“Aye,” he said, and started to leave.
I almost let him. I’d already engaged three soulless soldiers, two humans, and one vampire that morning. But then I realized something else about this man. There was a magic-user in that furniture shop, but it wasn’t Mr. Vander Meer. It was Mr. Blue Eyes.
I opened up my wizard’s senses a crack. I wasn’t surprised to see a magical hue in his aura, but I was surprised at its thinness. Where was the power that had protected the store from would-be arsonists, not to mention compelled a vampire like Arnaud to back down?
“Hold on a second,” I called.
Blue Eyes faced me again, but his gaze was firm, unfriendly.
“I was wondering if I could, ah, ask you a few questions,” I said.
“There’s no time,” he replied, striding away again. “I must return to work.”
I caught up to him at a jog. “The ingredients I want are for potions,” I said in a lowered voice, “but I think you know that.” He gave no indication either way. “There’s something demonic here.” I was having trouble keeping pace with his long strides. “Something that might be connected to the Patriot soldiers who were recently released. The ones without souls. Do you know anything about this?”
“How could I? I am just a furniture maker.”
Yeah, and I was Thomas Hanson. I knew people had been burned and hanged in the colonies for witchcraft, but was the man’s fear of persecution so great that he would keep his identity a secret from someone who just admitted to being a fellow practitioner? Who told him a demonic threat was looming?
As the furniture shop came into view, Blue Eyes turned on me suddenly.
“You must leave now or Mr. Vander Meer will attack you again. He is convinced there is a conspiracy to take over his shop, and he is not wrong.” I wondered now if Arnaud had been the one to accuse the store owner of being a warlock.
“I just need help,” I said, not knowing how else to appeal to him.
I could see by the slight glazing of his eyes that he had opened his own wizard’s senses. His brow creased in what seemed bafflement. After another moment, his gaze dropped to my cane, then flicked to the pocket where I’d stashed the ring. It was still vibrating in that high frequency. By the time his eyes returned to mine, his face was composed.
“Do not come to Vander Meer’s again.” I started to renew my appeal, but he held up a hand. He wasn’t done. “I am staying in a farmhouse two miles up Bowery Lane. You can find it by the rooster in the road. I will be there tonight. Come quietly.” And with that, he strode back toward the furniture store.
“Thank you, Mr.…?”
“Croft,” he said over a shoulder. “Asmus Croft.”
The name bowled through my head, blowing my thoughts in every direction. I could only stare dumbly as my grandfather opened the door to Vander Meer’s, issued a final look of warning, and disappeared inside. As he pulled the door to, I caught the silvery glint of an ingot on his right ring finger.
When the door closed, the ring in my pocket stopped vibrating.
29
I returned to the chapel with a sack of spell items and an alchemy kit. I found Malachi at a desk in our dorm room, poring over his Latin Bible.
“Are the others back yet?” I asked.
He started as if he’d been deeply absorbed. “Oh!” he said, pausing to catch his breath. “Sorry, this place has just been so empty. No, Seay and Gorgantha are still out. I haven’t heard from Jordan, either.”
I checked my bonding sigil. There had been no alerts all morning.
Malachi closed his Bible and rotated on his seat, injured arm propped over the backrest. A spot of blood showed through the bandage, but the bandage was much cleaner than it had been that morning before the rector changed it.
“How did it go out there?” he asked. “Anything happen?”
I blew out a laugh as I placed the sack and kit on the neighboring desk. “Yeah, a few things.”
I told him about my observation of the sugar-house-turned-prison, my encounter with the soulless soldiers, and my conversation with Mrs. Burgess. I also shared the details of my interesting trip to Vander Meer’s furniture store. His eyes went wide as I described my encounter with Arnaud and wider still when I got to the part about the blue-eyed man who turned out to be my grandfather.
“H-how is that even possible?” Malachi stammered.
“Magic-users live a long time,” I said. “Especially the powerful ones. From what I’d pieced together, I’d always thought my grandfather was in Europe around this time, that he hadn’t come to Manhattan until the eighteen hundreds.” I shook my head, still dumb with disbelief. “I’d thought wrong.”
“What were the chances of running into him?” Malachi mused.
“Probably a lot higher than it would seem at first blush.” I told him how I believed my magic had arranged my meeting with Vander Meer’s descendent the day before, so I’d have the info about his store when I arrived here.
“And you went to the store under the impression Vander Meer was a magic-user?”
“Yeah, turned out it was his assistant, my grandfather. He must have overheard me asking about the spell ingredients and gotten curious. After settling Vander Meer down, he went out and found me in a standoff with Arnaud.” I snorted. “No wonder Arnaud backed down. Not only had he seen my grandfather’s magic up close during their campaign in Eastern Europe, Arnaud knows he wields the power of the Brasov Pact. My grandfather was one of the magic-users who forged the original enchantment.”
I eyed my ring. That explained the resonance I’d felt earlier. It had been responding to the ring on Grandpa’s finger. The two rings were twins, after all, separated only by different time structures.
“Did he know who you were?” Malachi asked.
“He had to have seen the familial patterns in my aura. Beyond that?” I shrugged.
