Page 14 of To Clutch a Razor (Curse Bearer #2)
A RESTLESS SPIRIT
Ala crouches next to a pine tree, her phone in her hand so she doesn’t miss the signal. One hundred yards in front of her is the house of Knights, lit up like a lantern against the night. She can see shadows shifting behind the lace curtains of each window. The gravel driveway is packed with cars.
She watched them all arrive from her place in the trees, kneeling in the dirt to make sure she wasn’t visible over the brush.
Despite knowing they couldn’t see her, she still quaked with terror at the sight of so many of them.
They were too far away for her to recognize them, but she suspects she would, if she saw them up close—she would know their faces from the memories that once played for her every morning like a horror film.
She’s glad she didn’t see them up close.
All around her is the cool, humid air and the buzz of insects and the rustling of birds in the trees.
She hears music coming from the house, a dirge that reminds her of going to church with her mother as a child, with an itchy dress on and shoes that pinched her toes.
Her mother insisted on going every Sunday until Ala was fourteen, and when Ala asked her why, she said that some days it was an act of devotion, and some days it was an act of defiance.
The Holy Order doesn’t get to decide who receives salvation and who doesn’t, her mother said.
They don’t get to take this from us. Ala agreed with the sentiment, even if she didn’t share her mother’s faith.
Behind her, she hears voices from somewhere among the trees. Her stomach gives a lurch. She draws the knife at her hip and turns her back on the house of Knights, creeping into the darkness to see what’s going on.
She doesn’t have to go far. There’s a small pond a dozen yards behind her, and there are two figures at the edge of it, one crouched and one… strange.
A cloud passes over the moon, and in the clarity of the moonlight Ala sees them for what they are.
A girl—but not just a girl. She has lanky arms and acne-spotted cheeks, and there’s a body growing out of her spine, like a plant sprouting from a crack in a stone.
Black fabric swirls around the body, and instead of a human head, a human face, all Ala can see is a skull.
They’re back-to-back, the girl and whatever it is, attached at the spine and facing two different directions. It’s the girl, though, who’s holding a sword to a man’s throat.
The man isn’t facing her head-on, so it takes her a moment to recognize that he’s Niko.
She knew Niko was going on a hunt, but she never imagined he’d turn up here, in the same town where Dymitr’s grandmother lives—or that he would turn up here, in the woods right behind the woman’s house, when the entire family is gathered inside it.
The sight of him is so incongruous, in fact, that all she can do is gape at him as he kneels in the dirt at the mercy of this two-bodied thing. Badass zemsta my ass.
“If you are planning to go inside the cockroach nest, you should say so,” the girl is saying to Niko.
As her mouth moves, the mouth of the skull behind her also moves, the teeth clattering together in a gruesome imitation of speech.
“Because I have no use for a means of conveyance that’s about to die. ”
The girl’s voice is high and young. As a cloud passes over the moon, the body attached to the girl’s back disappears, as if it was never there.
Ala’s phone buzzes in her pocket; Dymitr is giving her the signal. But she can’t leave now, not until she knows Niko is safe. And she doesn’t want to step out of the relative safety of the trees until she knows what this thing is.
She also wants to spit curses at Niko, because he’s currently, at this very moment, fucking everything up for her.
“You wouldn’t like possessing me,” Niko says. “My life is too full of danger. You should find someone more boring. A shopkeeper, maybe, or a farmer—”
Ala’s heard of possessing spirits. Too many, in fact; people all over the world believe in spirits.
She’s most familiar with the idea of demon possession, something her mother didn’t believe in, but other Catholic zmoras seem to.
We exist, so why not demons? Even if they’re wrong about the particulars, they seem to agree that the possessing spirit is malicious, like a host-devouring parasite.
There are other spirits, though, that seem to be neutral, or even beneficial to the host. She has no idea what this one is, though given the knife she’s holding to Niko’s throat, she’s betting on “malicious.”
“You don’t know what I’d like, ” the girl says, her voice now impossibly deep. “So few of my people are left in this place, and even fewer of my kind. No one knows me, not even when they try to draw magic from the land and it twists in their hands. No one is left to know what I want.”
