Authors: Tim Pratt
“Shit!” Charlie wrenched the sword away and threw it across the room, where it struck the floor with a clatter, then pulled up my nightgown to look at my side. My entirely unharmed side. “You—but you stabbed—is it a trick sword? I don’t understand—”
I screamed, because the pain in my right hand was sudden and unbearable. But it was definitely pain in my
hand
, not ghost pain, not my wrist. I didn’t understand why it hurt—the sword took pain away, it stole life from the future to cure ills in the present—but then I figured it out. The bandages wrapped tightly around my stump were cutting viciously into the new hand I was growing. I lifted my stump to my mouth and tore at the bandages with my teeth—reminding myself uncomfortably of the Belly—and finally ripped the cotton enough to let the bandages fall away.
Have you ever seen time-lapse video of a plant growing? Seeing my new hand form was like that. It went from baby-sized to normal-sized in seconds, and apart from the skin being softer than the rest of me and the fingers entirely without calluses, it felt just like my old hand when I flexed it.
“You…you…you just grew a new
hand
, Becks.” Charlie took my right hand in his, running his fingers across the new skin. “What the hell is going on?”
My head was entirely clear. The sword had cured my fatigue, my blood loss, and probably flushed all the drugs out of my system, too. “So, Charlie.” I squeezed his hand in mine—my
new
hand. “I maybe should have mentioned this before. But I inherited more than just a house.”
“I don’t know anything about a body,” Charlie said. We stood in the living room together, looking at the place where I’d seen the Belly die. There was no blood, though I thought one of the rugs was missing, and the couch he’d landed on had been reupholstered in a rather pleasant dark-blue corduroy.
“The Howards must have buried him, or burned him, or…who knows what. Did they tell you
anything
?”
“They told me a bunch of bullshit, Becks. That Trey came by to see you, to make up because you’d had a fight, and found you with your hand missing. Gave me some story about how the local hospital’s no good, so they hired a private physician, best in the business, all that. Nothing about shotgun murders.” I waited for him to say, “Are you
sure
all that really happened?” But he didn’t.
I love Charlie.
With the broom and the watch gone, I didn’t have as much proof to show him, but the bell of truth and the vanishing Studebaker and the magic glasses convinced him, though in truth the fast-growing hand alone had probably been sufficient. Charlie’s never been one to clutch his head and moan about things being impossible, and I saw him integrate these new realities into his worldview more smoothly than I’d managed to. I could see his mind working: okay, there’s magic, and crazy motherfuckers who are obsessed with said magic, got it.
Maybe I couldn’t depend on Trey as I once had—though him showing up with the cavalry was a hell of an apology—but with Charlie, I had someone I could absolutely trust by my side.
No make outs with Charlie, of course, but you can’t have everything.
“Oh, your treacherous lawyer—ha, I’m repeating myself—left you a note.” Charlie took a folded envelope out of his pocket and passed it over.
I sighed. “Do I burn it unread, or what?”
“If this was a normal asshole-boyfriend situation, I’d say yes, cut off all contact. But since you’re standing in the middle of a covered-up murder scene in a magical house, and said asshole boyfriend probably saved your life, maybe you should see what he has to say—even if it’s only, ‘Don’t dig a hole by the back door, that’s where we buried your half brother.’”
Good point.
I read the letter.
Dearest Bekah,
I’m sorry. I know it’s not enough, and I know it probably doesn’t matter, but it’s true. You have no reason to believe me, but if you want me to say this in the presence of the bell to prove it, I will: I
couldn’t
tell you about your father, or his magic, because I wasn’t supposed to. I wasn’t allowed. Mr. Grace forbid it, and when he forbade me—or my father, or my grandfather—to do something, it was well and truly forbidden. I don’t mean we’d get in trouble if we did it anyway: I mean we
can’t
do it anyway, any more than the sun can stop shining or the ocean can stop being wet.
My grandfather betrayed Mr. Grace a long time ago, and as punishment Mr. Grace bound him and his descendants to service, unto the third generation. Which would be me. We were compelled and bound by magic to serve and protect your father…and his rightful heir. Which would be you. I did know—I
do
know—all sorts of things I wasn’t allowed to tell you, because I was bound to keep Mr. Grace’s secrets, as one of the basic tenets of my existence. But you’re the one who holds power now, and if you tell me to speak, I’ll speak.
I hope having Charlie there helps you. I’d be by your side myself, there’s nowhere I’d rather be, but I know I’m not welcome now. I did the best I could to make sure you wouldn’t have to be alone.
I knew the name Ken Tenzil from the moment you told it to me. That it was one of the Belly’s aliases. So when you told me he was in town, we tracked him down and started keeping watch on him. We followed him to your house, and did what was necessary. Don’t worry. No one will ever know he was there—we’re good at covering up things like that. It’s not the first body we’ve had to bury for the Grace family.
