~ Sylas ~

The boat rocks beneath my feet, riding the cobalt swells, and sea spray mists my face as the breeze licks the foam-crested waves. Above, the sun glares down from a cloudless sky, and the rushing sounds of wind and sea buffet my ears.

Most of my attention is on the man before me, though: Linden Edwards with his khaki dockers and boat shoes, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, and his blond hair tousled by the turbulent air. Whatever he'd drugged me with hasn't completely worn off, and I sway unsteadily as my mind struggles to process what he'd just said about having the key to something, and not letting me go.

"What are you talking about?" I ask, backing away from him. "What do you want with me?"

He lifts a brow. "I thought that was rather clear. I want you to Craft for me, Sylas."

I shake my head. "No."

"Well, I'm not really giving you a choice, am I," he says, with unnerving gentleness, and his smile sends a shiver up my spine. "Now that we've found a stone that resonates with your power, and now that you've discovered the key, time is of the essence and my hand is forced."

"The key to what?" I ask, hearing the note of panic in my voice. "And who were you talking to just now? You said, 'bring him.' Bring who?"

His smile broadens slightly. "It's a good thing you've got a pretty face, Sylas, because you're a bit slow, honestly. I thought you'd have caught on by now."

He steps towards me, hands in his pockets as if to signal harmlessness. For once in my life, and albeit far too late, I'm not fooled.

"Can't you guess?" he asks. "The key to Solemnity's tomb, of course, wherein lies the Devil's Song. Once he's found it, I expect my dear old friend, Aurelio, to bring it to me, along with the final ingredient I require: namely, his brother — the Ink to your Quill."

I feel the blood drain from my face, and take another step back as Edwards advances.

"I stumbled on the idea by accident, you see," he says. "When Forsythe put out that desperate call for anyone to help his kid, I thought I might as well give it a shot. Technology is the magic of the mundane world, after all, and they already have mechanical hearts, though they don't work particularly well. I thought, what if I could build a mechanical heart, powered by magic? So I made one, and it worked, quite literally, like a charm. The only problem was — like all my little machines — I couldn't get the damned thing to hold a charge. It was like a clock that had to be continually wound. Not exactly ideal in a device meant to keep someone alive."

As he speaks, I continue to retreat, but the boat's only so big, and I find myself backed against the rail in the stern. He stops, regarding me with the confidence of a cat who's cornered a mouse.

"Then, a chance encounter gave me the answer I'd been looking for. I was at one of Linus Spellwright's parties, and he was showing off his collection of family Relics. He got into the story about his Ancestor, who'd killed his lover and harvested his magic for his Sign, and what a powerful Relic it made. It gave me an idea. Relics retain something of their former owner's power, like a permanent magical charge. What if I used one to power my machine? The problem, of course, was getting my hands on one. As you know, all legitimate Relics are registered, and the illegitimate ones are hard to come by. So, I thought, I'd have to make my own."

As his words sink in, my blood seems to lose a few degrees of heat. "Your assistants..."

"That's the nice thing about a boat," he says, shrugging. "No witnesses. Accidents happen all the time at sea."

"You're insane," I gasp, barely able to hold myself up as I start to shake with adrenaline.

He shakes his head. "No, not insane. With my newly made Relic, the mechanical heart beat without fail, and — with his girl running out of time — Forsythe was just desperate enough to let the medi-mages implant it. You might call me insane if it hadn't worked — but it did. It worked perfectly, and I realized it was just the beginning. I'd stumbled across the exact thing I'd always been looking for: a way to prove that a Crafter's power need not be limited by the gift he's born with. First, though, I had to replicate my success."

"You murdered someone," I rasp breathlessly. "I wouldn't call that 'success.'"

"No?" He raises his brows at me. "A young man died, yes; but a girl lived. Some might say that's a fair exchange. Though I admit not all my experiments were so... altruistic."

"How many?" I ask, though I'm not certain I really want to know.

"Four," he admits easily. "But I soon realized that 'making' Relics was unsustainable. For one thing, I wanted to present my findings to the world — to show the likes of the Spellwrights and Forsythes, the Knowalls and Goldhearts, that one needn't be born with strong magic to attain it. I could hardly do that with machines powered by Relics I couldn't account for. Second, while the Relics worked, they were weak. A Relic reflects the power of the Crafter who once wielded it as a Sign, and people notice when powerful Crafters disappear. That's one reason there's a registry — to protect Crafters and their Signs from people like me."

