Who'll seek Robin's soul?
I, said the mink.
I'll journey betwixt cliff and vale,
I'll journey between hill and dale,
If you will hold the link.
—
The house smelt like smoke.
Heather let herself in the back via the spare key, which hadn't been moved. He'll owe me a lot. I get to test out my powers. I get to pick up some of my own stuff. And I made him admit he's all concerned and whiny about some stupid pet, which is worth knowing.
It'd seem like bats or tarantulas or gila monsters or a fish tank full of giant slimy slugs would be more J.D.'s style, but Heather had seen the hamster during her stay, on the desk in the room full of general teenage-boy grossness. David was tidier than him, Kurt Kelly worse.
She'd planned to go up to the attic first to get her own things - the most important goal here - but she couldn't stay one second more than she had to, not any more. This was closer.
Heather's dad sometimes took way too long to understand stuff and told incredibly bad jokes that should've died a merciful death with the dinosaurs. That wasn't exactly the same thing. Her grandmother had made Heather look at the burn and touch it, dark red and even black skin in spots, leathery and disgusting. He's the kind of person who does that to his kid.
Heather picked up the hamster cage. Screw going down the stairs; there was a big window and an elm tree with thick branches nearby. Mind control was a much better power than pyroclastics or whatever you called what Mr. Dean had. She should be able to yell at someone like that and tell him exactly what to burn. Heather Duke. David. Veronica. Martha. Or, hell, even J.D. - just to generally make the world a more beautiful place. 'Assuming you have a soul' - what kind of bullshit is that? I should've ordered him to take it and shove -
Heather slid the window open. There was still that horrible smell of smoke and ash around her, though she couldn't see or hear traces of any fire. Heather knew she was very powerful; she was stronger than her grandmother, she had to be. She'd done something much bigger than anything Grandma had ever done, even if she still wasn't exactly sure how to do it again.
Subtle influence is much better than forcing people, Grandma tried to tell her; let them believe they won too. Like she'd done to J.D.'s dad, got what she wanted and let him walk away with something he wanted too. My mother - your great-grandmother - failed to understand that. We all need to sleep sometimes, which was how she died. Good night and sweet dreams, my dear.
Heather Chandler liked blatant more than subtle, when she could get away with it. Blatant meant everybody knew you were the one with power, and subtle was what you did when blatant wouldn't work.
She set the cage out on the sill. There was no sound except for faint squeaking. But that smell of constant ash was awfully - subtle.
Then she heard a creak on the stairs.
Heather threw herself out the window, hands scraping tree bark, jumping down to the ground. She used a stick to knock down the cage and catch it, ignoring the fuss the animal made. She looked up. She saw a dark shape, rushing into the room she'd just left behind. A man was chasing her. She ran.
She looked back, just once.
Panting, Heather rounded the corner of the shopping mall, her natural habitat. One-and-a-half decent clothing stores and a corn dog stand and a grocery store. She practically bumped into store security. Full of people. Thank goodness.
"A man's following me!" Heather blurted out, going little-girl-scared, despising herself for it and promising later revenge. "You have to help me!"
The guy seemed a little confused about the hamster. He let her in some pathetic windowless back storeroom, a dusty plain room with a chair to rest on. Brought her some water too.
"Are you okay? You want me to call your parents? I didn't see any weirdos out there - what does this man look like?"
"Black," Heather said. She didn't mean it the way the guy heard it. She was still reeling, chilled, with the man she'd actually seen. "No, I mean, Caucasian. Wearing black. A gross old guy?"
She had a vague idea what Bud Dean looked like, though she'd only seen him once and at that time hadn't cared enough to pay attention. He looked normal enough, so ordinary as to be boring.
Not like what Heather had really seen. It was shaped like a man, but smaller and spindlier. It was black all over, the black of charcoal and ash and cinders. What passed for its skin was rough and craggy, dust-edged, like it had to draw itself together with every step. Something white had flashed from its mouth like long needle-shaped teeth. It smelt of smoke and ash. Blue-grey fumes rose from where it placed its feet.
Did he, somehow, really look like that unreal thing of ashes and dust, underneath it all? Or was it something completely different, after Heather for its own reasons?
Couldn't give that full description - she'd sound crazy. The security guy said he'd not seen any guys who looked like that, not seen anything weird.
"Give me your wallet," Heather told the guy, trying to put force into it. She didn't let her surprise show on her face when he reached into his jacket and actually handed it over.
