by Anton Strout
Caleb shook his head. “We can do this discreetly.”
“I’m all for discretion,” Alexandra said, her eyes locked with mine, hesitation in them. When she spoke again, her voice sounded more like she was trying to convince herself into going. “Having a Belarus there might get more answers than not. My family’s legacy has been one big game of hide-and-seek. What’s one church more?”
I said nothing. Alexandra needed to go, but I was not going to let it come from my lips. There was a selfishness in it, I knew, but I could not let my own words be the ones that sent her away again.
Especially with him.
Caleb looked out across the statue-covered roof of the Belarus Building, gesturing at them. “We’ve practically got an army up here, and if we can find a way to mass-produce enough Kimiya to bring them to life, we can oppose Kejetan.”
“Aren’t you worried about him complaining to the freelancers’ union?” Aurora asked him.
Caleb sighed. “Such a snarky, angry bunch,” he said. “You sure you’re the good guys?”
“That is the trouble with playing both sides,” I said with a growl. “You run the risk of angering twice as many people.”
“Don’t remind me,” he said, then gave me a smile. “But then again, the higher the risk, the greater my reward. I figure helping raise this army here should be worth something.”
“Nuh-uh,” Aurora said, scolding him. “You’re doing this act out of the goodness of your little black heart.”
Caleb spun around to her. “I am?”
“Yes,” Alexandra said, walking to me and laying a hand on my chest as she looked at Caleb. “You are. You’ve got a lot of bad blood to work off here, remember? You’ve spent months wronging our good friend here, so consider this payback.”
“Unless you’d rather I beat it out of you,” Aurora said, poking the nonbladed end of her pole arm at him.
Marshall gestured to the hole in the roof. “Rory and I will work on patching this up,” he said.
“Aurora’s beating would be the least of your concerns,” I said to Caleb. “There is still Kejetan for you to think of. My father will kill you for your betrayal.”
What color was left in the man’s face went away, his amused look disappearing.
“Yeah, I know,” Caleb said, turning away and heading for the doorway. “Don’t think that’s not on my mind twenty-four/seven now. That’s why we need to make more of your kind. That’s why we need to go back to the Libra Concordia.”
“I’ll grab my library card,” Alexandra said, going for her backpack, patting her hand against the stone spell book sticking out of it. “Maybe it grants me special access to the off-limits areas.”
Alexandra ran to me and threw her arms around me again, and I did the same back. She looked up at me, her eyes unwavering.
“I’ll be back,” she said. “I promise. Look after Marshall and Rory, okay?”
“As you wish,” I said, causing her to smile.
She lingered a moment longer before turning and walking slowly away.
“Don’t hold your breath about gaining special access at the Libra Concordia,” Caleb said as he hit the stairs heading down into the building. “There’s off-limits, then there’s really off-limits.”
As I watched Alexandra run off to catch up with him, something deep within me twinged with pain.
“You okay there, Stanis?” Aurora asked.
“I do not like this ease and familiarity between the two of them,” I said, fighting my sudden urge to tear apart the man who had tortured me for months. Caleb had told me that he had not known I was a living creature, but even with that knowledge, I found it hard to just let it go.
“It takes some getting used to,” Marshall admitted as he held up a clear tube full of a dark green bubbling liquid.
“I think I understand what you’re getting at,” Aurora said with a smile. She leaned in closer. “I don’t trust him either. But I’d hold out on any desires to crush his head in just yet.”
“That is unfortunate to hear,” I said, leaping into the air and taking to the night sky. “I would like nothing more.”
The confusion of fighting the dominant other voice in my head was gone, but I still felt the need to take to the sky to clear my thoughts. There was still the problem of my father and the Servants of Ruthenia to contend with, and Alexandra and the alchemist, but for now the only peace I could find was flying as a free creature after so many months of servitude. Head crushing could wait.
For the moment, at least.
Nineteen
Alexandra
When Caleb had said there were a multitude of secret alcoves and such throughout the Libra Concordia, he wasn’t kidding. My head still spun from earlier. I went through the boarded-up hidden doors of the church, planning to systematically work my way down the main aisle, but Caleb grabbed me before I could and instead dragged me off through the maze of the space in search of my great-great-grandfather’s secrets.
The sounds of people working echoed throughout the area, but thanks to Caleb’s sneaky ways, we didn’t cross paths with a single one of them in our initial pass of the main floor. Despite our clandestine lurking about the church looking for Alexander’s secrets, we still had nothing to show for it except frustration, and Caleb dragged me into our usual research room before I could scream.
“Fruitless,” I said, once he had shut the door behind him.
“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Caleb said. “I didn’t really expect to find anything on the first pass, did you?”
“Truthfully?” I said. “No. But it would have been nice.”
Caleb laughed and shook his head. “Nice doesn’t enter into the dark, magical secrets business. Sorry.”
“Maybe it’s carved in runes on the outside of the building or something,” I said. “We should come back during daylight to check it out.”
