Chapter 26 The Mapmaker
Once upstairs, I paused to catch my breath.
My hands trembled, though I couldn’t tell if it was from the cold sweat clinging to my back like a second skin, or the lingering terror still twisting in my gut.
The House was silent this late at night, its long hallways stretching out in eerie stillness, the gas lamps casting jagged shadows against the walls.
I drifted toward the foyer, intending only to steady myself, maybe regain some sense of control before I moved again. That’s when I saw it.
A red envelope, tucked neatly into my mail slot.
My breath caught. It hadn’t been there before.
I swallowed hard and reached for it with slow, measured movements, my fingers brushing the thick, waxy paper. I glanced around, suddenly hyperaware of the empty corridors. It must have been delivered only hours ago.
I quickly dropped my bag and tore the envelope open, my pulse hammering against my ribs. The note inside was brief, but the weight of its message pressed down on me like a vice.
How’s your research project going? I’m eagerly awaiting the results.
No date. No signature. But I didn’t need one.
The Al-Ahmar.
The name slithered into my mind like the cursed lion serpent in my dreams. I could almost hear her voice, the amusement laced with quiet menace.
She was reminding me of our trade. The Skorn deck in exchange for an answer to Julian’s death.
She must be trying to undermine the Meister, working around him.
Maybe he was failing to deliver results.
My fingers tightened around the paper, crumpling the edges. The problem was, I still had no answer for her. What would she do if I failed her? I forced a breath, trying to untangle the knot forming in my stomach. I had to move.
My time was running out.
I needed to find Leone. Now.
*
I was stuffing my face with blueberry biscuits as I walked into the library. I probably should’ve kept the crumbs away from the books, but I was starving, and I wasn’t there for the books. Not at two a.m. on a Monday night.
Everyone at Foresyth had a preferred letter in the stacks where they frequented, making it easy to find them. Leone was in the “C” section, bent over a particularly weathered cartograph.
Is everyone staying up late tonight?
“You’re not allowed to eat in the library,” he stated without even glancing up.
“I brought extra if you’re hungry,” I teased, even though I knew Leone’s only appetite was for books and maps.
“No, thank you.” He sighed with apathy. I leaned over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of the map he was studying. It was of an archipelago I didn’t recognize, but the intricate craftsmanship was impressive. Even with my untrained eye, I could see why Leone deemed it worthy of his attention.
“Quick question, do you make maps, or do you just study them?”
Leone paused mid-scribble. “If someone’s up this late working, it’s likely because they have a deadline, not because they enjoy it. And as much as I value your conversation, I’m a bit preoccupied.” His tone was flat and dismissive.
“Fine, then. I won’t waste your time. I need a map of the underground tunnels at Foresyth.”
Leone finally looked up, his expression impassive but not without a flicker of curiosity.
“Tunnels?”
“Cut the mysterious act—I know about them. And I almost got eaten by one of the Marie Curie experiments down there,” I said, taking the chair across from him and placing my pack and half-eaten biscuit on the table.
His eyes raked distastefully over my belongings, clearly not appreciating the proximity of my crumbs to his work.
“I might know something about them. But I haven’t been down there myself,” he said, his tone almost peevish. “Making a map without navigating a place takes a kind of magick neither of us can afford.”
“I’m not asking you to conjure a map from thin air,” I replied, though the sharpness of my tone surprised even me.
I quickly softened. “There has to be an original blueprint of the tunnels from when this place was built.” I recalled the maps that Nina and I had poured over to find the barren circle, but those were only of the House and the external grounds.
“Not to my knowledge,” he muttered, clearly hoping to end the conversation. But I wasn’t giving up so easily. Without a map, I’d be at a serious disadvantage, possibly even risking my life if I wandered down there again alone.
“Let’s say I did want the magickal kind,” I ventured. “What would you need to make that happen?”
“That kind of divination would require calling on multiple cards,” he replied. “And even then, it would demand a substantial sacrifice. It would take a full semester to gather the magick needed.”
The weight of realization cut through me like a sword: Leone believed in magick.
And if someone as rational as him could, then maybe I could, too.
I had witnessed inexplicable things with my own eyes where the only possible explanation was otherworldly.
I didn’t know exactly what type of sacrifice Leone needed, but maybe I’d try.
If it meant getting a map, then surely it would be worth it.
“I don’t have that kind of time,” I snapped, frustration coiling tight in my chest. “Symposium is in three weeks. I need it by then.”
The image of Al-Ahmar’s bloodshot eyes flashed through my mind, her urgency mirroring mine. The weight of the red envelope was still fresh in my hands; the unspoken threat curled between the lines.
Leone studied me, unmoving, his gaze steady in that way that always made me feel like he saw past my words, past my face, straight into the hollow space where my uncertainty lived.
