The warden nodded, a sour look on her face.

  “You know she is his creature!” Sanford had to restrain himself from shouting. “How could you betray the Order this way?”

  “I have done nothing to betray the Order.” Her voice was ferocious and certain. She crossed her arms and fixed him with her steeliest gaze, but Sanford refused to be intimidated by an underling, not even the warden. “I am guarding the Lodge right now, as always.”

  “You have betrayed me by consorting with my enemies.” He wanted to kick over the table, and though he resisted that urge, he couldn’t help himself raising his voice. “And I am the Order, warden!”

  “I know that you believe that,” Van Shaw said calmly. “You might wish to berate me more quietly, master, lest you draw unwanted attention to yourself.”

  The impudence! The temerity! “What did Dyer give you?” Sanford said. “What bauble did Tillinghast use to enchant you? Tell me! As long as I am head of the Lodge you will obey me.”

  “As long as you are, I will,” she murmured. The warden reached into the neck of her dress and drew out a pendant with a little silver charm dangling from the end.

  Sanford reached across the table, lighting quick, and yanked the chain off her throat. Van Shaw gasped, wailed, and then vanished, without so much as a puff of smoke. Her dress collapsed, empty, and her hat landed upside down on the table, the feather crushed beneath. The silver thread vanished into the wall, like a line being reeled in.

  Sanford hadn’t expected a result that dramatic, and he looked around to make sure no one else had witnessed the disappearance. Fortunately, the bartender was busy with a customer at the far end of the room, and there were no other patrons nearby.

  He looked at the charm in his hand. It was the symbol for Gemini, the twins. That made a certain amount of sense, symbolically speaking. Sanford was briefly tempted to put the necklace on. Being in two places at once could be quite useful.

  But this charm came from Tillinghast, and his gifts had hooks hidden inside them, just like a fisherman’s bait. It might not work for him, anyway. The shopkeeper seemed adept at tailoring his gifts solely for their intended recipients. Sanford put the charm in his pocket instead, rose, and left the hotel bar.

  He could scarcely believe the warden had turned on him. The warden! If someone with her years of loyal service could be compromised, then no one was safe. And how had Tillinghast won her over? Had he done something to her mind, or simply made her an offer she found irresistible? Sanford hadn’t realized Van Shaw was unhappy. The thought had never even occurred to him. Why would it? He never thought of her as a person. She was a fixture of the Lodge. You didn’t wonder if your furnace was unhappy, or your icebox; you only cared if they worked or not. And right now… she didn’t work.

  He had compelled her to answer him honestly with her oaths, but that didn’t mean she’d told him the whole truth, and indeed, she’d proven a willingness to dissemble. She might be working against him even now!

  Tillinghast was a worm, crawling through Sanford’s life, rotting it from the inside out.

  He stopped at a phone booth and called the Lodge, demanding to speak to Altman, who answered quickly. “Have the warden seized and locked up downstairs,” he said without preamble.

  Altman paused for only a moment, and then, with his usual practicality, asked, “What about her dogs?”

  A fair question. Even the fearless feared those hounds. “Tell her you are acting on my orders, with the authority of the head of the Lodge, and she will know the truth of your words, and her hounds will not interfere.”

  “All right,” Altman said. “Anything else?”

  A sudden inspiration struck him, irresistible. “Yes,” Sanford said. “Tell O’Bannion we won’t need his… pest control specialist. I am going to take care of the last part of the job personally.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea, sir?”

  “It’s my idea,” Sanford said. “So of course it is.”

  •••

  Just after nightfall, Ruby checked in with the watchers Sanford had set to spy on Tillinghast’s shop. They confirmed that no one had entered or left the premises all day, by front or back doors. They reported seeing a light go on upstairs, and glimpsing a moving figure through the windows, so Tillinghast was presumably puttering around, maybe having dinner, if the old lizard did anything so mundane.

  Now it was full dark, and Ruby had to go and steal from him.

