Someday, Melanie was going to hate herself for her behavior. She was going to curse herself for being single-minded and pigheaded and so wrapped up in herself and her anger that she didn’t notice the obvious. She was going to tick over every single thing she learned, every single thing that happened in the days and weeks and months to come, and wonder at what point she could have changed things if only she hadn’t been so damned focused on the House of Wax.
But as it was, it wasn’t until thirty-six hours after she and Tim returned, triumphant, from Great Yarmouth with incontrovertible proof that it was the site of the Unknowing, most of which she’d spent sleeping the sleep of total exhaustion, that she said to Jon, “Hey, shouldn’t Martin be back soon?”
She’d woken up with Nod, as usual, curled up on the pillow next to her, but Wynken and Blynken nowhere to be seen; wandering into the kitchen in her pajamas, she’d found Jon having a philosophical debate with Wynken over the merits of beef versus salmon while Blynken, who was nowhere near as particular as his brother and sister and would in fact eat shoe polish if you put it in his dish, enjoyed his breakfast (or possibly Nod’s) with a particularly loud and disgusting gusto. In response to her half-awake inquiry, Jon had shrugged and mumbled something about catsitting and looking after her. Melanie had decided not to ask further questions. Smug delight at being proved right had—temporarily at least—overridden the anger that seemed to be perpetually near the surface these days, and she was willing to let Jon play with the kitties for a bit while she got dressed. She even, despite his halfhearted objections, made breakfast for both of them. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week, and she told him so.
He didn’t attempt to deny it all that hard.
They were halfway to the Institute—two hours late, but who really gave a crap—and Melanie was going over all the things they’d learned when she suddenly thought to ask Jon about Martin. Surely he’d found something about Gertrude’s plan to stop it, and once they figured out when on top of where, they’d be golden. She was going to add all that, but the stricken look in Jon’s eyes brought her up short.
“What?” she demanded. “How much longer is he going to be gone? Fuck, where could he possibly be? Last I heard he was heading to Pittsburgh, and that’s where Gerry died, so unless he’s not tracing her steps in order…I mean, Gerry was gone four months between the last time we saw him and when he died, but he can’t be going over all of that.” She paused. “Can he?”
“I—I don’t know.” Jon swallowed hard. “I haven’t heard from him in…a while.”
Melanie drummed her fingers on the back of the seat next to her, staring vacantly at the window opposite. That wasn’t entirely unusual; after all, they hadn’t heard from Gerry at all when he was on the road with Gertrude, save infrequent texts, usually tied to important events like birthdays or the autumnal equinox. But then again, Gerry hadn’t had an international plan. And he wasn’t desperately in love with either of them.
That thought was quickly overruled. Gerry didn’t do romance, maybe, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love Martin or Melanie just as deeply as Martin and Jon loved one another. Love came in all kinds of forms, and if Gerry had been able to contact them while he was gone, he would have. The fact that Martin hadn’t…well, okay, yes, actually, it was a bit unusual maybe. Then again, maybe he’d just forgotten he had the ability to call them. Not likely he’d forget he could talk to Jon whenever he wanted, but it was possible. Or maybe he’d just been keeping odd hours, four to eight hours out of step with them, and it hadn’t been convenient to call.
She pulled out her phone and sent Martin a quick text: [Hey, we have the location. You can come home now.] Looking up at Jon, she added, “It’s too early to call him. Even if he’s still on the East Coast, it’s only about six in the morning, and he deserves to sleep in a bit. And God forbid if he’s gone to the West Coast.”
“You don’t think he went to…Bucoda, do you?” Jon sounded like he was having trouble getting the question out.
“No,” Melanie said emphatically. “He’s not stupid. Going near…that…would be too much of a risk. It might kill him if it’s still strong enough to draw attention. And he’s long past the point of his curiosity being stronger than his desire to live.”
Jon’s face was suddenly devoid of color, and Melanie got the impression that if he wasn’t sitting down, he might have fainted. A sudden surge of guilt swept over her—both for upsetting Jon and for maybe letting something slip Martin wasn’t ready to share—which made her angry again, both at herself and at the guilt. She swallowed all of it and didn’t apologize. “Anyway, he’s looking for answers we don’t have, so there’s no reason to go over ground we already know about.”
“True,” Jon said softly. He twisted a ring around on his finger. Melanie had never noticed him wearing a ring before.
“Is that new?” she asked, pointing to his hand.
