She closed her eyes. “I can almost picture it. But I don’t know if what I’m picturing is real.”
“Maybe the elders can tell you.” I stood and went to the window. The blizzard showed no sign of abating, and even the draft made me ache. Warmth, still flowing from the others, held it back a little. I closed my eyes and felt along the less comfortable connection. There was direction to the fragile threads. “We need to go by the library. And then drive to Innsmouth. I don’t think this can wait for better weather.”
“I don’t think so either,” said Audrey. She sounded steady, but through the confluence I felt the chill within her, and the darkness around it.
“Do you drive?” I asked Trumbull. “I don’t know how we’re going to fit everyone otherwise.”
“It’s been a while.” She frowned. “It was two days ago. Or feels like it. Except that it doesn’t at all. But yes, I drive. I hope my … guest … kept the gas tank full.” She looked around the room. “Miss Marsh, where is Emily?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Who’s Emily?”
“My maid. She should be here.”
“Trumb—your guest—didn’t keep any servants. She said something about letting a maid go who she worried might notice the change.”
“Damn it! How—” She opened the door and peered out into the hallway. The missing woman failed to materialize. “Never mind. I’ll find her again once the storm’s passed.”
“I’m sorry,” said Caleb. He shrugged. “The Yith don’t tend to maintain relationships. Among the people of the water, friends and family know to wait, but when people don’t understand what’s going on … it’s good you didn’t have a husband or children.”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t.”
Dawson elbowed Caleb, who muttered an abashed apology.
Trumbull shook her head. “Let’s go find your missing friend.”
I tried to hold Audrey back a moment before we went downstairs. “Your blood…”
She pulled away. “Let’s talk about it later. Little enough to be done, anyway.”
The other Trumbull could have told us whether the void-specked cells were normal—an ordinary immune function shared by all the people of the rock, kept in reserve against need and likely to retreat when done—or whether they were a product of whatever experiment had created her bloodline. Whether the darkness and anger could be cautiously encouraged, or whether they would consume her as easily as the outsider.
I found a spare coat, somewhat ragged, at the bottom of Trumbull’s winter chest. Even driving from faculty row to the library, we went slowly through icy streets. Frozen sandbars covered the sidewalks; if Trumbull had a late afternoon class, it would have been canceled.
The library’s front path was equally treacherous. Barely six inches had fallen, but the wind made it uneven: two-foot piles in some places, and others where our boots scraped bare stone. The gale blew droplets of cold against my stinging eyes and lined them with frozen tears.
We found a little shelter in the overhanging stone of the entryway. Spector knocked heavily, then tried the door. It was locked. Caleb fumbled in his pockets for the keys, but the door creaked open and one of Barlow’s guards examined us with displeasure. Behind him, three more put out cigarettes and frowned at our interruption. Dim light filtered through the foyer’s stained glass, marking them in strange colors.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the guard. “Mr. Barlow left explicit instructions that he wasn’t to be disturbed.”
“We’ve discovered something that might help with his research,” said Spector.
The guard shook his head. “I’m not going to argue with him, and neither are you. Orders, sorry. It’s a mess out there; you’d better get back inside until the storm passes.” And he shut the door again.
Audrey glared. “That was useless. Idiots!” She kicked the threshold and turned her glower on the rest of us. “Well, come on. They still don’t know how we got in the first time.” She began trudging in the direction of the side entrance. I prayed they hadn’t thought to guard that as well. My face was growing numb, and I felt as if my thoughts were doing the same.
Snow drifted high against the library’s east side. We scraped it away with gloved hands and pulled the door open enough to slip in. No guards awaited us. The service passage was still cold, but shelter from the wind came as an intense relief.
“Why does anyone live in New England during the winter, if it feels like this to them all the time?” I demanded as I stomped snow from my shoes.
“I couldn’t begin to tell you,” said Charlie.
“You get used to it,” said Audrey. She pulled off her gloves and rubbed her cheeks. “Worse today, though. It’s easier when you can stay inside.”
My connection with Sally was a compass, not a map. But I suspected they’d ensconced themselves in the restricted section. We followed our old route upward.
After a few minutes Trumbull said, unprompted, “I’d appreciate it if you called her something else. Whenever you say, ‘Professor Trumbull did such and such,’ it’s very distracting. And unpleasant: I didn’t do any of those things.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll try to remember. We can call her ‘the Yith.’ But she never gave us any name other than yours.”
“It’s—” She stopped abruptly in the middle of a narrow corridor, held her hands out claw-like. “I know it. I know it, but I can’t pronounce it.”
Audrey looked at her sympathetically. “Amnesia really isn’t as useful as some entities seem to think.”
“Have you ever heard of Atlantis?” asked Caleb.
“You’ve mentioned it before. Please tell me some mystical nonsense is actually nonsense?” said Spector plaintively.
“Some is,” said Caleb, “and there was never a place named Atlantis. But there really was an island city-state built on anachronistic knowledge from a poorly executed Yithian memory wipe, and they really did destroy themselves with ill-considered use of that same knowledge.”
Spector shook his head. “I don’t think knowledge needs an esoteric origin to be dangerous.”
