“Okay, so with this makeup, we can obfuscate our way out?”
“That’s the idea,” Eastwood said.
Ree raised an eyebrow. I smell a but.
Eastwood shrugged. “But I’ve never actually tried this. Symbolically, it matches up with things I’ve done before. Now I need you to do mine. I always screw up if I do it myself.”
Ree sighed and took the makeup kit. Shot in the shoulder, trudged through sewers, attacked by cannibal gnomes, and now I’m doing some guy’s makeup. At least one part of my day makes sense.
Flashing back to her One World by Night days, she put on foundation, applied a white base, and did detail work around the eyes to make Eastwood look at least good enough to be a Boris Karloff cosplayer at Gen Con.
When she was done, Eastwood evaluated her work with the hand mirror, nodding. “If somehow this doesn’t work, I’ll hold them off, and you bust a move to the nearest manhole.”
She didn’t argue. He handed her a chicken-scratched character sheet with dots for Obfuscate, her skills and stats. Her name was Ignatia. Eastwood showed her his own sheet, folded it, and replaced it in his breast pocket, then said, “Cross your arms and think ugly.”
Trying hard not to think of how ridiculous she felt for using live-action role-playing sign language as stealth magic, Ree followed Eastwood out of the doctor’s bolt-hole, arms crossed in front of her, hands on opposite shoulders. She stayed a single pace behind him, repeating in her head, Please let this work, please let this work.
She continued the mantra as she saw the first gnome ahead. Another two appeared behind the first. Nestled in an alcove left by a collapsed wall, they fought halfheartedly over a bloody bone. As they passed, Ree watched for any indication of their presence being detected, but there was none. One of the gnomes slammed a concrete chunk onto another’s head and grabbed the bone, sucking at it like a kid would a straw in an empty glass.
They hustled another couple hundred yards before Eastwood stopped her and gestured up to a manhole. “This is our exit. Should dump out near Wilkerson, and we can hop a cab.”
He hustled up the ladder and moved the manhole cover, letting in a swath of cloud-dimmed sunlight. The alley was empty except for graffiti and a stencil of the starfleet symbol.
“Was that you?” Ree asked, trying to wipe off the assorted muck from the sewer.
After a quick sidelong glance to check, Eastwood shook his head, walking toward the street. “I use a different color of spray paint. Don’t know who did this one. Might not even be someone in the know.”
Daydreaming of the empty-the-hot-water-heater shower she was planning to take, Ree scanned Wilkerson for a cab. “How long will the Claddagh thing take?”
“Several hours, at least. I have to gather the other materials, pop in some Mists of Avalon to set the mood, and go through some books to refresh myself on the ritual. It’ll go faster with you to help me fetch things. We should know the likely next candidate by dinner.”
At the mention of food, her stomach reminded her of the cruel neglect she’d heaped upon it. Eastwood flagged a cab, and that hunger stayed with Ree all the way across town to the Dorkcave.
Step 1: Food. Steps 2 & 3, shower. Step 4, Claddagh-ring-magic thing. Step 5, stop suicides. No biggie.
• • •
All Eastwood had to eat were protein bars, chips, and a week-old pizza. The protein bar proved very tough, so Ree gnawed determinedly while stripping down for the shower. It was very much a stereotypical dude shower: more than a bit dirty, with only bar soap and an off-brand shampoo in the white plastic rack that hung from the neck of the showerhead. Eastwood had one ragged black towel and a far more pristine sky-blue towel. The blue one was a bit dusty but smelled clean.
Branwen’s, perhaps?
Stepping into the shower, Ree wondered who this woman was, where she’d gone, and what her relationship with Eastwood had been like. She had a reputation in the area as a badass, but when she’d disappeared, what had the locals done? Nothing? That didn’t sound like much of a community. Or maybe it went to show how much trouble she’d gotten herself into.
Ree didn’t believe that Eastwood would have simply sat by, so wherever Branwen had disappeared to, they must have covered their tracks damned well.
