Something is not right in St. Margaret of Scotland Episcopal Church . . .
Shadow went first, easing through the part-open door, Ears at his side. She and Rings followed, with the Hunter close behind. Beaker came last. Beaker closed the door behind them.
Empty. The church felt empty, sort of, almost as if the owner had removed all signs of personal presence. She looked toward the high altar. No light, no red candle, nothing. She reached up and touched Rings. “It wasn’t deconsecrated,” she half-asked.
“No,” he murmured. “But something—” He stopped and shifted his weight. “Under the organ loft.” They picked their way over to the spot. Shadow and Beaker stayed near the charred pile of something on the south side of the nave. Pisicagheara followed her, sniffing the air. “Here,” Rings said.
Lelia shifted fully to magic sight. She saw nothing. Ah. She turned to her boss. “Sir, would you please try the touchstone?”
Pisicagheara drew the cabochon Labradorite in its silver mount and chain from the pocket of his waistcoat and let it hang free. As he extended his arm, the faintest red glow grew on the blue and brown striped stone. Lelia went to one knee and Rings eased down to the floor. He sniffed, then began pawing at a small mound of debris and dirt. Pisicagheara crouched. The stone glowed angry red, still dull, like a half-spent coal. He said a word in his own language. Rings stopped digging long enough to answer. “Silver,” her boss breathed in English. “It hides yet in the oaken ash. Oak and thorn.” He sounded deadly certain.
She drew power as he tucked the touchstone back into hiding. “Now!” Rings hissed, jumping back from the ashes.
She slapped shadow magic and raw power over the nothing. “Lux aeterna, lux argentumque,” she murmured, sliding silvery light under the darkness, filling the void with light and purity. “‘Fiat lux,’ et lux in tenebre lucet.” Let there be light, and light shone in the darkness.
“Et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt,” her boss finished. And the Darkness did not overcome it.
The emptiness filled, then shattered. She caught the pieces and poured more shadow over them. They too disappeared. Still more shadow, this flavored with sorcery power, flowed around her and she pulled her own magic back. Most went to Rings. She sensed Beaker doing something complicated, then withdrawing his power as well. “That was interesting,” the sorcerer of shadow observed. He sounded a little angry and a touch winded. He and Shadow now stood behind her.
“Yesssssss,” Rings hissed. “The physical link remains, melted to the stone.”
Beaker took a deep breath. “Should it be removed?”
Lelia shook her head and regretted it as the world jiggled. “No. Rings and I sealed it. A blessing will be needed, nothing more.” She tried to stand and did, almost.
Pisicagheara and Shadow both caught her before she fell. “What did she eat?” her boss demanded of Shadow once they got her to an undamaged pew and she sat.
“Not enough, sir,” came the clipped reply. “I’ll see to Rings. Make her eat all of the trail mix, please, sir.”
She ate all of it before her boss could say a word. He stood, looking, sniffing the air. Or so she guessed. “The absence is gone,” he observed, the slightest hint of accent in his words.
Shadow plunked Rings down beside her. “That’s where the bael-fire was the hottest, or so Beaker says. The fire marshal and Wizard are ninety percent certain that it didn’t damage the physical structure of the church. The regular fire did that.” Shadow sounded less than convinced.
“But bael-flame would prevent anyone from approaching the true flame until sufficient damage had been done.” Pisicagheara looked to the north side of the nave. “Shadow. What see you under the St. Cuthbert window?”
Shadow turned, looked, and made an odd gesture with his right hand. Pisicagheara half-spoke, half-hummed. Both men, and Ears, went that direction. Rings flopped against her, pinning her to the wooden pew for the moment. She got him water, and drank one herself. Magic moved, shadow power, and she saw a bit of red glow in the darkness. The glow faded.
“They found more.” She drew a tiny thread of power from the night to herself, and “tasted” the magic and the building.
“Yes.” Rings shifted and sat up.
The lack of presence. She no longer felt it. “God’s back. No that’s not right,” she said before he clawed her or something. “But it feels safer again, safer than outside.”
“Vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit.” Rings quoted, “Bidden or not bidden, God is present.” His voice had grown deeper, heavier with age and almost wild. “What masked the Presence has been lifted. The consecration remains.” He shook, then reached over and left a pale, ashy paw print on her skirt.
“You—! Why—? Naughty lemur, naughty!” Lelia sighed as loudly as she could as Beaker approached. “That was uncalled for, unkind, and uncivilized.”
Thppppth and lemur snickers came in reply.
Beaker had been comparing his notepad with images on a flat digital camera. At the sound of snickers, he stopped. “I should be worried. When Tik-Tik giggles, Defender’s about to be in trouble. Or Tik-Tik is.”
“MaaaaAAAAAAAaaaaybe,” Rings giggled, then subsided.
Shadow and Pisicagheara returned. ” . . . I recognized it too. Draku told me of such, and showed an illusion, but not a true one,” Shadow said.
“You don’t make one of those just to have around as a horrible warning, boss,” Ears groaned. “Someone went to a lot of work.”
“Yes, because to make such without blood-path work requires abyssal aid, or so I have heard it said.” Pisicagheara scowled. Lelia hid her shiver and spiking sense of dread by getting two more bottles of water out of the bag and offering him one. “Thank you.” He took it and drank without looking.
“Defender and I should be the only ones who have the skills to make that, and neither of us did it.” Shadow scowled as well, then took a water.
“Make what?” Lelia heard no inflection or emotion in Beaker’s voice.
“A type of charm spell called ‘Agni’s dance.’ At least that’s what my instructor called it. It is a fire-related charm, used to seek out and burn certain classes of item if you don’t know anything more specific. Um,” Shadow paused and drank more. “Like ‘old French book’ if you don’t know which book by title, or weren’t certain if the target would even be present in the first place.”
Kit tapped the notebook with one square, solid finger. “That’s so open-ended it must take a huge power reserve. Worse than cat-trap-class patterns.” He put the notebook back into his jacket pocket. “My head hurts imagining it.”
Rodney nodded so emphatically that his ears flapped. “Which is why no one does it unless they are blood-path, or have an outside assist. Maybe a coven could do one if they’d been banking power, but Shadow’s instructor had never heard of that being done.” Lelia and Tay groaned in unison, and Rodney added, “What they said.”
“What else was here?” Arthur inquired. He dropped the empty bottle. Lelia caught it and did not sigh. “Why set the charms there,” he gestured toward the north wall, then under the organ loft, “and not the altar or chapel?”
Kit held up one finger and disappeared into the shadows. Arthur and André had a quick conversation in the Clan’s speech, with some long German words tossed in. Lelia recognized two of the long words as spell classes, and made a face. Tay eased over an inch or two and she stood. The world didn’t sway. Kit returned with Merddyn and Rosie.
” . . . You’ll have to aske Fr. Garibay, but in general, a display of old books and artifacts from church history. The display frames and tables were up, but the objects didn’t get here yet.” Merddyn removed his hat as he walked. “Rosie, do you recall why?”
The huge skunk’s nose twitched. “Ah, that is, I think that some of the items went to a museum for a special show, and that the rest were locked up until the batch returned? Maybe?”
Before any of the humans could speak, Lelia sensed cold, like malign ice, flowing from the stones of the nave. It oozed up just in front of the altar, between the lower step and the golden oak kneeling rail. All three Familiars turned and launched, racing toward the coldness. The three mages followed, Pisicagheara right behind.
(C) 2022 Alma T. C. Boykin All Rights Reserved
The draft of Overly Familiar is finished and is resting. I hope to release it in August.
Cat Rotator's Quarterly 