Chapter 17 Archer
Chapter seventeen
Archer
The inside of Old North Church was vastly different from that of Temple Church.
In New York, the overall atmosphere was dark, full of natural wood and dozens of stained-glass windows, often lit only by candlelight. As a result, the building typically felt like a darkened alcove, a place for quiet contemplation and reverence.
By contrast, the church I currently stood in was bright as a summer’s day, the pews and walls all painted a blinding white, the upper balconies boasting arched windows of the clearest glass, allowing the sun to infiltrate every single corner of the room and fill it with dawn’s early light.
I hated it.
Moving through the building as quickly as possible, I exited through the front door and headed to the office, which was, pathetically, tucked in behind the gift shop.
I entered without knocking, ignoring the kitschy rows of plastic lanterns and fake felt tricorn hats, then pushed my way into the room marked ‘Private’ like I belonged there.
Because I did.
Opening the door, I stepped quietly inside, my shadow magic silently searching the room for threats before it retreated into me once more.
The room was plain, with dark wood walls and very little furniture.
There was an empty coat rack in one corner, with a single desk and chair against the far wall.
Above the desk hung a musket, the rack nestled just below a finely made Betsy Ross flag.
A man sat at the desk, his back to me, with the curtains drawn and a single candle illuminating the small room.
Hunched over, his thinning hair pulled back into a queue, he scribbled at a notebook, still using a quill and ink as though technology hadn’t progressed since the time when he had been made a Guardian.
I’d always found Nathaniel’s staunch desire to cling to the era of his birth charming. Now, I found it worrisome. A man who fought so hard against change would not welcome the things I needed to do here.
“Hello, Nathaniel.”
I’d made no secret of my approach, but my words still startled him. Jolting in his chair, Nathaniel flung one arm out to the side, knocking over his ink pot, a river of black spilling across the page he’d been writing on.
“Blast!” he swore loudly, then rose from his chair before the ink could run onto his breeches.
Because yes, he was still wearing white woolen breeches and a waistcoat.
He was lucky as Hell that the area was so full of colonial tourism, or someone would have tried to institutionalize him by now.
“Archer,” he gasped when he finally noticed me standing in the doorway. His eyes darted around the empty room for a moment before he swallowed, the spilled ink forgotten. “What are you doing here?”
“I think you know why I’m here, Nathaniel.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. The Key.” Blowing out a breath, Nathaniel turned back to the desk, quickly closing the notebook he’d been writing in and shutting it in a drawer. Once he’d locked the drawer and pocketed the key, he turned to me. “I had hoped you wouldn’t come.”
I frowned. Nathaniel and I weren’t close—not like I had been with William—but we’d always been cordial. His impeccable manners would never have allowed him to speak so plainly before. Keeping my gaze on him, I closed the door behind me and inspected him more closely.
He was thinner than the last time I’d seen him. An immortal Guardian could withstand nearly anything—something we’d unfortunately seen tested far too recently for my comfort—including starvation. So for Nathaniel to have lost weight would mean he’d gone weeks without eating. Maybe even months.
The pallor of his skin was yellowed and waxy, like a tallow candle left in the sun too long. His loose flesh hung off his cheeks and chin, creating jowls that shook with what appeared to be fear. His hands were twitchy, and his red-rimmed eyes refused to stay still.
All in all, it appeared that Nathaniel was having a very bad day.
“I’m afraid I can’t give it to you at the moment,” he muttered, his hands knotting together, then twisting apart, the ink stains on his fingers contrasting against his pale skin in the candlelight.
“I’ve got the service, you know. Must start on time.
It’s an honor to still be able to hold the service here in my church. An honor indeed.”
His voice trailed off, his gaze darting to the locked drawer before he snapped it back to me. Whatever he was hiding in there, he definitely didn’t want me to see it.
Of course, that only made me even more interested in what that journal could possibly contain.
“Please, go to the house. Eat. Rest. I’ll join you as soon as service ends, and then I’ll give you what you’re looking for.”
“Nathaniel,” I said, stepping closer to him. “Is there something I can do to help you? Something you need from me?” He was already shaking his head, his fleshy neck wobbling rapidly.
