Ever since having the conversation with Tim, Martin really had been trying to have a better work-life balance. Or, well, any kind of work-life balance. He, Tim and Sasha had reached an agreement to rotate out the recording so that one of them wasn’t doing all the work, with each of them taking no more than one day a week or recording more than one real statement per day, and he’d also promised not to work more than an hour outside their regular working hours or spend more than an hour a day in the tunnels. He’d taken to doing one or the other on any given day, and it was working more or less well enough. He also knew that Tim was right—he needed to do something that didn’t involve the Institute—and being alone wasn’t the smartest idea, for more reasons than just the fact that he’d be more likely to lapse back into bad habits if he was.
The discovery that the shop he frequented for knitting supplies had a circle that met on Tuesday nights hadn’t surprised him nearly as much as learning that the little old ladies who made up most of it referred to it quite casually as a “stitch and bitch”.
The leader of the group had challenged Martin to try a particularly tricky sock pattern that involved colorwork and cables, and he’d been so focused on it that he’d almost missed his stop that morning, but he had managed to make it in time, barely. He’d exchanged a few kind words with Manal, the young woman who’d been hired to replace Rosie, and then headed down to the Archives. For just a moment, he’d hesitated on the threshold, hoping against hope that he’d walk in to find Jon waiting for him with a smile, but of course that hadn’t happened.
So…here he was. Wednesdays were his day to record, and Tim had presented him with a stack of statements they’d finished the research on. Most of them were going straight on the Discredited shelves when they were done, but Martin, with unerring instinct, had already located the one real statement in the bunch and set it to one side. It was a bit distracting, really, and by rights he probably ought to do it first or he wouldn’t be able to focus on the others.
He didn’t want to, though. Something about it made him want to record literally anything else. It seemed to be taunting him, which he knew was bullshit—he couldn’t See anything on the statements for a reason, they didn’t have anything of the Fourteen in them specifically—but still, he had a feeling he wouldn’t like whatever was in it. The name was no help, either, so he obviously hadn’t been helping with the research for it.
The tape recorder turned itself on at his elbow, and he glanced at it suspiciously. He shouldn’t, he knew he shouldn’t, but…well, no one was around. And if they were something harmful, they needed to know. Maybe he couldn’t use the candles, but they could surely figure out some way of warding against whatever was behind them.
He was just reaching for his glasses when the office door opened. Trying to suppress the sudden flare of guilt, Martin looked up and saw the last person he would have expected—Basira, looking puzzled or angry or worried or some combination of the three. She nodded at the stack of files in front of him. “Still recording, then?”
“I mean, it’s what we do,” Martin pointed out. He put his hand on top of the real one, but didn’t pull it towards himself or flip it open. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for Daisy.”
Irritation flared in Martin’s chest. He’d told Basira, told her to stay away for her own good, and here she was in the middle of the Institute and looking for Daisy. The urge to say I wouldn’t tell you if I did know bubbled up in his throat, and he swallowed it down and tried to be rational. The stress of the last few weeks was getting to him. His anxiety about Jon, his anxiety about Melanie—who Gerry had said would be a couple weeks later than initially planned getting back but hadn’t reached out to him—the worry about the Unknowing, and the general atmosphere of the Institute was combining to make him less patient with people than usual. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. The fact that Basira was asking about Daisy wasn’t helping that, because despite everything, she still scared the hell out of him.
“I don’t know where she is,” he said, aware that his voice was tight. “Why would you think I would know where she was?”
“Okay, okay,” Basira said, holding out her hands. “It’s just that they said at the station this was the last place she checked in.”
“When she interviewed us,” Martin said. “Which was more than five weeks ago.”
“Yeah, I haven’t heard anything, so I went to check in with her at the station.” Basira avoided Martin’s eyes when she said that. “They said she hadn’t been in since February.”
Martin lifted an eyebrow. “And no one thought to check in on that?”
