“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “I’m more interested in the rules that bind you.”
“I am not obliged to answer, monster of the Thorburns.”
“Monster of the Thorburns is far less descriptive than you’re imagining,” I said. “The family is mostly monsters, honestly.”
“Blake,” Green Eyes said. “They’re gone.”
“Listen, can we cut through the rigamarole?” I asked.
“Rigamole. Cut? I do not know this word, nor the phrasing.”
“Just answer my questions, and I might let you out.”
“What?” Evan asked.
The box hadn’t answered, so I only offered my first question. “When you’re free of the box, what are your instructions?”
“To devastate my master’s enemies until fifteen minutes pass without my finding them, then to return, and await being bound once more.”
“Can we redefine ‘master’ here?” I asked. “Can you call me master?”
The thing chuckled, from within its box. “No. Not a thing such as you. A mortal, only. A man.”
“The bird?” I asked.
“Yeah!”
I continued, “The body is-”
“Insufficient. Not yet a man.”
“‘Man’ is vague,” I said. “He’s still mortal.”
“Vaguely mortal, vaguely a man, vague in form.”
Evan bristled.
“Okay, scratch that line of thinking,” I said.
Green Eyes gave me a look, and I jerked my head in the appropriate direction. Might as well get moving.
The diagram continued to unfold like a flower as we approached and walked past it. When it became complete on all sides, an energy of some sort gathered in the middle. The snow and ice in the center of the diagram spurted a bit, forming a plume of snow and ice that exploded in a general way, before striking the road again.
We walked at a good clip. I didn’t want to run, but walking was too slow. Moving at a light jog let me move just fast enough to watch where I was going. I definitely didn’t want to fall and let the box fall apart under me.
“Let me explain my line of thinking,” I told Inomenos-in-a-box. “I want to screw with the guy that summoned you.”
Silence. Only the sound of my footsteps, the scratching sounds as Green Eyes’ scales scraped over ice, and the distant, faint tolling of the bell.
“He put you in a box instead of just summoning you and pointing you at me. To me, that says something about his relationship with you. Am I wrong? Or would you like a chance to go after him?”
“I’m forbidden from harming him until the close of the deal.”
“The deal is closed when you’re bound again?”
“Yes.”
Pretty standard.
“Then… okay. What if we made a separate deal? So it didn’t get in the way of the one you made with him?”
“Another deal?”
“Are you prohibited from indirect harm?”
“If I intend to harm, even indirect harm is prevented.”
I resisted the urge to curse. Annoying.
“Then… I swear to release you, provided you swear to grant us the same protection from harm you gave the one who summoned you…”
“I would rather remain,” Inomenos told me. “In hopes you drop the container, or lose it.”
“I’m not done,” I said. “Go after the ones near him. The blonde women. Return to him as you’re instructed, but seek out the ones within ten paces of him. Plague them, torment them, but don’t inflict any permanent harm on them. Nothing they’ll suffer from, in body, mind, or heart, more than a day from now.”
“I have reason to believe they are his allies,” Inomenos said.
“I’ll give you one reason to see them as his enemies. If you look, I suspect you’ll see that the men do not keep the company of the women. They’re reluctant to mingle, except where they’re otherwise bound together as family, as married couples. There is doubt in their hearts, fear, and confusion.”
“If this is so, I will do them mischief.”
“Good,” I said. “Agree to do me and my companions no harm, and to return to your master to be bound if you do not find your suspicions validated.”
“Agreed.”
“Try to catch them by surprise,” I said. “Before they know you’re coming, the more you’ll achieve. Time is short. The more time you can cost them, the more it will hurt. It’s a good way to do mischief for them.”
“I will try.”
“Go for it,” I said.
I tossed the box to the ground.
It broke into its constituent elements.
Inomenos appeared in a dark cloud, flexing four skeletal arms, yawning until his lower jaw nearly reached his pelvis, where his legless body stopped. There was only dark smoke beneath. His face was like melted wax, the teeth few and far between.
He howled, but it was an eerie, wrong sort of sound. Where most noises seemed like they started from the mouth and expanded outward, his howl was almost like he was devouring sound, drawing it in, and drawing himself forward in the same motion. He disappeared into the darkness and snow ahead of us.
“Huh,” Evan said.
It didn’t take too long to catch up with them. It helped that we could hear the screaming. Inomenos’ screams, more than the rest.
The area was residential, the houses older and not so well kept. The group was in one house’s front yard. Snow had cascaded from the roof to block off the door and front windows.
The sounds were horrible, and I wasn’t particularly vulnerable to it all. Many of the younger Duchamps were bent over, hands over their ears. One noticed me as I looked at her. She looked my way, and I could see images dancing across her eyes, as if they were television screens. Herself, a crowd, in a place that wasn’t here. It was some place with pillars and marble walls.
The older ones were holding up, though, they each had their own images dancing across their eyes.
They were forming rank and file, implements out. Lenses, rings, bowls filled with oil.
Trying to bind the spirit.
Slowly succeeding, as its mobility seemed to be getting cut off.
The guy with the blond beard that I’d seen by the diagram was moving through the crowd, toward it. Duchamp women stepped or staggered out of the way.
“Take a long route, go, do what you can, then get clear,” I told Evan.
He took off.
“And me?” Green Eyes asked. “You want me to stay back?”
She was pulling the closest thing she could manage to puppy dog eyes, given her translucent eyelids, and a bit of agitation at the end of her tail, twitching restlessly. I could remember how eager she’d been to keep moving.
“No,” I said. “You can come. I think I’ve healed enough. Here.”
I offered a hand.
She climbed up onto my back, tail encircling my torso. Her hair draped over one of my shoulders as she leaned forward, elbows bent at angles.
Keep your friends close, I thought. We focus so much on the ‘keep our enemies closer’ part.
I glanced around, and then took a route opposite to the one Evan had taken, through a backyard. Circling the group of men that was so distinct from the women.
“Do you know the witch in the Drains?” I asked.