“Yes.”
“While Tiff and I were napping, you’ve been… what, pacing? Reading?”
“Both. And talking to Evan. I can’t ever sleep, he can’t either, I guess we’ll keep each other company when the rest of the world rests,” Rose said. She touched her head, seemed to notice hair that had pulled free of the braid, and started to unwind it, starting over from scratch. A nervous habit.
So she’d been talking to Evan, getting an idea in her head, seeing my familiar, wanting an approximation for herself.
“You were able to check on the others while you did all that?”
“Kind of? It eats away at me, to be away from ‘safe’ sources like you or the house. But I can move more easily here.”
“Okay, good.”
“Are you changing the subject?”
I shook my head.
“Well?”
“Well, I can sort of follow your line of thinking,” I said.
“I’m not saying I like this idea, but I want to do it,” Rose said.
“One very careful summoning and ritual,” I said, “And you have a pair of hands in this world, and you have some muscle.”
“That’s the idea.”
I nodded slowly.
“I didn’t expect you to actually hear me out. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I said. “I’m hearing you, but I don’t know that I agree. This sounds like fucking lunacy.”
“It’s crazy, but you picked me as a champion. You’ve got two champions you’re afraid to let loose, and probably with good reason.”
“Leery of, not so much afraid, and I’m leery with definite good reason,” I said.
“You need firepower.”
“Nukes, you mean?” I asked.
“No! No, look, listen!” Rose was more agitated. She flipped the book open. “Grandmother wrote some stuff saying that back in the day, before studies in diabolism had come so far, people had a bad habit of chalking up any particularly nasty Other as a demon or something infernal. There was a whole period of history where almost every bad Other was thought to be a demon or demonic, and the classification was harder for some to shake than others. So I’ve been researching, and looking at the criteria.”
“What criteria?”
“For what I need, for what we need. The summoning would need to have a physical form. I know Evan’s… he’s a good kid. He wouldn’t have been my first pick, or even my second, but he’s served you well, and I can see the fit. But he can’t move a book or turn a mirror if I need him to.”
“He can, sort of.”
“Without risking breaking it and leaving me high and dry? Blake-”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I admit it. He’s not a good manservant. But is there anything in that book that’s going to fit?”
“Maybe?”
“We’re biding time, Rose, waiting this out, hoping that Conquest gets reckless enough to make a mistake. If you want to talk this out with me, I’m game. But please understand that’s not a yes. I just want to know what direction you’re thinking of going.”
“Then, um, let me see here, I’ve got it in one of these books, I color coded the bookmarks. Except I didn’t have a bookmark for the sixth, so I used a sprig of herb. Here. First option. She’s Mary Frances Troxler. Origin unknown, but she may have been a wraith, a ghost that took on other qualities. Mediums used to call on her to help women find their husband to be. The ritual was tainted, too much negativity, maybe it got blamed when the marriages didn’t work out. Calling her a demon or a thing of darkness, and the label starts to become true, in a roundabout way. She started showing up when she wasn’t called, was eventually bound, and she remained a minor tool of diabolists for some time.”
“What kind of tool? Finding husbands?”
“The ritual used a mirror. She’s been summoned in ways since before zero A.D., and she only went bad recently, a hundred and twenty years ago, about. When she did go bad, she started crawling out of mirrors and carving up the women who inadvertently summoned her.”
“I can see why she piqued your interest. The mirror theme.”
“Yeah. She’s one of something like nine different entities that are related to the whole ‘Bloody Mary’ urban legend. Even has the name right. All stemming from the same roots: vanity, mirrors, and women.”
I nodded. “She’s the sort of Other you’d want on our side? Keeping us company for however long?”
“Don’t think I don’t hear the tone there. No, I don’t know if I’d want to have her around long-term, but she has uses. Pros: she’s tied to the mirror thing, and if there’s a complex answer to be had with my… I guess current predicament, maybe we learn something from her. She’s dangerous, a killer, capable of striking at our opponents from an unexpected place.”
“You want to kill our enemies?” I asked.
“They want to kill you, Blake. Killing me by proxy.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m… I guess I’m okay with going after the Eye, or the demons, or any of that. But when you think that it might be the Sisters of the Torch?”
“What about Laird?” Rose asked.
“I… I don’t understand Laird, I don’t even remotely like him. I even hate him, because he’s every inch the kind of holier than thou motherfucker that’s made my life miserable since day one. But no, I don’t want to kill him.”
“He might really be holier than us, if we’re diabolists, Blake.”
“Fuck that, and fuck you for saying so,” I said.
“He’s dangerous, and he’s not going to stop. Okay? Listen, I’m not proposing outright murder. I’m saying we should use something that can murder, so they know we aren’t playing around. We then rein it in, to keep it manageable.”
“That sounds slippery,” I said. “I’m not going to use the words ‘slippery slope’, but I think it sounds like there’s a lot of room for something ugly to happen.”
“Yeah,” Rose said. I heard a book close. “I won’t say you’re completely wrong. I was about to get to the cons, and it’s a longer list. She’s evolving, and just like you don’t want to mess with a virus that’s constantly changing, I don’t know if we want her around if we can’t predict her exactly. Besides, my suspicion is she’d only target women, even under orders, and that’s limiting her to going after the Sisters. And maybe it’s a bit selfish of me to say so, but I don’t like the idea of utilizing something like Mary Francis Troxler if she’s going to bounce off the protections they have in place and come after me. In my mirror world, even.”
I nodded. “Starting to get a better idea of what you’re wanting to do, though. Other options?”
“Tallowman. Originally thought to be possessed, modern thought points to him being a revenant. Died, or suffered some gruesome injury, but didn’t go down. Soul couldn’t rest, too hungry for revenge, basically a serial killer zombie. The spirit didn’t leave the body, and the body came back for unfinished business.”
“How’d he die?”
“Loner, as the story goes, a talented candlemaker who scrimped and saved to buy a woman’s love. He was betrayed by greedy brothers and their families who wanted the savings. Multiple stab wounds, left to die, he filled them all with candle wax, then lurched to his feet and kept going. He got a few of the peripheral family members, others severed his head, then left it be. His body kept going, as the story says, driven by hate, it separated the body fat of the ones he’d killed to make more wax, stuck his head back in place and patched the other wounds.”