Chapter #113Not What You Were Expecting by: imaj   Rick catches up with you the following morning, just outside the little study where you are supposed to meet Father Ed.
“Morning squirt,” he says nonchalantly.
You consider telling him about what you overheard in Maria’s room previously, but then you remember his rule number two – trust no one. He very specifically included himself in that rule, you recall. Then there’s his rule number seventeen – always act dumber than you are. Right now you know very little, only that something odd is going on. Better to pretend to know nothing – that way no one knows that you know. You hate to think the worst, but if the wrong people found out you knew something…
“Hey Rick,” you say after a few moments.
“Everything ok,” he asks. “I heard you took Rosalie’s imago again yesterday. Must have been fun seeing the kid all confused. Did you keep it this time,” he asks, almost as an afterthought.
“Rosalie asked me to keep the face,” you admit. “But I’ve removed all her memories again.” That was the first thing you did when you captured the imago yesterday, of course. Now that you think about it, if you hadn’t done that you could get right to the bottom of this mystery in seconds.
“Hmmm,” says Rick, frowning. “Well, I just wanted to offer you one piece of advice before you speak to the Jesuit. Don’t let him push you around squirt. He thinks everybody’s guilty of something. Trouble is, he’s probably right, but that’s just the way the world works. No sense in getting all het up about it.”
“Thanks Rick,” you reply. He opens the door for you and you walk into the study.
Charles and Father Ed are already there, embroiled in a heated discussion which fades to nothing as soon as they spot you. You sit down opposite Charles, who has a long suffering look on his face. He gives you an encouraging wink.
“This your shapeshifter then Chuck,” says Ed, squeezing himself into one of the wooden chairs in the study. He’s a tall man with a grim face. His glasses, ugly square things chosen for price rather than style, frame flinty blue eyes. He stares at you with barely concealed displeasure. “Hear you were running around dressed up as our new Glundandra yesterday young man,” he adds addressing you directly. “You like pretending to be a girl?”
The question throws you off balance. “No,” you squawk urgently. Ed continues to stare at you and you squirm in your chair. “She asked me to do it,” you explain, the words tumbling out urgently.
“So you’re blaming her then,” says Ed with a touch of smugness. “What is it you’re saying, she’s some kind of deviant?”
You’re left with the sinking feeling that there’s nothing you’ll say that Ed won’t twist or misunderstand in some way. He’s a Catilindria, of course, and a contrarian streak isn’t unusual for them. Don’t let him push you around. You’ve had plenty of practice with Miko. “No,” you reply, struggling to assert yourself and remain calm. “I think she just wants someone to talk to. I’m the one with most in common with her, and it’s easier still if she’s talking to herself.” Ed lets out an unsatisfied harrumph.
“We’re not here to accuse anybody of anything,” says Charles patiently. “We just want to shed a little light on why Will’s second ousiarch is so hard to find.”
“When you shine a light into the dark,” replies Ed, slowly and deliberately. “Sometimes you are going to see things you wish you hadn’t.” It almost sounds like a challenge and the two men stare at each other. Something seems to pass between them, although you cannot make out what. “Ok Chuck,” says Ed a little more meekly. “Where do you want to start?”
“At the very beginning,” replies Charles.
The very beginning means how you found the Libra in Arnholm’s back in Saratoga Falls. You explain how you returned it to the store as quickly as you could, but ended up selling it to Aubrey Blackwell instead. “He identified that I had magical talent, although he didn’t really tell me that at first.”
“What did he do,” asks Ed pointedly.
“He sort of cursed some boys that were bullying me,” you explain.
“And you let him,” ask Ed with just a note of smugness in his voice.
“I didn’t know what he was doing,” you squeak anxiously.
“Peace, both of you,” chides Charles. “I think you better describe this curse in detail Will.”
You explain how Blackwell marked a number of bills with what you now know was a sigil, and how you passed them out to the bullies at Westside. They all became terrified of you after that. It solved your bullying problem for sure, but it also created a host of new ones as the cursed notes passed about the school and almost everyone started to feel the bullies’ revulsion second or third hand.
