"They"re perfectly fine," the man said, "at the moment. That could change."
"Let them go," Steven said.
"That depends on you," the man said. "Sit."
Steven walked to the chair and sat down. A small fire erupted on the ground between them, illuminating them both.
"I"m seated," Steven said, wondering how he could get the man over to the mirrors. "What now?"
"Don"t be worried about the mirrors," the man said. "They"re already smashed."
Steven looked at the man. He had thin blondish brown hair and a faint goatee. He was dressed in a jacket and slacks, with his legs crossed. Steven could see some type of expensive Italian shoes on his feet.
"The mirrors are smashed?" Steven asked. "I don"t know what you mean."
"Yes, you do," the man said, the edges of his mouth curling up into a small smile. "Don"t pretend."
"You killed Robbie," Steven said.
"I did indeed," the man said. "You were there when I did it, outside."
"Robbie was just a child," Steven said.
"You"re all just children," the man said, "to me."
"Let my friends go," Steven said. "They"re not part of this."
"The basis of a good friendship is trust," the man said. "You need to trust me when I tell you that I"m not as stupid as you think."
"I have no desire to be friends with you," Steven said.
"Then at least be smart," the man said, irritation creeping into his voice. "It"ll help keep your options open."
"I know you have enemies," Steven said. "You should watch your back and leave me and my friends out of this."
"Vohuman?" the man said. "He"s one of many. Popping up to steal Robbie gave him a whiff of me that he desperately wanted. He thinks he"s chasing me. He"s half right."
Steven"s mind was swirling. He could see Roy and Eliza, floating in the distance. He didn"t know if what the man said about the mirrors was true or not. He didn"t know what to do next.
"Do you see all these bodies?" the man asked, waving his hand towards the forest. The blue haze returned, and hundreds of bodies appeared in the trees, hanging, swinging slightly.
Steven looked out at them. "I see them," he said.
"Do you know why they"re there?" the man asked.
"No idea," Steven said, not wanting to entertain the man any more than necessary.
"If we"re to become friends," the man said, "you really must step it up a notch. Use your brain. I can"t abide imbeciles."
"I told you I"m not interested in being your friend," Steven said.
"You will be," the man said, laughing a little as he said it. "Do you know why they"re there?" he asked again. "The bodies?"
"I told you, no," Steven said.
"Because they came here," the man said. "That"s the main reason. They might have lived, but they came here. Once they arrived, we took over. If they had any doubts, we erased them. They finished themselves off."
"You"re responsible for their deaths," Steven said.
"Yes," the man replied, "but not just me, alone. I"m just a visitor here. There"s hundreds of my kind here, with varying degrees of strength. When someone"s halfway to suicide, it"s easy to make that someone think their family would be better off without them. Most of the creatures who inhabit this forest can do that with little effort. What"s really challenging is to make someone who"s in a normal state of mind think they need to tie a rope around their neck and swing from a tree."
"That"s you," Steven said.
"That"s right," the man said. "That"s me."
"You tried to get me to stab myself," Steven said, "back at my home."
"Just to scare you a little," the man said. "I need you a little scared."
"I"m not afraid of you," Steven said.
"You should be," the man said, smiling again. In the distance, he heard Eliza scream. Steven looked out over the clearing. Eliza was now suspended upright at the edge of the clearing. Steven could see something forming over her head, the same kind of twisting movement he"d seen above him in the dark in his bedroom. The twisting slowly stopped as it straightened out into a rope and wrapped itself around Eliza"s neck, forming a noose. He"s going to hang them, Steven thought. They"ll just be two more suicides out here. All of Steven"s muscles tensed, and he felt as though a cold hand ran up his spine. "Alright," he said.
"I wasn"t interested in seeing you stab yourself, Steven," the man said. "I was hoping you"d hold the knife to your chest, give yourself a good scare. That"s all. If I wanted you dead, your friends would already be swinging from the trees. I"d make you think you needed to take some rope and do yourself, too. It"d be easy."
"We drank protection," Steven said.
"It wore off," the man said.
"What do you want?" Steven asked, angry.
"I want us to be friends," the man said. "That"s the only way out. If we"re not friends, I"ll suspend those two from the trees right now, and we"ll part enemies."
Steven swallowed hard and thought for a moment. He needed to play this a different way.
"Usually a friendship is something mutual," Steven said. "You"re forcing me into it. Hardly a friendship."
"I"m willing to forgive the initiation," the man said, "in light of the end result."
"Alright," Steven said. "Let"s say we"re friends. What then? You take my hands?"
The man furrowed his brow and squinted one of his eyes. "You think I want your hands?"
"Like Robbie?" Steven said. "I"m marked."
"I don"t want your hands," the man said, shaking his head with repugnance. "You"ve turned. No demon wants you now."
"But you wanted Robbie," Steven said, a little confused.
"He was a morsel set out by Vohuman to tempt me," the man said. "Any marked gifted boy at p.u.b.erty is a prize. Vohuman knows I have a taste for them, that"s why he set it up. But after that age, you"re the opposite of tasty. You"ve probably noticed that most demons won"t come near you."
