Chapter 9: An Army of Two

Ingrid rubbed at her temples in an attempt to assuage yet another massive headache blooming right behind her left eye. She was fairly certain it wasn’t a massive stroke waiting to occur, but there was always the possibility that fate had decided to cut her string early.

Dibs on your body, Jenny whispered in her mind.

“Only after I shit my pants,” Ingrid snapped.

The awkward moment of silence that followed was further compounded by Aurora slowly spinning in her chair like a geriatric Bond villain, a look of concern on her face.

“What was that about shitting your pants?” she asked. “Is your stomach okay?”

“I’m suffering from IBS is all,” Ingrid replied, jerking her thumb at Jenny. The doll was seated in a fucking high chair of all things. “An Irritating Bitchy Spirit.”

“You two need to play nice.” Aurora frowned and pointed at the monitors. Surveillance footage from around the Kensington estate revealed an increased presence of what appeared to be hired mercenaries, which were one of Jenny’s favorites. “The others need you.”

“Can we really not get one of the Radleys here?” Ingrid stared at the screen. There were easily twenty men and a few women patrolling the grounds with automatic weapons that hadn’t been there a day before. It was clearly a response to Dana and Tasia’s break-in, or perhaps even the dead goblin Ingrid left in the Caymans. “What about the fox? Yuki can ice the whole place down.”

“Their home is crawling with Fae.” Ingrid clicked a button to reveal satellite footage. Where the Radley house should be was a weird dead patch, as if the satellite had malfunctioned. “Dozens of them, all over the house. If this was happening literally anywhere else, the Order would have at least approached the Fae and asked what grievance was committed so that they could mitigate it.”

Ingrid scowled. “That fucking figures.”

“Why are you being so down on yourself?” Aurora leaned forward in her chair and patted Ingrid on the knee. “You’ve never balked at a little breaking and entering before.”

“Somebody in there took out a werewolf and a ... whatever Dana is.” Zombie really wasn’t the best word for it. “And if they took Lily, too, I feel like I’m jumping into the lion’s den with little more than a sharp stick and delusions of grandeur.”

I’m the delusion, Jenny whispered, then let out a laugh that sent a wave of static across the monitors, which shouldn’t even be possible on LED monitors.

“Ah. I see the problem.” Aurora leaned back in her seat. “Feelings of inadequacy. Imposter syndrome.”

“It’s not a syndrome if you really are faking it.” Ingrid groaned and rubbed her temples harder. “Maybe if we had more intel, I’d feel better, but—”

There was a loud thud from above. The two of them looked up to see Eulalie squeezing through a small hole in the ceiling. It was rather remarkable just how small her body could contract when she wanted it to. The Arachne dropped the remaining thirty or so feet and landed in a light crouch.

“I’ve got valuable intel,” she declared. Aurora leaned sideways in her seat to smirk at Ingrid. “Check this out.”

Eulalie dropped some charts in front of Ingrid, but misjudged the distance. Instead of landing in a neat stack, they fluttered everywhere on the way to the floor.

“Oops,” she muttered. Ingrid noticed that two of Eulalie’s legs were tapping anxiously at the floor as the Arachne bent down and scooped up her mess.

“Give me the CliffsNotes version,” said Ingrid.

“Right. Satellite telemetry recorded an anomaly out in the Atlantic Ocean on three separate occasions within the last week. The earliest was roughly the same time you were at the oil rig. It was actually spotted leaving from London, then headed to the rig and back. We saw it again right after Lily went radio silent on us, and tracking seems to indicate that it went straight to Lily’s last known location, then went back to Kensington.”

“Is it a private plane?” Ingrid asked.

Eulalie shook her head. “Far too small. Bigger than a drone, smaller than a plane. But I spotted it again right after you returned from the islands and it’s headed to where you were. Based on its current speed and heading, we actually have a narrow window of opportunity. Whatever it is, it’s left its base of operations, which is roughly when the guards showed up.”

Ingrid frowned and tapped her fingers on the armchair. “You think it’s our target? The witch?”

“Whoever it is needed to hire a small army for when they were gone,” Eulalie said. “Object isn’t much bigger than a single person. My guess? It’s someone riding a broomstick.”

Ingrid nodded. That tracked with her experience on the oil platform. “I guess that means I’m going in,” she said and stood.

“Well, hold on.” Aurora snagged Ingrid’s hand. “We need to get you properly outfitted first. The away team put together a kit that should help you get in.”

