“You know that you have friends at the Lorica. More friends than ever. We’ll keep the Heart distracted and looking the other way for as long as it takes everyone to find a solution to this problem, once and for all.”
“Asher will help me sift through my library for any spells or rituals that may help,” Carver said. Asher nodded briskly, his eyes hard with determination. “Perhaps an enchantment of some sort. Yes. An artifact, specifically created to veil you from the eyes of the Eldest.” He hummed to himself in thought. The cup and saucer clinked again, and he sipped.
I pushed myself off the couch, Asher supporting me by the shoulders as I went up. I smiled tightly at him in thanks, my stomach still in knots despite everyone’s best attempts to cheer me up. Sterling’s boots clacked as he lifted off his seat and stalked straight for me. He had his giant pink teddy bear tucked under one arm.
“Listen,” he said. “I let you use The Sofa.”
I glanced down at where Asher, Prudence, and I were sitting, the long red sofa that Sterling had silently declared his own the very day it was moved into the Boneyard.
“Right,” I said.
“That means I like you enough as a friend. Okay? As if you didn’t know already. And I’m not afraid to admit that I’m scared as fuck of what’s coming, but we’re not just going to roll over and let the Eldest stomp their shitty moccasins all over us. Hey. Hey! Are you even listening to me?”
I couldn’t help that the huge bear was in my eye line. I had to choose between looking into the bear’s beady plastic eyes – or Sterling’s crotch. One option was less terrifying than the other.
“Kind of hard to take you seriously with your bear staring me full in the face,” I mumbled. I was still, I realized, in something of a daze.
Sterling raised his chin, glaring at me down the end of his nose. “His name is Rufus,” he declared haughtily, hugging the bear tighter to his body.
I looked up at him finally, chuckling despite my misery. For whatever else Sterling was, and however else he behaved, he got me to laugh in that moment. That mattered to me, for some reason. It counted for something. I looked down at my knees, laughing to myself again. He named the bear.
After a few more rounds of consolation, not quite enough to lift my spirits, unfortunately, everyone slowly dispersed. I took a beer out of the fridge to bring to my bedroom, thinking it would at least help me relax, if only a little. I opened my backpack and Vanitas floated gracefully from out of his pocket dimension, the garnets in his hilt blinking in greeting as he spoke.
“Bad night?” he asked.
“The worst. Those assholes who made you are back.”
“What? Again? I thought we dealt with that.”
“Not quite well enough, I’m afraid,” I said, taking a pull of my beer. I grimaced as the bubbles fizzed at my throat on the way down, but I licked my lips and savored the bittersweetness of the beer. Bittersweetness. Hah.
“Well,” Vanitas said, his jewels glimmering in the half-light as his voice thrummed in my head. “Did you want to talk about it?”
“Not just now, buddy,” I said. “I think I’ve had enough talking for one night.”
“Right,” he said, hovering over to a stone shelf in my bedroom, the space that had been designated as his living quarters. “I won’t say anymore, but I can sense that you’re not feeling at all well, Dustin. If you want to talk, I’m here. I’m not just good for cutting your enemies into tiny little pieces, after all.” He coughed pointedly. “Which, I might add, we haven’t done in too long a time.”
“Knowing the trouble that’s coming, you’ll be getting your chance soon en
ough, buddy.” I smiled at him. “And thanks. I’ll be sure to let you know if I need to vent.”
As promised, Vanitas said nothing more, scraping into position on the shelf, his garnets dimming as he went dormant. I kicked my shoes off, placed my hands behind my head, then fell into bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering what I could do to take my mind off of things.
Play video games, I considered. Read an ebook. Hell, go look up some really filthy porn. But nothing appealed to me just then. The only activity that truly jumped out at me was the one thing I had pledged to do more of, to practice more, but that hardly counted as taking my mind off of things. In fact, I’m pretty sure it qualified as plunging straight into the heart of the matter.
But Carver did say that doing it was one way I could learn to exert more control over my abilities, and control was what I craved that night. I needed to feel like I had some kind of power over my existence – over my destiny. I wasn’t just some pawn, plaything, or victim of the Eldest, and I wanted to prove it.
So I turned inward. I rapped my knuckles against the door of the Dark Room, prepared – no, worse, excited to explore and uncover more of its endless obsidian labyrinth.
Chapter 4
Easy enough for me to say that entering the Dark Room would be a welcome, if slightly frightening distraction from yet another looming threat of imminent death – but things were different. Things had changed since the day I decided to stop fearing its chambers, to embrace it as a kind of second home.
You already know that my connection to the Dark gave me improved eyesight in gloomy conditions. In our reality, I could navigate a completely unlit environment without bumping into stuff or tripping over. No sweat. That was why it was so interesting for me to work as a Hound for the Lorica. All I needed was one of those crystal phials to suck all the electricity out of a compound, and my target – whether it was a house, an office building, or a college dorm room – was transformed into my playground.
But it felt as though my bond to the Dark Room had deepened even further. I could see beyond the mists now, finding that I wasn’t always surrounded by total darkness. The corridors around me weren’t just formed out of huge shrouds of shadow. Taking my time, looking closely, I saw that there were walls. Corners. Instinct had guided me from point A to point B in the past, so that I would never collide with anything.
Yet knowing they were solid, I still never touched them. Look, but don’t ever touch, I told myself. Something in the back of my head told me that it wouldn’t end well.