Chapter 32
Perthrux could let Ligat know it wished for his attendance at any time, no matter where he or it were, but Ligat wasn’t nearly so lucky.
Simply approaching Perthrux’s lair without permission was asking for any number of unpleasant consequences.
He could contact the demon from afar, but he did so as little as possible, and not only because he disliked its attention.
He carried a barbed metal sigil in a concealed pocket of his robes.
In theory, it would work wherever Ligat happened to be.
After his interlude with Hazel, Ligat waited until he was in his lodgings once again, seated in the central room that had formed around him first. He preferred to be on what home ground he had.
The room wasn’t quite a pleasant place. Emotion and memory gave the ethereal its shape, and both had been painful when Ligat had arrived.
He had enough willpower and enough time had passed that he could sit at a desk made of dark wood, not rusted iron, but the bookcases remained scorched black, the walls oppressively gray.
It somewhat resembled his old flat if he’d decided to set fire to the place.
Once he sat down, Ligat took the sigil from his pocket as quickly as possible and laid it on the desk, then carefully opened the handkerchiefs in which he’d wrapped it. The relic was cold even through the fabric. Unwrapped, it chilled his hand when it was inches above the metal.
It stuck to Ligat’s skin as soon as he touched it.
As a boy, he’d heard of children who’d frozen their tongues to lampposts and he’d read about Antarctic explorers having to use gloves to eat with knives, but he’d never imagined such a painful or solid connection.
He’d screamed aloud the first time he’d had to contact Perthrux.
He’d learned since then to grit his teeth and endure—in many situations.
Cold pulled at his hand, tugging his skin with a million tiny hooks. It worked its way up his arm a centimeter at a time, and his flesh turned numb but never too numb to hurt, as Ligat forced himself to hold still. Once he started the process, pulling away was disastrous.
He tried to keep the right mental state too: calm enough to get through the torment but not so calm that Perthrux thought he’d gotten too accustomed to it, caring about the events around Hazel’s house only in how they served Perthrux and thus reflected on him.
The woman means nothing. She’s a tool. Chapman is inconvenient.
Her visitor is inconvenient. That’s all. No more.
The room around him wasn’t all ethereal.
On some of his errands or explorations, he picked up souvenirs—a crystal iris with a real scent, an incense bowl shaped like a coiled snake, a few books, ranging from vaguely informative texts to utter potboilers.
He never brought back any objects he really liked, or the loss of which would cause more than a moment’s disappointment. He’d learned that too.
When the cold had almost reached his elbow, the air before him flexed, and a transparent image of Perthrux appeared, toying idly with one of the ornaments from its throne. “Important matters?”
“I would hardly bother you with less, my lord,” said Ligat, and inclined his head.
“Continue.” Its fleshy fingers tugged at the remnants of hair.
Ligat thought this is annoying, that’s all at himself one final time, then said, “A man’s been skulking around the medium’s house. Haven’t caught a glimpse of him yet, but I’ve seen footprints. He’s tried the windows too. I know it’s the devil of a coincidence—”
“Likely not,” said Perthrux, primary mouth puckering with the demon’s displeasure. “Wounds bring out jackals, even if they don’t know what they’re following.”
That made sense, though Ligat had never thought of it before.
Life and death brought the worlds closer, as did the extremes of pain and pleasure, so why shouldn’t the conjunctions call to people who built their lives around such affairs?
“He could be a danger, then?” he asked, careful to make it a question rather than sound as though he was presuming to advise the demon.
“He could be an inconvenience. And he’s trespassing.” Perthrux hissed, a thicker and wetter noise than a human could have made.
Danger had been a mistake, Ligat realized.
He wasn’t sure the demon even really understood the word.
Its kind could be hurt, as Hazel had most recently demonstrated, but death or destruction didn’t really seem possible, not the same way they were for other creatures.
He switched tactics. “Maybe someone should teach him better manners.”
“Someone should,” Perthrux agreed. It shifted the attenuated meat that made up its body, leaning back against its seat. “But we’ll have time for that.”
Ligat’s heart sank. He tried a slightly bolder approach, still striving to sound like it didn’t matter. “I could spend more time on guard, of course. If that would help.”
The demon’s eyes glinted with the dull shine of drowned worms on pavement. “You could linger in the mortal world, you mean,” it said, freezing Ligat with dread before it chuckled, contemptuous but not angry. “No, I won’t waste you on nostalgia. The ghoul can always step in if the gateway dies.”
“I caught Chapman’s trail near the house. He might be going behind your back—unless you sent him, of course,” said Ligat, spotting another opening.
“No,” said Perthrux, and its talons pierced deep into the lump of flesh it had been toying with. The sharp squeak it made might have been escaping air. “The upstart thinks he’s clever. We may have to have words with him.”
