Had this been done beforehand? Had things been set up so that they’d get in my way at the first available opportunity?
Or had someone found a loophole?
I wasn’t sure I had a chance to debate it. A cashier was dialing on the phone, her eyes on me.
In that moment, I saw Laird enter the store, not in uniform, but wearing a long coat, cheeks red from the cold. He surveyed the situation.
“Mr. Thorburn,” he said.
“Officer,” I said. “Pretty prompt response to a call that hasn’t been made yet.”
“Are you getting smart with me?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Only stating the truth.”
He gave me an appraising look. “Yes. I imagine you are. Katie, you can put the phone down. He’s right, there isn’t a point.”
“He had a few harsh words for the fellow there,” the guy with the walker said, “Then shoved him, they exchanged blows.”
“That so?” Laird asked. He surveyed the room very slowly. His eyes settled on Katie. “I’m asking. Is it, Katie?”
She looked at the crowd.
“Katie?”
“No, sir.”
“No. I didn’t think so. I’ll tell you what. You guys go on about your business, and I’ll see that Mr. Thorburn gets to his destination. Deal?”
“Yes sir,” a few nearby people mumbled.
“Mr. Thorburn?” he asked, giving me a sharp look.
“Sounds good,” I said.
“I don’t think I heard that clearly enough,” he said. His stare was a level one.
Right. He wanted to play this game.
I wouldn’t be buying clothes, toiletries or groceries, it seemed.
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
“Good,” he responded, smiling.
We went on our way. I hadn’t turned off my second sight, and I saw how the spirits were shifting. People were milling around the area, which was more like an extended strip mall than a true downtown, but the spirits diverted them from taking one side street.
We turned down that street, and were soon joined by Andy and Eva. The witch hunters.
“I assume they aren’t bound by any neutrality rules,” I said.
“No,” Laird said. “But if they wanted to kill you, they could enter your home and murder you in their sleep.”
The girl smiled, giving me a look. Confident, brash, if I remembered right from the vision. Her brother kept his eyes straight forward, watching the ground for slick patches and lumps of snow he might stumble on. He was burdened down with bags of stuff, while she strutted.
I’d read up on the locals. What had the little black book said? They were witch hunters in service to Jacob’s Bell. Killing or punishing any Other or practitioner who strayed too far from the rules and made life inconvenient. Half of their payment came in the form of hard cash. Half was in either trinkets they could use on their job or knowledge.
We approached a church. The area was desolate.
I saw the woman with a blur for a face pause outside, waiting for a man to hold the door open. She was the one who’d molded the other who’d pretended to be a delivery driver. I saw her deliberately put the little ever-lit cigarette out before entering.
A church wasn’t my first guess for a meeting place.
Inside, Laird walked me to the front, where his family sat in the front row of pews. He paused, bending down to talk to his wife, and I walked on, my eyes taking it in.
All eyes were on me, in turn. It made for a kind of pressure. Like all of the bad parts of public speaking without the ability to say something and give off a better impression.
Behaim Circle, chronomancers. Demesnes situated in scattered residences across the city. I was familiar enough with them.
Sitting in the aisles opposite the Behaims was the Duchamp Coven. According to the little black book, their line was purely female, and their craft was taught to women only. Easy enough, when any Duchamp woman would give birth girls only. A large family with strong ties to many of the surrounding areas, the family had earned a measure of prestige and power by marrying off their daughters and cousins to others in Ontario, Quebec, and the Northeastern States. Enchantresses.
What were enchantresses? Essentials had filled me in on the basics. They would be focused on altering relationships. Influencing people, influencing things. An object could have its owner reassigned, so it might find its way into someone else’s hands, or be tethered to a location, so it would continually end up there. On the higher end of things, people could be altered, with an enchantress literally stealing someone’s love. On the very high end of things, familiars could be claimed by an enchantress that didn’t already have one, among other general bends and twists in more fundamental rules.
In short, they were the most likely culprits for sending Aunt Irene’s family my way.
A middle-aged aboriginal woman sat alone, and nobody sat near her. Mara Angnakak. She straddled the line between practitioner and Other. When Jacob’s Bell was first settled by colonists, she was already here. The notes had marked that she was very reserved, but she harbored a horrendous amount of hatred for the rest of us. Grandmother had written out suspicions that she was illiterate; arguing it would explain why her talents seem to be limited to what she could teach herself. Centuries of such teaching and experimentation, but limited nonetheless.
Being a practitioner inevitably meant losing a bit of your humanity and becoming a bit more Other. My new eyesight was a part of that, one step along what could be a long journey. Mara Angnakak had nearly finished that journey before stopping. Or she had to have, if she was that old.
She was here before Europeans came to Canada and chances were good that she intended to be here well after we were gone.
A girl slouched in a seat. Her familiar wasn’t in its mortal form, but was ethereal, with all of the mass of a grizzly on the front end, and a tail end that looked like that of a fish, the features an incoherent blend of different animals and plants, different features being emphasized as I looked longer. Her stick tapped the floor with no rhythm at all. She’d seated herself nearer the Others at the back than the two big families. I recognized her as the one who’d been shouting at the rabbit.
She would be the Briar Girl. No other name. A recent addition to the local population, as of six years ago. She apparently lived full-time in the woods and marshes behind Hillsglade House. Grandmother’s suspicion? She had contracted with a familiar too powerful for her to handle, creating something that was less a partnership than a practitioner dominated by the spirit. The bear-thing would be the familiar, the stick her implement.
Johannes, the sorcerer from the north end, was already sitting, but he’d chosen to sit among the Others, near the back, rather than anywhere near the two families. His dog sat beside him, a breed that could easily look silly, given the chance, but it managed to look noble.
It helped that the lights behind the dog seemed somehow brighter, the rest of the room darker by contrast.
Others continued to appear, and it seemed as though they had been arriving for a while. They avoided the pews and stood around the edges. Where they clustered, their bodies blocked the wall-mounted lights behind them, and the room darkened.
I found an empty row and sat. I put the backpack down on the pew beside me and fished out a pair of bike mirrors. I adjusted the zipper, and zipped up around the prong where the mirror was supposed to fit into the bike handle. It stuck up, facing forward.