The North Valley Grimoire

by Blake Northcott

  After the weekend her order arrived. She yanked it from the packaging, stuffed it inside an unmarked box, taped it shut, and printed Maisie’s name and address across the top. It was mid-week, and Frank had the day off, so Calista asked if she could borrow the Civic for a trip to school; she made her case that it would be a nice treat to leave the chewing gum-encrusted seats and mystery smells of the city bus behind for a day. He begrudgingly tossed her the keys.

  With her getaway car and her package, Calista skipped school and made her way to Maisie’s house. She parked around the corner, got out and picked along the snowy street, placed the box on her porch, and returned to her car.

  It was gloomy that morning, bitterly cold and darker than usual. Heavy flakes blanketed lawns and trees. The routine of intermittently staring at the clock on the dash and back at the GPS app on her phone grew tiresome after twenty minutes, and it became clear why her uncle was no longer a private detective. This was the job: monotony.

  “You get paid to sit on your ass,” he’d say. “You take the pictures for free.”

  Her phone blipped to life around hour five of the stakeout. A jagged green map of North Valley appeared, and a small red dot traced along Maisie’s street. She flipped her wipers in time to clear a sheet of powder and saw the cobalt pick-up rumble past. The monotony she’d suffered through suddenly felt worthwhile; the payoff was a rush of adrenaline, zapping her like a defibrillator.

  Moments later she was racing down the highway, knuckles white as she gripped the wheel, wiper blades at full speed to keep up with the pelting snow; the flakes had grown fat and spattered on impact like miniature water balloons. She burst with a raucous laugh. This is insane! The little red dot on her GPS exuded a gravitational pull that she was powerless to resist.

  None of this made sense. She was pursuing the only magick-related lead she had, which could conceivably land her in a trap—or worse, a fight. She was armed with nothing more than her Sharpie, and the sum total of her expertise was a single spell that had no offensive firepower. It’s not like she hadn’t tried to materialize some bad-ass spells, but they lacked any significant bad-assery. Her attempts to conjure lightning were so weak they failed to toast a slice of whole wheat bread, and her fireballs came out like embers, dissipating as they fluttered harmlessly to the floor.

  She didn’t have time to wait until she was a Magnus level Scrivener, whatever that was. She needed to know more about this unfinished grimoire. She needed to know how it was supposed to help her mother. And after she did that, she sure as hell needed to get this murderous sigil removed from her back before it decided to kill again.

  She was exhausted from planning, and waiting, and the constant hand-wringing about consequences. When she spoke with Kaz, or Frank, or her mother, it was always about the safe play—sitting back and hoping for the best. Hope was a mirage. It shimmered in the distance, threatening to vaporize when she reached out to grasp it. Or worse, it was a child’s birthday wish, blowing out candles and expecting a fantasy to manifest into reality.

  Action, she decided, was the antithesis of hope. It was taking charge, generating her own outcomes. She needed answers, and the closer those answers felt, the more determined she became.

  Or maybe ‘obsessed’ was a more apt description.

  The cheerful Thanks for Visiting North Valley sign whipped past, vanishing in the rearview. A moment later the dot veered towards an off-ramp to Oswick, and proceeded to take a long, circuitous route through the city. An attempt to avoid being followed, she surmised. Little did they know.

  Following her GPS, she pulled into a dank apartment complex as the pick-up truck was pulling out. The gray low-rise was a decaying pile of bricks with steel bars protecting the ground-level windows. After parking and approaching the front door she lingered, pretending to check her phone until a hunchbacked woman with a walker fumbled the door open. She slipped in behind.

  The groaning elevator let her out on the sixth floor. Tawny brown carpets lined the hall, threadbare from decades of traffic, and parts of the drywall were stripped away to expose gnarled wires. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

  Her phone chirped as she neared the package. She followed the beeps as they intensified into a continuous drone. Soon she was only a few feet away, separated by a door.

  Like the other units, number 603 had a powder-blue door, chipped and faded, with a lusterless brass knob inset with a keyhole. Unlike its neighbors, 603 had a secondary lock. The pewter deadbolt gleamed with an out-of-the-box shine.