“But … if he knew you were family, why did you have to chase him down?”
I’d thought about that on my walk back; given Grandpa’s history it made sense. “Because he’s lying low.”
“Lying low?”
“While studying the ancient history of our Order, he began to suspect that some of the later accounts were lies. There had been a rebellion centuries before. The youngest member of the First Order, one of the nine original saints, discovered a shaft to an ancient being called the Whisperer. He drew power from that connection and tried to overthrow his brothers and sisters. According to the history, Lich’s rebellion was put down and the portal to the Whisperer sealed. But my grandfather began to suspect the rebellion had succeeded and that this Lich was still alive, that he was harvesting the souls of powerful magic-users for a portal that would deliver the Whisperer into our world.”
Malachi watched me, his face rapt. As often happened when I lectured, I had slipped into my story-telling voice. The result was that he was now seeing and experiencing bits of what I was describing.
“My grandfather used the war against the Inquisition to meet with other magic-users, including the man who would eventually marry his daughter and become my father. They started a resistance group to defeat Lich. To succeed, though, would require time and resources. That meant faked deaths, alternate realms, the hoarding of enchanted items, basically a lot of sneaking around. After the war, my grandfather claimed he’d lost most of his power from a head wound and was granted a dismissal from ‘the Order.’” I air-quoted the words. “This freed him up to become a full-time leader of the resistance.”
Malachi blinked. “And I’m assuming they succeeded?”
I caught myself studying the scar on my first finger, the one Grandpa had inflicted with his cane sword. For a long time I thought it had been punishment for sneaking into his locked study when I was a kid. In fact, he had drawn my blood in order to bond me to the powerful blade that would one day destroy Lich. From that memory, I saw my father plunging into the portal to the Whisperer, shouting the Word of Creation that collapsed that chann
el once and for all. And sacrificing his life in the process.
I curled my finger and looked up. “They did,” I said. “But this alternate version of my grandfather doesn’t know that. He’s still in covert mode, pretending his magic is broken. He might have been planning to keep tabs on me from afar, see if I was trustworthy enough to bring into his confidence, but I forced his hand. He’s invited me to his farmhouse tonight.”
“For what?”
“Probably to start my recruitment into the Order in Exile.”
The idea of being recruited by my grandfather sent a wave of unreality through me. My father, Marlow, would be in the Refuge at that moment. I laughed at the improbability of it all, even as I tried not to well up. The only one missing was my mother, whose last name I had been given to protect the Order in Exile, but who wouldn’t be born for a couple hundred years.
“You’re not thinking of going, are you?” I emerged from the thought to find Malachi watching me with a small frown set in his forehead. “I mean, aren’t you planning to cast the tracking spell tonight?”
“Yeah.” I wiped a sleeve across my eyes. “That’s why I picked up the spell ingredients.”
It came out more defensively than I’d meant it to—probably because Malachi had a point. I was getting too caught up in the sentimentality of having encountered the time catch version of my grandfather. Maybe even more so for knowing I had a baby on the way but no living family to share her with.
“Plus, are you sure you can trust him?”
I looked over sharply. “What do you mean?”
“We’re not the only visitors in the time catch. We don’t know who else is in here. You said yourself that you didn’t think your grandfather would be here for, what, another fifty, hundred years? What if—?”
“Someone’s pretending to be him?” I finished.
“Well…” He scratched the dusty stubble on his chin. “Have you considered that?”
“Listen, it’s him.”
“When I was an acolyte at St. Martin’s, I thought Father Victor was himself too.” He paused for a beat. “So did you.”
He was referring to the vicar who had been possessed by the demon lord Sathanas.
“That was a long time ago,” I said, still trying to tamp down my defensiveness. “I can see things now I couldn’t then. My grandfather’s aura checked out.” But did it? I had only gotten a glimpse. “Plus, he was wearing the same ring. I felt a resonance. And his eyes…” I was about to describe how, with a little gray, they were dead ringers for the stern set I remembered from boyhood. But it sounded lame in my head. Instead, I started organizing the ingredients I’d purchased.
“I’m just looking out for you,” Malachi said after a moment. “For everyone.”
“I know. A lot happened, and I’m still in processing mode. You’re right to counsel caution.”
But even as I reassured Malachi, I still believed that my magic had led me to the blue-eyed man for a reason, that he was my grandfather. “How was your morning?” I asked. “Were you able to talk to Rector Harland.”
“I tried, but he was heading out. He did tell me about a grotto behind the church. He said its protections weren’t as complete as those of the chapel. I’m not sure what he meant—or why he even brought it up in the first place. Seemed sort of random.”
“He might have been tipping us off about a safe place to cast. I’ll check it out.”
I stopped as I remembered what Mrs. Burgess, the pregnant woman, had told me earlier.
“Hey, would it be normal for someone like Rector Harland to visit rebel prisoners?”
“Well, you heard him last night,” Malachi said. “He feels that allegiance to the Creator supersedes wartime loyalties. Why?”
“Mrs. Burgess, the woman who was bringing food and clothing to the prison, said the rebel soldiers were mindless before they were turned out, which means someone or something is claiming their souls on the inside. The only other person she’s seen on her visits, besides soldiers, is the rector.”
