Page 2 of Backpacking through Bedlam

“Hold tight and I’ll ask,” said Mary, and disappeared.

Alice sighed again as she began scanning the marshy ground between her and the tree line for signs of swamp hags. Swamp hags didn’t do tactics beyond the basic ones that instinct provided them with; they were basically big frogs, and if they had a little more in the way of clever than an ordinary frog, it was all down to them having bigger heads and bigger brains, which meant more space for thinking about things. But since they were still frogs, the things they were thinking about were generally food, safety, and whether or not it was safe to make more frogs.

So they wouldn’t have chosen sophisticated hiding spots. And that would have been fine if they hadn’t had just enough smart in them to wait until she was good and surrounded by marsh on all sides before they showed themselves.

How she’d been able to wander that far across the marsh without noticing was a little harder to understand. Sure, she usually managed to step where she needed to be stepping, and to avoid stepping where she shouldn’t, but she hadn’t been paying any attention to where she’d been going, and yet somehow that had translated to her not stepping in a single puddle or patch of mud deep enough to catch her attention. It didn’t make any sense, which was why she didn’t have any trouble believing it had happened.

The less sense something made, the less point there was in arguing with it.

Mary reappeared as abruptly as she had vanished, shaking her head. “Well, kiddo, looks like you’re in luck,” she said. “My employers have decided that in this instance, seeing you safely back to the woods counts as a standard part of babysitting duties. Follow me.”

She began walking across the marsh, her feet never sinking into the wet ground, her shoes never getting muddy. Alice only hesitated a moment before she followed.

Mary had been one of the most trusted people in Alice’s world since she was an infant in swaddling clothes, placed into the arms of a white-haired teenager by a mother who needed a little help. Fran hadn’t known Mary was dead at the time, but the family had figured it out pretty quickly and, rather than firing the girl, had essentially adopted her. Every house needs a haunting, after all, and Mary was theirs.

But Mary wasn’t just theirs, and never had been. Mary Dunlavy was a crossroads ghost, a dogsbody for the terrifying supernatural entity that brokered bargains for the unwise and the unwary, the desperate and the doomed. She couldn’t do anything without their permission. When Alice had been young, that permission had been easy—Mary’s babysitting duties were always allowed, unless the crossroads needed her elsewhere. And when Alice had been injured, anything that fell under the heading of nursing her back to health had been considered acceptable. Now, though . . .

Now, every request had to be run through the crossroads, and unless they said it was all right for Mary to do without a contract, Mary had to say no or offer to broker a bargain. Alice had never been particularly tempted to deal with the crossroads for her own benefit before Thomas made his own bargain, and now, having seen what they were doing to him, she was even less inclined to push when Mary said the crossroads didn’t want her to do something.

She still didn’t know the exact terms of Thomas’s deal with the crossroads, only that it had involved her in some way, and when she died, if she died before he did, he would be freed from the arrangement and able to leave the house again. Maybe it was about time she pressed him to tell her the rest.

Drawing her second revolver and holding both at the ready, Alice began following Mary across the marsh.

Mary was following the safest route, her spectral nature keeping her from entirely noticing how wet it was. Alice wasn’t quite so lucky. Her own special brand of uncomprehending good fortune didn’t feel the need to step in when she was following a supposedly safe path, and so her very first step left her with one foot mired up to the ankle in muck. Alice scowled.

“I liked these shoes.”

“Should have thought about that before you woolgathered yourself right into the swamp,” said Mary, not looking back.

Alice shot an annoyed glance at her and kept following, pausing to yank her feet free of the mud every few steps.

They were halfway to the trees when two lumpy clumps of muddy, grassy earth rose up and reached for her, webbed hands hooked to grasp and tear. Alice shot them both, one in the forehead, one in the stomach, and they fell, more of the ground around them heaving as the other swamp hags smelled blood and prepared to attack.

“Alice?”

“Yeah?”

“Run.”

Alice bolted for the trees, not looking back. Mary didn’t, remaining visible and frozen in the middle of the swampy ground. She made a tempting target, even if she didn’t have any actual flesh for them to devour, and with the scent of blood in the air, it was unlikely the swamp hags would realize she wasn’t physical until they actually attacked her. Many prey animals froze when frightened. Mary’s actions were perfectly understandable, if you were a creature with a brain the size of a swamp hag’s.

So Alice ran, and Mary remained, and when the swamp hags lunged for her, they passed through her insubstantial body, falling into the muck. Several of them turned their attention to the bodies of their fallen kin, beginning to devour them, while a few of the others turned toward Alice, gauging the distance between her and them.

Only three took off after the woman, the rest remaining to squabble over the meat and make ineffectual swipes at Mary. Mary rolled her eyes.

“Amateurs,” she said, and vanished.

Alice was almost to the trees when Mary appeared in front of her, looking almost bored. “Three on your tail,” she said, studying her nails. “Might want to get rid of them.”

“Oh, for—” Alice swore under her breath as she whipped around and dug her heels into the swampy ground, firing three times. She didn’t take the time to aim. It didn’t seem to matter. All three bullets found their places, and three more swamp hags went down.

Mary watched this, hand dropping back to her side as her mouth fell slightly open. Even after years of dealing with Alice, the woman could still astonish her.

Does she even realize how impossible it is to do what she just did? she asked herself. Everybody needs to aim.

Everybody but Alice. When she’d been alive, Mary had believed humans were in charge of the whole world, with nothing to challenge them for their dominion. Dying had been a real eye-opener, in more ways than one. Humans were far from alone where intelligence was concerned; they might have the sheer numbers to put them at the top of the food chain, but lots and lots of other species, many of them humanoid enough to blend in, were also kicking around, looking for their place in the grand scheme of things.

Sometimes Mary suspected Alice had one or more of those “looks human enough to bring home to Mom, actually about as human as an opossum” folks kicking around somewhere back in her family line. Something like a jink or a mara or even a Fortuna, something that could bend luck to suit itself. It would explain a lot.