“Hmm? Oh.” Jon stared at the ring for a second like a deer caught in the headlights, then nodded. “It’s…after you mentioned it to me, I started doing research into asexuality. One of the things I found was that a black ring on the right middle finger was…sort of a symbol of it? It, I don’t know. It seemed like a way to be proud of who I am without…” He gestured helplessly.
“Decking yourself in rainbows and fishnets?” Melanie supplied. “I get it. How long have you been wearing it?”
“Just for a week or so.”
Well, that was fair. Melanie had been extremely distracted since she and Tim had started their project, and she hadn’t exactly been in close proximity to Jon much since then. “Might have to look into getting one for Martin for his birthday. This better be over by then.”
“I hope so,” Jon murmured, twisting the ring again. Melanie suspected it served a double purpose as a fidget as well as a symbol of his orientation.
Tim, Sasha, and Basira were all hard at work when Jon and Melanie turned up, or at least giving the illusion of being hard at work. Tim looked up from his laptop, holding a steaming mug in his left hand. The dark circles under his eyes told Melanie he hadn’t slept much. “Hey. Feeling more human?”
“I love how you know me enough not to ask if I’m feeling better.” Melanie snorted at Tim, who smirked. “Yeah, thanks. Have you slept at all since we got back?”
“Not really. More important things to do.” Tim waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and Melanie had to resist the urge to throw something at him or jiggle his arm so he spilled whatever was in his mug on his lap. “No, seriously, I just…too anxious, you know? We still don’t have a good idea of when this is going to be, and short of…” He hesitated. “Actually, is there somewhere else we can discuss this? I don’t trust…” He gestured vaguely. The words I don’t trust the wards to keep Elias out of our beeswax went unspoken.
Jon, too, hesitated, then nodded. “This way.”
He led them down to the tunnels, because of course he fucking did. Melanie paused briefly about halfway down the steps, fighting back a sudden wave of disorientation and nausea. “Ugh. I hate this.”
“Hate what?” Basira said from somewhere in the rear.
“We’re cutting ourselves off from the Eye down here.” Melanie got herself under control and kept moving, following Jon and his torch. “The minute you signed that contract you bound yourself to it, and the longer you work here, the worse it gets. I was already kind of…eye-adjacent before I ever got here, so I had a head start, but it’s slowly affecting all of us. Coming down here’s not as bad as, say, fucking off to Venice for ten days and trying to pretend there’s not a damned thing in the world powerful enough to make you come back—”
“Hey, now, it was only six,” Tim protested.
“—but it’s not something any of us can do long-term,” Melanie continued. “Or should. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I definitely feel it when that door shuts.”
“I do, too,” Jon said softly. “It’s…maybe I’m just getting used to it, it’s not as hard as it used to be, but it’s still…unpleasant.”
“Like the world’s worst attack of vertigo,” Sasha agreed. “I don’t know how Martin stands it.”
“It’s not like he’s been down all that much lately,” Jon mumbled. He pushed open a door. “In here.”
There were a few boxes in the room, which would do for makeshift seating; Melanie took one and waited for the others to sit down. “Right. Finish your sentence, Tim. Short of…?”
“Short of staking out the House of Wax until we see it kicking off,” Tim said, “which would be a really bad idea, especially with thirty pounds of plastic explosives in tow, I don’t know how we can tell when it’s going to be ready.”
“Why can’t we blow the place up now?” Basira wanted to know.
“Gertrude seemed pretty sure that doing anything ahead of time wouldn’t work,” Sasha answered. “We have to disrupt it at the height of the ritual or it’ll just…delay it a little. And we might not get lucky enough to find out where it’s going to be next time.”
Basira looked back and forth between the others. “And…we believe her?”
“Gerry agrees with her,” Tim said. “So does Martin. I trust both of them on this. And since Melanie hasn’t gone full Rambo and charged the place singlehandedly, I think it’s unanimous among the Disaster Squad that she’s got the right of it.”
Melanie would have thrown something at Tim if she had anything to throw. “Anyway, hopefully Martin has an answer for us on when it’s going to be. And maybe a better solution than blowing it up. Not that I don’t want to see that…place…and everyone in it blown to hell, but I don’t know anything about planting plastic explosives safely.”
“Daisy does,” Basira said, surprising everyone. “Took a course on detonation a couple years back.”
“Will she help us?” Jon asked.
Basira hesitated. “Think so. If we ask. Or…” She trailed off.
“Or if Elias does,” Sasha supplied. “Or if he orders her, I guess. He’s still giving her jobs, right?”
“Right.” Basira’s jaw tightened briefly, but she said nothing further.
