“Perhaps before we begin, we should invite Grace indoors? She’s been outside quite some time.” Owen sat back in his chair.

“What?” Irish said.

“Grace,” Owen repeated, brushing some imaginary lint off the sleeve of his jacket. “She’s on the roof. She must not have seen you drive up. Alice, would you be good enough to fetch her? I’ll keep Mr. Hayes company.”

I was not about to leave Irish alone with Owen. “Sure, okay.” I stayed in my seat, and the shadows stirred. From a dozen pools of shadow in the huge, brightly lit station, darkness flowed like ink up the walls. “I’ll keep company with you. Shouldn’t take long.” I’d grown accustomed to a bigger, stronger shadow and it was actually a little surprising when she grumbled at my mental image of the building. She didn’t like how tall it seemed. While I smiled innocently at Owen I stressed to the shadow that we were showing off, here. This was no time to come off as unable to do anything.

She flowed out through the broken and cracked windows, and commenced climbing. She wasn’t really leaving me, of course. She was right here, in my head, grumbling but obeying. Mindful of the void bullet and my resolve. The darkness flowing up the side of the train station was also her – reaching, stretching. Tasting granite and bird shit and decades of accumulated air pollution and grime.

Irish stared at the empty darkness outside the high windows with a tight-mouthed guarded expression. Owen leaned forward, peering over his octagonal glasses. The tiny facets of his pale eyes glinted in the warm glow of the chandeliers. “Why does it bother you, Mr. Hayes?”

Irish shrugged and turned to frown at Owen directly. “Who says it bothers me?”

Owen twisted his mouth into what I was assuming was his version of a smile. It looked uncomfortable. “Your heart rate jumped when the shadows moved. You began perspiring. Your blood pressure rose, a bit, I’m guessing from your attempt to hide your reaction. You needn’t have bothered. My lights are set somewhat brighter than they appear. There’s a very faint residue of darkness permeating the room. It’s in the air. It’s on your skin, and mine. Alice could sense all those physiological changes as easily as I could, I’m sure. And she’s better at reading humans than I am.”

Irish grunted, but didn’t back down. He met Owen’s eerie stare with a cold glare of his own. “Ah. So I won’t be winning if we play poker, then?” I grinned and pulled out my pack of cigarettes. Meanwhile, up on the edge of the roof, the shadow found a dark spot to flow over and start spreading out. They’d done some repairs up here recently, and the tar-paper roofing was dark and wet. She didn’t feel comfortable billowing up and feeling through the air at such a distance, so she was slowy probing. As she spread, her increased surface area was stretched taut, feeling for vibrations in the air. Listening. There was a mechanical hum as she spread around an exhaust vent. They probably kept the heat on a minimal amount to keep the plumbing from freezing. The wind whistled, and we felt the piercing whistle of a bat hunting in the night sky.

“No, Mr. Hayes. I doubt you would. But sometimes it pays best if you play to lose, eh?” Owen turned my way, and I tucked my lighter away and blew a plume of smoke into the air. “Alice. When last the three of us met, your shadow refused to touch Mr. Hayes. But now, I see no such hesitation. Interesting, that.”

“Isn’t it just?” On the roof, we encountered something odd. Fleshy pads, separated about an inch. A hard point of chitin before each pad, piercing the tar paper. A foot, of sorts, and one that tasted of Otherness. A taint of the Outside, similar in flavor to the way the spidery woman at the house in Woodlawn had tasted. Grace. Nearby, a second foot, matching the first. “Found her. She’s about…” I squinted up at the vaulted ceiling, and pointed towards the back of the building. “…there-ish.”

Irish’s gaze followed my point, narrowing. “That’s a ways off,” he muttered. “Ye found her that far away?”

