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Hunter is the closest thing to Caleb that Philip has ever helped crawl from the blood-sogged soil. Maybe that’s why he feels a fondness for this attempt. Just this once, even though this imitation has strayed from the path so lovingly laid at his feet, Philip will amend instead of strike out. Hunter will see it as mercy, and Philip will get closer to what he truly wants: his brother, back in the flesh.
Call it vanity, insecurity, or in Philip’s heart of hearts, the ennui of almost everything going to plan for so long. Power has been predictable, like a lake so still that a ripple set off by a leaf falling in reaches the opposite shore. Philip is bored and wants to be amused. If this doesn’t work, he can always take up gardening and turn Hunter to mulch.
*
Alas for entertainment, it’s too easy. The very palisman Caleb carved with Evelyn leads Hunter to a fragment of Philip in the human realm. Compared to other times he’s cleaved himself, this piece of him is as weak as a fraction of a worm. Hunter still loses against the frailty of an annelid. Philip writhes in through a fresh scar, an open door. Hunter is defenseless.
As Philip uncoils in Hunter’s mind, he flips through his memories like the pages of a book. The months in the human realm the main offshoot of Philip spent amassing enough fat, protein, and bone to stand on its own two slimy feet play out in Hunter’s mind. At the speed of neurons, faster than the fiercest winds in the Boiling Isles, Philip watches. Philip reads. Philip takes notes.
Most of Hunter’s exploits are little more than psychic sewage, riffraff clogging the inside of his skull: motorized horses, lightning-powered moving pictures, apple blood mocktail recipes, flyer derby plays. Watching for long enough, Philip notices patterns. They are detestable.
He sees Hunter meet Willow, the witch who teaches him that he can strive for something because he wants to, because he likes it, because he might be good at it. If Philip had known it was this one who taught Hunter to think, he would have squeezed out her emerald entrails when he saw her at the Head. But now is not the time for hypotheticals or regret. The mistakes of the past are the lessons of the future.
Philip’s shards of self have no stomach, but that non-existent organ churns within him, acid and tidewater, as Hunter falls for her, this Willow, like a candle melting into wax.
They’re in a garden. Hunter is thinking about how she smells or what it would be like to spread sunscreen on her back when his mind should be on the bees swarming about. They’re in a strange box that makes rapid engravings with pigmentation. Hunter looks at her with eyes full of weakness that will be immortalized in ink. On and on the reels unspool. On and on Philip’s psychic gut fills with disgust.
Call it seventeenth century sensibilities, but Philip understands, purely intellectually, why his brother might be drawn to her. She is voluptuous, well-proportioned and pale. She would be quite attractive to one Hunter’s age, save for being a witch. There is hope for Caleb yet.
Philip works most when Hunter sleeps. He will wake knowing he’s had nightmares, but his brain is powerless to resist Philip’s questions. In the physical face of the human realm, Philip is a powerless man, aged to emaciation and wrinkles and vinegar, but in Hunter’s psyche, he is a god.
He fingers through one volume of memories and cross-references another. “How adorable, your first day on Penstagram and you were sending a picture of your palisman to the girl you fancy.”
Hunter is combative. He always is when Philip corners him like this, but what can he do but knock frantically at the corners of his own mind? Even if the bones break and the walls crumble, he’ll never escape himself.
“Come now,” Philip would spread his hands if he had any in this form, “everything known to you is known to me as well. And, do you think I’m not on Penstagram, Ruler’s Reach fuh-four-n?”
Hunter scowls. “It’s Ruler’s Reach fan, the four is a letter A, uncle.”
Philip finds it endearing that he calls him uncle and not brother, not master, not Emperor, not creator, even with all that he knows. Philip sees his own influence as a trellis, and Hunter as the vines, alive, an independent organism dependent on him for support and structure. Despite his months away from the Demon Realm, Hunter has not disowned himself from his implanted narrative. He continues to show promise. Caleb is close.
“Okay, Ruler’s. Reach. Fan. ” Every consonant comes with the threat of a dagger point in the stomach. “Why don’t you tell me all about Penstagram and your new, whatever, bayonets and steam engines.”
“Tsch, I bet you have three followers and they’re all porn bots!” Hunter spits.
