The structure encloses one large, empty room, with a doorway and a single window set into the front wall. Carved mask faces cover the dark, polished wood on the exterior, and the inlaid mother-of-pearl eyes seem to glow in the dimmed lighting. It is a sacred structure, patiently waiting to be used for the purpose it was meant for—a fulfillment that will never arrive.
The Lorefolk, at least, found a use for it, and a respectable one at that. Kelsey steps forward until she can rest her hands on the empty door frame. The wood feels smooth and warm beneath her fingertips. She mutters the Old Words and sends her will down her arms to fill the doorway, and the view of the interior wavers as if no longer confident of its reality.
Kelsey steps through. Her feet land on grass, and a clean, unscented breeze lifts her crest feathers. Behind her, an empty stone archway leading nowhere; in front, the architectural collage of the Engineer’s workshop.
The low, sprawling structure shows no respect for right angles. It has three prominent domes—the smallest built of glass and the larger two of wood painted white with stripes of gold—fewer windows than all that weirdly-angled exterior wall space might suggest, and only one door.
Kelsey sidles forward hesitantly, glancing at the rocky humps of small hillocks surround the workshop on all sides, eerily silent and isolated to her city-accustomed mind. She opens the door and slinks inside. The front hallway opens up into a cavernous pentagonal room, three storeys high plus the domed ceiling. Five enormous machines hulk in the center of the room, all shining brass and dark bronze. They hiss and chug in a steady rhythm, filling the air with almost musical sound.
A single door is set in each of the five walls on each floor, and it is from one of these upper doors that the Engineer emerges. He follows a catwalk along the wall to a set of stairs and begins to descend without looking up from the leatherbound book in his hands. The Engineer is a short and squat little man with three sets of spidery arms and an extra joint in each of his too-long fingers. His wrinkled face gives him a look of perpetual squinting, and his ragged robes could be as old as the wrinkles.
Kelsey freezes where she stands, feeling unworthy to ask for his regard. She should go before he notices her.
He reaches the bottom of the stairs and, without looking at her, says, “The Engine Room is not open to the public.”
“Sir, I need a moment of your time.”
The Engineer adjusts the round set of spectacles perched on his nose. “I’m occupied, as you can see.”
“There’s an Old One loose in Chicago, and it’s using the glamour network.”
He makes a motion that might be a shrug. “The network is built for all Lorefolk to use.”
“But the Old One isn’t just hiding, it is draining power to use during its killing sprees. It’s a parasite. It has to be stopped.”
“That is … interesting.” His lowest set of arms folds across his stomach, and his upper arms slowly close the book. “What would you have me do about it?”
“Sir, I know that I impose upon your time, but—”
“To the point, if you please.”
Kelsey takes a deep breath and let it out. “I need you to build me a trap fit for an Old One.”
Once she slips past the museum guards and regains her freedom, enough night remains for Kelsey to fly back to Novak’s apartment and check on him. She alights on the fire escape outside his living room window and peers in. He has fallen asleep in an old armchair, and instead of waking him, she sneaks in and leaves a note: meet me in Rockefeller Chapel at sundown. Then she departs to find a resting spot of her own.
Sunrise. The oblivion of sleep. Sunset.
Kelsey launches into the darkening sky, beating her wings to gain some altitude. The campus blurs beneath her, and she lands atop the tower of the university chapel. She takes the spiral stairs down, fingertips running along the brick-lined inner wall of the tower. The chapel sighs comfortably, still warm and calm from the Engineer’s daytime visit—she can feel the residue of his presence in every brick.
She cuts through the dim-lit sanctuary past the long shadows of polished-wood pews and finds a side door locked only from the outside. Sticking her head out, she yells for Novak, who comes jogging around from the front entrance. His flashlight rakes her eyes and she squints against the brightness to see him jerk to a halt.
Too late, Kelsey realizes she’s wearing her real face.
“It’s me,” she says curtly.
“You’re … you’re a monster.”
“I told you I’m a grotesque. What exactly did you expect?” She spits, angry that for a moment he made her wish for her human face. “If you stand out there all night, the Old One will paint the grass with your innards. Come.”
He comes forward again, cautiously now, and slips through the door she holds open. The high, vaulted ceiling of the sanctuary swallows up the brightness of his flashlight, and the scuff of his shoes on the stone floor echoes.
“So, what—ancient cloud demons don’t like churches?” He forces out the words, trying not to look at her.
Kelsey shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter that it’s a chapel, but it does matter that it’s my chapel. I know these stones well. They’ll aid me.”
He breathes deep, lets it out, and turns to face her. “Okay. What’s my job?”
“Sit on the dais and act, you know, murderable.”
“I’m the bait?”
She blinks. “Naturally. What did you think I needed you for?”
She turns away and walks the length of the sanctuary on both sides, checking the small brass relays hidden behind each pillar. No long antennas on these pentagonal brass contraptions—the Engineer didn’t build them for transmitting in this instance. What Kelsey needs is the opposite. She circles back to the dais and finds that the Engineer left the trigger on the podium, as promised. She picks it up, round and brass like a pocketwatch but singing with the power of glamour.
She says, “Not long now.”
“Oh. Great.” Novak flops down on the steps of the dais, elbows resting on knees. “I love this plan.”
She stares at him, perplexed. “How you feel about it isn’t relevant.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“The alternative is dying in an explosion of gore.”
“Look—I’m in, okay? But I don’t have to like it, is all.”
Not knowing what to say, Kelsey shrugs it off. Now is the time to focus. She springs up, gives the air two long strokes of her wings, and finds a perch atop the large pipe organ on the right side of the dais. The height and partial concealment give her a comfortable edge. She’s ready for it.
They wait.
It comes.
Slowly at first, like the howl of a distant hurricane, the city begins to moan. As the Old One approaches, the calm evaporates from the chapel walls and each stone seems to shiver in terror. Kelsey feels the tremor when the Old One’s fluid mass breaks like a wave against the outer wall. It leaks in through the cracks around the front doors, a black cloud thicker than firesmoke pouring into the air.
On the dais below, Novak shifts nervously. Kelsey stares down, willing him to hold his wits together until the Old One has been lured all the way inside. Stupid of her to plan a trap that hinges on a human’s help, but Novak stills himself and does not flee.
The Old One literally pulls itself together, black tendrils tucking in to form a sphere of darkness, and begins to glide down the central aisle. It pulses slightly, as if breathing, and the hideous eyes and teeth rise to the surface to gape hungrily at Novak.
When the Old One reaches the center of the chapel, Kelsey pushes off from her perch and snaps open her wings to glide down to the floor, landing in front of Novak. The stones of the chapel quail and shriek beneath the Old One, and she feels Novak’s fear, too, like a subsonic vibration. But when she serves the city, she has no fear of her own.