Chapter 52: Chapter 49: Two of a kind

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> “My memory is hazy but this much I know: I will make them pay for what they have done, even if it takes a lifetime.”

We stared at each other with matching looks of bewilderment on our faces as Beatrice produced an identical token from her pocket.

“What … how is that possible?” I said.

“Where did you get that locket?” Beatrice asked.

“It was my mom’s. She gave it to me on my 11th birthday and I’ve worn it ever since she died. Where did you get that token?”

“Where you thought it was. The 19th-century townhouse on Pearl Street, with the triangle carved into the stone wall. The token was buried underneath.”

“Ah,” I said.

So much had happened since yesterday that I didn’t feel like patting myself on the back for finding where the token from Rita’s memory had been hidden. How it had made its way to that townhouse from deposit box number 42 was a mystery I didn’t feel like solving. Besides, it was Frankie who we had to thank for finding it, and now because of Doug, we never would be able to.

My eyes drifted toward her unmoving body on the floor and I suppressed a sob. I could blame Doug for killing her and blame the Guild for sending us after her in the first place, and wipe my hands of everything. I could justify my absolution with that twisted pretzel logic and pretend that I had done nothing wrong. But that would be the first step onto the path that Beatrice had taken long ago, and as much as we had bonded over the weeks, I didn’t want to end up like her.

I looked down at the token that had been hanging around my neck for half of my life and thought of my mom. Was the locket just some old piece of jewelry she had lying around or did she know what was hidden inside? I didn’t want to think about what that meant.

The token, like the Medoblad, gave off an otherworldly shine. Unlike its wooden, iron, and bronze cousins, this one lacked the number one etched in the center. Instead, there was a beakless bird that looked like a cross between a pigeon and a hawk.

“What is this on the token? A dodo bird missing its beak?”

“No,” said Beatrice. “It’s an alerion.”

“A what?”

“A mythical bird. Only two were said to exist at a time. Every 60 years, they lay two eggs, and then when the eggs hatch, the parent alerions down themselves. It’s the Guild’s sigil. Don’t ask me why.”

“Oh,” I said. “So now what? Are we actually just going to walk into Dalia’s office, plop the tokens down on her fancy table, and demand to join the Guild?”

“I don’t know,” said Beatrice. “Maybe?”

“Or maybe we should take that box and these tokens and get as far away from the Guild as we can,” I offered.

“First things first. Let’s just get out of here. We’ll come back for Frankie later.”

Beatrice reattached the knob to the front door and opened it slowly. But before she could step through, she was knocked backward by a man wearing a blue blazer.

It was Gilbert.

Beatrice retreated to the middle of the room and I stood next to her, clutching the Medoblad.

“Beatrice,” he said cooly, his eyes surveying the room until they reached Frankie’s body. “What happened here? Where’s-”

“Doug?” said Beatrice. “Dead. Thankfully. Frankie too.”

“I see,” the real Gilbert said. “How…”

“Doug, with that,” I pointed to the spilled command ink that had seeped into the wooden floor. “Right after she opened the box.”

“So you did have it,” he said.

“No, your crazed lackey took it, after he trapped us in the cave and left us to die,” said Beatrice. “Why are you here? Come to finish what Doug failed to do? Because if you are, then I’m-”

Gilbert held up his hand.

“No, I’m not. I came to sue for peace. And to stop Doug. But it seems like you handled that on your own.”

“Sue for peace? You’re the ones who keep coming after me,” said Beatrice.

“That was Doug,” said Gilbert. “I gave him the glamour to use when he was out in public. Seeing as how he was supposed to be dead, which I seem to recall was your doing.”

“Yes,” Beatrice said. “Except you saved him for some reason. Thanks for doing that, by the way.”

“Enough,” I said. “We never asked to be involved in any of this. But we’re not just going to walk away now and pretend like nothing has happened. I’m afraid you’re going to be stuck with us.”

“How do you figure?” said Gilbert.

“Because,” I said, holding my gold token aloft while Beatrice did the same. “We’re joining the Guild.”

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“John, Ms. Jacobs’s just walked in,” said our HR manager Margaret to a speakerphone in the middle of the conference room table. She beckoned me to sit at the chair across from her and then turned her attention back to the phone.

