“Yes,” Rose said. “Some of it. We did it to lure in the ghost.”
“And breaking connections?” Ms. Lewis asked. “Case in point, they’re tracking your every step.”
They were. I could feel their eyes on the back of my head. The connections were there, too, fuzzy on one end, to the point that I couldn’t trace it back to them, but unerringly focused on me. The Other was making its way back to the alley, meandering. No doubt looking for a trace of us.
“No, I don’t know how to break connections,” I said.
“Clench and unclench your injured hand. Get the blood flowing from the wound. Now, instead of supplying power to the conduit, you want to block it.”
If I’d had to draw a line parallel to the connection I was feeding, then to block it…
“I draw the line sideways?”
“Perpendicular. Think of it as a wall or a dam to block or divert the river.”
I stopped, ready to bend down and draw the line.
But Ms. Lewis took my arm, pulling me along and keeping me moving.
“What?” I asked.
“Wait one moment. This is about symbolism and effect. A great deal of what any practitioner does is draw on the power of Others. Connections, pacts, bonds, borrowed power. You can be dull and methodical about it, but that’s only going to impress a specific kind of Other. If you use presentation, however, timing, flair, showmanship…”
“It matters?”
“You do have an audience, after all. It’s marginal as benefits go, but if I’m going to teach you, I’m going to teach you to do it right. Gesture and statement can go along with power. Saying the right thing, doing the right thing, they can add a modicum of power to anything you do, for very little cost. Understand?”
“I… think so,” I said.
“Draw the line of blood a moment before we round the corner. Take the stairwell, downstairs.”
There was a bang on the door, loud enough to carry down the hallway.
“We’re on the ground floor,” I said.
“I’m aware.”
“We’d be cornering ourselves, going into the basement.”
“Not if this works.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then I’ll find another way to keep you safe as I’d promised. Now.”
There was a bang on the door, and the sword speared through the wood. It cut down in one swift stroke, severing the top three-quarters of the door from the lower hinge.
I bent down, using the blob of blood on the back of my hand as a palette, to draw one thick smear of blood across the top of the stairs, between us, the other, and where the two Duchamps were.
In that same movement, as I drew my arm left to right, I took a step down to the right, heading down the stairs.
“Good,” Ms. Lewis said. “Everything you do has meaning, and informs your practice.”
Getting further away hurt the connection, as did rounding the corner. Evasive actions. Was it confusing the spirits, and thus making us harder to track, or was it the other way around, with the spirits recognizing that we were trying to slip away and acting in accord with it?
Whatever the case was, the effect was pronounced. I didn’t feel their eyes on me any more.
I heard the door coming to pieces in the hallway above us, as we quickly and quietly descended the flight of stairs.
The basement. The paint was old and the plaster on the drywall was still visible in spots. There were no doors. We passed by a room with washing machines and dryers inside.
I stopped at the foot of the stairs, reached into my back pocket, and withdrew one of the small bike mirrors. I propped it up in the corner. “Keep an eye on things?”
“Padraic could reach through to get me,” Rose whispered.
“I don’t think a hand is going to reach through there,” I said.
“The sword could.”
I heard a faint scrape. Was the sword dragging along the floor? I hurried down the hall to catch up to Ms. Lewis.
“No obligation, Rose,” I said. “But it’d be handy.”
Rose said, “I’ll keep an eye out. I can pop in and look, then come back.”
I nodded, realized she couldn’t see me from her angle, and said, “Thanks.”
To Ms. Lewis, I asked, “What are we doing down here?”
Ms. Lewis said, “For now, I’m hoping you’re learning. Now, Faerie often use glamour,” Ms. Lewis said. “Do you know what that is?”
“Like mirages,” I said. “Things that aren’t really there?”
We passed a room filled with large, bulky equipment. Vacuums, a pressure washer, steam cleaner…
“You’re wrong,” she said. “The things they conjure up are there. They’re fabricated, and it’s this affinity for things that have been crafted that helps the Faerie avoid being touched so easily by fabricated things. With glamour, the Faerie might create an image of a flower. It’s an image. But as they put power into it, it gains substance. As people see it and recognize it, they feed power into it. Plant that flower in a garden, leave it be, and it will grow as any flower might. It becomes a part of the garden, and the garden adapts. It adapts to the viewers, becoming what they want and expect to see. A two way street. Given opportunity, it becomes as much of a part of things as if it was always there.”
“Could you-” Rose started. She stopped as we did – Ms. Lewis had peered into a room and stopped in her tracks. “Could you do something like that to fuel a vestige? To make the false copy more real?”
Ms. Lewis smiled a little. “Theoretically. But there is a fragility to it. An idea is an idea, after all, and if you dismiss it or if you challenge the lie and win, then it is liable to fall apart. This is in addition to the fragility a vestige already has. I can say with conviction that this would do you more harm than good.”
“Oh,” Rose said. A little disheartened.
Ms. Lewis didn’t hold back, “Glamour thrives on attention, on interacting with our senses and being validated. A vestige is like gossamer, and any interaction does damage to it. It’s a contradiction, and that makes for an exceedingly dangerous balance to strike. Damage one element and it all might collapse.”
We had stopped at one doorway. Ms. Lewis led the way inside.
It was a workshop, complete with a massive box of breakers, tools hanging on the wall, water heaters, and an old trash can filled with bits of concrete and plumbing.
I bent down and drew out a line of blood to break the connection again. Their focus wasn’t anywhere near us, at this point.
Ms. Lewis continued. “A glamour is most effective if it can insinuate itself into your subconscious. The Faerie manipulate things to distract, to addle your senses so you aren’t paying attention to the fact that it doesn’t fit with reality. You’re more afraid for your life than you are concerned with the ridiculous length of her blade, and the fact that she couldn’t possibly be strong enough to hold it.”
“You challenged her.”
“As your partner Rose already said, they’re weak against the unrefined, against crude things. That includes attitudes. Their court is one of dancing around subjects, allusions, games, masquerades, and complex plots that unfold over decades and centuries. They shore themselves and their reality up with glamour, and they use these illusions-made reality to fool even themselves. It catches them off guard when you are blunt. It offends them on a fundamental level, because they thrive off of belief, real or otherwise, and they don’t like for those beliefs to be challenged.”