“The Hatchling is bullshit,” Annalise snapped. “It’s a boogieman created to justify the murder of people like us. And to justify summoning predators, too.”
“How come I never heard of it?”
“Guess,” Annalise said without looking away from Hardy.
“Because it’s bullshit?”
“Got it in one.”
“I wish you were right,” Hardy said. “A folktale. A boogieman. But the simple truth is that the Originals would not have been placed on his planet if the zealots had not also planted a Hatchling here long ago, before even the dinosaurs were born.”
“Zealots?”
Hardy turned his attention to me. “Were you not allowed to use the Book of Oceans and become a primary? The beings who call you back in time when you access one of the Originals are called zealots. At least, that’s what I’ve always heard them called. Perhaps… Never mind. It isn’t important.”
“Okay,” I said. “They’re the ones with hooks for hands and who think their thoughts with your brain, right?”
Hardy quirked his head in surprise. “Yes, that’s one way to describe them. I have always heard them called zealots. Do you have another name?”
I studied Hardy’s expression, trying to figure out if he was testing me or trying to make me look like an idiot. I couldn’t see anything in his expression, not a sneer, not a challenge, nothing. All I saw was curiosity.
I could never be a CEO. “Nope.”
Hardy looked down at his hands. “I don’t know much about the zealots, but I will tell you what I can. They were one of the earliest intelligences in the universe, and they consider it a sacred ritual to seed a living planet with a Hatchling, a creature that collects and concentrates magic. The Hatchling devours magic and releases magic back into the world, so the magic will grow and spread. Eventually, there will be enough power that it can break free of its bonds, emerging into both the Shallow Realms of Death and the Deep Realms of Life at once. Then it will draw all life into it, human, plant, animal, bacterial, and also the creatures you call predators.”
“And kill everything on Earth?” I asked. Annalise shot me a nasty look.
“Not just Earth. There are other living worlds the zealots have not visited, and the Hatchling will seek out and devour some number of them, too.”
Hardy paused, as though that was the end of the story. “And then?”
“And then what?” he asked.
“What happens then? It travels around, eating everything in sight. The Earth is stripped down to bare rock and the whachacallit fills its belly. After that, it moves on and does it again and again. Then what happens? What do the zealots get? What’s the point?”
Annalise leaned forward. “This is the question no one can ever answer. The Hatchling was placed here, and the original spell books are meant to feed it until it comes alive and kills us all. What no one ever explains is why. The zealots, as this guy calls them, are millions of years gone. What do they get out of it? Nothing. It’s bullshit.”
Hardy stared at her intently. “What purpose is required beyond eating and living? Maybe the Hatchling will give birth to more zealots. Maybe the zealots find dead worlds aesthetically pleasing. Only the effect is important. The reasons for what they do simply do not matter.”
I sat back, thinking that last bit was a load of shit. Reasons absolutely matter, because if you know the reason an asshole is doing asshole things, it’s easier to stop them.
“You’re wrong, but I don’t want to argue about it,” I said. “Let’s focus on the spell books. These Originals you keep talking about. Tell the story.”
Hardy leaned back on his stool, which flexed underneath him. If it broke, he’d tumble backward down the sloping aisle, probably with his feet flying over his head. I guess he didn’t think much about the indignity of that, because he looked oblivious.
But it would be the perfect moment for me to throw my ghost knife and disable the wires on that bomb.
“The Originals were seeded into the Earth’s crust, waiting to be found by intelligences powerful enough to be called through time. Those intelligences were shown how to use magic and then returned to their lives. The spells they cast fed the Hatchling, to one degree or another.”
“See?” Annalise said. “If you listen to this shit, it’s not just summoning spells that are dangerous. It’s all magic.”
“Spells that summon the creatures you call predators,” Hardy said, “are the least dangerous magic of all.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I snapped. Before I could finish that question, a series of memories flashed through my mind—the bloody tangles of flesh left behind by the cousins, the burned women who breathed fire back in Hammer Bay, the dry bones spilling out of abandoned vehicles, the children who laughed as flames rolled up their necks and over their heads. “You have no idea how many… What I’ve had to do—”
“No,” Hardy said. “I don’t. But for someone who expects a reason for a Hatchling to exist, you’re surprisingly unconcerned about the reasons predators come to this place of death to feed.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. Predators were hungry animals—sometimes intelligent hungry animals—who came here to feed. On us. Annalise had explained it to me early on, back when we were still enemies. There was no supernatural good or evil. No devils or angels. There were only predators and the people they ate. The cousins or the theater of sleep was no more evil than an owl.
The Twenty Palace Society existed to protect the mice from the owls.
At least, that’s how Annalise explained it to me. And I never questioned it.
