“The plus side,” I said, “Is the enemy has a lot of unknowns too.”
“The witch hunters?”
“The council,” I replied.
“Ahh. The enemy behind the enemy.”
“The root of our problems,” I said.
“Okay,” Alexis said. “I’m being a bit of a tattoo geek, here, but I’ve had a few sessions with clients who couldn’t articulate what they wanted. Let’s block this out, start from scratch.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You just said the key things. We need the witch hunters stopped and defenses in place for tonight. We need to buy time until Rose comes back.”
“Bonus points if we can free the other Thorburns and get them out of harms way,” I said. “I don’t like them, but…”
“But?” Ty chimed in from the other side of the room.
“I just really don’t like them,” I finished. “All the same, they’re a resource.”
“Okay,” Alexis said. “Those are the broad strokes, the notes we have to hit. We can’t do much about the witch hunters, agreed? Their whole schtick is that they’re really hard for a practitioner to work around. We can send a mob at them and hope it keeps them distracted until we can make another move.”
“Witch hunters on the backburner,” I said. “Leaving… the council?”
“The council,” Alexis said.
I nodded slowly. The source of both the nighttime attacks, or the bulk of them anyway, and the witch hunters.
“A starting point,” I said.
A distant explosion made me sit up.
I stepped out of the patch of light and crossed to the hallway outside.
Smoke rose from a black scorch mark on the floor, at the end of the hall opposite the stairs. Andy and Eva were at the opposite end. The explosion, whatever it had been, had knocked a picture frame off the wall.
There was so very little space left to me. From one end of the second floor hallway, I could see how one window had been spray painted. Some of the paint marked the curtains.
The girl grinned as her eyes met mine. She reached the top of the stairs, striding forward. She raised a gun-
I didn’t bother to watch. There were too many possibilities. Silver bullets, in the metaphorical sense, that could have hurt me. I threw myself to one side.
The sound of the gun was muted, the hiss of an air compressor more than any gun I’d ever heard. The window broke into a thousand fragments.
They were cutting me off from the house.
I disappeared back inside the hidden library.
“They’re in the hallway,” I said.
“Fuck,” Ty said.
“Tiff,” Alexis said, “Open the third floor door, leave the ground floor door closed. Send the ‘help’ to deal with the witch hunters.”
“Right,” Tiff said. Her hands were hidden inside long sleeves, and hidden further as she kept her arms folded. It almost looked as if she was wearing a straightjacket. Wool, but a straightjacket all the same. She looked grim. She climbed the little ladder to the second tier of the library.
“I assume I’m the one going after the council?” I asked, resuming our former conversation.
“You’ll have to be,” Alexis said. “You and Evan.”
“Okay,” I told her. “But there’s a limit to what we can do before dark.”
“Yeah. Breaking the rule wouldn’t help. Law of retribution,” Alexis said.
“Which?”
“The practice and Others get stronger if you do it for a just reason,” she said. “I punch you or treat you more horribly than you deserve, your workings are going to affect me more.”
“Oh, that.”
“Break the local rules, and you’re not just fighting against all those other practitioners. You’re fighting against society. Against the tide of civilization.”
“Aren’t they breaking their own rule, sending the witch hunters?”
“They’re keeping the letter of the law,” Tiff called out from upstairs, “If not the spirit. Ready Ty?”
“Five seconds… four, three, two…”
He finished drawing with chalk, and spoke, “Sylph Elatus.”
The air distorted, a slight fog, a movement of dust, tracing the vague outline of a young boy.
The boy darted forward as Tiff opened the library door by hand. She left it open only for a few seconds, allowing the gathered Others to pass through.
“Next summoning,” Ty said. “I think we’re out of usable ghosts.”
“Minor incarnation or spirit,” Tiff suggested. “Um, can’t remember which types were in the books.”
“Any insights?” Alexis asked. “Things we can use against the attackers?”
“They’re kind of fucked up. Andy’s ok, but his sister’s a bit of a lunatic. Trigger happy, kicked a kid to the point of near-unconsciousness.”
“Choleric!” Alexis called up to Tiff.
“Right!”
“If you can, order it to turn them on each other!” I called up.
“Dunno if I can!”
I frowned.
It wasn’t fast, the hunting down of the book. I watched, waiting, trying to figure out a good strategy for going after the council.
“Deck’s pretty stacked against us,” Alexis said.
I startled a bit at the tone of her words more than the suddenness of them or the words themselves.
“We’ll manage,” I said.
“Be careful you don’t lie,” she warned me.
“We’ll manage,” I said. “Do I need to say it a third time?”
“No,” she said. She smiled a little. “But if we don’t manage… If it comes down to you…”
She trailed off.
“If it comes down to me, then that’s it,” I said. “I’m responsible for you. I’m pretty sure that if you die, then I take on a bit of that misfortune. I go too.”
“No,” she said. “Your connections moved to Rose, right? Rose is responsible for us.”
I frowned.
What did it say that that bothered me? I wanted to be responsible for them. I wanted to have that tie to people I cared about.
“I’ve been thinking about it. If we die, or if something bad happens to us, Rose is probably going to suffer, because she adopted that responsibility. The council members might have even figured it out,” Alexis said. “It could be the advantage they need to get control over her, to defuse the dead man’s switch. Or they call it a win and rely on the karma swing to screw up Rose’s plan. The dead man’s switch might not wind up working at all.”
Hearing Alexis talking about dying was making my skin crawl. Branches and feathers inched forward, taking millimeters of ground on the surface of my body.
“No,” I said.
“Blake, we need to plan. If something happens to us, it’s going to set off a chain reaction. Something could happen to Rose. You need to do what you can to help her, even-”
A pause.
“Even what?” I asked, my voice low.
Ty was watching us intently.
“Do what you can to help her,” Alexis repeated herself, instead of answering my question. “The enchantresses wanted the Thorburns here. If she dies, if the dead man’s switch doesn’t stall things, then the Thorburns are going to run out of people really quickly. The next three heirs are here. One bullet for each, in turn. Then it’s Ivy? How does that work? How does Paige work, being in Isadora’s grip?”