Gerard stares up at the lighted window of the house across the street, hugging his shoulders.
Somebody is there, at any rate. She isn’t the sort to just leave lights on if she isn’t going to be home, or if she’s gone to bed. And it’s a bit early for that, really. Theoretically, he guesses it could be one of her housemates, but somehow, he doesn’t think so.
Gerard takes a deep breath to steady his sudden nerves. Relaxing his grip on his shoulders, he looks down at his hands. They’re rock-steady and pain-free. He feels solid, energized…healthy.
He also feels more than a little guilty. He knows he did what he had to—and he’s been in this life long enough to know that people like, well, like him are somewhat limited in their choices. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t choices. He just isn’t sure what there might be outside of “feed or starve,” and since he doesn’t want his family to worry about him on sight, he chose the former. There has to be a third option. One that won’t hurt…well, anybody.
He just needs to talk it over with them to figure out what it is.
Another deep breath, and Gerard crosses the street, slipping from shadow to shadow out of habit. The door needs a fresh coat of paint, and the knocker could do with a polish, but it’s the same familiar door, with—crucially—the same familiar knob and keyhole. He stoops down and examines the cluster of smooth, fist-sized river rocks next to the stoop, then plucks up one with a thin band of ocher across the center and turns it over. The key is still there, tucked behind a false panel. Gerard unlocks the door, replaces the key, and slips inside, taking care to lock the door behind him.
“Who’s there?” Melanie’s voice from the living room—just a couple of meters away—wavers between angry challenge and wobbly fear.
Instead of answering, Gerard moves forward slowly and steps into the room.
It isn’t just Melanie—he expected that. Martin stands in front of her, the same expression and posture he always gets when he put himself between them and danger, be it something called up by or in relation to whatever they’d hunted down or the women who controlled their lives for so long. He expected that, too. What he didn’t expect was Martin to be covered with bandages, encircling both arms and plastered to his neck and face, his left hand nearly immobilized, his shirt likely indelibly stained with blood and viscera. Or for there to be other people in the room.
He barely notices them, hardly spares them a glance. His eyes are fixed on Martin and Melanie, on the shock and fear and, yes, suspicion on both their faces. All the words he hoped, planned, to say stick in his throat. He simply stares.
Slowly, Martin reaches up with one trembling hand and pulls his glasses down—not all the way off, just past the end of his nose. His eyes go unfocused, and the familiar soft static-y sound fills the room. The pain that accompanies it is much duller than usual; Gerard doesn’t know if it’s because he belongs less to the Beholding than before or if it’s just that he’s used to it now.
After a moment, the static fades. Martin slides his glasses back onto his face and says in a small, pained, regret-laden voice, “Oh, Gerry.”
Gerard isn’t conscious of his decision to move. One minute he’s by the door, the next he’s across the room, arms outstretched, and both Martin and Melanie are hugging him. They’re warm and solid, so warm it almost burns, but it feels right, too, and oh, he’s missed them both so much. He doesn’t bother to try and fight back the tears pricking at his eyes. For long moments, they just stand there like that, clinging to one another. Martin trembles slightly, which isn’t a surprise, he always feels things more deeply than the others do.
Then Melanie pulls back from the hug, hauls back her arm, and punches Gerard in the shoulder. Hard.
“Ow!”
“‘Mother, may I?’” Melanie hisses at him, voice dripping with anger and dismay. “You fucking idiot.”
“Look,” Gerard starts defensively, pulling back as well. Then his brain catches up with what Melanie just said. “Wait, how did you…”
He trails off as he finally registers the three people sitting on Melanie’s sofa, staring up at him with varying degrees of shock and confusion. Two of them are men Gerard has never seen before, one also bandaged and with a jumper Gerard recognizes as Martin’s draped over his shoulders like a blanket. The other is the woman who claimed to work in the Archives, the one who was almost taken by the thing that wasn’t the Corruption.
“Oh,” he says, a bit stupidly.
“I take it that it, in fact, can be?” the woman says with a lifted eyebrow.
“Uh, yeah.” Martin sighs and waves a hand at the other three. “Sasha James, Tim Stoker, Jonathan Sims…this is Gerard Keay. Somehow.”
“It’s not what you think,” Gerard says. Anxiety curls at his stomach as he realizes that Martin and Melanie were probably informed of his death, at least in some part. They have to be thinking…
Melanie snorts at him. “It’s not what we think? So you did fake your death and waste a year and a half avoiding your promises instead of somehow making a deal with one of Them that got you brought back to life at a terrible cost?”
