by Anton Strout
Rory hopped on a stool behind the counter bar and simply stared at him.
“What?” he asked.
“Do you not even hear what you are saying sometimes?” she asked back. “On behalf of all women everywhere, I think my reproductive organs literally just crawled farther up inside me.”
Marshall was on the verge of responding, but startled as he looked down at floor level.
“Bricksley!” he said with a nervous laugh. “You scared the crap out of me.”
My tiny brick golem looked up at Marshall, his face ever the happy, painted-on smile and wide-eyed expression.
“Sorry,” I said, heading to the ingredients I had laid out on the counter earlier. “I’m a sloppy cook and set him about Roomba-ing.”
Rory joined me the way she used to when we took over the kitchen on Gramercy from my mother. As usual, it quickly turned into me fighting her on overspicing everything.
“It’s my Latina heritage!” she protested, slamming her spoon-clenching fist against her chest.
“I like spice,” I said, “but don’t blame your heritage on the atrocity you’re committing in my kitchen. You just have a bad palate and overdo it.”
She started to argue, but she knew I was right, and gave in to the evening and just had fun with it.
After stowing Bricksley away, I invited my parents up from downstairs to join us for dinner, where we avoided talking about both the arcane and my run-in with my father’s spiritual counselor. The former was a subject they were aware of but chose to avoid, and the latter simply gave me the wiggins that I simply didn’t want to mention his name.
Marshall cleaned, claiming it was the least he could do although the least-that-could-be-done award went to my father, who headed back downstairs to attend to more of his business right after the meal. But Marshall’s contribution was welcome.
The whole affair warmed me, reminding me of a simpler time—one before men of stone, mad cultists, and Rory’s mastering medieval French weapons.
After my mother left, the three of us sat around the partially furnished living room enjoying each other’s company, and, for a second, I felt normal, but eventually all spells must be broken, and all good things must come to an end.
“I’ve another surprise,” I said. “I thought we might go over our notes from the last couple of outings. If I’m ever going to master Spellmasonry, I need to be able to not only control stone, I need to be able to do all the things that Alexander Belarus did. I still can’t seem to control any stone creature larger than Bricksley, and I’m light-years away from figuring out how to build something like Stanis. There’s something that I’m missing in the process. We just need to figure out what that is. And it wouldn’t hurt to stumble across how to make a lot of Alexander’s concoctions that we’ve been using up. The Kimiya is starting to look like a very finite supply these days. We need to step up our experimentation.”
Rory sighed, sitting up in her chair. “You want to head up to Gramercy now?”
I shook my head.
“That’s the surprise,” I said. “I thought we might do it here.”
“But what about the experiments and equipment?” Marshall asked. “What about your supplies?”
“We have a lot of the alchemical mixes on the premises,” I said, “and I’ve been moving some of the other supplies down here. I thought it might be nice to have a change of venue.”
Rory sat forward. “You mean . . . ?”
I nodded. “My great-great-grandfather’s guild hall,” I said. “I know how hard you’ve both been working on this with me. I appreciate it, but the idea of dragging the two of you back to the haunting emptiness of Gramercy again just seemed cruel. I thought a change of venue might help. It took a lot of doing. Clearing away the debris of the building collapse was fairly easy, but trying to build this place on top of Alexander’s secret laboratory? I filed and refiled plans until I was blue in the face, changed construction companies at least half a dozen times. By the time it was done, I don’t think anyone working on Belarus South knows what truly lies beneath this building.”
“I am so jealous,” Marshall said. “Think of the game setup I could do down there with all that creepy, dungeony, carved stone.”
I smiled at Marshall. “If we can figure out how to create something like Stanis, you can throw your weekly games down here.” A twinkle of approval lit up in his eyes, and I turned my head back to address both my friends. “So . . . we know that I can’t sustain bringing anything larger than Bricksley to life, but we know it’s possible. How do we know it’s possible? Stanis, wherever he is, is living proof that an autonomous creature of human proportions can be brought to life. I don’t know how to unlock that level of power. My grandfather was clever about those arcane secrets.”
I pulled my backpack closer to me from where it lay on the floor and reached for the solid stone book within it, finding Bricksley nestled in there. I took the book from under him, breathed out the words of power that transformed it to leather and paper, then pulled my own notebook out. “We’ve got his work and my own lame-ish start at a spell book of my own.” I held up my own notebook. “We need to make this as powerful as his.”
“There are too many missing pieces,” Marshall said.
“That’s why we compare notes, then,” I said. “Do you think Einstein gave up just because he had too many questions?”
“This isn’t science,” argued Rory.
“Maybe it’s more of a science than we think,” I offered.
“Maybe it’s more of a science than we can think,” Marshall said.
I looked to see if he was mocking me, but he was serious.
“This hurts my brain,” Rory said. “Can we go back to dinner conversation?”
“No,” Marshall said. A second ago I wouldn’t have thought him capable of it, but he looked riled up. “Lexi’s right. We’re all just frustrated, but that’s no excuse. We need to continue to be analytical, keep experimenting, keep refining.”
