I stumbled back to Lee Street and the nearest gas station I could find and called for a cab, then ducked inside the restroom to wash up. God. Whoever was behind Zipperface-he’d killed my car. He’d killed my car and my friends-and he’d almost killed me. Twice now.
My hands were shaking as I splashed water on my face. As the water trickled down, I heard police sirens and fire trucks, and stayed put. Only after someone knocked impatiently on the bathroom door did I nervously slip out and skulk among the cola cases until my ride came.
As the West End receded and the driver rode quietly on, I started to think I was paranoid: of course the police were called to the scene. After the cab dropped me off at the hotel, however, I went with my gut, quickly grabbing toiletries, my riding gear and helmet, then hopped on my Vespa and took off, just before a police car swooped up to the hotel, sirens blazing.
I figured using my credit card would be a dead giveaway, so I drove up far north up I-85. I felt that magical tingle again as I passed the Perimeter, but I kept going, all the way to the Mall of Georgia, and withdrew as much as the parking lot ATM would let me.
While it was spitting out money I called Dad. He didn’t answer, probably zonked out on the recliner, so I left a brief message. Then, the moment the receipt was in my hand, I hopped back on my bike and headed back south. With any luck, they’d think I was fleeing to South Carolina-when instead I was going to ground in the city, my city, Atlanta.
I rode the first few miles on the highway to get some distance-always a danger even when the police weren’t specifically looking for me, as the Georgia Highway Patrol sometimes pulled me over just to try to figure out whether the Vespa was a motorcycle or a moped. But by the time I reached Gwinnett Place Mall I knew the area well enough to take the surface streets, slipping off onto mini-mall infested Pleasant Hill before finally escaping to the wide pine-lined lots, wooden fences and aging split-levels that dotted sleepy Old Norcross Road.
I was still OTP-outside the Perimeter-but the suburbs were well trafficked enough that I didn’t worry about trolls. Soon, I found a Waffle House where Old Norcross crossed Buford Highway, swallowed my pride, and settled at the counter to take stock.
No one noticed me. Wearing old jeans, a brown bomber jacket, riding gloves and a bandana, I didn’t look much like myself. In fact, with the bandana covering both my deathhawk and the tattoos on my temples, I looked normal. It was an odd, good feeling. I found myself enjoying not being stared at, swigging sweet tea, and having a damn good waffle.
In theory, they couldn’t pin the fires on me, but I was already accused of one crime I didn’t commit, and everyone had warned me juries simply didn’t understand magic. So I needed my freedom of action, at least a little while longer, until I could either figure out how to cut off the graffiti’s power source, or find the prick who was orchestrating it, or both. And to do that I needed a place to crash, snag some Internet, and make some phone calls.
But who to call? I really wanted to leave mundanes out of it. Half my friends had nearly gotten killed trying to take on Valentine, and I didn’t want the karate club getting burned alive by Zipperface, or Michael Bell arrested for aiding a fugitive.
The Edgeworld was also cut off from me. After the werehouse fire, I had tried and failed to contact Lord Buckhead, the werehouse itself was gone of course, the werekin now hated me, my contacts at the Oakdale Clan were dead… including Calaphase. Damnit.
Thinking more broadly, there was the Underground, the network of tunnels under the city. But it was werekin territory, and Philip had mapped all of the Underground that I knew, so he could find me, if he was forced to. Being a fugitive sucked: like walking a minefield, there were many places to step, few of them safe, and no way to tell which from which.
Finally, I swallowed my pride and called the Vampire Consulate. After all, it was a Consulate; who knows what that really meant, but maybe Saffron could offer me some temporary protection until the police sorted out I was innocent.
“Junior Van Helsing Detective Agency,” a sweet voice answered. “This is Nagli.”
“Hello, Nagli,” I said. “This is-”
“I know,” Nagli said quickly. She sounded strained. “Caller ID.”
“Ah,” I said. “Actually, I was calling on Consulate business.”
