Page 7 of To Clutch a Razor (Curse Bearer #2)

A FULL BOTTLE

Ala pays for her own plane tickets. Dymitr tried to insist, but it would have depleted all of the money his family gave him for this mission if he’d paid for them both.

When he asks her how she can afford it on a bartender’s pay, she gives him a level look and says, Just how old do you think I am, exactly? He has no idea, of course.

One of the great lies that humanity tells is that time produces wisdom.

Oh, Ala will concede that time creates more opportunities for a person to become wise, but it’s hardly a guarantee.

And for those who don’t fear death as much as the average human being, wisdom is even harder to come by.

The short mortal lifespan makes the acquisition of wisdom feel urgent, like a survival skill; a long lifespan, by comparison, makes someone feel they have all the time in the world for a slow, contemplative life… later.

Her bank account, though, reflects both her age and her dedication to humble living. Her mother was the one who told her that a zmora can’t afford to have nothing squirreled away. She might have to flee at a moment’s notice, and fleeing is expensive.

When they go through airport security, Ala gets a glimpse of Dymitr’s passport.

It reads Dawid My?liwiec. At her questioning look, he rolls his eyes and explains that everyone in his family has a legal name and a Knight name.

The legal name has to be approved by the government, so it needs to be Polish—but Knights name their children after other Knights from all over the world.

She teases him by calling him Dawid all the way to the plane. He refuses to respond.

To get to Gdańsk, they fly a nonsensical route through LaGuardia, at Ala’s insistence.

There’s something she needs to do there.

When they land in the new terminal, she grabs Dymitr’s wrist and drags him to the fountain in Terminal B.

Then she points at an empty chair and tells him to sit and wait.

Dymitr’s just listening to a voicemail when she walks away from him and faces the fountain.

It’s simple in structure, just a wide cylindrical base with a column of water and light falling from the ceiling.

It’s the light that’s remarkable, displaying patterns in the falling water that passersby stop to marvel at, even if they’re in an obvious hurry.

Right now, the Statue of Liberty glows green in the water column, her torch held high.

Ala tucks her hands into her pockets and takes out something hard and beige.

It’s an old baby tooth—her mother saved them for her, for just such a purpose.

She balances it on her thumbnail and flicks it as hard as she can, so it lands in the middle of the fountain’s base—not exactly the kind of fountain you’re supposed to throw coins in, but once it touches the metal grate, the tooth disappears, and all of the hair on the back of Ala’s neck stands on end.

Standing beside her is a woman. But not merely a woman.

She has long hair—most wi ? a do—and her feet are bare, but otherwise she’s opted not to look like a figure from an old book of fairy tales.

She wears, not a flowing white gown, or a crown of flowers in her hair, but a hot-pink dress that makes her skin look even duller and greener than it would have otherwise.

In an attempt to mitigate this, perhaps, she’s wearing a lipstick to match the dress—but it’s garish on her, and incongruous, like it’s painted on a corpse.

Not all women are beautiful by the standard definitions, and not all wi ? a are, either. This one isn’t. There’s something froglike about her round eyes and her wide mouth.

“My lady,” Ala says, bending her head a little in greeting. The wi ? a is smaller than Ala is, but much older. It’s obvious in the way she appraises Ala, like she’s about to correct her posture or scold her for bad manners.

“A zmora,” the wi ? a says, her voice raspy. “How interesting. Are you on a journey, zmora?”

“I am. Back to our homeland.”

The wi ? a snorts. “What reason do you have to go back there? Everything you need is here.”

She gestures to the room around them. No one is paying attention to them, not even Dymitr, who’s turned away from Ala, his phone still pressed to his ear.

Everyone is moving more slowly than usual, too, which is likely due to the magic created by her tooth donation.

It’s the price of speaking to this particular wi ? a, who’s an odd one—living inside an airport, for one thing; separated from her sisters, for another.

Wrapped around the circumference of the large room are restaurants and shops.

A Dunkin’. A Hudson Booksellers. A Starbucks.

She supposes, depending on your priorities, the wi ? a has a point: everything she needs is here.

