No reaction. She dropped her hand, looked at them, and shrugged. “I’ll make some tea. You can talk to him. He might hear you.” Miss Stillwater left the room, plodding like there were weights hanging around her neck.

  “Poor woman,” Abel murmured when she departed, but Seth was already kneeling in front of the professor, looking into his face. Abel joined him. Stillwater had been shaved, and his hair was combed, but his eyes were like empty windows.

  Seth snapped his fingers in front of the man’s face. “Stillwater? We need to talk to you. If you’re still in there…” He stood up, fists clenched at his sides, shaking his head from side to side. “This is no good. This violates the will of Asterias.”

  “We should leave,” Abel said. “We’ll find another way. Miss?” He called down the hall. “We won’t trouble you any further. Thank you for letting us stop by.” He grabbed Seth’s hand and dragged him out of the house. “We’ll ask around,” Abel said as they returned to the car. “Maybe Stillwater had an assistant, or–”

  Seth stopped. “We’ll just take his finger.”

  Abel looked at him, frowning. “What?”

  Seth gestured at Abel’s chest. “We’ll put the amulet around the old man, chop off his finger, and grow a comet. The comet will have perfect recall, with all the professor’s memories, so he’ll be able to tell us–”

  Abel recoiled from his twin. “Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t cut off a sick old man’s finger, that’s – it’s a crime. It’s monstrous.”

  “He won’t even notice, he’s so far gone, and even if he did suffer, what does it matter? This is the will of Asterias!” Seth’s eyes shone.

  “And do you think Miss Stillwater would sit patiently while we fill her bathtub with brine and chop off bits of her father? The ritual requires fresh blood to work, so we can’t wrap up his body parts to go.”

  “We could… sneak back in, grab the old man, bring him home to the farmhouse, do it there…” Seth trailed off, but the wheels were clearly turning in his mind.

  “No,” Abel said firmly. “I forbid it. Do you hear me, Seth? I am the chosen one, the prophet of Asterias, I bear the amulet, and I forbid this. We will find another way.”

  Seth wrinkled his brow, looked like he was about to argue, and then slumped. “I… yes, brother. Of course. You guide us. I’m sorry. We’re just… we’re so close.”

  “Let’s go home,” Abel said. “We’ve found all we can in Arkham.”

  So they did.

  •••

  “That’s when things turned, that moment outside Stillwater’s house,” Abel said. “I just didn’t realize it right away.”

  “What do you mean?” Diana asked.

  Ruby had a pretty good idea. “Seth went through with his plan anyway, didn’t he?”

  Abel nodded. “I woke up at home the next morning tied to the bed. There’s a lot of rope in a fisherman’s house, and Seth was better at knots than me, since he remembered every one he’d ever seen tied. He was standing over me, holding the amulet, the string looped around his fingers. He didn’t want to wear it – I think he was afraid to. But he said, ‘I’m going to need help,’ and put the string over his neck. The amulet touched his chest, and he sort of shivered, all over, and his eyes closed. I was yelling this whole time, telling him to let me go, but he ignored me. He got my knife and cut off his pinky finger right there, using the top of the dresser for a chopping block. Then he went away, and came back with his finger bandaged up, the amulet in his other hand, and sat by the bed. ‘This is how it has to be, Abel,’ he said. ‘Nothing matters but the resurrection of our god. I know this part is too hard for you – you’re too human to do what’s necessary. I will take this burden from you, because I love you’.”

  “If that’s love, you’re lucky he didn’t hate you,” Ruby said.

  “He did love me, though.” Abel sounded sorrowful. “He just loved Asterias more.” Abel told them how Seth fed him soup and responded calmly whenever Abel raged and made demands. How Abel fell into a fitful sleep. How when he woke up the next morning, there were two comets standing over him, both wearing his clothes.

  “I could recognize the new one immediately, and not just because he had all his fingers. He was just… wrong, in ways I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The way his eyes lined up, or didn’t, quite. How sharp his teeth looked. These deep lines on his face that didn’t match mine and Seth’s. His fingers looked too long, and he moved in a sort of eely way, like he was slithering through the water even when he was walking around on dry land.”

