“I’m the one who brought up tutoring Sean,” Daniel said. “That makes it my fault.”
Normally Sean would have let them fight for the blame, but Daniel kept giving Eddy’s shoulder these awkward pats, and you didn’t pat Eddy when she was mad. “Hey, let it go. We’re all still here, and I’ll just have to wait to learn magic, that’s all.”
“Man, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s—”
But Sean couldn’t say “mine,” after all. Magic went gene-deep for him—it was natural he’d want to do it. And Marvell had promised him a mentor, and Sean wouldn’t have almost torched the wine cellar if Marvell had stuck to that promise. If anyone was to blame, it was Marvell.
Sean left the sentence hanging and took off for his room. It wasn’t five minutes before Eddy knocked. He yelled he was in bed. For a couple minutes more, she whispered outside the door with Daniel. Then they left him alone.
* * *
But they must have gone straight to Helen, because first thing next morning she was knocking on his door. Sean let her in. “My turn to make breakfast,” he said, like he’d been about to hurry to the kitchen and knock out a ten-course brunch buffet.
“Cheerios and strawberries?” Helen said.
“Um, Rice Krispies and blueberries.”
“I guess that can wait a few minutes.” She settled on the window seat, which gave him no choice but to park on his desk, facing her. At least he was in shadow, while a shaft of sunlight spotlighted every freckle on her face and kindled her hair to spiky auburn fire.
“Eddy and Daniel talked to me last night,” Helen said.
“I figured. Did they have a humongous debate about who was more to blame for me being an idiot?”
“A moderately humongous debate. Mainly they were worried about how angry you seemed when you cut out of the discussion.”
“I was sick of going over it. What’s there to talk about? I’m done.”
Helen swung her feet up onto the seat. “‘Done’ doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s true, though. I’m done with magic until Professor Marvell gives the go-ahead.”
“Ah.”
“What?”
“He’s the one you’re angry with. Theo.”
“Maybe.”
She ducked her chin and looked up at him from under raised brows.
Sean had to give. “Well, he is the one in charge, right? And he decided I couldn’t do practical magic right after you told him me and Orne are related.”
“It’s not that simple, Sean.”
“I can do complicated.”
“Theo only proposed the delay. The decision was the Order’s. A majority of members agreed that your introduction to magic had been too abrupt, and you should take a step backwards.”
Helen thought she was telling the truth—the steadiness of her gaze proved it. Should he tell her about Geldman’s suspicions? About Marvell’s own admission that he thought Sean was like Redemption Orne? Impulsive, stubborn, too curious for his own good. Bound for the dark side right out of the action figure box, might as well just hand him the red light saber. “You’re sure, Helen? The Order doesn’t think I’m, like, too dangerous to train?”
She smiled. “You’re too dangerous for Daniel to train. Burning up my wine cellar.”
“We had the fire out in five seconds.”
“I know. And the only Orne-related danger the Order’s worried about is the danger he poses to you. Did you ever think…”
When she hesitated, Sean took the bait. “Nope. That’s my problem.”
Helen wrinkled her nose at him. “Bullshit.”
“Wow, thanks.”
“Did you ever think that the more magic you do, the more Orne’s going to want you? Ever think that’s why Theo might be applying the brakes?”
“But how’s Orne going to know I’m doing magic? Me and Daniel only did it here, inside the wards.”
“But you go outside the wards every day. Doing magic changes your energy, Sean, in ways Orne or his newt could sense.”
“I didn’t know that.” But knowing it now didn’t negate Marvell’s dick behavior in the Office of Doom, especially the way he’d lobbed that twenty-megaton threat when Sean was halfway out the door.
“Well, you know now. Theo’s on your side, Sean, same as me. Part of that is sometimes seeming overprotective, harsh, because we’re afraid for you.”
Was Marvell afraid for him or of him? Sean almost asked Helen the loaded question, but Daniel had come out of his room and started down the stairs, to meet Eddy halfway up, from the sound of their voices. “Better go make that breakfast,” he said.