“I mean, they don’t keep a close eye on…well, she goes off the grid sometimes when she’s investigating a case. Never this long, though. I thought it might have something to do with…y’know.”
Martin felt a probably unwarranted surge of pride at that. He knew that the reason Daisy usually went off the grid was to track down a suspect, and the fact that Jon had managed to elude her for a whole month was a pretty big deal. He wasn’t going to let that last part slide, though. “You can’t seriously believe Jon killed anyone.”
“I mean, if you were going to cover for anyone, figured it’d be him.” Basira shrugged uncomfortably at the unimpressed look Martin gave her. “I just hope he didn’t. Don’t want to think I was wrong about you. I really like you, you know?”
“I’m gay,” Martin said automatically, then winced as he heard the words come out of his mouth.
Basira recoiled, which didn’t exactly do wonders for his self-esteem. “No, not like—ugh, why does everybody think that?”
Martin made a mental note to strangle Tim later. “Sorry, no, I didn’t—that just—”
“I just, I mean you’re good company,” Basira said, gesturing to him vaguely. “You know, when you’re not being all morbid and paranoid.”
“Working here will do that to you,” Martin said dryly. “But I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
“Sure.” Basira took a deep breath. “So, you have no idea where Daisy is?”
“Considering Elias seems to think she’s still looking at Jon for the murder? Probably using her ‘operational discretion’ to bully some poor sucker who hasn’t seen Jon in a million years,” Martin grumbled.
Basira froze. “What did you just say?”
Martin paused and ran over what he’d just said. “Elias thinks she still suspects Jon?”
“No, no. Did she use the phrase ‘operational discretion’?” Basira pinned Martin with a look more intense than she’d given him since the first official interrogation.
“Yeah,” Martin said slowly. Dread, never very far away these days, began creeping up his spine. “She said she had ‘full operational discretion to make everything go away’. Is everything all right?”
Basira didn’t answer—or if she did, it was definitely not an answer Martin wanted to hear. “I need to find him.”
“He’s safe,” Martin said quickly. “If she hasn’t found him by—”
“No, I need to find him now.” Basira looked Martin over intently, then evidently decided he was telling the truth. She handed him a business card. “Look, here’s my number. You call me immediately if you find anything out, okay?”
“I—fine. Wait, hold on.” Martin grabbed one of the business cards for the Institute Jon kept on his desk to avoid having to give them to people, flipped it over, and scribbled out his own number. “Here’s mine. Do the same, okay? And—and if—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Sure.” Basira took the card and left, a lot faster than she’d come in.
Martin watched her go, feeling even more unsettled and off-balance than he had when she first arrived. He turned to glare at the tape recorder, which was still running, so at least he had a record of the last…however long it had been.
Suddenly furious—with himself, with Basira, with the Fourteen, with everything and everyone that stopped him from being an ordinary office drone or, better yet, a chorus boy—he swept up the folder, snapped it open, and yanked out the statement. He didn’t even bother skimming the statement or the supplementary research, just began dictating.
“Martin Blackwood, Archival Assistant at the Magnus Institute, recording statement number 0030411, statement of Enrique MacMillan, given 4th November 2003,” he said crisply. “Statement begins.”
He wasn’t past the first sentence before he felt it—the itch that settled on his shoulders, the tightness around his chest, the ache in his hands, the dry cold and the stale air, and the sharp, burning pain a mere hand’s breadth from his heart where the tiny sliver of metal that had broken off the end of the alleged seal still remained, in too precarious a spot to remove safely but not in such a position that it would work to a more dangerous place. Unfortunately, he also felt the pressure in the back of his eyes and the static on his tongue. It was really a matter of which would hurt him more—continuing or stopping.
Since the Fear in question wasn’t actually on the statement, and all the sensations were mild enough that it was probably just probing at him to see what it could get, Martin plunged ahead and hoped the Eye would be protective, or at least possessive, enough of him to stop anything else from getting at him while he was actually working for it.
