Chapter 6

Cameras flared, filling the air with an irregular explosion of bulbs and sulphur. It was a battlefield of photography, freelancers and journalists vying over the no man’s land of misery for the best shot. Icarus scowled at the chaos and turned up the collar of his dark wool coat. Maren paid them no heed and watched the comings and goings of the officers and investigator-priests sent by the Church. 

“They’ve no clue what’s happened,” she muttered.

He raised a brow and tried to see the scene through her eyes, “How d’you figure?”

She indicated a pair of priests with their red cords of station mingling near the door, “They haven’t moved in ten minutes. None of the officers have approached them. There’s another who’s come in and out twice carrying nothing and wringing his hands.”

“Clueless morons.” He huffed and looked for a break in the crowd along the barrier. 

She touched his elbow, “I’ll look for the girl.”

He nodded. If anyone would know where a grief-stricken woman might hide, it was Maren.

He made for the only open space between the makeshift perimeter. Nobody questioned him when he moved through, tab collar flashed strategically. No standard policeman wanted to expose themselves to the supernatural and were glad to relinquish leadership over cases like this to whoever showed up with confidence and a collar. This is what the Church did--investigated crimes of the demonic and fae while the police handled crimes of the human variety. They worked in tandem, symbiotes in the biosphere of justice. It was stranger to see one or the other instead of both. 

“Gentlemen,” Icarus approached the pair of dawdling priests he did not recognize, “working hard or hardly working?” With hardly a head nod, they scattered. He tucked his arms around him against the chill with a bitter shake of his head, “Cockroaches from a lantern.”

At the threshold, he paused. Detectives moved like ants ferrying food back to the queen--evidence that would amount to nothing put in paper envelopes like it might solve this puzzle of slaughter. The room was thick with knowing the futility of its effort. When he stepped over the threshold, a hush fell among the crowded front room. He ignored the stares, eyes tracing the remnants of the bloody tide that had washed over the floor and rear wall. 

The hair on the back of his neck raised. He frowned and stepped farther into the room. An officer risked stepping close, “What’s the word?”

He meant the assessment of the fools loitering outside. Icarus huffed air through his nose, “I’m the second opinion. Step back and let me opine.”

He waved the officer back with a sharp gesture. The others clung to the walls in response. It always did fill him with a sick sort of joy to wield authority like that. A sour remnant of revenge against the loss of his former station. He pushed it out of his mind and concentrated. His rosary was in his hand, thumb worrying the beads slowly. 

He hit the fifth bead before the hazelwood hummed faintly under his finger. That was odd. The rosary responded to an inversion of Calderism--demonic magic. A wooden bloodhound that could sniff out the presence of dark magic. He crouched and pulled the silver knife from its hidden place against his hip, pricking the meat of his palm. Blue fire licked at the tips of his fingers and he touched them to the wood. 

One of the officers gasped, crossed himself, and turned away. Shallow superstition apparently did not escape the metropolitan minds of the city. He scowled and ignored the man, listening to the whispers of the wood under his hand. 

He heard it clear as day: the ceaseless susurration of hushed voices that always followed in the wake of the fae. 

His frown deepened. That was odder. 

Outside, weaving through the crowd, Maren scanned the faces and tried to suppress her disdain for the open-mouthed gawkers hoping to catch a glimpse of the violence within. She let the boiling water of her outrage run its course, setting it to the side when she had enough of its scalding distraction from her task at hand. 

With a slow breath, she let the path of grief unveil itself in her mind’s eye. Her feet carried her to the fringe of the crowd, away from the spectacle of the modest home. She saw the shadowed street corner--far enough to be isolated, near enough to watch the comings and goings, and under the awning of enough shadow to give the illusion of safety. Standing beside a stack of unopened crates, a figure with shoulders drawn tight around herself like she might fight off the cold reality of her new, terrible life. 

Eilonwy Callahan. 

Maren approached well within her line of sight, hands raised in contrition as if soothing a spooked horse. Her lips tightened in a neutral expression, but the ghost of empathy still haunted their corners. 

“Miss Callahan?” She spoke clear and low, “Do you remember me?”

Forest green eyes flashed to hers with such sharpness it made her pause. She stood straighter now that she was fully seen. There was a tempest brewing in the young woman Maren was prepared to absorb. It was the least she could do. 

