Mark Teppo - Heartland

"I see," I said. An hour ago. I looked around for a clock. "How long have I been out?" The skin of my face still ached where Marielle had slugged me. A few times, if I remembered correctly. Somehow my arrival had gone horribly awry.

Par for the course these days. Things had certainly been easier when I had been hiding in my self-dug hole.

Had they? asked a familiar voice in the Chorus.

Denial is always easier, John, I told the spirit of Detective Nicols.

Antoine's mouth twitched, fighting to hide another smile. "You forgot her temper, didn't you?" He touched his cheek gently, and I knew I was supposed to notice his lack of bruising. "That was quite a punch," he said. "I felt it, and it wasn't even meant for me."

"Yeah," I said, gingerly touching my face and exploring the warm skin. I'm sure there was some nice color developing. Antoine would enjoy that. "She's gotten stronger."

The gravity well she carried with her was new. She certainly hadn't exhibited that sort of psychic pull the last time I had been here, and it felt. . primal, for lack of a better world. Some sort of arcane magick that I didn't have any experience with.

"She's going to need it," Antoine said. "They're all going to be watching her now. Waiting to See."

"Where is she?"

He lifted his shoulders.

"Seriously."

"I don't know. She didn't come with us."

"What? You left her there?"

"She refused to get in the car, and I didn't want to deal with Henri. He was lost in his magick. He never would have listened."

"So you just-what? Threw me in the car and drove off?"

"Henri is not that stupid. He didn't want her."

I shook my head. "This wasn't what I planned. Not like this."

He laughed, and the Chorus slithered in my gut, feeding on the bubbling magma of my guilt and anger. He was goading me, hoping I would try to wipe that smug grin off his face.

He wants the excuse to hurt you, the snakes in my belly reminded me. There is an imbalance of pain, a debt owed.

I shook them off. "Yeah, well, okay. I guess it isn't my planning that brings us here anyway," I said. "Rough and tumble as it may be, we're still caught in the Hierarch's Weave."

Antoine leaned forward. "Are we?" His eyes glittered with violet light. "Did he tell you as much?"

I threw back the comforter and swung my legs out of bed so that I had something to do. Something other than lying there, looking at him. "Plainly? Of course not," I said. "It was like every other conversation with him. Soothsayer or Devil's Advocate: it changes with every sentence that comes out of his mouth."

"How could you expect anything less? But after you talked, what did he give you?" He paused, waiting for my answer, and when none was quick in forthcoming, he prodded me a bit more. "Other than his soul, of course."

I considered denying it, but realized there was no point. Antoine knew how the Chorus worked. He had killed Lt. Pender-the Hollow Man contact in the Seattle Police Department-so that I could have enough energy to face Bernard. He had offered me another man's soul. I had refused, because it wasn't so much an offering as a yoke. It would have made us complicit in the willful thievery of another person's light, and while I didn't have any illusions about being a lightbreaker, I wasn't a soul eater. Not like that.

"He gave me a lot of heartache," I said. "Philippe gave me nothing but pain, Antoine. His, and yours, and Marielle's."

His lips curled back from his teeth, a feral motion I had never seen on him before. More than a crack in his armor. This was Antoine, naked before me; before I could read him further, he disappeared, slipping beneath the ever-present layer of magickal distortion that wreathed him. Like a shark, always just under the surface.

"That's not completely true," I said, as if the thought had just occurred to me. "He did say you took credit for stopping Bernard. In your True Record, you were the one who destroyed the Key."

His gaze was hooded, the glint of magick in his eyes nearly invisible. That inscrutable exterior. That marble facade. I was starting to realize how much it revealed about him.

"I take it you're not going to disagree with him?" I asked as I stood up. I wasn't wearing socks or shoes. They were neatly piled on the dresser, along with my ruined coat and the contents of my pockets.

He shook his head. "I was protecting your anonymity," he said. "We had to discern the Hierarch's vision of the Weave. A global manhunt for you wasn't going to help us figure out what was going on."

"Of course not," I said, wandering toward the dresser. I was a little unsteady. Some lingering muscle twinges from Charles' magick wand. "That would have been distracting. And who knows how long it would have taken for them to track me down?"

"Yes," he said. "Exactly." A little too eager to agree with me.

"Though, with you being the True Witness to the event, and reaping the reward of being the badass who stopped their plan, you certainly got back in the Old Man's favor. All sins forgiven, perhaps?"

"Perhaps."

I tried to be casual about my inventory of the items on the dresser. New passport for Michael Dupont, my ready-made alias for this trip. Nearly empty wallet with one credit card, some business cards, and a couple hundred Euros. Velvet bag of tarot cards. A pack of spearmint gum I had bought in Heathrow, along with a page torn out of a magazine: a mention of the Archimedes Palimpsest. The conservation team had finished disbinding the manuscript a while back, and the news was finally getting out in the journals. I had a client who'd be disappointed; he had wanted access to it before they tore it apart.

What was missing from my personal effects was the key and the ring.

The key was old and made of iron. The ornamental bow had been smashed into an ugly lump, and the teeth had been slippery, wavering in and out of focus. A piece of paper had been previously attached with a loop of thin string, the word "Abbadon" written on the scrap, but I had ditched both the paper and the envelope the key had come in during my layover in England.

The ring was a platinum band, set with three opals. On the inside of the ring were fine lines of arcane script, old magick I hadn't had a chance to decipher. The ring of a king, the circular seal of a thousand-plus years of history. It had gone on my finger quite easily and I had only taken it off and put it in my coat so as to not get comfortable wearing it.

"We had a deal," I said, picking up my coat and checking the pockets. Just in case. "We were going to work together."

"We are," Antoine said. There was nothing in his face but that placid serenity that challenged me to be the one to say otherwise.

Could I trust him? I wondered. All history between us aside, did we really have enough of a common enemy to work together? Or was everything he said on the riverbank in Portland just what I had wanted to hear? Was he manipulating me to his own end?

Ask him, the Chorus challenged. Ask him for the ring and key back. Ask him as his liege. Ask him as is your right.

"Is there something else?" Antoine asked, prodding me in my hesitation.

I wanted to know why. From Antoine as well as the Chorus. Why was it important that I force this issue? If he had the missing items-and I didn't see any reason why he hadn't taken them; they had been in my pocket when we had left the train-why would he give them back because I asked? He knew I couldn't take them from him. So why wouldn't he just deny having them?

"You're not telling me everything," I said, and I wasn't sure if I was talking exclusively to Antoine.

"Neither are you." He smiled. "But at least we're being honest about it. I'd call that progress."