Salt and Iron (6 page)

IT’S STANDARD
Baptist church layout. Entryway, double doors—in this case they’re standing open—and then the nave.

It’s a beautiful little space, but it’s probably not how the builders envisioned it. The only thing that’s unchanged is the altar, still standing at the front of the church, and behind it, painted on the wall in only-just-visible black and peeling letters:

The harvest is past

the summer has ended

and we are not saved.

Everything else has been modified. The windows are boarded up and covered over with canvas. A heap of books, probably prayer books and hymnals, stand stacked in one corner, slowly growing ferns. If there ever were pews in here, they’re gone, and instead there’s a big red rug over the honey-colored floorboards, and a dining table, huge, almost as long as the entire length of the place, stands on top of it.

He frowns at the table, heavy with lit candles standing free, or in a silver candelabra, or in wine bottles and on plates. The candles cast all the light in the place, making it glow golden, filling the air with the sweet scent of beeswax and perfumes, and in that sweetness there’s the smell of some kind of chocolate cigarillo, and dust and growing things. A pair of people sit together at the altar end of the huge dining table. For certain definitions of people. He stares.

There’s a shape covered in a veil embroidered with red flames, with slim hands resting on the table, one holding a cup and the other a skinny little cigarillo. There’s a man with gold-ringed hands folded over a black wood stick topped with a skull, also gold, and smoking a cigar the size of a police baton. James doesn’t have to be introduced. He’d know the La Flaca and the Loa kingpin anywhere.

Baron Samedi’s flanked by a pair of men, one of them smaller, slighter, and carrying a banjo, the other standing with his arms folded. James would bet good money these two are the Baron’s Dogs, Doorman and Strongarm, shape-changers who control the borders of things and keep order in his little dominion. Maybe it was Brett who got him in here, but if he’s allowed to go, it’ll be those two who let him out.

The woman with the cigarillo raises the veil and turns her head, and James can see her face. He’s never seen La Flaca before, didn’t know she could be seen. Her face is painted white like a sugar skull, a rose painted on her forehead, her mouth stitched. If she’s got eyes, James can’t see them. She tips her head up, and smoke comes from her mouth and hangs like fog in the air. She is La Flaca, Skinny Mary, queen and justice, ruler and lawmaker of what some people call the Veil, and some call Penumbra, but what James grew up calling the Land of Shadow or the seelie court. He holds his breath.

“Brought a guest for dinner,” Brett says, and now, even through the haze that keeps him from having to think about the things that he does and the thing he is, now James is scared.

“SIT DOWN,
kiddo, and have some wine,” Skinny Mary says.

James considers protesting. Pointless. If they want him to drink, he’s going to be drinking. If they want him to eat, he’ll eat. He should run. He should do as he’s told, then escape when no one’s looking. He should never have come, taken his chances with the tornado. He was drunk, proud, curious, and he’s a van Helsing. The sidhe wouldn’t dare come after him. And it’s Brett the bartender. He’s known her two years, across the bar. He wasn’t thinking any of this could be real. And it is. Oh God. He realizes, like he’s taken a bucket of ice water in the face, just how colossally stupid he’s been.

But Brett pulls out the chair across from the baron, and right beside Skinny Mary. She does it like it’s just good manners, like he was waiting for her to do it, as if his hesitation had something to do with him not knowing where to sit, and not a prey-animal sort of desperate indecision. He drops into it, and it creaks like an old door. Brett glances at him, then at Skinny Mary.

“He’s going to get too drunk,” she says.

“I can hear his heart pounding like a drum all the way over here,” Skinny Mary answers. “Give him a drink to calm his nerves. Bourbon.” She smiles at him then, skull-mouthed. “That’s what you prefer, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says softly, not really sure what he’s agreeing with, only knowing it’s better to give the queen of the seelie no reason to dislike him, over and above the connotations of his family name.

Brett snags a bottle from the center of the table, produces a cut crystal glass from the pyramid that’s sparkling in the candlelight, and pours out a generous measure of amber bourbon. She sets it down at his right hand and steps back again, behind him, beyond his peripheral vision.

