“Kind of interesting,” Ivy said, reading over my shoulder. “I guess it will depend on what she’s willing to pay, and what exactly she wants us to do.”
“What do you need from me?” I asked Jenny.
“I need you to steal a—”
My pocket buzzed. I absently glanced at the phone, expecting a text from J.C. He’d probably sent me a picture of himself trying to drink straight from the soda machine at the gas station, or some similar nonsense.
But the text wasn’t from J.C. It was from Sandra. The woman who originally taught me to use my aspects; the woman who had brought me sanity. The woman who had vanished soon after.
The text read, simply, HELP.
TWO
I tore from the room, followed by Ivy and Tobias. Out on the street, Wilson and his niece saw something was up, and he alertly opened the car door for me. I waved Ivy and Tobias in. J.C.? Where was J.C.?
No time. I climbed into the back seat of the limo.
“Wait!” Jenny shouted from the door of the building. “What about my interview! I was promised a full session!”
“I’ll start it up again another time!”
“But the case!” she said, holding up her papers. “I need to see how your aspects respond to this situation. Aren’t you intrigued by—”
I slammed the door shut. On a normal day, perhaps I would have been intrigued. Not today. I held up the phone for Ivy and Tobias.
“You’re sure it’s from her?” Ivy asked.
“It’s from the number she left on the table that morning,” I said. “I’ve kept it in my contacts list on every phone I’ve had since.” We’d tried tracing it in the past, but phone records always listed it as unassigned.
Wilson climbed into the passenger-side front door, and his grandniece pulled on her coachman’s cap and took the driver’s seat. The car rumbled to life. “Where to, sir?” she asked.
I looked from Tobias to Ivy.
“It could be someone else spoofing the number,” Ivy said. “Be careful.”
Is it really you? I typed to her.
Destiny Place, she typed back. It was her nickname for Cramrid Hotel, the place where we’d first met. Another text soon followed: a sequence of numbers and nonsense characters.
What? I typed to her.
No reply.
“Sir?” Wilson asked from the front. “We’re leaving?”
“Take us home,” I said to Wilson.
His niece pulled us out onto the street and made a U-turn, heading back the way we’d come.
“What are those numbers?” Ivy asked, looking toward Tobias. “Do you recognize them?”
He shook his head.
“Sandra is worried that I might not be the one who has the phone,” I said. “It’s a cipher. She often did this sort of thing.”
The other two shared a look. Both of them had been around when I’d known Sandra—or at least they’d been among the many shadows and apparitions I’d seen back then. But they hadn’t been completely themselves until Sandra taught me to create aspects. Focusing my attention, meditating, compartmentalizing my mind. They’d transformed naturally from shadows and whispered voices into distinct individuals.
“We should ignore it,” Ivy said. “She’s playing with you again, Steve. If that’s really her.”
“If he ignores it, Ivy,” Tobias said softly, “it will haunt him for the rest of his life. You know he needs to pursue this.”
Ivy sat back, folding her arms. With her blonde hair in a tight bun and her no-nonsense pantsuit, you might easily think her cold. But when she looked away out the window, there were tears in the corners of her eyes.
Tobias placed his hand on her shoulder.
Oddly, I felt out of place. I should have offered her comfort, reassured her I wasn’t looking for a cure, or a way to be rid of her. I’d always promised Ivy that wasn’t the point of finding Sandra.
I did none of this. Instead, I stared at the phone screen. HELP. Twelve years ago, Sandra had saved me from the nightmare my life had become. Dared I hope that I’d be able to be with her again? Dared I hope that she’d be able to do something about the way I was sliding, my aspects getting worse, my—
The image on my screen was obscured as a new text popped up.
Dude. DUDE! Tell me I didn’t just see you drive off.
We’re heading home, I wrote to J.C. Grab an Uber or something.
I got you a doughnut and everything. With sprinkles.
And you haven’t eaten it yet?