From Branwen, Ree’s thoughts turned to the Moorelys. Was there some secret connection between the three victims? If the ring didn’t give them any information, how could they even attempt to search the whole city for the next person likely to commit suicide? She wondered how many people in a city this size committed suicide anyway, and how had Eastwood figured out or decided that this was a pattern?
She was riding damn close to blind, always playing catch-up or second fiddle or something else frustrating.
The shower worked nearly as well as a cappuccino in helping her wake up. She’d expected soreness, tenderness in her shoulder or legs, but they just felt tender, like new skin. Either Dr. Wells’s mojo was damn good, or Ree was on some kind of painkiller. Something else to ask.
She didn’t have anything to change into, but she felt far more human after the shower. If she was lucky, Eastwood would decide to put together materials for the ritual on his own so she could go home to change. If she was really lucky, the ritual would determine that there weren’t going to be any more suicides and they could console the families of the dead and move on. Ree wasn’t betting on either.
Now cleaner and less starving, she made her way back through the stacks and found Eastwood flipping between several books. Behind him, there was a cauldron sitting on top of a space heater.
Eastwood spun in his chair. “Great. I need you to find these books. They’ll be two rows over, on the top shelf. There’s a ladder in the corner,” he said, gesturing to the opposite corner of the Dorkcave with a paper in his hand.
Ree grabbed the paper as he spun back to resume poring through the books.
Scanning the list of books, she sighed. Innocently Irresistible: Gypsy Love Spells and Emotional Magic in the 19th Century, Sympathetic Magic, Empathetic Efforts, and The Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Sonnets and Poems. Huh.
She found a ladder on rails and dragged it behind her, scanning the stacks for the appropriate section. She’d already seen that Eastwood’s categorization system was more associative than alphabetical, so she searched for the LOVE section.
She walked past the sections of JOKES, PRACTICAL; JOKER, THE; and KEYZER SOZE, as well as KING, STEPHEN, a section sporting an impressive hardcover collection as well as several boxes of props labeled PET SEMATARY, CARRIE, and THE MIST.
She abandoned the ladder and moved to the next row over. There, she found LOVE, which had boxes labeled for various romantic comedies, a big stack of books, a half-dozen DVD cases for Love Actually, and finally, the three books on the list.
Which were, of course, on a shelf too high to reach from the ground.
This row of stacks didn’t have its own ladder, so Ree found a folding number in a corner and brought it back to the section. She stared at the ladder, her breathing getting away from her.
This is no big deal, Ree. The ladder is sturdy, it’s not a long fall, and you have more important things to freak out about.
Ree wasn’t as afraid of heights as she’d been as a kid, but she still had a healthy respect for what falling damage could do to a body, and she occasionally freaked out about it. She exhaled but started to climb. The ladder obligingly stayed underneath her, making only one small terror-inducing creak.
She pulled the books out one by one, setting them a shelf down. Then she descended two rungs, moved the books, and repeated the process until the books were reachable from the floor. She stepped down to the concrete and exhaled again, snapping the ladder closed and returning it to its corner.
Ree picked up the books on her way back, and when she cleared the stacks, she saw Eastwood standing over the cauldron holding a wooden spoon to his mouth. He took a sip and then wrinkled his face.
Not tasty, then. I woul
dn’t imagine a Who Is Going to Commit Suicide? recipe would be.
“Have books, will divine,” she said.
Eastwood nodded. “Put them over there, then turn to Sonnet 116. I think it’s that one. Starts with ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds.’ ”
Ree set down the books and flipped through the book to find the sonnet, which was in fact #116. “Now what?”
Still looking at the cauldron, Eastwood beckoned her over. “Come over here, then recite it at the solution.”
“Why, exactly?”
Eastwood shook his head. “It’ll take longer to explain than to do. I need to keep adding ingredients at the right intervals, so you get to recite.”
Ree cleared her throat and started reciting the sonnet. She’d read them all back in school but hadn’t touched them since. #116 turned Shakespeare’s epic writing chops to the subject of qualifying true love. True love is beyond time, it’s unchanging, so on and so forth. Ree was reminded of the passage from 1 Corinthians that was used in every single wedding she’d been to as a kid.
