Page 18 of That Ain’t Witchcraft

“Actually, I did that, on account of how you broke into our house and broke my girlfriend’s hand.” There was a low, dangerous note in Sam’s voice, one that promised a remarkable amount of pain to anyone who got in his way. “The knots would be a lot tighter if she’d done it.”

“I didn’t break her hand,” protested James, shooting an alarmed look in Sam’s direction. The oven mitts we’d taped over his hands flexed with the movement of his fingers.

“No, you just froze them a little.” I held up my left arm. A red, angry handprint was etched in the skin around my wrist. It didn’t hurt as much as my hand, but that wasn’t saying much. “I’m going to lose skin. Not too much, I don’t think. Not sure I care how much. It was my skin, and I didn’t say you could have any of it.”

“And I didn’t say you could go breaking windows on the house I just rented,” interjected Cylia. Sam shot her a sour look. She shook her head. “I’m upset about her being hurt, too, but I’m also the one who promised to pay for any damages incurred during our stay. Windows are expensive. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t call the police right now.”

“My father’s the chief,” said James. “Please call the police. I’m begging you. I’m sure he’ll be really interested in why I’m tied to a chair with a broken nose instead of safe at home where I belong.”

“Your nose isn’t broken,” I said defensively.

Cylia put a hand over her face. “Of course, his father’s the local police chief. Of course. Of all the luck.” She muttered the last like it was the direst curse in her vocabulary, and for a jink, maybe it was.

I focused on James. “You broke into our house,” I said. “We didn’t kidnap you. We were defending ourselves against a home intrusion.”

“This is Maine,” said James, like that explained everything.

Maybe it did, in whatever weird little world he was inhabiting. I turned to Cylia. She lowered her hand and met my eyes, expression despairing.

“He’s right,” she said. “I forgot. For a few minutes, I forgot.”

“Forgot what?” I asked.

“We’re in New England. It’s like …” She took a breath, clearly trying to organize her thoughts. Then she turned toward Sam. “When you were with the carnival, how did you feel if some townie wandered backstage, where they weren’t supposed to be? Were you welcoming? Happy to see them? Or did you tell them to get the hell out?”

“We told them to get the hell out,” he said, voice still rough and angry. “We didn’t like strangers.”

I could testify to that. Our first meetings had been a dance of snark and snipe, him trying to bait me into walking away and leaving the carnival forever, me trying to convince him I deserved a chance to prove myself. “What does that have to do with anything?” I demanded.

“New England is a lot like a carnival, or a secret society, or the insular group of your choosing,” said Cylia. “I mean, they welcome tourists, they can’t close their doors against the whole world, but in most of the small towns around here, they’ll choose the familiar over the strange every single time. If we call the police and tell them we have the police chief’s son tied to a chair, the fact that he’s the one who broke into our house won’t matter one damn bit. What’s going to matter is why is his nose broken, why did you have a knife in your hand when you went to confront him, all the things that shouldn’t matter. Because we’re strangers. Because we’re new. Because we don’t belong here.”

“A cat can have kittens in an oven, but that doesn’t make them muffins,” said Sam.

I eyed him. “What?”

“Something my grandmother used to say.” Sam looked at the red marks on my wrist, then back to James. “So if we can’t call the police, what do we do?”

“We get the shovel out of the car and we deal with things the old-fashioned way, I guess. Maybe I’ll actually break his nose, since you all keep saying I did it.” I sighed heavily as I turned my attention to James. “Someone else is going to have to do most of the digging. My hands aren’t working properly for some reason.”

His eyes widened. “You wouldn’t.”

“You broke into my house, you froze my hand, and you’re lying about basically everything except, I assume, being the chief of police’s son,” I said. “I don’t know how you deal with unsolvable problems here in New England, being a stranger to your town and all, but where I come from, if someone presents you with a situation you can’t win, you don’t say ‘well, guess Starfleet wants me to fail this exam.’ You say ‘what would James Tiberius Kirk do,’ and then you shoot the asshole who broke into your house in the head and go about your business.”

James’ eyes widened further, although not so much with fear. “Did you seriously just use the Kobayashi Maru as a threat?”

“The what?” asked Sam.

“It’s a Star Trek thing, and yes, I did,” I said. “There’s no such thing as an unwinnable scenario.”

“Oh, my God,” said James. “But cool. Cool. I clearly didn’t actually break into the house, and am having a very vivid and painful dream. Awesome. I can deal with that.”

“Nope,” I said, and leaned over to flick him in the nose. My fingers ached at even that small gesture. He rocked back in his chair, gasping from the pain. Worth it. “Not a dream. You’re about to die at the hands of a house full of nerds, unless you want to change your song and tell me how you froze my hand and why you broke into the library.”

Eyes full of tears, he sat up straighter and fixed me with a haughty look. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Let me guess: puberty hit, and you discovered you secretly had strange and inexplicable powers, powers that required you to stand apart from your fellow man, at least until you received a call from Professor Xavier’s Institute for Higher Learning, and—”

The flicker of interested, wary curiosity that had been growing in his eyes flickered and died. I stopped talking and looked at him for a moment. Really looked at him, trying to see the man beneath the blood, bad decisions, and bravado.