Authors: SM Reine
Laura pulled sheets out of a drawer and began setting tools on a wheeled tray. Elise stood by the bed and glared at the room like she was awaiting execution.
“And you are?” the nurse prompted James.
Even though the doctors in the practice were witches, he wasn’t sure what the rest of the staff knew, so he didn’t try to explain the unusual relationship between a kopis and witch. “I’m her boyfriend.”
Whatever Laura thought of a teenage girl dating an obviously older man, she kept it to herself. “I’m going to ask you some personal questions, Elise. Would you like your boyfriend to leave the room?”
She shook her head.
Laura asked about her health and her family’s history. She asked about alcohol and drugs, too. When she asked if Elise was sexually active, she shook her head again, and the nurse gave her a skeptical look. She made a note on the clipboard.
“You’ll need to strip down, but keep your socks on. It’s chilly in here. This one is a vest,” she told Elise, setting one folded sheet on the counter, “and this one is a blanket to cover your hips. Dr. Kingsley will be right in.”
She shut the door behind her. Elise picked up the vest. It was made of flimsy blue paper.
James studied the city through the window while she changed. He waited to face her again until the paper on the bed crinkled and Elise said, “Okay.” She had pulled extra sheets out of the drawer to protect herself and left her gloves on. She looked frail and childlike on the raised bed, and stared mistrustfully at the waiting stirrups.
“I can leave,” he said.
She shook her head again.
They waited together without speaking. James shifted her clothes to the counter, careful to leave her knives concealed, and took the chair by the bed.
When the door opened again, a short man with a bushy beard entered with Elise’s chart. He ignored James. “So you’re the female kopis,” said Dr. Kingsley. “Excellent! I’d say that I’ve wanted to examine one of your type, but that would sound odd, wouldn’t it? The good news is that your pregnancy test came back negative. Can’t imagine a pregnant demon hunter, eh?”
Elise looked horrified.
“Let’s see what we can find. Lay back and slide to the end of the bed.”
He positioned the stirrups and rolled his stool to sit between them. She moved stiffly, settling back against the bed with jerky motions. She was shaking.
“James,” she said.
Elise held out a hand. It took him a moment to realize what she was asking, but then he took it and squeezed her fingers.
She didn’t let go for the entire examination.
E
lise retrieved the
bowl that evening.
She didn’t want to stay at the hotel with James. It was too hard to face him. On the other hand, finding Mr. Black again was easy. She stood on a street corner until his slender, whip-like aspis appeared on the other side.
She walked to a bakery and looked in the window. His reflection appeared behind hers.
“I’ll do it,” she said, pretending to study green apple cupcakes. The sight of food made her stomach give a hard cramp, like it was trying to digest itself.
A thick roll of paper was pressed into her hand. By the time she turned around, Alain was gone.
He had given her a note wrapped around a roll of money. She didn’t need to count the bills to know that she could buy all the cupcakes in the bakery if she wanted. Elise sat on a bench to read the note while savoring a flaky, buttery croissant.
So glad you came around to my way of thinking. Here’s where you can find the bowl. See you tonight
.
Numbers were written at the bottom. Coordinates.
She sneaked into the motel where James was showering, grabbed her hiking boots, and stuffed most of the money into the bottom of her backpack. The sound of water traveling through the pipes shut off. She left a handful of twenties on his pillow, tucked her spine sheath and swords under one arm, and slipped out the door.
Using a map from a corner gas station, she pinpointed the coordinates Mr. Black had given her. They were centered on grassy plains bisected by freeways, where great native civilizations had once occupied the land—civilizations that had since been destroyed—and left nothing behind but pottery fragments and earthen mounds.
Elise took a cab to the edge of town. There were no exits from the freeway directly to the mounds, so she climbed over a concrete barrier and walked along the rolling hills.
Cars whispered along the overpass. An occasional horn honked. She moved deeper into the hills without worrying anyone would see. The moon was nothing more than a yellow sliver glowing between wisps of clouds.
The grass grew long and lush as she moved into a valley between mounds. Dew misted on her bare legs. Mud slurped under her soles.
