A Maze of Glass, Chapter Eleven, Pt. 1
Jill sat, legs folded, in the center of a circle of blessed, Kosher salt poured around a flat-enough, less-filthy patch of alleyway asphalt. Eyes closed, her lips moved around silent syllables. At the mouth of the alley, Zoe leaned a shoulder against a brick wall, gazing her nightsight into the sodium-lit dimness. Almost a third of the buildings bristling along the shore and harbor waited on death row, foreclosed or condemned—and so the lights and buzzing glows bringing haven to the darkness there were interrupted by deep notches of shadow. Still, for safety and secrecy’s sakes, they’d set up the ritual between two still-operable businesses, both warehouses, and waited until just after midnight to begin.
It wasn’t a complex plan. They’d used invocations and drugs to strengthen Jill’s already-trained sixth sense. Jill had induced herself into a semi-conscious vision-state and plugged herself into a divination spell supported by an amply-notated map of Oceanrest provided by Sung-ho. Just over an hour had passed since, Zoe standing guard, waiting.
Sung-ho and Omar had already gone home.
Zoe had smoked two cloves so far. Six more still waited in the slim case inside her jacket.
A faint shiver rolled through Zoe’s sixth sense and she stepped back from the alley mouth. Crouching low, she sank into shadows, hand on her sidearm grip, maneuvering around a reeking green dumpster. A cop car whispered rubber along the street beyond. It rolled through pauseless. Trying not to re-notice the stink around her, Zoe watched the dark until taillights blinked for brakes and the police vanished into distance. Standing, she spat. It didn’t help.
She returned to the alley mouth, just six blissful feet away from her hiding spot. Jill’s eyes snapped open. “You were right.”
“Well, shit.” Zoe removed her case of smokes and clicked it open. A clove filter fit between her lips. “What did you find?”
“A matrix of spells, like you predicted. They’re all pretty frail but there’s a lot of them, some obviously redundant…”
Zoe lit the clove with a flare of Zippo and disappeared the case and lighter in a dash of hands. Puffed. “What do you think he’s trying to do?”
Jill stood up, brushing grime from her hip-hugging jeans. She ran a hand through a sheen of royal purple hair. Shrugged. “I don’t know. The magic’s too subtle to get that clear of a reading like this…” she gestured to their set-up. “If you drove me around town I could pick out specific sites and maybe get an idea of what it’s all for, but from out here all I can say is that it’s big.”
“We can take a circuit around the city after we get some sleep.”
“This ‘Summoner’ guy, you said he deals mostly with constructs and summoned entities?”
“So far.”
“Zo’…I’m one of the best in the world when it comes to banishings and exorcisms. Cleansings and seals, too.”
“Yeah, well,” Zoe peered back toward the road. In the not-too-distant distance, the Atlantic lapped the coast. “It’s not something I would’ve brought you into if things hadn’t gotten…out of hand.”
“I know. It’s not something I would’ve agreed to if you hadn’t sounded…”
“What?”
“Scared.”
Zoe took a drag, flicked ash. “I’m not scared.”
“It’s me.” Jill put a gentle hand on Zoe’s shoulder. “You can lose the armor for just one second.”
Zoe pursed her lips and tried not to focus too much on her sister in her periphery. “We shouldn’t even be seen together.”
“Things aren’t that crazy between Malleus and W-A.”
“You’re right, they’re not. Not usually. But somehow I think that when one of Malleus’ best agents meets with one of W-A’s best scientists, yeah, that one might get a reaction. Maybe even an overreaction.”
“Zo’—”
Zoe shrugged Jill’s hand away from her. “We covered for you, right? But there was still blowback. And I get it, after everything we’ve been through, I understand why you left. Why you had to. But it changed everything. You know this is a risk, helping me. You know it’s a risk just being here.”
Jill sank back, nodding. “I know.”
“The decisions we made…they were the right ones, but they had consequences.”
“I couldn’t stay at Malleus.”
“No shit.”
“What are you trying to prove, here?” Jill asked.
“I—I’m not trying to prove anything.” Zoe lost steam. She went to take a puff of her clove but the cherry had died. She flicked the burnout to the ground and sighed. “It just…” (every story) “It just sucks, doesn’t it? Don’t you feel so alone, now?”
“We have our payphone chats.”
“And now everyone at Malleus thinks—or knows, they know I’m compromised.”
“Everyone’s compromised,” Jill said.
“Not everyone is this compromised.”
Silence brooded between them.
“I’ll admit it sucks,” Jill cracked the quiet. “Honestly, none of my colleagues trust me, either. Maybe two of them. And dating is impossible, but it’s always been impossible, right? There aren’t enough eligible men in our world and none of them are any better than the FiDi douchebags outside of our world. I have two friends, I’ve been single for two years, and, yeah, I only talk to my sister twice a month during covert payphone conversations. Life’s rough. So what?”
Zoe chuckled despite herself. “FiDi douchebags?”
“I thought we needed some levity.”
“Sorry. I haven’t had much to do since Sung-ho and Omar left, so I’ve just been…”
“Stewing?”
“Thinking,” Zoe corrected.
“Stewing?” Jill repeated.
“I guess so.”
“Well…for the next few days, at least, we can creep around Oceanrest together.” Jill joined Zoe at the alley mouth, shoulder to shoulder. “So it’s not all bad. I should get back home, though…I can meet you at twelve-thirty tomorrow if you want to drive through the city and see what we can figure out.”
Zoe examined the clove’s dead cherry. “That sounds like the best next step.”
“I’ll give you a ride back north. Sung-ho’s place isn’t too far out of my way.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t worry about it. As long as no other secret agents see us.”
“It’s not a joke if it could happen.”
Jill shrugged, pulling her car keys from her purse. “Says who?”
Turn Back
...coming soon...
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