Fathomless (6 page)

“I can believe a lot more than I used to.” Daniel took a deep breath. “What Professor Marvell said about Orne wanting you for an apprentice and sending you that spell? I was like, this Sean guy's incredible, summoning a familiar the first magic he ever did. That's major league.”

Sean felt a cheeks-to-neck burn of gratification. “But, see, I summoned the
wrong
familiar.”

“You got rid of it, though.”

Marvell must have left out all the shit that had gone down between the summoning and dismissing. Maybe sometime Sean would tell Daniel the whole cautionary tale. “Well, after a bunch of other people helped me. So. Anyway. What did you do to get here?”

“Nothing much. No real magic.”

“Then why's the Order think you're magic-capable?”

“More because of my family. They say there've been a lot of magicians on my mother's side. Including my mother.”

“I get it from my mom, too! Not that I knew for sure until last year. Did you know about your mom all along?”

“No, not really.” Daniel went to the door. “Eddy's calling us.”

The guy had good ears—Sean heard her only when he followed Daniel into the hall, and by the time he'd grabbed a hoodie from his room, Daniel was swinging around the second-floor newel post and onto the last flight down.

 

4

Helen
drove them to Mama Jo's in Kingsport, Sean's favorite pizza joint east of Providence. Afterwards they hung out in the common room, where Helen and Sean played cutthroat Scrabble and goofed on how Eddy and Daniel, busy at the shelves, kept discovering they'd read the same book.

With so little sleep the night before, Sean crashed early, and if any ghosts visited him, he slept through the electromagnetic field fluctuation. He'd have slept through breakfast if Eddy hadn't pounded on his door. Daniel, on the other hand, had been up long enough to make a mushroom frittata. Seriously, a mushroom frittata, plus home fries. Helen and Eddy had brunchgasms, and Sean had to admit that the guy could cook. Nobody was going to be impressed on Sean's days to fix breakfast, but at least Daniel wasn't all
Iron Chef
about it. Helen's compliments turned his face tomato red, and he snuck apologetic glances at Sean like,
Dude, did I overdo it?

Yeah, but chowing on his third slice of frittata, Sean could forgive him. Besides, he was too stoked about the meeting with Helen and Marvell to work up a good surge of resentment. Pretty soon he'd know who his mentor was (had to be Geldman). Maybe the mentor (Geldman) would even pop in. Plus Helen would reveal what she'd told Dad on the phone, which wasn't that Sean was getting expelled before he started, so how bad could her big secret be?

Marvell arrived as they came up from the kitchen. Eddy immediately went fan girl on him: “Whoa, Professor! That's an awesome tan.”

Marvell's white-toothed smile made his skin look even darker. “Thanks, Eddy. Two months in Greece helped.”

“Were you on an archaeological dig?”

“No, just visiting relatives.”

Oh, right, because Marvell's mother was Greek, which explained his dark brown hair and eyes and that scary first name of Theophilus. To poke at Eddy, Sean asked, “Your relatives aren't archaeologists, Professor?”

Marvell must not have realized it was a joke, because he didn't smile when he turned to Sean. “I'm afraid not, Sean. Glad to see you arrived without incident.”

“No problems. Eddy drove.”

“Ah, that explains it.” Marvell smiled again, at Daniel. “Good morning. All well?”

“All well, Professor.”

“To business, then. Let the tyranny of the alphabet prevail, Glass before Wyndham.”

“I'll warm up the rack for you,” Daniel whispered before following Marvell and Helen into the library.

Eddy curled up in a front parlor armchair and started rerereading
Franny and Zooey
. Apparently, Daniel was also rerereading it, so they could analyze the book together at lunch. That sounded like so much fun that Sean went out to watch carpenters lay the carriage house subfloor. He'd helped Joe-Jack lay floors, but the foreman here gave him dirty looks if he drifted near the work zone. His loss—Sean would have worked for nothing to pass the long hour before Daniel came outside, his pale skin flushed. “Was it that bad?”

“No. It was good. You better go in.”

After a pit stop to wash off secondhand construction grime, Sean slipped into the library. Marvell sat at the head of the conference table, with Helen to his right. The chair to Marvell's left was askew, so Daniel must have sat there. Good enough for Daniel, good enough for Sean. “So,” Marvell said as he settled in. “How's the carriage house coming? The crew must have arrived by now.”

