WOLF
WOLF
IT CAN’T BE COINCIDENCE,” Benjy said once again.
“Oh no, it’s much worse than that, it’s bad luck.” Hetty grunted as she stared at the chess set before her.
They sat in the shade of a Bottle Tree, on the grounds of what had once been known as the Biddle Manor. The tree, like the grand house, had been transformed lately, and like everything else on the island, it was for the best. Glass bottles of every possible color dangled from the limbs. When the sun shone through them at the right angle, rainbows danced along the ground. The bottles glowed at night as well, because they were charmed with powerful protective magics to capture bad spirits to keep them from causing harm.
Hearing the news Benjy had brought, Hetty hoped that magic could go a bit further.
“Doesn’t make it less real. A man with a scar on his face, caught somewhere he isn’t supposed to be—it means Nathan Payne didn’t drown like we hoped he did,” Benjy said.
“If he’s locked up and out of the way,” Hetty asked as Benjy moved his remaining knight along the board, “why should it be our problem?”
“Because if he’s here, it’s because he’s looking for us after what happened in Charleston.”
“The money people want for us isn’t that much.” Hetty reached for her bishop.
Benjy tapped the board. “I don’t think he cares about the money. And that’s check if you move a few more spaces down.”
“Why are you helping me win?” Hetty asked, her hand frozen over the piece.
“Because I’m going to see Payne and you need to stay here and out of trouble.”
Hetty sucked her teeth, taking offense at that last bit. “I’m not the one that was shot last month when we were in that swamp. Maybe you need my help keeping out of trouble.”
“Hetty,” he began, only to stop short because their hostess was approaching.
Pearl was born on this island, according to her. Her family and the others were used to white folks leaving them on their own during the summer, as the storms and heat spurred on a seasonal migration to the mainland. But with war and the Union army in and around Charleston, every slaveowner had packed and fled the island, leaving the lands in the hands of the people who knew it the best. Pearl and everyone who spent their lives on Teach Island didn’t consider themselves emancipated as much as claiming rights to what was theirs. They moved into their former masters’ homes, choosing with their pleasure from the large and spacious rooms, and built new structures on the island for a proper schoolhouse and a church. They even purchased acres of land through the new redistribution policies, in an effort to keep unscrupulous outsiders from staking claim on their homes. Out in Washington this was called the Port Royal Experiment, but as far as Hetty could see it was just people living the lives they were always meant to have in the first place.
“How are you two faring?” Pearl asked. She grinned at the chessboard, which, like everything else in the grand house behind them, once belonged to the absent Biddles. “Or did you lose again?”
“I don’t think I can lose as badly as to your grandfather,” Benjy laughed.
“You’re not alone there! He gives everyone quite a thrashing, though he does think you made a half-decent opponent. I came to tell you that Clare is back home. You said you wanted to see the doctor?”
Hetty looked over at Benjy. “We did.”
Ignoring Hetty’s pointed look, Benjy said to Pearl, “I heard about the person that was locked up. I think I know who he is and might be able to take care of him for you, if you like.”
Pearl nodded, not hiding her relief. “Can’t speak for Abner, but I think he’d be happy to hear that. People are worried about so many strangers just showing up here, in a short amount of time.”
That certainly was true. Hetty had spun a masterful tale of her and Benjy’s being shipwrecked in a recent storm. They even took care to wash up on a beach, timing it so some children could stumble across them. While Pearl, her family, and a few others questioned them little, others were a bit more wary.
For good reason.
Their whole story was a ruse. Tucked and hidden in a shallow inlet was their rowboat, and the coded messages that Bernice Tanner had given them were hidden away in a panel in Hetty’s bodice. After escaping the swamps in Virginia, they’d contacted the Vigilance Society and gotten this task from Bernice. Because it had been the closest they had ever been to finding Hetty’s sister before losing their lead, Hetty had been eager to take on this mission even if she was now regretting that choice.
The flight of the landowning whites left the homes they’d once occupied empty. But they also left caches behind. Caches not of gold or jewels but of information. Records regarding the domestic trafficking of human cargo since 1853 were supposed to be locked up in the study. Copies were kept in an office in Charleston, but they lacked the details of greatest importance, such as names and other crucial information that could be checked against papers collected elsewhere.
