Time's Apprentice

Prologue: Occupational Hazards

Saul wished that he could remember being alive even two hundred years ago. Five hundred was perhaps too far back, and he wouldn't like to risk it at only a century past, but two hundred seemed quite fine. Certainly better than today, he thought.

Saul de Coeur stood in what he hoped was an impressive sort of position at the edge of the pier, looking out at Venice's Grand Canal shining in the late morning sun. All told, Venice wasn't what Saul had expected, or at least, hoped for. The so called Queen of the Adriatic was no longer the fabled Floating City. Saul would have been alright with the multitudes of tourists swarming every inch of the city. He would have accepted the huge network of scaffolding and billboard advertisements that masked an entire section of the buildings overlooking the Grand Canal; renovations were a necessity, he understood that. No, what really disappointed Saul when he first arrived at Venice was…

"There aren't any boats!" Saul squinted at the water, as though hoping for a gondola and a man in a broad-brimmed hat clutching an oar to rise out of the sea. "What's the point of having a city built on water if there aren't any boats?" He snorted in disgust and turned his back on the Canal, facing the city.

"The thing that really gets me," he said to no one in particular, as he began to slowly walk, "is that none of the locals are even trying to hold on to their way of life. There aren't even any people trying to go about their daily lives on their personal boats while being pestered for rides from tourists. It's like they've given up!"

"There is one good thing," he said, as though trying to carry on a conversation with an invisible person, and succeeding. "There aren't any cars about. Not a single automobile. I bet you five Euros there isn't a single car in the entire city. That's what we ought to do for the congestion problems back home. Get rid of the cars, replace them all with gondolas. The boats or the cable cars, I don't care which. Either would be just fine."

Saul began looking around warily, as though trying to spot someone, and at the same time, trying very hard to not be noticed. There was a crowd of Oriental—no, wait, that's not politically correct anymore; well then what can we call people, if not by where they're from?—tourists just up ahead, and he did his best to blend in with them. There was an intense vibration in his pocket, and he pulled out a mobile phone.

"Yes?" he said.

"Cortain on your tail, watch yourself. Get to San Marco's Square and await further instructions."

"Seriously?" Saul moaned, but the man on the other line had already hung up. Saul shoved the phone back into his pocket and charged into the crowd, hurling apologies left and right as he trampled on toes and knocked people out of the way. The irony of the situation was killing Saul. He had chased Dmitri Cortain from Paris to Geneva to Rome, and finally to here, and now Saul was the one being pursued. It was a dangerous game of cat and mouse they were playing.

To tell it shortly, a weapon of great worth and correspondingly great volatility had been stolen from Saul's employer, a one Mister Solomon Aeon (Saul would wager all the paycheques he'd ever received that that wasn't his real name, and you would have been a fool to take him on his bet, because Saul knew the man's real name) and Saul needed to get it back, without it being used on him. Or, it suddenly occurred to him, used on anybody else. Aeon's weapon was something that really shouldn't have ever been invented, or, if it really had to have been made, never let out of the twisted workshop from which it was conceived.

As it was, Saul was running through Venice, trying very hard to not be noticed by Dmitri Cortain, someone who was as much an enigma to the idea of a national census as he was to Saul. All he knew, and all Aeon let on, was that Cortain was the enemy, and wanted to do very bad things to Saul and all his friends. When Saul pointed out that Aeon didn't let him have friends, and anyway, that wasn't a very specific or credible threat, Aeon told him what he actually thought Cortain wanted to do. And that was always enough to get Saul on the next flight to wherever it was Aeon wanted to send him. Sometimes London, sometimes Barcelona or Madrid, sometimes even to Canada or the States. For some reason, never the Middle East or beyond; Aeon was always vague about why his name was mud east of the Balkans.

Saul needed a place to hide, somewhere safe to stay where he could wait for Cortain to pass him by, so that Saul could become the chaser, rather than the chased. He cast around for a suitable hiding place. The crowd wouldn't be good enough, and he didn't want to sneak around in one of the many gift shops. The fewer people that got involved, the better. He spotted a garish advertisement covering a wall of scaffolding that clung to one of the nearby buildings. The gaudy canvas ad for a superior form of mascara, which was almost fifty feet to a side, would have to do. Saul changed direction in an instant and began to climb the scaffolding, not even bothering with a mi scuzi to the workers he nearly knocked aside.

One of the workers renovating the building said something to Saul, which he supposed translated to "What the hell do you think you're doing up here?" but Saul didn't have time to answer. His phone began vibrating again. In a flash, he whipped it out of his pocket and pressed the button to answer.

"This had better be good," Saul snapped.

"That depends," said Aeon. His voice, normally precise, crisp, and deep, was coloured with irritation. "Why have you stopped moving?"

"Hiding," Saul grunted. "Where's Cortain?"

There was a pause while, no doubt, Aeon checked some surveillance instrument of his. "A hundred metres or so, due west."

Saul peered around the edge of the canvas concealing the scaffolding and scanned the crowd. How hard could it be to spot a man who went around wearing a huge black hooded cloak? "I don't see him," Saul murmured into the phone, his eyes flickering left and right as he looked for the distinctive shape of the long black coat Cortain favoured. A coat like that could say an awful lot of different things. That he was an amateur who thought a villain ought to have a signature style. That he was a wannabe mage, washed out of one of the many informal institutions and apprenticeships that cropped up in the big cities. Or maybe, that he was just powerful enough to not need to care about his image or what people thought of him. That wearing that coat meant a genial go ahead, see if you can take me. I promise I'll leave you alive once I've eviscerated you.

"He's headed toward San Marco's," Aeon's voice buzzed from the phone. Saul nodded in reply, remembered that Aeon couldn't see him, and then said that he was on his way.

Saul waved a vague sort of apology to the workers and scaled back down the crisscross of steel poles and wood, monkey-like. He braved the crowd of tourists once more, allowing them to more or less drag him in the direction of the piazza like a river's current. Suddenly, and completely on instinct, he ducked away from the seething mass of people and into a side street.

The air suddenly seemed incredibly tense, as if charged with electricity, building up and building up until fit to burst. Saul settled into a fighting stance and felt slightly more comfortable, although the only weapon he possessed at the moment were two pebbles charged with what some people might call magic, and a taser that he supposed rightfully belonged to Scotland Yard.

This alley was shaded by a tall stone building and flanked with gift shops displaying ornate masks. Saul considered for just a moment buying a mask, as if the sheer audacity of the confection of paint and plaster would be enough to hide him from Cortain. At the end of the alley was a small stone bridge that curled in an elegant arc over a canal. This, right here, was quintessential Venice, but Saul didn't have the time to admire it. The tension in the air, the electricity of the situation, was reaching breaking point. Something was going to happen soon, he could feel it.

He heard voices, footsteps, and the high voice of a complaining child. Saul let out a huge sigh of relief as he saw that it wasn't Cortain at all, that the tension and fear had been all for nothing. Three people—a man of about thirty, his blonde wife, and a boy of about four—turned the corner ahead and stepped onto the bridge. The man—tall, dark-haired, his handsome, angular face badly sunburned—picked up the child and set him in a comfortable perch on his shoulders so he could look at the water over the rails of the bridge. The woman had an expensive-looking camera around her neck, and was snapping pictures of everything she could see.

Suddenly Saul's phone buzzed in his pocket a third time. "Yes?" he said, when he'd flipped it open.

Aeon's voice was urgent. "He's right on top of you, Heart, I repeat, he's right on top of you. Now's your chance."