He looks at the glass. He grew up on stories of Persephone and Izanami and knows better. “I think I’ve had enough to drink tonight,” he says, and his voice doesn’t even shake, which is amazing, actually.

She laughs. Smoke comes out of her mouth again, but he didn’t see her draw on that chocolate cigarillo.

“You think I’d want to keep you here?” she asks. “You’d be a shitty hostage and no good for a ransom. I’d want your brother. He’s the valuable one, isn’t he?”

He swallows and isn’t quite sure what to say.

Her open mouth curves up like a fingernail moon. “You’re being real damn Celtic, boy. Which is pretty funny, considering.”

He knows bait when he hears it. But he’s past caring, because everything about this is a disaster. And he’s a disaster usually, but this is colossal, even for him.

Him, a van Helsing, sitting at Skinny Mary’s table with her servants waiting on him, with Baron fucking Samedi sitting here watching him like he’s a whole litter of kittens that might be cute and delicious, but it’s hard to know ’til you test it out.

So he swallows the bait, the hook, the line, the rod, and the hand that’s holding it. He takes the glass and drains it, as if she’d challenged him.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says. “What was that you were saying?”

She laughs and gestures, and Brett comes forward again and grabs another bottle and pours out. This one is champagne. He could kill himself drinking tonight, but he won’t. He sips.

“Thank you for the hospitality,” he says.

She shrugs. “Well, it wouldn’t do to be rude.”

“What did you mean?”

She closes her mouth and tilts her head. “What’s that your people always say? Bad blood will out? Well, it surely came out in you. That thing your brother said on the TV the other night? God, how we laughed. Sure he’ll be ready, your brother says. It’s in his blood. Sure is. Like iron and salt, like Christ in wine.”

He sips again, to wet his lips, to moisten his mouth, to buy him time, to cover up his expression. He drinks to feel the sweet numbness of the first glass coming upon him and know with certainty the rush of the second will be even better. It unropes the tension in his limbs. It lets the agony of fear fall a little to the side so he doesn’t have to carry it so far. Which is why he’s not upset about this, this
in his blood
thing.

“So you know.”

“Well, it was my sister, wasn’t it?”

Silence. A candle spits like an adder and then falls silent too.

“Pretty thing,” the Baron says quietly, nodding as he does. “Old like the sky. Black hair curling, eyes and skin like a seam of coal.”

Skinny Mary turns and looks at him. Her mouth is curved in a dreamy sort of smile. If she has eyes, they’re probably soft and fond. “And the way he covered her with gold,” she agrees. “Hung it off her like she was his Christmas tree.”

James swallows. “Who?”

“Your great-granddaddy, James. Your great-granddaddy and my baby sister, they had a sweet tumble down at the river and had a pretty baby boy that we gave to him, to raise him like a human.”

“My… your….” Too many questions and wants rush through him. “I want to see her” is all he can say.

She smiles, she laughs. She raises her head, and breathes out a long strand of smoke that hangs gossamer and golden above her.

“You and me both. She died long time ago, a kind of death anyway. She fell in love with a human, like I said. Went to the Firm and they told her they’d fix her, make her human too.” She snorts. “So they baptized her in that river where she tumbled, and she died. You know the old Rogers mansion? The one on the island in the middle of the river, just north of town?”

He nods. Of course he does. He and Abe used to take the boat out in the summer and paddle up and scare the shit out of each other in that place.

“That’s where they did it. Word is she’s locked up somewhere now. Some say you hear her when the weather’s rough, screaming and wailing, but she’s dead.”

James has stopped pretending to drink. He sets down the glass. “How can she be dead and still scream?”

“They teach you nothing in that big fancy school you went to? Nothing at all? I heard you’re smart. I heard you’re one of the best.” She shakes her head and puts her lips to the cigarillo, and the ember glows like a Sacred Heart. “Sidhe get three ways of dying. Some, we get old and we go west, you know?” She might be winking at him, it’s hard to tell. “And some, we get old and we fight it, and maybe we use mortal lifetimes in exchange for a bit of magic, but it’s a deal done and everybody’s free. But some sidhe, when they die, they get mad. That’s how she went. She died like a sun. She died like a star. She came apart, and she tore down everything all around her.”

