“Geldman would know. In fact, he’s probably got Deep One summoning charms in stock.”
“We can’t ask Geldman,” Daniel said.
“How come?”
“He told me this morning. The hint about my grandfather was all he could give me. If I went to Innsmouth—if we went—we’d be on our own.”
The thing about wizards that sucked? They didn’t do helicopter mentoring. Unless—
Unless aether-newt surveillance wasn’t the same thing. “Never mind Geldman, then,” Sean said. “What about Redemption Orne?”
Orne’s good behavior in the seed world had advanced him so far with Eddy that she shrugged instead of exploding.
“Why not?” Sean said. “At least he doesn’t have to worry about going against the Order.”
“You’d have to go back to Arkham and into the window,” Daniel said. “I’m not risking it.”
“Risking what? The Order can’t lock you in the wine cellar.”
Eddy interrupted with an urgent hiss of a whisper: “Listen.”
She pointed into the air above them, which, though empty, wasn’t silent. A high-pitched piping, insectile, insistent, descended to circle Sean’s head, sounding louder in one ear, then louder in the other, around and around in mad stereo. He swatted at the invisible and yelped to find it wasn’t quite intangible—his fingers passed through a chill viscosity that left them dry but tingling.
“You okay?” Daniel said. Eddy floundered across the steep face of the dune to Sean’s other side.
He shook the tingle from his hand. “I guess. I thought—”
The piping had stopped.
It started again near the foot of the dune, where the air condensed into mist and the mist into a bubble-skinned caterpillar with ten suction-cup feet on ten stumpy legs. With an egg-shaped head minus nose and mouth but plus diamond-pupiled eyes and fleshy-feathery ear fans. And more fleshy-feathery fans down its back, and winking spheroids along its sides, and tails, five of them, the longest wickedly barbed. The creature hovered a few inches above the sand, and, of course, it flicked the barbed tail, because flicking tail was what newts did best.
Eddy had seen the thing before, when Afua Benetutti had puffed silvery dust over it. Daniel stared. “That’s?” he whispered.
“An aether-newt, yeah,” Sean said. “And it’s got to be Orne’s. It must have heard us talking about him, how we wanted to ask him something.”
Double flick.
He still wasn’t sure whether that meant yes or no or “Dude, eat me.” Before he could try Eddy’s plan of asking whether it was an aether-newt and seeing how many times it flicked, the newt corkscrewed out of sight into the dune. The sand above its point of entry swirled faster and faster until it glowed with heat like the blast from an opened kiln, and like silica in a kiln, the swirling sand melted.
Daniel jumped to his feet. “That looks like something that’s going to blow up.”
Why would Orne’s newt try to kill them? It wouldn’t, but what if Deep Ones also used aether-newts? The anti-Order kind of Deep Ones who thought Daniel was a traitor?
Eddy and Daniel had taken cover on the other side of the dune. Sean was about to dive after them when the liquefied sand didn’t so much explode as burp out a gleaming length of newt. No longer ethereal, it plopped onto the dune and shook its new shell of articulated glass plates. They rang like chimes as it slithered down the dune to the beach. There it twisted its forebody back toward Sean and beckoned with its newly crystalline ear fans.
Sean yelled the all clear and slid after the newt. When Eddy and Daniel had joined him, they converged on a tidal flat where the newt was treading a circle into the damp sand. That done, it extended its longest tail into the pristine interior and with the barb began to write not in mystic runes but in crooked English caps. Squatting, Eddy read out the words of the message as they appeared:
SEAN
COME TO
ISLAND VISTA MARINA IN NEWBURY
ROUTE 1A NORTH ACROSS PARKER RIVER BRIDGE
MEET OUTSIDE SHIPS STORE
I CAN HELP
RO
Task completed, the aether-newt ballooned until its temporary exoskeleton cracked and fell to the sand in tinkling shards. It went airborne, ethereal again, and, clearly expecting an answer to carry back to its master, bobbed before Sean’s face. Through its shimmying and shimmery form, he could see Daniel’s tense expression, and Eddy’s. I CAN HELP had to mean help Daniel meet his mother, since that’s what they’d been talking about when the newt appeared. Also, Orne wanted to meet at a marina, and what could you get at a marina?