  “I think when you make a copy of a copy, things start to go wrong,” Ruby said. “I saw that with the Berglunds. Some of the doubles were a little… off.”

  Abel nodded. “Seth said, ‘I think we’ll name our new brother Enos’, after the son of Seth in the Bible, you know, but the new comet said, ‘I will choose my own name when the time comes. May I wear the amulet, brother?’ Seth tightened his grip on the amulet and said, ‘I think I’ll hold onto it’. Then he leaned over and patted me on the cheek and said, ‘We’ll be back with the professor, don’t you worry’. I shouted at them, told them not to do it, that they’d better not hurt that old man or his daughter…” He shook his head. “They just left. But the new comet, he looked at me before he left, a long look, and then he licked his lips, and I swear, his tongue was black.”

  “Did they get the professor?” Ruby said.

  “I remember this,” Diana broke in. “I didn’t remember the name, Stillwater, but I heard about this a while back. There was a break-in, a murder, and a man disappeared. That was your comets?”

  Abel nodded. “I don’t know exactly what happened. They never gave me details. But Miss Stillwater must have gotten in their way, and they killed her. Seth was upset about that, at least. I think the other one, the new comet, did the actual killing. He doesn’t mind killing much. People don’t matter to him at all. Only Asterias does. But after Miss Stillwater was dead, they bundled the old man away and brought him to the house and put him in the bed – they moved me to a chair, tied me there sitting up, which was a change, at least. They put the amulet on the professor, and chopped off his finger.” Abel put his head in his hands, and his shoulders shook. His voice came out muffled and weak.

  “He screamed when they did it. He wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t feel pain. He didn’t live long, after that. You have to be alive, I think, for your comet to grow, and he lasted that long, but then his heart gave out, or something. “

  “But you got a comet of Professor Stillwater out of it?” Ruby said. “One with his mind intact?”

  “We did,” Abel said. “And, heavens help me, once the whole mess was done, and the old man buried in the basement… I told Seth and the new comet that I didn’t approve of their methods, but I still believed in the mission, and since they’d already done what they’d done I wanted to be part of things again. They believed me.” He looked up, and his eyes were haunted. “I wasn’t even lying. I did want to see things through. Seth untied me, and gave me the amulet back, but the new comet, he was watching me. He didn’t trust me.”

  “The old man,” Ruby said. “Professor Double. What did he have to say?”

  “He sobbed, mostly, so it was hard to get anything useful out of him at first. He was bereft, you see, because he was now devoted to Asterias, and he’d actually seen a piece of our dead god. He’d held the jar in his hands. If he’d known what it was, he could have achieved the resurrection all those years ago. The knowledge that he’d failed to save his new god… it almost broke him. But he did finally tell us where we could find the man from Innsmouth. His house was just a few hours’ drive away. So the next day we set out, and took our new Stillwater with us, even though he was practically hysterical, because the man we were looking for – his name was Lambton – knew the professor already. We thought seeing a familiar face would help us get in the door easier.”

  “Did it?” Diana asked.

  “There was no door. It was torn off the hinges. The windows were broken, and the whole house was empty, except for dust. After we had a good long look, Seth drove into what passed for town and asked around – he made like he was interested in buying the property. Seth was always so good at that sort of thing, talking to people. A gift from our god, I guess.”

  Ruby noted the past tense but said nothing. Abel would get to that in time, she supposed, but it seemed like a safe bet that Seth was gone, and probably not from natural causes.

  Abel went on. “We found a local busybody sitting on the porch at the general store who was happy to gossip. It turned out Lambton had died years before – killed, actually, a grisly unsolved murder. Seth blew right past that and asked what happened to all Lambton’s furniture and things – said he was interested in antiques, that kind of nonsense. The busybody told him, quote, ‘a fella came up from the city and bought all his books and things at the estate auction, and took it all away in a truck’. A little more questioning, and it turned out the city in question wasn’t Boston, but Arkham, and we got a description of the buyer–”

  “A small man,” Diana said. “Older gentleman, but still hale. Silver hair. Neat beard. Dapper dresser.”

