Like a worm wiggling back in the ground when you turn over a rock, a tiny thread twisted in the dark depths of the Chorus. They boiled over the memory of Bernard du Guyon, but I already noticed that tiny shard of him moving in my mind. I couldn't look out over the nocturnal glow of a city landscape and not think of him, standing at the top of that tower in Portland, incanting the culmination of his great work. He had tried so hard to unmake everything, a petulant child who believed destruction came from the same divine urge as creation. Every inhalation is but a prelude to a Hallelujah!; all life rushes back on itself so that it can be born again.
The only trouble with that theory is the assumption that the universe will eventually contract as God finishes exhaling. To believe that He mirrors us-inverting the supposition that we have been built in His image-is to conflate our ability to dream with His creativity.
Thus it always has been with power. With knowledge. With the truths we conceal. We harbor the keys to these occult secrets and think ourselves greater than the rest, scurrying about in these jeweled landscapes. We stand above them, in great towers raised by sweat and blood and sacrifice, and think we are closer to Heaven. We think we are closer to God from this height because we can See all the way to the edge of the world.
A phone rang somewhere and I turned, confused, as I hadn't remembered seeing one on the desk. When it rang again, it also vibrated. Against my side. Because it was my cell phone ringing. Making a mental note to change the ringtone to something other than the stock ring, I fumbled the phone out of the inside pocket of my coat.
My phone didn't recognize the number, which meant it wasn't Marielle.
"Hello?"
"Hello, M. Markham." The voice was clipped and precise. Each word afforded just enough breath to form all the letters, and each word was equally spaced from the others. It would have been easy to think it was computer-modified in some way so as to disguise the speaker, but there was more of that old analog warmth of a human throat behind it than the cold sterility of a vibrating speaker. "Enjoying the view?"
I glanced around, and didn't see any obvious cameras, and I was too high up to be clearly seen from the street. The windows were polarized too, so even if someone down on the street level was watching me with binoculars, they shouldn't be able to distinguish features enough to recognize me.
"I am," I said. "You?"
"It is a bit voyeuristic, I admit, but I like to See."
" 'Seeing.' Interesting word choice. Most voyeurs are 'Watchers.' " It was a cheap shot, but I might as well see what sort of man I was talking to.
His laugh had none of the characteristics of human warmth, though. Like a loop of sound that wasn't cut quite right, and there was a jagged hiccup at the end as it leaped back to the beginning again. I had mental images of steel jaws opening and closing in a parody of amusement. "Not tonight, M. Markham. I am not bearing witness. Not now."
I shivered involuntarily, and tried to pretend it was a reaction to the dry air of the office. I stopped trying to find the camera pinhole, because even if there was one, he wasn't watching me through it. Not bearing witness. Whoever he was, he was using remote viewing, astral magick to See me from afar.
"Do they know you can peer into the Archives?" I asked.
"Only the outer ring," he said. "They're fastidious with their security."
"I'm sure they are." I looked out at the flickering lights of Paris. "So, other than this demonstration of power, what else would you like me to Witness this evening?" It was an old distinction, one coded very specifically into the rules of La Societe Lumineuse. Remote viewing wasn't recognized as a means of Witnessing-the official manner in which history is marked and recorded by the Watchers-unless it was grounded first by another Watcher. Someone had to verify the remote viewer was, indeed, viewing the proper location and event before the Viewer could enter a True Record.
There were a couple of moments in history that needed a Witness but were problematic in the matter of the on-site witness surviving. Setting up a remote view prior and then extracting the Watcher on the ground was a concession to the alternative of losing the magus and the Record.
"You asked me to call," the voice said.
"I did?"
"Yes. You spared the Journeyman's life in hopes that he would carry a message for you."
I actually looked at the phone to make sure it was mine and not Tevvys'. "I believe I told him that we'd be reachable on Tevvys' phone."
"Ah, my apologies. I was under the impression you wanted me to call you from it. Why else would you have left it behind?"
"Why else?" I tried to be nonchalant in my response. Tevvys had never known my phone number, nor had there been any reason for Marielle-the only person who knew it-to give it to him. Before the others realized the food had been poisoned and had bashed his skull in. Don't let him rattle you, the Chorus murmured, it's a display of power. "We think we are closer to God. . " Remember?
I remembered that I had been thinking that thought just before the phone rang, which made it all even less of a coincidence. Pointing that out was supposed to make me feel better?
"Talking with the spirits?" the voice asked.
"Fuck." I hadn't meant to let it out, but what was the point of trying to keep it in? The guy was nearly in my head already. "Yes." I took a moment to control my breathing. "Okay, I get the point. . " I made an intuitive leap. "M. Husserl."
"Yes." He sibilated the "s." "Very good."
The Architect known as the Scryer. Remote viewing. Forward looking. Physiology scanning. The legacy of Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly, scrying was a way of interpreting the Weave, though it wasn't the same inexact science as it had been in the sixteenth century. While tarot was a means by which one's part in the Weave could be comprehended, scrying was a tool by which the Weave itself was illuminated. Kelly hadn't been able to control his sight all that well, and he and Dr. Dee squabbled too much about the interpretation of what Kelly saw. But we had gotten better about understanding the Akashic Weave, and what lay there. We had become better readers. Scrying, unlike the sort of postulating and calculating that Father Cristobel did as Visionary, adhered more to the core principle of Witnessing. One could look ahead as a scryer; the trick was knowing what you were seeing, and Ulrich Husserl was, evidently, the best at Knowing and Seeing.
"Is this a social call? Just calling because you can," I asked, my voice no longer unsteady, "or is there a specific detail of my future you wish to impart?"
"The spirits will not be able to aid you forever. They will leave you."
"I'm sure they will. Probably when I'm dead."
"Assuredly."
"But I don't need you to tell me that."
"No, of course not. What you do need me for is to tell you when they abandon you. Prior to your death."
"And in return for this piece of trivia, I'll grant you. . "
"Nothing, M. Markham. Any promise you give me is hollow. We both know that."
"So this one is free."
"The first one always is." He laughed again, and my skin crawled even more this time. The Chorus swarmed like someone had just poked them with a hot stick, and the ripples of their unease went all the way down my spine.
I walked over to the desk and emptied out my pockets. I needed a way to get this guy out of my head. There had to be some way to shield myself or divert his astral eye. Wallet. Still had that pack of gum. Folded pages of the hand-drawn org chart. Cristobel's rosary. Philippe's deck of cards. Holding the phone between my cheek and shoulder, I upended the bag and spilled the cards out on the desk.