by Gwenda Bond
Callie plainly agrees with me that it’s nice to see Porsoth asserting himself.
Mother ladles soup into the first of the bowls. “He has tormented more souls than you’ve met in your life, or will,” she says to Callie. “Do not sleep in the room with a wolf just because he is old and tired.”
“Is it okay if I eat in the room with one?” Callie asks. “I promise I’m as hungry as the wolf.”
I start singing the chorus for “Hungry Like the Wolf,” that old ’80s song, and when Callie laughs in surprise I soak it in.
Mother notices me noticing Callie.
But, “Simon Le Bon, now there’s someone who owes me a visit,” is all Mother says.
Porsoth sets the soup in front of me, and I tuck in like a good son. At this point, I only hope we get out of this cottage before my deadline passes. I’d at least like to do something nice for Callie—like help her save the world—before I betray her forever for my own ill-gotten gain.
Now I know just how rotten I am for agreeing to take her soul, based on Mother’s reaction. I have that to thank her for, I guess.
I don’t bother.
* * *
“Mother, the World Watcher. Please.”
She hesitates, but rises from the table. “I suppose you must. You’ll visit me again?” The question is for Callie, not me.
Callie nods, but doesn’t commit out loud. Good thinking. My mother’s house might bring her a measure of freedom in the future. But it will come at a cost.
“Why did you borrow it?” I ask Mother.
“He told me to,” she said. “I agreed, because I wanted to see you, son.”
I bask in the crumb, not quite able to speak. This confirms my thinking that Father knew far more than I assumed about my activities, or lack thereof.
“Can we see it?” Callie asks, and lays a gentle hand on my arm. Comforting me.
I am a terrible person for accepting it.
“Outside,” Mother says, intent on Callie’s hand.
Then she leads us through the cramped common room and another door to her bed chamber. I carefully do not look around once I take in the giant bed with carved details painted black with sheets to match. I’ve never been in this room before. I do not want to think about what’s gone on in here. No, thank you.
A wide set of doors is open to her back garden, inset with stones. Here, more things bloom. Strange blooms, stranger plants. They’re alive, truly alive. They wave as if to greet my mother and she lifts a hand, soothing.
The World Watcher sits among this odd tableau, almost as if the garden was designed to create a space for it. Or maybe the Watcher is one of those things that makes every space seemed designed to house it.
Callie gapes. The globe stands two storeys tall with a million other colors shining beneath a golden sheen. It’s much larger than all of us, and a set of spiral steps curls around it to allow the viewer to climb up to any vantage point and spin it to view the desired place.
“Show me what to do,” Callie says.
I slide her hand into mine and she allows it without a hint of protest. I feel more than I have before. More than a heart beating in my chest, more than the air in my lungs. So much more that I don’t want to examine it. We change that which we observe—isn’t that something I’m supposed to have read about?
“Solomon Elerion,” I say, “you black-souled heathen, here we come.”
Mother and Porsoth watch, silent for once, as I lead Callie to the stairs and up and up around them. I navigate by feeling. I send out the question where where where as we continue up the steps, picturing Solomon, and finally a signal faint but discernible to my gut tells me when to stop.
We’re past the middle point of the globe. I have to drop Callie’s fingers to pinpoint the spot and I feel the loss.
I place my hands flat against the curving slope of the globe and I give it a turn.
As places and faces rush past in a mad whirl on the spinning globe, Callie gapes and says, “Oh my go—”
“Not here,” I remind her, barely in time to prevent whatever saying that word here would’ve caused.
“Goodness,” she finishes on a breath, correcting course.
I can understand why she forgot herself and why she thought of the Above. The globe is magnificent because it’s the world. It shows the brutal beauty of Earth. Every living thing in war and in peace, in sickness and in health, in flesh and in bone. It’s a touch overwhelming to focus on. I do it anyway, because it’s the only way to locate our quarry.
I place my hands back on the surface to stop its movement at the moment that feels right and squint beneath the glossy surface layer.
“There,” I say. “There they are.”
Callie cranes her neck to confirm.
Solomon is in a circle of his followers, another pentagram drawn beneath him. He’s stalking back and forth across it, clearly upset and in the middle of a tirade.
“Looks like he’s figured out it doesn’t work,” I say.
“Yup.” There’s a note of satisfaction in Callie’s tone. “Are they back at the house?”
“I don’t think so—it would probably reject them now that Michael’s been there.”
She squints harder and then gasps. “Widen the angle.”
“What is it?”
“Please,” Callie says roughly.
I mentally command the globe to do as she says, giving us a wider view of the room.
The space has every appearance of an occult lair. I’m about to use my powers to find out where it is, but Callie speaks first, strangled. “I know where they are.”
She doesn’t sound like herself.
“Where?” I gaze at Callie, concerned.
Callie peers back at the globe, and then sinks to sit on the step. “They’re at the Great Escape.”
I look harder. I see what she sees. Along one wall of that spooky room—which I now see has a flair of arrangement and design that is more perfect than a real occult lair would be, like the theme park version—stand her brother, Jared, and best friend, Mag. Both of them have their hands bound behind them.
