I sighed and turned my attention to my toolbox, putting things aside as I dug through the contents. A box knife found its way to the kitchen table. I found a set of small glass jars of acrylic paint, and weighed them in my hand before setting one aside. Hole punch, good. A few smooth-headed bolts, nuts…
I paused, before I could get lost in the mindless busywork. “I guess I kind of woke up this morning and the plan doesn’t seem so hot as it did after way too much intensity and too little rest. I’m thinking in terms of worst case scenarios.”
“Well, we’re stuck with it, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re committed. Give me a sec to think this stuff through, then I want to hear what you’ve been reading.”
“Deal,” she said.
I took the small jar of paint to the sink and washed out the little paint that remained, making sure it was clear. Then I took a pair of scissors and removed all of the hair that was crawling free of the locket.
Lighter, spoon, burning hair, some water…
I emptied the resulting ink into the paint pot and placed it in my pocket.
Box knife into the other pocket. Handful of hook screws in a sealed plastic bag, some string, pencils, a compass and protractor from a math set, a marker and two pens.
I found a small knife with a sheath, put the knife aside and used the sheath for a pair of scissors.
It took me a minute to arrange things so it was comfortable, and so I didn’t have too many things that would rattle or click as I walked.
I put the belts on the table, and propped one foot on the chair. I wrapped a belt around my leg, up the thigh, then marked the point where it crossed over. I did the same halfway down.
Using the box-cutter, I cut up the belts.
“Don’t look, Rose,” I said. “Taking my pants off.”
“M’kay,” she said. “Not asking why.”
I pulled my pants off, took the sections of belt and looped them around my now-bare leg, then used the hole punch to get through the leather. I had to force the bolt through, with the smooth side pressing against my leg, to fix it in place, but I didn’t apply the nut.
I used a remaining length of belt to form loops, slid the hatchet through a few times to make sure they were a good fit, and attached the upper and lower portions together.
I screwed the bolts on tight to fix it in place, pulled my pants back on, and experimentally slid the hatchet in and out. In a resting position, the axe pressed against my hip.
In a pinch… I caught the underside of the hatchet’s head with two fingers and pulled it straight up. I caught the handle. A shift of my grip, and I slid it back into place nearly as smoothly.
I tried walking around with it, and it didn’t swing at all.
I donned the bike mirror pendant that had come with the stuff Rose had given me.
“Probably going to chafe the hell out of my balls,” I muttered. Boxer briefs or no.
“I said I wouldn’t ask why,” Rose said, raising the book so it blocked my view of her face, and her view of me. “I’m not asking.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then tell me.”
“About?”
“Motes. Or abstract demons. Or goblins,” I said, as I headed over to the hall closet and pulled a jacket on.
“If devils are fires, motes are sparks,” Rose said. “Best comparison I can come up with.”
“Works.”
“Most of the time they just drift. They’ll burn you if they make contact, but they’ll also burn out. That’s probably not the sort we’re talking about.”
“It’s lodged in a person,” I said.
“Something like that. If a spark happens to drift to a person or place where things are more… combustible, you can wind up with a blaze that’s nearly as bad as the one that set the fire in motion. I don’t think this is that sort, either.”
“No? It’s bad enough he wants it dealt with.”
“The Lord of Toronto wouldn’t be content to leave things to unreliable and untrained diabolists, if things were at that point. That leaves two options. It’s either an organized mote, which one of the three books I glanced over call imps, which means it’s still linked to the one that made it, or it’s independent, a blaze in the making.”
“I assume they need to be handled in different ways.”
“The organized ones have a mission,” she said. “The independent ones don’t.”
I thought about how I’d figured out why Conquest was operating the way he was, how things had fallen into place. Knowing about the motivations driving my enemies made it a hundred times easier to interact with them. It put everything into context.
Was it strange that I hoped the thing was part of some organized group?
“And the host?” I asked. “I learned my lesson last night. Fuck of a lot easier to deal with something that’s human at the core.”
“Conquest was human once,” she said.
“I almost forgot,” I said.
“Kind of similar, really. Let a mote get carried away, you end up with something that isn’t recognizable as human. Our advantage is if this thing isn’t that far gone, there might be something human at the core.”
“Can they be saved?”
A knock at the door turned both of our heads.
Conquest’s man, Fell? With all the info we’d been promised?
I headed to the door. Not a practitioner. Joel.
“Hey,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“Honestly, I don’t really know how to answer that question.”
I gestured for him to come in, and he made his way into my front hall as I headed for the dining room.
“I just wanted to check in. You sorta disappeared on us last night.”
“I said I would.”
“You did. I sent everyone home as soon as Tiffany got back, locked up your place, but I waited up a bit to see if you’d show, and you were late.”
Time apparently flew when you were in another world.
“Yeah. Thanks for that.”
“I was talking with some of the others. Goosh, Alexis, Joseph. This fear you have, that someone’s going to kill you?”
“Oh yeah,” I said.
“I’m just wondering, where do you feel you’re at, mentally?”
“That is a hell of a question,” I said. “One I’m not sure I’m prepared to answer.”
“Because I’m going to be upfront. I’m worried about your mental health.”
“You hinted as much before,” I said.
He nodded slowly, and I could see how he was watching me, studying me. “Do you think you’re getting sick?”
“Mentally?” I asked. I sighed. “I’ve wondered, but no.”
“No,” he said, more of an agreement than a counter to what I was saying. “You don’t fit many of the symptoms. You’re not irritable, you’re not distant. You know that’s sort of why I said I’d invite people over? To see how you fared? And because it looked like you really needed people?”
“I didn’t, but it makes sense in retrospect,” I said.
“It usually starts with something bad happening, like the death of a family member. Which got me thinking. But you didn’t seem too distant. Alexis said you seemed pretty together when she talked to you on the balcony. You didn’t get angry when I raised the idea that you might be losing it. So when you say that people might want to kill you…”