Eastwood hurried back and forth between the nearest shelf on the racks, looking half like a cooking show host and half like one of the “more scared of you than you are of them” customers at Café Xombi: head down, seemingly shut off from the world. And to top it all off, still smelly, as he’d forgone the shower that Ree had deemed necessary.
Though maybe he’d showered at Dr. Wells’s and smelled of only one sewer expedition. Ree prayed that she’d never spend enough time in sewers to be able to tell the difference. The thought almost cost her her spot in the sonnet, but after a pause, she finished the second line of the final rhyming couplet.
Eastwood scurried back with the last ingredient—the Claddagh ring—and cast it into the cauldron. The ring made more of an explosion than a splash, and Ree leaned back to avoid whatever magical colorful wooj the rising plume was made of. When the plume dissolved, Eastwood leaned over the cauldron and squinted. He pulled on Ree to lean in beside him. “Keep your eyes open, and don’t freak out.”
“Huh?” Ree didn’t have time to freak out when the liquid in the cauldron bubbled up, flashing colors more brilliant than a soap commercial, washing over her and sucking her into . . . something?
• • •
It started with flashes of light. Bells, then drums, then an electric-guitar riff. She felt dropped into a liquid mass, a pool or an ocean. Sensation rolled over her—sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell all at once. It was overwhelming at first, but after what felt like an eternal moment, she surfaced, got her head above water. The world settled into a hazy outline, sepia-toned, and she found herself in a bedroom. The edges of her vision were wispy, dreamlike, and when she tracked her head, the side of the room she focused on became clear while everything else became hazy.
A door opened, and a young man walked in, spiky hair in a Mohawk and a half-dozen piercings in his left ear. He slammed the door and locked it, tossing a bag on his bed. The room’s decoration suggested a Millennial Goth Punk—here a Ramones poster, there a computer tower modded with skulls. As he walked across the room, Ree saw a ghostly outline of Eastwood beside her, also watching. She opened her mouth to speak, but he put a finger over his lips in the unmistakable sign of Shhhhhh.
The boy sat down in front of a computer and opened an email folder. Though it was across the room, Ree could read it clearly. It was a Dear John letter from someone named Jeanine to a Tomas. The words of the letter didn’t stay with her, just the feelings of dread, betrayal, and loss. There were no last names, the email addresses reading Autumn Razor and Winter Knife—notable for their teenage affected coolness but not much else.
A bitter cold rushed over Ree, and she saw a phantom shadow play across the wall, reaching out to Tomas. As she tried to process the sight of the darkness wrapping itself around the boy, Tomas pulled a pair of pliers out from a stack of tools, beginning to cry.
And then he shoved it toward his eye.
The vision shattered, and Ree felt an intense pain in her eye. When the pain faded, Tomas’s body was on the floor. His body flickered in and out of place, switching with Angela’s body and two others she didn’t recognize. Then the rooms, too, changed with the bodies, visual whiplash nearly overloading her eyes. She squinted and focused, trying to isolate one room at a time. Her vision settled back into Tomas’s. It was night, where it had been daytime.
The window opened, and a strange figure’s head peeked inside, checking the room. The silhouette scampered through the window, making no sound when it landed. It stayed half crouched and shuffled over to the boy’s corpse. Still in shadow, the figure reached into itself and produced a red-and-white sphere, generating a light that swirled and folded in on itself rather than illuminating anything around it.
Ree hunched down to get a better look, maybe catch the face of whoever this shadowed figure was.
The murderer returned? Some scavenger?
As she looked the figure eye to eye, she saw no light, no shadow of black on black, just a mask of darkness. She reached into her coat, hoping to find a flashlight, a lighter, anything. When she brought her hands back out, she had nothing.
She looked sideways to the dream-Eastwood, who stood frozen as he watched the interloper.
The figure waved its hand over Tomas’s body, the body that Ree saw but refused to register, wouldn’t analyze or examine. She took it as a gestalt, keeping it distant so that the pain couldn’t pour through the cracks in her emotional armor that had been left by the sympathetic pain in her eye, the memory of Angela, and a hundred other emotional scars from her life.