“Well. We don’t like it.” I said, with some defensiveness as he turned that critical look on me. The exact same one he’d just been giving Owen. “It’s like stretching a rubber band. You know you stretched it too far when it snaps. Reaching that far is uncomfortable. But as for finding Grace? She’s easy. She stands out in a crowd these days.” I cleared my throat, and when I spoke again my voice resonated in the train station all around us, and up on the rooftop my voice sounded right up out of the layer of dark over the tar paper. “Come on in, Grace,” I said. “We’re down here in the station, having the nicest chat with Owen. I’d hate for you to miss it.”

She jumped – I felt her feet twitch on the roof, tearing furrows in the roofing – and gave a little squeak of surprise that made me grin.

“Hold on. Did you just…?” Her voice echoed thin and breathy and broken, tangled amidst the whistling wind. It wasn’t unlike a conversation over a really bad phone connection. For a few seconds we heard nothing but the wind, before Grace spoke up, louder this time. “Is… that you, Alice?”

“Sort of,” I answered, letting my voice resound above and below again. “Anyway. Come on down.”

“Okay. Just a minute, Alice.” The shadow receded, flowing back along her length, and we faintly caught Grace saying “I’ll call you later, okay?” Was she on the phone? With who? I didn’t particularly want more company at this meeting. I almost sent my shadow back to eavesdrop, but she was so relieved to be compacting herself again. It wasn’t worth a mental wrestling match, not at the moment.

“Ah, good.” Owen clasped his hands and did that horrid grimace of his again. “As soon as the Knight of Wands joins us, I can explain what I’ve learned about the Order.”

“To her?” Irish had a hand on his sword and his legs braced before he quite managed to stop himself. “Don’t ye think I should know what you’ve got to say before we tell the Arcana’s hit squad?”

“No.”

Irish blinked, and he forced himself to relax back into his chair again. “I need to know what they’ve kept from me. But I’m not comfortable with their secrets being given out to the Arcana. I still believe in their cause, and while it might have been corrupted by evil men, the good folk who still carry on in the name of God do not deserve to be endangered.”

“Huh.” I took another drag on my smoke. “Damn, Irish. Your brain must squeak, it’s been washed so hard.”

“Fuck,” Irish sighed. “Woman, that’s not helping.” He turned his attention back to Owen. “Is this a bargaining ploy? Do you think I’ll pay extra if you won’t tell the Knights?”

“Of course you would. But that’s not an option.”

“Then I don’t want to know.” Irish stood. Come on, Alice. We’re leaving.”

I stayed put. “Irish, you might not want to know, but this isn’t a ‘want’ kind of situation. This is about ‘need.’ I’m more worried about what it’s going to cost us.”

“Oh, I may possibly ask for something in the future.” Owen waved a dismissive hand. “For example, it’s difficult to leave the library on my own. Perhaps I’ll want help with that at some point. I like to get out once in a while. I don’t see how that’s so much to ask.”

“Ye want a hand getting out’ve the bloody library now and again?” Irish’s voice was skeptical as he glanced at me to see if I was buying it. “And for that, he’s willing to just give us the answers he’s found? Either these answers are utter shit, or he is.”

“Oh, he could be on the level,” I said, just to be fair, even though I wasn’t buying it. “Hell, he might just want you to stop by with Oreos once a week. He’s an outlander, Irish. What he wants might not make any damn sense to you, at all.” I shrugged. “Or me.”

“He’s part human, isn’t he? He wants something.” Irish turned to face the doors on the far side of the station – and the shadows of the Park outside.

“Huh?” I scratched my head. “Um, Owen’s not human at all.”

“So…” Irish shifted to stare at Owen. “You mean there’s nothing left of the human he used?”

“What?”

“The person.” Irish pointed at Owen, his gesture taking in the neatly pressed suit, the pale blond crewcut, the glasses worn low on his long nose. “The man he took over!”

“Ha!” Owen said. I can’t quite call that a laugh, but I figured it showed an effort on his part.

I smiled up at Irish’s alarmed expression. “Didn’t you listen to a word of what I told you earlier? Did any of that sink in? No?” I scanned Irish’s face for any sign of comprehension. “No. Owen’s an outlander, not a hollowman. There’s nothing human about him. Never was.”

