nancy werlock's diary s01 - episodes 10 (2 page)

“I know. Let me see the address.”

“How did you know it was an address?”

“Well, it wasn’t going to be a confession.”

“You sure that you don't want to call Steve?”

“Not yet.”

“We go to this address, Nancy, there may not be time to call him.”

“I know.”

Houston shows me the address. It is my old office address at the Beach Professional Building in Philadelphia. Someone has a sense of humor.

We drive into Philadelphia and park in the garage. As we walk into the lobby, the receptionist gasps. “Nancy? Um, I mean, it's good to see you again.”

“Hello, Isabel,” I say as I sign in. “I believe we have an appointment with Mr. Shan?”

“We do?” says Houston.

I point at the updated directory hanging above the reception area. My old office is now assigned to Millennium Consulting Group. And in case the reference was not completely obvious to the oblivious, there is a little falcon logo next to the name.

Isabel looks at the appointment book and becomes perfectly still for a moment. She then looks up at me with a blank stare and monotones, “Mr. Shan will see you now.”

“Thank you, Isabel.”

Houston and I head for the elevator and go up to my old office. The door opens on its own as I reach for the handle. We step inside and “Mr. Shan” is sitting at the desk. The door closes behind us.

“Okay, I’ll say it,” Houston begins. “I half expected you to be wearing Sith robes.”

“I considered it but it felt over-the-top. Maybe if we were closer to Halloween.”

“Lord Advocate,” I say.

“Madame Warlock,” he replies with a nod. “Thank you for coming. And for your…discretion. The room has been secured. We can speak freely here.”

“Did you kill my mother?” blurts Houston.

“Houston, we—”

“Yes,” says Brynwolf without hesitation. “Though to be clear, your father already had bad intentions toward your mother. I simply hid him from her powers so that he could follow through. And from the look on your face, you’ve already figured out why.”

“My mother has been working with Chana Magus,” Houston says.

“No, Houston,” says Brynwolf as he stands and walks around the desk. “She
is
Chana Magus.”

In the late 18
^th
century, Haemomancer Chana Magus discovered the first official case of a psychic vampire, a vampire that fed off of psychic energy instead of blood. She captured and tortured several of the creatures and eventually developed spells that would allow the witch to drain residual energies from other living things in order to extend their lives. At first, it was possible to simply siphon off the “waste” energies all living creatures produce to gain the benefits of the ability. But as a Haemomancer artificially extended her life more and more, residual energies would no longer sustain her and she would have to kill the victims. Once the full horror of the magic's application was uncovered, the Nine ordered the entire school purge and the knowledge of the spells was labeled as Forbidden Magic and locked away.

We had assumed that all this time, Chana Magus was hiding in the astral plane; biding her time until the Veil was weak enough to return. But this…

“That’s not possible,” says Houston. “Chana Magus was born in, what, 1730? Something like that?”

“The Soul Jar ritual,” I say.

Brynwolf nods. “Corella Dark created a ritual that would allow a witch to jump into another person’s body. It evicted the existing soul so the witch could move in; much like a demon can take over a newly dead body and become a skin-walker. Dark’s ritual was based on Chana Magus’ forbidden research.”

“But how did you connect this to Vivika?” I ask.

He opens a file cabinet and removes a thick leather portfolio. He hands it to me. “Psions don’t manifest their powers like other witches, as I am sure you know from your own research. With most hereditary magic, it isn’t uncommon to see a slow progression over generations to more and more powerful witches. A combination of nature
and
nurture in most cases. Parents teach magic to their children and the children have the opportunity to surpass their parents. With Psions, you rarely see that sort of progression, even in families, because of the wild nature of psionic powers. Vivika’s lineage exponentially became more powerful from generation to generation. The kind of power you develop from training, not heredity.

“The Eighth of the Nine became suspicious because Vivika started out so powerful. She didn’t seem to slowly come into her powers. She started off with power and built on it. That is the kind of thing you see with Imprinting or Pacts. And it couldn’t be explained away with training, because there was nobody around to train her until she was older and formally joined the College. So he tasked me with investigating. That file contains all of the evidence I’ve gathered during the investigation.”