Annalise took out her phone to check the time. “According to this story,” she said to me, “sorcerers like us are a disease, and predators are like white blood cells. They swoop in and kill spell casters, then kill the people around them before they return to the Empty Spaces. Boom. Less magic in the world. Less magic to feed the Hatchling and destroy us all. But the question no one can answer is why, if the Originals contain spells to feed this world destroyer, would there be summoning spells in the mix?”
“It’s an interesting question,” Hardy admitted. “Perhaps the zealots wanted predators to thrive because the Hatchling needs to feed on them. Perhaps they wanted to slow the rate the Hatchling could absorb magic from the world. You see, magical energy isn’t oil and a magical creature isn’t an oil drum. You can’t just fill it to the brim and be done. Magic grows and thinks. It struggles to spread and becomes stronger because of the struggle. I’m sure you both have noticed that the spells you have cast upon your own flesh—and on the remains of other living things—grow stronger over time. More aware. That is the spell’s connection to the zealot’s deadly gift.”
“So,” Annalise said, “you’re saying that this Hatchling, which no one has ever seen, gives us our power?”
“No. What I’m saying is that the magic you cast on living or once-living surfaces—your flesh, a wooden lintel, a woolen cloth—feeds the Hatchling and connects you to it. You both grow in power together.”
I remembered, suddenly, the moment when I destroyed Ansel Zahn. He’d seen my ghost knife and jeered at me because I cast it on a piece of paper, which was once a living thing and now, I suppose, was a feeding tube connecting me to some kind of… egg?
And if that were true, then all magic was summoning magic. The difference was in what was being called to kill us.
“Wally wanted to euthanize the world,” I said. They both looked at me. “Bad shit is coming, he’d said, when we were down in LA. He kept talking about how the predators might have been terrible, but they were better than what was coming for us.”
I also remembered drawings in a bedroom closet, from… somewhere? I knew it was from several years back, but all I could remember was standing at the foot of a bed, snapping photos of the back wall.
But I couldn’t call that memory to mind, because Annalise and Hardy were already talking.
“So, your fucked-up friend Wally King believed this shit too. That makes it less credible.”
Hardy sighed. “The society used to know this, but the knowledge was lost years ago, and the peers do not look beyond their membership for guidance.”
“Nothing about this conversation makes me wish we did.”
I leaned toward Hardy. “You seem to know an awful lot for a coder who had an idea for a better version of Myspace,” I said. Annalise was about to object, but I pressed on. “Whether he’s right or wrong, boss, he’s getting information somewhere. You recognize this Hatchling stuff he’s saying, so he’s not making it up out of some magic-mushroom trip.”
“I’m not.”
“So, he’s getting this from somewhere.” I looked right at him. “Where?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I learned much in my ‘better version of MySpace.’ The human species has a deep affinity for community. Even those who turn their backs on society and live all alone, calling themselves hermits or loners, still define themselves by their relationship to society as a whole. Human relationships are so ingrained in their psyche that people define themselves by them, or by their lack. They call themselves a parent, a Libertarian, a science-fiction nerd, a Giants fan, a Taylor Swift fan.
“When I created the FriendShip, I implemented a private chat function that could not be accessed by any third party or government entity. And sure enough, amid all the birthday-party planning and drug deals and terrorist-cell networking and secret stalking, there was a small but nonzero number of what you would call rogue sorcerers, sharing news about recently summoned outsiders, or spell books that went missing, or even just wannabes looking to apprentice with someone who had even the most minuscule amount of magical power. And of course, there were those who wanted to feel like an authority. Some shared their knowledge solely because others were grateful for it, and that gratitude made them feel powerful.
“So, you see, they were eager to form these online communities, and they believed that no one could overhear them.”
“But you could.”
“I gave myself a back door. No back door is perfectly secure, but mine has been so far. I spent hours searching through these private conversations, looking for clues to real power. And I found them. I found more than I could have dreamed.”
“Sure,” I said, “and getting insanely rich was a happy side project, right?”
“It only became a side project when I discovered how much information I could gather in these spaces. Some of which”—he turned to Annalise—“comes from peers in the Twenty Palace Society.” Annalise’s face darkened, but Hardy pressed on. “Don’t be angry with them. They seemed so desperate for some kind of connection. They’re only human, after all, with human needs.” He touched his nose and cheek in a strange, gentle way, as though he was trying to caress his face. “Just as we all have.”
“But it didn’t start there,” I said. “You didn’t just stumble across talk about spell books on some online chat and start stroking your chin and saying Very interesting. Must find out more. For you, this all started before that. Long before that.”
Hardy quirked his head in surprise, then nodded. He turned to Annalise. “I thought you might recognize me, but I’m not surprised that you haven’t. It’s been almost thirty years.”