Halfway Hunted - Halfway Witchy Read online

  Blood.

  Chapter Nine: Truth or Pizza

  As far as days go, it was long, but at least it was awful. I’m upbeat like that. I’d been one step away from sobbing on the couch in a fetal ball after seeing the third part of my spell drift into sight. The fact that I’d written the word blood in my family grimoire without having a gun to my head only made me feel worse. By the time my shift was ending, I wondered if my heart was already corrupted from even dancing around an idea as patently evil as blood magic. It scares the hell out of me; my family prides itself on being a force for good, and you can’t do that when you’re busy calling demons and causing mayhem based on a system of magic that hungers for—and demands—blood.

  It’s a road to ruin.

  And then, on the other side of the mess, was Wulfric. The bridge was taking shape, but the fact that it might be built out of innocent bones was terrifying. I didn’t even know what to say to Gran. “Hey, I kinda started building a spell that might corrupt my immortal soul, but it’s cool because my vampire lover may or may not be saved by it—you know, if he doesn’t eat me while I’m casting it” seemed a bit inadequate to the task. I could envision Gran’s sculpted brow raising ever so delicately as she stirred her tea before lifting my hair to check for a lobotomy scar.

  As I hung my apron and said my goodbyes in a fugue state, my phone delivered some more wonderful news. It was Gran, informing me that I was to take Exit for pizza at The Pines, and he would be waiting outside for me as I left the diner.

  Great. Now I could play the role of happy girl while wondering if the very ground I was walking on would be tainted simply by considering the use of such dark arts. I stepped into the frigid afternoon air, thankful for the weak sun. I was squinting furiously at the rangy form of Exit as he approached. It wasn’t until I’d stared at him for a full ten seconds that it registered.

  He looked ashen, to the point of illness. His lips were pulled down in something between a frown and mourning, and his eyes were rimmed with the kind of tired redness that meant grief was a visitor, and recently. I reached for him out of sheer instinct; there was a wobbly quality to his stance that made him seem like a shell of the man I’d seen yesterday.

  “Hey,” I foundered. He sure didn’t look like a guy who wanted pizza. In fact, he didn’t look like a guy at all, but a spirit. He was an echo, standing there wrapped in the enormity of an unknown sadness.

  He shook himself and focused an expression of unfiltered misery to me with a glance. “I’m not at my best this afternoon. Please forgive my poor company.” Every word was listless; robbed of vitality by something I couldn’t understand. Yet.

  I looped my arm through his, causing mild alarm at first. With a reassuring pat and smile, he accepted my touch as we began to move off toward The Pines. I felt like a tugboat urging an ocean liner into movement. The sky was iron gray, and small flakes began to fall, infrequent and hurried.

  “Why would Gran send us out to eat pizza if you aren’t well?” I asked gently.

  He considered that with a rueful smile. There was bitterness behind it, looking to unhinge the remainder of his self-control, but he masked it with a sigh. “As it turns out, I have never eaten pizza, despite it being one of the primary dietary components of the entire world since my departure.”

  “Really?” I blurted, then I realized that I don’t know much about the history of pizza other than it has existed since my birth; a fact for which I’m eternally grateful. Envisioning a world without pizza was something like being an archaeologist who found a settlement without chimneys. It was just odd. “Well, you’re in for a treat. The Pines makes an excellent pie. I’ll teach you the proper method for eating, so that we can avoid getting any grease on your shirt.”

  “It is a pie filled with grease? Your Gran led me to believe it was a sort of baked cheese with wolf’s peaches underneath the topping.” His tone was frankly dubious, which was better than disinterested. This was progress.

  “You mean tomatoes? Well, you can eat whole tomato on a pizza, but most people use sauce, with herbs and spices. That goes on the crust, with cheese and other things like sausage or olives or . . . well, you can put just about anything on a pizza. Some people even put anchovies on them.”