I open the portfolio and spread out some of the papers on the nearby table. Old newspaper clippings. Copies of birth and death records. Letters. Discolored old photographs. Centuries of clues neatly sorted and labeled. There is a 1798 registration form to the College of Necromancer for a Chana Mathers. Her 1800 Rank Five certification is attached. In those days, certifications included a woodcut impression of the Necromancer printed on the form as a sort of proof of identity. There is a copy of a page from the Monfort family Bible, owned by Louis Monfort's grandparents according to the notes. It shows the date of Louis' marriage to Hannah Monfort. We had never found a copy of a marriage certificate nor any evidence of Hannah's maiden name. According to the family Bible, it was Mathers.

I show Houston the Necromancer certification and the photocopy of Hannah's wedding portrait.

“It wasn't uncommon for people to use variant spellings of their own names,” says Brynwolf. “It wasn't like today with all of the security issues.”

“She just changed her identity and hid in plain sight,” says Houston.

“You both need to understand that it has really only been in the last hundred years that the various colleges have started…sharing…information. Each College traditionally kept its membership information under lock and guard. And until a few decades ago, even the information that was shared was sorted manually. We really just now how the infrastructure in place to connect the dots.

“At the time she was reinventing herself, the College of Necromancy was dealing with the Schism. Anyone who might have realized who she was was busy dealing with the rift within the College.”

“I guess we know now what happened to Hannah Monfort's first two husbands,” says Houston. “Sucked their life energies then inherited their fortunes. It all looks like natural causes because they were both older men anyway.”

“Houston, look at this,” I say as I hand him a copy of a daguerreotype portrait of Fiona and Francois Dubois' wedding. In the image, we can see the couple with both sets of parents. Standing next to Fiona's mother...Hannah Monfort. “We never did find a death certificate for Hannah.”

“That is because she allegedly committed suicide a few days before Wilma was born,” says Brynwolf. “There are pages from Fiona's diary in there. She talks about her mother becoming increasingly depressed about her old age. Francois found her dead in the cellar of her home. She had slit her wrists.”

Houston picks up the page of the diary where Fiona talks about the death. “Nightshade petals, candles, circle of salt...sounds like a ritual.”

“The Soul Jar. She released her spirit from her body and sent it into Wilma,” says Brynwolf. “It seems that after the first jump, she unlocked a method of transferring her soul that didn't require such elaborate measures. So long as it was blood of her own blood, she could simply slip in.”

“Arachne’s Web!” I shout. “Chana Magus was a necromancer first and foremost and wanted to preserve her hereditary magic bloodline to consolidate her power. She would jump into the body of an unborn descendant. That’s how she hid and how she maintained her power.”

Houston screams and flips over the desk.

“Houston!” I shout at him.

“April!” he cries. “Mom wasn’t
guiding
April. She
was
April!”

“We didn’t realize that until recently,” says Brynwolf. “During the Inquest we made the connection between April’s emergency application to the College and Vivika.”

“She used Aunt Ruth. She
knew
. She knew that people were digging into her past and it was only a matter of time before someone figured it out. That's why she donated her eggs so that Aunt Ruth could have a baby. The baby would be hers and she could jump in and nobody would know!”

“When I realized who she was, I went to the Eighth of the Nine. The Nine determined that it was best to make it look like…make it look like she was just killed. If we had known about the circumstances of your aunt’s pregnancy, we would have handled the matter differently, but at the time we felt eliminating her then and there would have ended it. They didn’t want to publicly reopen the case against Chana Magus. The implications of it; if people realized she had successfully been using that Forbidden magic for so long. That such magic existed. The Council wasn’t even told. Just a few Justicars in case things went wrong. In this age, the risks were too great. And there were considerations given because…because of Houston.”

“Me? I was just a kid. And I didn’t have any powers. What was I going to do?”

“The Nine wanted to ensure you had an opportunity for a normal life.”

Houston kicks the overturned desk. “
That
worked out well!”

“Houston, calm down,” I say.