“And miss checking out what the basement here has to offer us?” Caleb clicked his tongue at me. “You know that caged area up here?”
I nodded. “That’s where they keep all the stuff they’ve recovered.”
“Partially,” he said. “It’s the area where they keep the cataloged stuff. Most of it is written up in their ledgers, and if you had the time to sit back and read them, they’re endlessly fascinating. Luckily, they let me bill by the hour for that. I make lawyers look like they’re undercharging.”
“And yet you were squatting in my old family’s building on Saint Mark’s before it collapsed,” I said.
“My costs for supplies are high,” he reminded me, then pointed down at the floor. “Let’s stay focused, all right? There’s an area or two here in the church that I’m not allowed into. Probably because I’m a freelancer . . . or a heathen. None of what’s kept down there is on the record up here.”
“Then how do you know about it?” I asked.
“I’m the curious sort,” he said.
I smiled. “I bet you are,” I said. “Didn’t turn out well for the cat.”
“Nor did it for me,” he said, frowning. “The stairs leading down to it are protected. I was back in the apse, and next thing I knew, the railings flew off the side of the stairs and wrapped around my arms. Desmond didn’t seem particularly thrilled to find me trying to venture downstairs, but I talked my way out of it, making it seem like nothing more than an honest accident.”
“You can be very convincing even if you’re lying,” I said, filling the words with a darker bite than I meant to, surprising myself.
Caleb stepped back from me as if I had slapped him. “What’s that about?” he asked.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s nothing.”
I hadn’t meant to lash out, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to explain it to Caleb even if I could. With Caleb’s having returned Stanis to his former self, I knew I could trust him, but at the same time I
was discovering that having the gargoyle back conflicted with my growing fondness for Caleb. Now was not the time to get into it. “You were saying about this restricted area . . . ?”
“‘It’s nothing’ . . . ?” he repeated, narrowing his eyes at me. “All right, well, you just tell me when you want to talk about this nothing, then.”
“Caleb . . .”
He held his hands out in front of him and pretended to let go of something heavy.
“This is me dropping it,” he said.
He wiped his hands together as if cleaning them off.
“As I was about to say, my money is on the restricted area.”
“We just need a different way in, then,” I said. “Unless you think we could take on a set of enchanted stairs?”
“I think that might draw a little attention,” he said, moving to the table at the center of the room. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his notebook, and laid it down, taking a seat. He gestured to the chair across from him. “Maybe we should compare notes on your spells and my concoctions, see what we can come up with that might help us get down into the lower parts of this church.”
With no better plan, I sat down opposite Caleb and set to work looking through my own notes, also pulling out Alexander’s stone spell book and transforming it into readable pages. After twenty minutes, I slammed both books shut.
“This is ridiculous,” I said, standing up and stepping away from the table. “I don’t have half of the things I want here to do most of this.”
“Me either,” Caleb said, in the middle of inventorying the left-side contents of his coat’s hidden bandoliers.
“And even if I did, we can’t just walk out into the main room and hope not to cause a commotion.”
“There’s got to be another way down there,” he said.
“There is,” I said, stepping farther back from the table. “We’re just overthinking it.”
Caleb stood, looking where I was at the spot in the center of the room.
The church, despite its current life as a secret society’s storehouse, was still an old-world piece of architecture, which meant the touches my great-great-grandfather had applied in building it were a luxurious mirror of the time period. And being the man that he was, his attention to the stonework was impeccable, including the large slabs of stone floor where we stood.
Caleb was already fumbling through the insides of his coat, but I shook my head.
“No,” I said. “We don’t want to damage anything if we don’t have to. No one knows we’re here, and if we do it my way, hopefully no one will know.”
“Good point,” he said, and let his hands drop to pick up his notebook instead.
I slid my master tome into my backpack and snatched up my notes, breathing out the words of power into the large stone square at the center of the room. No doubt it was cosmetic, with others beneath it, but it was a start.
My will connected with it, and I guided it with my right arm as I forced it up and out of its slot, the dust of ages falling from the cracks around it. It wavered unsteadily at my command, but I managed to set it down without a sound before realizing I was clenching my teeth from the effort. I rubbed my jaw.
“You’re going to hurt yourself doing it like that,” he said. “Stop looking at the stone like the heft of it truly matters. Your mind is tricking you into compensating for the weight it thinks you should be lifting.”
“Yes, Professor,” I said, turning back to the hole I had just created. The stones beneath were rougher but only half the size of the one above. I reached out to the one on the left, and grabbed it with only my will. Maybe Caleb was onto something because although it was more firmly wedged into the foundation, when it came free I did notice a sizable difference in handling it if I tried to ignore the stone’s actual size.
The two of us moved to the edge of the hole I had made. A dim light filled the area below, but I had the Maglite that Boy Scout Marshall had given me and shined its light down below. The lower levels of the church weren’t quite as finely finished as the main floor, but they still looked in good shape.
