“Surely not—“
I cut her off, anticipating her protests. “It’s the only way I can make any sense out of this. I think they knew they were crossing lines, using blood is to use the suffering of humanity to fashion spellcraft. But what makes sense is if it’s a willing sacrifice by the magos. Then it is not suffering. And if it should ever be used by siphoning the pain of humanity, then another magos who knew the secrets of the box could easily destroy it through a sacrifice of his or her own.”
Joy ordered us waters, orange juices, and two breakfast sandwiches I already vowed to not even touch. Once we received them, she handed me the bag. “Give the sandwiches to Cool Luke and one of the orange juices.”
“Uhm…is he Muslim? Will he even eat the sausage?” It was a question I had not yet had occasion to ask him, even if he made no demands to eat halal. Apostasy was not looked kindly upon in his world, so he probably kept the airs of Islam even if he did not practice. To date, he had made no effort at praying that we could see. Offering him breakfast sandwiches was as good a way to broach the topic as any. “We have to save Sean. That is priority one. I am going to ask after Gavin, then Sean. We’ll try to get Manannán’s blessing before going in commando against Triolo.”
Joy took a long drink of water in from her straw. I only just then remembered that I also needed liquid and drank greedily. “What if he forbids us?”
“I’m not sure what we will do, then. We have to keep the box out of Triolo’s hands.” I was already sucking down the juice. “More than that,” I turned to look directly at Joy, “I don’t think Triolo can be allowed to live.”
Back in the motel lot, Joy had another idea: “Do you think we should ask the box what to do about him?”
“No.” It was a valid question, but such a question introduced into the box did not seem like a good idea, even if it was based on the perceived greater good. I cut myself on the left arm again. Now having written with it several times, I was noticing just how thick blood was and not like what was shown in movies at all. The box opened, and I wrote my question on a new Post-It and deposited it inside: Where is Sean?
Once the aperture was opened, I removed the Post-It from the box. The crazed man does his laundry.
“Do you remember seeing a laundry mat near here?” I showed Joy the answer. If we left now, we could get the jump on him. Though, he had to know we would do this with the box now that he knows we know how to operate it. And if he could see what Cool Luke could see, then he mostly had to know how to open the box as well.
This was a trap. He was planning to call us at sunrise, if I had to guess, and have us come to him. And I had to believe that he had laid out the trap to kill us and take the box from our corpses.
“Okay. I think I have some semblance of a plan. You go get Cool Luke. Keep him blindfolded. Drop me off near the laundry mat. I’m going to send you some texts once you drop me off and once he calls me.” My first round of inspiration had me thinking I should scry how to remove the spell from Kuluc’s eyes. But I thought that knowing about it allowed us an advantage.
I took two pads of Post-It notes out of my bag of the three I had left. Joy went inside to retrieve Cool Luke and returned moments later. Before she could drive us away, I took her by the arm and cloaked her. With me in the passenger side, passers-by would think our car was for mail delivery if they were really nosey enough to look at us too closely. I put one knee on my seat and the other on the middle console of the car, and grabbed at Cool Luke to do the same to him.
“Might I ask what you are doing?” his arm twitched at my touch, but he let me ink the spell on his skin with my quill.
“You may not ask,” I finished his spell, “But we got you a couple breakfast sandwiches.” I tossed the bag onto his lap. He grunted and tore clumsily into the bag as I sat down and buckled my seatbelt. I could hear him eating the sandwiches, and thereby answering our questions about his dietary habits. If he had adhered to the laws of a religion, that adherence was well in the past.
Once, Joy tried to speak, but I shushed her. While the box explicitly indicted Cool Luke’s eyes, we could not be sure about his ears. The realization that even his pursuit in Tennessee was part of his ruse made me that much more wary of him. A powerful alchemist and a depraved psychopath were bad enough, but Triolo was also brilliant.
The laundry mat was just over a mile, so Joy let me off in front of a closed florist that was part of the downtown area and sped off in the same direction on Mitchell Street the car was pointed; to find somewhere to park and to await my texts.
I went around the next corner and found a covered entryway to finish my remaining Post-Its and create my double. We had about 30 minutes until the sun would rise and figured Triolo would try calling his burner phone soon after. I just hoped he’d allow me enough time to lay out my notes.
The night was beginning to fade as I finished the last note. I knew I would not be able to get inside the building, but I had an idea for outside of it. The idea of scrying to find out if this scheme would work crossed my mind, but had little faith in whatever answer I would receive and did not feel like sacrificing the time, nor the blood to do so.
I kept my double hidden behind the dumpster while I moved around the building, affixing Post-Its. The adhesive usually did well on most surfaces, but not as well on brick. Thankfully, the laundry mat was the only building in a significant radius to not be brick-and-mortar. It was white vinyl—and that meant I could even tuck the notes just under each slat so it would stay put.
I was surprised to see that a town as small as this supported a 24-hour laundry facility, but was willing to concede that as a popular locale for affluent Chicagoans and Detroiters to own vacation homes, it made sense, especially if these were summer hours.