I’m only sorry we didn’t get there faster. Your hand. Your poor hand. Oh, Bekah. But there’s more healing magic somewhere, I’m sure. Or I can try to track down Hannah, and get back the sword. We’ll fix this. We’ll fix everything that can be fixed.
Can we be fixed?
Yours,
Trey
I crumpled the letter and let it fall.
He’d had a good reason to keep secrets from me. Not just a reason—a compulsion. That made sense, and if I hadn’t been so hurt by the spoon’s revelations, if I hadn’t felt so betrayed by that discovery immediately after our intimacy the night before, I might have listened to his explanations before the house chased him away. But that didn’t mean things could go back to what they’d been between us, because the explanation for his behavior solved one problem while pointing out another.
He’d signed the letter “Yours.” He was mine, all right. My…what? Indentured servant? Slave? I thought of things he’d said: “Your wish is my command”; “I live to serve.” I’d thought they were words of goofy gallantry, but they were literally true. The connection he felt, the one I’d responded to, it wasn’t about me, or him, or anything within us. He was
bound
to me—enchanted, ensorcelled, bewitched, bedazzled, and all that similar jazz. It was just magic. Stupid magic.
How can you have a meaningful, healthy relationship with someone who’s compelled to obey your orders? You can’t. The power imbalance distorts everything. (Sure, being bossy in bed can have its pleasures, but it has to be
consensual
nonconsent.)
Charlie picked up the letter. “May I?”
I nodded and sat on the couch. I wished I had a necklace with the same magic the wristwatch had—something I could wear that would make my head all numb and solid and invincible, to turn all my thoughts to stone.
“That is some heavy shit,” Charlie said at last. “Did you see the PS on the back, Becks?”
I took the paper from him and turned it over, to see the line I’d missed scrawled on the back.
PS You should try stirring the spoon the other way.
“He means the spoon that, what, showed you the past?” Charlie said. “What happens if you turn it the other way?”
I rose from the couch. “Let’s find out.”
“So am I going to see anything happen when you work this particular magic?” Charlie said. “Sparkles, translucent unicorns, your eyes turn black and your tongue turns to fire—something like that?”
I poured the cold coffee out of the brown mug and waited impatiently for a new cup to brew. I had no idea if the cup needed hot coffee to make the looking-through-time thing work—maybe tea or whiskey or water or nothing at all would serve just as well—but this hardly seemed like the time to go screwing with the ritual.
“No idea. When I did this before, time didn’t even seem to pass in the real world while I was gallivanting through the past. If something does happen to me, let me know.”
“Always happy to bear witness.” The coffeemaker beeped, and Charlie poured fresh black brew into the cup. I added some cream—again, do what you know works—then picked up the spoon.
“All right. Here goes.” Trey’s letter had suggested I stir the spoon clockwise instead of widdershins. I’d done that before, to bring myself out of the past and back to the present, but I hadn’t tried it from the present.
“You think this is going to take you into the future, don’t you?” Charlie said.
“I think it might. Or maybe it’ll give me visions of the outer solar system or the secret vaults under the Vatican where they keep all the porn of the classical world and the mummified body of Christ. What do I know?”
“Seeing the future…there are some implications to that. Like, there-is-no-free-will, the-future-is-predetermined, we-are-in-a-mechanistic-universe implications.”
I nodded. “I think I took the same Intro to Philosophy course you did, Charlie. But I don’t know what the spoon is going to do until I try it. Maybe it’ll turn me into a stegosaurus wearing a waistcoat and a monocle. Magic is weird.”
“I’ll just be over here, then…at a hypothetically safe distance.” Charlie drew way back, standing near the door with the impenetrable padlock.
I took a breath and stirred sunwise.
Last time, color drained from the world. This time, the colors intensified, growing more garish and oversaturated, like the world had been run through a terrible Instagram filter. The scene around me didn’t change, though—Charlie was still standing there in the corner, but he was frozen now, a statue of himself in too-bright colors.
Then the kitchen vanished.
I found myself in the middle of a cratered, scorched patch of earth, just a few scattered bricks and boards to show there’d ever been a house on the spot. The coffee mug—still its usual muted brown—sat where I’d left it, but because the counter underneath it was blasted to splinters, the cup just hovered in midair, like the world’s most boring special effect. I tried to pick up the mug, but I might as well have tried to lift a truck.
I looked around, and the woods were still recognizably those that surrounded my house…except now they were on fire—blazing orange and red, but also blue and green—and great clouds of birds fluttered above the conflagration, wheeling in the dusky sky, screaming their jay calls.
I couldn’t smell smoke, or anything else, so that was something. Otherwise, though, I was pretty much freaked the hell out.