“Thank God,” Owen said, crossing himself and shuddering at the very thought. Either Owen got all Catholic when I wasn’t looking, or he was making fun of Irish. Since when did he have a sense of humor?

“But –”

“He doesn’t even look like that,” I added. “It’s a seeming. Like what the vampires can do? I used a hand mirror once, and got a look at him. It was… surprising.”

“You said they needed a person,” Irish accused, turning to glare at me as though he’d caught me out in another lie.

“No, I said the ones from really far out needed a host,” I said, raising a finger as I made the point. “Ideally, yeah, a human being. The more alien they are, the less able they are to survive here. My shadow can’t be here any more than you could live in outer space. You can’t survive in a vacuum; she can’t survive here.”

“Bullshit. You just sent her climbing the building!”

I tapped my forehead. “She’s in here. When the shadows move, that’s just… her reaching out. That’s her fingers. Her eyes and ears. But her mind, her life, that’s safe in here. Get it?”

Owen chimed in, probably trying to help. “The Fae, for instance, are from a very similar reality. Congruent, perhaps, if not quite adjacent. They can live here quite comfortably, so long as they avoid cold iron. My library is imbued with a sliver of my home. There, I can live safely. Here?” He shrugged. “My kind do not experience pain quite like you do. But if we did, I assure you I’d be having the mother of all migraines right now.”

“Besides, you’re assuming Owen even has that ability,” I went on. “The ability to possess a human shell in some fashion. That’s not some kind of universal quality.”

Irish seated himself again, somewhat at a loss. “It’s not?”

“Of course not. Can you possess someone else?” He gave me a dirty look. “It’s not such a strange question. There’s a parasitic worm, totally native to this world, mind you, that controls the minds of ants, did you know that? It gets into their brain, and makes them stand on fenceposts, or tall blades of grass, waving their legs in the air. See, they lay their eggs in the digestive tracts of birds. They need the ant to get eaten.”

“What?”

“Possession is rare, but it happens. The outsider might not be solid, as these things are reckoned. Like my shadow. Or it might be a like a virus, and it finds shelter in the bloodstream of a host. The ones who are alien enough to need a host to survive here and can’t manage it – they just die, Irish. Unless someone makes them a shelter. Like Owen’s library.”

“Okay.” Irish scowled. “I get it. Owen’s an alien, and we can’t predict how he thinks. At all. Ever.”

Owen nodded soberly. “That’s right. If it helps, humans often surprise me, too.”

“So we can’t possibly deal with him,” Irish said. “It’s too dangerous.”

Something thudded heavily to the cement outside. “Jesus Christ, did she just jump?” I sat up, staring towards the noise. A moment later, the door creaked across the hall, and Grace stepped in, pushing the door shut behind her. She smiled and waved at us, and fussed with her dress as she walked. She was lovely. A loose, flowy blue caftan was all that she wore against the chilly weather, and it hugged her curves and draped in all the right places to accentuate her figure. Or at least, that’s what she wanted us to see.

The shadow, diffused as she was through the huge open hall, felt the shape of her as she strode towards us. She was even taller than before, easily seven feet, her arms and legs stretched thin and wiry. She walked oddly, like she had extra knees. It made her gait a smooth, rolling thing, like a horse if it walked on two feet. I looked her up and down. She might still weigh the same, but the mass had been redistributed.

Her face was flatter, her forehead pushed back and her head too long by eight or ten inches. Her jaw had elongated, too, though not so far that I’d call it a muzzle. Maybe a huge underbite. Her eyes bulged, compensating for the wedge shape of her face, round balls set nakedly beside the impossibly long bridge of her nose, which tapered down to a pair of nasal slits. Her hair was still thick and curly and gorgeous. Some girls have all the luck.

She arrived at our little seating arrangement, and stood beside the sole empty seat. “I did jump,” Grace said. “The elevator’s not working, and I didn’t trust the stairwell.” She gave me an arch look. “Too dark.” Her voice was still that soft contralto I’d always envied, too. That beautiful voice, coming from that bizarre mouth, struck me as more bizarre than anything else.

