Page 47 of Aïdes the Unseen
Why would she? I studied the screen. Of course the animal followed her. Even in this life, the pull was still there—life drawn to her. Even things born in darkness want to be near her.
“Are we sure it’s not an avatar?” I asked.
“Negative. It’s untagged. Natural.”
That was worse.
“Monitor it,” I said.
Mara didn’t move. “It’s shadow-tethered. What if it binds fully?”
I didn’t answer.
Back in my office, I sat at the window and watched the city blink itself toward night. I didn’t need the simulation to feel the old energies stirring. They were in the cracks of the sidewalks, in the way shadows bent slightly wrong around certain corners. Something was waking. Not loudly. Not all at once. But enough to notice.
And Irina—she didn’t remember.
Not yet. Not consciously.
But she would.
It was only a matter of time. No, my only question was, should I press the advantage Ifinallyhad or wait…
When she did, the bloomcouldbecome a gate again and I could choose to let her walk through it or close it before she entered.What if it doesn’t become a gate?
I pushed that last thought away.
We couldn’t rush this. She neededtime. She needed to beallowedtime. She needed tonotbe stolen again. How many times now had she been torn away just as I found her? Too many mistakes made over the years. No, I had to be patient. It had been near a millennium since I’d been this far ahead. I’d had months to study, to put people in place. To create a safety net.
I refused to anticipate failure.
Not again.
My home satin the Upper East Side—though it never looked like much from the outside. The kind of brownstone that disappeared into the background. Carefully chosen. Warded, though no one would know it. Humanity had forgotten so much over the centuries as their reason and logic sought to eradicateknowing. The animals, though, they remembered. Even the birds avoid the second-floor sill.
Inside, it was all dark wood and silence. Shadows nested in the corners and didn’t move unless I let them.
I shed my jacket, set my gloves on the marble dish by the door, and moved through the house like I always did—measured steps, checking the windows, checking the dark.
Not for safety.
For signs.
The apartmentremembered. Just like I did. It moved with me, letting me carve it out of whatever time or place I needed it to be. The door to enter just another gateway I forged.
I stood at the tall window in the study, looking down at the street, at the thin pulse of city life smeared in taxi lights and rain.
She’d taken the dog home.
Not a tagged projection. Not a creature of the net. A real thing, small and still damp from some other plane.Shadow-tethered.That was Mara’s phrasing, but I felt it more plainly. Iknewwhere it had come from and what it might mean.
The Underworld still answered to me. Mostly.
Yet even that was changing.
I lit no lamps. Shadows didn’t need help here.
I was halfway through reviewing the second day's node reports when the air in the study shifted—like someonesmiledbehind me, without sound or breath.
