Monk knew better than to try to soothe her with platitudes. “You’re right. What Bibbie did was crazy and what Gerald and I did was dangerous. But it worked. Thanks to Bibbie I broke the other shadbolt this afternoon. We got some important information.”
“Really?” said Bibbie, delighted. “Monk, you plonker, why didn’t you
say
?”
“You were never meant to know about any of it, Bibs,” he said. “Officially you still don’t. Officially what happened here last night never happened.”
She pouted. “Oh, but—”
“Quit while you’re ahead, ducky,” said Reg. “Basking in the glow of being an unsung heroine’s not so bad. I should know. I’ve been doing it for centuries.”
As Bibbie made scornful scoffing noises, Melissande sighed. “Just tell me this much, Monk. After all the unpleasantness with your Uncle Ralph, tell me this latest escapade hasn’t caused you more grief.”
He recalled Mr. Plummer’s expression after being discreetly taken to one side and told in a tone that brooked neither contradiction nor negotiation:
“So anyway, here it is. I can break this bastard’s shadbolt, sir, and I’ll do it for you here and now—on one condition. No awkward questions afterwards. Just nod and smile and send me back to R&D.”
And because Mr. Plummer wanted results more than he needed explanations he’d accepted the outrageous condition and never once made mention of the second shadbolt’s disappearance.
“No grief,” he told Melissande… and prayed devoutly he was right. Because for all he knew, Mr. Plummer’s gratitude came complete with an expiration date.
She nodded, trying to hide her relief. “Good. All right—so counting last night and this afternoon, how many shadbolts have you broken altogether?”
He exhaled sharply. “Two.”
She wasn’t the only one who found the prospect alarming.
“But two is better than none, Mel,” he added.
“True,” she conceded, after a moment. “And I suppose this shadbolt will be easier to break because Gerald made it. Since you know his thaumic signature as well as your own, it’ll just be a case of reading it, like reading his handwriting. And—I don’t know—
over-writing
it?“ritkno”
“Um…” He ran one hand down his face, dreading what he had to say next. “Not exactly. If our Gerald and his Gerald were the same wizard, I could do that. I’ve broken heaps of Gerald’s hexes now and some of them were utterly diabolical.”
Reg, listening intently, pointed her beak at him like a shooter aiming his rifle. “Eh? What d’you mean
if
they were the same wizard? The last time I looked you were busy bleating over my strenuous objections that they
are
the same wizard. Now which is it, Mr. I’m-the-instant-expert-so-don’t-argue-with-me Markham? Make up your bloody mind!”
“Okay,” he said, after some frantic thinking. “This is all theoretical… but it seems to me that
that
Monk’s world and
our
world were running on parallel rails, like—like trains going in a straight line side by side. Same speed, same direction. Same lives, pretty much. Only then something different happened in
his
world and now our worlds are running on two different tracks.”
Bibbie was nodding. “Sounds right,” she murmured. “As a theory it’s metaphysically sound.” She pulled a face. “Well. As sound as anything as crazy as this can be. So—what happened? What caused his world to veer off while ours kept going straight ahead?”
“Monk?” Melissande prompted, when he didn’t answer. “Monk, what aren’t you telling us?”
Sickened again, he folded his arms tight to his chest. He could feel his heartbeat, thudding right through his sleeves. “All I can be sure of,” he said, unable to meet her eyes, “is that it’s got something to do with the other Gerald. It’s something he did. Something… not good.”
“Pishwash,” Reg snapped, feathers ruffling. “I’ll never believe it and you can’t make me.”
“Look, Reg, I don’t want to believe it either,” he snapped back. “But I felt the other Gerald’s thaumic signature in that shadbolt and I’m telling you it’s
changed
. It’s
wrong
.”
“Wrong how?” said Bibbie. “You’re going to have to be specific if you want us to believe you. This is
Gerald
we’re talking about, remember?”