  “Carl Sanford,” Ruby said.

  “That’s how it turned out,” Abel said. “Though getting the name wasn’t that quick for us – we spent two days in that county, with Seth sweet-talking himself into a records office and finding a receipt from the estate sale. It didn’t say ‘Carl Sanford’ on it, either, it was something like ‘Silver Imports Ltd’, I forget the exact name, and then we had to do more research. But, yes, eventually, we figured out Carl Sanford bought up everything. Including, we assumed, the jar holding the piece of Asterias. We didn’t know who Carl Sanford was at the time, apart from a prominent citizen of Arkham. So we decided to return here, and do more research, and find a way to take back our god.” He sighed. “That was two months ago.”

  “How did you end up on the outs with your brothers?” Ruby wanted to know what had converted Abel from reluctant cult leader to out-and-out adversary, but before he could answer, there was a pounding at the door downstairs.

  Diana startled, then rose and looked out the window, down into the alley. When she turned back to them, her eyes were wide, and her face was pale. “It’s Carl Sanford.”

  “This is what you need to tell him,” Ruby said instantly.

  Book Two

  The Magus

  Chapter Twelve

  The Magus

  After rather longer than should have been necessary, Diana opened the door to the back of her shop. She looked a little flustered, which was appropriate. When the head of your order showed up with a pair of large men – Brothers of the Night both – flanking him, it should make you flustered. Perhaps she’d needed extra time to get dressed for visitors. That could explain the delay. But so could other things.

  “Hello, Diana,” Sanford said. “I had my assistant call you, but there was no answer. I was hoping you’d get in touch after visiting the Berglunds. I was worried something might have happened to you.” That wasn’t precisely true. Sanford didn’t worry about many things. But he was curious. “I am glad to see you appear unharmed. Perhaps you have a few moments to talk to me now?”

  “I… yes, of course.” She straightened, putting the steel back in her spine, and that pleased him. Diana had the potential to be a useful tool.

  Sanford looked left, and then right. Sunday night in the Merchants was quiet indeed, and a cool fog was creeping in from the river, muffling the world further. “Did you want us to talk here in the street?”

  She blinked, then laughed. “Of course not. I’m sorry. We can talk in my office.”

  “My associates will wait here.” Sanford trusted the two of them as much as he trusted anyone… but that didn’t mean much, especially lately. Diana was an exception. He did trust her – or at least, her self-interest, her ambition, and her desire to rise in the Arkham social scene. She also wasn’t important enough to the Lodge to be worth coopting, if, indeed, people were being coopted.

  Sanford didn’t have time for this sort of distraction. He had a meeting tomorrow at the Independence Hotel with an out-of-towner, pursuing a deal he’d been working on for months, and this was a terrible time for a disruption. But the world never much cared for anyone’s convenience, did it? If strange things were afoot in his city, he needed to know.

  He followed Diana into the back room of her shop, which he inventoried with a glance – fine fabrics and the various tools required for alterations, nothing of interest to him – and then into the small office at the back. She sat behind a desk, and gestured to a chair on the other side. Sanford sat down in it, amused. Usually he was the one sitting behind the desk, and a rather more impressive desk at that, but she was clearly striving for a sense of control. She hadn’t invited him up to her apartment. That was not surprising. She was not comfortable around him – that showed intelligence – and allowing him into the place where she ate and slept would feel too intimate. He could have suggested they move upstairs, to assert his own power, but that would be petty. He had real power, and thus, there was no need to make a great show of it.

  “May I offer you anything to drink?” Diana said. “Water, tea, or I keep champagne on hand for my customers.”

  He shook his head, once, a simple negation. “I just want to know what happened when you visited the Berglunds.”