Saul's blood ran cold. He wasn't ready for this, not when he thought about the weapon Cortain had. It was too dangerous, and its effects were irreversible.

"Did you really think you could evade me for long?" The voice that echoed around the alley was confident and arrogant, and perhaps just a slight bit triumphant. Cortain stepped out around the corner that the family on the bridge had just come from.

"Get out of here!" Saul shouted at the family. He was on the bridge in an instant, shaking the woman by the shoulders and yelling at the man. "You have to get away from here!"

"Get your hands off my wife!" the man exclaimed. He set his son down on the ground; the boy clung to his father's leg. "Who do you think you are?"

"Run away, damn you," Saul said. "That guy there, he's bad news, alright? Just go!"

"What are you talking about?" the woman demanded.

"They can't see me," Dmitri Cortain said. He stepped a few feet closer. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and covered in all manner of facial tattoos that Saul knew didn't contain a lick of power. They were all for show. But at the moment, Cortain was more dangerous than even Aeon could be on an off day.

Saul readied one of his stones, holding it in his fingers as if preparing to skim it on a lake; it would be enough to injure Cortain, but nothing more. Not for the first time today, Saul wished that he had had more time to prepare for this. Facing the robed man, Saul yelled over his shoulder once more for the family to run, but they seemed to be more interested in watching this—whatever this was—play out.

It happened before Saul could react. Dmitri tossed a charged rock of his own at Saul. It exploded at his feet with a surge of electricity that arced straight into his chest. Saul stumbled to the ground, feeling like he'd been punched by a world-class boxer while simultaneously being tased. He lay writhing on the hard stone floor of the bridge as through blurred vision, he saw Cortain step menacingly forward.

"You ought to have listened to the nice man," Cortain said, addressing the tourist family. By their looks of shock and amazement, Saul figured that either they could now see the man, or they still couldn't see him, and were wondering where the vaguely threatening voice was coming from. "Too late now, though, isn't it? Yes, I think it's time I tested this."

The man stood between his wife and son and Cortain, and shouted something that Saul couldn't hear; it seemed like he was going deaf. Cortain removed from his coat an item that resembled a policeman's nightstick, although it was made of dull blue metal and covered with discrete knobs and switches. It also had a thin barrel at the end of it. Saul felt an icy hand clutch his heart, and struggled against his limp muscles. He had to warn them, he had to make them run away, he couldn't let Cortain use that thing on them.

The man rushed at Cortain, but it seemed as though he had been expecting that; he stepped nimbly to the side and in the same whirling movement, backhanded the man on the back of the head, sending him sprawling to the ground. Cortain turned his back on the man and faced the woman and child. He waved the baton at the woman and said something that Saul couldn't hear. Then there was a flash of blue light that flared from the end of the baton and struck the woman in the chest. She crumpled to the ground immediately. The child began to cry, and from behind Cortain, the man tried to reach him, but it was too late. With a sneer and a silent roar of triumph, Cortain fired off a blast of the blue light so large that it engulfed the boy's entire body. He turned to the crawling man, whose expression was a mask of shock and grief, his features alight with glee.

Saul couldn't bear it anymore. He lay there, having given up on trying to move his paralysed limbs. Then, through the ringing in his ears, he could just barely discern Aeon's deep voice, touched with fury and might.

Ten minutes later, Aeon had undone Saul's paralysis and they were sitting at a café, dejectedly staring at cappuccinos that were never going to be drunk.

"Well we know the gun works," Aeon said, his tone suggesting that they ought to look on the bright side of things.

"Mundanes got involved, and Dmitri got away," Saul said, stirring sugar into his cup of coffee. "That guy back there, he's lost everything. There's no way to reverse the effects of that gun."

"That we know of," said Aeon, wagging a finger at Saul.

"You ought to recompense him somehow," Saul said.

Aeon said something noncommittal and nodded vaguely. "At least we're alive."

"There's always that," Saul said. He watched the multitudes of people walking by, unaware that there was a war going on, unaware that a man had lost his wife and child forever this day. The Venetian sun was high and bright, and Saul was drinking his cappuccino, after all. "There's always that."

#

Two and a half months later:

Solomon Aeon's apartment in Paris was a dump, but that was the way he liked to keep it. Aeon was a slob, but he was a classy slob. Instead of crushed beer cans, empty bottles of fine wines and champagne littered the floor. There were about ten broken Rolexes tossed to the floor, their intricate components spilling out of their cracked faces. The only thing that was kept meticulously clean was a wall of shelves filled with books with spines cracked from being read a hundred times over, and a corner where Aeon kept small trinkets that he collected in his travels.

Saul de Coeur didn't bother knocking on the front door, instead just strolling in, a battered briefcase in his hand. Saul found Aeon at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and nursing a glass of clear liquid that most likely wasn't water. Aeon didn't give any indication that he noticed Saul enter the room apart from stubbing out his cigarette on a bone china saucer.

Aeon made to light another cigarette, but Saul took it from his fingers and set it down on the table. He sat down beside Aeon and sniffed the glass of clear liquid.

"You'll drink yourself half to death, imbibing that foul stuff," Saul said, offhandedly. He got up, took a glass from the cabinet, and looked around the kitchen for a bottle. He found a half-empty bottle of gin, and poured himself a generous measure, before sitting back down.

"Does it matter at this point?" Aeon asked. "Love is gone. Gone without a trace."

"Yes, I've seen the news," Saul said. "And yes I'm worried. But it was just a kidnapping. None of our lot had anything to do with it. They just saw a cute blonde girl and—"

"Dammit, Heart, she's your soulmate," Aeon said, croaking a little. "Must you be so flippant about it?"

"I'm saying, she'll be alright," Saul said. He looked at the packet of cigarettes and decided to help himself to one. One of the benefits of being him was not getting cancer; his body was just too smart for it. He lit it, and watched the coil of blue smoke rise to the ceiling. He tried to blow a ring, but only succeeded in exhaling a thin stream of smoke. He shook his head and looked at Aeon straight in the eye.

"Any word from Dmitri?" Aeon asked, his heart not in the question. He took a swig of gin, emptying his glass. He looked at the bottle, contemplated filling his glass again, and thought better of it. It would be easier, he decided, to drink straight from the bottle.

"Put that down," Saul said, taking the bottle from Aeon. "And no, I haven't. That lackey of his sent a message, though. He wants the Oblivion gun back. Says it was won in unfair terms. I told her where she could shove it. I suppose it's a blessing we got it back as easy as we did."

"Yes, it's a blessing having that fucking thing in my house," Aeon said, peering uneasily at a section of wall where, no doubt, there was a safe hidden. "Like sleeping with a warhead in the next room. The sooner we ship it back to America, the better."

"They won't like having it there," Saul said, sipping his gin.

"Do you see this face?" Aeon said. "This is the face of a man who does not give a shit. Now listen. We are going to rescue your dainty little wife, and we are going to do it in style." And with that, Aeon fell off his chair. It wasn't comical; it wasn't even sad. It just was.

"You okay, pops?" Saul asked. He helped Aeon to his feet.

"I am," he said, enunciating each word carefully, "perfectly fine. Now get your hat and coat. We are going to Spain."

"What's in Spain?" Saul asked. "Surely not Love. They've probably shipped her out to Bulgaria by now, for all we know."

"Hush. It does no harm to check." Aeon tried to look at Saul, but it appeared as though his coordination was making a hasty run for it, helped along by the gin and misery. Saul helped the man to bed.

