There aren’t words to describe what being home feels like.
It’s not just the four walls of the house they’ve bought together, or the warmth and beauty of a March sunset, or the sounds of a London evening. It’s Charlie flying down the sidewalk to attack Jon with a hug and a bright smile and a flurry of words about how much they’ve all missed him and then coming back two hours later, pleased as Punch and bearing a “welcome home” cake he baked himself. It’s Sasha calling, not texting, to tell Tim she’s home safe and then asking to talk to Jon so they can reassure each other that they’re both okay. It’s Martin gently tending to the marks on his wrists and ankles, still raw from his desperate attempts to pull free before his strength started to desert him, and singing the song he remembers from when he was a little boy and his father came back from a voyage. It’s Tim cooking Jon’s favorite dinner, but serving him in small helpings so that he doesn’t overstretch his stomach after two weeks while still making sure he eats his fill. It’s the cool, clean sheets and the thick, warm quilt and the weight and security of Tim and Martin on either side of him as he falls asleep, and it’s Tim and Martin soothing and reassuring him, as much with their presence as with any actual words, when he wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.
Going back to the Institute is harder than he would have thought. Only the fact that he knows he can’t be away from it for long gets him to go back—that and the fact that he can’t, won’t, leave his team alone to deal with Elias. Once there, though, he slips back into the routine easily enough. Despite Elias’s snide insinuations, the Archives ran fine without him, but he knows they’re glad to have him back.
They take Tuesday morning to regroup and plan. It’s all very well for both Elias and Jon Prime to tell them to find Gertrude’s notes, but Gertrude was, in Tim’s words, a paranoid old bitch, and it’s not likely that they’ll find a conspicuous notebook with detailed plans on how to stop the Unknowing. More likely that whatever they find will end up being more memory aids than anything, cryptic jottings that only mean something to Gertrude, and sussing it out won’t be easy. But it’s a place to start nevertheless, once they figure out where those notes are.
In the end, Tim and Martin take to looking through the shelves of statements—Tim looking for anything to do with the Stranger, Martin looking for a few of the tantalizing little threads they’ve noticed weaving through the tapestry of their database. Sasha attacks the filing cabinets, with the logic that Gertrude may have pretended to file something important. And Jon takes his counterpart’s advice and goes through his office.
It’s not like he doesn’t know what’s in all the drawers of his desk, but he does his due diligence, pulling everything out of each drawer, tapping for false backs or false bottoms. He does find, stuck in the back of the drawer where he keeps the spare statement forms, a creased and faded concert program printed on green stock from 2003; it doesn’t seem to have any immediate significance, though, so he sets it aside with the intention of looking into it later. Perhaps it’s simply a concert Gertrude attended that she enjoyed, but it might also be a clue to the Unknowing. He’ll have to research.
It isn’t until Wednesday morning that he finds the laptop, hidden along with a key under a floorboard that’s been creaky as long as he’s been working in the Archives. There are scratches on some of the floorboards that Jon’s always hoped aren’t fingernail marks, but several of them are loose and one of them levers up fairly easily, revealing Gertrude’s hidden stash. He digs around a bit but finds nothing else, only the laptop and the key. He sets both on his desk next to the concert program and goes to tell the others.
The laptop is dead, of course. Jon vaguely remembers seeing a charger for it when he was in Gertrude’s apartment, but he didn’t grab it then and it’s far too late to go back now. Luckily, Sasha’s laptop is almost the exact same model, so she simply swaps over the cable and lets it charge while they go over what they’ve found so far. Tim has three statements he thinks might be Stranger ones, but hasn’t looked at yet to be sure; Martin found a third statement involving the Daedalus, which Tim seems positive is a Dark statement, and another statement involving Salesa. Sasha hasn’t found anything in the filing cabinets—yet—but she does have Elias’ schedule, so they’re able to plan their briefings when they know they won’t be observed.
She also kindly hacks into Gertrude’s laptop for him, once it’s charged, and he spends most of Thursday painstakingly going through the files, emails, and Internet history. The latter is by far the most voluminous. It almost makes him laugh to discover the account name “grbookworm1818”—how had he not figured out that was Gertrude, attempting to buy Leitners? She seems to have obtained three, one of them being the copy of The Key of Solomon he found fragments of in the tunnels and the other two being ones he’s never seen or heard of. There are also purchase reports for Archival supplies, airline tickets and travel bookings, and sporadic but suspiciously large orders for petrol, lighter fluid, pesticides, and high-powered torches.
