Deep Roots

by Ruthanna Emrys

  Trumbull nodded. “I only remember these things when I’m reminded. I’m sorry.”

  Spector sighed. He separated his hands, unraveling finger from finger. Into his trouser pockets they went, breaking the lines of his suit and effacing his irritation. “Well, it’s good to confirm that our suspects exist, even if you can’t tell me why they might suddenly make off with twenty-five humans.”

  I didn’t want to ask, but: “Is that what you thought would upset us? Creatures from other worlds going after our cousin? They might make kinder captors than ordinary men.”

  “Not that. Or not just that. I’m sorry.” And there was the apology. “With over two dozen missing, they won’t let me handle this case alone. And there are only so many agents with this particular specialty.”

  Candles filled the window display, hanging on hooks or rising from brass sconces. Laid out in patterns, they might delineate the space for a ritual. In a large classroom, in the basement of a university building, chairs pushed to the side, they’d outline a sizeable spell. They’d cast a cold light, summoning cold things.

  Charlie gripped his cane. “You mean to tell me that after everything that happened, they not only didn’t fire your pal Barlow, they’re sending him to trip you up again? He got a girl killed!”

  We’d all contributed to Sally’s death, even Sally herself. But George Barlow had started it, along with his stooge Peters, and his secretary-going-on-collaborator Mary Harris. Mary had worked with us willingly at the end, too late for Sally but soon enough to save myself and Audrey. George Barlow, so far as I knew, still thought the rest of us disloyal to the country—or to the species, if his allegiance extended that far.

  My demands had brought him in. Any blood he spilled this time would be on my hands.

  Spector looked at his reflection. “There are only so many of us with this particular specialty.” He shook his head, and pulled away from the window’s alluring distractions. “George has more experience with missing persons than I do. So does Peters, for that matter. They’re not incompetent—they’re just very willing to gamble. One of Barlow’s gambles saved my life a while back.”

  Audrey adjusted her hat, casual as a crouching cat. “So you approve?”

  “If I approved, I’d get along with them a lot better. But George’s supervisors appreciate how he rolls the dice for them, and he’s not going anywhere. I’m just as dependent on the people who go to bat for me and defend the risks I take.”

  “Risks like us,” I said.

  He shrugged. But there was frustration in his voice. “They don’t trust you, Miss Marsh. You’ve every reason to hate us. You work with the government, but you won’t work for it. If you’d sign something, it would make it a lot easier to explain that I’m not just dragging in a bunch of civilians—because I wouldn’t be. It would sure as hell make this case easier, because we’re going to need your experience and—you know how George is. Miss Harris may have learned better, but don’t count on that making a big difference.”

  “She’s still with them,” said Trumbull. It was a reasonable statement, but her voice was so unruffled that it sounded like a non sequitur.

  “I’ve got no quarrel with Mary Harris,” I said. “But I’m not going to bind myself to you just to ease Barlow’s mind. Or for any other reason. I’m doing this work for my people, not the state.”

  “For your people’s sake, then. For your cousin’s sake. Give me some leverage to make them listen to you. It’s not just about Barlow. Miss Marsh, you’ve seen in the papers what we’re dealing with. We may not have found any Russian spies borrowing our people’s bodies, but we’ve found spies. People working with our agents off the books, without so much as an oath—it scares them.”

  “I’m still on the books,” said Deedee. Her arm brushed Caleb’s, a touch that might seem accidental unless you knew them.

  Spector flushed and looked down. “I know. That ought to make more difference than it does.” I wanted to ask why he thought his fellow agents would respect my signature, but I knew: not only the paleness of my skin, however ugly they might find it, but that I’d never seduced anyone on their orders. Her remaining connection to the FBI was the most tenuous possible, just short of quitting entirely. It occurred to me—I flushed myself—that some of her colleagues might well assume her relationship with Caleb a new assignment. Or they might look at the ugly man with a beautiful woman on his arm, and suspect she’d returned to her previous profession.

