Jon hadn’t been thrilled Melanie had accepted Elias’s offer to join his staff. Actually, that was an understatement. Jon had been horrified, and also surprised Martin hadn’t killed both her and Elias for that. At the same time, though, he had to admit her logic was sound. If she was going to be Jon’s liaison to the Institute, help him with his research, it was far less suspicious if she was doing said research in her official capacity as an Archival Assistant than just as some nosy kid off the street. She swore Martin understood that she knew what she was doing and trusted her, so reluctantly, Jon had decided to as well. If nothing else, it meant that she could keep him updated on how Martin was handling things. Not well, as it turned out.
He also hadn’t been particularly thrilled to find out Martin wasn’t the one sending him the statements. Or that he was still a suspect in Leitner’s murder. There were quite a lot of things he wasn’t particularly thrilled about right now, actually. Melanie’s friendship, and the kittens, seemed to be about the only things he could really be grateful for at the moment.
He missed Martin.
He missed the others, too—Tim and Sasha had been his friends long enough that he’d actually wanted them to come to the Archives with him, and Gerry was…well, Gerry made him a little nervous, actually, and he wasn’t entirely sure why, but he was a good man and a solid friend—but after over two months on the run, so to speak, the absence he felt most keenly was Martin’s. Partly it was that the low-grade hum of terror that formed the soundtrack to his daily life these days faded much more into the background when Martin was there; partly it was that he worried about Martin’s safety despite Melanie’s reassurances that he was fine, that he might be a little stressed out but he was physically okay, that he was trying to stick to his regular work schedule and not spend all his time at the Institute, and that he hadn’t crossed anything particularly dangerous lately and his powers didn’t seem to be getting any worse. Mostly, though, it was just that this was the longest since they’d become friends, or at least friendly, that Jon had gone without seeing Martin’s smile, or hearing his voice, or accepting a cup of tea from him.
Melanie seemed to understand that last part, at least, since she mostly made cocoa when they were debriefing.
Sighing, Jon looked at the package that had been delivered to Melanie’s house once again. It felt like a written statement this time, which could have meant that it was one Gertrude never got around to recording, or it could have meant that whoever was sending these packages didn’t have access to the tape it was recorded on. Either way, he was convinced—and Melanie agreed with him—that the carefully curated statements he was being fed were meant to lead him in a particular direction. It wasn’t hard to guess what that direction was, either. Most of the statements so far had dealt with the Stranger, and the tape he’d received last week had outright mentioned the Unknowing, the Dance. It was enough to make Jon suspect, or maybe fear, that the statements were coming from Elias, who still thought Jon was being kept largely in the dark.
He made a mental note to run the theory past Melanie when she got home. If Elias knew where Jon was, then he’d almost certainly hired Melanie with an eye—no pun intended—towards making it easier for him to feed Jon information, so they would need to go over anything he said to her very carefully.
For now, though…there was this statement. Might as well see if it could add anything new to their store of knowledge, or if it was just confirming what they already knew.
All three of the kittens were flopped in a pile of sleep in Melanie’s scrap basket; Jon quietly and carefully picked it up and moved it into the kitchen, then shut the door. It wasn’t so much that he thought they’d be a bother, they usually weren’t, but the last thing he wanted was for one of them to wake up and demand attention while he was mid-statement. Then he sat down, checked to make sure there was a blank tape in the recorder, and slit open the envelope, then pulled out the statement on official Institute letterhead.
Melanie had left him her tablet to do his research with, which had been a huge improvement over his fumbling attempts to investigate the first couple of statements he’d been sent. That this was a Buried statement became quickly obvious; if the reference to a pit hadn’t been clear enough, the frankly lurid description of the statement-giver’s dream made it blatant. It would have seemed oddly unconnected from the others if Jon had been as ignorant as Elias believed him to be. He did his usual due diligence, jotted down his findings as he came across them, then got up to light the ward. The candle for the Stranger was getting low, but he thought it would probably last the duration of the statement; even if it didn’t, there hadn’t really been anything in it that specifically invoked it, so he would probably be fine even if it burnt out. He made another mental note to bring it up to Melanie while he lit the points for the Eye, which was also getting low, and the Buried. Then he sat down, tucked the throw blanket Martin had made around his legs, thumbed the switch on the recorder, and brought it up to his lips.
“Statement of Jackson Ellis, regarding the geographical oddities in the town of Bucoda, Washington,” he began.
If it weren’t for the fact that Jon was getting to the point where he could…sense real statements from the get-go, even before trying and failing to record them electronically, he might have been tempted to dismiss this one as an American exaggeration, the way he’d tried desperately to do with that wolf-man statement. It seemed overtly ominous, almost dramatically so, but it was still true, which almost made it worse somehow. Not that Jon was remotely aware of anything going on around him as he read.
