I chewed on that for a minute. We were almost at the temple. “And the true name?”
“Bait. You got it, you carry it in there, he can’t resist coming after it. He gotta defend it, keep it from getting lost.”
“You said I could get obsessed or go insane. So it’s possible not to? What does it take?”
“Love.”
“What?” I stopped walking again.
She faced me. “I know what you’re thinking. Sounded like some Hallmark bullshit to me too, at the time. But look, here’s the thing. Occultists, the ones who study the hard-core shit I do, we get lost in our heads. This stuff gets real cerebral. Lots of us lose touch with this human world, get isolated, stop caring about everyday things or real people. You walk into a place like the one we’re talking about, it takes over your mind, fascinates it. You need something stronger to push back against that, something to root you in this world and make you remember to come back home. Strong body ain’t much good to you in there, so that leaves heart. You need a strong, strong heart and a lotta love in it for you to overcome that temptation to lose yourself for good.”
“And spirits can’t do that?”
“Some spirits, sure. Not ones like him. They got no love at all. They think it’s their strength, but in there, it’s not.”
I looked her in the eye. “Are you afraid my heart isn’t strong enough to do this?”
She met my stare, unflinching. “I’m afraid I don’t have a way to tell without doing the thing. And I’m afraid I don’t got a way to protect you in there if you need it.”
“I’ll make a deal with you,” I said. “After we search the temple, we go back to Free Radicals and tell the others about this. If they know what danger you’re all in, and what danger this trap poses, we can all decide together what to do and who’s going to do it. If everyone decides no, I won’t ask you for your help with this again.”
She looked me over. “Notice you didn’t say nothing about not running to your spirit to go do something about it on your own.”
“You’re right,” I said. “This isn’t just about you guys. It’s my family, old friends, lots of other people. I can only promise so much.”
“I guess that’s fair. I’d do the same. All right, deal. Now let’s go see if this whole thing’s moot.”
We searched the outer wall of the first floor of the temple where Vivi and I had been. I found my own graffiti--Dionne pretended not to read it, but smiled when she thought I wasn’t looking--and measured about how far away I remembered being from Vivi. She’d been sitting cross-legged on the ground. I sat down myself and studied everything around eye level.
“Somewhere around here. Anything stand out to you?” I thought Dionne would have a better chance of noticing something meaningful than I would.
She squatted behind me and examined the words and pictures. “Wish we had some of her handwriting to compare.”
“It might not matter. She said she didn’t remember doing it.”
“You believe her?”
I thought about it. “Yeah. I do. There were times, back when he was in my head all the time, that I’d lose time. Not much, and I used to tell myself that I fell asleep or was daydreaming, because it scared me. But yeah, it fits.”
“I just don’t know about this. Could be that whatever he put means nothing to no one but him.” She cupped her chin in her hand as she studied the wall. “How about you? You know him better.”
“Maybe this one?” I traced around one piece with my fingertips, afraid to touch it. It was written in red marker, a series of letters forming a spiral and getting smaller and smaller toward the center. It seemed like it’d be hard for a person to write with such precision, and the letters didn’t seem to spell anything. “I don’t know for sure. What do we do? Should we just try to cut a chunk out of the wall or something?”
Dionne chuckled. “It’s cute, you’re so literal.”
“What do you mean?”
“Girl, you really think a demon’s true name gonna be in some Sharpie ink on plywood? What you think it was before that?”
“Well, I don’t know. It could be a container, couldn’t it? Transferring an essence from one thing to another?”
She let herself topple backwards to sit, stretching her legs. “More like, it’s a mark so he don’t forget where it is or how to get it back.”
I nodded. “It’s here, but it’s not here.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“Okay.” I stared at the design. “I need to find out if I can get to it. We’re a little light on the trappings, but--can you help me journey?”
She considered it. “I guess we can try. You’re gonna do it anyway.”
“Pretty much.”
She sighed. “Fine, let’s go inside at least.”
We went into the main level structure, which was empty for the moment. I lay down next to the wall, roughly where I thought I’d be on the other side from the red spiral. Dionne took out her phone. “Gotta be a metronome app or something, right? Also, I’m gonna set an alarm. You got fifteen minutes before the alarm pulls you out and I pray to God you can scoot on your own before that if you need. Got it? This takes you more than fifteen minutes, you’re coming back and we make a new plan from there.”
“Got it.” I settled myself as comfortably as I could while Dionne fiddled with her phone. She played the alarm sound for me and glanced at me. I nodded.
“Don’t make me regret this.” She started a metronome beat on her phone and began a low humming chant.
I closed my eyes and slowed and deepened my breath, letting the beat fill my head and chase away stray thoughts. Now that I’d journeyed twice this weekend, I was sure it would feel familiar enough to do it in this stripped-down way without resisting or panicking. I dropped my sight down to my soul eyes and envisioned my surroundings as they were. I imagined them growing hazy, blurry, and then I imagined that they were curtains being drawn back, filmy curtains that revealed the spirit-side of this place.
My soul-eyes opened, and I sat up.
