Authors: Tim Pratt
He touched my arm as he entered. “I was just worried about you, after everything that happened today.”
The bell in my pocket rang, its sound muffled.
Trey frowned. “What’s that?”
Trying not to reveal how suddenly and justifiably tense I was, I said, “Oh, just a new ringtone. It’s my friend Charlie, I don’t need to get it.” The bell rang again to note my falsehood.
Trey stood in the living room, looking around appraisingly and nodding to himself. “It’s looking really good in here now.”
“Yeah. I hope it stays that way.” I asked a question I’d already asked him once, after saving his life: “Do you think the Firstborn is going to come back?”
I didn’t want it to seem like I was staring, but I looked at him as closely as subtlety would allow, and he sure looked like Trey…until my gaze reached his hand, the one I’d cut with the sword, the one where his scar had disappeared. The scar was back now, a thin white line that started beneath his index finger and ran diagonally across the back.
“I doubt it,” he said.
Ring ring ring
. “I’m sure the Firstborn got what she wanted, and she won’t bother you again.”
Ring ring ring
. He frowned. “Are you sure you don’t need to get that?”
“No, sister,” I said. “It’s nothing important.”
“Sister? Bekah, I don’t know what you’re—”
I shook my head. “I’m not stupid. Your disguise isn’t as good as you think it is.”
He—she—sighed, and when she spoke again, it was in the Firstborn’s voice, horribly surreal emerging from Trey’s familiar mouth. “Did you set up a code word or something? I knew I should have made arrangements to listen as well as watch. I was surprised to see your new boyfriend survived our encounter. I suppose you put that clever sword to use. You might not have done that, if you knew what it cost to use that kind of magic, but of course you don’t know
anything
, that’s the point—”
“Did you hurt him?”
“Who, your pet lawyer? Not since I dropped him off the top of the stairs, and that didn’t do him much harm in the long run, so I don’t see what you’re fussing about. No, he’s fine. I still had some of his skin under my nails, from when I held him by the throat—and that’s all I neeed to make a perfect model of his body.” She paused, and I was disgusted at the sight of her smile on his face. “Hmm. I could pick up a bit of your hair or blood or skin now, you know, and visit Trey wearing
your
face and form. Wouldn’t he be surprised when my false face began melting off in the middle of fucking him? Almost as surprised as he’d be when I tore off
his
face with my fingernails a few seconds later—”
“Why did you kill Melinda?” My sister’s threats were entirely too good at unnerving me, and I wanted to interrupt her, knock her off balance, and try to take control of the conversation…before it turned into an assault. “She was harmless.”
My sister rolled her eyes. “Harmless, and worthless. Why even talk about these short-timers, these vermin, these ordinaries? You focus on the most trivial things, little sister. I just went to Melinda’s house to pluck a few of her hairs from a brush for my disguise, but coming upon me in her bathroom alarmed her so much, her poor heart just broke. I didn’t want her stinking up the cottage so I dragged her out to the garden, to let her corpse feed the plants. Maybe that’s what she would have wanted. Not that I much cared.”
The bell didn’t ring, so I took all that for truth. Good to know Melinda hadn’t been murdered, exactly, but it still meant the Firstborn was still responsible for her death. “Look. What exactly do you
want
? You got the mirror, the sanctum—they’re yours. Take them and go.”
“The mirror is a lovely bauble, and the sanctum very peaceful and safe, if too rustic for my tastes. But there’s nothing
in
there, no hollow places in the walls, no hiding places under the floorboards, nothing hidden in the desk or the chair—they are just things. What I want, Rebekah, is something you’re too stupid to even identify. I want the
vessel
.”
“The vessel. That’s helpful. What the hell is it?”
“My birthright.” She spread her hands, clearly making an effort to look peaceful and reasonable. “Give me that, and I have no quarrel with you. Father was clearly losing his mind in his later years—why else imbue a sword, of all things, with healing magic? Choosing to pass all his worldly and otherworldly possessions on to you after his death was just another symptom of his sad mental decline. The fact that he
chose
to die, him who was born when the world was young, him who could have lived forever, is further evidence that he was no longer in his right mind. I am his firstborn child, Rebekah. The best. The brightest. I lived with him until I was fourteen. Can you imagine? His presence, filling my formative years, shaping me. I learned magic at his knee. He taught me how to make the world bend to my will, and I am the only one who deserves to wield the power he left behind.” She took a step closer, a terrible smile on her face. “Just say you renounce the inheritance. Say it all belongs to me. Or, if you won’t give me what’s mine willingly, I can take it—”
Ring.
