“…Statement ends.” Martin let the last page fall into his lap and sighed. It wasn’t exactly satisfaction or delight, but he felt…full, in a way he hadn’t in a while. Weak as the thing that had once been half of a whole and was now the sole remnant of a near conquering army was, it was still old and it hadn’t survived that long not being powerful. He’d be able to live off this one for a bit.
“It’s probably a bad sign that I’ve started thinking of these statements in terms of flavor,” he mused into the recorder, which buzzed comfortingly in his hand. “It’s definitely a bad sign that statements from other avatars and servitors—Jude Perry, Breekon, my fucking mother—the people and things that cause fear more than anything—literally seem to leave a bad or bitter taste in my mouth, but ones from actual victims are…almost sweet. The written ones we’ve got out in the Archives don’t really have much flavor to them, but they satiate the hunger, even if I do have to, uh, consume more of them to do that. Still, I think I’m going to stick with that for a while. That’s not something I want to start getting a taste for, especially after this statement. And I can really do without any more nightmares.” He paused, thinking it over. “I wonder if Breekon dreams.”
A few feet away, Melanie shifted on the cot and groaned softly. That wasn’t all that unusual; she’d been doing it off and on since Martin had come in, and he’d mostly tuned it out while he was recording. This time, however, she came awake with a gasp. “Oh, fu—”
“Melanie?” Martin straightened up and set the recorder on the top of the file cabinet as he scooted closer. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re safe.”
“Ma—Mar’in?” Melanie blinked at him, looking disorientated and lost. “Why’s m’ leg hur’?”
Martin had really hoped that wouldn’t be the first question she asked when she came round, but of course Melanie couldn’t go for the clichéed Where am I query. He tried to speak as gently as possible. “There was a bullet in your leg. We had to take it out.”
“I got shot? ‘Gain?” Melanie frowned and patted vaguely at her leg. “Why ‘m I…pants?”
“Hang on.” Martin picked up the cup of tea Jon had made him and pressed it gently into Melanie’s hands. On second thought, he cupped his own hands under hers and guided it to her mouth. “Here. Take a drink, okay? You’re probably dehydrated.” He was stalling, and he knew it, but he also knew that if he explained it to her while she was still groggy and couldn’t process properly just so she would accept without argument, things would be way worse later on. Anyway, she was probably dehydrated.
Melanie took several slow, careful sips. After about the third one, a funny look crossed her face; it took two more before she looked at Martin, her eyebrows knitting together but her eyes looking a bit clearer—emphasis on a bit. “Why did you put milk in my tea?”
“I didn’t. Jon put milk in my tea, but that was all I had on hand.” Martin reached out for the mug, and Melanie let him have it. “How are you feeling?”
Melanie considered the question seriously from all angles. “Like shit.”
Martin couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s…probably fair.”
He took a sip of the tea—cold, but it still tasted just fine—and watched Melanie for a moment as she studied herself. Sasha hadn’t thrown a blanket over her when she laid her down, so her legs were fully on display. She touched the bare skin exposed by the torn pant leg lightly. “Did something…get me?”
There was a temptation, a very, very small temptation, to let her believe that, but even the possibility of lying about something like this sent a sticky swirl of guilt through Martin’s chest, and he knew he’d never be able to do it. He’d never been anything but honest with Melanie and he definitely wasn’t going to start with something like what he’d done. “I told you, we had to take a bullet out of your leg.”
“Right. Right.” Melanie took a deep breath and looked up at him suspiciously. “How’d it get there?”
“India. Or so we assume. The whole damn thing was soaked in the Slaughter, and it was…infecting you.” Martin swallowed hard, well aware that the slowly spreading striations of red spreading from that spot on her thigh like a glowing map of the London Underground was going to haunt his every waking moment for a while yet—there wasn’t room for it in his nightmares anymore. “We—I got it all, but…Jesus, Neens, I’m sorry. I should have…I should have Looked sooner.”
“I wouldn’t have let you,” Melanie admitted candidly. She ran her fingers around the butterflies. “You did this?”
Martin hummed in the affirmative. “Might have to get you down to the clinic in a bit to get proper stitches in there and make sure I didn’t, you know, cause a regular infection. But I did what I could with what I had.”
“Mmm.” Melanie scraped her tongue against her teeth. “What’d you knock me out with? Feels like that time I tried to be helpful and clean the bathroom.”
“That’s…not a bad comparison, actually. It was chloroform.”
