Dolly Girl

Like at least the five previous Constance Faradays—Connie’s mother, and hers, and hers, and on back like that—Connie had been born with a Whisper Girl wrapped around her neck. This presented difficulties suffered by no one else any of those troubled, dark-eyed women ever knew.

Connie’s Whisper Girl claimed to be an incarnation of an ancient goddess of goats from the Caucasus Mountains called Dali. This had caused some misunderstanding when Connie was very young, and Dali had become Dolly Girl. Connie persisted in calling her that despite the girl’s threats and curses. Using the name was one of the few acts of rebellion Connie allowed herself. Otherwise, trouble would come.

Not that trouble didn’t always come.

It had always come for all the Constance Faradays, according to the stories handed down and according to the evidence of Connie’s eyes. She had watched her grandmother starve herself to death rather than follow her Whisper Girl’s every sadistic suggestion. She had witnessed her mother’s repeated hospitalizations from the cuts and burns and bruises that resulted from fruitless efforts at prying her girl away from her neck.

Her grandmother’s girl said she was a vampire. Her mother claimed hers never said anything at all.

you will learn poisons, Dolly Girl had said when Connie had wondered why the girl forced her to get a job in a grocery store pharmacy. and ways of burning skin and ways of blinding men with powders and ways of rendering women barren with potions

Dolly Girl was obsessed with making women barren. She didn’t understand that this was not as unutterable a disaster as it had apparently been in the mountains of Georgia. If she was even from the mountains of Georgia. Something Connie’s mother had said over and over was that Whisper Girls are liars.

“Are you a member of our rewards program?” Connie asked the old man sliding his card into the slot. A buzzing noise indicating that the machine had failed to read the chip. He looked irritated.

“I can never get this damned thing to work right,” he said.

blind him, said Dolly Girl.

The old man did not hear this of course. Nobody but a Constance Faraday could hear a Whisper Girl, and even they could not hear one another’s. Neither could anyone see one, or touch one, or smell the sour breath of one.

Connie did not know whether Whisper Girls had a taste, even though Dolly Girl sometimes reached up and pinched her lips together when Connie said something she didn’t like.

The machine beeped again. “I just want my blood pressure medicine,” said the old man, angrily.

blind him, said Dolly Girl.

“Let me try it, sir,” said Connie. She leaned over the counter and slid the man’s debit card into the reader. It took. “Now just punch in your PIN number,” she said.

“Why do people say that?” the old man demanded as he typed in the four digits.

“Sir?”

“It’s an acronym. PIN. The ‘n’ stands for number so you’re saying ‘punch in your personal identification number number.’”

The screen of her cash register once again prompted Connie to ask, “No rewards number? There’s no discount on prescriptions but it counts toward your fuel points.”

“I don’t buy gas at grocery stores,” said the old man, and motioned with his hand for Connie to hand over the paper bag, stapled together with six or seven pages of instructions and warnings. “I buy my gas at a gas station where somebody pumps it for me.”

Connie considered pointing out that he was picking up a prescription at a grocery store, but she’d already had one verbal warning over her attitude with customers. So instead, she smiled, and said, “Thank you, sir!”

you should have blinded him

“Maybe next time,” whispered Connie.

Connie didn’t actually need a job. The Constance Faradays had been moderately wealthy since the Civil War, when that generation’s Whisper Girl managed some sort of complicated scheme involving Confederate currency and fine timing with the Emancipation Proclamation. Connie had never asked for details, which suited her grandmother and disappointed her mother.

The downtown apartment building where she lived was carved out of an old Victorian. There were two other units in the house. Connie owned the whole building, but the apartments were managed by a leasing agency, so her neighbors didn’t know they were also her tenants. Unit #1, on the ground floor, was the most expensive because it had access to the terrace and the back garden, which the young family living there tended very nicely. Unit #2, on the second floor, was occupied by a blind man whom Connie hadn’t blinded. Connie lived on the third floor.

It was August. The shared entryway and stairwell, which was neither air conditioned nor heated, was stifling. Since she’d already walked home in the heat, Connie was sweating when she reached the second-floor landing.

“Connie?” Carlos from #2 was standing at his open door. “Is that you?”

Carlos had told her once that he could recognize everyone in the building by their tread, so she didn’t know why he bothered to ask. He was in his late twenties, a little older than Connie, and she might have found him attractive except for his acne scars and the way his eyes didn’t track her when they talked.

blind him said Dolly Girl.

Connie didn’t know how many times they’d gone over this.

“Hi, Carlos,” she said. “What’s up?”

“There’s someone up there,” he whispered. “There’s a woman waiting outside your front door. She’s been there for hours.”

Connie looked up the stairs, but the way they wrapped around she couldn’t see her front door. This was very odd. Odd that somebody would wait that long in the heat, odd in that Dolly Girl insisted they never have visitors, and odd in that a stranger had been able to gain access to the building. The keypad lock required a six-digit code.

“How did she get in?” Connie found herself whispering as well.

