Martin opened the door to Jon’s office cautiously and found him pushing the tape recorder to one side, staring at something on his desk. He looked…worried wasn’t exactly the word. Martin couldn’t quite put a finger on it.
“Hey,” he said carefully.
“Oh—Martin.” Jon looked up, startled. “Is, ah, is everything all right?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine. It’s just ten minutes past closing time is all.”
“Oh. I…I hadn’t realized it was so late.” Jon glanced at his laptop and rubbed his face. “You go ahead. I’ll meet you at the bookshop.”
Martin felt a little prick of worry nag at him. It was Tuesday—they didn’t normally meet on Tuesdays—although he guessed Jon probably realized Martin and Gerry would be worried about Melanie and might need the distraction. More than that, Jon seemed off. Something was upsetting him. “Jon, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just a bit tired is all.” Jon gestured to the mess spread across his desk, which was becoming more and more typical for him these days as he stopped caring if the team saw him as “professional” and eased towards comfortable; he always put things away neatly when he was finished, but he saw no point in wasting time on organizing things he was just going to pull apart and shuffle through anyway. Martin couldn’t imagine how he was able to work like that, but then, the Mark Jon had from the Spiral was vastly different from Martin’s in every conceivable way. “I’ve only got one or two little things to finish up.”
“Do you want me to wait for you, then?”
“No—no, I’ll be all right. This won’t take long, and then I’ll be there. Safer this way.” Jon managed a smile that almost reached his eyes and made something in Martin’s chest dance a little. “I’ll call you when I leave.”
“All right,” Martin said guardedly. Jon was hiding something. He’d probably been digging into one of the tapes on his own and was trying, in his own way, to keep it from Martin, which almost certainly meant it was something to do with the Buried; of all the Marks Martin had, that one was the deepest besides the Eye, and Jon was even more militant than Melanie and Gerry about protecting Martin from it. It was oddly sweet. “Just…be careful, all right? We’ll see you soon.”
“I will. No more than an hour,” Jon promised. “And I will call if it’s going to be longer. Not text.”
At that, Martin couldn’t help but laugh. “Fine. See you later then.”
He withdrew from the office and returned to the cluster of desks where the assistants sat. “Dinner? I’ve just got to stop and pick up a book I have on reserve first. Neens said it came in this morning.”
“As long as it’s not takeaway. I am not setting foot in a restaurant today,” Sasha said with a mock-frown. In response to Martin’s raised eyebrow, she added, “It’s Valentine’s Day.”
“Ugh.” Martin wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Lost track of the date.”
Tim looked back and forth between the two of them, something slightly guilty in his eyes. “You’re not fans of the holiday?”
“An entire day where every store, restaurant, and advertisement for weeks on end proclaims that you’re only worthwhile if you’re in a romantic relationship and there’s clearly something wrong with you if you’re not whilst also creating obligations on the people who are to make big, elaborate, public showings that they’re better at it than everyone else, at the same time setting up the potential for situations where at least one party ends up embarrassed at best and actively endangered at worst? Of course I’m a fan, what’s not to like?” Sasha deadpanned. She stuffed her laptop into its case. “Amatonormativity is a hell of a drug. Do you have plans for the evening, or are you coming with us?”
Martin couldn’t resist adding, “Or do your plans for the evening involve a certain bookseller?”
It probably should not have been as satisfying as it was that Martin was able to make Tim blush quite that hard, but he chalked up the win in his mental tally book anyway. “I—we didn’t—no. I don’t have…plans.”
“Intentions maybe?” Sasha teased. “Does Martin need to give you the Shovel Talk?”
“I am not the person you need to be afraid of if you hurt him.” Martin considered. “Or at least not the main one. Anyway, are you coming over, or do I have to critique his soppy lovesick poetry that owes more to Tennyson than Ginsberg, however much he wants to insist otherwise?”
Tim’s face was burning so much it was a wonder he didn’t set off the fire suppressant system. “Tell you what. I drove in today, so why don’t we all go together so I’m not tempted to drive to Malaysia?”
“Can you even drive to Malaysia?” Sasha wondered. “Like, are there enough connecting roads between here and there that you could make the journey by car?”
