And Haliel’s attitude supported the idea that the only version of Ettoriel out there was… Cat.
Silver Horse said, Less talking, more trampling angels.
Earth Horse added, We need to end this haunt and go back to the farm. Jen is unhappy enough.
Brynn said, “I think you already did, Cat.”
“Did what?” he said coldly.
Biting her thumbnail, Brynn said, “The angel version of you was going to do something awful, before Marley stopped him. Then you—I mean he—did something with all that angel power. Sent it away somehow before becoming you. Isn’t that kind of like what Gale’s done?”
Cat drew a deep breath, clasped his hands behind his back, and said in his best professorial voice, “Puns aside, do I look catatonic to you, Brynn?”
Brynn crossed her arms and refused to get drawn in to the rhetorical question. Instead she waited.
After a moment, he said, “Are we done?” and turned away.
“Sure,” said Brynn. “I’m going to go talk to Jen.” She glanced up at Haliel, who gave her one of her little salutes. Brynn nodded an acknowledgement and began to walk away.
“I can’t do what she wants, Brynn,” called Cat. “And it wouldn’t help if I could.”
Brynn schooled her face before turning around, her eyebrows raised in polite inquiry. “Did you say something?”
The look of pure annoyance Cat gave her made it even harder to keep triumph off her face. “You’re right. It’s ‘kind of like what Gale’s done.’ But I’m not going to be him again, while Gale isn’t willing to let go of her. Similar road. Different choices. Jennifer never has understood that.”
Haliel said, “I like that, Slick. No rewrites. Care to go on?”
“What about before?” asked Brynn uncertainly. “Just a few minutes ago, when you said you knew what the consequences would be?”
Cat hesitated, then said very deliberately, “I don’t need to be him to pick up what he left behind.”
Brynn’s skin prickled as a surge of fear partially her own and partially the horses’ ran through her. Backing off, she said, “Let’s get back to Gale. So you can’t figure out how his power separation is working because he took a different route there?”
“Boo!” said Haliel. “Go back to talking about Ettoriel!”
“I can’t know, but I can make educated guesses,” said Cat evenly. “I don’t think he could have spread himself this much without a focus.”
An unearthly shriek echoed through the town, passing right through the unreal structures. Haliel shaded her eyes, peering into the distance. Then she said, “No, no, nevermind, it’s nothing important. Go back to discussing Slick’s secret identity.”
Brynn closed her eyes and paid attention to how she felt: not emotionally, but magically. The haunt hadn’t changed in any significant way; the flow of soul energy off her skin was steady; and while she didn’t quite know what it would feel like if one of her fellow Huntsfolk were in danger, she was sure it would feel like something. Whatever the shriek was, presumably somebody else was handling it.
“A focus,” she said. “And that’s what you’re looking for with all the under? It might have helped to have explained this earlier.”
Cat only shrugged, but Haliel said, “Oh, Ink. He was doing his best not to think about it. Poor, confused Ettoriel.”
Another shriek resounded through the haunt. Cat said calmly, “Ettoriel is gone.”
Haliel smiled. “Is he? Too bad. I know where his Nina is, too.”
Cat looked up at Haliel. “Who?”
Her smile broadening, Haliel said, “You’re just straight-up lying now, Slick.” She started writing in her book again.
Brynn rejoined Cat and said softly, “I could throw a brick at her.”
“I appreciate the thought, but not your inevitable concussion. Let’s just find the focus.”
“Is it really going to look like lightning flows?”
Cat sighed. “It’s going to look like something real, and it’s going to influence the surrounding Geometry.”
Brynn said, “Oh. And I can’t see the Geometry.” When the demon Tia had sent Brynn to help reboot the original Wild Hunt, she’d outfitted her with a full set of charms that all turned out to be part of one big spell: the magic that let Brynn carry horses—and souls—on her skin. Being able to see the Geometry would be useful, but it just wasn’t in Brynn’s line.