Sure I did, he wrote back. But I knew I probably would, so I bought two. Can’t promise the second will survive the trip home. These are dangerous times, Skinny, and it’s a rough neighborhood for a tasty doughnut to be wandering about on its own.
J.C., Sandra just texted me. She needs help.
I didn’t get a response for a good minute and a half.
Stay at home until I get there, he wrote.
I’ll try.
Skinny. I’m telling you, wait.
I tucked the phone into my pocket. Three more texts came from him, but I ignored them. I wanted J.C. to hurry, and nothing would make that happen more efficiently than letting him think I was going into danger without him.
Not that there was anything he’d be able to do. He was a hallucination, not a real bodyguard. Though … there had been that one time, when he’d moved my hand—as if he were controlling it. And that time he’d pushed me out of the car …
I texted Kalyani en route, so the aspects were waiting by the windows when I got back to the mansion. I pushed open the car door as soon as we were near the house. Wilson’s niece yelped, then stopped the car.
I strode across the lawn.
“Want me to get the White Room ready?” Ivy asked, hurrying up.
“We don’t have time for that,” I said. “Get me Audrey, Ngozi, Armando, and Chin.”
“Got it.”
We reached the front doors, and I took a deep breath, bracing myself. All of my aspects would be here. That could—would—be taxing.
“Master Leeds?” Wilson asked, stepping up to my side. “Might I discuss something with you?”
“Can it wait?” I said, then pushed open the doors.
It hit me like a sudden weight—as if someone had slipped bars of lead in my pockets. Some fifty people, standing inside, all talking at once. Some were panicked. Others excited. A few haunted. The same name was on all their lips. Sandra.
Tobias joined me, and he seemed winded. From that short walk from the car? He was getting old. What … what happened when one of my aspects died of old age?
“Can you quiet the crowd?” I asked him.
“Certainly,” Tobias said. He stepped among them and began explaining. His calming voice worked for most of them, though as I walked up the stairs of the grand entry hall, one woman broke off from the others and chased after me.
“Hey,” Audrey said. Plump with dark hair, she tended to be a little unusual even for an aspect. “Sandra’s back, eh? Is she going to un-crazy you? I’d like forewarning if I’m going to vanish forever; I’ve got plans for tonight.”
“Date?” I asked.
“Binge-watching Gilmore Girls and eating like seventeen bowls of imaginary popcorn. I can’t technically gain weight, right, since I already weigh nothing?”
I smiled wanly as we reached the top steps.
“So…” she said. “You doing okay?”
“No,” I said. “Take this, see if you can figure out what this sequence of numbers means.” I tossed her the phone.
Which, of course, she fumbled and dropped. I winced. Audrey looked at me sheepishly, but it wasn’t her fault. My mind had forced her to fumble it—because she wasn’t actually real. I’d thrown my phone toward empty space. It had been a while since I’d made that kind of mistake.
I picked up the phone—its screen had cracked, but not badly—and showed Audrey what Sandra had sent. Audrey was the closest thing we had to a cryptographer. Actually, she was getting
pretty good at it, now that I’d read a few more books on the subject.
“Thoughts?” I asked.
“Give me a few minutes,” she said. “Those characters in the string are probably wildcards … but for what…” She scribbled the string on her hand with a pen. “You going to deal with that mess?” she asked, gesturing toward the aspects down below.
“No,” I said.
“You going to at least count who didn’t show up?”
I hesitated, then leaned against the banister and did a quick count, already feeling a headache coming on. No Armando, but that wasn’t odd. He rarely left his room, or his “kingdom in exile” as he put it. Ngozi had come, which was good. She wore a face mask and gloves, but Kalyani had been working with her—and they’d been going out lately. Like, the actual outdoors.
Let’s see … no Arnaud, he’s probably sitting in his room, oblivious as always. No Leroy. Isn’t he on a skiing vacation? No Lua. Maybe in the yard, working on his hearth? He’d been constructing his own “stone age” house in the back yard, using only technology he could build by himself.
