She moved, and I could see the summonings. Three, in circles on the other side of the mirror. The others had drawn the circles, they’d appeared in the mirror world, and Rose had enlisted their help in summoning the things, using her voice to summon them to her mirror reality.
From there, I suspected, they could be bound into more convenient packages, as Maggie had bound Dickswizzle into the flute or the whistle or whatever it was.
The circle closest to me held a woman. She was dressed in brown homespun clothes that were spattered with dark brown patches that I suspected were dried blood, holding a kitchen knife that seemed disproportionately large, all things considered. Her facial features seemed slightly offset, as if they weren’t quite anchored in place, and the longer I stared, the more the eyes, cheekbones, eye brows, nose and mouth seemed to drift from their starting point.
A man with an apron and vest, wild orange hair, and slashes of dull ashy yellow wax crusting his skin here and there. One of his eyes was missing, and the orb within was more wax, set with a tiny black dot in the middle, slipped into place.
The other circle was empty.
I wasn’t an expert, but there was only one Other we had discussed summoning. I’d vetoed the choice.
Rose was tense. Braced for an argument.
Was there more to the inherent hostility? Was the sphinx right? Were we instinctually aware that there was a game of musical chairs in progress, the two of us dancing in circles, and only one chair?
Fuck that. Fuck the hostility, fuck the arguments wasting time, fuck the game of musical chairs.
I’d take the third route.
Starting by forestalling whatever argument she was prepared to make.
I tried to keep my voice level, but a kind of hoarseness found its way in despite my efforts. “In the interest of full disclosure, the Sphinx has informed me I’m fated to die. It won’t be too long. It’s… sounding pretty damn certain, and it fits with what some others have been telling me. Fated, was the word she used.”
Evan spoke up, “There’s gotta be a way to stop it.”
“This isn’t the movies, Evan. Yeah, I’ll fight it if the chances comes up, but something like Isadora would be pretty screwed if she lied that blatantly. If she tells me something straight up, I’m inclined to believe her.”
I saw Tiffany’s hands go to her mouth in shock, as she took it in. She was the first to react, oddly enough. Our relationship was the newest, the shallowest. Was that why? did it take longer for others to grasp the full import?
Alexis’ expression was one of shock, but it kept going, distorting, until it hit some breaking point. Her face crumpled a little, and tears appeared in her eyes.
She reached up, as if to hug me, then thought again about it a moment later.
I felt like an utter asshole for not just hugging her anyway. That was what happened in the movies, right?
But I wasn’t sure I wanted to admit how shaky I felt. Standing still, being stoic, it was all I could do.
I looked at Rose, and I could see the alarm on her face. She’d been waiting, probably, with words prepared to argue for the summoning of the Corvidae spirit, and I’d left her speechless. But it was more than the shock that Alexis was demonstrating so well.
Was she worried about her own existence?
Good.
“I’m sorry Rose,” I told her, and my voice was a little hoarser than before.
I didn’t tell her why I was sorry. I’d lie to let her keep worrying. If we were caught up in some dance we weren’t aware of, then maybe mutual self preservation would push her to cooperate where she wouldn’t otherwise.
“I’m sorry Evan,” I said. “We made a deal, though, and I’m going to try to make the most of the time we have left, to follow through.”
He didn’t respond, but he hopped over a bit and settled closer to my neck, leaning on me.
Ty hugged Alexis in my place.
■
Fell finished painting the posterboard, then stepped back to examine his work.
My eyes moved from the board to the circle that was drawn on the floor of the apartment, checking over every detail.
“This is your escape hatch,” he said. “While in the spirit world, things take on a different dimension. The workings of practitioners are more physical, the workings of man are more fragile. You’ve already seen hints of this, how easily neglected things fall to ruin in that world.”
I nodded, and Rose nodded with me.
We’d talked briefly, running through the various stages of grief in our own way and our own individual orders. I’d gone in with acceptance of a sort, and it helped that my recent brushes with death had acclimatized me to the idea. Rose still seemed to be in denial. But she’d dropped the pretense of a fight and she seemed to be in my court, now.
I wished it hadn’t affected Alexis as much as it had. Ty, too, seemed to have switched to a very introspective mode.
We’d agreed not to tell Fell and Maggie, when we heard them at the door and realized our time for mourning was over. Not telling them meant putting on our best game faces. Some of us were doing better than others.
“With luck, the defenses they’ve set in place are going to be geared towards stopping us in the spirit world. If they are expecting us, they have to expect that Blake will make a personal appearance in the real world. If he couldn’t, he wouldn’t be able to follow through on the agreement he made with the local police chief. They’ll be prepared in other ways.”
I drummed my fingers on the kitchen counter that divided the kitchen from the living room. “We hit them from multiple directions, and we hit them hard. I’m inside the building with Evan and Rose.”
“Will you be okay?” Alexis asked.
She was maybe having the hardest time dealing with what I’d told her. It surprised me, because she was often so strong.
But people worked to leave legacies, and while my ambitions were pretty damn low, merely on leaving the world a better place than I’d left it, Alexis was having to face the fact that the legacy she was leaving was in jeopardy. One of the people she’d saved and helped rehabilitate was potentially going to die.
“No idea,” I said. “But Rose has the firepower, Evan can hopefully help me work around the traps. We have Alexis and Ty as eyes on the scene, and Fell guarding the perimeter to distract further trouble. In an ideal world, this is our chance to take out one of Conquest’s champions.”
“Perception and misdirection are my stock in trade,” Fell said. “I’ll set your friends up so they’re hard to spot and capable of tracking whatever is going on. If trouble heads your way, I’ll try to turn it aside or stall it. If I can’t, Maggie will step in.”
“The goblin catching expedition was a wash,” she said. “I have my gremlins, and some Faerie tricks I’ve picked up, but that’s it.”
“Faerie and Goblins are usually opposing,” Fell said. “Allying or borrowing the help of one usually scares off the other. A feud dating back thousands of years, even. It’s surprising you’re able to balance the two.”