It’s often hard for Philip to remember that Hunter is only sixteen when he watched Caleb live into old age and has considered every Golden Guard a continuation of the original. Then there are moments like this.
Philip considers his own words, that Hunter looks most like Caleb. With this Willow as his Evelyn, he acts like him too. Caleb was drawn, moth to vaporizing flame, to Evelyn’s embrace before Philip could save him. Hunter and Willow are, by all appearances, chaste. There is hope for Hunter yet. Philip will guide him and help him escape temptation.
“You wish for the heart of this witch.” Philip says sympathetically and tastes curdled milk. “Why don’t we go tell her then?”
“Not like this.” All the eyes watching narrow. “Not with you here.”
“You think you have a choice? You don’t.”
Philip rouses Hunter from sleep with every truth he knows but won’t admit. Yes, he is a clone. Yes, he is a grimwalker, called forth from resin and crystal and stone. Yes, he has no family but the man who controlled his waking and now his sleeping hours, who is both his brother and his great-great-great-great- Philip counts on his fingers to let Hunter know the exact number of times someone like him has failed.
This is the exciting part, when Hunter’s blood storms through its vessels with such vigor and speed that Philip almost feels like he has a body.
“Wake up, let’s go.”
It’s nice when Hunter is obedient, the most comfortable, even if Philip knows he doesn’t have a choice. Hunter stirs, yawning and stretching with a vague sense of disgust, having turned the part of the sleeping mat that his body sunk into into a marsh. Every covered inch of his skin is tacky. His heart beats as fast as Flapjack’s. The bird palisman rises with him.
He notices his forelock seems longer, but chalks it up to the strangeness of night, when eyes don’t know the truth of what they see.
This is so easy.
Hunter climbs the stairs, holding his elbows. Philip gets it, it’s a little hug for himself, temporary comfort along a journey that ends in the witch’s arms. How endearing. How disgusting.
The bedroom door creaks open. A handless clock tells time in piercing red. Amity and Vee are light sleepers and stir, but see it’s only Hunter, again, and re-submerge into slumber.
Flapjack coos a quiet greeting to Clover and nestles in beside her.
“Willow,” Hunter gets down on both knees by the head of her bed. He touches the back of her hand. “I had a nightmare.”
Willow rolls onto her side to be closer to him. “What’s your streak now?” she mumbles into her slobbered-on pillow. It’s the same as asking, how many nights in a row have we shared this mattress that barely fits just one of us?
Hunter counts on his fingers. “I think eight? Yeah, eight.”
“High score.” Willow yawns, patting the empty spot next to herself. Hunter crawls in beside her. She redistributes the blankets and the pillows to cover them both.
She wraps her arms around him and breathes, deliberate and slow until his furious heart settles.
Philip can’t remember whether Caleb would do this, whether he would hug or be hugged. Sadness is a strange feeling. It should have calloused over after so long of defining determination as the only emotion worth experiencing. Perhaps hope is a weakness, which like water finds every crack.
Hunter falls asleep quickly within the comfort of Willow around him. His mindspace tremors when, upon arrival, it is full of Philip, who has one command.
“Say it.”
Hunter’s mouth moves. “I love Willow.” He bites his tongue, chews on his cheek. The dream is not a dream.
“Do you mean it?” Willow whispers back. Hunter flinches, then folds in on himself.
“I didn’t mean to say it.” Hunter’s breathing is again shallow and swift.
“But now that you’ve said it, do you mean it?” Willow rocks back and forth against him, half to calm him down and half to persuade him. “I need to know if I should say it back.”
Hunter summons courage. “I—“
Philip knocks on Willow’s mind. It’s like rattling at a gate. She welcomes him with a green glow and a doorslam that rattles teeth the splinter of Philip doesn’t have. She is a strong witch with formidable determination. For the sake of Caleb’s soul, she must be eliminated.
“Hunter!” Willow shouts. “What did you do!”
Bands of rot stretch across Hunter’s face and coil around his limbs as Amity smashes the light switch. His eyes glow a strange blue, like the outer rim of a neon OPEN sign.
Hunter smiles. No, Philip smiles.
“He tried,” Philip pauses, speaking with an unfamiliar mouth, “to love you.”
“Hunter attacked me, but it’s not Hunter!” Willow yells, throwing blankets in his face and scrambling across the room.
