Familiar Spirit

Prologue

After a long while Valerie rose from her slumped, broken position like a puppet whose dangling strings have at last been gathered and pulled. She looked down at herself, running hands over arms, legs, breasts, stomach, and a triumphant smile stretched across her face. Without haste, she walked down the short hallway from the bedroom to the bathroom, and stared into the soap-spotted mirror above the sink.

The smile grew harder and brighter. But although the triumph in it doubled, shining out of the mirror, the odd golden gleam in Valerie’s eyes, almost like a glimpse of flame, had no reflection.

“Yes,” she said, testing her voice. “Yes, you’ll do. You’ll do for now. A temporary home.” She leaned closer to the mirror, intent upon the reflection, studying her face. “I’ll make some changes, of course. I’ll take better care of you, Valerie, than you ever took of yourself.” She laughed, a rich, satisfied chuckle, all the while watching the face in the mirror to see how she looked when she laughed.

Her hands had been resting lightly on the porcelain rim of the sink, unneeded and unnoticed as she concentrated on face and voice. Now, still unnoticed, they moved. The right arm lifted and reached in an old, familiar gesture, and the right hand took hold of the drinking glass that hung on the wall. That hand then brought the glass down, cracking it against the side of the sink with a deft flick of the wrist. Half the glass sheared away and fell to the floor, leaving behind a curved glass dagger in a heavy base.

Hardly more than a second had passed; the tinkling crunch of breaking glass had not yet registered on the mind of the woman who spoke to herself as to a stranger.

Left hand turned over, presenting the pale, veined throat of a wrist to the sacrificial knife. Right hand brought the glass blade jabbing down hard, then ripped inwards, towards the body, tearing the skin and letting a blood-river halfway to the elbow. Only then did Valerie look away from the mirror, down to see what her hands were doing.

“No!” she roared in someone else’s voice, and flung the broken glass away. It smashed to fragments against the hard side of the bathtub and flung out tiny jewels of crimson against the flesh-colored floor.

She clutched her left arm with her right hand—they were hers again—and tried to push the edges of skin back together. Her lips drew back from her teeth and she hissed in frustration as she fumbled about in the tiny bathroom, unable to find tape, gauze or bandages of any kind.

Blood continued to run in rivulets down her arms, dyeing her clothes and spattering walls and floor. She lurched into the bedroom and began jerking open bureau drawers. She found only heavy jeans, sweaters, nothing that would do, nothing she could tear easily.

“Tell me!” she roared in that other voice. “Find something! I won’t let you die, damn you, not yet!”

The next drawer yielded T-shirts. Valerie snatched up one and tore it down the seams. She managed to make a rough bandage of it, wrapping it tightly around the wounded arm. It was blood-soaked already, as she knotted it, but that didn’t matter; she had stopped the worst of the bleeding and Valerie would not die just yet.

But the moment she relaxed her vigilance the right hand was busy again, plucking at the knotted fabric, trying to let loose the blood.

Furious, Valerie slapped the left hand, then the right. Then her eyes rolled up in her head, her eyelids fluttered, and she collapsed on the floor.

Painfully, Valerie opened her eyes and saw the dirty floorboards. Her head hurt and she ached all over. Why was she on the floor? When she tried to move she felt as if someone had stabbed her. She gasped with pain, sitting up, then saw that her arm was wrapped in a blood-soaked cloth.

Quite suddenly the pain and dizziness turned to nausea. Valerie managed to move just enough to be sick on the floor rather than into her own lap, but afterwards she had not the strength to move away and remained staring dully into a pool of vomit, retching dryly every now and then.

Later—how much later? She only knew that the room had filled with shadows—Valerie managed to stand, the puppet miraculously moving without strings, and stumble into the bathroom to rinse her mouth. A sharp new pain made her look down, and she saw that she had gashed her bare foot on a piece of broken glass. Broken glass, and blood, littered the floor. She stared dully, unable to make any sense of it.

Then a voice told her what to do. It was a relief to be spared thought, a relief to obey. Under direction, Valerie washed her wounded arm with antiseptic and bandaged it cleanly, cutting up two of her favorite T-shirts to make the dressing. She also tended her foot, picked the glass off the bathroom floor, and cleaned up her vomit. Finally the voice told her to go to bed and sleep and, a grateful automaton, she did.

Hours later she woke screaming.

She fumbled for the light and, blessedly, it came on. Valerie looked around, the sound of her own breathing harsh in her ears. She saw her clothes in untidy heaps on the floor; she saw the dirty, cream-colored walls; she saw the magic circle she had painted on the floor. From the corner of her eye she saw the awkward lump of bandage binding her aching arm, and began to tremble again. It hadn’t been a nightmare, after all. What had happened to her was real.

