Page 47 of That Ain’t Witchcraft

For a long, long moment, I didn’t say anything. I just stood there, staring at the dead woman who had become my aunt through adoption and inertia—when someone sticks around for decades, it’s hard not to make them part of the family—and feeling the dull ache in my shoulder grow stronger.

I had the crossroads breathing down my neck. I had a Covenant asshole shooting at me, or at least shooting at my boyfriend, which wasn’t actually any better. And now I had to face the possibility that I’d lost my babysitter and constant companion, not because someone was having a baby, but because I had screwed up badly enough to need to call upon the crossroads.

“No,” I said. My voice was surprisingly clear. I took a breath, and repeated, “No. That’s not going to happen. We’re going to get her back. You can’t stay, it’s not safe for you to stay, but I need you not to tell my parents what’s happening. There’s nothing they could do to help, and with the Covenant on the ground here, it’s not safe for them to get involved.”

“Someday you’re going to outgrow this need to martyr yourself, and then things are going to get interesting.” Rose reached out like she was going to touch my cheek, only to recoil when her fingertips brushed the wards. She managed a weak smile. “Good work on the wards. Keep them up. No matter how much you think you want to take them down, keep them up. You’re going to need a place where Bethany can’t reach you. You think you’ve dealt with crossroads ghosts before. You haven’t. You’ve dealt with Mary, and she’s not the norm. Stay careful. Stay safe. And, kiddo, please try to remember … Mary’s as dead as I am. She had her chance. You’re still having yours. It’s not worth it to trade yourself for her.”

She turned to Sam and James, suddenly smiling the bright, easy smile that has coerced generations of truckers to let her into their passenger seats, promising easy roads and minimal traffic ahead. She’s had decades to perfect that smile. It was still funny to see the boys trying to deal with the sheer intensity of it.

“Sam, nice to see you again. Remember, every day you keep putting up with our girl is a dollar in the betting pool for me, so I hope to dance at your wedding. James, nice to meet you, always a pleasure to be on a sorcerer’s good side, if you ever need a hitchhiking ghost, I’m your girl. Now, all of you, behave, and try not to let Annie get shot again.”

Like that, she was gone, not fading out of the world so much as simply ceasing to be a part of it. She had never been fully solid, and so there was no inrush of air, only silence. There wasn’t even a coat to leave behind.

I looked at the place where she’d been for a very long moment. Then, carefully, I closed the door and turned to face the others.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s fix this.”

Thirteen

“If you do your job and get out, people will wonder about you forever. If you do your job, ask for applause, and pass the hat, they’ll forget you in the morning.”

–Frances Brown

In the living room of a rented house, trying to figure out what happens next

“DID THE CROSSROADS REALLY turn this lady’s husband inside-out?”

Sam sounded so plaintive that I craned my neck to see the page he was looking at, not moving from my place against his side. Cylia didn’t want me out of her sight until she was sure there weren’t going to be any negative side effects from Leo’s tranquilizer, which meant the research party was back on, and had taken over the living room. Fern was upstairs in the attic, watching for trouble, but that didn’t mean she’d been spared; Cylia had toted an entire armful of local histories and a sheet of questions from James all the way to the top of the house for her to work on.

Having what was essentially a homework party while wrapped in a mothball-scented blanket and propped against my living heater of a boyfriend shouldn’t have been so pleasant, but it really, really was. I felt like several pleasant academic fantasies were all coming true at the same time, and fully expected to be crowned homecoming queen the next time I fell asleep.

“Looks like it,” I said. “She asked them to reverse his manner of thinking and behavior, so they straight up reversed him. This is why it’s best to be careful with your wishes. What year does it say that happened?”

Sam squinted at the page. “Um, 1495.”

“That fits with the rest of the reports,” said James. “When the change happened, it was followed by several years of deals that weren’t just counter to the desires of the petitioner, but destructive in a way they had never been before. I’m guessing it took the new crossroads several years to determine how cruel they could be without driving their potential, er, customers away.”

Something about that didn’t sound right. I returned to my original position, leaning my head back to rest against Sam’s shoulder, and stared up at the ceiling.

Cylia asked James a question. I didn’t really hear it. I heard even less of his answer. I was far away, remembering my first weeks as a roller derby trainee, otherwise known as “fresh meat.” Roller derby can be dangerous, but it would be a lot worse if not for the training everyone went through before we were allowed anywhere near a bout. We had to learn how to skate. We had to learn how to hit. And most importantly of all, we had to learn how to control our momentum, because once you strapped a reasonably athletic woman into a pair of roller skates, she became a physics-fueled engine of death, presenting a danger to both herself and others. During my first few weeks on skates, the most dangerous thing about the sport had been, well, me.

“No.” I sat up abruptly. The motion pulled at my injured shoulder, making it throb in an unpleasant manner. “That’s not what happened.”

James looked up from his own book and raised his eyebrows. “It wasn’t? Because everything I have here seems to imply that it was.”

“It’s one of those things that looks intentional if you’ve never been there,” I said. “It’s like learning a sport. You can hurt yourself if you don’t know your own strength.”

James looked at me blankly. I realized that an introverted, nonathletic kid with few friends would not have been in much demand for his high school teams, and that’s where most Americans learn whether or not they enjoy playing sports. There are things you can do as an adult, but they’re fewer, farther between, and they take more individual effort. Time to try another approach.

“Remember when you started freezing things?” I asked. “You probably shattered a few sheets when they got too cold, because you didn’t know how strong you were and you hadn’t learned to control it. The more you know, the more delicate you can be.”

James’ eyebrows climbed even higher toward his hairline. It was Cylia who spoke.

“Are you saying the crossroads are being controlled by some sort of cosmic horror in short pants?” she asked. “Because if we’re about to fight a toddler from beyond the stars, I’m out. I will pack the car and be gone by sunrise.”

“It’s good to know you have limits,” I said and meant it. “But not quite. I’m saying that whatever moved into this dimension and hooked into the crossroads in 1490 either got stronger when it crossed into our world or found a richer source of power than it expected. Add a language barrier or twenty—I’m betting there was a lot of turnover in the crossroads ghosts when this change was happening—and it’s understandable that people were getting turned inside out or whatever. The thing had to adjust to being where it was now.”

“I hurt my grandmother once,” said Sam.