“Ah, good. Sorry we have to do this over the phone Jen, but I got called away to London last minute. Anyway, I know you were supposed to have your annual review next week, but something’s come up, so I wanted to do this now.”

“Umm, OK,” I said into the phone while trying to avoid Margaret’s blank face.

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“Now you’ve done great work for us in the past, and this year-”

“Look, is this about the run-through? Because I emailed the team afterward to say I was sorry for running out. But I did fix the bug and-”

“What?” interrupted John. “Oh. No, no. That was some inspired thinking. Really saved the day.”

“Then what? The other devs are mad I was out sick last week?”

“No, it’s not that either. If you’ll just let me explain, then this will go more smoothly.”

“OK,” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was sit through a lecture from Hammond about God knows what, especially with tonight’s summons looming.

A week had passed since that morning on the island and my life had almost returned to normal. Well, my new normal as a Guild recruit. Gilbert had stared at our tokens for what had seemed like 10 minutes before nodding.

“This is … unexpected,” he had said. “But that’s why we have bylaws. You’ll be hearing from us soon.”

And then, before we could do anything, he had grabbed the box and escaped back through the front door. We had foolishly given chase through the portal, but luckily Gilbert hadn’t pulled off the knob on the other end, and so we had emerged into the Chrysler Building office a few moments later to find him gone.

“-took them a while to sort through everything, but when Anthony and Greg laid it all for me, I made the decision immediately.”

“What?” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”

“Does the night of March 26, 2018 ring a bell?” Hammond said, a note of irritation in his voice.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Should it?”

“Yes,” he said. “Because on that night, our logs reported a massive power outage. Every computer in the office except one went out at the exact same time, only to be rebooted a few minutes later.”

My eyes went wide. It was the night I had first discovered the Quest Board.

“And the only employee at the office that night was-”

“Me,” I said. “But, nothing happened. I mean, I didn’t-”

“Erase anything? No, fortunately not. But you did install a backdoor into your workstation during the outage and who knows how much of our code you’ve purloined.”

“A backdoor? What the hell are you talking about it? I didn’t-

“I’m sorry, Jen, but you’re fired.”

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“What’s wrong with you?” said Beatrice, as we got off the subway at 51st Street just after 1 a.m. “You haven’t said a word all night.”

“I got fired,” I said, the glamour’s weight feeling heavier than usual.

“Oh? What for?”

“For loading the Quest Board onto my computer at work.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yes, but the company thinks I committed corporate espionage or something. I just can’t believe-”

“Let it go, Jen. Or Jade, I guess. Are you really planning on wearing that thing for the rest of your life?”

“No, it’s just that, Gilbert, he only knows me as Jade. I’d like to keep it that way for as long as I can. This is the Guild we’re talking about.”

We crossed under the familiar trellis into the pocket park, which was predictably deserted. But the gurgle of the waterfall at the back broke the relative quiet of the night, and we sat down at one of the tables near the freshly-packed dirt that was awaiting a spring planting.

“True,” said Beatrice. “But we are about to be members of said Guild, so that should provide us with a measure of protection.”

“After all we’ve been through, do you really believe that?”

“Not for a second. But we don’t have a choice. I’m not just going to hand these tokens over to Dalia and hope she leaves us alone.”

The park suddenly went quiet and I looked up at the waterfall to find it had stopped. I stood up from the table and walked through the dirt surrounding the now-still collecting pool, and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw a dark figure walk out from the ivy wall that lined the back of the park.

“Hello, ladies,” said Gilbert.

“Gilbert,” said Beatrice.

“Why are we here?” I asked. “This doesn’t look like the Guild Hall. Even Dalia’s conference room would have been preferable.”

“We are here because there are some preliminary matters to attend to before you can be sworn in as the newest members of the Guild.”

“And what are those?” said Beatrice, glaring at Gilbert. “We have the gold tokens. We know that they confer Guild membership. What else is there? You going to dunk us in this pool here to see if we’re witches?”