He smiles, his head tipped a little to the side as he regards me, and another shiver of disgust and fear travels up my back.

"Then I remembered that little story Linus Spellwright had told about his Ancestor. It had given me the idea to use Relics, but I realized then that I had missed the true solution. I didn't need more powerful Relics; I needed a more powerful Sign. A living Sign — a Quill, able to channel infinite magic through his body itself. And I needed to take that power for my own, as Griffin had done."

"You're forgetting that Griffin was convicted and executed for murder," I point out, gritting my teeth. "You will be, too."

"Griffin's mistake was getting caught," Edwards says. "I won't, because everyone who knows what I've done will be dead, or else as guilty as I am."

"It won't work, anyway," I say, as defiantly as I can. "I'm bound to Jaxon, not you."

His smile doesn't falter. "That was unfortunate. After all the trouble Edie and I went through, to have that oaf ruin everything by chance. I'd found an unexpected ally in Linus's wife — she had her own ambitions, but our interests aligned. She'd already discovered that Amarias had living ancestors, though her first attempt at harvesting a Lovecraft Relic had not been a great success."

My body feels numb, and I can barely get my lips to form words. "My mom..." I whisper.

He nods. "By the time we joined forces, Edie had already discovered that the Ink required a living Quill, and — for whatever reason — had to be a male. Luckily, there was you. Unluckily — for us, anyway — there was Jaxon, too."

He frowns at me, and I do my best to scowl back at him, though I'm sure I don't look particularly fierce at the moment.

"Then, after the debacle at Linus's wake, I went to ground," he goes on. "Without Edie's expertise, and with you already bound to Jaxon, I had to rethink my plan. With his mother dead and your sister distracting him, Marcus wasn't so keen to work with me anymore, either. Fortunately, I still had him tongue-tied, and it wasn't hard to gain his cooperation with a few threats. Mainly, I needed to draw you and Jaxon back into the game, and of course I needed the one thing Edie hadn't tracked down — the Devil's Song. Fortunately, the two goals went hand in hand, and then—" he laughs, "—Aurelio comes along and drops you right in my lap."

"Aurelio... Is he...?"

"In on it? He wasn't, but after our little 'date' on the Spire, he figured it out. Came to me with a proposal: he helps me secure you and the Song, I help him restore the Spellwright name to all its former power and glory. Oh, and he gets the family Relic back, too, once you're, er... 'finished' with it."

"What about Jaxon?" I ask, barely able to speak past the tightness in my throat.

"Well, I need him, too, of course," Edwards says. "As the Ink to your Quill, it is he who must carry out the ritual."

"Never." I shake my head. "Jaxon will never help you."

"Not willingly," Edwards agrees. "Not knowingly. But he will, nonetheless."

I glance over my shoulder at the distant land, and down at the wild sea.

Edwards reads my thoughts. "Don't even think about it," he warns. "Land is a mile off and the water's freezing. You'd never make it."

I look back at him and feel more certain than I have in a long time: certain that I can't let him hurt Jaxon, and that I'm probably better off beneath the waves, anyway, than with whatever he has planned.

Not giving myself time to second-guess this decision, I turn and mount the railing, swinging one leg over in preparation for a jump.

Edwards is faster, though, and leaps to catch my shirt before wrapping an arm around my middle. He hauls me back, but I kick hard off the rail, knocking into him and taking him by surprise. He falls with me on top of him, but he doesn't let go, instead wrapping his legs around mine and pinning me. I struggle, reaching overhead to scratch at his face or grab his hair, but he loops his other arm around my throat and squeezes hard.

"Shh, shh, shh!" he hisses near my ear as I thrash. "That's enough of that now. Don't make this more difficult than it has to be."

I claw at him, convulsing in his grip, but the pressure on my windpipe only increases. Stars burst across my vision and darkness closes in, and I stop fighting as I slip towards unconsciousness.

He releases me before I get there, though I can't do more than cough as he pulls a piece of cloth from his pocket and holds it over my nose and mouth. It has a sickly sweet smell, like honey-covered rotten apples, and makes me cough more, which makes me inhale.

My muscles go weak as whatever it is takes effect; my mind fogging as my thoughts drifts, until I lie unresisting in his arms.

"You're stronger than you look," Edwards says, panting heavily as he lifts the rag from my face and sits back on his heels to look down at me. "I'll have to remember that."

I stare up at him, glad to see I got a few good scratches in, at least. His arm is bloodied, and there's a bruise darkening his cheek where I hit him with the back of my head.

