Choe’s spell was perfect. It’s a big claim, but the spell really was almost flawless. There are scholars of magic today who still argue there has never been a more well-put-together and reliable incantation. As tricky and unpredictable as magic is, it’s rare to find one that fulfils the exact purpose of its design on the first cast.
Choe lived for about sixty years before he held his seminar. The attendants were diverse and came from just about every corner of the globe. In addition to the government bureaucrats and their sons, some attendees were millionaires who had bought one of the few tickets he had auctioned off over the early internet. Though most were wizards that Choe had met over his long lifetime who had collected enough favours from him to cash them in for a seat in the hotel ballroom.
He spent the first day talking them through the thought processes that had informed the creation of the spell. He spoke about the different magical traditions that had influenced him and how he had incorporated them into that fateful incantation.
On the second day, he explained the incantation itself. How to perform the chant, and which languages should be used or avoided, and which materials needed to be burned in the brazier during the process.
The third day was a workshop. Everyone had their own brazier and pile of ingredients, and the plan was to go from station to station helping each attendee prepare the spell and then guide them through the casting process. It worked. Once.
Because the spell is only almost flawless, and the flaw is that the spell works once. Once you cast it, you are guaranteed to live forever, or until someone else casts it, whichever comes first.
Choe died the instant his first student finished casting their spell, and that student died a few minutes later. Choe’s Immortality, it seemed, was a container with space for one resident and a very strict first-in-first-out occupancy rule.
To say ‘pandemonium erupted’ once the conference attendees figured out what was happening would be an understatement. Nobody’s quite sure of the exact sequence of events, but the hotel burned down.
Sam and I drove back to the beach that afternoon. Well, Sam drove while I scanned Kathy Quinn’s address book for mentions of someone called Graham James or anything similar.
“Here’s a J.G.?” I said.
“James Graham? Another alias?” Sam asked, looking at the notebook.
“Maybe…” I said before spotting another entry with the same phone number over the page, but with the name ‘Jenny’. “False alarm”.
“What’s the motive?” Sam asked. “Someone from the Seoul conference you told me about? Someone trying to eliminate anyone else with knowledge of the spell?”
I thought about it. “Doesn’t really make sense. Why wait a year and a half? And why pay her two hundred grand and then pay Feeny to kill her later?”
“So what’s the motive? I can hear a theory in your voice.”
“I think she was selling it. The spell is perfect, but you can only count on it if you’re the only person who knows it. Kathy starts selling the formula for two hundred thousand a pop, and one of her customers realises the value of his purchase is going down each time she does, so hires Feeny.”
“Makes sense,” she said. We sat in silence for a while after that, the only sounds being the wheels turning on the road and in our heads.
“There has to be a list,” I said eventually.
“I was about to say the same thing!” Sam said. “If you were at the conference, you’d want a complete list of everyone who survived and who knows the spell. Stick them on a big pinboard and cross them off whenever one of them dies.”
“And once they’re all dead-”
“Or you’re ninety years old and have nothing to lose-”
“Right, right. If you cast it at ninety and then someone else casts it two years later, you’ve still got youth and perfect health for the last two years of your life. Totally worth it.”
“So someone - probably all of them - has a list of everyone who knows the spell. Can you reach out? See if anyone else died violently around the same time? This Graham James chap might have killed more than Kathy.”
“Fuck,” I said.
“What?”
“I should have done that fucking ages ago.”
“Well, hindsight is twenty something.”
“Oh, speaking of spellcasting. I heard the word you didn’t say to Feeny!”
“What?” she said, not taking her eyes off the road ahead.
“When he asked if you cast. You said ‘no’, but you very audibly stopped before you said ‘not yet’. I heard it.”
“Oh, thaaat,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Well, stop.”
“Excuse me?” She glared at me.
“Seriously. You know how many spellcasters kill themselves with their first spell? It’s not a small percentage.”
“Cormac said he’d help me with it, if I have any talent.”
“I’ll have to speak to Cormac about that.”
“No you fucking won’t,” she said. “You’re not my boss. You can’t show me the door to a whole new world and then say I can’t come in.”
“It’s a chaotic and dangerous world. You know what a HVAC pump is?”
She thought for a moment. “You mean one of those air conditioning machines that sit on the roof of buildings?”
