“Hope?” I say.
She doesn’t confirm my answer as correct, because we all know it is. “It’s not because there’s no hope that there’s not more to the vision,” she counsels. “It’s because there is hope that the ending can be changed.”
~~~
There’s still an hour before the time designated by Cameron Hardy for the trial. I was hoping to delay things, thus ensuring I wouldn’t have to deal with those crazies anytime soon, but Cameron insisted. “All American humans have the right to a fair and speedy trial,” he said, as if quoting some law book. I noticed how he emphasized the word ‘humans,’ making it sound as if criminal magic-born would be either shot on sight or left to rot in prison without trial.
With hundreds of eyes staring at me, I had no choice but to agree to his terms, the trial time set for noon. Just another unnecessary distraction when we should be planning for the battle with the Shifters.
Since the allegiances of the humans are drifting further and further away from where I’d hoped they would be, I’ll have to depend more and more on the magic-born. We’ll need the help of every willing and able witch and warlock if we’re going to have any chance.
Every witch, I remind myself as I step inside the large tent set up for Mags, the Medium we met after our last mission. She sits cross-legged in the center of the tent with her eyes closed, as if asleep, or perhaps deep in meditation. On each side is a heavily armed witch hunter, both of whom are probably itching for her to make a run for it so they can pull the trigger. They hesitate when I say, “Leave us,” but then shuffle out, eyeing the Medium warily the whole way.
“Rhett Carter,” the witch says without opening her eyes.
“You said you’d help us,” I say.
She says nothing.
“Does your power diminish with time?” I ask. “Or strengthen with experience?”
Her eyes flash open to reveal abnormally cloudy whites surrounding irises so dark they appear to be extensions of her pupils. With trembling hands, she grasps a few locks of her long, stringy, gray hair and begins to braid them together. “You’re asking whether the reason I didn’t fight back when you found me was because I was simply too weak, or because I truly didn’t want to harm you.”
Pretty much. “Yes.”
“My body is weak but my mind is strong,” she says in response.
“Prove it,” I say.
Her wrinkly skin seems to twitch in delight. “Hold on to your hat,” she says, although my head is bare.
She extends her arms, closes her eyes, and starts murmuring under her breath. I notice a slight breeze caressing the outside of the tent, as if searching for a way in, but other than that, nothing happens for a long minute.
I’ve been duped by a fraud. This woman can’t conjure the soul of a mouse, much less a full-fledged furious human poltergeist. I shake my head, taking the first step to leave her, when the first chunk of her hair drops from her head.
It’s the one she was working with her fingers, already half-braided. But instead of hanging from her scalp, it’s now resting in her lap, as if pulled up by the roots. There’s an embarrassing bald patch on her head, as if she had a particularly bad haircut. I frown, wondering whether her body is failing her, the final throes of death taking her hair first, then her heart.
More hair drops, blanketing the floor like feathers from a molting bird. But no, it’s not just her hair falling out. For, littered amongst the gray locks are fingernails, having torn themselves free of her fingers, tumbling around her crossed legs.
It’s like she’s coming apart before my very eyes. I stare on, horrified, as she continues to whisper, her lips barely moving. Soon she’s fingernail-less and fully bald, her scalp wrinkly and pocked with sun spots.
If she’s aware of her baldness and lack of fingernails, she doesn’t show it. The breeze picks up until it’s a stiff wind, shaking the tent like a sail whipped across the open waters of the ocean. Someone shouts something from outside the tent, one of the witch hunters perhaps, and a sudden gust bursts through the entrance, slapping my face and ripping at the tent poles.
My breath leaves me as the tent is thrust upward, as if sucked into a massive vacuum, rocketing overhead like a kite in a hurricane. Fighting to stay on my feet while the wind buffets me from all sides, I stare at Mags, who is no longer bald. It’s not hair, but fingernails that grow from her scalp, lengthening by the second and then bending, folding down around her dome, like grotesque dreadlocks.
