35. Shit Gets Real #2
It’s enormous. Three years of ghost activity, three years of a missing occult object, and maybe a way to stop it all. “So if we could find that mirror…” I vaguely suggest.
He shuts it down with, “It’s impossible to track that mirror.
Every attempt I’ve made to discover its whereabouts, ghostly or otherwise, has come to nothing.
The police are still looking for it. It’s simply gone.
If not for the abundance of spirit activity, I wouldn’t even think it was still in this country. ”
“And you’re sure it’s the mirror that’s causing it? I mean, it’s just a… what? Like an old-fashioned ouija board?”
“Oh, no. No, the scrying mirror is much more than that. It’s famous for belonging to Doctor Dee, but it was already in dark and constant use before it was stolen from the original owner, which is how he got his hands on it.”
My heart stutters as the plot thickens. “What? Stolen twice? Stolen from who?”
“From the Aztecs.”
Okay. That was about the last answer I would have expected. “The Aztecs?”
“The Aztecs!” His finger slams down on the newspaper. “This mirror would have belonged to a high priest who would have used it in ceremonies to appease the god Tezcatlipoca.”
“Who is Tez… Tez…”
“Tezcatlipoca,” he clarifies.
“Mmm. Him.” Clearing my throat, “Who’s, um, him?”
As if he doesn’t even notice my questionable grasp of spoken word, he carries on with his excited lecture.
“In Aztec culture, a mirror that looked exactly the same as this one belonged to Tezcatlipoca. He was the god of… Well, of all sorts of things. The god of shadows, of sorcery, of the night sky, of chaos and discord. But he was also the god of good fortune. If he wanted to bring horror on you, too bad, so sad, you’re fucked.
Conversely, if Tezcatlipoca wanted to bring you something nice, he’d do that too. ”
Archer takes a moment, waving his hand in the air as if he can clarify his thoughts with it.
“He was, ultimately, the god of fate. And he could use his mirror to look inside a person, to see who they really were, deep down. The good things and the bad things they’d done.
But more than that, their thoughts. Who they were at their very core.
You couldn’t hide a thing from Tezcatlipoca.
Using that mirror, and the information he got from it, he’d decide exactly what he wanted to do with you, and with your fate.
He might reward you or punish you. If he wanted to, he could even stop you crossing over to the afterlife—the realm of the dead.
He could simply snaffle you up and keep you in his void for eternity. ”
“Wait… so what you’re saying is…” The understanding hits like a ten-tonne truck. “He could open or close pathways between the living and the dead. So, he’s just like you then?”
Archer glances over at me, eyes wide like I’ve said something appalling. “What do you mean he’s just like me?”
“You know.” I slightly smile an embarrassed smile. “Controlling where the dead go. Shadows and sorcery. That sort of thing.”
“No shadows and sorcery here,” he chuckles out. “Well, maybe just a little. But if I had his powers to control fate, I certainly wouldn’t need to be involved in ghostly theft and grave robbery.” Then he quips, “And I’m a whole lot better looking than him too.”
A smile twists my lips. “Oh, are you? Than an actual god?”
“I’ll prove it. I’ve got a picture of him around here somewhere.”
Archer wanders over to his bookshelf, back muscles flexing enticingly as he pulls an enormous book down from a high shelf.
He literally blows dust off the top of it, which adds to this spooky and mysterious side of him that I’m falling for just as fast as I’ve fallen for the apron-clad, baking, sunny side of him.
He lays the giant book down on the table, and I read the title on the front: A Ten Thousand Year History of Art.
“Is that…” I stare at the gilt edges and thick pages. “How old is that book?”
He flips it open, running his finger down the index. “It was published last year.”
“Bullshit.” Reaching out, I feel over the cloth-bound edge. “This is a new print?”
“They make them so fancy these days. Perfect for any necromancer’s office.”
I cackle out a laugh that brings that grin back across his handsome face. “Does the dust come with it?”
“Hey, I’ve been very busy. Yet still managed to keep the vibe.” He throws me a wink, then he flips the book open.
My smile dies on my lips.
There, in huge, glossy, full colour, is a face I’d recognise anywhere.
It’s a picture of an Aztec mask, enormous eyes staring back at me.
It’s made from a skull. A real human skull that still has its teeth, only it’s covered in a mosaic of tiny shards of stone.
A band across the eyes is set green and blue in turquoise.
Another band just the same runs along the line of the mouth, those unmistakably real teeth grinning back at me.