I do have power. Heather paged through a couple of dog-eared family photos - mom and dad and three girls all smiling, how apple-pie cute and generally unoriginal. I think I once told Mom I didn't want any smelly baby brothers or sisters when she asked me; I would've been just a little kid; she made the right choice, really. A driver's license, credit cards, old receipts turning brown, almost a hundred bucks.
She decided to only take twenty and give the rest back. No reason; she just didn't want to attract too much attention.
"Forget I was here," she told the guy, and went to find a pay phone to call Heather Duke for a ride back.
"Not a word, Heather," she said, warding off questions about the cage in her lap. Duke stayed completely silent until Heather started to feel annoyed by it. "Fine - I'll let you talk."
Duke held up her middle finger.
"Oh, come on, be nice," Heather said. "I saw a weird smoke creature at J.D.'s house - it could have been his dad, I don't know. I thought it was following me." She looked out the car mirror in case she could see it again. "But it's gone now."
"First possibility is you're going insane and having delusions," Duke said with a smirk. "Couldn't happen to a nicer girl. Second possibility is that you're being pursued by a shapeshifter - or something worse. Get smart and listen to people who know what the hell they're doing, Heather. I've been reading fantasy since before I could walk."
"Give me what you've got, then. Or is this some revenge of the nerds, where I get to listen to you make the same kind of sense as Mizz Fleming trying to teach Philosophy 101?"
"All right, was it the same size as Mr. Dean? Okay, smaller. Then, probably not a shapeshifter. Ye cannae change the laws of physics, Jim," Duke quoted something or other. "Of course, we're dealing with magic and ghosts here, so the laws of physics get thrown out the window like so much loose change. But since he's pyrokinetic, I guess your new apparition is linked to him. We know ghosts can come back, so maybe someone who died in a fire he set managed to return as a smoke ghost. That's logic for you. My next theory is that your power works through pheromones. You know, like sweat hormones radiating from your body to attract mates or mark your territory."
"I don't stink. Take that back or else," Heather said.
"I did put on extra perfume today," Duke sniffed and grinned at the thick jasmine scent that filled the car in a rather nauseating way. "Maybe that'll help me - "
"Shut up, Heather."
The old line still worked.
"Sorry," Heather said, only somewhat apologetically. "I need to test what I can do. If you can beat me at my own game, I want to know." So I can get even stronger. "Thanks for the hot tips, Heather."
She faced a withering tongue-lashing from her grandmother, of course. Heather's only consolation was that J.D. got it equally in the neck for prompting her.
"Smoke figures indeed. I hew to your Miss Duke's first theory. I imagine you believe you're far more powerful than the old bat." Her grandmother gave her a frosty smile. "You killed two people; if one is enough to give you power, then two must be better. Is that what you think, Heather? I know too well what they must teach in the schools nowadays: a lot of nonsense. Of all the most vital tools in a woman's arsenal, logic is one of the most frequently absent. I suppose it's not entirely your fault. But to kill again doesn't give you any more power. It's worse than that. It makes you believe you have more power, when you actually have less. A swollen head over not being caught gives you arrogance, delusional thinking, and sloppy, slack standards all over. I have seen the pattern before: people gain power, use their newfound abilities to kill again, and think themselves the most important and untouchable kings and queens of the world. It's a literal sickness within them, and it always brings them down. Do you both understand that, children?"
Screw you, Martha, you made that mistake too when you killed Kurt for me, Heather thought. "Got it, Grandma, no homicide." She rolled her eyes and kicked the side of the bed. "She means you, J.D." It must've been pretty uncomfortable for him, to know that six people knew he'd committed murder-one. She hoped he felt it.
"I mean both of you," Grandma Chandler repeated. But she was looking at J.D. "I've heard from my son that his business is ahead of schedule. Your father will leave. One problem fewer, at any rate. All you must do is recover as quickly as you can." Heather could tell her grandmother tried to add that force to it, as if her power extended to induce placebo effects or ninety-percent-of-wellness-is-in-the-head or whatever faith healing bullshit Mizz Phlegm was pushing this week. It probably did, Heather thought. She had commanded herself to fake her own death, and her body had obeyed her, buried alive and surviving.