The response is hectic.
“Batata, wake up!” Amity screams.
Vee shrieks for Camila as the palismen huddle behind her tail.
“Stop.” Philip traces a magic circle in the air and gawks when it works. Everyone’s movements jerk to a halt. “So noisy, so nosy. I just want her.” Hunter’s finger points.
“Let me in!”
He lurches for Willow. Whether from arrogance, sloppiness, or a want of challenge, he lets the holding spell drop.
Amity throws a pillow at him. Hunter’s arm bubbles and bursts, splits apart, an oozing rift yawning between the tibia and fibula. With it, Philip slices fabric and walks through a cloud of feathers.
“Won’t you leave us be?” Philip pleads, patronizing.
“This is a bedroom full of teenage girls.” Amity retorts. “Take your own advice, creep.”
Luz, at last stirring, grabs Amity’s arm and shouts, “Get out of Hunter and get out of my room!”
She pulls Amity close as Hunter sends one branch of his arm into the wall behind her head.
Hunter smiles hazily as he cracks his arm at the elbow. Philip recalls a long-past childhood, bending the limbs of lobsters and crab until they snapped to get at the meat inside.
“Hunter?” Willow says expectantly. Her voice is the only steady part of her. Her fingernails dig crescents into shaking palms. It’s a miracle she’s still standing.
“No,” a smile dances on his face, “Philip.”
Hunter’s legs break and extend, coagulating with gnarled filaments of spindle and sinew. He gains inches then feet in height. His mouth keeps trying to say no, no, no, no but Philip smiles cheek to cheek. Hunter is easy to subdue, like stepping on a rodent’s tail. Philip hopes his spirit will be too. Once the flame of this second Evelyn is extinguished, the brothers Wittebane can return to their lives.
Willow falls, her back against Luz’s dresser. She slides out a drawer and raises it between Hunter and herself. Wacky patterned socks spill out around her.
Philip smiles. He would never wound a lady, but a witch? He has fantasized about doing this to Evelyn for four hundred years. Willow will have to suffice.
Hunter’s hand splays as wide as a rake. Plywood splinters. Willow’s glasses land across the room, clattering against the mirrored closet.
The paths of three clawed fingers cross Willow’s face. Instead of bleeding, their tracks teem with sickly ooze, that gray bile that passes for Philip’s flesh. He knows there’s a reason he went with this pattern. Where has he seen it before? Ah, Penstagram, the Emerald Entrails. This is a better version of her face paint, one that will teach her the right lessons.
If she were to live long after this, every look at herself would remind her that any joy she feels can be taken away, that anything can wither and wilt if given the chance to die. Alas, she will not be surviving this night, but Hunter can learn his lesson through her. For that moment, Philip thinks, even wiping out the palistrom forests, in the long term his only source of vitality, will be worth it.
“Watch me, Hunter.” Philip snarls. “This is what undid you so long ago, and why I have endured four hundred contemptible years of boiling hell to bring you back.”
He strokes Willow’s cheek. His consciousness tingles. It’s been so long since he’s had two puppets in the same room.
“Hello, Willow.” Philip says through her. “So hospitable of you to let me enter.”
The witch resists him. He doesn’t need full control, only to keep her from guiding Hunter further astray.
Hunter calls her name.
“Quiet you,” Willow slaps him hard enough to crack a jaw. “Once this wench is fertilizer for her own plants, we can get back the rest of our lives. Would you want to live forever? He did. That can be arranged.”
“I’m not him!” Hunter gasps, “I can’t ever be him.”
“I dug you up with my bare hands.” Willow says, her eyes drooping. “Death so fresh on the face of Caleb Wittebane that I thought you were still warm.”
“You may have pulled me from the earth, uncle. You may have sculpted me like marble. But I saw how many there were, in your mind, how many you threw away.”
“I did not throw them away, Hunter. I remember all of you. You have had so many names. James, Edward, Henry, Richard— and after I ran out of names of rulers, there were names from the Bible, names from the theater.”
Philip holds pieces of a golden mask, a spider-webbing crack in the center from a blow to the forehead. “This one, Ferdinand, refused to kill the head of the abomination coven.” He tosses it away.
Another mask appears in his hand and turns to fine powder. “Judah had a taste for sneaking out of the palace and cavorting with harlots.” Philip pours the dust out from his palm. It scatters before reaching the ground.