“Getting into Kensington isn’t the hard part,” Ingrid replied. “Apparently leaving is the primary issue. What does the team even have for me?”

“Well ... not much,” Aurora admitted. “We lost some good supplies in the fire, and what we have left is mostly preventative, demon stuff and the like. Once you leave, that demon will come after you again.”

“Goody for me,” Ingrid muttered.

“Are you ... scared?” The way Eulalie asked the question wasn’t accusatory. Rather, she sounded a little stunned at even the thought.

“Of course I’m scared,” Ingrid replied. “This fucking sucks. I don’t think I can do it.”

“But ... you’re a mage of the Order.” Eulalie stared at Ingrid with unblinking eyes. “You guys are terrifying.”

“Terrifying?” Ingrid barked a laugh. “Hardly.”

“My mother used to have nightmares about the Order.” Eulalie frowned down at her hands. “My father taught us early about what he remembered. The knight that hunted them, along with ... Master Cyrus.” The Arachne smiled weakly. “He was kind of like the boogeyman for my sister and me when we were little. I got in trouble one time for picking up a stick and casting fake fireballs at Velvet when she was still really little.”

“Why did your parents teach you about something so scary while you were so young?” Ingrid asked.

“When I was five, I ran into a grizzly bear,” Eulalie said. “I accidentally broke its neck while playing with it. My parents needed us to know that there were things in the world that could hurt us, that we weren’t invincible. Just ... different.”

“Well, that was the old Order.” Ingrid sighed. “They knew better tricks.”

“They were also complete assholes,” Eulalie replied. “Look at you, though. Willing to work with others. You’re part of the team, the only one who can use magic, even! That’s pure DPS!”

“DPS?” Ingrid asked.

“Damage per second,” Aurora answered. “Gamer lingo.”

Eulalie nodded. “Maybe the Order is different now, but you’re a bona fide badass. Do you know what you can do that the others can’t? You can cast magic.”

Ingrid chuckled. “Only through artifacts and shit I don’t have. My options are pretty poor right now.”

“But it doesn’t have to be magic.” Eulalie pointed at the screens. “Those guys are just humans. What are they going to do, shoot at a fireball?”

“That’s exactly what they’ll do. I would far rather be casting spells from behind Tasia than by myself. She can take a bullet. I cannot.” Ingrid shook her head. “I’m literally the one person on the team who can’t take a bullet. Hell, if I break a bone, I’m in a cast for weeks. I’m fragile.” She looked at Eulalie. “That doesn’t mean I’m not going. But it does mean I’m fucking scared.”

Eulalie moved slowly and deliberately, as if to not startle Ingrid. The Arachne took Ingrid’s hands in her own and met her gaze.

“You can’t take a bullet,” she said. “Your body doesn’t heal. You aren’t a demon, or a zombie, or even a werewolf. But you are brave. And once we get you outside of your own head, you’ll remember just how brilliant and cunning you are.”

Ingrid rolled her eyes. “You can’t butter me up. I’m not a piece of bread.”

“You escaped a demon. Twice.” Eulalie squeezed Ingrid’s fingers. “I saw the video footage from Maui. I’ve seen how you’ve faced insurmountable odds. You think that you’re weaker than the others, but it’s simply not true. They have things that they are good at, yes. But you’re the one who has always had to think outside the box.” The Arachne let go of Ingrid’s hands. “When I was a little girl, my father taught me how to hunt with this old rifle of his. It was a Remington. Beautiful gun, he got it from an estate sale.”

“Why did you need a gun?” Ingrid asked.

“It wasn’t about the gun. See, my sister and I were born killers. It’s in our blood. We could have fended for ourselves from an early age. But the reason he taught us how to hunt was two-fold. First, guns could still hurt us. He didn’t want us playing with them and thinking we were invincible. Second?” Eulalie smiled, her eyes on a distant memory. “It was so that he could bond with us. He was the only human in a family of Arachne. In a lot of ways, he was like you. The weakest among us.”

“I can see that.” Ingrid’s original response had been far snarkier, but she could see the fondness in Eulalie’s eyes. The Arachne was trying to make a point. “So he taught you to shoot.”

“My father was a lot of things to me. But mostly, he was the heart of our family.” Eulalie smiled. “My mother was cold. Not in a bad way, really. There was this odd ... divide sometimes. Like she didn’t quite fit in. I’m way more like her in that regard. But it was my father who helped me be more than just that. He couldn’t outrun a deer, climb anything, or make webs. But he was so good at being the things we didn’t know how to be.”

