“There's something in there.”
“Of course, there is,” Constantine said tiredly. “Human remains?”
“What? No.” I reached inside. “Why would you say that?”
“Why would you blindly reach inside a hole in the floor?”
“Yeah, okay. Point.” My fingers grabbed the wrapped package inside.
“Darling, you didn't even check for wards.”
“I don't sense anything,” I said slowly, pulling the package into the light of the room and examining the enchanted burlap and twine. “Except a...vague residue. If I wasn't looking at the spot, I wouldn't even sense that, I don't think.”
“Right. You should obviously unearth the death packet then.”
“I don't think it's a death packet.” The burlap was enchanted, but it was a protection and preservation enchantment curved into the parcel, with no outward spikes.
He sighed, and I could see twelve other spells join his first ten, as he readied whatever he thought he'd need to save the world.
“I could care less about the world,” he answered, reading my thoughts. “That is your burden. I merely exist to save you.”
I shook my head fondly, not keeping my further thoughts secret either. That is why you helped Olivia, then, I said mentally, as I started to unwrap the twine.
“Lies,” he said blandly. But he leaned in to see what the package revealed.
It was a series of exquisitely crafted sketches of the same woman.
Touching the first made the world warp—visually pulling the things close to me, like Constantine and my supplies into macroscopic view, and shifting the rest of the world into a hazy blur. Feelings—deep and crushed with weight—exploded outward, like pollen bursting from an overripe bloom. Emotions and memories fell around me, and I felt the wisp of a woman's ghostly fingers brush my cheek.
Alone. Darkness. Aid.
What do you seek?
“Kinsky did this,” I murmured. I knew this woman.
The brush strokes were long and sensual, lovingly curving the frame of the woman's body, her head was just starting to turn, but it was not filled in by detail—as if the artist knew her enough to anticipate her features, but was rediscovering her as she moved to face him.
Like a man painting a memory that he wanted to experience again.
Despair and melancholy and loss.
“He lost a love,” I said softly. “Such sadness in these strokes.”
Constantine didn't respond for a moment. “I see it,” he said tightly.
“It's the same woman,” I murmured.
The other images were burned into my brain in a soul-deep way. They, too, had held a melancholic tinge.
Sergei Kinsky was a man who had loved deeply and mourned just as profoundly.
“Yes?” Constantine had stepped away at some point while I’d been absorbed and was looking through the window, curtain pulled back, and magic coiling around him. His cloak suddenly secured around him, transforming him into an anonymous wraith.
“It’s the same woman in the portrait at the Library of Alexandria, the same one from Ganymede Circus.” I shook my head. “I never found out what happened to that shop.”
“And you won't find out today.” He let the curtain fall and his magic reached to join with mine, his cloak wrapping him even tighter in anonymous spells.
“Why?” I let his magic automatically connect to mine.
“Because the Department’s flunkies have arrived.”
I put my hand on the floor and felt the reverberations in the layer. I nodded and sent a summons for paper and wings, then carefully wrapped the small portrait back in its burlap and gathered up my supplies. “You ready?”
“Do I have an alternative to letting that blasted book ferry me back?”
“We could take Will's portal pad,” I offered, nodding to his pocket. “It fits two and has an enlargement spell for four.”
“The tunnel of death?”
“It's not that bad.”
“Everyone screams.”
“Most. Most people scream.”
“Right. My mistake. Pass.”
The book popped into the room, dropping Guard Rock on my shoulder and devouring the painting in one fell swoop. Guard Rock hitched his arm through the strap of my bag, and the book enveloped us from behind when a soldier wearing Stavros's face opened the door.
The house roared, and a giant maw of oak shot toward the man with Stavros's face.
He paid no attention to his death. Magic flitted over his stolen eyes—the scrolling magic that the high-level Department thugs used to see beyond disguises and lies. His gaze was affixed to my bag and a look of deep fury overtook his stolen features along with a sliver of unease.
“You’re too late,” I said. I didn’t know what made me say it as the book’s pages closed around me.
Stavros didn't move toward us, nor did he move away as the mouth dove to envelop his puppet. He simply watched us as we disappeared, eyes full of caged fury and cold plans.
He looked at the paint on my disappearing fingers, and smiled as his puppet died.
Chapter Six: Other Hands Do Burdens Hold
We emerged in the turret and I stumbled over to the desk. My supplies slid from my bag across the wood. My wrapped painting and the Kinsky sketches stopped near the edge, teetering.
Another death. Images of death and dying whirled in my mind. I was drowning in death’s darkness.
I touched the table.
Constantine's cloak zipped from him in an effortless movement. He crouched down, darkly contemplating Guard Rock, who was gesturing something to him. “Your rock says they were ambushed at the 'gate with five arms.'” He frowned at Guard Rock. “The Library of Alexandria? Why the devil were you—”
Magic hooked into my gut, stiffening my muscles as the layer whispered in four dimensions. An Awakening.
I swayed unsteadily, and Constantine was suddenly lurching over to catch me, his palms pressed to my cheeks as he searched my pupils. “Ren?”
Magic soared through me as his expletives grew distant in my ears. I raised my hands and shot the paint splatters on my fingers against the walls to strengthen the wards on the complex.
The wards pulsed. Magic tingled from every pore. The painting session had been...different. I felt more in control, more powerful. I let calm descend and slowly rotated my shoulders forward, feeling the energy course through me as I let the magic pull me upright. This Awakening would be easy.
I rotated my palm downward.
“No.” Constantine's voice was dark. He grabbed my hand and pulled me against him. He flicked his finger and my fitted trench cloak peeled from my frame and flew to the other side of the room.
“Constantine—”
“No. It’s insanity. With you hopped up on juice and Stavros knowing it? No way are you going. I don’t care what—” His eyes unfocused, then a flood of relief filled him painfully and suddenly. “Those idiots got your device into production.”
I pulled my hand and body free and the cloak sailed back over to me. I swung it in an arc, shrugging my arms into it.
Magic coursed through me. Power.