by Nazri Noor
“It’s his first communion, Arachne,” I said. “We hope you find it acceptable that we’ve brought him along, to learn how to commune by starting with one of the kindest, most gracious entities I know.”
Somewhere behind me I swear Herald snorted. Asher kept slurping his boba. But Arachne smiled. Sometimes, depending on the entity, a different approach was needed to grease the wheels, but with almost all that I’d encountered, flattery was the choicest way to go.
“No harm done, Dustin Graves. And we see that he is indeed very enthusiastic about his learnings in the arcane. You are free to visit Arachne’s domicile whenever you wish, Asher Mayhew.” Her veils and all the silks in the chamber rustled when she tittered again, laughing softly with one hand over her mouth. “He’s certainly dealing with this new reality far better than you did when we first met, sweetling. Do you recall? In the words of your people I believe that you were, oh, how do you say it. Shitting your pants?”
“What?” I blustered, and thanked the light of her domicile for disguising the fact that my cheeks had gone searing red. “That’s ridiculous. I mean I – ”
Arachne held up one hand, the length of her arm glittering with the myriad jewels and trinkets she wore. “Enough pleasantries. Tell me what you need.” With her other hand she was already riffling through the plastic bag, as if to select the best of the fortune cookies out of an assortment that, naturally, all looked exactly the same.
“Information,” Herald said, with a brief bow of his head. “As we all know is your specialty, Arachne.”
She grinned. “How very correct.” She smashed a fortune cookie with one fist, dug out the little slip of paper with the fortune on it, then read it, chuckling. “This says that I will be lucky in love. How droll.” She crammed the entire mess – cookie, wrapper, fortune – in her mouth, chewing aggressively as shards and splinters of the little treat erupted from between her fangs. “And what do you need to know?”
“My father,” I blurted out. Herald fixed me with a look, but said nothing. “I asked you once if you could help me find him.”
“Ah. Of course.”
Arachne probed at the air around her, as if looking for something. Then, pinching at some seemingly invisible object with her thumb and forefinger, she tugged. In the light I could just barely make out the sheen of a strand of spider silk.
There must have been dozens, hundreds around her, each attached to one of the secret-finding spiders she kept under her employ, their tethers hanging around her invisibly until she needed them. She pulled on it again, like it was the rope of a small, delicate dinner bell. “Give my offspring time. They will come with what we need soon enough.”
“There’s another thing,” Herald said.
“Oh. Is there?”
I nodded. “We have reason to suspect that my old mentor is masquerading as me somehow. Using a glamour, maybe, or one of her enchantments. She was found stealing an artifact.”
Arachne pressed a long, taloned finger against the side of her temple, turning it like a screw. “How curious. Why would that be necessary? Why would she not simply take what she needed?”
Herald lifted a hand in agreement. “See, exactly. That’s why we’re here. We need your wisdom, and access to your network. Tell us what you can find, why this woman is impersonating Dustin. It seems so pointless.”
“Hey.”
“He’s so insignificant.”
“Seriously, Herald.”
“Now this,” Arachne said, a hand on her chin. “This demand is more complex. What would you have to offer in return, I wonder?”
Herald and I watched each other cautiously. “We need her help,” he muttered. “Your friends might have ways, but nothing like what she can do.”
Arachne stretched her neck out and spoke louder. “Is that a ‘Yes,’ sweetling?”
I chewed my lip and eyed her carefully. “What would we have to give in return, Arachne?”
“Oh, such trifling matters can be discussed at a later date.” She grinned widely, her teeth like perfect chips of malachite. “If you had asked for something smaller, I would have continued to offer my aid. But this is quite a demand. For now, consider it my last gift. A final favor. But no more. From this point on, anything you ask of me or my brood will involve payment more expensive than, say, a handful of fortune cookies.”
