She settled for staring down at the road at her feet.
“What… what’s going on?” Chris asked.
“I think you know,” her father said. “It’s… not normal.”
Which summed it up. Normal rules didn’t apply.
Maggie clenched her hands.
“Wee birds,” a woman’s voice.
Maggie turned her head.
“You had him a moment ago, the slippery man,” the voice continued.
Maggie looked, and she saw the figure in the crowd. Some of the people parted to give her a better look.
The woman’s teeth had been filed down to points. She wore contact lenses that reflected funny in the light. Her entire facial structure… implants? The shape of her ears? The too-pugnacious nose Surgery?
Maggie couldn’t come up with excuses as fast as she noticed all the things that didn’t fit. Too much, all together, that made the buxom woman look wrong in a way that simple makeup and cosmetics couldn’t manage.
Her feet were a big part of that. More like a lizard’s. The fingers on her hands were too long. But the most noticeable thing was her hair. It was wet, soaked crimson, and only a blood-soaked headband kept it out of her face.
She toyed with a skull. Not a bleached skull. It was dark, with bits on it.
All of the illusions and self-delusions fell away.
“Oh. God,” Maggie muttered.
“You had a tie,” the woman said. “To him. You know the one I’m talking about.”
Maggie thought of the man.
“Yes. Him,” the woman said. “You met recently, he confided in you, you know what he looks like. That is enough points of reference.”
“Who is he?” her father asked. “What’s going on?”
“He’s slippery one,” the woman said. “He’s lurking, trying to spoil our fun. Hunting me. Because I found a way to cross through your cities. Bridges of bones.”
“I don’t understand,” Maggie said.
A man’s voice cut in. “Her kind can’t walk easily inside modern cities. She found a way, and she’s been waiting for a chance to use it.”
The stranger.
“I was just about to look for you.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sparing you the trouble. You’re letting them go.”
“Giving yourself up. Are you worth so little?”
“I warned them. The largest group I could find. I told them how to fight you, and they’ll think I’m mad, but maybe they’re scared enough to listen. But some of their sins and their mistakes are my sins and my mistakes too.”
“Ah. You’ve given them all your luck and fortune. All of your slipperiness.”
“I’ve tried. And now I’m hoping you’ll let this family go, and promise to stop for three days and three nights.”
“You’re worth so little now. Luckless, feckless, sad little wretch.”
“Blood is power, and I do have some power. You’ll bathe in it, you’ll make some of that power yours, as you have with Faerie and Hags and all manner of other things, and you’ll be even more fearsome, when next you attack.”
The woman smiled, showing her pointed teeth, “Or we could keep doing what we’re doing. I’ll find others like you in time.”
“Others like me will come after you. Stronger people. This is the best option you’re getting.”
She considered, head turning this way and that, as if she thought differently with her head at different angles.
“Break him,” she said.
Her subordinates attacked, grabbing the practitioner, pulling his arms out to to either side, making him kneel. Maggie turned her head before the makeshift weapons came down on his arms.
She still heard the sounds, the strangled scream.
The bloody-haired woman prowled forward, bending down near the broken stranger. Deftly, she pulled things from his pockets. A short wand, a set of large, fat gold coins, a piece of chalk, a book, falling apart, with symbols on the cover. Each fell to the ground, pages of the book coming free with the impact, the coins ringing impossibly loud in the scene.
The woman turned her attention to Maggie and her family.
“Which one?”
“No,” Maggie said. “All of us. Let all of us go.”
“If I were to let two of you go, which two?”
“Them,” her father said. “My daughter, my husband. She… Chris will give her better support.”
“No,” Chris said. “N-no.”
“You can take her to her mom.”
“Let them go,” Maggie said. “Please. I- you can’t take my family.”
The voices overlapped.
The bloody-haired woman approached, placing her hand on the cheek of Maggie’s father. “You argue best. I believe you, when you say you’d sacrifice yourself for them. You love them that much.”
He shuddered, bowing his head, unable to maintain eye contact.
“You, I’ll let live, then. You’ll feel the lost most.”
“No!” Maggie cried out. “No!”
And, somehow, it was that idea, her dad, alone, that fed the emotion into her shouts, more than any self preservation.
“Take them to pieces, slowly.”
“No!” Maggie shrieked. “No! All of us live! All of us!”
“Her first. So the adults can watch.”
Maggie had to raise her voice to be heard over her fathers. Her voice was so loud and high it was ragged. “I’ll do anything! Just let us go!”
“Anything?”
“Just- just let us go.”
“Agree… Let me think. You’ll experience what you experienced here, twice more. The rule of three, to make this stronger. Perhaps it will be me again. Perhaps no. But you will experience blood and darkness and fire, like you experienced it here. If you agree, it will be so.”
This? Again? Maggie hesitated.
“Yes? No? I am impatient.”
“I said anything,” Maggie said, defeated. “I- I think I meant it.”
“Then keep walking, child. Walk with your parents, and wait. Twice more.”
Maggie stepped forward, and she saw the goblins part, stepping out of the way.
Then she stopped, and she walked over to the stranger.
“Fool,” he muttered, through the pain. “Fool. She was to rest. She had to agree, or she had to finish here, and once she rested for three days, three nights, she would have to sleep centuries before acting again. Now she can keep going, come back with your oath.”
Numb, Maggie picked through the things the woman had taken from the stranger. Coins. The wand.
“The wand- no. Won’t help you.”
She picked up the book. Symbols, magic circles, script.
“No. Walk blindly, pay no attention to this, forget. It’ll make things easier, when the blood and darkness come, next time. Your power is the oath’s power.”
“I’m not looking away,” Maggie said.
She picked up the book. She’d need a way to stick it all together. She hugged it to her chest.
Nothing stopped her or her family as they walked free of their town, leaving it all behind.
■
Two months ago
“Yes, I do actually know a thing about prophecies,” Laird said.
Maggie frowned. Her ice cream was melting. She licked the biggest dribble from her hand. “And?”