I stepped out of the shower, snagging my towel off the rack and drying off. I scrubbed my hair in the towel and armed the steam off the mirror. For a moment, I was looking myself in the face, pale, sharp-featured, green eyes dull with sleep deprivation, and then my reflection’s eyes ran black. The reflection blinked – I didn’t – and the blackness spilled over like tears, dribbling down her face and spreading like an oil slick. In the space of a couple of heart beats, I was staring at a black silhouette of myself, a shadowy twin.
     I sighed. She could be so tiresome when she was face-to-face. And, I couldn’t see to brush my hair out. “What?”
     Show me the sign again.
     Her lips moved, but I heard her voice, like snake scales through dry sand, in my head. “You recognize it?” The unspeakable glyphs aren’t an alphabet. They’re more like calling cards, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell. Maybe ideograms, except they aren’t always about words or concepts. Or at least, words and concepts that a human mind has any way to understand.
     It does not call to me.
     I paused to parse that out. The shadow had been sharing space with me for thirty-some years, but having a conversation with her had always been difficult. She was an alien thing, trying to use alien words to explain alien ideas. When she spoke, I always felt her picking through my brain, a woman’s fingers with long, long nails, ice cold, flicking through a Rolodex. Her words came with pictures plucked out of my head, feelings borrowed from other memories. Sometimes it helped. Most of the time, it didn’t. It was like trying to explain an automobile, and being shown pictures of kids playing marbles in a school yard. Not only did it not make sense, but you couldn’t even figure out the train of thought that had led to those connotations.
     In this case, she seemed to be indicating that if she had known the glyph, there would be some sort of resonance to it, some kind of echo she’d pick up on. It came with the ethereal feel of standing in a cloud of old magic, sensing it out to see if anyone I knew had cast it, and the vivid memory of following a pack of blood hounds through a Louisiana bayou.
     “So why do you want to see it again?” I asked.
     
     She tilted her head, staring at me, unblinking, pressing against the mirror glass. It began to bow, ever so slightly, under her pressure. Show it to me.
     “It’s in my head. Go look for yourself.” I frowned. She had free access to my thoughts and memories. I didn’t share the same privilege. Or maybe I did, but just couldn’t understand what I was looking at.
     Show me. And this time, it came with the image of me in my workshop, sitting on a stool, bent over a delicate gold wire brooch, forging protective magics into the jewelry.
     “Oh, fuck no. I’m not casting that thing until I know what it is.” I stood back from the mirror, shaking my head. I grabbed my brush, going to work on my hair by feel. “Who knows what it’ll do?”
     I will guard. Her voice took on a persuasive tone, coaxing. Her black fingertips stroked the glass, and I could feel them in my hair, petting, soothing.
     “No. We’ll talk to Owen, first – no sense being stupid.”
     Forge the sign, and I will read it. This came with a rush of imagery that made no sense whatsoever, a childhood circus trip, a full moon on a cold night, the feeling of being kissed. Sometimes I thought she did that just to screw with me.
     I was an outlander and a mage – two mutually exclusive things, by the way. Without one, I still would have been the other. But, since I was both, I could cast the glyph like any rune-based spell. I already knew several glyphs that produced some particularly ugly effects when used like that. And sure, if I did it, we’d know in an instant what the thing was and did, and maybe the shadow would even be able to tell me some other useful things about it, if she watched me cast it. But who in the hell knew what it would do? Neither of us, that was for sure. For all I knew, it would punch a hole straight into the Abyss, and I’d have the Watcher For Doors trying to rip its way into my basement. I’m pretty sure my home owner’s insurance doesn’t cover that. Not that I’d be around to collect, but still.
     “That’s a last resort.” I said with finality.
     She stared at me for a long moment, expressionless, and then faded out of the mirror, and I was left with my own reflection again.

     It was going on two in the afternoon by the time I made it to the Detroit Public Library. It’s a grand old stone building with arches and columns with fleur de lises. A neat lawn rolls up to the sidewalk leading to the stairs, up to big entry doors set under stone arcs. I spent a lot of time here as a kid, no matter what set of foster parents I was living with at the moment. There was always a bus or something that could get me to the DPL.
