"Check that one out," he said, hoping to distract her.
They wandered through the halls, discussing the sculptures, statues, and other art installations littered throughout. They had a particularly grand time examining the tiny tea sets a mad mage from the 1500s had created by reducing human sizes down to mouse size, for his pet critters.
He was having such a great time that he forgot he was supposed to be figuring out why the Gurken might be targeting her hall.
They were staring at a hunk of flame frozen into stasis by an enterprising mage, and he said, "So you know a lot about my hall, but I don't know much about yours. What does your hall do, besides develop ripped biceps for its mages?"
Tally flexed her muscles as if she were on stage. "It's certainly a perk. I was on the lifting team in high school."
"Can you make magic weapons or armor?" he asked.
Her forehead knotted. "I mean, we can, but why? No, we're more like metallurgical nerds talking about grain sizes for metal matrixes, or how to alloy with alchemy, the best way to improve thermal yields on fae-hardened steel."
"I don't even know what you said, except the fae part, and I thought they were allergic to iron," he said.
She stuck her tongue out playfully. "Shows what you know."
"Not a lot apparently," he said, searching for another way to get her to talk about her hall. "What about that thing you were working on when I dropped in on you."
She coughed out a laugh. "Dropped in? You mean you fell on your ass."
The word "ass" echoed through the marble hall, bringing around heads. She ducked her head and held up a hand in apology.
Tally spoke again, this time a whisper, but keeping her playful smirk. "I knocked you right off that roof. Dropped in. Ha."
"You sure know how to knock a man off his feet." He looked at his hands. "So did your project work? The one you were hammering on before I made an ungracious entrance?"
"I'm trying to make a porous metal that filters impurities in the air using reverse osmosis." She bit her lower lip. "Everything I've tried so far hasn't worked. Spells, transmutation agents, I even considered summoning a demon. I feel like I'm so close, yet so far."
"What's the problem?"
She hung her head. "It only works for a few seconds, and then the impurities overcome the filter, rendering it useless."
"Don't most filters use charcoal, or something similar?" he asked.
"I'm trying to make a universal filter. That's the challenge my professor gave me. He said it would help in hospitals, and with Aura Healer work," she said, rubbing her arms as if she were cold.
"Can't you put something sticky inside of it?" he asked.
"It has to be able to withstand significant stresses as well. There's nothing that's both strong, flexible, fits in small places, and is also sticky."
"Spider webs?" he asked.
Her eyes expanded with excitement, then she grabbed him by the shoulders and mashed her lips against his. When she pulled away, the lingering taste of strawberries was on his mouth.
"Oh my god. Thank you. Why didn't I see that before? It's perfect."
He was still reeling from the kiss, which had hit him like a jackhammer. Tally seemed to catch herself, as if she hadn't realized what she'd just done until well afterwards.
"Oh," was all she said. "I'm sorry."
"Nothing to be sorry about. It was nice. Unexpected, but nice."
"Only nice? You sure know how to wound a girl's pride," she said with a hand on one hip, sassing her head to the side.
"I'm up for a do-over. You really have to get these kinds of things right," he said.
She beamed a smile back at him and winked. "I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to things like this."
Zayn stepped forward until their faces were only a few inches apart. In her heels, she was taller than him. Her green eyes sparkled with flecks of gold, like a mossy stream in the land of fae. Her lips, then her teeth parted, half in anticipation, half in a smile. He leaned in, delaying the touching of their lips as long as he could, their mouths opening hungrily the closer they got, until they pressed against each other from lips to hips and down to their toes. It felt like falling into a warm pool. His body was one big goosebump. And when her wet tongue flicked against his, he slipped his hand onto the back of her neck and pulled her into an embrace.
He didn't know how long they stood next to the displays of tiny tea sets, but he could have stayed for a month. When Tally pulled away, she was panting. Zayn had to remind his hands that they were standing in the middle of a museum.
She bit her lower lip. "The guard is giving us the stink eye. I think we'd better move on."
They walked hand in hand into the next hall. Zayn felt like he was floating ten feet off the ground. All he could think about was the way her body felt against his.
As if a magnet pulled them there, they found a cul-de-sac between two display areas and pressed themselves into it, reengaging their kissing in earnest.
Suddenly she pulled away, a confused look on her face.
"Something's digging into my leg," she said.
"Well you did say it was big when I fell for you," he said, chuckling.
"No," she said, forehead wrinkling. "Your pocket, something sharp poked me."
He looked down, seeing something straining out of the left side of his pocket. Somehow he'd activated the tracking disc. He tried to turn it off inside his pocket, but slipping his hand inside only gave it a chance to spring out and attach itself to Tally's waist.
"What the hell is this?" she asked, clearly alarmed, pushing at the disc as if it were burning her.
"It's nothing. A tracking device. Something from a lesson I must have left in my pocket."
But the way she glared at him told him that she didn't believe it. "Were you planning on putting this on me?"
"No," he said, yanking the tracker from her hip. "I swear. I forgot it was in there."
He quickly turned it off and shoved it back into his pocket.