“That’s them. You ever have to clean human remains out of one with a wire brush? Because I have, and it was because some idiot thought he could turn himself into mist and sneak into a jewellery shop.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“I’m sorry. I know that. I trust you. I do. I just don’t trust magic.”
“So do you want me mucking about with it at home, unsupervised? Or learning from Cormac?”
I muttered something unintelligible.
“I thought so,” she said.
“Is that why you came down this weekend?” I asked. “To meet other wizards?”
Her voice took on an exaggeratedly offended tone as she said, “I am shocked, shocked, to think you would question my motives.”
“Well, at least get Caroline and Jim’s number,” I said. “They’ve been using magic a lot longer than Cormac, and a lot more responsibly.”
“Done,” she said. “Does this mean I can help with the incursion?”
“No, it absolutely does not. And if you even think about coming near it tonight, I’ll-” I stopped and sat bolt upright. “Fuck.”
“What?” she said, looking at me.
“Can you drive faster?” I asked with a grin on my face. I pulled out my phone and dialled Cormac.
“You hate it when I drive fast,” she said.
“I will enjoy it this one time,” I lied as the car accelerated and I felt my stomach fall behind.
Cormac’s phone stopped ringing and I heard him answer, “Yhellow?”
“Cormac, stop everything and get to your uncle’s boat. I think I know how to close the incursion.”
I heard him begin to move on the other end.
“Tell him I know that he’s still smuggling fae stones. But it’ll all be forgiven if he lets us use them to plug the sinkhole.”
“OK,” said Cormac. “But fae stones need to be imbued with a spell. You have one in mind? It can’t be too powerful if you don’t want the stones to interfere with each other.”
“There’s a rune carved onto every brick in Twomey house. How hard would it be to replicate it?”
“That’s not a spell. That’s a nullification charm. It absorbs energy.”
“Either way, would it work?”
“I’d have to figure out how the rune works…”
“Ask Jim. He came up with the damn thing. We’ll be there in an hour-”
“Forty minutes!” corrected Sam.
“We’ll be there in forty minutes. Get everyone on it.”
Thirty-five minutes later, as we pulled up beside the beach, I looked around but could see nobody in sight.
“It’s very quiet,” said Sam.
I got out of the car, took a moment to steady my legs, and looked around. “Either the sinkhole ate everybody up, or they’re all in the van.”
“Or the boat,” said Sam, pointing.
I looked to see McGinnis standing on the deck of Ronnie Watts' boat, waving excitedly at us. “They must be moving the fae stones. C’mon. You can watch some spellcasters spellcasting.”
We ran down the jetty to meet McGinnis and Cormac, who had emerged from below decks, wiping his hands on a towel.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“You know, you sometimes have good ideas,” he said. “We’re enchanting the fae stones now.”
“Here?”
“They get finicky if you enchant one and then move it and we don’t want to spellcast inside the incursion. But we can enchant them here and then sail the boat in. Once the tide’s a bit higher, we can beach her right on the epicentre. “
“Any ETA on when the boat will be ready to move?”
“A few hours. Each time we enchant a stone, it emits a field that makes it harder to enchant its neighbours. But we’re persevering.”
“Want to go down and spectate?” I asked Sam.
Cormac looked from me to her and back again with a raised eyebrow. “You told him?”
“I did,” she said.
“How’d he take it?” He asked.
“I owe you a fiver,” she told him. They both laughed.
“Oh, you know any wizards called Graham James?” I asked Cormac, as we went below. “Would have been active in the community about thirty years ago.”
“Never heard the name, but it was a bit before my time. I can ask around.`
Below deck, each of the small crates containing a fae stone had been opened and placed about the cramped space with the stones nestled in hay and shredded newspaper. The folk from the beach were similarly scattered about, focusing on the stones with hands outstretched. Weber was chanting towards a stone at the prow while Buckley watched. Oakwood was towards the not-prow end, kneeling with arms outstretched, fingers brushing two different stones.
Murtagh was supervising with his usual curt attitude. He nodded when he saw me. “Almost done here. We just need to decide who’s piloting the boat in.”
“Has anyone volunteered?”
“Not yet,” said Murtagh. “Should be someone from the department.”
“True,” said Cormac. “Someone who won’t get affected by strange magicks flying around.”
“Someone who’s maybe walked into an Incursion before?”
“Good idea,” said Cormac. “Anyone you can think of who fits the bill, Vic?”
