We wandered into town, taking the time to have our first real look at the place and talk about the things we liked in the area. It was actually a pretty nice little town, bunch of buildings (and spirits) that looked older than my country. I needed to use the restroom after a bit, and she spotted some restaurant and suggested we dip in and she could ask if they had a table open while I handled that. They did, apparently, and by the time I got back to her they had pulled out a suit jacket that I needed to put on if we expected to eat there. I wasn’t super excited about the idea, but she seemed to be, so I accepted the jacket and we were led to our table.

“I thought places with rules like this take reservations,” I said, adjusting the jacket after we sat down and glancing around the room. It was nice, real nice, ‘blow my whole income from the trip on our dinner’ nice. I was having regrets.

“Yeah, well, they generally do,” she answered. She was beaming, and I suddenly realized how little time we spent in her world and how much time we spent in…or, I suppose is more accurate, adjacent to mine. This was probably a rare treat for her, which I should probably fix, and while I was pretty sure she had made arrangements ahead of time—no place like this just gives up a table to people walking in off the street, sure as hell not on Valentine’s Day—I decided to let her play her game and dropped the subject. God, she was beautiful when she smiled like that.

So dinner went well. When she realized that I was skipping past the most expensive parts of the menu she finally confessed that the whole thing, including the tab, had already been arranged and I didn’t have to worry about it. So we had a nice dinner and some wine and dessert and spent some time talking about something other than cults and magic, and it was really nice. By the time we left the restaurant, I had been able to completely clear my mind of the reason we were in Britain to begin with. Then, as we were walking kind of the long way back to look for souvenirs or something, I felt a surge in the air and dead stopped.

“John? Are you okay?” She asked, resting her hand on my shoulder. I stood for a moment, trying to parse what I was feeling, before it clicked.

“It’s the magic from that site,” I said. “I can feel it. It’s being activated.” We made our way to a park bench and I called the others.

“Matteson,” Benedict answered.

“The site’s been activated. I can track it. Where are you?” There was a sudden clinking sound and then I heard Benedict repeating what I’d said, but muffled as if he was trying and failing to cover the receiver, and then his voice dominated the background chatter and shuffling.

“We’re at a pub in town. Where are you?”

​“In town. Heading,” I paused and pulled out my keys, which had a little compass ball on them, “Southwest, probably along a ley line.” He informed me they would head in that direction, and I promised to tell them if I had to change direction or where I ended up.

​The problem with knowing, or at least being pretty certain, that the Brood of Nachash is working in an area is that you then have to figure out what they’re doing there. And where they’re doing it.

I had only directly engaged with the cult either during a summoning or in the wake of a summoning, and Benedict had similar experiences but with the addition of that lost town. Akshainie knew more about their day-to-day operations, having spent a couple years hunting, and finding, them before meeting Benedict. We knew their larger goals involved the eradication of religion, or at least had that on good authority, but had never seen what that really looked like in action. So if they were doing a summoning, we had to figure out where. If they weren’t, we had to figure out what they were doing and what that would look like in time to stop it.

For the first time in a while, I really felt out of my depth.

But I was there partly as an investigator, so I was going to do my best with it. Alice helped on and off, sometimes slipping off to do something with family or call home. I spent the whole time in the library, even eating in there when I didn’t realize how long it had been and a servant showed up with a lunch for me. It felt weird having servants around, but I tried to not disrupt them too much with my concerns.

I had a map of the British Isles where I was attempting to draw a map that would hopefully show a target, but didn’t have enough to go on for that yet. The Church of England seemed a sensible target, but how would you even take that down? There was the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Queen, but it didn’t seem like just killing one of them outright would do the trick, and I didn’t even know what they would need to have in place to aim for a larger scale attack than that.

​Alice tried to teach me a trick for sensing magic she had learned from Jackie. She felt it was a logical option, given that I’d been learning how to recognize the trail of things like ghosts and that I was built to work against magic, I should be able to sense it in a way that allows tracking. So if I could track the network of power being amplified by the site we’d found, maybe I could find points of interest along it. We spent most of the afternoon working on that, and I finally did start to sense something, but the house itself was so loud with magic that I couldn’t make out anything else. So we had to drop that for the time being, and by that time we realized it was coming up on evening and we hadn’t even settled plans for Valentine’s Day, so we left the work behind and headed out to find somewhere we could do dinner and maybe have some time on the town.

We had taken the rest of that first day off to get situated in the estate and adjust to the time difference. We had rooms in the Guest Wing, because these people have an entire fucking Guest Wing, and Alice and I slept in a room that looked like it had as much stuff in it as my entire house. I could barely sleep, the bed was so soft. Benedict and Akshainie were given different rooms, but kind of nearish each other and down a different hall than our room, but Lord knows if they even used them. They were still in the library when we went to bed, and by the time I saw them the next morning they were coming from the library.