“I know,” she repeated. “Each number has its own line.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. This was damn peculiar. “That’s good to know.”
“Your discretion is appreciated,” Nagli said, voice suddenly hushed. “Don’t-”
And then there was commotion in the background, a new voice talking. Nagli started to respond, but there was a sudden racket, as if the phone had been ripped from her grasp.
“Who is this?” said the new voice-Saffron. I didn’t respond, and she said, “Frost.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Darkrose is gone,” Saffron said, voice acid. “Went hunting for three other vampires gone missing-and never came back. You were too busy with your new friend apparently.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, but I couldn’t leave it at that. “Calaphase is… gone too.”
“I know,” Saffron said, some of the acid leaching away. “I’m sorry
… Dakota. And I heard you were arrested.” She paused, then asked, “How are you holding up?”
“Fine,” I managed, “until I was attacked again.”
“When?” Saffron said.
“Just now,” I said, and told her. “I left the Candlesticks on fire. It happened less than twenty four hours after I got out of jail. And a fire started when I went back to Calaphase’s to pick up my car. I think the police are looking for me.”
“Almost certainly,” Saffron said. “Since you got out, fires have broken out all over the city. Dozens of people have been killed. The media’s talking about a plague of arson, which is bad enough… but I’m just waiting for someone to break out the t -word.”
“Terrorism,” I said. “Oh, flying fuck me. Saffron… I may need some help here.”
“Damnit,” Saffron said. “I can’t take you in. You’re not wearing the collar.”
“Can’t you-” I said, and then let the words hang there. “Forget it.”
“I… I took you off the roster,” she said, embarrassed. “The police can’t search the Consulate without a warrant, but if someone saw you, if they get even a whiff, they can get one. If you were a vampire, I could actually give you asylum, but for human ser-uh, don’t take this the wrong way, Dakota, but for human servants, there’s negotiation involved. If the police come knocking, unless you’re already on the roster, I’d have to give you up.”
“And they will come knocking,” I said-I knew how this worked. “You’re my ex.”
Saffron was quiet a moment. “Look, Dakota. I can’t aid you. I’m a public official. I have to follow the law. It will raise a stink if it even sounds like I told someone to help a fugitive. And I think you should expect the police will be watching all of your friends too.”
“Damnit,” I said. I needed to go completely off the radar. “All right. Look… I should go.”
“All right, Dakota,” Saffron said. “Well, then… good luck.”
She hung up.
Quantum Magic
There was one more person to call: Jinx. I didn’t immediately get an answer, but then I realized I knew one person who was technically a mundane, but was as deeply involved in the Edgeworld as I was, if not more-and through him, I’d get access to Jinx for free.
“Doctor Zetetic!” Doug said happily into the phone. “ Guten morgen to you! Thanks for calling so early, I know it’s the crack ass of dawn in Berlin-”
“Doug?” I said slowly. Doctor Zetetic? It took me a moment, but then I got it: Zetetic was the original name of the Skeptical Inquirer . Doug was covering my identity. Of course the police would talk to him. One of my known associates. Great. “You know who this is?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said breezily. “Anyway, I did talk to Finkelstein about your problem, and it’s tied to the Bekenstein bound. Care to talk some loop quantum gravity?”
“Sure,” I said, even more slowly, “if you’re free to talk.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah,” he said. “What you’re dealing with is a quantitized bijection between disjoint manifolds-I’m sorry, am I bothering you guys? Sorry. Hold on a minute, Doc.”
“Sure,” I said, hearing voices, then some bumping around. The line got a little more quiet, and I asked, “Doug? You still there?”
“Yeah, Doc,” he said, voice tense-and he was still coding the conversation. “I’m going to take a walk outside. I was over at my fiancee’s, but the police are questioning her.”
Oh shit. They’d already gotten to my friends and family. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”
The line was silent for a moment. “I’m afraid it is,” he said grimly. “Remember she was attacked last year? Well, the police have reopened that case. It may be related to a rash of arsons that’s hitting the city. The last was a warehouse fire, easily killed twenty-five squatters.”