     There are a lot of nice libraries in Detroit, and I went to plenty of them as a kid, but this one always called to me. As a child, I thought perhaps it was the size of the place, so huge that you could get lost, and easily, or maybe the gorgeous murals, the thick silence broken only by the soft tapping of feet on the floors or the turn of pages. Later, when my first master – you use that title for anyone who teaches you magecraft – brought me here, I finally decided that the library had called to me so much because Owen was here. Visiting Owen feels just a little bit like visiting home.
     You know. If you think of “home” as some warped extra-planar hell. And a part of me does.
     I went to the basement floor, through media rooms, and slipped through a door marked “JANITOR”. Commoners don’t find anything but brooms and cleaning supplies when they open this door. Mages find a set of old marble stairs, which lead down to a set of double doors, large and heavy and made of some dark, luxurious wood. The corridor is narrow and quiet, dry and full of a sweet smell, and lit by three hanging lamps that flicker like they have candles in them. They don’t – I checked once. It’s just witchlights.
     I pushed one of the doors open. It went easily, no creaking noises or slow, melodramatic swinging. Owen doesn’t believe in that sort of thing. I stepped into a well-lit, old fashioned reading room, very Victorian looking. Everything was red and dark wood and leather and copper. The carpet was thick and plush, scarlet, and three leather couches sat arrayed around a huge brick fireplace. The room was wall-to-wall book cases, floor to, well, one would imagine there’s a ceiling up there, but the light petered out about twenty feet up, and anything past that was lost to darkness. A hallway directly across the room from the door led deeper into Owen’s archives. That, too, was swallowed in shadow. I knew from experience that it would light up when someone walked down it. Assuming, of course, that the someone was accompanied by Owen. It’s extremely inadvisable to go deeper in without Owen.
     Speaking of which — “Owen?”
     “A moment.” His voice echoed out of the darkness down the hall, a very ordinary sort of voice, a bit older in timber, a bit deeper, the sort of voice you’d expect to find giving lectures at U of M.
     I let the door swing shut behind me, waiting, shuffling around the stacks of books. They were in some sort of order that made sense only to Owen, so I was left with a hodgepodge of authors and titles, an ancient bound manuscript of the Kama Sutra next to a book of popular kitchen tips from the Seventies, and right after that, an elderly grimoire with no author listed. I was four books down from that before it occurred to me to wonder why Owen would have a Kama Sutra, and I quickly kicked that thought out of my head before it could conjure any visuals. Then again, I could just as easily wonder why he’d have kitchen tips from the Seventies, but why bother when I was looking at an original first print edition of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, shelved next to something claiming to be the Necronomicon.
     What can I say? Owen has everything.
     I was flipping through the Judy Blume – I hadn’t ever read it, and paging through, I could see why – when Owen came down the hall and into his reading room. I heard his footsteps, and turned, smiling. “Hi, Owen.”
     Owen was five-foot-nine and slender, and he could have been any age from forties to sixties. His coloring was bled out, like someone had washed him in hot water too many times, pale, fine blonde hair in a short, business-like cut, hair-line receding some, ivory skin, eyes so light blue they were almost white, behind little round glasses with silver frames, and he was dressed in professor’s tweeds. He was fine-boned, delicate, but there was something in the sure way he moved that belied fragility.
     Of course, all that was just illusion. This, and the library, was just what he showed to visitors, to put them at their ease.
     “Alice. It’s been awhile.”
     “Sorry.” I made an apologetic shrug. “But I brought presents.” I held up the plastic grocery bag dangling from my wrist.
     “Is that — ?”
     “Oreos. And honey.” The thought of the combination was enough to make me feel like gagging, but Owen loved it, and I am not above bribery when it comes to keeping my friends happy.
     “You’re my favorite bipedal humanoid denizen, Alice.”
     That’s some seriously high praise, right there. Behold, the power of Oreos. I handed the grocery bag off to Owen, re-shelving the Judy Blume. He pulled the cookies and honey out of the bag and sat them on a cherry wood coffee table in front of one of the couches, and then came back to me, like he might give me a hug. Instead, he cupped my face, stroking my cheeks and neck, his head tilted, eyes unblinking. His hands ran down over my shoulders, down my arms, took my hands. He rubbed my fingers.
     “What have you been up to today?” He asked, a little smile tugging at his lips.
     “It’s been a busy day.” I agreed, cocking an eyebrow at him.
     “I smell the utangards all over you.” He let my hands go, stepping back. “Coffee, I suppose?”
     “If the question is coffee, the answer is always yes.”
     “Sit, sit. It’s business that brings you?” He waved at the couch.
