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lexmagica · 5 years

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Long Distance

by Lauren Roy

Hello from Ohio!

Passed a sign for the Paper Airplane Museum on the road and thought of you. Hope I will get home to you before this arrives

Love, Glen

The mailbox clanging shut sounds like a judgment, like it read the words he wrote and knows them for the lies they are. He hasn’t passed any such sign, first of all, just grabbed the first postcard his hand landed on. He won’t beat it home, either; he’s got at least another half day of driving ahead of him — in the opposite direction. At least the name is only half a lie. It was his name. Still is, as far as Sam’s concerned. It’s the name on the bills, on his license, on their marriage certificate. But for going on seven years now, it hasn’t fit him at all.

He leaves the too-bright rest area just in time, returning to his car as a busload of road-weary tourists pulls in. He can’t help but feel the miles radiating off them, not just in the way they knuckle their backs or breathe in big gulps of non-recycled air, but also in how each one yearns a bit towards home, wherever that might be. He could look with the Sight, if he wanted, see the blue and red strands radiating out from tired travelers like lines on a map, but then he’d have to see his own as well, the golden one leading back to Sam.

Instead, he switches on the shortwave radio on the passenger seat and sits back, listening. Tessa taped a note to the back of it when she lent it to him; instructions, mostly, and a gentle “I want this back in one piece, Nax.” Nax is the name he can’t tell Sam. He can’t tell him about Tessa, either, or any of this.

Before he can get too far into the guilt spiral, the static dies down and the chimes begin. Two bars of a song he almost recognizes but can never quite place. That’s not the important part, anyway. What matters is what follows the tune.

The voice is vaguely feminine, inflectionless, reciting a handful of numbers. Batches of five, repeated twice, then a new set. Nax copies them down dutifully even though they’re useless to him in this mundane form. If they’re a cipher, he doesn’t have the key. What they’d translate to is only a mild curiosity for him; he records them in case anyone back at the Athenaeum might want a look. But underneath that dull, dry voice, hidden within the litany, woven around it, shimmers true meaning. He closes his eyes, and his soul thrums to the tinny sound of High Speech emanating from the shortwave’s speaker.

Much as he’d like to simply sit and let it wash over him, the transmissions are short. If he doesn’t act now, he’ll need to wait another hour before it repeats, and he wants to be well on his way before then. Nax digs the spiral-bound atlas out from under the passenger seat and draws his compass from inside his coat pocket. The needle swings wildly as he utters his spell, grasping at the voice coming from the radio and riding its waves back to the source. He’s been chasing it for three days now, knows he must be close. Last time he looked it was…

It’s moved.

“Son of a bitch,” he mutters.

The signal’s origin is somewhere off to the southwest. More highways, more miles, more time spent away from Sam.

He considers going home. Drive through the night, goose the laws of speed and distance a bit, and he can be back before Sam leaves for work in the morning. He imagines the look of joy on his husband’s face, thinks they of how they’ll read his postcard together when it arrives in a couple of days.

Nax pinpoints where he is on the map, traces his finger up to the next exit and finds the cloverleaf that’ll get him headed back east. He’s going to do it; he’s made his mind up to go home, and—

The broadcast stops. Static fuzzes in, fills the air.

I can’t lose the thread. Twelve extra hours is all he needs. Sam will understand. He always does.

• • •

“Hey, you’re probably in your Tuesday meeting. I wasn’t paying attention to the time zones. Sorry I missed you. I just wanted to let you know I’m going to be a couple more days. The audit hit a snag, and they’re sending me to one of the other locations to… I can feel your eyes glazing over and you haven’t even listened to this yet. Anyway. I’ll check in when I get to the hotel tonight, okay? I’m sorry. I love you.”

The time zone thing is bullshit. Nax knows exactly what time it is back home and waited until ten minutes after Sam’s weekly team meeting had started to make sure he’d miss him at his desk. It’s easier than hearing the disappointment in his husband’s voice.

The job’s another half-lie, of course. He was an auditor, back before he Awakened, and if you squint a little, what he does for the Mysterium is a type of auditing, too. Which means he can sling about the buzzwords well enough to make Sam believe he’s still at it, and field the whatdo-you-do questions at parties like it’s nothing. It’s an excuse to be on the road, one that his gas and hotel receipts will bear up to any scrutiny Sam puts to them.

Except Sam wouldn’t suspect a thing. Nax loves him for his trust and hates himself a little for taking advantage of it every time.

He drives all day, catching rush hours in two different cities. Breakfast is the sludge the gas station calls coffee. Lunch is a beef stick and a packet of crackers and fake cheese. Dinner is a fast food burger with a side of fries and regret.

Funny, how he always knows exactly where he is, but in all these in-between places he feels like he isn’t truly anywhere.

His only companion, every hour on the hour, is the woman’s voice, reading off her numbers. She begins to sound lonely to him, or sad, probably both. Or maybe he’s projecting.

When he stops for gas, cheap food, or a chance to stretch his legs and walk some feeling back into his numb backside, he double checks his spell. The signal’s source is holding steady, and the encouragement that brings — supplemented by enough energy drinks to keep a college dorm awake for a week — means he drives until nearly two in the morning.

For the first time in four days, he leaves the interstate. His GPS leads him to a cornfield, and when he shuts off the car’s engine, the only sounds are the rustling of the wind through the stalks and the static of the open station on the shortwave. It’s 1:58, and Nax gets out, peering into the corn, hunting for a shape in the dark. Must be a transmitter out there, right?

Two minutes take two years to pass. For a horrible moment, as the clock flips, he’s sure he won’t hear anything, that he’s just barely too late, and the station has played its last. Then comes the heartbeat of silence, the song, and the compass is out of his pocket before he even registers it, the spell tumbling from his lips. He makes the place within that first row of stalks by the edge of the road and the spot in the middle of the cornfield the same spot, and steps into it.

Her voice falls away as Nax lets the magic fade, the shortwave radio suddenly too far for him to hear. Now it’s just him and the corn, and he’s casting about for the transmitter. He doesn’t need to hear the broadcast to feel the resonance of High Speech all around him. It’s here somewhere. It has to be. He’s casting about for other minds, but he’s the only person around for acres. He’s scrabbling for soundwaves, but they’re not where they were a moment ago.

It’s moved again. God damn it.

Nax sinks to his knees in the sandy soil. He gropes for the signal, scrawling runes in the dirt to boost his awareness, humming the bars of that odd little tune as though he can call the voice back to him. But it’s gone. The High Speech hidden beneath-within-around the numbers still buzzes against his consciousness, but even that’s fading — the echo of magic done. He almost wishes Tessa were here; his familiarity with Time is shaky at best. She’d know what to do.

Instead, he will go back to the car and wait until the clock strikes three, triangulate again, and get back on the road. He doesn’t need his Witch friend here to spin out that particular tale.

I could give up, he thinks. He’s tired, wrung out, half a week of crap food and unfamiliar beds taking their toll. He could get on the road and head toward home, like he’d almost done yesterday. Get there mid-morning if he’s conservative with the magic or call Tessa and have her scope out an unlit corner of a rest stop parking lot he can teleport right into, Paradox be damned. Shit, he could step right into his own backyard at this time of night. Tell Sam the car broke down and he caught a ride home from the towing company.

He could do it, but as he stands and brushes off his dirty knees, he checks the time and sees it’s just after two-thirty. No matter what he does, he’ll be in the car when the next broadcast starts. The need to know surges, and Nax tells himself he’ll keep the idea of going home in his pocket, that if the next signal is more than four hours’ drive away, he’ll let some other sucker solve this one.

Okay, more than six.

By the time he gets back to the car, he’s feeling better. Every good journey has its crisis-of-faith moment, right? He needs a good night’s sleep and a decent breakfast. This isn’t the kind of decision to make in the dead of night. Besides, he’s so close to figuring it out. He’s sure of it.

It’s only later, as he tumbles into bed in a chain motel (fully clothed, dirt in his shoes and strands of corn silk in his hair) that a terrible pun comes to him, something about being surrounded by all those ears and not being able to hear the broadcast. Sam would get a chuckle out of that, he thinks, but he can never tell Sam the truth behind this strange quest of his. Maybe he can turn it into a funny work anecdote. Maybe—

Shit. I forgot to call home.

• • •

“Sweetie, you look like shit.”

“This is why I hate FaceTime, Sam. It was a late night, is all.”

“Are they going to let you come home anytime soon?”

“...”

“You’re making the Bad News face.”

“I fucking hate FaceTime. Have I mentioned that?”

“How much longer?”

“I don’t… I don’t know yet. Every time I think I’m near the end, something changes. I can’t get a handle on it.”

“Tell your boss you need a couple of days to step back from it, see it with fresh eyes. Or, hell, I’ll tell him.”

“If only it were that easy.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you, too, babe. I’m trying real hard to get home to you, okay?”

“Okay.”

Sam doesn’t call him on his lying face, though if he can make out the Bad News one, he can definitely make out the lying one.

Four hours turned into six turned into twelve turned into another three days. Another three stops where the signal fizzled out before Nax could get to its source. He’s thought about ‘porting straight to it, cut across all those miles in an eyeblink and be done with this, but it feels wrong. Like he’s cheating if he does that.

So he takes the long way around, the Sleepers’ way, the way that — he fears — reinforces the Lie so he can get to some kind of truth. He hopes it will be worth it, in the end.

The images the High Speech conjures in his mind all have to do with liminality and transition. He wonders if that’s why he can’t shake the feeling of not being anywhere. He’s moving, always moving, and even the times he shuts the car off and walks away awhile, he’s figuring out where he’s heading next.

Sometimes, especially on long, unlit stretches in the dead of night, Nax is certain he truly isn’t anywhere — as though the darkness on either side of the road is endless void rather than the absence of light. Other times, he’s sure the highways he’s cruising along aren’t on U.S. soil anymore, maybe not even on Earth. Maybe he’s on Mars, in another galaxy, another universe, another dimension. Perhaps, rather than pavement, the road beneath him is composed of abstract concepts: bravery, free will, pride.

Calls home are tense. Rather than fight, Sam’s refrained from picking up the last couple of times. Nax knows he’s there, listening to the machine. Checking on your husband when you’re a Mastigos is as easy as breathing. Easier than, maybe. But rather than keep scrying and see the hurt on his husband’s face, he pretends Sam’s simply not home. That’s easier, too.

• • •

9:32 A.M. I’m almost done here. If I don’t have what I need by Friday, I’m coming home no matter what.

2:14 P.M. Babe, are you okay?

8:52 P.M. Are *we?*

The restaurant has four thousand locations across the country, strung along the interstates like the kitschiest pearls. The food’s good, though. Coffee’s strong, wait staff’s friendly. It’s disconcerting how alike they all are. It’s more than the building’s layout; every item in the gift shop is the same, displayed in the same spot no matter if he’s in Iowa or New Jersey. He wonders if they’re identical down to the inch.