“You’re useful in other ways.” He didn’t need to glance up at Haliel for Brynn to understand what he meant. “I apologize for being difficult.” He hesitated, and then added softly, “I would really like that conversation with Jen, though.”
“Oh, come on, don’t whisper or I’ll just have to get creative,” complained Haliel.
“Would you like some help, Haliel?” said a pleasant, unfamiliar voice behind them. Brynn turned to see Amber, Yejun, and a black-haired stranger in a dapper suit with a hat.
Brynn shook her head, staring at the stranger. Capricorn, she guessed, of the variable pronouns and the delicious smell. Brynn couldn’t smell him, but he confused her all the same. Him, but the first him who’d ever attracted her.
“Oh my god, Capricorn, go away!” said Haliel, with more irritation than Brynn would have predicted.
“I can only go so far,” said Capricorn cheerfully. “I’m here for work!”
“You wretched little beast, you’re going to mess everything up!”
Brynn decided to blame her strange reaction on Capricorn’s androgyny and looked at Amber and Yejun, who were watching the exchange between the demon and the angel.
“That’s certainly a valid point of view,” agreed Capricorn, still gazing up at Haliel with sparkling eyes. “I’ll look forward to your critique later?”
Haliel slammed her book shut and floated higher. “I don’t have to put up with this. I have options. There’s a whole filthy town to document here.”
As she flew away, Brynn said weakly to Cat, “Were they having the same conversation?” Then Capricorn turned his brilliant gaze onto Brynn, smiled, and her knees went weak. “Uh, Cat?”
Amber appeared by Brynn’s other side, looking wistfully in the direction Haliel went before nodding toward Capricorn “I know. It’s creepy how yummy she looks, right?”
“She?” said Brynn, grabbing at whatever she could.
“Whichever you prefer,” said Capricorn, with a sweet smile.
“That’s the problem,” wailed Brynn.
Suddenly Yejun was standing between Brynn and Capricorn: not like he meant to do it, just like he was being accidentally rude. “Cat, we need that book Jen wanted you to give us.”
Brynn pulled herself together. “You’re really going to trick her?”
“No, brat, we’re going to make her a prop so she can remember what we’ve already done,” said Yejun patiently.
Cat pulled out the notebook he’d been writing in and tore out the pages already inscribed. When he proffered it to Yejun, the other young man was too shocked to accept it.
“It’s just a notebook, Yejun,” said Cat quietly.
Yejun took it, shaking his head. As he pulled out his own tiny notebook and started copying information from one to another, he said. “I don’t know, man. No notebook, no glasses, how am I supposed to recognize you?”
“What did happen to your glasses?” asked Amber, frowning.
“They annoyed me,” said Cat.
Amber’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah… About that—”
Quickly Brynn said, “So what did you do? What happened? What was that awful noise?”
Amber stopped looking at Cat as if she was about to start something and shuddered. “It was a giant mouse.”
“That’s… unusual,” said Cat, his eyebrows going up.
“Not really,” said Yejun, too quickly. “Anyhow, we managed to communicate with Imani for a very brief period, and she told us about her work. We’ve got access to online archives, so it’s no longer technically lost.”
“What was she working on?” asked Brynn.
“History,” shrugged Yejun. “I don’t know how much it matters now. Where’s Gale?”
Capricorn inserted himself into the little group and stood listening politely with his hands behind his back: just one of the team. Brynn eyed him warily.
“Gale is locked down. We’re looking for a way to unlock him.” Cat surveyed Amber and Yejun. “Maybe the two of you can help.”
Grim, who had been investigating Capricorn’s hands, suddenly sprang into the center of the group and started barking and wagging his tail. Then he grabbed Yejun’s trouser leg and started tugging.
“Hark, it is the Grimphone,” said Yejun. “Does she want all of us or just me, Grimwhiskers?”
In response, Grim nudged each of them, and even licked Capricorn’s hands, so everybody strolled after him to where a phantasmal post office stood. Several figures moved around the post office. As they got closer the ghosts sharpened into individuals and the old-fashioned building resolved into something built in the last century. Haliel drifted high above, visible but not audible.
