When I opened my eyes, everything was still a formless, painful white, but as the aching in my eyes faded, so did the light. The nuances of shade and tint came into focus.

I was staring up at a dingy popcorn ceiling. Sunlight was streaming in from somewhere. The familiar puckered, tugging sensation of tape on my inner elbow informed me that someone had hooked me up to an IV, and sensations in other places let me know that wasn’t all they’d hooked me up to.

I was in a hospital.

Unfortunate.

I twisted my head as much as I could to look around.

Were hospitals ever this…ugly?

My brain grudgingly accepted that it had to do some work, noted the ivory and mustard-colored curtains, and tried to retrieve the memory that would explain why they looked familiar.

It came to me in a rush of images. The dark swamp with white mist. The angled red sign: MOTEL. The yurt. The lurkers. The empty hollow. The creepy cabin. The pendant shattering in a blast of white. The last blast of white—

My lazy heart gave a loud thud.

“The lamp.”

I tried to yell it. It came out of my mouth as a whispered croak.

By my side, someone or something moved.

“Is it broken?” I croaked.

“No.”

I knew the low, intoning voice instantly.

“That lamp is not something that can be broken,” Big Jacky said.

I took a deep breath and tried to turn my head. It was hard. Harder than climbing a mountain.

Jacky was sitting beside me in the chair that was usually in front of the small desk. He was holding a book in one hand with the bones that made up his index finger tucked inside to act as a bookmark.

“Conrad?” I croaked. “Kappa?”

“They’re gone.”

My heart gave another, more painful, thud.

“Gone?” I squeaked.

Big Jacky saw my face and put the book down on the nightstand without bothering about a real bookmark. “Sorry! Forgive me. I put that badly.”

Beside the book was a thermos mug meant to hold chilled drinks. As he picked it up, he said, “Conrad and Kappa are both healthy and alive, but they aren’t here right now.”

Someone took the boulder off my chest so I could breathe again.

Jacky leaned forward and angled the bendy straw toward my mouth. “I was told to have you drink.”

I sipped at the ice water. My dry mouth sucked up most of it. I swallowed only a trickle. It was one of the best things I’d ever tasted.

After one or two more sips, I pushed the straw out of my mouth with my tongue, and Jacky set the mug aside.

“Conrad and Kappa have been with you almost the whole time you were convalescing,” he said, “but the Torr team had exhausted all their other options. They were forced to prevail on Kappa to help them find Bourdin’s cabin.”

It was easier to talk now. My voice came out as a feeble voice, rather than some squeaky toy I’d stolen from a decade-old rubber frog.

“And Conrad?”

“Kappa refused to go into the swamp without him. Alligators.”

Geez. Even my smile was weak.

“How long was I out?” I asked.

Big Jacky grabbed a clipboard off the nightstand and glanced at it. “Five days and some hours. It’s Friday, the twenty-seventh.”

I would have whistled, but I couldn’t get my lungs or my lips to do it.

Big Jacky went on, “Dr. Belliston informed me that you were in a state similar to a coma, but I couldn’t tell the difference between that and sleep. You dreamed, at any rate.”

Oof. I knew what that meant.

“Was it bad?”

Big Jacky nodded. “I’m afraid so. Kappa insisted that he had your permission to sleep on the bed with you, and when Conrad put him in reverse, Dr. Belliston was forced to capitulate—”

Jacky stopped talking when he noticed my chest shaking from my silent giggles.

“Did you mean, ‘when Conrad backed him up?’” I asked.

“Er, yes.” Big Jacky tapped the tip of his index finger bones on his suit pant leg, then continued. “Kappa would wake up when you became restless and drag his nest as close as possible. Of course, you would have settled down in a few minutes anyway, but he’s now convinced his presence is a medically valid tonic to help someone suffering from nightmares.”

“Well, he’s right.”

Big Jacky watched me for a moment, then turned his skull. “Perhaps Kappa got the idea while he was trying to deal with his own nightmares. He’s taken to laying on Conrad or beside you until he falls asleep.”

Oh, my poor buddy. It always seemed like he had such a care-free heart—bounding around the mansion, making the world a better place just by existing. We’d taken him out of that mansion, and now he was dreaming of monsters.

Big Jacky’s thoughts seemed to be following a similar track.

“I want to apologize, Emerra. If I’d known how dangerous this favor would prove to be, I would have warned you before allowing you to accept.”

How like him. He would never tell us that we couldn’t risk our lives, but he would make darn sure we knew what we were getting into.

Would I have accepted anyway?

