Chapter 31: Marina Murders (11)

The truck had grown cold and we had to let the engine run a bit before being on the road again.  The last glimmer of daylight faded behind the horizon.  Already, night was encroaching and fast.  It didn’t take long for the roads to turn completely dark.  Lev had to turn on his highbeams to see.

There was a weight to the silence.  Penelope had chosen to ride shotgun, instead of in the back with me.  Instead of pressing the issue, I chose to look out the window instead.  It turned out to be a really bad idea, because I kept spooking myself with thoughts of something looking back at me from the forest.

Rather than sleep, I opened up one of my books and read up on the Third Eye.  It was a good while before Penelope spoke.

“Did you take AP World History?”

This was the last place I expected questions about my high school curriculum to come up.  It had only been a few days but school seemed so distant and meaningless now.

“Nope.”  I answered.

Penelope continued, unbothered, “There’s a theory called environmental determinism.  Basically, the world we live in; all the wars, the different resources, even the culture, was all shaped by where people chose to live.”

“Ok?”

Her voice took on momentum, like a teacher giving a lecture.  “China and Brazil basically own agriculture.  Oil?  The Middle East.  Tech?  U.S, Japan, and Korea.  You with me so far?”

I nodded.  I hoped she was going somewhere with this.

She was.

“Then answer me this, Hallow.  Who owns Magic?”

I frowned.

“Magic?”  I asked eloquently, like the quick-witted high school student I was.

“Yes.  Magic.”

“I don’t know.  Society?  The magic home owner’s associations?”  I threw out some answers, but I knew that it wasn’t what Penelope was getting at.  It was like I saw a foggy picture of what she was trying to draw, but everytime I tried to get a better look, the picture slipped just out of reach.  My brain struggled with the concept of Magic as a resource, trying to get a better understanding of where Penelope was going with this line of questioning.

“Good guesses.  But I’m talking about it in terms of environmental determinism.  Do you think there’s  a place that has a stronger concentration of magic than elsewhere?”

I thought about it.  And I mean really thought about it.

“I’m new to this whole magic thing, but my guess? No.”  I spread my hands, “I just learned this week that the monsters in people’s closets are real.  But every single place in the world has a story about ghosts, monsters, and things that go bump in the dark.  Hell, I bet it’s harder to find a place without it.”

“And that’s without accounting for the fact that I met the Valentines and the Ryus, both from outside the States.  For all I know, Japan, Taiwan, India, and Canada have families that are every bit as powerful as those two that I have never met.  Hell, probably every other country in the world.”  I finished.

“You’re right.  There’s no pattern.  Not that we know about anyways.”

“For someone who claims to know almost nothing about practitioners, you know a lot.”

“Knowing about the history of the supernatural world on a larger scale, and having a general understanding of it, is different then knowing the specific details of what it is that your kind does.  Which in part, is due to your kind.”

The way she said ‘Your Kind’ annoyed me.  I chose to grunt in acquiescence instead.

“Besides, it’s my kind’s job to know it.  Or was.”

Finally, we were getting somewhere.  “Well, what is your kind?”

She sighed and I caught Lev’s eyes glancing towards me in the rearview mirror.  When someone does that, their cars tend to swerve, or veer away from the center.  Lev’s truck… it stayed perfectly straight.  Like Lev was aware of where he was on the road without looking.

“There are two ways to get resources in history.”

Ugh, she was continuing with the history lesson.  But she had my full attention now.

“Look.  If your neighbor has gunpowder, and starts to make guns, what do you do?”

“Make my own guns.”  I answered.

“Where do you get gunpowder from?”

“Someone else who has gunpowder.”

“If no one else has gunpowder?”

I frowned.

“Think hard, Hallow.  It’s not a trick question.”  Penelope urged.

I thought back to my own history classes, flipping the proverbial pages of the memories stored in my brain.  It was there somewhere.  It finally came to me.

“War or Marriage.”  I said under my breath.

The picture became a little clearer.

“But they have guns and you don’t.  What does that leave you with?”

Penelope’s voice had gone quiet, a little more than a hushed whisper.  But I heard her perfectly, above the revving of the engine and the crunching of snow beneath Lev’s truck.  My mind surged forward, clinging onto her words and wiping away the fog –an idea beginning to form in my brain.

“Marriage.”

