Reminding myself to have a conversation with Mina and Abigail—separately, I wasn’t that stupid—I got into the limo. As soon as I closed the door, Abigail gave a shallow nod with her head towards the partition, and the car began to move. We moved seamlessly through the empty streets, sunlight eventually replaced by street lamps, LED panels, and storefronts.
Mina and Abigail didn’t talk.
So I kept my mouth shut, too. Which was good, because it gave me some time to think.
My goal was to complete the trial, and so far, it was looking good.I had no idea where Valentine was, but I had a feeling that if he visited, Greg and Ashley might have mentioned something.At the very least, Yokocho or Sana might have hinted at it.One thing I was becoming increasingly aware of the preternaturals was that they couldn’t keep secrets to save their life.Or was that they loved dangling information to fish what they could get out of you, which was more likely of the two explanations.
So, unless Victor had given specific instructions or made a contract to keep them silent, I was in the clear. I doubted he did it, though, because my theory of the practitioner’s talents affecting our worldview was starting to make more and more sense in my mind. By that logic, Victor’s primary talent seemed to be in evocation. That meant pressure, enforcing your will on the world to shape it as you saw fit. Maybe he threatened them, but I doubted Sana would respond well to threats like that. Still, until I figured out his secondary talents, I had to keep my guard up.
Which brought me back to the trial; there were so many factors at play here. If I was right—Damn, I was getting sick of these contingents—there was the Wickerman who might have ordered a hit on the Mother Tree, the Wickermen who probably carried it out, and some unknown entity that would have followed them back from the forest. If I wanted to get evidence that it was the Wickermen who killed the Mother Tree, I had a feeling that the normal ‘excuse me’ and ‘please’ wouldn’t work. Hell, even normal New Yorkers didn’t respond to that.
Rosefinch had called the old forest a ‘crossroads’ and warned me about following something that might try to draw me away. Was it possible that one of the Wickermen had been followed by something that inhabited the crossroads?
“Wol,” I said into the heavy silence.
My familiar lifted his head from next to me, where he had been curled up. “Yes, Practitioner?”
“Rosefinch called the Mother Tree’s forest a crossroads. Give me the Sparknotes version?”
“I do not know what this SparkNotes is,”Wol said calmly.
I gritted my teeth in mild annoyance. “Summarize it for me.”
He gave me a quizzical look. “Oh. You should’ve said so,” he said and gave a small sigh. He was tired, I could feel it through our bond. But the cat roused himself enough to continue. “It was the Greeks who first documented the phenomena, though I’m sure lesser-known documents exist. It was a place ‘between worlds’, my Practitioner. Where paths converge, creating a place with many doors that could lead to even more places than there are doors. Interestingly, ancient mortals also recognized the potential of the crossroads.”
“Potential?” I asked.
“It was used in simple rituals. The Greeks often performed religious ceremonies, mostly for gods associated with many different places. British practitioners taught villagers and townsfolk to bury criminals and suicides at such places. Koreans would bury children under four years old, especially those who had no names yet. Weaker hoodoo practitioners use it to communicate with spirits.”
“The boundaries are weaker there,” I said. “Why bury those people there?”
“You already said it yourself. The boundary is weak there. It is easier for preternaturals from other places to crossover without giving up a significant portion of what makes them them,” Wol explained. “In ancient times, Practitioners invented such practices to appease whatever would cross over. Then there is the symbolic connection, that those who are buried there are never fully one thing, but in a state of in between.”
“Criminals are citizens, but they’ve broken the law, so they’re outcasts. Suicides are among the same vein… and Korean kids didn’t have names until they were four years old?”
“Rightly so. They weren’t considered fully people… but still not not alive.” Wol said. “They’d be buried under trees at crossroads, with nameplates hanging off the branches.”
Creepy as fuck, but I wasn’t about to say that out loud in front of Mina. She was already in a bad mood and kept refusing to look in Abigail’s direction. I was dying to ask Wol what was up with that, but I saved it for later.
“Ok, so the Mother Tree’s forest is a crossroads. The Wickermen go and bam,” I slapped my fist onto my palm. “The Mother Tree is hurt and left for dead. In the commotion, something crosses through the boundary and follows them home. Does that sound plausible?”
Wol nodded.
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“The problem is that we don’t know what it could be,” I said.
Abigail spoke up. “Will that matter?”
“It’ll make a huge difference,” I said, glad that it wasn’t just Wol and me filling up the silence. “Knowing what it is could help me prepare. Chants, materials, special weaknesses…”
“Jain, shut up,” Mina snapped. “Those types of things are for you to know.”
“Geez, I didn’t realize that knowledge is power was a secret.”
“You’re giving away practitioner knowledge,” Mina made a motion to get up out of her seat.
I scowled. “Hey, what’s your problem? We should be working together to—”
Abigail shook her head, speaking over us. “No, I should not have asked. That was rude. Forgive me.”
“You heard the detritus,” Mina said. She folded her arms in front of her chest and went right back to sulking.
I looked at Wol, and he just shook his head at me. He returned to lying down.
After that little tense outburst, no one spoke for the rest of the trip. I gave up on making conversation and joined in on the childish silent game.