She laughed again, one hand over her mouth, the other waving dismissively, as if she had practiced this very gesture in the past. It looked like she was pantomiming, trying to be human. Technically, Arachne was human once. Still, it felt too measured, too deliberate. She seemed to be trying to put us at ease, but it only made me that much more apprehensive.
Asher was switching his gaze rapidly between the three of us, the fat, huge straw of his tea drink still stuffed in his maw. He wouldn’t have looked out of place with a bag of popcorn in his hand, really. He might have been new to this, but even he could sense the potential severity of Arachne’s payment.
“Dude,” Herald said softly. “She’s given you enough freebies as it is. This is your investment. Whatever she demands from now on, that’s Future Dustin’s problem. Sure as hell beats being attacked by vampires every night. Do it.”
I stared at Arachne resolutely. This wasn’t about burgers. Someone out there had stolen my identity. Someone was wearing my face. And if it was Thea, then we needed some way to find her, so I could put something sharp into her heart and stop her fucking our lives up, once and for all.
I nodded.
Arachne clapped her hands together and squealed. She was far, far too happy about this. “Excellent, sweetling.” She raised her head, then cooed. “And what timing, too. Here comes my offspring to deliver what she’s discovered of your father.”
One of Arachne’s secret-spiders descended from the ceiling, its strand of web so fine that it looked like it was floating towards me. On its back was a bright blue gem. Through some form of magic, these bejeweled spiders were connected to Arachne with bonds even stronger than her regular children, making it so they could flawlessly store and convey information to their many-legged mother. It made her a fantastic resource for intelligence, and possibly a very terrible enemy to have.
I held out my hand as the spider descended, and when it was only feet away I noticed that it had its legs wrapped around something glimmering. A gem? What the – no. It was the plastic wrapper of a fortune cookie, the same brand that we always brought Arachne.
The spider landed gently in my palm, deposited the fortune cookie, then ascended into the ceiling once again, the sapphire on its back turning into a bright blue speck as it disappeared into the darkness.
“A cookie?” I said, hoping that my confused expression wouldn’t offend Arachne.
“With information on your father,” she said, her head raised with confidence and, I thought, what looked like triumph.
I knew these entities were crazy. Who knew why these gods and demons and mythological creatures wanted to be so obtuse about everything, but hey, they came from a different time. There was no sudoku to pass the time and shit, no porn, so it was all about the riddles.
This all grumbled inside of my head as I unwrapped the fortune cookie, then split it in half. I pulled out the tiny scroll of paper, unfurled it, and read the words printed there. I couldn’t help myself. My mouth fell open.
“What is it?” Asher asked, his mouth a perfect, dumbstruck mirror of my own.
“An address. It’s my dad’s address.”
Chapter 4
Herald’s face scrunched with every passing second, driven slowly to annoyance and insanity by every tiny slurping sound.
“Asher. Seriously. Aren’t you done with that stupid thing?”
Asher stopped chewing, swallowed thickly, then gave him a wide-eyed look. “I wouldn’t want to waste it. Come on, dude. Lemme finish my drink.”
Herald bared his teeth. It was kind of amusing seeing him get so worked up over something so dumb, but that was part of being friends with Iga
rashi. He was so chill, and calm, and level-headed, until he wasn’t.
“They’re tapioca balls, for God’s sake. Just throw the damn thing out. Surely that lich boss of yours pays you enough that you don’t have to scrimp and save on every little thing.”
I chuckled. “Let him be, Herald. You try being locked up in a room for years. Everything’s new to him, so it’s a fun experience. Right, Asher?”
Grateful, I suppose, for the little defense, Asher gave me a small smile. I was the one who suggested we try out some boba – which he clearly loved, quite unlike kombucha, which he spat out on first contact. We were on a park bench not far from the alley where Arachne’s sigil was tethered. She’d let us go after handing me my father’s actual, physical new home address inside of a fortune cookie.