“Exactly,” I said, standing. I gathered up my books and a few of the others I had been reading through. “Let me show you the cool stuff I’ve rigged up, then.”
Rory stood, and we were halfway to the stairs when Marshall stopped.
“Go on without me,” he said. “I’ll be down to the Bat Cave in a couple minutes.”
“Where’s he going?” I asked, as Rory and I started down the steps.
“Excitement pee,” she said, taking some of my books from me to carry. “He gets this way when he talks about Comic Con, too.”
Five
Alexandra
Rory and I headed down to the finished basement of our new building, not wanting to wait around for Marshall while he hit the little boys’ room. The sooner we got to work sorting through our comparative notes from the brick-man incident, the sooner I might get to sleep. Pillowy thoughts of slumber filled my head as we walked along the half-finished basement hall, following the series of bookcases off to my left.
“I’m glad you took Marshall’s suggestion months ago when he tried to talk you into the library motif,” Rory said.
I nodded, counting off the bookcases as I went. “‘Very Wayne Manor,’ he had said. Apparently, Batman liked secret doors, too.”
“I still don’t get why you call it Alexander’s guild hall, though,” Rory said. “I mean, he was a guild of one.”
“My guess is that Alexander built it in the hopes of using it for a higher purpose,” I said. “For finding other Spellmasons, for educating others to his way, but I think having a madman hunting down that power made him think the better of it. Some things, it would seem, were better kept secret. Which, conversely, is why we’re so busy playing arcane Nancy Drews.”
We arrived at the bookcase that concealed the one thing that had survived the original building’s collapse—my great-great-grandfather’s old alc
hemical workshop.
I reached behind a copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame on the top shelf to activate the pressure plate against the back wall, but, to my surprise, the bookcase was already clicked free from its swivel locking mechanism.
“This door shouldn’t be open,” I said. “That’s the point of it being secret.”
Rory looked at the unfinished section of the basement along the other wall. “Maybe one of the workers triggered it by accident?”
I shook my head. “I’ve changed enough workers in and out on this project. I switched them out every few weeks. No single one could have known enough about any one aspect of the project to open this door.”
“Let’s check it out,” Rory said, dropping her dance bag on the floor. “Cautiously, of course.”
I pressed against the bookcase, sliding it over to reveal the black stone door behind it, finding it ajar as well. I put my hand on it and willed the heavy stone to move as I breathed out the old country’s words of power. It yielded, and the two of us entered the room beyond, the light spilling in behind us, allowing us to make our way easier as we went.
Carved-stone markings bearing the winged Belarus sigil adorned the walls of the cavernous circular space, rising up to a dome high above, but it was the lower part that sported tables, chairs, and counters built into the walls that we had to step through carefully. I checked the glass-covered cabinet built into the far side of the room, inventorying the array of my great-great-grandfather’s alchemical mixes within it.
As Rory and I stepped to the center of the room, she stopped and pointed at the cobblestone floor beneath her. “You fixed it,” she said. “That giant ball you summoned, protecting yourself from Alexander’s defenses when we first found this place.”
“Yeah,” I said, recalling how I had needed Stanis’s help to extract me from it. “I’ve been training myself to feel Alexander’s signature in his stonework. It helps that his magic in here had gone untouched for so long. It’s still strong here, which made it easier to wrap my will around it.”
“Aww,” Rory said, all baby-voiced, “somebody’s been giving magical hugs, wrapping their will around things again.”
I pressed my sense out into the rest of the room, holding a finger up to my lips. “Somebody’s definitely been in here,” I whispered. “I can feel it.”
I let my connection to the whole space take control, letting it run through me. Something felt . . . off. I moved around the room, reaching out with my will, seeking out whatever felt different, which led me toward the large glass case of alchemical mixes.
“What is it?” Rory said, joining me. “Has someone been stealing from the liquor cabinet?”
“Has,” I said, focusing in on a dead spot on the wall just to the other side of Rory, standing by the glass cabinet. “And is.”
Rory stepped in front of me to look at the spot, then turned back around to me. “Meaning what exactly?”
“Shh!” I said. “The walls have ears.” I pressed my will toward the stone there, oddly finding no connection with the spot. I focused in, staring hard to find what my will could not. “Ears . . . and eyes.”
“What?” Rory asked, starting to spin back around to it, but I was already reaching out to pull her away from the spot.
The stone did indeed have eyes then, and they went wide at my mention of them. A section of the wall impossibly peeled itself away from the rest, and although the stones kept their shape, the movements and outline of the figure rushing for the door were distinctly human.
I reached out to the stone creature with my will but found no connection to it. I pressed my power past the figure, grabbing at one of the stone tables along the wall, sliding it across the floor to block the creature’s exit path. Unprepared, the figure slammed into the moving table, falling forward, then over it, landing on its back on the floor. Rory and I closed on it as the creature—burdened by its own weight—struggled like a turtle on its back to right itself.
