Magie Noire

By Rurouni Star

Chapter Twenty-One

The Leanansidhe was clearly snippy with me. She wanted me to quaver in my boots and reassess my life choices.

...but thankfully, she didn't really want me dead.

I saw her form outlined among the flames, her eyes dancing with furious power. A cold, bitter wind swept across the burning lake house like dark wings, snuffing the fire utterly where it passed.

I have to admit. I was impressed, and not in the fun way.

The faerie's tall, pale figure stood beside me for a moment in the still darkness. She turned, then, toward the rippling veil that still led into Winter. Her golden eyes glinted at me.

"I shall come for you," she said, her voice ringing on the storm overhead. "And when I do… you shall answer my wishes, or else you shall sorely grieve this day."

I stared at her, as the edges of her opalescent gown began to fade into the Nevernever. "I believe you," I managed.

That earned a cold, narrow smile from her… just before she disappeared entirely.

I looked around at the empty shell of the lake house. Part of me surveyed it out of sheer habit, though I wasn't really mentally present.

There was a bloody, half-burned body off to my right that looked like what remained of Greg Beckitt. I didn't immediately see Hendricks or Carmichael, though — I had no idea what condition they might be in. Not far from me, Victor's altar still stood relatively untouched, though either circumstance or the Leanansidhe had snuffed out the candles there.

A thick, leather-bound book was still open on that altar, its pages turned to some reference point. I looked it over dully. It clearly wasn't any kind of original Egyptian text, but it had hieroglyphics scribbled out within it, with English notations in the margins. It was still old enough to have been written by some archaeologist in the twenties or thirties. There were layers of notes, written with increasing urgency and decreasing discipline.

I contemplated the book for a moment longer. I reached out to close it, and gently tucked it underneath my arm. I didn't have any magic of my own; the danger of me using whatever was in there to hurt someone was zero to nil. But even feeling as awful as I did, I knew the value of the knowledge in there. If another Victor came along anytime soon, I'd have a slightly better chance of dealing with him.

I slowly picked my way out of the house, wary of the potentially unstable flooring. As I stumbled out, I saw Hendricks stepping away from a tree, where he'd just finished cabling a hastily-blindfolded figure. His eyes fixed instantly upon me as I headed out from the smoldering lake house. The dying fire had probably made an impression.

"Jesus Christ, Murph!" I heard Carmichael hiss, and I turned to see him headed toward me. He'd torn off his mask, so I could see that he was covered in soot and little burns. I winced. He'd probably been searching the burning house for me. "What happened in there?" he demanded.

I blinked slowly. My brain still hadn't caught up with the fact that I was no longer dying. I felt a weird kind of numbness set in. "I can't right now," I managed. "I'll process later."

He reached out to duck underneath my shoulder, and I realized he thought I was still injured. I didn't have the mental capacity to explain things to him, so I let him hold onto me as we headed back up toward the car.

Hendricks opened the door to the passenger seat, like a gentleman. Carmichael dumped me into the front, and I leaned back to stare at the ceiling of the car.

"You're alive," Hendricks observed, as he shuffled into the driver's seat.

"I'm alive," I repeated, dull and disbelieving.

I still felt Bob humming underneath my skin — but he'd gone silent on me for the moment, and disappeared.

"The wizard?" Hendricks asked.

I shuddered. Victor's screams still echoed in my ears. His life still rushed through my veins. I tried very hard not to think about it. "He's… he's done."

Hendricks nodded. "Left the woman tied up," he said. He sounded disapproving. "She tried to kill you — should have ended her, but your partner insisted. Fire trucks will find her."

She did kill me. The words were on my tongue. But I didn't say them out loud. "Thanks, Ron," I mumbled. Intellectually, I knew Hendricks was right — Helen Beckitt had participated in all the same murders as Victor, and she'd fired on me with intent to kill. But she wasn't an immediate threat, and I didn't have the stomach for any more death right now.

