“Oh, I follow,” said Audrey. In fact she ran ahead of me, swinging into the stairwell. I went after her, down concrete steps into the less public passages of the building’s underbelly. Trumbull and Caleb hurried behind.
Here we found not well-polished floors but dust and cobwebs, bare bulbs of considerable vintage, doors with rusty hinges. In the back of my mind I felt Charlie noticing and echoing my excitement. And further still, the faint whisper of Sally’s heart and breath, racing as if in response to my own thoughts.
Audrey and I halted together before the same door.
“How do you know—” began Caleb. But I was already pushing it open.
To reveal a room illumined by witchlight, etched with diagrams like a sea of interlocking gears—gears made of numbers that pulsed and twined like those Trumbull had placed on my skin. I wished I still had that protection, but already I walked toward the particular gear that called to me, still half-believing that it held precisely the thing I sought. I don’t like being manipulated, I thought, but it didn’t help. Audrey, likewise in thrall, stepped into a gear of her own.
The strange call vanished as soon as I stood within. My head cleared, but invisible shackles held my legs. At the room’s shadowed edge, beyond the great sea of enmeshed equations, I saw that we were not alone. Barlow, his secretary Mary, and Peters were there—and alongside them, Sally and Jesse. All five stared at us with shocked expressions.
Sally found her voice first. “Audrey? Miss Marsh? What are you doing here—I swear, I wasn’t breaking my promise, I just wanted to learn—please—”
Mary slapped her across the cheek. “Be quiet. We need to find out what’s going on here, and we can’t afford panic. If the equation is bringing in people, something’s very wrong.”
Jesse, who’d been kneeling at the diagram’s edge, stood slowly. “It’s not. Or at least not human people. Audrey, what did she do to you?”
“Started to teach me magic. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Learning magic.” He eyed me, walked around the edge of the room to get a better view. “Your new mentor’s not human. I wasn’t sure whether she forced you to stay with her, or whether you’d just gotten caught up in something bigger than you could handle. But with what happened to Leroy, we needed power of our own. These guys started asking us questions, and we found out we had some interests in common.”
“I’m human,” I said, picking the accusation most immediately worth responding to. “Just a subspecies.”
“Are you?” asked Mary. “It said so in the files, but I didn’t take them seriously.”
“Amphibious,” said Barlow. “Supposedly. And certainly more loyal to her immortality-granting ocean gods than to any country. What about that one?” He jerked his elbow at Audrey.
“I’m human,” she said. “Just a subspecies. Will you please shut down this goddamned spell?”
“Which looks,” came Trumbull’s voice from the doorway, “absurdly unsafe. What by all the gods do you think you’re doing?” Twisting, I could see her and Caleb. Caleb looked ready to charge across the floor, and I made shooing motions. I wanted him to run for Spector, but he didn’t seem inclined.
“It’s an inventory equation,” said Barlow. “It’s meant to track down and sample any exotic power sources that might be available within a given range.” He turned to shuffle a stack of notes. “The sensitivity appears to be higher than predicted. I do apologize, Miss Marsh—I didn’t intend to detain you a second time. Although perhaps I should have. You seem to have come from very close by. What were you doing, skulking about the administration building after midnight?”
I gritted my teeth. “Trying to find out whether you were doing something dangerous. Which you were.”
“Certainly. Dangerous to our enemies.” He narrowed his eyes and shifted his weight; I could tell he would have preferred to come closer. “If you consider yourself an enemy of the United States, I think we’d better talk after I finish the inventory. Unfortunately, the equation is difficult to interrupt before it’s run its course.” He looked up to nod at the others. “Miss Trumbull, Mr. Marsh. I’m afraid we’re somewhat occupied at the moment, but if you want to leave now … well, your unwillingness to answer a few questions will be noted. This will take another hour or two; perhaps you’d prefer to come around the side and join us—I understand you have some background in more traditional esoterica. You might be interested to see what we’ve accomplished here.” And he clearly wanted to see their reaction to it.
Trumbull, who’d been listening to his suspicions with an expression of increasing disapproval, did not approach. “Are you mad? Your ‘equation’ is a nonspecific summoning and binding, however unorthodox—it’ll drag in one of everything it can reach. There are things that don’t bind as easily as two mixed-race humans.”
“Really, miss, there’s no need to be hysterical.”
“She’s a professor,” said Audrey. “And she knows more about esoterica, traditional or otherwise, than you’ll ever—”
One of the gears—less a gear, up close, and more an amorphous globule edged with numbers—began to pulse brightly. Then another, and then the whole room burst into a haze of actinic light. It ought to have been cacophony, but I heard nothing other than Trumbull’s startled hiss, abruptly cut off. I tried again to move, but the spell bound me fast. Something rushed past, cold as space and carrying silence with it. Memory flared of the thing I’d encountered during our own ritual—now I knew I’d only glimpsed it at a distance. It surged against me and I felt the touch of a nameless need deeper than hunger. I choked on something that was not air.
My connection with Charlie flared, all fear. But even fear made a spot of warmth, a little space where I could draw sudden, painful breath. I still heard nothing, though I could make out vague shapes moving beyond the light.
I had another connection in this room, beyond the confluence. My hands were unbound, though moving them brushed the edges of my bubble of warmth and air, and my fingers came back hoared with frost. When I pulled up my sleeve, it was a moment before I felt the fabric against my fingers. I touched the sigil on my arm. Sally. Sally, let me look.
I doubted my words would get through, but I hoped she’d sense the intention behind them. And it worked: for a moment, I saw through her eyes. Sally pressed her back to the wall, painted concrete rough against her hands, trying to stay as far as possible from the morass of color that overflowed the edge of the diagram. Then there was light, and our connection flickered, dimmed—did not go out, but I felt her paralyzed terror only at a great distance.
The cold haze began to tighten around me, pressing inward. Caleb and Audrey and Charlie felt far away, and Dawson impossibly distant. I hurled signals into the void: fingertip flutters, tiny patterns of breath. I knew now that no one could answer with aid; I only wanted to be noticed and remembered.