I reached for Mister Grumbles, then went to sleep.
Chapter 16
“Hmm. This is quite something. Hmm.”
Madam Chien held the Glovebox napkin up to a light, almost like she was examining a dollar bill to see if it was counterfeit. I peered over her shoulder, curious about what she was seeing, when she whipped around and gave me a hard stare.
“You say you got this from a death goddess?”
“Right,” I said, nodding. “Izanami. Pretty sure she’s their pantheon’s mother goddess, too.”
“Hmm.” Madam Chien rubbed her chin, her tiny, half-moon glasses glinting in the strange, soothing amber light of her apothecary. “I do not think that an entity of that much power would steer you wrong. I believe it is safe to say that this list is genuine, quite something that may be used in the interest of protecting our world from the Old Ones.” She held the napkin out for me, her lips pursing with distaste. “The true challenge, of course, is the difficulty of collecting these reagents.”
Sure, no small feat. After waking up that morning I’d spent a good chunk of the day exhausting the arcane underground’s avenues for rare and exotic ingredients. Carver didn’t have any of them in his laboratory, and even Sterling scratched his head, stumped, when I showed him the list. We’d thought of visiting the Black Market, over in Silk Road, but on Gil’s suggestion figured it’d be a good idea to check in with Madam Chien first, just in case she had any ideas.
The scent of incense filled my nostrils as I inhaled slowly, then let my shoulders sag with a burdened sigh. For all the jars and bottles and phials of rare, bizarre reagents Prudence’s grandmother kept in her shop, her stock clearly wasn’t going to help with our case very much.
Izanami’s recipe called, first of all, for a base item. Well and good, as all enchantments go. You need to anchor the magic to some object, someplace to keep it still and inert until the time you’ll need to use it. Anything could work, of course – a glass orb, a crystal, a dagger – but I figured I would use something that was already close to my heart.
I chose my mother’s amulet, the star-metal necklace she wore so often, and the same source of corruption that slowly brought her doom. Grisly, I suppose, but it felt appropriate. Wearing the thing was like being in constant mourning, feeling the cold of the metal and its single garnet jewel against my chest. It was all I truly had to remember her by, yet keeping it only kept the memory of her painful death alive. As keepsakes went, it was explicitly bittersweet.
The second and third ingredients we’d hoped to find at Madam Chien’s, but she’d patiently, almost angrily explained that those simply weren’t practical to source and to stock. I believed her.
“Grandma’s right,” Prudence offered. “I don’t even know how you would begin to extract, what was it again?” She took the napkin from me, reading incredulously. “Screams of anguish. What the fuck?”
Madam Chien rapped her soundly across the forearm. Prudence flinched and whined.
“Language,” her grandmother barked.
“I’m grown up now, Grandma,” she said, pouting. Prudence. Pouting! “And please don’t embarrass me in front of my friends.”
I had to hide my smile. It was kind of cute seeing Prudence all flustered like that. She was always so in control, so in charge of herself and her work, but I guess her hiatus meant that old habits and behaviors were steadily finding their way back to her.
Gil took the napkin from her, rubbing her arm briefly where Madam Chien had struck it. “And this – this is even worse,” he said. “The breath of the dying. This has to be some kind of sick joke.”
“Unlikely,” Madam Chien said, folding her arms, her cloud of white hair jiggling as she shook her head. “Izanami is powerful and learned in the ways of these things. If she says that this is required – ”
Her voice trailed off as her eyes returned to me, no longer as hard as before, but almost, I don’t know, sympathetic.
“You will need to gather these ingredients yourself, Dustin.” She took the napkin from Gil, handing it back to me again, then wrapping her hands around mine. “But you must be careful. The methods of collecting these substances? I am sure you can imagine that they are deeply profane. Forbidden. The Lorica must never find out.”
Sterling scoffed. “Pssh. Easy peasy. We’ll go find someone to beat up, then siphon their psychic vapors while they’re screaming.” He leaned closer to Madam Chien, tapping her on the shoulder. I wouldn’t have done that – I figured Sterling would be lucky to retrieve his arm and still have his entire hand up to the wrist. “Do you have some kind of enchanted phial we can use to collect that stuff? I’ll go find someone we can smash up. No problem.”
The slap came furiously quick, and I’m pretty sure everyone but Sterling and Madam Chien let out a tiny gasp. I cringed, my insides wriggling, my skin all but peeling off my body. I watched, and waited, but Sterling’s gaze only stayed glued to the floor.
“Do not joke about this, blood boy,” Madam Chien said coldly. “It is a serious matter. The collection of pain is not something simply done while it is inflicted. The quality of the pain matters. Some street thrashing cannot compare.” She dusted her hands off, folded her arms, then harrumphed. “Only the screams that come from someone in truly agonizing pain will do. Excruciating labor. Vivisection.” She exhaled slowly, in a single shuddering breath. “Torture.”
Prudence and Gil stood as still as statues, and I joined them in eyeing Sterling. He was rubbing at his cheek, the pallor of his skin slightly reddened by the slap. He looked crestfallen, for once, his shoulders drooped, his lips pursed in a small pout. Repentant, even. I’d never felt worse for him. He even seemed shorter.
Prudence cleared her throat. “I don’t know if that was necessary, Grandma.”
She looked at Prudence, then switched her laser glare to Sterling, who flinched. “If it was to impress the severity of the situation – to show that sealing the Old Ones out of our world is truly important, and no laughing matter – then I say that one slap wasn’t enough.”
“I’m sorry,” Sterling said softly, still rubbing his cheek. “I know. It’s nothing to joke about.” He looked to me next, his gaze somehow more resolute. “But what do we do, then?”
“We check the Black Market,” Gil said, the thick, tense air finally pushed out of the room now that all of us were back in the conversation. “See if anyone has anything in stock. Surely there’ll be at least one person there who deals in the really, really dark stuff.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but it was exactly what we did. Well, after Sterling had a little talk with Madam Chien, that is. By the end of it she was patting him on the back of the hand, rubbing his cheek tenderly and making odd cooing noises.