Honestly, Heather just considered herself lucky that J.D. wasn't the sort of pet owner who fussed over the hamster like he wanted to cuddle it and kiss it and have horrible half-hamster half-human babies with it, like the way Heather McNamara acted with her pathetic yellow canary Tweety. He only fed and cleaned it up in a common way, wincing but not complaining when he moved, leaning on the desk, knuckles white as he held on to keep upright.
If Martha isn't feeding that damn canary, I swear I'll find some way to kill her deader than dead, Heather thought.
—
Martha added fresh water to the canary's tray. She paced back in front of Heather McNamara's mirror, restless. Heather? Heather McNamara? Are you there inside me? she thought. Nobody answered back. Martha picked up a fluorescent yellow brush and gently lifted petal-soft tangles of blonde hair out of her face. People looked at her so differently now, looked at her like she was a real person and not a joke. Her mom had been so kind to her, even not knowing - kind to a strange desperate girl who'd knocked on the door in the middle of the night and talked about her daughter, helped her wash her clothes and brush the tangles out of her hair and drink her favorite dark tea with plenty of milk, kind as if she'd known somewhere inside her she was with her daughter again.
Things with Martha's dad were different. She'd learnt about the divorce; they split two years ago. His apartment smelt like beer and heavy-duty painkillers, and he turned the stranger away without looking at her. The world wasn't right any more.
Martha had had to go back to Heather McNamara's house, of course, and try and blend in. She'd seen that Heather's parents were were totally absorbed in their own angry fights and didn't notice anything odd about Martha's behavior. When Martha was alive, she'd never thought about what the lives of her bullies were like. It surprised her that the pretty, tall, perfect, blonde Heather had something like this to deal with. And a canary that seemed to genuinely love her.
If I can't find Heather McNamara or feel her, then isn't it okay to be her? Martha thought.
She drifted through school, smiling at people and getting her homework done. Heather Duke and Veronica knew what she was and kept away, but she had other friends.
"You want to hang, Heather?" Peter Dawson asked her, his friend Dennis half a step behind. Martha remembered them as clever and clean-cut from before, Dennis rarely without a book in hand and Peter similarly obsessive about his shoe brush with a custom computer chip in it. "Wicked demolition of an old hotel, we'll be an overly safe distance outside the blast zone, our standard-issue Boy Scout birdwatching field glasses, and - " he lowered his voice. "Beer. Maybe. A little."
"Sounds very," Martha said, remembering the new slang. That and -
She could see the boys' fate lines, already tangling. They headed toward a grasping, reaching darkness that wanted to swallow them in its maw. It shouldn't have been like that.
That darkness would be Martha's fault. She held her head down shyly while Dennis and Peter made plans, agreeing to everything.
It's the dark boy's father. Demolitions, demolishings, destruction.
They watched the man through two sets of field glasses, swapped around between three. He set up a camera on a tripod, went through a routine.
It's happening. Something terrible will happen to these boys. And they haven't done anything truly wrong. Yet, I suppose. Peter was greedy and Dennis secretly hungry for fame he wouldn't know how to deal with if he ever achieved.
Martha saw more than she had when she was alive. Her own actions had pushed the fates into a different place, a darker place. When she died, Martha went into a place that was neither life nor true death, but between them both. Most souls passed straight through that place into what lay afterward, but the murdered dead were unquiet. Martha had been born with a potential power, and it - and she - did not fade easily.
She'd learnt and seen many lessons in that world, most of them harsh ones. Martha wasn't sure if it was the nature of her death or the bitterness inside her that kept her from treading pleasant pathways, but she journeyed through the tangles of the Red Copse from north to south, fled the outskirts of Grey Willows, ran by the Hatchet Slasher's side and was tutored by the Fire Woman. It had felt like half an eternity, either that or only five breaths; time passed so differently there.
Now Martha had killed Kurt Kelly, which bound her power to her. She didn't regret it; she had seen inside Kurt's mind, known exactly what he and Ram would have done to Heather Duke, all through that long night. Her sight wasn't limited to the ordinary any more. Most of that was because she was dead, outside time and space, seeing fates and thoughts and what lay within. If she had lived and triggered her gift - although, back then, she'd never have wanted to end another's life - she would have been a healer. Reach inside people, see them for what they truly were, and cure them.