From her bare fingertips issue strands of greasy, ash-colored hair, drooping all the way to the ground, like some nightmare version of Rapunzel’s princely rescue.
I want to hurl, remembering the other two magic-using Mediums I’d encountered previously—the way their bodies did strange things as they cast their spells. Wrenching my gaze from Mags, I look to the sky, which is suddenly full of shadows.
There are more screams all around me, from witch hunters and Necros alike, bandying together, preparing for yet another battle, this one on our own turf. This was a stupid idea, I realize. I brought the Medium back to our home, and then invited her to attack. I’m a genius sometimes.
The shadows descend, whirling around us like a phantom army, picking up tents and logs and cooking utensils, showering them down upon us. I narrowly avoid getting clocked in the head by a skillet, and dodge a pair of metal tines just before they impale my leg. The hellish ghouls cackle from above, relishing the closest thing to freedom they’ll ever get, enjoying the chaos they’ve managed to render.
And the only way to stop them is to—
“Stop!” I shout, as I spy a witch hunter creeping up behind Mags, a crossbow aimed at her head. The bolt is pulled back and locked, ready to shoot. Its purple shaft leaves no doubt that it’s been magged up. The witch hunter gives me a sideways glance then ignores me, firing his weapon.
I push my every thought toward that bolt, willing it to miss, to disintegrate, to disappear entirely. Anything that will stop it from hitting its mark.
It snaps in half, the two pieces clunking to the ground.
I exhale deeply and shout, “Mags! Enough! I believe you!”
The moment the words leave my mouth, the wind slackens. With a final, hooting burst of laughter, the shadowy poltergeists fade away and anything tangible left in the air plummets to the earth like dead weight.
Mags opens her eyes and smiles devilishly.
Once more, her hair hangs from her head and her nails poke from her fingertips.
~~~
“I can’t believe you asked her for a demonstration and not me,” Xave says, hurrying along beside me to keep up.
I cringe. Why won’t Xave let it go? The thought of seeing him do…whatever it is that he does to reanimate corpses—dark things I expect—makes me shudder. “I already know you’re able to do what you do,” I explain. “Mags was a question mark. I needed to know she could perform in battle.”
“You’re still disgusted by me,” Xave says. “Great.”
Well, at least one thing hasn’t changed. Drama follows Xave around like a shadow. “I’m not,” I say. “Not by you.”
He reads between the lines. “By what I can do.”
“Can you blame me?” I say, stopping suddenly. “I’ve seen the end results and it’s not pretty.” Images of malformed faces, clawed hands, and fanged mouths whirl through my mind. Sewn-shut eyes. A rattling voice. Rhett-t-t-t-t. I bite down hard and will away my final memories of Beth’s reanimated corpse.
Xave stops, too, looking stunned, like I’ve slapped him. “I was screwed up,” he says, his voice pleading now. “I thought I could save Beth, that I could do better with her, bring her back for real. I should’ve left her in peace—I know that now. But I’ve come a long way since then. I’ve honed my skills. They’re not what you think.”
I don’t need this right now. We’re heading to the murder trial, something that could be a critical moment in history, and we’re arguing about magical demonstrations? “Okay,
” I say, just to shut him up. “You can show me later. I promise.”
The smile that lights up his eyes immediately makes me regret my promise.
~~~
The judge for the trial is Floss, as agreed by both Cameron Hardy, Mr. Jackson, and me. I’m hoping I don’t regret that decision later. The jury is randomly selected from the crowd, an even split of humans and magic-born, five and five. Although I urge them to sit together as a united body, they refuse, moving swiftly to opposite sides.
I’m just a spectator, having not witnessed the actual events, only arriving in time to clean up the aftermath and prevent any further crimes from being committed. Tillman Huckle sits next to me, his long legs spread out in front of him. “This is better than watching Law and Order,” he says. He’s chomping handful after handful of microwave popcorn, seemingly oblivious to the fact that half of it is missing his mouth, fluffy buttery crumbs tumbling into his lap. He even crunches the leftover, unpopped kernels.
