remains of the magic circle. Some of the chalk is still visible where it’s melted into the rotten floorboards. The burned stubs of candles are still lying around the circle, like the last people in here left quickly and never came back.
I can’t get hold of any one feeling. It’s like my brain and my guts and my heart are stuck in a speeded-up, old-school king fu fight. Different parts of me want to run off screaming in different directions. One part of me wants to puke quietly, but thoroughly, in a far corner of the room. Another part of me wants to rip the place apart, board by board, brick by brick. The weakest, smallest part of me, the one I seriously don’t want to hear from, is nothing but apologies and regrets. Sorry, Alice. You told me not to come here, but I did. Then everything else happened.
One part of me that’s left is the ten o’clock news. That’s the part I hold on to. The cold camera eye. Just take in the scene and report the facts. These ruins aren’t my private apocalypse. They’re the haunted-house ride at Disneyland. Digital spooks and Dolby stereo moans. About as scary as a basket of kittens.
“What are we looking for?” asks Vidocq.
I shrug.
“No idea.”
We move around the room, looking for a clue or a sign that points to something more than damp wreckage. I move furniture and trash away with the toe of my boot. I don’t want to touch anything.
“I don’t know if we’re going to find anything interesting in here. Mason always hinted that he had a hidden room where he kept all his important stuff, but none of us ever found it.”
Much as I don’t want to, I lean against a mildewed wall. My head is suddenly spinning. Voices and faces shoot through me, like streaks of lightning. I can even feel echoes of the Circle, all of them, even my younger self, trapped in here. I’ve heard of dark magicians doing this. Sometime in the past, Mason hermetically sealed the room from the rest of the world with a kind of barrier hex. He didn’t want what he was doing to leak out into the aether. It might let other magicians know that he was horse trading with Hellions. A lot of scary things passed through this room. A lot more than the few beasties that dragged me Downtown. Some I can see and feel, but others are just blurs that I can’t get a fix on. The inside of their heads is all hunger and knives, like insects. I’m not sorry that I can’t get any farther inside. I’d been getting used to sensing other people’s thoughts and feelings, but the intensity of this place makes the experience new and weird again. Suddenly I don’t want to be here anymore.
“Ha!”
Vidocq is in the corner of the room with one hand pressed up against a the ceiling and the other pressed into a small divot in the wall. The opposite corner of the room scrapes open, dragging on the junk that’s accumulated in the door mechanism over the years. “I said that I would show you how a good thief earns his keep!” Vidocq says happily. With his bottled light, he leads the way into the hidden room.
The hidden room is in a lot better shape than the other. There’s a lot of power in the hidden room. It’s protected by much more powerful spells than any of the rest of the house. Every inch of the walls, floors, and ceiling is covered with multicolored runes, sigils, and angular angelic and Hellion scripts.
Vidocq is studying the place with grim intensity. He runs his fingers over the wall and they come away black. He sniffs the dust on his hand, touches a blackened finger to his tongue.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Ivory black,” he says. “Made from burned bones and animal horns.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s a traditional pigment. It goes back thousands of years.” He moves his light over the walls and holds it up to the ceiling. “This symbol? Painted with cinnabar—a mixture of mercury and sulfur heated together. Cobalt and aluminum chloride, also heated, make this blue. Here is antimony yellow.
I can’t get hold of any one feeling. It’s like my brain and my guts and my heart are stuck in a speeded-up, old-school king fu fight. Different parts of me want to run off screaming in different directions. One part of me wants to puke quietly, but thoroughly, in a far corner of the room. Another part of me wants to rip the place apart, board by board, brick by brick. The weakest, smallest part of me, the one I seriously don’t want to hear from, is nothing but apologies and regrets. Sorry, Alice. You told me not to come here, but I did. Then everything else happened.
One part of me that’s left is the ten o’clock news. That’s the part I hold on to. The cold camera eye. Just take in the scene and report the facts. These ruins aren’t my private apocalypse. They’re the haunted-house ride at Disneyland. Digital spooks and Dolby stereo moans. About as scary as a basket of kittens.
“What are we looking for?” asks Vidocq.
I shrug.
“No idea.”
We move around the room, looking for a clue or a sign that points to something more than damp wreckage. I move furniture and trash away with the toe of my boot. I don’t want to touch anything.
“I don’t know if we’re going to find anything interesting in here. Mason always hinted that he had a hidden room where he kept all his important stuff, but none of us ever found it.”
Much as I don’t want to, I lean against a mildewed wall. My head is suddenly spinning. Voices and faces shoot through me, like streaks of lightning. I can even feel echoes of the Circle, all of them, even my younger self, trapped in here. I’ve heard of dark magicians doing this. Sometime in the past, Mason hermetically sealed the room from the rest of the world with a kind of barrier hex. He didn’t want what he was doing to leak out into the aether. It might let other magicians know that he was horse trading with Hellions. A lot of scary things passed through this room. A lot more than the few beasties that dragged me Downtown. Some I can see and feel, but others are just blurs that I can’t get a fix on. The inside of their heads is all hunger and knives, like insects. I’m not sorry that I can’t get any farther inside. I’d been getting used to sensing other people’s thoughts and feelings, but the intensity of this place makes the experience new and weird again. Suddenly I don’t want to be here anymore.
“Ha!”
Vidocq is in the corner of the room with one hand pressed up against a the ceiling and the other pressed into a small divot in the wall. The opposite corner of the room scrapes open, dragging on the junk that’s accumulated in the door mechanism over the years. “I said that I would show you how a good thief earns his keep!” Vidocq says happily. With his bottled light, he leads the way into the hidden room.
The hidden room is in a lot better shape than the other. There’s a lot of power in the hidden room. It’s protected by much more powerful spells than any of the rest of the house. Every inch of the walls, floors, and ceiling is covered with multicolored runes, sigils, and angular angelic and Hellion scripts.
Vidocq is studying the place with grim intensity. He runs his fingers over the wall and they come away black. He sniffs the dust on his hand, touches a blackened finger to his tongue.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Ivory black,” he says. “Made from burned bones and animal horns.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s a traditional pigment. It goes back thousands of years.” He moves his light over the walls and holds it up to the ceiling. “This symbol? Painted with cinnabar—a mixture of mercury and sulfur heated together. Cobalt and aluminum chloride, also heated, make this blue. Here is antimony yellow.
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