The girl turns her head and spits. Then she leans down to whisper into Niko’s ear, and her voice is so deep that it carries over to where Ala stands among the trees.
“You think I want a quiet life? I don’t want a life at all.” She turns the blade so it catches the light of the moon. Niko’s next swallow is labored. “I already lived. Now I want what comes after. And you’re going to get me there.”
Ala still doesn’t know what this is, but she’s running out of time. She steps forward, into the moonlight.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she says. “But I feel like I should point out that if you were going to possess him, you would have done it already. Which means either your threat is empty, or… that you can’t do it.”
The girl looks up at her. As it so often is, it’s the eyes that give her away. She doesn’t look at Ala the way a normal teenage girl would—wary, maybe, or bored, or curious. She looks at Ala like she’s tired. Worn down by the world.
“I can,” the girl says.
Niko lets out a short laugh.
“You can’t,” Ala says, as calmly as she can manage. “The only reason you’re still alive is because your host is a child, and my friend doesn’t want to kill her. Congratulations, by the way, that’s a new level of fucked up.”
“Ala, the host is still alive under there,” Niko says in English, and it takes effort for her to understand him, like her ears have almost forgotten the words. “I can hear her heart.”
The phone in Ala’s pocket is like a stone weighing her down. She has to go . She can’t go.
The girl glares at her. “I didn’t want this host. I had no choice—I was exhausted.”
“‘I didn’t have a choice.’ Everyone’s favorite excuse for ruining someone else’s life,” Ala says. “So what do you want, exactly? A new host?”
Niko looks exasperated. One of his hands is raised, as if in surrender, and she can see something strapped to his arm—a weapon, probably. He hasn’t moved to draw it.
Of course he hasn’t. If the host is still alive, there must be a way to save her. They just have to convince the possessing spirit to let her go.
The girl bites her lip in a surprisingly human gesture.
“I’m tired,” she says quietly. “So tired of wandering. So tired of running.”
“What is it, exactly?” Niko asks Ala, again in English.
Ala almost remembers. Her mother had a boyfriend, once—a German creature cousin to the zmora, an alp.
He’d spent his youth traveling, and he liked to talk about all the strange things he’d come across.
In Northern Canada, an ijiraq, a shapeshifter rumored to steal children—a myth, of course, and the source of too much trouble.
A Tata Duende, a forest guardian in Belize with no thumbs and an affinity for braiding. And…
“Dybbuk,” she says, the word surfacing from her mind like a crossword clue. A dybbuk, a Jewish spirit— So few of my people are left in this place, and even fewer of my kind.
The girl visibly tenses.
“A wandering spirit,” Ala goes on. “Whose sin in life was so great they lingered after death, seeking restitution.” She pauses, considering this. “And you thought having a zemsta as a host would give you access to that restitution.”
“I’m tired of wandering,” the girl—the dybbuk, really—says. The clouds pull away from the moon again, so Ala can see the body attached to the girl’s back, the swirling black cloak and the chattering skull. “I want what comes after.”
“Then leave him here,” Ala says. “Leave the girl, too. Come with me into the house of Knights.” Niko opens his mouth to object, and she holds up a hand to silence him, focused on the girl. “Attach yourself to one of them, instead.”
The girl recoils, and Niko takes the opportunity to slip from her grasp, stumbling away from her to the edge of the pond. In an instant his blade is drawn, but there’s no need—the girl is clutching her knife to her chest, her shoulders hunched in.
“I can’t,” the girl says. “Their split souls—”
“Then find one who hasn’t made a sword yet. Walk their feet on a different path.” Ala steps closer. “ Save a soul. Won’t that be enough?”
“You don’t know what I did.” The unnaturally deep voice sounds desperate now. “I need— vengeance . Not—”
“If you stop a Knight from becoming a Knight, you don’t just save their soul,” Ala says. “You save everyone they would have killed. You can’t tell me vengeance would be better than that.”
