by Nazri Noor
Standing in the midst of it all, arms folded and watching over the stylish spectacle like a trio of overseers, were the Sisters. Each looked like the other, except for the smallest differences: this one rolled up her sleeves, and that one had her hair in a messy bun with pencils stuck through it. This one liked cat’s eye glasses, and that one preferred wireframes. All three wore what looked like utility belts, their beige pockets bulging with tape measures, pincushions, chalk, and needles, and thread.
Again, not at all what I expected.
“Dustin Graves?” they said.
I blinked. They could see past my glamour, too. I tapped the gem on the ring Carver gave me. Did this thing even work? “You can see me? The real me?”
“Don’t insult us,” the middle Sister said, rolling her eyes. “Your bauble can only do so much. Besides, blond isn’t a good look for you.” She held her hand out. “Well? Did you bring an offering?”
“Oh,” I said, remembering myself. “Right.” I approached slowly, holding out the paper bag that was filled with the reagents Scrimshaw and I had so painstakingly collected.
The Sister on the left stepped forward, retrieved the bag from my outstretched hand, then walked back to her siblings in an odd, zigzagging pattern. Even as I stared I couldn’t tell which of them she was. The bag had changed hands, and subtle or no, their little differences were no longer enough to help me tell them apart.
It was infuriating, like a human game of cups and balls. As I watched the paper bag, as slender fingers reached in to collect reagents, I slowly understood that their individual identities weren’t important. These odd entities worked as a unit, and that was all that mattered.
“Wonderful,” one Sister said. “It’s all in order. Spun gold, a lock of hair, and loveliest of all, a scrap of tatted lace.” She passed the lace around, the three of them cooing as they stroked its impossibly ornate patterns.
And not just any lace. That was the toughest, priciest find of the night. We were lucky that the Black Market merchant selling it accepted credit cards. I was hoping Carver would cover my bill if it meant that this communion ultimately helped me stop an oncoming apocalypse.
The lace itself needed to be made by an artist so talented, so committed to the craft that the creation of its inhumanly intricate detail ultimately left them blind. Hey. Nobody said the entities were very nice. Or sane, for that matter.
“So.” I coughed softly, drawing attention to myself, casting my eye around the workroom. “Interesting setup you’ve got here.”
“Oh, you know how it is,” said a Sister. “Immortality can be so boring, you know? Truly. Honestly.” She waved a hand across the workroom. “And so, this. Fast fashion. Why not build an empire? Try our hand at something that isn’t quite as serious or ominous as assessing fate.”
Another Sister cleared her throat. “Though of course, we are very good at it.”
“Oh,” a third Sister said. “Very good indeed.”
I furrowed my brow. “Is that what you are, then? The Fates?”
“The Fates, the Moirae of the Greeks?” A Sister cupped her elbow, then rested her chin in her hand. “Perhaps. Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. Spinning, measuring, and cutting the threads of life.”
“Yes. Or perhaps we are those revered by the Vikings.” Another Sister emulated the same pose, nodding, her glasses flashing in the light. “Perhaps we are the Norns, the spinners of threads. Urd. Verdandi. Skuld.”
The third Sister chimed in. “And in the end both man and god must bow to the looms, to the stories they weave, to the ends of their tales as the spinning wheels run out. Or perhaps we are no one. What matters, Dustin Graves, is what you want.”
I blinked, and the Sisters were no longer there. I staggered back, blinking again, to find myself surrounded.
“What is it you want?” a Sister asked, extending a measuring tape across my body. “A better fit, clearly.” She tutted. “Terrible inseam.”
“A cuffed pant,” the second one added. “Yes. Perhaps some accessories. Bring out the blue in his eyes.”
“Um,” I stammered. “I’m not – wait, what was that about my inseam again?”
“Or,” the third Sister said. “Or do you simply need information, dear Dustin? Yes. Your threads have been so frayed, your weft tangled. You need to be strung in the right direction. A book. He seeks a book.”