“God have mercy,” I said. “All those warehouses, with only one exit.”
“Yeah, it was pretty fucking horrific,” Doug said, his voice a bit shaken. “They’re making a huge deal of it. I expect they’ll interview anyone even remotely involved.”
Damnit, damnit, damnit! “Well, Doug… thanks for the heads up.”
“No problem,” Doug said. He sighed with relief. “OK, I think it’s safe to talk.”
“Thank God.” I filled him in on the details of last night’s attack, and Calaphase’s death-how we fell through the graffiti, how Calaphase fell into it-and how his blood was sucked out by what should have been marks on the pavement. “Please tell me you found answers.”
“Oddly enough, I cracked it helping Cinnamon with her homework, though the answer ultimately involved loop quantum gravity,” he said. “But it’s easier to think of it like… like a magic door that shows distorted images of both its source and target.”
“Doug, don’t patronize me,” I said. “I know what it’s like, but I need to know how this thing works to fight it. I dug into the literature, and there’s no such thing as a magic door outside of a fairy tale. We’re dealing with deeply hidden magic that’s never surfaced in the Edgeworld.”
“And I think I know why,” Doug said. “Have you heard of the Bekenstein bound?”
“Doug, I read Scientific American more than you do,” I said. “It’s something to do with the holographic universe, right? Somehow, deep down, we’re really two-dimensional?”
“Right. Deep down, you are your interface, ” he said. “In quantum mechanics, if a thing acts the exact same way as another thing, it is that thing. According to Bekenstein, you have no way of telling the ‘real me’ from a surface that absorbs and transmits the same particles.”
“So if you had a magic cave painting, there could be a whole world behind its surface,” I said. “ If you could paint it. But no one could paint a whole world down to its particles.”
“But they do in the movies, armies of Wookies on alien worlds,” Doug said. I started to protest, but he said, “In the computer, procedurally generated-simple rules that can be applied over and over again to populate a whole crowd and forest. But it takes millions of steps-”
“He can do that, and he doesn’t even need a computer,” I said, with a tingly ‘aha’ feeling. “He’s created graffiti that can draw itself-a self propagating intent, we’d call it.” I explained I’d seen it first with fire at the tagger’s playground, then at the Candlesticks.
“I strongly suspected that,” Doug said. “Lines of graphomancy that use mana to make more lines, one idea leading to another, a recursive pattern, unfolding forever, an infinite conceptual field. There’s no limit to how far magic can build on magic-”
“If you have the mana,” I said. “But he’d never get enough to create a whole world.”
“That’s where I’m going,” Doug said. “To link space, I think he’s using magic to create a ‘spin network.’ But a magic cave painting that held a whole world would take as much mana as creating a small universe. But if the cave painting mapped between two spaces-”
“If it was a gateway,” I said. “It’s a magical gateway.”
“Exactly,” Doug said. “If the painting is mapping points in one space to another, then there’s no need to create a whole world. All the geometry of the painting would need to do is create the map. That spin network could be atomically thin, magically thin.”
“That sounds like surface-to-surface link,” I said, “but Calaphase and I seemed to travel through an actual space, if a distorted funhouse version of one.”
“You can create arbitrary geometry with a spin network,” Doug said. “He could create a twisted little pocket space propped up by several tags. In fact, I’m guessing all the tags are connected together, like a network-and it will get stronger the more that are plugged in.”
“Jeez, Doug, that’s heavy grade magic,” I said. “How am I going to fight this shit? This guy is a Michelangelo of the genre. According to Drive, he could make his tags look like anything if he wanted to. Any reasonably sized tag could be one of his traps.”
“No,” Doug said. “You can fight it, because I can tell you what to look for. Jinx and I think the spin network will show up as some repeated pattern, like a grid or a spiral.”
“There is a spiral that’s like a grid,” I said. “There are coiling vines and barbed wire that showed up in almost every tag, looping tightly at the center to make a grid like a sunflower’s. It’s the vines, Doug, the spiral of vines. That’s your spin network.”
