The sound of Marius von Raum beginning a song he wasn’t going to be allowed to finish jolted Jon out of a sound sleep, and also told him that Melanie had somehow got hold of his phone. He grabbed for it quickly to stop it ringing before it woke anyone else up and became aware, as he did so, that the nest of blankets was tucked securely around him, but he was otherwise alone. How Martin had got up and disentangled himself from Jon without waking him was beyond him. He must have slept very deeply, which was something of a novelty these days.
He managed to connect the call before the third repetition of the riff, fumbling for his glasses with the other hand. “Hah—hello?”
“Did I wake you?” Melanie sounded slightly distracted. There was something indistinct in the background, and then she amended, actually sounding apologetic, “Sorry, of course I woke you, it’s six in the morning. Are you awake enough to follow directions?”
“Awake enough to follow, asleep enough not to ask questions.” Jon found his glasses and slid them onto his face. “What are my marching orders, General?”
“Your mission, should you choose to accept it,” Melanie said, modulating her voice briefly into a solemn secret agent voice, then dropped into her usual voice. “Actually, fuck that, you don’t get a choice. Meet you at the bookshop. Bring Martin and Daisy. And possibly some elephant tranqs.”
“Oh, God, what happened?”
“Dunno, but Tim called Sasha a little bit ago and she listened for about three minutes and then started looking for the cat carriers, so I’m guessing there are some emotions involved.” Melanie sighed. “Meet you there. Tell Martin not to strain himself.”
“I will. Be careful, Melanie.”
“Nag, nag, nag. See you soon.”
“See you soon,” Jon repeated softly. He ended the call, rubbed his hand over his face briefly, and got to his feet.
Daisy was perched cross-legged on one of the desks, hunched slightly over a cup of tea cradled in her hands. Every so often, she attempted to blow a section of strawberry blonde hair out of her eyes, but like everything else about her, it stubbornly resisted being dislodged. Her gaze raked over him briefly. “Morning.”
“Is it?” Jon said, trying for a joke. From the brief smirk that flickered across Daisy’s mouth, he managed to pull it off. “Have—ah, h-have you seen Martin?”
“Office.” Daisy jerked her head towards the Archivist’s office. “Said if he was going to be awake he might as well get some work done.”
That was…not really something Jon wanted to hear, actually. He swallowed the sudden lump of anxiety and started for the office. He could hear the rise and fall of Martin’s voice and knew he was dictating a statement, which did not make him feel any better.
When he opened the door, Martin was seated behind his desk, a pensive look on his face as he stared at one of the two tape recorders on its surface. The other, closer to his hand, was clearly spinning as he spoke to it. His eyes glittered their intense, luminescent green as he did so.
“—an interesting theory,” he mused. “Not sure if I believe it, but it’s what we have to go on for right now. I just wish I knew for sure who was leaving these for me. End supplement.”
The tape recorder shut itself off with a cheerful click. Martin blinked, and his eyes returned to normal—still bright, but no longer literally glowing. He reached over to pop the tape out and looked up, giving Jon a soft smile. “Hi. Sleep okay?”
“Yes, for a wonder,” Jon said quietly. He was a bit more awake than he really wanted to be, and he fought the urge to walk over and hug his boyfriend. “How long have you been up?”
Martin raised his eyebrows and glanced at the clock. “An hour? Maybe? Dreams ended earlier than usual and I heard Daisy moving around, so I offered to make her tea. She didn’t want company and I didn’t want to wake you up, but I knew I wasn’t getting back to sleep and came in here instead. I thought I’d do a bit of admin before everyone else got in.”
Jon pursed his lips briefly. He knew he should call Martin out on the fact that he’d heard him doing a recording—and the worrying fact that there was no file in sight—but it was early in the morning and they had somewhere to be, and he figured he would wait until they were all together so Gerry and Melanie could help him yell. So he swallowed his instinctive response and said in as neutral a way as he could, “Melanie called. She wants us to meet her and Sasha at the bookshop. She, ah, she said Sasha was gathering up the cats, so…she doesn’t know what Tim was calling about, but there’s probably something bad going on.”
“Or Tim’s got a really weird idea for a party. It’s Tim. Anything is possible,” Martin murmured, standing up from the desk. Jon noticed him palming the tape from one of the recorders, but, perhaps unwisely, he kept his mouth shut. “Is Daisy coming?”
“I—I didn’t ask her, but Melanie said to bring her.”
Martin gave Jon another one of those crooked smiles he loved so much, and it was all Jon could do not to melt and pretend nothing was bothering him ever. “Let’s find out if she’s up for it then.”