When he comes out of his office at the end of the day, eyes bleary and with no clear plan, he finds a number of dusty boxes scattered about and his assistants attempting to find space for them, but they refuse to tell him where they came from or what they’re for. The next morning, however, Martin and Tim usher him into one of the storage rooms they’ve never really got around to sorting out the second they arrive in the Archives. It’s completely empty, save a table, four chairs, a low set of shelves, a whiteboard, and a corkboard, to which Sasha is tacking a large map of the world. The shelves hold fourteen boxes of the kind designed to hold photographs, a large box of pushpins, three different-colored balls of string, and a laptop cord, ready and waiting.
“We thought we needed a war room,” Tim explains, obviously trying to fight back a grin. “You know, somewhere we can keep everything together and not…get mixed up with the rest of the work we’re doing.”
“Allegedly doing,” Sasha says over her shoulder. “I’m still not sure how much of this job is what was presented to us when we took it and how much is the sort of thing we’re doing right now…can one of you give me a hand here?” she adds as the upper corner of the map flops over onto her head, just above her outstretched hand. Tim comes over to assist.
Jon looks around, surprised and pleased, and opens his bag to pull out Gertrude’s laptop. “Why did you pick this room, out of curiosity?”
Martin pulls the door shut behind him. “The molding.”
“What?” Jon frowns at him.
Tim gives the map a firm stroke to smooth out any air bubbles and presses the pushpin deep into the cork, then turns to give Martin a warm, approving smile. “You know how Elias always seems to know what’s going on in the Archives whenever it’s least convenient for us? Martin realized why the other day.”
“It was an accident,” Martin insists, face turning slightly pink.
“It was brilliant.” Tim claps him on the shoulder. “Those fancy decorations at all the joins in the molding? You know, those elaborate carvings at the top of the fake columns and the corners of all the doorframes and whatnot?”
“Not…I’ve never paid much attention to them.” Jon’s only five foot seven, and since he’s never had to worry too much about clearance or anything like that he’s never really looked too much at anything over his head.
“It’s at the corners of all the shelves, too,” Martin offers. “At least the ones where the statements are stored, the ones that are pretty obviously original to the Institute. You know, with what looks like a medallion in the middle?”
Those Jon has seen. “It’s the Institute seal, isn’t it? Or the Magnus family crest?”
“That’s what I always thought, too, but Martin got a good look at one the other day while he was getting down a statement for me.” Sasha’s eyes sparkle behind her glasses, which instantly puts Jon on edge; these days, anything that excites Sasha is likely to have bad ramifications for them. “It’s an eye.”
“And if he can ‘see through any eye, real or image’…” Tim spreads his hands out invitingly.
Jon sets the laptop down harder than he probably should, eyes wide. “He’s been watching us through the moldings!”
“Yep. It’s anybody’s guess whether or not Gertrude knew about it. I ran it down right after I told them and got a lot of stammering and profanity. Although not from who you might expect,” Martin adds with just the tiniest bit of a smirk. Sasha practically cackles. “Anyway, this room doesn’t have anything like that, we double-checked. So we just…cleaned out all the stuff that was in here and set this up. Give us a bit of breathing room, anyway.”
“At least until Elias comes down to the Archives to figure out why he can’t see us easily,” Tim adds. “But, you know, it’s a head start.”
Jon is six inches shorter than Tim and a full nine inches shorter than Martin, so there’s no way to make it look less than deliberate if he attempts to give either one of them even the most casual kiss on the cheek, but good Lord, he wants to. Instead, he just beams at them both. “God, you’re brilliant. Right, let me get a cup of tea and we can get started.”
“I’m on it.” Martin slips out of the little room.
Sasha smirks at Jon behind Tim’s back, but he does his best to ignore her and focuses on the boxes. “What are these?”
“Tapes. We made copies of all the recordings we’ve done so far of the real statements and sorted them by which fear they belong to.” Sasha taps the lid of one of the boxes and indicates the label on the front. It’s a bright yellow set of concentric circles—no, Jon realizes, it’s a spiral. “Tim did the labels.”