"You hurt bad anywhere?" Carmichael asked.

I shook my head slowly. I wasn't all right. But I wasn't injured, either.

Hendricks handed something small, white, and fuzzy over into my lap. I stared down at the bunny that Victor had tied up on his altar; someone had carefully wiped away the blood on its head. It was still breathing hard, terrified. I scratched absently behind its ears.

"You saved the bunny," I observed blankly.

Hendricks gave me a flat look. "It didn't hurt anyone," he said.

Carmichael pushed his way into the back seat, and Hendricks started up the SUV.

The ride home was very, very quiet.

0-0-0-0

I realized somewhere near the IHOP that Monica was still in fear for her life. I fumbled for her phone, and shot a short call to Father Forthill to assure them both that she could go to sleep. I told him Victor wasn't coming back, though I wasn't heavy on the details. I barely wanted to know them myself.

I thought about Waldo. I knew I needed to call him too — but I wasn't feeling nearly ready for that. I knew that if I tried now, I wouldn't be able to keep my voice normal. That could lead to questions I wasn't feeling up to answering.

Soon, I promised myself, feeling dazed.

We pulled back into the parking lot. It was a short affair after that. Hendricks didn't say goodbye — he just nodded at the two of us, and got back into his car. I briefly wondered if I would ever see him or the bunny again.

"So… that happened," Carmichael observed, once we'd both settled back into his car.

I leaned my head into my hands. "Yeah," I said. "What a fucking night."

We sat in silence for a long time, in the shadow of a sign that advertised twenty-four hour pancakes.

"...and you're really sure he's—"

"Really sure," I emphasized, with a faint shiver. "I didn't kill him, Ron. I did sign his death warrant. I all but pulled the trigger." I closed my eyes against the thought. "But in the end… something worse got him."

Carmichael swallowed. He looked out the car window into the night. I knew he was chewing on the things he'd seen today. Right here, right now, he was a believer. That made for some scary thinking.

"What the hell am I gonna do with this case?" he muttered, finally.

Good old Carmichael. Back to the practical basics.

"They're going to find a dead body and a tied-up woman at Victor's burned-out lake house shortly," I told him. "That sounds like lots of probable cause for searches and warrants to me. And Monica said he confessed the murders to her. If she comes in to talk, she can put that on the record. Doesn't mean she has to mention how he did it."

He jerked out a nod. "I guess we'll be charging him for stuff in absentia," he muttered.

"Walker won't care, as long as the case is closed," I said tiredly.

Carmichael watched me for another few moments. He seemed torn between asking more questions and not wanting to know the answers.

Finally, he started up the car, and quietly drove me home.

0-0-0-0

The moment I closed the door of my house behind me, I started shaking.

There was no good reason for it. I wasn't hurt or cold. I wasn't even tired — I felt perfectly well-rested.

But I had to stumble to my couch to sit down. I dropped Victor's book of spells on the coffee table, and pulled my bloodstained knees up to my chest, breathing quickly.

The panic attack that had been haunting the edges of my mind finally cut loose. I couldn't move, couldn't speak. All I could think of was the way my heart had slowed down, and the knowledge that I'd been only a few minutes from death.

I should have died. In any reasonable world, I should have died. The fact that I was still sitting there was a fluke that could be rectified at any moment. I was weirdly, keenly aware of every second as it passed, worried that it could all be snatched away.

I didn't understand it. For so long, I'd been barely clinging to my will to keep going. I'd all but dared the world to end me. That hadn't been some kind of phase — I'd meant it, believed it.

How could I also be so terrified of dying?

Time passed like a snail. I couldn't seem to get my breathing or my heartbeat under control. Eventually, though, it occurred to me that Bob still had yet to say a word since we'd left the Nevernever.

"...Bob?" I croaked out. "You okay?"