The restricted section was well-lit and well-insulated: a bright if not warm spot at the library’s heart. On the second level of the stacks, a door stood open. We found Barlow’s people there, in one of the rooms set aside for studies that wanted no witness.
Barlow came swiftly to his feet as we entered, hand moving toward the gun under his jacket. “Ron, I can’t believe you’d bring these people here now, of all times.”
Spector gave him an exasperated look. “I’m here to help.” The familiarity made me wonder what background they shared beyond their political disagreements. Surely the agency’s few experts in supernatural matters must sometimes be required to work together more directly.
“You’ve made it clear you won’t even admit to yourself that you’re harboring saboteurs. And you,” he added to Trumbull. “I’ll have your head for playing with the guards’ minds again. There’s no other way they’d have let you by.”
“We came in the back door,” I told him. “And we came now, of all times, to help. As Mr. Spector said.”
Barlow nodded at Peters. Before I could decide how to react, Peters rushed forward and grabbed me. He twisted my wrists tight behind my back and pressed his other arm against my neck, forcing my chin up so I could feel my pulse thudding against his skin.
I went still, every muscle tensed against the instinct to fight. I could break his hold, but not without hurting him. Not without the consequences that would bring. I sought Caleb’s eyes and willed him to stay where he was. He, too, had frozen, but I could see joints flex, gaze dart in search of a moment’s opportunity. I shook my head a fraction, felt Peters tighten his grip in response. I swallowed, hard: a soldier had grabbed me and our father had leapt to stop him—and died with another soldier’s bullet in the back of his head.
Spector held up his hands. “Don’t make this mistake again, George. You’re searching at random; we ca
n make a difference. My people aren’t responsible for your problems, and you have two women hurt.”
“Two?” Barlow surveyed his team. There were only the two women on it.
“I’m fine,” said Sally, glaring at Audrey. She didn’t look fine: her skin was wan, her muscles locked painfully against the shivers that threatened to overwhelm her. But if Barlow noticed, he didn’t acknowledge.
Mary rose from her chair and approached Spector. She looked him up and down, secretarial camouflage abandoned. “What do you know about what happened?”
I swallowed against the pressure on my windpipe. “I know that it doesn’t take sabotage for an experimental ritual to go very, very wrong.”
Peters’s grip loosened a fraction, and Barlow nodded. “Let her talk. I want to hear everything she has to say.” He eyed Trumbull, and I knew that with more agents here, he’d have happily grabbed us all. I glanced at her as well: where her guest would have glared back and made some cutting remark, she’d masked her expression entirely, save that her pupils had gone wide.
I was tempted to forgo Trumbull’s deception. This wasn’t Atlantis, and I wanted to say something that would shake them out of their paranoid arrogance. Shouldn’t they know how close they’d come to destruction? Shouldn’t they know how we’d discovered their disastrous summoning, and that the disaster was their fault and no other’s?
But Barlow didn’t believe he was doing something safe. He simply believed it necessary. And if he knew about the Yith, he was precisely the sort to seek out their other representatives around the world, and drag dangerous knowledge from them by whatever means he could muster. And, if he were truly foolish, try to keep them from sharing it with others.
I closed my eyes, breathed as deeply as I could, and tried to think beyond my father’s blood and Peters’s grip on my wrists. I needed to focus on what we were doing now: Audrey and Sally’s lives and sanity, and perhaps my own, depended on it. But I knew how to be honest, and how to be silent, and neither seemed wise. If Audrey weren’t so distracted, what would she say?
“We picked up on what you were doing last night,” I said. “We came to find out who was running an unshielded summoning, but when we got close enough it grabbed us as well. We found you in the basement of the admin building. Something else came through. You don’t remember any of this?”
“No, of course not,” said Barlow, but his eyes grew distant and worried.
“Is this your explanation for why letters look like gibberish to me this morning?” asked Mary.
“You use math and language in your rituals, don’t you?” Peters tightened his grip, and I tried to keep my voice calm and reasonable. “They can rebound against you, if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing. There are reasons the traditional methods are so rigid. And even those carry risks.”
“They aren’t ‘rituals,’” Peters interrupted. I felt his breath against the back of my head. “No more than a new kind of engine, or psychotherapy. Set up a machine or a pattern of actions, and get a certain result from the universe.”
“Call it what you will,” I said, “it went wrong. As any machine can. That wasn’t our doing, I swear by all the gods. We helped shut it down. But the thing you summoned—‘inventoried’—left a piece of itself in Miss Winslow. And we think in Miss Ward as well. You really don’t remember?”
“No, we don’t,” said Barlow. He turned back to Spector. “I can’t believe you would drag your … collection … here, to give us fairy-tale excuses. This is absurd even for you.”
Mary held up her hand. “Mr. Barlow, they could be making this up entirely, but it’s more plausible than it sounds. Some of the energies we work with aren’t entirely compatible with ordinary human psychology. It’s why so many less careful researchers end up in asylums.”
“Are you telling me you believe this? Mary, I know you’re shaken up by what happened, but I thought you had a better head on your shoulders.”
