by Tim Pratt
“There are too many vegetables on that hot dog,” Trey said, and I considered—just for a moment—commanding him to eat the hot dog. “Also, I bow to the power of your appetite. I am still crammed full of that stuff you mistakenly call pizza.”
I licked my fingers, still ravenous, but I’d taken the edge off. “I think using the book must suck calories out of my body or something. I am starving. I guess having to eat constantly isn’t such a bad price for using magic, at least compared to coming unstuck in time.”
“How’s that been, anyway?”
“Better. I lost maybe a couple minutes this morning. I don’t remember brushing my teeth, but there was spit in the sink and I felt all minty fresh, so. I think I’ll hold off looking into the future for a while, if I can avoid it. Even though it’d be nice to see if shaking down the Eldest Daughter changed any of those possible futures. Losing hours at a time was deeply freaky.”
Thinking about the Eldest Daughter bummed me out, which was not the point of this jaunt, so we moved on to a little square that I always found immensely peaceful, shaded by trees, with the burble of a nearby fountain for a soundtrack.
“Want to go to a museum?” Trey asked, lounging with me on a bench. “I hear you’ve got one or two decent ones in this city. Or we could visit your friend Charlie.”
I took his hand in mine. “Nah. Not today.” Trey had stepped up for me the night before, and I wanted to give him my whole attention. “As for museums, I might see someone I know, and if I do, Mom and Dad might hear about it, and if they think I came to Chicago without visiting, they’ll cut me out of the will.” I winced. “Wow. Choice of words, huh?”
“You do have a way with them,” Trey agreed. “So what do you want to do next?”
“It was nice to come home, but let’s go someplace new. You pick.”
“I hear good things about Bali.”
#
It was the middle of the night in Bali, and we sat together on a dark beach in the warm sand, listening to the waves rumble in and out. Maybe there was a kiss or two. I’m not only not made of stone, I’m apparently not even made of some soft metal like gold or tin. I remained strong in my resolution that we couldn’t date while he was supernaturally bound to serve me, but hey, a kiss is just a kiss.
#
Next we went to Paris. Trey had never been, and I’d only spent a couple of days there during my study abroad trip to Italy. We hit the airport first to exchange some dollars for euros, then went to a little bistro and ate steak frites at a table on the sidewalk, watching the fashionable French people and the vastly less fashionable tourists stroll by.
“Teleportation is going to make me fat.” Trey popped the last fry into his mouth. “You’re eating for two—you, and the magic book. I don’t have that excuse.”
“Poor thing. I missed the part where I forced you to eat again. But, sure—let’s get some exercise. Find a place where it’s warm, and daytime, and where the swimming is good.”
#
Midafternoon in Tahiti in September. Eighty-five degrees, breeze rustling through palm trees, white sand beach, emerald- or sapphire-colored water, depending on how it catches the perfect, pure sunlight. A boy who looks pretty good with his shirt off floating in the water next to you, everything silent and serene, every care in the world thousands of miles away.
What I’m saying is, it’s nice. I recommend it.
#
Standing atop the Great Wall of China, our legs still damp with ocean water, Trey let out an immense yawn.
“We don’t have to go everywhere today,” I said.
He nodded. “True. But it’s tempting, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Maybe we’ll hit two or three other wonders of the modern world, and then head home for a nap, then hit the rest? And after that, dinner in the best restaurant in the world that’s open at whatever hour it happens to be?”
“I like the way you think.”
#
Eventually we got home for good, after midnight Meat Camp time, worn-out and overstimulated and drunk on wonders. We collapsed on the couch and sprawled there, side by side. “I think I overate,” I said. “But with my brain.”
“Maybe we should have spaced some of that out. It’s hard to properly appreciate the Sagrada Família when you just looked at the Hagia Sophia. Still. I am on the record as having mixed feelings about magic, Bekah, but screw it: magic is awesome.”