  Diana closed her eyes, clearly preparing herself. “I am… still trying to figure out what happened.”

  “Simply tell me your experiences. I will assist with any necessary interpretation.”

  She wrung her hands, then stilled herself. She looked directly into Sanford’s eyes when she spoke. Interesting. That was something liars did, because they thought it made them seem honest and forthright. It was also something nervous people did to hide their nerves, though.

  Many people believed that Sanford had the ability to see into their minds, to tell truth from lies and divine hidden motives. In fact, he was simply a sharp observer and an astute listener, and hardly needed recourse to the supernatural to figure out whether people were lying or scheming. For one thing, almost everyone was lying and scheming. He listened to Diana with interest and growing alarm.

  “I went to see the Berglunds, and something was clearly wrong. Cornelia was upstairs, moaning, in some kind of distress, and wouldn’t come down. Cornelius said it was just a migraine, but…” Diana shook her head. “There were drops of blood on the floor in the kitchen. Cornelius had a bandaged hand from some kind of wound. I got the sense there were other people in the house, too – I could hear thumping, and people moving around. Something strange was going on.”

  “Do you have any idea what?” he asked.

  She hugged herself, shivering a little. “Cornelia called down from upstairs, and Cornelius went up to check on her, so I took the opportunity to look around a little. There was blood by the basement door, so I went down, and… and… Master, it doesn’t make any sense.”

  This was interesting. He leaned forward. “Tell me what you saw.”

  “I saw… it’s not possible, but under the stairs, wrapped in a tarp, I saw… Cornelia and Cornelius. They were dead. But they couldn’t be, because I just saw him upstairs, and I heard her, I know her voice.” She hunched further into herself, and when she went on, her voice was small. “That’s why I didn’t come to you. I fled the house. I came back here. I’ve been going over and over it in my mind, trying to understand, debating whether to call the sheriff. I’ve seen… things… helping out with your projects at the Lodge, so I know there is more to the world than I was taught, but something like this? Master, what’s going on?”

  “I truly don’t know.” Sanford was so troubled by the presence of unknown supernatural entities here, in his city, that the truth slipped out. “I’ve never heard of anything quite like this before. There are illusions, used to hide your identity, but who is doing the hiding? Or perhaps they’re shapeshifters of some kind, pretending to be other people – there are stories about those. But such creatures are usually solitary, and it sounds as if Cornelia and Cornelius were both replaced, and I have reason to believe others have been, too… and why target the Berglunds anyway? I thought there might be a conspiracy to infiltrate the Lodge, but they aren’t even members. One hates to speak ill of the dead, but Cornelius was a blowhard and Cornelia was a fool, and they don’t offer anything of particular value to the sort of people or creatures who could manage such a convincing imposture.” Sanford leaned back, steepling his fingers under his nose. “This is very curious, Diana. Did you see anything else at their house? Strange books? Unusual objects?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did this ersatz Cornelius say anything that might shed light on their motives or their nature?”

  “No, I… wait.” She tapped her forefinger against her pursed lips. “I… they were upstairs, talking, so I couldn’t hear well, but they said something about a person named… Cain? ‘Tell Cain he has to help us’, something like that?” Diana shrugged. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can recall.”

  Cain. The name meant nothing to Sanford, but it was a place to start. He rose. “Diana, I wish you’d come to see me immediately, but I understand you were distressed, so I will not hold it against you. In the future, however, do not hesitate to report to me directly. You are a member of my Lodge, and as such, you are under my care, and I will protect you.” As long as doing so protected him too.

  “What should I do now, master?” she asked, rising.

  “Nothing for the moment. I may call upon you later with another task, once I gather further information. In the meantime, you should remain attentive, and report any strange behavior by Lodge members and other citizens to me immediately.”

  Diana nodded, and led him to the door, where his Brothers of the Night were waiting, watching the foggy night. “Have a pleasant evening, Miss Stanfield,” Sanford said. She wished him the same – little chance of that, sadly – and shut the door.