“Imagine you are a being of such vast power you may go wherever you please. There is no one like you in all the worlds.” This was Bogomil. He was walking very quickly. Laura was having a hard time keeping up. The sidewalk had not been shoveled, and so they were in the street.
She said, “There are other worlds? She’s from another world? Are you taking me to Susannah?”
“Does it matter, Malo Mogge’s origin? If there were any others like her, they have never discovered themselves to us. She made a door of herself and came through it into our world and then made many other doors, each with its own guardians. I do not know what lay beyond the doors not in my keeping. She destroyed the faithless guardians all, and with them her doors. In this way she was made to diminish herself.”
“But she didn’t destroy you,” Laura said.
“We did not rebel. Perhaps our predecessors would have. They’d served her long. They knew her better. But the realm beyond our door is not another world. It is a threshold place only, Malo Mogge’s larder, which borders the kingdom of Death. I live upon that threshold though I do not cross over it yet.”
“If Susannah has the key, can’t we use it? Make a new door and go into other worlds, ones where Malo Mogge has no key to follow?”
“All these years and Malo Mogge has made no new doors. It is a task beyond her strength while she may not replenish herself. This temple of hers, the closing of Lovesend, this is all show. For the span of five hundred years, more, she has had to conserve her power. Entertain herself on a smaller scale. Now that she knows her key is near at hand, she is profligate. But this is nothing compared to what she will do when she has it back.”
“She won’t get it,” Laura said. “I’ll stop her.”
Bogomil halted so suddenly she almost walked into him.
“Hey!” she said.
“Do you think so highly of your talents that already you might surpass her?”
Laura said, “Should I just give up? I think I’ve done okay for someone who only came back from the dead a few days ago.”
Bogomil began to walk again, faster this time. They were on Little Moon Street, nearly down to the bay. He said, “All the magic you have comes from Anabin, and everything Anabin has, has as its source Malo Mogge. You are a match head beside the conflagration of her sun, a bit of chalk beside the majesty of her moon, even diminished as she is. When she has her key back, she will be able to cross to my side of the door again. She will replenish herself on sacrifices and in time she may again be what she once was.”
“She said something about sacrifices to me. People sacrifices, right? Why are you always barefoot? Your toes are going to fall off.”
“The cold doesn’t bother me,” Bogomil said. “And when we translate ourselves, peripheral things have a tendency to drift. One of the lesser mysteries.”
Like dryer socks, Laura thought. Bogomil went on speaking. “Those like yourself who have been marked by contact with her key in one of its incarnations are her sacrifices. Long ago it would be a knife her guardians used to cut the throats of men and women upon her altar, but that was only spectacle. To make physical contact with any of the key’s incarnations means that upon leaving Anabin’s realm, one does not go into Death directly but rather enters my realm, where, when Malo Mogge possessed her key, she might follow as she pleased. Once, you and your friends would have been Malo Mogge’s meat unless I had shown you kindness and sent you on your way into Death.”
“Ugh. None of this seems very helpful,” Laura said.
“Helpfulness goes against my nature these days. But here is something you do not know. When, very long ago, Malo Mogge’s key was lost the first time, she searched for it and I searched, too. I thought it was my own ability that helped me discover it when she could not. I took it into my realm and studied its nature. I came to understand it is a living thing. Once it was a part of Malo Mogge but, divided from her, it came to have desires that were divided from her desires. It was not lost but fled her. I was allowed to discover it because it is inimical to her. It showed me how she might be undone.”
“See? That’s actually helpful. Tell me.”
“In the moment when new guardians of our door are chosen, Malo Mogge is vulnerable. Both old and new guardians must draw on her magic then, but they draw as well on the magic that the key possesses. The last time I had the key I might have used Malo Mogge’s own strength in coordination with the power of the key to strike a blow. Thomas and his brother were to take up their roles, and in that moment, she and Anabin would have been summoned; I thought to wound her, then drag her across the threshold. Once she was on my side of the door, I could have taken more of her power, enough that I might have taken her place and become a god myself. But the one who calls himself Bowie interfered with the ritual, and Malo Mogge, who had not known the key was found and the ritual begun saw in that moment she was betrayed. And the key, too, saw my intention had been to not only strike down Malo Mogge but to become her. So once more the key hid itself.”
“Why did it care?”
“I would have had her power. I would have kept her key, too. What a waste it would have been, all that power, to keep none for myself. The key wishes Malo Mogge destroyed, her door destroyed with her, and itself, too. My plan was less wasteful. Here we are.”
Bogomil left the road.