“No, you can’t. And you
know
you can’t.” I desperately wanted to retreat from her advance, but I stood my ground. “If you could have taken it, you would have by now. But you can’t steal the magic our father left me. I have to give it to you, the way I gave you the mirror.”
She bared her teeth. “Let me rephrase. I can
make
you give it all up.”
No ring there, but I shook my head anyway. “Killing me won’t help you get what you want, either, sister—you’re sure as fuck not
my
heir.”
She snarled, and I hoped to never see such a look of rage on the real Trey’s face. “I can make your life a hell, Rebekah. You haven’t seen even a tenth of my power yet—”
I cocked my head, suddenly realizing something. “You can’t even be in my house without my permission, can you?” I smiled. “Fuck off, Firstborn. I’m asking you nicely to leave and never come back.”
The house came alive—or else, it had always been alive, and it just
showed
that life in that moment. The walls seemed to bow inward, as if with a great inhalation, the floor shook, the shelves began to shudder, and every loose object in the room levitated up to roughly head height, from books to statues to masks to furniture, all bobbing gently in the air, and waiting—I
knew
—for the merest gesture or indication from me to fly at the Firstborn and smash her to pieces.
Any pretense at friendliness vanished. “I will take your life apart until you—”
“Get out of my house,” I said, even more firmly than before, any trace of a smile gone. “You’re not welcome here anymore.”
She grunted, bent over double, and howled in pain. She looked up, and the Trey mask she was wearing started to run down her face like the paint on a fresh watercolor left out in the rain. Her eyes changed color, but stayed wild and furious. Then she howled again, some agony digging its quills into her guts, before vanishing with a sound like a popping champagne cork.
“
My
house,” I said, feeling pretty pleased with myself.
Then I called Trey and told him he should come stay with me for a while because otherwise there was a decent chance the Firstborn was going to show up at his house looking like me to murder him.
Trey arrived not much later with an overnight bag. Before I opened the door I yelled, “Tell me your name!”
“Uh. Stacy Howard the Third?”
The bell had no objection to that, so I unlocked the door, let him in, and gave him a hug. “Sorry. It’s just, considering everything…”
“Oh, I get it.” He didn’t have to ask a million questions, at least, because I’d pretty well filled him in over the phone. “I’ll take the bedroom upstairs that doesn’t have the creepy butterfly collection, if that’s okay.”
“The one with all the shelves full of big glass fuses, or the one with the water-damaged pulp science fiction magazines?”
“That first one. Glass fuses don’t stink of mildew.”
“Works for me.” I trailed him up the stairs. “Sorry to, um, endanger your life. And everything.”
“It’s not your fault a crazy person is trying to steal your stuff.” He stowed his bag in the Fuse Room. “Thanks for not telling your sister, ‘Go ahead and kill Trey, I hardly know the guy.’”
“I know you a little, and I like you okay. Well enough that I don’t want to see her rip your face off.”
“Yeah. I appreciate that. So…what are we going to do about her? Not that hanging out in your magical house isn’t a perfectly pleasant short-term solution, but…”
“I’m going to keep digging through the stuff my father left behind, and try to find this vessel the Firstborn was talking about—who knows, maybe it’s the cup from the sanctum? Cups are vessels. Unless I’m being too literal. Anyway, once I’ve got that, I’ll have some leverage. The thing is, I can see why the Firstborn is pissed. If I thought my dad was going to leave me his riches and instead he gave them to some mysterious illegitimate daughter I’d never even heard of, I’d be pretty annoyed, too.”
“Sure you’d be annoyed. But I doubt you’d break into her house and start stealing stuff and trying to murder her—uh, her lawyer.”
“Not just lawyer. Friend.” I patted him on the arm. “Let’s start there, anyway, and see where we end up, all right?”
