Episode 7: The Worst Version of Himself, Chapter 2
"How is it possible for anyone to live in New York pretty much all their adult life and not visit Bloomingdales?" Ezekiel wondered aloud, edging his way around shoppers and displays. "Even I've been in here and I've only been in the country five times before Flynn dragged me here from Geneva."
"Put it back," grinned Cassandra. "And not everyone spends their life jet setting around the globe stealing things."
Ezekiel Jones let the necklace he had removed from the display they were passing slip effortlessly into the pocket of one of the security guards bordering the door. "Force of habit," he shrugged.
"A habit I thought you were trying to break out of," Cassandra commented, hailing a taxi. The clambered in and she gave the driver the address of the dress shop she and Eve had visited in search of wedding attire. "Do not let old habits get the better of you in this place. Remember these are our friends."
The journey took longer than she expected. The clear blue sky that had greeted them outside Bloomingdales had clouded over by the time they exited the vehicle. Cassandra gave Ezekiel a look and he sighed, stooping and feigning the retrieval of the taxi driver's watch from the sidewalk. Waving off a grateful cab driver, he caught up with her where she was frowning at a faded door.
"What?" Ezekiel asked, looking up at the dress shop sign. "Isn't this the place?"
"It should be," mused Cassandra dreamily. "It's in the same place. It looks the same..."
"But?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. Something doesn't feel right."
"Maybe it's your spooky magic senses picking up their portal," suggested the not quite so reformed thief. "You're better at all that now than you were then, right?"
"True," she replied, biting her lip. "Just... I don't know. Keep your eyes open."
She reached out and turned the handle. The door opened. The bell jingled. They stepped in to the familiar array of white and ivory on one side and all manner of colours on the other. The door closed.
The glamour vanished.
Cassandra and Ezekiel turned on the spot, taking in the changes in their surroundings. The contents of the dress shop had disappeared. Nothing was left but bare brick and the door at the opposite side.
"What just happened?" Ezekiel enquired in his mildest tones.
"Try the doors," ordered Cassandra, heading for the far side of the room.
Ezekiel went the opposite direction and reached the outer door first. He rattled the handle. "It won't budge."
"This is locked too," Cassandra called over her shoulder.
"Ezekiel Jones does not get beaten by a lock," muttered the World Class Thief, searching the outer door for some sign of a keyhole or locking mechanism. Unable to find one, he hastened to the interior door and did the same. Nothing. Already on his knees, he rolled round to sit with his back to the wall.
"So tell me thief," groaned Cassandra, slumping down to sit beside him. "How exactly does one go about picking a magical lock?"
XXXX
Galeas stood in the tower room, gazing out across the sea loch. From the vantage point of the window, he could see all the way up the peninsula and our to sea in one direction, and out across the formal gardens of the Dunvegan estate in the other. In the centre of the room Seonaidh sat cross legged, her eyes closed. A ripple of blue light crackled around the top of the curtain wall.
"Good," said Galeas smoothly. "You have reached the wall. That wall was the limit of your Grandmother's powers over this castle. You know the outer limits of the estate, though. They were the boundaries here when you were born, just as the palisade that preceded the curtain wall marked the boundary of the dun when she was born. Cast your mind out into the outer gardens. The bridge. The fern house. The round garden. The water gardens."
The blue light, which had been spreading steadily outwards over the formal gardens, invisible to any but those looking for it, snapped back to the curtain wall and vanished. At the same time there was a small cry of pain from the girl behind him. Galeas turned. Seonaidh sat with her head in her hands, massaging her temples.
"You must focus," he remonstrated. "You cannot hope to control your powers, or make use of their greatest range, if you allow yourself to be distracted like this."
"I'm tired," she groaned.
"Child," snapped the old man, "you do not know the meaning of the word!"
XXXX
Eve held out a hand. It was only the third time her husband had fallen flat on his face this trip. That was considerably better than this point in their trek up the glacier last time. She dragged him to his feet and brushed the flecks of ice from his jacket.
"Really? We couldn't have linked in a door closer?" Mrs Carsen grinned, trying not to laugh at the bedraggled mess that she'd married. He was her bedraggled mess, after all.
"Not without using one of our wedding rings," replied the bedraggled mess in question, fixing his satchel then wrapping his hand around hers again. "And I don't think that would send quite the right message to the giver of said rings."
"Nor the receiver," warned his wife, pausing to kiss his reddening nose. He responded by turning her face back to his and meeting her lips with his own. For a long moment, the chill of the Norwegian air was forgotten. When they parted, she stayed close. "That sends a better message though."
"I don't care if it means climbing over..."