“Maybe,” Doug said. “I thought of that, but they don’t seem to cover the whole tag.”
“No, they don’t,” I said. Damnit. Every time I thought I had figured out how the tags worked, I ran into a brick wall. We thought it was graphomancy, quantum physics, whatever, but there were always missing pieces to the magic, like something… hidden beneath the surface.
And then it hit me. “He’s using multiple layers! I thought it was oil chalk, but Officer Horscht found an aerosol spray can. Spray painted graffiti isn’t like tattoos. It’s layers of paint.”
“I thought tattoos had layers too,” Doug said. “I’ve seen you go over designs-”
“To build up colors, but it all ends up as plaques of pigment in the dermis-a single layer that’s magically active. But we already know the graffiti doesn’t work that way.” I explained what Keif had explained to me about whitewashing the tags and using induction. “He can use several layers of paint to build up a pattern as complex as needed and we’d never see the whole of it-except the spiral of vines, which have to reach outside the canvas to pull someone in.”
“Right. And look for echoes. If it is a gateway, you’ll see echoes of your environment in the tag, and maybe distorted pictures of the target on the other end.”
“Like ghost images in a two-way mirror,” I said.
“It’s more like a television. The idea is simple, but the implementation is not,” Doug said. “There is too much physics involved. There is no way a backwoods graphomancer cooked this up on his or her own. None whatsoever.”
I was silent for a moment. “Like I said, maybe it’s hidden knowledge. Some ancient wizarding trick, developed in secret, hidden for centuries-”
“Maaaybe,” Doug said. “But I looked, Jinx looked, even you looked, and the three of us found bupkis. Now, maybe you’re up against an ancient cult of wizards, with magic beyond anything that I could find at the Harris School of Magic, or maybe some modern wizard with access to a physics lab. Or maybe, just maybe, it isn’t even human knowledge at all.”
“Not… human,” I said. “You mean like… vampire? Werewolf? Fae?”
“No,” Doug said. “The answer to your question combined thousands of years of magic and decades of study of the output of two-mile-long particle accelerators. I strongly, strongly doubt anyone just stumbled onto this on their own just dicking around. It would be like finding the design of a solid state laser in da Vinci’s notebooks, centuries before quantum theory.”
“Go back to the not human part,” I said. “If it’s not human knowledge… ”
“The graffiti links two spaces,” Doug said, “but the other side doesn’t have to be ours. ”
The Detective from Space
I spent the night in a box under a bridge halfway to Macon, Georgia. I had woven my way through the heart of Atlanta on surface streets, then risked exiting the Perimeter again on the highway, heading to Macon but intending to cut back towards Blood Rock.
The tingle as I went OTP was invigorating, but by the time I passed Stockbridge I was flagging. I turned off a few miles later, wound through smaller and smaller country roads until I found an industrial looking area with a small bridge running over a creek. I didn’t see any signs of trolls or other Edgeworld nasties, so I pushed the Vespa under the bridge, stole a box out of a nearby Dumpster, crept back under the bridge and into the box, and went to sleep.
Early, early the next morning, a truck running over the bridge woke me. I stretched, sore and cramped, and stood up. My neck hurt, my back hurt, and then both hurt more when I abruptly ducked down as I heard voices. After a moment the voices faded, and then I saw a couple of workmen walking down the road, turning in to the very place I’d stolen the box.
I leaned back against the bridge and took stock. I expected to feel sorry for myself, but I didn’t. Sleeping in a box had been cold and uncomfortable, but it had ended in a new day. Even the dingy, trash-strewn underbelly of the bridge was brightened by sun flickering off the burbling water. I saw a little scribble, near the abutment, stared at it curiously, and pegged it as a hobo sign-a graffiti precursor-that marked this place as a good rest stop. And it was indeed.
This too would pass, like the water slipping by in the stream.
“I can sleep in a box under a bridge,” I murmured to myself. “I can do anything.”