The temple’s essence was majestic. No longer plywood and colored marker or paper stars hanging from bits of yarn, its walls shimmered in filigree and carvings. The art that adorned it was now gold-filled engravings or living greenery or mosaics of sparkling gemstone. Where the stars had been, luminous orbs drifted at the ends of delicate chains or flowering vines. The floor was lush, a living carpet with curlicues formed of tiny bright flowers. The air hummed with vitality, with love, with sorrow, with creativity and joy and memory.
Beside me, Dionne was a cloaked and hooded figure. Protective sigils flowed across the surface of the cloak like computer code. I heard the metronome clicking, but in here it was the ticking of a vast and unseen clock. I went outside.
The exterior soared high, much higher than the physical structure. It was lavish with carvings, blush pink like sandstone, accented with silver. I looked up toward the top. There was a clock in the highest tower, its hands moving backward a second at a time. Counting down its own existence. Around me, the bed sheet labyrinth was a flowering hedge maze brilliant with colors.
I found my way to the spot where the red spiral had been. It was still there, etched into the stone and stained red, but its outermost whorl grew large and extended out from the wall, forming a curving pathway to the ground. Remembering that things like physics and gravity didn’t work the same way in this spirit dimension, I put a tentative foot on the spot where the path met the ground.
Everything whooshed around me, disorienting me. I was--smaller? I stood on a smooth stone step at the top of a stairway that spiraled down into darkness, seeming to penetrate the wall of the temple itself. I took another step down, shifting so that I was no longer perpendicular to the ground. That was a freaky feeling, and I almost backed off. But I looked up at the ticking clock again, reminding myself that I had
very little time to explore, and that I couldn’t expect things to feel normal here.
I went down several more steps. Walls grew up alongside the stairs, and everything dimmed, like I was going down into a medieval castle’s dungeon. Each step had a different letter on it--or rather a different character, because here the markings weren’t Latin alphabet letters alone, but a mix of symbols both familiar and not. I was getting nervous about how dark it was as I made my way down, but I had to keep going.
Except that I couldn’t. I walked face-first into a thick stone wall. I backed up, looking around, but saw no doors in the walls alongside the steps, no windows, nothing. I felt along the stone wall for a gap or a hidden latch, but the stones stood shoulder-to-shoulder and impassive.
Well, shit.
I went back up the steps one at a time, feeling for anything in the walls. When I looked back over my shoulder, the blocking wall was gone, but when I tried to go down again, it reappeared. I made my way back to the top of the staircase. It seemed like there was nothing else here.
I sat on the top step, folding my arms on my knees and contemplating the steps. Was this it? Did I need some word, some key, something that I didn’t have, in order to get any farther? I only had a handful of hours before sundown when the temple would be burned. By then, either Murmur would have reclaimed his true name, or he’d be the only one who could. If I couldn’t figure this out now, I might not get another chance.
Something caught my eye. On the third step down, just past my feet, there was a drop of blood beside the character. I recognized the Greek letter Alpha. I looked at the step I sat on, and moved my feet to look around them. Neither of the top two stairs had a drop. I walked down a few more steps. Yes--there was another blood drop, thirteen steps down from the first bloodied step.
Maybe I did need a word. One that was spelled out by these steps. I went back to the top of the steps, moving back from the slab where the letter was written on the top step to give myself a bit of running start. I bounded forward and jumped over the top step, landing unsteadily on the third step.
The Alpha carving glowed red.
I did a little wiggle dance of victory, not daring to lift either of my feet. Okay. Time to remember that my body wasn’t really here for me to be afraid of hurting it. I bent my knees and pulled my arms into my sides, looked at my target, crossed my fingers, and sprang up into a soaring jump. I found I could use my arms to guide myself and slow or speed my landing, and came down much more gracefully this time on the second step that had a droplet. I didn’t recognize this character, but it also glowed.
Even though it was dimmer here, it was still possible to see another blood-drop step, because it was only eight steps down. Something about the pattern pricked at my mind but wouldn’t announce itself. I jumped to that step as well. Its character glowed. The next step with a drop was five more steps away.
I jumped to it. For a moment, the wall appeared, and I cried out in frustration. But the character below my feet glowed, and the wall crumbled away and vanished. There were more steps past it, and a hint of light below.
Three steps to the next one, and two to the one after that. And then three steps in a row with blood drops. The last one was the final step, and below it was--nothing.
Empty space, void, darkness. Floating in the center of it was a pillar of smoke. A box rested on the top of the pillar, an old metal music box with a key in one side and green-patina gears showing through a glass panel.
That had to be it. His true name was in that box. I held the wall and tried to put one foot down. It passed through empty space and I jerked back. Okay, so no stepping forward. Could I float? I thought about it, willing myself up, and in a few moments I bobbed upward a few inches. I guided myself forward until I was beside the roiling smoke pillar.
It was then that I saw the walls around me in this small round chamber. They were covered with eyes. Closed eyes, large and small, that looked like they’d been carved out of the stone of the wall. I shuddered, but reached out toward the box.
The key turned one click, and the box let out a single “ting”, one tinny note.
