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The April morning's air was crisp with sea salt and acrid with the fumes of industry. Slowly lifting smog smothered the morning light. A crow cawed.
"Are you sure about this?" Darcy Graves' voice sounded small, even to her.
The ghostly woman in the red dress next to her kept silent as she went through her ritual. Spectral hands rubbed oil across machined steel.
The crow cawed again and flapped his wings.
Mechanisms snapped together as hands suffused with the blue grey light of undeath worked with practiced ease. The same hands that had held a corn dog for Darcy to eat the night before. Hands that she'd held while walking the streets of Boston and talking with the ghosts of old sailors and revolutionaries. Hands that pointed and gestured at historical displays with excited glee on trips to museums just weeks ago.
"I am." Was Vindicta's eventual reply. Calm and even. Vindicta's face looked up from her task, her blue cheeks marked with the permanent run of ancient makeup and tears. Her small, sad smile was thin. A pretence of regret for Darcy's benefit.
"I know these guys are evil. That they're going to hurt others and that men like them hurt you." Darcy hugged her knees to her chest. Cold wind whipped across the rooftop and stole the heat from Darcy's fingers tips and ears.
"But you wish there was a better answer." Vindicta's voice was soft and tender. Like it was when she was reading aloud to Darcy in the days when she had been learning her letters. And then long past the point where that was necessary. "These men would see you hang for less than half of what you've done, and you wouldn't deserve it any more than I did."
The fig leaf was as obvious as it was loose. It was every single time they had this conversation The lie waved in the wind. Vindicta was doing this for one person, and it wasn't Darcy. "Yeah," she said, rather than challenging the sweet fiction. "I know."
Vindicta's hands slipped the bolt into the receiver and slid a single bullet into the chamber. Hands that Darcy knew for their delicate grace snapped the bolt home and ready. "You don't have to be here." Vindicta's voice and smile were not unkind. She reached out one hand to caress Darcy's cheek with a delicate touch at odds with the rifle in her arms. "It's never too late to go back."
Darcy nodded, but did not move. Vindicta also knew that death was Darcy's life. That was how they'd found each other in the first place. Darcy shepherded the restless dead and helped them find peace. She had to be here and bear witness. Darcy was an accessory to Vindicta's murders, regardless of where she sat. "I'm not going anywhere."
Darcy still hoped she could help Vindicta find peace too. Somehow.
Vindicta held the rifle to her, cradling the weapon of iron and wood in a manner not totally dissimilar to the way she had held Darcy the night before. "We both know what happens if I do nothing."
Darcy blamed herself. She blamed John Hathorne for the witch trials. She almost regretted the day she told Vindicta about John Brown. Almost. "Yeah. I do."
Vindicta shifted. Her body turned away from Darcy. The butt of the rifle cane to her shoulder. Cheek met rest. Eye found scope. The long white hair that Darcy had plaited together into a waist length French braid that morning flowed with the wind. The crimson bow at its end twisted and fluttered.
The crow hopped from his perch on the roof and landed in Darcy's lap. His beak snapped and he squawked. Darcy brushed his head and rolled out a pin feather. Tears ran down her cheeks.
The rifle cracked.
Vindicta had known only three points of kindness in her short life and longer unlife. The first had been her mother. The mother who had nursed her, protected her from the harsh New England winter, and the harsher rages of her father. The mother who had tried in vain to protect her from the wrath of John Hathorne and who had gifted her a second chance.
The second had been Wesley. A soul akin to her own. A superlative hunter given to understatement and a fury that burned as hot as her own. He had taught her the skills her father had only taught her brothers. The skills of the trapper, the watcher, and the patient hunter. It was the only way he knew how to love anymore. Everything else had burned with his son, daughter in law, and grandchildren.