“I’m not sure. I think maybe Little Milo let her in when he got back from walking Big Milo.”

Little Milo was the eight-year-old in #1. Big Milo was a pit bull terrier with a head the size of a basketball. The kid was a hassle. The dog was okay.

“Rhonda and Levi?” Little Milo’s parents.

“Rhonda’s not home from work yet. I guess Little Milo just didn’t say anything to Levi.”

Which raised a question. “Why didn’t you say anything? Or did you talk to her?” Her voice was rising a little.

“I did. She said she was your aunt. She knew my name, so I figured she must know you. That you’d told her about me. But then …”

Carlos’s name, of course, was on the buzzer mounted next to the front door, so that was no particular mystery. “I don’t have an aunt, Carlos.”

“I remembered that after she went upstairs.”

Connie couldn’t recall ever telling him anything about her family, but she supposed she must have. He never forgot anything she told him, something else that creeped her out a little.

“Do you want me to call the police?” he asked.

“I can hear you both quite clearly.” This was a woman’s voice, coming from upstairs. She spoke in a conversational tone. “And there’s no reason to call anyone. I’m sorry I lied to you, Mr. Serrano. But I didn’t know what time Ms. Faraday would be home and didn’t want you to worry.”

“How does she know my last name?” Carlos whispered.

“Do you really not know it’s posted outside?” Connie replied. Dolly Girl laughed her ugly laugh.

“Oh, right. I forgot.” Which didn’t exactly jibe but she headed on upstairs.

The woman was dark-skinned with a cascade of braids interwoven with beaded yellow and green ribbons. She wore a conservative blue business suit and had the kind of face that didn’t tell Connie much about old she was. In her thirties? Forties? Older?

Then Connie noticed that the woman wasn’t looking at her. She was looking at Connie’s neck. “Tkashi-Mapa,” she said, or something like that. Then, “Dæl,” then, “Dali.” Then a string of words in a language Connie didn’t recognize.

Dolly Girl was suddenly constricting herself so tightly around Connie’s neck that Connie couldn’t even choke. She reached up, knowing it was hopeless, and scratched ineffectually at the girl’s coiled body.

hunter killer mistress of secrets you’ll not have me

Connie barely heard this, falling first to her knees and then face down on the floor, which she feebly kicked. Then she felt the woman’s cool hand on her cheek before it brushed the area beneath her chin and Dolly Girl released her.

“Is everything okay up there?” called Carlos. He obviously hadn’t gone back inside his apartment.

“We’re fine,” said the woman. She looked at Connie’s neck again and added, “Aren’t we?”

Connie breathed in great gulps of air. The woman helped her to stand, then turned and did something to the doorknob that Connie couldn’t quite see. The door swung open. Before she helped Connie through, the woman said, low, “Tell him you’re okay.”

She nodded, even though she didn’t feel okay. She had never heard her mother or her grandmother even hint that anyone else could see a Whisper Girl.

“Tell him,” the woman said again.

Connie coughed, then said, “It’s fine, Carlos! I just … dropped my keys.” This sounded weak even to herself, but there was nothing to be done about it. She pushed past the woman, who closed the door behind them.

Dolly Girl had gone as quiet as she’d gone slack.

“What did you do to her?” Connie demanded, not knowing if she was asking because she was worried or relieved. Either way, she was curious. Wildly curious.

“I just reminded her that she’s been awake for a very long time, and that she could use a little rest,” said the woman. “You could use some rest, too, more than you know. But I’m afraid we don’t have time for that. Your … what does your line call them? Whispering Girls? Yours will awaken soon and she won’t be happy.”

“Just Whisper Girls,” said Connie. “But how do you know—”

The woman held up her hand. “You have questions. I can answer some of them. But not here and not now. That creature, the one that told you its name was Dali, will stay quiescent until sunrise tomorrow. By then, you’ll have made some decisions and we’ll have either made some progress or experienced some setbacks.”

“We? You and me?”

“No, you and I are not a we. Not yet, and not unless you decide to join us. That’s one of the decisions you’ll have to make. I was referring to my colleagues and myself.”

“There are other people who can see Whisper Girls?”

“Constance,” said the woman, “there are people who can see all kinds of things.”

Then she walked into Connie’s bedroom and opened the door to the walk-in closet, which was an absolute wreck. Connie could only think to ask her, “How did you open the door?”

The woman was going through those of Connie’s dresses that were actually hanging up. She said, “I used a sort of key,” sounding distracted. Then she said, “Do you have anything … well, I was going to ask you if you have anything pressed but it looks like I should be asking you if you have anything clean.”

Connie had not felt so out of control since her mother’s death.

“Stop!” she said. “Stop it. You can’t just … you can’t just do all the things you’ve done and not tell me who you are. You haven’t even told me your name!”

The woman stepped over a jumbled pile of shoes and leaned in to the very back of the closet. “You haven’t asked. It’s Priscilla. What’s in this?” She pulled out a garment bag, closed the closet door, and laid it across the unmade bed.

