“He’s going to his sister’s. It’s the best place for him.” I put on another carafe of java and sat at the other side of the breakfast counter. “What about you? Are you… all right?”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before.” She offered the ghost of a smile, brief and superficial. It didn't reach her eyes.
“You mentioned something about Zagreb.”
She shrugged. “It’s violent there. My family left when I was a little girl. We went to East Germany…but I didn’t want to stay there, either. Too depressing, what with the wall running right through the middle of it.”
I'd heard stories, and had to wonder how she'd left. You had to bribe or murder to part the Iron Curtain. My own parents had taken the subway route: my Jewish mother had family in West Germany. Her religious ticket out of the Soviet Union was the only reason Grigori Sokolsky, the psychopath, had married her.
“Naturally.” My mouth drew to one side, and I leaned back. “I’m surprised you made it out.”
“People had it worse than me.” Crina’s smile faded with some kind of half-hidden pain, and she leaned towards me. “But I wake up to the sound of mines and rifles going off, sometimes. The dogs. Some guy was always trying to make the run over the Wall and getting blown to bits. You know?”
“Well, New York isn’t the place for peace and quiet. Not unless you have a lot of money and stay clean.”
“It’s good enough for you.” Her expression turned sly.
I frowned slightly. “Yes. But I was born here.”
“So that's why your English was so good.” She cocked her head, like a curious bird. “Your parents must have gotten out... God. How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
Crina’s eyebrows rose. “Is that all?”
I inclined my head. “I turn thirty in November.”
“Wow, I thought you were older.” She pressed her lips together, and leaned in towards me. “Here’s a secret... I’m two years older than you.”
My mouth quirked, and I ducked my face. It brought a laugh from her, filling my ears with a crisp, bright yellowness. Crina was good people. I decided I liked her, which put her in a category of person which only Vassily and Mariya really occupied.
“I have a question for you, Crina. Probably inappropriate.” I frowned with thought as she watched. “But social interaction has never been a strong point of mine. Why have you been so interested to talk to me?”
“Oh. Well, lots of reasons. For one, you’re really smart.” Her moment of apprehension passed. “For another, you’re not some meathead muzhik. Most guys play around. They smell like old school lockers. They drink.”
“Aren’t those supposed to be attractive qualities in men?”
Crina laughed again, more loudly than before. “Maybe if you’re a masochist. And, well, I’ll put it to you this way. If I were at Misha’s or Petro’s house, or pretty much any other guard’s place, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”
“As in... none of them would know how to ask these questions, Alexi.” Her smile became gentler. “It’s all ‘me me me’ with those kinds of guys. Suck my cock, dance in my lap, but don’t dare hang around: that’d be ‘clingy.’”
It was true, and something which this whole mess had been making clearer and clearer as the days went by. I shrugged. “I did just ask you a very selfish question.”
“Hey, you asked something about me first.” She mirrored me, my head and hands. I noticed it because it was the sort of thing an interrogator would do. “What makes you think you’re not good with people? You just seem like the quiet, confident type.”
I looked at her clear brown eyes and held them for a moment before I concluded she wasn’t trying to mine anything serious from me. She was safe. “To be honest, the only reason I’m still alive is Vassily. His family took me in at a young age when I left my home. It was… not a good place. I couldn’t speak much, or communicate normally, and I was violent, angry. His grandmother and sister took me in… I protected Vassily from his elder brothers, and he taught me how to talk to other people.”
“Taught you?” She looked confused but interested.
My expression turned distant, and I looked towards the bookshelves and the unused radio on the coffee table. “Yes. He would tell me when I needed to say certain things, or not. ‘Hello,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘please.’ I still forget, now and then—to say those things, that is. We worked out some hand signals, these little rituals to prompt me to do the right things at the right time. As I grew older, I got better at it. When he went to prison, I had to learn to do it myself.”
“Have you met anyone else with the same problem?”