I hastened through the second floor’s hallways to Arnaud’s room. The light above the door was on, indicating that he didn’t want to be disturbed, so I knocked. Finally he answered, a diminutive balding man with a soft French accent.
“Oh!” he said. “Monsieur!”
“How’s the device, Arnaud?” I asked.
“Come and see!” He opened the door, letting me into his laboratory. There were blackout curtains over the windows, since he was frequently developing film these days. Bits and pieces of machinery were neatly laid out on the workbench. A cigar in an ashtray indicated that Ivans had been helping him. He was the only aspect that still smoked.
Taped to the wall was a series of pictures. Winter scenes of the mansion.
“I’ve only been able to get it to go back about six months at most,” Arnaud said, stepping over to a device sitting on the table: a big old-school camera, like the ones you’d see news photographers use in old movies. “Just as you surmised, the flash is the most important part. But I still haven’t figured out exactly how it penetrates time.”
I took the camera, feeling its weight in my hands. A camera that could take photos of the past. The device had been involved in one of my most dangerous cases.
“I’ve now fitted it with instant film,” Arnaud said. “It should work. This dial here? That sets the time focus. It’s most accurate at short range, just a few days. The farther back you go, the blurrier the pictures become. I do not know how the original inventor solved this, but so far, I am at a loss. It is perhaps related to moments blurring together the farther back we try to make the light penetrate.”
“It’ll do, Arnaud. It’s fantastic.” I glanced to the side and noticed a few prints on the ground, each cut in half. “What are those?”
“Oh.” Arnaud shuffled, looking embarrassed. “I thought it would be good to have Armando look them over, as he is the expert in photography. I know physics, but not the taking of good shots. Armando agreed and destroyed several of my photos, as they were not ‘significant’ enough.”
I sighed, then packed the camera in a bag that Arnaud pointed out. Part of me already knew that the device would be ready. I’d been spending evenings in this room, working with my hands as Arnaud instructed me on the repairs. But those sliced photos were new.
I was getting very, very tired of Armando’s shtick. Each of my aspects could be challenging in their own way, but none were so outright disobedient.
I shouldered the camera. “You did well, Arnaud. Thank you.”
“Thank you! I am pleased to hear it.” He hesitated beside the door as I opened it. “Could I … return to France now? And my family.”
I froze. “Return?”
“Yes, Étienne. I understand how important our work here was, and it was truly engaging. But my job, it is finished, correct? I could return now?”
“You want to … leave. Not be an aspect any longer?”
“If it would not be too much trouble.”
“I…” I’d never had an aspect want to leave, other than for a brief vacation. “Let me get back to you. I mean, I won’t keep you here against your will, but the camera isn’t completely finished yet. Maybe … maybe we could work out … for your family to come here … or for you to live part-time back in Nice?”
“Thank you,” he said.
I pulled the door shut, troubled. Wilson walked up, bearing a tray of much-needed lemonade. “Master Leeds,” he said. “I do need to talk to you about a small matter. Insignificant, really, but I don’t want you growing too distracted to…”
I took a long pull on a glass of lemonade, then slung the camera bag off my shoulder. “Would you pack this camera in the car for me, Wilson? I need to talk to Armando. I’ll make time to chat with you then, all right?”
I just … Sandra. I had to keep focused on Sandra.
Sandra had texted me.
I checked the phone again as I walked up toward Armando’s attic room. Nothing more from Sandra, just a few texts from J.C., complaining that his Uber driver had a “Gun-Free Zone” sticker on his car window.
As if that means anything, J.C.’s text said. You can’t simply “sticker” your way out of the Constitution, buddy.
It was followed by: And yeah, I just ate your doughnut.
I shook my head, knocking at the attic door. No response from Armando. Was he imposing “royal auditory sanctions” on me again? I pushed the door open, preparing myself to be shouted at. Armando claimed to be the rightful emperor of Mexico, and …
His room had been destroyed.
