“From ana to kata,” Izzie muttered. Seeing Daphne’s confused glance, she explained. “Two terms that keep cropping up in the weirdest places. A nineteenth century mathematician made them up, or borrowed them from the Greek or something, to describe movement in the fourth dimension. North and south, east and west, up and down, ana and kata.”
“I was thinking in terms of ‘in’ and ‘out,’” Joyce said, nodding, “but the terminology doesn’t really matter. The important thing is, I think that the place the Ink is coming from as it appears in the hosts’ body is the same place it goes when the host body is killed. When you described it as ‘tentacles,’ Izzie, I think you were pretty close to the mark. The Ink is still connected to the main body, wherever that is, through the fourth dimension, and it pushes more of itself into the body, consuming more and more of the host’s grey matter as it does, and it can pull itself back out of the body, as well, leaving vacuoles behind. We know that the more pronounced side-effects of Ink use, like photophobia, only show up after prolonged usage. But maybe that’s just because there’s more of the stuff in their system. It could be that it’s the Ink that’s reacting to the light, not the host.”
Izzie scratched the back of her neck, thinking it through. “So, what . . . ? Maybe the loa can draw enough of itself out of the Ridden that those side-effects go away? At least temporarily?”
Patrick was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, a skeptical expression on his face. “Doubtful. It’s chewing up their brains, right? That’s where it starts. Would there even be enough up there left to operate if the Ink was gone?” He turned to Joyce. “What was it you said the other day about the effects of that much of the brain being missing? Their personality would be gone, and even if they were moving around, from a medical standpoint it wouldn’t be them calling the shots? Isn’t that how Ink works?”
Joyce held up one hand, palm toward the ground, and wiggled it back and forth in a “yes and no” gesture.
“Sure, that was the case with Malcolm Price,” she answered, “which was in line with the pattern of brain damage that we found in Nicholas Fuller’s victims five years ago. In all of those cases, the majority of the vacuoles were located in the frontal lobe, and yeah, with that much grey matter missing, they would have been incapable of independent thought or moving on their own volition. The car might have been driving, in other words, but they weren’t the ones behind the wheel anymore. But the brains of the other Ink users that I’ve examined didn’t display that same pattern. In each of those cases, the vacuoles were more evenly distributed throughout the entire brain. So they would still have been capable of some level of independent thought and agency, but it would have been impaired to one degree or another.”
“Maybe it just affects different people in different ways,” Daphne put in.
“Or maybe we’re looking at two separate things,” Izzie suggested. “What if the reason that we saw different kinds of damage in the brains of Nicholas Fuller’s victims was because the Ink was doing something different to them? The damage is more precise, maybe even surgical, because it needed to control them without causing all of those other side effects. Fuller claimed that his victims showed signs of personality loss, so there’s that, but none of them had black marks on their skin or had a problem walking around in broad daylight. Maybe it was using Malcolm Price the same way, until he threw himself out a window and ended up basically as good as dead anyway. So that was the point where enough Ink was pushed down into his system to cause the blots to appear on his skin.”
“So let’s assume for the moment that it’s a one way street,” Patrick said. “Once someone is totally taken over, and the blots are on their skin, then they can’t go out in daylight. But until that point, sunlight isn’t a problem.”
“So, if they know where we are right now,” Daphne asked, “what’s stopping them from coming after us? There’s got to be some of them that aren’t that far gone, right?”
“Well, we know that there are other ways of stopping the Ridden, short of sunlight,” Izzie pointed out. “They can’t cross running water, we saw that last night. Loud, discordant noise or music confuses their senses. They are repelled by salt and other crystals, or can’t come into close contact with crystals, or something like that. And silver disrupts their connection with the loa, somehow. At least, that’s what Robert Aguilar wrote in his journals. So maybe some of those side-effects apply to the Ridden like Fuller’s victims and Price, who are under the Ink’s control but aren’t completely far gone yet.”
“Uncle Alf’s marks.” Patrick turned to Izzie. “Remember?”
Izzie nodded slowly.
“Uncle who’s whats?” Joyce raised an eyebrow.
“Symbols of protection that my great-uncle carved into Te’Maroan houses all over this part of Oceanview,” Patrick explained. “I noticed that there hadn’t been any reported cases of Ink-related crimes in this part of the neighborhood. No Ink deals, no users, nothing. People from these blocks were using the stuff, but only in other parts of town, and once they started using they never came back home again.”
“Then we found a map of the city in Fuller’s effects,” Izzie added. “And he had put these little spiral marks all over the southwest corner of Oceanview, and another similar mark over the Ivory Point lighthouse.”
“Where the Ridden can’t go,” Daphne said.
“Exactly,” Patrick answered. “Uncle Alf always told me that the marks were there to prevent evil influences from entering a house. To keep away things that