Jon took a deep breath. “But you’re sure, absolutely positive it’s going to be the House of Wax.”
“We got proof, Jon,” Melanie assured him. “Took us a while, but that’s it. As soon as Martin gets back, we can finalize our plans.”
Jon flinched slightly at that, but he nodded. Sasha’s nose twitched. “Has he been in touch yet?”
“No,” Jon said quietly. “No, not…not yet. I still…” He swallowed hard.
Melanie shrugged and stretched. “He probably isn’t thinking about that international plan. Gerry never had one, so we almost never heard from him while he was gone.”
Sasha opened her mouth, but Basira spoke first. “Okay, wait, you keep talking about this…Gerry person. Is that someone I should know?”
“Gerard Keay. He’s an old friend of Martin’s and mine.”
“Wait. I know that name.” Basira frowned, and then her face suddenly went slack. “That’s who Martin was staying with after we found Gertrude Robinson’s body. The one who killed his mother a few years back.”
“He didn’t kill her.” Melanie whirled on Basira with a snarl. “She did that to herself, and if you don’t believe she could have, you haven’t been fucking paying attention.”
“Melanie,” Jon said softly.
Melanie ignored him, getting to her feet and clenching her fists as she faced Basira properly. “Aunt Mary had a book with pages made of the skin of people who’d been murdered, pages you could read the text on them that told how the people had died and summon them back as shades, trapped and bound to it in agony forever. She tried to become master of it, and the ritual failed, but Gerry wouldn’t help her and that’s why she punished him the way she did, even after she was dead. Gerry wouldn’t hurt a fly, not even his mother, even after everything she did to him—to us—when we were growing up. He’s not a killer, even now, and God knows nobody ever deserved death more than Mary fucking Keay did—”
“Melanie, stop.” Jon’s voice crackled with static, but it sounded…wrong, somehow. Different, anyway. Still, the compulsion in it did manage to stop her in her tracks.
She turned to glare at Jon, intending to give him hell about compelling her, but the words curled up and died on her tongue at the sight of him half-curled over himself, face ashen and eyes wide and slightly panicky. He’d pushed himself too hard, and…that wasn’t really supposed to be something the Eye did anyway, she didn’t think.
“Sit your ass back down,” she said without much heat, grabbing his arm and easing him back onto the box. “Jesus. Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Jon said unconvincingly, rubbing at his chest. He coughed. “That was…unpleasant.”
“I told you we’re cut off from the Eye down here,” Melanie scolded him. “You can’t just call on it and expect it to work like normal.”
“I didn’t…” Jon rubbed the bridge of his nose. “That—that didn’t feel right. I wasn’t doing that on purpose.”
Melanie pulled out her phone and checked. No text back from Martin, but she did at least have service. “Okay, screw it. I don’t care how early it is over there, I’m calling him.”
“Melanie,” Tim began, but Melanie ignored him in favor of calling up her contacts, selecting the work number assigned to Martin, and connecting the call. Or trying to, anyway. Instead of the ringing with which she was familiar, there were instead three high-pitched tones.
“This number is not accepting calls at present. Please try later,” a woman’s recorded voice said matter-of-factly. The message repeated itself, and then the call disconnected.
Melanie stared at her phone. “What?”
“You got the intercept message, too, I take it?” Sasha quirked an eyebrow at her.
Melanie looked around the room. “‘Too’?”
“What, did you think when we said ‘we haven’t been in touch with Martin’ that none of us had tried calling him?” Tim gestured at Jon in an exasperated fashion. “Last time anyone talked to him was when he called to ask about Gertrude getting arrested. Gerry was the last one to get his phone to ring, and it cut off abruptly. After that…nothing but intercept messages.”
“For any of us,” Jon said softly. “I—I’ve been trying every night, but…”
But he hadn’t answered. And it went without saying that if Martin was only going to answer calls from one person, it’d be Jon…unless he was somewhere he couldn’t. “How long has it been since anyone got hold of him?”
“Couple weeks,” Tim said.
“Fifteen days, fourteen hours, five minutes,” Jon said at the same time.
Melanie looked back and forth between the two of them in mingled anger and dismay. “And nobody thought to tell me?”
“You weren’t exactly around to tell,” Sasha pointed out.
“Well, I am now!” Melanie folded her arms over her chest. “Have we tried tracking his credit cards? His passport? Something? Maybe sending him a fucking email?”