Laura knew where they were now. She said, “The Seasick Blues? It’s the off-season. Susannah won’t be here. No one’s here.”
“Room twelve. See, there is a light on. Knock.”
I am tired of being told what to do, Laura thought. I am tired of doors. Nevertheless she managed a smile when it was Mr. Anabin who opened the door, as if she were genuinely glad to see him. Who had ever been glad to see Mr. Anabin? Well, Bogomil, supposedly, though as soon as the door opened and Mr. Anabin was there, Bogomil turned his back on him. Apparently this was what you did when you really liked somebody. If you were Bogomil.
“Mr. Anabin, hi!” she said, knocking snow off her boots and stepping into the room. “Sorry to bother you, but Bogomil’s been giving me a history lesson and now we’re visiting you. He hasn’t told me why. Did you know my mother’s dead? Ruth? Oh, right. You do. Mo found you and told you.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Laura,” Mr. Anabin said. As if he were actually her old music teacher. As if her mother had died of cancer or in a car accident instead of being murdered by a god. As if they were just going to have a normal conversation while Bogomil stood with his back to them both.
“Malo Mogge took away my grief,” Laura said. “So I’m not particularly sad or anything. I’m just angry.”
“I am sorry for that loss, too,” Mr. Anabin said.
“Thanks. I guess. Can I ask you a question?” Laura said. “Why do you do that? The thing where one of you spins around like that.”
Mr. Anabin said, “This is how it goes when we are together. It is the cost of the magic that made us guardians. He may speak, but I must turn from him. As he turns from me when I speak. In the realm of Life we may look but not speak. Speak but not look.”
“What about in his realm?”
“I may not enter it. The guardian whose realm is Life may not pass through the door. Though I still hope one day to see Bogomil’s realm.”
“It’s not that great. Anyway, maybe could you just go sit on the bed and face the other direction? Bogomil still hasn’t gotten to the important stuff yet. Thanks.”
She watched in fascination while Mr. Anabin went and sat on the left-hand bed. The largest mirror Laura had ever seen hung on that wall, its twin on the other side. A workaround, she realized. Remember that, Laura. There are always workarounds.
Bogomil sat down on the other bed. Laura stayed standing. You never knew with the motel beds. Susannah had told her stories. Susannah must have known Mr. Anabin was here, though. Susannah, full of secrets. As full of secrets as a fucking motel bedspread.
Bogomil said, “I can sum up the rest quite quickly. Malo Mogge made her key out of herself. She still does not grasp how it might now oppose her. She knows I betrayed her, but she does not know her key chose to leave her; she does not know her key once made alliance with me against her. When it is in her possession again, and you take up my place, you may yet make your own bargain with the key. Serve Malo Mogge faithfully until you may strike her down.”
“Because that worked out so well for you?” Laura said, exasperated. Mr. Anabin watched them both in the mirror.
Bogomil said, “Serve Malo Mogge faithfully then. Make sacrifices to her and keep her larder. Make your home in darkness as I have done. But should life as Malo Mogge’s servant pall and you decide to make common cause with her key, keep the terms of your bargain. My error was not that I betrayed Malo Mogge, but this: I betrayed the key as well, and with it, Anabin.”
Mr. Anabin’s face did not change as he listened to this: Laura checked in the mirror surreptitiously. It was like being in the room while your weird parents fought without ever acknowledging they were in a fight. Well, that wasn’t a situation Laura was ever going to be in again.
“None of this is how I saw my life going,” she said. “I had plans. They were so much better than any of this. I don’t know that I want career guidance from either of you.”
“Just wait until Malo Mogge has her key back. Things are really going to get interesting then. Her appetite will be vast after so many centuries starved of sacrifice. She’ll devour this town—everyone in it. Your work will be to serve it up,” Bogomil said, not sounding entirely displeased about this.
“Yeah, I got it, your job sucks. Eternal darkness, lots of murder. Betrayal, more betrayal, regret, inexplicable feelings for Mr. Anabin. No offense, Mr. Anabin. Just, maybe don’t give me any more advice for a second? Okay? Either of you,” Laura said.
“There is one more thing you ought to know,” Mr. Anabin said. He wasn’t looking at Laura, though. He was looking at Bogomil. Or, rather, Bogomil’s reflection.
“What?” Laura said.
Mr. Anabin said, “Malo Mogge is with your sister and the others now. She has come for her key.”
Laura found she was raising her hand in front of her face, as if bracing for a blow. Neither of her companions moved from where they were sitting. They only sat looking at the mirrors, at those other versions of themselves. How useless they were! She said, “What are you doing just sitting there? Come on, come on, get up. Get up! We have to go.”