Chapter 75: Chapter 20: Ring of truth

> “I introduced myself as a friend of the late Ms. van Asch and reveal the requirements to receive their inheritance: they have one week to extract the contents of a certain box hidden inside Gracie Mansion.”

The girl in front of me was nervous. That much I could tell from her shaking arms and her bugged-out eyes.

“I made the last one into a powder, so it would last longer and you wouldn’t think I was an addict by asking for more so soon,” she said.

This part of the memory was new, as the last time I had relived this encounter, I was half asleep on the train.

“Bought a mortar and pestle at Goodwill,” she continued. “Snorted a little bit to see what would happen and passed out. Woke up, did a little more, tried to finish a paper. Then it wore off again. But not before a thought occurred to me. I needed to inject it. So I went down to the health center, got into the exam room, and then took off with some syringes and tourniquets before the nurse came in. That did the trick. But I only had a little left, so I needed to find you.”

She pointed a finger at me and it felt like I was in the apartment with her and not Beatrice, which was enough to jolt me back into the present.

But the memories I had inadvertently siphoned from Beatrice during our initial encounter at the party almost a year ago were as fresh in my mind as if they had occurred yesterday. Except that Kate O’Laughlin had been dead three years, after Beatrice had killed her in some unknown manner that left no one the wiser. I reflected on these new revelations and wondered what had happened to the poor girl. Were the focus buffs really that powerful that she had descended into a crazed mania?

“A memory,” said Hugo, his brow furrowed. “It’s unorthodox, but I think it will do the trick. The only difficulty is getting it out of that head of yours. I assume a lobotomy is out of the question?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Fine, but that leaves nemosyne. And that’s not something you find in your average Night Market outpost.”

“Nemosyne?”

“Colloquially referred to as memory ink. You write down the memory onto the page and when the ink dries, the memory is siphoned out of your head. Then it can be reformed into something more suitable for the tracking.”

“Oh,” I said. I was quite familiar with nemosyne, only in the reverse fashion, as my head also held two of Rita van Asch’s memories from two hundred years ago. “And I suppose you’re about to tell me that raw nemosyne hasn’t been seen in a hundred years?”

“No,” said Ty curtly. “In fact, until a few weeks ago, there was coincidentally quite a plentiful supply at a certain pigment library up in Boston. But you and Ms. Patel conveniently burned the whole damn collection, so now we need to go to plan B.”

“Which is what, exactly?” I asked. “Please don’t tell me I have to break into yet another museum.”

“Not a museum,” said Hugo. “A mansion.”

“Whose mansion?”

“Your First Chair,” said Ty. “D.C.”

“To be more accurate, it’s not really a mansion,” said Hugo. “It’s more of a multi-story townhouse that spans an entire block in a tony Brooklyn neighborhood. But yes, a mansion in city terms.”

“So, I’m just supposed to break into D.C.’s house, locate his secret stash of alchemic treats, and make off with the nemosyne?”

“If you want to find that blonde,” said Hugo. “Then that sums it up pretty succinctly. Or you could ask him for some. Though I doubt he’d give you more than a single letter’s worth.”

“Whose side is he on?” I asked Ty point blank.

“Not ours,” she replied curtly. “But not J.P.’s either. So if you go down this path, it should be without leaving a trace that you were there.”

“Well, that’s just fantastic,” I said, nearly laughing. “It’s a never-ending escalating gauntlet of shit. It wasn’t enough that I spent two months stalking a payphone at three in the morning every day. It wasn’t enough that I nearly died in a horrible explosion or almost got my hand charred by some hellish fire. But now it’s up to little ol’ me to steal yet another magic totem, so I can single-handedly solve all the Guild’s problems! And do it quietly, if you wouldn’t mind. Well, I do mind! I’m done.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Ty and Hugo looked at each other as if I were the crazy one. But I had finally reached my breaking point, and it was so satisfying to unload everything after so many months of agita, stress, anxiety, and helplessness.

“Been practicing that speech, haven’t you?” asked Hugo. “Felt a little rushed. Anyhoo, I’ve said my piece and my offer stands, if you get over your pity party. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to go freshen up before my evening drinks with a particularly delightful senior staffer from New Mexico. And avoid J.P. while I’m at it. Ty knows where to find me. It’s been a pleasure, ladies.”

Hugo nearly sprinted out of the lobby, leaving me alone with the now-moody teenager.

