The security guard at Aubert’s apartment complex remembered us. He let us in, but he warned us Aubert probably wasn’t home. When Darius said he wanted to check anyway, the man stepped back. I didn’t blame him. The vampire was radiating enough intensity, I wanted to step back. And I knew he wasn’t hungry.

The elevator ride up to the third floor was tense. There was a bing, and the doors slid open.

When I saw the hall beyond it, my lungs locked up. It felt like my brain had been dumped in a vat of cold water.

“Wha-what happened?” I whispered.

Darius, who’d been about to step out into the hall, stopped. “Do you see something, Emerra?”

“Is it blood?”

The vampire grabbed the elevator door when it started to shut. He scanned the hall, then looked back at me.

I mumbled, “How can there be so much of it?”

The black splatters dotted the floor and walls along the entire hall, sometimes thinner, sometimes thicker. The ones barely outside the elevator were long and thin, as if they’d been flung there with incredible force.

“Emerra.”

I managed to drag my eyes away from the mess and look up at Darius.

“I need you to tell me what you see.”

“Do you not see this? It looks like Jackson Pollock went through an angry goth phase!”

“I don’t see anything.”

I blinked my black eyes and gazed around me.

Ever since Jacky had pulled me from my casket, I’d seen things I’d never seen before, but they were little things that could fit into my idea of the world without causing more than a few ripples. But this—this was not a little thing. This was someone dropping my idea of reality so I could watch it shatter.

How could what I see be so different from what anyone else saw?

I felt very lonely and very afraid.

“I’m not crazy,” I said.

“I know you’re not. Describe it to me.”

“It’s not blood?”

“Trust me, it’s not blood. This must be something else.”

I stepped out of the elevator while trying to touch as few of the splatters as possible. The count followed me. As we walked down the hall, toward Aubert’s apartment, I did my best to describe the scene: the color, the density, the patterns, how the splatters looked like they were all flying away from the same point. Neither of us were surprised when that point turned out to be apartment 303.

Vasil pulled out his phone.

“I’m putting it on speaker so you can hear,” he said, “but you might not want to say anything.”

“Why not?”

“I’m calling Ashworth.”

The dial tone only rang twice before the torrman picked up.

“Good evening, Darius.”

“Good evening, Mr. Ashworth. Have you ever heard of magic that appears to be black?”

“Black? Not a dark green?”

“Black.”

“If it’s a true black, then it’s not magic. You’ll have to call Thorburn.”

“Why Thorburn?”

“They share white with us, but if it’s gray or black, it’s spirit essence.”

I looked at Darius to try to figure out how to react. His brow was pulled down, and he was frowning.

“What could possibly make spirit essence go black?” Darius asked.

“Stagnation or corruption—just like magic,” Ashworth said. “It makes it appear darker.”

Darius took his phone off speaker and put it to his ear. It wasn’t like he was trying to exclude me; I got the impression that he needed to talk fast, and he didn’t trust the speaker phone to get it right.

“Mr. Ashworth, I need to know if it’s possible to set off the device before three souls are gathered.”

There was a brief pause.

“What if it wasn’t used on a mundane? What if it was being used on a magician?”

A long pause.

“How much power are we talking about?”

A second later, the torrman got a rushed goodbye, and Vasil hung up.

“Darius?” I said.

“We have to get in there now.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He stepped up to the door and knocked. There was no answer. I was about to ask Darius what we were going to do, but he held his hand up for silence and laid his ear against the door.

“He isn’t home,” Darius said.

“You can’t hear any breathing?”

“I can’t hear anything.” The count turned and looked me right in the eyes. “Unless you’re under oath, I’m going to ask you not to tell anyone about this.”

“What? That Aubert isn’t home? Or that when you knock, sometimes people pretend they aren’t?”

I saw his slight smile for half of a second, then it disseminated.

And, yes, I had to look that word up—but I needed something that could describe it.

One moment, Darius Vasil was right there, beside me, as solid as anybody should be, then he was spreading out, almost vanishing, as his whole body became vapor. Even his colors faded as the mist rose and spread. It seeped through the millimeter gap at the bottom of the door.

When Darius opened the door from the other side, my jaw was still hanging, unhinged, like a snake’s.

“What was that?” I hissed.

Vasil grabbed my arm, pulled me into the dark apartment, and shut the door. “That’s one of the powers I don’t normally tell people about. It makes them uncomfortable.”

“You think! I mean, what’s stopping you from sneaking into people’s bedrooms at night and sucking them dry?”

“My conscience. Should that ever fail, there’s also a rather extreme threat of punishment.”

“Who could possibly hurt you?”

“I’m not invincible, Emerra. I can only do that at night, and it isn’t as easy as I make it look.”

“You don’t have a warrant. Are we going to get in trouble?”

“Not this time. I have good evidence of exigent circumstances, and the people who’ll be hearing about it won’t like the idea of this device.”

When he mentioned the device, I remembered we had broken into Aubert’s home for a reason—not merely to show off Darius’s unique talents.

“I’ll get the lights,” I said.

“I don’t need them.”

“I do.”

Maybe he was just showing off.

I found the switch, flicked it on, and turned around.