The waiter keeps the coffee coming, brings him a slice of pie free of charge because “you look like you could use a little kindness.” Maybe it’s because he’s alternating between staring at his phone and fiddling with the shortwave radio, its volume turned low. He missed the signal by seconds last night, but it’s nearly Friday, and he can’t break another promise to Sam. But he’s so close.

His phone buzzes, but it’s not Sam. It’s Tessa. Fill up early, she’s texted. Just a feeling. Like Witches ever “just” have feelings.

Before he goes, the waiter gives him a to-go cup for his coffee. “You remind me of someone,” the waiter says. “Guy who used to come around here once a month or so. One of those guys who lived on the road, you know?”

“I have a home. I’m from Maryland.”

“You’re a long way from Maryland.”

Nax grunts.

“Anyway, I put you in his booth because I thought you were him at first. He was nice. Used to say how he never liked being anywhere. Or, wait, no. He liked never being anywhere. There’s a difference. He had a radio like yours, except he had a microphone.”

That makes Nax peel his eyes from his phone. “Does this guy have a name?” Now that he’s paying attention, he sees how the other man’s eyes have glazed over, the slight furrow of his brow that says something’s eluding him. Nax lightly taps a rhythm on the table, reaches out to see what’s going on in the waiter’s mind.

It’s slippery. Like he’s trying to latch onto a thought, but his brain keeps sliding off it. It’s not a spell, but neither is it entirely of this world. “I don’t remember his name. It’s been a long time since I saw him.”

“You said he had a circuit. Do you know where he usually went from here?”

The waiter struggles with it. When he finally spits out, “North. Through the mountains,” he sags like he’s just run a marathon.

Nax leaves him a 20-dollar tip.

Half an hour later, he’s tearing along the highway, barely slowing down when the road curves. The broadcast starts, the song he finally recognizes as an older version of his and Sam’s wedding song. As the numbers start, the car sputters to a stop. Too late, he remembers Tessa’s text. Nax turns on the hazards and guides it to the shoulder, cursing the whole time. When he gets out, he brings the shortwave with him, pops out his compass. Except, he doesn’t need either. He can hear the numbers without the radio. Just ahead, coming out of the dark.

The scenery around him is gone. Before, the mountains were dark shapes against a darker sky. Now it’s all blackness, except the flashing of the hazards. The light catches a shape on the ground, not a radio, but an antenna, stuck into the dirt at the edge of the road. As Nax comes closer, he realizes it’s not metal, but crystal. He plucks it from the ground, feels the words settle around him. Into him. Nowhere. Everywhere. In-between.

Standing in this no-place, Nax understands at last. The numbers, the Speech, they’re echoes of an Ascension. He’s not sure whose — not yet — but that’s a Mystery for another day. The highway returns as he trudges back to the car, clutching the length of crystal. It’s quiet now, the broadcast over. He hears an 18-wheeler approaching, sticks his thumb out.

He’s tired of not being anywhere. He wants to go home. He wants to sleep for a week. He wants to see Sam.

• • •

“Babe?”

“Where are you calling from this time?”

“Look outside.”

“You aren’t… Oh my god, you are. I thought you

were still two days away!”

“I took a lot of shortcuts. I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

They’re on the couch, curled around one another, when the shortwave squawks. Different frequency. Different song. Different voice. But the numbers are there, and woven around them, words in High Speech. Sam frowns. “Bad recording?”

Nax — Glen, now that he’s back home — reaches over and switches it off. He only hesitates a moment. The pull will come back again, he knows, and he’ll go chasing it. Unlike his Ascended predecessor, Nax likes being somewhere just fine. Especially right here, with Sam.

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lexmagica · 6 years

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Early Mage books can be quite jarring to read now. Way too much emphasis on Path, weird familial relations that fit better in other splats (forex, manipra and his kids) and of course Atlantis Atlantis Atlantis.

But it’s also a good reminder of how far the series has come and how clear the vision it has now is.

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lexmagica · 6 years

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FIESP building. Sao Paulo, Brazil

#mage the awakening #this is EXTREMELY seers of the throne #panopticon

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lexmagica · 7 years

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Vulcan, Thyrsus of the Silver Ladder

Vulcan adjusted the cup of his earphone. The noise of his workshop would have left his ears ringing for days without the protection. He ran a hand over the smooth metal of the blade — the spirit within was not only awake, but hungry for blood.

One step done, then, he thought. Now I just need to give it a target. He pulled off his thick gloves and opened a fi reproof box full of photos. His enemy’s face leered up at him from the top picture. Vulcan scowled and snatched the photo from the box.

He set it down on the wooden worktable and slammed the blade of the knife through the face on the photo. “That’s your target,” he growled in the spirit tongue. “His blood — only his blood — is yours to take.” Sweat dripped into his eyes, and he wiped his brow with his wrist, marveling at how diffi cult it was simply to raise his arm.

I can sleep soon, he thought. Justice first, then rest.

(Tome of the Mysteries, 54)

#mtaw #totm #story #ritual

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lexmagica · 7 years

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Zeno was Nowhere again.

This time, Nowhere’s purplish sky hosted bright-plumed birds. They looked like peacocks and screamed like dying men. Nowhere had brass and silver orreries instead of trees, but the birds could pierce the apparatuses with their beaks. They sucked something red and reeking from the glittering, filigreed planets.

“It’s like any other chantry: a hated dream.” The speaker was a small, black-haired boy. “It reflects Supernal majesty, but mocks it with imperfection.” The accent was Spanish, but the boy wore Bedouin robes.

“No time for that, Xaphan.” Agitated, Zeno stamped the red grass with a boot, but bowed to the boy. “This isn’t philosophy. It’s business.”

“If you have the quintessence, it’s both, enfante,” said the archmage. “If I twist the skein of her poor fate for you, will she be the same woman, or a doppelganger that made a more convenient choice than the original?”

“I’d say turning Scelestus is a fuck of a lot more than a matter of convenience.” He handed Xaphan a small, velvet bag. The boy opened it; jewels tumbled into his little brown palm.

“All tears from children who were orphaned by Supernal power,” he said, “shaped like gems by an Art that does not change them to ice, diamond, glass or any other thing. Though solid, they are still salt, water and sorrow. I do not have this Mystery, much less the dedication to find the needed unfortunates.”

Zeno glanced at his hands and said nothing.

“They are perfect for this spell, enfante Zeno! All shed for dreams dashed, wasted on the dead and beloved. Magic reaps this otherwise wasted quintessences for the sake of your lover. May I ask how you got them?”

“No, you may not,” said Zeno. “And your spell will guarantee that I’ll never know, either, because it will have never happened. Get on with it.”

As Xaphan cast his circle, Zeno remembered a sobbing girl. Her father burned at Zeno’s hands and cried like the bird from Nowhere.

Because it will have never happened, he thought, and for now, the thought was a jail for his guilt.

(Tome of the Mysteries, 161)

#mtaw #totm #story #archmage #zeno

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lexmagica · 8 years

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THE STORYTELLER

Jimmy held the warm bundle close to his body as he stepped across the soggy field. The Wilsons had moved off this land long ago, and it hadn’t been farmed since. The soil was scarred with deep ruts and pockmarks, some filled with rain from the night before. Jimmy noted the mud that was clinging to his shoes and pant legs, and for a moment he worried about how to explain it. But then he remembered that his mother and father didn’t care about that kind of thing. Not anymore.

Up ahead, at the top of a rise, he saw the curved stone wall of the old well. The ground felt a bit drier and firmer as Jimmy made his way up the slope. Mosquitoes and midges buzzed around his face. He shifted the bundle, cradling it in one arm to shoo away the insects with his free hand. He felt the blankets move and twist, and pulled them to his chest again.

As Jimmy reached the well, a slim, rufous, four-legged animal stepped out from behind the stones. The creature’s pointed ears twitched once; it raised its angular muzzle and sniffed the air. A light breeze carried the scent of spoiled meat; the animal shook its head, pawed at the ground with one black-socked foot and raised its bushy tail.

“Fox,” Jimmy said to the animal, “Are you sure we should do this?” Fox sat on his haunches, glanced to the right and left, taking in the barren farmland, the broken-down barn, the dirt road that led back toward town. “I’ve given it a lot of thought, Jimmy,” he said. “And I’m certain it’s for the best. Don’t you trust me?”

“Sure I do.” Jimmy stepped to the edge of the well and looked over, down into the darkness. “I think it’s waking up,” he said suddenly, as the cloth bundle quivered and shook. “I think it wants to come out.”

“Hurry, Jimmy,” Fox told him. “Hurry. If it wakes and you hear its voice, you won’t be able to do it.”

Jimmy stared at the swaddled white cloth for another moment. Then, taking a deep breath, he heaved the parcel into the well with an exaggerated grunt. He looked in and watched the bright white shape, lit by the sun, tumble into the black. He felt like he’d thrown a scrap of food into the maw of some hungry giant. At the last moment, before it was swallowed up by inky shadow, the wrappings flew apart and Jimmy could see the infant’s stubby arms and legs flailing and waving.

• • •

“You did good today, Jimmy,” Fox told him that night as he curled up at the end of Jimmy’s bed. “So I have another story for you. Do you want to hear it now?”

“Sure,” Jimmy said. He didn’t bother to whisper, because his parents never checked up on him after bedtime. Not lately, anyway.

“This one’s called:

THE BULL AND THE ANTS

There once was a large, strong bull who was mightier than any other in his herd. None of the younger, weaker bulls ever dared challenge him. One day the bull decided that life with the herd was boring, and so he decided to see what lay beyond the pasture. All the cows warned him not to go, and said that there were unspeakable dangers out there, and that it was much better to stay safe where they were. The bull just laughed at their fear, convinced that there could be no other animal as strong and powerful as he.

So the bull easily broke through the fence and began walking through the field beyond. He had traveled for a whole day when he heard a small voice call out to him. “Please, mighty one, do not go any further.” Looking down, the bull saw a tiny ant. “Please change your direction, O powerful bull,” said the ant, “or you may tread on me and my family.” The bull laughed. “No one tells me what to do or where to walk!” With that, he deliberately crushed the ant beneath his hoof. The bull kept walking, and every time he saw an ant he crushed it out of spite.

But then, as his powerful hoof crashed to the ground to crush another ant, his hoof broke through the turf. The bull had stepped into an anthill and now his foot was trapped. He tried to pull out, only to find his other three limbs trapped as well. As the bull snorted with rage, hundreds of ants swarmed from their holes and crawled up his legs and flanks and chest and back until his body was covered with the insects. They began to rip away his flesh, carrying bit after bit of him down into their anthills.