Charles asks you to draw the sigil, giving you a piece of paper from a notepad to do it. You draw it carefully from memory, but place it on the desk when you are finished rather than hand it to him. He and Ed get out of their chairs to take a closer look. When they sit back down a little burst of flame takes the note paper. The smoke is darker than you might expect, but when it clears the paper and curse sigil are gone.
“Nasty piece of work that,” mutters Charles under his breath.
“How did that make you feel,” asks Ed slyly. “Giving those bullies that curse?”
“Creeped the hell out of me, if you’ll excuse my language,” you reply. Ed gives you a dirty look but makes no comment. “I liked not having my face punched in, but the way they reacted when they saw me…”
“I don’t think this is what we’re looking for,” pronounces Charles. “Tell us what happened next son.”
That’s when Blackwell told you about the magic, and the eventually the masks. Ed presses you again about your feelings about what Blackwell told you. There is an almost triumphant look in his eye when you admit that the possibilities excited you. Before he can go further, you reach the point where your tale takes its first twist.
“And that’s when I fell into the book, the Libra,” you explain.
“How exactly did you fall in,” scoffs Ed, disbelieving you.
“It was night, I’d snuck into the room where the Libra was being kept,” you explain. “I looked through it, turned to a blank page, except it wasn’t blank any more. In the moonlight it was covered in glowing silver letters and they seemed to react to my presence.” You pause for a second. Even now the memory of the guardian of Blackwell’s house sends shivers down your spine. “I was attacked by something, and I sort of fell. Into the book.”
Ed scoffs again but Charles seems much more interested. “What did you see?”
“Sigils,” you explain. “Giant, interlocking sigils, like the whole thing was one great clockwork mechanism, impossibly complex. And when I woke up I was a golem.” You go onto to explain what followed: The time spent as Justin Roth. How Blackwell set you and Will Shabbleman against each other. Meeting Frank and Joe. You tell the whole tale slowly and carefully, yet Ed keeps on pressing for details and explanations. You feel him pushing hard at you, and the feeling is not unlike the one you experienced in Margaret’s library.
Charles grimaces a little as you reach the point where Frank gets possessed by Blackwell’s anima band. It isn’t a happy part of the story.
“He what? Guiseppe did what to you,” interrupts Ed. It takes you a few seconds to realise he means Frank.
“Buried me,” you reply. “Put me in a deep hole and left me there.”
“And just how did you get out of that one,” snaps Ed.
“I didn’t, I think,” you reply. “Blackwell’s guardian, the thing that patrolled his house – I think it sort of ate me. Then I sort of fell back out of the book, except mirrored like you see me now.”
Ed laughs hollowly. “That’s it? You fell back out of the Libra? We’re supposed to believe that? What really happened?”
“Ed,” says Charles quietly but forcefully.
“Don’t you ‘Ed’ me Chuck, he’s hiding something, I can smell it on him!”
Are you hiding something? You search your memories, seeing if there’s something you’ve missed. Something long forgotten sparks in your mind. “No, he’s right, there was something else. When I passed through the Libra the second time I saw someone else,” you say. Their argument stops instantly and they look at you, clearly surprised. “An old man, in some sort of old fashioned lab. He said something,” you continue. The last piece of memory slides into place. “He said I was ‘coming along nicely’.”
“What do you think Chuck,” says Ed gravely.
“I think we take damn close look at that book.”
*****
You stagger out of the study, drained. Taking a close look at the book means fetching in from someplace Charles referred to as ‘The Archives’. Nash Cairns, who you have met a couple of times in passing since arriving at Olympia is the man to do that. Charles told you that it will take him a couple of days to fetch the Libra and return to Olympia. That means he should return on Christmas Eve.
That’s what you are getting for Christmas this year, you think as you stumble into the living room, your second ousiarch.
You glance at your watch as you collapse into the couch besides Joe. It’s late afternoon. You hadn’t realised just how long you had spent in the study. Joe’s watching television, one arm draped around Rosalie. She’s snuggling up to him, her head on Joe’s shoulder.
“You ok Prescott,” he asks.
“Just spent the day with Father Ed,” you manage to croak.
“Ouch,” he says, somehow managing to convey a heartfelt sympathy into that one word. “You gonna need to see him again,” he asks.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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