“I am starting to see the advantages. How am I ever going to get any work done again when I can go anywhere, anytime? Talk about distraction on demand.”
“I’m sure you’ll get used to it. Become jaded. Being able to go anywhere in an instant will become ho-hum and ordinary.”
I shook my head. “Since I don’t intend to live forever, I don’t see how I’ll have time to get tired of it.” I leaned against his shoulder, feeling peaceful. This couch wasn’t a beach in Tahiti, but it was pretty great, just then. “I’m still reeling with the possibilities, honestly. I mean, being able to go anywhere—”
I stopped talking. Then I groaned.
“Trey. I’m an idiot. I take some consolation in the fact that we’re both idiots, but still.” I opened up The Book of Grace on the coffee table and turned to the index.
“Bekah? Is everything okay?”
“Maybe. Maybe better than okay, if, if, if…” I knew exactly what I was looking for, but I didn’t know what it was called, so I muttered to myself, “The key to open the locked door…”
There it was, only in all caps and index style: Key to Open the Locked Door, the.
I showed Trey.
He whistled. “Bekah. Wow. Are you ready for this?”
“No, but I haven’t been ready for anything else since I came here, either. Hasn’t stopped me yet.” I turned to the page indicated by the index, and there was a drawing of an old-fashioned key with ornate scrollwork on the end. “Want to come with me?”
We stood up, he entwined his hand with mine, and I tapped the page.
The book teleported us…all the way to the dining room. I looked around and laughed. “Oh, hell. It’s in here somewhere?” I’d cleaned out the room, pretty much, but there were boxes and trunks shoved against one wall, stacked neatly and filled with the contents of every yard sale held in the region for five thousand weekends straight, it seemed like.
“At least we’ve narrowed it down to one room,” Trey said. “We can sort through these boxes by…this time tomorrow night, maybe. And hope the key actually looks like a key—”
“Nope. We’re going to be efficient, Trey. Grab a box and take it to the kitchen.” I took a box into the studio myself, and another to the downstairs bathroom, Trey hauled a couple upstairs to the bedrooms, and we lugged the trunk out to the living room. Then we reconvened, opened the book, and teleported again.
We ended up in the bedroom where Trey had slept during the few days he’d stayed with me. A banker’s box with weird mold stains waited for us on the carpet, so we knelt, took off the lid, and began sorting through the jumbled interior, looking for a key.
Ten minutes later, contemplating the constellation of junk arrayed around us, Trey shook his head. “No key, Bekah. Maybe the book is confused?”
I considered the assembled mess. A crystal doorknob—maybe that was it? I picked it up and gave it a twist, to no particular effect, so I put the knob down. Nothing else seemed superpromising. A rubber duckie, once yellow, sun-faded almost to white. A spool of scarlet thread. Empty film canisters. A mason jar with no lid. A lumpy homemade ashtray. Capless airplane liquor bottles that didn’t even smell of booze anymore. An empty Scotch tape dispenser. A windup toy monkey, missing one arm. A tangled ball of brown shoelaces. An old trackball computer mouse. A night-light in the shape of a seashell. A chipped porcelain rabbit. A plastic ring shaped like a spider. A miniature pagoda made of plastic. A monogrammed handkerchief with the initials M. Z. A fake diamond necklace. A Christmas ornament that was a frog wearing a Santa hat…
“What�
��s this?” I picked up a plastic object, rectangular, about as long as my hand, with a square button on top and a little bulb recessed into one end. “Some kind of ancient remote control? From back when televisions came in cabinets the size of wardrobes?”
Trey scratched his nose. “I think it’s a garage door opener. But Grace doesn’t have a garage.”
“Trey. A garage door opener? So, basically, this is a key?”
He grinned. We hurried downstairs to the kitchen and faced the locked door. I pointed the opener and pushed the button.
Nothing. “Well, crap.” I tossed the opener on the counter.
“I thought for sure this was it.” Trey picked up the opener. “Maybe it doesn’t have batteries…”
“Magic things need batteries now?”
