by Joe Ducie
The first thing that always hit me as I entered the shop was the smell of good, old books. That heady scent of vanilla and something akin to freshly mown grass. Evanescent chandelier light cast the maze of shelves and tiny warrens of towering books in a soft, faux light. Navigating my shop almost required a map, the books were so many and the roads between them so narrow and winding. I loved little nooks and crannies, secret rooms and deep pockets. My bookshop was a labyrinth of cases and shelves, doused in the scent of ten million pages and the creak of old leather.
I’d made this place home after the war and my exile from Forget and all of that ugly business. Now, for the second time in three months, it seemed Forget was bringing trouble to my door.
Murder was an ugly business—perhaps the ugliest of business—and my head was killing me. If this was tied to Forget, to the Knights and Ascension City, and all signs pointed toward the positive there, then this was only the beginning, an opening salvo in a game of the highest stakes. I was being targeted, but by whom? The last words of the bloody message worried me somewhat.
Long live the Immortal King!
I was the Immortal King. A name, earned in Atlantis, that had spread through the realms of Forget as though it were wildfire, after I had seized the Infernal Clock and died for my folly—only to be resurrected by one of the Clock’s crystal rose petals. I rubbed at the scar across my palm yet again, where the petal had burned into my body and brought me back to life.
Was the killer being sarcastic? A lot of powerful people wanted me dead as well as several nation-worlds of not-so-powerful people. I didn’t have enough to go on—not yet. Again, I had a feeling that more pieces of the puzzle would fall into place soon. At least it wasn’t me that had died this time.
No matter. I had to make a call and catch a few hours sleep. In that order. If I was in danger—if the game was afoot—then Sophie and Ethan could be, as well.
Sophie Levy and Ethan Reilly, my only two friends in the world. Both just shy of twenty, both very much in love with each other. About a month ago Sophie had given me her old touch screen mobile phone. So far the phone held three numbers—Sophie’s, Ethan’s, and Paddy’s Pub down the road.
I called ’Phie’s phone and got her message bank. The time was only quarter to six in the morning, after all.
“Sophie, this is Declan. There was some unpleasantness in town last night.” What could I say over the phone? I didn’t know how the Western Australian Police operated, but could they tap into phone calls? I’d read enough thrillers and seen enough TV shows to be wary. “I hope you and Ethan are taking care. I’d like to see you later on today.” That would do. I ended the call and tossed the phone aside.
Before collapsing on the old leather couch in my writing alcove, amidst the towering stacks of a hundred thousand books, I poured myself a glass of water and tossed back four painkillers. More toxins for my bulletproof liver to process, but my head was killing me. Sleep was swift and sure and crimson.
*~*~*~*
I awoke a little after noon and didn’t bother to open the shop for what was left of the business day. Truth be told, I didn’t open the shop for much of anything these days. My thoughts too often turned to Tal—or Clare—and made me a foul proprietor of books old and new. And I didn’t like to part with my books at the best of times. At least I had enough money, stolen from Forget after my exile, to last me a few more steak dinners. Just one of the perks of being a Knight and hoarding fantastical treasure from a thousand war-torn worlds.
The shop was more of a refuge—a barrier against the night and the Void unseen. In the months since I’d last returned to Forget, undone the Degradation, and brought Atlantis forward through time to the Plains of Perdition—in the months since I’d died and come back to life—I’d spent considerable time constructing a platform of many and varied protection wards around the shop.
I didn’t want to die again, not anytime soon, and I was as safe here as anywhere on True Earth—the real world.
So bring your murderers and your Voidlings. Bring your Renegades and your vengeful Knights Infernal. I’ll do what I’ve always done and stop them every damn time.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table, next to the typewriter and between half-empty bottles of wine, scotch, and a regrettable mix of the two. I picked it up and tapped the screen a few times. Two missed calls and a message from Sophie.
Hi, Declan. We’re @ the uni tav
if you want to come down for a
drink? What’s wrong?