“Shit,” a male voice called out from it, and the stone of its skin began to transform. The rock seemed to melt away, fading to expose a twentysomething man with a mess of dirty blond hair and a knee-length brown coat. Now free of his stone form, the man righted himself, scurrying to his feet. He eyed the two of us with darting suspicion, then reached in his jacket and pulled a glass vial free from it, tossing it at our feet.
It shattered, and Rory danced out of its way, but I wasn’t quite quick enough. The stone beneath my feet softened like clay, and I sunk into it, my boots slowly disappearing out of sight. Try as I might to pull them out, my feet would not come free.
Rory stood dumbstruck for a moment before shaking herself out of it and turning to our foe, her eyes dark. “Don’t worry,” she said to me out of the corner of her mouth. “I got this.”
This drew a chuckle out of the stranger. “Do you, now?”
In response, Rory rushed him, jumping up onto the stone table that separated them and kicking him square in the chest. He fell back, tumbled over, and landed on his hands and knees, letting out a pained laugh.
“I guess you do at that,” he said, struggling to stand up. “Fast, aren’t ya?”
“The fastest,” Rory said, jumping down from the table, keeping after him.
“We shall see about that,” the man said, producing another vial, like a magician drawing his wand. He flicked the top off this one, causing Rory to instinctually jump back from him, but instead of throwing it at either of us, he chugged the dark yellow liquid within it. The man doubled over in pain, giving Rory an opportunity to close with him, but when she did, he was standing up straight again, waiting for her.
Rory grabbed for him, but the man—now moving with more than human speed—evaded her, circling around behind her.
“Look out!” I called to her, but by the time Rory spun to face him, the man had raised a closed fist to swing at her. I waited for his flash of a blow to strike her, but it never came.
He swung, but the man stopped his fist mere inches from her face. “Nighty-night,” he said. He opened the hand, palm facing up, and blew across it. A fine, white powder rose off it, engulfing Rory’s entire head.
She sneezed from within the cloud, blinking with heavier and heavier lids until they closed, and she slumped to the floor of the guild hall, her head cracking against the stone.
“Rory!” I cried out, but there was no response.
The stranger blurred past me, heading back to the glass case.
“What did you do to her?” I asked him, afraid.
The man ignored me and helped himself to a variety of my great-great-grandfather’s vials and tubes.
“What did you do to her?” I shouted this time as I lunged for him, but with my feet stuck as they were, all I managed to do was send a sharp pain through my right ankle.
“Don’t worry,” he said with the hint of a cocky smile on his lips. “She’s not dead. Just sleeping.”
That was a relief, but it didn’t quell my desire to smack the smile off of his smug face. Realizing I was wasting my anger, I tried my power at the stone surrounding my feet again, but it remained unresponsive. I turned my frustration to something I could manipulate—the stone table I had slid across the room. Using my mind to pull it apart brick by brick, I fired them one after another at the man, but his speed helped him avoid my barrage as he continued pillaging the cabinet.
He turned to face me, waggling a fistful of tubes in my face.
“Thanks for the supplies,” he said, and had the audacity to wink at me before turning and speeding out of the guild hall.
Outraged and trapped as I was, I jumped straight up, hoping to at least come out of my sinking shoes, but only managed to send sharp pains through both my ankles this time, which also unbalanced me. I went down hard on my ass, and, despite what I perceived as a lot of padding to it, I felt the stone slam hard up against my bones, which to
ok all the fire out of me.
Anger gave way to humiliation as I lay there, hurt, but all of that went away as my mind cleared and my thoughts turned to Rory, lying not more than ten feet from me, still unconscious. I needed to check on her . . . and where the hell was Marshall? With the stranger gone and my wits somewhat calmed, I reached out with my hands to the stone encasing my feet.
The stuff was impossible to grab ahold of, both solid and malleable at the same time, almost like trying to grab handfuls of quicksand. Using my will, I worked it around in my head, which also tried my patience in the process, and I once more felt my control over the stone returning as the effects of whatever the stranger had done to it faded. The rock gave way to my spell and thoughts, and I pulled my feet free, my boots covered in a thick black powder of stone.
I ran over to Rory, careful not to twist my ankle on any of the broken bricks of the floor as I went to her.
Movement in the doorway caught my attention.
“Don’t start the party without me,” Marshall sang out in a singsong voice. “Surprise!” He stepped into the room smiling, holding a large tray stuffed with an array of food. When he saw me kneeling beside Rory, the smile vanished from his face.
“Marshall!” I shouted at him. “What the hell took you so long?”
“I told you I had to pee,” he said in a quiet voice, looking worried. “Then I thought I’d surprise you with some snacks while we went over our notes and stuff. So I raided your fridge. I washed my hands first . . .” His words trailed off for a moment as his mind worked to process what he was seeing, his eyes fixating on Rory’s fallen form. “Is she okay? What happened?”
“Someone was down here,” I said. “In here. Now help me.”
Marshall dropped his tray, full of drinks and assorted snacks, on the main stone table at the center of the room and ran over to us. Falling to his knees. “Can we move her?” he asked.