“Huh.” I flicked ashes at the floor. It was an odd sensation, to perceive her like this. To my human eyes, she looked unchanged. Prettier than usual, even, like she was compensating. But my other senses… my shadow and I could feel and taste her for what she was. A twisted thing, perhaps well-suited to chasing down prey with those long limbs of hers. Yes, I bet she was fast. And with those talons on her two-toed pseudo-foot, and those claws on her elongated fingers, she could probably climb as easily as she walked. If I concentrated, I could see through the enchantment. It was easier to ignore it. To trust what I felt, rather than what I saw.

“Well, this is cozy.” One of her eyes shifted to inspect the chairs Owen had provided, and the other remained fixed on us. “Hello, again,” she said to Irish, who stared at her, then realized he was staring at her, and managed to tear his gaze away and look at me, instead. I smirked, for a second, but then I wondered. Was he staring at the curvaceous brunette, or the bipedal predator? Grace trained both her eyes on him for a long moment, probably wondering the same thing. Her expressions were nothing like human anymore, so even though her face wrinkled, and her mouth moved, I couldn’t tell what it meant. “And Owen,” she finally said, splitting her gaze between Irish and the outlander. I wondered if that gave her a headache or anything. It gave me one just thinking about it. But no, her brain would have adapted to it. “Hello. They’re looking for you.”

“They’re looking in the wrong places,” Owen said pleasantly as he studied Grace with open interest, like he’d much rather be taking her apart to see how she ticked now than talking to her. Looking just at the illusion she was presenting, it gave the impression that Owen was undressing her with his eyes, and planning something of a sensual nature. I remembered what I’d seen of him in that mirror years ago, and felt my stomach turn over.

“Apparently they are,” she agreed, tone dry. She turned her gaze – well, half of it – my way. “So, what’s going on here, Alice? Formenting rebellion?”

“Why? Want to join up?” I grinned. “You must be looking for a new job by now, right?”

She fixed both her eyes on me and squeezed the back of the chair she was standing behind. The gesture left six long tears in the upholstery. “I’m still a Knight, Alice.”

“Really.” I hit my cigarette and blew smoke out, pursing my lips. “How’s that work?”

She laughed, and covered her mouth. “Honestly? I think they’re too busy to fire me.”

I flicked my butt away. “Fire you? Grace, that’s not how it works. You know what they’ll do to you.”

“They’re trying to cure me.”

“I thought they were busy?”

She sighed. “They’re talking about ideas. Some of them sound promising. Have you come up with anything to help me, yet?””

“Hardly,” I snorted. “You’re a trickier case than that. And I’ve also been a bit busy.” I ignored Irish as he snorted in disgust.

One of her eyes shifted to study Irish. “He thinks you’re lying to me. Or planning to.”

“Excuse me?” I put my eyebrows up, preparing to look offended, and Grace shook her head.

“It’s no good. I can taste it now,” she said, and flicked her tongue out like a lizard. It was long and thin and pink, and I was half-surprised it wasn’t forked. Irish gasped and jerked back in his seat.

“Really?” I sat forward, grinning. “That’s got to be handy. And you jumped off the building? That’s what, twenty stories?”

“Something like that. It’s the extra knees, I think. Like shock absorbers.” She examined the empty chair for a moment, and I had another moment of dissonant input as she settled down and crossed her legs, draping the caftan demurely over her knees. The shadow, though, sensed her stepping up to perch in the seat, her legs folded back and her knees jutting up forward alongside the armrests. She didn’t so much sit as coil herself there, her talons gripping the forward edge of the seat. “So there’s nothing you can do, then?”

I braced my elbows on my knees, staring right back at her. “Can you tell with me?”

