“The painting.”
He smiled. “It never looked like a painting. It was always disguised as a door. Tricks and guises. You'd enter the door and stand in a long, decrepit corridor to hell. A between. Where you are neither here nor there. Where you waited for judgment—to house the devil or be smote forever.” Raphael looked at me. “To enter Hell or be returned from purgatory. That is where he wants us both. For once you enter that passageway, you fall under his dominion until he releases you. Forevermore.”
“How did you escape?”
“Oler wanted to do extended tests, and Enton doesn't like others in his space for long. So I went back to Table One. For months, I awaited an opportunity, sanity dwindling with only a single image to hang onto—a picture from Excelsine that I had managed to tuck away—and a single emotion—revenge—that Enton himself strengthened. He was going to take and turn my revenge against enemies he wanted gone. Make me think they were the ones I needed vengeance upon. Turn me into a weapon with continually fluid targets. He was going to move me back to his domain and rekindle a lost emotion—devotion—but to make himself the focus. Never.” There was a bit of the old insanity in his eyes for a moment, before he got it under control.
He ran his fingers through the sand. “I found an opportunity. Oler would bring outsiders, specialists, in to see his experiments sometimes. I grabbed one of the ones Oler loved best—used the last of my will, flipped the protections on him and slaughtered everything I could in my escape.” He looked to the side. “I never found the Basement again. Stavros was too smart for that. I have long wished I had taken my time to destroy it or mark it, but I was desperate to be gone from that place, and what was left of my mind fractured almost completely in my exit. It is easier to see now.”
There was so much and so little to say.
“I'm sorry,” I murmured.
“Yes.”
We let the waves provide the only sound for a half rotation of the sky. But I could feel dawn emerging and the others waking, and time was not on our side.
“Can Mussolgranz physically travel to Stavros, if he calls him?”
Raphael tilted his head. “Yes. And you have deduced correctly. Helen. Kaine. And a few of the praetorians, before Kaine consumed them. I saw no one else there, though there could be more. Oler’s assistants maybe. Enton doesn't share space with others well. Ironic, really.”
“I just need to find the passageway to Stavros then.”
Raphael looked at me and smiled. “I’ve always loved that about you, Butterfly. But, no, your confidence, though earned, will not help you once you are there. Your magic will not aid you. Stavros has complete control over that entryway. He can tailor the spells for each mage's abilities—and nullify all extra magic he finds. You will never unlock the magic of it, not in time. Sergei Kinsky set it up before he understood he was sealing his own doom, and the seals have been repeatedly refined since.”
Kinsky had done it because he thought he was fighting for something more important than his own freedom—his lost love.
“So, one can only enter under Stavros's complete control?”
“That is why I chose the alternative after my escape—to bury him so deeply that he could never escape.”
But I could see that Raphael felt this a poor alternative, too. It didn’t solve the problem of Omega Genesis if Stavros had a remote switch. If he had options, which he almost assuredly had.
Stavros was an ultra-planner. His alternative plans would not be weak. But his overconfidence in his own planning was our in. That and his reliance on only himself.
Raphael seemed to follow my thoughts and his gaze grew distant. “A man who stands alone is a man consumed by the river, Butterfly.”
*
With timers set to remind us of when and where we were, the “new day” inside our hideout provided a full slate of machinations and grim planning.
Like testing the spell from Raphael, which was eagerly and darkly embraced by the more mischief-bent of our number.
Mike, Patrick, and Lifen worked the curse angle with Constantine, Neph, and me, our heads bent together, all morning. With tainted and untainted magic samples from each of their loved ones—pulled through family magic spells—we came up with a test that would identify the caster's magic. Family magic was quite special when used for good purposes, and I could reluctantly see why people argued for life hooks—though I had too many bad examples to be swayed to that side.
Stevens and Greyskull had tasks in real time to take care of, so they had given us the parameters for a draught that combined with Origin Magic, might extend the stasis of the victims to four days. Enough time to find the cure in the real world once we had what we needed.
It had to be.
When we finally emerged from our last grueling session, we had a concoction that only required an appropriate container that could stay near the victim.
“Washcloth. Headband. Hair tie,” Lifen agreed. “Something innocuous and soft to rest against them without someone taking note. Price, where's Peoples?”
I looked around the library. We were missing five.
Olivia waved her hand from a table where she was neck deep in books. “Delia, Kita, Greene, Ramirez, and Straught left for testing. Said they'd be gone for the afternoon. Should be back in”—she checked her timer—“an hour.”
She flipped a page. “Trying to trick their way into other rooms on campus using the enhanced phys-changing spells and the magic of the rooms.” Crelussa had been good, but was not enough for what we needed. There was too much that could be undone.
I looked back at her. “Delia's not terrorizing Anastasia Kaparov again, is she?”
“If her enchantment can get her in Kaparov's room after all the pranks she's pulled on that girl, it can get her in anywhere,” Olivia said with a grimace. “And if she can get into one magicist's room...”
She could get into more.
“Everyone was inspired by Professor Stevens's potion, Verisetti's mastery, and your blobs. Loudon, Asafa, and William are certain they can place the resulting spells into an implant with Greene and whatever duplicitous witchcraft Ramirez is capable of, so they are over there practicing.” She pointed in their direction without looking and they gave a cheerful wave. “If they get past the magicists, we are greenlit.”
Even Bellacia—who was still off campus with her father, writing articles against the Department as if she were the one with an extended timespace—with her eyes and ears everywhere, had lost contact with the increasingly paranoid. And recent articles had put her at increasing odds with some of the most fanatical of magicists. There were even vows that had to be taken to enter certain dorm rooms now.