Familiar Spirit

Valerie glared at her. “Don’t lie to me! Do you think I don’t know? Something happened; I could feel it. I knew it. For the first time I could—I was free, he wasn’t controlling me. For the first time I could think, I could see what he’d done to me. He left, he actually left, and I was myself again. And I knew then—I won’t, I won’t be his anymore; I won’t let him control me anymore.”

Sarah stared at her blankly, unable to follow the torrent of words.

“Tell me,” Valerie insisted, her voice becoming a childish whine. “You don’t trust me, but it’s true—I’m not his anymore. I want to help you, I’m on your side. Look, look what I did. This will prove what I say; look what I did.” She reached into her large leather shoulder bag and pulled out a handkerchief. She held it out, unfolding it almost under Sarah’s nose.

The once-white handkerchief held a squashed, messily slaughtered toad. The remains of Lunch. Repulsed, Sarah staggered back. She looked at Valerie and saw that the other woman had tears in her eyes, and her forehead was beaded with sweat.

“You see?” said Valerie. “I am free. I killed my own, my little Lunch . . . I had to kill a part of myself, but I killed a part of Jade as well. And he doesn’t own me anymore. And I’ll help you.” Suddenly she frowned and looked more sharply at Sarah. “What happened to you? What did he do?”

Sarah shrugged. She wouldn’t admit to anyone what had just happened to her, but at the moment she lacked the energy even to think up a plausible story.

“Tell me, you have to tell me. Tell me and I’ll help you. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Oh, go away,” Sarah said wearily. “I don’t need your help; you can’t help me. If you’ve escaped from Jade, so much the better for you. You’d better run for it—isn’t that the advice you gave me, once? Run for it, before he calls you back?”

“He’s done something to you, oh, what’s he done?” Valerie stared wildly around, and a faint, warning pang struck through Sarah’s haze of misery. Get her out of here.

“Just get out,” she said to Valerie. “It’s not your problem. You can’t help me. I was safer here alone—don’t you know he could use us against each other?” She had a sudden, vivid image of herself, out of control, attacking Valerie, killing her, and she clenched her fists. No. She had succumbed to Jade sexually, but that did not make her his creature. She was not his instrument, she would not kill, and she would not bring him any victims. She would not.

“We can help each other,” Valerie said. “Two of us have to be stronger than one.”

“Not against Jade.”

“Yes. Why not? He’s not invulnerable—I realized that when I killed Lunch.” She sniffed, and blinked, and rewrapped the toad’s remains, placing the small bundle carefully back inside her purse. “We can draw a new circle to protect ourselves, and say all the spells just right, and—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sarah interrupted. Valerie’s presence was rubbing at her tender nerves. She moved away from her, but Valerie came after, once again standing too close, pressuring her.

“Spells and magic circles won’t work,” Sarah said. “Jade isn’t a demon, and it doesn’t make any sense to act as if he were. That sort of thing is just a joke to him.”

“What do you mean? What do you know?”

Where was Jade, Sarah wondered. What was he waiting for? When would he strike? She decided to tell Valerie the truth. Jade could try to stop her if he wanted.

“He’s a man,” she said. “Or at least he was. He was a magician who didn’t die when his human body did, because he had managed to imprint a part of his personality into a carved stone. And as long as it survives, he survives. So the reason we can’t kill him by killing the cat or the toad or whatever animal he’s lodged in is that another part of him, his essence, is still preserved in a piece of jade.”

“Jade,” said Valerie, wonderingly. “But . . . I called him up, out of nothing. I recited an invocation to spirits, and he came. He must be a spirit.”

“Oh, he’s a spirit, but not the sort he made you think he was. And you didn’t call him up out of nothing . . . he was using you, getting you to focus your will by reciting spells and all that nonsense. Where do you suppose you first got the idea of using witchcraft?”

Valerie shook her head dumbly. “It was . . . after I moved into this house.”

“That’s right. And it was Jade who put that idea into your head. You must have been especially susceptible . . . and he was trapped, and he needed someone to help him escape. You were the focus for his powers.”

“But how do you know this? Did Jade tell you? Why should you believe what he says?” Suddenly her face sharpened, like that of a dog who has caught a scent. “You found it. You found that piece of jade. Where is it?”

Sarah shook her head swiftly, feeling it imperative not to let Valerie know. “No. I didn’t.”

But Valerie had pushed past Sarah into the next room, where the shattered wall told a story. “Where is it?” she asked again.