Magic Steals
Page 8

Weird.
“Holy shit,” Jim said.
I frowned. “This is wrong.”
“What do you mean wrong? That was fucking unbelievable.”
“Usually when a house is this corrupted, the magic is deeply rooted. It should’ve taken more than two dance steps to clear it. I don’t understand this. There is so much corruption, but it’s all really shallow.”
I marched to the kitchen and opened the door to the back porch. The backyard opened onto a stretch of woods. A wrought iron fence separated the grass from the trees, a narrow gate ajar. The foul magic hovered between the trees, coating the bark, dripping, and waiting. It felt me and slithered deeper into the woods.
Where are you going? Don’t run. We’re just starting.
I crossed the grass, walked through the open gate, and kept going into the forest, Jim right behind me. The magic streamed away from me. I chased it down a path between the massive oaks. The same scent I had smelled on the coarse hair in my kitchen filled my nostrils: dry, acrid, bitter scent. Almost there.
The path ducked under the canopy of braided tree limbs bound together by kudzu. I followed it, moving fast through the natural tunnel of leaves and branches. The green tunnel opened into a clearing. A massive tree must’ve fallen here and taken a neighbor or two with it. Three giant trunks lay on the grass. The surrounding trees and kudzu laid claim to the light, greedy for every stray photon, and the leaves filled the space high above us, turning the sunlight watery and green. The air smelled wrong, tainted with decay. It was like being in the bottom of a really deep, scum-infested well.
Eyang Ida sat on the trunk. Her skin had a sickly grey tint, her eyes glassy and opened wide. She stared right at me, but I didn’t think she could see me. The magic swirled around her, so thick, it was almost opaque black.
I stopped. Jim paused behind me.
“Is that her?”
“It’s her.” I raised my hand to stop him if he tried to go to her, but he didn’t move. He really did trust me. I had asked him to stay close and he followed my lead.
Ferns rustled to the left of me and a creature stepped into my view. About ten inches tall, it looked like a tiny human, with dark brown skin, two legs and two arms. Long, coarse hair fell from its head all the way past its toes, dragging a couple of inches on the ground like a dark mantle. It stared at me with two amber eyes, each with a slit, dark pupil like the eyes of a blue temple viper, then it opened the wide slit of its mouth, showing two white fangs, and hissed.
“What is that?” Jim asked.
“A jenglot,” I said. Just like I thought. This was one of the traditional Indonesian horrors. Except that judging by the amount of magic in that house, there had to be more of them. A lot more. “It’s vampiric.”
Another jenglot crawled out onto the trunk. A third pair of eyes ignited in the hollow of a tree.
“It and its family stole Eyang Ida out of her house,” I said. “They will feed on her blood’s essence and when there is no more essence left, she’ll become one of them.”
The woods came alive with dozens of eyes. Big tribe, at least fifty creatures. I had expected fifteen, maybe twenty. But fifty? Fifty was bad.
“Are they hard to kill?”
“Yes. They are hardy. Setting them on fire helps.”
“There are a lot of them,” Jim said.
“Yes.”
“You might need some help . . .” Jim’s voice was very calm. He weighed our odds. The numbers weren’t in our favor.
With a soft whisper, a creature slithered onto Eyang Ida’s lap. If it had legs, this jenglot would stand at least a foot tall, with hair twice as long, but it had no legs. Instead it had a snake’s tail, long and brown, like the body of a spitting cobra. The royal jenglot.
The jenglots rustled through the greenery, circling us. They would swarm us in a moment.
Normally when I changed shape, for a minute or two, I had no idea where I was or why I was there, but in this case, with Jim next to me, I had to take a chance.
I took off my glasses and handed them to Jim. “Here, hold this for a second.”
He raised his eyebrows and took my glasses.
I let go. The world swirled into a thousand blurry lights in every color of the rainbow. Ooh, so pretty. Pretty little color bubbles.
A familiar scent swirled around me, captivating. Ooh, Jim. Jim. He was here, with me! Jim . . .
What is that smell?
Ugh. Nasty, disgusting scent. Unclean. Ew.
A jenglot! There was a jenglot coiling on Eyang Ida’s lap. Gross. Wait, what was Eyang Ida doing here? Where was I?
The Queen Jenglot raised her head, opened her mouth, and hissed at me, the black magic behind her flaring like demonic wings.
What? Outrageous. The nerve. Who did she think I was?
I stomped my huge white paw onto the ground and roared. The sound of my voice rolled like the toll of a giant’s gong, deafening, and my magic followed it like a blast wave. It touched the closest jenglot. The ugly creature hissed in panic, broke into pieces, as if instantly turned to ash, and disintegrated. All around me, jenglots vanished, breaking into ash and melting into thin air. The Queen Jenglot hissed, flailing. Its magic tried to fight me, but my roar swallowed it like a raging forest fire swallowed a puddle. The Queen vanished.
The disturbing stench disappeared. The woods exhaled, liberated of the evil taint, but Eyang Ida didn’t move. She was still bound. Not for long.
I padded to Eyang Ida on my big soft paws and curled by her feet, my left front paw on my right. Hold on. I will free you, too.
I faced Jim and let my magic spread from me. Flowers pushed through the moss at my feet, blooming into tiny yellow and white blossoms. A blue butterfly floated next to me, bouncing on soft wings. A white one joined it, then another and another . . .
Jim stared at me, his jaw hanging open.
My magic slid up the tree trunks. The oaks above us groaned, their branches moved, compelled by my power, and a ray of sunlight, pure and warm, fell on the old woman’s face. Eyang Ida took a deep breath and blinked.
Jim dropped my glasses into the moss.
• • •
THE problem with being a shapeshifter is that you can never keep your clothes on, which is why I always carried a spare outfit in my car. So when we pulled up in front of Eyang Ida’s son’s house and Jim carried the fragile old lady to the front door, I was able to knock with my modesty intact.
The door swung open and Wayan, Eyang Ida’s son, saw his mother. He grabbed her from Jim and ran inside. The family swarmed us and pulled us into the house. The air washed over us, bringing with it aromas from the kitchen: tumeric, garlic, onion, ginger, lemongrass, cinnamon, and the roast duck. Bebek Betutu was cooking somewhere nearby.