The debate that followed was pointless and silly and reminiscent of the ones Martin frequently had with his brother and sister, which somehow made Martin both miss Melanie a little less and miss her a little more. There was an unusual amount of traffic on the road for a Tuesday, or so it seemed, so it took them a little longer than normal to make the drive to Cinnamon Rose Books, but they finally made it. Martin largely tuned out the debate on whether they’d have got there faster if they’d taken the Underground and started for the door. Before he even reached it, Gerry opened it with a smile and his arms out for a hug.
“Had a feeling you’d be coming by today,” he said. “Neenie told you she was going out of town, right?”
“Yeah, but not where exactly. Just that she had some research to chase down.” Martin chewed his lip briefly as he eased out of the hug. “I probably should have gone with her, but…”
“Without knowing where, that’d be difficult,” Gerry completed. “And probably pricey. She’ll be okay, Mart, if it was dangerous she’d have brought someone along, even if it was Jon.” He paused briefly as he glanced at Tim and Sasha. “Come to think of it, did he go with her? I notice he didn’t come with you. Hey,” he added, taking Tim’s hand and bowing low over it to bestow a kiss on the back of it.
“Hey,” Tim said, sounding flustered but pleased. “Uh, you didn’t—is Jon going out of town?”
“No, he’ll be along, he just had some things to finish up,” Martin said. “He was the one who suggested we come over in the first place.”
“Probably wants to tell us what Melanie’s up to,” Sasha said, edging into the shop. “She was in his office talking to him before she left. Bet she made a statement about whatever it was.”
Martin recontextualized Jon’s behavior in light of that information and suppressed a sigh. Melanie was definitely doing something she shouldn’t be doing on her own.
Sasha offered to cook, and Martin volunteered to help her, knowing that if he sat still he’d fret himself to the moon. Following her directions helped soothe some, not all, of his anxiety. He couldn’t even really explain why he was anxious, except that he was on tenterhooks waiting for Jon to get there so he could find out what Melanie was up to.
“It’ll have to cook for half an hour, so that’ll give Jon time to get here,” Sasha said at last, taking the dish from him and sliding it into the ocean.
Martin glanced at his phone and did a double-take. All his worries came back in a rush. “We’ve been here almost an hour already.”
“Yeah?” Sasha frowned at him.
“Shit…Jon said he’d call when he was on his way, or if he was going to get held up.” Martin chewed his lip for a moment in indecision, then pulled up his contacts and dialed Jon. The call went straight to voice mail.
“His phone probably died,” Tim said, evidently reading Martin’s worry on his face. “You know how he gets, he forgets to plug it in half the time and he’s always surprised by how little battery he has left. He’ll be here soon, I’m sure.”
“Yeah,” Martin said softly. He glanced at Gerry. “I just…hope you’re wrong.”
“If he told you he was coming, he’s coming,” Gerry assured him with a squeeze of his shoulder. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you, brother mine. He wouldn’t go out of town without telling you he was going.”
Martin felt a blush rising in his cheeks. Sasha bumped him with her hip and a teasing grin. “He’s right. If there’s one of us Jon would never lie to, it would be you. And not just because you can read his mind.”
“I can’t—Christ, Sasha!” Martin buried his face in his hands, or started to. As he did, he caught sight of an unexpected object on the kitchen counter—a tape recorder. Distracted momentarily, he reached for it. “Ger, is this yours?”
“Is what mine?” Gerry frowned at the recorder. “No, I’ve got a boom box for my tapes. I don’t record. Did one of you bring that?”
“I thought we only had the two,” Tim said. “The official one Jon uses for statements and the one you’ve been using.”
“Yeah, and this isn’t one of them. Huh, weird. Maybe Umberto found it somewhere.” Martin looked inside. There was a tape, set all the way back at the beginning, which probably meant it was blank. Just to be certain, he pressed PLAY.
To his surprise, Jon’s voice came out of the device, sounding incredibly shaken. “I…er…we…we didn’t—“ He broke off for a moment, then came back slightly stronger. “Statement of Lawrence Moore. Regarding something that was not his cousin. Original statement given twelfth June, 2001.”
Ice water flooded Martin’s veins. It wasn’t just the weirdness of the tape being there, since none of them had brought it. It was also the statement itself. It was clearly a Stranger statement, and dimly, he was aware of Gerry stepping silently over to wrap his arms around Tim from behind, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from the recorder. The thing described in the statement was so clearly the same thing described in Amy Patel’s statement, the thing that was not her friend Graham…something proved at the end when the old man showed up with a table exactly matching the description of the one in Artifact Storage, and coalesced into horrid certainty when two men who were almost certainly Breekon and Hope carted it away.
