by Jim Butcher
It was what he’d thought she’d say.
“Then we agree. It will be fun.”
“Fun?” She glared in disbelief and then shook her head. “You’re insane. Max is going to make mincemeat out of you. I’m going to enjoy watching the whole thing.”
“I may grow on you.”
“Like mold.”
“Make your choice. I can drop you off here, or both of us can walk in the front doors.”
She considered. No doubt she was actually considering the death option. She wanted what was best for her covenstead. Nothing about her was selfish. Nothing about her was typical for a witch. He wanted to know why, whether she liked it or not, and for that he needed her alive. He was done giving her choices.
“You couldn’t keep me out before, and your wards won’t keep me out now. I’m moving in. Get used to having me around.”
With that, he took them home.
REEL LIFE
A Glass Town Story
STEVEN SAVILE
There are monstrous creatures in Glass Town, but the worst of them by far is an ordinary man, Seth Lockwood, whose envy of his brother drove him to kidnap the love of his life—a beautiful young actress, Eleanor Raines—over a century ago, because he couldn’t stand the thought of his brother being happy. Glass Town spans generations of obsession. Seth lives in a world where one hundred years pass as one, and he has lifetimes of being unlucky enough to get what he thought he wanted lying ahead of him . . . but there are cracks beginning to appear now as Damiola’s great illusion is failing, allowing Seth to slip between then and now. Without Seth, there is no Glass Town. Without Seth, our young lovers might just have been the Hollywood happy ending after all. “Reel Life” follows Seth through the cracks as he comes to grips with a century’s worth of obsession, looking for a way to win once and for all, and damning himself in the process. . . .
Seth Lockwood was in Hell. It had a lot of other names, but that didn’t change Glass Town’s fundamental nature. With Damiola’s magic he thought he was buying a ticket to his own personal heaven. A kingdom to rival any glory he could have dreamed of. But this place was Hell, even if it lacked the reek of brimstone and the streets of fire of its more traditional renditions. Hell for Seth Lockwood looked like an abandoned movie set filled with false façades and painted windows that looked out onto streets pretending to be normal.
It was hard to imagine that even a few months ago this was what he wanted more than anything else in the world; to be here, in this place, alone with the woman of his obsessive dreams. He had won the fair maiden, but theirs wasn’t a love affair for the ages. It began in covetous lust, slid slowly into jealous obsession, and finally consummated in violence. He wasn’t sure love had ever come into the picture, but that didn’t matter to Seth because in his world, winning was everything, and he’d won.
For once, though, winning wasn’t enough. The prize was bittersweet because she’d given up, and to Seth, something given freely had no worth.
That wasn’t to say he didn’t enjoy her begging. He did. He loved those moments when she pleaded, tears streaking her rouged cheeks. He delighted at the feeling of her hot breath against his neck as it came in ragged, frightened gasps. He savored the sensation of taking what wasn’t his to take, of reaching up to pull aside the gusset of her panties with no pretense at seduction. But what Seth took the most joy out of was his brother’s imagined pain. Isaiah truly loved Eleanor Raines. That, more than anything else, was the reason for Seth’s obsession. Like everything else, the pleasure he took from ownership was fleeting and he was left feeling hollow as he walked away, leaving Eleanor Raines curled up on the ground, the two-dimensional street painted around her. She looked like a broken doll cast aside by a petulant child.
He looked down at his bloody knuckles and flexed his fist.
It was the only way he touched her now.
Part of him still wanted to believe that, given enough time, she would learn to love him, but that part was a naive fool. The best he could hope for was acceptance, that this place would beat her into submission and she’d finally resign herself to the reality that these few make-believe streets were the be-all and end-all of her world now.
He heard the baby crying behind one of the thin plywood walls.
The boy wasn’t his. The mathematics of conception didn’t add up, meaning this was his brother’s parting gift to him. The first time he held the boy in his hands, just a couple of hours ago when he still hadn’t known what he was going to do with him, Seth found himself imagining squeezing the soft plates of the child’s skull until the bones broke.
