Chapter 62: Chapter 8: Sins of the past

> “So she bought a bouquet and went on her way. Upon reaching her townhouse without incident, she felt a slight ping of disappointment. Until later that night, when she heard the stone at her doorway sound, and so she slowly descended to the ground floor.”

“Why’d you do it?” I said to Emma the next morning at breakfast in the hotel lobby after a nearly sleepless night trying to wrestle with what Ty had told me. There was little she could do for me, she explained, until we could meet in person, so I had tucked the piece of information away in the back of my head and tried to focus on the task at hand.

Emma ignored me and continued steeping her black tea before squeezing the bag against the side of the cup and then adding a lump of sugar.

“Sorry?” she finally replied, after indulging in several sips.

“Why did you stab Steve with White Hilt? I saw the scar and I saw what’s happened to him since. Don’t even know if he’s still alive at this point.”

“Serves the fucker right,” said Emma, taking a casual bite of the large biscuit she had ordered, as if we weren’t discussing how she’d inflicted a horrible, deadly curse on someone. “You Americans know how to make a proper scone. Was never one for crumpets or pikelets. In Coventry, the only thing my mum would get was these clanger knock-offs. They were absolutely terrible.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I said, slamming my palm down on the table, which drew stares from the surrounding patrons, but not Emma. She instead picked up her knife and spread a generous helping of the salted creamy butter on the remaining half of her biscuit.

“Nothing,” said Emma, suddenly changing her grip on the utensil and pointing it at me. “Stop meddling in things that don’t concern you.”

“If we’re going to work together, I need to know why. And they do concern me. Because of what you did, I nearly lost everything.”

“Fine,” she said. “But no more questions. About anything.”

I nodded in agreement.

“He was trying to sell us.”

“What?” I said.

“My former mates. We were young and dumb and trying to take over more of the alchemy black market, and he came calling with a new designer drug. One hit and you felt unstoppable, both figuratively and literally. And it worked wonders. Until one night, we get back from a Raid, and Callie starts going all wide-eyed and crazy, and then …”

Emma looked away for a moment, and I stared down at my empty coffee cup while she composed herself.

“She was gone. Her body and brain were still working, but what made her Callie, it was burned out of her. By the drug. She just stood against the wall in the alley. For days. And then, he shows up, with his stupid green sweater and a leering grin, and Callie stirs to life immediately, like a robot receiving a command, and runs to his side. We were all meant to end up like that, sold off as compliant husks to the highest bidder, if Callie hadn’t OD’d and made us realize what was happening first. So, yes, I stabbed him with White Hilt, and I wish I had finished him there.”

I stared at her, my mouth gaping open, a knot in my stomach from the nightmarish tale she had just revealed. This world that I had thought I had a grasp on was always finding new ways to show me how little I knew. And that, coupled with the revelation from last night, nearly made me vomit in terror.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” asked Emma, as if she hadn’t just told me one of the most horrific stories I’ve ever heard.

“We’re going to be doing a bit of sightseeing around town,” I said. “It’s part of phase one of my infiltration plan.”

“You got the glamour working, I assume?”

“No, unfortunately,” I said.

“Then what?” Emma said, with an irritated tone. “Just yesterday, you didn’t even know this place existed. My da spent years tracking down this vial, to the exclusion of everything else. They’re not going to let us waltz in there and take it.”

“On that point, I agree. First, though, we need to find out where the vial is being stored by accessing their internal computer network. Then once we know where it is, we come back for the retrieval.”

“And I suppose you have a plan for that, too?”

“No,” I said. “That I will be relying on you for. And figuring out how to disarm any traps or wards or whatever alchemy is guarding the vial.”

“Uggh, fine. I’ll work on it. But I’ll need some time.”

“That’s OK. Because phase one will take at least a week. How do you like these, by the way?”

I pulled a set of blonde wigs out of a bag sitting under the table and held them up for Emma to see.

“I’m good, thanks,” she said. “But I’d think you’d look OK as a blonde. Doesn’t clash too much with those freckles.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Thanks. I think. Well, if you’re not going to wear a wig, then an enormous sun hat, sunglasses, and some bright red lipstick are in your future. If you can talk without your accent, like you did on the phone before, then that would help even more.”

“I thought the point was not to stand out,” said Emma.

“No, that’s for phase two. In phase one, you are going to be invited into the library as an honored guest, with me playing the role of your overworked and mistreated assistant.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Say hello to your cover identity, Zazy Scott, makeup expert and influencer.”

I handed her my phone, which displayed a brand-new Instagram account for the persona I had created earlier this morning.

“You’re joking.”

“Nope. The library has a lot of pigments that were used for makeup hundreds of years ago. Zazy is going to be launching her own line this fall. This will be perfect synergy.”

“Sure. Theoretically. But this Zazy person you’ve dreamed up has no influence over anyone. Not even a single picture or follower.”

“It’s only 11,” I said. “By tomorrow morning, you’ll have hundreds of posts and a hundred-thousand plus followers to boot.”

“How?”

“What kind of assistant would I be if I couldn’t deliver that? Today, though, we actually need to take some real photos about town for some authenticity.”

“This is getting ridiculous. I’m not doing that.”

“You have nothing to lose, if this doesn’t work. Me, I stand to lose everything. Tell me, what will Dalia do to me if we fail?”