So my next step: get real help, and with all of my other contacts dry, that meant Arcturus. Of course, he didn’t answer, not after any number of rings, not after three calls. I don’t know why he even had a phone. And I certainly couldn’t call Zinaga.
I considered trying to slip in uninvited, but if my ‘banishment’ was real, the last thing I needed to do was show up at Arcturus’ door with a horde of vampires and vampire thugs on my heels. Heck, even if I did make it, the first thing Zinaga would do would be to sell me out.
Come to think of it, there was no guarantee Arcturus would receive me. Zinaga had tried to poison the well. What I really needed was something to get in his good graces. And for the man who eschews material goods… the best currency I could think of was a favor.
So I needed to get into Blood Rock… and to get on Arcturus’ good side.
There might be a way to do both at the same time. Two birds, one stone.
I thumbed backwards through my text messaging log. January, December, November-and then I found it. I swallowed. I was going to do this. My thumb hovered over the call button; but I wasn’t that brave. Instead, I texted… the vampire Transomnia: ‹‹Need to talk. Coming to Blood Rock. Be cool.››
There was no response. I wasn’t certain I’d get one. It had been months since he’d texted me after kidnapping Cinnamon, and he could have ditched that phone. Even then, he was an old-school vampire, probably asleep. I stared off into the distance, thinking.
Then the phone rang, and I nearly dropped it. I answered immediately. “Transomnia?”
“I don’t want to know why you’d think he’d be calling you,” Philip said coldly.
“Philip!” I said, brightening. After all the static he, McGough and Rand had given me, I hadn’t even thought of actually calling him. “Look, I didn’t know who else to turn to. I-”
“Dakota,” he said firmly. “I understand why you ran. I might even have done the same thing. But I can’t help you, except to tell youturn off your phone. We can track you by it.”
I hung on the phone, stunned. “Philip, you know I didn’t do it.”
“I know, and I know you’re probably working the problem right now, but you’re wanted for murder and arson. So hang up, and turn off your personal tracking and recording device,” Philip said. “You spent a hell of a long time on the phone last night-I’m surprised they didn’t pick you up already. If I could find you, it’s only a matter of time before someone else will.”
“But Philip-”
“Between Stockbridge and McDonough,” Philip said. “Under a bridge, it looks like.”
“Damnit!” I said, killing the call, then powering off the phone. Damnit, damnit, damnit! I knew cell phones were insecure, and had gone and been a fucking amateur anyway. Quickly I gathered my things and pushed the Vespa out into the street, started her up, and hit the road.
I puttered up State Road 20 until I got close to Conyers, then pulled off and got some food, again at a Waffle House, tucked just off the highway. I got directions to the nearest library from the waitress, and headed down there to try to get some Internet.
The library was larger than I’d expected, a two-story affair with large triangular roofs and a little gazebo-like structure near the entrance. I got an out-of-state visitor’s pass so I didn’t have to use my library card, fired up a computer, and started to figure out how to find Transomnia.
That’s right. That was the first stage of my brilliant plan: go straight up to the door of the bad guys and knock. The green-haired vampire, Transomnia’s apparent second in command-what was her name, Nyissa?-had snarked that I didn’t know where I was, but I hadn’t lied: there were only so many roads in Blood Rock.
And as for what house on what road? They’d held me in a big room, but not a warehouse: more like a furnished basement. That meant a multi-level house, possibly new, which in turn ruled out most of Blood Rock, which was primarily single-storied and falling apart.
They’d been threatened by my presence, which mean they were near Old Town. They also had the Sanctuary Stone, which means they had to be close to the Rock itself-if not right on top of it, nearby, on a ley line intersecting the Rock.
That left a lot to look for, but I had satellite and aerial imagery from MapQuest, Yahoo, Microsoft and even Google to help me out. So, feeling like a detective from space, I zoomed in on Blood Rock and started looking for Transomnia.