Jon glances up at Tim, both impressed and worried. “You didn’t—”
“Nope.” Tim pulls out a box and shows him the label, simply the word US in a rich, vibrant green. “I don’t know how detailed the ‘image’ has to be, but I’m not risking it. Everything else I tried to do the symbols they described, or…something that made sense. Like antlers for the Hunt.”
“And the ink colors? Is that corresponding to—it’s not the labels we use.”
“No. Those are the colors I’m pretty sure the fears are.”
Martin comes back in with four mugs of tea. Jon takes his with a grateful smile. “Actually, let’s start there. We’ve never really talked about the colors, beyond…”
“What I told Elias,” Tim completes.
“And the little bit you described when you took a look at all of us.”
Tim takes his own mug from Martin, and for some reason Martin’s ears turn slightly pink. Jon’s distracted for a moment until Tim muses, “It’s…weird. Some of them are obvious. Like I said, it’s super obvious the Eye is green and the Stranger is indigo, because I saw that one at the Trophy Room with no other colors interfering. And the Corruption being yellow-green is obvious because of—”
“Me,” Martin finishes.
Tim nods. “And the Spiral being yellow—Christ, that door. The others I…sort of had to guess. Even with…you know…it was hard for me to suss out. The Eye is everywhere. Looking at him is like looking at the shelves in the Archives. The scars are pretty obvious, but not completely.” He frowns. “Like the Hunt and the Slaughter. They’re really close in color. I think the Slaughter’s got a bit more orange in it, the Hunt’s a true red, but especially under the cover of the Beholding, it’s hard to tell the difference. And, actually, sometimes it’s hard to tell the Stranger from the Web at a glance. I mean, until you really start looking at them. The Web is purple, so if it’s not by itself…I mean, it’s a subtle distinction.”
Jon glances uneasily at the carefully-inked purple spiderweb, then turns away. It still bothers him.
They manage to get nearly two hours into their discussion, moving from the colors to the Stranger threads they’ve picked up to what Jon’s gleaned from Gertrude’s laptop. Tim is just jabbing a pin into Nairobi on the map when Sasha stiffens and glances over her shoulder. “Incoming.”
Jon’s about to ask what she’s talking about when the door opens and Elias pokes his head in with a patently false smile. “Knock, knock.”
Tim and Martin make nearly identical noises of frustration. Jon clasps his hands behind his back and gives Elias his best I’m-annoyed-at-being-interrupted-but-you’re-my-superior-so-I’ll-be-polite look, which is only partly put-on. “Can we help you, Elias?”
“I simply wanted to see how you were progressing with finding out about the Unknowing.” Elias looks around the room with interest, and Jon has to work hard to use the tricks Jon Prime has been teaching him to keep his excitement from being obvious. Martin and Tim are right; Elias can’t see into this room. “What have you uncovered so far?”
Jon is immensely proud of his team. They manage to weave an incredibly tight explanation of how much they’ve learned, within limits, that doesn’t let on how much information they were given ahead of time, listing steps without revealing that anything other than chance led them to it. Elias completely acts the part of the mildly interested academic and bureaucrat, but he’s also obviously fishing for information. Martin does a masterful job of acting like he’s falling directly into Elias’ traps while neatly sidestepping them, Tim cracks jokes at the appropriate times to distract him while putting just enough bite into them that Elias will assume they’re simply angry and sarcastic jabs, and Sasha throws a flurry of technical terms into the discussion that are certainly relevant to the topic at hand but serve to make Elias change the tack of his questioning. Like Jon, she knows the value of a well-placed info dump.
There is no redirecting him from the map, however. While he must have known about Gertrude’s travels, at least in a general sense, it’s clear he knew little about her actual movements. Jon masks his reluctance with annoyance and gives Elias a clipped version of his findings.
“Is there any significance to the colors of pins you have used?” he asks, gesturing to the map, where they’ve been marking out Gertrude’s travels. “Or is it random? Or for the…aesthetic?”
“We were trying to do it by what year she took the trip, but we only have so many colors,” Jon answers. “We’ve just switched over. Red are trips that were very definitely expensed back to the Institute, white are ones that were not, and yellow are the ones where we aren’t quite sure.”
