Chapter 5 #2
Bad news on top of more bad news. Feeling a headache coming on, Malachy rubbed his temples. “Schedule a meeting with Julian Morro. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Noted. If I may inquire, Mal, about the…” O’Leary lowered his voice. “Demon. To my knowledge, the demon has not been sighted in London nor elsewhere since fleeing your office in February. However, there have been whispers of demons lurking in the shadows. Whispers that are growing louder.”
“I have no doubt of that. Even the hypocritical Masters admitted as much. I’ve learned little since I shot the d— Ghose. Since I shot Ghose with that useless Sephrinium bullet. But I know he’s out there, biding his time. Saving his strength to strike when I’m most vulnerable.”
The sword hanging over his head had never felt so imminent. And now the Tribunal’s ultimatum was poised over his jugular like another blade. Discretion, Bane, or execution. A careless flick and a painful death, should he fail in his secret mission.
Ghose’s three-month head start, courtesy of the Tribunal’s malicious incompetence, heavily tipped the scales in the demon’s favor. Even if Malachy succeeded in hunting Ghose, just how would the Tribunal reward him? Perhaps only the new Master Sciomancer wished for Malachy to succeed.
Virgil Carpathia’s cryptic parting words flitted through his mind. “O’Leary,” he said, “you went to Sunday school back in Ireland. How well do you remember your bible?”
“Impeccably.” The Memnomancer gave an affronted sniff.
“What’s Matthew 12:43?”
O’Leary’s eyes grew unfocused on a middle distance as he shuffled through the compendium of information stored on the shelves of his mind, compartmentalized like the rooms of a vast, labyrinthine manor.
In a faraway voice he recited, “ ‘When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through waterless places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.’ ”
The headache growing behind Malachy's eyes was now in full bloom. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
O’Leary blinked, his eyes unclouding. “I believe the verses refer to a demon that has left a person, and upon finding no other vessel, returns to find its house in that person has been, ah, tidied up.”
Demonic possession? Grand. Just fucking grand. Had Ikelas not been the only body-snatching demon afoot?
Malachy polished off his glass of whiskey and poured another. “Anything else?”
“Aye.” O’Leary dropped a second mountain of paperwork on the desk beside the first. “These documents require your immediate attention. They are, I regret to inform you, all overdue. And these”—he set down a third teetering pile of papers—“all require your signature. By the, ah, end of the business day.”
Malachy dragged a hand over his face. “Wonderful. That’ll be all, John, thank you. You’ve been a great help. Take the day off and go enjoy the bonus you’ve earned. Give my apologies to Edith and the kids for keeping you from home so long.”
The solicitor’s small smile was the biggest Malachy had seen on his pinched face. Gathering his notes into neat stacks, O’Leary left.
Malachy had enough time to heave a sigh before the office door swung open again.
Sloane Kilbride strode inside and draped herself over the recently vacated chair.
“Welcome back, Mal.” The petite Umbramancer toasted him with the proffered glass of whiskey, her strawberry blonde bob swaying. “Everything’s fucked.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Tell me everything.”
“O’Leary told you about pesky Potts? Even with all the coppers on your payroll, our favorite lieutenant has recruited an entire squad to tail the gang.
Not me, of course, with my shadow magic.
Potts’s targeted surveillance is more than an initiative to crack down on organized crime, that’s for certain.
It’s a pretty penny to spend on tailing us, and it ain’t coming from the London Police’s meager coffers. ”
His head perked up. The Umbramancer could shine light on the bastard responsible for crippling his business. It could be any of his long list of enemies funding the invasive police eyes on his operations, taking advantage of his prolonged absence to hobble him. “Any leads?”
“Yes, and no.” She vented a frustrated breath.
“We managed to nab one of Potts’s underlings to interrogate.
Took a damn long while to get close enough, with all the eyes watching us.
It was a close call. I cloaked us in shadows, and Ravi’s Aeromancy stole the copper’s breath at a distance.
But we were spotted while moving the body.
Had to leave the stiff behind, and fast. There are coppers everywhere. ”
“Did you make it look like an accident?”
“Obviously,” Sloane huffed, her freckled cheeks alight with a fiery flush of anger.
Given her pixie-like proportions, her temper had an equally short fuse.
“I bribed the coroner to make sure the copper’s official cause of death was accidental asphyxiation.