“Well,” said Emma, pausing to take a sip of tea and a bite of her biscuit, “your token will be given to someone deemed worthy. Then I imagine your memory of the past month will be erased, hopefully in a pleasant manner, and you’ll either wake up in your bed or in a mental institute, depending on how she’s feeling that day.”

“Wow,” I said. “That was worse than I was expecting.”

“Yes,” said Emma. “But point taken. We’ll try it your way. For now. And I guess I’d rather have you in the Third Breuckelen Seat. The devil you know…”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. “Finish up your breakfast, then. Fenway Park awaits.”

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Six hours and even more outfit changes later, we made our way through the double doors of Quincy Market. Despite her earlier hesitancy, Emma leaned into the role of Zazy with aplomb, and by the third stop on our Beantown tour, we had groups of teenage girls eyeing our photoshoots, wondering who we were.

“One more in the center of the building should do it,” I said as we walked past busy food stalls on either side.

“No,” said Emma, who was currently sporting the oversize sun hat from earlier, along with a long floral sundress and platform heels, which couldn’t have been comfortable.

“Fine,” I said. “We can rest a bit on those benches.”

“I’m not tired. We just have other business in here, and I don’t want to be seen like this. Wait here.”

Emma walked off to the bathroom, and I puzzled over what she could be talking about until she emerged in her original outfit from this morning, her prior set of clothes no doubt tucked away in her tote.

“This way,” she said. “She’s down at the other end.”

“Who is?” I asked, but didn’t receive a response.

The east end of the hall transitioned from food to clothing and accessories, and I wondered if Emma had gone fully into character and wanted to buy an entirely new ensemble for the last photo. But we soon stopped in front of a stand full of random knick knacks and souvenirs, and my confusion only grew when Emma motioned over the teenage girl behind the counter.

“Maude here?” asked Emma, and the girl shook her head from side to side.

“No, ma’am. She’s off today,” the girl said, in a thick Boston accent.

“Of course. Nikki … Serata, is it?” Emma said, reading off the name tag that hung on the girl’s overalls. “You have license to show us around? Cause I really don’t want to have to come back tomorrow.”

“Not sure what you’re getting at, ma’am,” Nikki replied. “Everything we got is out here on display.”

“Is that so?”

Emma reached into her jeans pocket and quickly withdrew a small object, which she plunked down on the counter. I peered over her shoulder to see what it was.

A silver token, with the familiar alerion sigil etched in the middle.

The salesgirl’s face lit up with recognition and she nodded silently before raising up a section of the counter and retreating to the back of the stand.

Emma retrieved the token and walked through, and I followed, still unsure exactly what was going on. At the rear, we found Nikki crouched down, fumbling with something on the floor. It was a hatch, and when she opened it, a foul smell emerged from the black hole hiding underneath.

“Be careful as you go down,” called Nikki, who had already begun her descent.

Emma found her footing on the set of stone steps that corkscrewed down into the darkness, and I had no choice but to join her. Thankfully, dim lights shone up from somewhere below, because otherwise I would have tumbled over the side of the railless stairway. I reached the bottom and found myself in the middle of a long hallway barely four feet across, lit by pairs of familiar red stones on either side.

“Where are we?” I asked as Nikki escorted us down the corridor.

“This passageway leads to the original basement of Faneuil Hall. We moved down here in 1762 after a group of anti-witch zealots burnt down the Hall the year before. Probably the only time those idiots ever got anything right.”

“My American history is a little rusty,” I said, “but who is the ‘we’ you are referring to?”

Nikki turned around to give Emma a look as if to say, “Who is this moron you brought down here?” but Emma just shrugged her shoulders.

“The Dutch West India Company,” the shopgirl eventually replied, as we reached the end of the corridor, which culminated in a worn wooden door. “In those days, the alchemy arm of our operations was run more out in the open. People viewed it more as hokey science or superstitious junk, like those fake cures they now sell at the back of magazines. But then there was that whole burning down the hall thing I mentioned a second ago, so we thought it would be wise to move underground.”

“So you work for the Guild, then?”

“Not exactly,” she said, producing a keyring from her overalls pocket. “We were spun off as a separate enterprise in the early 1800s. The Guild wanted to focus on its Questing and magic-hunting, and we were left to keep the alchemy economy running.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You guys came up with a really clever name like ‘The Market’ or something.”

“Oooh, close,” said Nikki. “We’re the Night Market, Boston branch.”

“And yet,” I said, “it’s only five p.m.”

“Well, ‘Night Market’ sounds better than plain old ‘Market,’ or so I was told. You can probably find the full account of how the name was chosen in the Guild minutes from-”

“Enough,” interjected Emma. “We just need some basic supplies and a bit of alkahest.”

Nikki ignored the demand and opened the locked door with a loud click before placing her palm on the wall just to the left of the doorframe. Suddenly the room beyond sparkled to life, and my jaw nearly dropped at what I saw inside: a veritable bazaar of oddities, jars, vials, weapons, and shiny objects that made Beatrice’s downtown laboratory look like a Little Tikes workbench.

“Your noob is showing,” said Emma, nudging me in the ribs and I quickly shut my gaping jaw. “Act like you’ve been here before, yeah?”

“Yes, Ms. Scott,” I replied, and Emma rolled her eyes as she followed Nikki into the wondrous cavern beyond.