by Jes Battis
“What is magic?” I ask him.
“The teeth that made me,” he says, petting the animal lightly. “The sound of the mercy bringers in the morning, plunging their knives into whatever still moves.”
I keep walking. I reach the outskirts of the fair. Lucian is in a dark corner, repairing a broken ride. I notice a Vorpal gauntlet among his tools. I should warn him about how dangerous they are. Instead, I ask my question: “What is magic?”
“A risk,” he says. “Like living with dragons, or eating something that fell on the floor six seconds ago. Or pissing with the door open.”
I keep walking, past the retired machinery, until I reach the exit. My mother is waiting for me in the parking lot.
“What is magic?” I ask her.
“Don’t be so literal,” she says. “Just help me figure out where I parked.”
I wake up early on the morning of my interrogation. I have no idea how I’m supposed to explain why someone wrote my name in smoke and then let it loose like a moth to flutter around the Seneschal’s cave. I’m not sure I even want to know. I lie in bed for a few moments. The house is silent, except for the faint rustle of Derrick’s delicate snores. I throw on some clothes and leave as quietly as possible. Well-dressed people are running to catch the SkyTrain, while the street punks and their dogs slowly rouse themselves. I grab coffee and a planet-sized muffin at JJ Bean. The barista wears a name tag that says, HELLO, MY NAME IS PHOENIX. The four-barrel roaster in the middle of the café smells like a dream. I thank Phoenix and walk to the station, where people are crashing into one another like players on Logan’s Run. Luckily, being a long-term Vancouverite has taught me how to avoid the bite of umbrellas.
When I was a little girl, we used to spend our summers camping at Cultus Lake, in nearby Chilliwack. The cooler was always full of vegetables, pop, and deviled-egg sandwiches. My mother would sit in a folding chair, watching me as I leapt off the pier. She was convinced that you’d get cedar itch by swimming anywhere near Maple Bay, so we always went to Entrance, which was packed with sweating families. The sand was so hot that my toes felt like Tesla coils. I had no fear of older boys in swim trunks, although I did avoid the girls who were always whispering and eating ice cream. I trusted the water and the light that warmed it. I trusted that no matter how far out I swam, I would still remain beneath my mother’s gaze.
Now I trust almost nothing. The SkyTrain rocks from side to side, and I keep quiet within my skeptical core. I used to trust magic, but it mostly just fucks me over, so I’ve put it on probation. I’ve given it a time-out.
This is my life now. Wake up; take transit to a place where I no longer work, as if searching for the shadow of my former job. Get ignored or patronized, like a child wandering through a museum. Get told not to touch anything, especially the sculptures. Get attacked for no reason. Then I go to sleep and it starts again. Is this really the vacation I was looking for? If so, I’m an idiot.
I walk to the CORE building and check in at the security desk. The guard swipes my ID and frowns. She swipes it again.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Your chip isn’t working. Did you immerse the card in water?”
“No,” I lie.
“I’ll have to issue you a temporary card.” She reaches under the desk and withdraws a new blank ID chip, which she inserts into her computer. “What part of the building are you visiting?”
I start to say, “Forensic unit,” but then stop. The Forensic unit is a medium-security zone that any OSI can visit. My OSI-3 clearance gives me access to the entire unit and parts of the subbasement, but nothing below that.
“Inhuman Resources,” I say.
The office of Inhuman Resources is located in a restricted section of the subbasement. I’ve never been there, but people are always complaining about it. Just getting through the door requires a unit director’s clearance.
“Selena Ward is your supervisor, correct?”
“Yes.” My mouth is dry.
“And you’re a level three?”
“I’m due for a promotion soon.”
The security guard frowns for a moment, staring at the screen. Then she types something and hands me the warm new ID card.
“All right. This will give you access to the blue sector of the subbasement. The IR office is door number 113. Stay away from doors twenty through twenty-eight. This clearance is only good for twenty-four hours.”
“Got it. I’ll try not to get trapped in a broom closet.”
“Right.” She looks oddly at me. “Have I seen you before at Sawbones?”
“That’s possible.”
“You know Lady Duessa.”
“We’re hardly Facebook friends, but yes, I do talk to her sometimes.”
“What’s she like?”
“Scary.”
I pass through the second checkpoint and take the elevator to the subbasement. The moral part of my brain—Derrick’s voice, basically—is screaming about how wrong this is. But my old teacher, Meredith Silver, used to tell me that I should never pass up the chance to learn something new about my world, even if it meant taking a risk. According to Selena, I’m practically retired, so I can’t imagine how they’d even punish me for a security breach. I can always just say that I was visiting Esther in the data archive and took a wrong turn. Who knew that dropping my ID in the ocean could actually work out to my benefit?
I exit the elevator and follow the signs. Eventually, the walls turn from white to blue, so I assume that I’m going in the right direction. Doors twenty through twenty-eight have no identifying labels, but I can feel some pretty intense materia leaking through their reinforced steel. The security guard was probably right. As the numbers increase, the portals get weirder. OFFICE OF LOST TIME. OFFICE OF DEADLY FORCE. OFFICE OF CANTRIPS AND CLAUDICATIONS. Door eighty-three is marked simply: REFERENCE TEXTS. It seems innocuous, but someone has placed a strong sensory block on it, so I haven’t the faintest idea what’s actually on the other side. I suppose, in my line of work, noncirculating texts are far more dangerous than automatic weapons.