It would take me ten minutes to send a reply with the damn thing—bloody autocorrect—so I stood up instead, stretched away the aches and pains, and shrugged into my waistcoat.
The grey coat was heavier than it should have been, given the thin layer of material. Its extra weight came from two sources. One, I’d imbued the cloth with several Willful protections—magical shields, to put it crudely. I’d been stabbed twice so far this year—once fatally—and I may have been a touch slow on the uptake, but I do tend to learn from my mistakes. And two, the waistcoat was fitted with a special holster.
A Roper Hartley novel was tucked into that holster, ready to be drawn at a moment’s notice. The Knights Infernal, although not averse to guns and swords, dueled often and most effectively with weaponized words.
With books of the Story Thread.
We could pull constructs of Will from the pages, from stories written by men and women with the talent to harness the power at the heart of creation. Roper’s fourth novel, written by a man long dead named John Richardson, was where I’d learned how to sew wards and defensive enchantments into my clothing these last few months. Times were, I’d have had an army of enchanters at my disposal to do that for me, but times were… were times gone.
Dressed to impress, I took a sip of scotch from an almost empty bottle on the counter and ordered a taxi to pick me up in ten minutes from the corner just down the road. I pocketed my wallet, stuffed with small bills and an ATM card, and my keys plus bottle opener, and wandered across the plaza for a kebab before any other business.
You have to feed a hangover grease and chili sauce, and I was already regretting not swallowing a few more painkillers.
My taxi arrived on time. I jumped into the passenger seat and off we went.
Sophie and Ethan attended university about a quarter of an hour away in Joondalup. They had recently, in the last month, moved into student housing together just off campus, on Lakeside Drive. I’d gone to the housewarming, bearing a tiny cactus in a colorful pot, and drank all the children’s booze, feeling not unlike an old hound surrounded by young, yappy pups.
The Edith Cowan University was a large, lush collection of modern buildings with a wonderfully cheap tavern slapped down in the heart of the campus, next to a man-made lake. The sun glittered off the dyed-green water, next to a half-dozen rows of neatly planted pine trees, which stretched a good twenty meters high toward the cloudless, blue sky. The scent of pine needles and fried food, from the pizza shop next door, was an enjoyable mix.
Entering the tavern, I moved around a collection of black and red couches and plastic-backed metal chairs, around a row of three worn pool tables and made my way to the bar. The bartender, a lovely young girl in her early twenties with blonde hair and freckles, was wearing a summer dress striped blue and white.
I doffed an invisible hat. “Good afternoon. Cider in the sun, I think. Can I take a bottle of strawberry and lime and a schooner glass with ice?”
“Sure,” she said. “How are you today?”
I’d been here enough times to be recognized. My usual haunt was Paddy’s Pub, just down the road from my bookshop, but I’d found myself here more and more since Ethan and Sophie moved in together. It was a good little drinking spot, full of students who should have been studying but seemed to know better.
“So far so good. Better for seeing you.”
She smiled. “Do you have class today?”
“Keep a secret? I’m not actually a studen
t.”
“No?” She gasped. “What are you?”
Shadowless. Forgotten. Exile. Arbiter. Immortal. Infernal... King. “Thirsty.”
“That’ll be nine-fifty then.”
I found Sophie and Ethan sitting outside the front of the tavern, on a small courtyard in the sun overlooking the lake and the pine forest. Sophie saw me first and motioned me over. She was playing with a large, bulky camera. Her pale skin and dark, red hair made her easy to spot. A few brave ducks had waddled up the steps and were begging for pizza scraps at the busy tables.
“Hey, boss,” Ethan, my unofficial apprentice, said. We shook hands. “You look like you were up all night.”
Sophie had found Ethan earlier this year. He was Willful but had never been recruited by either the Knights or the Renegades. He was Unfound—due to the stretch on resources during the Tome Wars. He had grown up never knowing why he sometimes set things on fire with a thought or found himself levitating when he awoke of a morning.
“We’ll get to that. Let me have a sip of this cider first.”