"You stay here and sleep it off," Saul said, as he shut the blinds.

"You're a good kid, Saul," Aeon mumbled. "A good kid."

"Someone here has to have a heart," Saul said, chuckling. "Speaking of. Have you looked into any sort of compensation to make for that guy back in Venice?"

"You still remember that?" Aeon asked incredulously. "Yeah, yeah, I'll do something. I'll send him a Sorry your family got erased from existence card. Hallmark has all kinds of shit these days." Within a few moments, the man was dozing like a baby.

They checked the Sunday market at the end of Barcelona's famed Ramblas street, but nobody had the information they were looking for. Still, Aeon didn't give up hope just yet. He said that there were certain resonances they could look for, and Saul had some experience finding people that way, but the trail was far too cold at this point.

"Let's just check the Sagrada Familia for clues, and then we'll head back to the hotel," Aeon said.

An uncomfortable tram ride later, they reached the imposing church. Hundreds of feet high, the cathedral was covered in all manner of sculpture and carving. It looked like a chocolate cake melting in the sun from a distance. It was only matched in stature by the nearby mountain.

"I think that you should call Alicia," Saul said. He craned his neck to see the tops of the church's spires, which were still under construction.

"Where the fuck did that come from?" Aeon asked, scowling.

"Just thinking about Love. If no one finds her, she won't have parents for a while."

"The situation with Alicia is a whole hell of a lot different from that," Aeon said. "You could even say that it's insulting to compare them. I won't say that, but I could."

"A girl needs her father, Aeon," Saul said.

"She wasn't anyone special," Aeon replied. "Not one of us."

They got in line to get into the church. It would take at least half an hour before they'd reach the front doors; the queue went all around the building.

"That hardly matters," Saul said. "Don't you miss her?"

"Of course. But I live too dangerous a life to be associated with her. She's safer with her mother."

"You just haven't forgiven her for everything," Saul said. It was dangerous to press this issue with Aeon, but waiting in lines always made it hard for Saul to shut up.

"Fuck off if you're not going to say anything constructive," Aeon muttered.

They were silent for a while. They got halfway through the line.

"There was a message from that demon friend of yours," Saul said, trying to fill the silence. "An email last night. Didn't want to bother you with it, 'cause it didn't seem important."

"If it's not important, why are you bringing it up now?"

"Shush. He said there was a battle in Canada. He had to fight Necropolis Dark. And the girl you had him set to watch—"

"Love's flit?" Aeon asked, looking up from his phone with interest.

"Yeah, her. Jasmine something. There's some kind of entity sharing headspace with her. A Shell being."

"That's worrying," Aeon said. "But it's not our concern. Griseous can handle it. He's little, but I wouldn't be friends with him if he weren't terribly skilled."

"You should still look into it," Saul said.

"Fucking Canada, though," Aeon grumbled.

#

July, 2007

"It's too bright a day for so dark a day," Saul said quietly. His sombre black suit stuck to his back, the hot summer day making him sweat. Aeon didn't look perturbed, but then, he had been hiding his emotions all day.

They were in a town on the outskirts of Ottawa, Canada, watching a funeral from a distance. There were about twenty people in attendance, mostly young teenagers.

"So young," Aeon murmured. He was in shock. Normally, he would never say a thing like "she was so young." It was beneath him. Somehow, this was truly affecting him.

"She was only just thirteen," Saul said. "Whole life ahead of her." He wanted to say something meaningful, but nothing came to mind. He hadn't known Jasmine Lockhart; he'd barely been aware of her existence. Sure, eventually, in ten years or so, she would have been introduced to him, Aeon would have become a part of her life, and she would have joined the ranks of those who helped and were helped by Aeon. But she was only thirteen now. A girl who liked climbing trees, who liked reading bad fantasy novels, who had parents and an older brother and a little sister.

"You realize it could happen to Love, right?" Aeon said.

Saul nodded. "So then we need to find her. Be more involved in her life. And in the lives of the other Metropolises. Guide them."

"That's the idea," Aeon said.

They watched as a priest began a reading, and the coffin—so remarkably small—was lowered into the ground. Two howls, like feral dogs, sounded out loud and mournful, and Saul realized that it was a young man and a small boy making the noises.

"You know she had a boyfriend?" Saul asked.

"Yes, I'm sure they were deeply in love," Aeon said, meanly. He glared at the gathering, as though the people had done him a great personal grievance.

"I didn't finish," Saul said. "He was Soul's flit. My brother's son, if you want to get technical. Something drew them together."

"I didn't know that Soul had a flit," Aeon said, sounding profoundly disinterested. It occurred to Saul that maybe Aeon was on something. Some pill or other to calm him down.

The funeral drew to a close, and the procession left, dwindling away back to their lives. Only two figures remained by the fresh grave: a tall man, and a little boy. Eventually, the man leaned forward to kiss the grey headstone, and went away. Aeon chose that moment to lead Saul over to the last mourner.

"Griseous," Saul said, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. His hair was dark grey and dishevelled. Pointed ears poked through it, as did a pair of small horns. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

The demon boy just nodded, starring at the earth in front of the stone. The marker read:

Jasmine Lockhart. Born July 1st, 1994. Died July 14th, 2007. You will live forever in our hearts.

"At least she's no longer suffering," Aeon said, numbly.

"You don't know that," Griseous snarled. "We can't take solace in that. We can't be like these idiot humans, thinking that because we say she's in our hearts, she's still with us. Because she's not. I've asked around. No one knows where she is. What if she's...?" The question hung in the air like a sword. "You have to protect Julian," the demon said at last. "She loved him. They were just kids, but I think they recognized their true selves in each other. So for her sake, you have to protect the one she loved."

"I'm going to talk to Alicia," Aeon said. "This nasty business has shifted my perspective. Life is too short for them to let it pass by."

They left soon after. Graveyards made Aeon nervous. And anyway, Saul had a job to do.

#

Three days later:

Saul stumbled through the darkening streets, the Viennese sky overcast and threatening rain. He had tracked Dmitri Cortain through three different countries, and had just about cornered him in this squalid Austrian slum, the sort of place where Hitler might have bummed around, trying to sell his mediocre artwork.

He held his phone up to his ear, and Aeon said, "He's definitely nearby. I think two buildings forward. On the right. Good luck."

The street was lined with apartment towers, each five or six storeys tall, ugly, and grey. He found the right one and opened the door to the tiny lobby. Shouldn't it have been locked?

"Two floors up," Aeon said. Saul crept up the stairs, listening intently. There was perfect silence throughout the whole building. "Yes, that door."

The door was ajar ever so slightly. A smell like cold iron wafted out of the apartment. He pushed the door open gently. His sixth sense told him that there was no one living in the room.

He found the source of the smell immediately. A scruffy old man lay in a pool of dried blood on the living room carpet. Saul's hand flew into his coat pocket to grasp his gun, and he whirled around, just in time to be hit over the back of the head with something hard and cold. He landed on his back, his vision dimming.

"I was considering using ketchup and a mannequin to lure your bleeding heart in here," said Dmitri Cortain, as he stepped into the room, "but that's just so unrealistic."

A young woman with too many piercings on her pale face stepped into view. "What should we do with him, Dmitri?" she asked, her voice coquettish and lilting, like a prostitute who knows what her Johns like.

"Make it look like a suicide."