Wesley hadn't been the one to teach her how to navigate the world she had found herself in. That had been the third star in the constellation: Darcy Graves. Darcy had found Vindicta when her spectral form had still been raw. Her soul a jumbled mess of horror, pain, and above all rage. Darcy Graves, prodigal necromancer, had given her soul a chance to agglomerate into something more than a screaming insensate mass while on a school trip to Salem. When Vindicta first asked her why, Darcy had simply smiled and shrugged. "I could hear you screaming from Providence."
It had been in their first meeting that Vindicta, clumsily and through half of a language barrier, had come to understand the shape of the world. The ordeal that had defined her and robbed her life from her was now an object of fascination for school children and outcast youths. Much like young Darcy, who had hair as white as Vindicta's, wore three black skirts of different cuts under her uniform, and practiced forbidden magics.
Vindicta had, and still did, marvelled at Darcy. She treated necromantic magic as a fun puzzle to be solved and not the subject of taboo. She ventured boldly and fearlessly into the ghastliest subjects imaginable without the slightest hesitation.
Darcy had also been the one to teach Vindicta her letters. A subject once reserved for priests, merchants, and other men of letters, was now mandatory learning for all. It was that time together, above all, that Vindicta cherished. The hours they would spend curled up together in Darcy's bed (or living room couch when they are alone) with Vindicta halting reading aloud, her finger tracing the page as she sounded out the shapes of words and tried to glean their meanings through contexts. The look of patient adoration on Darcy's face was what kept Vindicta going ever time she struggled. The warmth it instilled in her cold, dead heart was a bliss she had never encountered before, and she treasured it.
That was what made what she had to do all the harder. Wesley had taught her well. They had a common hatred and a common enemy. The Friends of Humanity were a vile collection of the rich, arrogant, and insecure. The worst sorts who would drown young girls for being witches and set a family alight for being mixed. Vindicta's mother had kept her soul together. Darcy had brought her back and given her form. And Wesley had given her a purpose.
The rotten seeds that were the bloodline of John Hathorne had not fallen far from the tree of their long dead patriarch. They could not be reasoned with, and Vindicta had to ensure that justice was served. For herself. For the girls who had died screaming with her. For Darcy, who would go the gallows the moment people like the Hathornes could get their way.
Vindicta floated at the foot of Darcy's bed. It was the dead of night, and Darcy kept her window unlocked just for her. Darcy slept peacefully in her bed, curled up as she hugged a hugged a well worn stuffed animal. It wasn't the first time Vindicta had seen Darcy asleep. Usually it came about because Darcy had fallen asleep while Vindicta had been reading to her. Vindicta floated there for some time, unwilling to disturb Darcy. The cold air did it for her. The young woman shivered, and stirred. Green eyes groggily opened and blearily blinked away sleep. Finally the gentle voice, slightly raspy from her smoking habit, asked, "Vindicta? Are you okay?"
Vindicta waited for Darcy to sit up and wipe at her face. "I'm quite alright, thank you. I wanted to speak with you."
Darcy smiled softly as she sat cross legged in her bed. "It's always good to see you. What's on your mind?"
Vindicta paused. It would be easy to turn her back to the problems she saw and live the quiet life that Darcy had offered to share with her. They both knew that was a pipe dream. When she spoke, her voice was soft, "I have made my decision."
"I'm coming with you."
The sudden determination in Darcy's voice and face shocked Vindicta to silence. She had expected Darcy to protest her decision. To cry, beg, and plead with her to reconsider the bloody pathway that lay before her. "Darcy..."
Darcy's words spilled out of her in the torrent of words long held in reserve. "I know what you're planning and I know what you're going to do and I've decided that I'm going to come with you."
Vindicta laughed, high and unsure. "I'm not sure that–"
"It's not a request." Darcy said flatly as she stood, dressed in a simple and rather flattering nightgown that might have made Vindicta flush had she had blood to rise. "I've kept a bag packed. I'm going with you."
"You don't know what you're asking for." Vindicta's lips drew tight. Necromancy was one thing. Darcy tended to the dead with a remarkable love and affection. Her heart was as large as it was soft. It was easy to forget that there was also a spine of iron lurking behind it.
