Infinity Key (Senyaza Series Book 2)

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  Branwyn shook her head. “But Jaimie is. We can see the magic.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” said Rime, and tapped her lip with a long, blue-burnished fingernail. “You are so persistent. I suppose it’s part of what makes you special. What to do, what to do.”

  “Let him go?” suggested Branwyn brightly. Rhianna clutched her arm as the faerie in the shadowy corner shifted, leaning forward, and Branwyn wondered what her sister had noticed about him. Branwyn herself couldn’t spare attention from Rime to give him a good look.

  “Don’t be silly. He’s mine. Let’s see. You have a role yet to play, so I should just send you on your way with your little entourage. But you’re like a little yapping dog, aren’t you? Bark, bark, bark, and you’ve even shown me your teeth. No, I didn’t miss your clumsy attempt at a meaningless threat, little thing. There must be discipline.”

  Branwyn sneered. “Oh, please.”

  Rime looked around the studio. “All protected, I see. Ah—” and she smiled and put her palm on the clear panel separating the booth from the recording area. Branwyn could feel the pulse of magic that poured off her and turned to follow Rime’s gaze. She inhaled sharply as she realized that not everybody who had come with her had protection against malicious magic.

  Howl, standing with Jaimie and the band, slowly raised his head and looked over at Rime, his eyes extremely wide. Smirking, she crooked her finger and he ran toward her, straight into the clear panel. As he reeled backwards, clutching his head, she giggled delicately, like tiny ice crystals shattering, and turned her attention back to Branwyn. “So—”

  “Hell with that!” Branwyn launched herself at Rime, pulling the Key out of her pocket as she did. The faerie woman stumbled backward into the recording console, throwing her hand up as her eyes widened. Branwyn pushed Rime’s hand aside and slammed the Key against the faerie’s chest. “I tried to talk. I tried to negotiate. I did. God knows I’m not good at it. But you had to go and fuck with my little brother.”

  She ground the Key against Rime’s skin, feeling it expand and change under her fingers in response to her rage. “Nobody does that but me. Now take your nasty magic off of them—all of them—before I convince this Machine it wants to be inside your heart.” She saw fear in Rime’s eyes and felt only a vengeful satisfaction.

  “Branwyn—” squeaked Rhianna in a strangled voice, and—

  “Lord—” whimpered Rime and—

  The shadow in the corner moved. Branwyn saw it only from the corner of her eye but she felt it pass over her; it was the same kind of psychic domination she’d felt twice before. The flavor was different, though. New. It was not Severin or Hunter, but somebody else.

  Ebony hands reached past her and plucked at Rime. One came away with a palm full of light, while the other had a fistful of darkness. Rime gasped, then her face froze like a statue’s and she fell away.

  At first, Branwyn thought she was just collapsing, but it was more than that: she was literally crumbling to dust. Whatever had animated her body was gone, and without it, she wasn’t going to even leave a corpse. With an inarticulate cry, Branwyn pulled her hands away from the faerie remains. She swung around, the Key still held like a weapon in her outstretched fist, reacting even as she struggled to keep up with what had happened.

  The man from the shadows stood to her side, his hands out. The palmful of light spread around his hand as she moved; he hurled the fistful of darkness into the air. Something rushed past Branwyn up through the ceiling. Then the violet-haired, silver-eyed man moved his hand out to catch Branwyn’s fist. “Careful,” he said. His voice was deep and sonorous. “We don’t want to damage the Key.”

  “You mean you don’t want it to damage you,” Branwyn snarled. She finally realized why Rhianna had been watching him so closely. He was the faerie from some of the videos that had been going around.

  The Duke of Nightwell raised his eyebrows. “Do you think it is infinitely powerful? Or is it only that Tarn has misinformed you?” He moved his hand from Branwyn’s fist to the shaft of the Key jutting out, hooking two fingers around it. Touching it didn’t seem to bother him. He certainly didn’t turn to dust, even when Branwyn ground the Key against his fingers.

