“Yes! Jørgen! Shame about the two of them; we may be able to get them later, very tricky right now, though, very tricky. So — where was I? Oh, yes, in our court. You say you’re not. And to this we say: Of course! Of course you’re not. Dark Oath, you know, it works that way. You probably see us as the enemy right now, it’s terribly ironic, actually. But in a physical sense? We have you here in the building. Literally in our court. And that’s very, very, very good.”
“You can’t stop Lucifer,” Billy says. “He came and he took Jørgen and Elisa away from you. He’ll take me, too.”
“Well,” Laurent says. “We’ll see about that.”
“Yes,” Billy says. “We will.”
They emerge into a hallway on the third floor and hustle him toward a pair of black double doors at the far end. As they approach, Billy’s dad, Keith, still in his commando garb, throws the doors open. Billy glares at him as though he’s an enemy.
“Is he—” Keith says.
“It’s as we thought,” Laurent says. “Dark Oath.”
“Shit,” Keith says. He looks like he might rip a phone book in half.
“Don’t hurt him,” Denver says, hurrying to catch up. “It looks like you’re hurting him.”
They enter the secure room. Fluorescent lighting, nacreous tile. Various personnel toil busily at racks of arcane-looking equipment. The room resembles a hospital operating suite jammed full of card tables, half-finished cups of coffee, empty take-out containers, and at least one ashtray. Billy sees Anil sitting in a plastic chair, safely out of the way of most of the bustle, in front of a glossy black bank of dormant technology.
“Seal the room,” Laurent says to Barry. Barry lets go of Billy’s arm finally and begins to do something to the door, something that involves a brilliant light flowing out of his fingertips. It hurts to look at, like an acetylene torch. Billy moves his arm gingerly, rotates it tenderly in its socket.
“We can undo the Oath,” Laurent says to Keith. “It’ll just — it’ll just take some time.”
“How long?” Keith says.
“Two days?” Laurent says.
“Two days?” Keith says.
“It’s unfortunate, I agree. But we don’t have the right components and we don’t have the right staff. I could get you this Yoruban guy, a specialist, but he’s in Nigeria, and even if we could get in touch with him—”
“You can’t keep this room secure for two days,” Keith says, pressing his fingertips against his temples like a character in a commercial for a headache remedy. “Not against the Adversary.”
“He has a name, you know,” Billy says.
“Billy,” Laurent snaps. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable. Go sit over there by the God detector. With your friend.” He waves in Anil’s direction.
Billy takes one more look at the double doors. They are barely visible behind a gleaming magical glyph. So, okay, fuck it, he probably can’t run. He dismally considers whether he’s going to need to turn into a wolf again and kill everyone in the room just to keep his word. But he feels no special compulsion to do anything other than wait for Lucifer to show up. So he goes, and he sits down in a chair next to Anil. Denver comes and joins them.
“Hey, man,” Anil says.
“Hey,” Billy says. He dumps Anton Cirrus’s duffel bag onto the floor.
Anil puts a hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Listen, man, these guys say that they’re going to help you get out of this. This Oath or whatever it is that you’re under.”
“But that’s the thing,” Billy says. “I can’t really root for that. I gave my word.”
Anil gives him an incredulous look. “Are you kidding me?” he says. “Of all the people I know, you’re like the first person to try to weasel out of your obligations. You break promises all the time.”
Billy turns to look at Denver, in the hopes that she’ll defend his honor, but all she does is give a palms-up gesture.
“So what the fuck makes this promise so special?” Anil says.
“I made it to the Devil,” Billy says.
“Right — which means that it fucks you even worse than the average stupid shit you agree to! And now you’re in a room with people who love you — your friends and your dad and an entire staff of fucking magicians who are working overtime to help you get out of this and you won’t even allow yourself to root for them? No offense, man, but it’s kind of a dick move.”
“You know what’s a dick move?” Billy says.
“What,” Anil says.
But Billy has no retort.
They sit there in silence for a minute. “All I’m saying,” Anil says eventually, “is just try to let yourself feel a little hope.”
Billy tries it. And a little light goes on in the wing of himself that he thought had collapsed, in the part of himself that he thought had died.
“So now what,” Denver says, after a minute.
“I dunno,” Billy says. “Anybody have, like, an UNO deck or something?”
The lights go out. A collective murmur of dismay goes up from everyone in the room, except Billy. The lights come up again a second later, when some backup system kicks in, although the illumination they cast seems a little more feeble and uncertain now.
“He’s coming for me,” Billy says. He says it quietly, but a pall has fallen over the room, so no one has any trouble hearing him.
“Hold that seal,” Laurent says.
“Got it,” says Barry.
The room shudders ferociously. The lights flicker. An expensive-looking oscilloscope-type widget crashes to the floor, gives one single alarming bleat as it dies. Barry’s glyph wobbles, blurs at its edges. Sparks peel off and bounce to the floor.
“Hold that seal!” Laurent shouts.
“It’s not that easy,” Barry says.
“Goddamn it,” Laurent says. He turns from person to person frantically, although he does not really appear to be addressing anyone in particular. “We’re not going to lose. Not twice in one day. We’re the fucking good guys. The whole point of our existence is that we’re superior to evil. We’re supposed to win. Our whole building got fucking trashed by hellfire once today, okay, yes, bad, but we should at least be able to hold one room that a fucking council of warlocks designed to be the most mystically secure space in all of New York City.” He takes off his hard hat and flings it at the wall.
The room gives another violent shudder. Barry’s silvery glyph suddenly turns a dark, smoky red. Little flames spill out of its edges. Barry begins to tremble and jitter, like someone about to have a seizure.
“Oh,” Laurent says, throwing his hands up into the air. “Oh. This is just perfect. We are ever so perfectly fucked.”
“Billy,” says Denver. She grips his leg.
“Yeah,” Billy says. He doesn’t look at her; he’s watching the door, watching the glyph begin to burn.
“Are we going to die?”
Billy turns to look at her now, sees the fear in her face. “I don’t know,” he says.
“If we’re going to die,” she says, “I want to say that I’m sorry. About last night.”
“Sorry?” Billy says.
“Yes,” Denver says. “When you said you loved me. I should have said it back.”
“Oh,” Billy says. “Uh, you still could say it. Now might be a good time.” His hope grasps at the idea that somehow love is the key to this situation, that somehow, love will save them all.
She opens her mouth, but then the room is gripped by a third groaning spasm. This one cracks about half the tiles that line the walls and shatters three of the fluorescent lights, filling the air with a harsh, choking dust. The glyph sputters out completely.