Carrie Vaughn - Kitty Takes a Holiday

Take this place for example. This magic. A family that decided it was okay to hire a bounty hunter to kill their son and pretend like their daughter didn't exist. A family so steeped in magic that all its members were terrified of each other. I didn't understand it.

We thought out loud during the drive back to Shiprock the next day.

"What's the series of events?" I said. "John comes back from Phoenix and he's different. A werewolf. We know how that can mess with someone. Then their oldest daughter, Joan, dies. Then Miriam disappears. They hire Cormac to hunt John."

"It sounds like John coming back from Phoenix as a werewolf was the trigger. Everything else happened after that," he said.

"What was it Tony said? A witch has to make a sac­rifice to become a skinwalker. So Miriam cursed Joan, killed her, became a skinwalker."

"But why? Why did she want to do that? And why at that moment?"

"She wanted John to have a pack," I said softly. She didn't want her brother to be alone. It actually made sense, from a twisted point of view. I knew how hard it was to be alone.

"Why didn't she just let him bite her?" Ben said.

I thought about it a moment. Some people wanted to become lycanthropes. They sought it out, got themselves bitten. Why wouldn't Miriam have been one of those?

"Control," I said. "She wanted to be able to control it. She probably saw how it affected John. He wasn't able to control it. She wanted the power without that weakness."

He winced thoughtfully, his face lined with thought. "Thus begins their reign of terror. God, it almost makes sense. But we still can't prove she was dangerous. We need proof that she killed her sister. No one's willing to pursue the connection. Maybe they're afraid she'd takerevenge on them. curse them, kill them—"

"But she's dead. She can't do anything now."

"I'm not sure that changes anything in some people's minds."

Spirits lingered. Evil spirits continued to spread evil. If they—Louise, her family, Tony, others—believed that, I couldn't argue.

Miriam's immediate family may not have lived on a beautiful estate, but at least they had a house, a bit of land, an aura of normality.

Lawrence, on the other hand, lived in an honest-to-God shack, with weathered planks tied together for walls and a corrugated tin roof that seemed to just sit on top, without anything holding it down. It looked like he'd been living this way for years, because the place was actually sev­eral shacks attached to each other, as if he'd been adding rooms over the years whenever the mood struck him. The desert scrub around his place was covered with junked equipment, including several cars, or objects that had once been cars. The place was isolated, out on a dirt road, behind a hill, invisible from the town.

The question remained, did he live like this because he had to, or by choice?

"I have a bad feeling about this," Ben said, staring at the desolate house.

"Let's get it over with." I left the car, and Ben slowly followed.

I was afraid to knock on the front door. It looked like a deep sigh would knock it in. I tried it, rapping gently. The walls around it shuddered, but nothing broke.

No one answered, which wasn't entirely surprising. This didn't seem like the kind of place where people threw open the door and welcomed you with hugs. In fact, I kind of expected to hear rattlesnakes or yipping coyotes in the distance.

I knocked again, and waited for another minute of silence. "Well?"

"Nobody's home?" Ben shrugged. "Maybe we can come back later."

We didn't have a whole lot of time to wait. We also didn't have a whole lot of choice. What could we do, drive all over town asking random people where to find Lawrence?

"What do you want?" A man spoke with an accent, as if English wasn't his first language.

We had turned to leave, when the man leaning against the farthest corner of the building spoke. He was shorter than me, thick without being heavyset. He was old, weath­ered like stone, rough and windblown. His hair hung in a long gray braid.

"What do you want?" he said again, the words clipped and careful.

Ben said, "Are you Lawrence Wilson? Miriam Wilson's grandfather?"

He didn't answer, but Ben stayed calm, and seemed ready to wait him out.

"Yes," the old man said finally. For some reason the word was earth-shattering.

"I don't know if the police have told you—Miriam's been killed."

He nodded, his expression unchanging. "I know."

"We're trying to find out what she did before then."

Did Lawrence smile, just a little? "What is it you think she did?"

"I think she killed her oldest sister."

He slipped past us and opened the front door. It wasn't latched, locked, or anything. It just opened.

"You have proof?" he said.

"Still looking for it."

"And you came here to find it?"

"You filed the missing person report. The rest of her family seems happy enough forgetting about her. But not you. Why?"

Lawrence stood in the doorway, gripping the edge of it. I thought maybe he'd slam the door shut, after a good hard scowl. But he stayed still, watching us with hard, dark eyes.

"If I'd found her first, I could have helped her. I could have stopped her. That's why I filed the report."

"But she never turned up. You didn't find her."

"She didn't want to be found."

He went inside, but he left the door open. Like an invitation.

Ben and I glanced at each other. He gave a little shrug. I followed Lawrence inside, into the cave of the house. I sensed Ben come through the door behind me.

I'd never seen anything like it. The floor was dirt. The place wasn't sturdy. The planks had weathered and warped so that sun showed through the cracks between them, and dust motes floated in the bars of light that came in. In this weird, faded haze, I could make out the room's decorations: bundles of dried plants hung by the stems. Sage, maybe, fronds of yucca, others I couldn't identify. Along the opposite wall hung furs. Animal skins. Eye­less heads and snarling, empty mouths looked at me: the pale hide of a coyote; a large, hulking hide that covered most of the wall—a bear; a sleek, tawny, feline hide of a mountain lion. And a large canine, covered with thick, black fur. Wolf. One of each. His own catalog.

I couldn't smell it. At least, I couldn't smell what I expected. I should have scented the fur, dried skin, herbs, the stuffy air. But all I smelled was death. The stench of it masked everything. And it didn't come from the skins, from the room. It came from Lawrence. I wanted to run screaming.

"You're one, too," I said. "A skinwalker. You taught her."

He stood at the far side of the room, which looked somewhat functional: a table held a camp stove and cook­ing implements. Lawrence lit a pair of candles, which did nothing to brighten the place.

"No," he said. "She learned. She watched. I was care­less. I let her learn."

"You couldn't stop her?" Ben said.

"Couldn't you? You aren't the only one who's been hunting her."

"If you knew what she was, if you taught her—then you had the power to stop her, and you didn't." His voice rose, along with his anger.

"I don't owe you any answers." He went to a box on the floor, a wooden crate that might have held fruits or veg­etables for shipping, and pulled out a can. He started cut­ting it open with an old-fashioned, clawlike can opener.

The wolf skin on the wall had dark, curved claws intact.

"Yes, you do," Ben said. "A man may go to jail unless I bring the court evidence of what she was and what she did."

Lawrence looked at us coldly. "The man who killed my grandson? The man who killed Miriam?"

The strangeness of this place smothered my own anger. I felt strangely calm. "He saved my life when he killed her."