  Caleb glared and took her hand. “The promises you want work both ways. We’ll do without it, thank you.”

  I agreed. The thought of giving the government even a slender leash parched my lips and tongue. But another thought, treacherous, whispered that Spector knew his people well, and knew me well enough to realize the magnitude of what he was asking. He wouldn’t bring it up unless his own masters had pressed him hard. Yet I couldn’t countenance so great a sacrifice, not even to protect our cousin.

  CHAPTER 4

  Virgil Peters—January 1949:

  In the private reading room on the second floor of Miskatonic’s restricted section, George Barlow paces. I can tell he’s thinking hard; I hope he thinks up something useful. I’m turning over last night’s failed inventory equation—last night’s sabotage—for the tenth time, trying to find the flaw. Amnesic shadows occlude the whole evening. I can’t recall enough to make a difference, no matter how I struggle against the fog. There’s little I can do for Mary until my turn to read aloud.

  Sally Ward, the kid who begged to join us, is up now. She stumbles over words as she reads, face ashen—her first taste of the eldritch has become a trial by fire.

  Eldritch, that’s Barlow’s term. Stranger than strange.

  I’ve always known we needed Mary. I could tell she had smarts from the day Barlow brought her on: a secretary who could tidy up a calculation as well as a letter. But it’s hitting me now just how much our work relies on her. We’d all be happier with that skill intact and unspoken, her most of all. Whether or not Spector’s irregulars gave her this impossible wound, I’d gladly strangle them for it. Or better yet, strangle a cure out of them. I remember moments out of context, ghost-like: the lot of them standing amid our sketches and figures, shouting.

  She wasn’t crying, when we found her in the office this morning. She was meticulously examining every book, every page of notes she could find. She asked us so calmly, for each one, whether we still saw letters, whether the nonsense chicken scratches were on the page or in her mind. She looks calm now, holding up a hand to silence Sally, dictating notes to the girl’s callow boyfriend. The hand goes down; Sally’s strained voice goes on. Barlow drops into a chair to scribble notes of his own.

  Rustling at the doorway. Goddamned Spector standing there, bland as you please, his “irregulars” crowding behind him. George jumps to his feet, already reaching for his gun.

  “Ron,” he says. “I can’t believe you’d bring these people here now, of all times.” I can believe it. The man has no shame, no true loyalty to keep him in line. He does what he pleases, and sticks his big nose in everything. It’d be fine if he knew what he was doing, but he’s never understood the things we study. The laws that folklorists are pleased to call magic, he sees only as myths to motivate fascists.

  “I’m here to help,” says Spector, as if he hadn’t dragged along the people who caused the problem in the first place.

  For once, George doesn’t put up with his bullshit. “You’ve made it clear, you won’t even admit to yourself that you’re harboring saboteurs. And you,” he adds to the bitch of a professor that Spector’s added to his stable. “I’ll have your head for however you convinced the guards to let you by.”

  (I try to be a gentleman to women, even in the privacy of my mind. I make an exception for the ones who’ve tried to violate that privacy and control my thoughts—yet another time Mary’s work protected us. If Dr. Trumbull pushes her way in today, she’ll get an earful.)

  “We came in the b
ack door,” says Miss Marsh. Speaking of women it’s hard to think well of. I’ve seen her family’s files. I don’t believe for a moment she counts herself as American, and Spector’s a fool to trust her. “And we came now, of all times, to help. As Mr. Spector said.”

  George jerks his chin at me, as good as a direct order. I pick a target as I start to move—Miss Marsh is the ringleader, and by how she stands she’s no trained fighter. I twist her wrists behind her back, and shove my free arm against her thick neck. Muscle tenses against me, where I would’ve expected a pad of fat; her pulse pounds against my skin. As my thinking mind catches up with my fighting mind, I remember more about her family and realize she’s stronger than I credited.