“I’m not getting a demonic vibe from him,” Malachi said. “But I guess I have to take my own advice and not assume anything.”
Harland wouldn’t have been able to enter the chapel if he were a demon or possessed. That didn’t necessarily rule out dark magic, though. But I wasn’t getting that kind of vibe either. “Any recent visions?” I asked.
Malachi started to shake his head, then stopped. “After the rector left, I took a short nap. And I had this, I don’t know, experience I guess you could say. I was on my back, and there were four other beings around me—”
“And you were rotating while a dark energy was gathering.”
Malachi stared at me, his mouth still open. “H-how did you know?” he stammered.
“Because night before last, I had the same dream.” It had come on the heels of my dream of Arianna telling me she was trapped in the Harkless Rift and that to help her and the others I needed to find Arnaud.
“It felt awful,” Malachi said, his eyes haunted by the memory. “Like something was about to happen, and I couldn’t stop it.”
“Did you get a look at the other four?” I asked.
“No.”
At that moment, a key sounded in the chapel’s front doors. I looked out to find Seay and Gorgantha returning from their outing. Seay had changed into breeches, a dark blouse, and a form-fitting coat that she wore well and must have bought while out. Gorgantha was still in her dress, the satin now dusty and stained with what looked like grease. She was carrying a basket in one arm and eating a chicken leg. As they crossed the nave, Gorgantha polished it off, bone and all, and wiped her hand on the side of her dress. When they entered our dorm room, she set the basket down on a desk.
“We got lunch if anyone’s hungry,” she said.
I wasn’t at the moment, but Malachi picked out a drumstick.
“How did it go?” I asked.
“Interestingly,” Seay said, plopping down on a bed.
Gorgantha, who was still crunching on bits of bone, sat on the other bed and began untying one of her shin-length boots. She grunted with relief when it came off and began picking at the laces on the other.
“We covered a lot of the city,” Seay explained.
“Sure did,” Gorgantha said through her final chews. “From this big lake up north, all the way down to a hospital at the southern end. I am flat assed-out.” She pried off her other boot and splayed her large feet. Even glamoured and stocking-covered, they looked monstrous, especially beside Seay’s petite shoes.
“There are some strange energy patterns out there,” Seay said.
“How so?” I asked, pulling the chair from the desk and straddling it in reverse.
“The best way I can describe it is like someone shifting mirrors around. It’s hard to tell what’s what. I would need a week to figure it all out.”
“So someone’s manipulating the energy here,” I said.
“It’s definitely not a random pattern,” she agreed.
That probably explained why the pattern felt so much different from its present-day equivalent. I had begun to adapt to it, regardless. I would be able to cast the hunting spell that evening. And if I’d correctly guessed why the rector had told Malachi about the grotto, I could cast without drawing attention.
“That’s not all,” Gorgantha said. “We’ve got mercreatures in the East River.”
“You saw them?” I asked.
“Smelled them. My skin started drying out late morning, and I had to take a dip. We found an old pier near some farmland. I shucked these wack threads and got into the water under the pier where no one would see. Out in mid river, the smell hit me. At least a dozen of them, maybe a half mile upriver.”
“The ones that fled you the other night?” I asked.
“Probably, though they all smell like death to me.”
“Is Jordan still away on his mission?” Seay asked.
“Yeah, and it’s getting close to noon,” I repl
ied, checking my watch.
“How about you?” Gorgantha asked. “What’d you do this morning?”
I gave a brief account of what had happened on my outing. When I got to the part about the blue-eyed man, Malachi shifted uncomfortably. Not wanting to rehash the debate over who he was, I left out the “my grandfather” bit. Seay remarked that she and Gorgantha had seen several of the soulless soldiers from a distance, but they showed no interest in my teammates. Like the one I’d spotted, they seemed to be wandering aimlessly.
“Good thing too,” Gorgantha muttered. “’Cause I about dislocated a knuckle on one of their skulls last night.”
“All right, let’s go over what we know,” I said, standing and pacing to one end of the room. “The demon master controlling the four Strangers sent at least one of them here, possibly with the possessed victims.”
“So there’s a chance they’re all here?” Seay asked.
“The presence of mercreatures would seem to strengthen that argument.” I turned on a heel. “But why the time catch? Maybe as a place to hide them, to hold them in suspension until Demon X has his cards arranged.”
“How do the soldiers figure in?” Gorgantha asked.
“Assuming Demon X stowed his Strangers here,” I said, “chances are good they’re the ones responsible for the state of the soldiers. Claiming their souls to build up their master’s power, then inducing the British Army to release them so they can use them as sentries and spies throughout the city.”
“How, though?” Malachi asked, setting down his half-eaten drumstick.
“Based on what Mrs. Burgess told me,” I said, “they would have to have access to the prison.”
“No, I get that part,” he said. “We’re in a time catch, right? The ones who actually lived during this period have already died and moved on. So how would the ones here have souls to be claimed?”
“Like everything here, their souls will be more like echoes than the actual articles,” I said, wondering now if that was what Malachi had been searching for in his Bible when I’d returned. “But even soul echoes hold power.”
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