“Mm…Gertrude did request a rather high travel budget, comparatively. Of course, if the Archivist job was as simple as it is in other institutions, she would have required no travel whatsoever, but in her capacity to stop the rituals…” Elias seems particularly fascinated by the pin on Beijing. “Why is this one in blue?”
“We just haven’t swapped the pin over yet. That’s one of the last trips we have a record of in Gertrude’s laptop.” Tim tilts his head at Jon. “From, what, six months before she died?”
“Closer to nine. Actually, Martin, can you change that one out, please?” Jon gestures at the box. “It’s a yellow one, I think.”
Martin mumbles an excuse me and switches out the pin. Elias purses his lips thoughtfully. “I don’t recall there being a ritual anywhere near Beijing at the time. What could have sent her there?”
“No idea. What’s bothering me is that we don’t know where she went from there.”
That draws Elias’ attention away from the map and back to Jon. “Surely she came back to London.”
“No.” Jon folds his arms over his chest. “Or at least, not that we can find. As I said, we’re largely tracing these trips from booking confirmations sent to Gertrude’s email address, and she largely purchased one-way tickets. Her last flight purchased out of London was to Paris, and then she booked a flight from Paris to Beijing. From there…I don’t know. I suppose she was buying tickets as she went along. It’s not like her credit card statements list where the flights went, only what airlines she flew and when she purchased the tickets. No hotel accommodations, though. Doubtless she paid cash, or else Gerard paid for those.”
“Gerard?” Elias says with interest. “Gerard Keay? Who told you he was traveling with Gertrude?”
Panic strikes Jon. Most likely it’s something he gleaned from Jon Prime—but on the other hand, did the Primes actually mention that? Flustered, he stammers, “I—someone must have—”
“No, no one told you. You Knew.” Elias sounds delighted.
“I probably just—gleaned it from the statements.” Jon glances at the shelves.
“No, Jon, this is a good thing. You’re getting stronger! It’s one thing to be able to—” Elias gestures vaguely and almost dismissively at Tim and Martin “—glean something from somebody in the room, but just Knowing something like that, that’s a big step.”
He sounds like a proud father, and it makes Jon feel incredibly uncomfortable. He balls his hands into fists, gathering up the cuffs of the sweater he definitely didn’t steal from either Tim or Martin, to stop himself from reaching out to one of them for protection. It’s stupid. Elias won’t hurt him, not here, not now; he needs him too much. He knows he’s safe. It just feels…dangerous, and he wants them to make him feel safer. Rather than risk Elias knowing how much he depends on them and doing something about it, he grips the sweater.
Elias practically beams at him. “It seems to me your next step should be obvious.”
“It should?”
“You should start retracing her steps. Are her notes from this trip on there?”
“Ah—no.”
“Then you’ll need to go where she was. Find out where she stayed, what she did.” Elias clasps his hands behind his back. “Where she went from there. How soon do you think you can leave?”
Jon blinks. This is going a bit faster than he expected. He turns to Tim and Martin. “Do you two have a passport?”
Martin looks a bit stunned. “N-no, I’ve never—never needed one?”
“Mine’s still in good standing,” Tim answers. “But if Martin needs one, that’d be—what, four weeks, at a minimum?”
“Jon, I asked when you would be able to leave,” Elias says, mildly enough but with a bit of steel behind it. “Your assistants need to stay here. We do need to get all of this straightened out still, and there’s research that needs to be done from here. You can relay whatever information you find back to the Archives, and I’m sure they can assist you if needed, but really, the Institute can’t spare the funds to reimburse more than one of you for an extended trip.”
Jon is pretty sure that’s a lie, but he knows Elias won’t reimburse them, and he also knows that neither Tim nor Martin can actually afford to pay their own way to come along, not with the house payments and Martin’s mother’s medical bills. He sighs heavily and fights to maintain eye contact with Elias. “I can get a flight out Sunday night or Monday morning.”
“Monday will be fine,” Elias says without batting an eyelash. Jon knows Sunday, statistically speaking, is the most expensive day to fly, so anything to save the Institute a few pence, he supposes. “Well, it seems you’ve all done marvelously well. I think you all deserve to take a half-day today. With pay. Finish up what you need to do here, and you can leave at twelve. Jon, do keep me appraised of your flight information.” He flashes them an absolutely terrifying smile, turns on his heel, and leaves the room.