“Brynn’s here,” said AT, from somewhere within the building. “And everybody else.” She came through the building wall, noticeably dirtier than she’d been last time Brynn saw her. “Come see what we found!”
Within the dark structure, a pale light shimmered from below ground level. The ground beneath the building had collapsed into a deep pit, and Jen stood at the bottom, gazing at a boarded up door in a stone wall. There were four small balls of foxfire floating in the corners of the pit, and Brynn recognized them as originating from one of the utility charms Jen had put on AT.
“It’s a sub-basement,” explained AT, sliding down a loose ramp of rubble. “Jen found it.”
Jen glanced up at them. “I think there’s far more than four hundred ghosts here, and some of them are much older than others. There’s something old down here, along with strange patterns in the Geometry.”
Brynn sat on the edge of the pit while Amber jumped down and Yejun followed AT down the rubble ramp. Capricorn sat beside Brynn, while Cat stood on her other side her, his hands loose at his sides and his head low. Softly, he said, “Even more under.”
Jen looked up at Cat, and then quickly shifted her gaze to Capricorn. Her eyes narrowed, but all she said was, “This isn’t obviously related to Imani, but it may tie into why this haunt is so powerful. So I’d like to see what’s in here.”
AT said, “Do you want to do the honors, Amber? I already got plenty of exercise excavating.”
Amber curled her fingers around one of the thick planks over the door and gave a yank. Nails popped out, and the board splintered and broke. “Ugh,” said Amber. “This will take me a while. Did you learn anything from the ghosts themselves?”
Jen sighed. “Yes. More from what they didn’t say than what they did. A conservative town, xenophobic, especially these days. Mixed feelings about Imani, but they didn’t like Gale at all.”
“Obviously warranted,” said Amber, yanking off another board.
“Mixed feelings, huh? But who actually killed her?” Brynn pulled her knees up to her chest.
“One ghost said it was an accident,” said AT, tentatively. “But they really didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Hah,” said Amber. “Yejun, tell them about what you did.”
Quickly, Yejun sketched out that they’d managed to somehow have an open conversation with Imani; how they’d found out her account data, and how she’d been working on a history of the town’s shadowy past.
When he was done, Amber pulled the final piece of board off the door and said, “I’m guessing if it was an accident, it was the kind of ‘accident’ where, after a heated argument, a gun ‘accidentally’ went off. Or maybe the kind of accident where an anonymous caller reported her to the cops as a threat to the town.”
Before anybody could reply, she pulled hard on the door’s ancient metal handle and very, very slowly, it opened.
24
Labyrinth
Amber squinted as she pulled the door open, for the other side was lit. At first it seemed as bright as morning, her least favorite time, but as the door opened wider the radiance dimmed, until it was no more that the foxfire that lit the sub-basement.
The passage beyond was wide and stone-hewn, unlit except for a gentle glow from lines engraved on the floor. A side passage interrupted one wall only a few yards down, with a four-way intersection visible past that. In the distance, the main passage curved.
AT surveyed the tunnel beside Amber and said doubtfully, “Do you think it leads to the Far City?”
“Hah hah, very funny,” said Amber, shuddering at the memory of the horrific hallway they’d encountered on their journey to reboot the Wild Hunt.
“What’s that?” said Brynn, and she came slipping down the rubble ramp. As she joined them in crowding around the entrance, two new side passages opened. The lines engraved into the floor multiplied and the entire complex grew brighter.
“Whoa,” said Yejun. He brushed between Amber and AT to step into the tunnel. He looked up, down, and at the walls. Then he walked to the first intersection and peered down it.
Amber watched him like a hawk, ready to spring or flee at the slightest out-of-place muscle twitch. But he stared for a moment, pulled off his sunglasses, before stepping back, frowning. Eventually he walked back to them, arriving safely in about the expected time.
Amber exhaled, letting go of a bit of tension.