Ethan scratched at his scraggly stubble and brushed a hand back through his mop of dark hair. He had a thin face and sharp eyes but a friendly smile. He was tapping away at one of those laptop computers I saw everywhere these days. If not for him—and Clare Valentine—I’d have been imprisoned on Starhold above Ascension City a few months back.
“Not like you to call,” Sophie said, still fiddling with her camera. She pressed a button near the viewfinder and the back panel sprang open. She inserted a cartridge of film, and it nestled into place with a satisfying click. “Smile, Declan.”
I did no such thing. The camera flashed and spat out a square Polaroid, which developed quickly in the sun.
“That’s not actually half bad,” Sophie said. “A little sullen and brooding, but we should scan this and set you up on Facebook—find you some friends.”
“Facebook?”
Ethan scoffed. “You mean you’re not on it?” He tapped away at his laptop and spun the device around to face me.
I glanced at the screen and did a double take. “Is that… is that an image of the Fae Palace in Ascension City?”
“I snapped that shot last summer on my phone, just after we took off in that cruiser and saved you from Starhold. Set it as my profile pic when we got back from Forget.”
“You’re… not kidding.”
“People just think it’s from a movie or something.”
Sophie slipped her photo of me into a special, slim wallet of similar photographs. The album was bulging with shots she’d taken.
“Guess you’ve found yourself a hobby.” I refilled my schooner with delicious cider.
“So, what was your phone call all about this morning?” she asked. “You don’t call. Ever. Should I be worried?”
I took a long sip and then filled them both in on the details—the gruesome murder, the bloody message, and the likelihood that I was being targeted in some nefarious, otherworldly plot.
“I saw that on the news this morning. Not the message with your name, but the murder. Christ, what can pull a man apart like that?” Ethan asked. He kept his voice low, mindful of the people at nearby tables. Our conversation wasn’t exactly sunny-cider chatter.
“A whole slew of things, actually,” Sophie said. “We study the bestiaries during our first few years at the Infernal Academy. Everything from angels to demons to monsters to… things that have no real classification.”
“Forget is big,” I said. “Infinitely so. This creature, whatever it is, could be something the Knights have seen before, or it could be something entirely new. The fact that it’s here, on True Earth, perhaps favors the former explanation. Only the really nasty stuff, the loud stuff, can cross universal boundaries and navigate the Void and the Story Thread.”
“Well, it has to be something clever, doesn’t it? If it can leave you messages,” Ethan said.
Sophie nodded her agreement. “What do you think it is?”
“Honestly? No idea. Despite the mess, it’s too clinical for something cheap and nasty. I keep stumbling over the fact that whatever killed the man took his heart. That’s mighty troublin’, but I’m not sure why. If we had access to the Forgetful Library and the catalogues of Certain Nightmare I could… but we don’t.”
Sophie stared at me. “You’re not thinking about going back to Ascension City again, are you?”
“Always,” I said. “But not any time soon. We’ve problems enough here in Perth without pissing off my brother.”
Across the balcony, following the steel railing over to the limestone steps that led down to the lake, a familiar figure walked up and onto our little courtyard.
Dressed in a pair of blue jeans, a white blouse, and a brown leather jacket, Detective Annie Brie strolled purposefully toward me. Her hands were safe inside her pockets, and she wore a pair of dark sunglasses, framed by her straight raven-black hair.
I felt something, a tingle of anticipation, as she drew level with our table and gave me a small wave. “Hello again, Mr. Hale.”
“Detective.” I stood to meet her and took her hand. One of the hungry ducks circling our table quacked indignation. “You are a lovely surprise. Care to join us?”
“I will, yes.” She took a seat next to me at the table, on a spare circular bar stool.
I made introductions. “Sophie, Ethan, this is Detective Brie. I have a sneaking suspicion that she may have followed me here today.”
Brie shrugged and offered me a smile that didn’t feel real. “We’re keeping an eye on you, yes. For your own protection, you understand.”
“Ah, not a social visit then?”
