by Joe Ducie
“The thing that killed Detective Grey and the others, that tried to kill you tonight, and gave me this knock on the head.” I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Annie, I’m sorry, but it’s not human. It’s not even from this world.”
Her face crumpled, as I’d known it would. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in an unconscious snarl, and she immediately put up a wall between herself and my cruel truth. “You think I’m an idiot?”
“Far from it.”
“Officer Owens!” she called across the bullpen. “Please find a nice cell for Mr. Hale. He’ll be spending the night.”
A large cop shuffled across the floor and hauled me up by the arm. I went quietly, Annie following in my wake, and did not protest the concrete box—stinking of chemical cleaners trying hard to mask urine—they shoved me in. I’d seen enough in that last glance on Annie’s face to know that, despite it all, she believed me wholly.
And it terrified her.
Her logical mind just needed to catch up with her soulful heart and absorb all she had seen tonight.
I sat down on the thin mattress in the cell, alone in the dull fluorescent light, and rested my aching head. It had been a long day—as long as any I could remember, even during the dark days of the Tome Wars. My heart was telling me it was only the first of such long days to come… War, or something like it, marred the horizon.
A few hours later, as I lay dozing on the edge of sleep, Annie returned and let me out. She held my worn, old waistcoat over her forearm. In one hand, she carried a bottle of water and in the other a packet of ibuprofen. I swallowed three of the pills, shrugged into my coat, and followed my new friend out into the early morning light just before dawn.
We said nothing as I climbed into the passenger seat of her car, and she took off in the general direction of Riverwood Plaza and my bookshop.
Chapter Eight
Spins Madly On
We didn’t speak until I’d let us both into my shop, reset the wards, and led Annie through the maze of bookshelves, around towering pillars of creative endeavor, to the counter near my writing alcove.
“If this thing...” she began, then faltered.
“Emissary,” I offered.
“If Emissary wanted you so badly, then why’s it killing all these other people?”
A good question. One that needed proper answers. What had Emissary said? Spill enough blood, and the walls of reality begin to crack. What, perchance, may slip through then? “We need to go see my brother, Annie. I may be the last sheriff round these parts, according to Emily, but there’s an army of men and women like me who need to know what’s happening here.”
“Your brother? Grey told me you didn’t have any family.”
“Ah, no. What I told Grey was that I was alone on this big, blue marble. Which is technically true. I’ve no family that I know of here on Earth. My brother lives on another world, in Ascension City. He’s the king of an order of men and women who can use Will—the magic, as you understand it—called the Knights Infernal. An ancient order responsible for maintaining the Story Thread and charged with protecting all worlds, but this world in particular, from nightmares such as Emissary.”
Annie took as much of that as she could in her stride. “Your brother’s a king?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound too happy about it.”
I snorted. “We’re not exactly close. In fact, we’re not close at all.”
“You had a falling out?”
“We’re still falling. He stole the Dragon Throne and had me exiled to True Earth, here, under pain of death. It’s likely he’ll want to kill me if I return, but perhaps not given recent events.” I rubbed at the tender rune seared into my arm. “Regardless, Emissary has forced my hand. I have to go back.”
“How so?”
“What happened last night, and the two murders taunting me yesterday, are bad. Real bad.” I shook my head. “Monumentally bad. The thing is, the Knights are usually on top of these things well before local law enforcement, or even the media, know what’s happened. Our world, our power, is best kept secret, and even during the Tome Wars the Knights and the Renegades held to that secret here on True Earth. When something broke through, like a Voidling, it was handled swiftly and surely. The fact that you’re involved at all, Annie, is an appalling lapse. The Knights are in trouble.”
She considered and then nodded. “What kind of trouble, do you think?”
