Me.
“Who am I?” she asked.
It was such a dumb question, but it held so much weight.
“That is a very good question,” Patrick said, with a smile. “I’d hurry up and answer it. Names are a lynchpin in the composition of our being. You’re going to suffer if you don’t fill that void.”
“You bastard.”
Padraic began cloaking himself in glamour. Short black hair with a hairband, canted eyebrows that looked perpetually caught between anger and a frown. A shorter, female body.
“I look forward to this,” she said, “Getting to go to Toronto. Finally getting out of this city. While you’re suffering for lack of a name, I’ll be shoring up my disguise. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll help out Mr. Thorburn.”
“You said you felt no animosity.”
“I don’t. Like I said, this is pure interest. I have a great deal of interest in ‘Maggie Holt’, the name, but I have no strong feelings either way for you,” the new Maggie said.
“You’re a bastard,” the girl in the real checkered scarf said.
“Be sure to consider going to Toronto, lest you be forsworn on top of everything else, not that I recommend it. You might collapse like a house of cards if you venture too far from the connections you have here,” ‘Maggie’ said. “I have a trip to Toronto to arrange. It’s been so long since I had a good ruse and got to practice my acting.”
The girl in the checkered scarf stared, horrified.
A moment later, she found the Athame. She stepped close, hiding the weapon with her body until the last possible moment.
Maggie blocked it with a fork, catching the blade between the tines.
A twist, and a strike with her free hand, and the girl in the checkered scarf was disarmed of the implement. She found a hand around one wrist and her neck, a gentle tap of heel to the back of her knee took away her balance.
Dishes spilled from the bar counter as she was pinned, facing skyward.
“This implement, if I remember the rituals right, rightfully belongs to Maggie Holt, the name is invoked as part of the ritual. I can’t really use it, but I’ll have to make do,” Maggie said, taking her implement in hand. “You’re already weaker, I can tell.”
The girl in the checkered scarf grunted, struggling to win the contest of strength, but the fingers tightened around her throat, punishing her.
“Don’t interrupt,” Maggie said, whispering in the other girl’s ear. “Save your breath, and save your strength. You’ll need both. Like I said, you have lessons to learn. Doors have opened to you, as they are wont to do for lost souls.”
“Fuck you,” the girl in the checkered scarf spat the words, despite the fingers at her throat.
She seemed more surprised at the epithet than Maggie did.
Maggie let her go, dancing back with wallet in one hand and mostly-empty schoolbag in the other, Athame stuck in her belt.
“This is fun,” Maggie said, smiling wide. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I’m hoping it won’t be for a long, long time. Bye!”
Then she was out the door, half skipping, half running.
The girl in the checkered scarf composed herself, catching her breath.
Dad. Father.
She collected all of her things that she could carry, stupid scattered school things, useless, then ran to catch up to them.
To Maggie’s family.
She only stopped running when she reached their back steps.
She knocked, unable to breathe past the lump in her throat.
The lack of recognition in their eyes was like a sword through her heart.
She looked like their daughter, but she wasn’t Maggie Holt. When push came to shove, the latter won out over the former.
She was adopted, her birth mother lived in Toronto, meaning she couldn’t even claim a blood relationship.
The girl in the checkered scarf turned away before any questions could be asked.
8.03
“Motherfucker!”
She could swear.
Maggie Holt had made the deal. Maggie Holt was bound to it.
Maggie isn’t my name anymore.
The cold was a bit more bitter than it should have been. Wind that had barely caught her notice earlier was now making her stumble.
The clumsiness had nothing at all to do with the tears that insisted on sitting at the corner of each eye, not large enough to come free with a blink, yet re-emerging if she scrubbed one away with her hand. She set her jaw, clenched her fists, and marched.
Jacob’s Bell was easy to navigate. There were three major roads, Harcourt running from North to South, dividing the city in half, while the other two ran from West to East. Sydenham ran parallel to the highway, curving only to avoid the marshland near Hillsglade House, while King George ran through downtown.
While the smaller stores and restaurants sat on King George, deep within Jacob’s Bell’s downtown area, essential institutions like the hospital and the school sat up on or near Sydenham. One such building served double duty as a train station and bus station, and could be referred to as one, the other, or simply ‘the station’, depending on need or preference. While the train’s horn could be heard a half-dozen times a day, it only stopped twice in a given day. The buses were more frequent.