A kindly-looking old man with a luxurious white beard looked down at him. He wore a warm overcoat and his arms were full of presents wrapped in gold and silver paper. For no reason that he could understand, Will burst into tears. Helpless, childish tears.
“My goodness, that’s no way to spend Christmas Eve!” The man clucked his tongue. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m trying to get home,” Will sniffed, wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve, “And I don’t have any money.”
The man quickly dug in his pocket and retrieved a handful of small change. He pressed the coins into Will’s hand; they were still warm from his body.
“You go on home, I’m sure people are waiting for you.” The old man put down his packages and helped Will to his feet. “It’ll all come out all right. You’ll see.”
“Ben?” Will whispered. But the old man had picked up his presents and was walking away.
Will got off at the streetcar stop nearest Winslow and walked to the apartment building. Seeing lights blazing from the sitting room in the front, he snuck quietly along the side alley and up the back stairs. When he got to the apartment, he saw that the door was standing half open. He stumbled through it.
“Jenny?” he called, softly.
But Jenny did not answer. And when he saw the apartment, he prayed she wasn’t there.
The apartment had not just been ransacked, it had been destroyed. Furniture was broken and the pieces scattered. The suitcases Jenny had packed had been slashed open, their contents strewn carelessly. Cold air streamed in through broken windows.
Will moved through the wreckage carefully, glass and shattered wood crunching under his feet as he moved. Weariness and hunger vanished; his whole body was suddenly awake and alert and anxious.
There were three men waiting for him in his bedroom. Three men—and a woman. But it wasn’t Jenny. It was Mrs. Kosanovic, the landlady, probably drawn upstairs by the sounds of destruction. She lay on the floor, hog-tied and gagged and blindfolded. Will’s heart thudded.
The men reminded Will of the men who had come to take Roher. But these men wore black suits, and instead of a badge, each man had a red orchid in his lapel.
One of the men—diminutive, with large dark eyes and a small moustache—had Jenny’s calfskin grip at his feet. He was reading her papers.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Edwards,” the man said without looking up.
“Who are you?” Will said, taking a step toward him. “What are you doing—”
Quick as thinking, the other two men, who had been standing at the first man’s flank, rushed forward and seized Will, pushing him back against the wall. One of them got a thick arm against Will’s throat and held him there.
“Get him a chair,” the first man said. “If there are any left.”
A chair was fetched, and Will was put into it, each of the two men standing beside and behind him, resting a heavy hand on his shoulder, holding him down.
The man who had spoken laid the papers aside. He rose and came to stand before Will.
“My name is Bernays,” he said. “And my boss is not happy with you. Not happy at all.”
Will stared at him, waiting for him to explain, but Bernays seemed in no hurry. Rather, he looked down at Will contemplatively.
“You’re so young,” he observed. “Your body should not be able to withstand that much magic, not without an allergic reaction severe enough to kill you immediately. You should be dead. Why aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Will said again. “I didn’t ... do any magic.” But then he remembered the charms he’d seen on Jenny’s Body the charms sketched in blood, and his head spun. “I don’t think I did.”
“We know you did magic,” Bernays said. “That is not in dispute. It is our job to know when huge amounts of magic are released. And it is our job to track down the warlocks who release them.”
Will blinked, remembering what Court had told him.
“The Settlement,” he said. “Killing Old Users. The Agency. You’re ... you’re from the Agency.”
“Very good, Mr. Edwards.” Bernays’ eyes flared. “You’ve been doing your reading. But you might want to choose your material with more care. The Goês’ Confession is a piece of seditious trash, and we work very hard to keep such falsehoods from propagating.”
He took a step toward Will.
“The information in that book is neither accurate nor fair. We are a kinder, gentler Agency now. Now, we offer the warlocks who have had the misfortune to come to the attention of our boss a choice.”
He made a strange ornate gesture, the flourish of a stage magician producing a dove from a silk hat. But instead of a dove or a silk hat, Bernays suddenly held a small phial—and a silver knife.