"Alright, up we get."

He slips one arm beneath my shoulders and the other under my knees, grunting as he gets to his feet. Awkwardly, and none-too-gently, he carries me back down the narrow steps to the cabin, where he dumps me unceremoniously on the fold-out bed.

Retrieving a length of rope from somewhere, he binds my wrists above my head, fastening the rope to a brass loop in the wall.

"That was far too close a call," he mutters, more to himself than to me. "Not taking any chances now."

He takes my pack, which contains both Agatha's book and my Sign, and pats me down for good measure.

When he finishes, he stands over me with a strangely dispassionate gaze. Leaning over me, he brushes the pad of his thumb across my mouth, pressing just hard enough to force me to part my lips.

"You're mine, now, Sylas Lovecraft," he says, softly. "And what's left of your life will be far more pleasant if you accept that."

I glare up at him, and if I wasn't effectively paralyzed, I'd bite his finger off.

He smirks. "Stronger than you look, indeed," he says, thankfully withdrawing his hand.

Then he leaves me, and a short time later, I succumb to whatever he'd drugged me with this time, and fall asleep.

✧ ✧ ✧

The next time I wake, the light coming through the narrow window overhead tells me it's late afternoon or early evening. For a moment, my mind is blank, and I have no memory of where I am, or of why my whole body feels numb. Then I glance over and see Linden Edwards looking down at me, holding a knife.

Before I can freak out too much, he folds the knife in half and slips in his pocket. At the same time, I realize my hands are free.

"Tying a good knot is one thing," he says. "Untying it is another."

He winks, and I swallow the taste of bile that rises in my mouth.

"Come on. Time to show you my real home."

To my surprise, he turns and walks away, ascending to the upper deck once more, leaving me to follow as I will.

I glance around, thinking I might search for a weapon of some sort, but then a strange pressure squeezes my throat. Lifting my hand, I feel a thin strip of fabric bound about my neck.

"Don't touch that," Edwards warns, calling down to me from above. "I got it from the same Crafter who made the tongue-tie spells for me, and you've seen how well those work. This is an obedience collar. Do what I say, in a timely manner, and you'll be fine. Resist, and... Well, 'resistance is futile,' isn't it?" He laughs.

Hugging myself to suppress a shiver, and feeling cold, sick, and generally miserable, I follow him to the upper deck.

There, I see that the sun is just sinking level with the horizon, about to set, meaning it's nearly twenty-four hours since I made the mistake of trusting Linden Edwards one last time. The air is cooler, the wind more gentle, and the waves have darkened to a calm, blue-black.

And even though I haven't Crafted, and even though I'm still mad at him, I miss Jaxon so much it hurts — like someone scooped out a hollow in my chest and filled it with ice.

I wish he were here; wish I could see his face and fall into the warmth of his strength; and yet, for his sake, I also hope I never see him again.

To the east, the strip of gray that demarks land is still just visible, while before me rises an outcrop of jagged brown stone, about the size of a small football stadium, longer than it is wide. The western, seaward facing end slants towards the water at a low angle, the lowest part worn away by devouring waves. The nearer, higher side has a level top, on which stands a lighthouse, painted a weathered white. It rises, phallic and stark against the pastel sky, and at its base I see a structure that resembles something between a barracks and a house.

Meanwhile, Edwards stands at the helm, steering his boat towards a sheltered bay, already falling into shadow with the sun's retreat, at the end of which I see a short, stone pier.

He guides the vessel alongside it, coming to a stop, and tosses a rope ashore. Then he hops down and fastens it to the pier, doing the same forward and aft. With the vessel secured, he turns his attention on me.

"Come, then — let me give you the grand tour."

I hesitate, and the collar constricts slightly in response.

Sighing, I obey, and the collar loosens again as I join Edwards on the dock.

"This way," he says, unnecessarily; one end of the pier ends in water.

The other end, however, seems cut off by the cliff. As we near, though, I see a narrow flight of steep steps, cut into the rock, that zigzags up towards the plateau above. I eye it unenthusiastically and rub my bruised neck, careful not to pull at the ribbon tied around it.

"What are you, a Bond villain?" I grumble, masking my sinking despair with a veneer of disdain.

"You know the difference between the hero and a villain?" he asks, unperturbed. "The hero lives to tell the tale, because he wins. Besides, I don't own the island. I just rent the lighthouse."

"Low-budget Bond villain, then," I concede.

He laughs and pushes me towards the steps.