“The Tome of Annihilation,” I breathed, turning in place to follow the Sisters as they fawned and fussed over me, growing dizzy with the pace of their speech and sartorial meddling. “I need to know where it is.”
“Lucky he brought that lace, eh, Sisters? This one’s asking a lot.”
A second Sister broke in. “The book is in Valero. In the very city you call home, shadow mage.”
I groaned, and yeah, okay, I stamped my foot, too. “I know that already. That’s what – ” I cut myself off, figuring that any mention of Scrimshaw probably wouldn’t help my case, whatever it was he had done to them. “That’s what someone told me.”
“Oh, very well.” The third Sister reached into her belt of wonders, pulling out a small, slender card. She slipped it in my breast pocket, patting it for safety. “You’ll find it there.”
“That’s it?” I blinked at her, feeling at my chest to make sure the card was still in my pocket. This was too easy. “Really, that’s all there is to it?”
“Really,” the three Sisters said in unison.
“But take caution,” said one. “Something hideously dangerous awaits you.”
“Oh,” I said. “Of course. You mean besides the book?”
“You must already know that you aren’t the only party interested in the Tome of Annihilation, dear Dustin,” said the second.
“Be on your guard.” The third Sister tugged gently at my hair, as if attempting to style and reshape it to her satisfaction. “And remember that you’re a winter palette.”
“Wha – what the hell does that even mean?”
“Pick up a fashion magazine some time,” one Sister said icily.
I rubbed the back of my neck. This was all a blur of disjointed information, but if a Norn – or a Fate, whoever these women were – told me to wise up and harden my defenses, then I wasn’t going to argue. I had to focus on the Tome of Annihilation. Focus on getting it back – and getting out of this mess alive.
“Is there anything else I should know?” I said, a little weary, yet somehow a little hopeful.
“Oh, no. You’re dismissed.” All three Sisters turned to me as one. “That’s all.”
The world spun, and I found myself spat onto the ground outside the narrow passage in Silk Road. It was darker out. The two stores concealing the tether to the Sisters’ domicile had closed shop, dim except for the faint interior lights they used to keep their window displays pretty by night.
That also meant that there was no one around to see me eat pavement. Good enough, I figured. I spat out bits of grit that had somehow made it past my lips, then reached into my jacket pocket. Perfect. The card was still there.
“Seek the tower of mouths,” I read. “The city’s unblinking eye.”
Oh. A riddle. Great. Just great. As if the entities in general could be any more obtuse. Though maybe I spoke too soon. I stared at the card, frowning. Maybe this was easier than I thought.
An unblinking eye. Surely it couldn’t be that obvious. That was Comstock Media’s logo, printed in its daily newspaper, or aired as a graphic in each one of its broadcasts. The last time I’d seen it was in a paper at dad’s house, and before that, during a report on the warehouse fire. The tower of mouths. Broadcasting, communications? It seemed to hang together.
I pulled out my phone, more than ready to hire a car to head straight to the Comstock Building. A stupendously foolish and impulsive move to go alone, sure, which was why I was grateful that my phone had about fifteen missed calls to stop me dead in my tracks.
But I wasn’t so enthusiastic to see that they were all from Gil. Things had been weird en
ough with him back at the Boneyard, but now I had to wonder if I’d somehow accidentally done even more to antagonize the Lorica, or possibly his relationship.
Fifteen missed calls, though? Yikes. I had to call him back. Something major had to be up.
Gil picked up in two rings. I had just blurted out a quick, questioning “Hello?” before he started talking over me.
“You’ve got to head over here, Dust. Texting you the address. Some serious shit is going down and – well, I thought you’d want to know.”
My heart thumped. “What do you mean? Is everything okay? Is it Prudence?”
There was a pause on the phone. “Well, not exactly. I’m with her right now. Dust – there have been more deaths.”
My mouth went dry. “How many?” I managed to force out.