2: Chapter 2

Part One

In Memorium Oblita

"The gods know nothing, they understand nothing.
They walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, 'You are gods;
You are all sons of the Most High.
But you will die like mere mortals; you will fall like any other ruler.'" - Psalm 82:5-7

#

Terra had been homeless, or as near as he could be while still actually having a roof over his head, for the better part of a month. He was comfortable for now, in the shoddy London flat that he rented with what was left of his savings, but the place had no central heating, and he didn't like to think about what the conditions would be like come winter. He hoped that he would be able to put his life back together before he really had to worry about freezing to death.

Moreso than his physical needs, which were met by the less-than-hefty severance cheque the bank had reluctantly given him, Terra worried about his state of mind. He told himself that it wasn't just because of his wife and son; he knew, or at least thought he knew, that he was right about them. What he was worried about was his state of mind at present. The dreams, for one thing, rarely about the same thing, but always unsettling, and coming to disrupt his otherwise peaceful sleep at least three times a week.

Terra knew that he was dreaming right now because he was still at work. The London landscape unfolded impressively through the plate-glass window of the twentieth floor of his building. He was sitting at the visitor's side of his boss' desk. The room was bright and spacious, the walls covered with bookshelves that were only there for decoration; the books were all blank.

"You wanted to see me, Malcolm?" Terra found himself saying. He knew what was happening; he had revisited this scene time and time again, sometimes multiple times in one night. He was being fired.

"Terra, how long have you worked at this bank?" his boss was asking. He was a balding man with a nose like a vulture's beak. The thing that Terra liked about Malcolm was that he was always smiling, a warm, friendly smile. Malcolm was approachable, genial, the sort of man who could take a joke and offer a caring hand. He wasn't smiling now. He looked uncomfortable and grim.

"You know how long I've been here," Terra said. "More than seven years. Eight, come September."

"You were one of our finest consultants," Malcolm said. Terra noted the use of the past tense. "And I count you among my close personal friends. You know that. That is why the board thought I should be the one to tell you this. We're letting you go, Terra."

The knowledge hit Terra with a sense of dull surprise now, but in the dream, he became enraged.

"Why?" he demanded. "How can you do this? So soon after I lost Julie and Marco?"

"That's just it," Malcolm shot back. "This talk about your wife and son being murdered, in Venice of all places. I've known you personally for six years, and I've never met this wife of yours, who's chosen such an inconvenient time to vanish."

Terra could only stare in shock and disbelief. "How can you say that?" he whispered at last. "You knew Julie, she was your friend too! For Christ's sake, Mal, you're the one who introduced us at that Christmas party. You were a senior consultant, I was just starting out. She was a secretary here. Don't you remember?"

Malcolm looked agitated now, but he refrained from calling for security just yet.

"For fuck's sake, Mal, you came to our wedding! You were Uncle Mal to Marco! You were there, Malcolm, you were there."

"Terra, in all the time I've known you, you haven't had a girlfriend, a wife, or any significant other of any sort. I was asking you, just the other day, why hasn't a smart, successful, handsome bachelor like yourself got a bird yet? And you flipped out, went bloody mental. You're a brilliant consultant, but you've become a liability."

After that, Terra had decided that enough was enough and that his fists might deliver the message better than his words, and before Terra could do any serious damage, Malcolm had pushed a button, and security arrived. As the two burly men grabbed Terra under the arms he continued shouting abuse and accusing Malcolm of being a liar and insane, while Malcolm simply looked sadly on. Terra kept shouting after security had removed him from the premises by throwing him onto the front steps of the building. As the weight of everything settled upon him, Terra stopped shouting, and began to silently weep instead.

Terra used to have an anger management problem, but therapy and medication had made it so that it had been so long since he had had an outburst that the last one had been in high school. He was picked up later that day by the police, who watched him do absolutely nothing on the floor of a holding cell for over an hour. When the police realized that Terra wasn't dangerous at all, and that the anonymous tipoff just might have been a malicious prank, they brought him back to his house and made him a cup of tea.

The dream ended, and Terra woke up feeling nothing: not pain, not sadness, just a hollow feeling of emptiness. He didn't like to dwell on the last few months any more than the dreams made him.

Terra got out of bed, and like he did every day, took stock of his possessions. This was partly because no matter what, he liked to feel in control of his life, and knowing what he owned was one way to measure how he was doing, but he had found a new reason to watch his things, in case something went missing in the middle of the night; he had found his neighbours snooping through his rubbish bins, peering through his window, and trying to see through the letterbox. Terra had: one air mattress, two blankets, two pillows, three credit cards he was meaning to cut up since they didn't work anymore, a sleeping bag from the days before he had found an apartment with a roof, a wallet with a thousand pounds in notes, and a tiny fridge containing an apple, a red pepper, and the remains of a Chinese takeaway.

Everything else had been repossessed: the three-hundred-thousand-pound house, the electronics, the art, the wine, most of his clothes (he had salvaged two suits, several t-shirts, and two pairs of jeans, which were in a duffel bag at the foot of his "bed") and everything else that had belonged to Julie and Marco.

Terra knew that this wasn't standard procedure, that there had to be some kind of conspiracy going on. People didn't just have the rug swept out from under their feet after a tragedy. They got therapists, instead, and grief counsellors and book deals. They didn't lose their wife and child and their cars and homes and jobs. However, when Terra went to the repo company's offices, they were incredibly surprised to find out that he existed, and not the least bit perplexed when Terra's house and possessions turned out to not be on their records, seeing as they kept very meticulous records, indeed.

Terra showered under the piddly excuse for water pressure the flat offered, and made tea on the tiny stove while he threw on his last clean t-shirt and his dark blue jeans. He got the post; nothing but a letter from the landlord asking for more money. Terra twisted his wedding ring around his finger nervously as he read it. He set the letter down in disgust and gulped at his tea.

Terra was never happy not doing something. He had to be making progress with something, advancing through some project or other. Unemployment didn't suit him one bit. So he spent his days walking around the city checking out shops and offices, looking for any sort of opportunity. It seemed as though his superiors at his old bank had sent the word around: don't hire Terra Benedicta; he's bad news.

He had to keep moving; he couldn't sit and relax, couldn't watch television or listen to music. He needed to be outside doing something. He had only two options: find a job, or find out who or what was ruining his life. He knew he wasn't dealing with anything of this world. He had become sure of this a week after the double funeral. Terra felt that he wasn't feeling enough, that he hadn't shed enough tears or felt quite helpless enough. He knew that was what happened when you lost a child. It was supposed to change you forever, but he had been strangely at peace. And that was what had scared him.

He had to look through all of Julie and Marco's things, decide what to keep and what to give away. It was when he stumbled across the manila envelope that they kept all their important documents in that he knew something was wrong. Julie and Marco's passports, birth certificates, medical records…. They were all blank. No photos, no information, just blank lines where their signatures should have been, where their dates of birth and citizenships and birthplaces should have been. This was beyond a sick joke. Terra knew they hadn't been replaced with blank ones; he recognized the creases in the papers where Julie would crinkle them nervously when waiting in line at airports, the coffee stain on Marco's birth certificate, the origin of which was a story they would tell at parties. Somehow the information had just vanished.

Even before that, though, Terra knew that something was wrong. Mere weeks after the funeral, people would stop offering condolences to Terra. At first he thought they were just being polite, not highlighting his grief, but when he mentioned fond memories he, Julie, and their coworkers had shared, he was met with blank stares and not a whit of recognition.

