The mayor gave an embarrassed chuckle. “Well, those kinds of announcements are always one part policy, two parts theater.” His mouth straightened as he rested his forearms on his knees. “The truth is, the problem is much more complex than that. Not only because my wife is, well, a supernatural, but because there are genuinely good supernaturals in this city. The diviner I consult in Chinatown, for example. Lady Bastet. The fae. You. Don’t worry, Everson. I know that about my city. For the eradication program I’m proposing, I want to target the bad ones. The worst of the worst. The goddamned ghouls in the subway lines. The creatures making a bone yard of Central Park. Those are the ones I want gone.”
I squinted at Budge, trying to figure out his angle. He was in a mayoral race that, by all rights, his opponent should have been running away with. That Budge was even close was owed to his wife’s condition. But sympathy was only going to carry him so far. Enter the eradication program—or at least an expedited operation or two that would show dramatic results.
“All so you can announce ‘mission accomplished’ in October,” I said, “sweeping you to victory in November?”
Budge grimaced before breaking into a you-got-me smile. “I have to keep reminding myself that you’re a college professor, not one of my typical voters. Yeah,” he conceded, “you’re more or less in the ballpark. Which means I have three months to do what I announced. Not much time at all.”
I studied his imploring gaze.
“Look,” he said, “the federal government spotted me an advance, so the team I’m putting together is ace. But most of them are new to this supernatural thing. You know the ins and outs. Hell, I’ve seen you in action. You’re good. Damned good. Plus, you’ve advised the NYPD before. It’s just a matter of renewing your contract.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The man didn’t want me dead. He wanted my help. I thought about Caroline’s warning before answering. “What would your wife say?” I asked.
Budged looked toward the door and lowered his voice. “What can she say? By the time she awakens, the program will have wrapped up. I’ll be in my second term, and I’ll have you in part to thank. We both will.”
“You sure about that?”
He nodded, his eyes moving back and forth over mine. In exchange for helping him, he was offering a kind of amnesty. No more looking over my shoulder to see whether Penny’s pack was stalking me.
“Are any wolves going to be involved?”
“God, no,” Budge replied, keeping his voice low. “Just NYPD officers and specialists.”
“Detective Vega,” I said.
Budge’s brow furrowed in question. “What about her?”
I was considering what Caroline had said about how the information Vega and I wielded over the mayor and his wife would no longer be a deterrent. “I want the same deal for her.”
Budge’s face smoothed. “Already done.”
“And there has to be discretion. I don’t want every New Yorker and their grandmother knowing what I can do.”
“Hey, mum’s the word.” His eyebrows rose above his glasses. “So?”
Even with my throbbing headache, the calculation was a simple one. Whether or not Budge could control his wife were she to awaken, I would be safer inside the eradication program than outside of it.
“I’ll have to clear it with my higher ups,” I said. “But as far as I’m concerned, yeah, I’m on board.”
Budge’s face lit up as he slapped my knee.
“Attaboy!”
8
I plodded up the final steps of my apartment building, cane and necklace back in my possession, casting prism restored, and reviewed the deal I’d made with Budge. If nothing else, it offered Vega and me another layer of protection. The only question was how robust that protection would be. I didn’t know how much control Budge wielded over Penny’s pack.
I unlocked the three door bolts and prioritized my next moves. First, heal up. Second, contact the Order about my participating in the eradication program. And third, start figuring out why the wolves had murdered Lady Bastet. That would tell me what kind of danger Vega and I might be in.
The apartment was dark when I entered. I was reaching for the light switch when, from the direction of Tabitha’s divan, came a strangled moan. I stopped and yanked my sword from my cane, the bloody image of the decapitated cats searing through my mind’s eye.
“Tabitha?” I called.
A pair of eyes flashed from the divan—but not the ochre-green of my cat’s. These were yellow.
“Protezione!” I called.
Sparks burst from my orb as it manifested a shield of white light. In the sudden glow, the being on Tabitha’s divan took shape. Not a wolf, though. A squat man in a corduroy sports jacket with elbow patches was sitting there, the pointed toes of his green leather shoes just touching the floor. Beneath a mop of gray hair, the man’s eyes squinted back at me.
“Chicory?” I said.
The last time I’d seen my mentor had been ten months earlier, when he’d rescued me from a group of druids in Central Park and then forbade me from pursuing the demon cases. I dissolved my shield with another Word and hit the flood lights. Chicory lowered his hand from his brow.
“At ease,” he said in his Irish brogue.
Tabitha was on his far side, purring and moaning as Chicory scratched the hair around her ears. They had always gotten along well, despite my mentor’s disapproval of her succubus nature.
I sheathed my sword. “You scared all hell out of me.”
“Ah, yes, I let myself in,” Chicory said. “I hope you don’t mind. I’d almost forgotten about your companion. She’s quite a beautiful thing, isn’t she? Though a little starved for attention, I should say.”
I watched Tabitha moan and twist her neck as Chicory scratched around it.
“Not anymore,” I muttered, walking toward them.