Around me, the stone eyelids fluttered.
I jerked my hand back by instinct, then reached out again, determined to snatch it and go. But as my hand got closer, the key turned in slow jerky clicks and the box made a different weak, discordant note each time. The eyes began to open. I pulled my hand away and the box fell silent, the eyes closing.
This wasn’t getting me anywhere. I just had to do it. With both hands this time, I grabbed it and pinched the key to keep it from turning. From within the box came a long high screeching note like its mechanism was stuck. The eyes began to open again, a hot red light coming from under the lids. I felt it heating me, scorching me, turning the box fiery in my hands. The awful sound was changing to something I couldn’t quite place. I couldn’t keep hold of the box; my hands were going transparent. I dropped it and it fell back to the top of the pillar. The eyes closed but the sound went on, and then the world swirled past me in a blur.
I jerked upright. I was back in the physical temple, Dionne’s phone chirping out its annoying alarm, and her hand was on my shoulder. “Mari! You all right?”
I sagged and exhaled. My head was tight with pain and my eyeballs throbbed with it. I rubbed my forehead and eyes. “I found it. But we need to talk to the others now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Everyone was dishing up lunch at Free Radicals when Dionne and I got back. My stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything yet today, but I couldn’t wait. “Guys, we need to talk. Right away.”
We went to the shade pavilion where I’d done my second journey. Sara insisted on bringing me a plate with a sandwich and a couple of pickles, and Cherry brought one for Dionne. They had fresh lemonade and bags of chips. I picked up the sandwich, but as soon as I started talking, everything tumbled out and I forgot I was holding it. I told them about Charlie’s message, talking with Dionne, the temple and my explorations down the spiraling steps to the chamber of eyes.
Tamar calculated, her lips moving as she ticked numbers off of her fingers. “The Fibonacci sequence. Going backward from thirty-four all the way to zero in a spiral. Good on you, figuring out that code.”
“I didn’t really, I just followed the trail he left.” I stared at the sandwich and my stomach lurched. I put it down. “But here’s the reason I’m telling you all this. I have to find a way to trap him and take him out of the equation for--however long the trap will hold him. Hopefully until long after I’m dead, at least. But Dionne’s only willing to help me if you’re all on board with it.”
“I’m glad she warned you off it.” Tamar met Dionne’s eyes and the corner of her mouth turned up, almost a smile. Dionne gave a halfhearted smile back and they nodded at each other. “After all we’ve been through this weekend? That’s insane. We gotta rest, not kick another hornet’s nest.”
“He’s going after all of you,” I said.
Sara paled. “What--does that mean?” Everyone else stared at me, frozen.
“I don’t know what form it’ll take. But that’s what he told me. And believe me, he’ll do anything to hurt you and make you all suffer at this point. You saw what he did to Vivi and Teo, what he was willing to do to this whole camp. And we stopped him, and he’s furious. At the very least, he’ll torture your mind until you’re convinced that dying is preferable to one more day of living like that.” I remembered Suzanne and swallowed hard. “Who knows what else he can do, when he’s not just toying with someone for fun? He’s weakened now. If we do this now, tonight, we have the best chance we’re going to get of keeping us all safe. Us, and everyone else I care about.” I looked around at all of them. “I really want your help. But I’m going to stop him by myself, if I have to.”
No one was eating now. Everyone looked around at each other. Cherry set her plate down in the gr
ass. “But you said you couldn’t take the box without the eyes opening.”
“Yes, and chances are good that as soon as I take it, he’ll know and see where I go. But if we time it out right, that could be an advantage.”
Tamar nodded, tense but thoughtful. “Sure could. We got that trap set for you to run straight into it, there’s no question he knows where to follow you, and maybe won’t be thinking about where you’re going.”
“So we need to act soon,” I said. “I have to be able to get back into the temple before sunset, when they’re going to prep it for the burn. If we need to set up the trap there too, then I need to be able to finish the whole thing before then.”
“That mean you’re in?” Dionne said to Tamar.
She chewed her lips for a moment. “Yeah. I’m in.”
“And Cherry?” said Dionne. Cherry’s gaze was fixed on Tamar.
“I’d rather she not,” said Tamar. “But that’s me being protective. With you and me in it, if she wants to do this, then yeah. She’d be an asset. She’s in.”
“I’m doing it,” said Cherry.
“Me too.” Joe looked at me. “No way in hell are you doing this alone.”
“Sara?” I turned to her.
She stared at her hands in her lap. “I want to help. But I don’t know what I can do that’s any use.”
I reached over and took her hand. “I can’t tell you what yet, but if you’ll trust me, there’s something in this that only you can do.”
She nodded. “Okay. If you say so.”
We all sat in silence. “Thank you,” I said at last. “All of you. I really do need you.”
“Just think.” Cherry shrugged and tried to smile. “We knock this out early enough, we have a whole night left to party.”
“All y’all finish eating,” said Dionne. “We need our strength, and we got to get to work right away. Time’s short.”
Within two hours, we’d made our plans, and we were assembled.
MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 47