Terra took the tube to the city centre, which was crowded with Londoners and tourists alike. Sometimes he would give a start, and fixate upon a person in the crowd, until he was certain that the person wasn't familiar. He had been jumpy the last few days, and wasn't quite sure why. All there was to go on was the image of a person in a ridiculous-looking black cloak, the kind of thing that would be more appropriate on Halloween Night than in the middle of a crowded street in July. And yet, there was something about that image that haunted him. It was showing up in his dreams often enough for him to think that it may be significant somehow.

The details of the murders were fuzzy in Terra's mind. He knew that he and his family had been vacationing in Venice when it had happened. They had turned a corner, there had been a man there, and then… Darkness. He couldn't remember anything for several days. He had woken up in his house in London with some work friends waiting on his waking up with sober faces. He learned of what had appeared to doctors to be strange burns that had killed Julie and Marco, that had left their clothes unharmed but their skin raw and bloody. They were perplexed, baffled, but after only a few days, they gave up on investigating, and feigned ignorance whenever Terra pressed them for more information. Miserable, depressed, and crippled with grief, Terra was unable to organize the funeral. The task fell instead to Terra's friends, who sent off Julie and Marco in sombre style.

Terra turned into an internet café and went over to the bored man at the front desk. It was two quid for an hour, and Terra bought a coffee and packet of biscuits with the change from a fiver. He sat down at a terminal and began job-surfing, trawling all the websites that he knew, even going so far as to check the classifieds in the online papers. He had money saved in separate accounts, just in case, and there were still the remains of the money his parents had left him several years back. So long as he could find steady work and sort out the mess with his house, he would be able to return to normal life. He set small goals like that all the time. I can fix my life if I find a place with a roof that doesn't leak. I can fix my life if I convince someone I was married. I can fix my life if I find a job.

Truth be told, Terra was only going through the motions. He had already checked each of these websites several times over, and they rarely had new jobs that he would be able to take, or that would take him. He had gone to six interviews so far, and applied for many more. None of them had accepted him, and not one had given him a reason why not. It wasn't with much hope that he kept searching.

"You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?"

Click. There was a chip shop in the east end that was hiring. Click. Department stores and supermarkets always needed new employees, right? Click. At the very least, he could try at a Tesco. Click.

"I said," said an amused-sounding voice. "You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?"

Terra turned around and found himself face to face with a man who looked to be in his late fifties. His face was tanned and weather-beaten, and claimed by a thick, but neatly-trimmed, dark grey beard. He wore a black fedora that had accents of dark blue in it that matched his casual, yet expensive-looking suit. His eyes were dark blue, and seemed to see right into Terra's soul.

"You could say that," Terra said, politely. "But we all suffer misfortunes now and then, do we not?" He turned back to his computer screen, but the old man tapped him on the shoulder.

"Are you looking for a job, son?" he said. His accent was hard to place, but was clearly British. He had a crisp, precise voice that belied the deepness of its tone.

"Are you offering?" Terra asked.

"I might be," said the man. "Would you like to come with me, and find out?" The man was standing, and from where Terra was sitting, he appeared tall and imposing. When Terra stood up, he found that it wasn't just perspective; Terra might have had a few inches on the man, but his sheer gravitas made him seem bigger and more important than anyone else in the room.

The man led Terra out of the internet café and down the street. Big Ben wasn't visible from where they were standing, but if they could see it, it would be readying itself to strike twelve.

"Let me buy you some lunch," said the man. "Are you hungry?"

"Starving," Terra admitted. "But it's no trouble, really."

"You're quite right, it is no trouble at all, and I want to buy you a meal. You are Terra Benedicta, am I right?"

Terra stopped instantly. "Yes I am," he said, his eyes narrowing. "How do you know that?"

"All in good time," the man said gently. "For now, where should we have lunch? I'm thinking a pub. Does a pub lunch sound good?"

Terra put aside his trepidation and said that that sounded lovely. They kept walking, side by side now. Each time they would pass a pub the man would stick his head in the door and come out again, apparently not satisfied with what he saw. They walked in silence, punctuated only with the man's occasional "no, this one is too large," or else, "too many people," or "the wrong sort of atmosphere." From what Terra could tell, each one was a typical pub. What more, he thought, than beer, food, and a pinball machine did a pub need?

The man finally called for a halt by gently holding up a hand. "This is the place," he said, smiling a smile yellowed by either tobacco or coffee. The place in question, called the King's Crown, seemed just like all the other places they had passed by. They sat at the bar and accepted two menus from the bald barman.

"Do you come here often?" Terra asked, looking around. It was an ordinary pub. Dark wood, antique tin advertisements, a fireplace that was unlit considering it was almost August. There really was nothing out of place or remarkable about it.

"Occasionally," the man replied. "Do you frequent pubs often?"

"Not since I was fired," Terra found himself saying. "I used to go out with my mates for a pint, but they've…."

"Yes?" the man pressed. "Your friends have?"

"Forgotten me," Terra mumbled. "Look, what do you want with me, anyway? What sort of job is this?"

"Straight to the point, I see," said the man. "That's good. But you must learn to enjoy life, as well. Live in the moment, and all that claptrap."

"Carpe diem," Terra said wryly. He glanced at the menu he had been given. "What are you having?" he asked his companion.

"I am considering the shepherd's pie," said the man, who was studying the laminated card with the intensity of a student cramming on stolen Ritalin.

The man eventually settled on a steak and kidney pie, and Terra had a chilli con carne, which wasn't British by any stretch of the imagination, but was what Terra usually had when he had a pub lunch.

"Do you believe in magic, Mister Benedicta?" the man asked. He fixed Terra with a gaze that, while warm and open, was also slightly severe, like a favourite teacher who was stern but fair, or a grandfather who had seen much of what the world had to offer and had taken perhaps a bit too much of the bad with the good.

"No, sir," Terra said. He suddenly thought that perhaps this man was a recruiter for a circus or something like it.

"That's alright," he said gently. "Not everyone does, in the beginning. How about gods? Do you believe in gods, Terra?"

Terra went to midnight mass every Christmas, and was nominally Catholic, but he was quite sure that that wasn't what this man meant.

"I've never seen any reason not to," Terra said, playing it safe.

"One last question, for now, anyway. Do you like to travel?"

"When I was a kid, we moved a lot," Terra said. He found that his throat was suddenly rather dry, and was pleasantly surprised when the barman placed two pints in front of Terra and his companion. He took a sip and continued. "Dad was French, and worked for the government. Embassies. So I grew up all over the place. The States, France, Italy, Tunisia for a few years. I hated it at first, because I never made any really good friends. But I realized how lucky I had it when I was fifteen. We were posted to Washington and most of the kids at my school had never left the States. Some of them had never even left Maryland or Virginia, and I had been all over Europe and the Middle East. So I realized then how important travelling is, and how much I enjoyed it. Still do."

The food arrived then, and the man began talking and eating at the same time. "That's quite splendid. So you're used to moving all over the place already. Splendid. If I told you right now that this job I will soon offer you would involve frequent travel about the Continent, and told you nothing else, would you take it?"

Terra thought about it for a moment. He didn't have anything left tying him to England. His parents were dead, he had no siblings, and now all of his friends had abandoned him. A change of pace would help him. If I can just get out of the city, I can put my life back together.

"I'd say yes," Terra said at last. He took a bite of his chilli, a gulp of his beer. He realized then just how hungry he was, and decided that politeness be damned, he was going to eat this chilli properly. It was finished in the space of two minutes, and left a pleasant burning sensation in Terra's mouth. They used real peppers in this chilli. "What do I have to do to get this job? Whatever it is? Pledge my loyalty to you? Swear an oath?"