I shook my head. “No. Everything I’ve read suggests some kind of neurological disorder. Autism, maybe. But no... Vassily was a boon. He was very patient when he was younger. Now? Not so much. Our careers diverged at the end of college. He went into business and I… went into other business.”
Crina sucked her lip under her teeth and let it go with a little pop. “Is the rage-thing better now you’re older?”
“I don’t really want to talk more about myself,” I demurred, looking away.
“If you’re worried that I’m bored, I’m really not.”
The whole thing was making me increasingly uncomfortable. Vassily had taught me to take strangers at their word when they expressed curiosity, but to bring it back to the other person as soon as possible. “I don’t know. The social element has been static. Fortunately, faces have patterns. If people stay the same, I look for the patterns and the colors.”
“Colors?”
“In their voices.” I’d never quite grasped how others missed them. The colors and textures and scents in sounds were so vivid as to be overwhelming. “And in sounds of all kinds, actually. They make... colors. Scents.”
Crina seemed strangely impressed by that. She was silent for several seconds as she digested the concept, as Vassily had tried to do so long ago. “What color’s my voice?”
“Yellow. Usually.” I didn’t hesitate, grateful she’d claimed her attention at last. “And effervescent. Sometimes it bleeds more towards green, and then it smooths out back towards yellow.”
“Green’s my favorite color.” She grinned. “This is great, and I don’t think you’re really that awkward. Maybe you just need to hang around the right people. Get out of the ivory tower a bit more, let out your hair.” She paused for a moment, and then chuckled. “Not that I’m necessarily the ‘right’ people, but you know what I mean.”
“Not really, I’m afraid. My dealings with living people are usually fairly short and to the point.” I checked the clock on the other side of the room, noting the time, and slid from my seat. In defiance of what I’d just told her about being better with common cues, I nearly walked off on her and started packing up but remembered myself just as I jerked away from the breakfast bench. “I… really have to get going. There’s things I must do at home.”
“Okay.” Crina rose and smoothed down her borrowed jeans. They fit her snugly but were rolled at the cuffs. I guessed they were Anya’s. “I’ll go with you. I really don’t want to stay here with Vanya the Lounge Lizard.”
"No doubt." I glanced aside for a moment. "Thank you."
"For what?" She had been walking away herself, but stopped as I spoke.
"For last night. The beginning of the night, and the end."
Her mouth curled up in a cat's smile. "It sucked pretty hard... I can't lie. But that's okay. We aren't going to be able to make our date tonight, are we?"
"I don't think so." And I was genuinely regretful. "We both need sleep."
Crina's lips twitched as she looked down, then back at my face. Her eyes were very brown, a lambent amber that reminded me strongly of a bird of prey. "You owe me another one once all this is over. Don't forget it."
We got dressed and took the subway. It was only two stops to Brighton Beach. I got off there,
and Crina carried on the Q line to wherever it was she lived. It was usually a seven-minute walk from the station to my apartment, but this time, it was more like twenty. The cut from the glass shard was inflamed and painful, though not infected. I considered the elevator but decided against it, hobbling up the stairs to my floor. A letter-sized, plain white envelope was stuffed half underneath my front door.
Curiously, I limped over and picked it up. I could be lucky, for once, and it was some vital clue from a helpful participant in the Manelli–Yaroshenko drama. Given how variable my luck was, it could also be that someone sent me a packet of anthrax. I cracked the seal carefully, holding my breath just in case, but it was nothing but an ordinary sheet of yellow steno notebook paper.
“Sergei arrived 0030 Tuesday,” read Nic’s blocky, heavy penciled hand. “Lev back in office. No arrests. Both S & L want to see you Wed 8pm at #2.”
Sergei, back already? My heart froze in my chest. Back already, and he wanted to see me. And I had nothing to show for it, no success, and no excuse. No Vincent. I hadn’t protected Vassily and Lev like I was supposed to. And Sergei was going to want to know how and why I’d killed my father.