“It’s my mother’s wedding dress,” Connie said. “Put it back.”

“Constance,” said the woman, Priscilla, “I didn’t have much time to go through your file, but I do know your mother was never married. In fact, I don’t believe any of the women in your family have ever been married. At least not as far back as we’ve been able to trace. Single mothers. Only children. All daughters.”

Which only raised more questions, but Connie just looked at the floor and mumbled, “Prom.”

“What was that?” asked Priscilla.

“I said prom. It’s my prom dress, okay? And I’m not going to wear it to some meeting of secret agent witches or whatever the hell you are.”

Priscilla unzipped the garment bag and pulled out a gold-sequined explosion of taffeta and lace. She put the back of one hand across her mouth, stifling a laugh. Connie saw that the only jewelry she wore was a thick silver ring on her right thumb.

“Well, you’re wrong and you’re right,” she said.

“Which? I mean, about which thing?” Connie said.

“I’m not a secret agent and I’m not a witch. But you’re right, you’re not wearing this. Come on, there’s time to stop at the mall.”

The problem, it turned out, was that there was a cadaver with extremely conservative opinions on what women should wear. The cadaver had herself been a woman, at least to judge by the outfit it was wearing as it lay on the slab.

After their trip to Macy’s, which turned out to have a whole department that Connie felt should have identified with a sign that said “somber,” they had driven out to some factories in a neighborhood by the airport. As with the somber area of Macy’s, Connie had not known this place existed. It made her feel unsettled.

There was a lot of that going on today.

Priscilla had done the hand thing again with a keypad of a personnel door on a loading dock and thankfully the interior was air conditioned. It was about six o’clock in the evening, but it was still brutally hot outside.

Actually, Connie thought, air conditioned didn’t quite cover it. After a moment she was shivering. She could see her breath. The office hallways they were traversing were positively freezing.

“It’s because of Mrs. Frank,” said Priscilla, for once providing some information without being prompted. “Cold slows decay.”

So here they were, in what was obviously some sort of repurposed meeting room. The repurposing had involved swapping out what had probably been some kind of classed up dining room table for a marble slab and replacing the fluorescent bulbs in the overhead fixtures to something flickering and green.

“Mrs. Frank, this is Constance Faraday. Ms. Faraday, this is Mrs. Frank.”

The cadaver just lay there.

Connie looked over at Priscilla, who was standing with her hands folded neatly at her waist, a neutral expression on her face.

Was she supposed to say something? She was about to when she felt the slightest of movements at her throat.

cold blessed cold of the heights the fools

It was the barest of whispers. Priscilla did not appear to have heard anything. Neither had Mrs. Frank.

Finally, Priscilla said, “Do you have anything you’d like to say to Mrs. Frank?”

“Um,” said Connie. “Am I going to be reimbursed for this outfit?”

“Please,” said Priscilla. “There’s more money in your trust fund than we’ll spend in the next ten years.”

blind her

That was new. Dolly Girl was normally kind of a gender essentialist when it came to the blinding and the barrenness.

There was a grinding sound, like bones rubbing together. This is exactly what it turned out to be. Mrs. Frank’s body jerked and shuddered. As she sat up, a noxious odor filled the room. There wouldn’t be any blinding of her because her eyelids were sewn shut.

“You are not unique,” Mrs. Frank said, the sound of her voice as much a nightmare as her face.

flee flee flee

But still, there was no reaction from Priscilla and Mrs. Frank just kept thundering on in her gravel-in-a-bucket voice. “We are none of us unique. Those who pronounce themselves so are fools or liars or both.”

“The shoes alone were $300,” said Connie. “We could have gone to Kohl’s instead of Macy’s.”

“From what I could tell,” said Priscilla, “that’s the best pair of shoes you’ve ever owned.”

“Silence!” roared Mrs. Frank. The stench grew even worse.

Connie risked a glance at Priscilla and saw that the woman was rolling her eyes, which surprised her and even pleased her a little bit. As pleased as she could be with someone who had somehow caused Dolly Girl to nearly strangle her earlier in the day.

“The Tkashi-Mapa, the Dæl-thing leech on you, it is a liar,” said Mrs. Frank.

This, of course, wasn’t news to Connie. But she also knew Dolly Girl was no fool.

“What language is that?” Connie asked. “Toshi map or whatever. Is that ancient Georgian?” It could be contemporary Georgian for all she knew. Her mother had always discouraged looking too closely into anything a Whisper Girl claimed.

“Tkashi-Mapa,” said Priscilla. “It means Gift of Daggers in the secret tongue of witches.”

“Knew you were a witch,” said Connie.

“Silence!” This time Mrs. Frank swung her legs off the slab. She wore no shoes, expensive or not, and her feet were white and swollen as large as melons. Her toes, though, were black and had burst like rotten grape tomatoes.

Connie took a step back. She felt Dolly Girl coiling. “Look,” she said. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, but I’m going to Uber on back, okay? Forget about the outfit, I’ll wear it at Halloween. Good meeting.”