The trains began running early, and the sun was already up, so they made good time to Cinnamon Rose Books. Jon kept an eye on Martin for signs of guilt, or that he was hiding a secret, but his face was as innocent and implacable as ever. Jon wanted to believe that wasn’t a facade, that there definitely wasn’t anything else going on, that Martin wasn’t keeping something important from him.
He wasn’t sure he did.
The thing was…the thing was, Jon thought as they got off at the end of the line and started the relatively short trek to the shop, that Martin was Web-Marked, but not Web-aligned, so he didn’t really go for manipulation, not casually like that. He didn’t bait, didn’t gaslight, didn’t pull strings like some kind of goddamned puppet master. But…well, the Eye dealt in secrets as much as knowledge, and it was possible Martin was getting a little extra energy from keeping secrets. A tiny romantic part of Jon told him that, surely, Martin wouldn’t keep painful secrets like that from him.
A tiny cynical voice in the back of his mind reminded him that almost every single person in an abusive relationship believed their loved one wouldn’t do that to them at some point or another.
Martin didn’t bother knocking on the door, just fished out his keys and unlocked the shop door himself, then locked it behind them again and led the way through the shop. Jon could hear voices from upstairs and deduced that someone was having an argument, but he couldn’t tell if they were walking into a lovers’ spat or a lighthearted debate until they reached the kitchen. Gerry was seated at the table, elbows resting on its surface and hands gripping his hair; Tim was gesticulating wildly with a spatula, and Melanie was standing in front of him with an armful of cat and an unimpressed look on her face, Sasha standing at her back.
Sasha glanced over Tim’s shoulder, and a look of relief spread over her face. “Thank God. You talk some sense into them.”
Tim whirled around, his face tight with anger. His expression didn’t change as he strode across the kitchen in two steps, and Jon didn’t have time to even think about what he was going to do before he slammed into Martin with a tight hug. Martin gave a startled oomph and hugged him back. “Uh, hi?”
“Those bastards,” Tim choked out. “You were four.”
“I—oh.” Martin looked over Tim’s head at Gerry. “Flashback?”
Gerry lifted his head from his hands, and Jon jerked back in surprise. He hadn’t seen him so drawn and haggard since…well, since he’d first turned up at Melanie’s door. He looked like he hadn’t slept…or eaten…in a while. When he spoke, though, Jon’s stomach lurched as he realized the truth—Gerry had been crying. “You dreamed about it last night, didn’t you? Being Marked by the Lonely?”
“I don’t…really have dreams of my own these days, Ger,” Martin said, a bit regretfully. “God, I don’t even remember it, it was so long ago. I knew I’d probably met it long before I ever met you, but even back then it was just a-a feeling more than anything. I was four?”
“That’s what you said. Well, what Tim said I said when I was narrating the experience.” Gerry closed his eyes for a minute. “I thought Neenie’s encounter with the Slaughter was bad when I woke up from it, but at least Uncle Roger didn’t try to feed her to the lions.”
“I genuinely don’t know why you’re still surprised at anything Mum ever did to Martin,” Melanie muttered. “Did you ever see the tally marks?”
“Melanie!” Martin went pale.
“Shit. Shit, sorry, I—” Melanie winced and looked away. “My fucking mouth. Sorry.”
“Tally marks?” Jon repeated, dread stealing over him. He looked up at Martin, and suddenly realized that, whatever that meant, Martin wasn’t going to elaborate. He was going to deflect, change the subject, keep his secrets, and—
Martin sighed heavily and let go of Tim, then stepped back and leaned against the wall, arms folded over his chest. Quietly, he said, “On the inside door of the hall closet, at the place Mum and I lived before she and Dad got married. I used to make one every time she locked me in there for…whatever reason. Melanie helped me repaint it before we moved out, because most of the part of the door I could reach had the scratches in the paint.”
The temperature in the room dropped several degrees, and Gerry’s eyes narrowed. “I am going to go find out if I can bring people back from the dead. And then I’m going to kill her again.”
“Help me with Peter Lukas first,” Tim growled. “The Lonely doesn’t get to touch anyone else.”
“I’ll help,” Daisy said immediately.
“Whoa, whoa, hold up.” Martin raised both hands. “You don’t know what he’s capable of. If you can even find him, he’s as likely to…”
“Vaporize you,” Sasha supplied.
“Uh—not exactly,” Martin said slowly. “I don’t think Paul and Nolan are actually dead, they’re just…trapped in the Lonely. Which isn’t noticeably better, but…still. We don’t want to lose you three.”
Jon noticed something in Daisy’s eyes and added, “You won’t be able to find Basira if you’re in there. Not if you don’t go in willingly. Maybe not even if you do.”