A body of water, in the fountain. The lives of mortals, to observe and occasionally intrude upon.

Food, if she desires it. And all the little debts and sacrifices that build on each other day by day—taking an earlier flight to see a loved one sooner, or giving up a seat so the plane can leave on time, or just the thankless labors of the airport employees who frequent this place—which create the potential for strong magic, if someone knows how to make use of them.

“Is that man your friend?” the wi ? a asks.

When Ala nods, she says, “I had friends, once.” She sounds wistful.

“We used to dance and sing together in the river. Then mortals came and built a dam, and the river dried up, and we had to scatter. I don’t know where my friends are now. I gave up looking for them long ago.”

“I’m sorry, my lady,” Ala says.

The light from the fountain is reflected in the wi ? a’s dark, round eyes.

“The world always changes,” the wi ? a says.

“For now, it changes to exclude us. Someday it may change to suit us once more. But not yet.” She looks at the fountain again.

“You’ve come to ask me for something, but I only help warriors, and most zmoras I have met can’t claim to be warriors. Are you an exception?”

She looks at Dymitr, who still has a phone pressed to his ear, and says, “I’m going to kill a Knight.”

The wi ? a raises her thin eyebrows. “And you believe you can accomplish this?”

“I’m not an experienced killer,” Ala says. “But I’m excellent at illusions. I have a plan to get close to her. I just need your help for the last part of it.”

“Then you’d better ask, zmora. Your tooth won’t buy us much more time.”

“I don’t speak the language, where I’m going,” Ala admits. It’s not exactly shameful, but it makes her feel sheepish, like it’s some personal failure. As if she doesn’t deserve to claim their mother country if she can’t speak its language… even though it wasn’t her choice, not to be taught.

“To purchase fluency would be costly indeed.”

“I don’t need it to be permanent. Only while I’m visiting.”

Ala is wary of her own request, wary of its cost. She could have gone to a lesser witch for something like this, but a lesser witch might give her the ability to speak Polish, but only in someone else’s voice, or they might have made her forget English in the process, or she could speak Polish, but only at night or only at the full moon.

Everyone knows that if you want something to do with the voice, you go to a wi ? a. She’ll do it properly.

“For as long as you speak our mother tongue, you will lose the ability to speak for twice that time upon your return,” the wi ? a says, after a moment. “If you stay for a day, you’ll give me your voice for two days. If you stay for a week, you’ll give me your voice for two weeks. Understand?”

“Yes, my lady.” Ala doesn’t love the idea of losing her voice for that long, but of all the bargains she could have made, it seems the most straightforward she could have hoped for.

Because wi ? a only help warriors, they tend to be more up front about the costs of their magic.

If they’re going to turn on you, they do it right away, before the bargaining even begins.

The wi ? a reaches into the pocket of her puffy skirt, and takes out a crystal bottle, small enough to fit in her palm. She takes the stopper out of it, and offers it to Ala.

“Whisper your name into this bottle,” she says. “And it will be done.”

Ala takes the bottle and holds it up to her lips.

“ Aleksja Dryja, ” she whispers, and then the wi ? a takes it and stoppers it.

For a moment, Ala thinks, Is that all? She’s not good at sensing magic, as a general rule.

But then she smells petrichor, and the fountain in front of her starts to look…

strange. Strings of water pull away from the column like hair blowing in a strong wind.

They stretch toward her and then wrap around her, not quite touching her, but distorting her vision.

It’s like trying to see through a waterfall.

She looks at the wi ? a through the curtain of water, and notices for the first time that her bare feet don’t seem to be touching the tile. She’s floating a half inch above the ground.

Ala can tell the moment the time-slowing magic runs out, because all the water collapses against her at once, soaking her from head to toe.

She splutters, water running into her eyes and ears and mouth.

Everyone around her stares at her like they’re waiting for an explanation, but Ala doesn’t offer one.

She just walks back over to Dymitr, running a hand over the back of her neck to keep a drop of water from rolling down her spine.

