Fair Game

The candles and every one of the boat’s lights went out.

Malcolm swore, dove for his console, and frantically played with the switches. He put a foot on the first rung of the ladder, presumably to go up and confront the witch for meddling with his boat.

Malcolm was under Charles’s protection, so Charles shoved past Isaac (still watching the witch instead of Malcolm), trusting that the Alpha wolf would have enough presence of mind not to fall overboard. He caught Malcolm by the shoulder when he was two rungs up, pulling him back to the deck. Interrupting a witch was not a good idea for anyone who wanted to survive long. Malcolm wrenched himself free of the unfamiliar hold and snarled. The noise cut off as soon as he saw who it was who’d manhandled him.

A dim light began to glow on the top of the fishing platform, distracting both of them.

‘What in …’

In hell, thought Charles, as the light resolved itself into the three-dimensional shape of an eight-year-old boy.

The smell of the black magic made Charles’s earlier seasickness rise with a vengeance, and he moved as far from the center of the boat as he could get. Anna’s cold hand closed on his. She was shaking. Not with fear. Not his Anna. No, she was shaking with rage.

‘Tell me this was necessary,’ she said.

‘No,’ Charles answered. He knew Anna didn’t mean the witch; she meant the method the witch had chosen. Directional spells were easy. He didn’t do them himself, but he had watched them cast. Calling a ghost as a compass was a major spell, a show-off spell, and entirely unnecessary.

‘Tell me she doesn’t get to keep him.’

‘She won’t get to keep him,’ Charles told her. He was no witch, but his grandfather had taught him a thing or two. He might not be able to get rid of his own ghosts because he had to somehow fix himself first, but Jacob Mott, held by black magic, would be no trouble.

‘All right,’ Anna said, her voice tight, trusting him to keep his word.

‘Jacob, I invoke thee,’ the witch said, her voice like honey rising over the wind and slap of wave. ‘Jacob, I conjure thee. Jacob, I name thee. Do thou my will.’

The boy’s figure, glowing with silvery moonlight, stood with his back to her, his head bowed, reluctance in every line of his body. But Charles could see his face – and there was no expression at all upon it, and his eyes glowed red as fire.

‘Where did they kill you, Jacob Mott? Where did they sacrifice your mortal being?’

The boy lifted his head, looked south and east, and pointed.

‘I can’t run without lights,’ Malcolm said. ‘It’s illegal, for one thing. And I don’t want to get caught with candles made with human blood. I don’t mind fines, but jail isn’t going to happen.’

‘My magic needs darkness,’ said the witch in a midnight voice.

Beauclaire got out of his seat and touched the rail of the boat. The lights came back on and the witch turned to glare at him.

‘Your magic is darkness,’ said the fae repressively. ‘The rest is cheap theatrics.’

The witch ignored him and put her hands on the shoulders of the boy, caressing him in a not-motherly fashion.

‘Thanks,’ said Isaac to the fae.

Malcolm, his face tight – he had to stand directly under the taint of black magic in order to run the boat – turned the Daciana. When the direction the boy was indicating lined up with the point of the bow, Isaac said, ‘That’s good,’ and the Daciana steadied on course.

Malcolm got busy with his charts and then called out loud enough that people who were not werewolves or fae could hear him over the engine and waves, ‘Looks like we’re headed to Long, Georges, or Gallops Island.’

‘What do you think?’ Isaac asked; then to the rest of them he said, ‘Malcolm makes his living hauling anyone who will pay him out fishing or exploring. He’s been doing it for thirty-five years and he knows the harbor as well as anyone living.’

‘Could be any of them, I suppose. Georges has a lot of people during the day, which would make me nervous if I was trying to keep live prisoners.’

‘What about Long Island?’ asked Leslie. ‘It’s accessible by car, too, right?’

‘Right.’ Malcolm was quiet. ‘Long Island has the public health facilities, and people who live and work there every day. But there are lots of places no one goes. Places for someone to hide people in, more than either Georges or Gallops. Those old hospital buildings have tunnels going from one to another. There are a few empty buildings – the old concert hall, the chapel, and a couple associated with the old hospital. Fort Strong is falling down and full of good hidey-holes. The old Alpha had me lead a couple of full-moon hunts out there. We hunted Gallops, too – ought to do some more there because there are rabbits doing a lot of damage. As long as no one notices the boats, it would be cool. We don’t have to hunt quiet there ’cause it’s been quarantined for the past decade. Gallops has old military buildings full of asbestos and there’s no money to clean it.’

‘Our UNSUB knows a lot about the local area,’ Anna noted.

‘Always seemed that way to me, too,’ agreed Goldstein, who had gotten up and worked his way around the boat until he could get a better look at the dead boy who guided their trip. ‘He does that in most of his hunting grounds – uses the territory more like a native than a traveler.’

Goldstein stopped and frowned up at the softly glowing boy.

‘Is he a ghost?’ he asked.

Anna looked at Charles and everyone else followed suit.

The witch looked at him, too, and smiled.

Charles ignored her and did his best to answer. ‘Not his soul; that’s gone on. She couldn’t have touched it.’ He believed that, believed that the only person who could destroy or taint a soul was the person whose soul it was, even though his ghosts were laughing as he spoke. You tainted us, they told him. You stole our life and tainted us.

He continued, stoically ignoring the voices of the dead. ‘A ghost is the little left-behind bits, collected together. Memories held in buildings or things – and here by flesh and hair.’

‘It’s not really the boy?’ asked Leslie Fisher, and from the tone of her voice, if he said yes, she would have shot Hally without a second thought.

‘No. More like a sweater that he wore and discarded,’ Charles told her. The red eyes, he was pretty sure, were caused by some aspect of the witch’s magic.

Leslie looked at him, and he thought that if she looked at her children that way, they would squirm. Then she nodded her head and made her way to the rear of the boat – and sat next to Beauclaire instead of the backward- facing seats behind the console that would have left her back to the witch. He didn’t blame her.

After a while, Malcolm said, ‘It’s not Long Island or Georges. We’re either going to Gallops or someplace along the coastline.’

‘It’s not the coast,’ said the witch, lifting her face to the night sky. ‘Don’t you feel it? It’s glorious. They must be amateurs to leave such a feast behind unconsumed.’ She smiled, and it was a terrible smile because it made her look so sweet and young – and the cause of the smile was the death of Jacob Mott and others before him.

‘It is too bad that so many of us, so many witches, are afraid of water,’ Hally said to Charles. ‘Otherwise we’d have known about this a long time ago. They’ve used this more than just this season.’

The Hunter had hit Boston twice, Charles remembered.

‘If this were springtime, we’d have trouble accessing Gallops,’ said Malcolm. ‘As it is, there are some docks that are still usable. I’ll take us around.’

‘We know where we’re going,’ said Charles to the witch. ‘Release the boy.’

‘I thought he was just a collection of memories,’ she murmured. ‘Just an old sweater discarded when Jacob died.’

Charles jumped to the top of the railing of the fishing platform and bent his knees, balancing with the sudden lurch the force of his jump had caused and then settling more comfortably as the rise and fall of the boat steadied to the ocean’s hand.

He caught the witch’s eyes and, bringing Brother Wolf and all of his power to the fore, said, ‘Let him go.’

She obeyed before she thought, his sudden appearance and the force of his order dictating her actions. She