“I don’t know if I could find my way in without being put there,” Daisy admitted candidly. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to hunt Peter Lukas down and rip his throat out.”
Melanie crossed the kitchen and unceremoniously pushed Wynken into Daisy’s arms. “Sit down.” She bent down, picked up Umberto, and thrust him at Tim, who took him, seemingly on instinct. “You, too. Everyone who’s upset, sit down and grab a cat, and let’s talk this out like fucking adults instead of…people possessed by our worst instincts.”
“What, exactly, are we talking out?” Tim said bitingly, but he did sit down.
Martin glanced at Jon and jerked his head at the kitchen door; Jon pulled it shut. “Want me to light the wards first?”
“Here.” Gerry fished out his lighter and tossed it to Jon. “Lonely, Beholding, Web, End, and for my peace of mind, the Buried. Please,” he added.
It was tacked on as an afterthought, but Jon decided to accept it and began lighting the candles. Martin, meanwhile, made his way over to the stove. “Here, I’ll make breakfast…look, I didn’t realize it was that bad. Not that I really understood Marks and all that until we were a bit older, but I genuinely thought the Halloween incident was what actually Marked me.”
“Apparently not. You were on vacation with your parents and…a woman came and offered to let you play with her daughter on the beach,” Gerry said slowly. “She told you to play hide and seek, and then…never went looking for you, I guess?”
“I…” Martin trailed off, his eyes going vacant. Jon felt more than heard the soft gathering of static. “It was a test. Her mother was trying to get them back into the family’s good graces after her own father was disgraced and sent to live with distant relatives, so she was testing to see if, even at that age, her daughter could be trained to see other people as nothing more than fodder for the Lonely. She was certainly better at it than her cousin, but it wasn’t good enough.” He winced and shook his head hard. “God. I wish that would stop.”
“Getting mugged by knowledge?” Jon said, a bit dryly. He wanted to hug Martin, to comfort him, but…something held him back. Not until he asks. Not until he admits…
“It’s not really getting mugged. It’s more…” Martin sighed. “It’s like—like there’s a door in my mind, and behind it is the whole ocean, pressing against it. Sometimes a few drops force their way past the door and I get a little wet, but it’s nothing like what will happen if I open that door.”
“What happens if you do?” Daisy asked, teasing up a bit of fur on the nape of Wynken’s neck, which the fluffy calico seemed to enjoy immensely.
Martin stood still for a moment, then said, very quietly, “I drown.”
“Martin,” Jon said softly. His heart ached for his boyfriend, but he made himself stay where he was.
Sasha cleared her throat. “When you say ‘it wasn’t good enough’…”
Martin shrugged without looking up. “Well. That particular bit of Knowledge didn’t have any names attached.”
“Ann,” Gerry murmured. “Without an E.”
“I think she made that up, Ger.”
Jon laid the lighter down on the table next to Gerry’s elbow. Gerry palmed it in a way that was uncomfortably close to the way Martin had done with the tape. “Okay, then, back to Tim’s question. What are we talking out, exactly?”
“How about what the fuck is going on?” Melanie suggested.
Jon nodded. “You said the flashbacks tend to…be relevant to what’s happening, or about to happen. And you flashed back to…Martin getting Marked by the Lonely?”
“So something’s about to go down with the Lonely,” Tim completed. “Peter Lukas.”
“Right,” Melanie said, obviously picking up on where Jon was going. “So I say again, what the fuck is he up to?”
Daisy cocked her head slightly. “What do you mean? Why does he have to be up to something?”
“Because he does. He’s not planning a ritual—Gertrude already disrupted the Lonely’s ritual sometime recently, you said, Gerry—so he can’t be using the Institute for that, but either Elias appointed him to be his temporary successor or he moved in on his own.” Melanie grunted as Blynken leaped into her lap and began kneading at it, purring all the while. “Besides, his whole thing is the Lonely, and isolation and all that—why would he be working with people?”
“And why Basira?” Sasha mused. She held up a hand to forestall Daisy’s glare. “Not that there’s anything wrong with her. Just…he made her his personal assistant. She’s working with him closely. Doing what?”
Martin, who was mixing something in a bowl, suddenly paused. Jon felt, instinctively, that he had an idea, and something in his chest twisted as he envisioned the next few minutes. Martin would resume his work, Jon would have to make a decision on whether to call him out on it or let him continue to pretend not to be involved, Melanie would call Jon out on it and he’d have to call Martin out, they’d end up in a fight, Martin would end up storming out to clear his head and probably pounce some poor random passerby and feed off of them, Jon would feel guilty about it for the rest of his life…
While the doomsday scenario played out in a matter of nanoseconds in his head, Martin set bowl and spoon down, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the tape, which he laid on the table in front of them. “Investigating a possible new Fear.”