With his last ounce of strength, the bull turned his head and saw the broken fence, very far away now. He could just make out all the cows standing behind it, watching. And then the ants carried away his eyes.

• • •

“Babykiller!”

Jimmy was in the far corner of the schoolyard, where the asphalt was torn up, when he heard the snickers of the three older boys. They passed him by, then stopped and turned back to look at him.

“I never see this kid in Church,” one was saying. “How come you don’t go to Church, kid?”

“Maybe he has better things to do.”

“Maybe he’s out looking for babies to kill. Babykiller.”

“How come you call him that?” the runt of the trio asked, his voice ponderous with boredom.

“What are you, stupid? Everybody in town knows the story,” their leader answered. “His whole family are babykillers. They took his mom to the plant and they cut out her baby and hung it on a meat hook. Isn’t that right, Babykiller?”

“You’ll be sorry,” Jimmy sighed.

“What did you say? The lead boy stepped closer; his companions scuffled their feet on the macadam as they followed. “You little fuck, what did you —”

Then the three aggressors began shaking their hands in the air, brushing at their arms and legs. Jimmy was surprised at how girlish their shrieks were as he watched the black and yellow blurs of a dozen wasps diving at their faces and hands. The boys fled in a blind panic, not looking back, falling to the ground more than once.

“Jimmy.” He already knew Fox was behind him; he didn’t turn around. “You don’t have to go to school anymore, Jimmy. I told you that. You have more important work to do.”

• • •

That night Jimmy lay in bed thinking about his parents. Rumors about them had been making the rounds for over a year now. His mother and father assured him there was no truth to them, but their explanations of what had really gone on were unsatisfying. They said he wasn’t old enough to understand, that he shouldn’t worry about it.

From what Jimmy had pieced together, his mother and father had been in a big argument, bigger than any they’d ever had before, right in front of everyone at the plant. And then his mother had gotten sick somehow. She tried to get to the bathroom but didn’t make it in time, and ended up bleeding all over the fl oor. One schoolmate who’d taunted Jimmy about it said Jimmy’s father pushed his mother down, but Jimmy didn’t believe that.

To help himself fall asleep, Jimmy muttered one of Fox’s stories:

THE LEG

Long ago there was a man who became so furious that he tore himself in half. He threw his bottom half down a deep well, where it lay in the cold dark for seven years. Then the man’s left leg couldn’t stand the loneliness any more, so it ripped itself away from the right leg and wriggled up the side of the well like a snake. Once out of the well, the leg crawled through the countryside for days until it came across the small cottage where the leg used to live. It waited until dark and then slithered into the house.

The next morning, the man rolled over in bed and felt something cold and hairy brush up against his arm. He threw back the bedsheets and there he saw the leg, which had crawled into bed with him during the night.

“What is this thing!” the man shouted.

“I’m your leg!” answered the leg. “Don’t you want me back?”

“Leg?” the man cried. “I don’t know what that is!” He grabbed the leg by the big toe and tossed it into the fire, where the leg was burned to ash.

“What a disgusting and incomprehensible nightmare,” the man said to himself, using his arms to crawl into the kitchen for breakfast.

• • •

After breakfast, Jimmy was on his way up to his room when he heard his parents’ voices.

“What are we going to do with him?” His mother sounded like she was about to cry. “He just won’t go to church. People notice. They’re talking. He has to come to church with us, he has to.”

“I know,” his father was saying. “I — well, making him go to church when he doesn’t want to, that isn’t what Our Lord wants. He wants Jimmy to come to Him of his own free will.”

Jimmy gripped the top of the banister with both hands, pulled himself up. He leaned over to see his parents clearly.

“I… I know you’re right.” His mother wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “I just… I just hate all the talk.”

Jimmy watched his father lean in to kiss his mother on the cheek. But before his lips touched her skin, he stopped, holding his face a few inches from her, his lips pursed. He looked confused, blinking his eyes and taking a sudden breath. He looked like he was trying to remember what it was he was about to do. Jimmy’s mother looked equally puzzled, and after a few awkward seconds, she took a step back. His father pulled back as well, and they looked at each other, not upset, not afraid, just uncertain. Jimmy’s father shook his head, as if to wake himself from a stupor; his mother gave a little shrug. Then they nodded and went their separate ways.

Later, Fox told Jimmy he’d be away for several hours. But before he left, he shared a new story:

GRANDPA'S FAVOURITE

There was an old man who lived in a house near the edge of the world, and he had four grandchildren. Every morning they would walk to the great glass wall that separated the world from what was beyond. One day, the eldest grandchild said, “Grandpa, if I was to climb to the top of that high wall, what would I find?”

“I don’t know,” the old man answered. “Why don’t you try it, then come back and tell us?”

So the child began to climb. The watched him for a while, until he was just a small dot, and then was gone.

The next day the child returned, and they all gathered around him. “Well,” they asked, “What did you find?”

“They have a thing called Light,” the child said. “But I have no eyes, so it was useless to me.” And the child fell sick and died.

The next day, as they stood by the wall, the second oldest child said, “Grandpa, if I was to climb to the top of that high wall, what would I find?”

“I don’t know,” the old man answered. “Why don’t you try it, then come back and tell us?”

So the child climbed. When the child returned on the following day, they all gathered around him. “Well,” they asked, “What did you find?”

“They have a thing called Music,” the child said. “But I have no ears, so it was useless to me.” And the child fell sick and died.

The next day, as they stood by the wall, the third oldest child said, “Grandpa, if I was to climb to the top of that high wall, what would I find?”

“I don’t know,” the old man answered. “Why don’t you try it, then come back and tell us?”

So the child climbed. When the child returned on the following day, they all gathered around him. “Well,” they asked, “What did you find?”

“They have a thing called Time,” the child said. “But I have no clock, so it was useless to me.” And the child fell sick and died.

The next day, as they stood by the wall, the youngest child said, “Grandpa, if I was to climb to the top of that high wall, what would I find?”

“Wait,” said the old man. He went into the house and returned with an iron box. “You are my favorite, grandchild,” he said, “so before you climb, take these.” He opened the box. “These are eyes, and these are ears, and this is a clock.”

The child took the eyes, the ears, and the clock. And then, for the first time, he saw his grandfather, and heard his grandfather’s voice, and knew how long they had been living in the house at the edge of the world. And he screamed in horror and tore himself to shreds.

• • •

“Is someone there?”

The voice was so soft that Jimmy wondered, at first, if he’d imagined it. He stood still for a minute, listening. The room was dim, even with the sunlight that found its way through the narrow basement window he’d pushed open. The voice did not repeat itself, but it seemed to Jimmy that the voice waited behind the only door in the room.

He knew that Fox wouldn’t like him coming here to see the Magician. Fox seemed to regret ever mentioning the Magician. But Fox had let enough details slip for Jimmy to find this place, a long-abandoned farmhouse across the road from the plant. “You can’t trust a magician, Jimmy,” Fox had told him. “All magicians are liars. And when magicians lie, their lies become real.”

Jimmy considered turning back, but he didn’t relish the thought of going outside so soon, smelling that carrion stink, or hearing the awful shrieks and the insect noises that drifted on the wind. So he approached the door and reminded himself of Fox’s warnings concerning magicians. Not to trust them, not to tell them your name, not to give them anything of yours, not to let them look into your eyes or touch you.

The door made no sound as Jimmy pushed it open. A few flies whirled around his head and sped off. The cage that the Magician was lying in looked just like the large dog kennels Jimmy had seen once at the state fair. This room had a light on, a bare bulb that hung from the ceiling and made shadows along the walls and fl oor. Jimmy stepped into the room and squinted at the figure lying in the cage. The Magician’s form was mostly covered by a dark blanket or sheet. Jimmy could only see was the vague outlines of a body beneath, and a thin-fingered hand jutting past the blanket’s edge.

Jimmy cleared his throat.

“Is… someone… there?” The Magician’s voice was faint, and not as deep as Jimmy had expected. He took one step closer, just as the Magician rolled over and the sheet fell away to reveal a face.

“Come closer,” the voice said. Jimmy didn’t move. He was staring at the Magician’s narrow chin and pale cheeks. It was a woman’s face, he realized, and a woman’s voice.

“Who…” the Magician whispered, sitting up slowly, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. “Who is it?”

“I’m… I’m…” Jimmy wasn’t sure what to say. He’d been looking into her eyes, contrary to Fox’s warning. But it didn’t seem to matter; the lady’s eyes were half-closed and distant, as if she were in a trance.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said to him. She was young, Jimmy realized, younger than his mother, younger than some of his teachers. Her hair was brown and reached to the bottom of her ears and was very messy, as if she’d been sick in bed for a week. Her lips looked dry and cracked. She stared at Jimmy as if she couldn’t see him properly.

Then her eyes widened a bit.

“I need help,” she said, not quite looking at him.

Jimmy considered this for a moment. Then he said, “Fox says it wants to eat you.”

“Fox… something attacked me. It looked like a fox.”

“Why don’t you just magic yourself out of here?” Jimmy glanced back at the door, making sure it was still open. He’d forgotten the questions he’d been planning to ask, the questions about his parents and how to get them back to normal.

The Magician didn’t answer right away. She seemed to sag a bit beneath the sheet; her shoulders slumped and she wasn’t sitting up as straight. “What’s your name?” she asked.

Jimmy just shook his head, slowly.

“Look… there’s something you should know. There’s something around here. From… somewhere else.” She rubbed her eyes. “I can’t concentrate…” For a moment she seemed to shake off her stupor.

“Listen,” she said, more urgently now, “you have to listen to me.”

“I already know all about it,” Jimmy said to her. “And it’s too late for you to do anything.” He’d made a mistake, he realized. He’d come to ask for some way to fix things, a way that didn’t involve doing what Fox wanted him to do. But the Magician couldn’t help him. She couldn’t do anything. Jimmy sat down on the floor. Despite his disappointment, he felt like he should do something for her. So he began to recite one of Fox’s stories:

THE MANNEQUIN IN THE CLOSET

There was a girl whose parents died when she was young, so she was sent to live with her aunt, who was a dressmaker, and her uncle, who was a tailor. The girl spent every day alone in the house while her aunt and uncle were working in their shop. They had told her that she was welcome to play anywhere in the whole house, but that she was never to open the closet door next to the big chest of drawers, up in the highest room of the attic.

Soon enough she’d explored every nook and cranny in the house several times over, and her curiosity go the best of her. She decided that she had to see what was in that attic closet. She climbed three flights of stairs, entered the attic, stood in front of the door, closed her eyes tight and then turned the knob. When the door was open, she opened her eyes and saw two eyes looking right back at her. Leaning inside the closet was a mannequin, the same size as her, with glass eyes as blue as hers and blond hair as gold as hers and wearing a pretty dress just like hers. The little girl shrieked and turned and dashed for the attic staircase.