  He curled his lip. “I can only assume you’ve managed to remove the poison from the tomato, but to add fish to it? My nation has gone stark raving mad.” He looked alarmed, then vaguely insulted. “It smacks of some sort of British plot to recapture our culinary imagination with their endless varieties of smoked fish.”

  “Poison? In tomatoes? Didn’t people eat them in your, ahh, when you were growing up?” I asked.

  He snorted. “Only if they wished for a most uncomfortable evening. I’ve heard of desperate people eating too many tomatoes, as you call them, and developing a permanent gripe in their guts.”

  We were picking our way across the street now in order to cross to The Pines. “How did you cook them? Or, people who ate them, I mean?”

  “Cut the leaves and fruit, boil them, and then eat it as a soup or stew, I would think. I never fell prey to their charms, I’m happy to say.” Engaging in conversation was helping his mood, if not his appearance. He was still tattered.

  Ahhh. “Well, consider this mystery of the ages solved. The leaves are toxic; no wonder people got sick. Didn’t any doctors spread the word about this?” It seemed incredible that something so simple could resist common sense.

  He sighed again, and this one was long and full of defeat. “Carlie, medicine in my time consisted of quackery and poison. I know that now, but at the time, what you call a treatment was often something even more harmful than doing nothing. It’s no wonder that children got sick.” He frowned before adding, “Sicker.”

  “Are you unwell because of what you’ve been reading this morning? Or is something else bothering you? I can tell you, a visit to the doctor here is much different, Exit.”

  We hovered in front of The Pines. The aroma of pizza filled our noses as the vent from the oven pumped delicious scents down from the roof, and he held in place from uncertainty and the need to speak.

  “Let’s go in and get some slices to go. Take with, that is. We can walk and eat away from prying ears, and you can tell me what you think of pizza and this world that you’ve awoken in.”

  With that, his expression became incrementally less grim, and we stepped inside for Exit’s first experience with one of the main American food groups.

  In moments we were outside with an entire pie. I admit to being overzealous, but the idea that he might love pizza as any other human being made me fearful of running short. His mood was fractious enough, without being two slices in and looking longingly backwards at The Pines. We walked to my house where he met Gus, recoiled at the size of him, and then slipped into an uneasy truce with my cat as they eyed each other from opposite sides of the kitchen table.

  “You’re certain that he’s a house cat? Not some rogue mountain lynx who has charmed you with his wiles?” Exit looked Gus over like a pawnbroker sizing up a wristwatch; to his credit, Gus didn’t blink or look away. If anything, his sense of smugness deepened.

  I was busily setting paper plates out, along with cold bottles of beer. If we were having pizza, we’d do it right. I plated a monstrous slice for Exit, who stared at the wedge as if a meteorite had landed on his table.

  “It’s certainly . . . large. It smells excellent; although I’m not quite certain how you expect me to—”

  His narrative ended as I folded my slice and crammed roughly a third of it into my mouth, cursing through the cheese which swayed drunkenly from my lip before I could wrangle it with a pinkie. I grinned around my bite in what I hoped was a ladylike fashion; although I was certain that grease covered my chin. Exit looked at me like I was a hyena gorging on a pilfered kill. So did Gus. I grunted—again, the model of manners—and nodded at my human lunch date to follow suit and dive in. With some trepidation, he mimicked my delicate maneuver, taking a reasonab
le bite and closing his eyes in appreciation at the rich sauce and cheese.

  “Good, isn’t it?” I mumbled. I was eating like a caterpillar. I had slices to consume and things to do.

  In mild reproof, he took the time to chew his food and sip appreciatively at his beer before responding, “It’s like nothing I’ve ever had before. How do you make it?”

  “Ah, an enthusiast. I knew you’d come around.” What followed, in between our falling on the remaining slices, was a complicated exegesis about the origins, process, ingredients, and hotly-contested war between people who favored different styles of pizza. I explained the phenomena of New York versus Chicago, brick oven or pizza oven, and finished with a technical explanation of the horrors of microwave pizza that are, to my senses, a bane on all that is good in the world. Some forty minutes later, we stared at an empty pizza box and several empty beer bottles, the fug of repletion hanging over the table like a welcome friend.