“Chloroform?” Weak as she was, a flare of anger rose in Melanie’s eyes, and she sat up straighter. “Where the fuck did you get chloroform?”
Martin held up both his hands. The temptation to let her believe that was even stronger, but he knew nobody would forgive him if he did. “I didn’t. Sasha had it. She wouldn’t tell me why, just said not to ask questions I didn’t want to know the answers to, but…”
“But you asked anyway?”
“I didn’t. Swear on Dad’s crypt. I’m guessing it wasn’t for you, but I haven’t asked, o-or tried Looking. I had other things to worry about.” Martin risked reaching for one of Melanie’s hands. “Like getting that bullet out of your leg before it took you over completely. Or reassuring Jon I wasn’t going to bleed to death.”
“You weren’t going to bleed to death?” Melanie said incredulously.
Martin winced. “Um. Well. You sort of…stabbed me?”
“I what?” Melanie shrieked, at a decibel level that definitely tested the room’s soundproofing. What little color there was in her face drained out of it. She lurched forward and started to swing her legs towards the edge of the cot.
“Easy, easy, Neenie, I’m okay!” Martin blocked her shoulder as gently as he could with one hand to forestall her. With the other, he tugged at the tear he’d made in his shirt, widening it so she could see the knitted pink ridge of flesh on his chest. “See? I’m okay. Bleeding stopped easily enough.”
He hoped she would assume it hadn’t been a deep cut. She didn’t. “That’s not any better, Martin! Jesus, I—I remember now. I was so angry with everything—Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday, and Basira being gone and Jon being so upset about the anniversary of Leitner’s murder, and the Chinese New Year is t-tomorrow and that’s the same day it was the year Mama died—and then you told me you were going to Look for me—fucking hell, you didn’t even actually do it! And I just got so mad and—and then I—what is that, ten Marks you’ve got now?”
Martin hesitated. “Twelve, I think. But it’s—honestly, Melanie, it’s okay. Just one more scar for the collection, I guess.” He tried for a laugh. “Not the end of the world, you know?”
Melanie didn’t seem particularly convinced of that; at the very least, she looked as though it might be the end of the world for her. “But I gave it to you.”
“And I forgive you for that.” Martin tried to go in for a hug, but Melanie leaned away and he sat back, willing to not push things. Instead, he tapped the side of his head. He’d discovered, the first time he actually looked in a mirror after getting home from America, that the lock of hair there had turned white as snow. “Papa gave me this one. I don’t blame him for it. Half the other Marks I have are from protecting people I love—”
“But they aren’t scars.”
“I was trying to protect Jon from the worms when I got, well…” Martin gestured at the faint scars still dotting his face. “Trevor only stabbed me because I wouldn’t tell him where to find Gerry.”
“That’s different and you know it. So is your father kissing you, that’s not—” Melanie reached out like she wanted to touch the stab wound, but drew back. “Jesus, I could have killed you. I—I tried to kill you.”
“Maybe,” Martin conceded. “But you didn’t kill me.” He took her hand and placed it over the scar—placed it, too, over his heart, so she could feel that it was still beating strongly in his chest. “More important, you didn’t want to kill me. I’m okay, Neens. I promise. It’s going to be okay.”
“I hate you,” Melanie grumbled, but she pressed her hand a bit closer to his chest before sliding it away. “And I’m still angry.”
Martin shrugged. “I didn’t cut all of the Slaughter out of you, just the bullet. You were still Marked by it before that.”
“I still don’t get how just watching Sarah Baldwin talk to…whatever it was was enough to Mark me,” Melanie mumbled. “I was fascinated by it, but I wasn’t afraid of it like I was of Sarah.”
Another lance of horrible, almost crippling guilt pierced Martin through the heart. God, how had he not thought of that himself, way back when he first Looked to see their Marks? “You…I think you were Marked way earlier than that, Neenie. Talking of when your mother died—do, do you remember the lion dance?”
“I mean, there’s always a…” Melanie trailed off, frowning as she obviously tried to remember. Suddenly her eyes widened. “Oh. Oh, my God. It—there was a lion I didn’t recognize and it was chasing the musicians—it killed one and—Lau Pei, one of the real lions, the regular ones, he asked me for help and…oh, God, I’d forgotten about that. I thought I dreamed it.” Her gaze suddenly sharpened, and she turned a scowl on Martin. “Get out of my head.”
“I didn’t look in your head,” Martin insisted. “Tim told me. Apparently Gerry had a flashback about it—a flashback where he was you, like the one he had before Christmas where he was Mum. Tim didn’t have a lot of details, but Gerry’s on his way, in theory, so you can ask him about it.”