“So now that they’re dead, you come to help me.” It was not a question, “I saw your coward of a boss go inside. Come to save the day when there’s no longer a day worth saving.”

Maren waited in silence, taking every testing cut in stride, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want this.”

“‘I’,” Eilonwy rolled the word around on her tongue, “not ‘we’. Interesting choice of words, Father.”

“That’s correct,” Maren saw no use hiding the truth of it. “My partner wasn’t himself. You paid the price for his distraction. I can’t undo this, but I can help to stop it happening again.”

Eilonwy fancied herself unreadable and she let her. Maren held the silence, waiting as it stretched to the point of discomfort. Still, she held. Silence was a powerful tool not enough people knew how to use. Something twisted in Eilonwy’s face. She crumpled and the tears began to fall. Maren closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around the woman’s trembling shoulders. They sank down to the damp cobbles, Eilonwy clinging to her like a lifeboat. She wept until there was nothing left to weep, until her gasping sobs became dry wheezes that could no longer bear the weight of her sorrow. When she was drained, exhausted, and empty, she leaned back just enough to wipe a gloved hand across her eyes. 

Maren dug until she found a kerchief and handed it to her in patient silence. She let her hold on as long as she needed, siphon whatever strength she believed she could from the priest. An attempt to return to scrap of cloth was gently declined, a sacrifice in the name of restitution for something that could never be restored. 

Eilonwy crossed the long, mournful space between them. Her voice was a rasp of what it had been, “I should’ve sought your help sooner. It’s not entirely your fault.”

“Drowning in shoulds will kill you,” Maren eased to her feet and helped Eilonwy, still shaking, off the ground. “Would you let us help you now?”

Eilonwy hesitated, her face a shifting image of complex thoughts she did not need to speak aloud. It settled in a firm, determined furrow. She nodded. Her eyes--the dark, thick green of an old growth forest--seemed to be a few shades lighter. Maren blinked and they had returned. A trick of the light and the shine of fresh suffering. They flashed behind her shoulder. Maren did not need to turn, she knew the hurried elongated gait that made its way to them. The slight hitch in one of his steps a satisfying reminder of the cost of his distraction. 

“Miss Callahan,” Icarus paused and made no move to touch her, “I need you to tell me everything you can about your brother.” Maren shot him a look that could dim the sun, “And… I’d like to apologize to you. Futile, small, and useless as it might be now.”

Eilonwy’s face shuttered from him. She wielded the silence the same way Maren had. A quick learner, Maren mused with a note of pride. After it became clear he was not sure of her goal, Eilonwy narrowed her eyes at him, “You’d like to apologize? Then by all means, Father Ulrich. Apologize.”

Her sharpness was a blade and he winced when it cut. Its wound bled guilt into his soul and his shoulders rounded in recalcitrance. He shifted uncomfortably under its weight, “I’m sorry, Miss Callahan. Truly. I am sorry.”

The words sounded so pointless, so small. A raindrop in the ocean of loss that separated him from her. None of it undid what had been done and none of it unmade the remorse he would carry with him for his part in it. 

Add it to the ledger of my sins, he scolded himself. 

She held his stormlight blue eyes for a punishingly long series of breaths before issuing the faintest nod, “Unfortunately for us both, there aren’t many places for me to turn now. But I need an assurance, Father Ulrich. You will never dismiss me again. Am I understood?”

He nodded in contrition, unsure how to respond to that. Sometimes, he knew, people needed to say something that helped them feel in control during the uncontrollable. If this was what she needed, he considered it owed to her.

*** 

Edith started at the sight of Eilonwy. A hand flew to her heart and she was on her feet at the other side of the desk. Her weathered palm found the young woman’s and her face fell in a genuine tableau of sympathy, “Oh thank the Lord Himself he came to his senses. You poor, darling thing. I am so sorry for your loss.”

She, of course, meant Icarus. The priest folded his arms more petulantly than he knew he was entitled to, but he did not interrupt them. Eilonwy smiled with as much warmth as she could manage. Politeness, more than a genuine feeling. She reminded him of Maren for a moment--practical first, emotional second. The women embraced and exchanged kindnesses in low voices he tried not to eavesdrop on. 

Maren leaned towards him, quiet, “What did you find?”

“Confusing things,” he reached into his pocket habitually and rubbed the fifth rosary bead. “Nothing straightforward. It’s strange. Obvious demon signs, but obvious fae signs, too.”

