“Because they shouldn’t have come today. I thought I talked them out of it.” She glared at Leroy and Sally. “I guess Jesse showed some sense and stayed home. What’s going to happen to them?”
“I don’t know.” I thought again of Upton, whose fate I’d yet to ask about. To my grandfather, in R’lyehn: “What do you plan now that you’ve captured them? They’re students at Miskatonic and Hall. They’re well-known and deeply entangled socially.”
Leroy’s knees bent a fraction. My grandfather—along with several others—hissed. Leroy bared his teeth, anger masking fear I could smell from the circle’s edge, but he did not leap.
“Twenty years ago,” my grandfather told me, “we had one or two people at Miskatonic to handle those who saw more than they ought. To scoff at their reports and demand impossible evidence until they doubted their own memories. Sometimes we bound intruders’ tongues, but that’s easy enough to break for someone who knows even a little spellwork—or is in a position to learn it. Sometimes…” He hissed again, this time thoughtfully. “Perhaps a binding that they would not seek to break. They seem young and healthy—fine thralls, if you treat them well, and you might make use of the boy’s seed without becoming overly attached.”
“Grandfather!”
“You would hardly be the first magician, of any human kind, to take as servants those who stumbled across your secrets.”
It would not do to sputter at my elders like some Victorian grandmother at a flapper. And it would miss the point. I took a deep breath, let the sea-touched air settle in my lungs. Then another, while I sought to assemble my words. For now I kept to R’lyehn, even though I saw Leroy and Sally grow more nervous as they failed to follow our conversation. “I am aware that it’s a tradition. It’s not one that I care for. I’ve spent too long as a prisoner to hold anyone captive, and I’ve seen too many forced to serve their captor’s pleasure. It nauseates me to think of doing likewise.”
His head whipped around. “Did they try that with you?”
“No—they thought we carried the metamorphosis like plague. Should it matter that it was only my beloved friends and never children of the water? Or that they starved and tortured and killed us, but never raped?”
“I did not suggest that you do any such thing to them, merely—”
I held up my hand. “Enough. I will consider breeding with a man of the air, if that is what we decide is truly best. But I won’t force them to it, and won’t hear any more suggestions that I do so.”
Grandfather frowned. “You’ve grown insolent in your isolation, Aphra Yukhl.”
Chulzh’th turned. “If she hasn’t had our voices to guide her, be glad she’s made her own worth listening to. But Aphra, if you will not have them killed or bound, what would you have us do? If they call attention to our presence, Innsmouth will be in grave danger. Especially now, when men of the air have weapons to reach the deeps.”
Audrey hovered, gaze darting from person to person. I glanced at the dunes—Charlie and Neko and Trumbull had not yet arrived with whatever wisdom they might offer. And Leroy and Sally’s tension had grown. At any moment they might break into hysterics or try to force their way free, and drive the elders to something irreversible. For now, my people held their tridents steady, immobile except for tiny movements that showed they were tracking our conversation and each other. They stood ready to maintain their siege for aeons, and yet the whole fragile situation would likely shatter within moments. I pushed my way between two guards, Ph’tngul and another whose name I could not remember, into the circle of their weapons.
“What do you intend to do?” I asked the prisoners in English.
Leroy tightened his arm around Sally. She squirmed a little in his grip, and glared at me. “What do you mean, what do we intend to do?” she demanded. She loosed an arm to gesture at the elders. “What are they going to do? What are they? What are you doing here? What’s Audrey doing here?” She paused, gulping air.
“This is our beach. This is our town. You came to see if it were haunted, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but…”
“Did you expect the ghosts to hover tamely for your delectation? Perhaps hoot a few times to make a good story? Did you even believe in magic, or read those books in the Miskatonic library?”
“I told you,” said Audrey from outside the circle. “They never let us in. Why do you think she followed him for a taste?”
I resisted a look at Leroy, and sighed. “And do you like your taste of forbidden lore?”
Sally bit her lip. “Don’t make fun. If you’re going to kill me, I’d appreciate it if you’d answer my questions first.”
One of the guards laughed, and she flinched. “A Miskatonic student to the core,” he said.
“I beg your pardon.” She pulled away from Leroy. He tried to reclaim her hand and she shook him off. “I am a Hall student.”
I smiled in spite of myself, aware that it would not be reassuring. “Audrey is here with me. I’m here to speak to my family, whom I haven’t seen since 1928. These are my family, and what they’re going to do depends on whether you can convince me—and them—that you won’t bring down the National Guard on us.” Spector might well be able to curtail such a thing, but it wasn’t something I cared to gamble on, and certainly nothing I could persuade the elders to take into account.
Leroy broke in—from the look he gave Sally I suspected he wanted to regain control of the conversation almost as much as he wanted to survive it. “Why shouldn’t we? Shouldn’t they know about you?”
Before I could find a response, Chulzh’th stepped between us and grabbed him by his starched collar. “We keep to ourselves. You are the intruders here—do you really think to threaten us?”
The sharp stink of ammonia told an end to any chance of rational negotiation. Leroy kicked and swung at her with unscientific punches. I pulled Sally to the side. “Say something sensible—anything!”
“We won’t tell. I promise we won’t tell!” She tried to pull away toward Leroy and Chulzh’th, but I held fast to her arm.
“That’s no guarantee—you can say anything.”
“What do you want?” Her breath came quickly, stinking of fear. “We tried a ritual last year. Some sort of crazy tantra thing Jesse found. One of the teachers caught us, caught me with Jesse and Leroy all together. Leroy’s dad paid to keep it quiet and there, a nice bit of blackmail, are you happy?”
Leroy froze in the midst of his struggle with Chulzh’th. “She’s making that up—I never!”
“Mammalian rutting,” said Archpriest Ngalthr. “Is what she describes truly forbidden? It has been a little while since Puritan mores held sway on land.”