I searched my mentor’s face, with its bushy brows, squash-shaped nose, and curmudgeon’s lips, for some indication of why he’d come. His visits rarely heralded good things.
“So, what’s up?” I asked.
Chicory gave Tabitha’s head a final pat. “There you are, love.” He wiped his hands together and stood to face me. Behind him, Tabitha curled onto her cat bed and passed out.
“Did you summon a gatekeeper from the In Between?” he asked pointedly.
Crap. “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say summon. I had a brief chat with one, if that’s what you’re getting at. Emphasis on brief.”
“And what did he say?” Chicory asked.
“Not much, to be honest.”
“They rarely do, unless it’s in the act of claiming your soul.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not careless enough to let that happen,” I said, recalling the sensation of dangling into the frigid void, my fingers clenching the mirror frame.
Chicory let out a humpf as he lowered himself to my reading chair. “You know the Order’s policy on summonings.”
“I told you, it wasn’t a summoning. It was more of a … leaving the back door open. I didn’t force the gatekeeper to come through.”
Chicory’s eyebrows crowded his dark eyes. He wasn’t buying it.
“Look,” I said, “I was just trying to find out some information on my mother. I went to the Order first, I’ll have you know.”
“Then you should have awaited their response.”
“Oh, yeah? And when would that have been? The next fossil age?”
“Everson,” he said sternly, “I needn’t remind you that there are penalties for wayward wizards.”
“No, you needn’t.” I sat on the couch with a hard sigh. “I just find it funny that whenever I ask for a hand, the Order seems to fall off the face of the Earth, but when I commit a minor infraction—bam!—you’re suddenly up in my face.”
“You shouldn’t expect your priorities and the Elders’ to align. But preventing wizards from turning to the dark arts is a priority we all share. There’s a reaso
n there’s only been one rebellion against the Order in its centuries of existence.”
“Rebellion?” I said, sitting upright. “I’ve never heard anything about a rebellion.”
Chicory, who had been pulling a smoking pipe from his jacket, paused to frown, as though he’d let something slip. He regarded the bowl of packed leaves for a moment before nodding. “That’s not a story we tell our novice practitioners, but perhaps it’s time you heard it.”
I bristled at the word novice before reminding myself that, though I’d been wizarding for more than a decade, I remained an infant in the eyes of those who’d been practicing for hundreds, even thousands, of years.
Chicory drew his wand from another pocket, touched it to the pipe, and puffed until the leaves began to crackle. When he moved the stem from his lips, a sweet fragrance of tobacco drifted over the room. “The First Saint from whom we’re all descended had nine children,” he began.
“I already know that part of the history.”
“Are your own students this impertinent?” Chicory asked with a frown. “If you want me to tell you the story of the rebellion, I need to start at the beginning.”
I showed a hand to say fair enough and nodded for him to continue.
He took two quick puffs. “Now, the Order began informally, as you know. A way for Michael’s nine children to train their own children in the art of magic, battling dark creatures, so on and so forth.”
“Sort of like community homeschooling,” I said.
“Very much so,” Chicory decided after a moment’s pause. “But like with any growing organization, as the practitioners multiplied and spread around the ancient world, the training became more formalized. Michael’s children called themselves the First Order. They appointed regional heads, whom they called the Second Order. Later Third and Fourth Orders were added. Decisions made by the First Order were disseminated down the ranks. Over time, the Diaspora came to be known as the Order of Magi and Magical Beings.”
This was still a review from my training under Lazlo, but I didn’t say anything.
“Now,” Chicory continued, “around the time of the late Roman Empire, the First Order attained a level of magic that transformed them. Some would say they became gods or at least god-like. Though they continued to exist on the physical plane, they inhabited more ethereal planes as well.”
“The Elders,” I said, scooting forward. Though I had heard all of this before, the thought of attaining that state—as indeed I might one day (if I managed to stay alive)—fascinated me.
“Precisely,” Chicory said, the smoke that rose from his pipe seeming to bend reality. He aimed the stem at me. “Now here’s what you weren’t told. Of the original members of the First Order, only eight attained that godlike state. No one can say why the youngest did not.”
“Runt of the litter?”
Chicory shrugged. “Perhaps he didn’t inherit as much power from his father as the others. But it wasn’t for lack of practice. This ninth sibling was intent on perfecting his magic, of transforming that art into science. Indeed, Lich—for that was his name—Lich devised the regimen for fledgling magic-users, penned many of the world’s first spell books. You might imagine his disappointment, then, when his siblings ascended and he was left behind.”
I caught myself nodding.
“But Lich was determined to join them,” Chicory continued. “The legend goes that he practiced more fervently than he ever had before, the effort nearly killing him, until one day, after hundreds of years, his efforts opened a deep, deep fissure in the fabric of our world. Through it, he heard the whisperings of a being more ancient than the First Saints and Demons.”
I leaned further forward, the rest of my apartment seeming to disappear.