As she ran, she could hear the steady patter of footsteps following after. She ran down the stairs, and behind her she could hear each step creak in turn. She ran into the parlor, closing the door behind her, and as she reached the kitchen she could hear the parlor door opening again, and as she exited the kitchen she heard behind her the slapping of feet against the kitchen tiles. She ran around to the back stairway and up to the second floor hall. She ran into her bedroom and slid beneath the big four-poster bed.

From her hiding place, she heard the kitchen door fl y open, and then the sound of footsteps coming up the back stairway, and then the pitter-patter of footfalls coming toward the bedroom. Then she had an idea. She fled the bedroom and ran up the attic stairs and dashed into the closet and slammed the door closed. She crouched down in the darkness and gripped the doorknob with both hands and pulled the door as tight as she could. She heard the attic door open, and heard footsteps coming closer to her, and closer and closer. And then they stopped.

Then the girl heard a voice, and it said:

“You nasty mannequin. You won’t get out of that closet ever again.”

And then she heard the sound of the big chest of drawers being pushed tight against the closet door, and the attic door closing, and footsteps fading away down the attic stairs.

After the story, Jimmy rose. “You can tell me a story if you want to.”

“What… would you like to hear?”

“Tell me about the day you came to town.”

He didn’t expect her to comply, but she began talking. “I was exploring. With my mind, with my senses, with my body. I explored in every way I knew how. First I heard the cry of an infant, echoing through time. So I retrieved it from the bottom of a well, but it wasn’t an infant. Not anymore. It was just… flesh. Shaped like a baby, wearing its clothing… animate, but not alive. Its head was like a mass of ground beef, squirming like worms…

“Then I went into the school. All the classrooms were empty. All the children and teachers were gathered in the cafeteria, sitting at the long tables, silent, staring. There were… heaps of bloody, butchered meat, piled on the tables. Every so often, someone reached over and ripped off a piece. They’d put it in their mouth and chew, not even brushing the flies and maggots off fi rst. At three o’clock a bell rings, everyone springs to life, running and laughing and unaware of what they’d been doing…

“Then something took hold of my mind, and it pulled me… down a long, steel-plated hallway, marked with rust-colored handprints. It became narrower and narrower, and at the end… hooks and chains, the smell of rot, flies crawling on lips and eyelids. Decapitated cows wandering listlessly, the stumps of their severed necks opening and closing like mouths, vomiting clouds of horseflies and hornets. And the kill floor, strewn with fingers and toes. And… a faceless mound, marbled pink, white. The fleshy pile, ragged, raw muscle and gristle and grease… it rears and unfolds itself into a vast maw… and the people walk in… a soft lipless mouth, rows of maggots hanging like teeth, a long throat that stretches into infinity…”

“Tell what you did then.” It was Fox’s voice. Jimmy jumped to his feet, opened his mouth to explain what he was doing there, but Fox interrupted. “Go ahead, Juna. Tell what you did then.”

“It was horrible… I…”

“You offered yourself to It, didn’t you? Offered yourself to the Meat God, the King of Flies, the Flesh That Devours. Begged it for power in exchange for service. Am I wrong?” It was the first time Jimmy had ever heard Fox sound angry.

“I…”

“Admit it.” Fox paced around the cage as he spoke. “You expected this entity to be something you could bargain with. Something you could outwit. Something you could trade favors with, a fast track to knowledge and strength if you didn’t mind getting your hands dirty.”

“All right. Yes. But it’s different now.” The Magician’s voice was stronger, steadier. She didn’t seem half-asleep anymore.

“Is it?”

“Yes! I saw the thing, I felt its… its breath on my soul. My God… I fouled myself and maybe I’ll always be tainted, but all I want now is to send that abortion back where it came from. I’ll fight it to the end. I’ll fight it. Just give me a chance.” She staggered to her feet, gripped the mesh of the cage.

Fox looked at Jimmy. “I put her here because this place is so close to the Meat God that magic is diffi cult to make,” he said, “but she can’t stay for much longer, or the thing will sense her presence.” Jimmy nodded, not sure he understood. “Our options are few and we could use the help. This is your town, Jimmy. Your people. What do you think? Can we trust her?”

He wanted to say he didn’t know. No adult had ever invited him to participate in one of their arguments before. He looked at the Magician, barely able to hold herself upright. Humbled, defeated, eyes downcast. And she reminded him of himself. Of how beaten he felt after the local bullies had their fun with him, how shamed he felt when his mother and father brushed his fears and aspirations aside like crumbs. How foolish he felt when his teachers sent him back to his desk after he’d failed miserably to solve some math problem at the blackboard. He knew that feeling, and he knew it came with a determination to never make the same mistake again.

“Yes. I think… yes.”

Fox stared at Jimmy for what seemed like a long while. Then Fox’s left ear twitched. “All right then,” he said. “She and I need to talk. I’ll see you at home.”

• • •

When he got to the house, Jimmy hopped off his bike before it came to a full stop. He slowed down as he entered, catching the screen door so it wouldn’t slam shut behind him. He didn’t expect his mother to be waiting in the living room. He’d imagined that he would slip inside, grab a few important things and slip out again. But when he saw her he couldn’t keep himself from approaching.

“Mom,” he said, his voice cracking, “I need to tell you something…”

His mother looked at him quizzically. She was holding bag of trash; something was leaking out of the bottom and creating a dark stain on the carpet. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Mom,” Jimmy said. “I have to go away. I have to leave town because Fox wants me to do something that I don’t want to and… well, I wanted to say… remember last year when you and Dad said I’d be having a little brother or sister soon? Remember? And I got mad and said I didn’t want it and I ran put of the house? Well I…” He sniffed. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I really am. I —”

She dropped the bag, crossed her arms. “You’re the one they talk about in the hotbox,” she said. “Aren’t you? The boy who won’t go to Meat Church? What was your name again? No, names don’t matter any more.”

“Mom?” He rubbed the tears from his eyes.

His father entered the room. “Oh. Have we met? Are you — you live here, too.”

She blinked at him. “Yes. It doesn’t matter. Today’s the day. We all become It.”

“That’s the boy.” His father stood next to his mother. They didn’t look at each other, they looked only at him. “That’s the one we need to bring. The one that Our Lord of Butchered Flesh has been waiting for.”

They moved toward him, calmly, patiently, and a pink, watery liquid was dripping from their hands. Even as Jimmy ran out the door, climbed shakily onto his bike, he was wondering if he could ever forget the putrid stink of the juices dribbling from his parents’ fingers.

• • •

The metal hallway leading into the Processing Center was very long, and its plated walls made sounds bounce around at odd angles. There was a faint humming that sounded almost like music.

“Wait,” Jimmy said.

Fox stopped walking. “Do you want one more story, then, before you do what has to be done?”

“Yes. Yeah, just one more, please.”

“All right then. This one is called:

THE WHISPERS IN THE ALLEY

Once there was a boy named Jimmy. Jimmy’ father was the manager at a meatpacking plant, and his mother was in charge of the plant’s finances. Jimmy was very unhappy because it seemed as if his mother and father didn’t like each other anymore, and didn’t like him, either. After school Jimmy would ride his bike to the edge of town where his parents worked, and try to imagine what his parents were doing inside.

One day Jimmy was coasting alongside the chain link fence in the back of the plant, when he thought he heard someone calling his name. He stopped his bike and walked up to the fence. And then he heard it again: “Jimmy…” It was a faint voice, not much more than a whisper. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the fence, where there was an alley between two of the plant’s larger buildings.

“Jimmy…”

There was a gap in the fence where someone had once cut through some of the links. Jimmy was able to separate the edges and slip through.

“Jimmy…”

Jimmy followed the sound of the voice, walking slowly down the alley, holding his hand over his nose and mouth because of the stink. At the far end was a kind of loading dock, and a long row of Dumpsters and a huge pile of sagging trash bags. Jimmy walked closer, following the whispers. He found a small green trash bag toward the bottom of the pile, with grease and blood spots all over it.

“In here, Jimmy,” whispered the voice, and Jimmy could see the bag move as the thing inside it spoke. “Help me.”

“Where did you come from?” Jimmy asked the bag, crouching down to hear it more clearly.

“I was born, same as you,” said the thing. But I was born alone, with no one to talk to. If you’ll be my friend, and tell me stories, I’ll do great favors for you.”

So Jimmy brought the bag home. The thing asked many questions, and Jimmy told it how unhappy he was. The thing in the bag said it could make Jimmy happy again, that it could make his parents forget about being mad all the time. It told Jimmy to untie the bag and reach inside, and he did. He only put the tips of his fingers in, and immediately Jimmy felt something cold and wet. He yanked his hand out and saw, stuck to his little finger, the tiniest bit of raw, greasy meat.

“Feed this to your parents,” the thing in the bag told him, “And they won’t be angry anymore.”

Jimmy thought and thought about this, and decided he would bury the meat, and then take the thing to the river and throw it in. But when his father got home he shouted at Jimmy for not putting away his bike, and when his mother got home she yelled at his father for something Jimmy couldn’t understand, and the two of them began their usual argument about someone called “Miss Carey” and Jimmy decided he’d do what the thing in the bag said after all. So he dropped the little bit of meat into the Crock-Pot where dinner was simmering. Neither his mother nor father seemed to notice anything different about the meal. Jimmy wasn’t hungry, so he threw away his food when nobody was looking.

The next morning, Jimmy came down to breakfast to see his mother and father sitting at the table. For the first time in as long as he could remember, they were talking to each other in calm, polite tones. This seemed like a miracle to him. But then he noticed that every so often his mother would look at his father with a strange expression on her face, as if she wasn’t sure who he was. And he caught his father, now and again, with the same expression. This scared Jimmy. So that night he took the bag back to the alley at the meatpacking plant and tossed it into one of the Dumpsters. And as the bag fell, it kept whispering, “Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy…”

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Because the thing in the bag had grown stronger on what it had taken from Jimmy’s parents. It found others, and tricked them, and when they fed on its flesh, it fed on their spirits. Soon it had emptied several people of their memories, their stories, the things that made them who they were. And then it had slaves that carried it deep into the plant, and they brought more people to taste its offerings; any who were able to resist got chopped to pieces and fed raw to the Meat. And it grew stronger and bigger, and soon everyone in town was feeding on it, and it was feeding on everyone.

Everyone except Jimmy. Because Jimmy’s friend Fox had come to town. And he protected Jimmy from the Meat. In the end it would be up to Jimmy, who had been first to feed the Meat, to kill the thing. Fox had figured out a way to do it. But they had to do it soon, because the Meat had found a way grow little bits of itself inside the people whose minds it had hollowed out. The Meat had first tried it with the body of a little baby, changing it into something the Meat could understand. Soon it would do the same to all its slaves. And then the Meat would have hundreds of bodies and would be unstoppable.

