by Lee Isserow
“Shana?” she asked.
“It's customary to check it's the right person before you sit down. . .” Rafe muttered.
“You are the mirror girl?” Shana asked, with wide eyes and a wider smile.
“Mirror girl? Is that what you call me?” she glanced to Rafe, who shrugged.
“It is how Talika referred to you, she says you are an adept, is that correct? I have never met a mirror adept!”
“I guess, yeah. . . Can we back track to me having a name, and not just being 'Mirror Girl', because that's the worst superhero name since 'Squirrel Girl'. . .”
“Squirrel is not an adept. . .” Shana said, not inferring Ana's tone.
“You have to learn to pick through the sarcasm,” Rafe explained. Shana stared at him blankly, then returned her attention to Ana.
“You must tell me, how do you command the mirrors? Is it as simple as intent for a crack in-between realms, or do you have to actively fracture reality. I know that any crack will heal of its own accord, I have learned that much, but cannot yet break through, as one might with the easier adepts, such as light and fire―”
“Oh! You're a mirror fangirl!” Ana chuckled, as she worked out where Shana's enthusiasm was coming from.
“You must tell me everything, I have studied the adepts all my life, but know mirrors the least well.”
“You can study adepts?” she turned to Rafe and glared. “I want to study adepts.”
“We'll get on to that. . . How about you focus on, and master the one you already have first.”
“Boring!”
“Oh, mirror is not boring, I would say that it is the most exciting of all the adepts, more so than water or wind, fire or―”
“Shadow.” Rafe said, a steely reserve on the word.
Shana's smile fled in an instant, her eyes skirted to the ground.
“What just happened?” Ana asked. “Did I miss something?”
“Tali referred to the guy who sullied the wellsprings as a 'shadowman', he's an adept, isn't he?”
Shana refused to meet his eye, but gave a small nod.
“You know him?” Ana asked, to another nod.
“But. . .” Shana muttered. “I do not know why he would be doing this. . . He was a good man when I met him. . . A family man. He did not want to hurt a fly―”
“All things considered, he hasn't actually hurt anyone,” Rafe found himself saying, and retracted it fairly swiftly. “Not yet, anyway.”
In an instant, Shana's eyes flicked up to meet his. “He was changed, against his will. . . before he was just an adept. . . but he was changed, the shadows became as much a part of him as he was them. . . they filled him, the darkness.”
Rafe sat upright, a lump appeared in his throat, and a shiver ran down his spine. As Shana spoke of her friend, the man who was sullying the wellsprings, a good man who changed, he became all too aware that the story was a familiar one. He had seen the transition with his own eyes.
“He might have been a good man when you knew him,” he muttered. “But people can change.” His gaze settled on the table between them and he took a deep breath as he mulled over the facts presented.
“Not for a change this drastic, shadow is just shadow, it is not darkness, not evil, just shadow. I know what you are thinking and it is not what made him―”
Rafe's gaze snapped back to meet Shana's, and cut off her defence of her former friend.
“Everyone has a trigger.”
Chapter 9
The briefest moments of peace
Shadows exploded into being in the hallway of a quiet suburban house, followed by soft, near-silent footsteps that walked through from the darkness onto the carpet. There was a knot in his throat. Trepidation punctuated his every step. The house was so quiet, quieter than he could ever remember it being.
Jules could feel a cold sweat coming over his entire body, along with a shiver that was insistent on haunting him every moment he was back in the house. But there was nowhere else he could go, Not now the tasks for the night had been completed.
The silence was broken by soft sobbing in the living room. A pit began to form in his gut as he walked towards the door, and slowly pushed it open. The crying was louder, sharp intakes of breath pierced between the sobs. Slowly, he leaned into the room and caught sight of the man on the couch. His eyes were forked with red lightning, as he stared into middle distance, a tremble on his lip, body barely willing to respond, overwhelmed by the entire situation that had befallen them.
Jules stepped towards the man on the couch, which resulted in a sharp turn of the head, the red-stained eyes burned into him, relaying waves of anger and desperation, hopelessness and fear, blame and hate all at once.
And then the questions came.
"Where have you been? How could you go out at a time like this? Where's Natan? What have you been doing? Do you even care―”
He dropped to the couch, and embraced his partner, held the man he loved close, closer than ever before. "It's all going to be okay, Akif, I promise you.”
Akif pushed him away. “What do you mean it's all going to be okay? What is it, Jules? How is it going to be okay? Where the hell is our son?!”
“It's a long story," Jules said, as the shivers ran down his arms. His hands shook, but he took a breath, closed his eyes, and steadied them. Readied himself to doing something that he never wanted to have to do ever again.
He gritted teeth, he had promised their son that he would never use magick on Akif again. But these were extenuated circumstances. He could only just about keep his own head straight given the situation, and wasn't able to give his husband the support he needed. It was easier this way. Merciful. This would be a burden that he carried alone.
He forced the first and middle fingers of his right hand up, fought through the shakes, and drew out a clockwise circle. “It's all going to be okay.”