“Statement ends,” Jon’s voice said, and it was only when he heard the way it shook that it occurred to Martin he had read the entire statement calmly and without undue emotion. “I found this in the folder marked 9910602, where Gertrude’s tape had indicated I would find the statement of Dekker himself. There is nothing else in there, but I think it tells me what I need to know. This thing, it’s tied to the table, it—“ There was what sounded like a sniff. “I found a tape. It, I was actually looking for a blank one to record this, and…and I…”
He broke off, and there was the sound of another tape recorder starting up before a wholly unfamiliar voice spoke. “—don’t see how you can stand it down there.”
The voice that responded made Martin gasp—it was his own. “Oh, come on, it’s not so bad.”
“Maybe under the old Archivist, but that…stuck-up prig…”
“C’mon, Rosie, be fair.”
Rosie? Martin’s eyes widened. He remembered that conversation now—in his own memory, they’d both been laughing, it had been a joke, but that woman sounded so…so vicious…
“What,” Sasha said slowly, “the fuck is this?”
“That can’t be Rosie,” Tim said, shaking his head. “That didn’t sound anything like Rosie…”
Gerry suddenly inhaled sharply. Martin met his eyes—and suddenly understood. “The table. The fucking table. She went and looked at it, o-or something, and that, that thing, it got her…”
“It was after you,” Gerry said, looking at Sasha, who went ashen. “The night of the attack—you said the table was in Artifact Storage? That’s what it was, it had to have been. If you’d gone in that room, it would have been you it killed and took the place of, but—”
“Wait,” Tim interrupted, suddenly pulling away from Gerry’s arms. “What was that statement number he found this one in?”
“9910602,” Martin said, and then felt the blood drain from his face. “That’s the one he went looking for today. He just recorded this tape today?”
“How is it on your kitchen counter?” Sasha asked Gerry.
Gerry shrugged helplessly. “Beats the hell out of me. More to the point, why is it on my kitchen counter?”
“So we’d listen to it?” Tim suggested.
Martin gripped the back of the chair in front of him. “Oh, God. Oh, God, that’s what Jon was staying for. He’s going to—we have to stop him.”
“Come on, I’ll drive.” Tim grabbed his keys, but Martin was already halfway out the door. He could hear Sasha and Tim arguing behind him.
“As long as it took us to get here—”
“It’s past rush hour, we’ll be fine.”
“We don’t have time, we have to get there as fast as possible.”
“But to take the Tube, we’d have to change trains…”
“If you two don’t hurry up, Martin is going to run the whole way there and beat you both,” Gerry said, a bit dryly.
Martin was barely listening. God only knew what Jon was planning, if Jon had an actual plan, but they couldn’t leave him to do it alone. He’d get hurt, or worse…
He was just turning for the nearby Tube stop, Tim and Sasha be damned, when Jon suddenly burst through the entrance at a run. He didn’t slow down, just flew straight down the sidewalk and into Martin’s arms.
Martin gave a startled oomph and pulled Jon close on instinct. He smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and he was shaking and gasping for air. There was a prickle of static behind Martin’s eyes, and when he realized what it was, he squeezed his eyes shut and hoped. If Jon had confronted the…what had he called it? The Not-Rosie…if he’d confronted it, what if it had killed him and taken his place?
No, he told himself. He’d recognized Jon’s voice on the recording—he wouldn’t have recognized it if Jon had been…had been changed. It would have been an unfamiliar voice like the one that purported to be Rosie’s…
“Jon, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he said instead.
“It’s not,” Jon choked out, and Martin could breathe easier. It was Jon, the voices still matched. Whatever had happened, Jon was still himself…terrified out of his mind, but himself.
“What’s going on? What happened?” Tim demanded. He sounded angry, but Martin knew him well enough by now to know that he was scared, and when he got scared he got angry. “And how did that fucking tape get to the bookstore?”
The words fell from Jon’s lips in a panicked, incoherent rush. Martin caught “Michael” and “tunnels” and “blood” and “sorry”—rather a lot of “sorry”, actually—but they didn’t add up to a coherent picture. Understanding was not improved by the fact that Jon was still trying to catch his breath, or the fact that his face was half-buried in Martin’s chest.
“J-Jon. Jon.” Martin finally broke into the rambling. He took Jon’s face in his hands as gently as he could, cradling his chin and guiding him to look up at him. “We’re here, we’ve got you. Take a breath and tell me what happened.”
