True Name
He waited while we gained our feet. Melinoë sent a fearful glance back at where the swarm had been swallowed up by the ground but there was no further sign of them.
In the crackling blue-white light, I caught more of his features. He was in his sixties, maybe closer to seventy, hair silver and carefully combed back, eyes dark and narrowed on us. He wore a black suit, though the material wavered a little—maybe a glamour, maybe not a typical cloth. Ashur hadn’t said how long the man had been here, but his dark silver goatee was carefully shaped like he had access to a razor. No sign of gauntness to suggest he went without food—perhaps Ashur was right about our bodies changing for this dimension, feeding on environmental energy rather than typical calories.
“I’m about to kill you,” his crisp voice broke through my thoughts. “Would you care to plead for your life and explain yourselves?”
If he was truly going to kill us right away, he would’ve, like, killed us right away. Shot in the dark, but we were just indirectly responsible for Ashur’s underling getting killed after it had been pursing this dude for however long he’d been here—he had to be curious. “I take it you get a lot of visitors if you’re so quick to want to wipe us out?”
He said nothing, though his gaze focused on me.
“I would really appreciate a spot to recover from,” Melinoë gestured vaguely behind us, “all that. Please.” Careful vulnerability in her voice, and I wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, but seemed wise—too weepy and sobbing, and he’d see right through it, but we still had to seem believably shaken and weaker than him.
At least that part was true—being shaken, that is. As for weakness, well, we’d see what the next several minutes brought.
A beat of silence passed, and then the ground shifted again, unfolding behind him like a pop-up building assembling. It resembled a small, two-story manor, a tall gate silently swinging open behind him to reveal a path toward the front door.
So it was definitely him who had the ground swallow up the swarm—I guess being here for so long, he could bend the dimension to his will. Didn’t Ashur say something about it being “malleable”?
I waited for him to head into the house ahead of us but the ground kept shifting. While he stood in place, it rolled him backward, up, and out of sight into the house like a conveyer belt. If I wasn’t freaked the fuck out, I would’ve found it comical.
“Do you have a plan?” she asked in a low voice as we huddled together again and stepped forward.
“Vaguely. Follow my lead?”
“As opposed to how we’re playing things now?”
I smirked. “Right, okay, we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing.”
While we walked up to the house, I tossed the situation around in my brain. He had complete control over the dimension, even the very landscape. There was no particular tinge of magic that I felt beyond the usual—with that level of power and control, perhaps he’d been pumping magic into the actual ground for so long that it had melded with him somehow. It was likely not something I could access myself, not without a lot of time and practice, which we didn’t have.
The fuck had Ashur gotten me into? Who was this guy?
From a distance the dark blue of the manor, the same as the landscape, almost made it look like a normal house shuttered for the night; up close, it was abundantly clear how unnatural it was. The ground folded and puckered around the edges of the foundation, disguising somewhat but not entirely that it was all the same substance. The walls had no texture, nor did the door, the surface all the same and making it even more alien. A house made of clay.
The door silently opened at our approach.
I’d been expecting rooms, maybe a hallway with stairs, but the exterior was where the facade ended. The house opened to a single two-story room that took up the bulk of the place. The windows were all false, the walls inside smooth and uninterrupted by anything but the door, which closed at our backs.
There was warmth, at least, coming from a firepit in the center; it wasn’t regular fire but white light tinged in blue, giving off glittering sparks that suggested a magical version of a fire and light source all in one. I still shivered in the cloak while I adjusted to warmth that far outpaced what had been given off by my own spell.
I was painfully outclassed here.
The man was seated high against the far wall, no steps or anything there so he must’ve magically elevated himself. He looked over us as if from a throne, the blue-tinged light from the fire spreading against the room and lighting him from below.
“I’ve been here a very, very long time, and suddenly I have guests. I admit I’m curious and distrustful.” He raised one hand to rest his chin on his fist, the other hand tucked at his side and out of view.
I couldn’t claim I came to rescue him—I didn’t even know who the hell he was. I couldn’t claim I stumbled in here accidentally, given the difficulty in reaching the dimension. It left me with one possibility that would either work or blow up spectacularly in my face—but it wasn’t like we had a whole lot of other options.
“We were sent to kill you,” I said plainly.
Melinoë’s gaze whipped to me, her eyes huge and body tensing like she was prepping to dart away.
The man said nothing to that but simply waited.
“Clearly that was a tremendously bad idea and we are way in over our heads,” I continued. “I don’t want to be here. She doesn’t want to be here. It was a quid pro quo situation where I owed someone but this is far from what I was told to expect.”
He seemed wryly amused, though little more than contempt left his expression. “Do you have a proposal?”
I nodded. “Smart man. We have a way out. I’m assuming someone of your...” I gestured around us. “...considerable abilities has means on the other side. Pay us when we get back to the surface so we can get out of dodge and we’ll get you out of here.”