     I dropped my jacket on a couch and sat. Between blinks, a coffee carafe and cups had appeared on the table, next to the cookies, and along with an ashtray. You’re wondering, if he can make the coffee just appear, why I’m bothering to bring Oreos and honey, right? He claims it’s just not the same as what he makes. I, personally, can’t tell the difference between his coffee and the “real” stuff, but I guess he can.
     “Afraid so.” I sighed, retrieved my cigarettes out of my coat, and lit up while he poured coffee and arranged cookies and honey on a china platter that morphed out of the table. He gets a big kick out of the domestic host routine.
     “Tell me.”
     I ran a hand through my hair, getting my thoughts organized. Owen was one of my first teachers – not a master, because what Owen does isn’t technically magic, but he taught most of us in Detroit basic magic theory. He expected a calm and orderly presentation. So I went through it quickly, but in a neat progression, starting with the deputy mayor in the amateur-hour display and finishing up with what I had witnessed this morning. I added that Tyrell had found two more glyphs prior to calling me in, and left out running into the Irishman. Hanging around with Ordermen would get me in almost as much trouble as it would get him to be caught with me.
     Owen listened to me finish, head tilted to the left, eyes unblinking, hands pressed together against his lips. He was still as stone, not even breathing that I could see. “This could get very unpleasant.”
     “Well, yeah. That’s why I came here – hoping to hear some more about this glyph.”
     “Show it to me.” He picked up a pad of blank, unlined paper that oozed up out of the coffee table, along with a pencil, and handed it off to me. “Draw it flat, please.”
     There are a couple of ways to draw an unspeakable glyph. The first is to draw it real, as I’d seen it on the deputy mayor’s body, twisted out into infinity and reeking of utter wrongness. To do that means putting the necessary will and magic behind the drawing of it. Of all the mages in Detroit, only I could do that and survive, because I’m an outlander. Me, and possibly, Owen, though I don’t know how much it would hurt him to do. He was an utangards creature, but he wasn’t an outlander.
     The other way is to draw it flat, which means to sketch it out with no intent, no will, behind it, make a flat, mundane pictogram of it. That’s the way you find them in books, and that’s the way any other mage will sketch one.
     I sketched it, a flat triangle with the requisite dots and lines. I had to erase and start again a couple of times. It’s tough to get the dimensions right on these things when you’re sketching them flat, or at least for me, it is, because I can see where the corners are all supposed to be. You know, out there past eternity somewhere. I finally got it as close as I could get it, and passed the pad back to Owen.
     He stared at it for several long silent minutes, lips pressed tight together. He turned the pad, stroking the lines with his fingertips. I finished my cigarette and coffee while he studied it, poured another cup.
     Owen set the pad aside, looking up at me. “This one has never been seen in Detroit before. I apologize.”
     “What do you mean?” I stared at the notepad, then shifted my gaze to Owen, caught flat-footed. Owen had never failed me before. He knew everything. It was his nature to know this stuff. The sky was blue, grass was green, and Owen knew things.
     “I mean, it’s not known.” He rubbed his hands together, over and over each other.
     “At all? Ever? Not even by you?”
     Owen sighed, eternally patient with us poor, stupid humans. “Alice, you know the rules. I may impart general knowledge. I may share knowledge about the things that are known to have occurred in Detroit. I can even share some of the learnings of the other mages in the city, if they’ve freed their knowledge to be shared.” He paused, stared at me over his glasses, and there was a flutter of irritation in his eyes. “As you have not.”
     I rolled my eyes. “There’s a pretty good reason for that.”
     “The humans are small-minded. If they tried, they would appreciate your presence more.”
     It was neither here nor there, as “the humans” weren’t going to be trying any time soon. I waved, dismissing his admonishment. Owen had been after me to get out of the closet, so to speak, ever since he first met me. “They’ve been banishing outlanders all our history, Owen. I’m no good will ambassador.”
     “They would get over your predilections when they see what you do for their city.” He stilled his restless hands with some effort. “Aren’t you going to find the intruder?”
     “Of course.” I felt the shadow shifting, like a cold wind blowing through hollow bones, restless, hateful, angry.
     “And what will you do when you find it?”
     “Kill it.”
     “And why?”
     I cut him a sharp glare. “Because it invades my territory.”