Resigned, I tucked the letter into my sweaty jacket and let myself in. I went through the motions: fed the cat, showered, shaved, found a container of pelmeni and salad left over from that first lunch I’d had with Vassily. The dumplings were dry and the cabbage and mayonnaise a little too pink, but I ate mechanically, staring off into the too-quiet apartment.
Mariya had tried her best, but she was wrong. Things weren’t going to be okay. I was cold as I thought back over the previous night. I was, quite frankly, fucked. I had no leads, no way to combat the array of half-seen forces against me. I was sure it all came back to Carmine, Carmine and Lev. If I didn’t kill Carmine soon, he was going to kill me. He’d seen me at the casino, and even if by some miracle the Vigiles had caught him, he was probably going to get out sooner than later.
As if detecting my need for inspiration, Binah ran into the kitchen with a rolled-up sock in her mouth, meowing around it, and dropped it helpfully at my feet. I snorted, bent down, and threw it. She chased after it like a dog and brought it back again, making muffled sounds of triumph through the cotton. We played this until she dropped it near the fridge, batting and clawing at the toy as she scooted around on her side. I watched her indulgently—and then almost magnetically, my eyes were drawn to the freezer door. And suddenly, it clicked.
I stood quickly, shoving the table back from myself. “Carmine used that angelic seal to do... something. Yuri used it to find me.” I spoke aloud, knowing Kutkha could hear me, even if I hadn’t heard him. “It’s still active, isn’t it? The seal?”
My Neshamah stirred uncomfortably. My sense of his presence was as gradual as the dawn, but I felt his answer. Yes. There were no words, but it felt apprehensive.
“So, in theory, you could trace it back to the mage that is using it to spy.” I paced agitatedly, an angular course around the small kitchen. “If I draw a summon circle and focus the ritual through something with a Phitonic charge—the Wardbreaker, my father’s hammer or something—I could summon it. Summon it and find him and kill him.”
“We could be deceived,” Kutkha said, after a time. “As I told you. There are no angels, only demons. The creatures and substance of GOD are physical. They cannot be summoned. Demons are formed of the cesspool to which all human minds contribute. They hold dark things—all dark things of which you could conceive. NOthings.”
“I know where they come from. I know it’s a risk.” I breathed in, out, and tried to relax on my feet. “But I am a ritualist, Kutkha. If there’s any place I’m strong, it’s ritual.”
“All summoning is Pravamancy. You will tear a hole in yourself. That is how they are called. You tear a hole. You must hope that you can fill it in once it is done.”
I went to the freezer and pulled out the chalice. It had been days without a water change, and the ice was brown and crumbly, like rust. “If I don’t, we’re dead anyway. If I have nothing to show, Sergei will shoot me like a dog on the street. Don’t you know what he’s like?”
Kutkha nearly said something. I felt him, the pressure of his intent—but he held back. Hiding something, from me? “Very well. If you fail, you will go mad. You know not what you do.”
It was the truth, but I was already on my way to the door. “No. Not really... but I’m about to find out.”
Chapter 17
It took at least an hour to prepare a full circle. There was a particular setup illustrated in the grimoire where I’d found the sigil—the main circle was adjacent to another, smaller figure in which the demon would appear. The main circle featured a spiral it its center, a deceptively simple geometric figure that had to be rendered with great precision. With chalk and string and a two-foot measuring board, I laid down the ring, and then the spiral, a perfect depiction of the Golden Ratio. The shape connected through positioned candles which led to the second, smaller circle. The summoning ring was made to take a beating: the shapes were simple, the lines tight, each border and sigil inscribed firmly and with care. I’d busted enough static enchantments to know how easy it was for imperfection to be exploited by a penetrating force. The fact was, other than a certain ability to sense and work with the currents of energy, I was working mostly from textbook knowledge. My fears had to be put aside, or I would fail from the expectation of failure.
Binah sat near the edge of the room, unnaturally attentive for an animal of her kind, watching me watching her as I wielded my onyx ritual knife through the chanting the incantation at each quarter of the circle. I felt a charge in it build as I went through each invocation, merging into the space through the stately choreography of ritual magic. Every hand gesture, each spoken word, the direction of our pacing—everything had its significance.
