Jon’s head was spinning as he and his team left Elias’s office. Partly it was the fact that his team had almost doubled in the last two months; first Melanie, now Basira. Partly it was that he was still a bit lightheaded from the events of the night before—or had it been early that morning?—and lack of sleep. Partly it was the sensation of having deliberately used his…abilities…on Elias. Partly it was the information he’d received, and not received. Partly it was the relief of seeing his team again. Partly it was wondering why it was Martin, and not Basira, that Daisy had made eye contact with in the long seconds between Elias’s taunt and her lowering her gun.
Partly it was concern about why Martin had given that little cry of pain when Melanie squeezed his hand.
The young woman at Rosie’s desk—Manal, Jon supposed—shrank back a little when she saw him, which made him feel terrible. Tim, however, slung an arm around his shoulder and gave her a huge grin. Only someone who knew him well could tell that it wasn’t as genuinely cheery as it had been before Prentiss’ attack.
“Jon,” he announced, “this is Manal Ellayq, Elias’s new assistant. Manal, this is Jonathan Sims, the Head Archivist. Sorry you haven’t had a chance to meet him yet, but he’s been out because of the thing that took down Rosie.”
“Oh!” Manal’s eyes widened slightly, but she managed a tentative smile. “Oh, okay. Um, it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Sims. Glad you’re…doing better.”
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Manal. And please, just call me Jon.” Jon managed a smile in reply. “Ah, Elias told me to get a Return to Work form from you…?”
“Oh, yep, yep, of—of course.” Manal turned to the file cabinets behind her and bit her lip, her brow furrowing as she muttered under her breath. “Let’s see, let’s see, blank forms are all in the left cabinet, employee forms are third and fourth drawers down…um, sorry, do you know what the—” She stopped, and her shoulders slumped. “No, of course you wouldn’t.”
“602343,” Martin told her kindly. “It’s a rubbish system. I think it was Rosie’s idea of job security.”
Manal giggled as she pulled open the drawer and found the relevant form, then handed it to Jon with a smile. “Here you go, Mr.—Jon. Welcome back.”
“Thank you,” Jon said, taking the form and tucking it into the folder Elias had just handed him. With another smile of his own, he led the others back to the Archives.
The second the door shut behind them, Melanie turned to Martin, eyes stormy. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine. I needed something to pull me out,” Martin assured her. He grimaced, just for a second, as he took his hand out of his pocket and checked his watch. Jon’s heart lurched as he saw that the hand in question was tightly wrapped in white gauze.
Melanie checked her own watch. “Twenty more minutes. Will you be okay until then?”
“It’s not that bad.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
“Tell you what,” Sasha said, clapping her hands together twice as she broke in. “Jon, Martin, why don’t you two debrief one another while the rest of us get Basira settled in?”
“Uh,” Jon began.
“Great!” Tim looped one arm through Jon’s and the other through Martin’s, then practically dragged them over to the trapdoor. Melanie threw the door open just in time for Tim to half-shove them down the steps, pressed a small lantern into Jon’s hand, and closed the door behind them.
Jon managed to click the light on before they fell down the stairs, and they descended in silence. He’d expected to feel nervous, or more accurately scared, at the idea of going down there again knowing the Not-Them was trapped in its depths—and he wasn’t entirely certain where. But being there with Martin made it a lot easier.
They both knew this level fairly well at this point, and through unspoken agreement they headed into the first room off the hall. There was a rusty spike sticking out of the wall a little ways in from the door, just enough for Jon to hang the lantern on so they would have light without having to hold onto it. He looped the handle over the spike, then turned to face Martin and took his first easy breath in almost nine weeks.
“What happened to your hand?” he asked.
“What happened to your throat?” Martin asked at the same time.
Both of them tried to explain at the same time, and as soon as they realized it, they tried to simultaneously tell the other to go first. The situation must have struck both of them as funny, because they both started laughing. Either that, or they were both so stressed and strung out it was the final snap of the tension.
Either way, Jon wished they had a recorder running so he could keep the sound of Martin’s laugh forever.
“God, I missed you,” he found himself saying.
Martin’s laughter died away, but his smile remained, even if his eyes grew wistful and melancholy. “I missed you, too. It…it hurt, not knowing where you were. If you were all right.” He took a deep breath. “Right, okay. Um…do you want to go first, or do you want me to?”
“I suppose I will.” Jon hesitated, then decided to just ask for the one thing he’d been desperately needing for the last two months. “Can, ah…can I have a hug first? I, I think I need one.”
Martin’s face softened. “Jon, of course. You don’t even have to ask.” He held out his arms.