Silence dominated for a long while. I felt the electric tingle beneath my skin, though. Eventually, I heard a faint voice, though the illusion I'd grown used to seeing didn't appear again. "Fine, kid," he whispered. I heard the distress and confusion in his voice, though. "I think… maybe I'm just tired."

A spike of worry cut through my breakdown. "You need your skull?" I asked.

"...yeah. Yeah, maybe that's a good idea," he mumbled. He didn't sound certain, but at least it was something I could do.

I forced myself off the couch, and headed for the landline. I wasn't ready to sound calm and collected. But I was beginning to suspect I wouldn't be capable of that for a long time to come.

"Hello?" Waldo answered after a few rings.

"Hey," I said. "I'm… I'm home."

I wasn't sure what to say after that. My brain hadn't offered me a plan that far in advance.

"Karrin?" he said. A hint of relief filtered through. "Oh, thank goodness. Are you okay?"

I thought on that. I thought on it much longer than I normally would have done. I had to force the words to make sense in my head. "...yeah," I said finally, forcing myself back onto script. "Yeah, I'm fine."

A brief silence followed.

"You don't really sound fine," Waldo admitted. "I'm back home. Would, uh. Would you like me to head over? I could bring Bob, if it would make you feel better."

That one took another bit to parse. Bob? Bob was here with me, still shivering under my skin. But I realized belatedly that I'd used his name in front of Waldo. He probably thought I'd named the skull.

"That would help a lot," I managed. "Thanks."

"No problem. I'll check your stitches while I'm there. I'm sure you haven't been gentle on them."

My stitches? I glanced down at my arm, remembering them for the first time. I tugged up my sleeve with one hand — and stared. The gash on my arm had completely disappeared. All that remained was a line of Waldo's neat stitches, threaded through unscarred, unbroken skin.

I blinked slowly. I found myself at a sudden loss for words. I had no idea how I was going to explain that.

"Karrin? You still there?"

I took in a breath. "I am. Uh. The stitches are…" My brain skipped a beat. "...fine." The word came out lame. I was repeating myself. None of this was coming out very well at all.

"...I'll head out now." I heard the gentle worry in his voice, and I cursed myself for my acute lack of eloquence. "Should be there soon."

The phone hung up.

In the silence that followed, I noted the bloody smears on my arm, my leg, my jaw. I groaned dimly. The planning ahead part of my brain was utterly broken. I needed to clean this hellish night off me before Waldo arrived. I had no idea how he would react to seeing it — I just knew that it wasn't something I was equipped to deal with right now.

I stumbled for the shower.

0-0-0-0

"I'll admit, I was expecting much worse," Waldo said apologetically, as I opened the door for him. "But it looks like you got a bit of rest after all."

I'd managed to clean the worst off of me and tug on a fresh long-sleeve and pyjama bottoms before he got there. The life that the Leanansidhe had stolen for me had me looking relatively fresh-faced, in spite of the utter chaos that currently swirled in my head.

Waldo offered Bob's skull out to me. I took the anchor with an audible sigh of relief. A moment later, there was a flicker of that electricity beneath my skin. I felt the spirit depart like a headrush. A weak orange glow flickered in the eye sockets that currently faced me, then slowly faded away once more.

When I looked back up, I saw Waldo considering me uncertainly. "You want some company?" he asked.

I thought on that. I realized that I did. Moreover, I wanted Waldo's company. There was no rhyme or reason to it, except that I knew I would feel better with him around.

"I really, really do," I sighed. I opened the door a bit wider for him, and he headed inside.

I set Bob's skull back on the mantle, and went to put on some coffee. I came back out with a mug for each of us. I ended up sitting on the other side of the couch from him, drinking in awkward silence.

Waldo was wearing what I would generously refer to as "normal-person clothing" — he'd dredged up an old Oktoberfest t-shirt and jeans, which made him look even more like a geeky, bespectacled scarecrow. I'd rarely seen him in anything other than scrubs, so it just added to the strangeness of the atmosphere. I could tell he expected I had something to say, but he was doing his best to wait patiently for me to sort it out.