She turned and somehow Priscilla was standing between her and the door instead of off to her side.

“And what would you be going as?” asked the braided woman, which briefly confused Connie.

“I’m going home, I meant.”

“What would you be going as at Halloween in that perfectly nice suit?”

There was a creaking sound from the center of the room and Connie decided she didn’t want to see Mrs. Frank lurching to her disgusting feet.

“CIA witch,” said Connie.

“How would anyone know that’s what you’re supposed to be?”

“Wasn’t there a Netflix show about CIA witches who wore outfits like this?”

“No,” said Priscilla and Mrs. Frank at the same time, though Connie was pretty sure they weren’t both responding to the same thing.

Mrs. Frank kept going. “You will not leave without my permit.”

Connie wondered whether the cadaver had meant to say permission or if she would be issued some kind of official form when she got to leave.

If she got to leave.

She swallowed, hard, trying to be subtle about it, hoping it would help Dolly Girl wake up. Connie had no idea how to get out of this situation but hoped that her Whisper Girl would have some ideas more useful than her usual.

“We are not witches,” said Priscilla. “Though we’ve been called that often enough, and we have some … areas of mutual interest with them. We also trade information. For example, they’re generally better at binding than we are. The white paper they sent over on how to send your friend there to sleep was worth everything we paid for it.”

“I thought you said you were hard up for money,” said Connie.

“I didn’t say we paid in money,” said Priscilla, and smiled like she’d scored some kind of point.

Connie didn’t like games.

“There are worse things in the world than the creature which has you leashed!” roared Mrs. Frank.

bring her back to life

Nothing at the grocery store pharmacy would help with that.

“Yeah,” said Connie. “No offense, but there are some people who might put you in that category.”

“Silence!”

quicken her her rotting flesh will fall from her bones

“At dawn, you will rouse the Tkashi-Mapa and descend into the netherworld.”

Connie looked over at Priscilla. “Does she mean, like, sewers?”

Priscilla shook her head.

“The Knight of Dawn will open the way,” said Mrs. Frank.

“You have knights? Witches and knights?”

“That’s me,” said Priscilla. “Knight of Dawn is one of my jobs. We have to double up a lot.”

wait wait wait

“Because of the budget?” Connie asked Priscilla.

“Because of turnover. And deaths.”

there is no knight of dawn the accursed things all perished

Dolly Girl was no longer making any attempt to stay quiet, but neither of the other women seemed to be able to hear her now. In fact, she did sound different. Connie seemed to be hearing her with her cheekbones instead of her ears. That made as much sense as anything else today had, anyway.

“Can I get that permit now?” asked Connie.

The room Priscilla left Connie in had a neatly made futon set in the sleeping position, a mini-fridge stocked with Bell’s Two-Hearted, Connie’s favorite domestic beer, and, thankfully, a glowing space heater. There was also a Macy’s bag that held the clothes Connie had worn to work that day.

They’d left that in the car and Priscilla hadn’t been out of her sight until now, so somebody else must have brought the bag in. Something to think about as she planned her escape.

First though, the matter of the gray pinstriped jacket and skirt. Connie left her new clothes crumpled up at the foot of the futon and pulled on her jeans and t-shirt. The space heater was turned all the way up, but it was fighting a losing battle, so she even put on her smock from work. She considered whether or not to pocket her name badge, but then, they already knew her name. And everything else about her, including her favorite beer.

She sat on the futon.

“Hey,” she said, feeling ridiculous.

There was a slithering feeling around her neck.

yes

“Do you have an escape plan?”

kill them all except the dead one

“You know I don’t have any superpowers, right?” Connie had been trying to make that clear for years.

quicken her and …

“And her flesh will fall off, yeah, I remember. But I don’t know how to quicken her.” Connie wasn’t even exactly sure what quicken meant in this context, but she was pretty sure it didn’t mean to offer Mrs. Frank uppers.

swallow me

What?

“What?”

cede to me

“You mean, like, let you take control of my body or something?”

cede to me

“Will that give me superpowers?”

better to me than to the knights and their ilk

“At some point, it would be great if somebody—and you’re the only other person or whatever here, so that somebody will have to be you—would tell me exactly what the hell is going.” Connie was trying not to let herself get worked up. She opened the fridge, took out a Bell’s, and looked around. There was no sign of a bottle opener.

you must not let them send us to hell

“I’m on board with that.” Connie placed the lip of the bottle cap against the edge of the fridge’s door and smacked down with the heel of her palm. The cap flew off into the corner. Her grandmother had taught her how to do that before things got really bad for her, when she was still drinking beer.

at dawn you will swallow me

“How about if we just escape before dawn?” The room’s door wasn’t locked. Connie had checked that first thing. “We can just sneak out and then hitch back into town.”