  “Well, it certainly wasn’t healthy for Rime, so—”

  “It wasn’t,” agreed the Duke of Nightwell. “You surprised her. It would have damaged her greatly, and she would have distorted the Key. We couldn’t have that. So I tore her free of its grip and sent her back to the elements. She will reform in time.”

  Branwyn frowned up at him, replaying the last thirty seconds in her mind. “You mean you killed her?”

  “Ladies, things are getting weird out here!” came Simon’s shout from outside the studio.

  “Ah,” said Nightwell. “Her pets. Let me just—” and without unhooking his fingers from around the Key, he waved his other hand. The light still limning it vanished, sinking into his skin. “As for you, my little Artificer—” He gave her an appraising look. “I can see you’re quite disturbed by my vassal’s choice in pets. We have taken what we needed from the band beyond, and I don’t share her tastes. So I will release them back to you. But you must promise to complete your work swiftly.” He let go of the Key and chucked Branwyn under the chin gently, as if she was a child.

  She mastered her rage enough to say, “What about the rest of them?”

  He smiled lazily. “We’ll see. Now do run along before I change my mind.”

  Branwyn drew in a deep breath. It was clear that just as Rime had, he valued her, or what she was doing for Tarn. That was leverage. She could—

  Rhianna grabbed her arm and pulled her hard. “Come on.”

  “What? Rhianna—”

  “Come on,” Rhianna said between her teeth. “Marley, help me get her out of here before somebody else gets killed.”

  Marley grabbed Branwyn’s other arm and the two of them started to hustle Branwyn out of the booth. After a brief internal struggle, Branwyn opted for dignity and turned to walk between them. It was that or be dragged backward, looking into the Duke of Nightwell’s laughing eyes.

  -twenty two-

  Howl went home with the band in their van, since from their perspective, the gig was done and he'd told Jaimie about the “misunderstanding” he needed to sort out with Holly. Dark-eyed and with a headache, Howl said they'd stop for flowers along the way. Meanwhile, Rhianna and Marley escorted Branwyn to Marley’s car and stayed with her. She was in the back seat. They were in the front. It wasn’t the most empowering of configurations, but it suited Branwyn. She had thinking to do.

  She looked out the car window and listened to Rhianna and Marley talk about her. It was clear they were worried. She didn’t know why. Sure, they’d dragged her away from a confrontation with a half-unleashed creature of unknown power who thought it was reasonable to strip the free will away from dozens and dozens of people. Sure, they’d forced her to flee with only her loved ones, like a coward. Sure, they’d tried to make a choice for her.

  But she wasn’t angry, no matter what they thought.

  At least, she wasn’t angry at them.

  “I’d like to go see Penny,” she said as they passed near the hospital. “You can drop me off here.”

  Marley tried to catch her eyes in the rearview mirror, but Branwyn looked out the window again. “What are you going to do now, Branwyn?”

  “Go see Penny,” Branwyn repeated patiently.

  Marley sighed, pulled the car over, then turned around to look into the back seat. “You’re not done with the faeries yet, are you?”

  Branwyn laughed humorlessly. “How can we ever be done? With faeries or monsters or angels or nephilim?” Marley flinched but Branwyn wasn’t sorry. “This is the world we live in. The only way to be done would be to be dead, and even then I’m not convinced.”

  “There was a balance at least, before the faeries started coming back,” said Rhianna. Branwyn shot her a glance, wondering once again what exactly her organizati
on knew. Hell, what exactly her organization was and what her sister’s place was in it all.

  “Maybe that was true, but it wasn’t a balance that humans were involved in.”

  “I really think some humans—” began Marley.

  “I wasn’t,” said Branwyn sharply. She caught herself, stuffed her emotions back down again, recaptured the voice of calm reason. “Try not to worry, Marley. Why should you? Don’t you know what’s happening?” She held out a hand to her friend. “What do you see?”

  “I don’t know,” said Marley tightly. “There’s a lot of bad that could happen and a lot of bad that already has and I haven’t been able to stop any of it. I don’t think you’re going to die, but that’s hardly the worst thing that could happen to you.” Branwyn remembered Hunter and nodded involuntarily. Marley went on. “Tell me what you’re going to do. That helps focus my vision.”