“The Everlasting…” I fumbled again at how much she needed to know. “Uh, that is, some powerful beings that seem to wish us harm must be encroaching on King Faraday’s territory. Despite what Emily said, I can’t imagine he’s abandoned Earth willingly… It’s the real world, after all. The Story Thread was first spun here, cast out into the Void like a beacon against the night. To give that up is like, well, like poisoning the well. The bad apple that spoils the rest. Somewhat of a degradation. Heh.”
“I’m following about one word in three here, Declan.” Annie wrapped her arms about herself and shrugged. “I guess there’s a lot I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to come with me, normally. Forget is no place for those without Will, save for a few bastions against the chaos—like Ascension City—but Perth is just as dangerous, if not more so, with Emissary on the loose. And he took a shine to you last night, I’m afraid.” Why you, though? Aeons become seconds...
Annie paled. “I feel sick. I should phone Brian and let him know.”
“Brian?”
Annie waved her ring finger at me and pulled out her phone. “My fiancé.”
“Be brief. Tell him nothing about Forget, or Emissary, or any of this absurd nonsense. There are creatures… Voidlings again, made of abstract concepts or worse, that can sometimes sense that kind of dangerous knowledge.”
“What?” Annie shook her head. “That’s—”
“Absurd nonsense, yes, but there you have it. Best start getting used to it now.”
“What should I tell him then? He could be in danger.”
I held up my palm and tried to create a small ball of spluttering flame—a simple trick, taught to apprentices not even seven years old at the Academy. The rune on my arm stung and cut me away from the enchantment. “Not if you can keep what you’ve learned a secret, he won’t be. No more than anyone in this town, at least. Tell him you’re stuck at work for a few days, what with all the murder. It’s not a lie, really. Work is just taking you further afield than Kings Park today.”
Annie stepped outside the shop to make her phone call, and I helped myself to a sip of scotch from the collection of bottles scattered around my writing alcove. The time was coming up on seven o’clock in the morning, but I’d been awake long enough for it not to matter. Scotch o’clock somewhere. I slumped down into my seat, opposite a leather couch stained and sticky with spilled liquor from a lot of sleepless nights, and put my feet up on a stack of pages, weeks out of the typewriter. My incomplete, somewhat endless novel made a better footrest than it did a story.
“Declan Hale, you need to sleep, lad,” Roper Hartley said, appearing out of nothing on the leather couch.
I rubbed my eyelids and cursed. “Not now, mate. Long night, yeah. Even longer day ahead.”
Roper was a real character. And by real character, I meant real character. The handsome, daring protagonist from John Richardson’s Emerald City series. A construct of Will or my own insanity, I’d once thought. He was a tall man, fair, and athletically built. Perfect stubble bristled across his chin under a wave of chestnut-brown hair. A sword hung in a sheath around his waist, pointed down toward the floor, and a quiver of arrows rested on his back.
He shouldn’t have been able to reach me here, on True Earth, but a lot of things seemed to be changing. War to come, Emily had said. At first, I’d thought I was mad, speaking to characters that only I could see, but now I believed them to be more than madness. Something to do with my lack of shadow and the way my existence pulled on the Story Thread. I
was half in and half out of the Void at all times, thanks to my deal with Lord Oblivion five and a half years ago in Atlantis. Some of my essence, my shadow, was trapped forever in the inky blackness between universes. I was in two places at once, and that kind of anomaly was like sandpaper scraping against the cloth of reality, wearing thin.
At least, that was my working theory. I didn’t have a better one or access to the scholars at the Infernal Academy who study Void law.
“Something changed, recently, and the walls between worlds are crumbling. Can’t you feel it, Arbiter? Old powers are returning.”
An image of the Infernal Clock shattering against a floor of dark obsidian stone came to mind. “What do you know of old powers? Richardson wrote you into existence not thirty years ago.”
Roper gave me half a smile. “You may use and, indeed, abuse the Story Thread, Hale, but I was born of it—I am part of it. I can hear it screaming.”
“It’s the Mirror upstairs, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here.” I chuckled and shook my head. “Holmes pretty much told me a few months ago, before Atlantis and Clare happened. Best you fix this, he said.”