Yejun flipped his sunglasses around a finger. “It’s a lot of tunnels. And big, focused magic around… something.” He shook his head. “There’s some serious strangeness going on here. I think I can unravel it, though.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t,” said Capricorn, from the back of the crowd. “That would probably be counterproductive.”
“Capricorn, stop meddling!” said Haliel, who was now hovering right above the pit, somehow visible through the shadowy phantom roof of the post office. “Go play in traffic or something.”
Capricorn glanced up at Haliel with a fond little smile. Jennifer said, “Explain, please,” but far more nicely than she’d spoken to Shatiel, Severin or Haliel.
Capricorn’s smile faded into a thoughtful expression, though she continued gazing up at Haliel. Then she lowered her gaze to Jen. “Should I?”
“At least give us a hint,” begged Amber. Haliel might disapprove, but Amber was far too wary of mysterious corridors to care after her time in the Far City. As a member of the Wild Hunt, she might be physically invulnerable, but the endless nightmare corridor in the Far City hadn’t been physically dangerous.
Capricorn brightened, her cheerful smile returning. “That’s a good idea.” She glanced at Cat, still on the pit’s edge, and back at Jen. “Do you know what a relic is?”
Slowly, Jen said, “An implement used in a magical ritual that has acquired magic of its own.”
Yejun leaned out of the passage. “Like the Horn?”
Capricorn bounced on her toes. “Yes, exactly!” She looked between them again and stopped bouncing. “Hmm… You must need another hint.”
Jen put her fingers to her temple, her brow creasing. Her gaze traveled to Yejun, and then the glowing engraved floor behind him. “I don’t know if anybody has ever tried to remove the natural charm from a relic. I suppose some researcher must have, sometime.”
“Oh yes,” agreed Capricorn. “They always discover something quite unexpected the first time, too.” She bounced again, looking between them hopefully.
Yejun said, “Bro, at this point, if you don’t tell us, we experiment and find out, and this whole conversation is a waste of time.”
“Experiment on what? The Horn?” asked Brynn sharply.
“The tunnel,” said Yejun, as Jen said, “The labyrinth.”
Capricorn gave Jen a delighted smile, swept a low bow over her hand and then brought it to her mouth. “You are truly dazzling.”
Jen flushed, but
didn’t withdraw her hand. Out of the corner of her eye, Amber noticed Cat jumping into the pit. It was far too high a drop for normal humans to make, though Amber supposed if Cat wanted to rely on the not-painless Wild Hunt invulnerability, that was… actually, it was typical of Cat. So typical.
Haliel drifted down, too, a perfect scowl on her perfect face. “Since you’re ruining this, you might as well get it over with quickly.”
Without releasing Jen’s hand, Capricorn smiled sweetly at Haliel. “My friend Yejun made a very good point.”
Cat said, his voice icy as he joined everybody, “What do they discover, Capricorn?”
Capricorn gave him a round-eyed glance, then brightened and released Jen’s hand. “Yes, of course. One of their discoveries is that the natural charm of a relic doesn’t fall apart once it’s removed from the relic. It continues to exist, but in a different form.”
Amber shuddered and said without thinking, “A giant mouse…?”
“That was unusual, friend Amber, but in essence, yes. Of course, it’s not always a mouse. Sometimes they can be quite dangerous.”
Yejun frowned. “You said all those things wanted to do was return to their source.”
Capricorn looked embarrassed. “You know, I didn’t mean to do one of those technical truths. I mean, talk about living down to the stereotype! Because, see, that’s technically true. But depending on their purpose, the route they take to get there might be quite… convoluted.”
Haliel said loudly, “I heard a tale once of a bane that had to harvest twelve livers before it returned to its wand, every time it was released. Another one had to murder all invaders… in Minos, was it?” She covered a giggle. “There was even one that had to be killed, which was hilarious, because as you know, normally that does very little to stop them.” She peeked at them over the hand covering her giggle. “You did know that already, right?”
Capricorn gave Haliel an chagrined look. “That wasn’t very nice.”
Fury Convergence Page 31