Aubert’s whole apartment was coated in black—or, more accurately, rancid soul juice. It was thick enough it could have been a new layer of paint. In the living room, laid over the black stuff, were dozens of two-foot by two-foot diagrams: collections of carefully inked, intersecting circles, lines, and runes. It looked like some steampunk philosopher had tried to create blueprints for the universe. They covered the floor and were draped over the couch. A few more were sitting, rolled up, on the tiny kitchen island.

Judging by how clean they looked, Aubert must have brought them out after he set off the device.

“Shit,” Darius muttered.

I stepped up beside him. “Are you supposed to swear in front of a lady?”

“Believe me, I toned it down.”

“What is all this?” I reached out to touch one of the rolls on the kitchen island. It was vellum. Real vellum. Calfskin. I shivered and pulled my hand back.

“They’re spells,” Darius said. “Quicade specializes in runes and diagrams.”

“What’s Quicade?”

“It’s the college where Aubert learned his sorcery.”

Vasil carefully stepped into the clutter.

“Are these valuable?” I asked.

“Each one is worth several hundred dollars.”

“And he left them lying around?”

“He must have been in a hurry.”

That didn’t bode well. Aubert lived in an apartment. His furniture was second hand. I was willing to bet he wasn’t rolling in money. That meant that I, as a fellow poor person, had a deep spiritual connection to him, and I knew that the only thing that could make me forget about, oh, roughly six to seven thousand dollars would be a matter of life and death.

“What kind of spells does a sorcerer in a hurry need?” I asked.

“I don’t know enough about magic to say.” The vampire bent over one of the parchments.

“How do we find out?”

“I usually take custody of them and bring them to Olivia or Iset.”

Blow that. I took out my phone and dialed.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Olivia! This is Emerra.”

“Emerra? How did you get my number?”

“Never mind. Darius and I desperately need a person who’s really clever with magic. Would you recognize sorcery spells?”

“Most of them. What I don’t know, Iset probably would.”

“Great. I’m getting you some video.”

I pulled up my camera and started filming.

“You’re on speaker, by the way,” I said. “Darius can hear you.”

Her voice echoed into the room. “He could have heard me anyway. Hang on, I’m getting the feed now. Move a little slower.” A second later, she said, “Damn. Cram time. That’s a lot of spells. Not so—Emerra! Not so fast. I can’t tell what the spell is unless I can get a good look at the diagram.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Hey, if these are his spells, why didn’t he take them with him? Is it a Dungeons and Dragons thing?”

“What?”

“Does he memorize them and then forget them when he uses them?”

“My god! Is that the worthless magic mundanes come up with?”

“You mean he can cast these spells as much as he wants? That seems a bit unfair.”

“Only if he can draw them out by memory. Otherwise, he’s limited to the number of copies he’s made.”

I didn’t see how that was much different from forgetting them, but now was not the time to pick a fight.

Olivia went on, “These are his originals. He would trace them onto tissue paper. Or onto the nilplane, if he’s powerful enough.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“As if that mattered.”

“Love you too, sweetheart.”

There was a silence while I walked from spell to spell. When I’d covered about half of them, I heard a quiet “fuck” coming from my phone.

Apparently, the vampire had toned it down.

I kept scanning the diagrams while Olivia talked.

“Darius, it looks like this guy was preparing for war.”

“Combat spells?” Vasil asked.

“Combative, defensive, destructive. This is everything in those chapters you’re never supposed to need.”

“What kind of defense spells?”

“Simple shield. He wanted to protect himself, but that wasn’t his main concern.”

“Do you think he’s planning on killing someone?”

“Or taking down a whole building. Where are you?”

“In Joel Aubert’s apartment.”

“Aubert? I thought he was supposed to be weak!”

“We have reason to believe he’s become a whole lot stronger. Olivia, I want you to text us a list of any specific spells you recognized.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Should I send her some pictures?” I asked.

“No time,” Darius said. “Olivia, send us that list as soon as you can.”

“I will.”

We both hung up.

As I put my phone in my pocket, I said, “I take it that we’re going somewhere else in a hurry?”

Darius said, “If Aubert had time to prepare for the confrontation, Frost must have called him and arranged to meet somewhere else. The question is, where are they going?”

“Nope!” I held up both hands. “It’s your turn to guess. I got us this far.”

“So you did.” Darius rubbed his jaw, then let his hand drop. “We’ll have to try the college.”

“The college? That’s an hour away and nowhere near the city!”

“The college is the only place we know that’s familiar to both Frost and Aubert. It’s late on a Saturday, so it’ll be mostly empty.”

“That might be what Aubert wants, but wouldn’t Frost choose somewhere more public?”

“Frost is the one that wants the meeting. All Aubert has to do is refuse to go unless it’s someplace that works for him.”

That made a lot of sense.

“I’m ready when you are, Agent Vasil.”

[https://i.imgur.com/f011ZNa.jpg]

Olivia pulled the phone from her ear and tapped her message icon. Before she could type anything, she felt a presence beside her. It was Conrad.

Since it was dinnertime, they had both been heading toward the dining room. It made sense that he would be in the hall with her. It made less sense that he would be standing over her like that. She fought the urge to lean away.

“That was Darius and Emerra,” the wolfman said.

“Yeah.”

“You said it looked like someone was getting ready for war.”

Olivia hesitated. When you compared anyone’s hearing to Darius’s, they came up short. It was easy to forget that Conrad’s hearing was better than a human’s.

“Yeah.”

“Where are they going?”