“Not quite,” said Gilbert, who pulled a small vial from his pocket. “Under the Guild bylaws, the holder of a gold token is entitled to one of the 12 Guild seats. The seats usually operate in a hereditary manner, the gold token passed down from parent to child and so on. There have been a few occasions where hard-up families have sold their seats, but that hasn’t happened in a century.”

“Fascinating,” said Beatrice, rolling her eyes, and I nudged her with my elbow.

“Anyway,” said Gilbert, ignoring Beatrice’s comment, “you two have presented the requisite tokens for membership, but there remains the issue that 11 of the 12 seats are currently spoken for. And earlier this evening, we called a full meeting of the Guild, at which 11 tokens were presented.”

“What are you saying?” I said.

“Either you are engaging in some extreme sleight of hand with one of our members, or one of your tokens is a fake.”

Before we could say anything to object, Gilbert unstoppered the vial and dumped half the contents into the pool. The surface of the water flashed bright red three times before returning to its normal opaqueness and Beatrice and I looked at each other, not knowing what to do.

“What … what was that?” asked Beatrice, clenching her fists, and I saw the outer edges of plastic wrapping.

“That,” said Gilbert, “will tell us which of your tokens is true. Now, Beatrice, if you wouldn’t mind, toss your token into the pool.”

“Fine,” she said, producing it from her pocket and flicking it into the air.

The token hit the water with a plop and sunk to the bottom. I looked at her and she shrugged her shoulders, and we waited for something momentous to happen.

After a few moments, I saw it: a faint glow at the bottom of the pool. It grew brighter by the second, but the light that radiated from the token wasn’t gold. It was green.

Then everything exploded.

The blast knocked me backward onto the dirt and a few seconds later I was hit with a frigid wall of water. Ignoring the ringing in my ears, I wiped the mud from my face and slowly sat up and looked over to see if Beatrice was all right.

Except, she was gone.

“Huh,” said Gilbert, who was seemingly unharmed. “Wasn’t expecting that. Well, I was. Just not that forceful.”

He walked over and extended his hand to me, and I reluctantly took it, his clammy palm sending a shiver up my arm.

“Seems like your friend made off clean and left you here to take the fall,” he said, coldly.

“I … no. She didn’t kno-”

“You don’t have to answer for her. Not unless your token also tries to blow me up. Shall we?”

Somehow, there was still water remaining in the pool and we walked to the edge together, where Gilbert emptied the remainder of the vial. The water flashed red three times again and he gestured for me to surrender my token just as Beatrice had done. I silently complied and held my breath.

Nothing happened.

No glow, no exploding tsunami of water, not even a gurgle from the pool.

“OK, yours is good,” said Gilbert, nonchalantly. “You can retrieve it.”

“What? I don’t understand. What was that liquid?”

“That? Just a little something to weed out fakes. Yours didn’t react, so it’s the real deal.”

“Oh,” I said, stepping over the lip of the retaining wall around the pool and into the cold water. The token gleamed up at me, like a coin in a wishing well, and I thrust my hand into the pool and quickly pulled it out.

“So, now what? Is there some sort of ceremony or something?”

Gilbert raised an eyebrow.

“Something like that. But are you sure you want to go through with this? Once you join the Guild, there is literally no turning back. It’s for life. Now, if you were willing to part with the token, I could offer you a handsome sum of money.”

Now it was my turn to be surprised.

“Define handsome.”

“Enough money that you wouldn’t have to work another day in your life if you didn’t want to. You’d of course also have to agree to let us wipe your memory of the past year. But the money would more than make up for that, I think.”

“I see.”

The offer was tempting, for sure. I was unemployed, my oldest friends literally didn’t remember me, my newest friend was now probably in permanent hiding, and my life had been threatened more times in the past year than I cared to think about. Gilbert was literally offering me a fresh start, the chance to chart whatever course I wanted.

But all the money in the world, I suspected, wouldn’t buy me peace of mind, even if I couldn’t remember the truth about magic or what Beatrice and I had been through. And what about Beatrice? Could I really just leave her to fend for herself? Walk away from everything and go sip scotch on a beach somewhere for the rest of my life?

I clutched the gold token in one hand and my mom’s now-empty locket with the other.

“Keep your money,” I said. “I’m in.”

Next: The end.