False Gods (Sins of the Father 2)

“That’s easy,” Beatrice scoffed, whipping out a piece of paper from under her counter, scrawling out a rudimentary map of the city. She seemed really eager to show off, and I’d given her enough grief that afternoon, so I was happy to let her do her thing.

Florian and I peered closer, finding that Arachne’s tether in Valero was located in – huh.

“That’s an alleyway,” I said. “Somewhere in Little China.”

Metric nodded. “It’s kind of convenient, truth be told. Means you can pick up some fortune cookies on the way.”

I cocked my head. “Sorry. Fortune cookies?”

“Don’t you know anything?” Beatrice rolled her eyes. “They’re Arachne’s preferred offerings. You should take a bunch of them with you. Take a whole bag.”

“I’m new to a lot of this stuff,” I said. “Sorry, damn.”

“Then you would know to be wary as well in your dealings,” Imperial said. “The entities are not to be trifled with.”

Metric chuckled. “We know that you’re good buddies with the Greek twins and everything, but that doesn’t mean it’ll always be smooth sailing.” The lens of her monocle flashed just then. See, this was why the Fuck-Tons had a reputation. They knew damn well everything that was happening in the city, for better or for worse.

Beatrice looked at each of us, her eyebrow cocked. “The Greek twins?” Nobody answered, which filled me with relief. Say what you want about the Fuck-Tons, but they weren’t out to air all of my dirty laundry after all. Just enough of it to be a tease. “Whatever,” Beatrice grumbled, folding up her map and shoving it in my hand.

The corner of it poked into my palm sharply, and I grimaced. “Um, thanks.”

?

??Why do you even need to see Arachne, anyway?”

I gave her the kind of secretive, knowing smirk that I knew would annoy her just a smidge. “We need a little favor.”

For the billionth time, Beatrice rolled her eyes away from me. “Whatever. Come back when you’ve got money for your leather jockstrap. I promise, I’ll make it extra scratchy.”

We said our goodbyes to the Fuck-Tons, then headed out of the Black Market, eager to find our way over to Little China.

Now, before you go wondering why so many entities loved to have their tethers in Valero, of all places, you have to think of them as doorways. Every entity’s domicile is a mansion with multiple doors, each one leading back out into our reality. You could knock, if you wanted, but in most cases, it’d still be up to them to decide whether to let you in.

It goes without saying that the more powerful and influential supernatural beings maintain tethers in multiple locations. Someone like Loki probably had a worldwide network, at least one in every major city. But someone like Skirnir, who’d been forgotten by both time and his own master? Poor guy didn’t even have a domicile to attach tethers to. Can’t have doors without mansions. At least he had his apartment.

As instructed, we made sure to swing by for fortune cookies, the most convenient place being a Chinese restaurant called Seven Dragons. I thought that the waitress would be more weirded out by my order of “Thirty fortune cookies, please,” but she very nonchalantly proceeded to bag them up for me, like nothing was amiss. Huh. Maybe everybody specifically came to Seven Dragons to pick up Arachne’s offering pre-communion. The alley with her tether was nearby, anyway.

It was curious, too, how the alley was set at an angle that kept it shrouded from the sun, all shadowy and cool on the inside. “This must be it,” I said, pointing at one of the walls. Among the graffiti, a single symbol stood out, its lines too precise to fit in with the rest of the tag art. It was an octagon with lines drawn through, forming a small image of a web.

“Okay,” Florian said, nodding. “I’m ready.”

I chuckled. “Whoa,” I said. “Hold up. We’ve got to actually commune with her, first.”

Carver once told me that communing was one of the first things any inductee into the arcane underground learned. Even the most mundane, most nonmagical person who could barely conjure a fireball could still learn to commune with the entities.

“There are only a few key ingredients,” I explained, finally understanding from the look on Florian’s face why teachers enjoyed the act of teaching. He was rapt in attention, eyes staring intently, mouth hanging open. “You need a circle, an offering, an incantation, and just a single drop of blood.”

I cleared away most of the debris from a spot in the alley using my shoe, making just enough space for our ritual. Using a piece of chalk, I drew a loose circle into the ground. Both summoning circles and their incantations, Carver explained, could be as simple or as complex as you liked. All that mattered was the intent.

He’d also shared that an entity might even overlook some of the ingredients in a summoning, depending on how much it liked you. Raziel, for example, seemed happy enough to show up if I yelled really hard, or if I was close enough to being burned alive.

“Looking good,” Florian said, his hands balled into loose fists at his side as he watched with fixed curiosity.

“I beg to differ.” A long, mocking yawn filled the alley, and our heads whipped about towards its source. This place was a dead end, which already didn’t bode well, especially when I saw who was standing at the mouth of the alley.

“You again,” I grumbled.

“Yes, me again,” said Sadriel, the angel of order.