He couldn’t do it.
Eleanor didn’t need to know that, though. So he left her on the ground, bleeding and believing he really was capable of crushing the life out of her baby. The last thing he did to her was promise to bury the kid beneath the dirt somewhere in the old film lot; she could play a grim game of hide-and-seek if she wanted to. His lips flickered into the approximation of a smile, but even that was fleeting. He pulled open a door into nowhere and stepped through into the backstage world of two-by-fours and unpainted Masonite boards. His nephew, barely a few hours old and with his forehead still flaked with the dried blood from his welcome to the world, lay beneath a wooden brace holding up the painted wall. His pudgy little legs kicked at the air. “Hush your noise, child. Uncle Seth’s here to take care of everything,” he said, taking his jacket off to swaddle the infant. Taking him out of this place was the easiest way he knew how to hurt Eleanor. Robbing her of the baby was the most obvious way to break her spirit. It went beyond anything physical he could subject her to.
Seth had never been driven by a need to procreate. Whatever biological imperative nature intended to see him share his seed was missing in him. In Seth’s London, children were a weakness to be exploited by bastards like him. They were leverage.
He’d found the fissure a couple of weeks ago, but resisted the temptation to step back through into the London he’d left behind, until now. He clenched his fist, dark thoughts running away with his mind as he imagined finding his brother and throat-punching him, then standing over the little bastard as he choked to death.
But all it took was half a dozen steps on the other side of the fissure to put an end to that particular fantasy. That was all it took to see how much had changed in the time they’d been gone.
He started to understand the magician’s miracle.
Everything was different out here.
A biting wind blew across the cobbled streets around him. There was ice in the air coming up from the Thames, and smoke with it. The horizon shimmered red. The city was burning. He didn’t understand what he was seeing. Huge spotlights strafed the night sky, adding to the stars. The worst of it, though, was the damage close at hand. There was a deep crater where three terraced houses had been, rubble piled up around the street where rescuers had tried vainly to find some sort of life in the ruin. He knew the street from before he’d left. He was on the outskirts of the East End and his old stomping ground. The first bloke he’d truly fucked over had lived in one of those missing houses. He’d broken one of his knuckles on the kid’s jaw, but it had been worth all of the pain that followed because it marked his rise from nobody to someone not to be fucked with, and on these streets, that was everything. He realized he’d made a fist. Reflex memory. He walked on, picking a path through the debris.
The first person he saw in the new world was an urchin in a threadbare blazer, and short trousers that exposed his knocked knees. He clutched a wax paper–wrapped parcel in filthy fingers. His shoes were scuffed, the sole peeling away from the toe, and his socks were down around his ankles. There was an equally scruffy dog at his side, some sort of terrier, all slack skin and protruding bone. The animal was starving. So was the kid.
“What’s happening?”
The boy looked at him like he’d just crawled out from under a rock and spat a wad of dirty phlegm at his feet. “Same things as yesterday. Same things as to
morrow,” the boy said dismissively. “The Jerries.” He looked up at the sky. That was the only explanation Seth was going to get.
“What have you got there?” Seth looked at the grubby parcel in the boy’s equally grubby hands.
“None of yours, mister.”
“Less of your lip, sunshine,” Seth said. “A smart mouth only encourages someone like me to give you a fat lip.”
“I didn’t—” The back of Seth’s hand silenced the rest of the boy’s objection and left him spitting blood.
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you. Now let me have it.” He held out his free hand.
Tears in his eyes, the lad managed a surly, “Fuck yourself,” which earned him a second slap and a “No, fuck you,” from Seth as he took the package with his free hand. The terrier growled, but didn’t attack. It knew its place.
Unwrapping the parcel while holding the baby wasn’t easy. “Get yourself gone before I decide to hurt you properly, boy.” The way he said it left no room for misunderstanding. The boy spat again, the phlegm thick with blood, and wiped the back of a soot-smeared hand across his lips. He backed off. It was only a couple of steps, just enough to put some distance between himself and Seth’s fist.