     He spread his hands as if to say, There. See? It was a very human gesture, something he’d learned from dealing with all of us. “And then its slaughter will end, its stupid, wanton slaughter that draws attention to you, and to all of you. How is this not helpful to the city? How can they not appreciate this service?”
     “Well, there might be that part where I kill people and feed their souls to the shadow.” I mimicked his gesture with a dry, tired smirk.
     “There is a price to pay for all services. That one can’t be so high, compared to what the average outlander can do.” He flicked his gaze at me and away, light as a moth.
     Owen has insinuated more than once that I’m not the “average” outlander. As far as I’ve ever been able to tell or learn, all that means is that I don’t let the thing run rampant. It was a near thing. There was a time when I was not so firmly in control of her, and I imagine that every outlander before me has faced that time. I guess not many of us make it through that fight with our wills intact.
     “You’re preaching to the choir, Owen.” I pulled myself off memory lane. Those were dark times, and I didn’t like to think of them. It wasn’t the carnage that had bothered me at the time, it was the slow loss of self, the gradual erosion of the part of me that was Alice.
     “Very well.” He sighed, waving a hand to send the notepad back into the table. “I’m sorry I can’t help you more.” He helped himself to the Oreos, dipping them lavishly in honey. Seriously, it gave me cavities just watching.
     “So. It’s not general knowledge, it’s never been seen in Detroit before, and if some other mage in the city knows about it, they haven’t freed their knowledge for you to share.”
     “Correct.”
     And, here’s where dealing with Owen got dangerous. “What do you know about it?”
     He paused, halfway to reaching for another Oreo, flicking that butterfly-light glance at me again. “My personal knowledge?”
     “Yep.” I caught my shoulders getting tight, and made myself relax.
     There was a gleam in his steady, unblinking eyes. “You ask me to share what I know.”
     “I do.”
     He sat back from the cookies, hands twisting together again, over his face and hair, back together, before he finally settled them on his knees. His fingers twitched. “What do I get in return?”
     “What do you want in return?”
     “I could name my price?” His gaze shot to mine, hands fluttering up in excitement.
     “Fuck no.” I spat it quick, leaning back. “I’m just trying to get a feel for the price range, here, Owen.”
     He eased some, all agitated twitches, like a cloud of disturbed flies settling back into place. “I apologize.” He glanced around the room as though listening to something I couldn’t hear. I resisted the urge to pierce his illusions, see things here as they truly were. I could do it, and easily, but I didn’t really want to. It disturbed even me a little. “Her name.”
     I snorted, shaking my head. “I don’t even know it.”
     “You could make her tell you.”
     “Wouldn’t if I could. That’s too much power to hand to anyone, even you.”
     “Let me taste her, then.” He leaned forward, licking his lips, eyes shining, reflecting the firelight like orange diamonds. That odd little smile of his danced on his lips again.
     “What do you mean by tasting?” I said, uneasy. Even as I asked it, I heard the shadow, No.
     “Just – let her forward a little. I’ll look in your eyes.”
     No. The shadow was insistent, repulsed.
     “Sorry. She says no go.” I shrugged. I didn’t really understand what he was after, and if the shadow did, she wasn’t explaining.
     “Then what else can you offer?”
     “You want something no one else knows, because I’m after something no one else knows.” I spoke slowly, considering. I visited Owen often, spoke freely enough with him. What did I have that I hadn’t ever told him?
     “Yes. But this is important, so what you offer must be powerful knowledge.”
     I thought through my secrets. Well, there was Irish, but I wasn’t sure he was that good a secret. I’m sure I’m not the only one in the city chatting with an Orderman, even if Irish was more infamous than the rest. Hell, the Arcanum councilors probably kept a dozen each on retainer. I would if I sat on the council. I knew a few other little tidbits here and there, a new pack of wolven – werewolves — moving into the wildlife reserve, but that wasn’t going to be secret long. I’d heard the Sons of Mohammad were organizing in Detroit again, like they weren’t already here, whatever. The Sons, as far as I could tell, were the Muslim version of the Order, only they were trained in wizardry, and a lot easier to get along with. I had a hard time believing that as many Arabs as we have in Detroit, the Sons were just now organizing. Supposedly there were a bunch of Jews somewhere getting a golem together to deal with the Neo Nazis taking over parts of Detroit, but what’s another golem? There’s ten or twelve of the damn things tromping around already. There was a new djinn in town. I met him. Seemed a decent enough sort. For a djinn.
     “Shit, I don’t think I have anything, Owen.”