They hadn't heard the nail guns? Come to listen, Sean didn't hear them either, even though the windows were open and the chirrup of sparrows drifted in from the side garden. “Yeah, and they're making a racket.”

“But not in here,” Helen said.

“Is it magic?”

“A ward that filters out unwanted noise,” Marvell said. “Too bad we can't ward away the mess, but it'll be worth it once the Order's housed in one building instead of scattered around campus.”

“And the basement, Professor? Looks like it's going to be a vault.”

Marvell's eyebrows arched. “Part of it will be. We've collected many irreplaceable items, some dangerous. That area will be closed to students, of course.”

In fortune-teller singsong, Helen added, “But someday you'll have a key to all the mysteries.”

“Nobody has that key,” Marvell said, so totally serious that Helen got busy with the canary yellow binder in front of her. To Sean, he said, “You saw Orne's aether-newt the other night?”

So the small talk was over. “Yeah, Professor. But it didn't bring any message. Not unless the way it wags its tail means something.”

“The gestures probably have meaning for its master and his regular contacts. Helen says you spoke to the newt. Do you think that was a good idea?”

Marvell had borrowed Dad's you-screwed-up voice, and his Back Bay accent made it sound even more ominous. “I didn't think it would matter. I mean, I didn't tell it any secrets.”

“What did you say?”

“I asked why it was letting me see it. All it did was flick its tail, like it was flipping me the bird.” Marvell gazed at him unamused, but there was no going back. “So I told it and Orne to fuck off.”

As if Marvell smelled something nasty, his nostrils flared. “In those exact words?”

“Uh, yeah. Then the newt disappeared.”

“I don't suppose it did any harm, Theo?” Helen put in. “Orne did provoke Sean, showing him the newt.”

Sean nodded. “Like he did it to prove he'd keep stalking me even though I'd picked the Order over him.”

“And how would Orne know you'd picked the Order? Have you talked outside the warded houses about studying with us?”

“Ah, maybe. Probably. Just to Eddy, anyways.”

“Indiscreet. When Dr. Benetutti put up the wards, we discussed keeping talk about magic inside them.”

The seat Daniel had warmed up really was starting to feel like a rack. “I guess I screwed up. I'm sorry, Professor.”

“I don't need an apology, Sean. I need you to take our precautions seriously. Orne's pursuit has always worried me. Why single out Sean Wyndham to be his apprentice?”

Sean looked at the
Founding
windows and the figure in the forest shadows. “It wasn't Nyarlathotep that sent Orne after me?”

“Nyarlathotep's certainly
aware
of all magicians, actual and potential. However, I think Orne's interest preceded his Master's.”

A tray on the conference table corralled a carafe of ice water and four glasses. Sean reached for a glass; Helen, closer, poured the water, then said, “Remember how Orne was surprised when Nyarlathotep appeared to you at the summoning?”

Sean rolled the cool glass between his palms. “Like Orne thought, ‘Hey, I'm the only one supposed to be messing with this kid'?”

“Exactly. Again, what made Orne pick you to mess with? Until recently, we didn't know.”

“That's changed,” Marvell said. “As Helen told your father yesterday.”

The phone call at last. On Marvell's cue, Helen coughed, then started talking. “Jeremy agreed we'd better be the ones to tell you about it, since we had the data.” She patted the canary yellow binder.

Sean vacillated between hoping she'd open it and willing her to toss it out the window.

She did neither, instead winkling out a legal-sized sheet of paper, which she smoothed under her palms, blank side up. “Recently I was helping an Order member research magical lines—families that have produced magicians. That made me think about researching your genealogy.”

Sean had one? Duh, everyone did, even if it wasn't drawn up on paper. “My granddad Stewie's into that.”

“Jeremy told me, and your grandfather was good enough to send me his notes. They're detailed on the Polish side, the Krols and Dudeks. On the English side, he didn't have anything earlier than the 1850s. A friend of Theo's at the New England Historic Genealogical Society made it to 1715 before he hit a wall at Thaddeus Howe, whose mother was a Constance Cooke from Boston. The other Cooke children appear in the usual records, but not Constance. Before her marriage, her only appearance is in the Cooke family Bible, as ‘Constance, taken in, 1693.'”