“No! I will not calm down! How do you calm down over this bullshit? My mother is a centuries’ old psychopath and their plan for me to have a normal life was to have my father kill my mother and stepfather to make it look like…what…tragic domestic violence?” He rubs his hands over his head. “Harlan must have seen something he wasn’t supposed to. That’s why she tried to kill him. That’s why he said what he said. He must have seen something.”

“I’m sorry, Houston,” I say.

“That’s why she Imprinted on me. That’s why she was so hyped up on you being my baby mama. She…that bitch. She wanted us to have a baby so she could take it over. Imagine if she had managed that?”

“Well I, for one, do
not
wish to imagine her with Werlock hereditary magic,” says Brynwolf. He looks at me. “Your bloodline has always run deep with power.”

“Lord Advocate, what I don’t understand is why
you
went into hiding when you have this evidence?”

“The Justicars who initially helped me with my investigation are all dead, Madame Warlock. I believe you can guess their names?”

My friend Steve Harken is a Justicar. Over the last few years, he has been investigating the mysterious deaths of several Justicars around the world. We had originally thought it was a group of rogue Necromancers using Forbidden magic. “Anatole? Sonny?” I say. He nods.

“Some of them were in other parts of the world?” asks Houston. “Could she
do
that?”

“Time and space don’t mean the same thing in the astral plane as they do on the material. With enough magical power, an astral entity could transverse the globe in a matter of minutes. And since she appears to have been…eating...their magical force, she was replenishing herself with each kill.”

“Replenishing herself,” mutters Houston. “She’s the one that has been killing the adepts in the area. She must be weakening herself, hiding from the Lord Advocate. She can’t sustain herself in the astral plane so she’s been killing witches. It…
it
was her. We were wondering all this time why it didn’t kill me. It was my mother.”

“I went to ground to force her hand,” says Brynwolf. “I can’t directly confront her. Not if she is using Forbidden magic. There are no known counter-measures for it. From what we understand all she needs is line of sight. If she can see me, she can kill me. Even if I have wards around me, it wouldn't matter. She has to be destroyed. For good this time. I know how to do it. But I can’t get close to her.”

“I can,” says Houston.

“She thought to use you against me,” Brynwolf says to me. “To help her draw me out to finish me. She asked you to get her Persian griffon eggs, didn’t she?”

“Yes, among other things. Very
expensive
things.”

“The ritual she intends to perform; there are fragments of it among the old notes regarding the Soul Jar ritual. The original ritual was necromantic. It allowed you to take over a body, but not a
mind
. But even all those centuries ago, she was dabbling in dangerous theories that would allow a person to take over the memories of the host body.”

“She takes over your body and she becomes Lord Advocate of the Eighth of the Nine,” says Houston.

“A lot of good it does her if she’s in the body of a person on the run.”

“You need to think bigger, Madame Warlock. Only the Lord Advocates ever know the physical location of the Nine.”

“She takes you over, she learns the location of the Eighth of the Nine…and then tries to take
him
over?” says Houston.

“Or the Fifth of the Nine. She was, after all, a Necromancer first. And while the Eighth would at least be prepared for her, the Fifth might not be.”

“I have to kill her,” says Houston. “I’m the only one that could get close enough.”

“No! Lord Advocate…”

“Houston isn’t strong enough to kill her,” Brynwolf says. “But we will need him to help trap her. The ritual that she is planning is very precise and therefore susceptible to sabotage. We could turn her trap on her, and then she can be dealt with.”

“Right now she thinks all of the wardings Houston has been throwing up are to protect us from you. And because he’s mad at her.”

“When did you talk to her?” Houston asks.

“This morning after I got out of the shower. I thought she was just…it doesn’t matter now.”

“Those files also include a summary written with ghost ink in infernal. Slip it to your mother when next you speak to her. With that information, she should be able to confirm for you the truth of everything I have said. In the event you have doubts. Don’t let Vivika know. But even if Vivika finds it, she won’t be able to read it. At least I don’t think so. I don’t have reason to believe she ever studied demonology. But we may need infernal support as we cannot call on mortal help. Anyone not you or Houston she’ll kill on sight if they even get within threat range of her. And considering everything, she may not realize demons are a threat until it is too late.”