“And now the time has come,” Fox finished.

“Are you really the same Fox I used to talk to when I was a little kid?”

“Does that matter?”

“I guess not.” The echoing chorus of flies and flying insects was louder now. “I think I’m ready.”

“I would do it if I could,” Fox said. “But I’m a magician. My stories are too strong, they would make that thing too powerful, make it unbeatable.”

“Sure,” Jimmy replied. They had reached the end of the line. Jimmy stopped at the door. “Will I see my parents again?”

“I’m not certain,” Fox said. “But everything that made your parents who they were is inside the Meat.” Fox didn’t look like a fox any more; he was a tall man with red hair, dressed something like a cowboy, in a long, reddish-brown duster coat and wide-brimmed hat. He had a pistol holstered on each hip. The lady magician walked next to him, alert and selfassured now, looking something like a nurse because she was dressed all in white.

Jimmy said, “I can feel them in there.” He bent down to grab the handle, then stood up, raising the gate. It slid upwards like a garage door. “Can you come in the room with me?”

Fox shook his head. “Once things get going, the Meat will call on its servants to defend it,” Fox said. “Juna and I will have to stay out here to keep them from getting to you.”

“Oh. All right.” Jimmy raised the door until it was just higher than his head.

Juna knelt next to him, placed a hand on his shoulder. “Jimmy,” she said, “I’ll go in with you if you want me to.” Behind her, Fox crossed his arms and frowned.

Jimmy looked into her eyes. “No,” he said. “I didn’t think I could do this. I was going to run away today.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked him.

He licked his lips. “I thought… I thought if I run, I’ll never be able to stop running. And I’ll always… in my head I’ll always carry everything that happened here, without knowing how it all ends.”

“That’s my boy,” Fox whispered. He laid a hand on Jimmy’s other shoulder, gave it a squeeze. Then the two adults stepped back. “Good luck, Jimmy,” Fox said. “I know you can do it. I’m proud of you.”

Jimmy walked through gateway. The door slid closed, softly, after he passed.

He didn’t hear what they said next:

“Does he stand a chance?” Juna retrieved a palm-sized mirror from her pocket as she asked.

“Of surviving? No. The thing will swallow him whole. That’s what I’m counting on.”

“You are?”

“I’ve been preparing him for weeks. Seeding his mind with stories. Special stories, carrying subliminal engrams to traumatize the creature with conflicting accounts of its own existence. I crafted them as best I could, based on what I’ve learned about its nature. It’s the best hope we’ve got. You can’t fight a thing like this conventionally…”

“Maybe,” she answered sharply. “Or maybe the time you’ve spent in this thing’s sphere of influence has warped your judgment, and you just gave it exactly what it wanted.” She held the mirror in her left hand and moved it in a slow figure-eight, frowning. “Something’s not right…”

Fox shrugged, drew his guns and cocked the triggers. “The world is just information, Juna. Stories. When you eat something, you’re making its story part of your story. When you work magic, you substitute one story for another. But we’ll have to debate all that later, if there is a later.” He handed one of the guns to Juna.

“With luck, spells will come easier once the Meat is distracted. If not…” He shrugged again. “They’re coming. It will be the housewifeflies who arrive first. Ignore their eyes and aim for the thorax.”

#MTAw #Mage: The Awakening #WoD #CofD

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lexmagica · 8 years

Text

THE DOOR

“Three minutes, sir.”

I meet Jasper’s gaze in the rear-view mirror and nod, then go back to my preparations. In the window, my reflection looks back at me, superimposed over the Brooklyn streets.

When did I get so old? The reflection has gray hair, a beard with only a few dark patches left, and eyes with more lines than I remember. Too many years with not enough sleep, and the stress of the role. Still, I must compose myself. My pain is not important tonight. The mages I’m meeting will rely on me to do what they can’t, what they mustn’t.

Many of those with my station go masked. The mask is unflinching, unchanging. I have considered it, but I always remember advice I was given, years ago. It was the Millennial Convocation, and I was only two years in my post. Then-Hierarch Turifex’s Consilium was strong, but just. The worst I’d done was put down a Scelestus and execute some boy’s Familiar when he refused to obey a ruling.

I remember meeting my counterparts from the attending Consilia, safely away from the Convocation. Heimdall and Locke were masked, but Cronus wasn’t. He looked so out of place sitting next to the three of us, like a benign great uncle smiling at children.

“The mask is a tool for separating yourself from your duty,” he said, “but used incautiously it becomes a tool for intimidation.”

“Isn’t that the point?” Locke asked, but the old man shook his head and smiled.

“What need do the condemned have of intimidation? Their sentence has been decided; it is for you to carry it out. To protect ourselves, we all too often become cruel. As Guardians, is it not our duty to put other mages first?”

“Even those we execute?” I asked.

Cronus had been Interfector of Philadelphia when the Reapers of Cloud Infinite infiltrated its Assembly. He had been Interfector when the Eye of Tyranny was stolen by its own caretaker, when a cabal of witches delved into alternate times and came back as hollowed-out things that ticked like clockwork. He had more blood on his hands than the three of us put together.

He seemed so sad, but kind.

“Especially those,” he replied.

• • •

My watch reads six minutes to midnight when Jasper pulls the car up to the sidewalk outside our destination. It’s nothing to look at, from here — just an anonymous, drab office conversion. One of many “temporary” field sancta for the Consilium in exile. Inside, I know that over half a dozen Awakened and many more staff are still here, despite the hour. The anger, the threats, the recriminations — they’ll have all burned out by now, replaced with a tiredness that won’t let them leave, look away, or rest. That’s why I’m here.

At the witching hour, death comes like an old friend.

The master of this house is Horatio, Deacon of the Brooklyn and Queens Caucus of the Silver Ladder. In most other cities on Earth, he’d be at the top of the totem pole, but this is New York. We may have lost Manhattan, Turifex may be in disgraced self-exile, but the Pentacle holds. We have a new Hierarch, and Horatio answers to her.

He meets me in his study, and lets me know just how welcome I am.

“This is an outrage! With due respect, you Guardians can’t just wander in and take over. This is an internal théarch matter, and... ”

“And Hierarch Seshat, your Archdeacon, sent me. You are still a member of this Consilium, correct?”

He fumes, but I’ve known him long enough to know that he’s not really angry. He was expecting me, as he should have been, but has to make the pretense of reluctance. Too many of his subordinates are here for him to risk looking weak.

“Correct.”

“As was the victim, and as is the accused?”

He nods, glancing at the door behind him. Thinking of his Caucus, listening in.

“And the accused, she turned herself in?” I ask.

“Yes.” he replies.

“Then I am here to exact justice. Take me to her.”

• • •

How do you imprison a mage, especially a Mastigos? The locals have put her in a guest bedroom stripped of all but the most basic furniture, and confiscated her tools. They even put a guard outside.

No one’s fooled. She could vanish in a heartbeat, if she wanted to. Which means her contrition goes beyond turning herself in — she’s accepted her fate.

When I enter, she’s sitting on the floor in a corner, head in her hands. She looks barely old enough to be my granddaughter, if my granddaughter still existed.

“Genevieve.”

She wipes her eyes and looks up at me.

“I’m Outis.” I say, as gently as I can. Recognition plays across her face. She knows who I am.

“You’re here to kill me?” She sounds exhausted.

“Perhaps. First, I need to know exactly what happened. It’ll be quick; I can pull your memories out with a spell and —”

She shudders, shaking her head.

“Please don’t. Don’t make me see it. I can’t...” she draws a ragged breath, “...I can’t see it again.”

She’s in no fit state for this.

“Alright, I won’t. But Genevieve, I need your confession. It is still a confession?”

“Yes. I did it. I killed her.”

I take a notebook and pen from my jacket, place it on the floor between us.

“Then write it. I’ll wait, and no one else will disturb you. I’ll keep them out of here until you’re ready.”

She nods, and I knock on the door for the guard to open it.

“Gee,” she says. I turn back. She’s already picked up the pen. “Everyone calls me Gee.”

“I’m sorry we met like this, Gee.”

• • •

Hours pass. The sky begins to brighten, and the crowd of bystanders slowly realize that they won’t be seeing Gee’s blood any time soon. One by one, they quietly leave to rest.

A servant brings me breakfast, and looks confused when I ask for a second tray. Taking it to Gee’s makeshift cell, I knock softly and push the door open.

She’s asleep, curled up on the bed. The notebook lies open on the floor, neat handwriting covering the visible pages. I pick it up and flick through the pages, realizing that it cuts off. She hasn’t finished.

I put the notebook back, and leave the tray. Let her sleep.

I sit in the lobby, and build the imago in my mind. I saw the writing for seconds at most, but that’s enough. Time parts before me, and I’m back in the room, frozen in the moment, looking at each page. I slowly advance the postcognition, reading Gee’s words.

--------------------------------------------------

Lucretia, they want a confession, but I’m not writing this for them. I’m writing this to remember you. To remember the days we had together, and make sense of the Mysteries we sought together. To record the trials of young mages and to serve as a warning to those who follow after us. But, yes, I write this as a testimony to answer to those who went before us and who now hold me accountable for what has happened. The Interfector is here, and I know what that means.

Lucretia wasn’t your name when you Slept, just as my name wasn’t Gee. You were Sarah, I was Constance, and we both hated the names our parents had given us. I met you at JFK, that pulse point off what others call Jamaica Bay, but whose true boundaries and energies we saw, ripples of color and texture no one seemed to stare at. Except for us. I knew you straight away among the throngs of Sleepers picking up loved ones and business associates. I saw you, wearing formal attire even though you had traveled over twenty-four hours to get here. Your clothes were still crisp and clean.

You’d Awakened far away, but you knew early on that you wouldn’t stay with your first mentor. You wanted to reinvent yourself completely, to build a Shadow Name in a new Consilium, one that needed you. The Order told you about New York, about how the Pentacle lost Manhattan to the Seers, about the Mystery of the city’s geomancy, and you felt your calling. You knew where you wanted to go. Over a decade since Turifex’s folly, and New York still welcomed any mage coming here for a better life. More than that - we needed you. Any who would come. If the Pentacle would ever reclaim the island, it would need every mage it could get.

I was born in New York City, and you were a newcomer. Together, we devoured the possibilities that stretched before us. We sat in the cab, your body leaning against mine as the car bounced on the streets. We chuckled whenever we caught the eyes of the cabby in the rear-view mirror, his quizzical expression only enhancing the experience we shared.

