“Your plan to remake the spell, strengthen it—does she know that?” My gaze casts downward to the thing brooding beneath our feet.
Arla rolls her eyes. “I’m not stupid.”
But I wonder how much she can really keep from her, how safe Arla’s secret really is, if the Fathom already knows so much about each of us. My thoughts plummet to the club and its revelers. “Medusa…”
Arla looks at me then. “Yes. All that energy, all that heat and chaos. The sex. The need. The hunger. People disintegrating and being reborn over and over. She feeds the club and the club feeds her.”
I take another long drink of water, absorbing the truth along with the liquid into my cells. There’s a catch somewhere that I know she isn’t pointing out. There always is where magic is involved. “What now?”
Arla smiles and takes the empty glass from my hand. “Now you go home. You get some sleep. You dream. In the morning, you wake up, you go to work, you carry on as usual. But everything is transformed. Everything is new. Including you.
“What I give—it’s resurrection. You understand? I’ve madeyou over. And now, like the rest of them, like the Fathom itself, you are mine.”
Her words are grandiose, but I see truth in them. They are coated in oil to get them down. The mask is slipping ever so slightly, and behind it she’s covered in scales.
“Arla, I don’t know if I can be a part of this.” I lay my palms on the counter, reeling.
Her hand snatches out and latches onto mine, fingers curling over my wrist, hot and searing. “You don’t have a choice, kitten. You gave that up in the basement. The genie cannot be put back into the bottle.”
It is a chillingly poignant metaphor.
“Now, go home and get some rest,” she says, releasing me. “I’ll check on you tomorrow.”
I cradle my wrist against my chest and leave, but as the elevator doors close, I look down and see it is red and angry, ringed with burns.
I’M COVERING MYeyes, squinting through split fingers, as I stumble into Orman Used & Rare Books. I couldn’t possibly go back to work in this condition, so I came to the only other place I could think of. The drive here was excruciating, the late afternoon light wreaking havoc on my sight, my head pounding more with every mile. I considered waiting for nightfall, but I need to see Levi, to feel engulfed in him, to be steadied. I need something to lean against as my center of gravity recalibrates, something I can trust. And right now, the only thing in this world that feels safe is this man.
Levi takes one look at me and drops the book he’s holding, rushing to my side. “Judeth, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”
He leads me toward the counter, but I clutch at his arm. “Please, the back room. Get me away from the sun.”
Without hesitation, he guides me toward the nearly hidden door and unlocks it, resting me against a table as he drags a chair over. “What happened?”
A demented laugh gurgles in my throat, hollow and sick. How would I ever find the words? “I wish I could say.”
I understand Brennan’s reluctance now, the gaps he couldn’t fill for me. He’s right: It doesn’t work that way. You have tosee. The absurd language of the poster makes more and moresense—Come and See for Yourself! IF YOU DARE.
Levi’s lips purse anxiously. He looks me over for damage. When he doesn’t find any besides the first-degree burn circling my wrist, he straightens, crossing his arms. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“I’m trying,” I insist, squinting up at him.
“What do you need?” he asks. “Food? Medicine?”
I remember Arla’s command to hydrate. “Water, please. And aspirin. Dim the lights if you can.” This room has softer lighting to protect the contents, but I’m still ready to crawl under the table.
He does as I ask and scurries, returning with a bottle of water, a couple of pills, and a granola bar. “From my personal stash,” he says as he sets everything in front of me. “Stay here, let me ring up these last few customers, and I’ll close the shop.”
He leaves the room, worriedly leaving the door open a crack.
I gulp the water and swallow the pills as my eyes slowly adjust, hoping this reaction passes soon. The pain is too much. I tear open the granola bar wrapper, famished the moment the smell hits me. It’s gone in a few bites. As my eyes relax and my headache eases, I get up and walk around, reading aging spines, awed by the more elaborate covers of the books shelved face out. Many are not in English. Several are so thick they could double as doorstops. There are other things too. A small but ornate reliquary with a fragment of bone inside, labeledEX OSSIBUS / ST. CONCORDIA. An oval silver container with Hebrew lettering and little embossed fruits that readsSILVER ANTIQUE ETHROG BOX. An iron wheel set into some kind of vise and box contraption that looks like a Victorian torture device but is taggedCAST IRON BOOK BINDER. Under glass, an ancient brown book marked1600S EDITION OFTHE BABYLONIAN TALMUD, ORIGINAL BINDINGlooks exceptionally well preserved.
I can only imagine how much value this one room holds as I move around it. A black spider the size of my fingernail, fine hairs shimmering violet like the slime mold on Arla’s well, catches my eye when it scurries across a book cover facing out, melting into the shadows beyond.Myths & Legends of Ancient Egyptthe title reads when I approach, the dull and worn cover printed with hieroglyphs. I remove it from the shelf and let it fall open on the table. It lands on a page with the namesNaunet,Kekuit,Hehut, andAmunetin bold, and I hear the whisper of Anneli’s shadow woman—Áhcešeatni.
The smaller type describes them as the feminine half of something called the Ogdoad, a set of eight primordial deities who represent the waters of creation, chaos and vastness, passivity and invisibility, as well as darkness, night, and obscurity. But according to the book, their attributes are so vague and their functions so ambiguous, it’s apparent the ancient Egyptians were unclear themselves as to the nature and visage of these mysterious beings. Instead, a drawing shows the goddesses rendered with the heads of snakes.
Brennan’s dragon ring flits across my mind, followed by other things—reindeer antlers, tentacles, the hooves of musk oxen. Cloaked in animal parts, Anneli had said.The way an octopus covers itself in shells.The image of black water parting as a razor-sharp fin—too long to belong to any known species—slices through it, glides through my brain, followed by hair as silky as in a shampoo commercial. I shudder and close my eyes. I don’t see Levi enter.
“Feeling better?” he asks.