“Statement ends,” he said at last, lowering the final page to his lap and reaching for his scribbled notes. “On the surface, this seems…wholly unconnected to any of the statements I have received to this point. It makes no mention of the Stranger, no mention of the Unknowing or a Dance or anything like that. I have done what research I can. The town of Bucoda, Washington is…well, it’s…gone. Newspapers reported it as an earthquake, and tremors were felt as far away as Castle Rock, but despite every article describing Bucoda as having been ‘destroyed’ by the earthquake, there are no pictures or records of the destruction itself. No damage seems to have occurred outside of town limits, and all the roads in the area seem unaffected, despite there being no evidence of rebuilding works taking place after the event. As far as I can tell, there was an earthquake, and then Bucoda wasn’t there, but aside from those two details, there is absolutely nothing. I’m not able to follow up with Mr. Ellis myself, and I probably should have waited until I could ask Melanie to help before I recorded this, but…”
He took a deep breath. “It’s the end of the statement that gets to me. The nameless old woman Mr. Ellis mentions. I…have a very good reason to suspect that that woman was Gertrude Robinson. If that is the case, then that means that Bucoda was the site of—”
The lightbulb at Jon’s shoulder went out with a pop that made him jump slightly. There were no windows in the living room, so it was almost totally dark, save the feeble guttering of a candle that illuminated little more than the shelf around it. At which point it occurred to Jon that only one candle was still burning.
“Oh. Great,” he muttered to himself. With a grunt, he untangled himself from the blanket and stood up, then made his way to the light switch on the wall and flipped it on.
Nothing happened. He flicked it a couple more times, but all the lights remained stubbornly off.
“Perfect,” he grumbled. “Likely blew a fuse. One bulb going out shouldn’t have done that. Right.” He fumbled for his lighter, intending to at least light it up long enough that he could find a candle that didn’t need to stay where it was.
“You don’t want to do that,” a sing-song voice said from somewhere behind him.
Jon froze, inhaling sharply, as harsh footsteps tap-tap-tapped across the floor towards him. He hadn’t heard anyone come in, and he didn’t recognize the voice, unless it was one of the others playing a joke…
“I mean,” the voice continued, “you can if you really want to, but you’re not going to like it. Sometimes not being able to see is a good thing.”
If it was anyone playing a joke, it had to be Melanie; the voice sounded almost exactly like the Toy Soldier from the Mechanisms, and Melanie was the only one who knew the band’s discography well enough to imitate it that closely. Jon turned around just in time to see a hand silhouetted in front of the still-burning candle, reaching for the wick. He started to protest, but his breath caught in his throat as he noticed the way the light gleamed off the thumb and forefinger—dully, but in a way skin never would have done—before they pinched the flame and snuffed it out, leaving them in total darkness.
Definitely not Melanie.
“Who are you?” he demanded, hoping the fear he felt didn’t show in his voice as he angled himself towards where the hand had likely come from.
“Well, my father called me Nikola, and then I killed him, so I thought I rather deserved to have his second name too,” the voice said from more or less where he’d thought it was coming from, in far too casual and conversational a tone for what it—she?—had just said. “Which makes me Nikola Orsinov. Pleased to meet you at last.”
“You, um…you killed Gregor Orsinov?” Jon managed. Which was probably not the most important part of that statement, but was at least a question he felt confident in asking.
“Yep!” Nikola—Jon supposed he should think of her as Nikola, or maybe Orsinov, since she’d chosen that part—said brightly. “He got really boring, and I’m a monster. I mean, what do you want me to do—not pull him apart? I did use all the bits.”
Jon backed up against the armchair without conscious thought, clutching the throw blanket he still hadn’t put down to his chest a bit tighter. It wasn’t quite as good as holding Martin’s hand, but it would do for the moment. “I—y…y-you don’t…sound Russian.”
“How can I sound anything, silly? I’m plastic.” There was a hollow tap, tap as if someone had rapped on a plastic skull—which, well, was probably what had happened. “I don’t even have a voice box. I had to borrow this one.”
Which might go a long way towards explaining why the Toy Soldier hadn’t been on the newest album. Jon really hoped he was wrong about that. “Uh…” he began, fishing out his lighter with his free hand again.
“Don’t turn on the light,” Orsinov ordered. Jon was so startled he dropped the lighter. He’d never find it now.
“A-are…are you going to kill me?” he asked. Unconsciously, he wrapped his now-empty hand in the throw blanket and hoped he wasn’t unraveling it.
“No!” Orsinov said, sounding aghast. Jon didn’t relax, and he was right not to, because barely a moment later, she amended, “I mean, yes. But not for a good long while yet. I don’t want you to go to waste.”