The contact who would help Hetty and Benjy find these records was Clare, a doctor who lent her skills not just on Teach Island but on all the other islands in the area. She had been called away not long after they first arrived, due to a difficult pregnancy on a nearby island, but now with her return, this task of theirs would soon be over.
Because Benjy was going to see what he could do about Payne, Hetty visited the doctor alone. Although she was irked at him, once she was headed on her way, Hetty found she didn’t mind. They had been too often in the other’s company of late, playing being a couple for the benefit of the islanders. To be on her own for a few moments was nice.
The doctor’s house sat overlooking the sea. A boat, still drying in the sun, was tied down next to the house. A wind chime of tarnished brass hung from the roof and a few chairs were placed on the porch, and there were bright blue flowers in pots with bees cheerfully buzzing around the petals.
Hetty went to knock on the door, but it was already partially open.
“Hello?” she called as she pushed the door wider. “I’m sorry if you’re busy, but I needed to talk to you.” Not hearing an answer, Hetty stepped inside, and into something soft that wasn’t a rug. Dirt moved through the hall. If there had been a plant that had been knocked over, she might not have worried. But the dirt continued into the hall, footprints leading to a broken pot.
Hetty stepped around it and the forlorn plant lying there, looking for any further signs of damage or signs of struggle in the house.
The doors along the hall were shut tightly, but before Hetty went to try to open them, she saw one open farther down the hall.
This was the door Hetty went through.
No more dirt trickled into the room. Although there was a body sprawled facedown on the ground.
A woman of middling years, with her blouse smudged with dirt.
Hetty placed a hand on the shoulder, rocking the woman back and forth.
“Are you dead?”
“Not quite,” a voice grumbled.
She rolled over and blinked up at Hetty. “But can’t say the same for you.”
She jerked her hand, the light of a spell flashed, and something jammed itself into Hetty’s neck.
Hetty gasped, staggering against a wall. She yanked out a syringe, and a few drops of yellowish liquid splattered onto the floor. The tiny spot at Hetty’s neck burned like hot coal had been placed on it.
Clare stood, brushing off her clothes, and calmly yanked the syringe out of Hetty’s hand. Hetty could only stare up at the doctor.
“Why would you do this? I came looking for your help!”
“Yes, I heard you were looking for me,” Clare remarked. “You were about to bring trouble.”
“I wasn’t.” Hetty fought the urge to rub her neck. She was still on her feet, although her vision was brightening around the edges. “I’m trying to help.”
“Your type of help isn’t wanted.”
Air hissed between Hetty’s lips, and she started to draw a sigil into the air. But the focus she required wasn’t coming to her, and her attempts to grab on to magical energies fell apart.
“I wouldn’t do that, it’ll increase the poison,” Clare said.
“What kind of doctor are you!” Hetty’s arm twitched on its own accord. Grabbing it sent her sliding down the wall.
“I help people,” Clare said. “I just make sure it’s for the right reasons.”
A shadow walked into Hetty’s vision.
“Give me the antidote and I promise I won’t hurt you,” Hetty said.
“Threatening people is not how you get help.”
The shadow that stepped forward had a face, a very familiar face. One she knew would be around, but not the one she expected to see.
Nathan Payne.
“What forsaken stars brought you here!” Hetty spat. “You’re supposed to be in jail.”
“They caught the wrong man.” Payne knelt down to be level with her face. He was inordinately pleased with himself, which was worse than any leer he might have thrown in her direction. “And quite lucky it was. I was able to speak with the good doctor and tell her all about the villain who did this to my face.” He lightly traced the jagged diagonal cut. “The night you did this, you sentenced my son to death. My punishment for failing. But you won’t win this time.”
“How did you find us?” Hetty asked.
“Oh, you’re easy to find. My employer is very interested in the ledger, just like you. Although not nearly as much. After all, the ledger is the only way you’re going to see your sister again!”
Hetty fought through the poison’s grasp and drew the first star sigil that came to mind, the Crow, and flung it at Payne. But instead of a bird pecking his eyes out, the magic exploded in her face and rebounded back on her, destroying what sense of self Hetty still had left.