Gerard pauses. “Okay, so maybe it is what you think.”
“Sit down, you moron.” Melanie points at Martin. “You, too. How long has it been? I’m guessing him digging his hands into your back didn’t help matters.”
What of Martin’s cheeks are visible under the bandages turn pink, and Gerard realizes with horror that emotion probably wasn’t the source of his shaking moments ago. He wasn’t careful with the hug. “Not long enough for more, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Still.” Melanie waves for him to sit down and points a threatening finger at Gerard, then disappears in the direction of the kitchen.
Gerard takes a seat, slowly, and looks at the woman introduced—finally—as Sasha. “I guess you played your tape for them.”
“I mean, that was the whole point,” Sasha says with a shrug. “So Jon would have a record of what happened.”
“I thought you were recording for the Archivist,” Gerard says, puzzled. “You says it was for your boss.”
“I am the Head Archivist.” The bandaged man, presumably Jonathan Sims, speaks softly.
Dread runs through Gerard’s body. “What happened to Gertrude?”
Both Jonathan—Jon—and Tim open their mouths to answer, but Martin beats them to it, his voice rising in volume and pitch. “You were working with Gertrude Robinson?”
“Who’s Gertrude Robinson?” Melanie calls from the direction of the kitchen.
“She was the Archivist before Jon,” Martin calls back without taking his eyes off of Gerard.
Melanie appears in the doorway, holding the weirdly abstract mug that she always uses as a passive-aggressive capstone to punishment for a transgression or fuck-up, which, honestly, fair. “So let me get this straight. You went haring off around the world at the drop of a hat to help out someone working for the Magnus Institute, in the Archives no less—without an employment contract to protect you—got yourself killed in the process, made a deal with the devil to get brought back, turned up at the Institute in the middle of a crisis, and deliberately put yourself in a position to piss off your new patron so bad he reminded you what killed you in the first place in a very physical manner. Now you’ve turned up here to, what, spook at us?”
“Well, when you put it that way. Christ.” Gerard reaches for the mug. “How much lemon did you put in this?”
“I’m not that mad at you. Yet.” Melanie hands him the tea and sits down with a huff. “I make no promises about the milk.”
“Tell me you’re siblings without telling me you’re siblings,” Tim says, not quite under his breath. Sasha snorts at him.
Jon rubs at his forehead. “Right. I…” He looks up at Martin with an extremely vulnerable expression. “Are we—is this place safe?”
“Should be, unless Andy took something important with him when he left.” Martin directs the last part of this sentence at Melanie.
She shakes her head. “Knocked a couple points out of alignment, but it’s nothing I haven’t fixed before.”
“Points? Like a pentagram?” Tim is the only one of the three people sitting opposite Gerard and his siblings who seems like he knows anything about…well, anything. “You’re not a witch, are you?”
“Nah. And technically it’s a—what’s the shape called?”
“Tetradecagram,” Martin says automatically. Gerard can’t help the proud grin that splits his face.
Melanie nods. “Okay, so we sort of cobbled it together from a couple different sources, but it’s kept us safe thus far.”
Tim frowns at Martin. “So why didn’t you have one at your place?”
“I did. That’s the only reason she didn’t manage to get at me,” Martin says quietly. “A couple tried squeezing in through the gaps and fried almost instantly. She probably would’ve broken it sooner or later if she’d really wanted to, though.”
“Okay, more important question. If you know how to set these things—”
“Why didn’t I set one at the Institute?” Martin completes. Tim nods. “First of all, the candles are kind of a key component of it, and I wasn’t about to risk actually setting the Archives on fire if—”
“Wait, you work in the Archives?” Gerard blurts out, staring at Martin in horror.
“I didn’t get a choice,” Martin snaps back. “Elias appointed me to the Archives, God only knows why, since he sure as hell didn’t want Jon knowing what’s really going on. Maybe he just knew I’d eventually try to get away if I was anywhere fucking else in the Institute and he wanted to keep me trapped. Either way, it wasn’t a yes or no question, it was a ‘pack your shit and get it downstairs so everything is in place before your new boss shows up’ and putting a really sharp desk ornament in my way so I cut my hand open and bled on the dotted line before I could tell him where to shove it, although knowing Elias he would’ve had to pull out his head and the stick first and probably still use a hammer. And, again, you have officially lost the right to lecture me about my job, because at least the Institute’s employment contracts have guarantees.”