I state the obvious. “They have your family.”
Callie climbs to her feet. “We have to get back there. Now.”
PART THREE
APOCALYPSE RIGHT NOW
“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly; “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, LEWIS CARROLL
“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”
PARADISE LOST, JOHN MILTON
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CALLIE
While we were lingering around Lilith’s kitchen table, eating soup and listening to her theories about mankind, Solomon Elerion got Jared and Mag. Mag, whose last words with me were … not good. Whose only wish was never to be in the cult’s grasp again.
I have to save them both, and that feels somehow harder and more urgent than saving the world. Also, my mother truly is going to want to murder me.
“Zappity us out of here,” I tell Luke.
His expression reminds me.
“You can’t.” I want to jump off the edge of this staircase next to this miracle globe and fly, because there’s no time to lose. But apparently making good time is not an option.
“I can’t,” Luke says. “He’ll know. It’ll make things worse.”
I let a dry laugh escape. “How can things be any worse?”
But I know. The people I love are the tip of a very large iceberg. All those demon troops weren’t traveling to the Gray Keep for their health. This could go very wrong.
Maybe I’m not such a good person. Because the only thing on my mind is getting to the Great Escape and helping my people, two of the humans I love most.
I start walking down, because every step is taking me somewhere and I have to pray it’s closer to home.
Lilith is w
aiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. The smirk on her lips is an unwelcome sight. “Now you’re beginning to understand what being a pawn in the games of Heaven and Hell truly means. You will never be the center, Callie. The story will always be about the men. You’ll only be a casualty.”
She could be right. But I can’t accept it. “They won’t be. How do I get back there? To them?”
“Let us hide you,” she says. “It’s all starting. It’s too late.”
“I still have half the spear, so it is definitely not too late.” Please, let me be right.
“Even so…” Lilith shrugs.
I turn to Luke, helpless and without time for Lilith’s negging. I know this is bad. I don’t need her rubbing it in.
“Mother,” he says and spreads out his hands. “Callie’s not like us. She’s not going to run away. She’s going to run into danger. And I’m going with her. Now, is there a shorter way to get there or not?”
“You know there is,” Lilith says, pouty.
“I do?” Luke asks, making clear he doesn’t.
Porsoth finally speaks. “This was in your assigned reading three years ago.”
“Humor me,” Luke says.
“Please?” I ask.
Porsoth bobs his head. “Lilith’s house is specifically located in a territory that borders the entire human world. You can go anywhere there from here.”
Finally something goes our way. Only …
I pound back up the stairs to the spot we’d occupied. Luke’s right behind me. Solomon Elerion and Jared and Mag are still right there, where they were before. Not for much longer.
They’re still in the Chamber of Black Magic, but they’re being shuffled out the door. Solomon is ordering them taken somewhere.
“Follow them,” I say. “We need to see where they go.”
Luke touches the globe and it tracks their movements. We catch a glimpse of guards posted at the front of the shop—armed—as the rest of Solomon and his grim band march my best friend and my brother up the back stairs and to the control room.
“‘No one will get to them up here,’” Luke says, and I realize he’s repeating what Solomon is saying that I can’t hear. For me, it’s like watching a silent movie.
Luke turns to me. “Is he right? How do we reach them?”
A terrible, perfect idea occurs to me. “Come on.” I drag him down the steps with me and we stop in front of Lilith and Porsoth. “You said we can go anywhere from here, right? How specific? How targeted?” I ask.
“What do you mean?” she returns with a frown. A vine curls around her arm, as if the garden is petting her.
“Are we talking a block or a building? The bathroom or some random place inside? How specific can it be?”
“Anywhere you can visualize.”
Ha. This is funny in the not-funny way. “Great. Because I’m going to visualize the most awful place I know, a place I’ve never actually been, and you’re going to send us there.”
Lilith barely reacts. “If that’s what you want.”
My heart pounds in my chest so hard I can barely keep standing here. The idea of where we’re going makes my knees want to give out, me to give in.
Mag. Jared.
Hang on, I’m coming.
“Callie?” Luke asks.
“It is,” I tell her.
She reaches out a hand, one to me, the other to Luke. He takes it without hesitation. He doesn’t even ask what my idea is first.
Porsoth coughs and raises a wing. “If I may, I’d like to go too.”
I imagine where we’re headed. “There won’t be room.” When Porsoth opens his beak to object, I say, “But you could wait outside, be our backup. Can you manage that?” I ask Lilith.
She shrugs. “Of course.”
Frantically, I inventory the contents of my bag. I have to keep the spearhead, obviously, but there’s my book. I don’t want the grimoire anywhere near Solomon Elerion again. I swallow and pull it out and extend it to Porsoth. “Would you be able to look after this for me while we”—I search for the right word and find it, and my heart beats even harder—“fight?”
“It would be my honor,” Porsoth says.