“A collapsed sun leaves a black hole,” he whispers.

Skinny Mary inclines her head. “So they did teach you something. Well then, well. She’s a dead star. She’s there. But just there to pull things apart. Unseelie now, that’s what it’s called. They burned her whole body with that holy water and took her boys away. We tried to save her, me and the Baron, but she wasn’t strong enough for saving. It’s not the kind of thing you’re ever gonna get over.”

“So that’s why I see what I see. I’m….” He tests it out. Even with the veil of wine over him, it’s weird. “I’m part unseelie?”

She glances at the Baron with a smile, and the Baron, he laughs.

“Sure,” he says. “In the way every white boy is part Cherokee.”

He shakes his head, not understanding.

“You’re part sidhe, yeah, but part god? In your dreams. You think you’re Greek or something?”

“I’ll call him Hercules from here on in,” Skinny Mary says with a little laugh.

James feels himself blush hard.

“Anyway, that’s why you came with the Dullahan, isn’t it? Come on now. Be honest. Because you knew there was something funny about you, and you knew the sidhe had answers, and you always wanted to know.”

He swallows. He can’t argue. If he had a reason for getting into that car after he knew what Brett was, it was because of the way time has been so crazy lately, the way it made him sick when he was talking with his father, the way he can’t stop seeing it, the way he’s seeing it more intensely and more sickeningly, the way it seems to be getting worse and worse.

“Maybe,” he says.

Skinny Mary sits back in her creaking chair. “All coming clear now?”

He nods.

“How do I get rid of it?” he asks.

She laughs, smoke coming out in puffs. “Oh, Jon Snow.”

“What?” he asks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You drink up. That’s your answer. Your answer is no, you can’t change it, no because you are a monster, and you already kind of knew that, and you hate it, so you drink. Now drink up.”

He looks down at the glass, then looks around. It’s just the three of them now, the Baron and Skinny Mary and him. Brett’s gone, the Dogs are gone. “How’m I getting home?” he asks.

Skinny Mary sighs and shakes her head. “Well, he’s not walking,” she says, “not with the Thing out there. And I’m not letting any of my babies go in case it’s out and prowling.”

The Baron sits forward. “My Horses will take you home. But none of the seelie are gonna want to risk meeting the Thing, and the Thing’s a night hunter, so you’re gonna have a late night.”

“This doesn’t seem like the safest building to shelter in,” James says. “What with a tornado warning. Shouldn’t we get somewhere safe?”

There’s a long, long silence. Then Skinny Mary starts laughing. She laughs so hard smoke starts coming out of her mouth again. The Baron laughs too, his hands tightening on his cane, the golden tip thumping on the floor.

“You’re a gas, James van Helsing,” the Baron says. “An absolute gas. Now, you like ghost stories?”

James doesn’t, but he nods all the same.

HE WAKES
up in his bed, world fuzzy at the edges, his head throbbing like there’s a clamp around it. That was, without a doubt, the weirdest fucking dream of his life. He rolls over in bed and covers his eyes with his arm. He’s still fully dressed, even has his shoes on, and his shirt smells like scented candles and chocolate cigarillos, and his head is pounding with a mixed-booze hangover headache. So it wasn’t a dream at all.

Jesus
, he thinks.
I’m alive.

He’s actually startled.

He rolls back over and looks at the clock on his bedside table. The glowing green face tells him it’s 11:40, and that it’s Wednesday, just like it should be. He’s late for work, but he’s the boss’s son, and nobody’s going to get him into trouble if he doesn’t show up promptly at nine. Or ten. Or at all, really.

He checks his phone for messages. There’s something from Abe, he doesn’t bother with that one, and there’s a text from Gabe. That one he checks.

Can I see you?

He reads it a couple of times to be sure he’s read it right. It’s hours old, and it could mean just about anything.

Slept in
, he texts back,
still want to come by?

He’s hardly put it down when his phone buzzes.
Yes. Now ok?

Y.

His phone rings then, and he swears at it, because nobody needs a hangover, a headache, and a ringtone all at once. “Yeah, what?”

“James?”

Abe. Shit. He sounds upset, voice tight and too high-pitched.