Chapter Eleven

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My point of contact with VNC was almost always the same person, some woman named Kelly Lamarcke who was apparently the firm’s primary agent in this region. VNC was at minimum a global organization, and quite possibly had interests in other worlds entirely, and they had a sprawling bureaucracy to support that. My understanding was that she was relatively low in that bureaucratic hierarchy.

I was just as glad to mostly deal with a relatively low-ranking member of the firm. I’d been around one of the name partners exactly once, and would be quite happy to never repeat the experience. Jack Tar was the most personally powerful human I’d ever been around. But that was a position he held only because while I did not know what Elaheh Nilsen was, and she might well have started out human, if so I was sure she left that behind a long, long time ago.

Kelly was creepy enough, honestly. She knew who was calling before she answered, impressive considering that it was a number I’d never used with them, and she sounded perfectly crisp and professional at four in the morning. I explained what I needed, making very, very sure to specify that I was in no sense taking on this debt myself.

She needed about ten seconds before she told me that she’d have someone on site within an hour and hung up. I shivered a little, and walked back over to where Audgrim and Saori were waiting at the edge of the clearing. “One hour,” I said, “and you’re negotiating price with them directly after it’s apparent how much you’re paying for.”

He nodded. Saori grinned and chewed gum. “I have to say,” the kitsune commented, “the deal with the devil vibe is actually pretty stylish when you’re not the one paying. So we have some time to kill?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t getting back to sleep tonight anyway. “Sounds like.”

“Awesome! Round of liar’s dice?”

Of course she’d brought dice. Unsurprisingly, within forty minutes I was several hundred thousand imaginary dollars in the red. I wasn’t great at any game that involved bluffing. Audgrim had very few tells, and while I was not certain how Saori was cheating, she definitely was. The security employees mostly stood around and watched; I was quite sure they found the sight of their boss sitting in the grass losing at dice while Saori cracked bad jokes to be enough entertainment on its own.

The hour passed, quicker than most. I found myself feeling grateful that she’d brought a way to pass the time. Almost exactly fifty-five minutes after I got off the phone with Kelly, I got an impersonal text message from an unfamiliar number saying our consultant would be there in five minutes. Audgrim tried to make himself appear professional; Saori and I didn’t bother, though I did note that her knife was out of sight again.

And then, after exactly five minutes, the consultant walked up out of the trees. I was not sure how he’d kept the suit that nice walking through the forest, but then, I also wasn’t sure at all how he’d even gotten here this quickly. Some questions weren’t worth asking. He walked over to where the two of us were sitting and Audgrim was standing, and nodded politely. “Miss Sugiyama, good morning.”

I winced. “Call me Kyoko. Please.”

One of the faintest smiles I’d ever seen flickered across his face, more visible around the eyes than anything to do with his mouth. He turned towards Audgrim, and nodded again, a tiny bit less deeply. “And Mr. Eyvindson. I take it this is the site you want me to examine?”

Audgrim nodded. The consultant smiled again, this one more visible and less sincere, and walked out into the clearing, pacing around, occasionally kneeling down to examine one of the objects more closely. The three of us followed, I think mostly because we weren’t sure what else to do. Nothing was said as he worked his way in from the edges, going over the entire clearing on the way to the center. Now that we were closer, I could see that at the center of the clearing, and thus of the things arrayed within it, was what looked like the stump of a tree, one that had been recently cut down. The tree itself was nowhere to be seen.

And then, finally, he stopped and turned to Audgrim again. “This is an interesting structure,” he said. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Assume I know nothing about the topic and go from there,” he said.

The consultant nodded. “Understood. Well, this is a focus for ritual spellcasting. Definitely a ritual spell, rather than a ritual as such.”

“The difference being?”

“A ritual is…a series of actions which follows a strict formula,” the consultant said after a moment. “It’s not magic, as such, though it might involve or result in magic. Rather, it’s a formalized invocation of another power which will get a relatively reliable response. If you slit a lamb’s throat and spill the blood into a silver bowl, and offer this sacrifice to Black Annis, a hag will come to guide you home, however far you’ve strayed. Things like that.”

“So they’re a way to get someone else to do things, rather than doing them yourself.”

“Yes, entirely. And they almost always involve some form of price, of sacrifice. When the ritual is invoking a greater power, the price can be very high, and the outcome less certain than the example I provided.”