  She’d tried calling Gloria to give her a warning about the night’s plan, but the woman hadn’t answered, probably out running more errands for her boss. Ruby was going to have to play this situation straight, and as the magus commanded. If Sanford’s plan succeeded, and Tillinghast fell, well, then she’d pretend her loyalty to Sanford had never faltered. And if this theft-fire-murder gambit didn’t succeed, she’d have to find a way to get the grail back to Tillinghast later, along with the Ruby of R’lyeh, probably. What a mess. That was the problem with double-crosses – they got you all crossed up.

  Ruby emerged from the shadows, dressed in grays and blacks, almost like a shadow herself. Her area of expertise was upper-story work, climbing onto rooftops and unlatching high windows from the outside, ghosting in and out of museums and lavish homes and jewelry stores. Sending her to break into a shop on the ground floor of a building was like getting Babe Ruth to bat cleanup in a neighborhood sandlot game. The fact that the owner of the shop was home made it slightly more dangerous, and the fact that she was secretly working for the owner even more so, but they were minor difficulties for someone with her skills.

  And, in truth, she didn’t even need her skills, because she had her New Accelerator. Ruby stopped just outside Tillinghast’s back door and set her watch back an hour. The sound of the breeze cut off abruptly, and she grinned, thrilled by the power, and the secret. She was like a ghost now – a sort of time ghost. “Ruby the Zeitgeist,” she muttered. She could think of worse nicknames.

  Her lockpicks made short work of Tillinghast’s door, and she breezed into the shop. Once inside, she stared around the dim space in amazement. Everything looked exactly the same as it had when she visited Tillinghast’s earlier location, in Northside. The man must have a fanatical level of attention to detail. Even the rugs were in the same positions on the floor, and the merchandise on the tables and shelves were arranged just as she remembered, too. Did he have a diagram he made his workers follow as they unpacked?

  She shrugged, dismissing the issue as irrelevant, and did a quick circuit of the shop. She shone her flashlight around without hesitation. There was no danger of passersby catching a glimpse of her light through a window, after all, when she was safely ensconced in null-time.

  The Grail of Dreams was there on the counter, just as Sanford had said it would be, underneath a glass dome. The grail looked just like the fake she’d acquired at the docks, a cup nearly a foot high from base to rim, cut into elaborate facets, made of some black stone that seemed to drink in the light. This one had an indescribable something more to it, though – not a shimmer, not a glow, but just a presence, like it was more real than everything around it, somehow made of a different order of matter.

  She’d been in the presence of relics before – real relics, old ones, not things like the watch Tillinghast had made for her – and so the sensation was unpleasantly familiar. Looking at the goblet was like gazing into an abyss of deep time, where hideous old things still dwelled.

  Speaking of time, hers was ticking away. Ruby opened her capacious leather bag and set it on the counter, then reached for the glass dome.

  “Hello, Ruby,” Tillinghast purred as he stepped out from the curtain behind the counter. “Have you come to do a little after-hours shopping?”

  She stared at him, wide-eyed, as frozen as he should have been from her vantage point in null-time.

  Tillinghast leaned on the counter and cocked an eyebrow at her. “Oh, I see. You’re surprised I can perceive you, since I should be stuck in the unflowing flow of time right now, hmm? Did you really think I’d give you a weapon you could use against me, Ruby?” He clucked his tongue. “As soon as you activated the watch, I knew, and I chose to join you here, in between moments. I’d hate for you to get lonely. It can be so very lonely, stuck in this timeless time. As you may learn, to your dismay, very soon.”

  She started to step back, but he darted his hand across the counter and grabbed her wrist, tight as a manacle, and held her in place. “Explain yourself.” The gentility in his voice was wearing away.

  “Sanford sent me to steal the grail,” she said. “I couldn’t refuse him, not without giving myself away and getting locked up in the basement. He has people watching me, watching the shop, right now!” She tried to pull away, but his hand might as well have been made of stone. “I tried to call Gloria to tell her I was coming, but she didn’t answer! What was I supposed to do?”

  “You could have returned to Sanford empty-handed and told him the grail wasn’t here,” Tillinghast said reasonably. “That you sought it and could not find it.”