I could see Triolo from outside the window. The purple sky was giving way into the muted blues of morning. Triolo was alone inside, playing on a pinball machine. There was a used car lot I took cover in from which I could still see Triolo through the window of laundry mat. His reflexes were surprisingly sharp for a guy still dying of cancer.
When he finally lost and sat down in a chair next to the pinball machine, he took something out his pocket. The phone in my own pocket now buzzed.
“Grey here.” I kept my tone even, not wanting to have my voice give anything away. Better for him to think I was afraid, nervous, angry.
“You have 30 minutes. Meet me at the laundry mat on Mitchell. I think it’s the only one in town. Bring it. As of right now, the kid is still breathing. That may change if you take too long.” The phone clicked as the call ended.
I texted Joy: Stand Cool Luke by the dumpster. Get the attendant out of the building. Pull a fire alarm. Whatever.
I cut my right arm and scried for Sean’s location. The process made me feel oddly cold—not in terms of temperature, necessarily. The wound felt almost like a chemical was used to make it feel like ice. Despite the sensation, I received the answer: the madman’s trunk.
Triolo would have already started feeling poorly. He would expect me in 20 minutes or so, and he was likely expecting some last minute heroics.
There was no way he would believe I would use his cancer against him. Every Post-It I placed around that building, even if some fell or blew off from the wind, was amplifying his affliction, growing it back. It was a simple enough spell as it was the opposite of healing. It was also one I had never performed as I had never needed to afflict another human being. However, Triolo was already afflicted. And, if there was any luck whatsoever, this would get the malignancy into high gear.
The words metastasis and metastasize were foul words in their usual context, but these were the words I was currently forming in my own mind.
Joy parked next to the dumpster and must have instructed Cool Luke to get out and stand next to whatever he felt. Joy took off toward the back of the building.
I called Cool Luke. “Cool Luke—Sean is in the trunk. We have to expect it to be booby-trapped. Can you undo i
t or get him out safely?”
“With my eyes, yes. Without them, no.” He sounded nervous, unaware as to how he could currently contribute.
“Our guy is going to have a hard time concentrating soon. When you hear him talking to me, you’re going to take the blindfold off and start working on that trunk.” I did not wait for a reply, merely hit the END button.
Chapter 14
I sent my double to the door of the laundry mat. She stood outside the door, looking in on him in a way I hoped would unsettle Triolo should he see her.
She entered just as I saw Joy coming from around back.
I moved in to put the last Post-Its around the front of the building to seal it. “Joy,” I whispered, “take this and put it on the back door. Then take Cool Luke to his trunk.” It was another note to seal the exit. I took out the vial I had lifted from Cool Luke to dissolve glass and tossed it on to the corner of the window near where I was crouching. From my vantage, I could see that Triolo was sizing me up, trying to determine what exactly I had up my sleeve before he could confidently deliver his deathblow.
He was still sitting and he was sweating. I could only hope that in some way, he had gotten used to feeling so badly and didn’t quite realize what was happening to him.
“You got the box?” He was now wearing a fedora with a feather in it. He removed the hat to pad at his forehead with a handkerchief. Then he tapped on the chair next to him. “Take a seat.”
I had my duplicate sit down on the seat next to the one at which he pointed. The lack of speech would alert him soon.
I stuck my pellet-shooting pen through the window—loaded with a death spell—and fired.
Triolo heard the shot and did not flinch. “Naughty, naughty! I suppose that was your apprentice?” Just as I thought, the room was warded. Still, my magic was working. His sweat was beading down the sides of his face, and would have been more profuse if the band of his fedora wasn’t soaking some of it up.
From behind me, I could hear Joy and Cool Luke at the trunk.
Triolo was standing now, towering over my double. He was about to give in to his rage, and my lack of interaction with him was only fueling his wrath.
My double looked at him, and I did my best to have her look fearful. Triolo did not want the fear. He wanted gratitude. That was why he kept those binders full of letters—he wanted to torment until he was thanked for it.
Or…
“I know this isn’t really you, Grey. I’m really quite surprised.” Triolo’s words came out haltingly, as phlegm caught in his throat. “You’ve done something to me I didn’t think you were capable.” I could see him patting his knees, rubbing them in some effort to keep focused.
I yelled through the opening I made in the glass, and glowered at Triolo through the peephole. “You’re dying, Triolo. You’re not going to make it out of there.”
“It’s like a sauna in here. These dryers must not be exhausting correctly.” He fanned himself with this fedora. He was showing signs of dehydration by the way his tongue kept lapping at the roof of his mouth and the words came out with short, syncopated snapping sounds.
“It’s the cancer, Triolo—the building is making it metastasize. And there’s nothing you can do about it at this point.” From behind me, I heard the trunk pop open, though I could not chance taking my eyes off Triolo for an instant.
“That was very smart of you, Miss Theroux. Ruthless. Savvy, even.” For the first time since I had met him, he looked worried. Triolo could not have imagined that we would be willing to play fair.
Before I realized what he was doing, his fedora was on the floor in front of him, he crawled down to it and hammered his fist on top of it.
From behind me the car started and accelerated forward, in through the front of the building. I was not quite in the way, but if I had not leapt aside at the last moment, the debris of the collapsing façade would have buried me.