She had brought the map with her, but there wasn’t enough light to make out the place she had marked. It didn’t matter. A strange quiet settled over her as she approached the eastern mound. It pressed inside her skull like wool. She could tell she was getting close when she found signs of an archaeological dig: leveled ground, a few posted signs, strings stretched between stakes.
Elise hopped a low fence meant to keep tourists away from the excavation and beelined for bushes at the back that hadn’t been cleared out yet. She pushed through the branches.
The hole she found was only a few inches narrower than her shoulders. It could have been mistaken for an animal’s burrow that had been worn away by rain.
She grabbed fistfuls of mud and threw gobs of it over her shoulder. Once the hole was widened enough for her to fit in with the sheath on her back, she squirmed inside. Mud scraped against her shoulders, her hips. Elise dropped to the bottom of the hole just a few feet down and straightened.
Her vision adjusted to the darkness, but there was nothing to see. Roots dangled from the ceiling. Shards of rock pocked the uneven floor. It was small enough that she couldn’t straighten fully. But the pressure inside her skull had worsened, and she knew she was in the right place.
Elise felt along the back wall. Her hand slipped into the damp soil, and her fingers met something hard.
Blowing her bangs out of her face, she dug into the mud. There was smooth stone on the other side. She drew a sword and rapped the hilt against it. Hollow.
She drew back her arm and smashed it into the wall.
The stone crumbled. A few more strikes, and she made a hole. Light glowed on the other side, faint and gray, like early morning.
She returned the falchion to her spine and ripped clay bricks from their moorings. Once she removed enough of it, the wall fell apart on its own, and she soon had a hole as big as her last one. She squeezed inside.
That faint light didn’t seem to come from any single source, but the chamber on the other end was obviously manmade. The walls and floor were chiseled, an old stone table stood in the corner, and there were engravings on the walls. A recession had been built into the stones at the opposite end of the room, just eight feet away. It was a different kind of rock than everything else: white and smooth, rather than clay-colored. The platforms and etchings made it look like a monument or altar. And the bowl Mr. Black wanted was trapped inside of it by bars.
The bowl was smaller than she expected—barely any bigger than her fists. It looked mundane, dusty, and boring, but the way it vibrated in her veins told her it was ethereal, which meant it was none of those three things.
Elise tried to jiggle it free. It wouldn’t budge.
She scanned the symbols surrounding it. A crucifix formed the center, surrounded by obscure symbols that most educated kopides would have realized were ethereal in origin. There was no other language like it, human or infernal. And no other kopis would have known the symbols were also a lock.
Elise looked at her hands. She wore thick leather gloves with a strap across the back, which she had recently shoplifted from a motorcycle shop.
James would tell her to leave. He would tell her to forget.
He would probably be right.
Her fingers shook as she ripped off the Velcro strap and removed the glove with her teeth, baring her hand to the dry air of the chamber.
Black lines marked her palm, like a freshly-inked tattoo that hadn’t had time to heal. The skin was red and swollen around the edges. But Elise had never been under the needle of a tattoo artist, and she never would have chosen the design if she had. The marks didn’t match the symbol on the altar, but it was close.
The stone vibrated to life when she stretched out her hand. Silver-blue light traced along the marks at the base.
Elise drew back. The vibrations slowed.
“God help me,” she muttered. It was not a prayer. She never prayed.
She pressed her palm to the altar.
A strange singing filled her skull. The vibration vanished in an instant, and so did everything else—the room surrounding her, the stone under her hand, the darkness. A veil of heavy gray light pressed against her.
There was a face on the other side of the veil.
Elise…
That single word made her eardrums ache. The voice was great and terrible, tender and surprised.
She wrenched her hand free with a gasp.
And she was holding the bowl.
Elise blinked at her hands. She hadn’t consciously moved the bars aside, but the bowl was no longer captive in the wall, and it was humming. It liked being held by her. There was no sign of breakage or shifting in the altar, so she shouldn’t have been able to remove it.
She set the bowl on the ground and took a big step back to study the chamber. It didn’t feel so empty anymore. Now the hollows looked like watching eyes, and spider webs swayed in the corner as if ruffled by a passing breeze.