“I can’t be specific, Bibs!” he said, not trying to hide his hurt exasperation. “It’s a feeling, isn’t it? It’s touch, it’s taste—I can’t put it into words. It’s like asking me to describe what Melissande’s singing sounds like. The word is
off-key
but that hardly encapsulates the entire hideous experience.”
Melissande stared, then slapped his arm. “Do you
mind
?”
“Now, now, ducky,” said Reg. “Enough of that. You can’t go around hitting people for telling the truth.”
He was not, under any circumstances, going to rub his arm. “I know you don’t want to hear this,” he told them. “Trust me, I don’t want to be saying it. But I felt something
rotten
in the other Gerald’s thaumic signature. I just think we need to be prepared, that’s all.”
“Prepared for what?” said Bibbie. Her voice wasn’t steady. “That the other Gerald—
his
Gerald—is
bad
?”
Monk slid his arm around her shoulders and held her close.
Oh, lord.
“Who knows? But Reg said it, didn’t she? Our Gerald would never put a shadbolt on me.”
“Maybe he wouldn’t,” said Melissande, glaring. “But believe me when I tell you
I’m
getting awfully tempted.”
Coughing, the other Monk stirred on the sofa then tried to sit up. “Melissande? Bibbie?”
He returned to his inconvenient twin’s side. “It’s all right. We’re still here.”
The man wearing his face, who’d stopped living his life and started living a nightmare, looked up at him with haunted eyes. “We’re running out of time, Monk. Right now he’s distracted—there’s a plan—but he won’t stay distracted forever. If I’m not where I’m supposed to be when I’m supposed to be there—” His thin face twisted—even saying that much must have woken the shadbolt. “I can’t—I can’t—”
Sickened, Monk dropped to one knee beside him.
That’s how I look when I’m writhing in pain.
“You mean Gerald, don’t you? He’s… gone rogue.”
Gasping, the Monk from next door nodded. “I’m sorry.”
So am I.
“What’s his plan?”
The other Monk was running with sweat now, his dreadful eyes turning glassy. “I can’t. I can’t.” He shuddered, groaning. “Get it off me,” he whispered. “
Please.
”
“All right,” he said to the man on the sofa. “I’ll
try my best but—you know it’s not going to be easy, right? And you know it’s going to hurt like hell?”
On a gasp, the Monk from next door nodded. “Been living in hell for months now, Debbie. You do what you have to.”
Debbie
. Short for Debinger. One of his middle names and Aylesbury’s favorite childhood taunt. Nobody knew that, not even Bibs. He’d never told anyone. His childish shame had been too great. So if he’d had any doubts left… if he’d thought that maybe, just maybe, none of this was really real…
Oh, bloody hell, Gerald. What a stinking mess.
Pushing up to both knees, he cradled the other Monk’s sweat-slicked face between his hands. “You ready, mate?”
“Don’t be stupid,” the other Monk said, trying to smile. “But since when has not being ready ever stopped us?”
“Right,” he muttered. “Right. So here goes nothing. Hold on.”
Mel, Bibbie and Reg had come to stand behind him. He could feel them, warm as flames at his back. Not a word spoken. There was nothing to say. But their silent strength strengthened him. Gave him heart. Gave him hope.
His second plunging into this other Monk’s damaged aura was no better than the first. Especially since he didn’t let himself dwell on the blue and the gold but made a beeline for the black parts, the twisted parts, the parts distorted by the crippling shadbolt. A shadbolt that wasn’t like any other he’d ever seen. Not that he could see this one. Not yet. Sense it, y“et.s, es. It was setting off all his thaumaturgic
alarm bells. But still it remained hidden from his etheretic eye.
Bloody hell, Gerald. I thought I was the inventor.
Circling warily, keeping his
potentia
tightly leashed, he eased himself in for a closer look. Straight away he felt the other Monk flinch. Heard him groan. But he couldn’t let that stop him. He had to keep pushing, no matter the cost. And there was going to be a cost. A bloody steep one.
The other Monk’s sharp discomfort increased. He could feel it now, in his own flesh, a weird kind of echo. Because they were the same man, sort of? More or less? Or because he’d sunk himself so deeply into the man’s etheretic aura that he was starting to lose track of where it ended and his own began?