Stretches of energy, lashing through the city, rippling with verve, waiting for a knowing hand to dip into them and drink from their depths. Supernatural beings going about their daily business, meeting their needs while masquerading as human. Shadows deeper than fear, ambition higher than the spires of skyscrapers, desire burning, destroying, creating. Beneath everything, the crackling tension of the leys, pulled by the Mystery, still vibrating years after the Folly. We pointed out the possibilities along the way. You asked about going into Manhattan, no magic, not to break the peace, but just to see all the museums, and I said we’d go to all of them, as long as Horatio gave us the time.

When we pulled up to the sanctum I held the door open for you and grabbed your suitcase. Horatio greeted us at the bottom of the steps, austere as always, welcoming you and telling us where your room was. I went with you to your room, just down the hall from mine, and put your luggage down. I told you I’d give you a tour but you opted to rest after all the traveling. “We’ll have time to catch up,” you told me with a smile. I nodded and blushed and left your room by walking backwards, my hands behind my back.

We were the two youngest théarchs in the city, and there was so much for us to do.

I still remember the sound of your voice. The memory of it still makes my heart beat faster, even after all these years of training.

“Will you watch over my body as I enter the Astral?” you asked me. We were at Cadman Plaza Park, eating bagels and watching a man make giant, iridescent bubbles with a bubble wand. It was winter and cold and I was smoking a cigarette while I ate. You hated when I did that.

“Sure,” I said, stupidly. “If you’ll do the same for me,” I managed not to choke on my words. You smiled and said you would.

“Of course I will, Gee,” were your exact words.

The Adepts called the room “the Abattoir.” They said dumb animals went in and were destroyed. It was meant as a joke, but it scared me. Diamante knew I was afraid to walk my own soul, and had told me to be patient. One day I’d be ready and the reward would be great, if I could face myself. You were ready before I was.

The room was unremarkable. I was disappointed. It was big enough for two people to sit comfortably. A single light shone overhead and a circle was painted on the ground, a worn feather pillow placed in the middle for you to sit on. You took my hands in yours. “Thank you,” you said to me, your brown eyes warm. “I appreciate this.”

“I’ll keep watch,” I said, watching as you sat in the middle of the circle, atop the pillow. I watched as you tried to get comfortable, your hands palm up on your thighs, your eyes closed. Your breathing slowed, then became more even. I watched you, concerned my breathing was too loud, worried I might disturb you. I looked at my phone for the time, watched you for some sign of distress. Your chest rose and fell, slowly, measured, your body still. I read while I waited for you to end your journey, looking up from my studies every time you drew a sharp breath.

Finally, you sighed. I looked up, waiting, watching. Your eyes fluttered open, and you smiled at me weakly. You told me you were tired, so I suggested you rest before I try. You were quiet, contemplative, as I walked you back to your room, supporting your arm. I could feel you thinking. I wanted to ask your thoughts, but couldn’t make a sound. When you closed the door to your room, I cursed to myself.

I always wanted to help people, you knew that. I told you that countless times, and you always nodded when I balled my fists and wondered why things always blew up in my face. Even other warlocks laughed behind my back.

We went to the squat in Coney Island to try and see if we couldn’t do something with it. The sanctum was getting crowded. When I suggested some of us move there, Diamante protested. We knew the neighborhood could use a bright spot, I reasoned something dark lingered there the household didn’t want to deal with. Let us fledgling mages go and fix it up, turn it into a place for us to live and a community center for the local Sleepers; our first Cryptopoly. How hard could it be? The neighborhood was already getting gentrified. What was one more well-meaning group getting in on unused real estate and doing something with it? I had visions of vegan potlucks and printmaking in my head, covertly teaching runes and sigils to our neighbors, encouraging them in the Ladder’s teachings.

The outside of the building looked stable enough, though a dark pall hung over the entire edifice. Brick facade, empty window frames gaping out onto the street. It was ours, legally, to do with as we liked. As I crossed the threshold, I shivered. It reeked of beer, piss, and blood. The presence of so many deaths lingered in the air, like cold spider webs.

“I think we can clean this place up,” I said determinedly, putting my hands on my hips.

The next thing I remember, I was lying on the floor, sprawled out. The hot, sticky feel of blood on my face made my heart thump. You were chuckling, your hand over your mouth. I reached up and felt my forehead, my fingers coming away with blood and white, chalky dust. Plaster. I looked up. A piece of the ceiling was missing.

“I don’t care if this building is working against me,” I muttered, avoiding your glance. “We’ll fix it.”

Lucretia, you were the one who found the Iris in the squat. You stayed there all night, trying to feel it out. You worked a ritual, refusing to give up until you’d found the heart of the building’s woes.

It was at the bottom of a bathtub in one of the apartments. What was left of the toilet had been shattered long ago, the pipes broken and raggedly rusted. The grey dust of time melted away to expose the Iris, closed shut. Bloodstains in the grout and tile around the tub made the door more ominous. Once revealed in my Sight, the door was a mess of black, thorny vines, pressed together so thickly, it may as well have been a solid piece of stone.

“What do we do?” I asked. The sounds of the workers the Caucus brought in to renovate the building echoed in the floors above and below.

“I’ll look and see if we know where it goes,” you said, standing up. “If we don’t, I’ll consult Locksmith to see what should be done. Considering what we’re doing with the building, it could be great that it’s here. We can at least keep an eye on it, right?”

“Right,” I said, nodding, looking at the door in the bottom of the tub. The stains of blood all around the tub. “Do that.”

“I will,” you said. Lucretia, did you know then? You hesitated before you left the bathroom. I stood there and looked at the door for a long time. I ran my hand over it, feeling the thrum of energy within the door itself. Cold as ice, dark as night. Where was the hinge the door would swing upon?

Did you know this door would be our undoing?

Weeks passed as we moved everything into the squat, repaired the worst damage, and spread the word. You spent your days organizing and recruiting, finding people in need of our help, laying the groundwork for what we were there to do. Helping the forgotten and abandoned find their place on the Ladder. You threw all your energy into it, while I spent mine on the door.

For days I’d sit in that abandoned bathroom, probing the door with my Sight, tracing its outlying vines. I remembered my training, and knew that the stronger methods of interrogating a Mystery might damage it. The door was a frustrating enigma, but it didn’t feel dangerous. And besides - what if it was important? What if it was an opportunity? Horatio had told us all, from our apprenticeships, to keep an eye out for anything that would help the Consilium understand what happened back in 2001, or force the Seers out of the city. I dreamt about opening the door to reveal an Emanation, or a Wending, holding something that would bring the Pentacle back. I woke with the vanishing memory of the dream-me’s pride, and the unyielding Mystery of the door.

Weeks turned into months, and the door didn’t budge. The vines - half-real, half in my mind’s eye - wrapped tight around it, without so much as a crack between them. Gradually, my guilt at you doing more than your share of the work on the Squat overcame my need to know, and I called Locksmith. He was the adept who instructed me on Irises; if anyone could explain the door, it was him.

I paced all afternoon while he cast a ritual to examine the door, unable to concentrate on my work - on our work with the squat. It felt wrong to have someone else in that room, knowing that he could destroy it. Or worse, open it and take the credit for himself.

That should have been my first sign. Those feelings, they weren’t from me. They were from the door. You saw them, and you said nothing. I felt them, and I pushed them down.

Locksmith told us that the door led nowhere. He said that it was a leftover from the Folly, a scar in Space, a closed Distortion to nowhere. The reason, he said, that I couldn’t find the Key was that it never existed.

“Maybe, in time, a true Iris will form. Best thing to do is leave it alone,” he said.

You were relieved. “At least we know it’s safe,” you said, and I agreed out loud. But I knew.

I knew Locksmith lied. I knew the door led somewhere.

Why didn’t I leave it alone?

The Squat became a lovely community center, and the center became our Cryptopoly. All the connections and amassed abilities of the Order aided us in our quest to reach out to Sleepers. We ran an after-school program for children where we told the stories of ruins even we didn’t understand, stories we ourselves argued over into the night. We grew a garden on the roof with herbs for food and rituals. We went on field trips to Hallows, in the off chance any of those who went might Awaken. There were always the politics and the doings of other mages, but the Squat was mine. It was ours. We took a thing everyone had said was a useless skeleton of a building and turned it into a vibrant refuge for many.

We lived at the Squat, named it our new sanctum. We kept all the top floor apartments and lived there with some of the other Acolytes. We still went back to the 13th Street sanctum for training, and you often went back to meditate. We would lie in bed and look over the schedule, texting back and forth with Horatio, coordinating our small party with the Clavigers.

The bathroom the Iris was in was used as a storage room. Locksmith said the door was better left closed, and although I knew better I deferred to his expertise.

I know they talked about it behind our backs, when we weren’t listening. They knew and didn’t tell us anything about it. Deacon Horatio commended us on our work within the community and our ability to balance our own work and studies with the running of the Squat.

I used to tell myself I was guarding the door from anyone who might try to access it. That if someone came to try to kick it open, I would have guarded the door. I would tell myself this at night, while we lay in our bed, while you slept peacefully next to me, my own eyes open and staring through the wall that separated our room from the storage room.

In time, Horatio asked me to spearhead another community center, this one in a rundown building in Queens. I remember asking, “Can I still live at the Squat?”

“I’d think you would want to save yourself the commute, Gee,” Horatio said with a chuckle. “Metrocards aren’t cheap.”

“I just really like it there,” I said, hands behind my back, rocking back and forth on my heels. “I’d rather commute than have Lucretia do it.”

“I thought Lucretia wanted to move back here to concentrate on her own Mysteries?” Horatio asked. “She says it’s often loud at the Squat, and internal studies are often difficult to process there.”

“Well, we’re working out ESL classes for some people who are showing interest. It’s kind of her thing, you know?” I said. I thought about the door in the bathtub and the stains. Someone had since cleaned it, but I still saw the shape of the ruddy stains and their hue against the dusty off-white.

“Sounds like her,” Horatio said with a smile. “I’ll send you over the specs for the building. Get me a proposal by the end of the week, Gee.” He turned back to the dusty tome on his desk, already dismissing me.

Paperwork. It should have been distracting. I should have been able to forget the door as I downloaded the files and wrote up the proposal, citing the grants we’d be eligible for, the different things we’d use the space for.

The door. I looked at the notepad I was working on. I had drawn it in black ink, its vinework and thorns represented perfectly on the yellow, lined paper. I should have told someone how it weighed on my mind. Instead, I ripped the paper from the pad and crumpled it, burning it in my hand with a spell. I told myself I’d do the same to any more thoughts of the door from here on out. I’d set them ablaze and watch them float away like ash on the wind of my mind. I’d do it.

That’s what I told myself.

Lucretia, you said you would

--------------------------------------------------

My spell ends. Gee’s confession had cut off with those words. She was too exhausted to face whatever memory came next.

I sip my coffee, grimacing as I realize it went cold while I was looking into the past. The sounds of the house around me indicate movement — my presence calmed matters last night, but the locals are now waking, and finding in waking that they’re still angry. That Lucretia is still dead. And that Gee hasn’t yet paid to their satisfaction.