“I’m surprised you managed to tear yourself away from your video games,” I say, watching with barely disguised disgust as he licks his fingers and then smears his greasy hand on his shirt.
“You can only kill so many alien demons in one day,” he says. “Besides, I’ve always been interested in the law.”
Subconsciously, my head cocks to the side. Although I’ve asked about Tillman’s past plenty of times before, he’s never been particularly forthcoming. I don’t even know how old he is. I’m almost afraid that if I prod too hard, he’ll clam up like he usually does. So instead I simply murmur, “Mm-hmm.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I was in law school before all of this.”
He could’ve admitted he was really a dark and powerful sorcerer and I wouldn’t be any more stunned. Somehow I can’t imagine Huckle opening a book, much less reading it. He never seemed like the studious type. And law school is supposed to be wickedly hard, right? “Wow,” I say, which pretty much sums up my thoughts.
“I was killing it, too,” he says. “Straight A’s through three semesters.”
I shake my head, not because I don’t believe him, but because Tillman Huckle doesn’t lie. Sometimes the truth is way crazier than even the most vivid imaginations. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“For what?”
“That your life got interrupted.” He should be more than halfway through law school, preparing to take the Bar Exam and start his new life in the legal world, not selling magical weapons to a bunch of desperate humans fighting a war they have little chance of winning.
He laughs, half-choking on a popcorn flower that pops—no pun intended—from his mouth. “I wouldn’t go back to that endless boredom for all the money in the universe,” he says. “I’ll take a world where every day could be my last, over a world where people sue the crap out of each other just because the law will allow it.”
Like I said, Huckle surprises me every time I see him. I never would’ve expected him to have such strong opinions on…well, on anything.
I turn away, because it appears the trial is about ready to start. We’re in a patch of empty ground between the other spectators; of course, the humans and magic-born are sitting on opposing sides. The empty space beside me seems to darken; it would typically be filled by Laney, Hex, and Bil Nez. Can’t think about them now, I tell myself.
Xave sits toward the front, on the Necros’ side, as one of the witnesses to the crime. Mr. Jackson will represent the victim, while Cameron Hardy sits with the accused. I spoke with both of them before the trial and we agreed the basics: a short trial, three witnesses each, questioned by both “lawyers,” followed by questioning of each of the accused. The woman, whose name is Lindy Jones, will be tried for second-degree murder, an unpremeditated crime of anger, while her husband, Arnold Jones, is accused of being an accomplice and accessory to the homicide, apparently having egged her on and handed her the knife that later became the murder weapon.
As the first three witnesses for the prosecution—all Necros—answer questions posed by the lawyers, it becomes clear that neither side is going to agree on the facts of the case. Although everyone says there was an accidental bump when the now-deceased Necro ran into Lindy Jones while heading toward the cook fire for breakfast, how exactly it occurred is a great cause of strife amongst the witnesses. The Necro witnesses opine that Lindy had ample time to avoid the collision, but seemed to lean into it, as if welcoming the altercation. The human witnesses refute those “filthy magic-born liars,” going so far as to say the Necro went out of his way to barge Lindy with his shoulder.
That’s the beginning of outburst number one, and it takes Floss more than ten minutes to resume order.
Outburst number two comes during a heated discussion about whether the Necro said he’d enjoy reanimating Lindy and Arnold’s unborn children after they died, or whether he said he’d kill them just so he could reanimate them. Either way, it wasn’t a very smart thing for the Necro to say, a fact that seems lost during the shouting match that ensues. Floss eventually shoots a shotgun into the air to maintain order. I guess that’s the witch apocalypse version of a gavel.
The final fact to argue about is the manner of the killing. Both defendants admit their hand in the murder:
According to Arnold: “I handed my Lindy that dagger so she could teach that no-good magic-born sumbitch a lesson in manners.”
According to Lindy: “I woulda stabbed that filthy mongrel ten times if they hadn’ta pulled me offa him.”
