He scowled. “Damn, you’re tough.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” She made a twirling motion with her finger, indicating he was to turn back around—playtime was over. “Make with the reading, L.A.”
Calista flopped stomach-first on her bed where the grimoire laid open. She paged through it for the millionth time, eyes trailing from one alien word to the next, paragraph after paragraph, sigil after sigil. She’d practically memorized them.
She opened her sketchbook and uncapped a marker. Gazing at the illustration of the same sigil that emblazoned her back, she began to doodle it. It was an unconscious effort; the tip lazily dragging across her pad, curving into a circular pattern, adding the loops and zig-zags to complete the design. There has to be a way to read this book, she thought.
On page one was a message written in English, so why wasn’t that coded? Adding to the confusion was the sigil beneath the message—interlocking stars inside a circle. Was it some sort of code-breaking mechanism? Two weeks ago that would have sounded ridiculous. Impossible even. But that was before the grimoire had fallen into her lap, and before her tattoo became an uncontrollable mystical weapon. Maybe it was time to erase the word ‘impossible’ from her lexicon.
Her throat went suddenly dry, and beads of perspiration formed on her hairline; a fast-breaking fever that struck out of nowhere. Food poisoning, she thought—oh god, the first time I have a boy over in more than a year and I’m going to spew lasagna chunks right in front of him. Her stomach gurgled. She was about to dash for the bathroom when she caught a glimpse of the grimoire. She could read it. Jackson’s calligraphic Elvish characters were breaking apart, floating around the page and reconstructing themselves into English. She blinked twice, and the letters drifted back to their original positions.
She tore the sheet from her pad and tossed it aside. With far more precision she re-drew the sigil on a fresh page, conforming to each line. The heat returned in waves, and her vision—now sharper than ever—snapped the letters back into English. She flipped through the book. Every page was decoded.
The book spoke of rituals and enchantments, potions and charms, amulets and ley lines. Specifics of how to perform incantations using light and darkness and bones and blood to amplify them—and warnings about which were not to be attempted. And each sigil Jackson had illustrated was accompanied by a description. Her stomach wrenched itself like a soaked rag, heart threatening to burst inside her chest like the pin pulled on a grenade. She was so excited and terrified that she slammed the book closed, fearing she might vomit on one of the pages.
To confirm she wasn’t hallucinating from a lack of sleep, Calista flung the cover back open and inspected the text, running her finger along the pages as she read. The characters were still legible.
The key she’d been searching for was right where Jackson had left it: inked onto her back. All she had to do was recreate it, and the grimoire revealed itself, broken like the flimsy lock on a dollar-store diary.
She slammed the cover shut.
“Hey,” Beckett called out. “Enough with the book slamming, Valley Girl. I need to finish my reading. I heard a rumor I was going to be quizzed.”
Calista leaped to her feet. “I just remembered, I have this thing tonight.”
He spun to face her. “A thing?”
“Yup!” She threw her hands up. “Totally forgot! Big hangout tonight. Me, a bunch of friends … it’s a thing.”
“Can I tag along? My calendar is wide open due to the fact that you’re my only friend.”
“No,” She said apologetically, gathering his things. She started jamming them into his knapsack. “It’s a really exclusive group, and they’re weird about new people. I need to shower and change, so maybe we can pick this up tomorrow?” She pushed the bag into his chest and patted his shoulder.
“But your notes were getting good! I was almost at the end of the Revolutionary War.”
She took him by the elbow, ushering him towards the front door. “Spoiler alert: we won.”
“Huh. I figured as much since the last time I checked our flag wasn’t the Union Jack.”
“See? You’re like ten times smarter than when you got here.” She scooped up his jacket and piled it on top of his book bag, along with his boots. His eyes peeked an inch over the pile. “Thanks for coming,” she added. “See you tomorrow!”
He was barely past the threshold when she slammed the door.
