Page 69 of Office of the Lost

“He’s not wrong.”Cerillia’s face looked a bit sour at the admission, like she’d just sucked on a lemon.“In the beginning, there were two forces in the void.Chaos and Order.Neither one had the upper hand, and worlds were built and destroyed as they fought for dominance.Unimaginable pain filled the young Connected Worlds, until a group of elder mages came up with a solution.They married Order to Chaos in the form of two beings, each made of one pure essence.”

“Why did these… beings… agree to such a union?”He didn’t like where this seemed to be heading.

“Because they were too evenly matched, and the world would never see an end to their strife if something wasn’t done.And because they realized something important: that Order without Chaos was deadly boring, and Chaos without Order was unsustainable.They each needed the other.”

It made a certain kind of sense.He and Leo balanced each other out nicely.“So where is your… consort?The King of Chaos?”He was rather proud of that one.It rolled neatly off the tongue.

She looked away, regret clouding her features like frost on a delicate leaf.

“The Red Door,” he said.“You imprisoned him.”

“It was the only way.My father did it before me, and his mother before him.Chaos, if left unchecked, eventually seeks to dominate everything?—”

“Just like you have?”He frowned.“That’s why I was sent to collect Leopold.He was a loose end, a bit of Chaos free in the world, not under your control.”

She took a deep breath.“Not exactly.He was meant for you.”She reached out to him, her white hand—cold, so cold—touching his cheek.“You just found him too soon.In a few more years….”

Crispin couldn’t believe what he was hearing.“You and Bidulla plan to keep him locked up foryears?”

He’d never seen his mother look uncertain before.“You weren’t ready.”

Before he could reply, the door slammed open.One of the mages who had been fighting the erosion of the Prickles Hotel stood there breathless.“Oh… thank… the...seven… gods.”

There was something strange about him, but Crispin couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

The anguished look on his mother’s face vanished.“What is it now?”She was once again the cold, bright, beautiful, terrible creature he’d known throughout his childhood.“Speak!”

He essayed a quick bow, but something outside had scared him more than she could.“Come quick.Something is happening!”

He turned sideways and vanished.

Cerillia Ailedrin Moss’caladin swept out of the empty bar and into the light of the new morning.Crispin followed her, and stopped at the threshold.

The world was flat.Or maybeflatteningwas a more accurate description.Color was seeping out of it like the bloom off a rose.All the random jagged lines were straightening out, crackling like broken glass as the change passed through.The mage turned back, and Crispin could see that he was now two-dimensional, thin as a slip of paper.“What’s happening?”

Only the Queen and her two sons seemed unaffected.

“Mother, what’s happening?”Aspin was actually shaking.Crispin had never seen his brother afraid.

“It’s Chaos.It’s leaking out of the world.”Crispin grabbed his mother by her leather jacket, spinning her around to face him.“Mother, what did they do to Leo?”

She shook her head, staring at the morphing world.Only the twitching of her cheek betrayed her own fear.“I don’t know, Crispin.I truly do not know.”

26

Leopold

Bewitchedproved less than spellbinding, maybe because Leopold had experienced more than enough magic for the time being.Which was kind of too bad.One of his foster families had possessed a huge library of vintage-TV DVDs, and for the several months that he’d lived there, he’d found surprising comfort in bingeing them all.

Now, though, he switched off the TV just as Endora was in the middle of trying to break up Samantha and Darrin’s marriage.That struck a little too close to home.

Leopold climbed into bed and tried to fall back asleep, but it was a no-go.He kept thinking about Crispin and wondering how he was doing.

“Maybe Ididaccidentally enchant him into falling for me,” Leopold said to the empty room.“And if so, maybe now that we’re separated, he’s over me.”That would be good, right?For Crispin, at any rate.

But Leopold was definitely not over Crispin.He couldn’t rationally explain how or why he’d fallen in love so fast.On the face of it, Crispin was his polar opposite: neat and organized and flawless while Leopold was, well, Chaos.Opposites did attract, however.And since when was love ever rational?

He sat up quickly, struck by a thought.Love was messy and unpredictable and sometimes dangerous.It was, he concluded, another one of those things—like magic and art—that could only exist with some Chaos in the world.That idea made him proud, if wistful.Gods, he missed Crispin!

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