I pass it to him and he disappears it into what I presume is a magic pocket in that scholar’s robe he wears.
“You’ll wait across the road from the Great Escape,” I tell him.
“And us? Where will we be?” Luke asks, frowning at me, still concerned.
“You’ll be right next to me, keeping me from hyperventilating. Hopefully.”
I reach for Lilith’s other hand and then I imagine the space I mean for us to go to. Small and dark and secret, filled with stairs and nothing much else.
With a murmured word and a breath, she sends us there.
Under the Chamber of Black Magic.
The exit I designed from my own nightmares.
* * *
Jared. Mag. I repeat the names like a charm to protect me.
The secret passageway is dark except for tiny pinprick lights to reveal the stairs on either side of us. One set goes up into the outer hallway, the other up into the chamber.
I struggle to breathe. This is so much worse than the chapel in Portugal. Floyd Collins flits through my mind, but there’s plenty of other famous dead people who shared my weird fear or one of its variations.
“Callie, you okay?” Luke whispers.
“Give me a sec,” I choke out.
Fairy-tale writer Hans Christian Andersen was so afraid he’d be buried alive that he liked to leave notes around when he slept saying things like, “I only appear to be dead.” He was also deathly afraid of pork—I wonder, with a hysterical impulse to laugh, what he’d think of Porsoth. The urge to laugh passes.
My heart feels like it wants to stop. The tight space presses in. I can sense the building above us, ready to collapse.
Get it together, Callie.
Jared. Mag.
Luke puts a hand on my arm. “Steady there.”
“Trying,” I say, keeping my voice down.
“Can I ask something?” Luke says.
He’s attempting to be helpful. Maybe he will. “Go.”
“I thought you were really upset at Mag and your brother.”
“Yes?”
“But you immediately flew into action to save them…”
That’s not a question, but it is an easy response. “It doesn’t matter if I’m upset at them or about them—they’re my people. I’d do anything for them. To keep them safe.”
“So you’re not still mad?”
“No, I’m curious and it still hurts, that they kept it from me.” I pause and my heart thumps as I imagine the building collapsing on top of us. “But the truth is, I know I could’ve been better. Mag said they planned to tell me this weekend.” My voice sounds thin. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot,” Luke says.
“Tell me more about the not-having-wings thing. Why is it a big deal?”
Luke hesitates. Guess I chose the sorest of sore spots. But then he answers.
“You may have gathered I’m something of a massive screw-up where things infernal are concerned.”
He’s attempting to keep his voice light, but I hear the pain beneath it. When did I get to know him well enough for that?
“Debatable,” I say to be kind. It’s what I’d want someone to say to me.
“Thanks, I think.” He pauses then goes on. “Wings are a birthright of mine. Most demons and angels grow them within the first few years of taking breath. It’s part of our nature. When you realize what you are, you get wings. So.”
“So, you haven’t figured it all out yet?” I squint in the dark and wish I could see his gorgeous face. “So what?”
“Or I’m too broken or weak to accept it. Maybe the truth is that I’m a complete failure.” He breathes out. “Feel better? That’s what Porsoth calls a Patsy Cline moment.”
I take the bait. “A Patsy Cline moment?”
; “Famous country singer.”
“Walking encyclopedia of random facts here. I’m aware.”
“Right. Well, all her biggest songs are so sad—‘Crazy,’ ‘I Fall to Pieces,’ or my favorite, ‘Walking After Midnight,’ in which a woman is literally depressed and walking by the roadside at midnight. And she’s done it more than once.”
I half laugh despite myself. I’ve almost forgotten the building looming over top of us. Almost. “What’s the moment part?”
“When you realize no matter how bad you’ve got it, Patsy Cline had it worse.” He nudges me with his shoulder. “I’m your wingless Patsy Cline in this scenario.”
In this darkness, something small glows inside of me. Enough to light the way forward. “I wish we had time for me to kiss you again.”
“Maybe we do,” he says.
“Later. If we make it through this. Let’s get out of here first.”
He reaches up, slides a hand over my cheek and touches my lips with his fingers. I nearly change my mind. My entire body stretches toward that sensation.
“It’s a promise.” He sighs, drops his hand, and apologetically asks, “Do you have a plan? For right now?”
“Take our chances by sneaking out into the Chamber of Black Magic and then hope we have time to make it to upstairs before anyone sees us on camera?”
“All right, I’ll go first. Which way?”
I feel around for his hand and then point to the right. “Those stairs. The hatch should push open from in here. The coffin that blocks it was still locked to the wall when we looked.”
He goes to take back his hand, but I hang on. “Do you mind?”
“Not even a little.” He drops his arm so he’s holding my hand behind him and we inch forward and then upward. With each step, I repeat my mantra—Jared, Mag, Mag, Jared—to keep from curling into a ball.
Jared. Mag.
I’m coming, hang on.
“Are you ready?” Luke quietly asks when we can’t go any farther.
No.
Yes.
Ready to be out of this place. At least if whatever’s on the other side makes me scream, it won’t be irrational.