We were in Heinsite Park, specifically. It was the same place I’d been abducted for my ritual murder, the same place I first met Sterling and Gil the night they tried to kidnap me, and the same place I discovered that I could finally cast a spell by lighting a vampire on fire. Good times, good memories.
Asher had been sucking on his boba tea the entire time, astoundingly unbothered as he was by both Arachne’s appearance and that of her offspring, something which was clearly driving Herald to the brink of madness. With a last, exaggerated slurp, Asher hoovered up the rest of the tapioca balls, crumpled up his empty cup, then tossed it in the garbage.
“There. I’m done. No need to be so pissy about it.”
Herald gritted his teeth. Asher reached his hand out towards me, palm open, and I handed him the little slip of paper with the address on it. He clearly didn’t know enough of the outside world to do anything with that information, but his specific portfolio of arcane power meant that he had a way of sniffing out life energy.
It was extremely limited in range, a severely watered-down version of what the Lorica’s Eyes could do with their scrying, but the extent of his ability was really all I needed. I just wanted him to reach out and sense if my dad was okay.
Asher closed his fingers around the fortune, his eyes shutting gently. A faint mantle of green energy began to pulse around his closed fist. The fact that he needed to actually handle the slip of paper told me that he had, in addition to the strange range of abilities necromancers possessed, access to a kind of psychometry. He required an object attached to the person in question, and the rest, pardon the expression, was magic.
The green light cloaking his hand faded, and he opened his eyes. “He’s alive.”
My heart leapt.
“But not necessarily well.”
My heart pounded. “What do you mean? Is he sick? Is he dying?”
Asher deposited the slip of paper in my hand, then leaned back on the bench. “Not exactly, but there’s something off about his register. His aura felt dark, troubled.”
I bit my lip. “That makes sense. He’s been depressed since my mom died, and he’s been doing a lot of drinking. Well, more than he’s used to.”
“That must be it. Whatever it is, it’s taking its toll on his mind, his body, his spirit.”
I stared at the piece of paper in my hand, then looked up piteously at Herald.
“No,” Herald said, frowning. “Absolutely not. You’re thinking of seeing him, aren’t you?”
I barely had a chance to open my mouth when Herald cut in again.
“You’re forgetting the part where you’re supposed to be dead. Well and truly dead, as far as the normals are concerned. What about the Veil, Dustin?”
“Fuck the Veil,” I spat.
The Lorica was so keen to keep up appearances, to ensure that the rest of Valero, no, that the rest of the human world didn’t know about the arcane underground that coexisted in the same layer of reality as the regular world.
The Veil was the pact we mages held to keep regular humans – the normals – from learning about the supernatural. But the city had already been invaded by shrikes once, and its botanical gardens grown over with a hell-plant the size of a skyscraper.
How often could the Lorica send out its Mouths to erase the normals’ memories, to make them forget what they saw? And what did that grand scale of destruction and fuckery matter in the end if it meant that I didn’t have the chance to patch things up with my father? That was all I wanted. I’d fight to protect Valero, and I’d fight to stop Thea, but reconnecting with my dad? Didn’t I deserve that one little thing?
But before I could put any of that into words, a motorcycle revved its engine, pulling up angrily, it felt like, to the sidewalk. It was the kind of noise that belonged to a machine that belonged to a man who loved nothing more than the adoration and attention of the general public.
Ugh.
“Don’t look now,” Herald said. “Here comes Bastion.”
It was anyone’s guess, really, how he could find us so easily, but Sebastion Brandt had worked at the Lorica long enough to establish a sort of clout. That meant that he had a little influence over the Eyes, enough to ask them for small favors about locating a certain extremely handsome shadow mage. As big of a douche as he was, Bastion had just enough charm to get his way. Shame that it was offset by such a terrible personality.
He leapt off his bike then ripped off his helmet, the one with the blue flames on the side, shaking his blond hair loose like he thought he was in some perfume commercial. But there was something slightly different about Bastion that day. Normally he would have taken his time to saunter, savoring the opportunity to taunt me. But this time he was walking towards me briskly. A little too briskly. And his hands were both in fists.