Ignoring the kid, Seth teased apart the knot of string tying the parcel, and peeled back the layer of brown wax paper to reveal a second layer of wrapping—old newspaper—and inside that a link of a dozen pork sausages as fat—or thin as the case may be—as the dog’s legs. “That’s all we’ve got, mister. Me, my folks, my little sister. Take a couple if you have to, but give the rest back. Please.”
Seth wasn’t really listening to the kid’s lament; he was staring at the date above the headlines that promised an incredible seventeen years had passed since the night Damiola and Glass had helped them disappear; 14th February 1941. There was no room for Saint Valentine in this world of bombs and burning streets he walked into. That didn’t matter to him. The Germans could rain holy hell down from the heavens for all he cared. The only thing that did matter was that seventeen years had passed. No one was going to be looking for them now.
“Please,” the boy wheedled.
“Shut up, lad. I’m trying to think.”
“We’ll starve if you don’t give ’em back. We ain’t eaten in two days.”
“And I’m supposed to care?” Seth said, upending the contents of the paper onto the slush-covered cobbles. He watched the boy throw himself to his knees and scrabble about, desperately trying to gather them before his mangy mutt could scarf them down.
Seth left them to it.
1941.
Part of a sign still hung over the door of an empty ironmonger’s; the only words left legible after the fire damage proclaimed: GIDEON SMITH PURV. That was it, the rest of the gold paint was charred beyond reading. Gideon was a good name. He looked down at the baby in his arms. Maybe he’d grow into a name like Gideon?
The streets he walked had borne the brunt of the bombing. The fallout was devastating. These were the same streets the world’s most notorious murderer had prowled in the days just before Seth had been born. The famous church bells rang out. At least the old church survived, he thought, not in the least bit sentimental for the place. He hadn’t realized where he was walking until he stood outside the old gates and looked up at the nunnery. He rang the bell and waited for the lined face of a world-weary sister to peer through the small hatch. “Got a little ’un here,” Seth said. “His mum didn’t make it last night.” He looked up at the sky as if to blame her passing on the invisible enemy. The old woman leaped to the conclusion he wanted her to leap to and ushered him inside without a word. She led him across the courtyard to the main building. “I figured you’d be best placed to find someone who might be able to nurse ’im, poor scrap. I can’t look after ’im.” He exaggerated his accent, laying it on thick, then caught his reflection in the mirror and stopped cold. He could have sworn he’d aged a decade since he’d walked between worlds. Gray had crept in at his temple, his crow’s-feet deepened around his eyes, and his complexion had gone from ruddy to waxen. The transformation just highlighted how unnatural Damiola’s magic had been. Now, looking at his grim reflection, he knew his hours here were marked if he didn’t want time to catch up with itself and leave him old before his time. Seth gathered his wits and pushed on. “Maybe some unfortunate mum who lost her little ’un? It’d be good if some good could come out of this.” Again he lifted his gaze heavenward.
The old woman nodded. “Of course. We’ll do everything we can. We’re here to help you and the child.” She offered him a practiced smile of sympathy. “Please, sit yourself down. You must be desperate. Let me take the little one.” She held out her hands for the swaddled babe.
“I’m not staying,” Seth said, handing the boy over. “Take him, find him a good home. I need to go. I can’t bear to drag this out, you understand? Just find the boy a good home. I don’t want to think of him suffering.”
“What’s his name?”
“Gideon,” Seth told her. “Gideon Lockwood.”
“Pleased to meet you, little Gideon,” she said. “I’m Sister Anne. I’m going to take good care of you, I promise.” She fussed over the little bundle of joy. Seth left the old woman and the boy, knowing he needed to go home.
He was already halfway down the street before he realized he’d started running.
