19

SECTS AND THE CITY

Apparently, the most powerful cunning woman in Tatum was a seamstress. The store that Alyssa Ballard ran, Darn Good Clothes, was your basic consignment business, but it specialized in altering and custom-fitting specific garments to specific people on-site. The thought made me a little tense. A cunning woman who was gifted with a needle and thread would be able to stitch all kinds of subtle magical knots, charms, and designs into a garment. But I contented myself with this observation: “This place is pretty huge for a small-town consignment shop.”

It was too. The consignment shop looked like it had been a grocery store once, anchoring down a strip mall that was nestled right between the town proper and an interstate exit. The location also contained a pet store, a nail salon, a used-book store, an antique shop, a health food store, and some kind of café. I couldn’t really gauge how successful the strip mall was based on customer traffic—we were in that time after Christmas and before spring when most businesses go into a kind of economic coma, and it was a Monday morning to boot, an hour before the stores opened. But the place didn’t have that grimy pallor that strip malls acquire after they’ve been on fiscal life support for too long, and the parking lot was trash-free.

“Alyssa married into money,” Sarah informed me tartly. She had just parked her car in the strip mall’s lot and we were taking our time getting out of it. “And her husband died soon after.” Something about her attitude suggested that the two events weren’t unrelated.

“So, it’s not just policy or general principle. You really don’t like her.” Molly was sitting in the shotgun seat. I was in the back. Sarah wanted Molly along because she shone like a small star for people who can see auras, and cunning folk would see her and both trust her and not want to have anything to do with her. People who shine like Molly are holy people, and saints or prophets or other divinely inspired types are nothing but trouble. They are the kind of people who generally live lives of suffering in the middle of god-awful events and don’t care anything about social ladders or material wealth or how they’re supposed to act in order to make people comfortable, and they walk a thin line between madness and inspiration.

Also, magic has a harder time affecting them.

“If I liked Alyssa, I wouldn’t be taking you to her.” Sarah’s expression was flinty. “She’s the reason I don’t belong to a coven.”

I grimaced, and Sarah spotted it in her rear view mirror. Even if she couldn’t see me with her second sight, Sarah’s physical eyes didn’t miss much. “What is it, John?”

“I can’t figure out if I wish we had more people here or if I wish I were doing this alone,” I admitted. “Working with other people is a pain in the ass, but it’s got advantages too.”

“Making relationships work isn’t easy, no matter who you are.” Sarah’s tone became a little wry. “There’s a reason I’m in my forties and don’t live with anyone.”

“Because you turn all of your lovers into small animals and make them pets as soon as they get annoying?” I guessed.

She smiled. “No. I’m just not good at it.”

We got out of the car. There seemed to be an unusually high number of employees present for so early in the morning. Such places are usually a mix of small-business owners opening up early because they live in their shops (sometimes literally), and part-time employees dragging their asses in just a little after the last minute because they’re not getting paid enough to do otherwise. Here, though, all of the stores showed signs of life.

When I pointed that out, Sarah responded, “Everyone who works in this shopping center belongs to Alyssa’s coven.”

I blinked. “Everyone?”

“She calls it enlightened socialism,” Sarah said dryly.

“What do you call it?” Molly wondered.

“Micromanaging. Bullying. Petty tyranny.” Sarah smiled tightly. “Take your pick. She wasn’t gentle about getting the nonbelievers to take their businesses elsewhere to make room for her followers.”

A young woman was already setting up clothing racks on the walkway outside the store.

She had flat long brown hair, a pale, oval face, wide hips, and a body that somehow gave an impression of solid strength without being noticeably big-boned or toned. Her designer jeans, pale blue sweater, and pink scarf didn’t really go with her unstyled hair or lack of makeup, but I guess it was good advertising for the store. She smelled like homemade soap and pomegranate.

“Brazil,” Sarah greeted. I wondered what the story behind that name was. The girl didn’t look remotely South American.

Brazil didn’t say anything. She just stared at me while surprise turned to alarm and then to a slow-building hostility. Her second sight wasn’t registering me, and Brazil knew what that meant. She thought I was a knight. If Molly’s presence was a carrot, I was Sarah’s stick. Molly was the velvet glove. I was the iron fist. Molly was… Well, you get the idea.

“It’s all right, Brazil,” Molly said gently. “You don’t have to know what to do with us. Just take us to someone who will.”

The cunning woman’s face cleared. “Wait here.”

“No,” Sarah contradicted. “You can lead us in or you can follow us. I’m letting you decide which as a gesture of respect.”

“That’s a pretty empty gesture,” Brazil said sharply. “You brought a knight here!”

“No.” Sarah didn’t elaborate.

“I’m not taking you inside,” Brazil said defiantly.

“All right.” Sarah smiled a little sadly, and Molly and I followed her into the store. If the property was warded against enemies, none of us cared.