“If you’re lying?” Her tongue ran out again, flicking at the air. “Let’s see… that’s… that’s fear, I think. And you’re exhausted, that’s easy. And… angry? Hungry? It’s tough to tell with you. I’m still learning.” She jerked her head toward Irish. “With him I can supplement the taste with my magic, kind of pair the two up. You’re much more difficult to do that with. Why? Is it your outlander?”

“Probably.” I hit my cigarette, considering my options. As a general rule, I detested dealing with lie detectors, which probably says something bad about me. Irish had always been a pain in the ass that way, too. But he’d also been good practice. “So, yeah. No. As I was explaining to a certain someone who got their panties all in a bunch over it earlier,” I cut my eyes at Irish, “I could make you physicallyhuman again if I tried hard enough, but there’s nothing I can do with your mind, and since the two wouldn’t work together anymore… Things could get unpleasant. I doubt you’d survive. Plus, I doubt you’d like what I’d have to do to get the human-looking part accomplished. The test subjects certainly wouldn’t survive.”

“Tyler said the Majors could do it.”

“Maybe.” I glanced at Owen. “If anyone could, it’d be them. If they could be bothered to make the attempt, anyway. Has anyone ever done it before? Fixed a corruption like that?”

“I don’t believe anyone has ever tried. Usually they die, or have to be killed.”

“Yeah. That’s what Damian said.” Grace hugged herself. They went all the way around her back, her hands grasping their own shoulders.

I tsked, utterly baffled. She just jumped off a building! She could taste emotions. She could probably run down a deer on foot and take it down with her bare hands. Talons. Whatever. Why would she even want to change back? It wasn’t like she had a roommate in her skull. She’d gotten off easy. “Okay, so let’s get down to business. What do they want, Grace?”

“The Knights?”

“No, the fucking Girl Scouts.” I lit another cigarette, rolling my eyes.

“Simple enough.” She unfolded her arms, pointing at Owen. “They want him back in the library.”

“Of course.” Owen waved a hand to dismiss this request. “I’ll return when I’m done here.”

“What?” Grace goggled at him. Considering her real eyes, it was a pretty good goggle.

“Where else would I go? I don’t care to return home, and this reality is… uncomfortable.” He smiled a tight smile that didn’t give much away, but I got the impression he was understating the situation. I wondered exactly how toxic our reality was to Owen. How much time did he have left, if he didn’t return? “I only came out to conduct this business.” Grace continued to stare at him, possibly suspiciously. Tough to tell. “And to satisfy my curiosity.” Owen inclined his head in a little bow, as if acknowledging her suspicions.

“Right.” She might have rolled her eyes. Since her gaze ended up on me, I wasn’t sure. “They want you dead. And him.” She nodded towards Irish.

“Oh for –” I tossed my hands up, sending a drift of ash down from my cigarette. “Seriously, what have I ever done? A little price gouging here and there is no call for an execution.”

“Leonard says you murdered a man outside your shop last night.”

“What?” That stopped me. Someone had seen that?

“Tanner backed him up on it.”

“What did you do?” Irish spun to glare at me.

“He had it coming! He tried to mug me!” Irish was still glowering at me. “With a gun and everything!”

“You made him suffer before he died.” Grace crossed her arms. “I think it was the snickering while you did it that they objected to.”

I dragged a toe over the tile floor, rolling a stray stone over. “In  my defense, the look on his face was really funny.” Everyone was giving me a funny look. Even Owen. I replayed that last sentence in my head, and had to admit that it hadn’t helped my case any. I rubbed my face, tired.

“And you,” Grace went on, turning to Irish, “have killed at least twenty magicians we know of in Detroit.

“Just counting magicians?” Irish asked. “Forty-eight.”

“Fuck,” I said, and ground my cigarette out under my boot. “Whose side are you on?”

“At least I didn’t enjoy it, though, did I?”

“Enough!” Grace hissed, tossing her arms out, and the whole room shook. Windows cracked, and plaster and bits of stonework rained down from the ceiling. Well, not really, but it was a really cool effect. She had her teeth bared, and was glaring at us with murder in her eyes.