“I’m here—”
The chime above the door jingled and someone, Annie most likely, stepped back into the shop. Whoever it was moved swiftly through the maze of books to the counter and my alcove. Roper turned his head, listening, with a small frown.
“Now that’s interesting...” he muttered.
“I told Brian as much as I dared,” Annie said, appearing from between the twisting shelves of romance and general fiction. “Declan, I... Who’s that?”
She was staring at Roper.
He seemed just as surprised as me, and I almost fell out of my chair.
“You can see him?” I asked. “Annie, you can see the man on the couch?”
“Wearing the tight leather pants? Yes. You’ll cook in the sun in those, buddy.”
Roper looked at me, back to Annie, and opened his mouth to speak. He licked his lips instead, chuckled, and disappeared.
Annie dropped her phone and jumped back with a small cry. I just stared at her, stunned. My world spun a few more degrees off its axis. So Roper, somehow, and impossibly so, was real. Time and time again he’d appeared, whispering in my ear, along with other characters—some not so kind—and no one, not Ethan or Sophie, or even old Marcus, had ever said a word. They hadn’t been able to see the impossible constructs.
But Annie... why Annie?
“Who are you?” I asked, gripping the neck of the scotch bottle hard enough to turn my knuckles white. If I could have accessed my Will, my hands would have been ablaze, reaching for the nearest book. I thought again on how my power had reacted to Annie, just over thirty hours ago in Kings Park. My Will had reached for her, like a man lost in the desert reaching for an oasis found.
“Declan,” Annie said carefully, a hand on the grip of her gun, “put the bottle down.”
I blinked. I was on my feet, legs set in a defensive stance, chest to the side, and holding the bottle as though it were a club, just above my waist. “Sorry,” I said, doing as she asked. “It’s just... impossible that you saw Roper.”
“Why... how... did he disappear?”
“Because he was never there!” I was shouting, and it felt good. “He was just... an echo, forced out of his book because of the Mirror upstairs. The Black Mirror, a path through the Void, and because of my shadow. He was a ghost sent to haunt me—like all of them!”
“I don’t understand—”
“No! No you can’t understand. No one can.” Oh, and pity the melodrama of the long-suffering. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Sorry I’m shouting. It’s just... I’ve never had my Will taken away from me. Not like this. I feel like I’m trying to breathe underwater, you know. Trying to see with my eyes stabbed out. I...” I got a hold on the anger. “You must have a lot of questions. Do you want to sit down, and we’ll talk?”
Annie nodded and moved over to the leather couch, so recently occupied by a fairy tale, and sat on the edge. She relaxed when I sat down, too, and pulled out my phone.
“I’m going to call Ethan and Sophie, get them over here. They’re like me, Annie. They know about... magic and other worlds. We’ll need their help getting to Forget and Ascension City.”
I glanced at the screen of my phone, which had been on silent mode all night, and saw I had forty-seven missed calls. “Yikes, I think I’m in trouble.”
I made a quick call, and Sophie picked up halfway through the first ring.
“Hi, Soph—yes, I know. Yes. Yes. Look, I was there. At Paddy’s and at Hillarys.” I gave Annie a smile and rolled my eyes. She didn’t return it. “Police station most of the night. A lot’s happened. You and Ethan need to get to the shop now—I don’t care if he’s got work. Trouble a’brewing, ’Phie. I... I’ve been Marked. Yes, like that. I’ll see you soon.”
I ended the call, tossed the phone on the coffee table between the old typewriter and the haphazardly stacked pages of my novel, and poured myself a half glass of liquid gold.
“You know how early it is?” Annie asked.
“Scotch o’clock somewhere, sweet thing.” A half-eaten packet of stale digestive biscuits sat on the shelf in the window alcove. I tore the packet wide open and dipped one into my drink. “Care for a biscuit?”
“No, thank you. That’s disgusting.”
