“Something tells me that anyone who tries to hurt those guys is going to be the one bleeding,” I said.
I pulled the book out of my waistband.
While infusing the text with one more spirit I couldn’t afford to give, I recited a few words. Three points of similarity. Repeating the same ones tended to be a problem.
Age. The practitioner’s coat of arms. The scuff mark on the back cover.
I tore off the back cover, and laid it across the hood of the car.
No pen, I’d have to make do.
Drawing the Hyena, I began to carve letters out, as slowly and carefully as I could. Rounded edges were harder. The paper cut, then turned black and brown where the blade had touched it.
Rose,
Behaims plan to back Alister. They have weapon for him. Must discredit or stop or attacks can become more serious, worse.
Give permission?
I didn’t sign my name. No time.
I threw the cover as far as I could get it, and I hoped the cover of the real book did something similar, within that library.
Mags was looking over her shoulder at Evan.
Evan extended one wing in a wave.
Mags waved.
“Go first?” I asked.
Evan flew.
A moment later, Mags beckoned me.
I crossed the distance.
“Hello, Mags,” I said.
More than a few people startled at my voice. A couple startled twice, reacting to my appearance when they saw me in the car window.
“I’d like you to meet the junior council,” Mags said.
“Blake shouldn’t be here,” Joanna said. Letita’s master, I recognized. I’d met her while with Ms. Lewis.
“I’m ambassador, I say he can be here,” Mags said.
“I don’t think it works that way,” a female Behaim said.
“Tough luck,” Mags said. “What’s up?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. My eye roved over the group.
My eye fell on one young man. Eighteen, apparently. He had the Behaim look, dark haired, with very strong features, a little taller than average. His features, though, weren’t so blocky as the other Behaims. Strong cheekbones and a prominent chin and an odd face shape. He wore a leather jacket with a heavy wool scarf tucked inside it. The way his hair was styled, the narrow jeans, the shiny black boots… something told me he was a Toronto resident, not a kid who’d lived in a small town all his life. His eyes were a bottle-glass green as he peered at me.
“Molly’s awol,” Mags said. “So are the independent Others. We think there’s a reason for that. In the past hour alone, a good four practitioners and ten innocents have been hurt.”
“When you say independent others, you mean Others like the faceless woman?” I asked, more to keep my thoughts in order and slow down the conversation than out of genuine need to know. My head was swimming a bit. “The revenant?”
“They’re among them, yeah. Essylt and the torturer Faerie might be too.”
“Hm,” I said.
“More a force of nature than an organization.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“We should go in soon,” the Behaim girl said.
My eye found Alister again, on the far side of the group.
“You’re here for me,” he said.
“Alister?”
“Yes. You’re here to make a formal declaration of war.”
It made sense, doing it that way. If I was going to do this seriously, with a minimum of casualties to Rose’s game plan, doing it tidy was one way.
“I-”
He cut me off. “That wasn’t a question. It was a statement.”
I was starting to see where Ben had been leery of him. He did take risks.
“Statements like that are dangerous,” I said.
“They are if you don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.
He drew a deck of cards from his hand, holding it up.
The Fool was the card that faced me.
“Your friend Rose is going to give you her signal. You’ll make your declaration of war, because you have to. But this won’t go the way you want it to,” he said.
“It might!” Evan chimed in.
Alister looked at the other members of the junior council. “You should go to class. I’ll be a bit late.”
“Go,” Mags said.
“You’ll have to stay out of this, Ambassador.”
“Yeah,” Mags said. “Hang with me, Evan?”
“I’m totally helping Blake.”
I nodded.
The echo of the bell continued in the background, an angry noise.
“I like doing things this way,” Alister said. “A proper contest of skill. Game on.”
11.04
“Game? Evan asked. “This is a game to you?”
Alister held up the deck again. The card facing us was Temperance. “Balance, union, opposites, agreements, and compromise. An earlier reading suggests you’ve killed before, but you don’t want to murder me. If I suggest a deal, a gentleman’s agreement…”