“Yes, yes, and yes.” Sasha ticked all three off on her fingers. “They don’t log when passports are used, it’s all recorded in the passport itself. Last purchase was an Amtrak ticket from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC, bought on the twenty-fifth of June, but I don’t have a way of verifying if he used it. Nothing since then. And when the first few texts didn’t go through, I sent an email, but it’s been sitting unread for ten days.”
“Jesus.” Melanie paced in agitation, her anger rising—at the Archives crew, at the universe, at herself. “He needs to come home.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Basira said, sounding unimpressed.
Melanie ignored her. “Fuck, how do we know he’s…?”
“He’s alive,” Tim said quietly. “Gerry’s sure of that, and he’d know, Neens.”
The casual use of her brothers’ nickname for her almost made her put her fist through Tim’s face, but she restrained herself. After all, he was essentially one of her brothers now. She’d just got so used to Jon not using nicknames—he wasn’t the type—that it never occurred to her Tim would. At least Sasha and Basira haven’t taken that as an invitation to do so. Yet. “Great! He’s alive. But where is he?”
Jon looked like he was about to be sick. “We—we don’t know.”
Melanie threw up her hands. “For fuck’s sake. We’re in service to a being of awful knowledge and terrible secrets, and none of us can tap into that connection to find out—”
She stopped.
There was one person…well, besides Martin…who could tap into that connection. Who could simply…Know things. Maybe he hadn’t reached the level of omniscience, but if Martin wasn’t imprisoned by the Stranger, he at least stood a better chance of finding him than the rest of them did.
Without taking the time to finish her thought, or even explain what she was doing, she turned on her heel and strode out of the room.
The sensation of coming through the trapdoor—like plugging back into a live current—was even more unpleasant at speed, but Melanie didn’t slow down. She simply let the trapdoor bang back into place and took the stairs out of the Archives two at a time. There were a few people milling about on the main floor, but she was apparently moving with enough purpose that they jumped out of her way.
“Oh, Ms.—um, Melanie, what are you—” Manal stood up from her desk, looking a little anxious, but Melanie breezed past her without even looking. She stomped her way to the director’s office and flung the door open.
“Where is he?” she demanded.
Elias looked up from some paperwork he was scribing, a placid look on his face. “Ah, Melanie. So glad you chose to come in to work today.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit.” Melanie let the door close behind her, crossed the office in two strides, planted her hands on the desk, and leaned closer to Elias. “I know you know where Martin is. I know you know what’s going on with him, or at least you can. So tell me, or I swear to God I will remove your reason for wearing trousers.”
“Threats ill become you, Melanie.” Elias sighed and capped his fountain pen, then set it aside. “As it happens, I do know where Martin is…more or less.”
“Well?” Melanie demanded impatiently.
“He’s on his way back to London as we speak.”
Melanie pursed her lips. “That is both encouraging and maddeningly unhelpful. When will he be arriving?”
“Soon,” Elias said.
“If you pull some fucking ‘I call all times soon’ bullshit…”
“Melanie, I cannot Know the future. You of all people should be aware that our master doesn’t work that way.” Elias sighed.
Melanie ran her tongue over her teeth and wondered if that fountain pen would be sharp enough to disembowel him. “You can’t read a fucking airline flight schedule and at least give me an estimate?”
“I could,” Elias agreed. “But it would do us no good. Martin is taking an…alternate route back to London, shall we say.” He pulled open one of his desk drawers, withdrew something, and laid it on the desk in front of her. “Here. I’m sure Martin would be relieved to know you were keeping hold of this for him.”
Melanie stared at the little gold-tooled burgundy booklet under her nose. She didn’t need to open it to know whose name and picture would be inside it. A number of questions swirled in her mind, chief among them how the fuck Elias had got hold of it in the first place, but she didn’t for one minute imagine that he would actually answer them if she asked.
“I’m sure it won’t be much longer,” Elias said in a tone that was probably meant to be soothing. “Weather permitting. Now, if there’s nothing else…?”
Melanie didn’t bother dignifying that with a response. Instead, she snatched the thing up, turned on her heel, and strode out of the office.
This time, Manal didn’t say anything to her when she stalked past, retracing her steps back to the Archives. She reached them just as the others came out of the trapdoor. Jon caught sight of her and inhaled quickly. “Melanie, what—”
Melanie walked up to him and silently thrust the object Elias had given her at him. Jon took it, seemingly on instinct, blinked at the cover, and opened it. The color drained out of his face once more as Martin’s picture, four years younger, stared up at him from the pages of his passport.
She caught him as he crumpled towards the floor, and held him tightly as he cried.