“Oh, good. I was afraid seeing your half sister wearing my face would make the prospect of a second date with me kind of awkward.”
“I’m not in a real romantic frame of mind, but you’ve still got a shot, if my life settles down enough for me to think about such things.” I’ll admit, the look of gratification on his face when I said he still had a chance made me even more inclined to give him one. It’s nice to be liked, especially by someone with a smile and shoulders like his. And, of course, all those crucial nonphysical qualities.
I let him get ready for bed, then obsessively checked the locks, then addressed the empty living room: “House, don’t let anybody, and I mean
anybody
, in here unless I give them permission—even if it’s somebody who’s been in the house before. Okay?”
No reply, but I had the feeling I’d been understood. I went to bed, with Trey in the room next to mine and the house crouched all around me in readiness.
Weirdly enough, I slept quite peacefully.
Trey made breakfast—pancakes with a hint of lemon and lots of bacon—and then we sat around looking at stuff on our laptops. It was a nice lazy Sunday sort of vibe—at least until I started to get twitchy. I closed my computer and looked across the kitchen table at him. “I feel like a shut-in.”
He nodded. “Me, too, a little. You think the Firstborn is likely to leap on you from a tree if you go outside?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I don’t want to just sit in here, cowering. That’s letting her win, you know?”
“So go outside. I mean, think about it—she’s tried disguise and subterfuge, not direct attacks, so far. She doesn’t seem willing to hurt you, just to try and scare you. She wants you to give up the inheritance, not die.”
“She might hurt
you
again, though, to get at me.”
“Yes. That’s why I said
you
should go outside. Me, I’ll stay in here where it’s safe.”
“Well…that sucks, but I see your point. Okay. I’m going to take a walk. Maybe poke around the outbuildings, see if I can find anything that looks like the vessel of a wizard’s power.”
“Pointy hat,” he said.
“Magic wand.”
“Black robe with stars embroidered all over it.”
“Big wooden staff with a crystal dragon on top.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Keep your eyes open for stuff like that.”
I went onto the porch, pausing at the top of the steps to say, “House, keep Trey safe.” Then I went down to the yard, into the warm morning, and scanned the area. No sign of the Firstborn, unless she was disguised as a tree or bush. I went to the shed where I’d gotten the bolt cutters and looked over the assorted tools, but if any of them had magic properties, they were nonobvious. What I needed was some magical thing that glowed or rang or buzzed or hummed or changed colors in the presence of
other
magical things. Or, as long as I was wishing for things, I could use a thing that granted wishes.
Having exhausted that avenue of exploration, and having inhaled approximately a pound of dust and old spiderwebs (and possibly spiders) in the process, I came out of the shed and walked around to the back of the outbuilding, toward the woods.
There was a broom leaning against the shed’s back wall, with a knotty handle made from a long tree branch, and a sad little collection of straws tied onto the end. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, I tucked the broom between my legs and willed it to fly.
Nothing. Probably just as well. Falling from a broom at high altitude would be a stupid way to die.
Feeling silly, I gave the broom a little sweep in the direction of the shed—and a geyser of grass and dirt flew up from the ground, smashing into the wall with a big loud thump. I dropped the broom, jumped back eight or ten feet (that’s how it felt anyway—I guess the broom
could
make me fly), then approached the broom again cautiously. I picked it up and walked over to the broken washing machine standing in the weeds, then swept the broom toward the hunk of junk.
The machine tumbled and spun and rolled across the lawn like it was a tin can and someone had kicked it.
I whistled. A souped-up broom. Maybe Archibald Grace had just been too cheap to buy a leaf blower, but the result was the closest thing to a weapon I’d found yet. If the Firstborn came at me, I could sweep her hard into the nearest tree. Granted, carrying a homemade broom with me everywhere I went would qualify me for “local eccentric” status pretty quickly, but it was a small price to pay, and less likely to get me arrested than a sword cane.
I rested the broom across my shoulder and walked into the woods, whistling, almost hoping my nasty half sister would show her pointy face. I spent a couple of hours rambling around, knocking over dead trees and swirling up tornadoes of leaves with the broom, feeling pretty witchy and badass, I must admit.