Boats, baby.
“That thing must have been following us all day,” Eddy said.
Why not—they’d been outside the Order’s wards since leaving the Arkwright House. Outside the wards and talking about magical stuff, which was against Marvell’s rules, but a super-minor offense compared to the one they were considering. “Daniel, you want to take him up on the help?”
“I don’t know, but would it hurt to find out what he’s actually offering?”
Eddy circled Sean and the newt, like she wanted to examine the creature from all angles. “That would mean you’d meet Orne, Sean. Face-to-face for real.”
Implied question: Was he ready?
Evidently Orne thought he was, and so far today, meeting long-lost relatives hadn’t produced apocalyptic results. The operative words being so far. He looked into the newt’s diamond-slit eyes as if they were lenses and he was delivering his lines straight to the cameraman. “Okay, Reverend. I’ll come to Newbury. Quick as I can.”
The aether-newt flicked a last double and faded to nothingness. If it had to travel to communicate with Orne, it was on its way.
“Sean,” Daniel said. “Thanks. Really.”
“No problem.” He hoped. “We better get moving.”
Daniel led the way down the beach, but Eddy hung back to collect some of the glass plates the newt had shed and, with one, to scrape away its message to Sean. “Smart,” he said when she caught up with them.
“Well, this does look like the kind of place Deep Ones might come to get a moon-tan.”
“What are you going to do with the armor thingies?”
“Save them for your dad. How many windows have aether-newt glass in them?”
Dad. It was late to call him in England. Besides, it would take too long to explain going to meet Orne when he hadn’t even mentioned the seed world yet, or the crow construct, or how Orne had known Mom, and how without Orne, she might never have met Dad. Without Orne, no Sean. Without Aster, no Daniel. Speaking of Aster Marsh Glass, she’d be the third long-lost relative of the day. No, the fourth, counting Cousin Tom.
Marsh had warned they’d have to think about how deep they wanted to dive with Daniel. Sean couldn’t ask Dad or the Order for advice, or Geldman either, per Daniel. He’d have to rely on himself or on Orne. Well, which of them was likelier to know whether deeper with Daniel meant a pothole or an abyss?
Not Sean. So, yeah, Newbury. “You remember the name of that marina?”
“Don’t worry,” Eddy said grimly. “We’ll find the place.”
21
It was a twenty-minute drive to Newbury. At the Parker River Bridge, Sean pulled over to let Eddy take the wheel. She and Daniel would go hang somewhere until he called for pickup. “Or backup,” Daniel said.
“I won’t need it.”
“Sure? You guys rode shotgun to my grandfather’s.”
“Yeah, but you’d never met him before. I’ve at least half-met Orne.”
“Okay. We won’t go far.”
They drove over the bridge and didn’t slow down when they passed the marina on the other side. In Eddy’s place, Sean would have crawled, trying to spot Orne. Walking across, he refused to play that game. The view helped. The name Island Vista Marina wasn’t wishful thinking—down the last stretch of the river, in the hazy near distance, was Plum Island. Loitering as dusk came on, he watched kayaks pass under the
bridge and motorboats chug upstream. Then he got his procrastinating ass to the marina.
It was a big place, with winter storage racks, a service department, and ten floating docks. The parking lot swarmed with fishermen stowing tackle and parents packing up kids; he threaded through their trucks and SUVs looking for the ship’s store, which turned out to be closed. Sean peered through the door at bait tanks and ice chests. No one was inside.
Along the store wall facing the river was a covered deck furnished with picnic tables and rocking chairs. Sean climbed aboard. So much for his hope that he and Orne could talk there: A young guy lazed in a rocker like he was there for the duration. With his white shorts, blue-striped tee, and tousled blond hair, he looked like a model for those catalogs that catered to the summer-house-and-Labrador-retrievers crowd. He even had Top-Siders propped on the railing and a cardigan draped over the back of his chair. And not a drop of oil or fish blood on him. Dude, surreally? Sean claimed a table, but once Orne showed, they’d have to find a more private spot. Wait, the guy stood. To leave? “That didn’t take you long,” he said.