It was a gamble. If it failed, I’d have to throw lightning at him or something and pray Melinoë or I could get the upper hand.
“You understand I can’t merely take your word for it,” he said at last.
I shrugged. “Pinky swear?”
His smile widened, slowly and deliberately. “You remind me of someone.”
I was playing at seeming a sweet dumb kid too over her head to double-cross him, and we all sort of looked alike to people like him. “Hope she’s brilliant.”
“Mmm. She thought she was.” He shifted, dropping his hand as the wall beside him melted and moved to reveal a vial of some kind. “I have further questions but I do need to know you’re telling the truth. You understand this, of course.”
“Of course,” I said automatically. Melinoë didn’t speak but took half a step back seemingly involuntarily.
He uncorked the vial with the hand holding it and tossed the contents forward.
Dark powder struck the fire and sparked, puffing out with growing smoke that rolled across the floor and concentrated in the direction of me and Melinoë. I braced but held my place as the smoke wound up our legs and bodies, a violet-tinged haze I couldn’t help but breathe in. For a moment even my vision was glazed in purple, but it faded and I stared at the same room again.
Melinoë crossed her arms at her abdomen, her leather coat creaking, and tightened her lips together.
Any remnants of the smoke were entirely gone now. I didn’t feel any different, no sense of being lightheaded, no sign of a dull headache or anything, but my stomach twisted nervously.
“Now let’s have a real conversation.” His tone changed, pitching darker and colder, and a shiver worked across my skin. “Who sent you?”
“Ashur,” I said immediately. “He’s one of the Aanzhenii. He didn’t tell me who you are—”
“Maximilian Vasquez,” he cut in.
That meant absolutely nothing to me and I was certain the confusion was obvious given the tightening of his expression.
“My, how the times change,” he said with an edge of bitterness. “Is this how things work in the real world now? Little witches doing errands for those creatures?”
“Like I said, I got way in over my head,” I replied. “I have nothing against you. We could all get out of here, and if you can fund us getting out of the country, I’m happy to forget all this happened.”
His gaze shifted to Melinoë. “You’re awfully quiet.”
“I-I’m just here to help,” she said quickly. “I got caught up as well but this is on her, so whatever she says, I’m going along with.”
All true, at least—we might be in trouble if he really pressed or asked for specifics, but Melinoë had at least figured out this was some kind of truth spell and whatever answers we offered had to be truthful ones.
“And how did you reach me?” His expression was guarded, eyes narrowed. “Did this Aanzhenii open the dimension somehow?”
“Some kind of blood magic?” I shrugged. “I never learned so I don’t know the particulars.”
His head tilted to the side as he regarded me, then his gaze slid between me and Melinoë smoothly. “Interesting. Whose blood?”
Too direct to wiggle out of. “Mine,” I said automatically.
“Hmm. I do find your terms potentially agreeable, but that leads us to who I’m doing business with. What are your names?”
Melinoë and I looked at one another.
“I’m Elis O’Connor,” I said.
“Mel,” Melinoë said.
He shook his head and gave me a withering look. “Your...true names. Your full names, your family names. The names your parents chose, that bind you to your families.”
He must’ve been down here decades if he thought birth names were “true” names or somehow sacred, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. A biting remark calling him ‘grandpa’ hovered on my lips but I swallowed the snark back.
“Melinoë Hayden,” Melinoë said, “was my birth name, but my mother called me Melinoë Takata.”
He watched her and several minutes ticked on, the silence serving to ratchet up the tension. “Persephone’s daughter.”
She nodded.
His attention then homed in on me expectantly.
I took a deep breath and spoke the name no one had used in many years.
“Elisabeta,” I said.
He gestured for me to continue.
Discomfort squirmed in my gut—I schooled my features into neutral, resisted fidgeting, but this was bothering me far more than I’d anticipated.
“My birth name is Elisabeta Nicole...”
He waited.
“...Lain.”
His widened grin was practically villainous, a light coming to his eyes that I hadn’t seen the entire time we’d been here. “Well, well. That’s...interesting.”
I probably shouldn’t’ve said that, but I suspected he knew—or at least theorized—about the answer before he asked me. Which meant this guy knew my parents and probably not in a good way.
He had to want out, though. And I’d gamble that as soon as he could confirm the way out, he’d kill me.
So I’d play dumb until I could kill him first. No problem.
His seat against the wall moved downward until it deposited him standing flat on the ground again. As he stood, I glimpsed the stump where his left hand should’ve been—and flashed back to the skeleton hand left on the floor of the chamber where Ashur took us.
This man, this Maximillian Vasquez, had been in a battle in that very chamber, which led to him ending up here.
He gestured forward with his remaining hand as the door opened behind me. “After you.”