"I'm not a child anymore, Vindicta." Darcy's lips drew thin as she discarded her nightgown to don her day clothes without an ounce of shame. It was nothing new to Vindicta, but she averted her eyes all the same. "I'm going to try to talk you down, fail, and become an accessory to death knows how many murders and to participate in a campaign of political violence. Somebody has to do it and it might as well be me."
Vindicta wondered if either of them had really had a chance to be children at all. "Very well. We'll leave in one hour."
"I only need half of that."
Darcy's ears were still ringing sixteen hours later, after a day spent conspicuously wandering Boston. The porcelain smile she'd worn had cracked when she saw the evening papers. The headlines had blaired 'Marathon runner shot dead!' and 'Hathorne Assassinated in Center Pack!'. She lay in the only bed of their hotel room, her arms wrapped around the ragged stuffed animal she'd left with.
Vindicta's arms, in turn, were wrapped around Darcy. Holding her close in cold embrace that was as comforting as it had first been two years ago; when Darcy had cried over the tragedy of another young woman who had been taken before her time. Something had changed between them the moment Vindicta had first held Darcy. Their connection, already close, had grown warmer in a way that Darcy couldn't define.
Now, with a pile of bodies that trailed across New England, it has changed yet again. There was a thrill now, deep in Darcy's guts. A little thrill as she lay with the killer she had helped to create. Darcy didn't put either the warmth or the thrill into words. How could she? Vindicta had even less experience than Darcy, and Darcy had next to none, beyond the preteen fumblings before she'd been fully rejected by her classmates.
Vindicta's hands held her tight, as if Darcy was the one who might lose her corporeal form at any given moment. They had become the hands of an assassin, drenched in blood. They were also the only hands that made Darcy feel tethered to the Earth. They felt like home.
Darcy had cried. She always cried for the dead, even if she accepted that some probably deserved it. She would probably always cry. She hoped she would, at any rate.
Vindicta's forehead pressed against the back of Darcy's head. Her lips grazed over the back of Darcy's neck. A shiver rolled through Darcy. Those cold hands tugged her just a little closer. The dark room was lit only by the cool blue of Vindicta's glowing form.
Darcy rolled over. Vindicta shifted back and withdrew her arms. Her eyes were a little wide, and darted nervously back and forth as Darcy finished shifting. Vindicta's voice was quiet when she asked, "Is something the matter?
Darcy hummed softly as she simply looked at Vindicta. She reached a hand up to brush her fingers across the black streaks of ancient makeup under Vindicta's eyes. Vindicta didn't flinch, she simply watched and waited. Darcy finally spoke, "I just wanted to look at you."
"Ah." Vindicta's lips twitched into a shy little smile. She reached up a hand and waved her fingers at Darcy. "Hello."
"Hey." A broader smile broke out across Darcy's lips as she moved her hand from Vindicta's face to her hand. Their finger tips touched, and then their palms. Questions swirled in Darcy. The questions. Do you feel this too? What do you want this to be? What does it say about me that I want this when I know you kill people? She left them unasked. Instead she asked, as their fingers laced together, "Did you want to go get some books tomorrow?"
Vindicta's smile broadened, ever so slightly as she held Darcy's hand. "I suppose that I can't refuse such a reasonable request, least of all on your birthday. Is there anything else you'd like?"
Twenty years old didn't feel real. Not yet. A stray impulse made Darcy's eyes flick to Vindicta's pale blue lips. Darcy wasn't sure if being here was the right choice, but she knew it was the only one she could live with. She wanted to say the words. She wanted a whole lot more. Darcy tilted her head forward. Vindicta watched, her smile unwavering, as Darcy's face crept closer and closer. Finally, her forehead came to rest on Vindicta's shoulder. She couldn't. Not now.
Maybe some day. When either Vindicta stepped off the bloody path she was on, or Darcy accepted Vindicta's rationale about the necessity and acceptability of what she did. Or perhaps one day Darcy would just do it and see what happened.
For now, Vindicta was her home and that was enough.