“Then you’re going to have to be the one to bring the magick,” he said simply. “I can’t afford it.”
I froze.
“Magick?” I echoed, the word a shape in my mouth, something tangible and heavy and ridiculous all at once.
I didn’t know where to begin with that request. It felt like stepping off solid ground into the abyss. Like all the things I had dismissed as illusions or side effects were suddenly clawing their way back into my reality, demanding acknowledgment.
I swallowed hard. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“Yes, you do,” Leone said, his pitch rising in annoyance. “Something imbued will work.”
My mind turned, gears grinding. If Aspen had his sculptures, and Sequoia had her song, then surely I could create something, too.
I let out a slow, measured breath. “Fine,” I said, the word tasting like surrender. “I’ll do it.”
Leone smiled, a rare sight, and one that sent a chill through me.
He wasn’t like Aspen or Sequoia, who wore their power on their sleeves, who reveled in their own performances.
No, he wore his intellect like armor, like a sellsword—calculating and careful.
And he was going to ensure he got something out of his work.
“I’ll help you make the map,” he said. “But you’ll need to bring the magick and my payment.”
“I thought we were friends,” I said.
“The best friendships are built on mutual understanding,” he replied evenly. “And I understand that you need something. So do I.”
His expression barely shifted, but something flickered behind his eyes. He looked momentarily unsettled, almost vulnerable. “I want my Herbin. It was stolen from me.”
I frowned. “Is that . . . a book?”
“No.” His jaw tightened slightly. “It’s a glass pen. One of the Trees has it, and they need to give it back. It was a rare instance of me losing a sabre match with Aspen last year . . .”
I blinked. “You want a pen?”
“I want what’s mine,” he replied, his voice edged with something sharper than frustration. “That’s my price. And don’t forget, you’re also bringing the magick.”
I hesitated. Something about the way he said it—the weight in his voice—felt off. This wasn’t just a pen to him.
I could argue—tell him I’d find another way. But I knew Leone. He wouldn’t be offering this deal unless it was exactly what he needed. And deep down, I already knew the truth: I’d do whatever it took.
“Fine.” I sighed, knowing I was agreeing to something I didn’t fully understand. “I’ll bring you your pen. And the magick.”
*
Leaving the library, I felt both triumphant and frustrated.
I now had a plan for getting a map of the tunnels—an essential tool for navigating to Julian’s coordinates.
But I also had new tasks to complete, tasks that involved people I’d been trying to avoid.
Both Aspen and Sequoia had become part of this puzzle, whether I liked it or not.
Julian the puzzle-maker. If he were still alive, he’d no doubt be giddy about the lengths I was going to solve his masterpiece.
Leone’s words sat heavy in my chest, pressing down like a weight I couldn’t shake.
You’re going to have to bring the magick.
I had wanted to scoff, to push back, to tell him he was being ridiculous. Magick wasn’t real. It wasn’t tangible, it wasn’t measurable, it was just belief. Faith dressed up in ritual.
But wasn’t that what I had told myself when I first arrived at Foresyth?
Before I saw Nina’s blood fizzle into the earth at the Tramping Ground, swallowed whole by the soil as if it had never been there?
It didn’t clot, didn’t dry, didn’t even stain.
It had simply vanished. And the air had hummed when it happened, thick and charged, like something unseen had consumed it.
Before The Book of Skorn burned in my hands, not from heat, not from any chemical residue, but from a warmth that implied the Book was pulsing and alive? I tried to explain it away but failed.
Before I heard her voice.
You pray to a false God.
Sophia had whispered in my ear, her breath sweeping against my skin. I had felt it—felt her—the weight of an ancient deity pressing against my ribs. I had told myself it was the elixir, a side effect, a hallucination. But it didn’t feel like a hallucination.
And Aspen—
I hated that my thoughts kept circling back to him, hated that my body still remembered the heat of him, the way my breath had caught when his fingers laced with mine.
He had shattered his sculpture, and in that moment, the air between us had shifted.
The pull had been instant, magnetic, unbearable.
It hadn’t been fully my choice to kiss him.
Something else had been at work, something that had reached inside me and turned me inside out.
And the creature in the tunnels…God, that thing. That thing.
I had seen its eyes, green and phosphorescent, filled with hatred and hunger. Not a trick of biology, not some undiscovered species. It was something else, something created, something stitched together by hands that should never have touched the canvas of life itself.
So, what the hell was I still trying to prove?
I could keep pretending that magick wasn’t real. Keep trying to twist it into rationalizations, into tricks of the mind and body. But deep down, I already knew.
The things I had seen at Foresyth—the things I had felt—they weren’t illusions.
They were reality.
And that terrified me.
Because if magick was real, then that meant Julian hadn’t just been killed by a human. It meant he had been killed by something far worse than I was prepared to face.