It was true. Using spells learned from books, she had summoned up a spirit. Only it hadn’t gone as the books had promised. Something had gone wrong, despite all her care, despite the magic circle. The spirit—Valerie remembered suffocating, remembered drowning—the spirit had not obeyed her commands—the spirit had—

“Possessed you,” said a voice so close it might have come from a man in bed beside her.

A little wildly Valerie turned, but she was somehow unsurprised to find herself still apparently alone.

“You tried to kill me!” she cried to the air.

“No. You tried to kill yourself.”

Valerie remembered the curving glass dagger she had made, and how she had plunged it into her own flesh and dragged it down, watching the blood bloom, feeling no pain.

“I was trying to kill you,” she said.

“You cannot kill me,” said the voice. “And how ungrateful of you to try. Did you not summon me?”

“But you were supposed to obey me, not—”

“Do you imagine you are worthy of being obeyed?” said the voice with awful contempt. “But there is much I can do for you, many benefits to be gained by accepting my presence in your body.”

“No,” said Valerie dully. It was unthinkable. She had only the dimmest memories of what it had been like, but she could remember the sense of suffocation, the utter darkness, the helplessness, and that was enough, more than enough. “I’d rather die,” she said.

“Little fool. Yes, you made that clear. Don’t worry—I need not stay where I am unwanted; not when I have so many options.”

“Why do you want a body at all?” Valerie asked. “Why not just be—free, like you are now?”

The sound of laughter in the empty air made her skin crawl.

“I need a body for the same reason you do, little Valerie. In order to live. When I left you, I found myself another temporary shelter.”

There was a soft thump against the window screen. Valerie sat up and looked across the room. Twin yellow flames glowed out of the darkness beyond the window. She caught her breath, and then heard a cat’s soft, inquisitive cry, and relaxed.

“Let me in,” said the voice in the air.

Valerie looked at the ceiling. “You’re . . . the cat?”

“We are one.”

“Poor little thing.”

“Not at all. It is a mutually agreeable relationship. A fine, healthy cat which I shall keep fine and healthy for as long as I use its body.”

“It would be better off dead,” Valerie muttered.

“Let me in,” the voice said, more sharply. “I shall not ask again.”

Valerie got off the bed and crossed the room, not knowing if her body obeyed her own will or another’s. She decided it really didn’t matter. She unlatched the screen and the cat leaped in lightly past her, and onto the bed. There it sat and purred and regarded her with gleaming eyes.

“A witch and her cat,” said the voice. “How appropriate.”

She tried to shut out the voice and think. There had to be some way out, some way of escape if only she could figure it out. She was smart—everyone had always said so. Too smart for her own good. But this should not have happened. She had been so very careful to follow the rules as they were set out in the books she had studied, to say the right words, never to step outside the boundaries of the consecrated circle . . . All that care should have kept her safe, according to the books she had read.

“Maybe you read the wrong books,” said the voice, as silken-smooth as a cat’s fur.

Her stomach clenched, and she felt sick. It was reading her mind. That awful sense of invasion. Would she never be whole and alone again?

“Remember why you summoned me?” said the voice. “You can still have what you want. I can give you what you want.”

“I just want you to go away and leave me alone.”

“Oh, no, you don’t want that. I remember what you want, ah, yes. Money, and all the good things it can buy. A nice car, nice clothes, and lots of drugs. That’s what you want. That’s what was important to you, so important that you summoned me.”

Was that true? Valerie supposed that it was, but she could not remember what it had felt like, to want things, to think that money was important or even necessary. There was only one thing she wanted now, and it was a negative kind of want, the desire to be left alone.

“You can have that too, in time. I’ll leave you in peace—let you kill yourself, if you like. But first you must do something for me.”

It was reading her mind. It could read her thoughts, and there was no way out. Revulsion made her convulse, and she bent over, coughing and heaving, but there was nothing left to bring up. She staggered back to the bed and sat down, wiping tears from her eyes and shivering uncontrollably. Why couldn’t she just die? She had to escape.

The cat was purring, making the bed vibrate softly. Think, think, she had to think, but she didn’t dare, not when the demon could read every thought.

Valerie stretched out her hand. “Here, kitty,” she said absently, and the cat came and fitted its sleek head into the palm of her hand just like any ordinary cat. She stroked it, feeling the delicate, fragile skull beneath the fur. She looked across the room at the magic circle, where she should have been safe.

Numbly, she rose and began to dress herself, trying to keep her mind a blank, trying to think of nothing. A plan, the barest image of a means of escape, had presented itself to her, but to think of it was to risk warning her enemy, and to be lost forever.

She slung her heavy leather purse over one shoulder and wondered if he would let her leave the house. She felt rather than heard the cat bound lightly off the bed behind her, and, not thinking but simply doing, Valerie turned and bent as if to pet it. But instead of stroking, her fingers closed on the back of the cat’s neck and gathered up a wad of loose skin. The cat let out a hiss of surprise as it was hauled firmly into the air, and claws shot out and legs flailed wildly.

