> “I created myself in Rita’s waning years. An extinct duchy was chosen, an aging and barren aristocrat was located, and a strongly written letter was sent informing this Duke of his long-lost illegitimate daughter. The man was, of course, thrilled to discover he had issue, and was only happy to legitimize her, even though he had never met her.”
The alleyway next to the boutique was not the best place for a panic attack, but I had barely made it out the door before I felt my mind cracking again. My hand reached into my purse and pulled out a small compact mirror.
I flipped it open with a flourish, and Jade’s smile greeted me in the reflection.
“Not again,” I muttered through gritted teeth, only for the smile to force its way back across my mouth.
“I let you have a little time to yourself and you immediately go spy on me? Will another fortnight at the helm teach you some proper manners?”
The pressure suddenly subsided, and I ventured a response.
“What do you want from me?” I said to the face in the mirror, which changed again as soon as the last word left my lips.
“What do I want? I want what everyone in my situation wants. Freedom. Agency. Control.”
“What does that mean? What are you?”
“I was someone. Then they destroyed me and took my body for themselves. But a fraction of my essence still remained, had to remain, for the stone to work. And that will be their undoing. I will make sure of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. But you should. You are right in the middle of all of this, whether you realize it or not. If you stay on your track and do not venture into mine, this will all work out in the end.”
Jade vanished, and I was left staring at my adopted face in the mirror.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Now you don’t feel like talking?”
Some of the boutique patrons stopped at the mouth of the alley and stared, but I ignored them and replayed Jade’s words in my mind. Ty had been telling the truth, it seemed: the body I wore had been someone, but who was she and who had converted her into a glamour, I hadn’t the faintest idea. And I had a feeling that either Ty didn’t know or wasn’t about to tell me.
I felt the weight of my burdens push down on my shoulders and I squatted down, trying to find a modicum of balance. In that moment, if I could have downed a vial of the memory serum to make me forget everything, I think I would have done so, despite knowing what would likely happen to me. It would be the easiest of escapes, but even that path was cut off from me, seeing as how Beatrice was the only one I knew who had the serum.
I stood up slowly, took a deep breath, and walked out of the alley. A warm June breeze enveloped me and made the glamour stone sway back and forth. It shimmered just slightly, whether from the afternoon sun or from Jade, I wasn’t sure. But I took it as a sign that she was in there, listening, ensuring I stayed on my track. Well, that track led right back to the Guild, and it was there that I was going to get some answers.
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The next 24 hours passed at a glacial pace. You never think about how many hours there are in the day when you don’t try to sleep, and I didn’t dare even close my eyes for more than a second, lest Jade decide to take full control again. And with the vitality serum off limits, I needed another way to avoid drifting off into unconsciousness. Fortunately, I still had the invisibility cloak, and so at 10 p.m., I donned the garment and went for a nighttime stroll. I ended up walking from my Cobble Hill apartment up to the Brooklyn Bridge and across, through the Financial District, and finally down to Wall Street.
I tried to picture what the city had been like when Rita had lived here. The vivid memories from her rings were still fresh in my mind, but they now seemed so alien when contrasted with the gleaming city that had replaced every single building from that time. Well, almost every building. During my wandering, I walked by Fraunces Tavern, whose two-toned brick exterior and dormer windows stood out on the busy modern street. A plaque outside exclaimed that the building was the oldest standing structure in Manhattan, having been constructed in 1719. I wondered what secrets its walls have heard over the centuries.
Next, I passed by where Rita’s bank had once stood, where she had stashed the twelfth gold token in an unassuming box in the basement. How that token made its way from there to my mother’s necklace, I had no clue. Or had it been the fake token all along, a latent trap laid by Rita for her enemies to eventually spring? I still had so many questions, and the only people who could answer them were dead.
I walked along the East River promenade as the sun rose, dreading that I had another half-day to wait before facing my fate at the Guild. But maybe I could jumpstart the process. The towers of the Guild headquarters loomed ahead in my mind as I traveled north, until finally I reached the unmarked entrance at the bottom of the south tower. There was no handle or any other door-opening mechanism, but I pressed my palm into the middle of the wooden barricade and was completely surprised when it opened inward. After a quick survey of the surrounding empty streets, I pushed onward into the castle.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
I was greeted by twin staircases, one leading up to the meeting room, and one leading down to the basement. Choosing the latter, I found a dark, narrow passageway that suddenly sprang to life when I stepped off the stairs. Was it more of the red glowing stones from the cave, I wondered? But then I remembered what Frankie had said, how we had it all backwards. That the cave wasn’t the Guild’s stronghold at all, but something that she and her family had kept hidden.