"Stumbling over..."
"Climbing over a whole range of mountains and glaciers," said Mr Carsen softly, his eyes locked on those of his wife. "I will never, ever, take this ring off. Not for anything."
She kissed him again, running a gloved hand over his rough, unshaven cheek. "I love you too."
XXXX
Jacob Stone woke up with a start. He was in his own bed, in the apartment the library had made for him. It was a surprise at first. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept there. Between the sofa of the reading room and the chair in the office, and the incessant pace their race against the Serpent Brotherhood had taken lately, he was only vaguely sure he could pinpoint the last time he actually woke up in a bed with some degree of accuracy. And the bed in question had been a hotel one. Or had it been in Dunvegan? He ran a hand over his face and headed for the shower. When was the last time he had showered? Not so long ago, surely? Before visiting Cassandra's parents, definitely. He had come back here to get changed. And certainly since the attack on the castle. Before the funeral. Before he had watched his friend say a final goodbye to his wife. A thought crossed his mind as he left the bathroom, towel wrapped round him, and he stopped by the bedside table. Sitting inside the top drawer was a small blue box. He would have liked to say it cost him a whole month's earnings, but not even the Library paid that well. Instead, what it had cost him were a sizeable chunk of the royalties from his other secret life's last book deal.
He opened the box and took out the ring. Inside, brilliant cut diamonds nestled in curls of Victorian rose gold surrounding a central, pale blue aquamarine, also of brilliant cut. The filigree pattern of the ring itself, as it rose to spread out around the central stone, showed weaving vines and leaves in fascinatingly intricate detail. He had spent so long worrying whether or not she would like the ring, the possibility that she might not accept it hadn't even entered his mind.
He snapped the lid shut and returned the tiny treasure to its drawer. There was work to be done. He had finished one task, maybe, but there were plenty more to occupy his time while he waited on the others returning. He wanted to have another look at the Runestone and its message. There was something he was sure he was missing. There was other research, though, that was long overdue. Cassie wouldn't like it, but it would be easier without her. At least until he knew something more definite. When it was time to try confronting her parents with whatever he found, well, that would be soon enough to reopen that wound in her tangled family history.
Rubbing his eyes with one hand and carrying a cup of coffee in the other, Jacob Stone returned to the office. A bright yellow light intruded on his vision as he removed his hand. The clippings book was glowing. He checked his back pocket for his own, but it was empty. He must have left it in his rooms. Setting the coffee down by the book, he leant over its pages, scanning the clippings therein. Finally a word caught his eye.
"You gotta be kiddin' me," he groaned.
XXXX
"Time marches ever onward, my friend," stated a quiet voice in the echoing catacombs.
"There is time yet," allowed the queen. "We were thwarted once, but now we have the means to transform half our retinue at the next solstice."
"And yet you have not replaced my spear?"
The queen inclined her head. "We have... a theory to test. Mythologies overlap so very much. Loki was, in essence, a trickster god. There are many tricksters in mythology. We believe we have a... lead on the talisman of one of them."
"This transformation cannot afford to fail because of a weak and tenuous link to the intended avatar," the quiet voice snapped.
The beatific smile of the queen faltered almost imperceptibly. "The link can be maintained if a Norse item of power is used in the second part of the ritual. We already have water from the Well of Wishes for the final part. It will not fail."
XXXX
Galeas stood alone in the ancient archive. On the table before him lay a map. It was no ordinary map. It was not even an ordinary ley lines map. It was a map whose surface was currently blank: nothing more than a pale, mottled beige. It was torn at the edges, and burnt in one corner. The sides lifted themselves from the wooden table top, threatening to curl back into the rolled scroll it had spent so long as, forgotten in the hidden shelves.
He did not have here the resources of his laboratory, Galeas thought, but he had resources enough for this, and power enough for it also. More so here than there. He sprinkled black powder over the map, murmuring long forgotten words in a dead tongue. He turned the map thrice widdershins and raised a hand above it once more. This time, in his hand, he held a glowing bottle of thick, old, faintly blue glass. What he poured from it was thicker than smoke, yet more insubstantial than a liquid. It pooled in the centre of the map, spreading out over the scattered powder and aged parchment. In some places, it caused the powder to form lines and shapes. In others it swirled up into miniature tornados, carrying the powder with it and building another layer of lines above the first.
When all of the mist like, ichorous fluid had left the bottle, Galeas carefully replaced the stopper and returned the bottle to the table. He stepped back. Hanging in the air before him was a map unlike any other. It was a map that the parchment had never shown before, and it was a map that it would probably never show again. It was not a map that showed where something was.
It was a map that showed how to get there.
