that I didn’t know they were there until Mama came shambling back and I heard them hooting back and forth.
“They heard about Miss Darla,” said Mama, after telling me they were there. “They don’t know nothin’, ’cept that Martha is gone and Miss Darla is dead. They said they decided somebody needs killin’, and they figure stayin’ close to you is the best way to catch up to ’em.”
She sat. I stood and stretched. Mama brushed back her hair and let out a long exhausted yawn.
It was only then I noticed how small she looked and how tired. Her eyes were red and puffy and her wild grey mane was tangled and matted. Her wrinkled old fingers shook as they gripped her tattered sack tightly closed.
She let out a breath and thumped her sack down hard atop my desk.
“Shut up,” she said, before I could speak. “I brung you something.”
I shrugged. I didn’t care, didn’t care to know, didn’t need any backstreet mojo.
“This ain’t what you think. I told you once I didn’t know the names of them what casts black mojo. I knows a name now.” She shuddered. “I knows it, and they knows mine.”
Mama gulped air and set her jaw. “There’s things that oughtn’t to be. Things that ain’t got no business comin’ out of what-ever dark hole they was born at the bottom of. Wicked old things that ain’t got no place in this world.”
“Do tell.”
Mama’s eyes narrowed, and when she parted her lips a hiss escaped.
“I do tell just that.” She shook the bag. “This is one of them wicked things. I reckon I ought to burn it. I reckon I ought to let you go out there tonight and get kilt. But I reckon I ain’t as good a person as I thought. Cause I want them bastards dead. I want you alive. And if that’s gonna happen, boy, it’s gonna happen because of this.”
She let go the mouth of the bag, turned it up, cast a rag-wrapped bundle the size of my clenched fist onto my desk.
“The one what give it to me called it a huldra. Reckon it’s a foreign word.”
She looked away, threw her bag down onto the floor.
“Take it,” she said, through gritted teeth. “Take it, and tell it your name, and Angels help us both.”
“I don’t need it.”
She glared up at me.
“Damn you, boy, you do! You need anything you can get. What you gonna do, you walk into a room and find twenty of them sharp-toothed bastards? What you gonna do?”
She reached out, caught the bundle a slap with the back of her hand, sent it sliding toward me.
“I know you’re hurtin’, boy. I see that dead look in your eyes. I know all you can think about is findin’ them what hurt Miss Darla. But you got to think about after you find ’em. Cause it ain’t gonna matter how mad you are, or what they done, or how much they deserve to die. They’ll laugh. They’ll take hold of you and they’ll tear your damned fool head off. Is that what you want, boy? Is that how you’ll avenge her? By bleedin’ at their feet while they decide who eats first?”
She pointed at the bundle. “You take it. You take it up and tell it your name. It knows why you need it. It knows what to do.” She drew in a breath. “I don’t rightly know if you’ll ever be rid of it, after. But I reckon we can figure that out tomorrow. If’n we get a tomorrow.”
I took up the bundle, began to unroll the rags, realized they were Orthodox grave-clothes stained with thick dark fluids still moist to the touch.
Mama turned her face away, fished in her pockets, came up with what looked like a tiny dried owl.
Inside the rags, deep within the turning, was a tortoise shell. A worn, scratched, fist-sized tortoise shell, the openings sealed with new black wax.
“Don’t touch it,” said Mama, still not looking, as I unwound the final turning. “Don’t you never ever touch it with your bare hands.”
I shrugged, opened a drawer, found a clean handkerchief. I took the shell up with the cloth, turning it this way and that.
It was heavy. Too heavy for its size, unless it were filled with lead. It was also too cold, not quite like a chunk of snow, but nearly so.
“You got to tell it your name,” said Mama. She gripped her dead owl close to her chin.
“What the Hell.” I knew she wouldn’t leave until I’d done so.
I raised the thing, spoke my name-my secret birthing name-to it.
It shook in my hand, but only briefly.
Mama began to cry. “Forgive us both,” she said. Though if she prayed, I knew not to who. “We done what we had to do.”
Tears ran suddenly down her face. She rushed around my desk and gave me a single fierce hug. Then she was bawling and out the door, leaving her bag and her dead owl and a fresh-brewed hex-paper charm-the one I’d asked for-behind.
I didn’t follow. I left the cloth-wrapped shell on my desk. I gathered my things, found my coat and put Mama’s charm in the pocket. I took my black hat off the hook where Darla had hung it, and I put it on.
A storm blew up, an hour after dark. Cold winds blew, and cold rains fell. It felt like spring had given up, and handed the streets back over to winter.
I listened for the count of bells amid the thunder. Found that I’d idly taken the huldra up within my hand. Still cold, even through the cloth, I found it comforting to hold, and the vague patterns on the shell drew my eye.
I thought of Darla, thought of Martha, thought of the rain-swept streets. But mostly, I thought about fires. Fires and blades and shouts, rising in the night.
The huldra stirred in my hand. I started and heard, faint behind the blow and beat of the storm, the Big Bell clang out Curfew.
I rose, donned my coat, slipped the huldra in a pocket. I put out a handful of jerky for Three-leg Cat, thought about it for a minute and upended the tin on the floor beside my desk.
And then I turned and sought out the alley on Regent Street, the one that gave me a clear view of Innigot’s Alehouse. And I waited in the storm, and I watched through the rain. I saw the Thin Man come, saw him open Innigot’s door and dart inside.
I tore Mama’s charm. I pushed aside the huldra’s cloth and took it in my bare hand, and something dark and hungry blossomed in the depths of my soul.
“Martha Hoobin,” I said. “It’s time to come home.”
I crossed the street, and opened Innigot’s door.
Chapter Thirteen
Innigot himself turned to face me. I knew the man, and he knew me, just another occasional Curfew-breaker out for a brew.
That’s what he thought, at first. But the longer he looked, the more troubled his grizzled old face became.
I grinned. He blanched and toddled off toward the back. I swept my gaze across the taproom, in search of my Thin Man.
As was any curfew-breaking alehouse, Innigot’s was dark. There were three candles guttering along the bar, flickering just bright enough to show drunks the way to more beer without making it obvious the place was open in flagrant defiance of the Curfew. Half a dozen hunched forms nursed beers at four tables. All watched me, without turning their faces toward me.
Save one. I blinked, the huldra shook and then the candle-lit room was as bright as noon. I saw him plain, though he sat in the back, in a corner barely touched by the light.
I smiled. As one, the other five men in the room rose, wove and heeled-and-toed it for the door. They left hats. They left coats. They left it all, and I let them go.
The Thin Man saw. He watched me come for him, tried to meet my eyes, tried to convince himself he wasn’t afraid, that something hadn’t gone horribly wrong. I could see though, see the fear rising through him, as easily as I