"You don't even need to drink three cups of mead," the man chuckled. "I earn my employees' loyalty and trust, I don't demand it."

"Well what's the job?"

"Terra Benedicta, do you know why I've brought you here today?" The man looked serious now; the jovial tricky-old-man vibe was gone now. His tone was businesslike. "My name is Solomon Aeon, and it is my fault that nobody remembers your wife and son. And I am deeply, deeply sorry about that."

Silence hung over the bar like a heavy fog. Terra stared at the man, Aeon, for several long seconds.

"What did you say?" Terra asked, his voice level. He felt a dull knot in his chest.

"I'm sorry," said Aeon. "I wasn't directly involved."

"They died in an accident," Terra said shortly.

"You're not sure, though. Nobody can even remember them, can they?"

"Why is that?" Terra asked. His voice was strained. He felt his throat constricting, his eyes itching. "It's like they've vanished." He suddenly became angry. "What did you have to do with this? Tell me!"

"First I want you to relax," said Aeon. "And I want you to know, right now, that I am very interested in bringing to justice the person who killed your wife and son. What do you say we go somewhere more comfortable?" Aeon picked up his half-eaten pie and glass of beer and motioned toward a table. Terra left his empty bowl on the bar, picked up his beer, and followed the man. They sat down opposite each other.

"Who exactly are you?" Terra asked.

"A friend," said Aeon. "Someone who will look out for you, if you help me in return."

"Are you mafia?"

"Nothing so crude. Although it could be said that my organization has similarities to mobsters."

"So what are you, then?"

Aeon fixed Terra with his most penetrating gaze yet. "I'm a god," he said. He took out a fobwatch from his suit pocket and examined it.

"I don't believe in gods," Terra said at once. "They're not real. They're things people made up to explain lightning and bad luck."

"And what do you think happened when people stopped believing in them?" Aeon said, smiling a sad little smile. "They didn't just disappear. They adapted, survived. They became other things. Once the idea of bad luck became a god, a conscious thing, do you think it could go back to being an abstract and nigh-nonexistent concept in an uncaring universe? Of course not. They've all clung to things they represent."

"And what do you represent?" Terra asked. He was half humouring the old man, but half of him wanted to know what it was he thought, or wanted Terra to think, he was.

"Let me ask you something, Mister Benedicta," said Aeon.

"You're time, aren't you?" Terra said, interrupting. "You represent time. Or you think you do, anyway. Why? Are you a hustler? Are you hustling me for something?"

"Not a word of it," said Aeon. "Although I'm glad you are perceptive enough to see that my name isn't just a fancy word. But now, let me ask you something. What does your name mean?"

"I'm not an earth god," Terra said at once. "Please don't go getting that into your head. If that's why you sought me out, if that's why you're buying me lunch, please just let me leave. I'm not a god."

Aeon laughed, a good-natured laugh. Terra found himself relaxing. Maybe he was being hustled for something. He didn't mind. He had nothing more than an air mattress and a wallet to lose. He suddenly felt incredibly alive. He was in a pub! How many people in the world would never eat chilli in a pub? How many people wouldn't taste a pint? It was rather a lot of people. Terra was lucky. Terra was having an interesting conversation with an interesting man, who was, at the very least, buying him lunch. He could listen to what he had to say. He might even agree with it. He finished his glass of beer and waited for Aeon to speak.

"I didn't say you were a god," Aeon said. "No, I know you're mortal. You're as human as the good man who's going to bring us some more beers. And I'm glad that you know the meaning of your name. Names are important. So why do you have such an unusual name?"

"Mum thought I was going to be a girl," said Terra, "and she wanted to name me after my gran, Tara. When I turned out to be a boy, they couldn't think of any other name, so I became Terra."

"You said your father was French," said Aeon. "And your mother was?"

"English," said Terra. "From London."

The barman came to collect their glasses, and Aeon ordered two more pints for himself and Terra.

"Yes, family is important," said Aeon. "And now you have none at all. How does that make you feel?"

"Numb," said Terra. "But I'm not sad. I know I should be. I lost my son, I lost my wife. I don't even know how." He suddenly glared at Aeon, as if a spell were broken. "You know. You know what happened. Tell me."

"I will tell you," said Aeon. "But first you must understand a few things. It will help the tale make all the more sense."

"I'm listening," said Terra.

Aeon wasn't the name he had been born with. Nor was his first name really Solomon. He had chosen those names when he was sixteen, when he had gotten his memories back. Aeon was something out of a myth, but a more obscure myth than Heracles or Jupiter, or Odin or Vishnu or Coyote. He was something like, like a person but still a god. A human soul that had the essence of a god inside him. The memory of a god. Aeon remembered being enormous, he remembered being powerful. And he remembered meaning so many different things, having so many personas and so many jobs. And he remembered becoming human. He remembered it all becoming so simple. Loving things, doing things, achieving things. That was the point of life, he discovered. Gods exist for people. He was tired of existing for other people. He wanted to be a person for once.

That had been millennia ago, though, and Aeon didn't dwell very much on those times. Often, he didn't even remember those times. It was easier to be human if you never thought of yourself as something ancient and immortal, something that would be born again as soon as it died. Aeon had seen the rise and fall of Rome, had seen the storming of the Bastille and the London Blitz. And he had seen all of those things alone.

"I find people I find to be special," Aeon said, "and I help them. And I get myself wrapped up in their lives, tangled in their affairs. Of course, in the process, I make rather a lot of enemies. One of them in particular is more dangerous than the others."

"And he's the one who killed my family?" Terra asked. "Why?"

"You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But listen. I am responsible for their deaths. If I had been more careful, that weapon, that awful weapon that he used, wouldn't have been stolen."

"I remember a lot of blue light," Terra said, uncertainly. The beers arrived then. Terra took a large sip and set his glass down. Aeon drank half of his pint in the space of a few seconds. "Is that what killed them?"

"Something like that," Aeon said quietly.

"I don't feel anything for them," Terra said. "Just. I'm ashamed that I don't. I should be a wreck. I shouldn't have been able to go back to work a week after it happened. Do you know why that is?"

"I have a theory," said Aeon. "Which I will tell you later. So. What do you think? Do you want a job?"

"I guess," said Terra. "And there's no secret test of character? No application? What sort of job is this?"

"I have a lot of enemies, but I also have a lot of allies. And I don't always have the time to visit all of them. That's what you're going to do. I'll give you your first assignment tomorrow."

They sat in silence for a little while, sipping their beer. Terra expected for something to happen soon, for some confederate of Aeon's to start a fight or something. But nothing happened. Aeon simply looked around the room, cleared his throat occasionally, or looked at his fobwatch.

That watch was like something out of a different time. But then, Terra supposed, if this person really was a god, it probably would be. Terra didn't know if he believed the man's story. It was too out of the blue, too incredible. And yet, Terra knew that there was something special about this person.

"There is business I must attend to," said Aeon after a little while. He held up his watch. It was about one o'clock. "Would you do me the honour of returning to this pub in about six hours? I feel like I've barely scratched the surface with you."

"Yeah, okay," said Terra. "Do you need help with this business?"

"No," said Aeon. "There will be plenty of time to show you the ropes later. No, I advise you to pack up your possessions, and be ready to leave London in the morning." Aeon got up and paid for their food and drinks, and shook Terra's hand. "Seven o'clock, now," he said. Terra nodded, and Aeon left the pub.

