Larson considered Reaper from where he stood adjacent to him from across the expanse of his desk.

The man had been in his office for an odd three minutes, and yet he had already filled the area with the unmistakable stink of the Known--metallic and perverse; sharp with salt and rancid with perspiration. He also suspected that there also was going to be a well-defined blob of moist carpet beneath where Reaper stood on Lars’s sheep-threaded rug from the mountains of Fellway Ire, as the lowly Austere was wearing thick-soled boots that he clearly hadn’t taken the time to dry off since returning from his gallivant in London after the tether. In fact, Lars spotted a thin sheen of muddy water that tracked all the way from the door of his office directly to where Reaper stood, and the sight of that alone was enough to fill him with sour disdain.

“Well?” Reaper said after a long pause had passed between them. The story of his ultimate failure in the Known still hung ripe in the air.

“Well, what?” Lars replied coolly, leaning his elbows on his desk and folding his hands together expectantly. He was pondering the repercussions of effectively moving his shadows in a way that would lift the man off of his rug and throw him violently down the steps outside of his office door. It would be a deliciously satisfying method to rid himself of Reaper’s person. On the other hand, Reaper might retaliate, and he didn’t want to have to deal with the task of mopping up his space post-altercation. But watching the man fly down several staircases would be such fun--more than Lars had partaken in for quite some time.

So far, the pros were outweighing the cons. He mentally calculated the distance from desk to door.

“You don’t have anything to say about all that I’ve divulged?” Reaper’s eyebrows were narrowed so acutely that they seemed to meld into one furiously cynical unibrow. “The tether told me that something nearly killed it. Whatever I ran into out there in that horrid world was out for blood, and it led me right to it.”

Lars was visibly skeptical. “And did you yourself ever lay eyes on whatever it was that the tether was after?”

Reaper darkened, “as I’ve said, I wasn’t in the vicinity when the tether was attacked!”

“And whose problem is that, Vaughn?” Lars picked at the edge of one of his fingernails. “It sounds to me as if you let your host get away from you.”

Indeed, Reaper had known he was powerless before the thing residing inside him when it had first gripped him on the edge of the levee, wrapping its cold hands of black lead around his throat and forcing him into submission. He had been surprised at the menial bit of respite he had procured from it when he had been wandering in hopeless circles waiting for it to latch onto another scent, and it was only when it had gone out from him in its lurch of power in pursuit of the thread that he recalled just how much strength it possessed.

When it had spoken to him, however, it had shaken him to his core. He knew that tethers weren’t made with tongues. Whatever beast was holed up behind his rib cage was not to be trifled with, or disobeyed.

But even then, it had been wounded, and it had retreated. Since then, he hadn’t heard it stir much, even during his journey back from the Known. It had been decidedly hiding away somewhere low in his gut, licking its wounds and brooding in a way that made Reaper somehow feel fifty kilograms heavier than his person actually was as he passed the Way Through by that blasted tube.

“You’re acting as if I can control the damned thing! It took over me when it caught onto the thread after hours of aimless silence. Once it decided to give chase, I had no say in the matter but to go streaking after it.”

“Right. I suppose I shouldn’t be giving you such a benefit of doubt, seeing as you’re in my office complaining about how you let a target of your tether slip neatly from your grasp.”

Reaper choked on a startled cough, and he felt a fleck of blood fly onto his tongue. There was a vague awareness at the back of his skull--pressure that built and churned--and he knew that the tether was listening in. He breathed inward, and it pushed against his lungs, taking up space. Lars scratched the bridge of his nose, and there was a secondary surge of fury that rippled across his senses, rivaling his own. He wondered if the demon had in fact been waiting tediously for just the right moment to approach.

Now it hung just out of reach, watching.

“How am I supposed to keep up with it if it has a mind of its own?” Reaper snarled. “Does Morse want me to find the Giver, or is he content with letting his little creation take the reins?”

“You do realize that you have limited time to finish this assignment, don’t you?” Lars carried on, leaning back in his chair. “It would have been remarkable of you to have found something worthwhile within your first twenty-four hours of searching, yes. Yet here you stand, dejectedly back in Brink, ranting and raving about your inability to do the most basic of tasks—follow the leader.”

“I want to know what Morse knows about this,” Reaper cut in fiercely, taking a step forward with his fists clenched at his sides. “He’s given me something that’s different, and I demand to be clued in.”

“You think Morse would spend even a scrap of spare time on you? He doesn’t care what you experience while tethered.”

“This tether isn’t like ones I’ve seen him craft in the past--it’s not just a hound after a bloody scent, it’s got power. It has words, too.”