So now we were in the car again, sans Alice who stayed behind from our “field trip,” as she called it, to talk to her family. Which makes sense, she hasn’t seen them in years, and didn’t think she had anything to offer for what we were doing. This time there wasn’t some staff driver taking us there, though. Michael was at the wheel, and I had shotgun. At least he let me smoke in the car. I don’t know if I was allowed to in that room or not, but I know for damn sure I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it if they got pissy about the sheets smelling like smoke and trying to charge me to replace some million threadcount Egyptian silk bullshit, so I refrained.

When we arrived, he led us through a work site and down through a hole in a wall that led to a chamber awfully similar to the one where I first met Benedict and Akshainie.

“We have got to stop having all our social functions in places like this,” I told them as I pulled out a flashlight. Michael moved his hand like he expected something to happen, looked at his hand confused for a moment, then glanced at me and sighed.

“What’s your radius?” he asked me.

“My what?”

“How far must I stand from you to use magic?”

“Oh,” I said, then thought for a moment and shrugged. “I dunno. Never really thought about it. Jackie can usually cast something if she’s like ten feet away or so?”

“You can restrain that, though, can you not?” Benedict asked.

“I mean, yeah, but it’s tiring.”

“I’m not paying you to come here and keep your power restrained,” Michael said, stepping away from me and trying the spell again every couple steps until it worked.

“How do you do that? Everyone I’ve known who does magic needs a focus.”

“Well, there is a certain family advantage to being in a line of powerful sorcerers, but also, I have tattoos that serve as foci for certain common spells.” He explained to us what he knew so far, about how the site was active and seemed to be connected to the Brood of Nachash, but he didn’t know what it was for. While he talked, I walked around looking at the symbols and taking pictures of them. They weren’t like the ones I’d seen in Ohio, but they looked familiar.

“What do you know about the Brood?” Benedict asked.

“Not much, I’m afraid. I only got the name when I got yours.”

“Well then,” Benedict said, summoning a large fire hovering in the center of the chamber, illuminating the whole place. I grumbled and turned my flashlight off. “Let’s not focus too much energy on your spell there.”

“I didn’t know the Pope was so permissive of magic,” Michael said, dispelling his light.

“It is debatable if what I do is magic.”

“It’s magic,” I said.

“Do you think everything a spirit does is magic?” Akshainie asked. “Do you think it’s magic when I use my swords?”

“Can I dispel your swords?” I asked. She grumbled and I smiled.

“Anyway,” Benedict continued, “in short, the Brood of Nachash is a cult devoted to their idea of the serpent of Eden. They believe mankind is enslaved to God or the gods, and that the freedom they began to receive in rebellion is just and incomplete. They use sites like this to summon and bind powerful entities, and then siphon off that power for their own purposes in attempting to remake mankind into a fully fallen race.”

“And you oppose them on, primarily, religious grounds, I presume?” Michael asked.

“That is a significant factor. But I fundamentally believe they are not only wrong, but dangerously so.”

“They are a danger to all spirits who use serpent iconography,” Akshainie said. “By associating their actions with serpents, they create an image in the minds of mankind that affects us.”

“And you?” Michael called over to me.

“They’re assholes,” I answered.

“I suppose that will do. What are you doing over there, anyway?”

“Taking pictures of this script.”

“Ah, yes. We’ve not been able to interpret that. It seems there are no surviving records that use it.”

“Well, not in your collection anyway. I’ve seen this before.”

“You must be joking.”

“His family has amassed quite the occult library,” Benedict said. “Its size is not comparable to your own, but I would argue its importance may be.”

“What, exactly, is the nature of your family’s involvement in the occult, Mr. Matteson?”

“It won’t leave us alone,” I said.

“You have a very peculiar manner of approaching these things,” Michael said. Akshainie laughed.

“At any rate, I can’t do anything with this information right now. I’ll have to send it to Jackie and ask her to check the books at the house, and she won’t be up for a couple hours yet.”

“Very well. Father de Monte, you said sites like this would be used for summoning and binding?”

“That has been my, admittedly limited, experience so far,” Benedict answered.

“So there is some chance we have a great spirit locked away somewhere on this site?”

“Some chance, yes.” Benedict pointed toward the collapsed remains of a large archway. “My guess would be down there.” We all walked over to the archway, and then Michael asked me to step a bit further from him. He produced a bit of pelt from his pack, pressed it to the stone as he closed his eyes, and began speaking in Latin or something very close to Latin. When his eyes opened again, they were glowing, and he lifted his hand to reveal a little blue mole. Its eyes were also glowing, and it looked around briefly before slipping between the rubble and vanishing. We all stood in silence for a few minutes, until the mole emerged again. Michael’s eyes returned to normal and the mole vanished, the bit of pelt dropping back into his hand from where the creature had been.

“Well. There certainly is a chamber that looks to have been intended for that purpose,” he said, putting the fur away, “but whatever it was meant to house either never arrived or eventually escaped. But then, how is this site still active?”