And there was blood on the walls.
THREE
Gouges in the plaster, like the claw marks of a feral beast. The bedding had been shredded. Stylish night photographs from cities around the world—Armando’s prize collection—lay in confetti on the floor.
And the blood. Sprays were flung across nearly every surface. Suddenly, I felt thoughts fading from my memory. Knowledge and expertise dispersed like smoke from a snuffed candle.
I’d first gained Armando about eight years ago, when working on a missing person case. A woman had vanished, but then continued to upload selfies with famous monuments—though the security footage showed she’d never been at any of them. I’d used Sandra’s technique, binge-reading about photo manipulation and imagining the information as a reservoir within me. I hadn’t consciously created Armando, no more than I’d consciously given any of the aspects personalities, but he’d been the result. In the early days, we’d joked about his claim to the throne of Mexico, just as I now joked with J.C.
I felt that reservoir leaking away like blood from my veins. I grew cold and stumbled backward, horrified by the scene of carnage inside his room. I couldn’t … I had to …
It was gone.
He was gone. I fell to my knees and let out a low moan that became a cry of agony. A breeze through the room’s open window blew scraps of torn photographs into the hallway around me.
Mi Won was the first to arrive. She gasped, but—ever the professional—went inside to assist anyone who might need her medical skills. The other aspects began arriving in a steady stream, gathering around me, though in that moment … in that moment they seemed to fade into the background. A group of shadows. Mere silhouettes.
“Master Leeds!” Wilson said, rushing up. He passed right through several of the aspects, then knelt beside me. “Stephen? Please. What is wrong?”
Slowly, I let my hands relax. I let out a long sigh, and felt a strange calm come over me. I had to keep control. That was … that was what Sandra taught me.
“Wilson,” I said, surprised at how even my voice sounded, “what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Oh, never mind that! Sir? What is wrong? Why did you cry out?” He peered into the room.
“What do you see?” I whispered.
“Sir? It looks like it always does. Empty guest room. The
bed made with a yellow comforter, tucked in.”
“Pictures on the floor?” I asked.
“No, sir. Would you … like me to pretend there are?”
I shook my head.
“Sir, if I may say, you’ve been most strange lately. More, I mean. More than usual.” The elderly butler wrung his hands. Behind him, his niece stood in the mouth of the attic stairwell, looking at us uncertainly.
“Am I causing it?” Wilson asked.
“Causing it?” I asked, blinking.
“Because of … today, sir.”
“Today?”
“My retirement, Master Leeds. We’ve discussed it. Remember? It was going to be last month, but you asked me to stay on. But sir, today, I’m seventy today.”
“Nonsense. You can’t be…”
Retirement? We’d discussed it?
I could vaguely remember …
Mi Won left Armando’s room and shook her head. The other aspects brightened into full color again, and their worried chattering suddenly filled my ears. Ivy pushed through them, then stepped toward the room. Mi Won grabbed her arm.
“I’m sorry,” Mi Won said. “He’s gone.”
“What kind of gone?” Ivy demanded, then turned toward me. “Justin and Ignacio didn’t just go. They became something else, something terrible. It’s happening again, isn’t it, Steve?”
I hauled myself to my feet, using the wall for support. “I can’t … I can’t keep imagining you all right now. Go to your rooms. Everyone who isn’t on the mission. Ngozi, Ivy, Tobias.”
“Did you want me?” Chin—Chowyun Chin—asked. He was wearing sunglasses as always, no matter the time of day.
“Sandra was always fond of puzzles,” I said to him, “and so I might need to crack some computer codes. I want you and Audrey to stay ready and near her phone. But I think … I think I can only manage a few of you with me today. Please.”
“Sure,” Chin said. “You’ve got those new programs installed?”
I wiggled my phone. We’d been making enhancements.
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