“Lots,” Gil said. I heard Prudence’s voice in the background. “More than a dozen, apparently. Some dumb college kids did a viewing party.”
“To view what, exactly? I mean – oh. Oh no. You’re not serious.”
“They watched Mona’s last concert,” Gil said evenly. “Dust. Even a recording of the performance is enough to kill the normals.”
Chapter 22
My heart was stuck in my throat. “And they died from just watching the recording?”
Prudence looked around the room, her nose wrinkling. It was far too soon for the corpses to begin stinking up the place, but there was no getting around the smell of blood. So much blood.
“Not just watching it, Dust,” she said. “We’re pretty sure even just hearing it is enough to kill normals. Look at these corpses – the way they fell, they couldn’t have been watching the TV. One of them was even in the kitchen.”
Prudence and Gil had asked me to meet them at this address, which Bastion had tipped them off about. We were waiting for him to join us at what was obviously a rental house shared by some college students. I’d deactivated the glamour on Carver’s ring – but not the cloaking, mind you, I’m not crazy – because there was no one to see me there anyway.
Everyone who once lived in that house was dead. They’d asked their friends over to watch Mona’s performance, and now about fourteen of them were splayed out on the floor, leaking blood and brains from every orifice. A television hissed in the background, the screen flickering, flashing.
“How did they even get a recording of the concert?” I said. “Everyone died.”
“But there may have been a few magical attendees who fled the premises, remember? And who’s to say that someone didn’t sneak a couple of smartphones off of the corpses?”
Who would even do that? Possibly the same individual – angel, demon, unicorn, who the fuck even knows anymore – who happily murdered a hundred humans, that’s who. And now they were out there with a recording of a killing song.
I raked my fingers through my hair in frustration. “How in the hell are we going to have any hope of tracking down a video on a rogue cellphone?”
God, this was my life now. Much more of this and I was going to scratch myself bald. We had to hope that these people hadn’t already sent off copies of the video to their friends, to chat groups, hell, to social media. Was this why Mammon wanted the Tome? Did the demon princes have designs on a grander scale now that their little experiment had succeeded?
“A counter spell,” Prudence suggested. “Reversing the arcane flow would sap the destructive energies distributed across copies of the performance. If we find the Tome, we can cancel it all out, render every recording useless.”
“Then we nip the problem in the bud,” I said. “I spoke to these entities called the Sisters.”
“Sisters?” Prudence blinked. “The Norns?”
Gil cocked his head. “Or the Greek Fates?”
“Honestly? No idea.” And, echoing the Sisters’ sentiments, I added, “I’m not sure it matters. But they told me where to find the Tome of Annihilation. Well, they hinted. I’m pretty sure it’s at the Comstock Building.”
Prudence narrowed her gaze, her face going deadly serious. “The Comstock Building. Valero’s media nerve center. The one that houses a bunch of the city’s broadcast studios. That Comstock Building.”
The tone of her voice was far from reassuring. Quite a few news outlets were grouped under Comstock Media, many of them stationed in the same building. Archibald Comstock was a powerful man, made more powerful by his near-total monopoly over the local media.
The news. A broadcast. If the killing song could be transmitted over a recording, then surely –
“Oh, fuck,” I moaned, slapping myself in the forehead.
“Fuck is right,” Gil said, frowning. “We should round up everyone we can and strike at the Comstock Building.”
“Right,” Prudence said, already tapping away at her phone. “Where the hell is Bastion? He told us to meet him here.”
“I’ll get in touch with Sterling,” Gil said.
I reached for my phone, unlocking the screen to call Carver, when I realized that a call was coming in at the exact same time. It was from a number I didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“Dustin? Hello? Dustin Graves, is that you?”
It was a woman’s voice, vaguely familiar. “Who is this?”
“It’s Luella Brandt,” the voice said shakily. “Sebastion’s mother.” I’d met her once, when Bastion had taken me and Sterling to investigate a homunculus breaking into their enormous mansion. “I need to know, Dustin. Have you seen my son?”