Connie had discovered that her phone was missing after Priscilla left her. She didn’t know whether the woman had picked her pocket or if she’d used another magic whatever like the key.

perhaps perhaps perhaps

“Why perhaps? You’re not offering up any other workable solutions, you know. I’m not going to swallow you; the whole idea is just gross.”

perhaps the knight and the wight might fall

“Did you do that on purpose? With the rhyming? What’s a wight? Is that what Mrs. Frank is?”

quicken her no wait

Connie had not, in fact, been preparing to leap into action and go quicken Mrs. Frank, whatever that meant. So she settled down to do exactly what Dolly Girl had said, and wait. By the time Priscilla returned, she’d had four beers and was a little tipsy.

“It is midnight,” said the woman, after looking at Connie’s outfit and silently shaking her head disapprovingly. “You must begin your preparations for descending into the netherworld.”

Connie stood up, just a little unsteadily. “Okay,” she said. “But first I need to use the restroom.”

Whatever knights or wights or minions—Connie figured Priscilla and Mrs. Frank probably had minions despite their budget shortfall and she hoped they didn’t consider her one—had swapped out the conference table for a mortuary slab and installed the refrigeration system had also knocked out the wall between the men’s and women’s restrooms. The expanded space had been used to install the largest bathtub Connie had ever seen.

While she was in the stall dealing with all the beer, she heard Priscilla turning the taps. When she came out, there was steam rising from the water filling the tub. On the wooden table next to it, Connie saw what looked like a loofah made out of rock, a large bowl filled with pink salt, and a towel that was much thicker than any she owned. She figured the last must have come from Macy’s.

“The first step in the cleansing will be a scouring. Stand upright in the water and pour it over yourself with this.” Priscilla held up a metal ladle that looked ancient. It had bits of green here and there on the handle that looked kind of like moss. “Then scrub every part of yourself except for your neck with the crystals. Finally, roll the stone back and forth over your scalp in three times three passes. Do not rinse away any residue from the crystals, then garb yourself.”

Connie just looked at her for a moment. Then she said, “No to all of that.”

do it

Well, that was a surprise. She couldn’t exactly ask Dolly Girl what the point of cooperating would be with Priscilla just standing there. “Or, okay, I guess. If it means I get my phone back and you let me out of here.”

“I must bear witness to the cleansing ritual,” said Priscilla in a weird sing-song voice.

“Which, what, means you’re going to watch me stand naked in the bathtub while I do your weird ritual? I don’t think so.”

let her

“If I do not bear witness, the ritual will not be efficacious, and your trip to the netherworld will be very short.”

“I want it to be short, if I’m going at all,” said Connie.

“It will be short because your soul and flesh will be devoured by the Precious.”

Connie could somehow hear the capital P. She walked over to the tub and leaned over to untie her tennis shoes. Then she stripped off the rest of her clothes and stepped into the water. It was hot, but not uncomfortably so. It was already up to her knees, and she wanted to lay down in it because even though the room was now steamy, it was still cold.

“First the water,” said Connie, and handed over the ladle. It was heavier than it looked.

Connie followed the instructions Priscilla gave her. The salt scrub was actually kind of pleasant and seemed like something the kind of people who went to spas probably paid a lot of money to do.

When it came time for the rolling over the scalp bit, Connie paused. “You said three times three. Why didn’t you just say nine?”

Priscilla shrugged. “These things have to be said in certain ways.”

“Right,” said Connie, and did her best to roll the cylinder, which was exactly as heavy as it looked, over and around her scalp, front and back, in a way that matched the weird formality of the rest of the bath. When she was done, Priscilla took it from her and held out her other hand to help Connie out of the bath. Connie ignored this and almost slipped when she put her foot on the tile floor.

“Pat yourself dry,” said Priscilla, handing over the luxuriously fluffy towel. “Try not to rub off the salt.”

When that was done, Connie looked around. “Okay, garbing time, right? Witch robes? Or, hey, do I get to wear armor?”

Priscilla nudged the pile of clothes Connie had taken off with her foot. “These are fine,” she said.

For some reason, that was disappointing.

The rest of the night was to be spent in meditation and contemplation, which, in practice, consisted of Priscilla nudging Connie every few minutes while they sat on the futon to keep her from falling asleep. Connie thought they shouldn’t have left her the beer if they wanted her to stay up all night.

Some indeterminate time later, Priscilla stood, turned, and then actually knelt before Connie. “I can answer some of your questions now, bearer of the Tkashi-Mapa. But first, you must answer one of my own.”

now it comes said Dolly Girl, the first thing she’s said since before the weird bath.

“Constance Faraday, last of your lineage, will you undertake to aid the Abbey of Tears?”

Connie had not expected the question to be easy to answer, but neither had she expected it to raise so many questions on its own. Last of her lineage? Abbey of Tears?

yes yes yes

“What if I say no?” asked Connie.

“We will return you to your home and you will never hear from us again.”

This sounded like an excellent deal, but Dolly Girl put an uncomfortable amount of pressure on Connie’s neck.

“Okay. What if I say yes?”

