Chapter 1. Jenny
Jenny
Forty years ago, I began keeping a list of annoyances that came with being a Hunter of Artemis. I’d gotten up to two hundred and four. Being awoken in the middle of the night was number six, right after always having to replace torn and bloodstained outfits.
As a Hunter, my body reacted to the presence of unnatural threats: monsters and demons and people who hung the toilet paper roll “under” instead of “over.” My duty was to track down and end these threats.
A high school friend had dubbed it my “spider sense,” and it had saved my life more times than I could remember.
That was then. At fifty-six years old, my spider sense was just one more annoyance on my list. Number one ninety-eight, to be specific.
My pulse raced. Heat surged through my veins. Sweat dripped down my cleavage. I kicked off the twisted sheet and slowed my breathing, trying to determine if there was any actual danger or if this was just another blasted hot flash.
Wooden chimes clattered gently on the front porch. A truck with a bad muffler drove past, several blocks away.
The only light came from the numbers on my digital alarm clock—1:57 in the freaking morning—and the streetlight outside, which sliced a thin beam through the crack between the curtains. I’d left the window open an inch, and the warm breeze carried the salty, fishy smell of the Atlantic.
My sense of smell was another mixed blessing: great for tracking the forces of evil, less great when a housemate was having GI troubles.
I grimaced and made a mental note to put a new candle in the bathroom.
Temple knew better than to eat too much dairy.
I’d tried eliminating it from our groceries, but I felt guilty depriving him of the joys of his homemade chocolate-swirl cheesecake or a fresh deep-dish pizza.
Not that I’d really stopped him. It was hard to keep a ninety-nine-year-old sorcerer from eating whatever the heck he wanted.
I sniffed again, teasing out the different scents: a trace of sandalwood from Annette’s Yves Saint Laurent perfume; the roses growing outside the house; leftover cheese and double-pepperoni pizza from Temple’s midnight snack. Layered beneath it all was the faint stink of rotting flesh.
Not a hot flash, then.
I climbed silently from the bed and crossed the old oak floor, stopping only to slip into a worn blue plush robe and my old fuzzy slippers.
My housemates were sound asleep, judging from the snoring coming from one bedroom and the low hum of a CPAP machine from the other. I heard skittering from the mice in the attic, too. Outside, the world had gone quiet.
I walked down the steps to the first floor. Past the kitchen—dark and empty—and through the open door we’d put up in the middle of the hallway to separate the front two rooms from the rest of the house.
This was the storefront for Second Life Books and Gifts. Every door and window was equipped with security systems both mundane and magical that would have alerted us if anything dangerous had gotten inside.
I checked the rooms anyway, finding nothing up front except bulging bookshelves and souvenirs ranging from tasteful to tacky.
According to Annette, tacky had outsold tasteful ten to one last quarter.
Through the leaded-glass window next to the front door I saw only darkness. Nothing had tripped the motion-sensitive lights around the house and parking lot. But the smell of death was stronger, and my muscles twitched with the need to strike and slay.
I flipped the switch for the porch lights.
Standing on the edge of the porch was a harvester. A big one, nine feet tall and almost as broad, thanks to the billowing black cloak and the smoky shadows swirling around its body. It stood with its head and shoulders hunched to avoid the overhang.
The last time I’d faced a harvester was thirty-five years ago at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in New York. That one had been eight feet, tops.
Harvesters usually fed on poltergeists and other unquiet spirits, but once in a while, they developed a taste for the living. By the time I’d gotten to Sleepy Hollow, the thing had spent three weeks nibbling on the souls of the tourists who tromped over the graves each day.
That fight had lasted ninety seconds, which was about eighty-five seconds longer than most. Harvesters were tough.
A Hunter with the power of a goddess behind every strike was tougher.
Here in Salem, we got far more tourist traffic than Sleepy Hollow, but I hadn’t heard anything about people losing their souls.
Not to a harvester, at least. TV and smartphones were a whole other class of spirit killers.
And I’d have bet anything there was underworld backing for some of those social media sites, even if I’d never been able to prove it.
I opened the door.
The harvester froze with its stick-like arm extended. From the angle of the bony fist, it had been about to knock.
The limb was emaciated even more so than usual for its kind, which meant it would be hungry. Maybe even starving.
I pointed down. “Wipe your feet.”