“You will see that I hold two objects, Mr. Edwards,” he said. “In my left hand—well, I hardly need tell you what this is.” He turned over the sharp silver blade, and it gleamed in the low light. “In my right hand ... that requires only slightly more explanation. Do you know what’s in this phial?”
Will shook his head.
“This is the Panchrest,” Bernays said. “Drink it now, and you will no longer be able to channel magic. And you will no longer be of any interest to us.”
“But I’ve already had the Panchrest,” Will hissed. “I had it when I was a child.”
Bernays looked at him with astonishment.
“What an incredibly stupid thing to say.” He grinned. “And here I’d heard you were supposed to be a genius or something. Haven’t you the slightest capacity for self-preservation? In any case, I know that you have not had the Panchrest. My boss has it on absolute authority that you have not.”
“Who is this boss you keep talking about?” Will snapped. “And how the hell would he know?”
“Oh for pete’s sake, will you just choose?” The man holding him down hit him hard across the face. Will felt blood blossom from his nose, trickling warm down his chin.
“Stop it, Trotter,” Bernays spoke with annoyance. “You know that never works. Mr. Edwards has decided to be stubborn. As we were told he might be.”
He went over to where Mrs. Kosanovic lay on the floor and lifted her to her feet. The old woman’s eyes snapped with fierceness and fear.
“In the bad old days, Mr. Edwards, in the early days of our nation’s history, when a warlock was accused of the crime of practicing magic, he was also required to make a choice. He was required to choose his plea—guilty or innocent. It wasn’t much of a choice, for pleading guilty meant death and pleading innocence meant a slower and more painful death. So some tried to get out of the choice all together, and they refused to plead anything at all. Do you know what happened to the warlocks who refused to choose?”
Bernays did not handle Mrs. Kosanovic violently at all. Instead, he just put his lips next to her ear and began to whisper. The whispered words, Will could hear, were in Latin. Mrs. Kosanovic began to tremble. Then she began to ... collapse. It was as if she were being sucked inward upon herself. Her flesh compressed as if she were being crushed by heavy stones.
“Stop it!” screamed Will, blank with terror. “Please!”
But Bernays just kept whispering, and Mrs. Kosanovic began making horrible squeaking sounds through her gag. The sound of bones fracturing into a million tiny pieces was like the pop and sputter of dry, burning wood. Blood welled from her skin in fat droplets like water being wrung from a sponge. She became smaller and smaller, crushed by the weight of Bernay’s words.
After a long, long time, Bernays stopped whispering. Mrs. Kosanovic was no longer there. All that was left of her was a dense lump of meat in a pile of bloody clothing.
Will must have passed out, because the next thing he knew, Trotter was slapping him hard across the face to wake him.
“You are going to choose,” Bernays promised him. “We can’t choose for you. It’s against the rules. But to make you choose—well, we can do anything we like to you.” He felt in hi
s pocket and pulled out the little purple velvet box that Will had left on his bedside table. Bernays opened the box, looked at the silver dollar within, turning it to glint in the waning moonlight. “Or to your lovely wife, when she comes home.”
The bedroom door crashed open.
All of the warlocks turned, and Will saw Harley Briar standing in the doorway. His face was yellow and purple with days-old bruises, and his nose—badly broken—was still swollen to twice its size.
“Let him go!”
He had something raised in his hand—a two chambered pendant, filled with a dark liquid. The same kind that Irene wore.
A sangrimancer’s alembic. Briar muttered a command that made it glow faintly, warm and red.
Bernays did not smile, but rather regarded Briar with a low dark gaze. “Oh wonderful. A hobo sangrimancer.”
“Who are you?” Briar barked.
“I think you know who we are,” Bernays said. “I’m sure you’ve heard of us.” He touched the red orchid on his lapel.
Seeing it for the first time, Briar paled, his battered face going corpse-white beneath the bruises. The alembic in his hand trembled.
