“You’re terrorizing him and his family,” Callum said. “Don’t you think you should at least know the names of the people who are under your protection?”
He swallowed hard, and the force of it pushed the soft tissue of his chin just barely into the point of the blade, drawing forth another trickle of blood.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know his name.”
Callum withdrew the dagger and took a step back. Piggy was shaking, now.
“What?” he asked.
“You didn’t try to lie,” Callum said, “and if I killed you for not knowing you won’t have learned shit from this.
“This is fucking stupid,” Piggy said around the tremor in his voice. “If you leave me alive, what’s stopping me from coming back at you later?”
“I might be worried about that if I thought you knew who I was,” Callum said, shrugging. “And as far as the rest of your motley crew, you tell them whatever you need to tell them. Let them know the Daelan City Devil’s watching and he’s going to come for them too.”
He didn’t wait for Piggy to respond. He simply strode down the alley, stopping only to snatch up the bag of money and listening for the sound of footsteps behind him. None came. He kept walking for hours until the sun had finally set.
By the time he got back to the bakery, it was closed. There was still glass on the floor. It took him a couple of minutes to pick the lock, leave the bag of money on the counter and sweep up the glass and cookie crumbs left on the floor.
Dead or not, here or not, these people were still his. He had a responsibility to take care of them, now, and he intended to uphold it. Anyway, he was due to meet up with Sam. He threw the glass away, left the shop and used his lock picks to make sure it was secure again.
Callum thought he’d have to get all the way to the house but Samael was sitting on the front steps of the mother-in-law suite when he peered around the corner.
“Of course you’d use the front door,” Sam said, getting to his feet and steering Callum around the corner. “Come on, we have an appointment and now we’re running late.”
“It’s the front gate,” Callum said, defensively.
“And if our parents find a masked man coming through the front like that, especially right now, what do you think they’re going to do about it?” Sam asked, raising a brow.
Callum hesitated. He’d be dead for real and they would never be able to forgive themselves.
“Okay, point taken,” he said, looking back over his shoulder. “What kind of a meeting did you set up anyway?”
“One with an information broker,” Sam said.
“Oh no,” Callum said, looking back at Sam and losing a step as he walked. “You’re not serious. I don’t have that kind of money right now.”
He would have if he’d kept the bag. Keeping the bag wouldn’t have been an option even if he’d known.
“They take payment in forms other than cash,” Sam said, shrugging mildly.
Cal narrowed his eyes behind the mask. This must have been some way of Sam trying to get him to back down from his plan and betray Lena. He squared his shoulders.
“Fine,” he said, “let’s go.”
Sam started to move for the trams and Callum caught his arm.
“Can’t,” he said. “They’re going to give me grief about the mask.”
“Pretend you’re dad,” Sam said, looking at him.
“As if I could pass for our father,” Callum said, furrowing his brow.
“You can,” Sam said. “Have you looked at yourself lately? Your his height exactly, the same haircut, the same color and you walk like him. It’s probably why it hit him so hard that it was you that went down.”
Samael wasn’t looking at him now. His brow was furrowed, his eyes locked on the bricks below.
“Are you jealous, Sammy?” Callum asked, furrowing his own brow in response. He reached out to touch Samael’s arm and Sam tugged back.
“Of course not,” he said. “You got stabbed. We don’t heal that much faster than regular guys. It’s just…you can’t tell me he doesn’t…”
“What?” Callum asked. “Like me more? I’m the family screw up, you know that.”
“You say that like Dad has never felt like a screw up himself,” Sam said, sighing. “Come on.”
Before Callum could reply, Samael had his hand and was pulling him in through the tram station doors. The entire interior floor was bricked like the street outside, but much cleaner and arranged in a spiral pattern instead of one after the other. There were stone staircases leaning in broad circles up to various floors of the building, the higher up they were leading farther out in to the city. They walked over to the third staircase, their steps echoing over the inside of the ostentatious room.
Callum looked up as Sam stopped by the ticket booth and dropped a couple of ten sigil notes on the table. Callum kept his distance while Samael bought tickets for both of them, looking at the mural on the round ceiling. It was a classic render of seven angels in joyous chorus.
The way they were painted made them look like humans with large, white feathered wings. His mother and Sam were both nephilim and their wings were ash grey. The angels on the ceiling all looked like they had two wings each, as well, and that, Callum knew wasn’t right. At least not for all of them.
Not that there were many people in this city that could say they’d ever seen an angel. Callum knew he hadn’t. He’d seen plenty of demons, you couldn’t miss them here, but angels?
“Come on,” Sam said, “let’s go.”
Callum followed.
The tram car hung from a thick cable with a caged contraption between it and the car. Inside the cage, a pair of short tailed imps phased into existence on either side of a retrofitted hand pump. They looked displeased, but they started the tram moving and Samael gazed out the window.
Steel structures on the roofs of buildings housed tram stops. From up here, the labyrinth stretched out. The sprawl of buildings made most of the alleys impossible to see into.
On the edge of the city, Callum could see where the wastes began. It was like the sprawl of buildings suddenly stopped, giving way to cracked desert where no one should have been able to live. Yet people did anyway.