     “You could offer me a boon against future knowledge.”
     I stiffened. “Um. No.” Going into debt to Owen? I’ll skip that, thanks. I’d heard stories about Owen collecting from people he deemed to be welshers. The last one had died in an insane asylum, drugged out of his mind and still babbling and shrieking. Owen had taken what he was owed, with interest. They said the guy didn’t even know how to wipe his own ass anymore.
     “Then I’m afraid I can’t help you.” He sighed, seemed honestly sorry about it.
     “Not even out of the goodness of your heart?” I grinned.
     “I don’t have a heart, as such.” He tapped his fingers against his lips. “Such a shame, though. I thought you’d be better at this, all things considered.”
     My grin faded. “Thanks, Owen. Way to be a friend.”
     “Traditionally, the hollowmen are easy to find.”
     “Who, now?”
     “Hollowmen. The unkept.” He looked at me, thoughtful, still now. “Those in whom the fiend is ascendant.”
     “Hollowmen.” I hadn’t heard it before. It put me in mind of the living shells that remained of my victims. Remained briefly, that is, before I put them down. I filed the word away for future reference. “Easy to find?” I prompted.
     “I taught you better than that. What kind of outlander are you, that you can’t defend your own territory?”
     The shadow and I riled at the same time, her hiss a cold frisson through my body. Owen smirked at me. “You’re kind of a bastard, Owen. That’s what I like about you.” He helped himself to more cookies, and I shook my head, standing, snagging my coat and smokes. “Thanks, anyway. If I come up with anything good, I’ll be back.”
     “Do that. I’ll be very interested in hearing about your hunt.” He stood with me, taking my hands again. “You should visit more often. I get tired of talking to the humans.”
     “I’m mostly human.” I arced an eyebrow at him.
     “You don’t think as they do. Good luck.” He showed me to the door, closed it gently behind me. I went up the stairs, out the Janitor’s door, and through the library. Stepping outside, I found it had got colder and grayer, and the fresh smell of snow stung the air. I shivered in my denim jacket, pulled my phone out to check the time. Heading towards four, and I was tired, hungry, and hadn’t gotten anywhere yet today.
     Gianna’s grandkids were still out there somewhere. Maybe dead by now. I shuddered to think of Gianna’s rage if that were the case. I had what was probably a rogue outlander, a hollowman, as Owen called it, roaming my city, and no idea how to find the damn thing.
     I sat down on the library steps, rubbing my eyes, and dialed Tyrell. I cradled the phone between my cheek and shoulder, cupped my hands around a smoke to light it.
     “Tyrell.”
     “Hey, Ty.” I exhaled smoke. “I saw Owen. He doesn’t know anything about it.”
     “Goddammit.” He said it all in one rush of air, with vehemence. “Now what?”
     “Where’d you find those other two glyphs? Maybe there’s a pattern.”
     “Oh, good idea. We never would have thought of that.”
     I lifted the phone away and glanced at it, surprised to find it wasn’t dripping liquid sarcasm. I put it to my ear again. “Well, if you’re going to be an asshole about it, Ty . . .”
     He made a frustrated little sound, and said, “I found one at the Municipal Center, and one at the Guardian Building.”
     “And one at a 7-11, and the house.” A 7-11 with a dead deputy mayor, and a house owned by a woman who might have been circumventing some red tape at the mayor’s office. “What did you do with them?”
     “Damien banished them.”
     “He can do that?” Good to know.
     “Of course.” More sarcasm oozing through my phone.
     “Fine, fine, you’re in a shit mood. I’m going to see what else I can come up with for you. Call me back when you want to play nice.” I snapped the phone shut on his growling answer, dropped it back in my pocket. As dismal as it was today, Gianna was likely to be up early, which meant in another hour or two I was going to get a crappy phone call from her, too. I’d better see if I could make some tracks on that, before she called or went ballistic or something.
     I glanced around, watching people going up and down the steps, alone, in groups, families, teen-agers, all happy and oblivious and doing all their productive little things. It cheered me up some to see it. There’s nothing nicer than watching my city tick smoothly along.
     Well, if I wanted to keep it that way, I’d best get off my ass and see what I could find out about this Yuri Gladrilov guy. Maybe while I was busy dealing with him, something would occur to me about the hollowman. And besides, when it came to tracking real people down, I knew just where to start.

Black Alice by Marci Sischo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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