“I will tell you some of what I know about the netherworld and the Precious. And I will release you from the burden you have borne all your life.”

lies

Connie wasn’t sure what Dolly Girl wanted her to do. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. But she said, “I don’t know how to swordfight or anything. Are you going to give me a gun?”

“The Precious cannot be harmed by mortal means.”

“So, you do want me to fight whatever they are.”

“We want you, and what you call your Whisper Girl, to save the world.”

Connie didn’t get a gun or a sword but Priscilla had both when they stepped back into the freezing room where Mrs. Frank stood waiting. She was standing exactly where she’d been when they’d left hours before and Connie wondered if she’d been waiting there like that the whole time. At least the smell had died down a little.

The dead woman started to speak. “Now, bearer—”

“Silence!” Connie shouted.

Priscilla started, and even Mrs. Frank cocked her head.

“Sorry,” said Connie. “Just wanted you to know what that feels like.”

There was a brief pause, then Mrs. Frank started again. “Now, bearer of the Tkashi-Mapa, you go to confront the Precious, the underminers of reality. The time is short. The warp and the weft are worn thin. Every attempt to counter them has failed. You are our last hope.”

“No pressure then,” said Connie.

we will end them said Dolly Girl, and Connie wasn’t entirely clear who the “them” was supposed to be.

“I still don’t really know what I’m supposed to do,” she went on. “Priscilla here is going to use her sword to, I don’t know, cut some kind of hole I’m supposed to go through and then some things nobody can describe to me called the Precious are going to try to eat me or something and Dolly Girl will, what, jump off my neck and squeeze them to death?”

“We do not know,” said Mrs. Frank, and she actually sounded a little sorry about that.

Connie turned to Priscilla. “She said last hope. What happened to the earlier hopes? Turnover?”

Priscilla nodded. “Mostly the deaths. But there have been two survivors.”

“Well, that’s encouraging.”

“Their minds had been wiped clean by terror,” said Priscilla.

“Less encouraging.”

Priscilla drew her sword and stepped over to stand close to Mrs. Frank. She held it back over her shoulder like a baseball bat and then swung it, cutting Mrs. Frank’s head cleanly from her shoulders. The body did not fall, and the head rolled over to Connie’s feet.

“Rouse the Tkashi-Mapa,” said the head, and Mrs. Frank’s voice wasn’t nearly as gravelly now.

fools to think I ever slumbered

Then Priscilla swung the sword at Connie.

She found herself standing behind the counter at work. The old man who couldn’t operate the chip reader was fumbling with his wallet. He wore black sunglasses and held the kind of cane Carlos used on his rare trips out of Connie’s apartment building.

“Will you do this for me, dear?” asked the old man.

this is wrong wrong wrong

Connie took the man’s card. “What’s your, uh, personal identification number?” she asked.

“Wait, I need to give you my rewards card,” he said, smiling.

Then he drew a sword from the scabbard at his hip, the highly polished steel gleaming in the fluorescent lights as it fell toward Connie’s neck.

Connie leaned against the banister on the second floor. Carlos was talking animatedly about a book he was listening to. Connie wasn’t much of a reader, or much of a neighbor for that matter, but she wasn’t in any particular hurry to get to work. You had to be late three times before you got a written warning.

struggle against it fight it

“Then it turns out that he’s part of this organization that fights witches, but only after they’ve fallen in love. They don’t know each other’s secrets. That’s what the whole thing is about.”

What Connie didn’t know about falling in love could fill a whole book. She’d never even dated in high school and had spent the two years getting her pointless Associate’s at the community college avoiding talking to anyone.

“Now look at this,” Carlos said, swinging his sword.

Big Milo growled and barked, slavering, while Levi from #1 raised his blade, Little Milo standing beside him, giggling.

A woman Connie sometimes saw jogging as she walked to work said “On your left” just before the sword hit the back of Connie’s neck.

Her mother looked at her with disappointment.

Connie found herself standing on a pillar of rock in an endless cavern. There was a hot wind blowing from behind her and bats the size of horses flew far below. If there was a floor, Connie couldn’t see it.

now I see

Then Connie felt something she’d never felt in all her life. It was a loosening at her neck. Then something as thick as a rope untied itself from around her neck and slithered to the rock at Connie’s feet.

Dolly Girl did not look like a girl. She—it—didn’t look like the snake Connie imagined, either. She was about a foot long, pale as snow with pink eyes and black teeth, feathery fins along her glistening sides. And she was growing.

The fins turned to legs and arms. The blunt head articulated atop a neck. Soon she was a woman, taller than Connie. Her skin was still white, her eyes still pink, her teeth still black. She was naked. From somewhere she produced a pair of daggers and Connie flinched.

Then Dolly Girl tossed the pair of them in the air so that she held them by their blades, with their hilts extended toward Connie. Black blood seeped between Dolly Girl’s fingers where the blades bit her palms.

now you will finish them blind them make them barren quicken them

Dolly Girl—Dali, the Dæl—still sounded through Connie’s cheekbones. Her thin lips didn’t move as she extended the ornate daggers.

i offer you the Tkashi-Mapa

The Gift of Daggers. That’s what Priscilla had said it meant.