“What do I know? Maybe.” He slid open the cover to the battery compartment, then said, “What the hell…” Trey took out a piece of paper someone had folded and crumpled and shoved into the place where the batteries should have been. He opened it up, read it, then muttered something between a laugh and a moan. “Read this.”
The handwriting was spidery and shaky.
trey
make sure my dauter gets this. key to everthing. give when give keys to house also batteries dont forget dont forget dont forget
“ ‘Don’t forget,’ ” I said. “I get the idea that message was meant as much for Grace himself as it was for you.”
“Didn’t work, though. He forgot. I knew he was bad at the end. He told me everything was taken care of, that you’d have all the information you needed. I wonder if he thought he’d given me this note already?” Trey pulled open one of the many junk drawers and sorted through the mess of old batteries inside until he found a nine volt, then installed it in the garage door opener. He offered it to me. “I don’t think this will work for me, so the honor is yours.”
I took the opener, pointed it at the door, and pushed the button.
Every cabinet door in the room flew open, and every drawer shot out to the end of its track with a clatter of shifting contents, and slams reverberated through the house as all the doors in the Grace house swung wide simultaneously, smacking into walls in the process.
The padlock fell off the locked door with a clatter, and the door itself opened soundlessly.
“Hold on.” I went into the living room and grabbed the sword of healing, because better safe, and took a moment to shut and lock the front door, too, because ditto. When I got back, I took Trey’s hand, and we walked through the now unlocked door into the corridor. The same doors I’d seen in my visions were there on either side, minus the pages torn from The Book of Grace and the handwritten labels. The door at the end, leading into the study, was standing open.
“I remember sitting in there, getting chewed out by Mr. Grace,” Trey said.
“I remember it, too.” We stopped in the doorway to the study, looking at the desk with its cracked glass top, and at the lumpy cup, and the folded letter resting on top. I went inside, fluttering in my guts, trembling in my heart, and Trey followed.
“That candle,” he said. “That flame, it’s so…so…”
I looked at him curiously, then at the candle. It was weird, sure—a little, stubby white thing, burning without consuming the wick, but a flame that didn’t eat its fuel wasn’t all that exciting as far as magics went. “It’s so…what?”
Trey just stood there, staring at the flame, like a switched-off robot. I waved my hands in front of his face, and he didn’t react at all. “Trey?”
“Yes.” His voice was a robotic monotone. I looked into his eyes. His pupils were dilated hugely, like he was tripping on acid.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you acting so weird?”
No answer. I looked at the candle, then picked it up. Trey’s head moved, following the progress of the candle. I moved it slowly back and forth, and his gaze tracked the motion.
Oh shit. The candle was a trap, too—anyone other than the rightful heir, presumably, who made it this far and saw the flame would get captivated, moth-to-a-flame style. I blew on the flame and it winked out just like an ordinary candle, sending up a tendril of sweet-smelling smoke. Trey blinked and shook his head. “Uh. Did I…were you saying something?”
“Magic candle. Stole your brain. Bad shit.” I put the candle down, then thought better of it, and dropped it in my pocket. Captivating eternal flames could be useful.
Trey grunted. “Thanks for blowing that out. I really wish your dad would stop messing with my mind.”
“Me too.” I picked up the letter that covered the cup. It was just a folded sheet of paper, but it was nice paper, the kind made with pressed flowers, for writing fancy thank-you notes and stuff on. I unfolded it, and read:
If you seek power, take up this cup, and drink
Pretty straightforward. I looked into the lumpy chalice—a holy grail sculpted by a kindergartner—and wrinkled my nose. “Trey, what does this stuff look like to you?”
He peered in. “Ah. Let’s say wine.”
“Not blood and water and ashes?”
Trey leaned forward and sniffed. “There’s definitely a whiff of vinegar. I’m going to go with bad wine. If that’ll make you feel better.”
“This better not be poison.”
“If it is, that’s what the magical sword of healing is for.”
