That might have been the cruelest thing she could have said to my face. I was left momentarily breathless.
I pulled myself together. There were only minutes. “Yes, you two are coming.”
Ty nodded.
“I appreciate your hearing me out, Isadora,” I said. “I get the impression something in our relationship isn’t reconcilable, due to history that precedes me by some time, but… I appreciate that you’ll reach compromise with me all the same, and I appreciate the advice.”
She dipped her head in a nod. “Die cleanly, diabolist.”
With that unnerving farewell, I turned to go. Alexis and Ty followed.
Passing up the stairs meant passing the other group.
I saw each of them staring at me. The Sisters glared, the twenty-somethings shifting their weight.
The Drunk remained very still, except for the wine bottle he held and tapped on his knee.
The Shepherd barred my path by stepping forward, directly into my way.
He didn’t look at me. His eyes were on Evan.
He brimmed with negativity. The feeling made me think of the shelters in the dead of winter. The general ambiance, suspicion, loathing, anger without a target, anger with a target, discomfort, pain, hopelessness… he radiated it. When his eyes moved over to me, it became more intense.
“You had months,” I told the man. “You didn’t. He needed someone to find him, and I found him. Don’t fucking blame me for your cowardice.”
Much as I’d seen in the morgue, ghosts appeared. Vague, damaged, insubstantial.
Some were a little less ghost and a little more spirit. Some were so real I might have mistaken them for people. Others were only fragments of ideas, stirrings of snow suggesting the vague outlines of people.
He had a small army at his disposal. A collection of Junes, Leonards, Evans and others.
“He’s not one to care about right and wrong,” the Drunk observed. “The ghost was his, he thinks, and you took it. Context doesn’t matter. Doesn’t help that you’re dangerous.”
“You get to be a shepherd by shepherding,” I said. “Giving shelter and care to your flock. Evan needed that care, and that man didn’t give it. The name doesn’t fit.”
“Attacking a man’s name is bad form.”
“I don’t hear him complaining,” I said.
The Drunk smirked. He raised his bottle, then drank. More than anyone except maybe the Shepherd, the look in his eyes was dark as he looked at me. The humor was only a thin, ineffective facade.
I made a mental note. He was more of a threat when he was being vaguely friendly, over the top, and uninhibited. It kind of fit.
But he still stepped aside.
As he left, the sisters stepped in. They’d hesitated before, but they were able to gather some confidence from the sheer numbers and the power that were arrayed here, between the Shepherd and the ghosts.
“If you bar my path, you’re liable to get on Conquest’s bad side,” I said, very deliberately using Conquest’s name, “I don’t want to work under him, but I am, and you’re making the task he assigned me harder.”
“We’ll be on his bad side anyway,” one of the older Sisters of the Torch told me.
“You’re standing against him.”
“And against you,” the Elder Sister said. “The blackguard was convincing, but not quite convincing enough.”
“We’re on the same side,” I said.
“Not right here we aren’t,” she said.
“That’s unfortunate,” I said.
“It really is. You messed up a great many things by coming here. I don’t think you can even fathom how.”
“I dunno,” I said, meeting her eyes with a level stare, “I’m getting a pretty good idea of how fucked up things can get.”
“You’re a threat,” she said.
“No he isn’t,” a voice piped up. Evan.
She glanced at him, only briefly breaking eye contact with me.
“Blake helped me. And he promised me he would stop the real threats. He cares about his friends, and he’s honest, and he’s smart and he’s cool.”
“You don’t know enough to understand,” she said. “He’s one of the real threats you’re talking about.”
“No he isn’t. I’ve seen some of the monsters. One of them sort of killed me, by trapping me until I was too tired and hungry and cold to keep going. Another one of them was in the factory. He tried to stop them. He stopped one.”
“I’m not going to argue with a child.”
“You’re going to lose, by the sounds of it,” Ty commented.
“Did you try to stop the monsters like the one that sort of killed me?” Evan asked.
“We’re not that strong.”
“You’re elementalists, aren’t you?” I asked. “You deal with spirits of nature, and going by the name and the glowing ring motif… you deal with spirits of fire?”
“Yes,” she said.
“The demon in the factory is vulnerable to fire and light. You could have done something.”
“It’s not what we do,” she said. I couldn’t see her face past the white mask.
“It’s what I do,” I told her. “Tell me again how I’m one of the real monsters.”
“You serve your ends and the Lord’s. Your family has long dealt in forbidden things. I know.”
“All I know,” Evan said. “Is he tried. You didn’t.”
“Well,” the Elder Sister replied, “I’m trying now, if it means you don’t deliver that thing to Conquest.”
“You’re done trying,” a man said from behind her.
She moved to look before I did. Winning the staring contest wasn’t much, but I’d take any victories I could. Evan could have probably beat me in an actual fight.
Fell.
“Step inside, Mr. Thorburn,” he said. “Shepherd? Put your grudge aside. Sisters, you do not want to cross Conquest right now.”
Reluctantly, the group parted. Many ghosts faded as they joined the Shepherd in moving to my right, while the Sisters drifted off to the left.
I stepped inside.
I gave Alexis and Ty a moment to get acclimatized.
“I didn’t think you were in this deep,” Ty said. His eyes roved over the tower interior.
My eyes fell on the clock. Five minutes to midnight.
“I’m in pretty deep,” I said.
I glanced at Alexis.
She, for maybe the third time in all the years I’d known her, put out one cigarette, then lit up another.
“You okay?”
“Mm hmm,” she said.
“That’s not really an answer, and if it is one, it sounds like a lie,” I said.
“They’re not words.”
“Vagueness and bullshitting,” I said, “remember?”
“I remember,” she said. “No, I’m not entirely okay. I can scrap when I have to. I can’t scrap against something like that.”
“Like the sphinx.”
“Right. I’d be way happier if I had… I dunno. Anything? Some power, some tools…”
“We are most definitely on the same page, there” I said.