I saw some response rise in her face, wiped away before she turned to face him. “I’m saying it’s plausible, that’s all. It’s also plausible that their ‘help’ was real, but did more harm than our inventory would have if left to run its course.”
“I wish that were true,” I said.
Spector spoke up. “Whether or not you’ll take our help, please listen to your assistant. Let Miss Marsh bring Miss Ward to work on the problem our way, and you can work on it in yours. What really matters is that one of us solves it.”
Ignoring him for the moment, Barlow came over to me. He stopped too near, close enough that the bitter scent of nervous sweat wafted over me. His breathing came too harshly and deeply; he clearly fought as hard as I did to keep himself under control. But at last he gave a quick, tight nod. “We’ve no evidence that would justify an arrest to the Bureau—not yet. We don’t have time to find it right now. But don’t think we’ve forgotten about you.”
Peters released me. I rubbed feeling back into my wrists and forced myself to step away slowly and calmly. Safely among my allies again, I looked back at Sally. It was her decision, I reminded myself, that was most urgent now—more important even than whether Barlow believed me a traitor. “Please come with us, Miss Ward. We can help.” I touched my forearm, meeting her eyes. You tell everyone you’re fine, but you aren’t suffering in silence. This doesn’t harm only you. I saw her notice, saw her consider.
But Mary looked at me with cold eyes. “Don’t,” she said to Sally. “They’re confident enough, but their superstitions may still have caused the trouble last night—and can only do worse now.” She went to Sally, bent over her chair, put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you hurt? Truly?”
Sally nodded shakily. The admission cost her; the shakes continued as she bent over, allowing them at last to show.
Mary’s voice was soothing and determined. “I may not know everything we need to do right now, but I promise you I know how to do the research. I’ll find out what happened to both of us, and I’ll find a way to fix it. We promised to help you learn what you needed to know—and we will.”
“I promise you’ll be okay,” said Jesse. Sally looked up at him, plastering on a smile.
“Good, that’s settled.” Barlow was clearly discomfited. “Ron, take your people and get out of here; you’ve made enough trouble.”
“I wish you’d trust me,” said Spector, only a hint of anger in his voice. “Have you forgotten Geilenkirchen, too? We needed to take those ‘superstitious’ ideas seriously then.”
“Geilenkirchen was entirely theoretical work, and you know it. Hitler was working from the same sources we found, and he never learned anything of substance. If he had, we’d have seen a land invasion on U.S. soil—or worse. The difference between us is that you’ve finally started taking the theory seriously, but you haven’t learned which parts are nonsense.”
I met Sally’s eyes one more time. “Miss Ward, please. If we don’t do something about this, and soon, you could die.”
She looked hesitant, but shook her head. Mary moved between us. “We’ll take care of it here.”
I wanted to drag Sally with us, pull her through the barbs of doubt that Mary had planted. But Barlow and Peters were armed and just barely willing to let me go. I could break the threads that connected us and leave her to her chosen fate. I should.
Only I had yet to see her make the choice.
“We’ll be with my family,” I said. “You know where to find us.”
CHAPTER 26
Beyond the campus, Arkham kept the roads well cleared—but outside of town they were only sporadically plowed. I sat beside Trumbull, my brother and Dawson in the back seat, gripping the armrest and trying not to second guess a skill I lacked entirely. Headlights tunneled through the darkening snowfall, occasionally picking out the answering lamps of Spector’s car ahead.
“I hope your family keep their houses warm for us mortals,” said Trumbull.
“We used to,” said Caleb. Dawson took his hand, and he pressed his face a
gainst the glass. I felt an echo of its slick coolness, a comfort filtered through my brother as it wouldn’t be to me. The car slipped sideways, and my grip tightened, but Trumbull righted us with a grimace and a muttered imprecation.
The trip to Innsmouth, which had taken a scant hour the previous week, lasted past dusk—or what seemed dusk, with the sky well hidden by cloud. As we closed in, the road’s poor repair forced us to slow further. No gulls heralded us, no scent besides salt spray and the pervasive smell, crisp and clean and utterly hostile, of the snow.
The construction crews had abandoned the town for the day, leaving the streets thick with snowdrifts. Spector and Trumbull forced the cars through.
Storm-swamped, Innsmouth looked more alien. I could no longer find familiar angles or imagine neighbors still hiding beyond collapsed porches. I could scarcely believe in rebuilding where the elements had so long and so successfully manifested their whims.
I shuddered as we pulled to a stop by the abandoned waterfront market. So long as we’d pressed through the weather, it had been easy to tell myself all would be resolved once we arrived: that I’d be able to hand over the burden. But we got out, and still I felt the confluence around me, at once both cloak and weight. Still I felt slender threads stretching between me and Sally—and suspected my grandfather would not hesitate to cut them himself and relegate her to the cold.
We scraped snow from a collapsed stall with gloved hands, and found a few boards beneath the top layer still dry. These we dragged over the dunes, and Spector and Caleb went back for additional tinder as Dawson and I stacked the foundation of a small bonfire. The tide was going out—not normally a propitious time for summoning, but surging waves kept the ocean close. As they retreated, they left a flat damp area up against the dunes. Here a fire might be tended and ritual diagrams maintained for a few hours.
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