  “I wasn’t joking about going to see Penny, you know. After that, I… don’t know.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.

  “It isn’t a gift, you know,” said Marley, subdued. “It’s never worked to give me concrete information. I only ever know ‘something bad may happen.’ It’s a curse. The only useful thing I can do is protect.”

  “You helped get Jaimie back. And you were ready to rescue me from Hunter.” Branwyn wrapped her hand around Marley’s. “That matters.”

  Marley squeezed her hand hard for a long moment, then let go. “I’ll go try to put kindergarten charms on everybody back at your mom's house. I don't trust that guy from the videos. Call me if… you know. I can help.”

  Branwyn turned to her little sister. “You heard her. Whatever I do is going to be dangerous. Do you have any advice for me? Any tips? Any secret handshakes?”

  Rhianna gazed at her with a studied innocence. “I don’t know. Given that I don’t want any more of those bastards on the streets, should I be trying to stop you?”

  “I haven’t thought about it,” said Branwyn casually. Then she added, “But maybe.”

  Rhianna toyed with something in her hand. Then she said, “I trust you,” and opened her fingers. In her palm was the silver courtkey that allowed Branwyn to open her own doors to Underlight. She held it up, offering it back to Branwyn.

  Branwyn snatched it up, growling under her breath. Unabashed, Rhianna said, “I’m going back to work soon. They want me to bring back souvenirs. But I’ll just pick up some postcards.”

  “Wait,” said Branwyn. She pulled out her mundane, day-to-day keychain and unclipped the key to her old studio. Then she pulled out the Machine key and concentrated for a while. When she was done, the old studio key had the same kind of nascent node that she’d given Simon’s knife. It was very small, but she thought perhaps it would eventually be good for unlocking very small things. She offered it to Rhianna. “Give them that.”

  Rhianna hesitated, then wrapped her fingers around Branwyn’s and the key. “I don’t know what they’ll do with it.”

  Branwyn found a little smile somewhere. “Unpredictable, are they? A bit like the faeries, I guess.”

  Her sister smiled back. “Maybe a bit. Thank you.” She took the key and tucked it away.

  Branwyn slid out of the car, walking briskly away. For a moment, the world around her brightened, and she felt safe, like she had as a little girl curled up in her mother's bed. She looked back over her shoulder, at Marley looking out at her. Marley shrugged sheepishly and Branwyn turned and kept walking, ignoring the pleasant light. About a block from the car, which stayed still, the brightness tingeing the world faded back to dull normalcy. She could suddenly smell the smog. And she felt like an adult again, making her own choices, alone against the world.

  Well, almost alone. Friends mattered, even without magic.

  She went to see Penny. There was a new bunch of flowers in the vase, and a fresh edition of Eclipse beside the bed. Penny’s mother’s perfume lingered in the room, but only Penny was there, pale and shallowly breathing. The monitor beeped, very slowly. Branwyn didn’t make a long visit of it, and when she was done, she knew what she had to do next.

  She made her way to her old studio. The fact that she’d just given the studio key away turned out to be a mild inconvenience, but it took only a little work to open the door. There was probably a lesson there about making spontaneous symbolic gestures, but Branwyn didn't regret it.

  She dug around in her store of materials until she found what she needed. Then she set to work. It took particular concentration, but not nearly as much time as it once would have, When she was done, she collapsed into the sagging couch in the center of her studio and fell asleep.

  She was exhausted and she slept a long time. When she woke up, it was the middle of the next day. The only message on her phone was a new video from the channel she'd subscribed to. She watched it contemplatively, then looked out the window at the sky for a long moment. Eventually she turned away, back to packing up her work.

  The silver key to Underlight didn’t open the door the way it used to. It slid in easily, and when she turned it, she could feel it catch—but the door seemed stuck. Branwyn frowned and focused her Sight on the door. She could see the double entity: the magic door to Underlight, and the prosaic door to her family’s home. It wasn’t anything like as complex as the sealed portal in Tarn’s gallery, and Branwyn had no patience for its moods. “Don’t make me fix you,” she warned it. “I’ve got a package explicitly requested by your master and I’m going to deliver it, whether or not you want to allow it.”