Sean glanced toward the parking lot, expecting to see a female model (with Labrador), just arrived for the photo shoot. He saw the same fishermen and families.
“Sean,” the model said.
Sean’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and all he could do was stare.
“Yes, it’s me,” the model said. “Did you think I’d look like Reverend Tyndale?”
Too late for politeness, heart racing, Sean jumped up. “I’m sorry. I guess I did kind of expect him, except without the Puritan outfit. Who are you supposed to be?”
“Supposed to be?”
“I mean, who’s your illusion of?”
One corner of Orne’s mouth quirked upward. “Do you sense an illusion?”
“No, but I didn’t sense Mr. Marsh’s either, and he must have a lot to cover up.”
“Indeed. I’d like to think my illusions are as seamless as his. However, I’m not wearing one at the moment.” Orne’s face grew serious. “I wanted to honor our first in-person meeting by coming without disguise.”
“This is what you really look like. Really.”
“That’s right.”
Orne’s eyes were blue, like Sean’s—like Dad’s, for that matter. But Sean and Dad had a lot of gray in their blue, while Orne’s blue was pale and pure. Like Mom’s. Damn, why did he feel light-headed, and why wouldn’t his heart slow down? “You got here before me. I thought you’d have to come from Arkham. Or can you, like, teleport?”
“No,” Orne said. “But as you discovered at the beach, my newt’s been with you today. It was also with you during that accident at the harbor, and afterwards, when you learned Daniel’s secret. I worried how that might have affected you, so I went to talk to Geldman. He said Daniel had found out his grandfather was alive, and now all three of you were heading to Innsmouth. I followed my newt, to be available if you needed me. But let’s sit down.”
By that he meant Sean had better sit down, and he was right. Sean took the rocker beside Orne’s. Orne sat again, and from the cooler he’d stowed underneath his chair, he pulled two bottles of spring water. The one he handed Sean had an unbroken seal—Sean was still leery enough to check before he drank. He must have been dehydrated; by the time he’d drained the bottle, his heartbeat had slowed and he’d figured out why learning the model was Orne had made his brain cramp. “You’re too young,” he blurted. “Lots younger than my dad.”
“I took the Communion of Nyarlathotep when I was twenty-three,” Orne said. “My body stopped aging after that.”
That made sense because who’d sign up for immortality if it meant you’d end up as shriveled as a mummy? “That’s an even better deal than being a Deep One. I guess they keep aging, just slower than humans.”
“Much slower. Daniel has relations in Y’ha-nthlei centuries older than I am.”
“I don’t think he’s thought about that yet.”
“Good. He has enough to deal with. From what Raphael overheard on the beach, Daniel’s learned his mother’s alive and Changed.”
“Raphael’s your newt’s name?”
“Yes.”
“Like the artist, not the Ninja Turtle.”
Orne grinned as if he got the joke. “Like the archangel, actually. But Raphael didn’t spy on your meeting with Barnabas Marsh. He’d have sensed its energy and resented the intrusion, and rightly so. Did something happen there I should know about?”
With the sun dropping fast, the Parker River mirrored a lemon-and-apricot sky like the one in the Founding; against the reflected glow, the last of the dock-bound boats were black silhouettes, vaguely sinister. “Marsh let us meet Daniel’s cousin Tom, who’s almost finished Changing.”
“That must have been unnerving.”
“Yeah, but Daniel got over it pretty quick, and he wants to meet his mom next. Only Aster doesn’t know Daniel’s started to Change, or how his dad’s trying to stop it. Marsh wants time to, like, prepare her. Besides, there are these Deep Ones who think Daniel’s a traitor, and Daniel’s supposed to be patient while Marsh talks them around. But Daniel thinks he’s got to get to his mom fast, before his dad stops him.”
“Daniel wants to go out to Devil Reef on his own?”
“With me and Eddy. But what good’s going if we don’t have a summoning charm?”
“You won’t need one. If Daniel—one of their own—goes to Devil Reef, Deep Ones will come.” Orne set his rocker in gentle motion. “Speaking of the reef, what did Marsh tell you about it?”