“Statement ends,” he said finally. He took a deep, shaky breath and pushed the statement aside, reaching for the supplemental notes. There weren’t many. “Um, the, uh, the statement ends rather abruptly there. According to the few notes in this file, it looks like Mr. MacMillan got in a bit of a fight, which led to his arrest, and…the replacement of quite a bit of floor in the Archivist’s office. There are still a couple of boards on them with scratches I’ve always hoped weren’t fingernail marks. That’s my luck, I guess.”
He turned over the paper and saw a few lines in Sasha’s handwriting, which he skimmed quickly. “Anyway, Mr. MacMillan passed away while awaiting trial. The official cause of death is listed as ‘asphyxiation,’ but neither Sasha nor Tim can find any details about exactly what happened. And…given the nature of this statement, I can’t look into it myself, for…reasons. The book itself is currently held by Artifact Storage in a welded iron box, and it’s at the top of the ‘Do Not Access’ list, but since then it doesn’t look like it’s caused anything unpleasant to happen.” He exhaled heavily. “Thank Christ.”
There was a tapping on the door—a very familiar pattern—and Martin’s head shot up, his spine straightening. Gerry wouldn’t come to the Institute, not under the circumstances, so that must mean—“Hello?”
The door opened, and sure enough, Melanie peered around it, doing her best “Kilroy Was Here” impression before pushing the door open enough that she could come in, smiling and throwing out her arms. “Well, aren’t you going to say hello?”
“I already did,” Martin pointed out, but he was around the desk faster than he’d thought possible and hugged Melanie hard. “God, it’s good to see you. I’ve been worried sick.”
“I’m fine,” Melanie claimed, but Martin didn’t even need to look at her to know she was lying. “I’m better than I was, anyway.”
Martin let her go and gestured for her to sit down. She dropped rather gracelessly into the chair in front of the desk; rather than sit behind it, he sat on the edge of the desk and smiled down at her. “When did you get back?”
“Last night. I decided to indulge myself a bit and took the train.” Melanie stretched, her spine popping. “I still fucking hate flying.”
“I don’t blame you. Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Yeah, and then some.” Melanie hesitated, then admitted, “I…kind of got shot by a ghost.”
“Melanie!” Martin was on his feet and kneeling in front of her before he thought twice about it.
Melanie shoved his face back, not exactly gently but not exactly violently. “I’m fine. Jeez. Got a doctor to check me out, they said there was nothing in there.” She hesitated, then added, “And…I talked with a specialist, too. He also said it looked okay.”
Martin frowned slightly as he heaved himself to his feet. “You, uh, you went by the bookstore last night?”
“Different specialist.”
Martin froze as the implications of that sank in. He stared at Melanie, who was watching him intently, like she was waiting for him to say something. Hope and fear mingled in his chest, and all he could think of was that he was glad she hadn’t come in before Basira.
“You’ve…run into one of your music friends, then,” he said carefully.
Melanie nodded once. “Probably the last one I’ve got, to be honest. I burned through a lot on this trip. Savings. Goodwill. Friends. Luck. He’s pretty much the only one I’ve got left besides…well, you. And you’re the reason I’ve got him, so, uh, thanks for that.”
“Hey, you might’ve met if it hadn’t been for me.”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t have tried to like him if it hadn’t been for you. He genuinely likes you, not like all those fake people who liked the fake you when we were kids.” Melanie studied Martin’s face. Evidently she didn’t find what she was looking for, because she sagged slightly, then dropped her voice. “He misses you.”
For just a moment, Martin let his guard down and let himself feel hope and longing. He knew who Melanie was talking about, of course he did, but as long as he pretended he didn’t…until Basira found Daisy, it was just safer Martin not know for sure. Still, he said softly, “I miss him.”
Melanie nodded and swallowed and looked away. “Anyway, I just…I dunno. I promised I’d let you know when I got back, so…hi, I’m back.” She looked back up at him and tried for a grin. “Hope you weren’t too bored while I was gone.”