A crowd of people stood loosely arrayed roughly where the front porch should have been. I made my way through the wreckage in their direction, spoon in my hand, trying to keep calm. Maybe this was something that would happen in the future, but it hadn’t happened
yet
. I was in no danger. I hoped.
I circled around wide to get a look at the half a dozen figures standing in a line in my front yard. I was surprised to see myself there, in the center, my hair hacked short, my face smudged with ashes. I held something in my hand—a gearshift from a truck?—like a scepter, or maybe a club. Hannah was beside me, but transformed: hulking, monstrous, nearly seven feet tall even while hunched over, her arms long, her hands tipped with claws like spear points. Her coat was shredded by the barnacles that covered her body, and torn fragments of her scarf were caught in her scimitar-length, curving teeth.
Trey stood on the other side of me, his head shaved, shirtless, a long and ugly cut running down his bare chest, like someone had tried to take out his heart with a machete and only just missed. He held the axe we’d used to try and knock down the unopenable door, and he was
grinning
, keyed up and manic. Beside him stood three people—at first I thought they were women, then men, then I just shrugged and accepted them as belonging elsewhere on the gender-presentation continuum—dressed in identical white shirts and loose cotton pants. Their eyes were closed, each holding hands with the next like a string of paper dolls, their short blond(e) hair standing up as if they were touching a Van de Graaf generator.
“Is everyone ready?” I—that is, the other me, the Bekah with the scepter—said.
“When you are, darlin’,” Trey said.
“Let’s go.” Future-Bekah took two steps forward and then vanished from sight. Trey ran toward the burning woods in an easy lope, axe at the ready. Hannah roared and rushed for the tree line…and the three strangers lifted up off the ground, levitating, and began to float toward the forest.
Something huge emerged from the trees. I couldn’t make out its precise form in the smoke, but it was definitely alive, as tall as the trees around it, and had a long dinosaurian neck. The smoke eddied away, and I saw a woman sitting astride the thing: the Firstborn, her long hair hanging loose. She threw her head back and howled, and birds and blackflies and butterflies poured out of her mouth in a torrent.
Then everything
jerked
to the side and I was back in the kitchen, holding onto the counter to regain my balance. The kitchen was no longer ruined, but it wasn’t the
same
—it was vastly less cluttered than I’d ever seen it, the dozens of cookie jars gone, everything gleaming and shiny. No longer a monument to Grace’s collections and obsessions and dementia, this was a house I could actually live in—and after the chaos of that strange battlefield, it was astonishingly quiet and peaceful. I padded through the house carefully, and the downstairs was similarly altered—cleaned up, redecorated, freshly painted, and far more minimalist than before.
There was a wedding photo on a shelf in the living room. I was in the photo, in a vintage-looking white dress. Trey was beside me in a tuxedo. Charlie flanked me—clearly he was my brides-man—and a man I didn’t know stood on the other side of Trey. “Oh, no way.” I turned the photo face down. It tipped over obligingly, but then blipped back to its upright position when I took my hand away. Me and Trey, smiling. Did this mean there was a path out of our impossible situation, where he was enslaved to my will? Or just a future where I went power mad enough to
order
him to marry me?
I went to the stairs, where more photos of me and Trey and assorted friends and family hung on the wall. I paused before the half-open door to the master bedroom, afraid of what I’d find when I stepped inside.
Check that—afraid of what I
thought
I’d find: me snuggled up in bed with Trey, the happy couple, in a future I couldn’t imagine a way to reach.
Instead I found us both in bed, dead, the sheets and blankets a sea of gore, only our faces recognizable in the devastation, and the Firstborn doing slow pirouettes around the bedroom, humming to herself.
I turned and ran down the stairs, and felt another sideways
jerk
, sending me stumbling into the kitchen counter. The room was dark now.
“Okay, okay,” I muttered. I’d seen the house burned down, and a supernatural war against the Firstborn, in one vision. I’d been murdered in my marriage bed by the Firstborn, with the house still standing, in the second. Those seemed like mutually incompatible outcomes, so I probably wasn’t seeing the One True Future. Maybe I was seeing possible futures? If so, it’d be really nice to see one where I wasn’t dead or surrounded by devastation.
I explored a little, and the house in this future was…witchy, I guess. Dried bundles of herbs hung from the ceiling. There were lots of mirrors in the living room, and hunks of volcanic rock and geodes, and chalk marks on the floors (huh, there was nice hardwood under all those rugs and carpets—who knew?) and drapes and altars and candles and an iron cauldron in the fireplace and jars full of things that squirmed or buzzed or shivered. I went back into the kitchen, which was clearly not a place where food was prepared anymore, and through the door that led to Grace’s study, which stood open in this—reality? Dimension? Possibility?