  Exit sobered and looked at me with eyes that were sharp and clear. “Did we really go to war all those times?”

  The weight of history hung in his words, and I knew that lying would make no sense. “We did.”

  He said nothing for a long time, rolling a bottle in his long hands while running down thoughts known only to him. “Maybe you should tell me what you think about the world. I’d like to hear it from you, first, and then I have many questions.”

  “Okay. I’m only twenty-one, you know. I haven’t been here for very long. Maybe you’d like to ask Gran?”

  He shook his head definitively. “No, we are too close of an age. I have my reasons. Tell me, Carlie. What do you make of this world that your magic seeks to preserve? Does it deserve such protection?”

  The question brought me to a mental wall. I’d never considered whether or not anyone was deserving of justice; we simply thought that their lives shouldn’t be cut short by creatures who didn’t respect their right to live. To thrive. To decide for themselves. I have a major problem with people being charmed or ensorcelled; it’s a crime that makes me unreasonably angry. Often, the practitioners of such magic are truly evil, so taking them out doesn’t make me lose any sleep. I gave the question due thought before tapping my nails—okay, the nubs of my nails—on the table for emphasis.

  “Yes.” One word, one affirmation, and I fell silent. There was no need for an impassioned defense of protecting people from beasts who would subvert their will, drain their blood, or use their bodies like a tool. No, I wouldn’t defend the possibility that my world wasn’t worth saving, no matter how vile humans could be to each other.

  He chewed on that, even taking a moment to look at Gus, who regarded him with the kind of bland gaze that cats have perfected. A smile touched his lips as he spread his hands on the table in preparation of standing. “I don’t mean to impose, but would you begin by showing me your home, and maybe some of the things in it that are new? To me, that is?”

  “I’d love to. Would you like to use the restroom first?” We’d had three beers each. My bladder was howling like a banshee. A tiny banshee, but still.

  He rubbed at his face with a grimace. “I would. I think I’ll even need to—well, I’ll be.” He smiled, and it lit his face from within.

  “What is it? Are you all right?”

  He grinned as joy suffused his being. Something was happening. Or had happened, I couldn’t tell. Pizza can have that effect on you.

  “I need to shave. I’ve felt, I’m not sure how to explain it—perhaps stuck in time until now.” He rubbed his cheek, making a skritching noise as the bristles fought back against his calloused palms. “This is pleasant state to be in.”

  “What state is that?” I couldn’t help but smile at his improved mood.

  “Living. I was in limbo for so long, and then, even after waking, I didn’t feel as if I were truly free. Something as mundane as hunger pangs and needing a shave are most welcome. I’m glad to witness the passage of time once again.”

  After a bathroom break in which I heard Exit hit the fan button no less than four times, followed by exclamations of curiosity, we left my house in that state of perfect balance between pizza, beer, and good conversation. The moon had risen before dark, and was hanging just above the mountains in a fat wedge of defiant white. Exit paused for a long moment, giving the moon a measuring look.

  “Did men really go there?” There was awe in his voice.

  “We did. More than once. There was a president who said that we should, so we rolled up our sleeves, and we went. It was a proud moment, according to my parents. And Gran.” I thought of her eyes shining with raw emotion as she told me of listening to Neil Armstrong’s voice from across the miles. Even now, it seemed like magic to me, and I use witchcraft every day.

  “What a place I’ve come to.” Exit shook his head, but in wonder rather than fear.

  We were on our way to the library, which remained open late on Tuesday and Thursday nights because, for some reason, people decide that those are the best times to hunt for books. I knew Brendan would be working, and it seemed like the next logical step in learning about Exit’s story. As we strolled into sight of the building, Exit hesitated. It was bustling in comparison to the other places he’d been spending time, so I let him slow of his own volition. I told him, “If you think that’s amazing, wait until you see the internet.”

