She shook her head. “He’s dead. Not alive dead, but dead dead. Zombies are so complicated. Real forever dead, I mean.”
“Did you…”
“Oh, Jacques,” Faye gave a tired smile. “I’m still not the monster you think I am.”
“I did not mean to imply—”
“Naw. He stuck himself in a furnace when we were done talking. He was just plain worn out and didn’t want to hurt no more. Can’t rightly blame him.”
His expression was unreadable. “Zachary was a good man.”
“I could tell.”
Jacques leaned forward in his chair until his elbows rested on his knees. “What did he show you?”
“All sorts of stuff. Things that have happened, will happen, might could, maybe, heck, I don’t know. I’m still sorting it out. I gathered them all up.” She touched the satchel with one foot. “But I do know one thing for sure.”
“That is?”
“Me and you? We’re done.” Faye kept her voice even, and though it was hard, she was exhausted, starving, and trying not to be emotional. She didn’t deal well with betrayal. “You were aiming to kill me.”
“No.” Jacques looked her in the eye. “I have kept my word. You are aware of how I voted. I explained to you my reasons. That was never a secret, but I have stayed my hand since we first met.”
“I know it’s been hard for you. You can’t shake your doubts. You’ve seen too much of what it means to be the Spellbound. I know about the poison in your pocket,” Faye stated. “Surprised you didn’t poison all those cookies, but then you’d likely have gotten yourself by accident too. I bet you never met a cookie you didn’t eat eventually.”
To his credit, Jacques didn’t flinch or try to lie his way out it. The elder played the vapid man of leisure really well, but Faye knew he was just as hard as any Grimnoir. He reached for his shirt pocket and removed a small vial. “It is a lethal neurotoxin. The effects are immediate and painless. Of course, I thought about using it many times since we met, believe me. Yet, I have refrained. I would ask you to show me the same courtesy now. Since you did not immediately take my head upon your return, then I can only assume Zachary showed you the future, and perhaps now you understand my dilemma. Was it the same one I saw?”
“You saw a future, but it ain’t the only one.”
“So there are more possible outcomes now? That is certainly better than before.” There was a glimmer of hope in Jacques’ voice.
And then Faye took that hope and squashed it. “More, sure, but most are still evil. So darn many evil ones that I couldn’t even guess which one it was you saw that got you spun up enough to have Whisper murder me in the first place. You’re still more than likely right, and I’m more than likely going to meet a bad end. So today’s your lucky day, Jacques. I get it. I know why you’re willing to do what you’re willing to do.”
“I am so very sorry.” And she knew he was totally sincere.
“So yeah, you’re right. One day the society will probably have to turn on me, and the only real question is, do you do it now while you can maybe still handle me, or do you wait to see, hope against hope, that maybe I get lucky and master this thing, but if you have mercy, and wait, and get it wrong, then you know I’ll beat you all. You didn’t say that before, but you know I’m already stronger than Sivaram ever was. Hard as he was, you know I’m better. If the Power is experimenting on Actives, you know I’ll show it better than Sivaram ever could manage. I scare you now. You give me time and you know you’ll never be able to take me.”
Jacques nodded slowly. “You are correct, Faye. We have taken an oath to protect man from magic. You understand now what your magic is truly capable of. That is the quandary I find myself in. You are not yet, but may well be, the greatest threat to innocent life we have ever seen.”
“Only I’ve got a bigger problem for you.” Faye reached down and opened the satchel. The pictures she wanted had been left right on top of the stack. They were easy to find, all crumpled up by Zachary’s frustrated hands. “There’s something bigger coming. Something Zachary couldn’t even draw, and as scary as the Spellbound curse is, the Enemy is worse.”
Jacques took the picture and looked at the ragged, blood-smeared hole torn in the page. “What manner of madness is this?” But much as when Faye had studied it before, the longer you started at the chaotic patterns, the more the Enemy took shape. Jacques gasped and dropped it almost as if it burned.
“You can feel it looking back, can’t you?”
“It is real, then.” Jacques unconsciously rubbed his hands on his pants, as if he’d touched something icky and wanted it off his skin. “Sweet, merciful God, it is real.”
“Told you so. I was right. Mr. Sullivan was right. Even the Chairman was right. Most of all, the Power was right. And all the bad endings you can imagine from the Spellbound curse won’t make a lick of difference, because if we don’t stop that first, then there won’t be any future at all. So evil as you think I may become, that thing is evil now. I ain’t got nothing on it.”
The picture of the Enemy had fallen on the rug. Jacques was still staring at it, like it wanted to crawl out of the ink and eat their souls. “What do you intend to do?”
“I don’t know yet. Win… Somehow.”
He was shaken, but he found his spine. “What do you want from me? What can I do to help?”
“Tell the elders I’m still alive, and then tell them to stay out of my way. Convince them that we’re about to get attacked, everywhere, and that we’ll need to be ready. Convince everybody. The pictures show men that ain’t really men, and they’re hiding, waiting, all over the whole wide world, ready to start collecting Actives. I need to find my friends before it’s too late. They don’t know what they’re getting into against this old samurai with the shadow living inside his head. They’re in the pictures, in a city with funny buildings and oriental writing on the signs.”
Jacques was still distracted by the idea that he’d been wrong, that magic was about to be chased from the world, and all life on Earth was about to be extinguished. “Shanghai. Jake Sullivan’s expedition is in Shanghai,” he mumbled.
Faye got up and gathered her meager belongings. “Power made me the Spellbound for a reason. Some of the other folks it picked before weren’t good enough, so I need to set things straight, take back things that have been done wrong. I’ve got some things I need to do first, then I’m going to Shanghai to beat this thing once and for all,” she stated with grim determination before she Traveled away.
Then she nearly scared Jacques to death for a second time when she reappeared a moment later. “Wait… Where is Shanghai, anyway?”
Chapter 15
If there is one lesson which I could pass down it is this: It does not matter what situation the adventurer finds himself in, from stalking lions in the tall grass, to living among cannibal tribes in New Guinea, or riding a raft over a giant waterfall. If you expect to survive, you must keep your wits about you. You must keep your firearms clean, your knives sharp, and—if you are lucky enough to have it—your magic ready, but no amount of Power or equipment or fancy kit will make up for a lack of brains and guts. When danger looms, don’t hesitate, commit.
That reminds me of a story about this one time I was mountaineering in Tibet…