"I have," Steven said. "Is that why? I"m not "tasty"?"
"You"re worse than that," the man said. "You"re lethal."
"I am?"
"Very."
"How?"
"You don"t know?" the man said. "Don"t expect me to tell you. My point was that the markings are enough to drive ordinary demons away."
"But not you," Steven said.
"I"m not ordinary," the man said. "I"m ancient." He smiled.
"Why did you try to seduce me?" Steven asked. "In bed?"
"It was worth a shot," the man said. "You"d be surprised how often it works. When it does, it makes things a lot easier than resorting to violence. So I try that first. Didn"t work with you."
"But it worked with Evie," Steven said, almost to himself.
"Who"s Evie?" the man asked.
"The woman Vohuman mated with," Steven said. "Robbie"s mother."
"Oh, that wh.o.r.e," the man said. "It"s nice to get a gifted one, you get more interesting offspring that way."
Steven was trying to take in all of the information the man was giving him. It was hard. He wasn"t at all sure where any of this was going. It was time to find out.
"So you want me to do something," Steven said, "since we"re friends."
"And friends do things for each other, right?" the man asked. Steven noticed that the rope had disappeared from Eliza"s neck, and her body was drifting away from the edge of the clearing.
"What do you want me to do?" Steven asked.
"I want you to give it to me," the man said.
"What?" Steven asked. "Give you what?"
"The gla.s.s," the man said.
Steven slipped his hand into his coat pocket. There was the planchette he"d shown to Eliza. He"d kept it with him, obsessed with examining his marks. He removed it, held it up to the man.
"You mean this?" Steven said. "The planchette?"
The man"s eyes widened and for a moment he transformed into the demon shape Steven had seen in the River. Then he transformed back.
"Yes," the man said, "that"s it."
"But it"s mine," Steven said. "Why do you want it?"
"It"s not yours," the man said. "It belongs to me. How did you come across it?"
"I"d rather not say," Steven said. "You"re right, it"s not mine exactly. I found it."
"I"d like you to give it to me," the man said, extending his hand.
"Is that what this has all been about?" Steven said, waving the planchette.
"I"m sure you"ve noticed it has special properties," the man said. "It"s not a normal gla.s.s."
"I know I feel sick when I look at my marks through it," Steven said.
"That makes it valuable," the man said. "And it has other properties."
"What do you mean?" Steven asked.
"I"m guessing you"ve been looking with the engravings up, facing you," the man said.
"Yes," Steven said, realizing the man was correct; he"d always held the planchette with the engravings up. It seemed the right way to hold it.
"Well, it"s very useful that way," the man said. "And it tells you far more than a normal gla.s.s. Try turning it over. Be careful, and look again."
Steven turned the planchette over so the engravings were facing away from him. The underside of the planchette was bare and smooth. He placed the gla.s.s over his hand and looked at his mark.
Instead of a slowly growing revulsion, he felt a slowly growing euphoria. His marking began to pulse within his hand, and he felt a wave of intense pleasure shoot up his arm and into his torso. He kicked back in the camping chair, throwing his head back as the sensation raced into his brain. He felt himself drop the planchette on the ground as the pleasure quickly moved down his body. As it pa.s.sed his groin he became instantly erect. It moved down his legs and into his feet. He felt himself shaking from the intensity of the experience, rocking in the camping chair. As it pa.s.sed from his feet into the ground, he felt as though he was being grounded to the earth, attached in a permanent way that made him feel an intense connection with it. The euphoria swelled in his mind until he felt he might burst. It was the single most pleasurable experience he"d ever had. After a moment, he could lift his legs again.
"Oh my G.o.d," Steven said. "What was that?"
"The opposite of what you felt looking through it the other way," the man said. "And another of the reasons why I want it back."
Steven slowly lifted his head back into a normal position. The planchette was lying on the ground at his feet. Why doesn"t he just take it? Steven wondered.
"I can"t just take it," the man said. "You need to give it to me."
"If I give it to you, you"ll release my friends?" Steven asked. "And you"ll leave me alone from now on?"
"Oh, I"ll do more than that," the man said. "I"ll offer you my protection. Vohuman will be angry you gave it to me. You"ll be on his enemies list."
"You say this is yours?" Steven said, reaching down to grab the planchette off the ground.
"I commissioned its creation four hundred years ago," the man said, "from a very talented fabricator. I wanted a gla.s.s that would allow me to not just see markings, but to know their consequences. It was very expensive. It was stolen from me a hundred years ago, and I"ve been searching for it ever since. When I was taking the boy"s hands, I noticed you had it on you, and I knew I"d landed a bigger prize than just little Robbie. I doubt Vohuman knows how beneficial his little trap worked out to be."
"You can"t take it from me, can you?" Steven asked. "That"s why all this talking. You need me to give it to you."
"Exactly correct," the man said. "Another of its properties is loyalty to its owner. It apparently thinks that"s you. If you give it to me, I"m the new owner, and things will be restored. If I were to take it forcibly, it would shut down on me and become useless, as I suspect it was for the person who stole it from me."