“I killed him.”
“Not by yourself.” Tor sounded perfectly calm. “I hope, anyway, that I finished him off. When I kicked him in the head. Maya, if anyone’s guilty of anything, it’s me. I drove him to it, didn’t I?”
“Did you? I don’t understand.”
“He had to use violence because he couldn’t best me with sorcery. I rubbed his nose in it. And then I let you down. I never should have drunk that much at dinner. I’m sorry. You were right.”
“I’m not blaming you for anything. I thought it was safe.”
He sighed in honest relief. Very slowly and carefully I walked back to the couch and managed to sit down before I fell. Tor hurried over and sat next to me.
“Let me see your arm,” he said. “You’re hurt.”
When he reached for me, I flinched and slid away from him.
“Maya!”
“Don’t you see?” I was shaking by then. “I never meant to kill him. I thought he’d just pass out, and then I could get away.”
“Okay, so you didn’t know when to stop. Where would you have learned? Why are you blaming yourself like this?”
“Because I’ve killed someone. And it hurts.”
“I don’t see why. He attacked you, Maya. Self-defense. Ever heard of it?”
“It’s not that simple. I should have realized I was going too far. I should have felt it or something.”
“Or something!” Tor shook his head in sheer annoyance. “I mean, shit! Come on! Nils nearly killed your brother. He tried to kidnap you. Think!”
“That’s all true. But that still doesn’t give me the right to kill him. That’s not justice, it’s vengeance.”
“Yeah. So?” He smiled. He actually smiled. “I warned you that I was a barbarian.” At that moment I saw it very clearly, that he belonged to the world of the old sagas. He would have understood the men around him, and they would have understood him, the vitki who could kill like a warrior. More than understood—they would have honored him. But here he was, adrift in the twenty-first century, in some odd way every bit as lost as I was despite his money and his sorcererous power.
“Besides,” Tor said, “could we have brought him to justice? Suppose we went to the police about Nils when all the shit started. Would they have believed us?”
“No.”
“Okay, then. We had to settle for vengeance. Second-best, sure, but it’s what our kind gets.”
Our kind. In my mind, I saw the shutters that haunted my dreams. They trembled and threatened to open, just a crack, onto the view I refused to see. I slammed them shut and slumped back into the cushions. I wanted to rest, but instead I saw memory images of the parking lot shimmering and swelling like waves on the ocean. I could taste the memory of Nils’s blood in my mouth. I opened my eyes again. Tor slid over next to me.
“Sweetheart, please,” he said. “Let me see that arm.”
When I raised it, it hurt, but at the same time it felt disconnected from me, as if I held out a stick of firewood.
“That’s a hell of a bruise,” Tor said. “You should see a doctor.”
“No.” I cradled my sore arm in my lap. “They’ll ask how it happened.”
“It’s not like they’d believe you even if you told them the truth.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to go. Not tonight. I want to stay here. Can’t you put a rune on it?”
“Yeah, good idea. We’ll see how it looks in the morning. I wish we had a TV. For the first time in my life, maybe. For the news.”
“I can get it on my laptop, or on yours. Yours would be better.”
We ended up waiting for the late local news. I took a shower. Tor put my blood-stained clothes into the washer, tended my arm, and fixed me some oatmeal to replace the food I’d lost. I felt well enough after the bland cereal to drink a little brandy. He sat on the couch and held me in his lap like a child until it was time to set up his laptop. I couldn’t tell you what I thought about during those hours. My mind had gone as dark and full of shadows as the view at night.
As we expected, the TV news led off with the corpse found in an Oakland parking lot. The cause of death had not been released. Nils had been carrying his wallet, so the police were able to identify him immediately. The official speculation ran to his having been killed elsewhere and then dumped. No one at the strip mall had noticed any kind of disturbance.
“The aversion spell worked,” Tor muttered. “He had power, Nils.”
The reporter pointed out that the dead man had been the suspect in an earlier shooting of an unarmed Marine veteran in San Francisco. A police spokeswoman made dark hints about drug dealing and gang warfare. Some of the ex-Marine’s friends had become “persons of interest.” I figured that Valdez and Williams would have great alibis, since they were innocent.
A car commercial appeared on screen. Tor shut down the laptop. “There,” he said. “No one’s going to suspect you or me. You can stop worrying.”
“It’s not that easy. I mean, no, I’m not worried about the police. But—”
“But what?” He sounded annoyed.
“You’re the one who’s always talking about wyrd.”
Tor sighed, one sharp breath. “You’ve got a point,” he said. “Yeah. There’s that.”
That night I was afraid to fall asleep. Tor left a light on in the corner of the room and turned up the air conditioning to keep us from sweating. When he got into bed, he pulled me into his arms and kissed me until I could at last relax. Clasped against him I slept without nightmares, but I woke early with the memory of Nils’ blood on my lips.