If Martin had declared his intention to quit the Institute, move to Las Vegas, and become a male stripper, he could not have shocked Jon any more. Not by what he had said. By the fact that he had just…said it. Jon had geared himself up so thoroughly for the fight that he actually hadn’t been prepared for the possibility that it just…wouldn’t happen. He hadn’t considered the possibility that Martin would actually tell them what he’d been up to, that he wouldn’t keep the secrets close to his chest.
“A possible what?” Melanie’s voice rose sharply.
“That can happen?” Sasha said incredulously.
“How?” Tim demanded.
“I thought you were going to keep that a secret,” Jon blurted without thinking.
That fast, Martin’s eyes snapped up to focus on Jon. “What?” he said, looking and sounding honestly confused. After a second, though, his eyes cleared and his face softened. “Jon, no. I just didn’t want to have to explain it more than once.”
“Explain what? Start at the beginning,” Gerry said.
Martin went back to whatever he was making, but he stayed facing the others as he did so. “A couple times lately, I’ve found things on my desk that I know I didn’t put there—statements I didn’t pull, tapes I haven’t seen, that sort of thing. They’ve been…generally helpful in what we’re doing. I just assumed one of you was leaving them there, but I found that tape this morning when I went in to put together the third quarter budget requisition, and since it wasn’t there when I locked it last night, I don’t know where it came from. And…it’s not Gertrude on the tape.”
“Who is it?” Melanie asked.
Daisy inhaled sharply. She reached for the tape, then drew her hand back, like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to touch. “Basira.”
Martin nodded. “She was reading a letter from Adelard Dekker—the one who got Gertrude the plastic explosives, who might honestly be the only person she worked with I haven’t met at some point or another. Anyway, Dekker is—or was at the time he wrote the letter—convinced that a new Fear was preparing to emerge. He waxed kind of poetic about it, actually, and he had a whole incident he said was representative of proof of his theory. You can listen to it if you’d like.”
“I’d rather not,” Tim muttered. Melanie nodded emphatically. “How? I mean…fear is fear, right? There aren’t…”
“Tim, people are always inventing new things to be afraid of. Yeah, they usually kind of sort into categories, but…what happens when something comes up, something that enough people are afraid of that it becomes a powerful concern, and it doesn’t slot neatly into one category or another?” Martin exhaled. “Even knowing—”
“The damn things overlap,” Jon and Sasha said in unison.
Martin cracked a small smile. “Yeah. Even with that, if they blend together enough, it might create something wholly new. Dekker’s potential new fear is called the Extinction.”
“Sounds like a mix of the Slaughter and the End,” Melanie mused. “The fear of…”
“Catastrophic loss. Not just the end of everything, but its obliteration.” Martin set the bowl down on the counter and opened the refrigerator. “I think you probably heard the tail end of my recording, Jon, so I’m guessing you know that I’m not convinced, but…”
“But it’s a possibility,” Daisy completed. “And Peter Lukas is convinced of it, and he’s convinced Basira of it.”
“Or he’s at least got her looking into it. I’m serious, Daisy, I’d like you to take a listen when you’re up to it, if you don’t mind—you know her better than I do, you can tell me what you think. But to me, it sounded like she was—I don’t know, humoring him?”
Daisy’s eyes went distant for a moment. “Probably. She was always good at that. She’d agree with what was said, go along with it especially when she was being watched, then just quietly go behind and do what she thought was the right move anyway.”
Jon was honestly only half paying attention. His mind was still stuck on what Martin had said: I think you probably heard the tail end of my recording, Jon. Guilt swirled in his stomach. Martin had known he was there, and really hadn’t been deliberately trying to conceal what he was doing. And yet Jon been so quick to assign the worst possible motives…God, what kind of a boyfriend was he, if he just assumed the man he loved wouldn’t tell him when things were getting bad?
Then again, was he any better? He’d been noticing things about himself for a while, things he didn’t like—not just the weird static in his occasional attempts to compel people, which even Melanie had called him out on, but things like…well, like this. All of a sudden—or maybe not all of a sudden, maybe it had been gradual, like Melanie’s descent into the Slaughter, and he just hadn’t noticed until he made the comparison to past behavior—he’d stopped asking about things that bothered him, or things he wanted to talk about. He waited for…no. No, most of the time he wasn’t just passively waiting for someone else to bring them up, he was deliberately laying the groundwork for someone else to mention it and think it was their idea in the first place…
“So what does Peter Lukas need the Institute for?” Tim asked, from somewhere on the edge of Jon’s existential crisis. “Or Basira? Just to look into if this is actually happening?”