Jon placed his hands over Martin’s, but he didn’t pull them away—just held them, tentatively, like he was afraid of being pushed away or worse. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and when he spoke, he still sounded scared and upset, but at least he was articulate. “It was something Melanie said—before she left, she asked me who the woman at the front desk was that had called to say she was coming that first time, and she seemed so sure of what she remembered, but it was Rosie who called. One of the tapes Basira brought said changeling on the front, so I listened, and…and I followed leads, and I eventually realized that, that the thing, the Not-Them, had taken Rosie’s place, and that it was…I thought it was tied to the table. I took an axe up to Artifact Storage and I destroyed it—I was so sure it would at least hurt it—but Michael, the Distortion, i-it showed up and told me…” He flinched and broke off, closing his eyes. “It got me away, i-it threw me a door, but I was in the tunnels, I was trying to get away, and the Not-Rosie was after me…God, the things it was saying, I don’t—”
“You don’t have to tell us,” Martin said quickly. It was only partly because of how visibly distressed Jon was; it was also because he could feel the prickle of desire under his skin and he refused, refused, to feed the Eye with Jon’s trauma, not when he was still raw and vulnerable. “We can…you can tell us later, if you want. But you got away? Is it still down there?”
“M-maybe. I don’t know. It’s trapped. There was—the voice we heard, i-it was…an old man, he said we needed to talk. He was…going to explain a few things. He’d started, and I just—I needed a moment, I needed a break, i-it was too much.” Tears welled up in Jon’s eyes again, and Martin couldn’t stop himself from swiping one away with his thumb. “I went out for a cigarette, and when I came back…he was dead. There was, there was so much blood—a-and a pipe, someone…someone came in while I was out and beat him to death.”
Martin’s blood ran cold again. Unable to stop himself, he wrapped Jon in a tight hug; Jon clung to him like a drowning man. Tim and Sasha joined the hug, hesitantly; Gerry managed to put a hand on Jon’s shoulder, making him flinch, but his head flicked back and forth along the street. “You think whoever did it is following you?”
“No—oh, God, I never thought of that.” Jon tensed. “I should—whoever it was had gone by the time I got back, but—”
“If they were going to kill you too, they’d have waited,” Tim muttered. “Great. Another dead body in the tunnels.”
“I-it wasn’t—we’d come up into the Archives,” Jon said. “It was…my office, I…”
“Your office?” Sasha repeated. “Wasn’t Gertrude’s blood all over the desk in her office too? God, we’ve got to get back there and clean this up before someone else finds it or the police are going to get involved and you’re going to be on the hook for it.”
“Sasha!” Tim and Martin exclaimed in unison.
Jon inhaled sharply and pushed away from Martin. As much as Martin didn’t want to, he eased back, and the others did the same. “No, she’s right, I—I can’t, what am I going to tell them? They’re going to know I was in the building after hours, and what if there’s CCTV footage in Artifact Storage? I’m, they’re going to—”
“There’s got to be footage of whoever did it going down there,” Tim said, sounding uncertain. “Unless they came in through the outer door.”
“Either way, seems you’ve got two choices,” Gerry said. “Either make it really obvious where you are, wait for the police to catch up to you, and hope they buy the truth despite the fact that you’ve got the old man’s blood on your shoes”—Jon flinched as he looked down at his feet—“or lay low for a few days until they figure out who actually did it. You’re going to be a suspect either way, and I’ve got a feeling the cops aren’t going to be particularly interested in the truth. They want the fastest solution they can make stick.”
“There shouldn’t be anyone else at the Institute this late,” Tim said. “If the three of us can’t get in early enough tomorrow to take care of things before anyone notices…maybe we can at least spin a good enough story that the cops don’t look at you. Or think it was self-defense or something. I mean, we had an intruder in the Archives once before, right?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Martin promised. “It’s going to be okay, Jon.”
“You can stay at the shop for a few days,” Gerry offered. “I’ve got it warded, and I’ll be there, so—”
“No,” Martin, Tim, and Sasha said in unison. It was hard to say who looked more startled, Gerry or Jon.
Martin tried to keep his voice calm as he elaborated. “It’s too dangerous. Remember, that was where Basira and Detective Tonner came to interview us after…they knew we were staying there.”