“What? No, I haven’t. Has he gone missing?”
“Well, no,” Luella said. “Not exactly. I’m not sure how to put it. He was here at home half an hour ago, but he left. Angrily. He burst through the front door.”
“I’m hoping you mean that in a metaphoric sense,” I said.
“No, I do not. He burst through the front door. And the walls. And a large part of the mansion gates. Please, Dustin. I don’t know what’s become of him, and he doesn’t have his phone. It’s how I found your number. If you hear anything about my son – ”
A loud crack whipped through the night, cutting Luella off, instantly silencing the chatter of Prudence and Gil’s voices. The bang was accompanied by a shower of rubble and broken glass, thrown into the house from the massive hole that had very suddenly appeared in the wall.
“Shit,” I muttered. “Shit shit shit.”
I should have asked the others why we were tackling this problem ourselves. I should have asked why the Lorica wasn’t already there for cleanup. This was a setup.
“Dustin?” Luella’s voice shouted. “Is everything all right? What’s happening?”
“Call you back,” I yelled into the receiver.
I stuffed my phone back into my jacket, slipping the flap of my knapsack back, because I already knew what was coming. The dust of broken concrete and debris settled, showing me that Prudence and Gil were lying prone on the floor – and that the three of us had found Luella’s son for him.
“Dusty,” Bastion said, in a voice that sounded distant, yet still thick with characteristic disdain. “It’s been a while.”
His eyes were silver. Like Mona’s, the night of the massacre.
“Bastion,” I breathed. “You’re not in your right mind. Something’s taken over. You have to know that.”
“Oh, really?” He tilted his head curiously, the light spilling from his eyes flickering when he blinked. “I hadn’t noticed. And here I thought I was just doing my job.”
Prudence sputtered and coughed into the dirt, pushing off the ground with shaking arms. “And what job is that?” she spat. “You work for the Lorica.”
Bastion’s eyes turned on her like searchlights, the light flooding even from his mouth when he spoke. “I work for the greater good, Prue. And the three of you are standing in the way of that vision.”
Gil growled, springing from the floor with terrifying speed, hurling himself bodily at Bastion. He stretched out his hands, blood bursting from his fingers as his wolf claws broke free fr
om his human form.
Bastion held out one hand, fingers splayed, a faint, circular shape glimmering in the air: a shield. The first thing I heard was the crack as Gil’s talons splintered, then fell from his hands. The second was his scream of pain, a sound that came from the wolf within him, the blood-curdling howl of an injured beast.
“Heel,” Bastion said. He gestured again, and Gil was thrown across the room.
“Bastion,” Prudence said. “No.”
She hobbled to her feet, her fists wreathed in blue fire. I had to hope that she would knock some sense back into Bastion – or alternately, smack him out of his mind control. I curled my fingers, calling on the searing heat in the palm of my hand to form into a clump of fire, and with my other hand, I threw my backpack open.
Willing the fireball to maintain its form, I reeled back and hurled it straight at Bastion’s body. Like a missile Vanitas streaked out of his pocket dimension, sword and scabbard slicing and smashing. Bastion waved his hand, invisible shields springing up from out of the ethers to block both sword and flame. Prudence struck at him with her full power, or whatever was left in her body after Bastion’s initial explosive arrival. The azure blue of her fist-fire was guttering out, and fast. It was only a matter of time before Bastion decided to stop toying with us and launch a counterattack.
But there had to be a limit to what he could do. Mages had their own stores of power, after all, and at the end of the day, a depleted sorcerer was just another fleshy, fragile human. We had to wear him down. I reached inside myself, calling to the Dark Room, the split at my lip going warm as new blood trickled from it.
Hurt him, I thought. Hook him, entangle him, just hurt him. Enough to make him stop, to bring his mind to the present, to bring him back to us. But don’t kill him.