  And there’s her brother close by, deceptively lanky as she is thick, looking terrified and murderous. Her head moves fractionally against me, a gesture that might carry as much menacing authority as George’s nod. I drag her back, glaring, hoping her followers don’t call my bluff.

  Spector raises his hands. “Don’t make this mistake again, George. My people aren’t responsible for your problems, and you have two women hurt.”

  And all I can think, too busy to look at either Mary or Sally—Sally, who I assumed was just feeling the strain of her first working gone sour—is: two?

  * * *

  Until Barlow’s arrival, there was little to do but fret. I would have preferred to fret at the elders, not to mention give them warning, but while we’d traveled by train they had only their own muscles and sea-mounts to carry them up the coast. They wouldn’t be in summoning range for at least another day, even if the currents ran fair.

  Spector, under no such limitation, disappeared for the day to appease his own family for the vacation cut short. The rest of us found a nearby park, away from the gossips at Tante Leah’s, and tried to unearth recollections of the hill-dwelling aliens. Neko and Audrey played interlocutors, asking questions that they hoped would prompt me or Trumbull to come up with more detail. For the most part this was entirely unsuccessful. After a while, Neko began keeping score, marking in her notebook a point for every query that drew a real answer, but if it was a game we were clearly losing. Charlie and Caleb speculated fruitlessly as to what the Outer Ones might want with the missing. I swore that on our next genealogical expedition, we’d leave someone at Miskatonic who could be telegrammed with urgent research tasks. Trumbull disparaged the city’s collections. Apparently nothing from NYU to the massive public library with its guardian lions held so much as a Necronomicon.

  Late that evening, Caleb caught me alone in the corner of the common room. “Did you know he’d bring them in?”

  I closed my eyes. “I knew it was a risk. I didn’t see any other way. Are you going to castigate me for it?”

  “No.” He voice sounded too even, strained over some unreleasable emotion. “I want to know if you think we should leave.”

  “Leave New York?” I searched his face for despair or anger or a shift in his ordinary background of bitterness. I found, instead, doubt.

  “Of course not. This boardinghouse of Spector’s. Deedee and I could take a draft from the bank, and stay at any hotel we cared to, without anyone squinting and trying to eavesdrop whenever we walked through the lobby. We could pick a place at random; that would make it harder for them to find us. We could try to track down Freddy before the feds do—maybe even get these aliens out of the way before that ass Barlow decides they’re Russians in rubber suits.” The plan fell from his lips in a rush, his breathing at the end short and shallow.

  It was tempting. The thought of meeting Barlow and Peters again made me shudder. I carried enough painful memories that I couldn’t afford to flee for shudders alone, but these people were a real danger to our family. At best, they thought us an artifact of another generation’s threats—the last remnants of the deadly cults that had supposedly plagued the ’20s. At worst, they believed us an ally of this generation’s threats. And whatever we did, they saw as proof.

  Yet the thought of investigating on our own frightened me as well. “If we hide from Barlow’s team, they’ll be hidden from us as well. And they’d find our cousin first. We’re lost trying to find him on our own, we’ve already said so.”

  “I know. Oh, void, Aphra, I don’t know at all.” He pulled a cigarette from his pocket, twitched the unlit stick between his fingers. “They’re dangerous to work with, and dangerous to hide from. If they get to the Outer Ones before we do, they could start a war. I don’t know how we could stop one even if we were there. And what they’d do if they walked in on Freddy with gills half-formed, I don’t want to think about. It might be worth staying close, just to be first in that door by half a second.”

  “I … yes. And if they try some spectacularly stupid spell, there’s a chance we could talk them out of it, or warn Spector. New York’s … there are a lot of people here. I don’t think Mary would make the same mistake twice, but even she seems attached to looking for new ones.” And the kind of cold, unearthly creature that had tried to consume us at Miskatonic would find richer and denser prey in the city. “I hate to say it, but let’s work with them for now. Cautiously. We can strike out on our own if things go really sour.”

  Late in the afternoon the following day, Spector reappeared. Today’s suit was darker, crisper, and more clearly armor. “They’re here,” he said. “You should come meet them.”

