Simon Tuttle's home was an old farmhouse. There'd been some improvements, such as a wraparound porch and a crude addition that didn't match the original siding. A sizeable, well-manicured lawn surrounded the home, and the entire property was itself ringed by dense forest. The porch light by the front door glowed, but otherwise, there was no sign of life.
As I walked up the steps I glanced eastward, wondering if Clancy watched and if he would be fast enough to save me from whatever mysteries lurked inside.
Probably not.
The key unlocked the deadbolt and I stepped inside. There were no overhead lights, so I had to use the shine of my phone screen to find and click on a lamp.
It had to be the most boring environment I'd ever stepped into. It reminded me very much of my few fleeting memories of my great-grandmother's house. As a child, I hated spending time there as everything about her place was exceedingly dull.
The living room contained a sofa, a chair, one lamp, and a fireplace. No television. No radio. No pictures. No artwork of any kind.
I wandered from room to room. Upstairs were three bedrooms and one bath. The bedrooms each contained the exact same setup of furniture. A single bed. Dresser. Lamp. After going through them I honestly couldn't guess which one Uncle Simon had actually slept in. His home had all the personality of a hotel.
The kitchen came next. The cupboards held a smattering of dry goods. The fridge contained nothing of interest except a six-pack of soda. Finally, I'd discovered something my uncle and I had in common—a love of root beer. I twisted one open and tilted it to my lips.
"Hello Finnigan," a voice whispered.
The bottle fell from my hand, shattered in a spray of glass and foam. I spun, throwing myself back into the sink, to face Sil, who had somehow entered the room and sat down at the kitchen table without my noticing.
"Oh my god," I swore at her. "That's the second time you've done that to me. Can't you just say hi from a distance like normal people?"
"No." She leaned back. "I'm not normal people. When one stops whispering, one gets too comfortable with noise."
I kneeled to pick up the largest pieces of glass. "You're sneaky as hell, so I guess I won't argue."
"Where have you been?" She said it with a hint of annoyance as if I'd stayed out past curfew.
"Amelia, the funeral director, took me out for a burger and a beer. Then I got jumped by some goons claiming to work for a woman called the Saint of Shadows. But I was saved by yet another damaged soul nursed back to health by Simon Tuttle." I blurted it all out, uncaring of secrets at this point.
This got her attention. "Who?"
"Clancy Krueger. He's a werewolf."
Sil's eyebrows raised. "He told you that already?"
"Yup. Gave me the hairy finger."
"Where is he now?"
"He's posting up on the east ridge," I said in my best monotone military soldier voice.
"Good. He's a brute but we could use his strength, especially since the Saint has already made her first move."
"He certainly came in handy tonight." I finished cleaning up the spilled root beer and flopped into the chair across from her. "What's your story? How did my wonderful uncle help you?"
She stood, retrieved another root beer from the fridge, popped it open, poured it into a glass, and handed it to me. She then, slowly, as if peeling a painful bandage, pulled a bracelet out from under her sleeve and off of her wrist. The effect was immediate.
In a blink, her appearance changed. The blonde woman vanished, and in her place sat the creature that I had briefly glimpsed at the viewing. Mottled skin, grey and black. Hair the color of ash. Dark eyes like that of a doll. From the tips of her index fingers protruded sets of insect-like pincers that clicked against the tabletop with nervous energy.
I managed to keep my reaction to a brief wince. It was a more extreme visual than seeing Clancy's finger change for sure, but all these odd experiences now felt cumulative. I was building up my immunity to the strange.
"So, this is the real you then?"
"Your uncle performed two miracles for me. Things I never thought I'd be able to repay. The first was the bracelet." She held it back up from the table. "Without it I'd have never been able to navigate about freely in society. I remember those days. Lurking on the edges of the world. Only moving around at night and even then, bundled up so no one could see my skin. I remember the first day I wore it. I went to the park and just sat on a bench watching people walk by. Kids and dogs playing. Not a single person even noticed me. It was joyous."