“I had a pack with chocolate topping around here somewhere, but this shop has a way of swallowing things whole, given enough time.” I chuckled and wiped some crumbs from the corner of my mouth.
“Is this how you usually live, Declan?”
A smile spread across my face. “First name basis—that is wonderful.”
Annie huffed and pressed her hands against her knees. Dark lines had appeared under her eyes in the last few hours. We both could’ve used about two days of good sleep. She looked around my shop as if expecting anything or anyone to pop into existence any second. I suppose that was a fair concern, given this place.
“How do you keep the silverfish out of all these books?” she asked.
“Minor wards and charms. The books are under my protection.”
“Are you actually open for business? That cash register doesn’t look like it’s ever been used.”
“When the mood strikes me, I open the shop, but you never can be sure who’s a customer and who’s an assassin, can you?”
“I’m not sure how many bookshop managers have that problem.”
“You’d be surprised.”
Annie raised an eyebrow and said nothing. I could see a thousand questions quivering on her lips, but it was best to let someone new to all this wonder and horror work their own way around to whatever was on their mind. Too much too soon could be damaging. Not as damaging as a demonic messenger of the Old Gods, sure, but still a trifle worrisome.
“There are other worlds,” Annie said, as if confirming the fact to herself.
“Yes.”
“You’ve been to them?”
“Oh, yes. Many, many times.”
“And there’s, like, this main other world and some sort of city where people like you come from?”
I shrugged. “I was born here on Earth, actually, twenty-five or so years ago, but yes, there’s Ascension City—a shining world of prosperity and wealth, a jewel of the Story Thread.”
“So who are you in this other world? A... Knight?”
“I was a Knight. Most definitely a Knight. Before I was exiled for ending the war, I was commander of one of the most elite units in Ascension City—the Cascade Fleet.”
“For ending the war?”
“That’s another long story. Short version, I bargained with a creature of immense power in the heart of Atlantis—yes, that Atlantis—and lost my shadow and my love in the fine print but forced an end to the Tome Wars. I created a... Degradation. A shield that encircled Atlantis, protecting the city and the powerful relics hidden there. It also crippled the Story Thread.”
Annie threw up her hands, struggling to keep up. “You keep mentioning that. What is the Story Thread?”
“A network of countless worlds that we, people like me with enough Will power, can access through books. Think of the Thread as cities and towns on a map, and books are the roads connecting them all together. It’s actually nothing like that, but you get a rough idea, yeah?”
Annie nodded. I liked the way she nodded, her fringe bouncing. She was quite pretty. “Tell me about the Knights then. What are they?”
“The Knights...” I sighed, somewhat wistfully. “My entire life, up until five years ago, was spent in service of the Knights Infernal and all that they, in their glory, stood for.” And how far we mighty fall... “The Knights are an order of men and women, millennia old, who serve the Story Thread and Forget. We keep the Void in check and deal with the monsters, the unseen, the nightmarish visions of humanity made real.”
“Sort of like a police force then?”
“Sure, I guess. But closer to a military, overseen by a monarchy of powerful Knights and the lords and ladies of Ascension City.”
“You mentioned something about a king before. I’m picturing a medieval castle, with Knights in armor fighting on horseback. Is it anything like that? A king would mean you don’t vote people into power, do you?”
“No, not so much.” I ran a hand back through my hair and frowned. “You have to understand, before I ended them, the Tome Wars had been fought for close to a century. One hundred years of war between the Knights and the Renegades. Not much chance to hold general elections in there.”
“So how do you decide who’s in charge?”
“Power,” I said. “Any kid who graduates from the Academy, at fifteen or sixteen, becomes something like a senator, a politician, in a way, capable of influencing policy and the war effort. For the last few decades, the Dragon Throne has been held by those with the power to seize control and govern the war, elected—in the loosest sense of the word—by a council of the ruling class. We’re soldiers, first and foremost, charged to protect the Story Thread and the wealth of worlds out there, standing strong against the Void.”