“How so?” Lars asked, completely uninterested and only half-listening as he shuffled some reports around on his desk. Reaper felt a tide of rage rise in his stomach, but before he could form the words, a cold finger of warning flashed up his spine, the darkened eyes of the tether turning upon him with an intensity that held him fast.

Don’t, Austere. Its voice was long claws on stone, scraping against Reaper’s inner ears and reverberating there. The man who held the box has secrets of his own.

Reaper paused, and Lars finally glanced up at him, his mouth twisting sideways as he studied him for a fraction of a second.

Reaper swallowed, his clenched hands beading sweat as the tether moved within his chest, circling slowly like a cat to a mouse.

If he knows the extent of my power, he will want it.

Lars at last opened a drawer in his desk, retrieving a pen as he continued looking through the papers, seemingly uncaring of the unnatural silence that had taken hold of the air momentarily. It was only then that Reaper noticed the wisps of black smoke that were barely visible at the edges of Lars’s ears, wafting in smooth spirals.

What are you doing? Reaper thought, and he had the vague impression that the tether was grinning with razor-sharp teeth.

Buying time.

Reaper felt a pressure around his temples, and he saw the inexplicable edge of a vein bulging at Lars’s forehead, almost as if in concentration. The shock of realization was a pail of frigid water tossed over his head--Lars was attempting to thought walk, yet the tether was holding him out.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Tell him you will search again. Afterwards, leave this place.

Lars’s eyes snapped upward, and the smoke around his head vanished in a heartbeat. “Well, Vaughn? Care to explain how very special you consider your tether to be?”

“It just…isn’t like anything I’ve felt before,” Reaper finally divulged, his hands slackening at his sides. Lars rolled his eyes and pushed back from his desk, bringing himself to his feet. The casual nature of him was as feline as ever, but Reaper felt his pulse quicken slightly. As relaxedly annoyed as the Emissary acted, the tether had fended him off from silently infiltrating his mind, and that unnerved Reaper considerably as he tried to gather himself back from the edge of adrenaline. Lars eyed him, and a flicker of vitriol in his expression sent Reaper’s mouth to ash.

“How observant you are,” Lars mocked after an instant, stretching his shoulders back. “Well, if you really feel as if this tether is out of the range of your skill set, I am happy to get Morse on an Orb to have you tell him yourself why you are giving up. I’m certain he will oblige by removing you from this mission.”

He is trying to get your guard down, the tether growled. Trust my words. I will not fail.

“I’m going back into the Known to continue the search,” Reaper muttered ruefully, jamming his hands into his pockets. “I'll finish the job.”

“Did you really come all this way just to vent?”

He will try once more. Depart.

“Seeing as you are our Emissary, I guess I assumed you’d have something helpful to say,” Reaper remarked flatly, and Lars motioned to the door behind Reaper in a flourish.

“Get out,” he grunted. “Leave before I change my mind and hurl you from a window.”

Reaper stiffened, suffocating his anger. He turned and exited the office, and the door slammed behind him as soon as he crossed the threshold, the energy of the door’s wards clicking determinedly into pace sending him hopping forward a few steps to avoid the shock.

“Bastard,” Reaper muttered, beginning to descend the steps. “What the hell was he trying to get into my head for?”

To learn, the tether answered. To see if I really am what you alluded to. No more of that is allowed.

“Why are you different?” The question was met with silence as Reaper made it to the landing above the ground floor, and he clapped a hand to his chest. “Don’t shy away. If you’re going to be living in me then we had best come to some form of understanding.”

Soon, it at last spoke in that low, crunching voice that ground like bones against pavement. You will know. For now, we must go back. I have sent for others.

“Other tethers?”

Helpers. Need more power to meet it once more.

“Was it the Giver you sensed?” Reaper crossed the bottom floor and pushed out into the bustling city of Brink, shouldering through a few people carrying large boxes down the sidewalk. Cars honked as they moved by, and a few people on the other side of the street were conjuring buckets of paste to slap up flyers on the light posts that lined the cobbles. He turned right, pulling up his coat collar even in the warmth of the sun.

Perhaps. Not certain.

“When will you know?” Reaper breathed, frustration growing at the base of his throat. He felt the demon clicking its talons together, a sound not entirely unlike the strained gnashing of teeth.

Back to London, Austere. Go.

Lars stood at the window of his office and gazed down at Reaper as he spilled out onto the street below and moved down the sidewalk. Once he had disappeared around the corner of the building, Lars turned back to his desk, examining the papers he had loosened from their manilla tri-folds and had spread over the surface, each of them gazing back up at him from the dull eyes of the grayscale portraits in their corners.