The warding was broken and Triolo crawled out over the debris with great exertion.
He could not get away from here. The cancer growing within him would not kill him yet. And he would hunt us and harry us and murder us no matter what it cost him until his very last breath.
I reached in my scuba jacket before Triolo had even opened his car door, withdrew the pen-gun, I had only just replaced, walked to him and fired it into his neck at pointblank range.
I was suddenly baptized in Triolo’s blood, as the pellet severed his carotid artery, spraying all over me in a rush of gore.
He was bound. He underestimated my survival instinct and I took a dark kind of pride knowing that I’d gotten the best of two men and their tragic pride recently. He was helpless to stop the bleeding, but I used my pocket knife to cut a piece of his cabana shirt to stifle the rapid blood loss, if only for a few short moments.
Joy and Cool Luke were huddled on the ground where the trunk had been only moments before, doing something to a body lying on the ground that could only have been Sean.
Sirens were heard in the distance, but I wrote a spell in Sharpie on Triolo’s forehead to seal his wound and patch the artery. He would die, but not this quickly. I went to the passenger’s side and hauled Triolo through from that side and got in the driver’s seat.
“IN! NOW!” Rage was washing over me in white-hot furor. In that moment I felt in the innermost part of my being that I wanted Triolo to die and that I wanted it to be at my hand. So blind was I to my environs, it did not register to me that Cool Luke was in the back seat with Sean and that Cool Luke was squeezing my shoulder, imploring me to go, to take Triolo’s vehicle and flee. I did not know where Joy was, nor did it register that she was even absent.
Moments later, I became aware enough of myself to realize that I was following Joy in the rental. With the city limits of Cadillac several miles in the rear-view, Joy’s pace slowed as she turned left into, from the looks of it, was a lumber processing facility. It was closed, but she was parked long before we hit the fences down the entrance road.
From behind me, I heard Cool Luke chanting something at Sean. I knew chants had no place in alchemy, so whatever he was doing was alien to the discipline. Joy was already back and writing in Sharpie on Sean’s flesh.
Cool Luke would heal Sean.
I could feel the pain at having been used, manipulated, of seeing my friends hurt and manipulated. Rage and sorrow fueled my movements, and before I could realize my next actions, I had Triolo on the ground next to the car.
“What were you going to ask, you piece of shit? Tell me what question was so important it didn’t matter how many lives you destroyed to get the answer?” It grasped every wrinkle every pock mark, each blemish on his face and contorted into something that had never been present on his face: for the first time, it was true, unadulterated fear registering upon his visage.
“The only way out is through my mercy! You are bound to me!” I held my boot at his throat, applying savage pressure.
“GREY!” Joy was holding me, both arms holding me in as tight a grip as her diminutive frame could manage. “Grey. Sean will be okay. Get control. I don’t care what you do with him, you just need to make a decision with a clear head.”
I shrugged off Joy’s embrace and took two steps away, crouched, and closed my eyes. Triolo was going nowhere.
My head throbbed with my diminishing adrenaline and lowering blood pressure. I crouched down there, pulling tall, dry grass from the earth until I could regain my composure. “Answer the question, Triolo. What question drove you to this? What answer were you so desperate to find?”
He cleared his throat, wet gurgling sounds came out of his mouth instead of answers.
I wrote words for truth in Sanskrit, Akkadian, and Greek on Triolo’s left cheek. “What question did you mean to ask the box?”
“I’ll answer you. Be,” he paused to inhale deeply, “patient.” He licked at his lips, clicked his tongue. He was well on his way to dehydrating while in the laundry mat. “Water. Water in the car.”
The latitude I was prepared to give Triolo was zero. “Is it a trick?”
“Yes.” No surprise there.
I wondered if I had anything in the rental car, if only to expedite matters. I did not. “Then suck spit and quit stalling!”
I waited a few moments, watching him bizarrely take my suggestion. “It’s the demons, girl. For 54 years I have heard the demons. They! They are the ones!” Triolo’s expression was an extension of the fearful one he had given me minutes before. “They’re the ones who’ve whispered in my ears for my entire life! If not for them! I would not be this!” he spat. The visage of fear was replaced with one folded into madness.
“What? What question?” I shouted above his ravings. I covered the ground between, staring down and keenly aware of the murderous intent in his eyes.
“Why they talk to me! How to shut them up!” I stepped back, though I still kept my eyes trained on his. There was a resigned sadness in that moment. He was a very broken man spurred to madness by the voices in his head.
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
The line from Shakespeare’s Tempest came to mind in that instant, spurring my next question.
“All the demons, all the monsters; I hear them. Sometimes all at once. Only the blood quiets them.” His breathing was labored now. These moments were torture for him. I once remember reading a book about the mob and their omerta, or code of silence. It always seemed like a fair amount of romantic nonsense, but for the tried-and-true it was, apparently, real life. Him telling me the truth was such a foreign concept, so galling, I thought he might actually be willing the cancer to metastasize faster.
Will of Shadows: Inkwell Trilogy 2 (The Inkwell Trilogy) Page 16