  The door relented and stopped clinging to its frame. Although it wasn’t the door, was it? That was just a thing imbued with celestial magic. It was the realm itself that had been resisting her presence. Tarn was trying to avoid her again.

  Tough luck for him. Branwyn opened the door and went through.

  He was waiting for her. But before he could speak, she swung the package she’d brought out from under her arm. It was quite large and flat. “Here you go,” she said. “You commissioned this, back at the beginning of this adventure. I don’t think you really cared about it, but I don’t like loose ends.”

  Wordlessly, Tarn accepted the package, pulling away the paper wrappings. Within was a mirror set into an iron frame. The mirror itself was half the height of a man. The frame was simple, but carefully made, with restrained scrollwork at each corner. Tarnished silver ornamentation, starting with the phases of the moon and moving on to more esoteric symbols, had been welded to the frame. Branwyn had gone with whatever her imagination could provide.

  “I figured out what to do,” Branwyn went on. “I mean—I used the Machine Key as a template to wake it up. It’s sleeping now, but I think it will grow into something. I tried to give it suggestions. It might help to put it in the moonlight when the full moon comes around again.”

  Tarn looked at the mirror for a long moment, his fingers brushing the decoration, then touching the place in the center of the mirror where Branwyn had gathered the Geometry lattice into a living node. “Branwyn,” he finally said, looking at her. “What does this mean?”

  Branwyn shrugged and repeated, “I don’t like loose ends.”

  “I see,” he said gravely. “It is well done. I shall treasure it.”

  Branwyn tensed for another little earthquake, but none came. Perhaps he was telling the truth. Or maybe she'd never understood the earthquakes, not really. Privately, she thought she could have done better with the mirror’s design, but she’d wanted to finish it and he’d given her so few guidelines. Because, of course, he hadn’t wanted it in the first place. It had always been about the Machine Key.

  William materialized out of the darkness to take the mirror from his master’s hands. Branwyn did a double-take. “You’re alive!”

  He gave her a familiar cool look, but didn’t say anything. Tarn put his hand on William’s shoulder. “Did you doubt? Take the mirror to my private chamber, William.”

  William vanished as silently as he’d appeared and Tarn crossed his arms, gazing at Bra
nwyn calmly.

  Branwyn looked back at him. After a moment, she said, “So, where’s the third Machine I need to finish the Key?”

  Tarn frowned. “You wish to finish it? Even now?”

  “And after I just said I don’t like loose ends.” She snapped her fingers. “Come on, come on. Out with it.”

  His face lost all expression, but he didn’t waste her time with any more pointless questions. “I know of one place certain to have what you need. It is extremely well-guarded, but contains many Machine fragments.”

  “You’re not talking about Heaven, are you?” she said lightly.

  He didn’t smile. “No. I’m talking about Senyaza.”

  Branwyn swore, then stared at his serious face, then swore again. “Senyaza?”

  “Senyaza. Stronghold of the nephilim. The force that thwarted the Deluge and bound the angels to the Hush. Sometimes, they kill monsters,” Tarn reminded her helpfully. “They’ve collected many Machine fragments over the centuries. Part of their Repository is stored in the facility in your city.”

  “Okay then. And you have an in? You’ve convinced Senyaza to give up a fragment for the Key?” Branwyn said, equal parts hopeful and disbelieving.

  “No. This is my last resort. My only ‘in,’ as you put it, is you, Branwyn.”

  Branwyn gave him a sharp look. “What are you talking about?”

  He shrugged elegantly. “You are friends with Senyaza, or at least some of its people. Use them to get to the Machine fragments.” When she looked at him askance, he half turned away. “Or do not. I know how you value your friends.”

  She’d already committed to doing this. She couldn’t back down. But for a moment, she shied and wondered if storming Heaven would be preferable. There must be another way, she thought. But this was the other way. She was trying to make a complex tool tailored to perform a specific task, a task most people believed was impossible. Too often there was no way. She had to take this opportunity.