Midnight Marked

“Sure,” Paige said, rising from her chair and walking to the boards. She wore a green T-shirt and jeans, a simple outfit that made her eyes seem to glow against her pale skin and red hair. For all that, she looked nervous. She’d been an archivist locked away in Nebraska. Probably hadn’t done many presentations.

She cleared her throat, took the laser pointer Luc handed her, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

“So,” she said, gesturing to the boards. “What we have here is a complicated alchemical equation. Classic alchemical symbols mixed together with small hieroglyphs. We know what the alchemical symbols mean. We have best guesses about most of the hieroglyphs, but they’re still guesses, and there are gaps in our knowledge.

“Theoretically, when you read all the symbols together, it should produce something that’s both an instruction manual—do this thing at this time in this way—and a written spell.” She linked her hands together. “Both the writing of it and the doing of it trigger the magic that’s intended by the entire equation.”

Morgan leaned forward, smiled. “Sorry, but for those of us who are completely green where magic is concerned, can you give us some context? I mean, you say ‘alchemy,’ and I assume you want to make gold out of lead.”

There were general murmurs of agreement.

“Think of alchemy like chemistry or biology,” Paige said. “A set of methods and principles used to organize our understanding of the world. At its heart is the belief you can manipulate matter to get closer to its true essence. And when you reach that true essence, the matter becomes a powerful, magical, and spiritual tool. It might make you healthier; it might make you stronger; it might make you immortal.”

“Those all sound like things Reed would like,” Morgan said.

“Agreed,” she said. “But I don’t think this sorcerer is working on what I’d call the ‘traditional’ alchemy problems. The philosopher’s stone, turning lead into gold, whatever. The phrases—the smaller chunks within each equation—don’t match those traditional equations. They’re very contradictory.” She pointed the laser at one of the lines. “For example, this phrase tells you to do something.” Then she dropped it to the line below. “And this phrase tells you to do the opposite.”

“What’s your best guess about the purpose?” Ethan asked.

Paige looked back at the boards, considered. “Something big. Even the equations that have tried to produce a philosopher’s stone aren’t this complex, or this contradictory.” She frowned. “Because of that, I don’t see this being intended for one person. I mean, you want to make yourself blond, rich, immortal, whatever, you don’t need this many lines of code, so to speak. I think it’s intended for other people.”

“What other people?” Ethan asked.

She looked back at us. “I don’t know yet. But as large as the equation is, I’d say a number of them. Many, many people.”

“I’m working on an algorithm,” Jeff said. “A program that will automatically translate the symbols, make predictive guesses about the hieroglyphs, and give us best translation results.”

“How far along are you?” my grandfather asked.

Jeff frowned. “About two-thirds? Need a few more hours to get the cipher right, and then I can compile the code, and we’ll be ready to roll. Might need to do some contextual tweaking—like Mercury next to the sun instead of the moon means you need to hop on one foot or whatever—but we’ll be close.”

“Good,” Ethan said. “We appreciate the work.”

Jeff nodded.

“So Reed’s got a sorcerer working some kind of big magic,” Scott said, his gaze on the board. “Big magic that could affect a lot of people. But we don’t know what the magic is yet, and we don’t know how many people. And most of Chicago still thinks he hung the moon.”

“And made it shine,” Ethan said. “That’s a fair summary.”

“Then what can we do?” Scott asked.

“Be vigilant,” Ethan said. “I can’t stress that enough. He’s looking for opportunities.” He met my gaze. “He likes to use what he perceives as personal weaknesses against people. He’s very intelligent, and he likes to manipulate.”

“He’s very egotistical,” my grandfather said. “Likes to create a dramatic scene, but doesn’t always think through the implications.” He looked at Ethan, then me. “It turns out, the cops who arrested you at the Garden thought they were doing a favor for someone very powerful—putting away supernaturals who’d been stalking his family. They were, let’s say, set on a better path.”

“Thank you for that,” Ethan said, and my grandfather nodded.

“The inaccuracies can be corrected,” he said. “But that’s the kind of manipulation we’re dealing with.”

“As for the magic,” Luc said, “spread the word. Alert your vampires to the possibility of more symbol sites, and ask them to report anything they find.”

“The odds of that seem pretty slim,” Jonah said. “I mean, not that there are more sites, but that we’ll randomly stumble across them.” He glanced at me. “That’s pretty much how you found the Wrigleyville symbols, right?”

“Almost exactly,” I said.

“Maybe we can build something.”

We all looked at Mallory, who was staring blankly at the open windows.

“What kind of something?” Catcher asked.

She blinked, looked at him. “I’m just talking this through, but a machine that would find the other sites? A magical radar, something that could send back a signal from concentrations of alchemy.”

Catcher frowned, seemed to consider. “You’re thinking about a receiver? Something to pick up the alchemical signals?” He paused. “Yeah. That might be possible. The sites would work like reflectors, if you could tune in to the alchemy’s signal.” He grabbed a notepad and pen from the center of the table, began scribbling.

“Is such a thing possible?” Ethan asked.

Mallory snorted. “Anything and everything is possible.”

“Truer words,” I murmured.

“Visibility could be a problem,” Mallory said. “Actually being able to see where the symbols are, I mean. If they’re spread out, we’ll have line-of-sight problems.”