“I’ve managed,” Martin said, as dryly as he could. He almost added that a full debriefing could wait until later, when they were at the bookstore, but if she wasn’t planning to head back there, he didn’t want to bring it up. “Just been a lot, you know? Not half a day after you left and Jon got accused of murder.”
“Who?”
“They don’t know. They found the body of an old man beaten to death in his office and decided Jon must’ve done it.” Martin brushed the surface of the desk lightly. It had taken him the better part of a day to scrub all the bloodstains out, but fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it—he had a lot of experience with that sort of thing. “He didn’t, though. He wouldn’t.”
“I know,” Melanie said softly. “You wouldn’t care about him if he were a bad person.” She cleared her throat and added, “But the work’s been okay? Nothing particularly…unusual?”
“It is what it is,” Martin said with a shrug. “We’ve been…some projects have stalled, others are still going forward. I was working a lot of extra hours until Tim made me stop, said it wasn’t good to spend all my time in this place.”
“He’s right, you need rest,” Melanie scolded lightly. “The work will still be here during regular hours, you know?”
“Yeah, but some days I don’t think it’ll ever be done.”
The door opened abruptly behind Melanie. Martin looked up with the intention of telling Tim he’d be along in a minute and almost swallowed his tongue when Elias stepped in, genial and affable. “A friend of yours, Martin?”
At this point, lying didn’t seem like that viable of an option—especially, he realized, since Elias had probably gone over the personnel files with Manal and doubtless knew, if he hadn’t already, that Martin had changed his emergency contact information. He tried not to blink. “Uh, yes, she’s my sister. Melanie, this is Elias Bouchard, he runs the Institute.”
“Hi,” Melanie said unenthusiastically. “We’ve met. Briefly.”
“Ah, yes, when you came to give your statement last year.” Elias smiled blandly. “My apologies, I didn’t recognize you then. Ms. King, correct? Surely you’re not the one who runs Ghost Hunt UK?”
Melanie stiffened, just for a second. “Not anymore.”
“Ah, of course. My apologies.”
Melanie gave Martin the briefest of incredulous glances. “What, you used to watch it?”
“I’m sorry to hear it’s no longer running,” Elias said, which wasn’t exactly an answer. “Your techniques were rudimentary, but you showed surprising promise.” He inclined his head in Martin’s direction. “Had I known you were Martin’s sister, that would have explained a good deal. You share quite a few traits. Your instinct for the truth in the tales of the credulous, for example, and your penchant for knowledge. Your tendency to…rush in where angels fear to tread, shall we say.”
“Thanks. I think,” Melanie said dryly. She set both feet on the floor and turned to Martin. “I should get going, I guess. Let you get back to work. You’ve got a lot on, you said.”
Elias scanned Melanie with his one good eye. “One moment, Ms. King. Martin has filled you in on recent events, I believe?”
“A bit,” Melanie said slowly.
“Then you are aware that the Archives are…well. Three is the usual number for assistants, but there is certainly enough work to support a fourth. Especially under the present circumstances.”
Melanie stilled. “Wait, are you offering me a job?”
Martin’s blood ran cold. Elias’ pleasant expression never changed. “You have some experience in the field, I believe. And some familiarity with the Institute. I believe you’ve made some use of our library in recent months?”
“Well, yes, but…” Melanie began.
“She’s my sister,” Martin interjected. He didn’t think Elias was serious, and he knew Melanie wasn’t going to accept, but still, he might as well give her a good excuse. “Wouldn’t that be, er, a conflict of interest?”
“You wouldn’t be supervising her, Martin,” Elias said pointedly. “At any rate, favoritism among the assistants is less of a concern down here than you think.” He turned slightly to face Melanie more directly. “Do you want the job, Melanie?”