Moment of truth. Power for the taking—but I’d better be sure I wanted to take it.
I thought of that vision of myself, white-haired and demented. Was that the inevitable end of this path? Would this magic corrupt me, as it had my father, as it had my eldest sister? Being able to teleport everywhere was nice, and if magic let me do that sort of thing, I saw the appeal. Having power to alter reality to suit my whim—assuming I was able to pay the cost—would certainly create space and time in my life to do things I really cared about, like making art and making out and traveling and looking at beautiful things and interesting ugly things. Keeping the Firstborn from cutting off my pinkies in order to motivate me to see things her way would also be a plus. On the whole, the advantages outweighed the disadvantages.
“I’m going to do it, Trey.”
“I figured that’s what we were here for. You need anything from me?”
“Here.” I put the sword in his hands. “The sword is yours now. It belongs to you. If I start convulsing or turning into a giant bat creature or melting into electric slime or something, I want you to stab me back to health. All right?”
“Yes ma’am.”
I picked up the cup in both hands, put it to my lips, and drank. The concoction did taste a little like corked wine, and a little like liver—and a little like cardamom, for some reason. I swallowed, almost convulsively, mostly to get the taste out of my mouth.
Ever take a big shot of liquor on an empty stomach, and feel it go to your head almost instantly? This was like that. The walls around me seemed to recede, like a trick camera effect in a Hitchcock movie, and a dull white-noise roar filled my ears. The cup fell from my hands—my fingers were no longer cooperating—and it seemed I was falling, too, though my body didn’t move. I was falling inward. Dark clouds swirled all around me. Or maybe not clouds. Maybe a cloud of ink, spreading out in water, like I was adrift in a distant sea.
Everything went dark. Then it brightened, and I was somewhere else.
Things weren’t black and white, like when I’d visited the past. They weren’t garishly supersaturated, like the future. At the same time, I knew I hadn’t moved in space, to another real place. I had a feeling this was a more internal sort of world than others I’d visited. I just wasn’t sure if it was my interior.
I stood in a round stone room, a castle tower, with arched windows. I could sense that I was very high up, even before an immense black bird flapped by outside the window. Everything seemed oddly soft at the edges, as if my surroundings only solidified when I turned my head to look at them directly—in my peripheral vis
ion, things were hazy, conditional.
“Bekah.”
I turned, and my father was there, looking younger than I’d ever seen him, his face creased in a smile. “You’ve grown up so much. Turned into a fine woman.”
Wow. More visions of the dead, but this time, the dead wanted to have a conversation. I wasn’t sure I was ready to chat with the shade of Archibald Grace, but I was here, so I had to do it anyway. “Uh. Thanks. What is this place?”
“The inside of the cup, more or less,” he said. “A frozen moment in time, where we can talk, and do our necessary business. Look, see?” He pointed at the window. I looked, and the same bird flapped by again. Some kind of temporal loop. Oh boy.
“Are you a ghost?”
My father shrugged. “I am a scrap of personality, and an abundance of raw power, infused in the liquid you drank. My power is inextricably linked with my self, my identity—my power is me. That’s just how it is.”
I frowned. “So, what? Now you’ll be living in the back of my head? That’s kind of creepy.”
“It’s worse than that, I’m afraid. I’m a survivor, Bekah. I always have been. I used my own life too hard, scraped holes in my soul, emptied myself out. I chose death because I couldn’t bear losing myself. My mind. My memories. But…there are ways to renew oneself.”
“What are you saying?” But I had an idea of what he was saying, and I didn’t like what I was hearing.
He stepped closer to me. “I’m saying I prepared for this eventuality. Some people call it ‘the thing on the doorstep trick,’ and it’s an old technique—the ancient wizard takes over his apprentice’s life.” He reached out, as if to touch my face, and I flinched away. “I can slip into your mind, and take your body and your soul—so fresh, so whole, so vital—for my own. I can live again. I—”