“I don’t want to be that guy, but I don’t think you have much of a choice.”
“I have a choice, and I choose to be the captain of my own destiny. If Isaac hasn’t been investigating what happened after the night of the attack, then I have to.”
“I hate to break it to you, but you can’t leave,” Cameron said. “If Isaac asked me to come over and make sure you’re safe, you must be in some kind of trouble. Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re not a mage, and seeing as I don’t know what you are, I can’t just let you walk out of here.”
Alice regarded him cautiously, trying to read his bodily cues and determine his angle. Everybody had an angle, and Cameron was no exception. She could get what she wanted from him, but she would have to give something in return. The only question was, did she lie to him about the trouble Isaac hadn’t been able to fill him in on, or did she risk bringing him into the fold? If she wanted to leave—and knowing what she knew now leaving was exactly what she needed to do—then she needed to win him over… or call on her police training and subdue him.
She sighed. “If I tell you what’s going on, will you let me leave?”
“If you tell me, I’ll think about letting you leave.”
“I honestly think there’s little you could do to stop me if I wanted to leave right now. Once I’ve made my mind up about something I’m like a train on a track, and I used to be a cop. I could take you down.”
Cameron smiled, more at himself than at Alice, musing as if he had just remembered a funny joke. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ve already figured out that much about you. The way you talk and hold yourself, you’re used to having the last word. I also think you’re not the kind of girl who likes to stay put even on the best of days.”
“Oh, no, there you’ve got me totally wrong. Give me a good book or a TV show to watch, and my sofa becomes my favorite place in the world. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s no TV here, no Wi-Fi, and my cell connection is non-existent. At least before I thought this whole business was being looked into, but it’s been a week since everything happened and both Isaac and I have been locked up and in the dark. The trail is going cold.”
Cameron folded his arms in front of his chest. His leather jacket squeaked. “Alright,” he said, “Now I’m intrigued. What trail is growing cold?”
“If I tell you, I’m leaving. That’s the deal.”
He nodded. “Go ahead.”
Alice told him. At least, she told him as much as she could in the minute or so she wanted to spend discussing the events of the last couple of weeks, omitting the parts where she ate souls and had, herself, been trapped in the Reflection once before. Cameron didn’t need to know all of the details; only that Helena had been possessed by an old and powerful entity that was now on the loose somewhere.
Cameron considered all that Alice had said, carefully regarding her in the dimness of the kitchen; an artist trying to understand someone else’s painting. He was quiet for almost an entire minute before he finally said, “There’s something I don’t understand.”
“What’s that?” Alice asked.
“You said you had been hired by someone to find this girl, to find Emily.”
“Right.”
“Are you a private eye or something?”
“You don’t know?”
Cameron shrugged. “Not really. Should I?”
“I’m a bounty hunter; people pay me to take nasty things down. I’m damn good at it, too.”
“But it wasn’t Isaac who hired you.”
“No. I went to him for help.”
“… because you’re not a mage.”
“Exactly.”
“Then… what are you?”
Alice cocked her eyebrow again. “You’re asking too many questions. I held up my end of the bargain, now you have to keep yours and let me leave this place.”
Cameron took a deep breath through his nose but kept his lips pressed together, trying to decide whether to accept her terms or not. When his mind was made up, he nodded. “A deal is a deal,” he said, “Even though we didn’t shake on it, I could hold you to that.”
“Verbal contracts are binding too. You’re a mage; you should know that.”
“I’m not that kind of mage.”
“Okay, well, it doesn’t matter what kind of mage you are—we have a deal.” Alice went to walk around Cameron but he stretched his hand across the open kitchen arch just as she was about to pass him, barring her way. “We had a deal,” she warned.
“We do, and I’m keeping it, on one condition.”
“No conditions.”
“You’re going to want to accept this one.”
“Am I?” she asked, placing a hand on her hip and flicking her long hair over her shoulder.
“I didn’t see any vehicles parked out front, and you’re about fifteen miles outside of Ashwood central. Unless you’re planning to walk along I95 until tomorrow morning, you should probably let me come with you.”
“You want to come with me?”
“Why not? If this whole thing is as dangerous as you say, you may need a hand—a hand I’m willing to offer.”
“Because you promised Isaac?”
The corner of Cameron’s lips turned up into a smile. “That too, but mainly because it sounds dangerous… and I like danger.”
Alice rolled her eyes and started to march upstairs. She didn’t have time to argue with him, didn’t have time to call him on his bravado bullshit—whether real or put on. If he wanted to come with her, fine. She wasn’t about to stop him no matter how much she disliked the idea of a tag-along. He was right, after all, about the trek back to the city. Until he mentioned her lack of a ride, she hadn’t thought about how she might get to Ashwood, and she wasn’t looking forward to taking a cab considering her last experience in one.
This thought led to memories of the museum. A pang of hurt settled into her heart when she remembered how Trapper had smashed into a wall and broken into a hundred pieces. Poor thing, she thought. It hadn’t just been her weapon of choice against the dangerous denizens of the world, it had become a part of her; it was her livelihood, and it was also kind of a friend. How could she collect bounties on nasty supernatural entities without her camera side-kick? What powers did she have beyond her ability to sense auras? Could she even do that now that Trapper had been destroyed?