Probably. Especially if Kappa was going. Or if I knew I could bring Conrad with me. I’m dumb like that.

I hurried to distract Big Jacky from his remorse. “What’s been happening since I’ve been out?”

Jacky raised his skull to stare into the distance with his empty eye sockets. I wondered if the distance they stared into was longer than average.

“As you can imagine, a multitude of Torr personnel have descended,” he said. “Some to help mitigate the damage, others to be as interfering as possible—”

“Is Darius here?”

“He’s not at the motel at this time, but he is nearby. He’s acting as my liaison and the head of the flimflam team.”

I giggled again.

“What is it?” Jacky asked.

“Please tell me that’s its real name.”

“They would hardly qualify to be on the flimflam team if they couldn’t make up a more official sounding name.” He waved his skeletal hand around dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. It sounds pompous and changes often.”

“What did they tell everyone?”

“I’m not sure. Darius requires me to stay away whenever an official statement is being given. I understand their excuse had something to do with Michael Baulder and Brandon Smith coming into the swamp without permission while Lily Carver and Sheriff Shine pursued.”

My amusement evaporated.

Jacky went on without noticing. “Fortunately, Conrad and Mr. Kohler did a good job keeping the golem away from anyone who might see it—”

“What did you call it?”

Jacky paused. “A golem. An artificial human being innervated by a false life. Although, in this case, the technicality balances on a different—”

“Never mind the technicality! What happened to it?”

“Once you used the lamp to disperse the source of its life—in this case, an excessive concentration of magic—the body sloughed and fell away. I understand that it was very anticlimactic after the struggle you endured to stop it. Kappa has been telling everyone it exploded. Fortunately, Conrad has a greater respect for accuracy.”

“But…the white light?”

“Only you could see that. Which reminds me, when you’re feeling better, Iset wanted me to ask you to write everything down.”

“Was anyone else hurt? The lurkers?”

“None have died,” Jacky said with authority. “I understand from Mr. Vance that several of them were injured, but they’ve refused all offers of medical assistance—wisely, I think, since the ones offering were all researchers in one guise or another. The only reason the lurkers tolerate the Torr’s presence in the swamp is because Mr. Vance has told them that they’re friends of yours.”

I said in the frailest teasing voice ever produced by mankind, “I thought that Mr. Vance wasn’t supposed to talk to the lurkers.”

“I believe that the Torr officials have found it’s better to turn a blind-eye to that rule until they can have it removed. If the lurkers were teaching Mr. Vance how to sign, it was patently worthless anyway, and they didn’t want their work to be stymied any further.” Big Jacky lowered his skull to gaze at me. “The lurkers seem to hold you in high regard. They’ve been leaving offerings of raw fish on the doorstep each morning.”

“What sweethearts.”

“I’m sorry if you wanted any. The cat gets to them before we can.”

“What about the humans in the swamp? Were any of them hurt?”

The chair creaked when Jacky leaned back. “Lily Carver and Michael Baulder are both dead, but I understand you already knew that.”

“The lurkers won’t be punished, will they?”

There was one of those brief pauses where I got the idea that, if Jacky had eyelids, he might have blinked. “What for?”

“For killing Mike?”

“Certainly not. They were defending their protected territory and fighting to save the life of another sentient creature.”

That was the first time I’d ever been referred to as a sentient creature. I didn’t know how to feel about it.

Jacky continued, “The sheriff and Mr. Smith were found alive. They’ve been removed to a secure location for medical treatment and to await the initial ruling on how the Torr will handle them. This case is unique and irritatingly complex. I was glad to hand it over to the courts. Mr. Kohler has been treated for his injuries, and Mr. Vance was unharmed.”

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

The mention of the courts reminded me: “What about Ayla?”

“Miss Davids has already been summoned to explain her actions.”

“And if she runs?”

“She doesn’t have the skills or power that would be required to successfully hide from the Torr.”

Someday I would grow up and become a mature, forgiving, compassionate woman. Until that day, my vindictive heart was delighted to know that Ayla Davids would be held responsible for her part in all of this.

I asked, “Does the Torr have any plans for what they’re going to do about Gladwyn’s murder?”

“Darius recommended that we allow the responsibility for Gladwyn’s murder investigation to pass to the next person in line now that Sheriff Shine is too injured to handle the case. They are unlikely to learn who the murderer was. They have no leads, no witnesses, and no murder weapon. It is, perhaps, an unsatisfying ending, but it serves our purposes, and Mrs. Carver is beyond the reach of any justice that any court could mete out.”

“The cultists aren’t.”

