The ever-wary Rory leaned on the wall next to him, arms crossed, watching, while Marshall played lab assistant, applying the last batch of Caleb’s home brew to the one statue I was going to attempt to animate. Going over my notes next to Caleb, I noticed Alexander’s newfound book lying closed on the worktable.
“How do you know what you need to do to prepare the statue for tonight?” I asked. “You’re not even consulting the book.”
Caleb kept his face down in his work, producing a tiny vial from within the shoulder bag he wore that night, pouring it into a large beaker on the table.
“I told you I was a Spellmason fan,” he said. “I’m an avid reader when it comes to it.”
I looked down at my notebook in my hands. “I took a ton of notes,” I said. “I couldn’t memorize anything that quick.”
Caleb smiled. “Trust me. When you end up ingesting as many of these alchemical elixirs and potions as I do, you learn to pay attention very quickly.”
“Let’s hope you finish all this without accidentally killing yourself,” Rory said, drawing a look from him. She gave a pained smile.
I was finding both her and Marshall’s mistrust of Caleb a bit unfounded lately, but then again, they hadn’t been working as closely as I had with him. I chalked it up to maybe a bit of jealousy that there was someone around who I needed more than them right now, but that was a discussion for another time.
“I don’t plan on drinking this,” Caleb said, looking up to her. “You don’t have to watch over me, you know.”
“Yes,” she said, not moving. “Yes, I do.”
Caleb took a moment, kept silent, then turned back to his work. He grabbed a reddish brown jug of our own attempt of Alexander’s Kimiya recipe and added some of it to the flask in his hand, filling it with about three inches of the mixture. He put the jug down with care, then slowly stirred the contents of the flask with a glass rod.
Marshall came back over to us from the statue, a brush in one hand and an emptied beaker in the other.
“Ready for another,” he said, a little damp from the few drops of rain that had begun to fall. He wiped his forehead with the forearm of his left sleeve. “I didn’t realize there would be so much arts and crafts. How am I supposed to learn what you’re mixing there?”
Caleb smiled but didn’t look up. “Consider this the hazing part of your education,” he said. “You get the grunt work.”
“Great,” Marshall said with a long, slow sigh. “Just like high school. Yay.”
“Here come the traumatic flashbacks,” Rory added.
Caleb lifted the beaker with care, but when Marshall reached out for it, he shook his head.
“I’d better do this one,” Caleb said.
“Why?” Marshall asked, looking a little hurt. “Is it my painting? Am I not leaving the right brushstrokes?”
Caleb held up the beaker with painstaking slowness.
“This mixture here is what I call active,” he said. “Right now, it’s a volatile liquid. And no offense, I still don’t know you that well, so I’m going to trust me not to kill anyone with it over you. Is that a suitable enough answer for you?”
Marshall’s face fell, and he raised his arm slowly, holding up the brush. “Sure,” he said, stammering. “No problem. You take this one. I’ll just watch, and, you know, not blow my hands off or anything.”
“Great,” Caleb said, grabbing the brush from Marshall’s hand. “A little goes a long way.”
The skies opened up, the fall of rain growing heavier every second.
“Won’t that wash off?” I asked.
Caleb shook his head. “It’s viscous,” he said. “You’d need a scrub brush and a couple of hours to make a dent in it. Don’t worry about the rain.”
He walked off, and Rory, ever vigilant, followed him, leaving Marshall and me to walk over to Stanis, perched at the edge of the building and watching it all. Whether it was real or I was imagining it, his silence felt more pronounced than ever since his return to us.
“You ready to see if we can make you some allies?” I asked.
Stanis looked down at me. “I do not know how to answer that,” he said, his words heavy. “I have never known another of my kind. If they are anything like the Servants of Ruthenia, perhaps I am not ready.”
“Relax,” I said. “I’m only going to try this on one of the figures first. If it works and goes well, then we’ll move on activating the rest.”
Marshall looked uncertain. “How’s this going to work exactly?”
“Somewhat like Bricksley,” I said. “Only on a much grander scale. The act of binding life to stone is different than manipulating it, which comparatively has been easier. The effort I put into getting Bricksley working was draining. It’s weaving spirit to stone, animating the material and allowing the spirit in.”
“And what if we get an asshole in there?” Marshall asked.
“We force it out,” I said. “In theory, anyway. But if it does work on this one, we’ll be able to create enough of an army to take care of Kejetan and the rest of his servants.” I looked up at Stanis, catching his eyes. “I’m not compromising this time. I did that last time when I released you and let you go with them, and look where that got us.”
“I am sorry,” Stanis said. “I could think of no other way that would have kept you safe.”
“And it did,” I said, my heart breaking with the memory of it. “You bought us time, but at your expense, and I won’t have that again. We end this together or not at all.”
Stanis turned to watch Caleb prepping the statue. “And he is a part of us now,” he said.
“You don’t trust him,” I said, more of a statement than a question.
“I cannot help it,” he said, his mood growing darker. “After all, it was he who bound me to my father’s will.”
“And the one who released you from it,” I reminded him.
This seemed to satisfy him for the moment, which was good because I needed to go over the notes I had written out about the ritual.
Caleb came over to us, empty container in hand, checking the time on his watch. “Ready?”
I closed my notebook and slid it into my pocket. “As ready as one can be for creating life,” I said, and crossed the roof to the lone statue. Marshall and Rory came with me, moving off among the other statues at what I hoped was a safe distance.
Caleb came over and squeezed my hand.
“It’s your show now,” he said.
I squeezed his back and let go. I needed to focus, which was hard enough in the rain without thinking about him. I breathed out one long, slow breath, then set about the ritual.
With the skill of Rory when she danced, I moved through the gestures, speaking my family’s words of power as I went. The burst of connection to the stone of the statue rolled throughout me stronger than I would have imagined, but I forced myself to ignore my surprise and concentrated on the spell.
This was more than just connecting with the stone the statue was made of. This was bonding with the actual grotesque form of it. Every part of me felt its wings, its arms, its legs, its hands, its fingers, the claws at the tip of them. My mind readied the statue to be more than it was, readied it to be an open vessel to fill its form. The words of my spell tore away the last barrier to it, releasing the will with which I was controlling it and setting the animated stone free to receive whatever spirit it drew. Drained, I stumbled back, pulling out of the spell’s narrow focus, finally able to once more take in my surroundings on the rooftop.