Brazil came in after us, yelling, “Alyssa! Someone’s coming!” But the store was mostly filled with long rolling clothes racks, and anyone over five feet tall was immediately noticeable, so Alyssa had already seen us by that point. She was about thirty feet from the entrance, a stout woman with broad hips, broad shoulders, and an extremely large head that was somewhat moderated by long blond hair that covered the sides of her face. She wore a long, shapeless mauve dress with elaborate lace trim, and if there weren’t runes and sigils woven into that garment, I’d eat it. Alyssa also wore some seriously high heels; she was probably five six in bare feet and at least six feet the rest of the time. At a guess, Alyssa liked to be taller than most of her employees.

There was a young man too, talking to Alyssa. He was dressed in a sort of retro sixties way with a white shirt and a black sleeveless vest over black jeans. He had a mop of brown hair and a beard that was trimmed to be thin and angular—it was the only thing about him that was. He was maybe six foot three, beefy but going soft, with cheeks that were way too ruddy for someone in his early twenties. He had a big ass, big hands, and a big head, but I really hoped he wasn’t related to Alyssa in any way. When we got close, I could smell her sex on his breath and smell his sex on her hands.

Alyssa didn’t waste any time. She looked at Sarah with real outrage. “You brought a knight here?”

I sighed and removed a pocketknife from my jacket pocket. Alyssa gasped and backed away as I unfolded the blade. The guy beside her assumed some kind of half-crouching stance with his palms out—at a guess, he had wrestled in high school—but he didn’t step between us. You have to understand, these were just ordinary people. I mean, yeah, Sarah didn’t like them, and they were cunning folk, and some of them could see things that most people couldn’t see, and they ran a coven, but they also had a favorite television show and romantic issues and went to concerts and worried about cholesterol and talked to people on some kind of online social site and had favorite animals and so on, and if they didn’t have those specific habits or traits, they had others like them. They were probably more used to seeing things like a man taking out a pocketknife and making a bloody gash on the back of his hand than most people, but that didn’t mean they liked it. Or liked the way that the gash was healing in front of their eyes either.

“I’m not a knight.” I transferred the knife to my left hand, then turned it to display the regenerating wound clearly. “See?”

“What are you, then?” Alyssa calmed down somewhat while I was matter-of-factly getting a handkerchief out of my pocket.

“These are my allies,” Sarah told Alyssa. “We have a mutual enemy.”

“You’re not talking about me are you?” Alyssa asked archly. She was looking at Molly now.

“I hope not,” Sarah said. “But I think you know the man we’re after.”

“It’s a little late to ask for my protection now,” Alyssa said coldly. “You had a chance to join us, and you spit in our face.”

“Covens weren’t meant to be run like fast food franchises.” Sarah’s lips were tighter than I’d ever seen them. “You have too many rules for the sake of having rules. Too many members and too many managers and too many penalties and too much territory.”

Just for the record, I have no idea what they were talking about.

“Too much power, you mean.” Alyssa smirked. “You can see the future in sifting flour, Sarah. You know the Pax is weakening. We’re going to need power in the times to come.”

“Your mouth says we,” Sarah stated levelly. “But your actions say I.”

Molly cleared her throat.

Alyssa smiled. “I don’t think your allies want to listen to your babble any more than we do.”

Sarah let it go. “The man we’re looking for is Japanese. An onmyouji. I don’t think he would have come into another’s territory without going through the proper channels. He seems to be very careful about observing the rituals and proper forms while perverting everything they are supposed to protect.”

Alyssa didn’t respond one way or another, but the guy next to her obviously knew something. His poker face was a poker farce.

“The young girl who disappeared right after he came here? The accident on Main Street?” Sarah inquired. “You must have known these things were no accident. I don’t know if he bribed you or threatened you or flattered you to stay out of it, but he came here.”

“Go away, Sarah,” Alyssa said.

“He’s trying to kill my apprentice,” Sarah informed her. It was the truth, but Sarah made it sound like Kevin had been her apprentice all along, before the onmyouji came to town, and I wasn’t going to contradict her.

Something flickered behind Alyssa’s face then. Behind us, Brazil gasped. Sarah continued, “He murdered his wife, imprisoned his daughter, and deals with unholy spirits, among other things. That’s the man you’re protecting, priestess.”

Alyssa spat, “You made your bed. Go fuck yourself in it.”

“If it was just me, I might,” Sarah admitted. “But it’s not.”

Now it was Alyssa who turned red. “You stupid bitch! I’ve let you have your little bakery and play out your fantasies in Bonaparte, but we’ll level curses on you that would bring down a small nation! We’ll charm your zoning commissioner and hex your customers and enspell your health inspectors and send plagues and diseases down on your head and in your house! There’ll be rats in your walls and maggots in your bread! By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be lucky if you can hold down a job behind a fast food counter!”