  It was Ruby’s turn to cluck her tongue. “This isn’t just a test, Mr Tillinghast. It’s a loyalty test. Sanford is suspicious of me. He’s suspicious of everyone, lately. If I came back empty-handed, he’d never believe me. He’d lock me up in a cell in the Lodge basement and start asking questions, and he has ways of compelling truthful answers. I’ve been in one of those cells before, and I don’t relish the idea of revisiting it.”

  “Oh, dear! A cell!” Tillinghast shook his head. “You should have accepted the captivity and trusted that I would set you free when I gained my ascendance over Sanford. Because you see, Ruby… I can trap you somewhere so much worse than a cell.” He dragged her closer to him and put his face near hers. Ruby noticed that the whites of his eyes were actually a sickly yellow. “I can strand you in null-time. To live forever among the statues of your fellow humans, never again to hear a human voice, never again to feel a loving touch. I have that power. That is the cell where I can imprison you, Ruby: a prison of time itself.”

  “No,” Ruby whispered, her wonderland transformed into a realm of nightmare. Slipping between moments was only a miracle if she could decide when it started, and when it stopped. Fleeing a cult in the swamps was paradise in comparison: at least in that situation there was the possibility of escape.

  “If you are disloyal to me, you are useless to me,” Tillinghast said. “And if you are useless to me, why should I allow you to be useful to anyone else, especially my enemies?”

  “No, please, Mr Tillinghast, I do want to work for you. I’m grateful, I was just scared, I made a mistake, you can see that, can’t you?” Ruby knew she was babbling, but her horror at the thought of being stranded here was so great she couldn’t stop herself. She had no doubt Tillinghast could do what he said – that his gift had always held this trap within it, from the very beginning.

  “I believe you.” Tillinghast released her and returned to leaning easily on the counter. “Because I see the fear in your eyes, and fear is a great motivator. Far greater, in my experience, than gratitude. Never forget that I can strand you in null-time whenever I wish, Miss Standish. Even if you toss the watch into the sea, that won’t save you. You have been touched by this timeless place, you see, and its mark is upon you. Its stain is upon you. I can send you here and bring you back any time I wish, with a snap of my fingers.” He snapped them then, and the air changed, the sound of wind whistling around the gutters revealing that time was flowing again. Another snap, and the sound ceased, and Ruby whimpered. Did her watch even possess this magic in itself, or was it simply a prop Tillinghast used to fool her as he imposed his own power over her? The latter seemed horribly likely. That would explain why the dogs hadn’t been troubled by her wearing the watch into the Lodge.

  “Will you serve me?” His voice was scales sliding over sand.

  “Yes,” she whispered, but though she was bowed, she was not broken. “But why? Why are you doing all this? You’re a collector of relics. Why do you have your heart set on casting Carl Sanford down? Why try to take over the Lodge at all? Do you just want to loot the treasury?”

  “Your former employer, Carl Sanford, asked me something similar this morning.” Tillinghast half smiled, amused. “Why am I in Arkham? What do I want here? I told him that it was my personal business, and not for him to know. I am tempted to tell you the same thing, if only to remind you of our relative positions in this relationship… but the truth is, I like you, Ruby. I’ve liked you ever since I sent you to steal that statue from those swamp-dwelling degenerates, and you acquitted yourself so admirably. So I will tell you, in the broadest possible outlines, why I am here. I am undertaking a Great Work. Do you understand?”

  “You’re doing some kind of ritual?” Ruby said.

  Tillinghast nodded. “There are various Great Works. For the Hermetic mystics, the Great Work was the eradication of unconscious desire, and the consequent acquisition of total self-knowledge.” He waved a hand. “I achieved that ages ago. Those cretins who follow Crowley, the Thelemites, have their own Great Work, meant to unify the self with the universe, until there is no longer any division between the two – to merge ego and nothingness.” Tillinghast scoffed. “Such a desire demonstrates a profound lack of understanding regarding the true nature of the universe, but never mind. My Great Work is unique to me, however. I seek not to change myself – for how could I improve upon perfection? – but instead to change the world, Miss Standish. There are those who would stand in the way of my ritual, if they ever apprehended its scope. Carl Sanford is one such.”