The second the door shuts behind him, Jon sags, bracing himself against the table. “God.”
Sasha collapses into a chair, looking absolutely wiped out. “Tell me about it.”
“Hold on.” Martin picks up Jon’s mug, then Sasha’s, and slips out of the room.
Tim tentatively reaches out and touches Jon’s arm. “Sit down before you fall down. You look almost as bad as she does.”
“I’m all right.” Jon sits down anyway, grateful for Tim’s concern.
A phone buzzes from somewhere; Jon instinctively reaches for his pocket before remembering that he hasn’t replaced it yet. He spent longer than he should have trying to resurrect his shattered phone after Martin silently handed him its remains, but finally had to give up. “Is that yours, Tim?”
“No, I think it’s Martin’s.”
With that rare sort of timing that almost never happens, Martin comes back in, bearing two brimming mugs of tea; he hands one to Sasha, then one to Jon. He has to bend over to do it, and Jon brushes a quick kiss against his cheek as it comes past before he loses his nerve, then tries to play it off like he didn’t notice he did it. “Your phone went off.”
Martin’s ears are pink, and he goes to pick up his phone rather quickly. He actually snorts with laughter and shakes his head, a slightly amused smile on his face as he taps out a reply.
“Everything okay?” Tim asks with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, it’s from Melanie. Just says ‘Jet lag sucks balls.’ I’m guessing she’s back in town.” Martin slips his phone into his pocket and sighs. “What do we do now?”
“Unfortunately,” Jon mutters, “I think we do what Elias said. Finish up what we’re doing here, and leave early.” He looks over at Sasha. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Sasha manages a smile that even Jon can tell is fake, then drops it immediately and sighs. “I was trying to keep on top of how much he knew, or thought we knew. It’s a weird sort of balancing act…thing. Like keeping just the right tension on a rope.”
“Sasha.” Martin sounds upset. “You were reading his mind?”
“Just—skimming the surface,” Sasha protests.
Jon sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You have to stop doing that. I know it’s tempting. God knows I know that. But you can’t just—and you knew he was coming. Was that intentional?”
“Sort of. It’s not like I’m constantly trying to read his mind or whatever, but…I don’t know. I just got a sense of…something.”
“All right, Gwen Stacey,” Tim says with a smirk. “Jon’s right, though, you’ve got to quit feeding it or it’s going to start feeding on you.”
Sasha sighs heavily. “I’m…trying to try.”
“Well, it’s a start.” Jon takes a sip of tea.
They get the room straightened up, then head back into the Archives. Martin keeps periodically replying to text messages on his phone, but the others don’t ask. It’s not until Jon, having brought his laptop out to join the others, is finalizing his booking that he frowns at his screen and looks up at the others. “Melanie wants to know if the rest of you’d like to join us for lunch, seeing as we’ve got the afternoon off and everything.”
Jon hesitates. On the one hand, he’d like to decline; he and Melanie tend to prick at each other whenever they interact, despite his best intentions. On the other hand, he admittedly wants to spend as much time with Tim and Martin as he can before he leaves on this trip. Heaven knows how long he’ll be gone and he’ll miss them, he knows that.
“If I’m included in that,” he says at last, “I’d be honored.”
They lock up at twelve and head to the pub Jon has begun to think of as “theirs”, even though they don’t go often. It’s cool and overcast, and there are definite signs it rained earlier, most notably the worms on the sidewalk. Jon notices Martin carefully avoiding treading on them and reaches over to take his hand comfortingly just as Tim throws his arm around his shoulders from the other side. It makes Sasha laugh, which makes them laugh, too, and at least gets Martin to stop watching his feet.
Pat waves when they come in and gestures to one of the tables, and Martin steps forward with a warm smile as Melanie King rises from a chair and meets him with a hug that would probably make Jon jealous if he didn’t know Martin was gay, and also if he had any right to be jealous. “God, it is…surprisingly good to see you.”
Martin huffs a laugh. “I’m not sure how to take that.”
Melanie actually laughs and gives Martin a friendly punch on the arm. Martin laughs in earnest as he reels back in an exaggerated manner, rubbing at his arm. “Ow! Hey, I need that!”