The fingers closed in on his palm, and he fought back the tears as he ran his other hand over the knuckles.
“I promise.”
Jules swallowed over the lump in his throat, and cast his fingers wide to seal the sigil. It felt as though the lightest puff of the air emanated from his open fist, and in an instant, the pupils of his husband's rheumy eyes shrunk to the size of pinpricks.
Akif sat there, motionless, emotionless, a void of calm. Jules was almost jealous at the notion of having a head so empty, all thoughts pushed back to the farthest reaches of the mind.
The envy did not last long.
The gravity and reality of the situation reared its ugly head once again. He was manipulating his partner for his own selfish ends. It was merciful, yes. But it was also a betrayal. Another of so many lies that he had perpetrated throughout their relationship, about who he was, what he was, and about what their son was.
Those lies were all coming to a head, this was the grand crescendo of his falsehoods. And a part of him, a cruel and self-destructive part, whispered in the back of his mind, telling him that this was exactly what he deserved. Jules tried to shake the thoughts away, reached over to Akif, and held him close.
He got no response, no reciprocation, for the man he loved was still mesmerised.
Jules took a deep breath, grabbed hold of the shadows from under his eyelids and created a thin barrier to keep the tears in. He would not let Akif see him cry, not now, given that he would have no memory of their pain―his pain.
In hushed tones he spoke into Akif's ear, told him that everything was fine, everything was normal, their son just up in his bedroom sleeping away, and they were going to spend the rest of the night holding one another, just as they did most nights.
He could not rely on the man he loved for emotional support in this desperate time, but if nothing else, he could receive tactile support.
Akif's arms slowly came to life, wrapped around Jules's back, and held him tight.
“He go to bed without a fuss? Akif asked, as his new memories took hold.
“After about six st
ories. . .” Jules said, over a lump in his throat.
“What was it this time?”
He searched his mind, desperately tried to recall any of the bedtime stories that he had told his son over the years. “Shaman in the Ethereal Forest.”
“Is that the one where he created a world?”
“A reality, layered over the top of this one.”
“To. . . hide something?”
“To hide one of the most powerful sources of magick in all the lands.”
“I like that one,” Akif said, as he nuzzled into him. “Doesn't rip off a fairy tale or Disney movie, and certainly isn't as gratuitous as some of the other stories. . .”
Jules held him close, tight, and was held tight in return. Akif could tell that Jules needed a hug, and knew him well enough to not ask why. He would tell him when the time was right, as he always did. He was always honest with him, always told him what was going on in his head, eventually.
The two of them passed out on the couch in the embrace. But Jules would not sleep well.
Despite the interaction with Shana, his incursions had been relatively easy, they had not been on guard, not yet. That would change as the sun came up. The Circle would be looking for him at the other wellspring sites. Expecting him. And if he weren't careful, he would walk right into whatever trap they had sprung for him.
He would have to do things he regretted―more than those he had already enacted. Panic would have set in across the magickal community, and the following days would bring more panic, perhaps violence, as much as it was not his nature.
For that moment, however, in the arms of the man he loved, who loved him equally in return, he would relish the briefest of moments of peace.
The calm before the inevitable storm.
Chapter 10
A walking tour of London
Rafe and Ana spent the rest of the night on a walking tour of London, as the scouted out the remaining three churches built above the wellsprings.
St. George's Bloomsbury was their first stop, and Ana found it curious how similar, and yet different it was to the church at Spitalfields, and the images she had seen of St George's in the East. The previous two had a certain symmetry to them, at least when viewed from the correct direction. Bloomsbury had pillars and a portico that were similar to Spitalfields, but the spire was off-centre, to the far left of the building, and looked as though it were tacked on at the last minute, as if Hawksmoor had designed it with some other purpose in mind―which was, of course, accurate.
“You're looking confused,” Rafe said, as he observed her expression.
“Why's the tower-thing all the way to the far end?”
Rafe made to answer, but Ana's eyes were already focussed on middle distance as she pulled from her memory of flipping through the mythogeography volume that mentioned Hawksmoor. Before he could respond, she proceeded to answer her own question.
“It was based on a Roman temple.”
“That it was.”
“What's 'Bacchus'?”
“Roman deity, drunkard.”
“Oh, the party god, yeah,” she said, as she cross-referenced with another text in her mind's eye.
“Deity, not a god.”
“You want to get into semantics now?”
“I don't want to get into semantics ever, but you can't go throwing the term 'god' around.”
“Seem to be doing it without a problem right now. . . Am I going to get struck down?” she looked up at the sky, theatrically waved her arms around as if to be beckoning lighting.
“When we say 'Gods', we tend to be referring to the Old Ones, from the Outer Realms―”
“I know. . .” Ana sighed.
“Deities tend to be magickians that have demonstrated their powers to the world at various times in the past―”
“We've been through this. . .”
“And have found themselves worshipped as a result―”
“You can stop talking now.”
“I'll stop talking when you stop using the incorrect term. . .”