I knew I should say something, but I couldn't figure out what. To be sure, I was thinking lots of things, but I didn't have the first idea how to go about sharing them. I'd promised both Carmichael and the Father that I'd try to talk more and bottle up less, but the things I was thinking about were frightening on a good day, and all tangled up in my head to boot.

"Waldo," I said finally. "Can I… can I ask you something a little uncomfortable?"

Waldo glanced over at me over his coffee. He managed a faint smile. "Well. I guess you can ask," he said. "I'll reserve the right to give you a silly answer, though."

I found I couldn't look him in the eyes. I forced the words out, though, as I stared at the cartoon beer stein on his shirt. "We both work around a lot of dead people," I said. "I thought I'd gotten over my fear of death, but now I'm not so sure." I chewed on my lip. "You seem pretty well-adjusted. How do you deal with it?"

Waldo let out a long breath. "Oh," he said. I felt his eyes on me, reassessing my current state in light of my question. "Well. You really went for the heavy one." I nearly took back the question, but he shook his head at me. "It's okay. I just have to think about it for a second, is all."

He took another few long swallows of coffee. Then: "I don't deal with it. I mean, not well. I wanted to be a doctor, originally. I sidestepped into my current job because I couldn't handle the stakes." Waldo sighed, and a small, helpless smile crossed his lips. "I still feel like a coward over it, if I'm going to be honest. I wanted to save lives, but I was too scared of failing. Working with people who were already dead just seemed safer by comparison. I'm literally hiding from death in a basement, you know?"

That helpless smile was the same one I'd Seen on his soul. It comforted me in a weird way, though I knew Waldo meant every word he'd said.

"I don't think you're a coward," I said. "You stitched me up, even though you were scared to do it."

Waldo flushed. "Well," he said. "Uh." He fumbled through the next words. "You know, you… you have that effect on people, Karrin. You're always forcing yourself to do hard things. I think it gives the rest of us a little bit of extra courage when you're around, to do the same." He rubbed at his neck, embarrassed. "I don't know that I would have offered, if you weren't involved."

That surprised me. I glanced up at him, and saw that he was the one avoiding my eyes now.

"But, um. As far as your original question," he added hastily, changing the subject. "I mean, I do have coping mechanisms. I try to enjoy the little things, and not worry too much about what other people think. Like… I enjoy polka. I know it's silly — but it makes me happy, so I've stopped thinking too hard about it."

I smiled at that. "That probably would have been a healthier way to go about it than the one I chose," I admitted. I thought back on the last few years, in the context of what I'd learned about myself lately. "I think… when my dad died, it really shook me. I think some part of me decided I had to practice getting closer and closer to death, so I wouldn't be scared when it finally came for real." I swallowed. "It didn't help, though. I came really close to dying. I missed it by an inch. It scared the hell out of me."

Waldo reached out to take my hand, squeezing gently. I clutched his fingers with a shaking hand.

"You know what I think, Karrin?" he asked me seriously. I looked up, meeting his eyes behind his glasses. "I think there is no good way to deal with this stuff. We're built to be scared of death. It's one of our deepest biological instincts to avoid death at all costs… but we're all doomed to fail eventually, you know?" He smiled wryly. "It's a really awful catch twenty-two. Whoever came up with the whole idea has a very bad sense of humor."

I let out a long breath. The shivers had started up again. "Yeah," I mumbled. "Me and Him are a good long way from making up."

Waldo hugged me awkwardly. I closed my eyes and buried my face in his shoulder. He smelled like wintergreen. He'd once told me he used the oil to mask bad smells while he worked. It shouldn't have been a comforting scent, with that in mind — but somewhere along the way, I'd started associating it with him, and it made me feel better.

I stayed there for a good long while, leaning on his shoulder. I expected Waldo to nudge me away after a bit, or make a joke to break the atmosphere, but he just held on and let me breathe.