An attenuated string of light seeped out of Tomas’s mouth and nose, a dead ringer for every TV show or movie she’d seen in which a creature took someone’s soul out of their body. The light floated up and began swirling around the stranger’s sphere, seeping in and joining the captured light. Ree lunged forward, trying to stop the process, half-knowing she couldn’t affect anything in the vision and half not giving a crap because she had to do something or yield to the pain that was peeling away at the edge of her vision.
Let go, said the pain in a sharp, gravelly voice. Let us in, and we’ll take it all away. You don’t have to hurt. We can take it away from you, leave you in peace.
Instead of pain, a warm dullness started to enfold her, wrap her up in nothingness. The vision faded away, the sepia tones fading to black and white, shifting grayscale.
“Aw, hell no.” Ree shook off the blanket of numbness, grabbed the edge of the pain, and yanked hard. It hit her like electricity, and the sepia vision rushed back in on a tide of pain. Still holding on to the pain, she tried to focus it into light, blasting the energy at the shadowed figure.
The light cast on the figure, illuminating the features of a middle-aged man with dark hair in a fedora and long coat, and a set of surprised eyes. The dream-Eastwood tackled her, shouting something incoherent. In another scattershot avalanche of sensation, she was torn out of the vision and dumped onto the floor of the Dorkcave.
• • •
She came to with a start, as if woken from a bad dream, that is, with a scream. She was back in the Dorkcave, her hands on the edge of the cauldron. But this time she felt like she was going to vomit.
Good gods, let’s not do that again.
“Are you all right?” Eastwood asked, looking green around the gills.
“What the hell was all that? Who was that guy, and did you see the shadow on the wall just before he—? Was it something that could be making these kids take their lives?” Questions popped up in her mind and spilled out of her faster than she could check them through the internal censor in her brain.
Eastwood held up his hands to stop her, then rubbed at his temples. “Hold on for a sec. Prophetic hangover sucks Bantha pudu.”
The room continued to spin, though she was standing still, and her ears were hot. She felt like she’d just slammed three doubles of tequila and needed a fistfight chaser. She paced back and fort
h, looking for something she could kick without consequence. Instead, she grabbed the lip of the cauldron and squeezed as hard as she could, digging her nails into the wrought iron until they scratched along the surface, biting into her palms.
Ree turned back to Eastwood. “We need to go now. I have his email address. You can track that and a given name to an address, right?”
“Theoretically, but that depends on the ISP, email provider, a lot. Hold on a minute, okay? This hasn’t happened, and it may not ever happen, or at least not like you saw. The ritual gave us a look at what might happen.”
Ree closed on Eastwood. “Or it could happen just that way, could be happening now, right? Who were those figures, the phantom and the shadowed figure? Is this some kind of magical serial killer or what?”
Eastwood backed up a step. “Give me a minute to sort things out.”
Something was wrong. Not just the situation. Eastwood. Something in his eyes. Those eyes.
Ree’s nostrils flared, and she felt lava-hot anger pour through her veins. “It was you I saw in there—the shadow with the sphere!”
Eastwood’s eyes went wide for a moment, then cast to the side. “No, no, no, of course not. Let me look up that address, you say you remembered it.” He turned his back on her, headed for the computer.
Oh, hell no.
“It sure looked like you, unless you have an evil twin—and I don’t think you have an evil twin. So if you do have an evil twin, you better let me know, because it really seems to me that you’re involved with this somehow and you’re trying to change the subject.”
He turned around again quickly, an argument playing out on his face. He changed his mind several times, almost starting to speak twice and stopping himself.
Ree continued to press forward, stepping to within a hand’s span. She had to look up to lock eyes, but she felt for all the world like she was looking down on him.
“You better sit down,” he said.
Ree gave him the stink-eye and he stepped back again, gesturing to a desk chair. Not one time in her life had someone prefaced good news with “you better sit down.” She’d been told to sit down when Mom left, when Grandpa died, when Dad got fired by the state of California (both times), and if there had been a chair available when Jay was dumping her, he’d have asked her to sit down.
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