By way of answer, Sarah held her right hand out as if she were going to squeeze Alyssa’s breast, her brow furrowed. Then Sarah moved her hand up, then across, tracing the lace spirals across Alyssa’s dress with a frown of intense concentration. “Interesting design work here. But you always get greedy. Some parts are straining to burst free.”

Alyssa laughed. “You might as—”

The fingers of Sarah’s outstretched palm suddenly tightened, and she pulled her hand back as if yanking something. The end of a white thread came loose from Alyssa’s dress and flew toward Sarah’s fingers, and Sarah snatched it out of the air. Alyssa shrieked a startled shriek. Sarah continued to draw her hand back, and the white threadwork on Alyssa’s dress began to writhe like a mass of slender white snakes. Sigils and symbols etched in white briefly stood out, straining outward from the fabric, only to unravel.

The young beefy guy lunged forward then, but he didn’t lunge far. He had palmed something while Sarah and Alyssa were talking, and he was trying to bring his hand up front and center while saying something in Greek, but I stepped forward and shot a stiff, fast left into his face. I snapped my wrist into a straight punch at the end and tilted my body weight into it. He bit off a word and the tip of his tongue at the same time, went down, and stayed down while some kind of black powder trickled out of his relaxed fingers. The spurt of blood left a stain on his lips.

When I looked back, Brazil hadn’t moved, staring with her mouth open as Alyssa was slowly encircled by hundreds of parallel lines of white thread rustling across her body, binding her arms to her sides. Sarah held the loose thread in her hand up directly in front of Alyssa’s face and said, softly, “Want some fries with that?”

“Brazil,” Alyssa croaked. “Get help.”

“Don’t move,” Sarah countered, and Brazil didn’t. “We don’t have time for this. Molly?”

Molly stepped forward and addressed Alyssa earnestly. “Good things can still come from this, Alyssa. It’s not too late for you and Sarah to take a step toward healing this rift between you.”

Alyssa didn’t call Molly a liar, so Molly’s sincerity and good intent really must have been manifest. Instead, she just snarled, “You wouldn’t torture me, and you won’t let them do it, either. Get out of my store.”

Molly sighed and addressed Sarah and me. “She’s been putting something in Brazil’s tea to keep her from becoming pregnant. Brazil is too useful to lose to some screaming little shitpot right now. Alyssa’s thoughts, not mine.”

Brazil gasped. Alyssa’s eyes were already shocked and uneasy, but they managed to widen further. “That’s not true!”

“She’s taking several dabblers with no real talent into the fold because they have money,” Molly continued.

“Alyssa always does that,” Sarah said dismissively. “What else?”

“This is utter garbage!” Alyssa protested. “I’m warded! No one can read me!”

Molly furrowed her brow. “Alyssa’s encouraging someone named Mariah to divorce someone named Carlos because she thinks he’s a pain in the ass, and hasn’t decided whether or not to get rid of him yet.”

“This is a trick!” Alyssa looked at Brazil wildly. “Brazil, don’t listen to them!”

The expression on Molly’s face grew increasingly distasteful as she went on. “She sent someone named Cassidy to join a coven in Manhattan because she wants Cassidy to seduce the leader and convince her to join up with them.”

Alyssa’s face went from red to bone white and Brazil whispered, “How could she know that?” Brazil still seemed more hurt and scared than angry, but there was something sullen and defiant creeping around the very edge of her voice. She hadn’t forgotten Molly’s assertion that Alyssa was drugging Brazil’s tea to keep her non-fertile.

“I don’t want to know all of this,” Sarah commented. “Can’t you narrow your focus?”

“Alyssa,” I commanded. “Try not to think about the onmyouji. Try not to put it in the forefront of your mind.”

“This is insane!” Alyssa shouted.

“There we go,” Molly said. “She’s scared of him, but she’s greedy too. The onmyouji gave her something from a magical animal. Something golden… a feather… wait… now something she’s afraid I’ll find out just popped into her head.… Oh, that’s dark…”

“STOP IT!” Alyssa shrieked. “STOP IT! He’s in New York City!”

“You’ll have to tell us more than that,” I insisted.

“He’s involved in the Crucible,” Alyssa hissed.

Somehow, I didn’t think she meant a production of an Arthur Miller play.

“The Crucible,” Sarah repeated.

“A place where monsters who are tired of repressing their true selves can fight each other,” Alyssa gritted out. “There’s wagering.”

“You’re talking about some kind of supernatural cage fights,” Sarah ventured.

“Yes,” Alyssa muttered. “A place for predators who are tired of hiding what they are.”

“How do we find this place?” I asked.

Alyssa looked at me with malice. “If you’re not human, go hang out in the warehouse districts. Their recruiters will find you.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Now Brazil is going to bring us the golden feather the onmyouji gave you.”

