Circle of Enemies

And I had volunteered for the position. I hadn’t really known what I was doing, but when do I ever? “Boss, how is this guy my fault?”

“Because you’re successful at a time when the society has been struggling. We’ve been falling behind in this fight, Ray, for a long time. You’ve given us some rare victories lately. The peers never thought they could get this sort of success from a mere wooden man, but here you are. And they want more of you.”

“And they picked Talbot? The guy’s an asshole.”

“They’re peers. What do you expect?”

True. When it came to the society, I couldn’t keep my expectations low enough. They were killers—vigilantes, really—hunting for the Wally Kings and Caramella Harrises of the world, and they didn’t care what sort of person you were. All that mattered to them were the predators; the people killed in the crossfire were acceptable losses.

Naturally, they recruited a guy willing to fire an RPG into a crowded apartment building in L.A.

“Boss, I’ve been …” I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I have nightmares. I couldn’t say it, not to her. She wasn’t here to listen to my problems.

“I know, Ray,” she said. She kept her voice low, as though afraid someone might overhear. “You have the look. You’re constantly afraid. It’s hard to control your temper. You continually think about the things you’ve done and will have to do again.”

I nodded. Annalise wasn’t nice to me all that often. I thought I should pay attention.

She studied my face, then turned away. “Lots of things in this job will kill you, not just predators, sorcerers, or mundane threats. You can win every fight and be destroyed by the victories. A guy like that doesn’t last long.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The garage smelled of damp concrete and exhaust. That was a perspective I hadn’t considered. Of course the society was full of assholes; those were the only people who could stand it.

“Did Vela say anything else important?”

“I don’t think so, boss, but there’s magic there, and I may have heard something important without realizing it.” I remembered Steve Francois saying He sounds feisty. “The guy who owns that collection, he’s not a sorcerer, is he?” Annalise snorted as though the idea was ridiculous. “Who is he?”

She gave me a measuring look. “Remember when I told you that the society used to have two original spell books but lost them? Well, Georges Francois was one of the peers who went missing with the books.”

“Meaning what?” I wasn’t sure how far I could push the brand-new Share Time aspect of our relationship, but I was going to find out.

“Eleven peers vanished overnight along with the original books. No one knows what happened to them. Most people think two of them stole the books and betrayed the other nine. Maybe they were killed and their bodies dumped somewhere. Maybe they were banished from the planet altogether. Then each of the two took a book and went into hiding.”

“But no one knows which two.”

“No one is even certain that’s what happened. It’s possible that one or more rogue sorcerers took the books and killed all eleven peers. Or that one peer killed the other ten. Or that a predator took them. Or maybe the books left our world in some way and dragged the peers away with them. No one believes that one, though, because they don’t want to.

“What we do know is this: the peers who vanished left behind odd objects and secrets—these were damn powerful sorcerers, you know—and the Francois collection is just one of them. Some people think it contains clues to the locations of the books.”

“And these would be which books?” In Washaway, I’d heard the names of a couple of these spell books, but nothing more. “The Book of Oceans, right? Because that’s your book. And the other is the Book of Grooves?”

“I cast spells out of the Mowbray Book of Oceans, yes, but the society never had the Book of Grooves. We could never find it. We had the Book of Motes.”

“Uh, Moats? Like a castle?”

“No, motes. As in And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

I had no idea what she was talking about. “Okay.”

“Like dust motes, Ray.”

“Oh. Boss, has anyone ever come across the Francois Book of Motes or something?”

She squinted up at me. “No. No one ever has. As far as anyone knows, there hasn’t been a new primary since those books vanished. In fact, there don’t seem to be any primaries left.”

“And Wally wants to be the next. Could Wally get what he wants as a primary? Could he destroy everything?”

“He’s a dipshit, Ray. Any of us could destroy everything. All it would take is a summoning spell. You don’t have to be a primary for that. That’s the whole point.”

“But he doesn’t want to kill us all with predators. He wants to be gentle. He wants to euthanize us.”

“And he thinks becoming a primary would give him the power to wipe the world clean. All these assholes are like that. They have power, but it’s never enough. If they could just find one more spell, if they could just become a quinary, a tertiary, a secondary, if they could just find the real Book of Grooves, they’re sure they could do whatever they want. All they think about is their limitations, and they’re sure they’d be able to do anything at all if they could just get a little more power.

“Except it’s bullshit. There’s never enough power, not for that kind. What’s more, primaries were damned scary, but they weren’t powerful enough to make us all extinct. It’s not like they crapped A-bombs.”