Tally crossed her arms. "Then why were you asking me so many questions about my project and what the hall is doing? This isn't a date at all, is it? This is some project of yours. A sick joke, isn't it?"
"No, I swear. I really like you. We're on a date," he said.
She shook her head as she paced away. "My friends told me I was stupid to go out with you. Your guild is nothing but thieves and liars. You're just trying to get information from me. Or it's some sort of sick game? Why did I ever allow myself to like you?" She had tears in her eyes as she stuck a finger in his face. "I bet you planned that whole library thing, and the fall, and then calling me out of the blue when I thought there wasn't a chance. Why was I so stupid?"
The heartbreak in her voice was worse than the accusations. He could barely muster a word because while she'd gotten some of the details wrong, she was right about his intentions. But he had strong, uncontrollable feelings about her too. Shouldn't that count for something?
Tally stomped off, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. A couple of older women shot him the glare of death, correctly assuming he was the cause of her tears.
Long after she was gone, he stood against the wall, trying to remember what it felt like to kiss her, and wondering how he'd let it go all wrong.
Chapter Seventeen
Eleventh Ward, March 2015
At least it's not Chucky
A week after his botched date with Tally, Zayn was downtown picking up spices from an international market to send to his sister Neveah, when he received an urgent text from Keelan.
KEELAN: Meet me in ward 11 ASAP
Zayn's questions back were met with silence, so he abandoned his quest for spices and hopped on the nearby Red Line, feeling twitchy and bouncing his knees the whole ride. When he reached the eleventh ward, he stood outside the station, busily checking his phone for messages from Keelan and worrying about what might be wrong. He cousin hadn't explained where they'd be headed, but the only pla
ce he thought it could be was the Smallest Eye Hall, the same place that they'd first seen the Gurken.
Zayn was about to head off to the hall alone when he heard Keelan's voice from behind him.
"Hey, cuz," said Keelan as they embraced.
Keelan had his red-and-black leather jacket on, along with shades. He looked like he was ready to head out to a bar rather than an emergency.
"What's going on?" asked Zayn.
Keelan gave him the covert signs for "lying" and "follow me." Instructor Pennywhistle had suggested that their teams develop hand signals to use when someone might be eavesdropping to communicate without being overheard.
"Thought we could get out, enjoy a day off, and play some pool at the bar up the street," said Keelan.
Concerned about the obfuscation, Zayn fell in with his cousin as he headed down the street, amping his senses to detect anyone who might be following them. The trash pickup services looked like they hadn't been through the streets in weeks, so the whole area had a fetid smell.
Once they were a couple of blocks from the train station, and the only person close by was a homeless man lying on a city bus bench with a blue tarp over him, Zayn said under his breath, "What's going on? Are we in danger?"
While keeping his mouth from moving, Keelan said, "Being cautious after attack. Will explain later."
At first, Zayn thought they were going to the Smallest Eye, but Keelan brought them to the west, away from it. The sun had slipped over the horizon with little fanfare. This was a bad area of town, and though they were a couple of hall-trained mages, without bullet-hardened clothing, a spray of gunfire would take them both out in an instant.
When they turned the corner across the street from a convenience store with metal bars in the windows, Keelan leapt on top of a brick wall and then climbed up a three-story brownstone as if it were a ladder. Zayn followed, trusting that his cousin would explain in good order.
They leapt from roof to roof in near silence, and a few minutes later, landed in the courtyard of The Smallest Eye, the same place they'd seen the Gurken take the head of a mage. The place hadn't changed much since the last time, except that the building was boarded up and yellow signs from Invictus City Police announcing that trespassers would be prosecuted had been stapled to them.
"If anyone was following us, I assume we lost them," said Keelan.
"Was anyone following us?"
"I don't know, but after the Stingtails, I didn't want to take a chance."
"I will assume that our current location suggests that you learned something," said Zayn.
"It's a wonder you never beat me in grades with logical acumen like that," said Keelan.
"I could only take so many art and philosophy classes."
While Zayn had taken his share of advanced placement studies, Keelan had maxed out on them. Had he been able to attend college, he would have had his pick of the best ones, based on his grades.
Keelan pulled the boards from the back door, the place where the Gurken had knocked them off their feet.
"I guess we're not worried about those signs," said Zayn.
"When have you ever been worried about breaking and entering?" asked Keelan.
"Since we got arrested here five months ago. A second time won't look good, even with our special privileges as hall mages," said Zayn.
"I'm not too worried about it. With the head patron dead or missing, the city doesn't seem to run as well anymore. This crime scene is an example. They should have cleaned it up months ago," said Keelan.
"Why? There are no new halls. As you said, Invictus is dead. Until someone figures out how to take his place, the Hundred Halls is on a long track to eventual extinction."
"Not in our lifetimes," said Keelan with an ambivalent shrug.
Stepping through the space between the boards, they entered the hall. A pair of floating magelights appeared.
"So why are we here?" asked Zayn.