“Nothing, really. It’s freaky, out by itself in the deep water. I never saw anything like it.”
“That’s because it’s artificial.”
“A piece of old breakwater?”
“No, more like a giant doorstep. The Deep Ones built it above the opening to the abyss that harbors Y’ha-nthlei. That was thousands of years before Europeans came and proved they couldn’t curb their curiosity as the Massachusetts and Wampanoags had. Pirates and smugglers tried to hide booty there. After enough of them disappeared off the reef, they gave it up as cursed, and ‘cursed’ remained its safeguard until people stopped believing in such things. Later Innsmouth patrolled the reef. It still does, to keep off the sport boaters and divers who want to explore the place. It’s posted as private property—officially, the Marshes own it. Also, since the Order intervened, the state and federal governments are aware of the situation in Innsmouth. They back up the Marshes if anyone wants access to the reef, scientists included. You know, people with submarines and sonar.”
“So the abyss doesn’t show up on any charts?”
“None the public can access. Devil Reef appears as a small seamount with nothing interesting at its base. The Deep Ones do their part, of course. Marsh tells me there are extremely strong wards around the city entrances. Including organic ones.”
“You mean live wards?”
“Shoggoths. They block the ways in like corks and simulate the ocean floor around them, perfect camouflage. I’m assuming that if a diver were to poke the floor and find out it was protoplasmic, not rock—” Orne made a hand-puppet maw and snapped it shut on his index finger. “It’s not likely a diver would get that close, though.”
And if he did, one gulp, gone. “They really have shoggoths?”
“Since the Elder Race of Antarctica declined, Deep Ones are the only species on Earth that keeps them. They communicate with the shoggoths through telepathy, use them for construction, transport, hunting, defense, same as the Elder Race did. But the Deep Ones obviously have superior control over the creatures. Otherwise, the whole world would know about them, whatever was left of it.”
The coolest thing was how Orne discussed crazy stuff (telepathy-operated shoggoths!) as if it were normal. “I hope they don’t let shoggoths up on the reef.”
“Oh no. The Deep Ones guard the upper reef themselves.”
“Nobody notices?”
“They g
o illusioned as any sea creatures about their own size.”
“Like the porpoises at the jetty. Did Raphael see them?”
“It did, and I through it.”
“Marsh said two of them were anti-Order Deep Ones. The others were real porpoises. I couldn’t tell the difference.”
“Nor I, at that distance. If you go out to the reef, remember that any porpoises or sea turtles swimming around your boat might not be porpoises or turtles. Same for seals pulled out on the rocks. What’s more, any real animals of that sort could be Deep One allies.”
So say a kayaker came along and thought, screw the KEEP OFF signs, he was stopping at Devil Reef to hunt for pirate treasure. What was there to be afraid of? Porpoises were playing around his bow, and gray seals were lolling on the reef, all sleepy and peaceful. So he tied up his kayak and climbed the slick rocks, only to have the seals stampede him into the water and the porpoises grow webbed hands to pull him under. “Then we should forget about going to the reef. I mean, if it’s suicide.”
“It’s far from that. The Deep Ones realize disappearances would draw exactly the attention they want to avoid. And they’re much less prone to homicide—or human sacrifices—than we are, truth be told. If the reef watchers can’t drive off trespassers, they alert the Innsmouth patrol boat, which can also call in Coast Guard support. Marsh say it’s never had to.”
If the patrollers looked like the Changers in New Church Green, it was easy to believe they didn’t need backup. “Okay, but if the Deep Ones don’t stop us, the patrol boat will. Either way, we don’t get to the reef.”
Orne rocked steady as a metronome. “Just you and Eddy, you’d get turned back. Daniel would complicate things. Since he’s a hybrid of Y’ha-nthlei stock, most Deep Ones would be reluctant to bar him. But this other group you mention?”
“The anti-Order guys. It sounds like they’re against any interference with Innsmouth, and the way Geldman’s helping Daniel is the last straw. They don’t want Daniel around unless he decides to Change.”
“Then they certainly wouldn’t want him out on the reef.”
Sean caught the rocking bug from Orne. “What would they do to stop us?”
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