Authors: Tim Pratt
Then the girl across from other-me died, an arrow complete with feathered shaft sprouting from her throat. The globe of light fell and vanished, and other-me scrambled backward, cursing. The Firstborn stepped out of the shadows behind other-me and I said, “No, look out!” and then the Firstborn lifted a crossbow—an actual goddamn crossbow—and put a bolt through my alternate’s heart. Coven-of-one Bekah looked down at the arrowhead protruding from her chest, grunted, and then fell over.
The Firstborn lifted her eyes to mine. “Move along,” she said. “Nothing to see here.” She took a step backward into a shadow and disappeared.
It took another minute or two, while I watched my body bleed out, before the spoon jerked me back to the kitchen.
I’d had enough. The future was nothing but assorted varieties of terrible—
But before I could get the spoon into the cup to go back to my time, things changed again, and an elderly version of me wandered into the kitchen, hair white, housecoat filthy, waving her arms around and muttering, “Where, where, where did I put it, I need it, why, why, why…” Just a babble of syllables. The resemblance to the last-days dementia of my father was pretty clear.
I finally got the spoon in the cup, but I was so disturbed by the stumbling apparition of me as a doddering wizard who’d given up her humanity that instead of turning the spoon counterclockwise and rolling back time, I turned it sunwise again. Apparently that was the manual control to jump to another future, because things shifted once more.
Music tinkled in the sunny kitchen, a song by a singer I’d never heard before, but I liked it right away. And…there I was with Trey again, this time sitting in a little breakfast nook, each of us with a cup of coffee before us, and a plate of untouched Danish pastries between us. I was wearing the velvet smoking jacket I’d seen in the sanctum, looking really quite ridiculous, and Trey was gazing at me solemnly. “So,” he said. “What are we going to do?”
“End it,” other-me said.
“Are you sure? You couldn’t go through with it last time.”
Other-me shrugged. “What choice do we have? The spoon doesn’t lie. I mean, yes, it shows all sorts of crap that doesn’t actually happen, but if you take the average, you can get a sense of what’s most likely, and I didn’t see a single future where the Firstborn just retired to the Bahamas and left us alone. I gave her every opportunity.”
“I just…I know you didn’t want to be…”
“A murderer? I don’t. But we’re talking existential threats, here. Murder’s got one thing going for it, anyway. It’s definitive.”
Another jerk. This time I didn’t move much, since I’d stayed close to the cup, and I quickly whipped the spoon around counterclockwise. All the garish brightness faded, making the real world seem oddly muted in comparison. I carefully set the spoon down beside the mug, then looked over at Charlie. “Did anything weird happen to me?”
“Apart from you turning into a black-and-white movie version of yourself for about a second, no,” Charlie said. “It’s possible I just got something in my eye, though. Did anything weird happen to
you
?”
“Let me tell you about it.”
Apparently I did tell him about it. At least, he knew about it later. But I have no memory of any such conversation, because that was the moment I started losing time.
Damn it, right? Nothing’s ever easy.
The next thing I knew, I was standing in my studio, brush in hand, having made changes to my painting I couldn’t recall. I looked around blankly, and Charlie was there, sketching on a pad and sipping from a cup of tea simultaneously. I didn’t have a clock on the wall in the studio, but from the angle of the sun I thought it was an hour or so later than the moment I remembered standing in the kitchen…if it was even the same day. Nothing was garishly colored, or black and white, so I didn’t think I was peering through time…but I’d certainly lost some.
I opened my mouth to tell Charlie something was wrong, but he’d just want to rush me to the hospital or call Trey or something. The last time I’d assumed my brain was glitchy, the weirdness was just the consequences of magic. Probably this was simply a hangover from using the cup and spoon. Right?
I carefully put my brush down. “Do I seem okay to you, Charlie?”
He looked up, raising an eyebrow, then shrugged. “My calibration could be a little off—you went from a one-handed woman on a deathbed to a two-handed woman painting in a studio—but, yeah, you seem more or less like yourself. Why? Feeling like someone else?”
“Just sort of strange, is all.”
“Ha. I can’t imagine why.”
“How long do you think you’ll stay?”
Charlie whistled. “You are out of it, Becks. We just talked about that. I cried family emergency to my professors, and I could stay here the rest of the week, but you said you wanted to get me out of here before some grim meat-hook scenario can come to pass.”