But we couldn’t guarantee it was a closed-casket burial so no one would spot the Unweaver’s handiwork when Cora communed with him afterwards. ”
“What did Cora learn from the dead copper?”
“Ask her. It’s been a while since I went on a job with Cora. I won’t deny that getting intel from dead people is useful, but if I ever have to interrogate a reanimated corpse again…” Sloane made a sound of disgust.
“How has Cora been?” he asked with feigned casualness.
Sloane gave him a knowing look. “Anita has been dragging her to more parties with us. That’s better than the alternative, ain’t it?
Cora isn’t so bad. She’s surprisingly vulgar.
I quite like her. Though not everyone in the gang has come around.
Guy Haviland still can’t stand to be near her.
Bastard tried electrocuting her a few times. ”
His gaze sharpened on her. “Did he,” Malachy said in a dangerously soft voice.
“Cora fought back. What she rotted off Guy still hasn’t grown back.
When the Electromancer isn’t jolting her, he’s treating her like a contagious disease.
Guy is still convinced Cora killed his fiancée when she just communed with the already-dead corpse.
Doesn’t matter how many times we tell him the Unweaver’s rotten handprints are just communing marks, not proof of murder.
Nuance is lost on that dolt. If Guy wasn’t such a talented Electromancer and we weren’t in the middle of the motor car factory construction, I’d say kick him to the curb, Mal. ”
He tucked away the myriad ways he would punish Guy Haviland. “What has Cora been doing while partying? Drinking, drugs?”
“Well, yeah, but so was everyone else.”
In his line of business—namely, enabling vices—he couldn’t fault someone for partaking recreationally.
Reality was a terrible thing to experience sober.
But his concern for what appeared to be Cora’s worsening drug habit overpowered all of that.
Last night, with the glow to her skin and dark hair, she had looked fine.
More than fine, he amended. Fucking beautiful. Yet her memory loss worried him deeply.
“Have you noticed Cora forgetting things?”
Sloane considered. “I guess so.”
“What has she said about me?”
“Nope. I am not getting in the middle of whatever is going on between you two. Good luck, Mal. You’ll need it.”
He bit off his frustration. “Speaking of luck. How are things with Judge Forley?”
An exasperated sigh. “You’ve missed out on everything. Judge Forley hasn’t been my sugar daddy for ages. I’m with Ari now. Judge Forley will need another warm body or more bribes to soften him up.”
Without Sloane buttering up Judge Forley, Malachy would need better defenses to buffer him from Lt. Potts’s overzealousness. He made note of doubling his bribery fund to keep the judges and coppers docile in his pocket.
His gaze narrowed on Sloane. “What do you know about Ari Razaq?”
She lifted a shoulder. “That I love him.”
Love, or lies?
“Is Razaq in charge of the gang of shadow and light mages?”
Her eyes darted to Malachy. “Why would you think that?”
Answering a question with a question. Not good.
“I want to meet Razaq. Set up a meeting.”
She straightened from her petulant slouch.
“You could meet Ari at the next Protean Society meeting. You heard about the group Rune Borges is heading? Rune’s recruited mages from across the UK and the continent.
I started going to meetings with Ari. It’s bloody fascinating stuff. You oughta come, Mal.”
He lit a cigarette, her worrisome words churning in his mind. The “social club” O’Leary had mentioned preoccupying Rune sounded far from innocent. “The Protean Society?”
She handed him a flyer. On the corner of the creased paper was a symbol, a red triangle made of interlocking pieces.
From the cryptic wording he gleaned that the Protean Society were enthusiasts of Dr. Franz Dalton, an outspoken mage supremacist in scholar’s garb.
The paper was slight in his hand, but the words carried the weight of foreboding.
Malachy said nothing, letting the silence discomfit Sloane into filling it with damning chatter, which took only thirteen seconds.
“The Proteans are just applying common sense to the Covenant. Mages have been following the secrecy mandate for centuries, and that’s the problem.
We’ve evolved, and humans haven’t. Their technology maybe, but not them.
When it comes to who’s superior, there’s no question.
We have magic. If we were allowed to use it openly, we wouldn’t need to die in human wars or live in poverty or cower in the shadows for fear of discovery.
We’d rule things, like we oughta. Humans don’t belong in power.
Look at what they’ve done with their wars and greed. ”