“Sure.” Melanie turns and offers Sasha a smile and her hand. “Sasha, good to see you.”
“Good to see you, too.” Sasha shakes her hand, then turns slightly. “Sorry, don’t think we’ve met.”
Jon turns, too, and his brain pulls up short. She’s changed up her hairstyle and shed her glasses, there’s a tattoo peeking out from under the collar of her t-shirt, and he’s pretty sure there are a couple additional holes in her ears, but the smile is unmistakable to someone who’s spent six years running from it.
“Georgie,” he stammers.
Georgie Barker’s smile gets a bit more uncertain, but there’s at least no hostility in her eyes. “Jon, hello. I didn’t expect to see you.”
“I, ah—” Jon gestures vaguely, either at Martin or at Melanie, he’s not sure which.
Melanie shrugs. “I did say the invitation was open to everyone. Kind of didn’t expect you to accept, to be honest, but—”
“Frankly, it’s been a shit month and we’re an all-or-nothing deal right now,” Martin says. He looks slightly quizzical and slightly worried as he eyes Georgie. “I—did I talk to you on the phone once?”
“Right, introductions. Georgie Barker, Martin Blackwood, Sasha James, and—” Melanie waves at Tim. “I actually haven’t got a clue who you are.”
“There are some who call me….Tim?” Tim quips with an arch of the eyebrows.
It’s the right thing to say to diffuse the tension, especially as Melanie and Martin both let out exaggerated groans as Georgie, who consumed every bit of media even vaguely associated with Arthurian legend during a time when she was obsessed enough to qualify as a minor expert on the subject, bursts into laughter. The six of them arrange themselves around the table as Pat brings over a tray of pints, then takes their food orders and heads off to get them together.
Martin takes a sip of his pint and evidently starts to speak three times before saying in a carefully neutral voice, “I hope you had a…successful trip.”
Melanie lifts an eyebrow at him. “You were a lot less cagey before. Is it them?”
“No, I’m a bit tired,” Martin says. “Like I said, it’s been…a lot.” He hesitates, glancing at Georgie for a brief second, then evidently gives up. “Remember how I said we all had…weird stuff we could do? My thing is that I can make people answer questions when I ask them. And if I’m tired or not really paying attention, sometimes I do it without meaning to, and that’s not fair to you.”
“I don’t believe you.” Melanie folds her arms over her chest. “Prove it.”
Martin hesitates. “Okay, um…what made you so upset when I asked if you wanted to come to lunch with me when we met?”
“If you weren’t a bloke, you’d be exactly my type and I had just a second where I wondered if I was actually a lesbian,” Melanie answers automatically, then blinks. “Fuck.”
Martin’s face catches fire. Tim grins and winks. “That just proves you’ve got taste.”
“Yeah, well, still.” Melanie presses her lips tightly together. “S’pose I can’t get too mad. I did tell you to prove it. Not your fault I didn’t actually expect it to work.” She snorts. “Successful? Yeah, I guess. I found out what I went to find out. And I didn’t die, so…promise kept?” She shrugs. “I owe you the whole story, but maybe not here.”
“Come by the Institute on Monday,” Sasha offers. “We can get your statement—oh, right.” She looks at Jon. “That okay with you?”
“No, that’s fine. Ah, take your pick on who you want to tell it to,” Jon says to Melanie, indicating the other three. “I promise you don’t have to deal with me.”
“I don’t mind all that much,” Melanie says with a sideways glance at Georgie. “You’re not…actually that bad to talk to. At least you’re trying not to be a prick.”
Georgie turns a laugh into a cough. Jon studiously avoids looking at her. “Thank you, I think, but I didn’t mean that in a ‘you can choose to talk to someone else’ way. I meant that as in ‘I’m leaving on a business trip Monday morning, so I won’t even be there.’”
“A business trip—for an Archivist? What, are you going to the Library of Alexandria or something?”
“No, the last one blew that up,” Tim says under his breath.
Jon kicks Tim under the table. “Beijing. My…predecessor traveled there some time before her death, but she didn’t leave any notes behind on what she may have learned there. So, lucky me, I get to follow behind her and try to pick up a three-year-old trail.”