  He stepped inside the bland foyer, cautiously. He’d been here once before, but I didn’t know if he would remember. Things might have been fuzzy right after his decanting. “Inter-net?” He drawled the word as two sounds. “What sort of thing is that?”

  “Well, it’s supposed to change the world forever, but mostly we use it to insult people or share pictures of our cats.” I grimaced at the reality of that information, but he seemed to take it in stride. To be fair, he’d seen Gus, who was undoubtedly the finest example of a feline in the entire universe. Just ask him, he’ll be happy to confirm.

  I hung my coat up and gestured for his as he muttered once again, “What a place I’ve come to.”

  There are few things that could please a librarian more than a complete blank slate walking into their place of business, so Brendan’s greeting verged into the territory of an excited puppy. After ten minutes, in which Exit was dragged from bookcase to video monitors at a hectic pace, I put a hand on Brendan’s wiry arm, looking up at him with what I hoped was a patient smile.

  “Too much? Yeah, too much. Sorry, I’m excited. It’s not every day that I meet someone who isn’t hardwired to crave social media instead of books,” Brendan said, but his tone was more appreciative than rueful. I understood his sentiment. For Exit, books were the internet.

  “I can appreciate a man who loves his work.” Exit’s absolution of Brendan was simple and effective. Brendan left us to wander with the admonition that he would be back once he couldn’t control his curiosity. I gave us ten minutes, tops.

  “Why don’t we look for your wife first, before I bombard you with other things?” I walked him to an open computer terminal that was cleverly secluded, being that it was behind an enormous vertical bookshelf filled with a local music collection. We would have privacy until Brendan’s giddiness overcame his good manners once more.

  I heard his breath catch before Exit reached out to steady himself against the desk. His knuckles went white on the polished wood, which creaked under the power of his grip. I touched his arm reassuringly. “It’s okay, we’ll look at some records. I’ll be right here with you.” His face grew wan, but he nodded in agreement as I hit the space bar and the screen flared to life. Exit’s eyes went round, so I let him cautiously tap a few keys to break the cloud of fear that settled around us. “You were taken in 1916. Reina was here with you, right?”

  A single nod, then his eyes flicked back to the screen with heated interest. He was filled with that particular mix of dread and curiosity that humans can’t seem to escape when perceived danger is at hand. “Thank you for this,” he said simply.

  I smiled, but i
t was a plastic thing. “What was her full name?”

  He looked briefly confused, but then answered, “Reina Wainwright. Her middle name is Isobella. Why would you need to ask?”

  “Because—oh, well. Right.” It hadn’t occurred to me that she might keep her own name. Chalk that one up to our difference in time. I stated with a basic search, and found . . . nothing. Not even a whiff. “That’s really weird. Would she have spelled it differently? On her passport?” I didn’t even know if passports existed in 1916. I’d have to look that up, too.

  “No, and yes. She had a passport. I did as well. They were required because of the war.”

  I could rule out a simple transcription error, then. I looked in public databases and interlibrary sites, and even online war records just in case something bizarre happened after Exit had been stolen away. I spent five uninterrupted minutes combing everywhere I knew in the digital world, and had not a whiff of one Reina Isobella Wainwright. A feeling of disquiet began to steal into my mind, and I didn’t like where it was leading me.

  “There is a problem.” Exit’s statement was unwavering in its certainty. He could sense my frustration, despite my attempts to mask what was happening.

  “Yes. I can’t find her. We need Brendan.” On cue, Brendan appeared like an overly attentive waiter, his green eyes shining with delight.

  “You need the librarian’s assistance?” His eyes danced with unalloyed joy. This was what he lived for.

  Exit regarded him patiently as I sketched out what we needed. “Do you need to write her name down?” I asked.

  Brendan look mildly wounded. “No, not for a name as lovely as that. I’ll do some digging and let you know what I find tonight. Shouldn’t take long.”

  “I thank you,” Exit said gravely, offering his hand to Brendan. They shook hands with the severity of men concluding a land transfer, and we bustled out of the library before I lost my nerve and told Brendan to forget the whole thing.