Chapter 25: History has its eyes on you_NYC Questing Guild

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> “I heard an interesting account about Washington’s evacuation during the Battle of Brooklyn. It seems like there are others at work on this continent besides the Guild and its former members. I need to be more cautious going forward.”

I thought about running after him.

It would have been like a scene out of a movie. One that would probably have gotten cut, because, well, who would care about the out-of-town boyfriend who made a dumb ultimatum when there was a secret world of magic to get back to?

Well, for starters, me. And probably no one else.

The plane ride back was excruciating. I went back and forth a hundred times on what to say to Duncan, whether I should pour my feelings out in an email, try to somehow make a plane-to-plane video call, or just let things simmer for a bit until cooler heads could prevail. Of course, I took the easy way out and chose the third option. It would take Duncan a few days to get over the jet lag anyway, and I’m sure he would be too slammed at work to even think about it for a bit. I wanted to put it out of my mind, too, to escape back over the threshold of my new life.

So that was why, on a cold January morning a week later, I found myself on the Weehawken Cliffs, debating whether or not to knock over a bust of Alexander Hamilton.

The bronze bust rested on a column, which was surrounded by a short fence, an empty flagpole behind it. The face of the man was smirking, as the sculptor had wanted to portray him as a man who hadn’t cared that he had gotten killed in a ridiculous duel with the Vice President of the United States. I walked to the back of the fenced-in area to find a boulder with words inscribed into the surface.

> “Upon this stone rested the head of the patriot soldier, statesman, and jurist Alexander Hamilton after the duel with Aaron Burr.”

I knew from my reading on the way over that the stone’s claim was an unconfirmed myth, but so much of what I had thought was myth was not, so maybe there was something to this rock after all?

Four holes drilled into the stone formed a rectangle of sorts around the words, remnants of a long since stolen plaque that sported the same words now carved into the stone. If anything was hidden here, those holes were the best place, save for some secret compartment under the bust, and I wasn’t ready to venture into destruction of property just yet. I made a lap around the premises and, satisfied that no one was around, climbed over the fence and stepped down next to the stone. It only took a few seconds to confirm that each of the holes was empty, except for wind-swept dirt that now adorned my fingers. I quickly climbed back over the fence and left the fallen Founder to his thoughts.

Fortunately, the bust was a short walk from the ferry terminal and in no time I was looking back at the cliffs from the water and wondering if this whole sojourn was going to be a complete waste of time. The ferry soon docked, and I walked over to the subway to head uptown to the next set of coordinates.

My train car was empty so I pulled out Beatrice’s little notebook and finally began to read. Her handwriting was sparse and neat and all the entries were dated, which made it easy to decipher. I quickly flipped to the back to see the last page dated 2010, which meant that this was potentially only a small sliver of Beatrice’s knowledge. I turned back to the second entry, the one right after Beatrice had found her Rita ring.

> “Put on ring. Nothing happened. Took off ring.”

That was the extent of the note. Great. At least I already knew why nothing had happened when she had put on the ring. She hadn’t yet found my Rita ring and whoever had it at that point wasn’t wearing it. I read on to the next entry.

> “Plan: identify locations mentioned in diary and visit to see if any prima materia left.”

That seemed sensible, except that the intervening hundreds of years had probably reduced whatever magic was there to nothing.

> “Identified pond mentioned in March 1777 entry. Located in Crotona Park in Bronx. Collected various flora in vicinity for testing.”

So she had done the hard work of correlating the vague descriptions in the diary to their present-day locations. Smart. I read on.

> “Incomplete May 1777 entry makes reference to rat. Hypothesis: vermin accumulate traces of magic. Will need to devise method to extract.”

I didn’t want to imagine how many rats, pigeons, and other creatures Beatrice had killed in her experimentation. But it was fascinating to read how she had sussed all of this out seemingly by herself. The screech of the train brakes shook me out of my reading stupor, and I put the book away and braced for reentry into the cold.

The second location was another relic of history - the former site of the Polo Grounds. Or, rather, the lone remaining stairway from that once-hallowed stadium, which led up to a small park. I walked to the designated spot and was greeted with another inscription.

> “The John T. Brush Stairway, Presented By The New York Giants.”

This was turning into a ridiculous scavenger hunt crafted by an overly enthusiastic history teacher. I walked back down and underneath the portion of the stairs where the plaque was. The ground looked undisturbed, which I took as a good sign that someone hadn’t beaten me here. Or a bad sign that there was nothing here to begin with.

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I knelt down and started digging up the dirt with my hands. The cold soil came up in chunks and after a little while, I had made a perfectly good mess of the ground and myself. Still, I had nothing to show for it. Maybe whatever was supposed to be here was deeper than I’d managed to go.

I heard the footsteps of people above on the stairway and stepped away from the makeshift hole. If this was the right location, it would require a proper shovel and the cover of night. I bent down to smooth everything back to its original state and headed downtown to the final location.

> “First extraction a success, but a bit messy. Will test content of liver and preserve spleen for later.”

The entry made me almost vomit on the subway, imagining what Beatrice had done, but I kept reading.

> “Liver dissolved and distilled. Unsure whether to mix with material recovered from pond or test on its own.”

I hadn’t thought of the difference between sources of prima materia. In my mind, it was like this one big well of magic that you could use in different ways. But maybe it wasn’t that simple.

> “Mixed liver essence with ink and wrote test command on paper: ‘jump once.’ Nothing happened.”