The Arachne’s eyes shimmered as her gaze met Ingrid’s. “Do you know what goes through a bear’s mind when you shoot it with a rifle?”

“Rage? Anger?” Ingrid snorted. “I can only assume nothing good.”

“My father had a different answer. He liked to say ‘a .22 caliber round if you’re a good enough shot.’” The Arachne smiled. “He couldn’t snap a bear’s neck by accident. But he could aim and wait until it was close enough that he could put a bullet right between its eyes. The Order was the boogeyman, but my father? He was my hero. That’s how I see humans, Ingrid. Full of bravery and potential, and capable of doing great things. That’s how I see you.”

Ingrid stared at the Arachne for several long seconds, her self-loathing officially cut off at the source. Eulalie wasn’t just blowing smoke up her ass, the woman was speaking from the heart. For a brief moment, her mind tried to reconcile it as pity, to bring that rancid anger back and bathe in it.

“What I need...” Ingrid closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to hold onto this feeling she suddenly had. This sensation was a freshly lit candle, and she didn’t want it to get blown out too quickly.

“Anything we can get you,” Eulalie said. “We’ve got a magical Library and portals everywhere. If you can think of it, we can try to find it.”

For the first time in several days, Ingrid firmly stepped back from her personal feelings, from the events that had occurred, and even from her own self-doubts. The visualization was intense enough that she actually found herself standing in a dark room, looking at monitors similar to the ones Eulalie had put up. The Kensington estate was there, the images frozen and overlaid with bursts of static.

Crouched beneath the monitor was Jenny. The spirit’s arms were just a little too long for her body as she idly poked at the ground with what could have been a bone.

“Are you doing this?” Ingrid asked.

The spirit shrugged. “It’s always like this for me,” she said, then stood from her crouch. Her hair shifted just enough that Ingrid could see one wild-eye between them. “I’m not stuck in here with you—”

“You’re stuck in here with me,” Ingrid finished. “You’re no good against demons—”

The spirit blurred and teleported right in front of Ingrid, that wide eye now cracked with veins. The bone was sharpened, and pressed against the base of Ingrid’s throat.

“But I am,” Ingrid finished, ignoring the spirit and studying the monitors. “I got stuck thinking about the things I couldn’t do, along with the things you couldn’t do. That’s a fool’s game. But if I start thinking about the things I’m capable of, the things I was trained for...”

Jenny pressed the sharp end of the bone into Ingrid’s neck. The mage simply pulled it back out. This place was little more than a hallucination, after all. Ingrid couldn’t be hurt here.

“I don’t have a plan yet, but I know somebody who can help.” Ingrid patted Jenny on the head. “Want to go make a mess with me?”

Jenny opened her head like a demonic Pac-Man and cackled. The vision popped and she was back in the real world, Aurora and Eulalie watching her with bated breath.

“I need to speak with Tinker Radley.”

Tasia opened her eyes and stared at the roof of the barn for almost an hour. She sat up and picked the straw from her hair and sniffed the air with hesitation. Blanching, she stuck out her tongue in response to the flavor of this place.

The air tasted like paint. Once upon a time, this world had been nothing more than brushstrokes on a canvas, some artist’s idyllic dream of a small farm on the edge of the woods. Through magic, a small pocket world had been formed, the painted trees and grass imbued with a false life.

The sun never set in this place. As such, it was hard to tell how long she had been stuck here. Whatever magic created the illusion of a real world also provided the minimal sustenance required to stay alive. Tasia’s stomach growled, and she rubbed at her belly with a frown.

Upon arriving at Kensington, there had been an ambush—that much she remembered. Then she had awaken here, sick to her stomach and her entire body hurting.

It hadn’t taken long to figure out what had happened. This place had odd boundaries, where it looked like the world continued, but it was little more than a painted surface. Her world was an oblong box, less than sixty feet wide, yet a quarter mile deep. It had taken her a minute to recognize the place, which she had last seen inside of a painting in the auction house.

Any doubts that she had been trapped inside this place had been immediately dispelled by the man she called Gunther.

The man was old, perhaps in his nineties. He had been frightened upon seeing her, and had hidden himself away almost immediately. Other than a few, scratchy words of German, he had said little else to her. She had tried to introduce herself, or to communicate in any way, but the guy refused to say another word.