“Still can’t manifest her for too long, though, I need more practice. But I’m just famished. Gotta take a break. Walk with me to the pantry?”
She didn’t have to ask twice. My stomach grumbled, and I resisted the urge to swipe one of the candies she kept in a bowl on her desk. I’d never seen her eat one, and probably for good reason.
I’d once noticed that the candy bowl was almost empty, only to watch as the leftover pieces just sort of started – wriggling. Writhing against each other, like they were trying to reproduce. The bowl was full again the next morning. When I say I watch what I put inside my body, it’s not about me trying my best to be a good Californian. There really were certain things that I would rather not let slip past my mouth, and several of them lived inside the Lorica.
But the coffee at HQ was pretty good, which was why I happily followed Romira to the break room. She poured us a couple of cups from a device that looked far more like an alchemical apparatus than a coffee press.
They had some muffins set out as well, those ridiculous triple chocolates ones that I liked so much. Romira snatched one for herself, balancing it on her coffee cup, then threw me a wink before trotting off back to her station. That left me alone in the break room, which was just fine by me since it gave me the privacy I needed to shove the muffin straight down my gullet.
I ambled off towards the Gallery, the hub of shelves and display cases the Lorica used to store the artifacts us Hounds retrieved for them. This was where two of my closer friends at HQ tended to hang out. I looked around for Herald, a Gallery archivist who also doubled as one of the Lorica’s best alchemists, and found him wrestling with the Book of Plagues.
Wrestling might not have been the right word for it. Black-haired, bespectacled, and dressed like the snappiest librarian I’d ever seen, Herald Igarashi had his hands thrust out against the book, muttering to himself as violet skeins of light surged from his fingers. The Book of Plagues flapped and struggled in defiance.
I rushed forward, ready to assist when the book jerkily leapt up from Herald’s desk to snap at his fingers. Fury twisted his features, and before I could bother to help, Herald balled his hand into a fist and punched the book square in its leather-bound cover. The book screeched, then fell to the desk, its pages fluttering limply.
“Stay down, damn it.” Herald adjusted his tie, then nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“That’s a mean left hook. Uh. Need help?”
“Can’t talk,” Herald muttered, wiping a hand against his forehead. “Gotta get this son of a bitch in cold storage before it starts fighting back again.”
“That sleeping dust you gave me worked wonders before.”
“Oh?” Herald’s eyes lit up, to show that he found my suggestion helpful, or perhaps because he considered it a compliment. He did create the powder after all. He lunged across his workspace, reaching for a phial of the purple dust, then promptly dumped it all over the grimoire. The book’s pages fluttered, then went limp.
“Thanks for the tip,” he said, sighing with some relief. “Gonna go grab a case to put this in. Bulletproof one, just to be safe. I’ll probably chain it up, too.” He cracked his knuckles, then favored me with a small grin. “Talk later?”
I gave him a salute as he walked off into the archives to hunt for supplies. Herald’s work was pretty serious, making sure the artifacts stayed put exactly where they were, especially the ones that, in the wrong hands, could cause widespread disaster.
Eyeing the Book of Plagues and noting that it was pretty much unconscious, I headed over to another section of the Gallery, to a glass display case where a sword lay across a velvet cushion. The blade and scabbard were cast from tarnished bronze, aged to a murky green with verdigris. Deep red garnets decorated its hilt, jewels that seemed duller, dimmer than the last time I’d visited.
“Vanitas,” I said. “Hey. You in there?”
The sword said nothing. Now, I’m going to sound totally crazy, but this was that other friend I was talking about. Some weeks back I’d been tasked to retrieve this very artifact, what I’d been informed was basically a magic sword. Nobody told me it could talk, or fly of its own accord, or even fight, which was how Vanitas and I became friends. I was in the Meathook, a really rough part of Valero, and some thugs were bothering me. He sprang to life, beat them up, then cut off one of their hands. It was this whole thing, and it was so, so awesome.
But Vanitas had gone silent the day I brought him back to the Gallery. Herald tried to tell me that it must have been my imagination, that the sword’s enchantment might have been to cast that very illusion and convince me it could talk, and fly, and fight. But I swear I’m not insane. I could remember Vanitas’s voice so clearly, yet all he’d done for weeks was sit perfectly still on his cushion. I tapped at the glass.
“Vanitas. Yo. It’s me, Dustin.”
Still no response. I sighed and turned away, just in time for Herald to come back with a trolley loaded with a fresh glass case and some incredibly sturdy-looking chains. Enchanted, of course, because nobody wanted something as aggressive and vile as the Book of Plagues breaking its way out and wreaking havoc in the Gallery.
It took some heavy lifting, but together we managed to strap the book down and negotiate it into its new home. Prison, more like. I thought of Vanitas again, wondering whether that was why he had gone silent.
“Herald. These cases, are they enchanted or something? I mean, in some way to nullify an artifact’s power?”
He cocked an eyebrow and shook his head. “Never. The point of the Gallery is to keep these relics safe, not to destroy or neuter them completely. The chains are there to restrain the tougher bastards.” He gave the book’s display case a half-hearted kick. “But no. The glass is mostly protective.”
“Okay,” I said, trying not to show my disappointment. “Thanks for explaining.”
There had to be another reason Vanitas was lying dormant. But if Herald
had no answers, then what chance did I really stand of solving the mystery of the sword’s silence myself?
I left Herald to his work then. It was cool to have a few friends at the Lorica, whether it was him, or Romira, or Prudence. Everyone was happy to help each other out, I’d noticed, and I was always glad to extend a hand whether or not somebody asked. Unless, of course, that person happened to be Bastion.
Who, incidentally, I hadn’t seen since getting to HQ, which was weird considering he probably beat me there on his speeding death bullet of a motorcycle, but that was just as well. I turned a corner as I grudgingly made my way to Thea’s office, dreading what it was that she wanted to talk about, when I came face to face with exactly the person I was trying to avoid.
“Beat you to it,” Bastion said. “Weren’t you supposed to be here sooner?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “She wanted to see you, like, yesterday.”