“Look,” Jim said.
A car pulled up to Vasil’s Deli. A man got out. He was in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair. He walked up to the deli’s door, keys in hand. His fingers were shaking. His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot. He dropped the keys, crouched to pick them up, finally managing to get one in the lock, opened the door, and stepped inside.
Jim and I walked toward the deli. The CLOSED sign had been flipped to OPEN. The man was sitting in a chair, slumped over the counter, nodding off. Jim opened the door and I saw it, the dark furry cloud of magic, wrapped around the man, hanging off his back like a revolting liquid sack bristling with boar quills. Thin, slimy strands crossed his neck, garroting his throat, and stretched across his face, trying to worm their way to his nose and his eyes.
I jumped onto the counter and grabbed his hands. The magic hissed at me. The liquid sack on the man’s back broke and a nest of black furry snakes erupted, wriggling toward me, each armed with a dark beak where the mouth should’ve been. Jim cleared the counter and sliced through the phantom snakes with his knife. His blade passed through them. They didn’t even notice.
I pushed with my magic. The beaks struck at me, gouging bloody wounds in my arms. I pushed harder, trying to purge the awful darkness. It persisted, tightening around the man. I strained. The magic slithered back, retreating from his face but clenching to his back.
The man opened his blue eyes and looked at me.
“Mr. Vasil?” I asked.
“It’s Mr. Dobrev,” he said quietly. “Vasil is my given name.” He looked at my hands holding his. “Don’t let go.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
“Dali, talk to me,” Jim said, his face grim.
“You see the magic?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Right now I’m holding it back, but this is all I can do. If I let go, it will swallow him again.”
“Why is this happening to me?” Mr. Dobrev asked.
“We don’t know,” I said. “When did it start?”
“Two nights ago. At first it was just a heaviness, then a headache. I went to bed early. I thought I had caught the flu. Then she came.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
He leaned to me. His voice shook. “The hag.”
“Tell me more,” I said. “Tell me about the hag.”
His face went slack. He had big, rough hands, the kind strong men who work with their hands a lot get, and his calloused fingers were trembling. He was terrified. “I opened my eyes. The bedroom was dark. I felt this oppressive weight on my chest, so heavy. Like a car. My bones should’ve cracked and I don’t know why they didn’t. And then I saw her. She was sitting on my chest. She was . . .” He gulped the air. “Thin . . . like a skeleton. Long, matted grey hair, black fur on her arms, and fingers with talons, like a bird. Long talons, just like in the painting.”
“What painting?”
“A painting I saw . . . long ago. She sat on top of me and stared. I couldn’t call out to my son. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even wriggle my toes. We stayed like this for hours. I finally fell asleep and woke up tired. So tired. Last night she came again. I could barely move this morning. I think she’s trying to kill me.”
Jim looked at me.
“The old hag syndrome,” I said. Most of my magical expertise was tied to what Westerners considered Far East, but I had some education about European myths. You can’t live in the U.S. and not be exposed to it. “Before the Shift, people thought it had to do with deep sleep paralysis, which occurs when the brain transitions from rapid eye movement phase to wakefulness. Sometimes mental wires get crossed and the brain partially wakes up but the body remains paralyzed, as if we are still asleep. It feels like a great weight is pinning you down and you are frozen. Before the scientific age, people thought it happened because of demons, incubi and succubi, or sometimes, old hags. If the legends are true, she’ll feed on him until he is dead and I don’t have the power to purge her like this.”
“We’re going to have to kill the hag,” Jim guessed.
That’s why I loved him. He was smart and quick.
“Mr. Dobrev,” I said. “I need you to fall asleep.”
He shuddered like a leaf. “No.”
“It’s the only way. We will be right here. When she comes, we’ll take care of her.”
“No.”
“You will wake up, Mr. Dobrev. You don’t know me, but trust me, you will wake up. Go to sleep now, while you still have some strength left.”
He looked into my eyes and let go of my fingers.
“Take a deep breath,” I told him, trying to sound confident. “It will be okay. It will be fine.”
The dark magic rolled over him. Mr. Dobrev took a long shuddering breath. He looked like he was drowning.
“It’s okay,” I murmured. “It’s okay. I’m here. I won’t go anywhere.”
“Please,” he said. “Why me? Why . . .”
I felt so terrible for him. He was so scared. But it was the only way. “Let it happen,” I murmured.
Gradually his eyes lost their light and turned glassy. He blinked, then blinked again, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.
“If the myths are true, she has to become corporeal to kill him,” I said. “When that happens, we have to get her first.”
Jim pulled a second knife from the sheath on his hip.
We waited. The shop was quiet around us.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “It has to be connected to Eyang Ida. That’s just too big of a coincidence. But jenglots and the old hag are literally from opposite sides of the planet. No magic user should be able to summon both.”
“We need to look into that law firm,” Jim said.
“He did say he saw the hag in a painting before?” I asked.
“Yes.”
It meant something. We sat and waited.
I had no idea how much time had passed. It had to be close to an hour. Jim brought my cursing kit to me and I sat with it, my ink, brush, and papers ready, staring at the deli meat cuts behind the glass under the counter. I was hungry. The rest of the shop was filled with shelves crowded with canned goods, Slavic-themed snacks and every fruit and vegetable that could be pickled. I really wanted to try some, but taking without permission was stealing.
A few minutes after Mr. Dobrev’s breathing had evened out, the furry magic began to crawl ever so slowly, shifting from his back onto his chest, and finally now it sat right under his neck, a big ugly blob that took up all of him all the way to the waist.
The roar of a water engine came from the outside. I glanced through the glass storefront. A yellow school bus rolled down the street.
The sack on Mr. Dobrev’s chest trembled.
I leaned forward.
A ripple shifted the fur. Another. It looked like a tennis ball rolling under some revolting blanket.
I pulled a paper out and began writing a curse. The curse had to be fresh, so I would finish it the second before I actually slapped it on her. I paused with my brush in the air. One stroke left.
Outside a boy, about ten or eleven, turned the corner and walked toward the building. Must be Cole and Amanda’s son.
A thin black talon broke the surface of the fur. Something was about to come out.
The air in the middle of the street wavered, as if suddenly a cloud of vapor had escaped from underground and got caught in a dust devil. What in the world . . .
The air turned, twisted, and shaped itself into a car. What the hell? I’ve never heard of a magic car appearing out of thin air . . .
My brain blazed through the evidence, making a connection. My older brother died on his way from school, Amanda’s voice said in my head. He was run over . . . Oh my gods.
The car turned solid. Its engine revved. There was nobody behind the wheel.
“Jim!” I pointed at the boy. “Save him!”
He whipped around, saw the car, the boy, and leaped right through the window into the street, shards of glass flying everywhere.