“Oh,” Asher said. “He looks super pissed, dude.”
“Really? What tipped you off?” I fingered my jacket and picked it up off the bench, ready to shadowstep in case this meant real trouble.
“I think he wants to rip your head off.”
My ass had barely left the bench when Bastion grabbed me by the collar. He pulled me uncomfortably close, eyes piercing, cheeks red as he stared me down.
“The fuck were you thinking, Graves?”
I held my hands up. “Wow. Okay. Nice to see you too, Brandt.”
The last time we saw each other was at a getting-to-know-you dinner hosted by Carver, one that was meant to forge slightly friendlier ties between the Boneyard and the few members of the Lorica I considered my closer friends.
Nothing about Bastion was very friendly in that moment.
“Bastion, put him down.”
I knew that voice. I stood on my toes and stretched my neck as far as it could go, watching as Prudence Leung hopped out of a car and hurried towards us. Her hair sailed in the breeze as she ran, and I watched her fists for the telltale blue mantle of fire that meant she was about to punch shit and break it apart. Nothing there today, fortunately.
“What the hell is going on?” Herald said. Asher only watched, transfixed.
Bastion, as if he would ever let anyone forget, was among the Lorica’s most powerful Hands. Prudence was one of them, too. He was telekinetic, able to lift and tear things apart with just the force of his mind, while Prudence could wreathe her fists and her feet in mystic flame, then use her martial arts expertise to utterly crush and break things, from bricks to bones. Both, incidentally, were also fairly skilled magic users, which only complicated matters.
“I said put him down, Bastion.” Prudence stood with her hands at her hips, breathing heavily, winded from her run. “There’s got to be a logical explanation for this. We’re not sure that Dust did it.”
“Did what?” I pulled a finger under my collar, wondering when Bastion was going to finally let go of me.
“I thought we agreed to stay out of each other’s hair,” he said. “You stick to your business, and we stick to ours. That includes not breaking into my family’s mansion to steal heirlooms.” He stabbed a finger at my chest, way too close to the scar Thea left above my heart. Bad move.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” I shoved Bastion in the chest with b
oth hands, something he clearly didn’t expect – or appreciate. His face reddened even further as he stumbled away from me. And did he say mansion? “Prudence. What’s he talking about? You’ve got your head on straight. I’m sure you can explain without acting like a complete gorilla.”
Bastion seethed.
Prudence rolled her eyes. “The two of you, settle. Someone broke into Brandt Manor. They riffled around the place. It seemed like they were looking for magical objects. According to the security gargoyles and the camera footage, it was someone who looked like you.”
“It didn’t just look like him,” Bastion growled, thrusting a finger bare inches from my face. “It was him.”
I swatted his hand away. “I’m sick and fucking tired of people accusing me of being places I wasn’t.” I laughed, though it was totally humorless, the kind of chuckle that spills out of you from disbelief and exasperation. “And Brandt Manor? Is that some kind of joke?”
Prudence shook her head. Bastion looked like he was about to burst into flames. Herald shrugged. Asher looked between us, eyes wide.
“Wait.” I said, my voice softer. “Your family has a manor?” I was curious. I mean, aren’t you?
“Not the point, Graves. Now tell me why you broke in, and tell me what you wanted. No one endangers my family like that.”
Bastion waved his hand across his face, palm outward, and slivers of shimmering energy trailed in the motion. Around us, the air gleamed, as if it had been turned into glass. Prudence groaned, and I followed suit.
This was Bastion’s favorite thing as of late. He specialized in two things. The first was using his ability to pick up and throw things as projectiles, turning something as innocent as loose pebbles into a hail of gunfire. The second – and he was good at this part, too – was erecting invisible shields, which made him both an offensive and defensive asset to the Lorica.