"I was doing some research at the library, stuff I gleaned from The Ecological Webs of Arachnids. Don't worry, I stayed out of Tally's section. Basically, I was trying to find other works about purpura domina aranea, using the text from the book as a guide, but never actually looking for the explicit passages. Kind of like doing an internet search on porn, but never actually writing the word into the browser so no one can prove that you were searching for it. It was then I started finding other books that were talking about the spiders, but never naming them, as if other researchers had run into similar problems. A lot of them had to do with the Animalians hall."
"That's cool, but what does that have to do with the Smallest Eye?" asked Zayn.
"I'm getting there," said Keelan with his hands out. "I was sitting in the back of the library, trying to daydream myself around the problem, when I started thinking about the Gurken problem, and how we still don't know why he's taking heads. It occurred to me that maybe whoever hired him is after specific information that you can only find in those halls, but didn't want to reveal they were looking for it, so they took the heads. Like how I'm looking for information about purpura domina aranea, but not using that name, because the Lady has somehow blocked it."
"Okay, so someone hired the Gurken to gather information they could have found more simply? It doesn't really add up. Why hire an assassin that hasn't left their realm in decades, at an obscene price, if you could have done the same thing by stealing it or bribing someone?"
Keelan tapped on a table. "I don't have it completely worked out, but something about it feels right. Which halls have been targeted so far?" asked Keelan.
Zayn held out his hand and ticked them off as he said, "The Smallest Eye, Aura Healers, and Metallum Nocturne."
"And what do they have in common?" asked Keelan.
"Aura Healers are doctors, Smallest Eye is into microbiology, and Metallum Nocturne are blacksmiths? I don't know, got me," said Zayn.
A secret smile formed on Keelan's lips. "They're researchers, generally into using magic to create a better society."
"So the Gurken is taking the heads of researchers?" asked Zayn. "To what end?"
The excitement in Keelan's eyes dimmed as he looked around the ruined hall. "I don't know. That's why we're here. To prove my hypothesis. Look for anything that they were working on."
Zayn was going to bring up that even if they found something, there was no way to know what was taken from the Aura Healers, and since Metallum Nocturne hadn't been attacked yet, they were blind there. But it warmed his heart that his cousin had gotten involved with the investigation. Bringing him into his team had been the right move.
While Keelan searched in another part of the hall, Zayn moved through what looked like a laboratory filled with expensive alchemy equipment, microscopes, and small machines on a stainless steel counter. Three separate tables contained rows of glassware connected by sagging plastic tubes filled with a crusty blue dust. Zayn recalled last time he'd seen it, the mixture was bubbling as it moved through the tubes, and puffing out a white gas at the end. Everything looked newish, though it was currently covered with dust from sitting unused for so long.
He took a tentative sniff, catching the faint scent of sweetness, but kept looking. Without a background in arcane chemistry, he had no way to know what they'd been trying to do. He needed to find books or other notes.
An office behind the lab looked like it might have been used by the patron of the hall. An open laptop remained in a pile of curled papers on a desk surrounded by bookshelves. The keyboard was sticky, clearly from the drink knocked over in haste as the patron probably hurried to the source of the chaos.
Zayn tried to start the computer, but the direct hit from the soda had fried its electronic components. He wiped his fingers on his jeans and was moving to the tall shelves on the right, when something lurched out of the darkness at him.
He leapt out of the way, spells on his fingertips, expecting to do battle with some supernatural creature or drug-addled vagrant who'd squatted in the office, landin
g on top of the coffee table. The legs gave way with a loud snap, sending him unceremoniously to the floor, while out of the corner of his eye, the creature moved after him.
"Abbey?"
A misshapen being about two feet tall stepped out of the shadows, the magelight casting shadows across its lumpy face.
"Abbey?" it asked again, its soft confusion enough of a clue to its benign nature for Zayn to hold his fire.
Keelan came crashing into the room. The creature looked up to him, asking a third time.
"Abbey?"
Keelan started laughing. The creature looked like a piece of clay formed into a lumpy child. Its shoulders were tilted and it moved with a limp.
"I heard your scream and the crash and thought something got you," said Keelan, leaning over on his knees, laughing.
"What is it?" asked Zayn, looking into its amber colored eyes.
"I think it's a homunculus," said Keelan, squinting in the dim light. "Don't worry, little buddy, we're not Abbey, but we're not here to hurt you."
A red glow formed in the homunculus' eyes. "Not Abbey?"
The childlike face transformed into a menacing goblin as its clay arms morphed into sharp knives, attacking Zayn's legs in earnest. After crab-walking backwards, Zayn kip-upped and shifted to the side of the desk to keep it away from him.
Keelan brought a ball of explosive earth to his hands, but Zayn shouted at him as he dodged the murderous homunculus.
"Don't kill it, we can question it," said Zayn, dancing away from the knives.
"Are you crazy?" asked Keelan. "That's some horror show business right there. I'm gonna have nightmares for weeks."
The homunculus kept coming, but with his imbuement and the desk, it wasn't hard to keep away from its blades.
"Don't these things have command words?" asked Zayn, continuing around the desk as if he were playing tag with a toddler. "Search the desk while I keep it busy."
Standing in the doorway, Keelan shook his head. "This is like Chucky, or that one movie you made me watch when we were kids, Attack of the Dolls. I hated that movie."
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