Valerie held the cat away from her, not looking at it, clutching the scruff so tightly that the animal would have had to shed its skin to escape, and she carried it into the dubious protection of the magic circle. It was the only hope she had.

The cat was howling now and struggling furiously, body whipping around with a strength and agility that seemed supernatural. Valerie was aware of the burning pain as claws once, twice connected with the flesh of her arms, but that did not matter. Her wounded arm was bleeding freely again, too, but nothing mattered so long as she could still move. The pain, because she could feel it, was almost a relief after her earlier numbness.

She rummaged one-handed and with difficulty inside her purse, fingers trembling until they closed upon the solid handle of the knife. Terror and triumph rose in her like a sickness, and she withdrew the knife and looked down at the cat. At that moment it went limp in her grasp. But although it was not struggling physically, fury blazed out of the golden eyes, and Valerie felt his power like a hand which grabbed her heart and squeezed. But she would not give in; she would die first. This time, her will would be done.

It was shockingly easy. Valerie had expected a queasy struggle of hacking and sawing, but the knife bit easily into the cat’s furred throat. Fur and skin parted before the sharp blade as if they were water. Warm blood ran over her hands and spattered everywhere. The cat jerked once and was still.

Valerie stared at the dead animal, hardly daring to believe. The golden eyes were blank and empty now. The demon was gone. A silvery-grey line moved through the fur, and Valerie realized she was watching the fleas abandon the body. Already they knew their host was dead.

Her voice trembling, Valerie recited the prayers and exhortations she had memorized for this moment, the formulae designed to lay evil spirits. Now he would show himself, she thought, and her body was tensed anticipating an attack. Now he would make a mockery of her attempt to escape.

But nothing happened. The cat stayed dead in her hand and the room was empty and still, filling gradually with the thin, grey light of early morning.

Valerie dropped the knife back into her purse, careless of the blood. Her arms and hands were sticky with it—some of it the cat’s, some her own—and her wounded arm throbbed with pain, but she did not care. She had won. The demon had needed a body to live, and she had killed that body. She was free.

As she stepped out of the circle, he struck.

She felt his return as a body-blow which knocked the breath out of her. She fell forward onto the floor, unable to cry out, or even to try to break her fall. The limp, warm body of the cat was crushed beneath her. Her body vibrated with agony. For a moment she knew she was dying, and she was grateful.

Then the pain subsided, and she knew he would not let her go so easily. Tears started to her eyes, and she gasped for air. The hated, familiar voice was in her ear.

“When will you learn it is useless to fight me? When will you learn that you are mine, to use as I will?”

She could not speak. If she could have made a sound it would have been an anguished scream. She would never have another chance. She had failed.

“You will obey me. You will bring me what I require.”

With one blow, he had knocked all the hope, all the will to fight out of her. Now she wished only to avoid his presence and to wait for oblivion. Of course she would obey him. She had no choice, no resistance left. Perhaps, if she served him well, he would let her die before too much longer.

The crushing weight lifted, and Valerie sat up, feeling like a mechanical doll. She didn’t mind the feeling. She would do what she was told. Nothing mattered.

“You learn slowly, but you learn,” said the voice. “You will bring someone to the house, someone young and physically healthy, but someone pliant. A woman, I think. An attractive young woman who is alone and unhappy. Someone who will be more receptive to me than you. After you have found her and brought her to me, I will let you go. Oh, and I will give you what you need for your new life. I will give you what you wanted. You will have the money, and the car, and the drugs . . . and there will be someone to look after you, to make sure you don’t take too many of those drugs, until I have done with you.”

She felt a pain as if a knife were cutting through her brain, but that didn’t matter. The dead cat, her painful, bleeding arm, her failure, the numbness inside—none of it mattered. Valerie nodded her acceptance.

“And to help you in your search—”

An invisible hand seemed to push her head to one side. Valerie looked towards the doorway that led into the kitchen and saw something out of place on the mottled pink and brown linoleum. Something about the size of her fist, something like a clod of earth—but it moved.

It hopped forward, over the threshold into the bedroom, and Valerie saw that it was a toad, grey-brown and hideous, glistening slightly as if it were wet.

At one time Valerie would have recoiled, scrambled to her feet and backed away, face twisted in disgust. Snakes, lizards, toads—whether harmless or not they were all the same, all horrible. The idea of touching one would make her skin crawl. But she didn’t move now as the toad came towards her. She felt as if she were very far away, watching this happen to someone utterly unimportant. And so she did not flinch when the toad came closer still and hopped onto her leg. She bent down to take a closer look. They stared at each other, eye to eye. The toad’s eyes were yellow. She knew them well.