Page 32 of The Grip of Death
“It is so good to see you back with us in the land of the living,” Lore said.
I frowned. “Don’t say that, Lore. There was never any doubt. The soup is delicious, by the way.”
His little crystal body sparkled in an array of colors. “Why, thank you, Jackson. Whitby assisted. In fact, he ran an analysis of all the reviews and ratings of myriad chicken soup recipes that we found online and selected the very best one. Empirically, that is. Optimized for flavor and nutrition. The internet truly is a wonderful thing.”
He zipped toward the staircase as if he was about to descend, but he stopped abruptly at the top of the landing. “Oh, and Jackson? My apologies, I should have mentioned it earlier. You have a visitor waiting for you downstairs.”
I swallowed a mouthful of Lore’s creamy, delicious concoction, then stopped eating. Xander had also paused his whirlwind of consumption. Probably for the best, wouldn’t be good to suddenly shock his system with so much food.
“We weren’t expecting any guests, were we? Besides, I didn’t hear the door open at all.”
“Oh, no,” Lore said. “They came in through the floor.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Yes. She materialized from a crack in the floor, and she’s sitting on the sofa waiting for you right now. Very kind person, actually, quite polite despite her inability to knock on doors or use them at all. Very much enjoyed the cup of tea that I served her.”
I frowned, my suspicions mounting. “What does our special guest look like, Lore?”
“A pale woman in black robes, with eyes as black as night.”
I glanced at Xander. He swallowed. “Hecate? What’s Hecate doing here?”
“I don’t know, but you and I both know that we shouldn’t be in the habit of leaving goddesses waiting.” I pressed a kissagainst his hair. “You wait here. I’ll be right back. I’ll just go and see what she wants.”
And Hecate was there waiting on the sofa, exactly as Lore had said, presently drinking another cup of tea — not with her mouth, of course, because she just had to be creepy like that. She held one hand suspended over the rim of the cup, somehow drinking the tea through the palm of her hand. I tried not to shudder, keeping my discomfort on the inside.
“Oh, wow. Hi again, Hecate. We weren’t expecting anyone tonight.” Was that too rude? I had to hope it didn’t sound too rude. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”
“Nonsense,” the goddess said. “Your little jewel of a friend here has been so accommodating. Such delicious drinks and dishes he has offered for us to sample. Fascinating, what your kind has done with the melding of magic and machine. This discipline of artificing has always intrigued us. You might say that the curious results of your craft are the very reason you are still permitted to practice your unusual arts.”
Permitted, as if I needed to be reminded that the entities — and Hecate, most of all — would always be watching. Yet even there I could sense her cryptic tendencies, the way she liked to layer meaning in her words. The arcane underground had always gatekept artifice, natural-born mages especially looking down their noses at those who could only make magic with tools and technology.
And all at once it confirmed what I had hoped for: that the goddess herself was not involved in bringing Xander harm. As much as she liked to obscure her motives, Hecate spoke the truth. The goddess of magic saw the art of artifice as something amusing, a curiosity.
Maybe she didn’t raise the boys of Grayhaven to augment their magic with implements, but a goddess who also moonlighted as a principal at an arcane academy wouldcertainly be interested in observing new developments in artifice.
It was just as she’d quietly hinted. If we artificers overstepped our bounds and threatened the fundamentals of magic, or reality itself with our inventions, she would gladly crush our machinery. Just as easily as Xander could crush an empty can of his favorite orange soda.
I took my place on the couch next to her. I stretched my arms out, appreciating the tug in my joints, the loosening of my muscles. Hecate just watched, perhaps amused by my reaction to her presence, or the brazenness of me plunking down on the cushions so close to her.
So bizarre how I’d gone from having zero interactions with entities not so long ago to now having a goddess show up at random in my living room. As novel as it seemed, I didn’t really want it becoming a regular event. I mean, even Preston and Beatrice texted me before coming over.
“Um, thank you? It was my dad who created the AIs. Stands for ‘artificer’s intelligence.’ Was there something you wanted to talk about? I have to be honest. It’s been a really long day, and Xander just woke up.”
“Ah. Excellent news, then. That, at least, is a relief. What concerns us is how very little we have learned since we last spoke.”
I frowned. In retrospect, I should have guessed that Hecate’s use of the royal “we” would trip me up some day, but it had happened far less than I’d expected. This was probably the first time.
“And by ‘we’ do you mean that you’ve learned little, or were you referring to the both of us?”
She parted her hands in exasperation. “Both of us, of course. We’ve been known to leave humans to their whims, fleshling, but this is a very serious matter indeed. With the right leverage,the right amount of power, this arcane device of yours might have catalyzed a detonation to reach even beyond the walls of this dimension.”
A blast that could take out other dimensions, or maybe even leak into the real world? Gods above and below. What mechanical monstrosity had my parents created?
“The only thing I’ve learned is that this whole thing involves sabotage of some kind. But whoever’s responsible, I wish I could say. I barely have any kind of lead, and I even brought Reza Arshad with me.”
“Ah. One of our very best students, and yet nothing. It mystifies us, fleshling. Few things can hide from our watchful gaze. Few things indeed. This perpetrator must do well for themselves to have the power to cloak their presence from a goddess of the old world.”