“I’m used to long odds,” Briar said. And then he barked a command in some kind of strange language. Jenny’s papers exploded into ash-fine dust, filling the room with a blinding, choking cloud.
Briar was at Will’s side in an instant, grabbing his arm, pulling him toward the door.
But Bernays simply muttered something in Latin, and a cold fresh wind blew through the room, dispelling the cloud. With the precision of three who’d always worked as one, the assassins attacked Briar in perfect unison, lifting their hands to sketch the same charms; chanting the same flawlessly matched Latin. Briar held the alembic high, screaming his bitter acrid spell words, both defending and attacking, summoning tendrils of light from the floor that lashed wildly at them. One of these searing whips caught Bernays across the throat, slashing it open. It staggered the trio for a moment, but only a brief one; Bernays choked an imprecation, placed his hand on the gushing wound and closed it with one curt command: “Sanare.”
Then, with a snarl, Bernays and his men intensified their efforts, their voices rising to unearthly volume. The same whips of magical light that had been lashing out at them now turned, wrapped themselves around Briar, held him fast. He struggled desperately as he dropped to his knees.
Will fumbled in his pocket for the razor. He knew that he could help Briar. Save him. The voice didn’t come back to his head, but whatever had been speaking to him then was how he knew it now.
Not quite sure what he was doing, Will used the razor to gash his arm. He rubbed the blood between his hands, and strange power tingled on his fingertips. Then he reached down into himself, to a place dangerous and only vaguely remembered. The memory of the charms on Jenny’s body filled his vision. Lifting his hands, he spoke unfamiliar words, words that tumbled out of him, words that he knew had never really existed until the very moment he spoke them.
He saw the look of shock in Bernays’ eyes as the warlock assassins were wreathed in cold blue flame. They all screamed—in perfect unison—and vanished, leaving behind nothing but the smell of sulphur and silence. Dead silence.
Will collapsed against the wall. He felt exhausted and unclean. Looking at the place where Bernays had been standing, he saw that the warlock had dropped something. The purple velvet box. With an angry cry, Will bent to snatch it from the floor.
Then he went to where Harley Briar lay, writhing and moaning in agony. Briar had used so much magic. And beneath his skin, black rivers of Exunge were beginning to blossom and swell.
Chapter Nineteen
The Tender Sangrimancers
SEVEN DAYS UNTIL THE NEW MOON
Will didn’t know how he was able to get Briar to the Gores—he hadn’t eaten in five days, and hadn’t an ounce of strength left—but somehow, he did it. And when they arrived at Dr. Gore’s front door, Will didn’t bother knocking; he just threw it open and dragged Briar inside.
Briar had stopped screaming somewhere along Gratiot Street, and now just hung limply off Will’s shoulder, his feet dragging. As they collapsed together onto the tiled floor of the entryway, Irene fell to the floor beside them.
“Harley!” she exclaimed with anguish, bending over him. Her fingers traveled swiftly over his face, over the insane pattern of black writhing beneath his bruised skin. “He knows never to use so much magic! What happened?”
“We were attacked,” Will rasped, laying on the floor beside him, unable to move. “By warlocks wearing red orchids.”
Irene’s eyes went wide, and she looked up at her father, who had hurried in from the back room.
“There is no time to waste,” Dr. Gore said. “Irene, help me.”
“He’s dying,” Irene keened. “Harley—”
“If they’ve been followed, we’re all dead!” Dr. Gore bellowed, pulling a knife from his belt and kneeling at Will’s side. “Now. Quickly.”
Seizing Will’s arm, he used the knife to make another deep incision, drawing a fresh hot gush of blood, and both Irene and Dr. Gore coated their hands in it. Irene’s had her alembic at the ready. Clasping hands with her father, she held the alembic high as Dr. Gore spoke words in the bitter, pungent language that Will knew as the language of sangrimancy—the language Briar had spoken to banish the Agency warlocks. He suddenly realized that it was very familiar to him. It was the language the voice in his head had always spoken in.