I’d always assumed that the CORE kept all of its information on data sticks and durable hard drives. It’s weird to think they might actually keep monographs and oversized atlases, too. My curiosity gets the better of me. I swipe my card in the reader, and the door opens. I know that, somewhere in the building, a security program has recorded my entry. There’s nothing I can do about it now. I walk in.
The room isn’t what I suspected. Instead of a space filled with shelves, it’s barely an alcove. There are no books, just a slick metal table and chair. I sit down, and realize that the table is actually a flat-screen console. A biometric program blinks patiently, waiting for my fingerprints. I lay my hand across the panel. I feel a light pinch. Then the table asks me what I’m looking for.
“Excuse me?”
“Welcome to the CORE Special Collections,” the table repeats, speaking in Majel Barrett’s voice. “Please enter a search term so that I can find what you’re looking for.”
“Okay.” I think for a second. “Lord Nightingale?”
“Did you mean a small passerine bird?”
“No. Lord Nightingale of Trinovantum.”
“Did you mean Nightingale Elementary in Vancouver?”
“No. What’s wrong with you? Lord Nightingale.”
“Did you mean the Canadian Nurses Annual Nightingale Gala?”
I sigh. “How about ‘Ferid’?”
“There are two items that match your search criteria. One is a captured video file, and the other is a document. Which would you like to view?”
“The video.”
An image appears on the surface of the computer. Patrick, Selena, and I are in the interrogation chamber. I realize that this footage was taken last year, when we first met Arcadia. I listen to her coldly answering my questions by speaking through the mouth of the Kentauros demon, Basuram, whom she would later kill.
“Let me see the document,” I say.
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A scanned PDF image appears. It seems to be a transcript of a conversation between my old homicidal boss, Marcus Tremblay, and an unknown subject. Parts of the transcript have been blacked out, but near the bottom, Marcus asks: “What demonic species do you belong to?” The subject replies: “We no longer have a name. We serve the Ferid, and that is all we have left. Our service.”
According to the time stamp, this interview occurred in 1995, a full three years before Marcus allied with the vampire Sabine Delacroix and tried to kill me. When Selena first spoke with Arcadia, she’d assumed that the CORE had never had previous contact with the Ferid, who, as far as we could tell, were colonizers. It stood to reason that Marcus wouldn’t tell anyone. He was always a dick.
“Search for Tessa Isobel Corday.”
“There are three documents and one video.”
“Let me see the video.”
An image of my thirteen-year-old self appears. Meredith Silver is inducting me into the CORE. She asks me to raise my hand and repeat after her.
“In the name of every power and potentate,” I say (through my braces), “I swear to uphold order and defy disintegration. I will keep positive relations with the materia of this world, and never enlist it for selfish means. I will never harm a normate, nor reveal myself or my occupation to their community. I will use my abilities to protect life, ease suffering, and seek justice for immortals who can no longer speak for themselves. This I swear, before every power and potentate, until the darkening of the ways.”
Meredith takes my hand. “Very good. Now you are one of us, and this is a bond that cannot be broken, not even by death.”
But it is breaking, Meredith. It’s breaking every day, and I can’t stop it, because I don’t know what magic is anymore. I have to wander around a dream-fair, asking everyone I love, and their answers are weird and fucked and unsatisfying. You knew, Meredith. You gave me your athame, silver like your hair and sharp like your tongue. You always knew what you were doing, but I don’t. What world is this, where a vampire can break your neck right in front of me? What world is this, where a girl like Mia is orphaned because she happened to be born like me, raw and vulnerable to those horrifying powers and potentates? To whom did I swear? What do they look like and where do they live? I know nothing about them, save for their genius, their hunger, and their remoteness, like infernal quasars. At least the Ferid reveal themselves to their servants. I don’t know who I was indentured to. I don’t know who or what reached an opaque hand across space, saying: Awake, little girl, and be ours.
“Would you like to search for something else?”
I stare at the black screen. “No,” I say. “I’m tired, and I have an interrogation to get to. Thanks, though.”
The computer turns itself off. I leave room eighty-three and head back to the elevator. There aren’t enough search terms in the world to understand the CORE, and I don’t have time to keep trying. I should have figured that out ages ago.
8
“State your name for the record.”
“Tessa Isobel Corday. Can I have a cigarette?”
“No.”
“That hardly seems fair.”
“There’s no smoking in the interrogation room. Just try to answer the questions as best you can. This shouldn’t take too long.”
“It would go a lot more smoothly if I had a cigarette.”
“Tess.”
“Fine. Sorry. I’m ready.”
Selena glances at a folder on the table. Like most CORE folders, its precise contents are a mystery, but I know they’re not good.
“When did you first encounter the avian demon known as the Seneschal? Describe the encounter.”
“Two years ago. Lady Duessa hinted that he might know something about a suit of armor that belonged to Luis Ordeño. I gave him a shirt with a bedazzled kitten on it, and he traded me some information.”