  She stared at the lock and sucked in a deep breath. This was a one-time operation, and the expiration date was fast approaching; whoever opens that package would see the tracking device, and know they were being followed.

  She rapped on the door. The flickering hallway lights hummed like a lingering mosquito.

  No one answered. It was now or never.

  Calista pulled the Sharpie from her pocket and scrawled the Venari sigil on the back of her hand. It remained dormant. No latent magick residue in the area, as far as she could tell.

  She wedged her lock bumper into the latch. It stuck halfway. She jiggled it, careful not to snap it off; it was an old piece of hardware, and it stubbornly refused to budge. She twisted again and lost purchase on the metal. Her index finger snagged one of the serrated teeth, opening a small but painful gash. She resisted the urge to scream and stuck it between her lips.

  With her other hand, she reached down to wriggle the bumper free, but it was jammed. She pulled with increasing pressure, but the metal was giving way, threatening to bend and snap. Damn it! This couldn’t have gone any worse. What was she going to do now, kick the door until the lock snapped? It didn’t seem like the stealthiest of approaches.

  Her anger began to swell. I’m not leaving, she thought. Not until I see behind that door.

  She’d memorized her share of sigils, and knew some of the commands that went along with them. With a few swipes of her Sharpie she approximated a zig-zag pattern across the knob, outlined with a triangle. It was ragged, but given the size of the canvas she had to work with it was practically the Sistine Chapel.

  “Please, just melt,” she whispered to the sigil, coaxing it like she was babysitting a petulant toddler. And then, a little louder, she said, “Exudent.” She repeated the word that should have triggered the spell, again, and again, and once more to no avail. She kicked the door frame.

  As she sucked the sting from her cut, she had an epiphany: graphite and ink were tools of a Scrivener, used to conjure mystical energy when coupled with a few words of Latin, Sumerian or Aramaic. Sadly, her art skills were rudimentary, and her ability to recite dead languages had left something to be desired. But maybe those weren’t the issues at all. Maybe it was her. She’d felt painfully average her entire life, never excelling at sports, or music, or academia; she started to believe some things couldn’t be taught. You either had ‘it,’ or you didn’t. Maybe she didn’t. If a genetic code was required to conjure Elemental magick, maybe it simply wasn’t a part of her DNA.

  But now she had more than just ink in her toolkit. She had blood.

  Jackson’s notes explicitly warned against the use of Blood magick; a dangerously addictive shortcut that often spiraled out of control. She gazed at her fingertip. A fresh drop of crimson seeped from her skin, shimmering, begging to be painted on the door. What was the harm? It wasn’t like she planned to slice open a sacrificial lamb and drain the poor animal in some barbaric ritual. It was only a few drops. And besides, the drops were hers.

  She traced the ink onto the knob, streaking a bloody pattern that mimicked her previous attempt. She squeezed her finger to produce some extra blood. When the sigil was complete, she took a half step back. The rest of the hall receded out of focus like a dreamy bokeh effect. The knob sharpened until it was the only object in her field of vision.

  “Exedunt,” she said, clear and confident, like a proclamation. To her amazement the knob creaked, and bent, and began to corrode.
It was like a time-lapse video of metal left exposed to the elements, suffering years of decay in a matter of seconds. She cupped her mouth, suppressing a scream of delight. The remains hit the ground with a satisfying clunk.

  The door creaked open a sliver.

  Marveling at her handiwork, Calista erupted with a giddy laugh. This is it! She’d performed Blood magick, and on her first try, no less. The grimoire had used the word ‘addictive’ to describe the sensation, and now she knew why. It was more than a sugar rush, or a burst of adrenaline—this was primal. She was mainlining a supernova directly into her vein. And for the first time in forever, she felt alive.

  But it was even more surreal than that.

  She felt invincible.

  Her head swam, and for a moment she’d almost forgotten why she was there in the first place. It was a flash of pleasant disorientation; the trailers had taken so long she’d lost track of the film she was planning to see.