“Whoa.” I put my hands up.

“And they want the hollowman dead.” She eased back, shaking herself a little and huddling down again.

“Well, obviously. I was going to do that anyway,” I muttered, pulling a hard draw off my cigarette. Irish nodded, though he wouldn’t look at me.

“You were?” She sounded surprised.

“Yes, of course.” When she didn’t seem to believe me, I waved one hand, aimless and uncomfortable. “Shouldn’t be too hard, really. We can’t have it here.”

“’We?’ You and him?” she asked, pointing at Irish.

“No. Me and my shadow. Don’t be stupid.” Irish frowned, and wrung his hands in his lap. Grace shook her head. “It won’t save you. You’re an…” she paused, shaking her head with a little laugh. “You’re an abomination.”

“Yeah?” I leaned forward in my seat. “What’s that make you?”

We went eye to eye for a moment, before she turned to Irish. “And you’re an enemy of the Arcana, a murderer.”

“I was.” He didn’t look up, but sat there squeezing his hands together, his brow furrowed. “I was a soldier in a war. I followed orders. I’m not in that war anymore.”

“Is that how you get to sleep at night?” Grace’s voice was sweet as she stretched her mouth in that razor’s edge smile of hers.

“It was, yes.” His eyes darkened as he set his jaw, looking up at her. “I haven’t slept at all since parting ways with the Order. I’ll let you know.”

“It wasn’t all his fault, you know.” I saw Owen from the corner of my eye, expression rapt as he followed our conversation, like he was watching a really good movie. Grace flicked one eye my way. I grinned. It didn’t feel like a happy grin on my face. “That’s what I called you for.”

“What?” Grace’s tone was confused.

“The Order uses magic on their soldiers.”

“What?” She cocked her head to one side, and licked the air. It was a decidedly unsettling gesture when seen on her human-looking façade.

“You heard me. It’s an artifact tattoo on his back. I found it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Am I?” I raised my hands, fanning air in her direction, raising my eyebrows in challenge. Her tongue flicked out again, shamelessly suspicious.

“She’s not.” Irish shook his head. “It’s no excuse. I…” he shook his head again. “I knew better. But she’s not lying. I felt the difference when she turned it off. It was like…” he shrugged, at a loss to explain, turning away from us to stare out at the darkness again. “It wasn’t good.”

“And you didn’t tell us?” Grace ran her long, long fingers through her hair and held it back from her face as she shook her head. “Alice, this could change everything!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake Grace, I just stumbled across it last night! It’s not like I’ve known for months or something.” I tapped ash on the floor as she swiveled back to me. “And besides, what the hell are you guys going to do about it? I had to be touching his bare skin to find it, and if he hadn’t let me, I couldn’t have done anything to disable it. It’s not exactly a weapon, anyway.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s all enchantments, mostly to keep them following orders. Stops them from thinking for themselves too much, and asking sticky questions like ‘Is this herbwife’s spectacular garden really hurting anyone?’”

“Enchantments?” Irish and Grace turned to look at Owen, like they’d forgotten he was even listening. “How very interesting. So that’s the source of their abilities, then?”

I frowned as I looked at Owen. His face was perfectly serious, interested, his tone bland as ever, but I had the sudden feeling he was putting me on.

“Of course not. If they were using magic on us, we’d know that,” Grace answered for me. “There’s no forensic residue, for one. The spellnets would detect it, for another.”

“Of course,” I agreed. “And that’s not what the artifact does. At all. It’s just to control them.”

“So it’s not magic.” Owen sat forward, eying me intently, as though he were expecting something from me. “These amazing things the Inquisitors do. It’s not the artifact. Then what are they doing, Alice?”

“I… don’t know.” I frowned harder. What did he want?

“Why did you ask Grace here?”

“Well…” I stared at him. He knew something about this. “Irish was excommunicated, which supposedly cuts him off from the Order’s source of power, right?” I made air quotes. “From ‘God.’ But Irish is still doing stuff. When he’s not thinking about it.” I flicked a quick look at Grace. “I’ve caught him at it a few times now.”