My real goal was ultimately Arcturus, but MapQuest showed there was no “back door” to Arcturus’ pad: just steep hills and deep creeks. I was no woodsman, nor did I want to get shot cutting through backwoods Georgia, much less find myself stumbling around in a ravine while vampires tracked me down.
At the front door, I was pretty sure that I’d be spotted by Steyn or his peons. In the short time I’d been in town last, I’d seen Steyn twice. And now, Steyn could do more than turn a blind eye to the vamps or run me out of town: he could turn me over to the APD.
So I had to approach the vampires directly, hands up. I looked for what felt like hours, and was about to give up when, absently closing a window I was done with, I saw it.
Inadvertently I’d created two windows with two different views of the same area, side by side. It was the top of Blood Rock hill proper, zoomed in on the new complex of houses that I’d seen on the map. The complex was half built in one set of pictures dating from a year ago, nearly complete in the other, six months later-with something that looked like a mansion or clubhouse off a narrow access road, not visible on any street map, but clear as day from the air, especially in the shots taken during construction.
I tilted my head, looking at the complex of roofs, barely visible in the trees. It felt right: new, multistoried, on the Rock itself. And then I pulled up the map of ley lines: the building was smack dab at the crossing of three of them, with the most powerful line going through the Rock itself.
“Gotcha,” I murmured.
I wrote down the address (and two or three other likely candidates) and closed up shop, much to the relief of a young college student waiting on the machine. I found a nearby Chic-Fil-A, gratefully chowed down, then hopped back on the Vespa and headed to Blood Rock.
It was nearly dark by the time I found my way through the winding roads to Blood Rock. Once again I felt a tingle as I passed the boundary… and then, a slowly growing headache, just like when Nyissa had banished me. I’d looked into the magic: it wasn’t enough to hurt me, but, like Nyissa had said, if the vamps still had the Sanctuary Stone, they’d know I was here.
But I didn’t let that stop me. I just drove to the new subdivision atop the Rock, where I found my path barred by a simple, unmarked gate with an equally simple buzzer and camera. I stopped a few feet short, nerving myself to drive up and press that buzzer.
Before I did, a car passed me on its way to the gate. A hand reached out and pressed the button. Moments later, the gate slowly slid back. I debated tailgating. Transomnia’s guards might take that as a threat, but the point of driving all the way to their door was to force an audience. On the other hand, I might have guessed wrong and could be tailgating a man into his home.
And then the man in the car looked back at me: not a vampire, not a thug, just a pleasant good-old-boy Georgia businessman in a black suit. He didn’t have the hard look people get when strange women on motorcycles are sitting outside their driveway waiting for them to come home. In fact, he actually smiled, staring at me, curious, then started to turn forward.
“Hey, bud,” I called. “I’m a bit lost, and I’m wondering if I’m at the right place.”
“All right, let’s see if we can straighten you out,” the man said, in such a classic Georgia accent I imagined ‘Bud’ was probably his real name. “Looking for Stone Rose Sanctuary?”
My eyes widened. Good Lord, the vampires were brazen: the seals on the Sanctuary Stone were roses. They certainly weren’t trying to hide. “That… sounds like it.”
“Applying for a job?” Bud said, looking me up and down. “Or are you a client?”
My mouth opened. I had no way to translate what he was saying into something I understood. Finally I managed, “Looking up a friend who works here. And you?”
“Oh! I’m not, you know, staying at the, ah, inn,” Bud said. His face reddened a bit, then split into a wide grin. “Just here for the food. Great restaurant. Follow me in.”
He rolled the car forward, and I started the Vespa up and followed.
As I rode through, the gate squealed shut behind me. So this was it: I was heading through creaking iron gates towards a mysterious chalet nestled deep in the woods. My Vespa would be taken away by mysterious valets just as the sun would set, trapping me to dine under candlelight under the watchful eyes of predatory vampires, served by black-garbed waiters trained not to notice when their masters started noshing on you instead.
Or not to notice when Transomnia had me dragged out and shot.
Either way, I was committed. I was going to ask for help from my worst enemy.