Terra didn't see where Aeon was going. That didn't matter. He had business to attend to himself, if he was really leaving. He went over to the bar, and asked the barman if there was a phone he could use. He said that no there wasn't, not in the pub, but there was a phone booth a little ways down the street. Terra thanked the man and, his head buzzing ever so slightly from the beers, he left the pub. He found the iconic red phone booth, and was relieved to find that it worked. He slotted a few fifty pence pieces into it and dialled.

"Richard," he said, as the other line was picked up. "It's Terra."

"Terra? Terra who?"

"Don't be daft, Richard," Terra said, but he had a sinking feeling in his stomach that he was being forgotten, too. "I'm leaving, Richard. I'm gonna be going away for a while. Not sure when I'll come back. I just wanted to say, you've been a real mate. A real good friend. And I'll miss you."

"Terra," Richard said, as though it were a great effort. "Where are you going?"

"I got a new job. Leaving the country. Just thought I'd say bye. I'm leaving in the morning."

"Where are you going?" Richard asked again.

"Dunno. My new boss hasn't said yet. It's gotta be better than this, though. It has to be."

Terra put the phone back in its holder, then picked it up again and dialled another number. Then another, and another. Each friend he said goodbye to was like tossing a sandbag off the hot air balloon of his life, cutting off his tether, throwing away his anchor.

It was around three when he ran out of people to call and coins to pay with, so he took the tube back to his flat. He ate the red pepper in his fridge and threw away the Chinese. He packed his clothes, and the few sentimental things he'd managed to save, and left his blankets and mattress to the neighbour who had been eyeing them when he first got there. When that was all said and done, it was four-thirty. He decided to take a nap for an hour, then leave.

For the first time in months, his dreams were hopeful.

3: Chapter 3

Terra reached the pub at six forty-five, and took a seat at the same table they had had lunch at. The pub was beginning to fill up with people, and was quite a bit louder than it had been hours ago. Terra ordered a beer and sipped it slowly as he watched the bar fill with patrons. He wasn't normally one for people watching, but his rapidly changing life made him wonder about other people's lives. There was a young couple on a date; they had their whole lives ahead of them. There was a group of friends, probably students, getting an early start on the night, judging by the look of the number of empty glasses littering their table. They might have their own problems, but, Terra thought, probably not as bad as his. It was an odd feeling to be able to say with some certainty that he was worse off than other people.

He glanced up, and saw Aeon at the door, motioning for him to join him outside. Just visible behind him was a man of about forty, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and skinny jeans. Terra got up and said hello.

"Terra, my dear boy, good to see you," Aeon said, as though they hadn't spoken in weeks. Terra exited the pub entirely, and Aeon closed the door. "I was just telling my friend Mister Nook about you."

Mister Nook was smoking a black cigarette that smelled strongly of cinnamon. His long face was wrinkled from years of grinning. He looked to Terra as though he were trying to follow fashion trends, and not doing it very well; the floral print shirt and jeans combination wasn't really working for him.

"Pleased to meet you," said Mister Nook. His accent was American, but there was something about his features—the dark eyes, or the pencil moustache, perhaps—that suggested Eastern Europe. He shook Terra's hand with a slightly weak grip. "So you're the ol' clockmaster's new errand boy? I wish you the best of luck – you'll need it!"

"Don't frighten the poor boy out of the job before he's even started," said Aeon, smiling. Terra noticed that was the third time someone had called him "boy" in the last few minutes. Was everybody that Aeon knew old enough that anyone younger than several centuries was a boy to them?

"What sort of jobs will I be doing?" Terra asked, when he couldn't think of anything more interesting to say.

"All sorts," said Mister Nook. "Your predecessor, Mister de Coeur, went all over the place for Aeon. Likely as not, you shall be doing the same." He finished his cigarette, tossed the butt to the ground, and crushed it with his heel. "Now then. Shall we go in?"

Terra half expected for their table to have been claimed by someone else, but it was miraculously free. They sat down, and elected for Terra to go and order their suppers. Aeon ordered the shepherd's pie; Mister Nook ordered a steak and kidney pie, and Terra ordered another chilli. To drink, Terra had his pint, Aeon had a glass of red wine, and Mister Nook had a bottled Heineken.

"A toast," said Aeon, when Terra had brought the drinks back. "To the memory of our fallen comrade. May his death not be in vain." They drank, and Terra was startled by the suddenly sombre atmosphere about the table.

"What happened to this comrade?" Terra asked, quietly. "Is it likely to happen to me?"

"He was ambushed and sabotaged," said Aeon. His tone was aggressive and angry, but quickly reverted to a sort of relaxed cheeriness. He was like a flash flood, or a storm that comes and goes without warning. "But that's not likely to happen to you. I plan for our enemies to not discover your existence for as long as possible."

A small feeling of uneasiness descended on Terra. "What kind of enemies do you have, anyway?"

"Powerful ones," interjected Mister Nook. "I won't sugar-coat it for you, Mister Terra, there are some dangerous people out there."

"Gods," said Terra simply. Mister Nook and Aeon both nodded solemnly. "I don't believe in gods."

"That's okay," said Mister Nook, in an understanding sort of tone. "It really is. But that doesn't matter. I remember when I didn't believe in gods too. It changes."

Terra didn't say anything, he just sipped his beer. "I don't even really know what I'm doing here," he said at last. "What is this? A world of sinister hidden organizations? Secret underground societies? What are you people? Magical mafia?"

"You could say that," said Aeon. "But it's rather more complicated than that."

When he refused to elaborate, Mister Nook took it upon himself to break the awkward silence. "Any word about Amelie MacDougal?" he asked.

Terra recognized that name. "Isn't she that Irish girl who was abducted a few months ago?"

"Kidnapped on holiday in Spain," said Aeon. "And we have a vested interest in maintaining her safety. My people have been up in arms since the news became public."

"A four year old kid is a part of your organization?" Terra asked. "That's insane. And sort of sick."

"It's not quite like that," said Aeon. "It's difficult to explain at the moment."

"But you will explain it to me one day?" asked Terra.

"One day," said Aeon. "You'll need to know everything eventually." And he knocked back the rest of his wine.

Terra raised his eyebrows. "I know a lot about wine," he said. "And that's not exactly how you're supposed to drink it."

"Tonight is a night of release," said Aeon, sadly. "Tonight, I am going to get shitfaced. There's been far too much going on lately."

Mister Nook patted Aeon on the arm. "Come on, clockmaster, it's not so bad. We have a lot to be thankful for right now, as well."

"No we don't," Aeon shot back. He suddenly took on a whole new demeanour. He was no longer a genial, jovial old man in a suit. He wasn't quite a god, either; the age that showed in his eyes reflected decades rather than centuries. He was an old man lost in the world, angry and aggrieved at forces beyond his control, that he had thought he would always have a say over. "Everything's been fucked." And he got up, and walked to the bar.

"I must apologize on behalf of Aeon," said Mister Nook. "He's been doing his best to be cheerful for you, but the truth is, he has a hard life. He brings it on himself, of course, but there's no denying that he's got his difficulties."

"What's happened recently, in your world?" Terra asked.

"They don't tell me much," said Mister Nook, quietly. "My speciality"—he pronounced every letter in the word, unfolding it out into five syllables—"is books. Old scrolls, historical documents. My day job, it is work at a museum. Not a big one, you understand. But important. We keep things there that are very important to people like Aeon."

"You're not a god," said Terra. He meant to word it as a question, but it came out as a statement.