I sighed. “Just show me how to steer the damn thing.”
When the enchanting was done, we ushered everyone off the boat and up onto the road above the beach. Containment surrounded the sinkhole on the beach itself while Cormac and McGinnis waited by the foot of the jetty.
I powered up the boat engine and then undocked before returning to the wheel. The helm? The boat bobbed a few times as it floated away from the pier. I increased the throttle and jiggled the wheel a couple of times to get a feel for it before turning towards the beach.
The tide was not yet fully in, but water was pouring forwards onto the beach anyway. A maelstrom had formed at the water’s edge, where the water was churned into a boiling white froth.
“Fuck, fuckity fuck,” I said to the sea air and pushed the throttle lever all the way forward. The boat dipped alarmingly forward in response but then recovered and sped towards the sand.
Just before I hit the shore, I pulled back on the throttle, but the boat did not slow down. Momentum and the inward pull of the water hurtled it onwards. On the beach, I could see Containment scrambling to and fro in panic, but I couldn’t focus on them as the spiralling current was dragging the boat to the left, away from the epicentre.
I maxed out the throttle again and spun the wheel all the way to the right, trying to steer the small boat to the centre of the whirlpool.
I felt a jolt as the boat beached itself suddenly. I peered over the side to see the bottom of the boat stuck fast in the sand under the shallow water. But, even as I watched, the sand began flowing with the water, dragging everything forwards. The front of the boat dipped suddenly and I saw a rivulet of sand flow over it, like a snake slithering from one side to the other. Another appeared, this one thicker and slower-moving. As it moved over the boat, I heard a worrying creak.
The entire boat was tilted forward now and I saw the nose disappear completely into the sand. More rivulets of sand appeared and slither over the deck, like fingers grasping.
With a heaving crack sound, the boat flipped entirely vertical, and I was flung forwards. I landed in shallow salt water. The sand below was barely less of a liquid and pulled me downwards and back as it flowed into the centre of the whirling sucking sinkhole.
I managed to get my head above water and gulped a mouthful of air before I was pulled down again. The suction crashed me against the boat as it pulled me down and one of those metal rope-clip things dragged along my back.
The light vanished and the water turned ice-cold. Colder than ice. This was a cold that seeped in through my trollskin and started leaching the warmth from my being, like something trying to freeze me solid from the inside out.
I reached around me and my fingertips brushed against the side of the boat before it or I was whirled away in the tumult. I could feel nothing around me but the crushing pressure of the sand and the freezing water. My ears were full of the sound of pounding surf, and it merged with the sound of the heartbeat in my ears until I couldn’t tell one from the other.
Then I felt increased pressure in several places on my back and one piercing impact on my chest, as if I was being held by a giant hand. The piercing pain increased like a spike being driven into my heart. The agony was like nothing I had ever felt before, mounting higher and higher before a splintering cracking sound that could only have been made by the boat imploding under tremendous strain filled the world. A wave of pressure ran over me, and when it was gone; so was the feeling of being held, though the pain in my chest remained. The last thing I noticed before losing consciousness was that the icy chill of the water was receding.
“Vic!” said a voice.
“Keep digging!” said another.
I heard the repeated dull impact of shovels in wet sand around me and noticed I could see again. There was not a lot to see, just light filtered through sandy muddy water, but it was something. There was more digging and I felt hands grab my arm, which I realised was extended above my head. There was more digging and then hands grabbed mine again, and pulled. This time, the pulling had an effect and I felt myself sliding upwards out of the sand.
My head broke the surface of the water and I gulped in fresh air for what felt like the first time in a day. My eyes were completely crusted over with sand, but I heard familiar voices.
“Is he alive?” Symonenko asked.
“I think so,” I said, then added, “I hope so.”
“Oh good,” she said. “Can we use the door again now? I have been in the same socks for three days.”
I wiped my eyes to clear them, but it only seemed to make things worse. I blinked a lot instead, until I could see my hands. They were completely encrusted with sand. I tried to stand, fell over, and tried again. This time it worked. Sand covered every square inch of me. I scanned the surroundings. I stood in ankle-deep water in the centre of a wide and shallow depression in the beach. The only sign of the boat was a few pieces of shattered wood bobbing in the tide.