The rest is black, shining, tiny pieces of obsidian all over.
It’s unmistakable.
This is the face that’s haunted my days and nights since I walked in Archer’s door.
“That’s him,” I whisper, pulse throbbing so hard it’s making me dizzy.
Archer does a double take between me and the image. “That’s who?”
“That’s him!” I shout at him. “That’s it! That’s the thing! The thing in your attic. That’s the creature who’s been haunting us.”
“What?” He studies the page, looks back at me like I’m mad. “No. That’s Tezcatlipoca.”
“No, that’s the thing upstairs.”
“No, that’s…” His eyes grow large, then he falls silent. Deathly silent, like whatever he might say next is going to seal both our fates.
After too long of a time, all that comes out is a soft and low, “Liam, are you sure?”
“I’m dead sure,” I promise him. “I’d stake my life on it.”
He swallows. “Okay, maybe don’t say that.”
“Sorry.”
“Okay. Okay.” Sweeping his fingers into his hair. “Okay. We’re just slightly… a little bit… um…”
“Fucked?”
“Fucked. Yeah. Maybe quite fucked.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck. Okay. How bad is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know. What do you think we do?”
“I don’t know! What do we do?”
“I don’t know! Shit.”
“Shit!” I pace all of two steps away, then I’m right back by his side. “Well, you’re the necromancer. Can’t you use y-your necromancy skills to… to…”
“I’m a necromancer, not a godromancer!” he throws at me. “What the hell is that thing even doing here in my house?”
“I don’t know!” I shout.
“And how did it get here?”
“I don’t know!” I shout again.
“And what does it want?”
“I don’t know! It’s… It’s…” I step away, traversing the pentagram as though that will help me sort through this mess. “It’s a god, right? A god who controls access to the underworld. Which is what… That-that-that’s what you do, right?”
Archer drops back onto his desk, his fingers digging into the wood. “Well, maybe. A bit. But certainly not to that extent.”
“No,” I agree. “No, because he has more powers, right?”
“Right,” says Archer, concentrating hard on the floor. “And a more powerful bridge between this world and the next than I could ever create.”
“Because he-he is a god. And he opens that stuff. And he decides where people go when they die, when he looks into them with…”
“His mirror,” Archer finishes for me.
Our eyes lock.
“He wants his mirror.” The words are out of me as if they’re fact, can only be fact, can be the only logical conclusion of any of this.
He lets out a small breath of bewilderment, stepping away to join me in a short pace of the room.
“This is insane. This can’t be right. Even if that were the case, surely that mirror…
” He strides back to his desk, takes up the paper again, scrutinising the object.
“No. There’s no way that belonged to an actual god.
A real, actual god? No, it has to have been a copy.
A-a ceremonial object that belonged to some priest. It can’t have been… ”
He drifts off there, so I voice what I think he already knows. “Then why could Dr Dee use it? Why would it work for him? Why would it really, truly hold these powers, Archer, if it’s not his?”
He meets my gaze, and I can see he’s growing scared now. It’s sinking in for both of us that what’s up there is more powerful than either of us could have imagined.
He still denies it out loud, still says, “That makes no sense. What would it want here? With me? There is no link between me and that mirror. No one degree of separation. I’ve never seen it, I’ve never touched it, and I don’t know a single person in this world who has so much as laid eyes on it.”
He laughs a little, an anxious, nervous sort of laugh. “Why would an Aztec god make his way over here, all the way to Big Spanking cum Bottomly-on-the-Wold for a mirror that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with me?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug, wandering over to the bookshelf.
“Maybe. Maybe he’s…” I stop and think a moment, then, drawing a blank, I turn back and walk again.
“Oh, come on, there has to be something drawing him here. And for the life of me, all I can think of…” My feet scuff against the rug.
I look down and find myself standing in the centre of that giant, now-sexy pentagram. “It’s your pathways. It has to be.”
“No. No, Liam, I cannot conjure gods.” His tone catches me off guard, sharp and defensive. And when I register his expression, his hard eyes staring at the wall, his taut lips, fingers pressing hard into the edge of the desk, I realise where his mind’s gone.
“I’m not suggesting this is your fault.”
“You literally just suggested that it is,” he flares. “You just said it’s that right there. My giant pentagram. In the middle of my floor, my own personal landing pad for all things dead and evil.”
“Archer, no.” I step over to him, my hands wrapping around his arms, but he turns his face away.