Martha studied the demolition man. She could see what lay inside him even from a great distance. He was a clever man, and a violent one. The trails of fate were a fiery red around him. In cold blood, he pushed his wife to kill herself in such a way that she died at his hand, making her his sacrifice to gain power. Since then, he had killed several times over for his own amusement and gain. Each death left a red stain on his soul. The stains were like claw marks, turning inwards on him, tearing and scratching even if he wasn't aware of that damage.
The man raised a hand. He pretended to push a button, but actually he awoke the power inside him. He burned. Black smoke erupted from the bottom of the hotel, reaching upward like a hungry, devouring maw. The man triggered another explosion halfway up the building, breaking open the floors and pillars with an inferno of fire.
The hotel crumbled into black bricks. There was terrible danger. Martha waited, her heart in her mouth.
Then action came to her. "Dennis, something terrible has happened to your mom," Martha told him, constructing an illusion for him. "Peter, you need to go with him and help. Go. I need to be here."
The car sped away. Martha walked toward the demolition man, trying to hold back her flyaway hair from the wind.
She could sense the demolition man's plan, threads of fate converging on a single decision point. Finish the job quickly. Move out of here to the next one. Then come back, on the quiet. Drive in and burn down the old woman's house from a good distance. She dies, my son dies, and the girl lives. If she doesn't, then it proves she's not what I needed after all.
Heather Chandler's power wasn't what he thought it was. She was an evil person with an evil ability. Martha felt sorry for the other two, but Heather's grandmother had done nothing to stop her granddaughter and the dark boy was supposed to commit murder. Had committed murder. Yet he'd also reached out to Martha, tried to understand her.
The demolition man hunched over, seeming to cough. His hands clutched his chest. Martha saw him reach into his pocket. As she came closer, she saw him pour a bunch of pills into his hand. He took them all at once, gulping a long swig of Gatorade with them. Spasms and coughs wracked his frame, lines of red fire seeming to wind through him, torturing him. Fuck it, I'm in shape and take great care of my body, I don't deserve this, he thought, all I need is to find that girl, damn my son to hell ...
Martha suddenly understood. It was his power, though he didn't know it. Each life taken by the demolition man hurt not his soul but his body. Every time he used his gift, it burnt him from the inside.
No, he didn't want Heather Chandler, Martha thought. I think - if I were alive - he'd have wanted someone like me to heal him.
From the black ash and rubble of the hotel, something moved. Martha frowned. She couldn't sense it at all, not like normal people and animals. A flutter of old curtain, perhaps. No living creature could possibly have survived that blast. Something black seemed to move and slip through the cracks in the demolished brick, like a silverfish rushing up and down in quicksilver motion. There was something that suggested joy about the movement, like a new-winged bird flying back and forth just to see what it could do. But Martha could not properly see it, could not sense it.
Then the black form flew forward, as if it had found all the joy it wanted to in the destroyed building and needed something fresh. It came into clearer sight. It moved with a purpose - toward the demolition man.
It was almost man-size, though small and spindle-limbed. It was no man. Its body was black ashes and dust, though its eyes shone with the lambent glow of an inner fire.
Its name was Ash-and-Cinder. Martha had seen it before.
It came from the place that was not a place, the place betwixt and between life and death. She had glimpsed it only from a distance, cautioned strictly against approach by her tutor. It should not be able to walk the mortal world. She did not know how nor from whence it had come. It was drawn to the demolition man, its nature entranced by his power.
Martha emerged. She ran toward the man.
"I'm the - I'm the Heather you're looking for," Martha lied. She did not say her true name. "I'm a healer. I'll help you. You're supposed to help everyone, no matter how - how bad they are. Like the Red Cross. Let me heal you."
He looked astounded by her; Martha could tell her face was unfamiliar to him, not what he'd expected to see.
On the other side came Ash-and-Cinder. Steam rose from its footsteps. It held out a hand and spoke like the hissing of steam over hot coals, like nothing that had ever been human. "Join with me, and I will make you more than human," it offered to the demolition man. "You have power, and I cannot die."
"No," Martha pleaded. For Ash-and-Cinder to join this man meant - she did not know; she had not seen nor learnt about anything like this; but it could mean nothing good. "Choose me and tell this creature to leave." Ash-and-Cinder might respect the demolition man when it respected no other humans. "I'll heal you, I'll help you. Just come to me."
"Choose me," Ash-and-Cinder begged. "Power and fire. Let us burn as nothing has ever burnt before."
Bud Dean looked at the two of them in turn, bewildered, curious, then avaricious. He began to make his choice.