The more she thought about it, the more having a little help didn’t sound like an altogether bad idea, at least until she could figure herself out. And if it came to blows between her and Nyx, then Nyx would get the beating of her life.
Cameron had cleared out of the house by the time Alice returned downstairs tucked inside her own cropped leather jacket. She approached the door, stared at the threshold, and then with a deep breath held in her lungs, stepped outside into the cold night air. The icy breeze hit her at once and enveloped her in a refreshing, chilling embrace that smelled of grass and trees and a faraway ocean. The wind grabbed her hair and pulled it away from her face, and she closed her eyes and enjoyed the feeling.
Then she heard the roar.
Alice didn’t jump, she wasn’t skittish, but the sound had been sudden and unexpected; a lion’s growl that transitioned into a loud, authoritative purr. Of course he has a bike, she thought, and she marched toward the glow of the headlight. The bike was a well maintained Harley Davidson. Black and chrome, with the Harley logo pressed into the body and a decorative lion’s mouth clasping the headlight between its teeth. He tossed a half-face helmet her way, and she caught it in mid-air.
“Nice ride,” she said, “I haven’t been on a bike in a long time.”
A proud smirk spread across his face. “Where are we headed?”
Alice slipped onto the back of the bike and felt the rumbling between her legs. The vibrations coursed through her and for a moment she felt powerful again; a welcome illusion considering her actual circumstances. But she allowed the feeling to invigorate her, to excite her, and to drive aw
ay the niggling fear that in leaving her protective enclosure she may have just revealed herself to Nyx’s watchful eye. She wrapped her arms around Cameron’s firm midsection and interlocked her fingers.
“Take me to the Victoria district,” she said to the back of Cameron’s head. “I need to get some stuff.”
CHAPTER 4
The Dead Alphabet
Isaac rarely had trouble concentrating, but his eyes were like tires on an icy road—prone to losing their grip on the page every couple of minutes. He wanted desperately to keep his mind clear and focused, sharp and ready to think fast at a moment’s notice, but his thoughts kept circling back to the courtroom, to the camera, and to Alice. He checked his watch. She should be with Cameron by now, and would likely be on her way out of the safe house.
Good.
The safe house probably wasn’t so safe anymore now that Isaac had involved another mage. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Alice wandering around Ashwood without protection, but she was the only person who could uncover the secrets Isaac was unable to uncover. But Cameron was a good guy, a capable mage, and a good friend. He was someone Isaac could trust, which made him a rare commodity indeed, and yet precautions needed to be taken to further decrease the chance of Alice running into trouble.
Sending her out of the safe house was one of them.
Isaac wished he could be there with her, helping to find Nyx, but he couldn’t leave the apartment. He wasn’t, however, entirely powerless. It hadn’t been easy. Getting a message to Cameron had required him to summon a special kind of earthly, dark magic; magic so mundane it could slip through even the powerful wards surrounding the apartment. Because as powerful as they were, they weren’t terribly sophisticated—and he had succeeded.
Isaac had cut his palm with a knife multiple times and had stood waiting at the kitchen window calling for the crows in his mind. On the third night, one crow came, but then there were more of them, and when there were enough crows gathered in the same place, their intelligence boomed. They say crows never forgot the faces of people who wronged them. That wasn’t entirely true. Crows never forget faces, period; and they remember a person’s name, too.
At least, they did in Ashwood.
A crow’s call snapped him out of his thoughts, and Isaac realized he had dozed off with the book on his lap. He blinked the sleep away and checked his watch again. The librarian was late, but then they hadn’t made a formal appointment. Isaac stood, placed the book on the table, and stretched. The crow called again and he turned to face the window it was perched upon. The window was closed but there were three of them watching him, waiting for more blood; more of his blood.
Finally, there was a knock at the door, and Isaac crossed the living room in a hurry to open it. The door opened into the kind of corridor one would expect to see behind a simple brown apartment door and not the ornate marble hallway he had earlier been ushered through. Standing there was a man in his mid-forties. He was wearing a brown jacket, he had a closed umbrella by his side—which was leaving drip-drop trails all along the hall—and had a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles which, along with his preppy haircut and buttoned up shirt, made him look exactly like the professor he was.
“We don’t have time,” he said, and he pushed his way into the apartment.
Isaac checked the corridor behind the librarian and closed the door. “Hello to you too, Jim. Where is your escort?”
The librarian set his umbrella down in the kitchen sink, so the water wouldn’t pool on the floor, and wandered back into the living room rubbing his hands. “I have no escort,” he said. “I came alone.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I had to talk to you before… before I have to talk to them.”
Isaac found his brows furrowing with concern. James Allen, who Isaac knew as Jim, wasn’t exactly a mousy fellow, nor was he easy to scare. As librarian, he was entrusted with the analysis, categorization, and storage of just about any magical artifact surrendered to the magistrate. This included cursed items, possessed items, and worse. This wasn’t to say that Jim looked scared but he did seem… jumpy.
