'From the poor to the rich,' Jinn answered absently, running his fingers over the date as his golden eyes darkened. 'When did the circle of skulls first appear?'
'Sometime thereabouts,' Quessahn said, 'if I'm not mistaken.'
Jinn and Mara looked at her in unison, still bearing the same expression of having been interrupted, as if she'd disrupted a well-practiced routine. She saw in that look the years they had worked together, both committed to some task that seemed to have consumed them, isolating them from the normal lives of others. The look concerned her and made her fear for the possible victims they might find in the coming days. She wondered if Jinn still had the capacity to care for the lives of others in the midst of the war he fought.
'What about the sigils?' Jinn asked, breaking her troubled line of thought.
'Difficult, but the signs are striking,' she answered, laying her sketches on the table beside Jinn's chapbook. 'These are a kind of spell, a ritual, but they're incomplete. However, the patterns, the
… context of their proximity makes some sense.'
'I see,' Mara said, turning the sketches around and tracing them lightly with a painted fingernail. 'Almost like a cipher.'
'What's the connection?' Jinn asked.
'It is a spell of a sort, only it's still being cast,' Quessahn said. 'These are just random sets of runes, from one body to the next, sort of like reading a book, but only reading every tenth word at a time.'
'But the Watch has destroyed many of the bodies,' Jinn said thoughtfully. 'Would that not break the spell?'
'The sigils have already been cast,' Mara answered. 'Their place in the overall pattern is taken and they'-she twirled her hand as if searching for the right word- 'exist, until the spell is completed or until it fails.'
Jinnaoth stood perfectly still, head bowed, as though frozen in thought. Quessahn fought the urge to place a hand on his arm, shocked by the impulse and stepping away from the deva lest she forget herself.
Her gaze lingered on the way he kept one finger on the middle of his chin, just at the terminus of a swirling design that rose from beneath his collar. She smiled, but stopped when she caught Mara staring at her.
'So I suppose all that remains is the question of the day,' Jinn said at length, leaning on the table. 'What kind of spell?'
'Impossible to say,' Quessahn said, pulling her eyes away from the knowing gaze of Mara. 'Though, considering the method of casting, I'm not sure I'd want to find out.'
'We must find out.' Jinn turned to Mara, once again seeming to lock Quessahn out of some private understanding. He tapped a finger on the sketched sigils. 'This is what we were looking for; this is what will lead us.'
Quessahn was troubled by the strange light in Jinn's eyes, the cruel smile on Mara's lips. They turned to the books, ignoring her as she observed them, fuming with disbelief and feeling betrayed by the dim hope that Jinn had truly changed since she'd last seen him.
She recalled the face of a murdered child, the body she'd last seen being taken away by the Watch, and rounded on the pair.
'Why didn't you mention the fingers?' she asked, stealing Jinn's attention though Mara only glanced at her with a knowing smile before returning to her study. 'What does it mean?'
'The left hand is a symbol,' Jinn said after some consideration. 'Many religions hold some significance for it, primarily because most people are dominantly right-handed. In this case it is a symbol of divine will, the hand bound to the purpose of a god's law… the law of Asmodeus.'
'Asmodeus?' Quessahn uttered the name in a whisper, a hundred different depictions of Hells and devils rising to the forefront of her mind, classical images of both speculation and arcane fact.
'The left hand of Asmodeus represents the forceful nature of domination, fierce loyalty, and wrath,' he continued, holding up his hand and bending the ring finger forward. 'The ring finger symbolizes the covenant made and the bound soul.' 'And when severed?' she asked.
'The soul is claimed, and the body is forfeit, either abandoned or controlled,' Mara said, not looking up from her book. 'Not that the how of the matter is truly important, but the symbolism of the act-'
'Suggests followers of Asmodeus,' Quessahn finished quietly, staring off into the shadows and seeing the murders in a new and frightening light.
'And that is why we agreed to help Rorden Marson,' Jinn said.
'What do you mean?' she asked, searching the seriousness in his gold eyes and fearing his answer even as she allowed herself to reluctantly accept the inevitability of what he would say.
'Asmodeus has some stake in these killings,' he answered. 'One of his servants, an angel known as Sathariel, has been drawn to Sea Ward because of them-'
'And you've come to stop the murders,' she said. 'To stop whatever this cult is up to and-'
'No,' Jinn said and her hope faded, seeing in him what she had not wanted to see, what she had always seen and tried to deny. 'We've come for the angel.'
'I should have known,' she replied. Fury filled her as she pulled her cloak tight and stormed toward the door, shaking her head and cursing herself for a fool. She glanced back, her hand on the door, and saw a familiar glimmer in his gaze that pained her. There was hope, she decided, somewhere between his celestial sense of duty and the mortal heart that had been forced upon him, but she couldn't rely on it to do the right thing when it mattered. 'I'll be back,' she said. 'There's something I need to do.'
Then she charged out into the winter night before she could change her mind. She didn't need another chance to search him for what was no longer there, the ghost hiding in every gesture and stare. Snow swirled between the buildings as she walked the circle of crowded buildings around Pages Curious, the cold bracing her and keeping her alert.
The stars were caught behind a net of white clouds, and she let herself be further drawn into the darker places of her magic, letting the stark truths of half-formed, chaotic realms direct her thoughts.
'Better that it be the dark now,' she whispered bitterly, a scent of smoke still clinging to her cloak, specks of dried blood caught in the creases of her hands. 'Better that I be more prepared.'
'I can see it, you know.' Mara's voice stopped her cold, and she spun to find the dark-haired woman walking out of the shadows. Quessahn slid a suspicious hand toward her dagger, magic tingling at her fingertips as Mara approached, the same knowing smile upon her face as before. 'You love him, don't you?'
The statement pierced her like a knife, sharp and direct, flaying any attempt she might have made to deny the accusation and leaving the truth laid bare on her startled face. Wide eyed, she looked away, shaking her head in disbelief at being caught so unawares. She forgot her prepared spell and released her dagger.
'Not exactly,' she replied, anger warming her. Mara spoke as though Quessahn's privacy were a mere puzzle for someone to figure out. But in that moment, her senses still freshly heightened by her magic, she caught another glimpse of the dark aura that hung around Mara, a shroud that squirmed with a life of its own. 'You're not human.'
'Not remotely,' Mara said, still smiling.
They stood facing each other down for long moments. Quessahn's thoughts raced, wondering if Mara would tell Jinn, wondering if the next day would bring questions she didn't want to answer. Again she cursed herself for getting involved. For all of her indignant posturing with Jinn, she'd agreed to help for selfish reasons no less questionable than his.
'Well,' she said at length and turned away. 'We both have secrets, then.'
'No,' Mara said, a scratching tone in her voice that lifted gooseflesh on Quessahn's arms. She turned to find a tall, dark figure standing where Mara had been. Tattered, black robes hung thick across sharp shoulders, the cloth fluttering as shadows crept from crevices toward Mara. Thin wisps of stringy, black hair escaped the darkened hood where two pinpoints of coal red light glittered to life above a lionlike smile of sharp teeth. Skin the color of a dark bruise covered the hand that rose from Mara's robes, pointing at Quessahn almost teasingly as she said, 'You are the one with a secret.'
Quessahn backed away slowly and readied spells upon her tongue, dagger once again comfortable in her grip. But Mara merely turned away, her form melting bit by bit back into the illusion of a dark-haired woman, leaving Quessahn alone in the snow. She shivered as the shadows returned to their places. The hag returned to her shop and her strange alliance with the deva.
Finding her feet, Quessahn turned them back toward the House of Wonder, walking in a daze as she