He’s staring into the middle distance, his phone still in hand. When she touches his shoulder, he startles a little, and blinks at her.

“What happened?” she asks him.

“Why are you wet ?” he replies.

“Say something in Polish and I’ll tell you.”

“Um… why are you wet?” he asks again, and for a moment she thinks he just said it again in English, before her lagging mind processes the sound of the words he spoke.

“I understood that.” She grins. “Thanks to the wi ? a who lives in the fountain. It’s only temporary.”

She can feel her mouth moving in unfamiliar ways over the consonants, but she can no longer remember the feeling of not understanding them. It’s as if this is knowledge she’s had all her life.

Dymitr is staring. “You sound different. Your voice is… lower.”

“So is yours.” And it’s interesting to hear him in his own language, how much deeper and flatter he sounds.

More authoritative than in English, where he’s more tentative, maybe, or gentler.

And maybe it’s because the languages define a shift in him, with Polish the language of his Knighthood and English the language of his transformation.

She looks at the phone in his hand, clutched so tight his knuckles are white.

“What happened?” she asks again.

“My sister left me a message. Our uncle is dead.” His matter-of-factness is a little startling to Ala, though not surprising. Her mother was like that, too, in her declarations. Why dress it up? Better to just say it, she often said, when Ala scolded her for insensitivity.

But she’s gotten to know Dymitr over the last few weeks, and while there are many shades to his grief, the darkest one is when he shows no emotion at all.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“He was a Knight.”

“I’m not sorry for him; I’m sorry for you.

” She touches Dymitr’s arm, lightly. He’s wearing a black denim jacket from the resale shop.

When he got it, there was a patch on the shoulder from a national park, but he picked out the stitches to remove it, and now there’s just a dark circle where it used to be.

“Your sister wants you to go to the funeral?”

“Yes.” Dymitr doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “Well, that too. She wants me to come to the house for the pre-funeral rituals with everyone.”

“With everyone?”

“Cousins. Aunts and uncles. My brother and parents. Everyone.”

Ala’s chest tightens. The plan was to go to Dymitr’s near-empty house to steal the book—where they would be alone, or nearly alone, with his grandmother. Now the house will be stuffed to the brim with Knights?

She’ll have no chance. No chance at all, to rid the world—and herself—of this woman who haunts her dreams. To spare Dymitr the pain of having to do it himself, or else surrender to madness.

“We should find out if they can change our tickets,” she says. “How long does the funeral last? We could maybe go next week—”

“What do you mean?” Dymitr says. “I’m still going. It will give me a good excuse to show up there, and the chaos will make it easier to get the book. They’ll be too busy to pay close attention to me.”

“You can’t possibly be considering this,” Ala says. “You have to at least wait until the funeral, when the house is empty. Don’t give them a chance to see you like this.”

“I know you’re worried. But trust me, it will be fine. They have no reason to suspect anything of me. And my uncle…” He slides his phone into his pocket, and looks down. “My uncle was kind to me. I’d like to mourn him properly.”

There’s just a slight wavering—in his voice, in his lower lip. Then he picks up his bag.

She wants to argue with him. No matter how confident he is that his family won’t suspect him, she’s still unnerved by the thought of him walking into that house like nothing has changed. Can’t they tell that he’s not one of them?

She can. She has from the start.

But he’s right—they have no reason to suspect that he’s changed. Not when they believe change is impossible.

She’ll just have to find an opportunity to get his grandmother alone. Maybe on her way to the funeral, maybe the day after, while she sleeps, maybe—

He says, “Come on, I want to see if the shop has Baked Lay’s,” and she decides to save the brainstorming for another time.

Instead, she makes a face. “The entire array of American snack foods is in front of you, and you’re on a quest for Baked Lay’s ? They taste like almost nothing.”

“No, they taste both salty and bland,” he says. “All the comfort of a saltine cracker but with the satisfying snap of a chip.”

“Are the Lay’s people paying you to say this? Blink twice if you’re being blackmailed.”

Dymitr just grins, and leads the way to the store.

Ala ignores the gnawing in her stomach. It feels a lot like dread.