I alone have the right to commit murder. I will not tolerate vigilantes.

The sun is up, and I have much to do.

• • •

The mages my presence calmed last night have been joined by freshly-outraged colleagues. Word of Lucretia’s death must be spreading through the Caucus, drawing the théarchs in mixed cabals throughout the Borough back home. I make my way — as fast as I can without seeming hurried; it would not help to seem concerned — back to Gee’s cell. Outside, the bravest of the new arrivals is already trying to pull rank on the poor Proximus who’s still guarding her even now. I assess him with a glance, matching the face to my memorized files on the Consilium’s members. Carter. Second-degree Adept of Forces and Mind. Obrimos. Tamer of Fire. Sole théarch member of the Second Knock, a mostly-Libertine cabal based here in Brooklyn. The Knock make a habit of raiding into Manhattan, recovering treasures from the abandoned Athenaea and Lorehouses.

Everything about him screams “direct action.”

The Proximus gives me a relieved look as I position myself between them.

“Interfector. I must insist that —”

He never gets to finish insisting. We both feel the magic incoming, as foreign thoughts enter my mind. From his expression, he recognizes the nimbus. Good. I couldn’t have timed this better if I’d tried.

I hold up my hand for him to wait, as though I were taking a phone call instead of entering telepathic communion with the Hierarch.

–Outis.

Seshat’s thoughts are careful, measured. A result of the mental discipline needed to think in English, for my sake. She’s lived here most of her life, but Seshat still thinks in Arabic. I keep meaning to learn it.

–Hierarch.

–I was just called by Horatio. Why are you still in Brooklyn? Why isn’t it done?

Straight to the point, then.

–The accused is preparing her confession. I am establishing the facts of the case.

A hint of my doubts must have crept through the link. Seshat’s thoughts turn concerned.

–Is the verdict in doubt?

–A mage is dead, and I will punish the guilty. I need to know exactly who is guilty of what.

–You think she didn’t do it alone?

–I think there may be...other factors involved. I will contact you to confirm my conclusions.

–Soon, Outis. Soon. Don’t let what happened here cloud your judgment. I know you must feel sympathy for...

She had to bring it up. I send back as firm a thought as I can.

–My judgment is clear. Thank you, Hierarch.

I get a sense of her misgivings, but her ultimate agreement. Her spell ends. I frown for effect, and turn my attention back to Carter.

“Now. Where were we?”

“I...”

“If you wish to be useful, Adept, I must speak to those involved in the case. Do you know where to find Diamante and Locksmith?”

“The...uh...”

“Yes or no.”

“Sentinel Diamante is upstairs, Interfector. I think Locksmith is in Queens.”

“Fetch him. As quickly as you can.”

My tone does not make it a request. He considers his options, and nods. When he leaves, I quietly speak to the guard.

“Well done. If anyone else tries to come in here, tell them I have forbidden contact with the prisoner.”

He gulps. “Yes, magus.”

I smile in what I hope is a reassuring manner, and go to find my first suspect.

• • •

Those in my station try to cultivate a professional detachment, the better to weather the not-quite-ritual shunning that comes with the title Interfector. I remember the first time a mage I knew as a friend before taking the post crossed the room to avoid his shadow touching mine. I have few friendships — Seshat, Imuthes, possibly old Tiresias. I have fewer enemies.

Diamante, though. Diamante, I just plain don’t like. And I liked seeing her name in Gee’s confession even less.

I knock at her door, thinking. Our disagreement goes back years. A mage from some war-torn African nation had desperately opened a portal to escape the slaughter of her cabal, and Paradox had taken the spell. She’d wound up here, in New York, and in her panic displaced a Sleeper back to where she’d come from. Sentinel Diamante had been first on the scene, and when she found out what had happened she killed the refugee. Officially, the newcomer attacked her. But I know. And she knows that I know.

She opens the door. Diamante is normally reserved, hard, not a hair out of place. She wears her Shadow Persona like armor. I can relate, if not approve.

The woman in the doorway looks like she hasn’t slept at all.

“It’s my fault.”

I’ve gone into Diamante’s room. It’s a mess — sheaves of paperwork (the Ladder do love their paperwork) undone and scattered on all available surfaces, like she’s been searching for something.

“How do you mean?” I ask, as neutrally as I can.

“Gee was my apprentice. I had a duty of care. I just...I was so busy, and she seemed fine...”

“You know why I’m here.” Not a question.

“Why don’t you just get on with it?” She sounds resentful. I’ve abandoned my planned interrogation already. Diamante isn’t a suspect, as much as it would satisfy me personally. She’s a bystander trying to make sense of what happened. And she’s still loyal to Genevieve.

“Because I don’t know if she’s truly responsible. We’ve had our differences, you and I. But I need to know. If anyone else was involved, if Gee was coerced or pushed into it...”

She shakes her head.

“There’s nothing. I’ve been searching all night.”

I feel a stab of disappointment, and crush it. Maybe Seshat is right. Maybe I’m letting this one get to me. I know what Gee’s going through, after all. I know what the sentence she couldn’t finish was. Everyone here does.

“You know my story?” I ask. Diamante pauses, then nods.

“Help me to help her. Think.”

• • •

I leave her there, and return to Gee’s cell. The guard proudly tells me no one has been in or out.

Inside, Gee is awake. She’s been busy.

“Is this all of it?” I ask, taking the notebook she holds out to me. She nods, silently, grieving.

I step back outside, close the door again, and begin reading where I left off.

--------------------------------------------------

Lucretia, you said you would marry me, and you made me the happiest person in the world. It was three years since I had picked you up from the airport, since we first had hope for the city and the people living in it. We were married at the Squat, on the roof. Surrounded by Sleepers, Sleepwalkers, and the Awakened alike, we exchanged vows and rings we’d made for each other.

We kept the same quarters, and treated ourselves to some new furniture in lieu of a honeymoon, which I wasn’t so keen on anyway. I married you because I knew it would make you happy. You were always more of a traditionalist than I was. I knew we would be forever together and didn’t need to say it in front of everyone. But I knew the symbolism of the rituals mattered to you, so I happily asked you for your hand and gladly signed the certificate.

“Will you settle down back at the sanctum?”

“No,” I always said. “My life is here and you know me, breaking rules.” We’d laugh. The Order enjoyed the centers we’d set up throughout the city, pulling away from the tradition of staying under one roof. The others appreciated the amenities we’d been able to hide in plain sight. Mundane gyms, libraries, and meeting areas became training grounds for théarchs after hours.

I oversaw the recreation centers and went home to the Squat, our first project, every night. I stood in front of the door to the storage room and imagined the door in my mind, black and twisted. Every night, I imagined creating a fire which would destroy the door completely, engulfing the tub and eating through the threads of magic woven together to create the door. In my mind my magic was strong enough to dispel and consume the energy there.

I knew it wasn’t, not yet. It would probably be easier to open it. Find out what it was there for. Curiosity would be sated and I would never think on it again.

So many nights, I stared at the door and you would wake, asking me what was wrong. I always lied, the only lie I ever told you. Well, that and that your rice and peas were good. I told you I was worried about the Cryptopoly, or whether Diamante would come back safe from whatever head bashing she had that night, or Deacon Horatio’s health. I waited so long to tell you. By the time I told you the truth, I was already set on my course.

I should have told you. You were so much wiser than me. Horatio was wrong to trust me. I know that now. If he hadn’t been distracted by his personal vendettas, mediating between the petty squabbles of Adepts and Masters. If Diamante had stayed close to home. If the older Mastigos had laughed at me less. Lucretia, you alone are blameless in all this, but you are the one who paid.

I began to dream about the door. Something in it woke up. I said I was doing inventory and I would move everything out of the tub and sit on the edge, the chill of the hard porcelain eating through my pants. I put my hand at the bottom of the tub and I knew it went somewhere I had never been before. Somewhere no one had been before.

I told myself if I knew what was behind the door, I could better protect the people on this side. A frontal assault instead of waiting. Why should I be passive when my family was here? My community? Who knew what was lurking behind the door? I told myself I would open the door and deal with whatever was within. I would overcome it and make the Squat safer.

I told you what I was going to do and you didn’t stop me. I wish you had. I told you I was protecting us. I told you about my dreams where the vines of the door would ripple and grow. The screams I heard as thorns bit into flesh. The red and black of blood and filth. I told you if we worked together, we could prevent this from happening, find out what was on the other side of the door and stop it. I could unlock it.

You didn’t question me. You’d been by my side. You’d seen what I could do and I was shaking with what you maybe thought was earnestness, not excitement.

“Will you help me, Lucretia?” I asked. “The time is coming.”

“Of course,” you said. Of course you said that.

I never should have asked you. I knew you would help. I didn’t know what your aid would cost me.

We stood in the storage area, in the old bathroom. I looked up at the ceiling, knowing what the sky looked like beyond the steel beams and insulation and plaster and gravel of the roof. I knew the time had come and you stood there with me.

I had the knife. Even in the dark, it glimmered with its metallic sheen. I could taste its metal. The hilt was made of brass and bone. I placed the blade against my hand and cut into my own flesh, the hot blood leaping to coat the blade. I held my hand over the tub, watching as my blood splattered with a quiet, wet sound on the surface.

We didn’t breathe. You stood, ready. I held my hand out, my arm shaking.

The vines began to manifest, becoming visible even without Sight. Black and twisted, fitting so tightly together, thorns and tendrils interlocked. And then, they shuddered.

Like a thousand, dark mouths with black teeth opening, the vines pulled back and receded. A smell like a thousand deaths, fetid and cold, rushed out of the door, blowing our hair back.

“What is it?” you asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

“We should close it,” you said. There was urgency in your voice. If only I could have acted as quickly as you wanted me to.

“How!?” I asked.

YOU DON’T. The voice sounded like ragged nails against ancient stones. Fingers whiter than milk, whiter than maggots showed at the edges. I clutched the blade in my hand, my bones growing cold as the words scraped against my brain. THIS PLACE IS NO LONGER SAFE, came the voice again.

“Gee, move!” you screamed my name, but I did nothing. You pushed me out of the way as it rose from the depths of whatever hellish landscape it came from. It glowed with a sickly light. I could imagine its skin, colder than anything I’d ever imagined, but wet. Sticky.

Lights shot from your hand as you shouted Speech, locking yourself in combat with this creature. It reached out with an emaciated arm and grabbed you. It put its hands on you, gnarled fingers and jagged claws clenching around you. You shrieked, stumbling over your incantation. I leaped up, knife in hand.