“Ah. You mean Bourdin’s followers. You are correct. However, since there is no way to know how they would have behaved if they weren’t under the influence of magic exposure, we had no way of establishing their level of guilt. We decided to wipe their memory of that night, and let the pain and inconvenient side-effects of the process stand in as punishment.”

In some ways, I found that far more unsatisfying than an unsolved murder that I already knew everything about, but no matter how I turned the matter around in my head, I couldn’t think of a better solution. They were accessories to murder, but they weren’t murderers, and Jacky was right; we couldn’t know how much of the fault was theirs, versus the magic’s. I wanted their punishment to be temporary. But if it was temporary anyway, was it really all that important if they couldn’t remember what had happened? Did I want them to carry around an undefined shame for the rest of their lives?

No.

Doubly no if wiping their memories meant that they forgot all about the lamp.

“Can I get some more water, please?” I murmured.

As Jacky held the mug out for me to take a few more sips, he said, “Koawt has been handling any inquiries law enforcement has had for you—much to their frustration.”

“Oh?” I said, laying back again.

“He invariably points them to the statement you already gave and the dozen statements he collected from the witnesses that show you were in a restaurant at the time of the murder. The police haven’t been around recently.”

“Have I missed any other excitement?”

Jacky shrugged and returned the mug to the nightstand. “Clean up, information gathering—I’m not perfectly clear on the concept, but as I understand it, most people would say that you were awake for the real excitement.”

I let my head roll so I was looking up at the popcorn ceiling again.

Dr. Belliston was used to doing his work outside of a hospital. A lot of his patients were supernaturals who couldn’t be taken to one. He always said that people healed better in a familiar environment. I wondered if the color of the carpet in this particular environment had given him pause.

I closed my eyes, and my slight smile faded.

I had been awake for the excitement, and I had guesses about what had happened—but I didn’t know. There was no solid information I could use to prop up my shaky memories.

“Big Jacky, what happened here?”

“Are you referring to the gathering of magic and the rising of the golem?”

I nodded. My chin moved maybe a centimeter.

“You want the details?”

I nodded again.

Jacky laced his finger bones together and let them hang while he rested his elbows on his legs. “Your guesses were correct. It was an impressive feat of deduction, especially considering your limited background. The convergence of the tav lines and the geography of this area means that the preserve collects magic. If the researchers are correct, it collects more magic than had ever been supposed by the Torr. They didn’t know because the object that you call the lamp has been in place since before they were established.”

“Does it have a real name?”

“If it does, we don’t know it, and the lurkers can’t be persuaded to refer to it.”

“Go on.”

“The lamp had done its job for thousands of years, keeping the magic levels ideal for a thriving environment without ever becoming overwhelming. Then it was stolen.”

“By Ayla.”

“Yes. She claims that she did it with the intention of turning it over to the Torr, but Darius says he’s skeptical. Such an object is priceless. Despite her general ignorance, Miss Davids would’ve been able to get a fortune for selling it.”

I grimaced.

Jacky said, “The moment the lamp was removed from the preserve, the magic started to build up. Over time, its effects reached further and further, but the most dangerous accumulation was here, in the swamp.”

“But how did it become…that golem-thingy? Does that happen a lot?”

“Not anymore.”

Oh. Yeah. That sounded promising.

Jacky went on, “We’ve gotten better at preventing such events from occurring. The preserve was a blind spot. And it isn’t always a golem—though, it has happened before. This time, I suspect it took a humanoid shape because it was built up around Lily Carver’s body.”

My heart murmured with sorrow. All she’d wanted was certainty, and she’d wound up as an armature to a mud monster and dying in a situation she would never understand.

“It was the pendant,” I said.

“The pendant was the catalyst, but Mrs. Carver was the nucleus around which it formed.”

“Come on, Jacky.” I smiled weakly up at the ceiling. “This is me you’re talking to. Dumb it down. Add an extra helping of dumb. Like you’re talking to a five-year old.”

He leaned back in the chair again and tapped on his leg with his finger.

“Are you familiar with a supercooled state of liquid?” he asked.

Ah! Big Jacky had managed to connect with my inner grade-schooler. I had always loved science demonstrations. As far as I was concerned, they were magic shows with lectures attached. I could put up with the lectures to get that sense of wonder.

“Yeah,” I said. “You take water and get it super-duper cold, then you pound it on the table and boom! Instant ice. Witchcraft.”

“I assure you, if a witch wanted instant ice, she wouldn’t waste her time by chilling the water first.”

“I’ll take your word for it, Jacky. Go on.”

