The Warlock's Curse (49 page)

“Oh yes, that’s a
wonderful
idea,” Ben sneered. “Just exactly what do you think Brother Phleger will do when I tell him no? When I tell him that I’ve decided not to assist him in accomplishing his highest holy crusade?”

“God will probably tell him to kill you.” Will regarded his brother coldly. “But I don’t see why he’d hold it against Jenny or me.”

Ben blinked at him in astonishment. Then he exhaled slowly.

“You’ve got more Cowdray in you than I imagined,” he said harshly. “No, Will. He wouldn’t kill me. He would tear my mind to shreds with righteous indignation, looking for the information. And very quickly, he would discover the truth.”

“And which kind of ‘truth’ is that?” said Will, with faint irony. He was beginning to be very wary of that particular word.

“That he doesn’t really need me at all.” Ben said, his glossy green eyes reflecting Will’s silent astonishment. “There’s no secret to opening the snuffbox. It is true, it does require a magical connection to Cowdray’s spirit, a connection that could be established using you or—” Ben stopped abruptly, looking away. “But beyond that, it only requires overcoming Cowdray’s resistance with sufficient magical force. Of course I know how to do it—but so would even the most casual student of magic.”

“Well, why doesn’t God tell him this?” Will snapped.

“Because at the moment, Phleger perceives me as a necessary evil. The good brother protects his holy self-image by believing that I am the only one who knows how to open the box,” Ben snapped back. “He doesn’t keep me around for my magical knowledge. He keeps me around to be his sin-eater.”

Ben leaned forward, his voice becoming both softer and more intense. “But if I cross him, or thwart him in any way, I will become an
unnecessary
evil. Phleger’s subconscious defenses would swarm against me. And I have no doubt that God
would
tell him—in the form of a well-timed Vision—that anything I can do, he can do a million times more powerfully. When he decides he wants God to want that for him ... we really are all dead.”

Ben paused to let these words sink in. Then he continued.

“Unlocking the box is a risk, yes. An enormous risk. But given the amount of power Phleger has, it’s going to get unlocked one way or another. Using you—or the blood of your child.” This time Ben did not pull the punch, but rather hit the last few words with painful emphasis. “The only way any of us are going to get out of here alive is if we control how it happens, and control what happens to the power afterwards.”

Will thought about this for a long time. The sound of organ music, soft and muffled, filtered in through the walls.
That must be Little Sanctity Snow playing
, Will thought. He thought of how she’d sat at Phleger’s desk, intensely ripping his papers to shreds. He looked up at his brother.

“Just tell me one thing, Ben. And tell me the truth. Did you know that I would inherit the curse?”

“No!” Ben said, a note of anguish in his voice. “I
didn’t
know. I’ve told you that already, and it
was
the truth. I saw Father give you the Panchrest. How could you possibly inherit the curse? But to infiltrate the Consortium, I had to be of value to them. I had to give them information, and there had to be truth in it. I had to make them
believe
.” He paused. “It
had
to be you. You were a Kendall descendant, just turned eighteen. The Consortium knew that none of the other Edwards brothers had inherited the curse. You were the only plausible candidate. I gave them a
story
, Will. That’s all I have the power to do, tell people stories and make them believe them. I had no way of knowing it would turn out to be the truth.”

“But if you believed I
wouldn’t
inherit the curse, how did you intend to get the snuffbox?” Will said, following the logic through. “What did you think would happen when they found out I didn’t have the cursed blood they needed?” He gestured around himself broadly. “How did you expect to get the snuffbox out of this great center of power then?”

“If things had gone as they were supposed to, the snuffbox wouldn’t be
in
this great center of power,” Ben said bitterly. “Brother Phleger was in Detroit on the night of the full moon—December 16th. He was holding an old fashioned revival at the Detroit Scharfian Fellowship. I had convinced him to bring the snuffbox with him to Detroit. It was almost impossible to get him to take the chance—you’ve seen how careful he is with it. But I did. I convinced him. I told him a very good story.”

Ben paused, his face dark and intense. He stared down at the desk for a moment, fists clenched. Then he took a deep breath, and released it slowly.

“And if things had gone according to plan ... if you’d met me at the station as you were supposed to ... then Trahern would have taken us both to him. To wherever he was keeping the snuffbox. And the Institute warlocks shadowing me would have followed, and they would have seized the box in a place
away
from Phleger’s center of power. It would have been a difficult battle, but they would have prevailed.”

He paused again. “But you didn’t meet me. And Trahern did not take me to Phleger. And so, here we are.”

Will bowed his head. The organ music had become heavy and slow.

“I didn’t know where you were,” Ben continued. “I didn’t know what had happened to you. But I never imagined it was actually the curse, until Hart contacted Phleger and told him about Jenny.” He paused. “When I saw the charms on her Body I knew. I knew it had to be Cowdray.”

He looked at Will.

“I also knew that the most sensible course of action was for me to return to the Institute. Extract myself from the situation; put myself out of Phleger’s reach. He believes I hold the secret to unlocking the box—so the best move would have been to keep myself, and the secret he believes I possess, away from him. It would not have been a permanent solution, but it would have slowed him down. It would have made him waste valuable time. And the Institute needed that time. It needed it very badly.”