  She pressed her palm into the door, and it swung wide.

  And that’s when a powerful hand clasped her wrist, dragging her in.

  Magick sits outside of our reality, but it’s tethered to us by our emotions. Sometimes a bursts of mystical energy will happen spontaneously, and it can be incredibly powerful; the more unstable the Scrivener, the more intense the burst.

  There’s a legend about an English batallion venturing across Europe in the Middle Ages; they headed East to reclaim a Holy site that had been overthrown by the Turks. The party of five-hundred was accompanied by a Scrivener (then called a ‘mage’) who acted as a medic, along with an apprentice—his daughter.

  On the night before battle, the men grew restless; they gorged themselves on mead, sang by the campfires, and celebrated their inevitable victory. The mage wanted nothing to do with the raucous festivities, so he went on an evening stroll to meditate and prepare for the morning raid. He returned to find his daughter being attacked by the same men that he’d sworn to heal.

  The mage’s eyes glowed red, his hands became lightning, and he unleashed a blast of pure, hate-filled energy that swallowed the camp.

  All that remained was a squire, who had been standing just outside the blast radius, and a smoking crater where the batallion used to be.

  – Passage in The North Valley Grimoire

  18. Game Changer

  “WELCOME, CALISTA. Director King and I were just having the loveliest chat about you.” A well-dressed man with a British accent pushed the door shut behind her, twisting the deadbolt into place. His jacket fell open, revealing a holster tucked beneath his armpit. “Won’t you please sit down?”

  Her lip quivered. “I think I’ll stand.” The tiny studio apartment looked like it was used exclusively for clandestine meetings—no decorations, with a lonely metal table beneath a naked light bulb. The windows were shoddily bricked over.

  The man he referred to as Director King was bellied up to the table with paperwork fanned out at his fingertips. “Looks like we can call it a day,” King said. “Agent Malek, take the asset into custody. Once I finish up we’ll bring her in.”

  “This won’t take a moment,” Malek informed her, adding a well-mannered nod. “May I take your coat?”

  Without thinking, Calista unzipped her fleecy white jacket and handed it over, slowly, mechanically. He hung it on a hook by the door like she was a guest popping by for tea.

  “H-how do you know who I am?” she stammered. The rush from performing Blood magick had drained from her body, leaving it cold, quaking. She rubbed her arms, wishing she’d worn more than a short-sleeved Polo beneath her coat. Given her circumstances it was a ridiculous thought, but her mind was no longer switched into rational mode.

  “It started with your field trip to Culpepper,” Malek said offhandedly, strolling back to his seat. “Ever wonder why someone charged with treason was being kept at a conveniently nearby detention center? We don’t keep terrorists local, dear. We ship them to a quaint island locale, where interrogation laws are more …” He ran a hand along his freshly shaven jaw.

  “Lenient,” King added, finishing the thought. He was scribbling notes, paying no particular attention.

  Malek slapped the table. “Well, that’s quite the euphemism, isn’t it? I was searching for something more along the lines of ‘sinister’, but I suppose ‘lenient’ works equally well.” He chuckled before taking his seat, throwing one leg over the other. He made sitting in a folding metal chair look elegant, as if he were posing for a black and white photo shoot. “Your mother was left there as bait. The Agency was hoping her partner in crime would reach out to her, or be foolish enough to attempt a prison break. Anything to give us a lead. Imagine my surprise when her daughter showed up for a visit, and Julia began spouting our vernacular, going on about ‘Cleansing Protocols’ and the like.

  “We’d suspected you might have been transmogrified, and that clever little bit of Blood magick you unspooled in the hallway confirmed our suspicions.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Calista asked. As soon as the question spilled from her trembling lips, the answer struck her like a wrecking ball: because it didn’t matter. She wasn’t getting out of this, so there was no reason for secrecy. They knew who she was, what she’d done, and even though they hadn’t said it yet, they knew she was the one who’d killed Mrs. Walton. They were the ones who covered it up. Which meant they had her on murder, and who knows what else, though the ‘what else’ didn’t really matter. Once you’ve committed murder, it’s pretty much a wrap. She’d be applying to online colleges from solitary confinement, trading her school uniforms for a fluorescent orange jumper.

