Damn it.
Very slowly, with exaggerated care, I closed the door. My eyes were fixed on the outermost edge of the circle, my peripheral vision covering the shears and the interior, up until the closing door blocked my field of view.
I couldn’t say why the closed door made me feel more secure. Whatever was supposed to be in that circle probably wouldn’t be stopped by a door. But the fear I’d felt before opening the door had broken up into a general sense of disquiet. My heart wasn’t racing, but was pounding, with very slow, heavy beats. Absently, I grabbed my sweatshirt on the way down the stairs.
Rose was waiting for me on the third floor. “Blake! You idiot!”
I didn’t want to hear it. “I can barely hear you. Meet you in the study.”
I passed into the secret room, circled around to the far end and climbed down the ladder to reach the area with the mirror.
“What the hell were you doing?”
“I take it you read the letter,” I said. I was almost relieved to have the distraction of a conversation with Rose. I wanted to think on the circle, the possibilities there, but what the hell was I even supposed to do? I couldn’t even think straight, let alone read.
“Upside-down, but yes. You don’t go talking to demons or whatever elses without preparation.”
“It was prepared,” I said. I turned the letter around, then tapped it. “This was an emergency measure. A ‘you’re-fucked-and-you-need-the-big-guns-now’ measure. Grandmother outlined the key instructions.”
“You don’t go running off to check if you haven’t read about it in depth. There’s material on this guy.” Her voice was rising as she talked.
“I had to check,” I said, feeling more grounded. Feeling a little more sure of myself, I said, “I was thinking it might have killed Molly.”
“What?”
“What Laird said… I had the impression this thing might have killed Molly, and that Laird was misleading us when he said he knew what killed her. By saying that, he leads us to think the threat is from out there, and that way we have our backs turned when the threat from within comes after us.”
“So? You read up on it, so you know what to say to it-”
“I wasn’t going to say a thing, if it was there. No need to track the conversation if we don’t interact. I only needed a glance, and that glance showed me that there wasn’t anything in the circle.”
“I- huh? What do you mean?”
“A pair of scissors apparently penetrated a circle drawn on the floor.”
“It’s free?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The door was locked, Molly didn’t use that key, unless the lawyer resealed it in wax when they reshelved the books. It doesn’t fit. Maybe grandmother betrayed her own rules and brought something reflective into that room and then positioned it to where it might interfere with the circle, before locking everything up, but it’d be crazy to do that. If the thing can jump into our eyes, it can jump into the metal on scissors.”
“You’re right. That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t,” I said. “Which puts me in the funny spot of feeling more sure that it’s in that room, than I was before.”
“I don’t know how you can jump to that conclusion,” Rose said. “It’s better, now that it looks like it’s gone?”
“I don’t know. Which is why we’re going to do a little bit of reading, now,” I said. I felt more centered. Somewhere between ‘explaining is the best way to learn’ and ‘misery loves company’, explaining to Rose had helped me to find my mental and emotional footing, clarifying my thoughts so I could argue them. “Let’s meet Barba-whatsit.”
I found and picked up Dark Names.
“This is the sort of thing we need to read before you go to places like that.”
“Rose,” I said. So much for that bit on emotional and mental footing.
“I don’t want to let this opportunity go by, because it needs saying. First you go off with Laird, and I have to pull your ass out of the fire, and now you go-”
“Rose!” I said, louder.
She shut up.
“We can’t do this,” I said. “You second guessing me at every turn. This arguing. I’ve been through some shit-”
“So have I, in case you haven’t noticed,” she said, bitter.
“Nearly getting killed?” I asked.
“I was there! We’re connected, Blake. You die, I probably die.”
“Before,” I said. “Before any of this. I’m talking about when I was seventeen and newly homeless and picking the wrong spot to settle down for the night, only to find out that a local gang thinks you’re staking out their stash or drop point or something, and you get beat down by a group of six or seven people? Or having a group of teenagers with BB guns come after you because they want a live target and you’re pretty much subhuman to them? The pellets don’t go very far beneath the skin, but one of them hit something, because my arm bruised purple from the bicep to my hand.”
“You never said anything about that,” Rose said.
“There were worse days. Days I’m probably never going to talk to you about. Or tell anyone about, even if some people close to me maybe put some of the puzzle pieces together. I’m not aiming for pity here, I don’t want it. I don’t want to use this for leverage to win an argument. What I was going to say was that I’ve been through stuff, before any of this, and I made it this far with my instincts. I can’t and won’t abandon them.”
“I’m going to be a bit of a bitch here,” Rose said. “I don’t think your instincts are that good.”
“They weren’t good when I was first on the streets, either. But I honed them, I stayed alive and mostly whole, I refined those instincts, found people I could trust, and with their help I got to a point where I was surviving on my own. Which is something I’m proud of. I can do the same here, but I need time to get a handle on it all.”
“We don’t have time,” she said. “At this rate, you’re going to make a mistake, and we can’t afford mistakes.”
“Then help. Continue helping, please. We’re the same, the only difference being that I walked a different path.”
“And you’re still walking it,” Rose said. “It’s a lot to ask, for me to trust you as an extension of me, when I’m not sure I trust myself.”
“I’m going to ask it anyways,” I said. “That you trust me, and that you trust yourself. I’ll talk to you about this stuff more, but I need it to be a talk. Don’t second guess everything I do, or it’s just going to become noise, and the doubts are going to fuck me up as much as anything. I need cooperation, collaboration.”
“You want me to cater to your unique needs, but is there any consideration to mine? I’ve been dealing… I’ve got the memories of dealing with our family for years. It doesn’t exactly build up a team player mentality.”
“My experiences didn’t either,” I said. Barring the last year or two. “But I’ll try if you do. Please.”