There were thumbtacked pieces of paper on the doors lining the hallway, pages that looked like they’d been torn from the weird blue book we’d found in Grace’s sanctum. The pages were incomprehensible as always, but the doors were also neatly labeled with words written on blue tape. One said “Kauai,” another said “Hannah’s Place,” another “Europe”—no, wait, it was “Europa”—and one was labeled “Gallery.”
I pushed open that one—it seemed like the least freaky option, and I was feeling fairly freaked out already—and then stepped through. The space beyond the door
was
a gallery, a big one with high ceilings and white walls and lots of windows. The place was closed, and from the ladders, drop cloths, and toolboxes I assumed an art installation was being prepared.
The center of the gallery was filled by a maze constructed of ten-foot-tall wooden panels, each hung with paintings that ranged from the size of a hand to the size of a garage door. I drifted toward the maze, and I recognized the paintings, if only from my mind’s eye: they were my melting houses, my dissolving houses, my transforming houses. The amped-up colors in the vision made the paintings look even stranger than they would have anyway. I walked into the maze, and the walls curved and turned sharply and diverged, offering assorted paths, each with different paintings on display, but all variations on a theme. I liked the idea: disorienting corridors lined by disorienting houses.
“I don’t know, Charlie, do you think I should make it possible to see everything?”
I froze. That was my voice, coming from one of the other branches of the maze.
“What, put in dead ends and make people backtrack?” Charlie’s voice was thoughtful. “I like the idea of three or four paths to different exits, with people having to go through more than once if they want to see everything.”
“Except we’ve already got those rotating panels, so we can spin them around between walk-throughs, change up the paths, alter the configuration…that’s not disorienting enough?”
“I think you want people to
know
they’re being disoriented,” Charlie said. “Otherwise they’re walking around mistakenly thinking they’re
oriented
, and who wants that?”
Future-me and future-Charlie turned the corner, then, and I was confronted with my own face—or I would have been, if she hadn’t been dressed all in black, including long black gloves and a black veil.
This
Bekah was so goth her pee was bats. Me in a vintage dress with an uneaten broom didn’t even compare. This version of Charlie was older, getting a bit of a belly, wearing rimless glasses and a strangely cut suit—presumably the height of future fashion. Her arm was linked with his, like they were strolling along a scenic waterfront.
I backed away into a corner, hoping they wouldn’t brush against me. Touching my dead father had been weird. Touching myself would be weirder.
Goth Bekah suddenly stopped, put a hand to her forehead, and said, “I just got such déjà vu…wait. Charlie. Remember when we turned the spoon clockwise?”
“And you saw all that crazy shit? Sure.”
“I saw
this
…I have to remember what I did, I mean, what
she
did. I’d better do it, the same thing, don’t you think? I…” She shook off his hand and took a step forward—
toward
me. Then she lifted her veil.
Her eyes were fogged over and blank, and terrible scars crisscrossed her face—
my
face. “Bekah,” she said. “If this is where you end up, if this is the path that unwinds before you…just know it isn’t as bad as it looks. There are other ways to see, besides through your eyes.”
“Wait, she’s here
now
?” Charlie said.
“Hush,” future-me said, turning her head toward him, then looking back at me—though she couldn’t look
at
me, not really. “I can still paint, in my way. I still have friends, and family—my parents are alive, Charlie’s okay. The Firstborn has been taken care of, maybe forever. But the house…Hannah, the Trips…and, oh, I know you’re confused about Trey right now, and you have reasons, but without him…without his sacrifice…I’d be so much more than blinded and wounded, Bekah. He would die for you. You should know that.”
I shook my head. “He
has
to die for me. He’s enchanted.”
“I think I remember what I said…” she muttered. “Bekah, you don’t understand. Trey can’t ask you, but all you have to do is—”
And then I jerked sideways. I don’t know if the spoon has a sense of humor, or what, but it dumped me back in the kitchen, in yet another possible future, before I could hear whatever wisdom blind future-Bekah had to offer.
Another me was sitting cross-legged on the floor, across from a woman I’d never seen before—long black hair, on the pretty side of plain, maybe thirty years old—so close our knees were touching. We held hands, and in between us, a globe of light floated and bobbed. “Shit, it’s really working!” the other woman said, voice all bouncy with glee. “We’re really doing it!”
“I knew I could work this out from first principles,” other-Bekah said. “Whatever my father was, whatever weird stuff he had flowing in his veins, I’ve got a little bit of it, too. So what if the Firstborn has the vessel—I’ve got my own power, and I’ve got
friends
.”
The other woman chuckled, and it was a great laugh, low and musical and full of caramel. “Oh, we’re just friends now?”
“You know I’m not big on labels, darlin’.” Hearing Trey’s habitual term of endearment on my own lips, directed at this woman, was
weird
. “What we are right now is the world’s smallest coven, but we’ll bring in Julie and—”