“It’s likely part of a network,” I said. “They can’t exactly have one of these things in every town, right? They probably cycle power around, and sites that lose their power generator would still be on the grid.”

​“Well. Unless anyone else has anything to note,” Michael said, walking back toward the entrance, “I suppose we should regroup at the estate and discuss what we know so far.” We all agreed and followed, the fire in the center of the room disappearing as I went to pass through it.

I was laying on the couch, finishing off a fifth of Jack and staring at the ceiling, when the phone rang.

“Yeah?” I said, then checked the screen, hit the answer button again, and repeated myself.

“Matteson.” It was Benedict. “Are you free this week?”

“Depends on what you need.”

“Are you drunk? You sound drunk.”

“I’m sober enough. What do you need, priest?” I heard him sigh.

“I have a case that I think could use your particular skills. But it’s in England.”

“What the hell makes you think I can just up and fly to England? I don’t, like, own a plane.”

“No, but our benefactor does. And he can pay for your services.”

“Did he say that?”

“Would I tell you there will be payment if that was not true?” I had no idea what he’d say. But, to his credit, he had never promised me money before.

“And when would I be needing to do this?”

“We would leave in two days. I’m told his plane is occupied with something else this evening.”

“Fancy.”

“Yes, well. Look, Matteson, it’s the Brood. I get the impression they’re active, and I need to make sure we have whatever tools we need to shut them down. Are you in?”

“Let me talk to my boss. Can I call you back at this number?”

​He said that I could, so we ended the conversation and I lit a cigarette. And then I realized that I was probably going to be out of the country for Valentine’s Day, and here I just picked up a new girlfriend. I grumbled for a bit and rolled off the couch, went to wash my face, and then made some coffee. Once I’d downed that, I went for the phone. First, the boss. No use getting Alice mad at me for leaving and then find out I couldn’t even go.

It had taken me two weeks to find the key to the cipher. In one of the books I was studying, I found a letter that seemed at first to be nonsense, accompanied by a two of hearts. But something about it looked familiar, and I checked back in some of the other books where I thought I had seen something like it and where I had seen other cards marked, and started to piece together a code based on playing cards that I then used to decrypt the note. The note turned out to be a short letter written by Joanna, which explored the mortality of gods.

I had known, from some other scattered notes and statements by Dad, that she had taken an interest in learning how to kill spirits, especially very powerful ones, when Aaboukingon returned to the river. I had gathered from her own demeanor in telling me about that time that she was afraid, and ultimately was looking for a way to defend herself if the river gods turned against her for some reason. I never fully understood why she thought that was a possibility, but it did seem to be the reason this library exists today, so I’ll take her paranoia over any strain of sanity.

The letter didn’t offer much of anything new, really. She hadn’t found a way to kill a god, but felt that she was getting close, that there was something right at the very core of their being that could be exploited just right, if she could only find what that was. If she ever did, it’s in a note or a book I haven’t found yet.

But there was something interesting in the letter. She mentions two mysterious beings, her description vague and barely recognizable. I only suspected she was talking about King and Queen because I had personally met them and could see where she would get the terms she was using. She believed they would be the key, somehow the power they held could undo anything. This, it seems, was the power she was now searching for. She wanted to understand these two, to take hold of whatever they had that she didn’t, and use it as a weapon. I have no idea if that’s even possible, but more importantly, when did she meet them? I know they were there when my great-grandparents lost their home, but I had just learned she was unconscious the entire time they were involved. There are no other records that I’ve found that mention them. She didn’t say anything about them when she was haunting me. Was this letter written at the very end of her life, did she only see them when it was too late? If not, why did she keep it a secret?

Whatever encounter, or series of encounters, she had with them left her with a certain distrust. She describes their power as useful—though she never describes what she saw that made her think she knew what their power was—but described them more directly as questionable entities with unknowable motives and a possibility of being too much spirit to fully understand why a human would want to stand up to a god to begin with. She did not think she could call on them to defend her if it came to that; only that she could do it herself with access to their arsenal.

I set the letter down and read over the translation a couple more times to get it into my head, then took it and the document where I’d worked out the key upstairs and burned them. The original, with its card, was returned to its book and restored to the shelf. I made a mental note of where that book was, in case I ever needed that information, but honestly I can’t see what I would need with it. Killing a god is a fool’s errand, really, and I can’t imagine what it would even take for me to want to try.

More importantly, now I had some questions for King and Queen next time they decided to show up. There must be some reason they’re paying attention to my family. There must be some reason they slipped out of the memory of their involvement with Aaboukingon to talk to me last month. I need those answers so I know what to do with this information. Why didn’t Joanna trust them? What did she know that I don’t? Was she right?

​I know Jackie’s been working on the mystery of these two. I’ll have to ask her for some input, and decide whether or not she needs to know about my great-grandmother’s opinion of them.