I didn’t have time to ponder yet another mystery because I was distracted by the tapestries I could now see hanging on both walls. And they weren’t just colorful weavings, but depictions of scenes out of history. The one immediately to my left depicted an uncannily familiar scene: it was the Guild’s negotiation with the Lenape in northern Manhattan. And there was the tulip tree mentioned in the plaque on the surviving Inwood rock, in all its glory. A small group of men and women dressed in European garb stood next to the tree, and on the other side stood a group of Lenape, who had allegedly sold the island for 60 guilders’ worth of goods. Rita, too, claimed in her diary that “we” had bought the island for that amount. Seeing this tapestry here in the Guild’s headquarters, I was left to wonder whether the Guild itself had been the purchaser.
Moving farther down the hall, I came across several more tapestries. There was one showing the building of a castle on a hill somewhere, and then another showing that same castle on fire, which I thought was a rather peculiar narrative to display. Another showed a group of three people standing around a stone-lined altar with a figure tied to a stake in the middle. The precursor to a witch burning, I wondered? The final one depicted a woman standing behind a crowd of men listening to another man read from a piece of parchment. This had to be Rita, attending the reading of the Constitution she had helped draft from the shadows, as chronicled in her 1787 diary that we had found in the cave. Clearly, the Guild considered this one of its major accomplishments, but I doubted it was because they were fans of democratic republics.
I finally reached the end of the passageway and made my way slowly up the staircase. Exiting on the first floor, I entered a small square room with three doors arranged on each of the other walls. A bronze plaque with a small circular indentation in the center hung to the left of all three doors, and I examined the one immediately to my left.
“Orange, First Seat,” it said, and not surprisingly, the other two plaques were for the Second and Third Seats of the Orange Table.
On the second and third floors, it was the same, this time for the New Amsterdam and Pavonia Tables, and I was nearly out of breath when I reached the top landing. I wondered whether the Breuckelen Table members were put here as punishment or as a reward, or whether it was neither and they had some alchemic means of climbing all those stairs without getting tired.
I approached the door to my right, which had a bronze plaque next to it just like all the others.
“Breuckelen, Third Seat,” this one said. My Guild office. At least until they expelled me later this evening for the disaster in Boston. I went to open the door, only to realize that it had no doorknob. Upon further inspection, neither did the other two doors. I rolled my eyes. Why was it always something? Returning to the door of my office, I considered the circular indentation in the plaque, which looked to be the size of a large coin. Of course.
I retrieved the gold token from within my locket and pressed it into the plaque. A click sounded nearby, and then the door inched forward.
“After you,” said a voice behind me and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
It was Gilbert, sporting his now-inactive invisibility cloak, under which I could see a grey suit and red tie.
“What … why did you do that?” I stammered.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist,” he said glibly. “Just wanted to be here when you opened the door.”
“Why?”
“Because that door has never been opened before. I mean, I know what’s inside. The same wooden desk, workbench, and chairs that’s in the others. But after they were deposited and that plaque was installed, the Third Seat office has been locked ever since.”
“I see. What about at the old headquarters?”
“Same deal. An empty office for an empty Seat. And so on and so on. It’s good to see that the locking alchemy has held firm all these years. Will have to make a note of that in the current volume of the Compendium. Anyway, feel free to take a peek inside, but make it quick. The meeting is about to start.”
“Thanks,” I said, and he departed back down the stairs. By his easy-going demeanor, it seemed like he wasn’t aware of the calamity that had occurred, which I surmised was a bad thing. I would have rather entered the boardroom with news of my failure already disseminated and processed, instead of having to explain what happened to an excited audience expecting to receive one of the components of the Philosopher’s Stone.
The Stone. Everyone with a passing interest in Harry Potter thought they knew about that stone, but to find out that it was actually real? And that people were trying to create a new one? If the popular legends were true, the stone was a wellspring of immortality and unlimited gold. It sounded like a horrible combination, no matter whose hands it ended up in.
I pushed the door all the way in and stepped into my temporary office. It was as how Gilbert described it. A simple wooden desk was set against the wall sporting the lone window with a matching wooden chair stored underneath. On the opposite wall was a tall wooden workbench and a wooden stool. The door on this side had a knob, and I pulled it shut and heard the lock click. If what Gilbert had said was true, then there was no way for anyone else to get inside this room now. The thought was of small comfort, as the last place I’d want to hide from the Guild would be right at the top of their headquarters.
But the hour of my expulsion was drawing near, and so I exited the office, wondering if I’d ever be able to return. I made my way back down the stairs, back through the dark basement hallway, and climbed the last set of stairs up to the foyer outside the boardroom, where Gilbert was waiting for me, a perplexed look on his face.
“What?” I asked, hearing the sounds of animated discussion spilling out from beyond the door.
“Nothing,” he said. “Come inside. We’re ready to begin.”
The chatter immediately stopped as I entered the room, and I was greeted with 20 sets of eyes all staring at me as if I had three heads. Including a pair belonging to one Emma Patel.