That he had shifted from using her surname to using her first name was a bad sign, but Martin was fully prepared for her to still tell Elias to take a long walk off a short pier and hug an octopus. After all, she knew what he’d done, some of what he was capable of, and she knew enough about the Institute in general and the Archives in particular to know accepting would be a bad idea. Besides, she technically already had a job.
“Well, it’s a bit sudden, but—yeah, okay.”
“W-what?” Martin blurted, shocked into indiscretion. “Melanie, are you out of your mind?”
“Problem, Martin?” Elias asked. His voice was mild, but carried a faint warning tone.
And in that instant, Martin knew he was beaten. He knew Elias had no clue how much Melanie actually knew, how much they’d discussed, and for whatever reason he wanted her in the Institute. And if Martin objected too hard, neither of them would walk out of this office alive.
“I guess not,” he said.
“Good.” Elias turned back to Melanie. “Well, come on up to my office. We’ll finish up this interview. Hopefully we can fill out some of that paperwork.”
“All right. Lead the way.” Melanie got to her feet and whistled as she followed Elias out of Jon’s office.
Martin sputtered for a moment, then finally forced out, “Oh, great.”
At that point, he realized the tape recorder was still running and shut it off with an excessively forceful stab of the button, then propped his elbows on the desk and dropped his face into his hands.
He wanted to scream. There had probably been a scream building inside him in years, one he’d swallowed and suppressed and fought down and fought against, and if ever there was a time to let it out, it was now. He also wanted to chase after them and beat Elias to death with the pipe that had been used to murder the old man in Jon’s office. It wasn’t like Daisy didn’t have him as a back-up suspect, so even if he got caught and for some reason the other members of the staff cared, it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch, and at least Jon and Melanie would be safe. He also found himself wanting to call Gerry. Elias was distracted, he wouldn’t know if Martin called his brother, so they could keep Gerry hidden a bit longer even if Martin called him to tattle, or enlist help, or something.
He did none of those things. Instead, he forced himself to try and calm down, to be rational. He didn’t have to be quiet, he told himself, he just had to be sensible, and that actually suppressed a lot of his desire to be loud. He took a few deep, slow breaths and tried to think.
It wasn’t that much of a stretch of the imagination to guess why Elias was trying to recruit Melanie—had recruited Melanie. It was one more thread of control around Martin, one more safeguard against him doing something like setting the entire Archives on fire and walking away. He didn’t know about the bookstore, so he thought this was Melanie’s only option—and surely Martin wouldn’t make his sister jobless, homeless, desperate. What it was hard to figure out was why Melanie had accepted.
“Martin? Martin, are you okay?” Sasha’s voice startled him so bad he almost tipped the chair over. He looked up to see her hovering over him a little anxiously. “Are you sick? Is it—oh, shit. Tim! You weren’t supposed to give him that one!”
“I’m fine,” Martin insisted, or tried to, but Tim had already burst through the office door when Sasha yelled his name, and at the last part of her yell, he’d dropped his gaze to the folders and turned white.
“Fuck—fuck! That wasn’t the one I meant to give you.” Tim snatched the statement up and reached for the recorder. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll—”
“I’m fine,” Martin repeated, despite that being objectively false. “It’s not—it isn’t the statement.” Although that probably hadn’t helped, he had to admit. He rubbed at his chest, where he could still feel a little tingle of pain, and tried to explain to his friends, who were both hovering anxiously. “Basira was here—she was looking for Daisy—and some of the things she was saying…I just, I got worked up. Then, yeah, okay, I read the statement, and maybe it got to me a little, and I was just coming down from that, but…Melanie was here. And Elias was here, and he fucking hired her. And she accepted.”
“She what?” Tim and Sasha said together.
“She’s up in his office right now. I’m surprised you didn’t see any of them.”
“I’ve been back in the stacks for the last hour,” Tim said, sounding a bit guilty. “One of the files we’ve got cross-referenced another and I was trying to see if I could find it.”
“And I honestly had my head so far up my own research you probably could’ve dropped an elephant next to me and I wouldn’t have noticed,” Sasha added. She sat on the corner of Jon’s desk. “Christ, I can’t believe…okay, you are not all right.”