“So she says,” Irish added in an exasperated tone.

“Yeah, he doesn’t want to believe me. I think that’s part of the problem. I think the enchantments are more than I can fix. You know how it is –” I turned to Grace for corroboration. “He’s had them on him for years. Decades. He’s conditioned to think a certain way, now, even without the magic. You can’t take that away in a day. At least, I can’t.” I lit another cigarette, aware that I was chain-smoking but not caring.

“So, what? You think his loss of abilities is a mental block?” She kept one eye on Irish, and the other took turns watching Owen and me. I kept fighting the urge to duck back into her line of view. The eye thing was really distracting.

“Yeah. Makes sense, right?”

“After decades of enchantments? Sure.” Grace shrugged. “Like a circus elephant. When they’re babies, they’re chained to a stake. By the time they’re full grown, a string or a rope will do the job. They’re conditioned to believe they can’t break free.”

“That doesn’t really answer the question, though, does it?” Owen said, steepling his fingers again as he watched me. “That’s just addressing why he can’t do… what he used to do. Which was…? Anyone?”

“Uh…” I stared at the floor, elbows on my knees, smoke drifting up into my face as I stared at the glowing cherry at the end of my cigarette. I hadn’t really put a lot of thought into this part.

“What could he do?” Grace prompted, turning in her seat to face me more directly. Somewhat disturbingly, her lower half didn’t shift at all – not even in her projection. “What have we seen Ordermen do?”

“Well… let’s see. There was that explosion last night. He shot a gas tank, and the car exploded. I mean, seriously exploded. Shouldn’t happen.”

“Yes. I saw that one on Mythbusters.” Grace gave an indelicate little snort that made the nostril slits in her face flare.

“Then he walked right into it.”

“So that’s like a fireproof armor effect. Tyler does that.”

“Sure, I’ve seen him.”

“And he could make the tank explode, no problem.”

“Right,” I agreed. “But it wasn’t magic. I was right there. I would have felt it. She would have felt it,” I added, wafting a cloud of shadow up from the ground for emphasis. It floated there a moment, before settling back to the floor as a heavy vapor. It seemed to startle Grace.

“Okaay,” Grace said, drawing the word out as she thought. “What else? They’re tough, I know that. Strong. Damian saw him go toe-to-toe with Jada.”

“Lie detection, making people give up their secrets…” I added.

“That’s the sort of thing I do,” Grace mused. “But it doesn’t work well on you.” She looked at me. “But what he does did work?”

“Yes. Too well.”

“I am right here,” Irish said.

“Then help. What else? Wait – the drawing!” I sat up. “You talked about the drawing. And how you always know where to look for people.”

“Knew.” There was a bitter undertone in his voice.

“Whatever.” I waved that off.

“Drawing?” Grace swiveled to look at him, more of that odd spine-bending, like her spine wasn’t put together the same way anymore. She hadn’t been doing that before, as though she’d been hiding some of herself, and now that she was distracted, more of the alien-ness was coming out.

“Automatic writing, but with pictures.” Grace snickered at me. “No, seriously.”  I waved my hands, doing the spooky voice. “He knows shit ahead of time. Half the time he didn’t have to hunt his quarry at all. He’d go to where they were going to be and just wait.”

“Seriously? Precognition?”

“Yeah, for real.” We both turned to look up at Irish, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat and looked away.

She stood up and up, stretching, before settling back on, well, her first set of haunches, I think. “Is he psychic?”

“Oh, come on.” I rolled my eyes. “You’ve met psychics.”

“Yes, I have.” She propped an elbow on one hand, rubbing her face with the other as she studied Irish with both eyes. “I can’t imagine what else it would be, though.”

“Oh, but psychics are such sad, tragic things,” Owen practically purred. “Mr. Hayes, do you know why Grace has met psychics? Because she can go into their minds, and make them forget what they are. It’s horrible, and awful, and the only mercy left to the poor bastards short of death. In cities without access to an enchanter, it’s usually just death.”