It struck him then that he didn’t even know if he’d be able to step back through the fissure into Damiola’s great illusion or if he’d locked himself out of it forever. For just a moment, the silence between heartbeats, when the blood wasn’t pounding through his skull, allowed him to think that maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He could make a new life for himself here.
Finding the fissure was easy enough when you knew what you were looking for—and from this side it was obvious how it had come to be. It wasn’t some flaw in Damiola’s design; it came down to the damage of the German bombs. The building the illusion was anchored to had taken a battering in the most recent wave of blanket bombs, weakening it so much that time had begun to flow back toward the crack, trying to fill it in. Without knowing what you were looking at you’d have been forgiven for thinking it was a smudge on your glasses or a bit of grit in the corner of your eye, making your vision blur ever so slightly. Watching the flight of a bumblebee gave it away, the way the insect’s flight stalled then juddered backward as it struggled to escape the gravitational pull of the fissure. The image of the bumblebee repeated itself over and over and then it was gone. Seth wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking at the damage the German bombs had done. He felt dread form in the back of his throat, thick with the taste of iron, and sink to the bottom of his gut as he walked on into the rubble. Balancing on the broken bricks was difficult because the ground kept shifting beneath his feet, but he made it across the gap, reaching out a hand to touch the shimmering movie light spilling out of the fissure. He couldn’t leave it like this. Someone would see it, even if they didn’t understand what they were seeing, and once seen it wouldn’t be forgotten. Seth needed people to forget if he was going to truly disappear and ever stand a chance of reemerging from Glass Town into anything approximating his old life.
What could he do, though? It wasn’t as if he could rebuild the wall and hide the fissure away, could he?
Even as the thought occurred to him, Seth was on his hands and knees scrabbling around in the debris for pieces of brickwork that might fit together, but like all of the king’s horses and all of the king’s men, he couldn’t put the building together again.
He hurled a huge chunk of plaster at the sliver of glittering blue light and watched it disappear. That answered one of his questions. He could step through, but then what? Find some building tools left over from when Glass Town had been a failed movie set and look to build a fake façade here? That was beyond his ability. But he had money. Money could solve a lot of the world’s ills; surely it could hide away a fissure in the fabric of the city from pry
ing eyes.
Seth went to the nearest pub, a seedy little place a couple of streets away, and found a couple of desperate men willing to re-create the front of the Georgian terrace for the promise of good money. Opportunities for men not on the Front were few, so there were plenty of willing souls to bite his hand off when the color of his money proved to be green.
Seth didn’t stay in the city to supervise the work. He had to trust them to do what they were paid to do, and gamble that they wouldn’t grasp the true nature of that slight smudge that caught every so often in their line of sight. If they did, then he would be waiting for them on the other side, and that would be bad for them.
He didn’t return to London proper again for more than twenty years.
They’d kept his secret intact.
The culture shock of returning this next time was extreme. He’d barely changed. For Seth, only a couple of months had passed since he’d last ventured out, but as he slipped between the oblique—that was what he’d taken to calling the fissure, an oblique, as it was like some angle where one world brushed up against the other, allowing him to slip through—he was confronted by an almost alien landscape. All manner of cars lined the road. Streetlights shone down amber on the rooftops. There was a phone booth across the road, a girl in a brightly colored swirl of a miniskirt making a call. Her blond hair was cut savagely straight in a short bob that swished about her shoulders as she laughed at some unheard joke. Seth watched her through the glass wall, but she gave no indication that she’d seen him slip through the oblique from Glass Town, so he put her from his mind. In all the time he’d been gone, the building he’d paid to rebuild hadn’t changed very much at all, but then when he looked past the superficial modernization all around him, so much of the other buildings were essentially the same. The more the things changed, the more they stayed the same.
He had limited time here if he didn’t want to return to his prison an old man.
He needed to find Cadmus Damiola, if he was still alive, and get him to undo his damnable illusion without costing him his unlived life. There was only one place he could think of that might offer a thread back to the old man and his tricks: the Magic Circle.