Connie had been offered such a gift before.

When she was nineteen and they were still living in the split-level ranch in a modest suburb just outside the ring road, Connie had killed her mother. It was neither intentional nor an accident.

It was, her mother explained, just something Constance Faradays did.

Connie, of course, refused, even as Dolly Girl cackled in delight. She would not take the pair of chef’s knives her mother had ordered from a shopping channel.

“I can’t do it anymore, Constance.”

Her mother always called her Constance. Connie’s grandmother had always called both of them Constance, but somehow, it had never been difficult to tell whether she was talking to Connie or her mother.

Her mother’s voice was rough. Clear fluid leaked down her neck from where the blisters had burst after she had splashed herself with acid.

“Just…just ignore it,” Connie said, desperately. “That’s what I do. I don’t understand why you can’t just ignore it.”

“You didn’t understand why your grandmother couldn’t just ignore it, either. One day, you won’t be able to. You’ll ask your daughter to help you the way my mother asked me. The way I’m asking you.”

“I’m never going to have a daughter.”

you will have a daughter

“You will have a daughter,” said her mother.

“I don’t want a daughter!” Connie screamed. “I want a mother!”

Her mother winced at that. Tears glistened in her eyes.

Connie went on, furious now. “You said yours doesn’t even talk to you! It doesn’t try to control you like grandma’s did and it doesn’t say psycho stuff all the time like mine! Why can’t you just … why can’t you just live with it? Why can’t you just live?”

Her mother tossed the knives onto the kitchen counter. She looked down at the floor. “Because it wants to be the last,” she said, almost whispering. “All of them do. Yours will. It keeps me alive so that it can live long enough to … to do something terrible. It wants to be the only Whisper Girl.”

kill her kill her kill her

“Because if you don’t help me die, Connie,” and she reached out and smoothed Connie’s short hair, “it will force me to kill you.”

Connie shuddered, as much at the fact that her mother had used the name she used for herself as at the terrifying revelation. “Did you kill grandma?”

Her mother shrugged. “I helped her die. I stopped feeding her.”

“The IV …” said Connie, trailing off.

“Just fluids. I poured the bags with the nutrients down the sink.”

“But she wasn’t going to kill you.”

Her mother took in a deep breath. “Do you remember when you were nine and I went away for a while. When the court appointed your grandmother to be your guardian while I was in the hospital?”

“You tried to hang yourself.” Connie wasn’t supposed to know that, but she had learned it the way children always learned their parents’ secrets.

“No,” said her mother. “Mom tried to strangle me. She lost control.”

Connie just stared, eyes wide.

“And one day. One day soon I will lose control.”

Her mother was the definition of control. She was controlled even when she held acetylene torches to her neck. She was controlled now that she was asking her daughter to end her life.

“I can’t,” said Connie. She let out a sob. “I won’t.”

“You’re the only one who can,” said her mother. “They … they protect themselves, which means protecting us. Which means the only choice you will ever make in your life, the only choice not influenced by the demon around your neck, will be to either end your own life or end that of someone you love.”

“You’re doing both,” said Connie. Dolly Girl writhed with excitement.

Her mother inhaled sharply. She turned her head, as if Connie had smacked her.

kill her kill her kill her

“Constance,” said her mother. “I need you to believe me. To trust me. I need you to do this for me, and for yourself. I need to do it now, when you decide it. Not later, when it decides it.”

“It is deciding it! It’s telling me to kill you right now!”

“But you’re not. You’re holding those knives and you’re not killing me.”

Connie looked down. Each of her fists were tightly curled around a knife. When had she picked them up?

“See! That was it! I didn’t pick these up! It did!”

Then, from Dolly Girl, only silence.

“It has to be this way,” said her mother. “And I want you to … I want you to try to cut it away while you’re doing it. Because I believe that for just those few seconds, I will finally be free of it.”

In the end, she had leaned over the sink so that Connie would not have to clean up the blood.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” Connie asked Dolly Girl. “I don’t see any Precious or whatever to stab with them.”

you are a fool

“You are a jackass.” It didn’t sound as insulting as Connie hoped, because her voice trembled.

the wight and the knight delight in your fright

“Oh for God’s sake will you stop that?” Her voice was firmer this time.

constance faraday

Dolly Girl had never used her name. It was incredibly unsettling.

you are the Precious

Connie stood with that for a minute. Then she said, “Those bitches.”

She crouched and set the two daggers on the rocky surface of the pillar. She looked up, but she couldn’t see a ceiling any more than she could see a floor when she looked down. At least there were no giant bats that direction. She realized she had no idea what to do. Other than ask Dolly Girl. Which, she decided, was not an option she wanted to take. She would figure something out.