“She was adopted?”

Helen had cut her hair short, so when she reached for the lock she used to worry during the Servitor crisis, she had to settle for rubbing her cheekbone. “But adopted from whom? Then I remembered where I'd seen the names Constance and Cooke before.” She paused, as if waiting for Sean to have his own eureka moment.

Nothing, though “Constance” did tease his memory. “Where was that?”

“Redemption Orne's journals, the ones you and Eddy read last summer. I looked at them again and saw that Orne had an uncle in Boston named Cooke.” Helen fingered the sheet of legal paper. “And that Orne's daughter was named Constance.”

Helen was right about the daughter. “Yeah, but
that
Constance died. It's in the Arkham Witch Panic book. Redemption and Patience's baby died right after they hanged Patience.”

“That's what I thought, too. Except it was too big a coincidence. Redemption and Patience had a baby named Constance. In 1693, when Constance Orne would have been a year old, Redemption's uncle adopted a Constance of about the same age.”

From the concerned look Helen gave Sean, she must have noticed the break of sweat that chilled his face. But she plowed on: “I checked the archives of the Third Congregational Church and found a record of Constance Orne's burial in 1693. Then I found a collection of letters at the Arkham Historical Society. They'd belonged to Nicholas Brattle, who was pastor of the Third when Redemption was its teacher. One letter was from Alden Cooke, Redemption's uncle. He wrote to thank Brattle for helping free an innocent from the infamy of her parents, a convicted witch and fallen minister. Cooke didn't name the innocent, but I've got to conclude it was Constance Orne, and that what Brattle did to free her was to fake a burial record.”

First Sean had to close his mouth so he didn't look like a landed trout gaping for oxygen. Second he had to make sure he'd heard Helen right. “Like, Constance Cooke was really Constance Orne?”

Helen kept her voice level but her gaze sharp, like a doctor giving bad news to a patient who might flip: “Yes, Sean.”

Sean swallowed. “Constance was Patience and Redemption's daughter.”

“Yes.”

“So, if Constance is my ancestor, they are, too.”

Helen slipped him the legal sheet, print side up. It didn't show a whole family tree, more like one branch split off the trunk by lightning. At the left margin were the names
PATIENCE BISHOP
and
REDEMPTION ORNE
, yoked together, then an arrow to
CONSTANCE (ORNE) COOKE
, then more arrows and names all the way over to the last twigs, which were a yoked
KATHERINE KROL
and
JEREMY WYNDHAM
, shooting an arrow into
SEAN WYNDHAM
.

Sean pushed the sheet away. “What's that make Orne to me?”

Starting at
REDEMPTION
, Helen counted forward to
SEAN
. “He's your ten-times-great-grandfather, right, Theo?”

“That's how I counted it.”

That was an insane number of
great
s
.
For the first time, Orne's 338 years took on weight for Sean, became an overloaded backpack digging straps into his shoulders and chest, because what was at the end of all those years?
He
was.
SEAN WYNDHAM
.

“Sean? You okay?”

The straps of his ancestral burden cut his breath short. He'd never had an asthma attack, but this had to be what it felt like.

Marvell stood, but it was Helen who urged Sean to his feet and made him walk. The panicky suffocation eased, and by the time they'd traversed the library and returned to the table, Sean was breathing fine but burning hot. “Sorry,” he began.

“Don't be,” Marvell said, and weirdly, there was approval in his voice. “I'd be more worried if you didn't have that kind of reaction. Sit down. Finish your water.”

“Here's some colder,” Helen said, pouring him a fresh glass.

The water cleared his head without extinguishing his embarrassment. “This is what you told my dad, Helen?”

“Yes.”

No wonder he'd holed up in the studio, studying Mom's image and trying to gut down the fact that she was Redemption Orne's nine-times-great-granddaughter. Say that Dad could get his last-summer's wish, and kick Orne straight out of the world. Orne would remain part of their lives, tangled up in Sean's DNA. “I guess Orne's been watching his line? Looking for magicians?”