“Right, I hear the hungry horde’s on its way to the kitchen.” Helen accepted the hand-up Sean offered. She gave him an earnest look. “You’re all right, then? Or better at least?”
Helen always made things better, so Sean could give her back an earnest nod.
“Good. I’ll help you, ah, cook.”
“Pour the Krispies?”
“Wash the blueberries.”
“Deal.”
* * *
By Sean’s watch, Daniel’s pre-class meeting with Marvell lasted seven minutes, just long enough for Marvell to lecture him about the stupidity of a noob teaching a noob, which was the very pinnacle of magical stupidity and a half-assed scheme he’d never imagined Daniel capable of. Needless to say (though Marvell had said it anyway), repeat stupidity would be grounds for Daniel’s expulsion from the summer program.
The word “expulsion” was to Eddy like holy water to a vampire, and now both Sean and Daniel had doused her with it. After she’d recovered from the second scalding, she snarled, “No way I’m letting you guys screw up again.” Daniel blanched at the ferocity in her voice, but Sean helped him convince her that further screwing up was in neither of their game plans.
That night, as if to get things back to normal, Helen offered to “chaperone” them to a movie. Eddy and Daniel were in. Sean begged off so he could write Dad about the wine cellar incident—better Dad find out from Sean than from Marvell, who couldn’t have informed him yet, or Dad would have Skyped, steaming.
When the rest had gone, Sean was alone in the Arkwright House for the first time. That made the place feel bigger, older, and much more likely to ooze ectoplasm from its walls, however well repaired. What was a little Spackle to a ghost? He tried to write in the common room, but without Eddy and Daniel holding their latest book club meeting or arguing about a Scrabble play, it felt too empty.
He went downstairs to hole up in the kitchen, where at least there were snacks, but the closed library doors lured him over. He slipped inside and fumbled on the overhead lights. The sudden brilliance didn’t surprise old Endecott with his feet up on his desk, or Mrs. Endecott embroidering by the fire, or even Helen’s uncle John climbing a stack ladder in search of just the right tome. The only ghost around was the spectral aura Mom had somehow infused into the stained glass crow.
Since he’d figured out Mom’s secret gift, the crow’s halo glow had kindled every time Sean entered the library, lingering as long as he was alone in the room, winking out the second anyone else appeared. He smiled up at it. Mom, or whatever part of her the glass held, was company enough; the other ghosts could stay away, thank you.
However, in case Endecott popped in later, Sean set up his laptop not on the dais desk but on the computer station nearest the crow. He opened an e-mail screen and typed “Hey, Dad.” Great start. Too bad he didn’t know what should come next. The library was almost too quiet for concentration, the way its noise wards squelched any whooshes from passing cars, any footsteps or chatter from campus pedestrians, any distant buzz from the highway. The open windows admitted only the fiddling of crickets and the halting staccato of some night bird as lost for notes as Sean was for words. “Hey, Dad,” was too cheerful. “Dear Dad” was too formal. How about just “Dad”?
Maybe he should light up the Founding. It was more likel
y to inspire him than a stupid blank screen. Sean climbed onto the dais and flipped the switch hidden under the sill. It powered up slimline fluorescent fixtures Dad had mounted between the stained glass and the Plexiglas shield that protected it from weather. The Founding of Arkham brightened, and the crow amplified its halo to match, and Sean gave it a thumbs-up—
And was rewarded with a caw. Far off, on the edge of audibility, but a caw, all right. A second and a third followed faintly. Simultaneously, the crow’s beak gaped.
Sean dropped onto Endecott’s desk as the crow flew from Nyarlathotep’s upflung hand to the right edge of its window. The wooden frame between the left and center windows proved no barrier; the crow passed through without a missed wing flap and began circling the governor and minister. They remained motionless, merely painted glass. Same with everything else in the Founding.
And the crow’s flight was smooth, free of the jerky stammers of supernatural movement you saw in horror movies. That almost made it scarier, except why should Sean be scared while the crow still bore Mom’s aura? So what if things in her paintings had never moved. Maybe, transplanted to the Arkwright House, her magic drew extra energy from Order members, like the ones who’d met in the library yesterday. That made sense. It had to.