It took a little under an hour to get to Greg’s house.
Greg lived in a really nice neighborhood in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I was pretty sure this was where the famous Gingerbread House was. When people think of Brooklyn, they think of one of two things. Super ghetto neighborhoods, or fancy brownstones with picture-perfect families. Well, there is a third option: even nicer neighborhoods. This close to the city, American suburbia is rarer than a mom-and-pop grocery store next to a Walmart parking lot. But the plot of land in Bay Ridge where Greg lived was exactly that: the suburbs.
Perfectly cared-for lawns decorated each city block with just the right amount of space between each house. At the same time, each house had just enough tasteful decor on it to make it stand out from the rest: special Christmas lights, trees, blowup balloons, and the like. Most of the houses here were single-unit family homes, meaning even the famous brownstone duplexes would look out of place here. With the sun gone, most of the houses had their curtains closed. The streets were completely dark.
“Why is it so dark here?” Mina sniffed, getting out of the car. “I don’t see any street lights.”
“Look around,” I said, gesturing at the veritable mansions. “We’re in the rich part of the neighborhood. They don’t have street lamps here.”
‘Why not, Caller? Do they prefer the darkness?’ Hwari asked.
“Cause rich people don’t like fake light. The street lamps, the garbage cans, the orange glow… if there’s a lot of those, people might come around and take walks here since it’s nice. All that would mess with the ambience. The ‘mood’.” I made air quotes at Hwari. “Remember the evil HOA I talk about? Well, they have some very specific aesthetics in mind.”
Mina looked up and down at the mansion, checking it for the address. “I thought you wanted light in New York. Crimes and all that.”
“People who live here are wealthy enough that they don’t have to worry about that,” I said, closing the topic. “C’mon. Let’s check out this house.”
I boldly stepped across the lawn, hoping that nobody was looking. Oh, I was sure that neighborhoods like this had their fair share of Karens. But it was dinnertime, and hopefully they were seated around the table with their smartphone-addicted children, and neglectful husband. Even if someone saw us, we came here in a limo. I hoped that would give us a pass.
“How many bedrooms do you think this house has?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood.
“This house is a five-thousand-six-hundred-square-foot house, with six bedrooms and four bathrooms. It has an open ceiling floor plan, with a private balcony and a view of the bay. It has approved architectural plans to rebuild and pending permits for backyard construction. It was last listed for seven-point-five million dollars.”
I blinked at Abigail.
It was a bit too dark to be sure, but I think I saw her blush. “I did some research before coming. I thought it might help,” she said almost sheepishly.
Mina snorted.
“That does help, actually.If I need to hide, I know I have options,”I said.
“Thank you, Child,” Wol chimed in.
Abigail smiled.
I was the first one to reach the steps. Carefully, I reached out with my unburned hand towards the house, trying to sense anything unusual. My Third Eye unfurled, enveloping the house and giving me an eagle’s eye view of the manor from above. It zoomed in, giving me superimposed images of myself clawing among the vents too small for my real body.
It was a vision.
Something came in with me.
A ghastly hand, decrepit from years of decay, reached out of the darkness. It clawed itself along the ground, gripping onto the wood, and inched closer, all the while a voice screamed in the background like a tape recording set on loop. Fists banged from the underside of the pipes, howling at me to get out and show myself.
I gasped, leaving the vision. The back of my shirt slick with sweat, seeping into my jacket.
“Jain?” Abigail sounded worried.
Mina groaned next to me, and we locked eyes.
“It’s bad, Hallow. I don’t know what you saw, but the emotions in that place…” Mina swallowed. “I think some people died.”
The words didn’t hit me right. Yes, my mom died years ago. But the event had been rather detached, to say the least. We never found her body, so of course, it was a closed-casket funeral. Not a lot of people came anyway. I’d been too young to really feel the weight of the word until I got older. Even now, death is more absence and loss than the visceral raw example of what life could turn into.
I didn’t want to ask any questions. So I didn’t.
The neighborhood was quiet.
“We can go back,” Mina said, “Get more… capable help. I could ask my harabeoji.”
“No favors?” I asked. “From you to me? Free of charge?”
Mina pursed her lips. “No.”
I looked to Abigail.
“Assad wouldn’t help even if you asked. You are still a wildcard,” she said.
“Not a lot of choices here,” I said to Mina. “You with me or not?”
She bit her lips. “You’re going in?”
I nodded. Wol wasn’t saying anything, which meant he wasn’t against it. I understood. We were so close to the last stretch of this trial. Just this one last thing, and it’d be over.
Mina gave a little stomp with her boots. “Fine. Let’s go then.”
“I’ll be right behind you, Jain Shin Hallow,” Abigail said a moment later.
I leaned down and, taking out my knife, etched a small rune into the door. I breathed life into the ‘passage’ rune. Then, taking my knife, I began to fiddle with the keyhole. I think some magic can undo locks, but that would be in the field of evocation or transmutation. A conjurer like myself can summon something to break through the door… or, as an abjurer, use the rune to raise the chances of Lady Luck smiling my way to make passage for myself.
The door clicked open, and we were through.
It was dark inside.
We stepped through.
And the door shut behind us.
I was in.