"I'm not," said Mister Nook. "I'm a mortal, a mundane, but I've seen some things in my time. Reaped some benefits from it, too. I'm useful to Aeon. Useful to other people, as well. I get by."

"I still don't believe in gods," said Terra.

"The thing you have to understand about this business," said Mister Nook, "is that they aren't really gods. They die. They can't do much more than influence fate and luck and chance. They don't control the weather or the direction a life can take. They don't create. They are just people who are born with the memories of gods that might not even exist, that might not ever have existed. And they believe that they are gods, or that they were gods once. But it is not so."

"So are they gods, or aren't they?" Terra asked. "I would like a straight answer, please."

"Is like I say. They think they are gods, and they feel like gods. But they do not have the powers of gods. You do not need to worry about Aeon striking you with lighting. Most of them, they have knowledge, but they have no power. Aeon cannot use magic. Come to think of it, very few people can use magic. It is a dying art. No one can use it freely now, but for angels and saints and devils."

"So magic is real?" Terra asked.

"Yes and no," said Mister Nook. "Many people, they use things like casting papers. Parchments with circles of power drawn on them. And they work, sometimes. You can throw fireballs around, and cast out demons and refreeze melted ice cream. Sometimes you can even do big things. There was a big battle, in Canada, a few months back. A little girl fought against a devil-thing and won." Terra noticed that the more Mister Nook talked, or maybe the more he drank, the more his accent changed. It was variable. One second his accent would be neutral, American, and then he would sound German or Romanian or Czech. "Ah, but Aeon will tell you about that. He wants to drink to her memory, too. Not just Saul's."

"Saul?"

"Saul de Coeur was your predecessor," said Mister Nook. "If anyone was close to old man Aeon, it was him. He knew things, Saul. Knew things about how the world worked. Of course, I do too. It's my job to know things. I knew something was going to happen to Saul, I just wasn't sure what."

"You're psychic?" asked Terra.

"Let me guess. You don't believe in psychics, either."

"I guess I do. Not the fake ones that play with tarot cards and crystal balls. But I guess there are people with ESP out there. My wife, she would know who was calling sometimes, before she picked up the phone."

Thinking about Julie set a painful lump in his throat, and he drank deeply. He set the drained glass on the table just as Aeon returned with three glasses of whiskey.

"I'm not much of a Scotch drinker," Mister Nook said, as he sniffed one of the glasses.

"That's okay," said Aeon. "It really is. You're still going to drink it, though." He sat down beside Mister Nook, opposite Terra. "Shall I make the next toast, or shall one of you?"

"I will," said Terra. "To Julie and Marco. I hope you're okay, wherever you are. I pray to whatever gods there may be that you're not suffering."

"To Julie and Marco," said Aeon. He sounded ironic, like he thought the toast was a sad joke. Terra frowned at him, and he sipped his Scotch. Mister Nook echoed their words and drank.

"So yes," Mister Nook said to Terra. "I have some low-level psychic abilities, as these things are measured. But I also have another ability. Something that I call Graphomancy. I read old books and listen to music, sometimes modern things, and I can figure out meaning from them. Nothing that the authors usually intended to put it, just things that catch my interest. Things that can be applied to the work."

"That doesn't make much sense," Terra said, as he sipped his whiskey.

"It's like this. Back when Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings, people thought he was making an allegory for World War II. Except that he said many times over that he wasn't. What he did say was that events from that war could be applied to his book. But you can do the same with anything. You can read Catcher in the Rye and think it's telling you to kill John Lennon. It doesn't mean that Salinger meant it that way. It's just one person's interpretation."

"And Grapho-whatever makes your interpretations true?"

Mister Nook nodded. "It does."

"Another toast," shouted Aeon. Mister Nook's and Terra's attention immediately shifted to the old man. "To Jasmine Lockhart. May her soul rest in peace and may her battles not have been for nought. And may I not make the same mistake twice. Drink!"

Terra felt a sense of tragedy behind Aeon's words. There was a story there, of this girl, Jasmine Lockhart. He drained his glass, in her honour. He noticed that Mister Nook and Aeon both did the same. Mister Nook stood up to get more drinks.

"Who is Jasmine Lockhart?" Terra asked Aeon quietly, almost reverently.

"Was," Aeon corrected him. "She was a Canadian girl, related to me in the same way as the MacDougal girl. In the same way as your predecessor was."

"What happened to her?"

"She ran afoul of a demon," said Aeon. "A demon by the name of Necropolis Shell. Shell tormented Jasmine for the better part of a year before she could take no more of it. She hung herself. Earlier this month, as a matter of fact. Her funeral was a few weeks ago. Her family didn't know it, but I was in attendance." A couple of tears leaked from Aeon's electric blue eyes, and he looked very old, indeed. "She had so much promise, so much talent. And all of that was for nothing because a resentful soul couldn't keep its damn tendrils out of her."

That put in Terra's mind an image of a deep-sea creature, like a demented jellyfish, putting its tentacles into the girl's head. He tried to dispel the picture from his head; it was slightly disturbing.

"That's all in the past, now, though," said Aeon. He turned toward the bar, watching Mister Nook talking to the barman. There was someone different tending the bar from the afternoon, someone younger. A few moments later, Mister Nook returned with the drinks.

"What are we talking about?" Mister Nook asked, setting the drinks on the table.

"Lockhart," said Aeon shortly.

"Ah," said Mister Nook. "Say no more."

"All shall be redeemed, however," said Aeon, brightening up. "We, I mean I, shall not make the same mistake twice. We're going to be taking a hands-on approach to these Metropolis children from now on. That's going to be your job, Terra. Watching over a friend of Jasmine's."

"And where will I be doing this?" Terra asked. He didn't ask the how if it. He didn't really want to know the how of it right now.

"Budapest," said Aeon. "Ever been to Hungary, Terra?"

Terra shook his head. "We stayed clear of the communist countries when we were travelling. I hear it's a bit of a wreck."

"Infrastructure and economy have improved dramatically since the fall of the Soviet Union," said Aeon. "And that is where our friend is going to be living for a few years. We're not going to interfere in his life overmuch. Just enough to make sure that he's safe."

Terra nodded. "How am I getting there?"

"Tomorrow I will give you your aeroplane ticket," Aeon said. He pulled out his watch, looked at his drink, looked at his watch again, and shrugged. "It's getting on."

"That it is," said Mister Nook. He raised his glass. "To your good health," he said, looking at Terra, and finished his glass. "I must be off."

"It's still early," said Terra.

"I have a plane to catch," said Mister Nook. He shook Terra's hand and smiled at him. "Until we meet again." And then he was gone.

"I will send a car to collect you in the morning," said Aeon, suddenly businesslike. He shook Terra's hand stiffly and got up. "Do you want me to call you a cab?"

"I'm fine," said Terra. He was feeling rather boozy, truth be told, but he was sure he could walk. He could hold his liquor well.

"Sleep well," said Aeon. "Your last night in London. Think about how you'll spend it. If I were you, I would spend it sleeping. But that's me." He left a small pile of banknotes on the table, to pay for the drinks and the food.

Terra finished his whiskey and his food, which he had only picked at before. Then he thanked the bartender for the drinks, and went out into the night. It took him a little while to find his way back to his hotel, but the whole time, he didn't think of calling a cab.

He went to bed feeling that he ought to feel different, since he was leaving on a new adventure in the morning. He lay there for hours, not drifting off to sleep in the least. Finally, he thought about Julie and Marco, and for the first time since they had disappeared, he cried himself to sleep.