“Perhaps more than words, my lord. If we guard the medium, we get rid of the risk, and we can deal with Chapman permanently.”
Perthrux leaned forward, its headless face filling Ligat’s view. The lipless mouth smirked. “You don’t like him, do you, bondsman?”
“I don’t see how anybody could, my lord,” said Ligat. He didn’t have to prepare that answer.
Tendons stretched as the demon’s smile grew wider. “He has his uses. For now. Just like you do.”
Ligat bowed his head. “Understood, my lord. If you believe that he’s loyal—”
“I trust his loyalty,” said Perthrux, “just as much as I do yours.”
* * *
Hi, Hazel.
It’s Jess from the library.
I’m not really sure how to start this—maybe you’ll tell me to mind my own fucking business, and I probably would deserve it if you did. But you were telling me about that guy the other day, the Brit who gave you a fake name and address?
It’s been a really slow couple days here, and I thought it was a really shitty thing he did to you, so I did some Google searching. I figured most people use aliases that are close to their real names. Makes it easier to remember.
The only Maxwell Redfern I found was…well, I’ve attached the article. I’ve retyped this sentence three times. I don’t want to come off all Discovery Channel, I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation for this. I just don’t know what it is.
Anyhow, please tell me to fuck off if you want. Or ask questions. Or just pretend this never happened.
Jess
Hazel, who’d been reading her email while she ate lunch, put down her tomato sandwich and eyed her phone.
Oh, Jess, she thought with unexpected emotion.
Talking through her problem had been generous by itself.
She’d never expected the librarian to spend their own time on it—and as much as the effort touched her, the potential consequences worried her.
People who gave fake names generally didn’t like having other people look into them, and Jess was a nonbinary librarian in a small town.
She tapped on the attached PDF and sipped soda while her phone slowly proceeded with the download, wishing for about the tenth time that day that her laptop hadn’t gone down in a blaze of interdimensional glory.
Cosmic static didn’t really do much for her situation, anyway, and her latest reading hadn’t offered much help either.
A book on human sacrifice had included several chapters about various means of making living people conduits to just as varied underworlds, but had been more anthropology than specifics.
It also hadn’t included any suggestions about reversing the process.
Hazel guessed the question didn’t come up very often.
It had been several days since Chapman had given her his little lecture.
He hadn’t shown up again, to her relief, and either Ligat had stayed away too, or he was lurking out in the trees.
Hazel had considered going out and calling him but hadn’t wanted to give away that the two of them were on speaking terms.
Also, she would have felt pathetic trying to get in touch without any reason.
She wasn’t so desperate for company—or sex—that she’d start wandering around like a Tennyson maiden, crying out the name of a guy who was dangerous against his will at best. It was possible that she imagined his comments when she read particularly ridiculous bits of “occult lore,” or that she wondered what he was up to just before she fell asleep, but that was as much as she’d admit even to herself.
Maxwell popped up in her thoughts almost as often.
She’d tried to dismiss him as another asshole reporter, not worth her time, tried to distract herself, and tried to let her mind move on the way she’d learned in meditation.
It had worked about half the time until she’d opened her email and seen the message from Jess.
She stared at the gradually filling download circle and barely tasted her soda.
The attachment opened, revealing a grainy newspaper article with a black-and-white photo. Bright Young Things Get “Into the Spirit,” the headline read, because the lifestyle section’s sense of humor hadn’t changed since before it even was a lifestyle section.
It’s a supernatural summer in Torquay this year as Madame Ivanov graces us with a stop on her tour of lectures and séances—and a few of the faces around the old Ouija board might look more familiar in nightclubs!
From the right, Cecily Sheridan has swapped tennis lessons for table-rapping, while longtime beau Hugo St. Clair sits next to her, prepared to defend his lady from any ectoplasmic threat.
Maxwell Redfern, on St. Clair’s other side, told this reporter that “one should never turn down a new experience”—an adventurous sentiment from the young scholar!
In the photo, a group of people on one side of a séance table smiled for the camera with expressions that ran from sheepish good nature to an almost hectic enthusiasm.
Cecily sported a feathered headband and bobbed hair, while the other woman present was wearing a floaty, caftan-type dress, and all the men were in suits.
The article was from June 1925. Most of them didn’t look like they’d have been old enough to fight in World War I, but they’d have been old enough to remember, to have lost fathers or brothers, to bear a fair set of scars.
Maybe exploring the next world seemed like a great idea when the normal one had let everybody down.
Maxwell Redfern of the article gangled at least five inches above his neighbors, wore wire-rimmed glasses, and had a sharp, curious face. The picture couldn’t show color, but Hazel would have bet that his hair was tawny brown and his eyes vivid green.
Family resemblances could be strong, and people passed down names all the time. Hazel knew it was possible that she was looking at Maxwell’s great-grandfather, and he himself was a perfectly normal human.
She also knew that was bullshit.