  * * *

  On the train, I spoke to Nyarlathotep. You can pray to any of the gods, but with Nyarlathotep, traditionally, you also converse—and you prepare not to like, or understand, the answers.

  You offer people what they ask for, however dangerous. I begged for help in our search, and you sent it. If you are the one who tempts Barlow with dangerous knowledge, if he is your fool, so be it. But please, lead him to dance the cliff’s edge as far as possible from my family.

  I might have been less selfish, and asked the Thousand-Faced God to guide Barlow away from anyone who might be hurt. I might have begged for Freddy’s safety. But It rarely rewards broad altruism. Nyarlathotep is patron of forbidden knowledge and dangerous journeys and many other things, but self-love and specificity run through all of them.

  Barlow’s hotel reminded me not at all of the Gilman. The lobby was velvet and crystal, the staff uniformed and vigilant.

  “Don’t you have a local office?” asked Caleb.

  “Not where we could talk freely about this case,” said Spector. “And while George isn’t afraid to sleep on the ground, he doesn’t turn down luxury if it’s on offer, either.”

  In the elevator, I braced myself. The young negro man in his gold-buttoned scarlet flicked cold eyes across our motley group. I sent another quick prayer to Nyarlathotep, that this test might not be too onerous—and then, thinking better, prayed instead to Cthulhu for patience. The Sleeping God rarely offers help, and so offers the most reliable comfort.

  Mary Harris answered the door, of course: still playing secretary on a cursory level. She greeted us politely, but reserved a brilliant smile for Trumbull. “Catherine! I hoped you’d be along.”

  The two exchanged an enthusiastic handclasp, and were already deep in mathematical esoterica as Mary led us to where the others sat. The absurdly large room gave them time for such equationing. Abundant open space framed the carven and upholstered furniture. Doors suggested private bedrooms discreetly tucked away, but Barlow’s team seemed to have unpacked most of their materials in the common area. They’d hung a map on the wall, and a chalkboard. Another slate lay on the floor, marked up with unfamiliar symbols, but no magic seemed to be in process. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  Despite Mary’s enthusiastic greeting of her one-time collaborator, I noticed that their descent into technical camaraderie gave her an excellent excuse not to meet anyone else’s eyes.

  Nor did her own enthusiasm cover for her teammates’ lack. Barlow nodded at Caleb, a bare civility. “Ron tells me your cousin is among our missing.”

 
Caleb glanced at me. “Frederick Laverne,” I confirmed. “His mother didn’t report his disappearance.”

  “Why not?” asked Peters. “Is he involved with something?”

  Barlow put his hand out, palm down, discouraging this line of questioning. “Mr. Marsh. Miss Marsh. We’ll be glad to hear what you know about the boy, but there’s no reason for you to take part in our investigation. And plenty of reason for you not to.”

  “George, I’ve already told you—” began Spector, but subsided when Barlow made the same gesture at him. The reflex of their past collaboration showed.

  I swallowed both the fear Barlow’s presence raised and the instinct to defer, or to defend myself. He had no right to judge us. “Mr. Spector works with us for a reason, Mr. Barlow, and we with him. He assures us that you’re good at finding people, and I’m willing to take his word for it. Why won’t you take his word for our skills?”

  “It’s not your skills that worry me.”

  Mary put a hand on Barlow’s arm. “Mr. Barlow. I trust both their skills and their willingness to cooperate when they say they will. And really, would you rather have them running around investigating independently? You know they will.”

  Peters snorted. “If you’re worried about another Detroit, that’s a pretty poor recommendation.”

  “I’m not saying that.” She smiled, ducking her head. “Just that you can’t ask people not to help their own families, not and have it stick. I want to hear what they think about these Mi-Go.”

  Deedee pulled out a chair, sat gracefully. She smiled at Barlow, eyes downcast, and I saw the choreography plain in her movements and Mary’s. “Mi-Go?”