Samael broke him from his thoughts.
“Our dad is a good man,” Sam said. “He does his best for his people. But I know he feels like common trash sometimes, even if he never lets it show in front of the aristocracy. I don’t think he ever meant to live on the north end. And like it or not I’m pretty sure you remind him of himself in a way I never will. You’re his favorite.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Sammy,” Cal said, quietly. “I’m the son that gets into fights and sent home from school with a black eye, then goes on to fake his death. You’re the son that studies hard and listens to people when they have problems and wears his whole suit like a damn professional while I’m always losing my jacket.”
“And I’m saying our father has never been that clean,” Sam said, chuckling.
“If you think he wouldn’t have been just as torn up if it had been you,” Callum said, “you’re out of your mind. Our father loves you. How could you even say that?”
“How could you lie to him about something like this?” Samael asked.
Callum broke his gaze again. The cable car was starting to descend to a small way station at the end of the theater district.
“I said I wouldn’t tell,” he said.
“You’re still not going to tell me what she’s blackmailing you with?” Sam asked. “Are you going to die for real if you break your word? Does she have photographs? Is it something so bad you can’t even tell your own brother?”
“No,” Callum said, “that’s just it, it isn’t anything. She said, ‘keep this between us’, and damn if I can’t help but keep my mouth shut.”
“I don’t have to,” Sam started.
“No,” Callum said. “I need you to do this for me because…because she sa
ved my life. I was dying. I was a dead man. I don’t know how she fixed this. And all she asked was for me to behave for a little while until we could get this figured out. I wasn’t even supposed to tell you.”
“But you did,” Sam said.
“I never said I wouldn’t,” Callum said. “They’re my parents, but…you’re my brother.”
Samael sighed, reached over and ran his hand the wrong way through Callum’s hair.
“You’re an idiot.”
The tram car screeched to a halt and the imps disappeared in a fog of sulfur-smelling mist. Samael stepped out of the tram car while Callum tried to un-muss his own hair as he stood up.
“You weren’t kidding,” Callum said, sighing and looking around. “You actually made us an appointment with the Nightingales.”
“We’ll be able to catch the tail end of the show if we hurry,” Samael said, and set off at a brisk walk. He had a sunny expression on his face as he walked through the crowd. Sam was an expert at navigating his way through a knot of people like this. He sidestepped and turned, never bumping into anyone.
Callum wasn’t as good. He felt heavy on his feet and actually knocked into several shoulders on his way by. Rather than apologize, he kept his head down and kept walking. Every one of them had better things to do than worry about what he was doing.
The Haven Theater was one of the smaller ones on the block. It was painted white with an ornately carved set of pillars on either side of the door depicting harps and songbirds, and the sound of jazz music and smooth, crooning voices could be heard within.
The bouncer was a tall man with long hair bound in a loose braid, and he started to step in the way when he saw Samael.
“Finally decided to show up, did you?” the man asked, chuckling. “Go on in, you’ll be sent upstairs shortly.”
Sam gave a nod and pulled Callum in before the bouncer could say anything else. The inside of the theater was cool and the floor was dotted with small dinner tables where a variety of people sat.
Word had it that they named this place ‘Haven’ because anyone was welcome. Callum was under the impression it had been named after the woman who owned it, but he could see why it had such a reputation.
There was a mixed crowd here, and Callum could see no less than four visible cambion at different tables. One woman had a tail, and another man that was facing slightly away from the stage blinked two pairs of eyes at his date. There were men in heels and women with hair cut far shorter than would have been socially acceptable anywhere but Theater Street. There was even one group of three women clustered tightly together and holding hands.
The one thing everyone had in common was that they looked happy.
Samael walked over to the table in the back corner, one that had been left empty for them. He plucked the ‘reserved’ card off of it and dropped back in his seat. Callum sat beside him. His mask didn’t even feel eye-catching, here.
“If I didn’t know any better,” he whispered, “I’d say you were a regular.”
“We all have things we like to do with our time off,” Sam said, chuckling.
The woman on the stage was a vision in a white and gray feathered dress. Her eyes were large and very blue, her hair hanging in a neat bob at her jaw, and the song coming out of her mouth was as beautiful as she was.
It was low and lilting, following the curvature of the music without a snag. It was like she’d put a spell over the audience and Callum could see why. The dress she wore hugged all the right curves and as she spun a sad melody about jilted lovers. For a moment, he wanted to kiss that pout right off her ruby red lips. And then she stopped singing and the urge flowed out of him like an exhaled breath.
He glanced over at Samael, who was smirking sidelong.
“She’s good,” he said. Callum couldn’t deny it.
“Didn’t take her for your type,” Callum said. Sam laughed quietly and shook his head.
“That’s because she’s not.”
Callum couldn’t deny how comfortable his brother looked here. More than once near the end of the set he caught Sam mouthing the words to the songs the woman on stage was singing, until finally she stopped and took a shallow bow to announce the next performer.
“Come on,” he said, “that’s our cue.”