Jon immediately stepped into the circle of Martin’s embrace and wrapped his arms as far around Martin’s torso as he could. Pressed against Martin’s chest, he sighed softly in contentment as the familiar scent of mint and cherries settled into his nostrils. The smell of safety—the smell of home.
He was fairly sure at this point that he ought to just outright admit it, if only to himself. At some point in the last year or so, he had fallen in love with Martin Blackwood.
After what was simultaneously an eternity and nowhere near long enough, Jon sighed and eased back, reluctantly. Martin did the same. “Right. So…yes. Do you…want me to start at the beginning, or somewhere else?”
“Wherever you think is best.” Martin leaned against the wall and studied Jon seriously. His eyes lingered, for just a moment, on the bandage at his throat, but snapped up to his eyes almost immediately.
Jon, too, leaned against the wall, trying to think where was best, what was the most important point to get out. “I…suppose the beginning is as good a place to start as any. After we—after I left you that day, I…I went to Melanie’s house. I thought, well, she was out of town, and I’d promised to make sure the cats had water anyway, so I thought…I-I was sure this would all be cleared up before she got back.”
“So was I.” Martin sighed heavily. “I—I guessed that’s where you were. After she got back, she said a few things that…but she didn’t say for sure.”
“Safer that way.”
“Yeah.”
Jon fidgeted for just a moment with the cuffs of the jumper he’d taken to wearing whenever he needed the comfort, which was often these days. “I thought you did know,” he admitted. “At first. I…after about a week someone delivered a statement to the house, addressed to me. No postmark, so it hadn’t come through the mail, but…I thought it was you.” He paused. “No…I wanted it to be you. I was hoping you were…I don’t know, feeding me statements to keep me in the loop, give me clues as to what you were working on. Melanie worked out pretty quickly that you weren’t responsible, though.” With a sigh, he added, “It took me way too long to catch on that it was probably Elias. At least it was still clear he didn’t realize how much I knew. All the statements were about the Stranger, o-or implying about the rituals. The last one I got talked about Bucoda, Washington—I think it was the, what did Gerry call it? The Sunken Sky?”
Martin shivered, and Jon immediately felt bad for mentioning it. “Yeah, that’s the one. How soon before…or after…the ritual was it?”
“The night before. I think. Or at least the night before Gertrude disrupted it. It’s…I can let you listen to the tape I made later, if you want.” Jon hesitated, remembering what else was on that tape. “I probably should, actually. I…the day I was recording it—it was just this past Thursday, or at least I hope it was—something…something got in.”
“Something got in?” Martin repeated, straightening up so fast Jon was afraid he might topple over. “What do you mean? Got in where? In your mind?”
“No—in the house. It, I still don’t know how she got in. She. It. I don’t know.” Jon took a deep breath. “She said her name was Nikola. Nikola Orsinov.”
Martin’s eyes widened. “Nikola Orsinov? That’s—the Stranger, isn’t it? I—oh, God.”
“Yes. She said her ‘father’—Gregor Orsinov—she said he named her Nikola, but she killed him and took his surname too. She’s…not human, Martin. She’s a mannequin. Plastic.” Jon shuddered at the memory. “She said it was time we talked. She wants me to find ‘that old skin’. I think it’s one of the ones from the Trophy Room…she seemed to think Gertrude had it, and might have destroyed it, but also might still have it? I-I’m afraid I didn’t…I wasn’t really thinking clearly.”
“I’ll bet. What did she…did she hurt you?”
“A little,” Jon admitted. “Mostly she was just…talking. Then she said she was done answering my questions, and I had until she changed her mind.” He started to rub his throat at the memory of her fingers around his windpipe, then stopped when he encountered the bandage. At least it was dry.
Gently, ever so gently, Martin cupped Jon’s chin and lifted it slightly. “Did she do this to you?” His voice was quiet, but the steel underneath was unmistakable.
“No,” Jon said softly. “She grabbed me, but she didn’t…break the skin. This…this was Daisy.”
Martin went incredibly still. “With what?”
“A knife. I—it was mine. She said it was blunt.” Tears sprung into Jon’s eyes, and he had to look away…as best he could with Martin still cradling his face, anyway.
“Oh, Jon.” Martin let go of Jon’s chin as carefully as he had taken it, then folded him in another hug before he had time to think. Jon dropped the folder he still carried heedlessly and clung to Martin’s jumper, the same way he had the night they parted. The night of Leitner’s murder.