Between them, I realized, Waldo and Father Forthill had barely helped me keep hold of my health and sanity for the last few days. I wanted to tell Waldo how much that meant to me, but I just didn't have the words. I'd spent so long not talking about things like this that I didn't have the vocabulary or the social script.

"Um," I mumbled. "You're a good man, Waldo Butters."

He tightened his hug on me. "I've got my good days," he said.

0-0-0-0

I woke up to the sound of someone knocking at my front door.

I blinked, trying to process things. My neck was a little sore; everything smelled a little bit like wintergreen. Slowly, I realized that I had fallen asleep on Waldo's shoulder. He was still knocked out himself, in a terribly uncomfortable-looking position, his glasses askew.

Another knock sounded. It was terribly polite, as though worried about disturbing me. I slowly untangled myself from Waldo, keenly aware of the flush that had started to creep up my face.

I peered through the eyelet on the door. Monica was standing on the other side, dressed in what looked like clothing out of the church donation bin. She looked utterly exhausted.

I opened the door, trying to drag myself back to wakefulness. Monica focused on me, hesitant. She offered out what looked like a box of pastries and a coffee.

"The Father brought your motorcycle back," she said. "In the van. I told him I wanted to come with him."

I rubbed at my face, and reached out to take the food from her, dazed. I murdered a wizard and all I got was these lousy donuts, came the humorous thought. I pushed it away. "You're doing okay?" I asked.

Monica blinked slowly. "No," she said. "But I'm alive. That means I might be okay, eventually." She hesitated. "We haven't spoken under very good circumstances. I didn't want to leave things as they were. You went out of your way to help me; you had no reason to do that." Her green eyes were dull. I knew she had yet to clear herself from the trauma she'd endured for the last few days. "I'm a mess right now. I'm not grateful. I'm not much of anything. But I know I will be grateful, once I'm able to feel things again. I needed to tell you that."

I took a sip of the coffee. It was good stuff. Better than the stuff we made at the precinct, certainly. It woke me up a little bit. "How are the kids?" I asked.

"Better, now that we can go home," Monica said. "Though we won't be staying there forever. The Father said he has friends that can help us disappear. He said until we know whether Victor had any friends involved with what he was doing, it's best that we go somewhere safer."

I nodded slowly. "I think he's right," I said. "I didn't have the chance to worry about accomplices, past the Beckitts. I'll keep looking into it, but you don't need to be here for that." I hesitated. "It'd really help us out if you could come into the station and give a statement on some stuff, on the record. Not the… not all of it. But enough that we can get a judge to sign off on us digging into his affairs more."

Monica jerked her head in the affirmative. "Of course," she said. "Anything you need."

I sighed. "Let me go get your cell phone. I'll just be a second."

I turned to head back inside. Back in the living room, I saw Waldo sitting awake, rubbing at his arm with a wince. The flush crept further up my face, undaunted by my attempts to quell it. "Hey," I mumbled, setting the coffee and the pastries down on the table. "Someone brought breakfast. You want some?"

Waldo tipped open the lid of the box. He brightened. "Hey!" he said. "I love bear claws."

I grabbed Monica's cell phone from the table, and headed back to hand it off. She fidgeted for a moment with her sweater, then threw her arms around me in yet another awkward hug. It occurred to me that I was collecting them lately.

"Thank you," she said. Her voice wavered, then steadied again. "For the kids, if not for me."

I patted her back lightly. The words meant something. They wormed their way inside me, soothing over the doubts and pains that still plagued me over what I'd done. "I hope things get better," I told her.

Monica drew back, and took a long, deep breath. "They will," she said. It sounded like a promise she was making to herself.

Waldo gave me a curious look as I closed the front door and headed back into the living room. "Everything all right?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said, and for once, I actually meant it. I snagged an apple turnover from the box. "Everything's actually pretty okay."