Callum raised a brow, but stood with his brother, and the pair of them made their way through the sitting area and into a door on the other side of the floor. The lighting was dramatically different in the hall, fluorescent bulbs bathing it in warm light as opposed to the pale blue in the chamber over.
At the other end of the hall, leaning against a door, was the dark-haired singer. She beckoned to them with her long cigarette holder and vanished into the doorway.
“Always this mysterious?” Callum asked, glancing at Samael.
“It’s part of their allure,” Sam said. “The smoke and mirrors of it. It’s more important to some people than others and the Nightingales have a lot to work against.”
Four paces brought them to the door and Callum turned to find a spiral staircase instead of a room or another hall. He exchanged a look with Sam who nodded to them.
“Well, go on,” Sam said.
“You made the appointment, shouldn’t you go first?” Callum asked.
“I made the appointment for you,” Samael said.
Callum turned to face him completely.
“I know you can’t see my face, but I am giving you such a look right now,” Callum said.
“Noted and taken to heart, brother,” Samael said, coolly. “But she only speaks to one person at a time. Her secrets are for one pair of ears only and you’re the one that needs to know. I’m trusting you to ask smart questions and come back with the right information. You can offer her information, too, instead of paying with sigils.”
“I know that,” Callum said. “Do you think I don’t know that?”
He was trying to psych himself up. Samael wasn’t having it. He put his hand between Callum’s shoulder blades and gave a sharp shove. Callum stumbled up a couple of steps and a moment later the chipped-white painted door shut behind him.
The stairs were nearly glowing white and claustrophobic. The tile of the hall had given way to thick white carpet that muffled his steps as he moved up. Something about his shoulders brushing the rounded walls on his way up made it almost difficult to breathe in here.
Then, as fast as he had entered the stairway, he was exiting. The room on the other side was just as white, and the carpet stretched on. There were two wooden chairs in here, set beneath a low steeped ceiling. Between them was a tiny bistro table and in the far chair sat the singer from the little theater below, one leg crossed over the other and a long cigarette holder between her fingers.
“Everything,” she said, “is measured in exchanges. Let me begin. Your name for mine. Do you find this to be an acceptable exchange?”
“I don’t,” Callum said.
“Then you may call me ‘Rune’ and offer me a nickname, instead,” she said.
“Ashes,” he said. She nodded like she had been expecting this.
“You’ve come here because you want information. I might have it for you. This being your first time I’ll explain how it works. You sit down, and tell me what you want to know. I will tell you roughly how much I know about the subject, but not what that information is. Then, you make me an offer for it. From there, we play the haggling game. Sit.”
It was a power play and Callum tried to keep the fact that he knew it out of the set of his mouth as he took the seat. She’d left him two choices; obey her or refuse and look like a petulant child. He didn’t like that.
“In that case let’s get right to it,” he said, reaching into the interior pocket of his jacket and drawing out the paper he had lifted off of the dead Gater. He extended it to the woman and she took it between the delicate fingers of her free hand. The cigarette burned on, a couple centimeters of ash hanging precariously off of the edge and threatening to fall into the pristine
white carpet.
She tapped it out into the ashtray on the table at precisely the last moment.
“I’ve seen this glyph before,” she said, finally. “Without context I’m afraid nothing I can give you will be of much use.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Callum said. “You tell me what that sigil is, and I’ll tell you where I saw it.”
She glanced up at him, then, blue eyes alight with something Callum couldn’t quite place. Her lips quirked into a smile.
“Oh,” she said, “you’re a clever one. Point one in your favor, I find this agreement to be…copacetic.”
She took a drag from her long cigarette holder and set the paper on the table between them, with the sigil facing upward.
“First,” she said, “how much do you know about the art of summoning?”
“Precious little,” Callum said. It occurred to him too late that he might have tracked in mud, but if he had she didn’t look too concerned with the idea. “I know you have to draw a circle with no breaks and that some demons need more focus than others to keep control of. I know bigger ones need a more complicated circle.”
“I wouldn’t say bigger,” she said, taking another drag of her cigarette. The cherry flared toward the very base and she ground it out in the ash tray before she set her long holder on the table beside the paper. “Consider people. They work very much the same way. Being bigger does not always necessarily mean they are more powerful. But yes, the more powerful the demon, the more complex the chain of sigils required to hold them.”
An intrusive part of his brain wondered if that was why they’d named their standard mark of cash that. The aristocracy was that arrogant.
“Some of those sigils are specifically geared toward the names of outsiders,” she said. “Usually that is only the keystone and it goes at the northernmost point of the circle.”
She picked up her long cigarette holder and began to draw in the ashtray with the tip of the cigarette in it, first a circle and then an X at the top point of the dish.
“The rest come in two types. Seals and articulations. Seals go at the cardinal points as well,” she said, marking little ‘o’s at the eastern, western and southern points of the circle. “Articulations are woven between them, specifically designed to carry the will of the summoner between the seals and weave in contingencies for the circle itself. Ultimately these should be as unbroken as the outer circle. Different seals exist for different beings, do you follow?”
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