“What?” Irish was pale. “Why would you…?” He stood up, and started to walk away, only to turn on his heel and come back to the seating area again.

I watched him carefully, thinking hard. “I take it the Order doesn’t do psychics?”

“No! Even if they existed, which I doubt… why would we? Who would they hurt?”

Grace had this one. “You’d be surprised. It’s rare. We’ve had two since I was appointed to work Detroit. The first was a teenage boy. A borderline telepath. He could impose his will on other people’s minds. It was effective, but brutal. It left his targets puppets for a time, but eventually made them vegetables. He raped twenty women before we caught him. The second had visions of possible futures. He saw Detroit being nuked by terrorists in 2009, so in 2008 he organized a death cult. Forty people took cyanide, planning to exit before the blast that never came. He chickened out, and couldn’t understand why there was no mushroom cloud.” She was looking away, into the distance. Not really seeing the train station, I figured, but rather dwelling on unpleasant memories.

I raised a hand. “Hey, Irish? Why wouldn’t your lot deal with people like that? I mean, we do it because they’re bad for business. They make waves. They draw attention. You’d think the Order would take them out because they’re dangerous.”

Owen cleared his throat. “Oh, they do have interest in psychics. But that’s not Inquisitor work. The Confessors deal with them.”

“This is like a game for you, isn’t it?” Grace glared at Owen, flexing her hands. I wondered if he could see the wickedly sharp talons there or if he just thought her dainty little hand had a cramp in it. I was betting he knew, but wasn’t impressed. “You just want to see if we can figure it out.”

“It’s fascinating, how your little minds work,” Owen admitted.

“It’s not always that bad,” I said. Irish looked over at me, a little surprised. “Happens at least once a year, sometimes more often in a town this size. You’ve honestly never met one? Human minds aren’t meant to be left hanging open like that.” I made a face. “They go crazy. You meet one, you tip your Knights off and they send someone like Grace in to shut them down. Most of the time, we catch them when they’re still kids. Then they can sort of get over it. It’s easy enough. Shoot, give me a week and I could work up something to cauterize those brain cells.”

Owen nodded. “So whoever made that tattoo artifact could certainly deal with a psychic. They could even build a cauterization routine right into it in case the Inquisitor ever went rogue. So obviously, that’s not it.”

I took the last hit off my cigarette, and stood up to pace, flicking the butt away. “They’d shut him down, and it’d be all over. Irish hasn’t lostthe abilities. He just can’t use them.”

“So it’s something they can’t actually take away. They just have to…”

“Trick him into thinking they did,” I finished.

“And you want me to fix him.” Grace frowned, looking at Irish like he was a particularly annoying sample in a petri dish.

I grinned. “Yep.”

“Why on Earth would I do that? And why would either of you even let me in there to do it? You have no idea what I might do while I was in his head.”

“That’s what I said.” Irish tossed his hands up.

“Besides, what makes you think I can even do that? It’s not magic, he’s not psychic, what makes you think I can even do anything?”

“I’m not asking you to rebuild whatever gave him his mojo. Just undo the residual effects caused by the enchantments. The rest should be natural. It’s like an inborn ability, I think. It’s…” I felt the blood drain out of my face as I realized what I’d just said.

“Oh! There it is! She figured it out.” Owen sat up, smiling with real pleasure. “I knew she would. I half thought she already had.”

I reached out as my knees went wobbly, groping for the chair and just making it. “Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ.” I sank down on the chair before I fell. I knew Grace was asking if I was all right, and I felt Irish grab my shoulder, but all I could really hear was the shadow, howling with elation in my head, as though she were screaming Finally! That’s what I’ve been saying!

Table of Contents / Chapter Thirty-Nine >>

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Black Alice © Marci Sischo and James Agle | All rights reserved.

Image credit: Interior of Michigan Central Train Station by Albert Duce (CC).