You withered before my eyes. Your gaze turned to me as the creature whipped you around, its other hand around your neck. Your skin lost its luster and faded. Your eyes wilted like flowers in their sockets. The life in your body was gone, as the monster shook you like a doll. I saw the last light of your spirit glow as your form fell at my feet, a sickening slap of meat and bones. Your spirit hovered briefly above your body, as if looking at yourself in a mirror. You looked at me. And then you dissipated, in a shower of white, shining mist.

I felt all my plans and ambitions melt away from me, like wax and feathers under the too-hot sun. I clutched my blade, made by my own hand. I stepped over your withered body and screamed. The windows shook as I pushed my will into the blade, summoned the power stored in the house, power we had written into the walls and the doors. I thrust the blade into the creature. The blade ate flesh and glowed, the reek of abominable flesh searing and burning. The monster flailed as I shoved the knife deeper, tears burning in my eyes.

The monster shrieked, a sound like metal and bones tearing. I pushed, my weapon and hands covered in vile pulp and gore. Its ragged nails tore into my skin as it fell back through the threshold. If there was a bottom of that hellish place, I never heard it hit. I screamed again, my blood splattered all over the bathroom, trying to drown out the terrible grinding of the vines coming back together, the thorns interlocking like so many terrible teeth in twisted grins.

“Why?” I shrieked at myself. “Why? Why!”

I screamed, but no one answered me. The only answer I had for myself, I drowned out with my sobs.

They found me there, covered in my own blood, throat raw from screaming your name. The people who trusted us to watch out for them, protect them, and they had no idea what to do for me. One of them must have called Diamante, because the next thing I knew I felt her Nimbus around me... and then nothing.

I woke in Horatio’s Sanctum, in a room converted into a cell. Horatio asked me what happened, and it crashed down onto me. What I’d done. How I’d lost you.

I told him I killed you. I didn’t set out to - I loved you - but I killed you nonetheless. He left me alone, then, for hours. And now the Interfector is here.

Lucretia, I write these words to remember you. To remember what I did to you. I loved you. I failed you. Whatever Outis is here to do to me, I deserve it. This is my confession.

- Gee. "

--------------------------------------------------

I look up from Gee’s writing to find that I am no longer alone here with the guard. Carter is at the end of the hall, looking like he wants to approach but doesn’t want to risk it. I fix him with my best level stare, and he retreats back to the common area. In his wake, a Persian man wrapped up against the cold Brooklyn winter comes in. It’s about time.

“Locksmith,” I greet him, “good. I need a teleportation spell.”

“Uh...” he blinks, and recovers. “Of course. Where to?”

“Where else? The scene of the crime.”

• • •

I kneel to inspect the bathtub. The fresh stains of Gee’s and Lucretia’s blood layer over earlier marks, just as Gee described.

Locksmith fidgets as I make a fingernail diamond-hard and scrape up some of the blood. I review what I know about him. An Adept of Space, but curiously not a warlock; my uncomfortable traveling companion is a Thyrsus. Mastigos have a tendency to break down barriers. Locksmith specializes in making them.

“Genevieve mentioned you in her confession,” I say, neutrally. He has a good poker face, I’ll give him that, but he reacts. I just can’t tell if it’s guilt or surprise.

“May I ask..?” he ventures. I stand up, inspecting the flakes of old blood in my palm.

“She said you lied. You told her this wasn’t an Iris, that it couldn’t open. Well, it opened. What do you say to that?”

“I said it might. That the doorway hadn’t formed, yet. I...” I feel him open his Sight, and he frowns at where the Iris should be.

“That’s not right.” he says. “It still hasn’t formed. Look at it.”

I open my inner eye, pushing the Fallen World away. In Stygia, the room still bears the marks of Lucretia’s death. The floor where she landed is dented with a vague outline of her body, and Gee’s trauma and grief have left chains everywhere. The Iris — if it is an Iris — hangs in the air above the tub, vines coiled tight around the aperture.

And then I feel them. A resonance I have never felt, not in this timeline. Familiar voices play at the edge of my hearing, voices that fill me with joy and horror. I will my awareness back to Fallen reality.

As I come around, I realize I’m on one knee, gripping the edge of the tub for support. A fresh cut drips blood from my thumb, caught on a sharp object... like a vine.

Locksmith looks confused, but anger is growing to cover it.

“Tell me.” I say, quietly.

“It hasn’t changed. It’s just as it was when I assessed it: a possible Distortion in Space, but not fully formed. She... Genevieve must have killed Lucretia to try to open it.”

“And the creature?”

“There is no creature! I’m telling you, Master, there is nothing on the other side of this door!”

I shake my head.

“No. I’m sorry, Locksmith, but you’re wrong about that. I know exactly what this is. But now I need to ask you something important.”

“Like what?”

“Who exactly did you report your findings to?”

• • •

We head back to the sanctum. While Locksmith casts the spell to teleport us, I mull over his angry declaration. Genevieve must have killed Lucretia to try to open it.

He’s half right. He just has the wrong culprit in mind.

I feel Locksmith’s spell, and the momentary sensation of nothingness, before we reappear. Thanking him for his time, I quickly check that no one has disturbed Gee before heading upstairs.

Diamante opens the door on my second knock. Her expression is grim. I enter, and the background noises of the chantry suddenly vanish; she wants privacy.

“Before you tell me what you found,” I say, “let me ask you two questions. The Squat. Your Order owned it before Gee and Lucretia took it over, correct?”

“That’s right.” Her voice is clipped, carefully controlled.

“A building assigned to two apprentices just so happened to contain an Iris? An Iris that someone had previously attempted to open? Does that strike you as odd, Sentinel?”

“It does.” She knows. Or she suspects.

I open my palm, revealing the tiny flakes of dried blood, fragments of an old death and a new one. I cast a spell, separating the two, then another, calling on the laws of Time and Death to reverse the passage of years. The old blood, the blood Gee found when she first moved to the Squat, liquefies into a droplet on my palm. It grows, shimmering and warping into the image of the person it once was.

“Second question,” I ask. “Who is this?”

• • •

It’s nearly 24 hours after I first arrived by the time the dust has settled. The anger, the recriminations, the accusations of the Guardians overstepping our bounds...Diamante did herself credit in holding her Caucus together while we did what needed to be done, but in the end Seshat herself had to come out here. Her presence, not to mention her authority, calmed the théarchs down from the boiling point, but as I walk the halls of this sanctum I am painfully aware of the Interfector’s burden. I enact the Consilium’s punishments on mages who break the Lex Magica. Those mages always have friends, apprentices, mentors.

I’ve killed tonight, at the Hierarch’s command. I need balance.

There’s no guard at the door any more. The staff have all been sent home. There’s only one théarch in the city who doesn’t know what just happened.

I knock, and enter Gee’s cell.

• • •

“It wasn’t a door, Gee.”

I’m sitting on the edge of Gee’s bed. She’s across the room from me, sitting on the floor with her back to the wall.

I’ve just told her that Horatio is dead. That I killed him went unspoken, but she’s a smart girl.

“I don’t understand.”

“Back in 2001, when the city nearly died, tears opened everywhere. We remember it as Turifex’s folly because the Seers betrayed him, but working with them saved everyone. Cabals all over the five boroughs tracked down the damage the ley quakes did and fought to limit it. That’s when Horatio committed his first murder. In your Squat.

“Horatio found what he thought was a scar in the leys, a knot in the Supernal World that, if he could unravel it, would undo the damage. He tried to find a Key with his magic, but couldn’t. Finally, he tried sacrifice. In the aftermath of the Folly, dozens of mages and Sleepwalkers were missing, or dead. One more Sleepwalker was just another name on a list.”

“Who was he?”

“His name was James. Diamante knew him, a little, when she was an apprentice. He was assigned to Horatio’s cabal and officially, he vanished in the Folly. But now we know better.”

She shakes her head, disbelieving.

“If it opened, the creature would have...”

“The creature...the door didn’t open for Horatio fourteen years ago. He put you and Lucretia there, kept you there despite your obvious obsession, because he hoped you would solve what he couldn’t. He didn’t know what he was dealing with, and Lucretia died as a result.”

Tears well up in her eyes.

“I killed her. I killed her!”

I shake my head, gently.

“Horatio saw a tangle of ley energy, sealed away behind a locked Iris. Locksmith saw a closed Distortion, a portal to Manhattan that was safely locked away. You saw a threat, a monster from your own mind. The ‘door’ feeds on obsession, on the nature of the person observing it. Your concerns grew into fears, and your fears turned into the thing that killed your wife.”

She sobs, grief taking her. I wait, not disturbing her, until she looks up at me again with red eyes.

“How do you know what you’re telling me?”

I close my eyes, pained.

“A long time ago, I was recruited for a mission by my master. He sent me back in time, to accomplish a critical mission. He should have known better. I was young, and careless, and I did irreparable damage to my own history. I returned to a Consilium that had never heard of me, to a wife that never met me and married someone else, and to... my daughter, who was never born. ‘Outis’ means ‘No one,’ because I don’t have a life outside my Shadow any more. Being Interfector is part punishment, part putting me to some sort of use. And when I looked at the door...”

I trail off, remembering the voices.

“I heard them, Gee. I heard my family, behind the door. It was never a door; it was a mirror.”

I stand up, and offer her my hand.

“I know your pain. I’ve lived it. There’s no punishment the Consilium can command that will bite more than what you already feel.”

“You’re free to go.”

--------------------------------------------------

Lucretia, it’s been seven months since you died, and I still see what happened every night. The other mages in the Ladder shy away from me, part ashamed of what they thought when Horatio told them I killed you, part afraid that I’m tainted somehow, that your death marks me. They’re right.

It’s taken over half a year, but I’ve persuaded Diamante to let me return to the Squat. I’ve told them that the door must be guarded until we can figure out a way to destroy it, to prevent what happened to us ever happening again. They’re at a loss for anything else I can do, so they’ve agreed.

Outis says the place beyond the door contains whatever consumes our mind. I feared it, and those fears killed you. But he saw his loved ones, and recoiled at having his sacrifice undone.

It’s taken seven months, going through Horatio’s library, but I know what I must do.

I have these pages gathered here. I have poured time and power into them. I will gather these pages up and recall your last moments on this Earth, the feeling of the bond we had, severed. I will take these pages, and my memories, and I will use them. My emotions are great but my power and desire are greater. I will see you again, Lucretia. I know I will.

I will shut myself away from the Order. I will draw the signs on the walls and the floor that will aid me in my ordeal. I will say the words and push my will out and it will reach out across the worlds and call to you. You will hear me and you will answer me. You will come to me and I will hold you in my arms again and you will dry my tears. I will hear your sweet laugh and when I say something stupid, you will shake your head at me and roll your eyes.

I will hold your hand in mine. I will ask you a question and you will answer the Mystery that has plagued me all these days, since you left.

Why did I fail you, Lucretia?

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#Mage: The Awakening #MTAw

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