“About fifteen feet or so,” I said. “Damned old-world luxury and high, religious ceilings.”
“We’re getting down this way,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s the way we’re coming back up.”
Marshall’s voice screamed at the back of my mind reminding me on the importance of rope. Sadly, I had none.
“Normally I’d say ladies before gentlemen,” Caleb said, lowering himself in to his waist, his hands spread out on the floor to either side of him. “But somehow I don’t think letting you plummet into trouble first would be chivalrous.”
Before I could respond, he pulled his arms in tight and dropped through, landing on his feet with a hushed thud. He waved for me to jump down, and before I could start worrying about breaking an ankle or hitting my head on a rock, I sat on the floor, scootched forward, and let go.
I needn’t have worried about damaging myself on the floor below. Caleb caught me in his arms, lowering me to the ground.
“Thanks,” I said, welcoming the closeness.
“That’s two chivalry points,” he said with a smile.
The walls and ceiling there were nothing like those on the main floor. No ornamentation or detailing beyond the plain, carved stones fit together and the vaulted arches supporting the structure. Not that there was much to see in the narrow corridor we found ourselves in. The entire lighting consisted of bare bulbs that had been pegged into the stone walls too far apart to actually give off much light.
“Come on,” Caleb said, turning right down the corridor.
The space echoed with our movement as we walked through arch after arch, coming to a final one barred by a thick iron gate that ran from floor to ceiling. Beyond it, in the shadows, lay the outlines of what looked like shelves similar to those in the gated area upstairs.
“Now, see, this says restricted area,” Caleb said in a triumphant whisper as he pressed his face up against the gate, looking through. “Don’t you think?”
“I particularly like the bars,” I said. “Nice touch.”
Caleb stepped back and wrapped his hands around the gate, pulling then pushing them, but they didn’t move.
“So how do we get in?” I asked.
Caleb took my light from me and set to examining the gate and the arch.
“Maybe you need a secret decoder ring from the Pope,” he said. “I don’t know. All I do know is that we need to find a way in.” He continued his investigation, his face inches from the wall where the arch met the gate. “Oh great.”
“What is it?” I asked, straining to notice what he might be looking at but failing to see jack.
“Mr. Locke might not let your average Joe down here, and it seems he’s had some extra precautions installed.”
“Like . . . ?” I moved closer, watching Caleb as his fingers traced along the surface of the stone wall.
“I’m not sure, exactly,” he said. He reached out and took my hand in his. If I weren’t already panicked about being discovered, I might have taken a moment to enjoy it, but the desire passed as Caleb raised my hand and pressed it to the stone. He placed his hand over mine and guided my fingers along the stones of the archway.
“Feel that?” he asked.
I nodded, pulling my hand away and focusing on the spot as my eyes finally tuned in to what I hadn’t seen at first.
“It looks like a language,” I said.
“Runes,” he corrected. “More specifically: runes of warding. Meant to keep us out.”
Both my eyebrows raised. “Did Locke do this?”
Caleb snickered. “These religious types don’t like to dirty their hands dabbling in magic,” he said. “Too above it all, but you know what they’re not above? Hiring freelancers to do their dirty work. I’m just a little hurt
he didn’t ask me.”
“Do you know how it’s meant to keep us out?”
“Not exactly,” he said, “but by the style of the carving, I can pin who did it. The Witch and Bitch Society. You know, like the Stitch and Bitch knitters.”
“O . . . kay.”
Caleb let out a long sigh. “I wish I could say it was just a clever take on a sewing circle name, but I’ve had a run-in or two with them. Not all that fond of their work, mostly because they cut into my profit margin in competitive freelancing.”
“But can you break this ward?” I asked. “Can you get us in?”
“Maybe,” he said, and started poking through the contents of his jacket.
Nerves getting the better of me, I couldn’t stand waiting, and as a thought occurred to me, I pressed past Caleb toward the gate. I grabbed the latch, which he had completely ignored, feeling resistance, but more of the kind that came with aged metal. I jerked the latch upward, and the gate swung freely into the room beyond.
“Look at me,” I whisper shouted. “I’m a wizard!”
“Or we could try that approach, sure.”
Triumphant but still full of nerves, I pressed on into the room beyond. Much like the gated area above, rows of shelves filled the room, a large maze of books and artifacts stacked high on each of them. Row after row continued down the line, and at the end against the back wall lay a small, carved basin set half in the floor and half into the wall.
“A well?” Caleb asked.
“It’s a stoup,” I said. “It’s a Roman Catholic architectural thing. The more ornate ones are set at the front of the church by the doors, but I’m thinking the Libra Concordia is keeping a ready supply in case they have to deal with any of the nasty toys they might have gathered here.”
“Is it holy water?” Caleb asked, stepping back from it.
“Afraid you might get burned?” I asked.
Caleb ignored me and set off down one of the aisles. I picked another and headed into it. If my great-great-grandfather’s secrets were somewhere in the church as the notes had said, this had to be the place.