Chapter Twenty Four
It’s easy to mistake Verne-science for the real deal, until you realize that it’s only as real as a Merlin-type’s magic. There
’s no difference between a talisman that protects you from possession and a psychic shield that runs on triple-A batteries, or
between a fireball-throwing wizard and a guy in powered armor firing an impulse-cannon. I still prefer Verne-tech; magic is weird.
Astra, The Chicago Interviews.
* * *
I wasn’t very gentle, but my first priority was to make the idiots stop shooting. Flipping the stolen Lexus over worked nicely—
they lost their guns as the windshield shattered, and I pulled the stunned gang-bangers out through the windows before they
recovered enough to try and scramble, cuffing all four with nylon zips.
Dad had driven me back to the Dome in the morning, my costume in a gym bag, and sent me in through the secret parking-garage
entrance. Blackstone said nothing at the morning briefing about my night off the reservation, but I’d still felt like the time at
Lake Willahoo that Shelly and I had snuck across the lake to the boy’s camp. The morning got eventful when Dispatch sent me after
a carload of gun-happy gang-bangers; we don’t often get called in for lawbreaking normals, but when bank robbers shoot a guard
and then go on a high speed chase shooting wildly at any patrol car that gets close, the police like to involve us.
“Bitch!” One of them complained as I propped them up against the car. “It’s not fair!”
“Karma hurts,” I said. According to Shelly, they’d announced their intentions by shooting the unsuspecting guard first, then
terrorized and pistol-whipped patrons while they cleaned out the tellers. Wailing sirens drowned out his swearing, and in moments
Chicago’s finest arrived to manhandle them into the backs of their police cars. Patrolman Jobs tipped his hat.
“Thanks, Astra,” he said with a grin, changed to a scowl as he watched one of the perps smack his head squeezing into the
backseat. “High-speed chases suck. Forget the guns—the cars are lethal weapons.”
“No problem, officer. I’m always glad to help.”
“We know, but you handle yours, we’ll handle ours. You’ve got enough to do.” We shook hands and he turned away as I took off.
He was nice, but I found myself frowning. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of theirs and ours. Lots of supervillains could be
handled by a trained officer with the right weapons and gear; crazies with guns could be handled by any Atlas-type and lots of
other breakthroughs. Maybe the New York police had the right idea.
Shelly and I talked, and everything was right—a good thing, since she told me Vulcan had a blank neural-mimetic matrix ready for
her transfer now; she’d be in the process of moving house for the next few days. I ruthlessly squashed every are you sure you
want to do this response and promised to come down to the Pit to check on her.
That afternoon, Blackstone announced that Orb and Dr. Cornelius would be returning to LA—but before they left, we needed to know
what Dr. Cornelius had been working on. Truth, I’d been too wigged by Monday night’s little adventure to ask. He took us all
downstairs to the maintenance and security level where Platoon kept his armory and the staff kept everything else.
The secured armory had been expanded to include a new room and, stepping across the threshold, I felt the world balloon into the
same infinite space stuffed inside four walls that I’d felt when Dr. Cornelius cast his spell at Mr. Moffat’s apartment. Nobody
else seemed to notice, as, crowding into the room, we found ourselves looking at the Dome.
Someone had helped Dr. Cornelius make the kind of high-detail model the most expensive architectural firms did up when they wanted
to impress clients. Enclosed in banker’s glass, the diorama took up the whole center of the room. It even included the
surrounding walks and cherry trees, and around it and through it, with a draftsman’s precision, Dr. Cornelius had traced the
kinds of circles and symbols we’d seen at the Wicked Witch’s house. To me, the lines looked more solid than the surface they’d
been drawn on. Beyond the diorama and opposite the door, a solid display cabinet of the same thick banker’s glass was even more
disturbing; it held dolls of us.
The Sentinels were contracted with Adrai’s Figures, a company that produced porcelain celebrity dolls, and each of us had a run
of a few hundred. The eighteen-inch dolls were individually hand painted and outfitted in hand-stitched reproductions of our
costumes, but as high quality as those were, I’d heard of artists who bought these expensive collector’s dolls and repainted
them so realistically that enlarged photos could almost be mistaken for studio-shots of the real hero. They re-dressed the figures
in just as much detail, and could resell the artistically enhanced dolls for ten to fifty times their original price. We were
looking at a full lineup of the redone dolls, each standing inside its own magic circle of realer-than-real lines.
“Our biggest fan’s figure-collection doesn’t look this good,” Quin said.
She didn’t seem at all bothered by it, but looking close at my doll made me feel like I’d wandered into a funhouse’s mirror-
room, and when I looked back at the model of the Dome I got the dizzying conviction that I was looking at the real thing from high
over Grant Park. Laying a hand on the glass, I caught Dr. Cornelius watching me out of the corner of his eye.
“Each figure has been ceremonially named,” he said as we stared at the displays. “And I’ve tucked twists of hair with threads
from your costumes into their outfits. Sympathetic magic is crude, but effective. These are essentially sophisticated poppets;
they’re warded against magical attack, so you are too. The same with the Dome; I had them use scrapings of paint and concrete
from the actual Dome in the model.”