So she had gone straight to the big stuff. I would have done the same thing too, although I was relieved that it wasn’t as easy as mixing any prima materia with any regular thing and expecting a magical result.

I didn’t have time to ponder further as the train arrived at my final destination for the day: Long Island City, not far from the door.

It had begun to snow as I descended from the platform and I pulled the top of my jacket close to my face. The last set of coordinates was in a small park surrounded by on-roads to the Queensboro Bridge. I walked along a cobblestone path that ran between the multiple lanes of traffic, columns of jagged rocks lining the way. The aesthetic was appropriate and, I hoped, a good sign that I was nearing the end of this journey.

I crossed over to the park and spotted my destination: a Dutch millstone from the 1600s that prior to the park’s creation was buried in a traffic island. I wondered what else this city had buried and forgotten.

A small sign stood next to the millstone:

> “In 1642, Dutch citizens were issued licenses to settle around a stream (or ‘kill’ in Dutch) that fed into Newtown Creek, which divides Queens from Brooklyn, and so the area became known as Dutch Kills. This millstone was used to make flour.”

My eyes widened. Everything was starting to fit into place, and it couldn’t have been a coincidence that I had been led here, to one of the oldest artifacts in the city, to where the first alchemists had settled after arriving from Europe.

But like the other two locations, this one was also empty. The center of the millstone, which would have been a great place to stash something, was filled in with concrete, and again I resisted the small urge to destroy an object of historical significance.

Dejected, I walked back up to the subway and pondered my next move on the way back into Manhattan, glad that I had not told Beatrice anything about this. I could only imagine what she would be saying right now if she was here, after a day spent running down dead leads.

But this couldn’t be a dead end. Clearly there was something more to the tattoo ink - a second kind of ink that Beatrice didn’t want to tell me about. That didn’t make sense though. If she knew about this second ink, she would have told me to take the photos instead of just writing down the numbers by hand.

The day’s travels had taken a bit out of me, so I leaned my head against the plastic subway seat just for a second and closed my eyes.

But when I opened my eyes again, I was back in that tiny bathroom, staring at the reflection of Beatrice in the unbroken mirror.

My eyes were weary with the weight of a thousand problems, my lips were tinged with sadness, and I let out a low sigh.

I turned on the tap and let the rust-colored water turn clear before splashing some on my face, my head pounding from the prior night’s activities.

Three poundings on the front door shook me from my hungover stupor. I blinked and was standing in front of the door, flicking up the peephole to see a young woman outside.

I unlocked and unlatched the door, and the pounding stopped.

“Just a second,” I said, opening the door slowly.

A girl stood outside, every part of her a mess.

“Kate, what are you doing her-”

The girl pushed past me without saying a word and deposited herself on the couch in the living room.

I blinked again, and I was setting a glass of water on the table next to the girl named Kate, who still hadn’t responded.

I shouted Kate’s name a few times before picking up the glass and throwing its contents on the catatonic girl. Kate regarded the situation with a detached look in her eyes before suddenly diving towards a pocketbook that was also on the table and pulling something out: an ivory-handled knife.

Kate held the knife blade point at me, her hand shaking uncontrollably. I felt my heart start to pound but tried to remain calm.

“More. I need more.”

“More what, Kate? You know, you could have just called. Now why don’t you just give me that-”

“The buffs. I need more.”

“Oh.”

I blinked a third time and I was in the secret room behind the bookcase, digging through the bottom drawer of an armoire. I pulled out a container and brought it over to the desk, where a note written in black ink was drying in the dim light of the room. I took out two envelopes and wrote “Kate O’Laughlin, 5H” on the front of one of them before opening the container and stuffing a small piece of something wrapped in plastic into the envelope and sealing it. I then turned to the letter, folding it neatly and stuffing it in the second envelope and writing a second name and address on the front.

I returned to the living room with the second envelope and handed it to Kate.

“Here,” I said, handing Kate the envelope, who stared at it with a puzzled look on her face.

“What’s this?”

“Your next task. Make sure this letter gets delivered, and I’ll make sure you’re taken care of by the evening.”

The girl considered the envelope, the stoic look on her face never wavering, before stuffing it in her pocket and walking out the door.

“Well, time to start over again,” I said to myself.

The train suddenly stopped short and I was jolted out of the memory. Unlike the previous times, the details of what I had seen were crystal clear, and I struggled to slot this latest piece of the puzzle into the right place.

I recognized the Medoblad in the memory and wondered if Kate had known its true power when she had threatened Beatrice. And what was in the envelope that Beatrice was going to give her later that night? A buff to wipe her memory or…

The realization hit me like the swing of a bat to the gut: the newspaper headline that Beatrice had been reading at the coffee shop was about Kate.

I started inhaling huge gulps of air but still felt like I couldn’t breathe.

She had killed her.

And her threat to kill me if I crossed her wasn’t an idle one. She would follow through, I was sure of it.

The train began to slowly inch forward and my mind spun in a million directions. If Beatrice had wanted to kill me, she would have already done so, I reassured myself. But it was just as likely that she still needed me to help open the door, and then she would dispose of me. One thing was clear though: I needed to figure out the secret behind the three tattoo locations before I faced her again. Except I was fresh out of ideas and I had no one to turn to.

“Times Square 42nd St,” the conductor shouted over the loudspeaker.

Well, not no one.

Chapter 25: History has its eyes on you

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