Containment surrounded me, while everyone else stood in a wide semi-circle outside the marked-off area. Sam pushed the tape in, only holding her place due to Cormac beside her with one hand on her elbow.
“Is the sinkhole dead?” I asked.
Murtagh shrugged in one of those ‘you tell me’ gestures.
I did a double-take. “Did you run in to dig me out without- Jesus.”
He turned away and moved to where McGinnis was spying on the beach through Patrick Weber’s eyeglass. I went to follow before the pain in my chest returned. At least, it started there before flaring throughout my entire body. I bent and took two handfuls of seawater to wash the sand off my chest. My shirt was intact, so I removed it to see a curved scar I never had before. It was about eight inches long and ran across my sternum in a lopsided arc. Sand stuck to my skin everywhere but the scar. I lifted seawater to it a few more times. My skin had no shortage of scars, but this one was now the largest, and somehow seemed older than the rest.
Footsteps splashed behind me and I turned to see Sam slowing to a halt.
“Looks like you did it,” she said quietly. “They’re saying the sinkhole is closed.”
I grabbed another handful of surf and wiped some of the sand off my face.
“I thought you were dead,” she said. “Second time in two months, though this time I saw it happen.”
“I don’t normally get pulled into other dimensions,” I said. “Believe me, this has been an unusual few months.” I knelt down in the shallow water and used it to clean my hands and forearms. About twenty seconds of scrubbing told me it was a lost cause. “I’m going to need a proper shower. I’ll be picking sand out of my nooks and crannies for weeks.”
“You seem very calm for someone who just fought off a giant sand monster.”
I looked up at her, quizzically.
“We all saw the hand. It reached up and dragged the boat down like a bath-time toy.”
“This is the job,” I said. And though I knew it was a mistake, I added, “This is the world you want to be part of.”
She kicked a spray of water at me. “I’ll let you off with that one because you just fought off C'thulhu or whatever.”
I stood again. “Let’s talk to these people before they disperse.”
Containment gathered everyone along the grass verge between the beach and the road. I stood on a bench to get everyone’s attention and motioned for silence.
“I just wanted to thank everyone here for coming along,” I said. “Those stone enchants might just have saved the world, or at least this little corner of it.”
There was a smattering of applause from people who stopped when they realised they were giving themselves a clap.
I continued, “But before I let you all go, there’s been a matter I’ve been looking into for the last few days that I feel this group should be able to help with. Does anyone know of a practitioner by the name of Graham James? Would have been around the place in the 90s?”
Sam handed me my phone as I watched the reactions of the assembled crowd. Of the dozen of them, a few took on confused looks as if the name was familiar.
“I got the name from an incarcerated prisoner today at Twomey House. As I was leaving, I asked Lieutenant Kinneson to text me a list of the numbers of any calls made from the inmate’s wing in the hours afterwards. I doubt the person we were talking to was dumb enough to call his accomplice directly, but he might have had another prisoner do it. There were only four calls today so this won’t take long. I’ll just need you all to stay here for now and, Murtagh, let me know if anyone silences their phones.”
Murtagh nodded and gestured to the rest of Containment to spread out in a watchful line.
I rang the first number. I must have looked some sight, standing on a bench in just a pair of jeans, with a phone pressed to my ear, listening to it ring at the other end.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice answered.
“Sorry, wrong number,” I said and hung up.
I tried the second number. It didn’t ring for long before a voice answered with the name of a legal firm.
The third number rang once before its sound was echoed by a ringing sound from the pocket of Darren Oakwood, of the ponytail and the tricky boat dock.
I jumped down off the bench and made my way towards him. The crowd parted before me.
“Graham James?”
“What? Me?” he asked. “No.”
“Who called you from Twomey House today?” I asked.
“I have no idea. It was a missed call and they didn’t leave a voicemail. I assumed it was spam. I’m not even old enough to be whoever you asked about; I was a kid in the 90s.”
“The person we’re looking for has Choe’s spell. He’d be a lot older, but look to be in his twenties.”
Oakwood smiled a wry smile. “I’m just here to help close a portal and meet up with old friends. But you have my number now. You can call me if you have any questions. Am I free to go?”
I looked at the faces around me. Everyone was staring, though Murtagh nodded almost imperceptibly in a way that made it clear he’d back whatever decision I made.
“You can go,” I said to Oakwood eventually. “But don’t worry. I have your number.”
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