Audgrim nodded. “Okay, I think I understand. But this isn’t that?”

“No,” the consultant said. “This is something else which uses a similar name. A ritual spell is a working which is carried out over time using magic. Because the structure of the working is more elaborate, it tends to involve much more in the way of props and foci than spontaneous magic, and the effects can be much stronger and more precise. But it is ultimately powered by the caster, not by an external agent.”

“Do you know what this one was meant to do?”

“Hm,” the consultant said. “Yes, but some of the details will require explanation. At its most basic level, this was a spell of binding. It compelled a being to appear, and bound it to obey the commands of the caster. In this case, they were binding the spirit of this tree.” He gestured at the stump in the middle of the diagram.

There was a momentary pause after this. When Audgrim did speak up, his voice had the cautious tone of someone who is sure he heard correctly, and also certain it cannot possibly have been what the speaker meant to say. “The spirit…of this tree,” he repeated.

“Yes. Though it’s not…” the consultant grimaced a little bit. “This language is very poorly suited to describing the supernatural. A lot of terms overlap in confusing ways, like the difference between rituals and ritual spells we just went over. When people refer to a spirit or the spirit world, they are normally describing things which exist only as thoughtforms or concepts, with no physical embodiment. This is not such a being, but rather one more akin to a dryad or nymph, a creature which does have physical form.”

Audgrim was still staring at the man with that same “you can’t be serious” expression. “And that creature was…here?”

“Not exactly,” the consultant said. “It was in an Otherside domain. From the resonance patterns I’d guess Faerie, but a tree spirit of this kind might be linked to any number of domains, and Faerie is only a tentative guess. It just had a strong connection to this tree.”

Okay, that made at least slightly more sense. I had only a vague understanding of the Otherside, but I did know that it was an incredibly vast set of linked worlds. Thousands, at minimum, and while most were apparently tiny, others…weren’t. Faerie was estimated to be about as large as the surface area of the earth, on its own, and while it was one of the largest, it was hardly the only one in that range. The Otherside was huge.

And it had a comparably wide variety of creatures in it. When Audgrim referred to his family, he meant the dvergar who lived on the Otherside but had an interest in the city. The raiju were over there somewhere, as were the kitsune. These beings visited the mortal world, interacted with humans, but they were not native to it.

If the VNC consultant said there were dryad-like spirits over there, I could accept that. If he said he wasn’t entirely sure this one was from Faerie, I could accept that too. If anything, that he could even recognize the target and guess at where it came from suggested an impressive knowledge of the layout and fauna of the Otherside.

Audgrim was nodding. “And they used that connection to force it to manifest so they could bind it?”

“Yes, exactly. It’s a strong sympathetic link, very useful for that kind of thing.”

“Okay, I can work with that. Do you know who did this, or why?”

The consultant shrugged. “Not exactly. As to who, I don’t know who the caster was, but the ritual design is Sidhe in origin. And as to why, that ties into one of the oddities I mentioned that will require some explanation. You see, this ritual pattern is…several kinds of inexplicable. To start with, it’s far stronger than would have been necessary. This is the sort of ritual binding you would use to command something quite strong. A genius loci of a major natural feature, a Sidhe noble, a young dragon, that general range. Using it on this spirit is…an extreme degree of overkill.”

I frowned, looking at it. This part I did know something about. “That kind of binding takes a lot of power,” I said. “Like, you’d need a lot of energy to power that.”

“Yes, quite,” the consultant agreed. “That’s part of why it’s so odd that they would use it here.”

“When you say a lot,” Saori asked, “how much are we talking?”

The consultant barely glanced at her, and the answer was clearly directed towards Audgrim, but he did answer. “There are…perhaps a dozen mortal mages living who could support this working using just their own power,” he said. “For the vast majority of people, human or otherwise, an external source would be required to maintain it even long enough to get the spirit to appear.”

“What kind of source?” Audgrim asked.

“Ah,” the consultant said with some satisfaction in his voice. “That’s the interesting part. Because out of the major methods, I would normally expect geomancy. Place the ritual on a naturally occurring ley line, and use that to power it. It’s delicate, but usually the simplest method, and particularly effective for binding something linked to nature like this. This region is also a confluence for them, there are several lines that parallel the rivers and some from other sources. We’re standing over one of them, even.”

“I’m sensing a ‛but’ coming,” I said dryly.