Philip finds a third mask, one with trickles of blood trailing down from the eyes. “William became fond of painting instead of going on missions. I broke his hands and he learned to paint with his mouth.”
The next mask is nearly pristine, gleaming with polish. “This one, Alois? Not my best work. Don’t think poorly of me, but I found his voice unpleasant. It was still sad to kill him.”
These and more are all etched onto Philip’s heart, the shreds of it that swirl around between the clots of palismen.
“When we’re done here, we can stop this drawn out game of pretend, and change your name to Caleb, as I always intended. Did you know that it means dog? Now like a dog, obey your master. Obey your brother.”
“Why don’t you just make another, and leave me alone!”
“I have so little of your body left, only so many do-overs. It would be nice if you could be the last.” Philip muses. “But just like Caleb, you’ve strayed. Your heart is with a witch, but I can forgive you for falling for her siren call. Unlike Caleb, I have the power to eliminate that flaw in you.”
It would be a sensuous, delicate gesture: a finger at her chin moves down to the neck and traces her collarbone. Instead, it is violent. The bones of Hunter’s hand are fused to end in a hair-splitting blade, organic obsidian.
Willow screams as plants erupt all around her. A stray poppy seed in her shorts in the dresser bursts into a bush, roots protesting at the wall. The succulents on Luz’s desk turn into spike-spangled chains. She aims her vines and branches at Hunter, but hesitates.
“Look, Caleb, you’re making me hurt her.”
Philip lets him see the price Willow will pay for being the object of his desire.
“I’m sorry Willow,” Hunter says. In the wake of his touch are beads of blood as red as Caleb’s palisman.
“Actually,” Philip returns Hunter’s hands to their normal shape. Skin covers muscle covers bone. “I’ll let you do this, so you learn your lesson. This is what we do to witches.” He arcs his hands around Willow’s neck and squeezes.
Camila opens the door with her hip, hands wrapped full around a dog snare and a taser.
“I’m putting an end to this!”
She loops the snare over Hunter’s neck and sends fifty thousand volts surging through his side.
Electricity is a funny thing. Philip knows of it, once read some drivel by one William Gilbert whose findings meant nothing in the Demon Realm. Philip knows the force of amber powers things like lights and tiny music boxes, all sizes of noise-producing boxes. What he has never tested, for never having the materials or the cause, is the effect of electricity on possession.
Electricity and possession, it turns out, do not mix. Philip’s hold wastes away like ice thrown into boiling water. He retreats to a deep corner within Hunter’s mind, still believing that this version is redeemable. There will be other occasions to strike. For the next time, he knows what he’s up against.
Hunter is stiff, his entire body one great cramp, but he is alone in his head again.
“Everyone, let’s get cleaned up.” With one hand, Camila digs into her bag and throws wipes and bandages like game show prizes. “Willow, you’re lucky that Luz is a very fast texter.”
The snare wire sits tight around Hunter’s neck. He squirms against it, gives up, and weeps.
“Just what the fuck is going on here?” Camila wields the f-word for only the second or third time in her life. “I can’t be judge, jury, or executioner here.” She looks at the panicked girls in the room before settling on Willow.
“He hurt you. What do you want me to do?”
Willow rises without words. Camila yields her grip on the snare pole.
Hunter slouches against the closet door, whimpering and pleading, single I’m sorrys lost to the undercurrent of anguish.
Willow reaches out to him but can't bring herself to touch him. Hunter is not Philip, but this is the body that did this to her. She grits her teeth as she wipes her neck. Alcohol stings fresh wounds.
“He was trying to get into my head, but I didn’t let him,” she says.
“He’s always been in my head, even when he wasn’t. Every nightmare I’ve had, it’s his voice, his eyes, his control. He took my childhood.” Hunter wheezes, ”over and over again.”
Flapjack rests on Hunter’s shoulder. Willow finds that is enough to feel safe holding his hand.
She brushes his fingers in question, which reduces him to tears again.
“We can talk later,” she whispers, drawing loose the wire around his neck. “but for now, we can breathe and we can cry.”
Later, when Hunter has words again and has stopped apologizing with every breath he can rasp, he says, “I’m glad we made it. I want you to know, I did mean it.”