“He’s a wealthy middle-aged white man,” Melanie pointed out. “He doesn’t need anyone to validate his theories, he’s rich enough to pay people to believe them. If he thinks this is happening, or wants to believe it’s happening, he isn’t looking for proof, he’s looking for solutions.”
Martin nodded. “There’s a bit at the end of the tape where he and Basira are talking about…all of that. He says he needs someone who’s got a touch of the Beholding in them in order to really carry out his plan, but he’s vague on what that plan is, and he says he’s still getting some things together.”
“Can we get ahead of him on it?” Sasha asked. “I mean, can you…look into his head or whatever?”
“No,” Jon said sharply, surprise and a sudden bite of fear startling him out of his guilt spiral. Sasha jerked her head back in surprise, and he almost felt bad. Almost.
But Martin was shaking his head as well. “Jon’s right. I can’t risk that, Sash. Even if Peter Lukas wasn’t way more powerful than I am—meaning I don’t think I even could read his mind, not without a lot of effort—if I try to force my way into his head, he’ll either kill me or trigger…whatever his plan is before we have a hope of knowing if it’s even something we need to stop, let alone actually stopping it. We’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”
“Fun,” Tim deadpanned.
“Well, it’s that or sit around passively and wait for something to happen. Can someone hand me the cinnamon?” Martin swiped a paper towel through the butter and began rubbing at what looked to the casual glance like two frying pans welded together.
Melanie looked up, suddenly distracted from the conversation. “Are you making pancakes?”
“Waffles.” Martin’s voice held an implied duh.
“We only do those on…” Gerry’s voice trailed off. “Fuck. Is today the eighteenth?”
“Did you forget your own birthday?”
“Shut up. I have a lot going on.”
Jon shook himself out of his stupor, scooted around the table, reached into the spice rack, and pulled down the cinnamon. As he handed it to Martin, he leaned in close and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Martin smiled and winked at him, then added a dash to the batter, ladled some into the waffle iron, and closed it. Once it was set on the burner, he slipped an arm around Jon and pulled him close. “You don’t need to be,” he whispered back. “I’m sorry I worried you. I trust you, Jon. You know that, right?”
“I do.” Jon snuggled against Martin and hugged him tightly, more relieved than he wanted to admit out loud.
He also still felt a twinge of guilt. You don’t need to be. Martin wasn’t reading anyone’s minds if he could help it, so he didn’t know anything other than what Jon was outright telling him, or what was obvious from his body language. He didn’t know about Jon’s worries about himself. He only knew that Jon had been worried about him.
And Jon knew he wasn’t going to bring it up. Not here. Not now. Not with the others right there. He told himself he would, later, when it was just the two of them.
But what if he didn’t?
“So what’s the plan today?” Tim asked. “Breakfast, mass trip to the Institute, see what we can pull from the shelves that might relate to this Extinction thing?”
Martin hesitated, then shook his head. “No. No, I think…you know what, screw it. Let’s take the day away from the Institute. Let’s just…if we’re going to plot against Peter Lukas, I’d rather not do it directly under his nose, even if he can’t watch us the way Elias could.”
“Is Elias still watching us from prison?” Sasha wondered. “I know he can’t see through the wards, but is he keeping an eye on us otherwise?”
“Probably. I think he’s exactly where he wants to be,” Martin said slowly. “I just don’t know why. And right now, I don’t care enough to try and figure it out, by supernatural means or otherwise. As long as he stays in prison, that’s good enough for me.”
“You’re the Archivist. If it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me.” Jon leaned a little closer to Martin’s side. He’d been denying himself this contact all morning, to punish…one of them, God only knew which, maybe both. He should probably step away, because he didn’t deserve this closeness, but damn it, he needed it right now. From the way Martin kept one arm around him and worked the waffle iron with the other, he felt the same.
“Well, then.” Gerry sounded marginally more like himself. “Let’s have breakfast and then head out to Regent’s Park. If nothing else, we need to get our annual photo—and this year, I think I’d like to include the lot of you in the picture as well. Or at least in a picture. We’re all family now, and it’s not really my birthday without a new family photo.”
“And then what?” Sasha wondered.
Martin turned out the first waffle. “And then we improvise.”
“I hate this plan,” Melanie declared. “Let’s do it.”
Jon glanced down at the large orange cat that had ambled out of nowhere and butted his shins, but made no move to let go of Martin, even to pet Nod. “I hope someone has an idea of what to do with the cats while we do this.”