“Did you tell him anything about Ordeño’s murder?”
“No.”
“What did he tell you about the armor?”
“Nearly nothing that was comprehensible. But he did suggest that it had some connection to an old myth, about an alchemist and a Manticore. Which turned out to be true, if you remember.”
“Of course.” She looks again at the folder. “What about your second meeting? Walk me through it.”
“I asked him some questions about an Aikon, which belonged to Ru’s brother. At the time, we didn’t know what it was, but he explained to me that it was an organ.”
“Were you alone?”
“No. Mia was with me.”
Selena frowns. “You took a minor to see a bird demon?”
“He was harmless, and I was trying to get her away from the vampire community center. Nothing happened. He even gave her a teakettle.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. He gave her a brass teakettle as a present. It’s sitting on the mantel in my living room. A bit beat-up, but still pretty.”
“So—” She exhales. “You’re saying that you allowed a demon to give a potentially dangerous artifact to a minor in your care.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not dangerous at all. You could pick up the same thing at any souvenir shop in Gastown.”
“Was Mia Polanski with you the first time you visited the Seneschal?”
“No. Patrick came with me that time.”
“Right.” She scribbles something down, underlining it fiercely. “So you brought another one of your wards to visit. It sounds like you’ve been treating the Seneschal’s cave like a bed-and-breakfast.”
“They were fine. It was safer inside the cave than outside, in fact. It wasn’t until we left that we got attacked by an insane necromancer. That was the first time. The second time, nothing untoward happened. It’s not like I took them to Lees Trail. Both nights ended in soft-serve ice cream, not bloodshed.”
“Fine. So, you and the Seneschal never spoke about anything other than the cases that you were investigating.”
“No. He was a bird of few words.”
“You’re going to have to return that so-called kettle, you know.”
“But it was a gift!”
“We’ll have to analyze it.”
“You mean break it into pieces and immerse it in weird solutions. No way. It’s Mia’s. He gave it to her.”
“You’re being unreasonable.”
“What’s unreasonable is wasting money to probe a kettle.”
“Don’t worry about the money. Just bring it to the lab. Most of the Seneschal’s items were destroyed or damaged irreparably. What you call a kettle might be the only surviving artifact from his horde, and we need to have a look at it.”
“Fine. Mia’s going to freak, though. She loves polishing it.”
Selena leans forward and steeples her fingers. If she were a Great White, this would be the equivalent of charging. “All right. We’ve compared video of the Polybius letters to other exemplars that we have on file. The lab has no experts on smoke magic, unfortunately, but we were able to subject it to handwriting analysis.”
“And?”
“It’s your writing, Tess.”
I stare at her. “Get out of here.”
“The directionality of the letters, the loops, the hesitations—they all accord with exemplars we have of your writing. The only difference is that the composition is shakier. This could be because of the medium, or because the text was written when you were younger. It more closely resembles samples of your writing that we collected when you were first admitted to the CORE.”
“How many of these samples do you have?”
“How many forms have you filled out since you joined?”
I blink. “A lot.”
“Tess, I can’t think of a gentler way to say this. I don’t know how, or why, but at some point—maybe years ago—you wrote your name in smoke and left it in the Seneschal’s cave. The handwriting doesn’t lie.”
“I don’t know the first thing about smoke mag
ic.”
“Maybe you did at one time.”
“Selena—”
The door opens, and Derrick walks in. He looks uncomfortable. I give him a small wave.
“I think we’re almost done,” I say. “Then we can go for coffee.”
“I—” Derrick swallows. “Tess, I’m not here to take you to lunch.”
There’s a catch in his voice. I look at him strangely. Then the reason for his presence hits me. I go cold. I turn to Selena.
“No way.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, “but it’s the most efficient method of interrogation available to us. At this point, we need all the answers we can get.”
“But why does it have to be Derrick?”
“I think you know why,” she murmurs.
And I do. Even as the question leaves my mouth, I know exactly why he’s been chosen for this job. I can’t lie to him. Of all the telepaths in the world, he’s the one most likely to carve through my defenses.
He sits down next to me. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
I can’t look at him. “Just do it,” I say. “Quickly.”
Derrick puts his hand on mine. At first, I feel nothing but a tingle in my scalp. Then I feel heavy. The room darkens. I try to pretend that I’m at the dentist, but it doesn’t work. He’s my best friend, my rock, my person, and now he’s sifting through my memories with draconian efficiency. I want to throw up. I close my eyes and let his power carry me forward, inch by inch, until the room is mostly gone, until my resistance melts and he can read me completely.
I see a little girl, about nine years old, sitting on a fur rug. Candles burn in stone alcoves, shedding multicolored wax. The Seneschal sits cross-legged on the floor next to her, preening his feathers.
“Again,” he says mildly.
The little girl reaches out with her index finger. A nimbus of smoke collects around her small hand. Slowly, carefully, as if writing on a lined page, she traces her last name in seething calligraphy. Corday. It hangs on the air.
“Well-done!” The Senescal reaches out and snatches the autograph. Then he places it in a jar and seals the lid. “Should keep. Names tend to.”