"And the second thing he did?"
She removed a small vial of blue liquid from her pocket. Held aloft, whatever it was shimmered as if small bits of glitter and food coloring had been swirled.
"What is it?"
"Antidote."
My vision shot directly to my half-drunk root beer.
"I'm not trying to kill you, Finnigan."
"What's it for then?"
She looked at the vial wistfully. "It's for me. Or rather, it's for my victims."
"I don't understand."
Setting the vial gently on the table next to the bracelet she said, "Before I met your uncle my reputation and career had earned me the moniker of The Princess of Poison. It was my preferred method of dispatching my targets."
While I enjoyed the root beer and felt pretty confident it had been served untainted there was just no way I would drink another drop tonight.
"Everything about me is a deadly toxin. My blood. My saliva. Even my tears. I once killed a man by sneezing on him."
"Did he have time to say gesundheit?" Only my extreme fatigue allowed me the callous bravery to crack this joke. I immediately thought I'd regret it the next day.
To her credit, Sil smiled patiently and continued. "He did not actually. He suffered a series of violent seizures that dislocated his own neck and spine."
I had no joke at all for that one. "So, you wanted an antidote for people like him?"
"No. He deserved his fate. In my assassin days, I tried to only take targets that deserved my visit. Most of them did. But as the years wore on, the line became blurry at times. Judgment sometimes came too easily. More and more I assumed that if my entire body was poisonous then that meant I was built to kill. And I didn't really need good reasons to do so. One night I went on a date. Nice gentleman. We had a few drinks and at the end of the evening he leaned in for a goodnight kiss. So lost was I in the moment, that I nearly did it. I nearly kissed this man, which would have ended his life. I ducked away and fled. I didn't even make up an excuse. I just ran and never saw him again."
"That's more romantic than any story I could tell," I tried again for levity with failure. "So, with the antidote, you reconnected with him?"
"No. I never saw him again, but having the antidote made me more confident. I wasn't so afraid of those situations anymore." She slipped the vial back into her pocket. "Unfortunately, this is my last one. I'll have to be careful."
We sat in silence for a moment before I changed the subject. "Clancy said the house had a secret?"
"It does. Follow me." She stood with a fluid grace, almost levitating to her feet.
I trailed her to the basement. A rickety wooden staircase descended to a well-lit space with brick walls and several empty shelves. "My uncle didn't care much for clutter, did he?"
"I noticed that as well. His home was always very utilitarian, but this bothered me." She waved a hand at the shelving. "These had once been loaded with books. His private magical library. All gone. He must have moved them before he passed away."
I turned a circle, examining the emptiness. "What's the secret?"
"There." She pointed.
It took me a moment to see it and when I did, I found it underwhelming. A section of the wall had an extended rectangular pattern in it as if someone added an additional layer of brick to it to cover something up. Or protect it.
"What the hell is it?"
"Underneath this extra layer of brick is a magical rune known as a dimensional doorway."
"A magical doorway?" I almost said something pithy about that being ridiculous but when I looked at Sil she was doing that weird hover-on-her-toes thing. "What does it open to?"
"I don't really know. Your uncle was specifically tasked with keeping it safe from the Saint of Shadows. If she wants it then it can't be a good thing." She ran her fingertips along the wall. "And thus, began a decades-long cold war. Your uncle possessed magic that made him the perfect defense against her. Thus, she refused to attack. Instead, she hoped to draw him out, get him far enough away from the property so that she had time to claim it and throw open the door. But your uncle never took the bait. He refused to ever leave town. It became a stalemate, a waiting game. The only problem there is that the Saint is ageless. Your uncle, clearly, was not.
"Your uncle died. For whatever reason, he named you as his apprentice. Maybe he meant to train you and just ran out of time. Maybe you have a latent ability that could help you replace him without his tutelage. We are in no position to know. All we can do now is honor his wishes and try to stop the Saint from killing you and claiming the door. And that means we have to kill the Saint."
Chapter Words - 1670
Total Word Count - 11,783