Page 6 of That Ain’t Witchcraft

“Keep on falling in love, no matter how much it hurts you. Eventually, it’ll end up giving you a safe place to land.”

–Enid Healy

About two hundred miles outside the city limits of New Gravesend, Maine

Now

“IF YOU'D STOP SCRATCHING it, it would heal faster.”

“But it itches now.”

Cylia glanced up, her eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror. “And whose fault is that, exactly?” she asked, voice cool. “I told you not to fight a field. A field is bigger than you. No question, no contest, no way you were going to win.”

“But we did win,” I objected. “We burned the Blight to the ground. The field is clean, the farmer isn’t going to be eaten by evil fungus, everybody wins.” Not everybody. The Blight’s victims had been consumed enough that the fungus had weakened and worn away their bones. When the fire came and cleansed the fungus away, there had been nothing left to hold the skeletons together. Maybe a forensic anthropologist could have sifted through the dust and ashes to find conclusive proof that at least twenty-three people had died there. Maybe not.

For the families of the victims, there would be no closure, no confirmation that their loved ones were gone. There would just be the aching question, forever, of what had happened to them. It was difficult to think about that and not draw parallels to my own family’s situation. They didn’t know where I was or what I was doing or whether I was even still alive.

Well. They probably knew I was alive. I was pretty sure my dead Aunt Mary was allowed to tell them if I died, and the mere fact of that sentence making sense is proof that my life is damn weird.

“You need to be more careful,” said Cylia. “You can’t count on luck to save you every time. Believe me, I should know.”

I wanted to bristle and object that I hadn’t been counting on luck to save me, that I’d been counting on tactical planning and years of training for situations even stranger than “and then I convinced a cornfield to attack me by making out with my boyfriend.” Good sense caught up with me at the last second, reminding me that counting on luck was exactly what I’d been doing.

Dammit. I hate it when other people are right. I slumped in my seat, careful not to pinch Sam’s tail. He had it wrapped around my waist, and had since he’d fallen asleep about a hundred miles back. The poor guy was exhausted.

We all were. Travel is fun when there’s an end in sight, but when you’re on a seemingly endless road trip through the middle of America, there comes a point where the weariness settles into your bones and latches on like a novel new kind of parasite. I don’t know how the routewitches do it. They have to travel to preserve their power. Maybe that dependence comes with an increased tolerance for diner hamburgers and gas station bathrooms. Me? I don’t have any of that, and I was ready to commit violence for the sake of a shower with decent water pressure.

“Are we there yet?” I asked waspishly.

“Almost,” said Cylia.

I blinked, sitting up straight. “What?”

“I said, almost.” This time when she looked at me in the rearview mirror, she was smiling. “We’re almost there.”

I stared at her.

Of the four people in the car, Sam was the only one who was visibly not human. As always, he’d slipped into his fūri form as soon as he fell asleep, which was why he was wearing a hoodie, with the hood pulled securely over his head. If we got pulled over, he’d be able to shift back to his less simian guise before anyone got a good look at him. And of the four people in the car, I was the only one who was actually human according to any standard definition.

Fern and Cylia look superficially alike. Both are skinny, pale, and blonde. But where Fern is a fairy-tale princess turned live-action derby girl, with skin like cream, enormous blue eyes, and a dancer’s build, Cylia is tall and freckled, with eyes the color of pondwater and bones that seem to be constantly on the verge of breaking through her skin and running off on their own adventures. She’s remarkably strong, for all that she doesn’t have much in the way of leverage, and favors shirts without sleeves that show off her biceps and tattoos at the same time.

Both of them used to play roller derby and, presumably, will again when we eventually finish our road trip from hell and turn toward home. That was where we’d met: on the track, where Fern and I had been skating for the Slasher Chicks, and Cylia had been skating in one of the competing local leagues. We’d always gotten along, and after this little road trip of the damned, I strongly suspected any return to Portland would be accompanied by Cylia switching leagues. You can’t help someone take a sponge bath in a truck stop bathroom without forming the kind of bond that simply won’t go away.

They have something else in common, apart from the roller derby and the general “make me feel like I’m at a family reunion” blondness: neither of them are even partially human, unlike Sam, whose mother was as human as they come. Fern is a sylph, a walking fuck you to the laws of physics. Her density is sort of optional, and she can make herself heavier or lighter with a thought. It shouldn’t work. Biology and physics both say it shouldn’t work. But she does it anyway, because what’s the point in having scientific laws if you can’t break them once in a while?

And I’m glad we’ve already accepted that idea, because Cylia is worse. She’s a jink, one of two known species of human-mimicking, luck-manipulating cryptids. (The other species, the mara, mostly just eat the stuff. We are not big fans of mara. And by “we,” I mean “anyone with any sense.”) Things tend to go her way, although her lucky breaks are always accompanied by little misfortunes, like getting to the one motel in twenty miles that has any vacancies and discovering we’ll have to share a bed. Things that will inconvenience but not endanger.

It says something about her skill at working the luck that she can keep it that consistent. Most jinks who survive to reach adulthood are like that. They learn what they can bend and how far they can push it, and they hone their craft on the sharp, unforgiving knife of knowing that the first time they screw up, the Covenant of St. George will be knocking on their doors, having miraculously tracked them down. Luck goes both ways. If yours is bad enough, it’ll serve the ones who hate you.

Cylia’s husband, Tav, died as a consequence of his own bad luck, having spent their years together manipulating the world to keep her safe. It had been an act of love, and I was pretty sure that if it had been possible to ask him—if one of the family ghosts had been able to find him lingering in whatever afterlife waits for the jinks and mara—he would have said he had no regrets. Cylia had been safe while she was with him, and now that she was without him, she had a firm enough grasp of her own capabilities that she was doing just fine.

For the moment, anyway. Technically, the smart thing for her to do would have been to put me out of the car, since at last count, I had the Covenant of St. George, the sorcerers who ran Lowryland, and the crossroads themselves all wanting a piece of my ass. Getting far, far away from me would be safer and more sensible than taking me on a cross-country road trip.

Thankfully, no one has ever accused my friends of having sense.

“Where are we going, exactly?” I asked. “Did you throw darts at a map again?”

“Better,” said Cylia. She sounded serene, but I could hear the cracks behind her calm demeanor. Being in the car for weeks was wearing on her as much as it was wearing on the rest of us. Maybe more, since I don’t drive, Sam preferred not to—he had to stay human to do it, and that made him uncomfortable—and Fern’s driving could be described as either “enthusiastic” or “hazardous.” Cylia had been behind the wheel almost constantly since we’d left Florida. She deserved a break.