Tim nodded. “That’s like the third place they’d go to look for you. You could, I don’t know, hide in my closet or something, but…”
“No,” Sasha said. “You can’t hide with any of us. It’s…honestly, it’s best none of us know where you’re holing up. We can figure out a way to get in touch with you when it’s safe, but in the meantime, what we don’t know, we can’t accidentally reveal or have dragged out of us or whatever.”
Martin did not want to agree with her. He did not want to let Jon go on the run on his own. He’d like to think he was strong enough to resist anything. But at the same time…he knew he wasn’t. Mundane interrogations, certainly. But if someone with the power of one of the Fourteen tried?
“She’s right,” he said reluctantly. “It’s…it’s safer.”
“I know,” Jon practically whispered. “I don’t…I won’t put any of you in danger. I—I need to find somewhere else. I’ll be in touch if I can, but…” He choked slightly and looked away.
Gerry nodded slowly. He looped an arm through Tim’s and nudged Sasha’s shoulder, pointing her back in the direction of the bookshop. To Martin, he said quietly, “Ten minutes.”
Before Martin could come up with an appropriate response to that—or even manage a what?—Gerry, Tim, and Sasha were gone, leaving him and Jon alone on the sidewalk, staring at one another.
Ten minutes wasn’t a lot of time, but Martin understood why Gerry had set that as the limit. Much more and they would be running the risk of being caught. It was enough of a risk that everyone knew Jon and Martin were getting close—even if Tim and Sasha kept silent about that, someone upstairs would mention it sooner or later and he’d be in for a heavy round of interrogation, or worse. If they stood here too long, he’d have the police on him before Jon even had a chance to get somewhere safe. It wasn’t forever—it couldn’t be forever—but they still weren’t going to see each other for who knew how long, and they only had ten minutes to say whatever they were going to say at this point. It would have to be enough.
Jon spoke first, his voice low and shaking. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“Jon.” Martin held out his hands, not knowing what else to do and hoping Jon would take them. “We were on our way back to the Institute to find you. The tape you recorded…ended up here somehow. I don’t understand, but…i-if you hadn’t come, we’d have come to you. Or found the mess and no you, and I’d have torn London apart trying to find you. You came because you needed to.”
Jon reached out hesitantly, then bypassed Martin’s hands and hugged him tightly. Martin could feel him shaking and wrapped him up in as tight a hug as he could without hurting him.
“I wish you could come,” Jon whispered, the words once again muffled by Martin’s jumper. “It’s so much easier to feel brave when you’re there.”
Martin closed his eyes for a moment. He wished he could go, too. He didn’t want to let Jon out of his sight, not when he was so vulnerable, not when he was in all kinds of danger. The temptation to say screw it and run off to Ireland or Scotland or France was almost overwhelming. The only thing that held him back was the knowledge that he was just as tempting a target for agents of the Fourteen as Jon was, if not more; the two of them together would lead anyone coming after Jon straight to them. But goddamn, he just wanted Jon to be okay.
The feeling that had been building up slowly, like a rolling wave on a stormy ocean, since the moment over a year ago when Jon had brought him a mug of tea and quietly said I’m sorry about your brother, reached a crest and crashed down on Martin with a force that nearly drove him to his knees. He’d known his friendship with Jon didn’t feel quite the same as the one he had with Tim and Sasha, or the one he had with Gerry and Melanie, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on exactly why.
Now he knew. It wasn’t only a friendship. Yes, he considered Jon a friend—one of his best friends—but he was also in love with him.
He would have to take the time to sort that out later. He certainly couldn’t tell Jon now—this wasn’t the time to shoot his shot. Anyway, he really needed to understand what he meant by that, what it meant for them if he did say something. Maybe he would talk it over with Gerry later, get some outside perspective.
For now…
“Be careful, Jon,” he said quietly. “Please. I need you to be okay.”
“And you.” Jon’s voice was choked. “I-it’s not just—don’t ever forget how many people care about you. How many people need you.”
He clung to Martin a moment longer, then eased back—reluctantly, it seemed to Martin. Martin was equally reluctant, if not more so, to let go of Jon, but he knew he had no choice. “Stay safe.”
“You, too.” Jon looked up at Martin for a long second, then turned and fled back into the station.
Martin stood where he was for several minutes, staring at the spot where Jon had vanished and reminding himself of all the reasons, very good reasons, not to chase Jon down and go with him to wherever he was going, or just…know where he was.
Then, slowly, feeling about a million years old, he turned and made his way back to the bookshop.