She sprinted through the living room, into her bedroom and dove for her phone. Snapping off a rapid-fire text, her device struggled to display the characters as fast as she could type them.
“Call me RIGHT NOW,” she wrote. “I cracked it.” The message delivered with an electronic whoosh.
She just hoped that Kaz would be willing to meet her.
There are no laws against charming a corporate logo; it’s currently impossible to prove.
While the potential for financial gain is substantial, there is no clear and present danger. Despite infusing customers with preternatural brand loyalty, and hypnotizing them into purchasing twelve dollar Frappuccinos, magickally enhanced logos are otherwise harmless.
– FATHER Division Agent Handbook
11. Method to Madness
“WHAT I WOULDN’T GIVE for a caramel macchiato,” Agent Malek said wistfully, staring into his Styrofoam cup. A cloud of expired cream was congealing on the surface of the muddy liquid, refusing to blend with the coffee below—if the disaster he was holding could even be labeled ‘coffee.’ That point was certainly up for debate.
“And I want a ski lodge in Aspen,” King grumbled. “But it’s not gonna happen.”
“Couldn’t we have met in some quaint little coffee shop?” Malek said. He gazed at the stale yellow bulb looming overhead. “North Valley has loads of them. It’s not as if I’m undercover; as far as anyone knows, we could be a pair of well-dressed gentlemen sharing a laugh over a latte.”
Charles King stared blankly across the table, scratching at the underside of his chins. His expression remained as stark as their concrete surroundings.
Malek shrugged. “Sharing disapproving glares over a latte?”
Apparently the suggested change of venue didn’t warrant a reply. King flipped open a ruled pad and squared it in front of him on the battered metal table. This had been Malek’s life for the last two weeks: meeting with King at his behest, practically at his beck and call. Whenever his phone lit with his Director’s name, he’d make haste to the windowless Pit and reported his findings.
King drummed his pen onto his pad.
“Oh,” Malek said. “You want a status update, I’m assuming?”
“While we’re young.”
“I’m getting close,” Malek announced.
King wheezed into the back of his pudgy fist; a sound halfway between a laugh and a smoker’s cough. “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea what that means.”
“It means you have nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.”
“And I’m fairly certain that most of those aren’t even real words.”
“Here’s my problem, rookie.” King discarded his pen and folded his hands, elbows resting on a stack of files and folders. “I know you’re relatively new to The Agency, so I’m going to spell this out with tiny words. The Secretary expects results. I expect results. Two weeks have passed since this.” He riffled through an inch-thick folder, yanking out an eight-by-ten photo. He slammed it down. “Beatrice Walton’s murder. And in that time, you’ve produced exactly two things: jack and shit. Neither looks good on my reports. The powers that be—you know, those people who sign both of our paychecks—expect to receive these reports on a regular basis.” He pulled out a manila sheet with the Presidential seal beveled into the header. “When they read my reports while sitting around a big table at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they want them filled with actionable intel, measurable data. ‘We’re getting close’ isn’t a report. It�
�s a wish. It’s as good as saying ‘the dog ate my homework,’ only lazier. It doesn’t just make you look bad, it makes me look incompetent.”
“Leads take time to investigate,” Malek explained. “If you’ll allow a little leeway and trust in my methods, I assure you I’ll produce results.”
“There’s a method to this madness?” He barked again, this time a series of whooping coughs. “Astonish me, Malek. Really, I’m excited to hear the plan. Because cover-ups are expensive, and a lot of people need to be paid off and relocated to execute them. And now we’ve had two. We won’t be getting a third.”
During all the pseudo-interrogations Malek had suffered through with gritted teeth, he’d never felt like he was in danger of being reeled in by The Agency—of being pulled off an assignment. This seemed different.
Malek leaned in on the table, lowering his voice. “At the moment we’re running about aimlessly, swatting at wasps. For every one we flatten, two more are spawned. On and on it goes.”
King began scribbling notes on his pad. “That’s your mission. Pest control.”