Kutkha hung between us like a shadow, and I felt his presence overlaying mine with every step in the rote, every vowel and dripping consonant—and when the last word hung, trembling on the air like a bell, I felt him merge like a wave in the ocean, a drop in the sea... just as we were overwhelmed by a sucking rush of power that dragged my weight into the floor, the same tactile hallucination that you could sometimes experience at the seashore as the rushing tide seemed to carry your feet into the spray.
The lines of the circle thrummed, gathering strength, and then flared a deep vibrant orange. The engraved lead caster wobbled once, twice—and then the metal started to heave and boil, hissing as the entity bound to the seal began to struggle against the magic trying to control it.
“IAO!” I boomed over the sudden noise and movement, staring hard at the seal at the center of the spiral, the spiral that was gaining depth and power as we forced it to activate. I was conduit and controller, summoner and channel, and soon, something unseen began to test and challenge my will, seeking the cracks and holes it could leak in through.
“You, you, YOU... calling ME?!” Its voice crackled through the room like streaks of lightning, ringing off every surface. "You, of all magi?"
The room had gone very cold and smelled pungently of burning wax. I hadn’t expected it to respond with the eloquence and force that it did. My surprise caused the chalk line to jitter on the floorboards, slowly charring it black. I mastered myself, as the extent of the danger I was in dawned in its full weight and breadth. I drew up to my full height, unimpressive as it was, my back stock straight. Whatever had come was certainly not an angel. Invisible, it gibbered frantically in the face of my stony silence. The initial burst of sound was followed by a hush as it pried and poked at my conviction and failed to move me.
“What is this? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?” The whispering once built to a shriek and then dropped. Underlying its presence was the buzz of a hundred thousand hornets, a waveform pressure that peaked and then ebbed under my growing control. I was gaining confidence. It was the next step up from the kind of magic I’d been doing my entire adult life, but as I began to ve
rge into cockiness, I felt the entity picking at my mind like a hangnail.
“You! Creature, you will return to your last human summoner before me, and you will deal him agony.” I spat each word with withering disdain, command bordering on but not quite falling into arrogance. “You will do it NOW.”
It hissed at me before slithering into a pile of dancing motes, vaguely resembling the shape of a person, then a wheel, then a protoplasm. “Why not do it tomorrow, to catch the element of surprise? In the meantime, I could find you a lover... the man—”
“You will do it now.” My lip curled as I hefted the hammer. “Or I will torture your seal for days before I lock it in a lead box of salt and holy resin and bury it. Do it NOW.”
The threat caused the room to fill with wailing. The creature’s form manifested in my mind’s eye, a writhing bundle of lashing electric tendrils with no main body. The thing hissed, writhing in the air before being driven from the circle, inward, imploding to fly back towards its original summoner.
I bent my will to the rest of the task at hand—to destroy the seal itself. As I thought on it, the temptation to give into its desire only grew. It knew so much, and its tempting whispers lingered in my mind like cobwebs. The supreme math of the universe was at my fingertips, if only I could stand to listen to its voice. I burned with longing, and my mind was an engine on full throttle as I forced myself past desire, past covetousness—and with unerring speed, the spirit struck true.
It hit the other unseen magus like a Molotov, splashing fire and engulfing them in a roar that reverberated through the core of my being. I saw nothing—only a furious light that filled my eyes with infernal orange fire and sucked me inwards into physical blindness. But Kutkha could see.
Giddily, I realized I couldn’t feel my body anymore. That I didn’t have a body, but that I was moving, and I had no idea where I was.
“Now we’ve done it.” Kutkha was the one speaking aloud here, slinking down a narrow corridor like an avian dinosaur shadow. He was neither bird or reptile, bipedal and sleek, his body made of clustering, freezing darkness. In this place, this space, I was the ghost in Kutkha’s machine. “You call this Yesod, the plane of dreams and visions. And I do not know why you are here.”
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