After, while she dozed—all awash with dreamy dreams of how the two of us were both gonna squeeze, hand in hand, through whatever magickal escape hatch Samaire and I ended up cobbling together dancing in her empty blonde head—I studied the darkened ceiling and thought yet once more about that no-contact buzz I’d gotten just from standing next to (not-so-) little miss Princess; how she couldn’t helped but’ve felt it too, rippling up and down those carefully tattooed limbs of hers, the shiver before the quake. And how it’d probably only get stronger yet, the longer we stayed in proximity—ratcheting up unstoppably as we drew ever closer, like the static charge hum just before a flashbulb’s flare, or the filament whine as a lightbulb bloomed to full incandescence…
Dee might not be able to feel it, bein’ what she was, but she’d sure made certain I knew she didn’t like what she almost thought she saw going on: protective, like some five-foot nothing Mama Bear with her claws out, ready to fight to the bitter end. Which I guessed I could understand, though only in principle. ‘Cause me, I never did know what it was to have a sister, not even half of one…but then again, the pull I felt towards Samaire wasn’t entirely familial, as Dionne could no doubt tell; things always were a whole lot slipperier down in Hell than they were here up top, ‘specially in the bonds-of-kinship department.
I did need to know what-all they were planning to do next, though—about me, as much as anything else—and the surest way to find out was to send something to listen at their keyhole. Which I could certainly do, for all I hadn’t in quite some time—and like any other muscle, a witch’s craft does tend to get a mite…tight, if she doesn’t let it out for exercise on the regular.
So I shut my eyes, said a few choice words under my breath, bit my own lip ‘til it bled and took a deep old swallow. And a few moments later, I coughed out a little red glob of sickness onto the cell floor…dirt from my insides, stuck together with Hell-juice and ill-will. A fetch, just like my Momma taught me to make way back, long before I ever saw any Dark Man on top of any hill.
A beat more, and it opened two tiny black jewels to look my way, stretched out its spun-glass wings (still tinged pink with spray) and rubbed its delicate stinger-legs together in greeting. Its voice rose up drily, echoing off the concrete walls—a thin, companionable, whispering vibration.
Let me do thy will, Lady? the fetch asked, eager, inside my skull.
Gladly, I replied.
—
Over in their own cell, meanwhile, Samaire sat cross-legged on one bed with her eyes all rolled back like she was meditating, while Dionne paced the floor, one hand on her shank. Announcing, as she did—
“Look, this is just a bad idea, Sami, twenty years or not—that bitch is everything we ever fought, all wrapped up in a hag-ridin’, Devil-worshippin’ bow. Even layin’ aside what we already hear about how she conducts herself on the strictly human tip, she’s the sort of witch who probably takes names and steals babies—and we’re gonna let her back out, where she can get at the next given normal comes along, just to serve our interests? That ain’t buddies.”
I never stole a baby in all my life, I thought to myself, huffily, as the fetch hovered inside a vent above them, watching their debate through dim, colourblind eyes. Then added: ‘Course, I never really had to, just ‘cause I needed the parts. There’s abortion parlors all over the great state of Alabama, after all…and they dump out their trash like clock-work, twice a day.
(Ah, the conveniences of modern living.)
Samaire, unmoving: “Not helpful, Dee.”
“Right. ‘Kay.” A beat. “Seriously, though, Chatwin’s Hell-bait; we’ve killed enough like her to fertilize a car-park. A witch is a witch is a—”
“—witch, yeah, I got it.” A pause. “So what’s that make me?”
Dionne stopped, mid-stride. “Not her. You get that, right?”
“Except…I am.”
“But you use this shit, Sami. You don’t let it use you. That’s the difference.”
Samaire opened her eyes at that, and raised a doubtful brow; she looked down at her hand, studying that wrap-around ribbon of Transitus Fluvii circling the arm it attached to, like she could see things movin’ underneath it.
“Six of one,” she said, half to herself. Then: “You hear that?”
“What?”
“That…buzzing.”
Okay, time to go.
They both turned toward “me,” then, and I knew the fetch had almost reached its expiry date. So I peeled my consciousness back from it in long, sticky strings, letting its sight grow ever fuzzier, bleeding away pixel by pixel. ‘Til the bond between us finally grew so tenuous I barely even felt a thing when Guard Curzon swatted it from the air as it flew from vent to vent, and crushed it messily beneath one boot. I could hear Brenmer through the wall, muffled, as he blurted out—
“Damn. How those things get in here, anyways?”
Curzon, stomping on: “Fuck if I know. Maybe they can smell all the pussy.”
Which was crude, as ever. Yet not entirely inaccurate.
I turned over, wondering if Samaire would bother sending a fetch of her own to watch me sleep—or if she even knew how to make a fetch, considering who’d raised her. one way or the other, I wasn’t about to lose a good night’s shut-eye over it.
Things learned so far: Cornishes don’t want to work with me, but too bad, ‘cause they ain’t exactly got another choice to switch to, I thought. So let ‘em sweat on that a while; hell, I got time.
Nothin’ but.