“Before you launch into another tirade, let me ask you something,” said Ty, her voice barely above a whisper. “Why did you decline my offer at the fountain and again the other day?”

“What do you mean?”

“I offered you untold wealth and the ability to enjoy it without the burden of what you now know. Yet you refused and instead chose to join the Guild. Why?”

Her query was as pointed as White Hilt. I tried to recall what was going through my head during that fateful evening. The shock of Beatrice’s token exploding in the water and her immediate flight had jolted my brain. Had I been asked the same question the next morning, I wasn’t sure I would have given the same answer.

“I … I didn’t think I had a choice. That you wouldn’t just let me walk away scot-free. That I had to see things to through, to find out why my mom hid the gold token in my locket.”

“I see,” said Ty. “I guess that makes sense. We haven’t given you or Beatrice any reason to trust us, have we?”

“No, you haven’t. And why’d you want to kill Beatrice so badly, anyway? Was she really that much of a threat? I mean, it was more understandable when I thought Gilbert was real, but you’re just a kid.”

Ty took a swig of the half-empty glass of gin that Hugo had left and placed the now empty glass upside down on the table with a decided thud.

“Correction,” I said. “A kid who has a drinking problem.”

“I’m not a kid,” said Ty. “Growing up with Dalia as my mother erased any childhood rather quickly.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Couldn’t your mom have found someone else for her political machinations?”

“It’s not that simple. Do you even know why we exist? You don’t, do you? Well, I’ll tell you. The Guild exists because there is magic out there in the world and it is not to be trifled with. It is ancient and it is powerful and it is fleeting and we are the ones who ensure that there is still magic left after we are gone, that the heirs to our Seats and their heirs and so on will still have something extraordinary left to wield. Because were it not for our efforts, all magic in this country would have been exhausted at least a hundred years ago, if not more. And with all the schemers out there, trying to make a play from what’s left, there is nothing thicker than blood.”

I turned over Ty’s words in my head to make sense of them and realized I couldn’t. Maybe because I had spent so long chasing down the Guild as if just belonging was enough and I hadn’t considered what joining the Guild actually meant. Or maybe because something didn’t quite add up.

“But, isn’t the Guild the one who created the Quests in the first place? How does unleashing the Quests and the Raids on the city align with preserving magic?”

“Simple. Do you know how many people besides you have actually worked their way up and learned the truth about what we are doing?”

“No.”

Ty held up her index finger and wagged it at me.

“One. And even she took a shortcut. After a certain number of months or years spent grinding away chasing those elusive gold tokens, most of the people who are lucky enough to have found the Quest Board either give up due to boredom, insanity, or death. Mostly the first one, but sometimes the latter two. But we’re getting off track here. You find yourself in rarified company, Jen, and I don’t think you realize the opportunity you’ve stumbled upon. Once this nuisance with J.P. gets resolved, then you’ll really see what being in the Guild is all about and why you’d be a fool to walk away now.”

“Everyone keeps saying that, but so far, all that’s gotten is me is one missing ex-partner, one former partner with a charred hand who probably wants to kill me with said hand, and one semi-sentient magic stone who seems set on taking over my body. Tell me, when does the good part actually start?”

“Sooner than you think,” said Ty. “You won’t be going into D.C.’s townhouse empty-handed. I promised you after your initiation that you’d be properly equipped, and now you will be. So get over yourself, focus on the task at hand, and help us put this insurgency to bed.”

“Fine,” I said. “But I hope you have something good in your bag of tricks. I don’t feel like barely surviving a five-alarm fire again.”

“No tricks, just good ol’ fashioned magic. But you’ll see soon enough. Anyway, I’m going to take a stroll around Capitol Hill in my cloak, to see if I can catch any pols saying something awful. I’ll see you at the station.”

Ty slid out of the booth and nearly fell onto the floor, the effects of the gin on her teenage physique clearly unexpected. She regained her composure and strode out of the lobby before I could say anything. I remained at the booth for about 20 minutes, half hoping to run into J.P., to see if he had a more enticing offer up his sleeve than this nigh impossible Quest I had been tasked with. But when he failed to materialize, I resigned myself to another month of non-stop stress and dread, and began the long walk back to Union Station with my overnight bag slung around my shoulder.

I didn’t get very far, though, because no sooner had I exited the hotel than I collied with the last person I was expecting to see: Duncan.