“Magic, especially undirected active magic, can reach a super concentrated state, but it needs something to set it off. Then it takes direction from anything nearby.”

“And the pendant was what set it off?”

“We look forward to your account of what you saw, but considering everything, we think that’s the most likely answer. The pendant in question was probably nothing more than a tool Bourdin used to collect and store some of the natural magic of the swamp. Such things are cheap and relatively easy to make. If it had been anything more valuable, he probably would have kept it in his cabin.”

I ticked my finger in a no-no motion without bothering to raise it. “You should be careful of that attitude, Jacky. Don’t forget, most magician’s tools can also be an object of worship. Ask Iset.”

“Er…yes.”

“I take it the pendant couldn’t handle the extra workload?”

“If we’re right, it would have started shedding the extra magic, but that magic had already been focused into that one point.”

“Why was the golem so destructive? Was it angry about something?”

“You’re ascribing emotions to a thing that was too rudimentary to possess them. I would advise you to avoid that. It might lead to an unfounded sense of guilt. Destroying it was the right call, Emerra. By acting as quickly as you did, you saved lives and valued property.”

“Valuable property? In Fort Rive?”

“I didn’t say ‘valuable.’ I said ‘valued,’ as in, loved.”

An image of Vance in his shack and Brodie sitting on the steps of the yurt rose in my mind.

Jacky said, “The destructiveness of the golem was at least partly accidental. It was too large to be anything but destructive in a world like ours.”

“And the other part?” I said.

“Hmm?”

“You said its destructiveness was ‘partly accidental.’ What was the other part?”

“I assume, restlessness.”

I waited, but Big Jacky always took it for granted that everyone needed at least some cryptic mystery in their lives.

I disagreed.

“You’re going to have to do better than that, Jacky.”

He thought for a moment, then said, “From my observations, I’ve come to understand that life—all of life—shares a restlessness. Its nature is to fight and struggle. It has to. It fights among other life for the right to exist, and it fights entropy for the right to see another day. I assume that, when the line between magic and life blurs, the most basic attribute that the result would adopt from life would be that fundamental restlessness.”

I wasn’t sure his long explanation was any less cryptic than his short one.

Big Jacky added, “Watching the struggle has convinced me that being alive must be something very precious.”

When I heard the quiet frankness in his voice, I felt a soft touch of awe and embarrassment. That voice belonged to a part of Jacky I’d never encountered before, and I wasn’t sure I was supposed to see it. It made him seem more…human.

I tried to gloss over my embarrassment by acting casual.

“All that…”

I had been about to say “all that drama,” but then I remembered the strip of Lily Carver’s face at the bottom of a canyon made of mud and roots. I couldn’t joke about that. Not yet. Maybe never.

I took a breath and tried again: “All that, over a magic trinket that Bourdin didn’t think was worth protecting.”

“If it hadn’t been the pendant,” Jacky said, “it would’ve been something else.”

“Who was Gilles Bourdin?”

“Ah! Him we know more about.”

“Has the Torr stolen the journals yet?”

“We don’t steal things, Emerra, and in this case, I don’t believe we’ll even have to acquire them.”

“What did you do?”

“…We may have taken advantage of the confusion to bring in a scholar who could create copies for us.”

I was too tired to laugh.

Oh, well. In the grand scheme of things, that seemed like a good solution, even if it sounded shady. The Torr got the information they needed, but the town could keep their treasures.

Jacky said, “We also know of him from the Torr serving up in the country you know as Canada. He and his mother immigrated from France after Bourdin’s father had been put to death for practicing forbidden magic.”

“There’s forbidden magic?”

“Yes. Quite a lot of it. But there are three great crimes that every Torr in the world has deemed unforgivable. No magician is allowed to use magic to manufacture immortality, raise the dead, or disturb the dimensions.”

I thought about Gilles Bourdin and his doors. “I see.”

“Bourdin’s father had a talent for dimensional magic. Rather than reviling her husband’s betrayal of trust, Bourdin’s mother set him up as a martyr in her son’s mind. Gilles Bourdin practiced his magic in secret, outside of any Torr, and when the Torr up north got breeze that something was happening, he moved down here.”

“Where he found a swamp with all the magic he would ever need,” I said. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“We know that he disappeared. Given the preparation that he put into protecting his cabin, I believe he knew that he was going away, and that he planned to be back. Foolish optimism.”

The mean bite behind Jacky’s last two words surprised me.

“That magic is forbidden for a reason,” he said. “It’s only a mercy that he didn’t cause more harm while he was here.”

“Did he cause harm?”