I called Brittany and heard that Roman was doing as well as could be expected. When I passed the news along to Tor, he smiled, pleased.
“We can go in to see him later,” Tor said. “We don’t have to worry about Nils anymore.”
“That’s true.” I felt the guilt as cold and hard, as if every muscle in my body had clenched tight. Along with the guilt, though, I felt relief, sheer selfish relief that I’d never have to worry about him again. He did attack me, I reminded myself. He nearly killed my brother. Self-defense, not vengeance. I clung to that distinction. Tor was watching me with his head tilted a little to one side.
“You feel better,” he said. “About the death, I mean.”
“Only a little. I don’t have your arrogance.”
He winced. “I deserve that,” he said. “I was so sure that I’d knocked the shit out of him. I never thought he’d have the strength or the guts to fight back like that, not so soon. I’m still learning. I hate to admit it, but I’m only half a sorcerer. So far.”
“I’m only half a vampire,” I said. “So I guess we match.”
He smiled, then let the smile fade. “I keep thinking about it, my arrogance. When I heard you call me, when I was running out to the parking lot, I felt like shit. It was my fault. I was so damn sure I’d gotten the better of him.”
“I was sure you had, too. I can’t blame you.”
“No, go ahead and blame me. I’ve got to learn from this. There’s one last thing I have to tell you. If he had killed you, I would have joined you. Right away. You wouldn’t have had to face the death world alone. Not this time.”
In the dark and the cold, the water swirling, and my lungs burning in the cold as they screamed for air—would a hand have reached out to me? Would his cold fingers have clutched mine? Would we have sunk down together toward that point of light? I’d never know. I was glad I didn’t have to know. This time.
Before we left for the hospital, Tor and I sat on the couch in the living room to drink our morning coffee. I ate a blueberry muffin for breakfast, too, just like a normal person. The sun streamed in the east window and made a golden road across the rug.
“When I was little,” I said, “the sun would come into my bedroom window like that. I’d line my dolls up and tell them we were setting off on an adventure.”
Tor grinned at me. “Good idea,” he said. “Let’s go on one. An adventu
re, I mean.”
“Yeah? What do you have in mind?”
“Getting married.”
I stared at him.
“You look frightened,” he said. “I know it’s a big step.”
I wanted to say that I hardly knew him. I wanted to point out that we’d been together for only a couple of months. Neither of those things was true, now that I remembered Kristjan.
“Why?” I stammered. “I mean, why get married?”
“Because if something happens to me, you’ll inherit what I own that way.”
“Something—”
“Wyrd can be harsh,” Tor went on. “I should know that if anyone does.”
I finally understood. If he were killed by some sorcerous enemy. Or if he died performing some dangerous act of magic. I now knew enough to think of possibilities.
“I don’t care about inheriting your money,” I said.
“But I want you to have it. I want to know you’ll be provided for if the worst happens. Look, we can have my lawyer write out a marriage contract. If you get sick of me and want to leave, you’ll still get half the property as a settlement.”
“I’ll never get sick of you.”
“Well, then, what’s wrong?” He frowned in thought. “I could have said that better, I guess. Not real romantic of me.” He sighed. “How about this? I love you. Please marry me.”
I fumbled for words and found none. He waited, smiling a little, and sipped his coffee.
I tried to argue with myself, but I knew what I wanted. I was stepping off the edge of another dock, letting myself fall into a different sea, but this time I might float to safety instead of sinking into the dark. Might, maybe, could be, that I could have a life that wasn’t a constant battle to stay alive. Not a normal life, no—that would lie forever beyond me—but a life where I could survive, paint, grow, and love. Hope—there are times when hope hurts worse than despair, just from the fear that the hope’s only another lie. And then there are the times when even if it should prove to be a lie, hope is all we have.
“Yes.” I shoved the fear to one side. “I’ll marry you.”
His smile, so warm, so vibrant, made me feel that I’d made the right decision. He put his coffee down on the table, and I slid over into his arms. I kissed him, and when I slipped my arms around his neck, I felt like a shipwrecked sailor, clinging to a rock in the sea.
About the Author
Katharine Kerr spent her childhood in a Great Lakes industrial city and her adolescence in Southern California, whence she fled to the San Francisco Bay Area just in time to join a number of the Revolutions then in progress. After fleeing those in turn, she became a professional storyteller and an amateur skeptic, who regards all True Believers with a jaundiced eye, even those who true-believe in Science. An inveterate loafer, baseball addict, and rock and roll fan, she begrudgingly spares time to write novels, including the Deverry series of historical fantasies or fantastical histories, depending on your point of view. She lives near San Francisco with her husband of many years and their cat Flavia.
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Katharine Kerr, Sorcerer's Luck
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