The girl looks down. She’s wearing such ordinary clothes. Blue jeans that are too loose on her, white sneakers streaked with mud from the walk through the woods. A zip-up sweatshirt with fraying hood strings.
“You’ll carry me into the house?” she asks.
“Ala,” Niko says sharply. “You can’t—”
“I’ll carry you in… but only if you give me your name,” Ala says. There’s power in a name, and she can use it to expel the spirit if it doesn’t keep its word.
The girl sinks to her knees in the mud. Though there’s still a cloud over the moon now, the creature with its black cloak and tangled hair appears.
“Adam,” the dybbuk says.
The girl shudders, and then wrenches upright, her back bowing, arching. With a crack that makes Ala wince, the dybbuk breaks from the girl, and Niko lunges to catch her as she falls forward.
But Ala’s focus is on the shadow thing, on the dybbuk, as it clambers over to her.
It walks like it bears a great weight, favoring one leg.
The empty pits where its eyes were are focused on her; she can feel them, even if there’s nothing to see.
Its teeth click, and Ala offers it a hand. She can’t stop herself from shaking.
The dybbuk doesn’t grab her. Instead, with a swirl of its cloak, it spins and disappears. She feels a weight settle on her shoulders—heavy, but not more than she can bear. She hears its whisper in her ear, and the click of its teeth.
“Keep your promise, zmora,” it says.
“You’ve lost your mind,” Niko says, scowling at her. The host—the girl, now—is at his feet, lying on her side. He checks her wrist for a pulse, and then steps over her. “I know you came here to help Dymitr, but you can’t go into that house, with or without a fucking… ghost on your back.”
Ala takes her phone from her pocket. The message from Dymitr is waiting for her—the book emoji.
Maybe it’s not too late.
“I can’t?” Ala says. “That’s funny, because I’m about to.”
She takes off into the trees. Niko follows her.
“They’re all in there,” Niko says. “And you don’t know what they’re capable of—”
The rage is so sudden she chokes on it. She turns back to him, scowling, and says, “I don’t know what they’re capable of? I, who bore their curse, who watched their crimes day after day after day, I don’t know what they’re capable of?”
Niko holds up his hands, palms facing her.
“You’re right, you’re right,” he says. “That was a stupid thing to say. I’m sorry. I just—I’m about to create chaos. And I can’t guarantee that what you’re planning will still work, in the midst of that. So I think you should find another way to help him.”
“I didn’t come here to help him. I have my own reasons for being here, and if the outcome happens to help him, good. But I’m here for me.” She feels the press of the knife against her back, where it’s sheathed. “I want that book, so none of them can ever curse a family like mine again. And I want—”
She can’t say that she’s here to kill Joanna My?liwiec out loud.
It would sound too absurd to Nikodem Kostka, strzygoń zemsta, trained fighter.
He knows she’s more capable than most zmora to defend herself, but no one thinks a zmora can fight a Knight, not really.
Not even most zmoras. They’re better at running, at hiding.
Fast, evasive, clever—that’s what a zmora is supposed to be.
To march into a house full of Knights and try to kill their matriarch is madness.
But Ala isn’t going to try to be a powerful warrior. She’s going to do this as a zmora: fast, evasive.
Clever.
“I want my nightmares to stop,” Ala says quietly. “And in order to do that, I can’t keep running from the cause of them. I have to face her.”
From the stricken look on Niko’s face, she thinks maybe he never considered that.
Maybe he thought the curse ended when Dymitr broke it with the fern flower.
Maybe he thought the memories of what the curse showed her would spill out of her like water from an ear after swimming, in a rush of heat as she slept.
“You’ll probably die,” Niko says to her, gently.
“You’ll probably die, too,” she says. “But I don’t see you refusing to do what you have to. Why do you expect me to?”
Niko lowers his hands. There’s a troubled set to his mouth. But he nods.
“You’ve got five minutes before all hell breaks loose,” he says. “So… hurry.”
With the dybbuk’s weight on her back, she turns back to the house of Knights, to the pit of vipers, and she hopes the busy brightness of the house means she isn’t too late to follow Dymitr’s signal.