Ben stretched his hand out flat, staring hard at his own fingers, as if there was some kind of secret within them.

“But I knew what he would do with that time. The only thing he
could
do—figure out some way to use Jenny. And no matter what God told him to do to her, it surely would have hurt her more than she’s already been hurt. If I let that happen, you’d never forgive me. That’s why I put that note on your pillow.”

Will was shocked. “You?”

Ben nodded.

“The Gores warded their whole house against Agency warlocks ... do you really think a fool like Atherton Hart could get past them and stab a knife into your pillow?” Ben scoffed. “No, Will. I sent you to him, so that he would bring you to me. Because I knew that you and I together could have a chance of making this work. As long as I keep Phleger fooled about how important I am to him, and you do everything exactly as I say, we can save Jenny, get the box, escape to safety, everything. I know we can do this, little brother. Trust me.” He grinned crookedly. “It’ll all come out all right.”

Will absorbed all this. Finally, he sighed. “You could have told me all this at the Gores’, and spared me the trouble of climbing out the window.”

“Phleger would have known.” Ben lifted an ironic eyebrow. “You’re not a very good liar, Will. Besides—I couldn’t have told you earlier; that’s not how credomancers operate.”

“You’re not a credomancer,” Will said.

“But I
am
a storyteller,” Ben said. “And we happen to work in much the same way.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Sanctum Sanctorum

T
he jangling ring of the desk telephone shattered the silence, making them both jump. Ben lifted the receiver quickly, and listened.

“Yes, the preparations are complete,” he replied sharply. “You must return immediately. I have discovered something very important.” Ben replaced the receiver in its cradle and turned to Will.

“Phleger is coming.” Ben leapt out of the chair. “Things will happen fast now. Try to keep up.”

A suitcase, damp from melted snow, sat near the office door. Retrieving it, Ben unlocked it with a key he drew from his pocket.

“It is of utmost importance that we escape with the box
before
the Consecration ceremony,” he said, opening the suitcase. It was filled not with clothes, but rather with books and papers. “The ceremony will cement this place as Brother Phleger’s center of power. After it is complete, these walls will be magically impregnable. That’s why Phleger moved up the ceremony. He knows that you can access Cowdray’s power, and he knows that the Institute knows it.”

Will knit his brow, puzzled. “How does the
Institute
know it?”

“I told them, of course—”

“But how could
Phleger
know that?”

Ben’s eyes flashed alarm, but the look quickly coagulated into annoyance. He shook his head sharply.

“I don’t have time to explain everything, Will. All you need to know is that Phleger expects that Dreadnought Stanton will try and get the box before the Consecration puts it out of his reach. He’s fortifying his center of power to keep my Sophos from getting in ... and if we don’t get out before the ceremony is complete, we might not get out at all.”

Ben swept all of Phleger’s paperwork to one side and began pulling his own papers from within the suitcase. He spread these out over the desk as if he’d been working on them during Phleger’s absence. He set a pen and pot of ink nearby to complete the illusion. Will peered down at the sheets—they were all covered with hastily scribbled astrological charts and horary calculations.

“I have to convince Phleger to attempt to open the box before he’s completed his defenses—and I have to do so without making him question his faith in me.” Ben paused, his face going slightly pale, as if realizing the enormity of the task before him. Visibly steeling himself, he pulled several leather-bound astrological reference tomes—tables of houses, ephemeredes, sidereal atlases—out of the suitcase and thumped them down in dusty piles. “So I’ve cooked up a damn good story. My best yet.”

Having arranged the papers and books to his satisfaction, Ben then reached into his pocket and produced a silver tin that rattled. He opened it and thrust it at Will. “Quick, take one of these—no, take two.”

Will looked into the tin. “Candy?”

Ben rattled the tin at him insistently. “They’re a magical potion, just in a different form. Come on!”

Will took two of the candies and popped them into his mouth. They were sweet and bitter at the same time, tasting of ginger and honey and sulphur.

Ben tucked away the tin, put both his hands on Will’s arms, and looked him full in the face, his green eyes searching Will’s violet ones. “Listen carefully. Before I came here, I alerted the Institute. There are warlocks waiting to come to our rescue. But they cannot enter here unless Phleger invites them in.”

Will almost choked on the candy. “
Invites them in
? How are we supposed to—”

At that moment, the door to the office jerked open. Trahern entered first, glaring at Ben and Will as he stood aside to let Brother Phleger pass. The press conference must have gone very well, for the beaming preacher strutted through the door chest-first, in mid-command: “Of course they must print it! I have it here somewhere ...”

Going quickly to his desk, he sank into his chair, clearly meaning to retrieve some important document. When he saw the heaps of astrological papers and books, he frowned deeply, and his nostrils flared as if smelling brimstone. Lifting his eyes to Ben, he hissed, “What kind of demonic sorcery is—”

But then he caught sight of Ben’s face, and the words stopped in his mouth.

Will himself was shocked by his brother’s transformation. He had become “Professor Coeus” again in an instant, his chin raised high, his back strong and straight, his whole body as taut as a predatory cat’s. But that wasn’t what caught Phleger’s attention—rather, it was the fervent, intense gleam in Ben’s eyes.