Spectred Isle (Green Men Book 1)

by K.J. Charles

“You didn’t say what happened there,” Sam put in. “The Southcott business.” “With the tree, or the box?” “Either.” “Nothing.” Sam exhaled audibly. “Could you do better, please?”

or might it be the state of the veil?”

“From the beginning, then. Once upon a time, the divisions between this world and what lies outside were sufficiently substantial that one could use a scrying glass without having something tear one’s eye out.”

He’d never known two people less inclined to introspection or study; they just got on with things.

“Before the War, it was hard to get through, in either direction. An entity turning up—well, before the War that wouldn’t happen without a great deal of effort on someone’s part to invite it in. And perhaps that’s what’s happened now. But the veil is in tatters and Cock Lane’s a funny spot, and what Randolph and I are wondering is if something’s arisen without being summoned. I can’t say it’s impossible. And that would be worrying,”

Sam had been brought up a practical ghost-hunter rather than an arcanist, but he was learning fast.

was seven years since the War, and the War Beneath, had ended.

the Empire that had covered a full quarter of the earth was beginning to look less like an immutable and unchanging truth and more like hubris, with nemesis attendant.

And the veil between this world and the other, repeatedly slashed and burned by the Great Summonings of the War Beneath, was slowly, inexorably tearing apart.

Some believed the damage mankind had inflicted would repair itself. But Randolph had lost almost every relation, professional colleague, and teacher he’d ever known in the War, just as Sam had lost his entire family, and Barney and Isaacs had near as dammit lost their souls. He ...

Bartholomew’s Reference Atlas,

Cock Lane was an alley of no account near the great Smithfield meat market, famous only for the notorious fraudulent haunting of a previous century.

casual encounters when one had the time and inclination, to which the authorities turned a blind eye because there weren’t enough occultists to waste any over petty morality; no tiresome obligations afterwards, since there were more important matters afoot and anyway half the men one fucked would be going back to wives or sweethearts.

He’d nearly died for his country a great deal too often; if that country was as grateful as it claimed to be, it could demonstrate that by leaving him alone.

Bright Young People, made a great parade of unconventional natures.

“Darling, you can’t move for homosexuals!” he’d been assured of some Piccadilly club by one of his fashionable acquaintance.

acquaintance is saying it's a gay club i have no idea why that took me 6 times reading it to understand probably too much braining the horrors of the news--especially on the 4th anniversary of the pulse massacre

if only his war had ended when everyone else’s had. If he’d been like other men of his class, with nothing better to do than amuse himself; if he hadn’t been so sodding busy with ghosts.

since idle thoughts were a useful way to free his less usual senses.

The diviner they used, an irritable pet-shop owner in Brixton, had sent a series of frantic but incoherent telegrams, and by the time Randolph had worked out there was some threat to the Southcott Oak, he’d had very little time to get there.

Peabody had been an obvious idiot, his head full of half-baked mystical notions and theories. If Lazenby had been in Oak Hill Park by chance, it was perfectly reasonable that his unicorn-chasing employer would follow up the Southcott connection.

see, you're even thinking in synonyms for "unenlightened"

If you told a fellow he was wrong long and convincingly enough, he often grew wrong.

That sensitive, sun-browned face, that lean and hungry look, the banked fires in his dark, unhappy eyes—oh, he’d bet Mr. Lazenby would repay a man’s efforts, given half a chance.

*blech*

The presence wasn’t attacking him, yet, but it squatted over the street like a toad and he wasn’t the only one to sense it.

i feel like i'm having a practical magic moment

This wasn’t a spirit of place. This was a malignant thing that felt spiteful and ancient, as though it had brooded over the street forever, and it hadn’t been here at all six months ago. This was bad.

all the milk would doubtless have spoiled too.

and, here we are in warlock

It was that sort of influence, a kind of mad-eyed mountainous pettiness that made everyone’s soul a little shabbier.

“Sling your hooks, now.”

Randolph felt very strongly that he’d like to see them both die, and it was the strength of that feeling that gave him the warning of attack.

grabbing both men by the hand, and hissed out the First Line of the Saaamaaa Ritual as the thing descended.

It was malice, pure malignancy, without motive or ...

This thing was hellish strong. He repeated the First Line, putting more of himself behind it and, since he couldn’t use his hands without letting go of the damned fools he was protecting, he scraped a sigil on the pavement with his toe. Once, twice, a third time, and the protection sprang to life, flaring around him like blue fire.

You run to the end of this street and you don’t stop till you’re out of the line of fire,

Of all the times to be kind and considerate instead of taking umbrage and marching off.

Malice, lust, fear, envy, the usual slurry of human insignificance, but something more behind it. A sense of empty idiocy, as great and vacant as the sky.

oculus fatui

roughly: foolish eye, misleading eye?

It filled a ghost-shaped hole in the street’s belief,

For all its power, for all its sneaking, the damn thing didn’t belong here, and that gave him the edge.

“Not in this land, not in this city,” he said aloud, and spoke six of Wayland’s words.

wayland was the king of the elves (in northern European folklore) the king of the elves, a smith and artificer: known in Scandinavia as Volund, in Germany as Wieland.

He’d undergone nine excruciating days of ritual to keep Wayland’s words. The human mind was not equipped by nature to contain them; they slipped from the ears as soon as spoken. It was a rather unpleasant experience, although not nearly as unpleasant as actually remembering the things.

Glyde turning up for the third time could no longer be blamed on coincidence, let alone interest; that he believed Saul to be following him made no sense at all.

Cock Lane because the Major speculated it might be one point of a mystical pattern beginning at Temple Church.

Temple Church was his new Key to All th...

sent to him on strict conditions of secrecy by a mysterious and anonymous correspondent.

that's never a worry

was caught up in his fantasy,

ya know, i kinda think considering what's going on, randolph is rather dim to not being having more chats w these lads even if they don't KNOW what's going on, they're clearly in it somehow--have a hold of one of the edges

currents of spiritual energy and the harmonies of the spheres, repeatedly adding, “As above, so below,”

the confused and annoyed policeman, had decreed that they had walked into an area of great psychic darkness and forgiven Saul’s insubordination on the spot.

and, he's not wrong

gone off into his head, as his mother had used to call it.

Nature had given Saul a taste for lean strength, hard brains, harder will.

The Great Hexagram

History of Witchcraft by one Julian Karswell