A stronger caw flirted with his eardrums. The crow was calling him, and if it was from Mom, might it not speak for her?
Because he should have been eager to answer that question, Sean made himself haul a stepladder onto the dais. As he positioned it under the center window, the crow stopped circling to hover above the minister’s head, an inky reverse of the haloed dove saints wore in old-time paintings. What if he’d been wrong about the crow? What if an Order magician had enchanted it as a joke? What if Nyarlathotep, the real one, had sent it to summon Sean to a second face-to-face? After thinking the crow belonged to Mom, the first alternative pissed him off. The second made his heart and stomach lurch.
Sean climbed a rung on the stepladder.
The crow perched on the minister’s shoulder. Was that its equivalent of a step toward him?
He climbed another rung. Another. His eyes were now level with the crow’s.
In a harsh avian accent, a lot like Boaz’s, it croaked: Touch me.
Instead Sean touched the window sky, cool opalescent glass that retained his fingerprints.
Touch me, touch me, touch me, the crow insisted, bobbing its head with each syllable.
It could be Mom. Or a joke, or Nyarlathotep, or—
A trap Marvell had set to catch Sean doing magic?
That thought triggered a surge of anger that swamped any fear of the Master; worse, that polluted any wonder and longing for Mom. Any fool with a stepladder could touch a few cuts of glass lead-bound into the shape of a bird. There was nothing magical about it. Or if there was, Sean didn’t give a crap.
With his left hand, he gripped the ladder top. His right he lifted to the crow. Its hum had strengthened—he felt it with his fingertips still an inch from the glass. More, the hum had developed thuds and pauses, like a heartbeat.
He reached through the inch of air and touched the crow, and it pulsed lightning into him.
And then—
He was the crow.
11
He. Sean. Was the crow.
But not the glass crow. No, he was a real one with real nerves and real muscles that suddenly didn’t know how to keep him perched on the minister’s shoulder, or how to fly, or how to do anything other than misfire and spasm. It was a good thing the minister was also real now, and that he had enough control over his hands to catch Sean and lower him gently to the turf. Real turf, too, not streamer glass: it was thick and soft and starred with clover, just the thing if you had to lie on your feathered side and flail a helpless wing and claws.
“Don’t struggle,” the minister said. He sounded amused, but without any meanness to it. “The first transition’s always startling, especially if you pass into a nonhuman body. Or construct, I should say. You’re no more a crow than I’m the Reverend Benjamin Tyndale, first pastor of the first church in Arkham. We’re two minds meeting in a fabricated world, thinner than the glass it’s seeded inside, though you’ll find it feels as wide and high and deep as our own.”
Sean lay still.
“When your mind finishes merging with the construct, you’ll be able to walk, talk, even fly. I thought of merging you into one of the other humans, but I thought you’d like the crow better.”
As his panic subsided, Sean felt the merge. He was no longer trapped in the crow’s skull, imperfectly connected to its body; like a warming plasma, his will spread through the web of its nerves until he owned the finest fiber and so the whole. He hopped onto his thin-toed feet and ruffled his feathers into place, sleeking both wings with his beak. Then it hit him. Whoever occupied the minister construct didn’t sound like Mom. It didn’t sound like Marvell, either. No, it couldn’t be Marvell, because he wasn’t a magician, and whoever had created a whole world inside the Founding had to be crazy powerful. One magician came to mind at once. Sean opened his beak. He caw-spoke: “Mr. Geldman?”
The minister settled cross-legged on the turf. “That’s a reasonable guess, but I’m not Solomon Geldman.”
Don’t let it somehow be Marvell—
“I’m Redemption Orne,” the minister said.
Of their own accord, Sean’s wings propelled him into the air. Startle response? He glided to the ground a few yards from the minister. “I don’t believe you,” he croaked.
Unoffended, the minister smiled. “Why not?”