The words tumbled out of him in a rush, not a panicked one, just like a dam had broken, letting him say all the things he’d been waiting to tell Martin about, give him all the things he wanted him to know. To hand over all the pain and agony he’d gone through in the last days, for Martin to take his words and make everything all right again. “Melanie gave me the information she got from you—about Mike Crew, how to find him. I went to talk to him, I had to, it—Melanie was going to bring me Jude Perry’s information, but if she gave you Mike Crew’s I knew I had to follow up on it, so I went to find him, to talk to him. It took me almost three days, but I did it. And he, he told me, he gave me his statement—I thought, I was so sure he would have something to do with the Unknowing, that he would know something about it, but he didn’t say anything about it, he just told me about himself. I, I got it on tape, I hope I got it on tape, but I haven’t had a chance to listen. He, from the things he told me, he was being chased by the—by a fragment of the Twisting Deceit, and he bound himself to the Vast to escape it, and he said he felt so free afterwards, but he told me all this while he made me fall, made me think I was falling anyway, and I-I didn’t know if he’d let me land safely or make me hit the ground. And then we did land safely, and he was going to let me go, I think, he said to ‘take his mercy and leave’, but then there was a knock on the door a-and it was Daisy, she’d—she found me somehow. She knocked him out and…and kidnapped me at the same time, and I lost track of where we were going, but there was, it was an isolated clearing, a lonely cliffside, somewhere no one would have heard me, and she was going to—I tried to, I wanted to know why, but she was going to kill me, she shot Mike right in front of me and she was going to take me out too, she—she said I’d dragged her secrets out of her—I d-didn’t mean to, I swear, I didn’t know it was happening, not then. But, but it’s been happening—I did it to Melanie on accident, and I said I was sorry, and she said I didn’t have to be, but Daisy thought I did, and—” He gulped and pressed his face into Martin’s chest, hoping, praying that Martin wouldn’t push him away, that he wasn’t hurting him. “She would have killed me, Martin. She would have killed me if Basira hadn’t stopped her and given her something else to focus on and…”
“Shh. Shh. I’m here, Jon. I’m here. You’re safe now.” Martin’s cheek pressed against the top of Jon’s head, and the fingers of his left hand stroked gently at his hair. “I won’t let her hurt you again.”
Standing there, wrapped tightly in Martin’s embrace, in the dim light of the lantern, distanced from the Eye and all the other fears, Jon believed him. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that Martin spoke nothing but the truth. He wouldn’t let Daisy, or anything else, hurt Jon ever again. If it ever did, it would be in spite of everything he could possibly do to prevent it.
Jon only wished that he could do the same for Martin.
After several long moments, he eased back only far enough that he could look up at Martin, but not so far he was out of his embrace. “What, ah…what about you? What have you…have you been all right? Melanie said you were, but…your hand…”
“If it took you three days to find Mike Crew, Jon, you haven’t seen her since it happened,” Martin said, a little regretfully. “Or at least since she found out about what happened. It…at the beginning, I’ll admit I was working myself too hard. I just, I thought if I concentrated on…everything here, I wouldn’t worry about you or Melanie. Tim finally called me out on it and made me slow down, made sure I left on time. Made me spend less time down here. I joined a knitting circle,” he added, and Jon laughed, just a little. “Didn’t help much, honestly, especially after Melanie came back and got recruited to the Institute. Then on…Thursday, actually, I was recording one of the statements—”
“A real one?” Jon interrupted, suddenly worried.
“Yeah. Stranger statement, too, although the Desolation was involved. That’s where I got Jude Perry’s name from, actually—Melanie had made a note about her and it got mixed in with the paperwork, I obviously wasn’t supposed to find it.”
Jon gnawed on his lower lip. “Martin…you, you shouldn’t be…those statements, they’ll just draw you further in. I should—”
“Jon,” Martin said gently, “it’s a bit late to worry about that now. I’m already in too deep, and I think it’s getting worse. Reading the real ones, it…takes the edge off, a little bit anyway. It’s getting harder and harder to avoid Seeing, even when I’m not trying, but when I read the statements…it pushes it back a little. Like the Eye’s getting something out of me, at any rate.” He hesitated, then added, “That was…honestly probably why I followed up on Jude Perry without really letting anyone know what I was up to, at least at first. The statement…for some reason it, it didn’t work. I was still shaky and…off when I finished. When I found Melanie’s note, I…I just, I felt this need, that hunger for knowledge. I had to find out what it meant. So I called her up and made an appointment.”
“Without telling anyone?” Jon asked, like he had a leg to stand on when it came to that sort of thing.