Former Syndicate members, all dead. Leafing through their personal files was a bit of a personal hobby of his at the moment, and Lars decidedly flipped over a few of them to trace a finger along the black inky stamps that had all been smacked overtop of their fronts.

DEAD OR OTHERWISE LOST

There had been something about Reaper that unnerved him, as much as he hated to admit it. The Austere had seemed exceedinly disturbed by his short time with his new resident, and even though Morse had assured Lars that the tether would take its time in eating Reaper alive from the inside out, he hadn’t mentioned anything about it speaking. The other matter that he found infuriating was the fact that Reaper had been able to wield off his attempts at thought walking--although it truly took an unsuspecting mind for Lars to be able to enter inside a person’s psyche, he believed whole-heartedly that Reaper had not been protecting his mentation as he spun himself up over Lars’s carefully-curated dismissal.

But Reaper had succeeded in locking him out, and that alone was biting frustratingly at Lars’s heels. Whatever it was that Reaper was keeping tucked away, he wanted it to stay that way, and Lars simply couldn’t allow that.

There was a knock at the office door, and Lars’s wards whispered to him that James stood on the other side, his pale knuckles rasping on the oak. He waved a hand, and the wards loosened slightly.

“What is it, James?” He called to his secretary, watching as the boy pried open the door just a crack and stuck his lopsided nose through it.

“Sir, you’ve just received a request from Morse. Shall I tell him you are busy?”

Lars’s spine straightened, and he cursed under his breath. Why couldn’t he have been only a few minutes sooner?

“Get him on the line,” he commanded, and he dropped the wards long enough for James to nod and to hold out a little pad of glimmering silver paper. He scribbled furiously for a few moments on its surface, hesitating only once to scratch out a line of misspelling.

“Alright, he’s ready for you,” James said with a nod, and he motioned to a grand, intricately-carved standing clock in the corner of Lars’s office. “Any second now.”

A burst of silver flame erupted from the clock’s face, shooting spires of cold light in all directions, a deranged star fracturing at its center. The Orb appeared casually, squeezing out from the center of the clock’s hands and pushing into the room, growing larger as it gained speed on its slow journey from ether to formation just feet away from where Lars stood. When it halted in midair and began to hum gently, the Emissary sank back into his chair, folding his hands together expectantly. The figure of a man appeared in the halo of silver--a darkened iris trapped within a single gleaming, hardened eye.

“Morse,” Lars greeted the image in the Orb with a steady incline of his chin. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Your presence is needed here,” a voice from the abyss murmured, and Lars wished he could press the hairs on the back of his neck downward to fight off their insistence on raising skyward when addressed by the Syndicate Leader.

“What’s happened?”

“Escalation,” the voice breathed after a moment’s pause, but Lars heard his smile.

“I’ll rift shortly,” he answered, folding a few of the files closed on his desk to move them back into the drawers. “Is it the girl?”

“She has gained a friend,” there was a sound of dripping water somewhere off in the distance wherever Morse’s voice echoed out from, and it unsettled the air. “Things are about to change. I await your arrival.”

The Orb vanished without a sound, leaving the room remarkably dimmer than it had been, and Lars swept the last of the files into the drawer, locking it tightly with a sharp-edged ward.

“Sir,” James commented from where he still stood in the crack of the office door, his hands clutching the Record and his stubby pencil. “Are you off for the afternoon, then?”

Lars reached for his coat which hung on the stand beside the bookshelf, sweeping it on and snagging his cigarettes from the pocket. The pack unfurled in midair, shot out a single stick, and ignited as he caught it between his teeth, sending the rest of the pack soaring back into the folds of his coat.

“Cancel the rest of my appointments, James.” He drew a long drag from his cig, sending ivory smoke whirling into the air, and James nodded.

“Shall I inform the others?”

“Let them manage for an evening,” Lars plucked the cig from his lips and held it out, knocking a speck of ash from its tip. “Don’t forget to send my shirts to the laundry.”

Before James could remind Lars that the laundry he usually sent his shirts to had been burned down by a fitful stroke of Syndicate magic--and that Lars himself had wanted arson done, seeing as one of his shirts had been returned missing a button--Lars was caught up in a swirl of shadow that screamed through the room from all directions. It sucked the sound out of the sky and stole the breath from James’s lungs, causing him to hunch over in his precarious position half-inside the doorway, the wards pressing in around him at the disturbance rattling the atmosphere of the office walls.

When the wind died down and the secretary at last pulled his hands away from their shielding of his face, the Emissary was gone, a wisp of creamy smoke all he left behind in his wake.