That was the magic word.

“Humans needed a way to defend themselves from the supernatural.  Werewolves.  Goblins.  Baba Yaga.  Vampires.  Fae.  Changelings.  Things that could only be slain by magic.”  Then she added, "Practitioners."

I sat deathly still in my seat as she spoke.  

“My family,”  The words crawled out of her, quiet and still. “is the product of thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of years that humanity spent cross-breeding with the other side.”

“You were half-right about us not being human.  We’re not.  Not really.  Never treated like them anyways.”  Lev’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the steering wheel, and the leather squeaked under the strain.

“But we’re not practitioners either.”  Penelope said, “We’re the descendants of people who were sold off to the supernatural, Hallow.  People below even the gravekeepers, burakumin or the dalit.  Our mothers were captives, comfort women, and incubators –less than that at times.  Food.  And our fathers were monsters made flesh; warlords of the Fae, Vampires who were worshipped as gods.  Not always royalty either; Troll under a bridge, an outcast Strigoi who managed to take control of a helpless village in some remote place.”  She shuddered.  “And sometimes, they were the mothers.”

“Common werewolves.  A goblin general here.  A powerful spirit there.”  Lev’s voice shook.

“Over time, just like all inhuman practices, it was phased out.  Atleast, in Europe.”  Penelope shrugged, and her shoulder drooped –lower than before.  “Don’t ask me any specifics, because I don’t know.  But it was a long time ago.  Long enough so that the world forgot about us.  Who we are, what we represent.  How we were treated.”

“So to answer your question, there is no good way to tell you what we are, without going into the history of how we were made.  Right now…”  Penelope shrugged, “I guess we’re just like every other poor creature on this side of the fence.  Trying our best to survive.”

“And your family does that by ghost-hunting?  Investing in real estate?”

“It’s the twenty-first century, Hallow.  Money is the new game, and mortal law is just another rule to be abused.  You’d be hard-pressed to find a place where the presence of the supernatural is not.  Corporations, crime, sanitation department, even local businesses…”  Penelope paused.  “Does that answer suffice?”

I didn’t know.

It felt like her story was full of holes.  For example, I still had no idea what they were.  Well, to be fair, I guess she didn’t either.  My dad was Armenian and my mom was Korean.  But I don’t really identify with either culture.  I’m just… me.

I could only guess at how defining one’s identity by bloodline got increasingly complicated when you had to account for Uncle Werewolf and Aunt Mermaid.

I found Penelope looking back at me over her shoulder.

I like to think of myself as somewhat good at reading people.  

I think she was scared.  

Of what I’d say.  How I’d react.  That sort of thing.

Maybe I’m being melodramatic.  But I think everyone has a small fear inside of us.  Of not belonging anywhere, of being a reject.  I mean, take a look at some of the people at my old school.  Piercings.  The wild hair color.  The make-up.  It screams ‘look at me, pay attention to me’ but simultaneously, it says ‘don’t come too close or I’ll hurt you’.

Some people don’t want companionship.  Or friends.  I can get that.

But some of us kids are pushed into a situation where we convince ourselves we don’t need anyone else.  When in reality, we’re not.

I think Penelope was the latter.

Being descended from a family that were used as sex slaves for monsters probably isn’t the best for one’s self-esteem.  It probably makes making friends equally as hard.  I mean, how many people could understand that kind of backstory?

Hell, how many people around our age were in the know of the supernatural?  The two I met in Emyrith’s office kind of sucked.

Look, the point is that I think Penelope was scared.  

And honestly, I’ve been there.  I’m still there.  

You don’t have to be someone’s friend to be kind.  And that’s what I decided to be at that moment; just because and totally not because we were about to hunt a serial-killer supernatural being with my life depending on her.

I tried for a full smile, but I caught myself giving her a crooked one in the mirror.  “Honestly, I thought it’d be scarier.  Like some ancient god worshipping cult members or something.”

It could've been my imagination.  But right before she turned around, I think the girl beamed at me.  Then just like that, it was gone.  When she spoke, it was in the same matter-of-fact tone I had grown to expect from her, “Glad you’re on board.”

“Hate to break up this touchy-feely moment we’re having here,”  Lev drawled and maybe I’m crazy, because I heard the echoes of a smile in his voice too.

“But we’re here.”

…Shit.