“Nothing, Archer. Nothing. You’ve always been good to me. Good to us. My Persephone, she cares for you so. I’ve been loyal in my service to the Umbra Fratrum for my belief in their cause, but for her, as well. Always for her.”
I frowned again, my confusion deepening.
Reverend Nathaniel Emerson had been made a Guardian at the end of the eighteenth century.
Part of the bargain he struck with the Dark Lord was for his immortality to also include his niece, Persephone, who he had taken in after she’d lost all her family in the war.
It was a time when a young woman on her own in the world was very vulnerable—not that much had changed in that regard, regardless of the centuries that had passed—and while he was ready to swear his oath to the Brotherhood, he’d been loath to leave her behind, unprotected.
He’d cared for her, and while she’d been much more adaptable to the modern world than he had, she’d stayed by his side, her gratitude for his consideration shown by how well she cared for her uncle and his responsibility as a Guardian.
“Nathaniel, what is—”
I was interrupted by the ringing of the church bells, the harmonic notes resounding through the street and alerting everyone for miles that it was time for service.
“I must go,” he insisted, snagging his robes off a hook by the door and blustering past me as he put them on. “I mustn’t be late. I do love being able to conduct my service. I’ll miss it when my time is up.”
“Nathaniel!”
“Go to the house, Archer. Rest. I’ll see you after the service. All will be clear then. All will be made clear.”
He fled the office, a whirlwind of black cloth and what smelled like terror, leaving me blinking in his wake.
I wanted to follow him. I wanted to snatch him by his hair and drag him back into the office and force him to tell me what the fuck was going on, but as I glanced out the door, I could see that the gift shop had opened, the store was busy, and the street beyond was filled with tourists and worshipers alike.
Discretion was the better part of valor, they said, but in my line of work, it also kept people from asking some pretty uncomfortable questions.
So instead of following the Guardian who was acting exceedingly suspicious and demanding my answers, I would wait. I’d let Nathaniel conduct his service. Allow the crowds to go home for the day.
And when the sun set once more, I’d get my answers.
One way or another.
But first, I was going to read that fucking journal.
Making my way over to the desk, I bent down and examined the drawer. The lock was old, the desk itself a relic of a bygone time, and it was nothing for me to slide twin prongs of shadows into the keyhole, press the tumblers, and spring the lock.
Looking over my shoulder at the closed door, I pushed down the guilt over breaking my friend’s trust, then quietly slid the drawer open and pulled out the book.
Taking a seat, I spread the pages, the thick, leather-bound parchment feeling heavy in my hand as I opened the first page and began to read.
At first it was nothing unusual, notes on sermons Nathaniel planned to write, or bits of information about members of his congregation whom he wanted to help or spend more time with. All mundane, and normal, and boring as hell.
But as the pages turned, the content began to change, the neat, orderly handwriting turning to a chaotic scrawl.
The words swam on the paper, no longer written in tidy lines, but sprawled across the book as though at random.
Words that appeared to have no particular meaning or context thrown into the middle of a sentence or scribbled sideways in huge letters across an entire page.
Heavy-handed and underlined multiple times, these words were repeated over and over, like a mantra.
Balance.
Veil.
Samhain.
Savior.
Desperate.
Final.
Both enthralled and horrified, I turned the pages, trying to make heads or tails of Nathaniel’s rambling, incoherent words.
It was all too similar to what Asmodeus had said to be a coincidence.
But Samhain was less than a week away and I was still chasing down the pieces of the Fallen Key.
Here I was, following blind leads and spending far too much time thinking of a sassy little witch when I should be focused on doing my job.
Narrowing my gaze on the journal pages again, I tried to see if Nathaniel had left any clues as to his involvement in all of this. He was hiding something, that much was clear, but was he hiding it from the Order of the Broken Veil…or me?
And of the two, which was it that had caused him to literally quake with terror?
Turning to the last page, I could see that it was the one he’d been writing in when I’d arrived, the splash of ink across the paper staring back at me like an accusation.
The words he’d been writing were obscured now, the letters lost to the stain, but above the spill, underlined twice for emphasis, was a single sentence.
One that I couldn’t help feeling was more true than any other in the whole journal.
Running out of time.