  Tillinghast spoke with such venom that Ruby realized he hated Sanford, which meant he saw the magus as a genuine threat.

  Tillinghast went on: “Despite Sanford’s frequent traffic with otherworldly forces, he is profoundly attached to this world as it is currently constituted, because he enjoys his power, and wealth, and prestige, and privilege, and he loves this city. He would rightly consider my plans a threat to the status quo, and he would endeavor to stop me.”

  “But… what is the ritual going to do?”

  Something to Arkham? She thought. Or to the world?

  He showed his teeth. “You’ll see. Everyone will see. My ritual is delicate, and thus vulnerable to disruption. I cannot properly begin the Work until Sanford is removed from the equation. Moreover, he has resources that will be useful in the course of my work, and he will hardly share them willingly. So he must be removed.” The shopkeeper sighed. “Sadly, he has many defenses, both magical and practical, that make simple assassination difficult. To neutralize him, I must first remove all those things he values: his power, his wealth, his prestige, his privilege. His employees. His allies. His house, and its many interesting basements. His everything. I have been poking, and poking, and poking at him, to unravel his composure, to make him act rashly, to tempt him into committing an error. When he inevitably does, I will send him into exile, and even if he survives that, he will have nothing to come back to.” Tillinghast’s eyes seemed to shine. “Is that a sufficient explanation, Miss Standish?”

  “Yes,” she croaked. “So… removing Sanford isn’t even the point? It’s just the prelude to something else?”

  “A bit like stripping the old paint from the wall before applying a fresh coat, yes.” Tillinghast grinned, wolfish. “Wouldn’t your magus be outraged to know that my campaign against him is the equivalent of removing a stone from my shoe before setting out on a long walk?” He slammed his palms down on the counter suddenly, making Ruby jump. “So! Let’s discuss how you can help in my efforts. Come upstairs with me. I don’t have a good knife down here, and I’m going to need a little bit of blood for the next part. I’m afraid I don’t have any of my own to spare, so…”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Armed and Armored

  “What’s all this, then?” Altman asked. He’d tracked Sanford down to that strange office in the basements, the one he’d stolen from his early rival and kept in situ as a trophy.

  The magus set an assortment of metal strongboxes, drawn from drawers and secret panels, on the desk. He then opened them up, one by one, to reveal an assortment of oddments, one to each box. There was a pale pink ring segmented like an earthworm; another ring of gold, with a chip of broken tooth instead of a gem in its setting; a tiepin in the form of an undulating eel; cufflinks in the shape of tiny cubes, one of ebony and one of ivory; a pocket watch with its silver case elaborately decorated with spirals and other geometric figures; and a bracelet that seemed to be made of scores of tiny metal keys wired together.

  “I do not go into battle without armor and arms.” As he spoke, Sanford slipped on the rings, clipped the pin to his tie, tucked the pocket watch into his vest, and then, with some effort, fastened the cufflinks into his sleeves. “These are items from my collection of relics, and they provide personal security, among other things. I used to have a ring that could shield me from certain death, but, sadly, I used that during the unpleasantness last year. I’m glad I did, of course, or I wouldn’t be here now, but I still keenly feel its lack.”

  “It’s a shame my brother didn’t have a ring like that,” Altman said. “During the unpleasantness.”

  Sanford grunted. “He wouldn’t have used it anyway. He would have insisted I take it, instead. Your brother was devoted to the Lodge… and devoted to me, which is the same thing, of course. He was willing to die for the cause.” The old man looked at Altman levelly. “Are you?”

  “How about I just stick to killing for the cause?” Altman replied. “I’m more use to you that way than I would be dead.”

  The magus shrugged. “Fair enough. You are not your brother, but you have still proven yourself invaluable.” Sanford put his hand on Altman’s shoulder, and Altman bore it, though he wanted to shake it off – not so much because of discomfort over his betrayal, though that was a factor, but because he didn’t know what those rings Sanford was wearing could do. “It’s time to go to the shop and smoke out Tillinghast. Then, once he’s seen his building turned to ashes, his precious things reduced to rubble… I’ll finish him.”