“Oh. Right.” That did sound like something I’d say. The Firstborn was lurking, I had to figure out what to do about Trey, there were possible fires and wrecks and monsters, and Charlie didn’t deserve to have his love for me put his life in danger. “I think I still have a time-travel hangover. It’d be nice to have an ally somewhere safe and far away, though. Then I can call you in case shit goes crazy again.”
“It’s a little late for that. Shit went past crazy seventy, eighty miles back. I don’t want to leave you in the lurch…but I don’t know how much good I can do here. You’re dealing with stuff way outside my many areas of expertise.”
“Outside
everyone’s
expertise,” I muttered.
“Not everyone. You know who
could
help you…”
I groaned. “Don’t say Trey.”
“He knows stuff,” Charlie said gently. “And he’s magically compelled to tell you about it if you ask. That’s what I call a precious natural resource.”
“I liked him, Charlie. I really did.”
“Sounds like he liked you, too.”
I shook my head. “He’s enchanted. He’s got no choice—”
“Bullshit.” Charlie drew out the word, long and slow. “You said his grandfather treated you like crap when you met him, and he’s under the same she-who-must-be-obeyed geas. It’s not a love spell.”
“You just said ‘geas.’ I have never heard that word spoken out loud. Does it really rhyme with ‘flesh’?”
“According to the Irish role-playing gamer boy I was dating last month, yeah. Don’t change the subject.” He knew me too well. “I’m talking about
your
love life. If Trey likes you, it isn’t because he’s enthralled. It’s because you’re likeable.”
I grunted. “Okay. So maybe the affection isn’t supernatural. But I still can’t date him. He has to obey me, Charlie. Me dating him is like the president banging an intern, or a CEO hitting on an assistant, or a general coming on to a private, or…hell, I don’t know. It’s creepy. Major power imbalance.”
“It is not the ideal basis for a romantic relationship, I grant you. Though you wouldn’t have to worry about him cheating on you, I guess.”
“Funny.” My tone let him know I didn’t find him amusing in the least at that moment. “I just wish…huh. What if I just…set him free? Cancel the geas? If I’m his boss, I can fire him, right?”
“Worth a try,” Charlie said. “If you love something, set it free, and all that.”
“Let’s leave love out of it. I just want a fully autonomous boy for purposes of making out.”
“I can relate.”
I lost time again. I came back to myself behind the wheel, in a line of cars edging onto the freeway, watching a plane take off in my rearview mirror. I almost crashed into the car in front of me—if I’d been going faster, not stuck in a slow lane full of airport traffic, I probably would have smashed up my reliable little car pretty badly. I had no idea where I was, but my phone was on the seat beside me, offering me directions: from Greensboro International Airport back to Meat Camp—a trip of about two hours.
Checking the time and date I saw I’d lost nearly an entire day with this shift. Apparently I’d seen Charlie off at the airport. I had no memory of that at all, only an empty hole. This was blackout fugue-state stuff. I was walking around, doing things, interacting with people, driving a car, looking up directions, but I wasn’t aware of it. Was I suffering from a memory problem—having experiences that just weren’t getting recorded? Or was it something worse? Was I even
me
during these periods of lost time, or was I just an empty shell that acted like me? A philosophical zombie, going through the motions? A hollow woman?
I pulled out onto the highway and drove toward the setting sun. I cranked up some music, and I thought. I thought a lot.
“You left me a couple of messages.” I stood on Trey’s doorstep, arms crossed over my chest.
He was wearing workout clothes, his forehead slick with sweat, and he stared at me as if I were something wonderful and terrifying, like a velociraptor made of rainbows. “Bekah. I—you—
“Yeah. You. Me. Sorry to pop in on you like this. I got your address from June. I thought it was about time I came to your place. I didn’t bring a bottle of wine or anything, though. I’m not feeling all that festive.”
He blinked. “Wait. What’s the name of the guy who runs the unemployment office?”
The punch line, of course, is “art majors.” Instead I said, “Don’t be silly. Art majors can’t get jobs running anything.”
He relaxed, and I was glad he’d remembered to ask for the code phrase to make sure I wasn’t the Firstborn in disguise. Of course I could have just
ordered
him to remember, and taken all the uncertainty out of it. That thought depressed me. “Do you really have to do everything I say, Trey?”