Her father’s words made Irene’s alembic glow, and with it she began tracing patterns in the air. She sketched swift hexes over Will’s Body then over the doors and windowsills.
“What are you doing?” Will murmured.
“We’re sheltering you,” Dr. Gore said. “Hiding you. Quiet now. Rest.”
They proceeded around the whole house in this fashion, Dr. Gore chanting and Irene sketching, until finally they returned to where Will and Briar rested. Irene looked exhausted from the effort, but she did not stop for even a moment; she bent and lifted Briar up, carrying him into the receiving room and laying him tenderly on the table. Dr. Gore followed her.
Will lay on the cold floor, his own blood smeared on the tiles around him. He curled up into a ball and closed his eyes. And even much later, when a soft knock came at the door, he could not bring himself to open them.
The hem of Irene’s skirt brushed his cheek. She paused, and he heard her slide open the little viewing window. After a moment in which Will could feel her weighing her decision, she opened the door. Will felt cold air stream in over the threshold. He opened his eyes a crack, just enough to see a pair of leather shoes on the doormat.
“I’m looking for Will Edwards,” the shoes said. They were scuffed, Will noticed. Not polished. “Please let me in, I know he’s here—”
“You shall not enter here,” she replied in a calm, ceremonial voice. “Begone, kallikantzari. This home is fortified against you.”
“I’m not one of them.” A pause. “I swear it upon my blood.”
Irene weighed the shoes’ formal response for a long time.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Will’s brother,” the shoes said. “Ben.”
Chapter Twenty
Kala Christouyenna
SIX DAYS UNTIL THE NEW MOON
Hunger woke him the next morning, gnawing at his gut with a ferocity even more powerful than his lingering weariness. The smell of food suffused the house—the scent of garlic and rosemary and roasting pork heavy in the air.
He had been put into a bed in an upstairs room. Climbing out of it, he stood for a moment on shaky legs, steadying himself. Winter sunlight illuminated the shade covering the window. He pushed the shade aside, looking out over the roofs and back alleys of Greektown, narrowing his eyes against the intense glare.
Then, slowly, he made his way downstairs. In the kitchen, Dr. Gore, wearing a long ruffled apron, was bent before the gas oven poking at a roast. An unfamiliar man wa
s sitting at the kitchen table. Will stopped in the doorway, looking at him.
“Ben,” he said.
Ben was tall and slender, with walnut-colored hair and green eyes. He wore a rumpled suit—it matched his scuffed shoes—and the impression he gave was of a bank clerk in a very small bank with very few clients.
Ben rose quickly, and came over to where Will was standing. Without a word, he hugged Will. Will held on to him for a moment, steadying himself against his brother.
“It’s all right,” Ben murmured. “It’ll all come out all right.”
Will shook his head and pushed himself away from his brother’s embrace. But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he shakily crossed the kitchen to the table, steadying himself against the back of one of the chairs.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
“I can imagine,” Dr. Gore said. “But I’m afraid dinner is not yet ready.” He gestured to a plate that had been put out on the table to accompany two half-drained cups of coffee. “Have some kourambiedes. The sugar will help you.”
The plate was piled with cookies, round and white and thickly coated with powdered sugar. They looked like tiny full moons. Will devoured them, one after the other, licking his fingers between bites. Dr. Gore did not seem surprised at how quickly Will ate the cookies, he just went to the icebox and retrieved a glass bottle of milk. He poured a large cupful and set it before Will.
“Drink that,” he said. “Then help your brother set the table. Irene will be home from church soon, and then we will eat. We will be glad to have you, and you will need your strength to decide what is to be done.”
Will drank his milk as he was told, then followed Ben into the dining room, where a colorful cloth, plates and silver were collected on a heavy walnut sideboard. The eastern wall of the room was dominated by a holy shrine. An olive-oil lamp flickered low before gold-leafed icons of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, as well as a saint Will did not recognize, a beardless young man with dark curly hair.
Silently, Ben and Will began working side by side, laying the table for Christmas dinner.
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