The diagram called for a triangle across my back, pointing up at the nape of my neck. I debated if I’d have time…
Then, seeing the residual ink on the set-square, I gutted the pen and soaked the edge of the metal ‘L’. Very carefully, I pressed it against my back, rolling it back and forth to get it into the grooves and recesses. I checked the end result, then did it again.
Four o’clock.
Legs, arms, hands, feet, including the soles. Faster due to their location, but my speed at figuring out the process was balanced by the awkwardness of some of the angles, and the fact that I needed the use of the very limbs I was working on.
Rose hadn’t appeared to demand to know what the fuck I was doing to myself.
She hadn’t shown up, shrieked at seeing me in my underwear, drawing on myself.
I was now well past the point where I was worried.
Clothing…
I donned the t-shirt, smoothed out the wrinkles on the button-up shirt, and buttoned it up over the t-shirt.
No horrible burning. Good.
I put on the hatchet-holster, then pulled the slacks on. I’d placed open spaces at the knees, so I wouldn’t rub away the image or transfer too much bleach on my skin, but I still worried about the other areas where it might rub.
Not exactly top notch, but it felt like a step in the right direction.
Tie, yes. I picked a red one.
I wished I had the goblin flute and the paper goblins, but they hadn’t been mine to keep.
I had to be selective in terms of what I brought, this time. Only so many pockets. I chose the basics. Pens, cord, the hook-screws.
Five o’clock. Five o’clock and I would take action.
I cooked some pork chops, brussel sprouts, and grilled up thick slices of sweet potato, more to keep myself busy than anything else. Healthy body, covering all of the bases, to counteract the demon that upset the natural balance of things.
Four twenty. I’d hoped it would take longer.
I fidgeted, then decided to bite the bullet.
The drawer in my bedroom whisked open. I collected the book. The only one I had.
Black Lamb’s Blood.
Fuck.
I opened it, and I started reading, book open in my hands while I paced.
Halfway through the introduction, I stopped to go to the fridge and rescue another cupcake from the plastic container within.
I resumed reading, finishing the introduction.
I didn’t read the rest of the book. I skimmed, looking, hoping for charts, for something concrete.
But it wasn’t a magical tome. Not really. There were no rituals within. No charts, nor ingredients or diagrams. No proper terminology for bullshitting contracts in an hour.
Not what I needed, even in the slightest.
I needed Rose. I needed her help to establish a game plan.
I watched the last few minutes tick forward on the analogue clock of The Shitty Little Stove.
It ticked past five o’clock. I watched until five oh one.
“Rose Thorburn,” I intoned. “I summon you.”
Nothing, not even a flicker.
That disquieted me.
A vestige was fragile.
Rose had already been abused, hauled into a strange Conquest dimension, chained…
I fidgeted briefly, messing with the chain on my locket-hand.
“Rose Thorburn, by the tie that binds you to me and vice versa, I call you.”
Nothing.
“Rose Thorburn, you are me and I am you, one step apart, I call you.”
I’d had more luck with Leonard, my drunk ghost in a bottle.
“Rose Thorburn, by all your frustration with me, by the oaths I have sworn to you and the oaths you have sworn to me, I bid you to return to my side.
“Rose Thorburn…”
I didn’t know how to finish.
“God damn it, Rose, I need your help. Don’t leave me hanging.”
I picked up the tome, started reading it again, then put it down. Ten minutes later, nervous, I picked it up again.
I debated calling the lawyers for help.
Had they expected this? Had they helped it happen?
It would be so fitting if they were somehow in league with Conquest, if they were orchestrating this entire thing to put me on this road.
I had to obey Conquest or he’d murder me and Rose.
Obeying Conquest put me on this road, forced me into a situation where I had to beg for help, accept the deal. Working for another diabolist.
Where would that path take me?
But if I didn’t take the offer of help? Where did I wind up?
Dead, probably.
Would the diabolists step in to save me? They wanted me on board. They were going to lengths.
I pulled on my gloves with care, the ink and locket in mind, alongside the cuts and gouge that hadn’t yet healed.
The coat was next. Not quite a suit, but the coat was meant to be worn with a suit, and it looked good. Suitlike, only it hung longer. Only closer inspection would see the absence of the suit jacket underneath, or the t-shirt beneath the dress shirt.
I smoothed down some of the curls of blond hair that were escaping their prison of hair styling glue, knowing they wouldn’t stay down. I moved my mouth around, stretching my skin to make sure I didn’t have any patches of hair where I’d missed shaving. Never mind that I’d shaved twice today.
If I was going to armor myself in my own self and identity, I’d damn well stick to my preference of being clean shaven. I’d spent too many weeks with wispy teenaged beard growth while I’d been on the streets. I was going to be the best Blake Thorburn I could imagine. The sort of Blake who could look good in an almost-suit, but still pull off his button-up shirt and start working on framing a new art installation, or do prop work for the theater, or something. I’d armor myself in my personal ideal, hold it up to give myself courage in a situation where I had very, very little.
The inked out magic diagrams across my skin couldn’t hurt either, as armor went.
Probably couldn’t hurt.
I adjusted my tie.
I was procrastinating. It was seven. I had no idea what the evening had in store for me, now.
Rose had removed herself from the picture, Conquest was fucking with me by using that chain to remove her from my company, or something else entirely.
I filled my nicer backpack with essential supplies – the tome, the papers, some of the working pens, and other basic tools that it didn’t hurt to keep, slung it over one shoulder, and left.
No dogs barked at me while I made my way to the subway. I heard crows caw, but I couldn’t say if they were taunting me or just being ordinary crows.
On the subway itself, no fights broke out. No disasters happened as a result of the radiation. There was only the crowd, the late rush of people who had been working until dinnertime.
I hesitated as long as I could, waiting for the telltale Blake in Rose’s voice.
When the doors started to slide shut, I hurried through them.
I walked down suburb streets until I started seeing the telltale signs of Pauz’s influence. Crows, and watching animals. Every house had curtains drawn, every light on, otherwise.
The Dowghty house was the only one that had no lights at all. Flocks of crows took off as I approached, but they didn’t attack me.
I reached into the backpack for the yellow lined paper and the tome, drew out a pen, and then tossed it aside before stepping onto the driveway.
The door opened as I knocked. The inside was as cold as the outside.
Filthier, oddly more wilderness.
Stray branches, dirt, trekked in mud and snow, frozen in tracks. Dung and offal, bones.