At that point, most of the Necros stand and stare at the humans with undisguised contempt and barely restrained violence. Which, of course, causes outburst number three as most of the humans draw magged up weapons.
Instead of inviting everyone to a trial, it seems I’ve created a battleground.
I stand between them while Huckle lopes awkwardly out of the line of fire.
I feel like screaming and throwing things, but I’m pretty sure that won’t help. Instead I say, “Please. This is almost over. Let’s just finish and go back to trying not to die.”
Although tensions are high, for some reason they listen, lowering themselves to the ground. Perhaps they’re as exhausted of the fighting as I am. Floss gives me a tired, but thankful look and resumes control of the proceedings. Huckle doesn’t come back to sit with me, choosing to remain in the back, away from the action. I’m tempted to join him.
The final argument is over whether the Necro attacked first, Cameron Hardy using a classic self-defense plea as his rationale for the killing. “You see, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he says in closing, “these two upstanding citizens were clearly just protecting themselves from imminent harm.”
Mr. Jackson, having thrown his dark hood back in what I expect is an attempt to humanize himself to the human jurors, closes with, “The facts of the case clearly point to murder. The victim was stabbed in the back, as evidenced by the puncture wound you’ve all seen on the body. The two so-called defendants suffered no bodily harm and there was no evidence of self-defense, other than the made-up stories of the witnesses and their lawyer. I ask the jury to seek justice for the victim and I ask the court to punish the accused accordingly. Thank you.”
Floss quickly cuts off any further arguments from either side with another blast from her gavel-shotgun. “Uh. What now?” she says, finding me in the crowd.
“The jury,” I mouth to her.
“Yes, of course. Now the jury will, uh, get together and…discuss things.” Her fingers twitch at the air. “I mean, deliberate. Yeah, the jury has to deliberate.”
Although all ten jurors are sent off to a semi-private area walled off for them, I suspect they won’t do much deliberating outside of their magic-born/human groups. Which means we’ll end up with a hung jury, rendering the entire exercise in American justice pointless.
After ten minutes, Floss checks with the jurors and comes back almost immediately with the jurors in tow. She returns to her spot in the middle, holding her shotgun threateningly with both hands
, as if daring anyone to step out of line. The jurors return to opposite sides. I try to read their faces, but none of them give anything away with their expressions.
Floss says, “Have you reached a verdict?”
She looks to the Necros first. One of them steps forward and says, “We have.”
She swivels to look toward the humans. A woman with a squeaky voice says, “Yes, Your Honor,” which makes Floss smirk.
“Good, hit me with it,” she says.
The Necro spokesman gestures toward the human woman, inviting her to speak. She says, “We find the first defendant, Arnold Jones, not guilty of accessory to murder.”
While a cheer goes up from the humans, there’s a rumble amongst the Necros. A few of them stand, shaking their heads, preparing to leave this farce of a trial. Lindy and Arnold are all smiles, hugging each other.
The hubbub dies down when Floss threatens to murder them all if they don’t shut up. No one seems to believe it’s an empty threat.
The woman clears her throat, adding unnecessary suspense to a verdict that’s not in doubt in the least. “We find the second defendant, Lindy Jones, guilty of murder in the second-degree.”
A hush falls over the audience, the verdict silencing both sides. Lindy is all smiles, attempting to hug her husband in celebration. She heard what she wanted to hear—what she expected to hear. Not guilty. As Arnold pushes her away, his eyes wide with shock, she realizes the truth and her mouth opens in a snarl. “What?!” she shrieks. “I demand a retrial!” She glares at the human jurors. “You traitors. You’re an embarrassment to your own kind.” With a quickness that surprises me, she leaps past Cameron Hardy, trying to get to the jury. A couple of Floss’s witch hunter thugs manage to cut her off, holding her back. “You pigs! You filthy mongrels! I’ll kill you all for this!”
They hold her down as Floss issues the punishment. “Lindy Jones, you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers.” She looks up at me for approval and I nod. “For your crime you are sentenced to life in confinement.”