“No, we’d like you to come in—to Joondalup Police Station, just down the road, and answer some more questions.”
“And so they sent the young, pretty one to persuade me? For shame. Detective Grey most likely would’ve hauled me in by the ear by now, hmm?”
Brie folded her hands over her lap. “You’re not under arrest, Mr. Hale. But we do need you to answer some more—”
“Call me Declan, please. And have a drink with us, Annie Brie.” I sipped at my schooner of delicious pink cider. “Swim in the chaotic seas of infinity, stretched thin along a canvas of corruptible reality, and wonder with me if this truly is as good as it gets.”
“What did you just say?”
“Declan does that,” Sophie said, and held the Polaroid camera up to her eye again. “Spouts the poetic nonsense of the long–suffering. You two look good together. Smile.”
A bright flash lit up the afternoon and ’Phie’s camera spat out another picture. She handed it to Brie.
We watched the picture develop slowly, fading from black to life. It showed the detective and I seated together on our bar stools. I was leaning in toward her, and she sat straight and proper—as you do around new people—with a carefully composed face baring just the hint of a smile. Brie’s shadow stretched up the wall behind her as the early afternoon sun began a slow fall toward the west.
Mine did not.
I wondered, with not too much worry, if she would notice.
“So, how about that drink, Detective Brie? This strawberry and lime cider is deelicious.”
Brie looked at me over the rim of her sunglasses. “I’m more of a wild berry girl, Mr. Hale.”
“Known you half a day, and you’re already breaking my heart.” I sighed and raised my glass. “Well, cheers anyway.”
The schooner exploded in my hand and a shower of ice, cider, and glass lacerated my palm. Something hard hit me in the chest like a sledgehammer and I was knocked back off my stool and into the wall behind me. Away in the distance, I heard a loud snap as though a car had backfired.
I saw stars and struggled to draw a breath, slumped against the wall. The air had been pushed from my lungs. One of the ducks flapped its wings angrily at me a few feet away. Another snap cut through the air, and the bird exploded much like my delicious cider had.
�
�Duck!” Brie yelled, throwing herself to the concrete behind the table.
“It sure was…” I muttered, staring at what was left of the poor creature.
Ethan and Sophie, not averse to danger, scampered inside, abandoning their various cameras and laptops as the tavern’s other patrons just began to react—to scream and run.
Someone was taking shots at me.
This wasn’t the first time, but it was the first time in a long time.
I looked down at my chest. My reinforced waistcoat shimmered with a dull blue light. A heavy chunk of hot lead had flattened against the left breast pocket. It fell to the ground with a clunk. If not for the Willful protections, I’d have found out once and for all just how immortal the Infernal Clock had made me.
The pain blossoming across my chest felt a lot like mortality.
This was a sobering thought and made me thirsty. I made it to my knees and reached up onto the table to retrieve my bottle of cider, still half-full. No sense seeing it going to waste.
All of this happened in a few seconds, and Detective Brie acted with a lot more self-preservation than I. She hurled her shoulder into the large table and knocked it over, shielding us both behind the thick tabletop. Perhaps not enough to stop another bullet, but the shooter wouldn’t be able to see us anymore.
“Are you hit?” she yelled. Her service weapon—a slick, dark pistol—looked out of place in her small hands. “Hale, are you okay?”
I took a drink. “I’m okay, I think.”
She stared at me for a moment, and although I couldn’t see her eyes behind her dark sunglasses, I sensed a thousand questions burning through her mind. Brie shook her head and snapped open her phone just as another shot slammed into the table. The bullet didn’t make it through the heavy wood, but a spray of white splinters erupted from the underside.
As Brie called for backup, I peeked around the table’s edge to see what I could see. We were surrounded on all sides by several tall buildings just across the lake and beyond the tiny pine forest. People were scattering every which way, diving for cover. The shooter, whoever he was, could have been anywhere. But given where he had hit me and the duck, he—or she—was most likely on the roof of the building across the lake. The angle was right.