“That’s not part of the ritual,” Rose observed.
“Theatrics,” Alister and I spoke in the same moment.
Alister smiled. I didn’t.
“By their presence, the family elders agree to draw from the well,” Alister said. “Let this ritual be completed.”
The fires went out, but the manner in which they went out was unique. It was as if they were opened at the bottom, the burning liquid emptying along the lines of the diagram.
It animated, the individual components moving. Everything rotated, circles spinning, individual components aligning.
I heard a ticking sound. A cosmic clock, slowing down.
The components of the diagram all gathered together. Like a great piece of machinery settling into place, everything came to an abrupt, town-wide halt. My heart might have skipped a beat, if I’d had one.
The blue light that ran along the lines of the diagram traced its way to the center of the circle, leaving only darkness in its wake, and then used itself up, the fuse of an old fashioned bomb sparkling its way down to the base… then nothing.
“There,” Alister said. “That buys us a day.”
“Good,” Rose replied. “Ty?”
“Be right back,” Ty said.
He shot me a glance as he exited the living room and headed down into the basement.
Flashlights were flickering on, as we collectively stood in the front of the bottom floor.
It was a fairly pointless endeavor. The breaker was thrown, and the lights came on, all at once.
Tiff shrieked. At some point between the ritual and the lights going on, Green Eyes had climbed off me and crawled over to Tiff’s side, at the far end of the room. Tiff had seated herself on the arm of the couch that had been dragged into the kitchen, Alexis sitting on the couch cushion itself. Green Eyes was on the other side, her face six inches from Tiff’s, at about the same level. Unmoving.
“Shit on me,” Peter said. “I did not need to flashback to the mermaid melting the giant man to death. Burned into my retinas.”
“Please don’t give her ideas,” Tiff said, not breaking eye contact with Green Eyes.
Green Eyes smiled, showing her teeth, then dropped to the ground, moving easily through, under, and around the pieces of furniture that had effectively blocked off the entire kitchen and back hallway.
“Try to behave,” Alister said. “Things are touchy enough as it is.”
“As the frog said to the scorpion?” a Behaim asked.
“Said me, to you,” Alister said, his voice stern. “What I’m saying isn’t for just the bogeymen and Others. It goes for you too. Don’t pick fights.”
I could tell, at a glance, that the older Behaims were not keen on being told off by an eighteen year old.
Had they expected to have a pawn they could control, who would be a more obvious target to any enemies? He’d been a more obvious target to me. Had things played out a little differently, I might have wounded him, bankrupted him of power by forcing him to undo the damage the Hyena had inflicted.
Green Eyes returned to my side. I offered her a hand, and she used it to climb up my back. She settled, her upper arms and chin resting on my shoulders, hands sticking out in front.
Better to keep her close, just in case.
“How’s your pet demon?” Alister asked Rose.
“Bound. I should check on it in two hours.”
Alister didn’t respond. Instead, he raised one hand, showing Rose his watch.
“Stopped? All clocks?”
“All clocks in Jacob’s Bell. The real power comes in when we need to smooth things over. We’re borrowing against tomorrow, adding to today. Except, as you’re well aware, given how you broke through my uncle’s barrier around this house, there’s more to some Chronomancy than simply altering time.”
“Or less to Chronomancy than altering time,” I observed.
“Ah…” Alister said. He glanced at some of the other Others in the house. The faceless woman and burned Revenant weren’t standing that far from me, and could see into the living room. “Yes. Both are true, depending on your perspective. Right now, however, our focus is on the consequences. We effectively skip a Tuesday. Certain important mail isn’t delivered. Errands are skipped. We put everything out of order. The real cost is in smoothing out the wrinkles, paying our debt to the universe for leaving things a bit out of order, and giving this enough backbone that it won’t fall apart the second it’s tampered with.”
Rose frowned. “Does that mean the time-delayed effect around the demon’s circle is paused, or is that exempt?”
“Don’t know,” Alister said. “What’s the timer?”
“Three hours. I should check it in two.”
“I’ll remind you,” Alister said. “If I can’t, someone should?”
A few older Behaims nodded in agreement.
“We expect you to hold to your end of the deal,” Alister said. “It’s not just for our sake. It’s common sense.”
Rose glanced over at Tiff, Alexis and Ty.
“Yeah,” she said. “We’ll arrange it before we move on to the next steps.”
He cut the deck, glanced at the card, then pocketed it. “Blake. A word?”
I raised my eyebrows a little.
He gestured toward the front door.
I led the way out, walking past the faceless man and burned revenant.
I didn’t like him. I didn’t trust him. It wasn’t that he could lie to me. It was a question of loyalties.
Stepping outside, I could see the sky.
The clouds had frozen overhead. It wasn’t that they were that bright or easy to see to begin with, given the oppressive darkness and the lack of light from the city itself, but they formed a tableau now. Like a cave roof overhead.
The longer I stared, the more artificial it looked. Like an oil painting.
And it was so quiet.
Green Eyes reached out and touched a snowflake that had frozen in position in mid-air. The snowflake drifted away from her touch, melting away.
“Perception,” Rose said. “Neat to see, but it’s only a trick of the mind, a great many spirits playing along. Pay too much attention to it, and you’ll start to see holes in it.”
“If it was a weaker effect, I’d urge you not to poke too many holes in it, but I didn’t make it weak,” Alister explained. “I’m half expecting Johannes to send a genie or two to start trying to undo it and speed things along.”
Rose and Alister stepped down from the front steps to the driveway, joining Evan, Green Eyes and I. Alister was in the process of pulling on a coat, Rose hadn’t taken hers off while in the house.
I expected Alister to tell my companions to leave. He didn’t.
Rose studied me, her eye taking in every bit. Including Green Eyes.
Finally, as if she’d come to a decision, she said, “Before we discussed the marriage in detail, Alister told me that he thinks someone’s pulling strings behind the scenes.”
“This abyss thing?”
“That’s part of it. We can’t be sure without the full cooperation of Sandra and Johannes, but we think there might be more going on with the number of Others in town,” Rose said. “Goblins without masters. Many of your new acquaintances.”
“Gravity,” Alister said. “As if we’re at the center of a whirlpool, and things are being drawn in. Summoning is easier, control is harder, and thanks to the involvement of the Abyss, bogeymen like you and the faceless woman are thriving, recuperating faster, hitting harder.”