I put my hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Experience, kid. I’ve done well trusting Carpenters.”
Chapter
Thirty-Four
February came and it wasn’t as cold as it might have been. I had been spending a lot of time working on the spell for Thomas. I had proved the concept with Lara on New Year’s Eve, but going halfway and backing off wasn’t the same as going through the whole process, any more than a quick sketch on a napkin was the same thing as a large oil painting. Magic, like all power, often has unexpected consequences when used. It’s easy to call it up, hard to deal with what happens as a result if you haven’t employed it with discipline and caution.
Severing the bond between the Hunger and Thomas was the danger point. I had thought my way through it and had realized with a cold little shiver that I was, on a magical level, attempting something that, if done incorrectly, would be a lot like breaking molecular bonds. The amount of eldritch energy that could potentially be released was staggering and could readily consume Thomas or the Hunger, or me, or all of us. There was a very low-order probability that it could chain-react beyond the immediate participants in the spell as well, with results that could be entirely unpredictable. I’d have to do it on the island, where I could have free rein to build the magical equivalent of a vault, clean room, and surgical theater.
I’d have to go to the island and outline to Alfred what I would need. TheWater Beetlewas in harbor land storage at the moment, so it would have to be a trek through the Nevernever to get there. Fun, in the way that I could readily get killed doing it, but I wanted to give Alfred plentyof time. I’d probably need a proper thaw and the boat back in the water to get everything I’d need transported to the site.
Spring, then.
I’d given Fitz the evening off, and he’d promptly gone to the gym to horse around with a couple of the younger Knights of the Bean and several young men who were staying with their families from the neighborhood. They’d worked out a way to throw down the workout pads and play a game somewhere between dodgeball, American football, and Rest-of-the-World football down the long axis of the gym. There was a lot of tackling and kicking the ball with egregious amounts of force. Bruises and minor injuries were common, and the players seemed to regard them as a feature, not a bug.
People get weird when they’re cooped up for a while.
I wrapped up my sketched design for a proper major circle for this spell, put it away in a protective sleeve and into a folder, and left it on my lab table. Bob the Skull had helped with it.
I climbed up the stepladder to the lowest floor of the castle and shambled down the hall to my room. Bear, reading a book, glanced up as I walked by her room and I waved good night, before shutting myself in my bedroom, locking the door, and getting out the materials for the summoning ritual, along with a new board game where players cooperatively dealt with urban folklore monsters running about a small town.
Before, I would have said the game was too much like work, but I hadn’t been much on the deal-with-monsters train lately.
Maybe she’d feel the same way.
Spells go smoother and faster and more efficiently the more you perform them, and by now this one was second nature. Maybe forty-five seconds, start to finish, closing a circle centered around a SIG Sauer P365 nine-millimeter pistol named Backup, a set of motorcycle keys, and several rough, raw diamonds I once would have considered rocks.
“New game,” she noted, a few seconds after I was finished. “Huh. Cooperative? They make cooperative games?”
I opened my eyes. The candles had burned down to blue pinpoints, and like always, it would take a few minutes before I could see her face. “They’re mostly playing together against an algorithm, but yeah.”
“Okay,” she said. She studied me for a moment. “Except you’re looking different, aren’t you?”
“Shaved,” I said. “Haircut. Maggie thought it looked messy.”
“Maggie’s right, it did,” she replied, amused. “Taking care of yourself. Grooming. That’s a good thing. Healthy.” I vaguely saw her tilt her head. “Something else is on your mind.”
The Winter mantle stirred, flickers of anger and need for resolution zinging around my insides.
“Mab thinks I need to get revenge on Rudolph.”
“For what?” she asked me.
I felt a flicker of something like shame at the way I felt. “You know for what.”
“From where I’m at right now,” she said, “it gets less and less relevant to me.”
“After what he did to you?!” I demanded.
“From my perspective,” she said gently, “he kind of created me. I know you get upset when I say this, but you need to hear it: I’m not quite her, am I?”
“Dammit,” I muttered. I stared at the box for the game.
“I don’t think I want to play that one,” she continued in the same soft voice. “Harry, I understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. But you can’t do this forever. We aren’t actually cooperative in all of this.”
I didn’t look up at her dim form.
“I don’t mind helping you,” she said. “I’m very, very fond of you, obviously. But I also have very limited agency in this, also obviously.”