Another flicker of a smile that didn’t reach his lips. “Indeed. The ritual structure here does have those geomantic elements, but it’s not tuned correctly. You have to adjust those structures based on your location and the nature of the line you’re pulling from, and this is not set up in a way that would work here. However, there are also secondary structures there, there, and there,” he gestured as though it meant anything to us, “which suggest blood magic as an alternative power source.”

“They killed someone for this,” I said. My voice was softer now.

“Yes. Likely someone with meaningful personal power—animals or random people off the street would not be enough for a ritual of this size, not without using a lot of them. It would be most effective if there were a sympathetic link to the target, so in this case someone with ties to nature or to Faerie would work best.”

Audgrim’s face tightened, very slightly. “I see. Anything else?”

The consultant was quiet for a moment, and looked at me for some reason, and then looked back to the center of the ritual site. “Yes,” he said, “one final note. They killed the spirit with this. Not necessarily right away, but the connection to the tree was a fundamental part of its being. Now that the tree is dead, it will wither and die as well in a short time. This was not necessary for the ritual itself; they did it after it was already conjured and bound. Any further questions?”

The clearing was silent except for the breeze. He smiled again, this one back to the false, professional look that didn’t show up in his eyes at all. “Excellent. Someone will be in touch to discuss payment. Good day, Miss Kyoko, Mr. Eyvindson.” He nodded politely and walked back into the forest, which still did not touch the suit, did not so much as scuff his shoes. He hadn’t given his name, hadn’t acknowledged that anyone other than Audgrim and I was even present. Maybe, for him, they weren’t; they did not have a business relationship with VNC.

It was quiet for a few moments before Saori said, “Well. Shit.”

“Does seem to sum it up pretty well,” I agreed. “So, you figure they used the werewolf as a sacrifice?”

“Seems likely,” Audgrim said. “Timing lines up, and werewolves are natureish, I think.”

“I don’t think they’ll like that very much.” I looked at the diagram laid out under our feet. A ritual strong enough to cage a noble of the Sidhe Courts, set up to use multiple serious power sources, and they used it for…this. The spirit of a random cypress.

“Understatement of the week,” he said sourly.

“Nah,” Saori said. “Understatement of the week was calling this situation weird. ‛Weird’ is when I spike a monastery’s incense with hallucinogens. This is outright bizarre.”

Audgrim just stared at her for a moment, took a deep breath, and then said, “It somehow does not surprise me that you two get along.”

I snickered, and looked around. Saori wasn’t wrong, this was just…why? Why would anyone go to all this work for some random tree practically in my backyard? Hell, even if you discounted the lycanthropic sacrifice—murder clearly was not something these people particularly objected to, so I doubted they’d seen that as much of an issue—this was just…so much work to set up. The time, effort, and expense involved in setting up this ritual structure was just…a lot to throw at something so trivial.

And then I paused as a thought occurred to me. “Hey, when are you going to be talking to the funeral home guy?”

“In about an hour or two. Why?”

“Cause there’s something I’m curious about,” I said. “Hell, go ahead and call one of the werewolves, too. I think I know somewhere these lunatics have been. And if I’m right, I highly doubt they bothered to hide their scent when they did.”

“I’ll just give you Andrew’s number,” Audgrim said. “And we’re still working on other avenues, by the way. Couple of wolves have been searching around where we found Chris’s body, and we’ve been looking into the werewolf from the funeral home.”

“Awesome. I think I’ve done more than enough for this morning, so unless you somehow have yet another random question for me, I’m going to go home and get some more sleep.”

Audgrim gave me a slightly odd look, then said, “Yeah, that seems like a good idea. Like I said yesterday, you look like shit.”

“Thanks, wasn’t sure.” I glanced over at Saori. “You mind if we walk home?” I was feeling antsy again, agitated and restless. It was the same feeling I’d had after meeting with Maddie, what felt like much more than a few days ago, and for much the same reason. I didn’t understand this, couldn’t make it make sense. I had information, but I couldn’t make it into meaning. I was aware that my fixation on that understanding, on knowing the meaning of what I observed, was neurotic. Didn’t do shit to make it go away. Walking, movement, things like that helped, they made it easier to shift away from that headspace.

I didn’t actually ask Saori whether she wanted to go back to my house with me. I was socially clumsy, but even I could figure that one out.

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