He sighed. “If you tell me to do something, yeah. It’s not like you mind-control me, or something. It’s…there’s just an itch if I don’t do what you ask. A serious itch, deep inside the folds of my brain, and the only relief comes from compliance. I experienced it a few times with your—with Mr. Grace. But I’ve never felt that with you. You’ve never asked me to do anything I didn’t want to do anyway.”
“We haven’t had an argument yet, Trey. If I hadn’t found out about your…condition…what would’ve happened if I’d told you to go fuck yourself at some point?”
“It would have been a very depressing evening.” I could tell he wanted to reach out for me, to touch me, but he didn’t—just stood in the doorway. “I couldn’t tell you about my circumstances, Bekah. I wasn’t allowed—Mr. Grace ordered us to keep it a secret, for obvious reasons. But now that you know…” He shrugged. “That locked door in my throat is open. I can tell you whatever you want.”
“You could tell me you’d like me to come inside. But only if you want to.” I was choosing my words exceedingly carefully.
“Of course.” He wasn’t doing a good job of hiding his nervousness or eagerness as he stepped aside and let me through.
His living room was neat and minimalist, as far from the apocalyptic clutter of the Grace house as I could imagine, with photos of family and mountain landscapes predominating among the art on the walls, though there was a Klee print over his chocolate-brown couch, one full of colorful triangles—not really to my taste, but at least he had some nonphotographic art in the place.
I sat down in an armchair that matched the couch, and he sat down about as far from me as he could get on the sofa, though he leaned toward me. I knew he was keeping his distance in order to make me more comfortable, and I appreciated it.
I wiggled my regrown hand, which was still slightly paler than the rest of me. “You don’t seem surprised by new and improved, two-fisted action-Bekah.”
He nodded. “Charlie texted me, and told me you got the sword back, and that you’d been healed. I can’t tell you how glad I am about that.”
We were so stiff. So formal. So unlike
us
. I’d gotten accustomed to the guy, his easy laughter, his teasing. Thinking back, it was surprising how comfortable we’d become in one another’s company, so quickly. Sometimes it’s like that, though. You meet someone, and you just know: we’re going to be friends. If there was a way back through the maze of our current circumstances to a place where we could be friends—or more—I wanted to find it.
“Okay, Trey. I’ve got two problems. One, the boy I like is magically compelled to obey me. A little power exchange can be fun in bed, but a literal ‘your wish is my command’ dynamic is a shitty foundation for a relationship. It’s not fair to you or me.”
He nodded, his face carefully neutral. “Understood. I can’t say you’re wrong.”
I took a breath. “So, what I want to know is—how can I set you free? Remove your geas? Turn you into a real boy?”
Trey leaned back on the couch, releasing a long exhalation. “Well. I’m not allowed to ask you to set me free, but…Grace bound my family to serve his. I don’t know what kind of spell he cast, but as his rightful heir, I assume you have the power to, ah, annul the contract.”
“So, what? Do I just say, ‘Trey, I free you from your obligation’?”
We both sat there. I didn’t feel any electric crackle of magic. Trey shrugged. “I don’t know if that did anything.” He was tentative, maybe a little hopeful.
“Recite the Pledge of Allegiance,” I said.
“I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America—” Schoolboy cadence, automatic and robotic, his expression total dismay as his mouth worked without his volition.
“You can stop.” I put my face in my hands for a moment, then looked back up. “Sorry,” I said. “I think…we both know I haven’t really taken on my inheritance yet. I’m Grace’s legal heir, the property is mine, but until I find his vessel of power and absorb his magic, or drape it over me, or however the hell that works, the transition isn’t complete. That’s why I can’t open some doors in the house, I bet, among other limitations. Like not being able to set you free. So. You’re still in thrall to me. You’d die for me, whether you wanted to or not.”
He nodded.
“But that thrall isn’t the reason you want to be my friend.”
Another nod, very vigorous. “My grandfather, and even my father, they resent the compulsion. They kind of hate you for it, even though it’s not your fault. But I really do like you, Bekah. That’s all that makes this compulsion bearable, for me—that you’re a good person. I trust you. I understand if we can’t be…more…but I want to help you, any way I can. I mean that.”