“Collaboration?” She mused, always open to even the most dismissable theory. To her, all options existed at the same time with the same likelihood until proven otherwise. 

He considered it with a slight shrug, “Not sure. It felt… combative.”

“Confrontation?” She folded her arms and watched the two women embrace for a final time. 

Quiet conversation cut to a premature end, they ushered Eilonwy into Icarus’s office. His board contents had been neatly taken apart and stored in its box off to the side. He bristled. Edith had unlocked his office to make her point. Scolding him through tidy, organized dismemberment of his work. She had not, in fact, been his bear at the mouth of the cave. He begrudgingly knew it had been better to show Eilonwy a blank wall instead of the chaos she would have remembered, but that was not Edith’s original intent. Gratitude threatened him anyway, but he paid it no mind. 

“When we spoke,” he needed to distract himself from his brewing temper, “you mentioned a fight but no wounds. Can you describe what you mean?”

She pointedly watched his hands when he poured himself a drink. He raised it before catching her and--against his better judgement--handed it over. She took it, he poured another for himself, and knew better than to offer one to Maren this early in the day.

“He had blood all over his shirt and shoulder,” she drank slowly, gaze far away, “and on his neck, in his hair. But when I told him to come to me, he wouldn’t. I could only glance for a moment before he rushed to the washroom.”

“And you saw no wound?” Maren leaned against the long wooden cabinet. 

Eilonwy shook her head, “None. I… grew up in Fairview. Before it started coming up, like. Patched a lot of reckless friends and careless neighbors. My brother among them. I know what to look for.”

Maren caught something in the moment, “What’s your brother’s name?”

The woman’s movements changed. Subtly, but still there if one knew where to look. Maren was very good at knowing where to look. She became measured, calculated, movements more a performance than an action. Over a name, a fact Maren logged for dissection later. 

“Dáire,” she offered a heartbeat too slow for the routine question. “My elder brother.”

“And he lived at home with your family?” Icarus could sense something in Maren he could not place, but he picked up enough on that detail. 

Eilonwy’s eyes returned to him, “Fell on hard times. Moved back home a year or so back.”

The air hummed for a second. He redirected the subject, “What sort of hard times?”

“Not sure exactly,” she released the sense of performance, back to herself again. “He’d moved north a while, to Slaghtaverty. We hadn’t heard from him for months, then suddenly he writes that he’s in hardship, needs to come home.”

“And the night of this incident,” he continued,” tell me about it.”

She frowned, brows knit as she tried to recall the details before she shared them, “He said some friends from that life were in the city and left to meet them for a pint. Dáire indulged, especially with his fortune taking the turn it did. I didn’t think anything of it until he returned and fled to the washroom.”

Icarus tapped a stylus against the desktop. He was not taking notes, he had little need to anymore. The metronome habit helped him think, “What time did he return?”

“Late. Close to dawn.”

“And after?”

“He worked evenings at the docks, I only saw him for dinners on occasion. It wasn’t long after that he started skipping those, vanishing into the city those nights.”

“When you say something was masquerading as him,” Maren interrupted their flow, “can you explain what you mean?”

Eilonwy’s hand tightened and she drained the rest of her glass. From the flinch in her shoulders, it burned, “It would be him, but… not exactly right. Say things in almost the way he would, move close enough to how he moved. But the tone would be off, the words he chose, the way his shoulders couldn’t stay in time with his steps. Almost like…”

Maren probed the edges of her wounded memory lightly, “Like what?” 

“Like he would rather be crawling.”

Big news! Bindery is launching a merch shop! To celebrate, all paid subscribers get an exclusive 30% off code to use in the shop. They've got these cute mugs, plus hats, sweatshirts, and more.

Use the code BINDERYINSIDER to get 30% off your entire order at binderybooks.com/merch from 8/27-9/1.

Thank you so much for being a paid subscriber and helping make my work and Bindery's work possible!

This week our contributors are diving into some great titles!

Nox is reading When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo.

Renee is reading Survival Show by Juno Dawson.

Marlena is reading Plus Size Player by Danielle Allen.

Rah is reading Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu.

Mhairie is reading The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World.

Shoshana is reading World's Okayest Oracle (reluctantly) Seeks Demon by Olivia Dade.

What book(s) have you picked up to read this week?! If you've read any of these titles, share your thoughts in the comments so we can discuss!