“You can’t tell me the idea of piecing together something like that doesn’t appeal to you,” Georgie says, sounding amused. “What’s your—hang on, what was it called—your PFX count these days?”
“I haven’t—yes, all right, I suppose the idea of the hunt’s not altogether unwelcome,” Jon admits. “I just…would really rather not be doing it right now. For God’s sake, I only just got back from my last—unexpected absence.”
Martin’s hand tightens on his glass. Tim takes a huge swallow of his. Georgie looks back and forth between the two of them, then frowns at Jon. “So why are you leaving so quickly? If it’s been three years, it’s not like the clues are going anywhere.”
“Yes, but the situation is…somewhat time-sensitive.”
“Critical,” Martin supplies.
“Life-or-death, you might say,” Tim offers.
Georgie’s frown deepens. “You’re an Archivist. Which I’m still wrapping my brain around, by the way. You were a researcher, Jon. I know you don’t just have a degree in library science lying around.”
“No,” Jon says with a sigh. “The Archives at the Magnus Institute are…interesting, let’s put it that way. Library training in the actual Archivist is surprisingly less important than you might think. Besides, we have Martin, and what he doesn’t know about organizing and categorizing isn’t worth knowing.”
“Christ.” Martin buries his face one hand. Both Sasha and Melanie snicker at him. If the two of them are going to be friends, Jon thinks, God help them all.
Only Georgie can manage to frown while simultaneously arching an eyebrow in a knowing fashion. Jon tries very hard to pretend he doesn’t understand what she thinks she knows. “So you have a degree in library science.”
“No,” Martin says, voice still muffled by his palm. “I don’t have a degree. But I worked in the library at the Institute for ten years before I got assigned to the Archives, so I kind of know what I’m doing.”
“Right. Still. What do you have to do, as an Archivist, in China, that is life or death?”
Protect my team, Jon wants to say but doesn’t. The ritual, according to the Primes, can’t succeed; Orsinov’s Unknowing will collapse on itself. They’re probably going to try to stop it anyway, because he doesn’t doubt that Orsinov will survive the ritual’s failure and try again, and they can’t let anyone else fall prey to that. This world tour, retracing Gertrude’s steps, won’t give them any information to help them with that. But Elias doesn’t know they know that, and Jon can’t risk what he might do to the people he loves if he doesn’t obey orders.
“It’s…a long story,” he tries.
Georgie shrugs. “I’ve done my recordings for the week and I’ve got plenty of time for editing. And I thought you got off early today.”
Pat turns up then with everyone’s lunch. Jon waits until he heads back behind the bar to say, “I don’t…know where to begin, honestly. Trust me when I say it’s all pretty unbelievable.”
“You’re an archivist. We left believable behind a while ago.”
“Ha, ha.” Jon gives Georgie his best glare. As usual, she sticks her tongue out at him and rolls her hand for him to continue. “I—really, I don’t know where to—”
“Jon.” Martin sets down his glass, reaches over, and covers Jon’s hand with his own. Jon meets his eyes instinctively. “In thirty words or less, what is the story behind this trip?”
“There are monsters in the world, tied to different fears,” Jon answers immediately. “They’re trying to reshape the world in their own image and basically kickstart the Apocalypse. We’re trying to stop them.”
Martin sits back, looking miserable, and it’s only then Jon registers the wash of static receding from his mind. “Sorry, Jon. I really should have asked first.”
Jon grabs Martin’s hand before he can pull it away and squeezes. “I’d have sat here dithering to the end of time if you hadn’t. Thank you, Martin.”
Martin manages a tentative smile. Georgie’s frown has eased back a little. “Huh. How many of these things are there?”
“Monsters? Or rituals?” Jon blinks at Georgie. “You believe me?”
“Well, yeah.” Georgie waves a hand as if to say duh. “It’s not like I didn’t know there are monsters in the world.”
Sasha’s hand tightens on her fork, and she pushes back from the table abruptly. “Be right back. I—I need a minute.” She strides purposefully for the front door.
“Sasha, don’t—” Jon begins to call after her, but too late; she’s out the door.
“Did I say something wrong?” Georgie looks concerned.
Martin sighs heavily. “I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you’ve seen…monsters before.”
“Yeah? What’s that got to do with anything?” Georgie asks with a deepening frown.
