Lightbreaker

The Chorus hissed, uncoiling in my head. Blackness crawled up my spine, and I shivered involuntarily as the frayed edges of my memories filled in. 'I won't say his name.'

'Why not?'

'Names are powerful, John Nicols. They make objects real. They give strength to the imaginary.'

'So if you say this name, this. . Whatever. . will be real?'

'I've seen far less be summoned and bound by the power of its name. I'm not about to give this being any more reason to find me. Remember what I said to you on the boat? Belief is a very big part of magick, John.'

'It sounds like a very big pile of horseshit to me.' He waved his hand. 'Yeah, okay, I know. It's all a matter of subjectivity and perception. Bla bla bla. Whatever. Okay, so you met some mysterious stranger in the wood. What happened next?'

'Afterward, I wandered for a year, trying to figure out what had happened. I came back to Seattle, intent on finding Kat. But she had vanished; I couldn't find any trace of her. So I went east and tried to-' I swallowed the bile raised by the Chorus. '-educate myself. Survive the best I could.'

'It looks like you did pretty well. Must have found the right teachers.'

The Chorus flexed in my throat, heat on the back of my tongue. 'I have an. . unusual learning style. Very immersive.'

He grunted. 'I suppose that's to be expected. It's probably not much of a stretch to fit you with an obsessive personality profile.'

There was no way he would understand what the Chorus was, and how they came to be in my head. Their knowledge became mine. It wasn't a matter of an obsessive focus at all; it was simply an act of absorption. I hadn't spent the last decade learning how to do magick but rather had spent it becoming magick. Each voice of the Chorus brought with it a wealth of arcane knowledge and occult instruction.

Nothing is ever lost; it is simply transformed.

'Occasionally I would find hints of Katarina. I would be in places where she had been recently, but I never got close enough to find a warm trail.'

'So what changed?'

'I met someone who knew her.' A random intersection of threads. I shook my head. The funny way the world was woven. 'I broker antiquities for a living. It's a means to an end. I get to travel regularly, and I get to poke about in old libraries and the dusty corners of forgotten collections. My clients like to be anonymous. They appreciate someone who understands the nature of the transaction, who will grease the pipe from one end to the other. I have an office in Los Angeles, but I'm never there. An agency answers the phone, and takes care of my correspondence. I spend a lot of my time on the road, making deals and moving pieces.

'Most have esoteric or magickal histories, and some are black market items. Usually the buyer wants the acquisition to remain off the radar. I don't ask about provenance, nor do I care how the artifact comes available. I am an unaffiliated third party who can be trusted to move the object from point A to point B, who will never reveal the identity of the seller to the buyer, and vice versa. I have a reputation for good, clean work. I don't advertise; all my business is through personal references.

'What brought me to Seattle was an Assyrian statue. It used to be in the National Museum in Baghdad. But with the chaos in Iraq during the last decade, a number of pieces have been secretly removed in an effort to preserve them.'

He raised his eyebrows, a number of questions half-formed on his lips.

'I'm under no illusions as to what I do, John. I know all the arguments about the preservation of cultural heritages, but do you just let these objects be destroyed because you can't protect them from chaos and barbarianism?'

He nodded curtly. 'For the sake of argument, we'll pretend that I agree with you on this point.'

'The statue was large enough that it couldn't be quietly smuggled into the US. Rather a certain amount of hands-on attention was necessary to ensure all the hurdles were properly cleared. It came on a boat from India, and there was a week's delay while the paperwork was processed by the Port of Seattle-this is all very standard, you realize-and I had a lot of free time on my hands. The buyer invited me out to his house one night to see his collection. It was almost an accident, really, but during the course of the evening's conversation it came up that we both knew Katarina.'

'Really? Small world.'

'It isn't, actually.'

He gave me a thin smile. 'I know. Rarely do people run into each other by accident. There's always something in their histories that brings about these happy collisions. An old detective I knew when I was younger used to say: 'There are no coincidences, only convergences.' ' He sighed and looked out the window. 'Now that I can see these energy lines, it seems even more true.'

I acknowledged his point. 'According to my buyer, there was a good chance Kat was still in Seattle. I decided to stick around for a while and see if I could find her.'

'And when you find her?' His eyes, watching my expression now.

'I don't know,' I said. The Chorus twitched behind my eyes, a motion contrary to the innocence of my statement. They had a plan. They had been waiting a long time to taste her. Take back what was stolen. That was the only way.

Nicols' extrasensory sight may have seen the flicker of light in my eyes. His face was unreadable-a mask of sagging flesh that gave nothing away except a long-suffering weariness with human frailties and self-deceptions. 'This isn't about revenge?'

'Maybe,' I admitted. Something moved in my gut like a giant sea creature rising toward the surface of the water. An untoward surge of stomach acid for such a noncommittal word.

Honesty.

'Okay, I appreciate that.' He swirled the liquid in his cup and drained the last of the chocolate, his throat working.

My hands knotted themselves in my lap as the Chorus hissed at me. Do you really need his help? Is it worth the complications? His contacts with the police department could help me track Doug. His badge could grant me immediate access to places that I would have to otherwise force with magick and the force of my Will. Speed was an issue. Pender had begun to regret letting me go and, if he caught me a second time, he wouldn't make that same mistake again. I needed a shortcut, and Nicols was the closest thing I had.

No other reason? The Chorus tightened in my throat. I swallowed heavily, feeling their knot.

Nicols' hands moved toward his coat pockets, reaching for a cigarette, and then stopped. Someone walked past the front of our car and glanced at us, their eyes like phantasmal fire through the mottled condensation on the windshield.

The soul is a guttering flame sunk within our shells. Its light permeates the flesh, driving away the shadows that live in the heart, liver, and lungs. As the spirit is nourished by Knowledge and Reason-the reoccurring mythological symbols of enlightenment's sacred mysteries-the spark grows stronger, coughing and sputtering into a real flame.

The passage of Doug through Nicols' body had been like a burst of oxygen to a starved flame. A channel had been opened, and fuel had been given to his spirit. But he hadn't been damaged, not like Kat's hand on me. His initiation could be temporary. The pipe could be closed. He could return to the life of a guttering candle, burning so faintly that the back of his head would be forever in shadows.

He deserved a chance to make his own choice.

For a long time, I had lamented the loss of my innocence. Like the children in Blake's poetry, I wanted to be purified and left clean. But that could never happen. Not after what happened in the woods. Even if I stopped using magick, even if I sealed myself off and denied the mystical world, there was still a hole. Things could get out; things could get in.

In the end, I had adapted. It was as simple as that. I embraced the darkness as my path toward the light. It was the only way I knew.

One direction, one life. One purpose.

I needed to bury the past. In time, all things must be returned to the earth, planted deep so they can be