She pulled her glove back on.
“I’m coming for you,” she whispered, just to break the silence. “This is going to end.”
Shucking her shirt, Elise wrapped the bowl so that none of the stone was exposed. Wearing nothing but a camisole was chilly, but it was better than feeling the ethereal artifact recognize her. It didn’t hum so much when it was out of contact with her skin. The gray light dimmed as she stepped further away from the altar until she climbed out of the room in total darkness.
It was hard to climb the short, muddy slope to the surface again, but with enough grunting and wiggling, Elise emerged from the hill.
Three men were waiting for her at the top.
Two of them were standing. The other was kneeling with a gun aimed at the back of his skull. Elise probably shouldn’t have been surprised to see the one on the ground was James. Alain Daladier’s grip was steel on the pistol. Mr. Black stood in front of the others, smiling his most charming smile.
Her hands tensed on the bowl as she straightened. Elise was soaked in mud, and the slight breeze gave her chills. The odds weren’t good. Not good at all. Mr. Black may have been old, but he would be fast. Elise didn’t like her chances against him. It was an unpleasantly vulnerable position to be caught in.
“You made it,” Mr. Black said in a warm voice, like a pleasant older uncle. He wore a fine white suit and leaned on a jeweled cane. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised, but you have impressed me mightily, young lady.”
James was pale. There was sweat on his brow. “Elise—” he began.
A nudge from the pistol cut him off.
“I’ll take that now,” Mr. Black said, stretching his hand out.
She didn’t move. “The money.”
“Surely you don’t think I wouldn’t make good on a deal?” He caught her glance toward James and feigned further shock, fluttering his hand at his breast. “Oh, my dear, I realize this must not look good. We spotted Mr. Faulkner trying to follow you underground. We're only concerned he might have been trying to stop you. Don’t you see? It was for your safety.”
She considered the accusation. As persistent as James had been in following her around, he had never shown an inclination to hurt her. He was taking short, shallow breaths. Not injured. Just afraid. He didn’t like having a gun aimed at him. Well, that was his fault for following her where he wasn’t wanted.
“The money,” Elise said again.
Mr. Black’s smile widened with delight. “You don’t find having your witch friend at gunpoint motivational? You surprise me again!”
“He’s not my friend.”
“Well, well. Then I suppose it doesn’t matter if we shoot him. What do you think?”
“The money for the bowl.”
“Cold, my dear. Very cold. I appreciate that.”
Mr. Black gestured. Alain opened his jacket with his free hand, removed a piece of paper, and offered it to Elise. She hugged the bowl to her stomach as she stepped up to take it from him. James’s features were drawn and grim.
The paper was another set of coordinates.
“I’ve hidden your money,” Mr. Black said. “Couldn’t risk having you take it from us without holding up your end of the deal, hmm? Now it appears that wouldn’t have been necessary.”
Elise thought back to the map. The coordinates weren’t far.
“Goodbye,” she said, more to James than the other men.
Then she tucked the bowl under her arm and started toward the lights of the freeway. When Mr. Black called after her, there was no good humor in his voice. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I don’t see my money.”
Alain moved in the corner of her eye. He was turning the gun on her.
In a flash, she grabbed the pistol, slammed her hand into the joint of Alain’s elbow, and kicked him to the ground. The bowl didn’t even slip.
Whirling, she aimed the gun at Mr. Black’s face.
Everyone froze.
He couldn’t seem to work up a grin again. It flickered on his lips and was replaced by wary evaluation. Would she shoot him? “You want me to have the bowl as much as I do,” he said in a low whisper that only she would be able to hear. “If you want me to kill Him.”
“Yes. I also want my money.”
He raised his voice. “Alain. Go get it.”
The aspis got to his feet, glaring fire at Elise, but he obeyed without argument. He vanished down the hill.
James stood. His knees were wet and he was breathing hard. “You don’t want to do that,” he said, giving the bowl a look very much like the one he had given Alain’s gun. He didn’t seem much less nervous without a bullet aimed for his head. “You can still put it back.”