From the shocked and slightly awed expressions on the faces of the people on the sofa, Gerard guesses they’ve never seen Martin lose his temper, let alone in full combat mode. Gerard has, however, and while Martin might be right, that doesn’t mean he has to let him know that. He folds his arms over his chest. “Uh-huh. And it’s going to benefit you in the long run…how, exactly?”
Martin sucks in a deep breath, but Melanie opens her mouth before he can, leaning around him and hitting Gerard with a glare hot enough to melt glass. “You lost the right to make that argument when you told us you backed your mum and Lily about Martin Looking for books, even though you knew where it would lead too.”
Guilt stabs Gerard in the gut and deflates him instantly. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s just…God, the Archives?”
“Again, I didn’t get a choice.” Martin sighs, also deflating. “Besides. I’d probably have ended up down there eventually, let’s be realistic. It’s just a damn good thing Elias didn’t decide to appoint me Archivist.”
Gerard shivers. “Let’s not think about that. Uh, no offense,” he adds, looking over at Jon.
“None taken?” Jon doesn’t sound too sure of himself. He looks up at Martin. “Ah…second of all?”
“Huh? Oh.” Martin takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes tiredly for a moment. Gerard notices he keeps them closed until he’s slid the frames back into place. “It’s designed very specifically to keep out the Fourteen. And one of them…is the Institute, kind of. At any rate, it belongs there. Can’t keep it out if it’s part of the very stones of the place.”
Jon pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay. Okay, we…I think there are a lot of questions that need to be answered here. I just…need to figure out where to start.”
Gerard holds up a finger. “Can I start? Nobody ever answered my first question. What happened to Gertrude Robinson?”
“She’s dead,” Jon says. “Or…at least that’s what I was told. That she had ‘unexpectedly passed away’ last year.”
“Has…I hate to ask this, but I know the old bat. Has anyone seen her body?” Gerard asks hesitantly. He wants to believe she’s still alive…somehow…but he’s also terrified that she died at the hands of those two Hunters and her corpse is rotting somewhere in America.
Tim slowly raises his hand. “I…found her. Tonight. In those tunnels under the Institute. The, um, the police are looking for her body now. It’s a maze down there, I think it’s the remains of the old Millbank Prison, and I just—I was panicking and scared and I can’t remember where I found her.”
“And she’s still recognizable after being dead for more than a year?” Melanie frowns. “I mean, he is, but I think we can all agree he’s not a normal case. The air must be pretty good down there if you could still make out it was her.”
Tim barks out a surprised-sounding laugh. “It’s cold and dry, that’s for sure. And I think there might be limestone in there, maybe. Either way, yeah, she was, um, pretty well preserved. Actually, I’m surprised I recognized her. I only saw her like twice, and always from a distance.”
“How did she die?” Jon asks. He pulls Martin’s jumper more tightly around his shoulders, not seeming to realize he’s doing it. “Could you tell?”
“Yeah, I could tell.” Tim takes a deep breath. “It wasn’t natural, Jon. She was shot.”
“Shot?” Gerard repeats. Oh, God, it was the Hunters, that’s why they were in America, they shot Gertrude and fled the country…hang on, though, that doesn’t make sense. He turns to Martin, forgetting for a moment that he doesn’t know what happened to him. “Wouldn’t that sort of thing have been talked about? If a couple of Hunters took out the Archivist?”
“Probably. But it wasn’t a Hunter that did it,” Martin replies.
“It wasn’t?” Gerard blinks, confused. Wait, how the hell does Martin know that?
Something flashes in Jon’s eyes, a look of pure devastation, there and gone in a second. Gerard almost asks about it, but Sasha speaks up first. “How do you know?”
Martin stares into his mug of tea. “Because he showed me. Put the memory in my head as a warning.” He gives a bitter laugh. “Not really something I can go to the police with, and he’s not stupid, there won’t be any evidence. He just wanted me to live with the knowledge that he did it, and could do it again, and there’s not a whole lot I can do about it, is there?”
Gerard’s stomach lurches. Melanie’s frown deepens. “Put the memory in your head? That sounds like a…wait, who did kill Gertrude Robinson?”
“Martin?” Jon’s voice is slightly plaintive. There’s a lot of nuance and emotion packed into the two syllables of the name.
Martin doesn’t answer right away. After a second, however, he says softly, “Elias.”