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5
Tap, tap.
The silver beak of the vulture atop his cane rapped against the gravestone. That was all it took. No candles, no sacrifices, no incantations. Those were the tools of amateurs. For him, all he needed was to knock. Shifting his weight, he sat on the edge of the tombstone and balanced his cane against his thigh. Reaching into his coat, he pulled out his silver cigarette case.
Fetching a cigarillo from beneath the latch, he placed it between his lips. The strike of a match came next. He was never fond of using lighters, and he wasn’t quite sure why. He inhaled, enjoying the rush of flavors as the smoke coursed into his lungs. He exhaled through his nose and watched as the curling wisps of white drifted over something otherwise unseen before him.
Like a drape placed over a stereotypical specter, he smirked at the figure in front of him.
“Yes, Master?”came the whispery voice of the ghost before him.
“Follow her wherever she goes. Be unseen and unheard. You are not to alert her to your presence. But stay close. When our old ‘friends’ arrive and speak to her, follow them instead. I need to know their movements at all times.”
“Yes, Master…”
And with that, the spirit was gone. He took another puff of his cigarillo and flicked the ashes to the ground by his feet. He knew it was a nasty habit. But what was it going to do…kill him?
Gideon grinned.
It’d take a lot more than that to put him in the ground when all was said and done.
* * *
Maggie shovedher hands into her hoodie pockets as she walked into the Boston Public Library. She spent a lot of time there, usually looking up old famous artists and sketching their works or sitting in the hallways and drawing the architecture. There wasn’t a whole lot else for her to do with her days. She didn’t have the money to buy a computer, and surfing the internet on her phone was only so entertaining after a while.
So she went to the library.
Now she had a real purpose. Heading to the catalogue computers, she tapped on the enter key to wake it up and began typing into the search bar. “Doctor Gideon Raithe.” Enter.
Quite a few published papers, a record of his graduation from Harvard, and something about being interviewed at a charity function. Not much else, honestly. She kept digging. “Faustus Diogenus.” Enter.
One book came up with a reference, something about the Byzantine Empire. Great. History books. Not sure what I was expecting. Jotting down its location in the library into her sketchbook, she cleared the search and walked off to find her target.
“Can’t believe I’m falling for this shit,” she muttered to herself as she walked. She didn’t have anyone else to talk to. That was the case almost all the time. Harry slept most days because he worked nights, and besides her appointments with Gideon, she just…spent her time alone.
It was part of the reason she really wished she could get a job. It would be nice to talk with people. Her world just felt so devoid of anything. But mostly, she figured she was lonely. Painfully lonely.
No friends. No life. No past. No money. No hobbies. Just drawing, listening to music on Spotify, and wandering around the old and interesting places of Boston. Sitting in graveyards and pondering what it must be like to be dead.
If Rinaldo is right…
She shoved the thought from her head.
It was in some far-off, dusty corner of the library that she found the book she was looking for. Plucking the tome off the shelf, she looked down at it curiously. It was unimpressive. It had a plastic cover on it that was cracked and yellowed at the edges, desperately taped back together by some well-meaning librarian, before the packing tape gave up as well. With a shrug, she wandered to a nearby desk and plopped down into a chair and began flipping through the pages.
It turned out that the rise and fall of the Heraclean Dynasty of the Byzantine Empire was…not that interesting. But she did find reference to “Faustus Diogenus.” One small paragraph referencing one of Heraclius’ most trusted senior vizirs. But other than that? Nothing. Just a dead end. No talk of any lineage, or sons, or where he came from, or anything she could track.
No reference to him being “the world’s most dangerous necromancer,” either.
She sighed.
Checking her phone, she still had a few hours before she had to be at her appointment with Gideon. His office was on the south side of Tremont Street, in a building that used to be a piano factory before it was converted into several different practices. It’d take her the better part of an hour to walk there from Copley Square.
She was a slow walker. Harry always gave her shit for it.
Apparently, she didn’t grow up in a city. That much she could figure out from her leisurely pace.
But she might as well start walking now. She reached the end of her lead—one stupid name. One stupid paragraph. Maybe that stupid priest who broke into her apartment the other night was full of sh—