“What are they, anyway? Priscilla and Mrs. Frank? The knight and the wight or whatever?”

hunters killers soul stealers

“Well, that does sound pretty bad. But whose? If they’re just after things like you, maybe they’re the good guys.”

there is no good

This actually tracked with Connie’s experience.

Then the idea came. It was obvious, now that it had occurred to her.

She stood, one dagger in each hand. There was this weird thing where Connie wrote with her right hand—badly, her teachers had always said—but threw a ball with her left. At least the few times she had ever thrown a ball. An occupational therapist she had been sent to in fourth grade said it was because even though Connie was naturally left-handed, the school system or her mother or someone had trained her into right-handedness.

So she used the dagger in her left hand when she leaned forward and cut Dolly Girl open from her pubic bone to her esophagus.

Whatever magic version of the transporter on Star Trek dumped her back in Mrs. Frank’s chamber must have been silent because Priscilla didn’t turn around. Mrs. Frank was lying face down on the slab, and Priscilla appeared to be sewing her head back on.

Connie brought up one of the daggers and dragged its point across her neck. She felt blood rise, but she didn’t feel anything else. She didn’t hear anything else. She forced herself to not shout.

“Hey,” she said instead of shouting.

Priscilla whipped around. Connie saw that her sword was laying on the floor next to the door. She took a step between it and the woman. Mrs. Frank made a gurgling sound but didn’t move.

“You’re the wrong one,” said Priscilla. She started forward, apparently unconcerned by the daggers in Connie’s hands.

Connie raised them. “Look, I know you’ve probably got some kind of ninja training or something, but these are really, really sharp, and I promise you that even if you lay me out, you’ll get gutted in the process.”

Priscilla paused. “Where is it?”

“Netherworld,” said Connie. “Pushed her off into a giant cave. Maybe she landed on a bat or something, but there was an awful lot of blood.”

They both looked at the blade in Connie’s left hand. An oily black substance smoked along its length.

“How?” Priscilla was incredulous. “How could you kill it?”

Connie steeled herself. “It was what I was taught,” she said.

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” said Priscilla. She was practically trembling in anger. “You have upset plans that have been laid for centuries.”

“I really don’t care. I mean, I don’t care that I don’t know what I’ve done, and I don’t care how long your secret witch club has been planning to catch a Whisper Girl. All I want to know is where my phone is.”

“I am not a witch!”

“Really? You’re worried about me calling you by the wrong rank or whatever?” Connie took a step to the left so that she was standing on Priscilla’s sword. “You should be more worried about what would happen if Dolly Girl’s blood touches your skin. It seems to be melting this magic dagger so I bet that boring suit wouldn’t offer much protection.”

In fact, the smoke from the blade was rising faster and thicker than seemed possible. As if anything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours was possible. As if anything that had happened in Connie’s entire life was possible.

Priscilla put her hand over her mouth and nose. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. On the slab, Mrs. Frank’s great bulk began trembling.

Connie didn’t seem to be experiencing any ill effects herself.

She threw the melting dagger into the center of the room, leaned over and picked up the sword, and closed the door behind her.

She didn’t find her phone in the office complex, but she didn’t find any minions either, so Connie called that a win. She wasn’t really sure which way was home, but she knew they’d driven toward the airport, so she walked away from the sound of taxiing planes in the early morning light.

Eventually, she found a busy four lane road that had a street sign. It was actually the road that the grocery store was on, just way farther out than Connie ever went. There wasn’t a sidewalk, but there was a shoulder with little ridges cut into at right angles to the road for some reason.

Connie thought about a lot of weird things on her long walk home. She thought about maybe learning to drive. She thought about asking for a raise. She thought about getting her tubes tied. She’d never bothered being careful with birth control because she’d never bothered having sex.

When she reached the first crossing street that actually had a walk signal, she realized she was still holding the dagger in her right hand. Early morning commuters must not pay much attention to pedestrians. She threw it in the trash side of one of those divided garbage cans, deciding it probably wasn’t recyclable.

As she turned onto her block, Little Milo and Big Milo came up beside her. The dog leaned his ridiculous head into her knees like he always did, nearly knocking her over. She reached down and scratched behind his ears, and he made the satisfied groaning sound like he always did. Little Milo asked her if she’d had to work a night shift and she told him they didn’t have night shifts at the grocery store, even though she wasn’t sure that was true.

On the second floor, she heard the sound of a radio playing coming from Carlos’s apartment. She hesitated. Then she knocked.

A moment later, Carlos opened the door. He sniffed. “Connie,” he said. “Have you … been to the gym?” He sounded surprised because if Connie had been to the gym it would have been the first time in her life. Then she realized she must smell pretty sweaty.

“Hey,” she said. “I was wondering if you want to go get some breakfast. I’ll take a shower first.”

He didn’t look so much surprised as he did confused.

“I’ve already had breakfast,” he said.

“Oh,” Connie said.

“But I’m free for lunch,” he said.

Connie remembered that she had a shift starting at ten. If she no-call-no-showed that would be it for her at the pharmacy.

“Sounds good,” she said.