Tim nodded. “She’s right. Look, go home for the day, okay? You don’t—”
“No, I—I need to be here when she comes down.” Martin clenched his hands tightly. “I need—I have to be sure she’s okay, and I, I need to know why she did it, why…”
“Okay, okay. But you at least need a break,” Tim said firmly. “Go outside. Take a walk, or just sit in the courtyard for a bit or something. Take your knitting with you if you want. Just…get some air. After…after a statement like this, you need some open space. And you need to breathe. Okay? You can’t help her if you’re compromised.”
Martin didn’t want to admit it, but Tim was right. He could feel every nerve straining to the breaking point, and at this point, one more stress and he might explode. “I can go down to the tunnels—”
“Absofuckinglutely not. Outside. Now. Don’t come back for an hour at least.” Tim pointed sternly. “I mean it, Martin.”
Martin took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay.”
He somehow wasn’t surprised that both of him shadowed him the whole way across the Archives, presumably to make sure he didn’t slip down into the tunnels or upstairs to commit homicide. Clutching his knitting bag in one hand, he opened the secondary door and stepped out into the crisp March morning.
The fog that had descended that morning was still hanging about. Martin wasn’t the world’s biggest fan of fog, for a few reasons, but he had to admit Tim was right, it beat the feeling the Buried gave him. He crossed the courtyard, letting the heavy door swing shut behind him, and tucked himself away in a corner, pressing his back against the stonework. Bag on his lap, he tried to let his head clear, fog be damned.
What had Melanie been whistling when she followed Elias out of the office? Martin ran through the tune for a moment. “The Maid on the Shore”, that was it. It wasn’t one they used all that often for burning Leitners, but somehow, he didn’t think she’d chosen it at random.
Almost without conscious thought, Martin began singing the song, trying to follow the plot of the lyrics. It was the kind of song Melanie had always liked, the ones where the fair young maid turned out to be as devious as the men or worse, about a girl who tricked the sailors into thinking she was their prisoner only to rob them blind and row herself back to shore unaccompanied. By the time he reached the last verse, he got it, or at least he thought he did.
Trust me, she was saying. I know what I’m doing. I’m not as trapped and helpless as you think I am.
Well…okay. Martin wouldn’t say he was exactly happy about it, but he was going to trust her. He had to. He always had before, and…okay, sometimes she gave him reason to doubt her, but for the most part, she knew what she was doing as much as he did. Which wasn’t always a recommendation, if he was being honest. Still, she had to have her reasons, so he would take Tim’s advice, sit out here for a bit to calm down, and then go back in and find out what those reasons were.
He thought about pulling out the sock he was working on, but a sudden impulse came over him. He didn’t normally sing outdoors around the Institute, not during daylight; he didn’t like disturbing people, and he’d always worried about causing a scene. But the fog meant not a lot of people were out, and…well, it wasn’t like they could pinpoint where he was anyway. He stood up, planted his feet the way he’d been taught in school, took a deep breath, and launched into his favorite of the two songs he’d used as his audition pieces for college.
He hadn’t sung it terribly often since then, but not because of the memories. Mostly, it was because it was an operatic aria, and those were never meant to be sung quietly.
The last of the fog burned away as the final note rang off the building nearby, which Martin took as his cue to sit back down and pretend he was concentrating on his knitting for a while. As he did so, he realized that a lot of his tension—not all of it, but a lot of it—had lifted as surely as the fog had. Clearly, he needed to do that more often. Maybe he’d look into joining an amateur choral group or something.
For now, though, he was going to at least work this sock up to the heel, and then he was going to head back inside, get back to work, and wait for Melanie to finish her interview so he could either assure her he trusted her or wring her fool neck. He genuinely wasn’t sure which way it was going to go, so he supposed he’d have to wait and see.
That seemed to be his lot in life these days.