Chicory nodded gravely. “By eavesdropping on the being’s whisperings, Lich learned secrets that could elevate him to the level of his siblings and possibly beyond. From those secrets, he cultivated power. And with that power, he confronted his eight brothers and sisters, demanding his rightful place among them. They questioned the source of his magic. When he told them, they attempted to close the fissure to the Deep Down. Lich fought back.”
“What happened?”
“A horrible battle. Indeed, the Order almost fell. But in the end, they destroyed Lich and sealed the opening to the domicile of the being who came to be known as the Whisperer.”
I had always considered the Elders invincible. To hear that they’d been pushed to the brink sent a guilty jolt of pleasure through me while filling me with a deeper anxiety. “The Order almost fell?”
“The Elders took steps to ensure nothing like that would ever happen again.” Chicory leveled his gaze at me. “Including creating a penalty system for wizards who insist on summoning beings they shouldn’t.”
“I told you, it wasn’t really a summon—”
“Silence, Everson.”
I watched him watching me, the smoke from his pipe enshrouding him in a sinister mist. Story time was over. Time to dole out the punishment. A heavy stone rolled around my stomach. Chicory set his pipe on an end table and folded his stubby fingers over his small paunch.
“Though you committed an infraction, that’s not why I came,” he said.
“It’s n-not?”
“I’m here on another errand. When I let myself in, I happened to sense the remnants of the summoning spell, which you’ve all but confessed to. There are penalties for such actions, Everson. But given that you banished a demon lord last fall, I’m only going to issue a warning this time. This time,” he emphasized, raising an eyebrow. “You’ll see no such leniency the next.”
“I understand,” I said, touching my clasped hands to my forehead. “Thank you.”
“I’m here about your mother.”
I lowered my hands.
“In response to your multiple inquiries into the circumstances surrounding your mother’s death, the Order has sent me to address them.”
“That’s why you’re here?”
“The answer, I’ve been told, is no.”
“No?” I said. “What do they mean no?”
“They have no more information for you.”
“They have no more information period, or no more information they want to tell me?”
“They hope this brings the matter to a close.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Brings the matter to a close? The hell it does! All it tells me is that the Order is hiding something.” I flattened my shaking hands against my thighs and took several deep breaths. “I’m going to ask you something, Chicory—you, not them—and I want the God’s honest truth.” I took another breath as I considered the question I’d been brooding over for the last four months. “Did the Order execute her?”
The room seemed to waver around us.
“I can tell you unequivocally that they did not.”
I took a moment to decide whether or not I believed him. Chicory waited, a sober honesty standing in his eyes.
“But there’s more,” I said. “There has to be more.”
“If there is, the Elders have chosen not to disclose it. We must accept whatever wisdom guides their reasoning.”
“But it’s my mother,” I said.
“I know, Everson.”
“Can you at least tell me whether she was a magic-user, a member of the Order?”
“She passed away before my transfer here,” Chicory said. “But I don’t think the Order would object to my telling you there’s no record on her. None that I could locate, anyway. Not every generation manifests the power of Michael’s lineage. While your mother carried the genes, the genes may not have found expression in her. They found expression in you, though—something the Order was unaware of until your adventures in Romania.”
“Can you ask them?” I pressed.
Chicory sighed heavily.
“Please.”
He move his head side to side as though deliberating. At last, he nodded. “I’ll see what I can find o
ut. But I can’t tell you when to expect any information,” he added hurriedly. “I have a full caseload right now.”
“I understand. Anything’s better than nothing.”
“Very well.” He stood and returned his pipe to his pocket. “Was there anything else?”
“Actually, the mayor is planning a program to eradicate ghouls and lesser creatures in the city. He wants me to act as a consultant. I told him I had to clear it with my higher ups.” Not wanting to convolute the request, I said nothing about the werewolves or Lady Bastet’s murder.
“That sounds fine,” Chicory said. “It’s why Michael sired children, after all. Just don’t let it interfere with your other duties.” Chicory shot me a final reproving look. “And no more summonings—or leaving doors open, as you call it. Not from the In Between, not from anywhere.”
“No more leaving doors open,” I agreed.
Chicory’s cocked eyebrow issued all the warning I needed. Not only would I face extreme punishment, but I could forget about learning anything more about my mother.
“G’night, love,” he said to Tabitha, giving her a final scratch behind the ears.
Tabitha shifted and purred in her sleep.
9
I met with the mayor twice that week, official meetings in his City Hall office. No more being beaten and grabbed off the street. For Budge’s part, he acted as if that episode had never happened. We spent most of the first meeting discussing the supernatural geography of the city, narrowing in on the ghoul-infested subway lines and the wilds of Central Park.
Budge frowned down at the map spread over his desk. “Which one should we nail first?”
“Well, if the goal is to get the most bang for your buck in the shortest amount of time…” I tapped the defunct Broadway line in lower Manhattan. “…I’d go after the ghouls. With them gone, murders and disappearances will drop immediately. A hard stat you can point to.”
“I like the sound of that,” Budge said.
“Not to mention you’ll be able to restore service to that line, something the public’s been clamoring for.”
The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Page 58