Melanie swung her good leg off the cot. “Well. Let’s go do that, then.”
She swung the second leg off to meet the first and winced as it—evidently—pulled at the cut, but she swatted away Martin’s concerned hand. She did, at least, accept his assistance in standing up, and leaned heavily on his arm as they limped out the door and into the Archives.
Tim and Sasha were apparently mid-argument; they stopped when they heard Martin and Melanie coming towards them and turned. Sasha smiled, a bit tentatively, but her eyes were still worried. “Melanie—how are you feeling?”
“Sore, but I’ll live.” Melanie’s tone of voice implied she wasn’t altogether sure if that was a good thing or not, and possibly that she intended to make that Sasha’s problem. “Martin told me what happened. Where’s Gerry, and why did you have chloroform?”
“Gerry’s on his way,” Tim said, in a gentle voice that was probably meant to be soothing and that even a few hours ago would probably have had Melanie throwing things. “He had an appointment with someone about a book, probably not a Leitner, but he said he’d be here as soon as he could.”
Melanie turned back to Sasha, but before either of them could say anything, the exterior door to the Archives opened, followed by hurrying footsteps. A second later, Gerry appeared, looking out of breath and worried. Whoever he’d been meeting with had obviously been important; far from his usual band shirts and baggy jeans, he was dressed in a cream-colored turtleneck and pressed trousers, an old and faded green corduroy jacket with leather patches at the elbows, and brown loafers. He’d even tied his hair back in a low ponytail, so he looked more like a professor or an academic than a goth painter. The thing that startled Martin most about his appearance was the white streak on the side of his head, despite the rest of his hair being freshly dyed a shiny, even black that would, given past evidence, start fading in random streaks and patches in a day or two.
“Is everyone okay?” he asked breathlessly. “What happened?”
Tim, Sasha, and—surprisingly—Melanie all turned to look at Martin, who sighed. “We’re fine. Mostly. Melanie still had a bullet in her leg from when she got shot in India and it was infecting her with the Slaughter—”
“What?” Gerry’s face turned, if anything, even paler than usual. “Jesus, Melanie, I’m so sorry, I should have—”
“Should have what? You don’t have freaky Eye powers,” Melanie snapped, then added grudgingly, “And I wouldn’t have let Martin Look if he’d asked, so it’s not anyone’s fault but mine. I stabbed Martin over it.” Before Gerry could react to that, she turned to Sasha and added, “And you didn’t answer my question. Why did you have chloroform?”
“I think Gertrude had some, but I’m pretty sure she used it all,” Gerry said, a bit uncertainly. “Wait, you knocked her out with chloroform?”
“I…yes,” Sasha admitted. “Just a little, though. I mean, it was just enough for her body weight to knock her out, and not so much that it would do permanent damage—”
“And why did you have it, Sasha?” Melanie demanded.
“Melanie,” Martin murmured. He was burning with curiosity, too, but if Sasha had said he didn’t want to know, he probably didn’t want to know.
“No, fuck that, that’s not something you just have. Let alone know how much to use.” Melanie folded her arms over her chest and glared at Sasha. “How long have you been planning to knock me out?”
“I haven’t, I swear,” Sasha insisted. She glanced up at Martin, a bit guiltily, then sighed and said in a low voice, “It was for you. Just—you know, just in case.”
“WHAT?” Melanie’s yell rattled the shelves around them.
“Melanie, stop.” Martin grabbed her by the shoulder and gave her a warning squeeze. “I’ve been demonstrating more and more dangerous powers. Why wouldn’t she have some way to take me out if they got out of hand? I’m not entirely sure chloroform’s the best choice, though. I mean, under the best of circumstances, it takes too long to kick in and I’m taller and heavier than you are, I’d probably be able to fight you off. And in an…avatar state, I guess, I’d likely be way too drunk on my own power to respond well to that. You probably need something closer to a tranquilizer dart.”
“Jesus.” Tim pinched the bridge of his nose briefly. “Don’t let Jon hear you saying things like that.”
Martin looked around, his anxiety suddenly spiking for no real reason he could think of. “Where is Jon?”
“Running an errand. He’ll be back,” Sasha answered. She turned to Gerry. “Tim said you’ve been having flashbacks where you’re other people?”
“Not often, but yeah,” Gerry said slowly. “Did we…not tell you about that? It’s how I knew to tell Martin to call Aunt Lily before Christmas, I’d had a flashback where I was her.”
