Page 74

Phase One: Divert. Guy and Lou would provide the controlled kin echo. I would refract it until the Hellmark read something convincingly related to Knox, but not Knox. Bernie would feed that false answer into the response path. The leash would follow the wrong kin.

Phase Two: Cut. When the Topside relay stretched toward the false answer, Bernie would sever the Fogarty-linked portion of the Topside relay. At Carrick’s signal, Guy would isolate the cabin from the larger Ward network so the recoil could not spread throughout Arrhythmia. Knox and Sully would withstand whatever snapped back through the Hellmark.

It might not destroy the entire Hellmark. Carrick was very clear about that, in the same tone doctors probably used before saying words like exploratory. The ancient Infernal portion remained its own disaster. This would remove the Topside architecture that was letting whoever controlled the thing exploit Knox against Arrhythmia.

“So, this is Phase One: lie to Hell.”

“Essentially,” Bernie said.

“Phase Two: break its shit.”

Guy nodded. “Also, essentially.”

Hank lifted his mug. “I finally understand the plan.”

Then Carrick ruined our brief moment of teamwork-adjacent optimism by discussing how Guy could die.

“The false signature must resemble something the Hellmark already recognizes,” Carrick said. “If Guy gives too little, it will not follow. If he gives too much, the tether may stop chasing the echo and acquire the source.”

Knox went so still I almost heard it. The room did too, as if every living thing in it had recognized that Carrick had just put Guy’s name beside the word risk and waited for Knox MacAllen to become unreasonable about it.

Guy did not look at him. “Don’t start.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Knox said.

“Your face did.”

Hank nodded gravely. “His face is very loud.”

The problem squatted in the middle of the room, ugly and obvious once I saw it. Guy’s Magic was only half the answer. The Hellmark expected two nested resonances: MacAllen, Dragon King. Guy could supply one. Lou could supply the other. But if they blurred together too much, I would not have layers. I would have mud. And if I got the composition wrong, Hell might not chase the lie. It might turn around and take the hand holding the paintbrush.

Carrick explained frequencies. Bernie explained Magical harmonics. Guy explained Ward architecture. Everyone spoke fluent Nerd, and I loved them all slightly less with every sentence.

“Stop.”

They stopped. Mostly because I had used my apparently effective teacher voice, which was hilarious because I had never taught anything except one drunk werewolf how to use a toaster oven without starting a grease fire.

I got paper. Actual paper. Guy produced it from a drawer like a man whose kitchen was ready for both supernatural siege and office-supply emergencies.

“You keep talking about making a copy,” I said, sketching fast. “We don’t need a copy. We need a forgery good enough to fool somebody who only gets three seconds to look at it.”

Knox looked at me. “That is disturbingly specific.”

“Art school.”

Knox and Sully were the original composition. Guy and Lou were related, not identical. The Hellmark expected certain proportions, spacing, repetition, an arrangement that said kin, but not the actual body standing in front of it. I did not need to forge anybody’s Magic. I needed to alter the composition.

We rehearsed without the Hellmark because everyone in the room enjoyed living… or at least had unresolved scheduling conflicts.

Guy released the smallest controlled thread of MacAllen Dragon Magic. It glowed deep bronze and smelled like heated copper and storm wind. Beneath it, Lou’s resonance surfaced, bronze-gold and ancient, steady as something that had watched kingdoms rise and fall and found most of them poorly built.

I reached for Earth and Sky and bent the two threads together. The result was terrible.

Magical, yes. Convincing, no. It hung over the paper like someone had tried to paint a portrait from memory after being kicked in the head by a haunted mule.

“That is hideous,” Neysa said.

“Constructive criticism is apparently dead,” I muttered.