For a moment, the world froze.

“What?!?” Alyssa demanded.

“John,” Sarah warned, but I wasn’t her dog, and the look I gave her said as much.

“The onmyouji touched it,” I explained. “I can use it to get his scent. More importantly, the moment we walk out the door, Alyssa here is going to start thinking about contacting the onmyouji and warning him about us. She’ll think she can cover her ass with the onmyouji and get some risk-free revenge for the way you just embarrassed her.”

“And how is a feather going to prevent her?” Sarah’s voice was edged and curious at the same time.

“Because Alyssa will never be able to tell him she sent us on our way and didn’t say anything, not if we have the feather,” I said. “He’ll never believe she gave it to us willingly. He’ll want to know how we knew about it, why she gave it to us, what else she told us while we had leverage over her. He’ll know she told us how to find him. And no matter what she says, he’ll kill her because she’s proven to be a weak link and a loose end.”

“And what if he kills you and finds the feather himself?” Alyssa demanded, forgetting that she hadn’t admitted to owning the feather yet.

I smiled, but not as if I was amused. “Now you’re getting it.”

It took a few more words and a threat that wasn’t a bluff, but Brazil finally took me to fetch the feather—a siren’s feather, by the way—without Alyssa’s permission. Brazil apparently knew a lot of Alyssa’s secrets and precautions, and from the look on Brazil’s face, that wasn’t good news for Alyssa. We left the store and made our way back to Sarah’s car, pointedly not hurrying. “You did good, Molly,” I told her.

Molly looked troubled. “I don’t think I did.”

The private information that Molly had been announcing out loud in the store had come from me. As soon as Sarah had told us her intent, I’d asked Parth to see if he could hack into Alyssa’s e-mails while I spent the evening locating her private residence. With my enhanced hearing and ability to blow past most wards and charms, crouching in Alyssa’s backyard and listening in on her side of several phone conversations had been easy.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I made her think that I was getting that information from a higher power,” Molly said. “And I wasn’t.”

“Deception is a part of war,” I insisted. “Appear weak when you’re strong, strong when you’re weak. Act like you know what you don’t know and act like you don’t know what you do. That’s basic Sun Tzu stuff.”

Molly’s troubled expression didn’t ease. If anything, it became more intense. “I don’t like pretending I’m something I’m not. I spent most of my life doing that because I didn’t want to hurt my parents or the people in my church. I wound up marrying a man I liked, but I couldn’t make myself love him the way he needed me to, the way I needed to, and I hurt him and my parents and a woman I did love worse than I ever would have if I’d just been honest.”

Molly had once told me that she was a lesbian and never mentioned it since. We reached Sarah’s car and Sarah opened the passenger’s door, but Molly didn’t get in. I was getting a little alarmed. “None of that stuff you said was a lie. Alyssa is lying and manipulating and using people.”

“And now we are.” Molly sighed heavily. “What if God does want to speak through me now? I’ve turned the idea of being inspired into a scam.”

My throat was suddenly dry. I’d still lie my ass off to an enemy in a heartbeat, but Molly wasn’t me, and the idea that I’d somehow gotten Molly to betray her truest self… it hit me hard. “Molly, I’m sorry.”

Molly took my arm. “It’s alright. It’s okay not to be perfect. This has clarified some things for me.”

“I don’t mean to slight the importance of this conversation, but could we have it in the car?” Sarah asked. She had been deep in her own thoughts since leaving the store.

“No,” Molly said, and turned around and began to walk away. “I’ll walk back to the bakery.”

“Molly, that’s fifty miles!” I called after her.

“It’s something I have to do.” Molly didn’t say it like she was happy about it. “It’ll give me time to think. It’s okay, John. Nothing is going to hurt me.”

Somehow, I believed her. But I stood there staring after her anyhow.

“Let her go,” Sarah advised.

“Everything I did, I did so we wouldn’t have to hurt Alyssa,” I protested. “The smart play would have been to kill everyone in that store.” I don’t know who I was arguing with: Molly, maybe, or God, or myself. Not Sarah, at any rate.

Sarah smiled wanly. “People like your friend have their own path, and it’s never a good idea to stand in their way.”

I didn’t try to argue with that.

“Do you really think that feather will keep Alyssa from betraying us?” Sarah asked. “She’s smart and cunning, but she’s not wise.”

“I think it will give her pause for at least a day. And maybe by that time, Parth will have broken into her system and can contact her and let her know that he’s downloaded her e-mail history,” I said. “And if that holds her a little longer, Cahill can come by in another day or two to inspect her store for safety violations and show her his fangs. It’s the best I can do.”

“But not the worst,” Sarah reflected, and she patted my arm kind of the way Sig does. “That does count for something.”

We passed Molly as we drove out of that place. I don’t think she noticed us. She was staring straight ahead but seeing something only she could see.