“Where did you find it?” he asked.
“Find what?”
“The camera. Where did you find it?”
Isaac considered Jim before surveying the room. It was probably bugged, of that Isaac had little doubt. Even if Jim was a friend and fellow lover of old things, he wasn’t about to give the magistrate anything they could use against him in this case. But then, Jim’s unsanctioned visit could very well be enough.
“I didn’t,” Isaac said, “Logan brought it in and presented it to the praetors. He thought I had something to do with it.”
“Do you?”
“Of course not. I don’t know anything about that camera besides what I already told the court. The camera belonged to a photographer who attended my museum event the other night. Seeing as though you’re here, however, I think you wish I had known the photographer. Why is that?”
Jim pushed his spectacles up onto the bridge of his nose. “Did you see the sigils?” he asked.
“I got a glimpse, but it wasn’t enough for me to identify them.”
The librarian reached into his jacket pocket and produced a piece of paper. He handed it over to Isaac. On it, there were exact copies of the runes and sigils Isaac had seen on the inside of Alice’s broken camera, as well as sigils which hadn’t been on the camera itself, but that Isaac had seen on the inside of the trapdoor at the Cinema Royale, and again in Alice’s apartment.
“What are they?” Isaac asked—a genuine question.
“Magic,” Jim said. “More specifically, they’re a magic alphabet.”
“An alphabet?”
“Of sorts, yes. Hieroglyphics designed not by human hands, but by mages.”
“Do you know who they belong to?”
“That’s the tricky thing. I do, but I don’t see how these markings exist. Here. Now.”
“I don’t follow.”
Jim sat on the chair Isaac had a moment ago been sitting on. He glanced at the Mountain of Madness paperback on the table and then looked up at Isaac again. “Have you ever heard of an ancient, secret sect of mages called… the Void Weavers?”
“I can’t say I have, though I do recognize the Void.”
“What do you know of it?”
“If I’m not mistaken, there are other worlds—other planes of existence—beyond that blasted place we call the Reflection. I have heard of those worlds, collectively, being referred to as the Void, a place where no one goes and nothing lives.”
“Wrong and so wrong. I thought you were supposed to be smart, Moreau.”
“My field of expertise is in human anthropology, Jim. Mine is the gift to detect traces of the mystic woven into the fabric of the mundane, not the secrets within the magical. Those require more effort. I have studied our culture greatly, but there are still gray areas in which I am not as well versed as I would like to be. The Void is one of them.”
“You’re not special in that regard. Many mages know nothing of the Void, only what they know from stories passed down orally or in books. The Void is a well-kept secret, and the weavers are responsible for that.”
Isaac walked over to the window where the crows still stood, perched, watching carefully. Cars hissed along below on wet streets. Thunder rumbled somewhere in the sickly yellow clouds above.
“So these Void Weavers,” Isaac said, “They hold the keys to the secrets of the Void?”
“According to what little information is available on them, that is the general consensus. They were an order of mages who dedicated themselves to the study of the Void, learning its secrets, harnessing its power, and bringing it to bear on humanities enemies, but they’re gone—and no one knows why.” Jim pressed his glasses back into place. “You understand, then, why this is such a magnificent find. I feel like an archaeologist discovering the remnants of a long lost civilization.”
“Not quite an arc
haeologist, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the Void Weavers aren’t extinct.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. The Void Weavers are gone, Isaac. Every last one of them. No one knows where they’ve gone, or when the last one walked on this side of the reality spectrum.”
“And yet one of them made that camera. It would seem like we have, or recently had, Void Weavers in Ashwood.”
“The camera, as far as I could tell, could be thirty years old. That’s hardly recent,” Jim said, but Isaac knew better. Someone had left the camera, and the Chest of Haunts, on Alice’s doorstep less than two years ago. He was willing to bet the same person who built Trapper built the Chest of Haunts, which right now sat in Alice’s closet. He, or she, may also have been responsible for the markings at the Cinema Royale, but of this Isaac had no proof.
Jim stood and paced around to the center of the room. “You’re sure you don’t know anything else about this camera? Where it came from, who may have made it, or who was using it?”
Isaac turned to face him. “No,” he lied. “I have no idea. But I want to find out, only I can’t do it from in here.”
“With that I cannot help.”
“Jim,” Isaac said, putting on his winning smile. “There has to be something you can do. I’ve been here all week, I’ve answered questions. I’m hardly a criminal.”
“You aren’t. I know that.”
“So why am I really still here? You can’t honestly expect me to believe it’s because of what happened at the museum.”
Jim looked away. Isaac’s heart sped up until he could feel it beating in the palms of his hands. “Jim,” he said, “You have as much authority as the praetors. Tell me why I’m still here.”
“I can’t, Isaac. You know I can’t.”
“You can, and you should. I am a tribune. I have a duty to my people and to my museum, and as long as I am a captive here I cannot perform that duty. Keeping me locked in here is only hurting the magistrate. I have nothing to hide.”
“Are you sure about that?”
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