“Oh…damn.” Jon looks at Georgie, and now he can feel it, too—the static building behind his eyes, an almost imperceptible itch beneath his skin. This shouldn’t be happening, he’s taken two statements already this week, first Michael’s and then Tim and Martin’s, and even if Sasha siphoned off most of that one…he can’t possibly need one this badly, not now. But it’s not need, it’s want, it’s a desire at this point, so he can fight it…
“The Institute serves one of those fear things we’re talking about,” Tim tells her, his voice subdued. “In our case, it’s about knowledge and secrets and…hidden information and stuff like that. We usually just call it the Eye, it’s quicker than most of the other names. But one of the ways it sort of feeds itself is with other people’s stories of their spooky encounters. Usually with something touched by one of the other beings.”
“You’ve got a story to tell,” Martin explains. “The Eye wants it. And Sasha and Jon can both…” He hesitates, looking at Jon. “Sense it?”
“Better than saying ‘smell it,’ I suppose,” Jon says softly. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, forcing the static back.
Georgie blinks. “I mean…I’ll tell you about it. If you want.”
“That…would probably not be a good idea. I can’t—we can’t take but so many statements in any given period of time.” Jon opens his eyes, feeling a bit calmer. “Not without wearing ourselves out, or hurting ourselves. And I’ve had two already this week.”
“And we’ve had one each,” Tim adds, gesturing to himself and Martin. “Right? You just read—”
“Statement of Manuela Dominguez, regarding her unconventional religious beliefs and their intersection with her project aboard the space station Daedalus,” Martin recites. “And you read yours yesterday, it was—”
“Not, as it turns out, a Stranger statement. The Web. Statement of Darren Harlow, regarding a failed psychology experiment at the University of Surrey.” Tim rubs his forehead and sighs. “Actually, I need to talk to you two about that one. We may have a problem.”
Melanie looks back and forth between the two of them, blinking. Jon sighs, too. “Anyway, yes, it’s…there’s a lot. The ritual we’re trying to stop right now is the Stranger’s. It’s—kind of the opposite of the Eye? The ritual’s called the Unknowing. We’re still piecing together what it’s all about, but anyway, that’s what I’m about to go haring off around the world about. Which I would really rather not do, but I don’t have much of a choice. Our boss made that perfectly clear.” He can’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.
Sasha comes back in, looking much calmer, and slips back into her seat with an apology. Melanie looks at Tim. “So what about you, then? If he can ask questions and make people answer, and they can tell when someone’s got a story—”
“It’s not quite that. It’s more—” Sasha spreads out her hands. “Less stories and more secrets. Things people haven’t told. At least, that’s how it is for me. The ones who come to make statements and will talk to anyone, they’re not as interesting to me. It’s the ones who just…don’t want to talk about it, I guess. Or choose not to. Sometimes I know things without meaning to, but I’m trying to throttle that back. Jon is more…all of it.”
Jon nods. “I have the—the question thing, too. And the knowing, although it’s not just hidden things, it’s facts or important information. It’s not as bad as it could be, but it’s getting worse. On top of that, there’s the compulsion to read out the statements, and…it’s just a lot.”
“None of which actually answers my question,” Melanie says. “What did you get out of all this?”
“Oh. I can…look at people, or things, and see if they’ve had anything to do with one of the fear…things,” Tim says. “They glow different colors.”
“You can see auras,” Georgie supplies.
“Not—exactly. I mean, I can’t say ‘oh, you have a calm personality’ or ‘you’re a very troubled person’ or anything like that. But if you’ve bumped into one of the powers, if I concentrate, I can see where it marked you and…usually figure out from there.”
Georgie folds her hands on the table and meets his eye. “What color is mine, then? Or am I making it up?”
Tim hesitates, then takes a deep breath. His eyes go slightly unfocused, and Jon feels the faint crackle of static—not quite the same as when Martin asks questions or Sasha blurts out a secret, but close, like the dial on a disused radio station turned a single click in a different direction. After a moment, Tim’s shoulders relax and he blinks. “White. Bright white. The one you’ve met is Terminus. The End.” He hesitates. “Death. Am I right?”
There’s a short pause before Georgie looks at Jon and says, “You’ve got a good bunch here.”
Jon looks at both Tim and Martin and says, softly, “I know.”