Payne said something. His lips were moving, but somewhere along the way, Hetty lost the thread of it. Her thoughts kept returning to a cemetery, a hand pushing out of the grave. Her sister’s hand. Benjy’s hand. Hetty’s own hand.
Dead and buried, and Payne standing on top, grinning in triumph.
Hetty’s vision began to narrow. The only thing she could see was Payne before her. Still talking. He kept talking. Using words to threaten, to promise, to hurt, to confuse.
But around him, around Hetty, shapes stepped out of the shadows, tall and spindly. They were solid enough to touch, yet they floated back in the space they occupied, slowly gathering like ghosts until they came to rest behind Payne. Their mouths were sewn together, the straggling ends of cords flopping about as they moved. Brown skin once dark in life, now ashen gray. Then there were their eyes. Eyes that were gold and flickered like flames.
Payne didn’t react. He couldn’t see like Hetty could see.
She was going to point it out. But one ghost shook its head, urging Hetty to stay still. To wait. To watch.
So she did.
And suddenly Payne was in pain, howling and crying out in a scream that Hetty could hear like a distant cry of a wolf at night.
The ghosts had grabbed Payne and held his arms and hands as he fought them.
The blood fell onto the floor like rain.
Hetty watched it fall and fall and fall . . .
Then she was falling and falling and falling . . .
She tried to scream. Tried to yell. But if she managed it, she heard nothing.
No sound, no voices.
Just her falling and falling.
Then she stopped.
Hetty lay on her back, staring up into nothingness, and saw things clearly for the first time in her life.
Death encircled her.
No, not death. The ghosts that cling to the world.
They were real and they were here.
And they were here to tell her all about her failures. About the people she hurt on the way, and the people she left to die.
So many people. So many . . .
Then she smelled flowers, as bright and crisp as the promise of spring.
Something, somebody, shook her by the shoulders. She could hear muffled voices as if she were underwater.
Then more shaking, and a voice that she knew as well as her own.
“Stay with me. Tell me a story. Tell me any story. Just stay awake.”
The simple words caught her and wouldn’t let go, and soon she forced out the first words that came to mind.
“There was a woman who got lost on the way home and she heard a voice,” Hetty said, each word bringing her out of the strange darkness that had grabbed ahold of her. “When the old lady turned around, no one stood there. She was in a swamp and it was a lost spirit sent to guide her home.” Hetty coughed. “She didn’t know it was a bad spirit because she didn’t have a lantern with her.”
Hetty coughed again. She was still on the floor on the doctor’s room, held up by the wall. Except instead of Payne in front of her, Benjy was at her side, and on the other was Thomas.
“What are you doing here?” Hetty asked, staring at Thomas. His face was a bit bruised, and his eyes were rimmed with what could have been tears.
“Is that part of the story?” Benjy asked calmly, as he always did, sounding unbothered even as his eyes glittered with concern.
“I haven’t got to that part yet,” Hetty admitted. Then she remembered everything. “Where is—”
“That lying bastard?” Clare said. She had a cut on her forehead, and a scowl that wasn’t meant for Hetty anymore. “Unfortunately, he’s not dead. He escaped on my boat. If he stays around the islands we’ll find him. I’m sorry I let myself be tricked and attacked you like that. He had a convincing tale.”
Hetty shook her head, even if it hurt a bit. She knew Payne wouldn’t be found that easily.
“Why are you here?” Hetty asked Thomas again, because she truly was confused by his appearance on the island.
“I’m here to help about this ledger,” Thomas said. “If I hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have caused all this confusion, and you wouldn’t have been—”
“It’s fine.” Hetty patted Thomas’s hand. “Payne’s the only person to blame. Good thing he ran with a tail between his legs. He knew death was coming for him if he stayed.”
Thomas forced out a laugh.
Benjy didn’t, however.
“The next time he shows up, he won’t get away,” Benjy said. He absently rubbed a thumb over his bloodied knuckles.
“That might be sooner than we think,” Hetty remarked. “He said he’s after the ledger too.”
“Then this time we’ll be prepared for whatever he’s going to throw at us.”