Carrie Vaughn: Kitty in the Underworld

Cormac gave me a look. A mustached frown, a calculating gaze. “If it hasn’t happened yet, it may be because there hasn’t ever been one person who’s gathered enough power to be able to do it. At least not yet.”

“Yet,” I said, staring. “And what about Dux Bellorum? The Long Game?”

He blew out a breath, looking thoughtful. “Hard to say. Her diary, the personal stuff, she wrote out, like she was just typing it in whenever she could. The meat of the thing—the spells, the lore—she wrote in a code. There’s probably a couple of hundred pages of information she learned about Roman and the Long Game, either from Kumarbis or from scrying or who the hell knows what else, but it’s all coded.”

“Are you kidding me?” I said, slouching back, feeling defeated all over again.

“It’s a common practice,” he said, although I had the feeling this was Amelia now, making the explanations like she often did. “In medieval times alchemists and mages were competitive and jealous, always trying to steal each other’s secrets while protecting their own. They’d invent their own arcane systems for encrypting their work. Very effective—some old books of shadows still haven’t been deciphered.”

“This doesn’t help us at all,” I complained.

The glass door swung open then, bringing in a blast of cold air and Angelo, light hair tousled, face ruddy with recently drunk blood, wool coat flapping. He only hesitated a moment, glancing around until he found me and marched to meet me.

As usual, Cormac stayed seated and calm, but his hand had disappeared into a jacket pocket and the stake he likely kept there. Angelo didn’t even notice.

He regarded me, and I raised a brow at him, prompting.

“What did you do?” he said finally.

“What do you mean, what did I do?”

“Marid called. Marid. He’s a legend, you know, and he doesn’t call anyone. He appears mysteriously, that’s it. But he called me. Roman has fled Split in something of an uproar, I gather. Left behind henchmen, odds and ends. But apparently he found what he was looking for right before being chased off. No idea where he’s gone next, but Marid is sure something spooked him. So of course I assume you did something, to answer for Antony. So does Marid. He asked me, I’m asking you.”

I hesitated, because my first thought was that I hadn’t done anything, not really. I was the victim here, right? I tilted my head, pursed my lips. “If he calls back, can you ask him if he’s ever heard of a vampire named Kumarbis?”

Angelo’s brow furrowed. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“I’m not asking if you’ve heard of him, but has Marid?”

“This one’s old, then, I take it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And he’s the one responsible for making Dux Bellorum bolt?”

Credit where credit was due. “I think so, yes.”

“And where is this astonishing person now?”

I pressed my lips together and shook my head.

“Ah,” Angelo sighed with understanding, and finally sank into one of the empty chairs at the table. “So. What happened? ”

“I’m not sure I even know anymore.”

“Is he coming here next?” Angelo said. “If Roman’s on the move, and he thinks you had something to do with flushing him out of his last hideout, will he be coming here ? Do I need to worry?”

“If I could predict what Roman was going to do I’d have staked him a long time ago. How many times can I say it, I don’t know.”

“So the answer is—maybe,” he said.

Yeah, it was. Silence gave him his answer.

I expected him to whine. To wilt and moan about the unfairness of it all. To blame me for putting him this position, for driving Rick out when Rick was the one who should have been here, defending the city. But he didn’t do any of that. Straightening, he set his expression, put his hands on the table as if we’d been at a formal conference.

“Right, then,” he said. “Might not hurt to prepare. Call in favors and such. Kitty, Ben, I’ll be in touch.” He gave a decisive nod and swept out just as abruptly as he’d swept in.

We all stared after him. “Is it weird that I found that reassuring?” I said.

Ben rested his hand on my leg. A point of contact, a touch of comfort.

He said, “We need everything we can get on Roman. Cormac, do you think you can decipher the book?”

“I’ve got some leads. Not many, but it’s a start. In her diary, she lists some of her mentors, some of the people who got her started in magic. One of them’s a great-aunt who lives down in Manitou Springs. We could get in touch with her, find out if she knows Amy’s code or has any ideas about cracking it.”

Next of kin. I hadn’t even thought about trying to find Zora’s—Amy’s—family to tell them what happened to her. Not something I was looking forward to, but it looked like I might have to. I rubbed my eyes, suddenly tired. “Yeah, okay.”

“I can take care of that,” Cormac said. “I—we—know what to ask.”

“You and Amelia can talk to her, magician to magician like?” I said, trying to make light. He turned a hand in agreement. Didn’t say a word. Already making plans, and I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Ben asked, like he had a dozen times a day since rescuing me from the mountain.

I squeezed his hand. He’d be able to feel the lingering stress, not so much about what had happened in the mine, but about what would happen next. He’d know I wasn’t quite telling the truth when I said, “I’m okay.” But as long as he kept asking, I would be. “I wish I could talk to Rick.”

“You don’t have any way of getting in touch with him?” Ben said.

I imagined trying to send a letter to Rick, of the Order of Saint Lazarus of the Shadows, care of the Vatican, but I didn’t imagine him actually receiving said letter. I couldn’t consult the people I most wanted to, Rick and Anastasia, who had departed on their own personal crusades. I had to be satisfied knowing that they were out there, somewhere.

Ben added, “Not even an e-mail address?”

“Nope. Though I suppose we could do something crazy like post Amy’s book of shadows online with a big header saying, ‘Rick, please read this,’ and see what happens.”

As soon as I said it, I suddenly wanted to do it. Just to see who else it pulled out of the woodwork. Because it didn’t seem any less crazy than anything else we could do. Roman had his Hand of Hercules, the demon bounty hunter—he had everything, now, and we had nothing to lose.

I waited for either Cormac or Ben to tell me it was a crazy idea, and under no circumstances should we post a powerful magician’s book of shadows on the Internet where everyone could see it. But they didn’t. Ben donned a thoughtful look, brow furrowed and lips pursed. Probably thinking about whether posting the book would get me sued. But he didn’t say anything. Cormac just raised an eyebrow. Right, if they weren’t telling me it was a bad idea—what were we all missing?

Then I thought, this kind of knowledge had been kept secret by arcane practitioners for hundreds of years. Maybe it was time to see what crowd sourcing could do with it.

“I mean,” I said, thinking out loud now. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You really want an answer to that?” Ben said.

“It might be like reading out loud from the Necronomicon,” Cormac said. “But shit, I’m game.”

That should have been a warning right there.

“You might be showing your hand,” Ben said. “Telling Roman how much we really know about him.”

And how much did we know, really? Didn’t seem like much. But if we could make him think we knew more than we really did—I’d love to see his reaction. Yeah, Kumarbis and company had poked him with a big old stick. I wanted to keep poking.