“I'll stop using the incorrect term when you stop being pedantic.”
“Take it that means you're not going to stop using the wrong word then. . .”
“Unlikely,” she scoffed. “Nothing's going down here, shall we move on?”
He took another look around, and nodded. Despite the presence of a myriad Circle operatives hiding in plain sight, it appeared that there was no incursion. They were just waiting for the inevitable assault. And it would be inevitable. There was no point hitting just two of the Wellsprings, this was all in the service of some greater ritual, the point of which would likely not be clear until it was too late. . .
As Ana called a door, she shot a look back over her shoulder. “What did you say this place was?”
“The apothecary.”
“Glad I asked.”
“Basically a pharmacy”
“Like, a magick doctor?”
“Like a magick doctor, sure,” Rafe said, with an attempt to hold back sarcasm as he held the door open and ushering Ana ahead of him. “Those trained in the apothecarian arts can do anything from curing a cold to making a baby.”
“Like IVF?”
“Like IVF, but without the womb. . .”
“Well, that's creepy. . . Where does it gestate, in a box?”
Rafe decided that based on Ana's glib Python reference, it was best not to respond at all, and led the way around the gated park that encased St Luke's of Old Street.
As they walked around the north side of the church, Ana stopped dead in her tracks, eyes fixed on the windows of the church.
“Something's wrong. . .” she muttered, as she dispersed through the fence and walked across the grass towards the building.
“What?” Rafe asked, as he clumsily climbed the fence, rather than expend the unnecessary magick. He jogged across the park and stopped by the wall that had caught her eye.
Ana lay her hand on the old brickwork of the window, which was disjointed, cracked just before the centre, the left half an entire inch lower than the right, it angled down, sloped towards the ground, whilst the right half of the window was perfectly straight.
“It'd take big magick to crack reality like this, right?”
Rafe checked out the damage to the window that had caught her attention, and glanced up to the window above it, then the windows on either side, then the angle of the brickwork.
“Not magick,” he sighed, took a few steps back to look at the entire side of the building, then dropped to his knees and placed a hand on the ground. He closed his eyes as he cast a sigil on the grass and lay his palm at the centre. His eyes clicked open. “Subsidence. Nothing magick about it, the land was all boggy before. When they built it, it was probably more important to get a church up here than it was to dry out the ground first.”
“Oh. Well, that's boring,” Ana said with an exasperated sigh. She turned on her heel and walked back to the street. “Thought we had found our guy, and I'd get to do something fun. . .”
“You think it's going to be 'fun' when we track him down? Chances are it's going to be violent, probably messy, guy doesn't just start pooling magick with benevolent thoughts in mind. . . this is all in the service of some greater, darker plan. . . “
“Pooling? Really? You're just going to drop a pun whilst acting all serious and not expect me to call you on it?”
“Get a door,” Rafe grunted.
“What's this one, anyhows?” Ana asked, as a glossy black door pushed its way out from the white stone brickwork of the church.
“The safe.”
“Safe, like sanctuary? Aren't all churches sanctuaries?”
“This church is de-consecrated, so it's not technically a sanctuary. . . And no, not that kind of safe.”
“Like, storage of expensive things?”
“Dangerous things, rather than expensive. . .” Rafe said, as he looked up at the castle-like turrets of St Mary Magdalen, Bermondsey.
/> Ana cocked her head. “One of these things is not like the other. . .” she muttered to herself.
“Surprised you noticed.”
“Don't be surprised. I'm not a moron. Just because I don't know all the fancy words doesn't mean I can't tell the difference between architecture styles or whatever.”
“Succinctly put,” Rafe said, as he nodded politely to the doorway.
“Who are you nodding to?”
Rafe grabbed Ana's shoulders and spun her around on the spot, and pointed at the doorway. To her it just looked like a door. . . except somehow, the light was wrong, as if it was refracting through water.
“Circle agents?”
“Operatives. They've been stationed around every church. . . That's why this whole damn thing is a waste of time. Circle has it covered, we really don't need to be involved.”
“Is it that we don't need to be involved, or are you just freaking out because you're having to work adjacent to former friends and colleagues or whatever?”
Rafe didn't respond.
“Or. . . Are you just pissed about this whole thing, because it's yet another reminder of how you, y'know, have limited magicks. . .” She caught his eye, and a glare seemed to erupt on his brow. It trickled down across his whole face until the expression hit his lips, and burst out as a huff.
“Don't be like that. . .” she said, as he turned on his heel and continued to walk down the street.
He took a deep breath, and tried to clear his mind, focussed back on the matter at hand. Only a small portion of the church was on the street, so he went around the block to get into the expansive grounds behind it. It was only when he was half-way down the path between the lawns of the churchyard that he noticed Ana wasn't following him.
He backtracked his steps, and found her on the corner of the street, enamoured with a busker sat on a speaker that cranked out something tinny and classical, whilst he fiddled with sticks that appeared to be controlling a marionette that played the cello in time to the music.