“And you had one where you were Melanie? What did you—”
“No, wait,” Melanie interrupted, letting go of Martin’s arm and leaning on the desk in front of her. Her eyes were fixed, not on Gerry, but on Sasha. “What’s Jon up to? What kind of errand could he be running? He wouldn’t have gone off without telling Martin, unless he was just going to the break room to get tea—and if he was doing that, you’d have said so from the off. What’s he doing?”
“It’s fine,” Sasha said. “He won’t be long, I’m sure.”
“You’re not answering the question,” Melanie said suspiciously.
Martin could feel the static building on his tongue and behind his eyes—the urge to compel Sasha to tell him exactly where Jon had gone and what he was doing—which meant it was something she, or Jon, or both, didn’t want him to know. It could be that it was a nice surprise for Valentine’s Day, which they didn’t celebrate, but no way was his luck that good. And the fact that his anxiety was coalescing into pure fear told him that was probably not what it was anyway.
He swallowed hard to force the Eye back and said, softly and with a great effort to keep it neutral, “Sasha?”
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Tim hissed.
“Well, it’s not going to do any good otherwise,” Sasha hissed back.
And that was it. Martin knew, deep in his bones, without the Eye providing him any additional help. He knew where Jon had gone, what he’d done, what he was risking, what was going to happen to him.
“No,” he whispered, turning towards the door to the Archivist’s office.
“Look, if he hadn’t, someone else would have,” Sasha said desperately. “Eventually. You wouldn’t have been able to leave it alone and Melanie would have been trying to atone or, or whatever, and Gerry would have been trying to protect all of us, and he made the argument that he had the best chance of finding her and getting out safely…”
“I’m sorry, what are we talking about?” Melanie demanded.
“The coffin is in there,” Tim blurted out. “The one that Breekon and Hope were toting around, only there’s only one of them left. It delivered it not long before I got here, and it’s in Martin’s office. Daisy is in there and Jon says she’s still alive. He went in to try and get her out.”
“What?” Gerry and Melanie cried in unison.
“No, no, no.” Martin would not panic, damn it all, that wouldn’t help. He had to be calm and rational and—and screw that, the man he loved more than life itself, the man he loved so much it hurt, had climbed into a box that led directly to the Buried. He had every reason to panic. Clutching the recorder he’d forgotten he still held, he started for the office.
“Whoa!” Tim grabbed his arm.
“Let go of me, Tim.” Martin yanked his arm free, making Tim stumble back a step.
“No, don’t!” Melanie cried out, lunging towards him and managing to grab his sleeve, at least.
Gerry rushed around the desks and stood between him and the door, arms outspread. “Martin, you can’t, you’ve already been Marked, it—it won’t let you go.”
“I’m not leaving Jon down there alone!” Martin wasn’t crying, but it was taking a lot of effort not to, and also not to call on the Beholding and Know where Jon was, compel the others to leave him alone, force them to let him in…even if that wasn’t really in his purview. “Someone has to go in after him, and it might as well be me!”
“No.” Gerry’s voice echoed with the strange, resonant quality it had taken on in the warehouse when he Reaped the waxwork that had turned out to be Danny, at Rosewood Forest when he’d proclaimed Liliana Blackwood’s death. The air in the Archives seemed to drop several degrees, and Gerry’s eyes lost all their color—pupils, iris, even the blood vessels turning white, like a pencil sketch. His hair, too, suddenly turned white, coming loose from its tie to stand on end in a flowing, undulating halo around his head like he’d just received a jolt of static electricity.
“Shit.” Tim pushed himself straight and lunged forward. He ran around behind Gerry and wrapped his arms around his torso from behind. “Got you. I’m here. I’m here.”
Martin had never, in his entire life, been afraid of his brother, but he was afraid now. The recorder clattered to the desk, miraculously not breaking or popping open, as he grabbed Melanie and Sasha on instinct to try and protect them. “What’s going on?”
Tim’s face was ashen. “Just wait. You’ll see.”
Gerry lifted his head, seeming to stare at a point somewhere over Martin’s shoulder, but also seeming to stare at something that wasn’t there…or at the very least wasn’t then. The temperature continued to drop…and drop…and drop…until Martin, clasping Sasha and Melanie as close to himself as he could, swore he could hear ice crystals forming in the air. He found himself instinctively gathering the static, gearing himself up to compel Gerry to stop…if he could even compel him in this state. If it was even Gerry to be compelled and not the End itself.
And then…Gerry began to speak.