Riptide crossed himself. “Dios. You cast a spell on us?”
“Yes, and before you decide to burn me at the stake, I conferred with Father Nolan—the magic tradition I use is not geotic, and
therefore falls under the category of accepted magic traditions recognized in the Pope’s encyclical on breakthroughs and the
supernatural.” He smiled drily. “If you’re Baptist, you might have a problem.”
That settled Riptide, but he didn’t look happy. Chakra simply smiled; she’d probably felt the enchantment happening, though I
was sure it wasn’t the same as her psychic-tantric magic.
“In any case,” Blackstone said, “this is why all Hecate could send against us herself yesterday was a golem. Projections like
the demon that Astra and Artemis encountered can’t cross the Dome’s new wards and we can’t be targeted directly. What she can
do when we’re face-to-face may be another thing entirely, so nobody get cocky.”
I stared at Blackstone’s doll, circled by protective symbols that seemed to me to glow. I couldn’t shake the wooginess of it,
but there would be no box for Blackstone now. Whatever else happened, we could face it as a team.
I was still glad to get out of there, but as the others dispersed Dr. Cornelius pulled me aside.
“Astra,” he said. “May I take a minute?” There was nothing left of the strung-out druggy I’d met in LA. He’d even ditched
the pin-studded coat for a black three-piece suit with a silver talisman where the tie would have been.
“How’s Orb?” I asked. We’d seen little and heard less from the unnervingly silent PI since the second night.
“Fine. Eager to get back to her practice. Look.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m no hero. The kind of fights you guys get
in… I can’t stick around for that. I’m going back to my research, but the wards are the best I can make for you people. And—”
he watched me closely “you felt them, didn’t you?”
I nodded, rubbing arms that had developed goose-bumps under my sleeves, and he grunted.
“In the attack, I released two of the three Words given to me in Aztiluth—the words for Roeled and Phthenoth, the decans of
protection and healing.”
“Released?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t speak them so much as let them speak themselves. You feel the reality of the patterns of the wards.
Imagine that reality multiplied exponentially and sitting in your head. With only one Word left, there’s finally room inside my
mind for me, but I need to explain. You…”
“I’ve changed, haven’t I?” I supplied when he stopped to look for words.
“Yes. Phthenoth is the decan of healing, and its Word healed us all, but Roeled is also the decan of insight.”
He waved a hand.
“I think exposure to its Word may have given you what you could call Second Sight. You’ve become sensitive to the inner world
behind our hologram of experience. Not—” he stopped me when I opened my mouth to protest “that you believe in that. It might go
deeper, but you can see magical operations now. It may wear off, but rely on that insight when you feel it; it’ll tell you when
you’re facing something of Dr. Millibrand’s. Or of mine or somebody else’s. We aren’t the only breakthrough mystics in the
world, after all.”
“Thanks? I suppose…” I shook my head, and he held out his hand.
“Goodbye, then,” he said.
We shook, and he turned away. “Doctor?” I blurted.
“Hmm?”
“What is the last Word? The one you’ve still got?”
“The word for Kurtael.” His smile held absolutely no warmth. “The decan of death.”
Sometimes you just shouldn’t ask.
* * *
Just before sunset, Detective Fisher called me in on another superhuman homicide, this one an obvious Villains Inc. hit. Or an
Outfit hit—nobody was wearing colors showing their side. The victim, Sammy Deines, a D Class Ajax-type with a long rap sheet, had
long been suspected of being a mob-hitter. They found him wrapped in a car someone had crushed like a beer can, and there wasn’t
much for me to do other than look good and sweep for trace. No witnesses, but no dead bystanders either, so Fisher figured it was
all good.
Apparently Chief Garfield didn’t think so—he was threatening to pull Fisher off the Villains Inc. cases unless he found
something for him soon; the identity of the bank-robber who’d started the whole thing was first on the chief’s hit-parade. At
least I’d been able to give Fisher a name, Kitsune, and another description, though it was anybody’s guess how meaningful the
new description was.
Chicago News broadcast crime-scene footage of the villain-on-villain slaying as we sat down for dinner.
Dinner, at Def-1, meant everyone was present and dressed for action. Willis had whipped up a spicy goulash and rice dish for the
main course, delicious as always. Watching everyone eating in costume, I had to smile; we looked like movie actors chowing down in
the studio canteen before heading back to the set for our next big scene. And it was fun watching Blackstone and Chakra eat; they
might as well have been alone together in a restaurant. They were cute.
After desultory conversation faded and silverware clinked in the silence, Quin put her foot down; we were all going to go stir-
crazy if we didn’t get out—and besides, we needed to be seen off-duty or the press was going to get the idea we were turtling
up. Blackstone held out until Chakra leaned in and whispered something I definitely didn’t hear, and finally agreed to split-
shifts, Lei Zi and the guys first, so that Quin, Artemis, Chakra, and I could have a high-profile Girl’s Night Out.
Which was all the excuse Quin needed to drag us off to The Fortress and get us into the evening news for the third night in a row.