Either way he’d have to be careful. This was dangerous magic—even for him.
Gritting his teeth he gathered his own
potentia
closer. Imagined it thin and sharp like a needle, poised to pierce the invisible shadbolt’s poisonous heart. Where was it, anyhow? He could feel it. He could taste it. It was here. Why couldn’t he
see
it?
Come on, you filthy thing. Come out, come out, wherever you are
.
Images were starting to form in his mind. Shards of glass. Sharpened knives. Bits and pieces of barbed wire. Twisted and tangled and embedded in flesh. And the hand that had forged them—the wizard who’d dreamed them, had turned his dreams into a lethal reality—
Gerald. Oh, Gerald. What happened to you?
Achingly familiar, abhorrently strange, Gerald’s despicably altered thaumic signature tainted every
thread of the shadbolt. No doubt about it now. No way to hide. This was Gerald’s doing. The other Gerald. This Monk’s Gerald. He felt a trembling clutch of fear.
I don’t know if I can break this monstrosity. I don’t know the man who made it.
From a long, long way distant he heard himself sob, once. A sound of despair and impending defeat. Then faintly he heard a voice.
“Don’t you dare give up, Monk Markham. We both know you can do this.”
Melissande, being bossy and regal the way only she could. Taking heart from her snippiness, taking heart from
her
, he steadied his ragged breathing and looked again at the cage in which the other Monk was trapped.
Something tickled his attention. Something familiar. Outlying semi-cants, like the shadbolt he’d broken on Mr. Plummer’s prisoner. Not the same thaumic signature but the same wicked design. Either it was a coincidence—or Gerald and their mysterious black market wizard had been reading the same books. Even though this was awful, he nearly laughed.
His Gerald had told him exactly how to break through this kind of lock. After doing it twice he was practically an expert. And once the correct sequence of semi-cants was triggered, the rest of the shadbolt should just… melt away. All he had to do was work out the correct order.
<“er. codiv height="0em">
Except last time it was Gerald who’d identified the right sequence. Sure, he’d figured the proper timing to break them, but without the correct order—
If he can do it, I can. I have to. Come on, Debbie. Prove that pillock Aylesbury wrong.
The other Monk was weakening. The strain of this was proving too much for him. They were both running out of time now.
Come on, come on, come on.
With a surge of his
potentia
he pushed through the wardings and the barriers surrounding the shadbolt, roughly pulling them apart. The other Monk screamed, the most hideous sound. He felt the pain sear through his own body and screamed with him. He couldn’t help it—but he didn’t let it stop him, either.
Twelve semi-cants. Three groupings. Twenty-four different timings. And oh bugger—what was that? A buzzing, a burning, a warning shudder through the ether.
No
. He’d set something off. Some kind of thaumic booby-trap. Hell. Why hadn’t he sensed it?
Damn you, Dunwoody! When did you get so sneaky?
Now the race was really on. Desperately he threw his
potentia
at the tangle of incants. But even as they fell, their timings haphazardly staccato, he could feel the other Gerald’s thaumic booby-trap expanding, spreading like acid spilled from a filthy glass.
Come on, Markham, come on, come on. Are you a bloody genius or aren’t you?
Six hexes down. Seven. Eight. Nine. The other Monk was howling.
God, somebody shut him up.
Ten. Eleven.
The twelfth semi-cant resisted. Because it wasn’t a simple semi-cant. No, of
course
it wasn’t. It was a triple-hexed double-looped terto-cant.
You bastard
. He and the other Monk were howling together now,
blood and bones and flesh on fire. The booby-trap had nearly reached its critical tipping-point. No more minutes left, only seconds remaining.
No time for kindness. No time for finesse. He ripped apart the shadbolt’s final incant like a wolf falling on a lamb. And then, as he pulled himself free of the Monk from next door’s tattered aura, he managed to extinguish the booby-trap before it finished its job.
Take that, Gerald, you maniac. Whoever you are.