“Then—then why are you here?” It occurred to Jon that she might have come for Melanie, and panic gripped him. He had no idea what time it was. Suppose Melanie got off work…or, wait, hadn’t she mentioned plans tonight? Wasn’t she going to be late? Oh, God, please let her be late…
“Oh, I just thought it was high time we had a good old chat,” Orsinov said. “Face to no face! Eye to…well.” She giggled. It sent a chill down Jon’s spine.
Jon’s mind flashed back to the statement he’d received first after holing up in Melanie’s place, the one about the window display and the blank-faced mannequin. That had to be the same figure now in front of him. Which meant he knew what she was capable of and was not keen to have that happen to him—or anyone else he cared about. He took a deep breath, as quietly as he could.
Managing, somehow, to keep his voice steady, he asked, “What do you want?”
Orsinov hummed. “Well! We have a mutual friend, Archivist. Or did. I think you did something naughty to them!” She gave that giggle again that shattered Jon’s confidence, what little of it he had. “But they told us you were asking some very interesting questions. So we should have a little trade. I won’t come after any of your friends, and in exchange, I want you to bring us back that old piece of skin! We thought that mean old Gertrude had destroyed it, but now we think maybe she was just very good at hiding.”
“I—what? What skin?” Jon stammered. He tried desperately to remember if they’d done anything involving skin that wasn’t a Flesh statement. Then he remembered the taxman’s statement about the taxidermy shop. “From, from the Trophy Room?”
“That’s right! You know which one I mean.”
Jon didn’t, actually, but he suspected he would live longer if he pretended he did. “I’m sorry, are you asking me to find it for you?”
“That would be lovely. And a lot nicer for you than our other ideas.”
Suddenly, Jon remembered the cryptic reference Gertrude had made in that one tape he’d received, the one about the plumber and the forest: I had assumed Orsinov and her ilk would have spent more time searching for their precious skin.
“Why is it so important?” he asked. He didn’t know if she’d answer him or not, but he had to try.
To his surprise, she did answer, sounding absolutely elated. “I want to wear it when I dance the world new.”
“But—but wh—” Jon began, then cut off with a strangled urk as a hard, plasticine hand suddenly closed around his throat and lifted him effortlessly off the ground. Immediately, his lungs began to burn and his ears began to ring as the flow of oxygen to his brain was cut off.
“Question time is over, little Archivist,” Orsinov said in the same cheery tone she’d answered his other questions in, now muffled by the pounding in his head. “Find the skin for us. You have until…well, until I change my mind.”
She let go. Jon fell to the ground in a heap, still clutching the blanket to his chest, gasping for breath as his ears popped and air flooded back in. He was practically sobbing.
“Shh,” Orsinov said soothingly. It made Jon feel sick. “Save your energy for the Dance.”
The footsteps tapped away as Jon struggled desperately to regulate his breathing. There was a faint click, and he realized the tape recorder had been running the entire time.
A second later, the overhead light quietly turned itself on.
Jon stayed where he was, huddled at the base of the armchair, clinging to the throw blanket, tears wet on his cheeks. His whole body shook with adrenaline and fear.
He’d fucked up. He’d royally fucked up. The house was supposed to be warded, it was supposed to be safe, and here Nikola Orsinov had just…waltzed in like it was nothing. He’d let the Stranger into Melanie’s house…
Sudden misgiving struck him. He forced himself to the feet and stumbled towards the front hall, still clinging to the blanket like a lifeline, and checked the door. It was locked…and more importantly, the chain was still attached. There was no way Orsinov could have come in through that door. And come to think of it, he hadn’t heard the door to the living room open…
He checked the kitchen, but there, too, the door was shut and bolted. The kittens were still curled up in the scrap basket, although Wynken lifted her head and blinked up at him when he walked past. She shook her head, then scrambled out and followed Jon back to the living room, mewing plaintively.
Jon collapsed into the armchair. Immediately, Wynken scrambled up his leg and butted his hand, demanding attention. He rubbed her ears and chin, managing the tiniest of smiles when he was rewarded with a purr far larger than the calico scrap on his stomach, and tried to calm down.
Whatever skin Orsinov wanted, Jon knew it was imperative she not get it. I want to wear it when I dance the world new. Which meant it was probably a keystone of the Unknowing, which meant Gertrude probably had destroyed it; she wouldn’t have wanted to risk it getting out of her hands. Maybe Gerry would know, but Jon would either have to get Melanie to ask him or break cover and ask himself. Either way, he needed Melanie to come back so he could ask. And also so he could make sure she—and everyone else in the Archives—was okay.
He began humming under his breath, then quietly singing the song Martin had sung for him the first time he asked, the one about the boatman. Maybe it wasn’t a proper sea shanty, maybe it didn’t have any protective powers, but it made Jon think of Martin, and that made him feel better.
It would be the best he could do for now.