“What if we could stop swatting these pesky little wasps and go straight for the source? What if we destroyed the nest? We’d be in the clear.”
“You mean you’d be in the clear,” King said.
“Fair enough. But what if I had a lead on the only man with the ability to do just that? Nolan Foxcroft.”
The scribbling halted, and King raised his eyes. “Nolan Foxcroft? As in Fox Techno-alchemy? That Nolan Foxcroft?”
“Is there another Nolan Foxcroft I should be aware of?”
“He’s a ghost, rookie. If Foxy doesn’t want to be found, we won’t find him.”
“What if I told you I could be a ghost buster of sorts?” That came out embarrassingly wrong. “Let me rephrase: I’m on his trail. You and I find him, he stitches up the tear, and Morpheus goes back online. Before long Gravenhurst is up and running, and all those pesky little wasps will suddenly cease to exist.”
King discarded his pen, and for the first time in their tenuous relationship, he pushed his pad aside. The gesture was symbolic, like a journalist turning off a recorder; this was going to be an honest-to-goodness conversation, not a data dump. He’d done it: Malek had piqued the interest of a man who was ostensibly un-piqueable.
“Julia Scott is the last person to have seen him.” Malek dug into his pocket and plucked out a photograph of his own. He slid it across the table. The platinum blond teenager was captured striding down a snowy flagstone path towards an elite private school, backpack flung over one shoulder.
King glanced at the photo but didn’t bother picking it up. “Nice boots.”
“Meet Calista Scott. Julia Scott’s only daughter.”
“Right, the daughter. Read about her in Julia’s file. And this is supposed to impress me how, exactly?”
“She visited her mother in prison not long ago. She asked our guest Julia about all sorts of interesting things.” Malek produced a second photo; a grainy security cam image of Calista and Julia separated by bullet-proof glass.
King slid the photo back towards his agent with a single digit, unimpressed. “So what? The kid visited her mom.”
“Visited for the first time ever,” Malek added. “Julia had instructed her daughter not to visit under any circumstances.”
“So what did they chat about?” King asked grudgingly, like he was being forced to sit through a slideshow of a co-worker’s vacation photos.
“Primarily? The incineration of a middle-class suburban home in North Valley, along with three Americans. And she let something else slip: the term ‘Cleansing Protocol.’”
King creased his brow, his bushy eyebrows folding into one long caterpillar. “Why the hell didn’t I know about this?”
“It’s amazing what goes on outside of this little room. I talk to people, watch security footage … occasionally consume a beverage that doesn’t taste like raw sewage.” He picked up the Styrofoam cup and sneered at it, giving it a little swirl. “It’s quite liberating.”
King breathed out a long, rattling wheeze, like the muffler on a dying truck about to break down on the freeway. “So she let one of our codes slip during visitation—this isn’t the first time an employee has opened their mouth. When do you get to the part where I’m astonished?”
“We follow Calista. Stay close, watch her movements.”
“Great, keep me posted. And if she posts Nolan Foxcroft’s address in one of her status updates, we can go smash down his front door.”
“I propose we get to know her on a personal level. She might not realize how much information she has access to. Calista may have contacts we’ve yet to uncover—someone who does have Foxcroft’s current address.”
“So you’re talking about an insider. Someone gets close to this girl, breaks down her walls, makes her open up?”
“You’re reading my mind,” Malek said. “The wheels are already in motion. If we give the relationship a little time to unfold, the payoff could be unimaginable.” He leaned forward and flashed a hint of a smile. “Imagine the possibilities, Charles: instead of delivering a few low-level Scriveners, you turn up to your next briefing with Nolan bloody Foxcroft—number one on the most wanted list. If that happens, your ski lodge in Aspen won’t be far off.”
King huffed again, rapping his pen into the table. Then he nodded. Twice. That much affirmation from Charles King was tantamount to be knighted by Her Majesty at Buckingham Palace.