  King barked a ragged cough into his fist. “Malek here thought you might inspire a former agent to step foot on US soil again, but since you’re using magick, we’re reeling you in.” He finally looked up from his paperwork. “Or to put it another way, you jumped into the boat without us ever having to get out our fishing rods. We’ll have to find another way to track down Nolan Foxcroft.”

  Her eyes flicked between the two men seated at the table. “Nolan who?”

  “Your mom’s co-conspirator,” King said, as if it were common knowledge. “They worked together for two decades before they crashed the system.”

  Calista’s fear mushroomed into a sudden rage. “She’s innocent! I don’t know what you think she did, but—”

  “Oh please,” Malek said, cutting her off. “You haven’t spent the last year believing your mother would be exonerated, have you? She admitted her guilt to protect Foxcroft. To protect you.”

  Calista blinked hard. “She wanted to protect me?”

  “All part of the deal,” King grumbled. He was back to his paperwork, evidently bored with the conversation. “Something about you receiving a bursary for your remaining year of private school, and tuition to college.”

  “Of course that wasn’t the full extent of the arrangement,” Malek put in, “but Julia knew she was never going to see the light of day. Not after what she’d done. In exchange for a quick confession, she got your education taken care of, and took responsibility for the Gravenhurst Incident. It’s why there hasn’t been a trial. She’s not getting one. And she won’t admit to Foxcroft’s involvement, but we know better.”

  Everything Calista believed—everything she needed to believe—was crumbling down around her. The protective armor she’d shielded herself with had been stripped away, leaving her raw and exposed.

  “You keep saying my mom was protecting this Foxcroft guy, but why would she take the blame?”

  “You don’t think your father left your mum because of her poor culinary skills, did you?” Malek stood and strode over to Calista. He lowered his voice to a menacing whisper. “Your mother was having her cake and eating it too, so to speak. An after-work rendezvous with Foxcroft after a long day at the office, and when she’d had her fun, she’d scurry back to the suburbs, playing the role of the dutiful wife and the doting mother. Deliciously scandalous, isn’t it?”

  C
alista’s teeth clenched so tightly she thought her molars would grind into dust. “Stop talking right now.”

  Malek had started off as affable and somewhat detached, but was now lashing Calista with barbs, seemingly for no other reason than to see her pained reactions.

  He wasn’t finished. “It burns you to have come this far, doesn’t it? To know you came so close to solving this little mystery—to freeing your mother, avenging your poof of a boyfriend. And now here you stand, with nothing to show for it. Kind of pathetic, isn’t it?”

  A flash of rage blistered through her temples, blurring her vision. “I could kill you,” she seethed. And at that moment, she wanted to.

  Malek stepped back, regarding her like an ill-tempered child. “Oh, I don’t believe that’s so. If you could, you’d have done it by now. No offense, love, but you’re not exactly a female double-oh seven.” He turned his attention to King. “Is there a female double-oh seven? I don’t get to the cinema nearly enough, and with all these reboots and remakes I can hardly keep up.”

  King scooped up a thick ream of paper and tapped it on the table to even it out. “Enough, Malek. We have to call this in.” He reached into his breast pocket and extracted a phone, thumb poised to dial.

  “Wait a moment …” The British agent circled the table and took his seat. “Let’s think about this for a moment, Charles.”

  “Think about what? Calista tracked us down, and she’s been transmogrified. It’s over. We’re packing up the tent and heading home.”

  “Now, now, don’t be hasty. We have quite the opportunity laid out before us.”

  The Director choked out a grainy sound, halfway between a smoker’s cough and a derisive laugh. “An opportunity? All right, you’ve got fifteen seconds. Dazzle me.”

  Malek gestured vaguely towards Calista and began speaking like she wasn’t in the room. “If we bring her in now, we’ve lost our chance at apprehending Foxcroft. Letting her dangle for a while longer can’t hurt.”