Jacky once again tapped his finger bone on his leg. Maybe I could measure his thoughtfulness by counting the taps.

“I suppose that would depend on your definition of the word ‘harm,’” Jacky said. “At the moment, we have no confirmation, but I think it’s an odd coincidence that the largest colony of Paludicola vigiles should happen to live so close to where Monsieur Bourdin worked.”

My heart seemed to stutter.

“You think he opened a door,” I muttered.

“Yes.”

“You won’t send them back, will you?”

“Emerra, I wouldn’t do that, even if I had the power to. We have no idea where they came from, and I’ve never found a morally compelling reason to remove them. Besides, they’ve proven to be excellent guards.”

Now that I knew that Kappa and the lurkers weren’t going to be sent away, I found that exploring the idea wasn’t so panic inducing.

“Some people would say they don’t belong here,” I pointed out. “Won’t they ruin the ecosystem or something?”

“They certainly changed it. I don’t think you can convince me it’s been ruined. Besides, that whole premise assumes that the value of the original life was greater than the current life. I won’t grant that.”

“What’s the term? Invasive species?”

“All life is an invasive species. You didn’t exist. Now you do. If I went around eliminating everything simply because, once upon a time, it wasn’t there, this world would be a barren place.”

I grinned up at him. “I like you, Jack Noctis.”

He paused. “Thank you, Emerra. I find that gratifying.”

“Can I ask you another question?”

“I don’t suppose for a moment I could stop you. Also, I know that you are owed a debt of gratitude for what you’ve done. If I can partially pay that back with answers, I would be happy to.”

“Earlier, when I woke up, you said that the lamp wasn’t something that could be destroyed.”

“Ah. I wondered if you would ask about that.”

“What is the lamp? Where did it come from?”

“The lamp is…a god-object.”

“A god-object?”

“I could use the old word for it, but since it’s a name, I suspect it would sound like meaningless syllables to you. I’ve given you my fairest interpretation of the idea—as inelegant as it is. I’m not a flimflam man.”

I smiled at that.

“A god-object,” Jacky said, “is an item made by one of the gods. It cannot be replicated by anyone with less power than a god, and it can’t be altered, harmed, or destroyed by anyone but a god.”

“Are they common?”

“They are extremely rare.”

“And when you say a god…?”

“I mean a god. A being with exceptional power. You’ve been raised in a Judeo-Christian society—even if you aren’t religious, your ideas of God are probably shaped by those themes. An all-mighty being, alone, omnipotent, omniscient, existing outside of time—”

“That’s right.”

“The gods I know have no such preconceived notions.”

“And they live here?”

“Sometimes. When they want to.”

“And the lamp?”

“I hope you’ll forgive me for acting without your permission, but I perused your journal at the request of one of our research teams. I’m afraid there were some pages that I couldn’t make out—”

I blushed when I remembered my scribbled notes, then I laughed at my embarrassment.

“—but I found your notes on the Chitimacha illuminating. They claimed that a god taught them how to make their canoes and weave their baskets.”

“So why not believe them,” I said softly.

“If a god was so involved in their well-being, I can easily imagine them creating an object like the lamp to ensure the Chitimacha would be safe in their chosen home.”

“Do you know which god it was?”

“No. Many of the gods from this part of the world have died.”

“Died! A god can die?”

“If they want to. For them, it’s a choice. One of the unique powers that makes them gods is the ability to move back and forth in the passages. It gives them a form of natural immortality. If they die, they can come back. If they’re curious about what lies beyond, they’re free to go, but the ones that do have never returned.”

“Do you know why?”

“No one in this realm does. And I will never find out.”

His statement reminded me of something he’d said to me back when we first met. Something about there being places he couldn’t go. His voice had the exact same tone of indifferent acceptance.

He said, “I am relatively certain that the lamp has been returned to its intended place—”

“Why only ‘relatively?’”

“Conrad gave the lamp to the lurkers. I trust they put it back, but no one has seen it. You’re welcome to make the trip to visit the location when you feel up to it. You would probably find it assuring, and Darius would be glad for the confirmation.”

Jacky reached out and put his hand on mine. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see the bones while feeling a normal flesh-and-blood hand. It always threw me off.

“We’ve talked enough,” Jacky said. “For now, you should rest.” He stood up from the chair. “I have to make a few phone calls.”

“Urgent business?” I said wryly.

It seemed like Big Jacky was always busy with something.

“Yes, I think you could say that. They certainly would. I have a list of people I was instructed to call if you woke up while I was here.”

He stepped out of the motel room and closed the door behind him. I shut my eyes and let my mind drift.