Martin gave him a crooked little half-smile, as if he was thinking the same thing. “Like I said, at first. But by the time I got there…well, I realized I’d been stupid. Especially since I almost went and got another statement after I recorded the first one—Tim and Sasha, and Melanie once she found out what was up, were adamant that I wasn’t allowed to read more than one real statement a day, and I was only supposed to record once a week anyway, but I thought maybe if I, you know, got an older one we didn’t have to research too much I could read it and it would stop the shaking—”
“Martin…”
“—but I realized I was justifying it the way Gerry did when I tried to get him to quit smoking, so I didn’t,” Martin continued. “Tim sent me home early anyway, I wasn’t…right, and I was going to just go to the appointment and then go home and…I dunno. And I, I knew going was probably a bad idea, but if I hadn’t gone you or Melanie would have, and I didn’t want either of you to get hurt. But once I’d made up my mind, once I got there, I decided not to be a total idiot. I called Tim and told him to give me an hour, and then if he didn’t hear from me, to tell Melanie I was following her lead. I figured she’d have an idea of what to do then.”
Jon studied Martin’s face anxiously. “Did…did you get anything from her other than Mike Crew’s information?”
Martin grimaced. “No. Not really. From the statement—i-it involved the Gwydir Forest, up in Wales—I, I thought maybe the Desolation had allied itself with the Stranger to help with the Unknowing, but…”
“Oh.” Jon sighed, his shoulders slumping slightly. “I—I know that statement. It was one of the tapes Elias sent me. Maybe…maybe that’s why it didn’t work well for you? Because the Eye had already…fed on it recently?”
“That…would explain a lot, actually,” Martin said slowly. “And it would certainly explain how Melanie knew to look up Jude Perry to begin with. But yeah, I—she didn’t, it wasn’t related. She was just doing a favor for Nikola Orsinov, because it gave her a chance to burn something someone loved and feed that to the Desolation.” He sighed again. “So a whole lot of damage and an extra mark for both of us…for a fat lot of nothing.”
“Both of us?” Jon repeated, horror slowly dawning on him. “Oh, no…oh, Martin, your hand—don’t tell me—”
Martin brought his right hand around to between the two of them, and Jon stepped back a little more, only so he could take it in his own hands as gently as possible and study it while Martin continued to explain. “I made a deal with her. She gave me the information about Mike Crew, and in exchange I told her I would personally destroy Jack Barnabas’ statement, the one about Agnes Montague. So she wouldn’t be one of our stories.” He gave a short laugh. “Never mind that we both know it, so it’s not likely to be forgotten any time soon, but she doesn’t need to know that. Anyway, Jude said we had a deal and held out her hand to shake, and…I couldn’t see any way around it.”
Jon stared at Martin’s hand. It was heavily bandaged; only the very tips showed at the end, but it had been wrapped in such a way that it would allow movement, even though it seemed difficult for Martin to flex his fingers. He ran his thumb over the palm as lightly as he could. “Is it…” he began, then stopped. He didn’t even know how to finish that sentence.
“It’s not so bad,” Martin assured him. “She’s essentially made of wax. I only gave her three seconds to shake my hand, and wonder of wonders, she actually kept to it. She couldn’t have got hot enough to do real permanent damage in that amount of time, not without her hand turning fully to liquid. It’s only a second-degree burn.”
“Only second-degree,” Jon mimicked.
“Says the man who almost had his throat cut with a blunt pocket knife.” Martin smiled briefly, but something flashed in his eyes as he said it. “I’m okay, Jon. Honest. It hurts—which is good, because if it didn’t that would mean there was nerve damage—but I’ve got painkillers, and the doctors said I probably won’t have a whole lot of scarring when all is said and done. It could have been a lot worse.”
Jon took a deep breath. “If you’re sure…”
“I’m sure.”
“Then…I trust you.” Jon looked up at Martin’s face and tried to smile. “But maybe slow down on the Marks a bit? By my count, that’s seven you’ve got now.”
“No more than you have,” Martin retorted. “Look, how about from here on out we stick together? If we have to investigate things outside the Institute, we’ll do it together. That way…that way we can keep each other from getting hurt.” He hesitated, then brushed Jon’s cheek gently with his good hand. “Is that acceptable?”
“It’s a bargain.” Jon covered Martin’s hand with his own for a moment, then let go and bent down to retrieve the folder he’d dropped. Form 602343, the Return to Work form, slid out from behind a very fragile-looking piece of yellowed paper covered in shaky handwriting. The date at the top read 1824. “Oh, good, another letter direct to Jonah Magnus. I only hope this one isn’t from a native German.”
“How many foreign friends could a man like Jonah Magnus actually have had?” Martin asked with a raised eyebrow. “What do you think it’s about?”
“I haven’t the foggiest. I only hope it’s enough to…settle my stomach, I suppose.” Jon looked up as a thought occurred to him. “Would…would you like to read it together? The way we did with…i-it might help you, too. You’ve, you’ve had a long week too.”
Martin looked surprised, then smiled, for real this time. “Would you…like to come over to my flat? I could, I could make us something to eat, and we could read it there. If you like.”
“I’d like that, Martin,” Jon said sincerely. Warmth filled his body. “I’d like that very much.”