“This place, it’s inside the library windows?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the windows are inside the Order’s shield—the wards go out to the property lines.”
“Oh, I’m aware of that.”
“Then you can’t be Orne. You’re—someone in the Order pretending to be him.”
“Why would a member of the Order of Alhazred pretend to be a renegade?”
His wings jerked again, but he checked the flight impulse. “Because you’re testing me. You want to see if I’ll break the rules and talk to Orne. Now that Helen Arkwright’s found out about him. Now that they’ve told me.”
“And what exactly did Ms. Arkwright discover?”
If the minister was Marvell, it was a pretty good ploy to pretend he wasn’t on a first name basis with Helen. So was pretending not to know about her genealogical research. “She wanted to figure out which magical line I came from. She traced me back to somebody named Constance Cooke.”
“And where did she go from there?”
“She knew you had an uncle named Cooke and a daughter named Constance, who died when she was a baby. Except then Helen found some letters. One was from your uncle to Pastor Brattle. I guess it thanked Brattle for faking Constance’s death record. See, because when Cooke adopted her, he wanted to say he found her on the doorstep or something, not that she was related to you and Patience. Witches and murderers.”
The minister stood and walked away. For all their apparent reality, the other Puritans remained inert as wax figures. So did Nyarlathotep in the woods to Sean’s left and the Indians on the hillside to his right. In fact, everything but Sean and the minister was inert. He looked up at swallows hanging motionless in the sky, down at a line of ants struck to tiny statues as they climbed a yarrow stalk. The eeriness of it lifted the feathers on his nape, and he flew after the minister and lighted near him on the brink of the hill. Below them was the mouth of the Miskatonic and the Mayflowery ships and flocks of seagulls, all frozen in place. The minister wasn’t looking at the scenery. In fact, his eyes were closed.
Standing half as high as the minister’s knee, Sean had to crane his short neck to make out the tight-lipped sadness of his face. Could Marvell fake that kind of emotion? Would he even bother to try? Or was this the real Orne, in which case, Sean had just been pretty insulting. Not that he should care, but—“Um, Reverend? About the ‘witches and murderers’
thing.”
Maybe-Orne looked down. “I was neither a witch nor a murderer when I had to leave Constance behind. Patience was both, however, and I did become a witch soon enough.” He extended an arm toward Sean, like a falconer to a falcon. “You can’t think I’ll hurt you, now that you know we’re kin.”
If maybe-Orne—probably-Orne—had wanted to twist Sean’s neck, he could have done it while he was flapping helplessly on the ground. Besides, he’d break his own neck if he kept craning it. Fluttering up, Sean dropped onto the minister’s forearm. He sank claws into the thick wool of his coat sleeve but spared the skin underneath, for the moment.
No hood appeared, no jesses around Sean’s ankles, no suddenly conjured cage.
“Ms. Arkwright has beaten me to it,” Orne said, “but I did intend to tell you about our relationship. I’ve known you were a magician since soon after you were born. Your father was out pushing you in a carriage. I was one of those strangers who exclaims over every baby, and since I’d persuaded a plausible young woman to play my wife, your father didn’t object. I gave you a finger to grab, as babies will. Even though I’d hoped to feel it, your latent magic startled me. Then, of course, its strength was a delight.”
Going after a baby, with a fake wife? That was hard-core stalkerage. “How did you persuade her?” Sean said.
“Her?”
“The woman.”
“Oh, a mild ensorcellment. I removed it right afterwards and let her go with an extra hundred dollars in her purse. Puzzling over where the money came from was the only aftereffect she might have suffered.”
“You pay people for ensorcelling them?”
“I think it’s fair to give compensation. But aren’t we getting off track, Sean?”
With so many tracks to pursue, Sean wasn’t sure he could jump off one without landing on another. “My dad would freak if he knew you’d done that. He freaked when Helen told him you were my great-grandfather times ten.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Yeah, he went up to my mom’s studio and stared at the window he made for her. He wouldn’t tell me what was up, but I could tell it was something bad.”
Fathomless Page 11