The harvester’s eyes were pinpricks of orange, like the last, brief light of a candle wick after the flame was extinguished. They flickered and peered at the old welcome mat.
Curly script beneath faded yellow sunflowers read, An it harm none, do what you will.
Slowly, awkwardly, the harvester scuffed its bony feet on the mat.
“Do you understand and accept the contract?” I asked.
The harvester nodded.
“Then come on in.” I stepped back to give it space. “I’m Jenny Winter. I don’t suppose you can tell me what’s wrong?”
Being attuned to the unnatural didn’t mean I could understand them, and harvesters were the strong, silent type. It ducked inside. The door closed behind us on its own, the latch clicking softly into place.
The harvester’s hooded head stayed low, avoiding eye contact. Knotty fingers fidgeted. For a scavenger of stubborn spirits, it was surprisingly shy.
Up close, it smelled like four-day-old roadkill. The stench didn’t bother me too much; I’d trained to ignore far worse. But now I deliberately leaned in, studying the harvester’s BO like a sommelier with an old bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.
Rot and death, but also an earthy smell, like soil after the rain: petrichor. The scent of harvester blood was a permanent addition to my sensory memory. I’d had to throw out my favorite boots after killing the harvester at Sleepy Hollow. Nothing got that smell out of leather.
“Wait here.” I hurried to the end of the hall. The closet door swung open as I approached. This house had witnessed me treating countless patients over the past two decades, and it knew the routines.
“Thanks,” I said. Two first aid kits sat on the middle shelf of the closet: a red one and a larger black one. The first aid kits were repurposed tackle boxes, heavy enough to stop a small-caliber bullet. Red was for humans; black was for everything else. I grabbed the black.
I returned to the front of the hall and set it on the floor. From the top tray I took an infrared thermometer and pointed it at the harvester’s torso. I sucked air through my teeth when I saw the number.
“Your body temp is thirty-four degrees Fahrenheit. You’re in bad shape.” It should have been between fifty and fifty-five.
Next, I grabbed a smooth, flat stone on a leather cord from the kit. I tied the cord around my head so the stone hung over my right eye like a patch. I adjusted it until the small hole through the stone was directly in front of my eyeball.
Hagstones were natural magic for seeing through illusions and charms. The type of rock didn’t matter, but the hole in the stone had to be natural, formed over time by running water. Using a waterjet cutter made a nice hole but didn’t do squat, magically.
This was a Petoskey stone I’d found in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula while hunting a rogue wendigo. I’d hand-polished it to bring out the pretty spotted fossil pattern and to keep it from scraping the skin of my eye socket.
The shadows and darkness around the harvester thinned as I peered through the stone, letting me see its physical form. Her form, rather. The tall, bony body was clearly female. “You poor thing. Who did this to you?”
Crusted blood the color of swamp muck covered three deep stab wounds to the chest. The arms had been slashed as well.
I imagined the scoffing of my old mentor, Felipe Aguilar, his heavy Spanish accent filled with disdain.
Sloppy and crude. A Hunter must be precise. Any threat can be ended with a precise enough strike.
Harvesters couldn’t be hurt by normal weapons. Bullets were useless. Knives and swords would snap before they pierced that dead flesh. You needed magic, and you needed to sever the head. This was the work of an amateur, albeit one gifted enough to see the harvester and strong enough to injure it.
From the size of the wounds, they’d used a wide-bladed knife. Small abrasions on either end of each injury suggested an upward-curved guard that had struck the skin with each deep stab.
The harvester sagged against the wall, dislodging several colorful flyers from the large public bulletin board.
I caught her arms and helped her to sit. Despite her height, she weighed no more than fifty pounds, tops. The feel of the leathery skin shrink-wrapped around thick arm bones brought back memories of Felipe’s old training drills.
Twist and hold the wrist. Use the arm as a lever to control the body. Strike the elbow from the outside to break it. Draw your blade and step in for the killing chop to the neck.
Instead, I patted the harvester’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you fixed up.”
Felipe would be so disappointed in who I’d become. The thought warmed my heart.
“Temple, I could use a hand down here.” I didn’t bother to raise my voice. The house would carry my words to his bedroom.
I donned latex gloves from the first aid kit and took out a can of pressurized saline wound wash. “This might hurt.”