The farmhouse is old, two hundred years
of stone and silence pressed down by the weight of snow on the roof
and drifts gathering about the walls outside. As water erodes cliffs,
so does the snow seek to erode the stone further inland, not
forgetting what it truly is. The family who make their living here
were painfully grateful for the surprise tickets to Hawaii for
Christmas, as much because of the weather as because of the recent
string of murders the police were refusing to release any details
about at all. Not how many had died, not anything about the killer,
and that kind of silence generally means something had gone badly
wrong with the world.
That, or someone was covering up gross
incompetence, but in this case it seemed the former. It hadn’t
taken much magic to procure tickets for the family, and almost less
to push them into taking the trip, which left behind an empty house,
myself, and Dana. Neither of us filled it in any way that mattered,
for all sorts of reasons. I’ve visited four of the other homes
murders had happened in, spoken to the world and learned a few
things. Enough that Dana had altered her fae glamour to appear to be
a girl of six years of age and was walking about in pyjamas with
fluffy pink slippers on.
I throw another log onto the perfectly
normal fire Dana had started in the fireplace as she sat beside it
with the carefully blank expression of a child in a horror movie.
“We have at least a few minutes
before the killer arrives,” I say dryly.
“I have no idea what you mean.” It
could have been my imagination, but it felt like Dana hadn’t quite
pulled off being a child, that fae glamour – often said to be so
good it fooled reality – was somehow slightly off. I say as much as
she shrugs lightly. “Fae aren’t children in any true sense: it is
why all changelings are found out in time. Parents see through such
glamours if they have a care to. If glamour had no limits, we would
be gods that the gods would envy. We are not.”
Which is more than I’ve learned from
her in weeks. “You have been acting distant, even for you.”
“I am trying, quite hard, not to
laugh. You did not know how to make a fire in a fireplace.”
“I’ve never had cause to.”
“You were never a scout?”
“I came into my power as a magician
before I was fourteen, not understanding it for some years. I wasn’t
a magician then, but there was enough to me that it set me apart.
There are a great deal of things I’ve never been taught, and many I
use magic for so never needed to learn.” I pause a beat. “Diplomacy
sometimes comes under that.”
That wins a soft laugh. “We do make a
pair, magician. I have never needed it. Being a fae is always the
bigger stick, and you start from a position of power at all times.
You believe this ruse will work?”
“Whatever this creature is, it only
kills parents and only speaks to children. Who are often left too
broken to speak about it, which at this time of year –,” I trail
off into a shrug.
“Yes. There are no good possibilities
for that.” She stands and heads up the stairs to one of the
bedrooms. “Be careful.”
The main bedroom is on the ground
floor. I head into it after making sure the fire is warm and we’ve
left out milk and cookies for Santa Claus. I raise up no wards about
myself for the first tine in a very long while, not wanting to risk
driving our target away, and trust Dana will hold it all together. I
hear nothing drop down the chimney or walk across the living room
floor, not that I expected to.
I expected a monster or some creature
from Outside the universe. You expect those sorts of problems if you
are a magician: what you don’t expect is for a fae disguised as a
human child to push open the door to the bedroom and smile winsomely.
“Daddy? Santa is here to see you,”
Dana says, and there is nothing quite like having a fae pretend to be
your child for making you feel very, very strange.
“And where is Santa?” I ask in my
best sleepy voice, still under the covers, and it is one of my
talents to speak questions that must be answered by the truth.
“Here,” Dana says, and splits open,
tears apart to become some humanoid creature at least seven feet in
height, all claws and teeth and wearing a bright red coat stuffed
with pillows.
I start laughing at the false beard,
which is definitely not what it expects.
“You can see me?” it begins, moving
backward instead of forward, which I don’t mind at all as those
claws are definitely sharp and ugly.
“Magicians see what humans often
don’t,” I say as I get out of the bed. “That’s how it works,
then? Only children see you, so they let you into their homes in your
disguise, so happy at Santa Claus being real that they don’t see
too deeply. And you them kill the parents who can’t see you at
all.”
It growls, moves, and then is a little
girl again between moments, slamming face-first into the wooden
floor.
“It does put the children to sleep so
they don’t have to see what happens,” Dana says from the doorway.
“It was, however, stupid enough to copy the form a fae was using,
which means I can keep you in that form as long as I desire.”
The creature scrambles to its feet with
a hiss of fury, trying to flex claws that no longer exist.
“You could have sent out a call for a
fae to get rid of your hunger or change it,” Dana says softly. “You
did not.”
“You are weak, fae-thing. I can smell
weakness on you and you will die, and I will be –.”
I cough. The creature turns and shrinks
slightly under my smile. “I bind you,” I say softly, pulling a
name out of its head. “You call yourself Krampus and you are a Dana
too, and I bind you to to the form you wear, and I bind you to find
every family you harmed, to help every child whose trust in the world
you shattered, and to help them heal. After all this, creature, you
will come and find me. And if I am feeling very kind and very nice, I
will release you from this binding.”
“And if not?” it says, glaring up
at me in bravado.
“Then I will extend it to every hurt
child the world over and you will never know rest or freedom. And
that is only what I could do; Dana can do far worse when her strength
returns. It is reason enough for you to do this job very, very well
without trying to break it at all.”
It stares at me, then is gone,
vanishing from the building entirely in a fit of fury with some of
the small scraps of power I have left to it. I work other bindings:
that it will not kill the children to ‘heal’ then, that its
strength could only grow with helping and other limits and
protections it will know only when it has to. Then I walk into the
living room and drink the brandy we left for Santa.
“It actually put you to sleep.”
“For a moment,” Dana admits, eating
a cooking and shrugging into her normal adult human form. “I will
need to find some way to begin to heal my strength soon, magician.”
I consider options as I finish the
brandy. If I were to help her find it, it would mean I would know a
way to take strength from fae as well, and that I doubt she could
allow to happen. “You broke free, though.”
“I will not say it didn’t cost.”
Dana looked away.
I take a deep breath. “Jay trusts
people, Dana. That’s who he is. Even if they hurt him, he’s
rather trust them first. Charlie doesn’t, which means they work
quite well together. We don’t. We’re too much alike in ways that
make us see sides to ourselves we don’t care to see. At least in my
case.”
“And?” she says, not moving.
“There is going to be a new year
soon. The world is different at such times. We will be close to the
solstice, with echoes of Christmas behind us, a shifting of balances,
an opening of ways. You cannot heal yourself alone. But perhaps, if I
gave you my magic for a time, you would find a way to do to this.”
Dana goes still at that. “Why?”
“Pick a reason: we’ll go with
that.”
She almost throws a cookie at me, but
just nods and walks outside. The weather still doesn’t touch her. I
leave her to that and head into the kitchen. There is an old rotary
phone in it that does not ring. I wonder if Jay is trying to get
ahold of me. I wonder if Charlie wants to call me. I could find out.
I could even call them.
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