“You’ve got your leeway, Malek. See what Calista knows, and if she has any leads on Foxy. In the meantime, our convenience store killer is still at large, we have a dead school teacher, and no one to blame for it. You’d better produce someone with a tattoo of a sigil, and you’d better deliver them yesterday.”
The world is filled with spellbooks, but without opening your mind to the magick inside, the spells remain invisible.
– Passage in the North Valley Grimoire
12. Fool’s Errand
CALISTA’S KNUCKLES ACHED beneath her cottony white mittens. Every time they struck Kaz’s front door an arrow of pain shot through them, amplified by the bitter wind. Everything hurts more in this type of cold.
“I’m going to keep knocking!” she hollered, arching up on her tippy-toes to peer through the peephole. Night had fallen, and the interior was pitch black, but she could swear he was right there, peeking back at her. It’s not like he ever went anywhere, especially on a school night.
A squall twisted through his portico, dusting her hair with a fresh lattice of snow. She jogged in place and rubbed her hands together. Physical force wasn’t working—it was time to change tactics.
“I’m not leaving, you know!” She pounded the door again. “I’ll die out here. Your best friend, frozen to death on your front porch. You’ll have to explain to the paramedics why you were too much of a dickhole to let me in!”
She reeled back to hammer the door again, and it swung open. Kaz silently stepped back, pulled it wide enough for her to pass through, and closed it behind her.
Calista yanked off her mittens and unzipped her coat, letting her knapsack drop to the hardwood with a klunk. Her cheeks were bee-stung, hair windblown.
“I missed you,” she said, blowing into her hands. Then she punched Kaz in the shoulder. “Even though you’re a dickhole.”
“I missed you too. And ouch.”
“Next time, return my texts.”
He lit a fire and prepared hot chocolate, allowing his guest some time to thaw. They stared at the crackling logs for what felt like an eternity before he broke the uncomfortable silence. “Don’t let the extra marshmallows fool you, Callie. I’m still pissed.”
She blew into her mug. A coil of steam trailed into the darkness. “I won’t let them go to my head.”
When she was warm enough, she retrieved her knapsack and opened the grimoire, spreading it wide on his coffee table. This was going to be the tough part. Calista had witnessed two separate event
s that could only be explained as supernatural, while Kaz, having been pistol-whipped right before Mrs. Walton’s death, had witnessed exactly zero.
Calista pulled out a sketchbook and pencil, opened the grimoire to the page with the design of her tattoo, and asked Kaz to recreate it.
He protested, but eventually agreed. One circle and zig-zagging line after another filled his page until the design was complete. He leafed through the grimoire, squinting at the alien characters.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t see anything. It still looks like some made-up Tolkien language.”
Calista wadded up the page and tossed it into the fireplace. “Here,” she said, rapping her finger against a fresh sheet. “Draw it again.”
“I don’t think—”
“Do it! You’re going to see, I promise.”
His eyes reflected a deep concern, but he picked up the pencil and repeated the design. It was carefully crafted, even more accurate than his first attempt. He leafed through a few pages, shaking his head all the while. Still nothing.
“Are you sure?” She held the notepad adjacent to the grimoire, scrutinizing the designs. “Ah! Maybe it’s because you don’t have the tattoo yourself, so you can’t see it. I bet that’s how it works.”
Kaz set the pencil down. “I know this is important to you. To make sense of all this. But what you’re talking about is not possible.”
“It’s magick. Not an illusion or some trick, Kaz. It’s real.”
He wiped his face with both hands, sagging into his couch. “Callie, we can’t go back to this.”
“Ask me anything!” She leafed through the grimoire, quoting Jackson’s handwritten notes.
“I know you believe you can read it,” Kaz said, “but I think … I think you need to see someone. A professional.”
“What about Mrs. Walton?” Calista shouted. “What my tattoo did to her? And the cover-up! Explain that!”
The North Valley Grimoire Page 11
