The door began to come apart. I backed away, so the wall and counter would help keep me out of Duncan’s immediate line of sight.
I felt better, in a way. Very much like I’d come up for air after being underwater.
Evan took to the air, settling on my shoulder with a flutter of wings.
Our heads turned in the same moment, looking to the window. We were in the basement, but the window looked out onto the pavement. Snow piled halfway up the window’s surface.
I could see him in the corner of my field of vision. White, speckled with brown.
I grabbed the soap from the end of the drawer that Evan’s body laid on, then pushed the drawer shut. It only took two good pushes.
Then I tossed the soap down onto the ground in the middle of the floor.
By the time I reached for the window, Evan was there. Beak and clawed toes on the complicated latch. There was a keyhole, and we didn’t have the key.
It clicked open, regardless.
I pulled it open, while Evan hopped down, wings flapping. He achieved the angle he needed, passing through the gap between the top of the piled-up snow and the top of the windowsill, heading outside. The snow scattered as if something a little larger than a sparrow had passed by it.
Creating a bit more room for me.
I hopped up, putting one foot on the counter, starting to make my way up.
I heard a gun click.
No longer moving, I said, “Why not shoot?”
“Is that really the question you want to be asking me?” Duncan asked. “I might reconsider and actually pull the trigger.”
“Right,” I said.
“Close that window and lock it,” he said.
I let the window close. I flicked the lock around.
“I already called for help,” he said. “You and me are going to stay here until others show up. You’ve made a mess, and even the fact that you’re here will raise questions.”
“Probably,” I said. “The door too, I imagine.”
“Turn around,” he said.
I did.
He looked a little ragged, a few cuts on his face, a little dusty. He wore his scarf and a heavy coat with large pockets, no doubt carefully chosen to keep implements and tools out of sight.
He was glaring at me. Behind him, the deterioration of the door was reversing itself. The cracks in the glass shrunk, and the damage to the fiberglass gradually healed.
“How?” I asked. “You said you’d keep me in the building for the day. You lose access to your magic if you lie.”
“And you aren’t really you, are you? It’s why you were able to slip my fellow officers so readily. A portion of you is still occupying the floor of that jail cell. The man who jumped from that window was… well, I imagine many spirits had trouble figuring out who he was, just as the others did. I did take a hit, but a lot of the power I’m using right now is borrowed power.”
The spirits and implements the circle had loaned him.
“You managed to escape, and you came back here. Why? You did something, didn’t you?” he asked. “A ritual?”
I looked down at the floor. The circle had been scattered somewhat when the connection had solidified, as if an explosion had gone off in the middle.
“Yes,” I said.
“To do what?”
As if to answer him, a bang sounded on one of the hatches to the drawers.
Duncan raised an eyebrow.
More bangs. Steady thudding. Almost knocking.
“Necromancy?” Duncan asked. He seemed rather unconcerned.
“I don’t really know what qualifies,” I said. “I improvised some.”
“Better toying with the dead than diabolism,” he said. “But instead of my going to check, closer to those very reflective surfaces, why don’t you tell me exactly what you did? No hedging it, no half-truths.”
There was more knocking.
“Or?” I asked. “Maybe I don’t want to reveal the cards I have up my sleeve.”
“Or I shoot you in the leg?” Duncan asked. He reached over to grab a glass vial from beside the sink, then dropped it on the ground. “If someone asks, there was an altercation. You tried to hurt me. You had a… let me see.”
He opened a drawer, found a scalpel, and tossed it onto the ground. He met my eyes. “Let them infer that you had a weapon. I can tell them I briefly and sincerely believed my life to be at mortal risk.”
“I’m flattered,” I said. “I didn’t think I put up that good a fight, upstairs.”
“You’ll be suffering from a bullet wound too, if you don’t start talking. Necromancy, yes or no?”
“I don’t-”
“Yes or no, Blake Thorburn? Don’t test me.”
“No.”
“What was the ritual intended to do?”
“Settle Evan where he was supposed to be. I’m hoping,” I said.
“He’s gone?”
“As far as I’m aware,” I said. Evan had flown out the window.
“Ah. Promises?” Duncan asked.
“There were quite a few promises,” I admitted. Then, to throw him off the trail, I added, “He helped me deal with one monster.”
True, but a bit of a non-sequitur. If he wanted to weaponize half-truths, so could I.
“And the banging… ah. She can shatter glass, but not metal, I take it? Come out, mirror-dweller. Unless you want to see Blake shot.”
Rose appeared. She crossed the room, until the drawers showed her reflection, standing at roughly the same point I did inside the room.
“You went to some lengths,” Duncan said. “Your arms, your… current condition.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’m surprised a diabolist would do that to themselves. I’d think a diabolist would know as well as anyone.”
“I’m not a very good diabolist,” I said. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
“Demons and devils do ask for people’s souls. Or they make Faustian promises. They don’t put any particular value in the soul, though. That’s not to say the soul is useless as a commodity, it does have some power to it, but my understanding is that most such Others are more interested in the soulless than the soul itself.”
“I met an imp a few days ago, who was very interested in finding chinks in the defenses, so it could wedge itself into them,” I said.
“Exactly,” Duncan said. “It’s not demons and devils alone that want that kind of opportunity. Nature abhors a vacuum, and you’ve cracked yourself like an egg, emptying out the contents and allowing anything and everything else in.”
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
“You polluted yourself, and you’re going to get rather sick, given time, Mr. Thorburn. The initial effect, when the foreign bodies take hold, it’s disorienting. When they make themselves known, the effect will be very similar to injecting dirty water in your veins. Our bodies reject foreign entities, and our spirits will do the same. I don’t even need to do anything.”
He paced a bit. “I’m going to, don’t get me wrong, but only to secure this. Ah, I hear my coworkers.”
Running footsteps.
“Don’t suppose I could get you to turn back the clock?” I asked. “We could have a round three.”
“Wouldn’t matter. You remain fundamentally the same.”