A Lower Deep

memories drove down like spear thrusts and I wondered why the hell I was still alive.

Jebediah stood and made a weak gesture of greeting, a half-formed attempt to shake my hand, or perhaps he was going to try to hug me. Revolted, I gagged and spun aside. He grinned as if we should talk about high school and football games, old movies, and recent bestselling novels. My heart rate doubled and the cold sweat streaked my back. My fingers twitched like crazy.

He said, 'Welcome home.'

My jaw dropped and I choked out baby noises, the hexes suddenly pouring from me, black sparkling motes rising to my eyes, fists burning. So much horror stood between us that I could almost see a violent red ocean rising over our feet. He stepped away, amusement playing beneath that sneer. I said something but didn't quite hear what it was. I said it again and missed it again. He cocked his head, puzzled. Finally I understood what I was asking him.

'Why?'

It was a stupid question.

He smiled, that jagged sliver of tooth as pointed as a needle. 'I need you. We've finally come full circle.'

'You have. I just wanted to be left alone.'

'That's never been a possibility, no matter how much you desire it. We're a covenant. You made a vow to be one with us. Despite my studies you remain the Master Summoner. My summoner.'

'Our vows are hardly sustaining or enduring. There is no coven anymore. You murdered them all.'

'I've found new members.'

'I met one. I don't like her.'

'We're even stronger than we were before, and capable of doing so much more than we originally dared to dream. Think of what we might accomplish, now that we've had these years to grow wiser and gain in strength. More pacts and more power. Don't try to deny your talents or capability. You cause a stir in the aether wherever you go. And you've been extremely busy since you left.'

'Not that I've enjoyed it much.'

'When has that ever mattered?'

We could have gone on like that forever. The pause lengthened. Those rocks that had crushed Giles Corey but failed to break him seemed to regard us witches with contempt. Jebediah stared into the dirt and I knew what it was, and from whose grave it had come.

'Aren't you even going to ask if anyone else lived?' he asked. 'About what happened after you left, who fought and who was redeemed and who died crying in the mud crawling on their shattered legs? After all this time, now that you're back, aren't you even curious? Another survived, you know, even if you don't truly care. I'll tell you anyway. Only Gawain lived.'

I already knew that. Gawain had survived, protected in his unique blind and deaf muteness, but I didn't want to think about him.

I said, 'They're dead because of you. Whatever you've got in mind, let it go, Jebediah. Draw Iblees from me and cease this Fetch and maybe we won't have to kill each other for another few years.'

'Are you sure we have to?'

'Let's put it off a little while longer before we have to find out.' The burn slash rose like an eyebrow cocked in offense. 'But I swear if I have to look at you for another minute here, we'll have our death match now. So I'm asking you, please, let me go.'

The lip quivered, skewing his smile even farther. 'So, it is true. I'd heard whispers in the circles that you still pine and rage, and Bridgett mentioned you refused her gracious offer of flesh.'

'Listen-'

'You're still angry with me for what happened to Danielle? You've actually never gotten over those adolescent urges?' He had a natural talent for making the most meaningful aspects in life sound so hideously insignificant. 'You're better off really, if you approach it from an objective point of view. In time she only would have destroyed you.'

Calm down, Self told me.

What?

Don't . . . don't . . . shhh . . .

'I'm willing to pay what you most want,' Jebediah said. 'I'll help you bring her back whole, with her entire soul, if you'll rejoin me.'

'That's impossible.'

'You really ought to know much better than to ever say that to me.'

The venomous rage caught me low in the guts and Self growled and nearly doubled over. 'All your faith and four hundred years of knowledge, your deceits within the craft and deals in the devil's circles, and you still managed to ruin the authenticity of our last sabbat because of your insecurities and inadequacies, Jebediah.'

The color drained from his cheeks, making the bags under his eyes stand out farther. 'You've no right to judge me,' he whispered.

'You're a failure as Grandmaster, leader, and friend. Rather than lunge and parry for the remainder of our lives, let's skip the banter. We've always known it would happen this way.'

'It didn't have to come to this,' he said. 'Perhaps not a decade ago, before you shoved us all into hell. Not before you killed my girl. Now it does, Jebediah.'

'For you have said so.'

How we enjoyed our tortures. The monks of MageeWailsIsland had developed a taste for vinegar and self- flagellation with cat-o'-nine-tails. Danielle existed as the most perfect core to my soul and the greatest horror of my conscience-guilt was a salve of sorts, and one I wouldn't give up. Jebediah demeaned love like no one since the Inquisition.

I remembered how she would laugh and compliment him on his wit and character, proud of our brotherhood, so trusting in me, and me in him. Her face kept flashing in my mind-beautiful and wet as she'd once been lying on the shore of the pond after we'd made love, sediment in her eyelashes and water cresting on her naked shoulders- and spitting blood, choking in the church, and grinning a red smile.

'You're insane,' he said, and I burst out laughing. So did my second self, slapping his knee, and then we looked at each other and suddenly it wasn't so funny anymore.

Jebediah tried to chew his lip but that tooth kept passing through the tear. Fiery shimmering sigils began to float and flame in the air before him, products of his madness, or only mine. He wanted to play with the dead some more. 'I still need your help,' he told me, 'but if you need to die to become willing, then by all means, proceed.'

'Sounds good to me.'

So many hints and taunts and minuscule torments. He'd enslave me after death, if he could, like the rest of his soulless minions wandering the house, just another eggshell puppet and afterimage of the doomed. Jebediah's body brimmed with spells, crimson sparks now skittering along his fingernails, popping and arcing to the buttons of his vest. He stroked his goatee.

The majiks in the room soaked the back of my neck, those cursed authors returning to some trace of life through their lore. Why the hell not? We all knew one another, and what had brought us to this. He held his fist out and the occult violet flames burned up his arm the way they had that final sabbat night.

Pierre's lute began to play, the plucked strings straining for melody. Antiquity is myth, and his past was steeped in the shrouds of witchery from the hanged to the hangsman.

'I actually did need your help, you selfish son of a bitch,' he said calmly, and made as if to fling the fire at me backhanded.

Self dove from behind Jebediah, grabbed his wrist, and wagged a claw under his nose. No, no, none of that. You sent the invitation but that doesn't make you King of the Hop.

'You never knew what to do with this companion of yours.'

You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Self's DeNiro needed a little work. You must be. I'm the only one here. Peck in the Crown couldn't put up with your folly any longer.

Jebediah refused to address Self directly. 'It's grown far too articulate and willful. It even has your face. Can't you see that you've given too much of yourself to it? Perhaps you're not as strong as I thought.'