In Which Two Did Not Consort



“Two?” I said to Dee.

“Wait, the golem?” Rowan said.

“She has a name,” I said.

“I know, I know!” he said, throwing up his hands. “You just said it… I was only clarifying that was who you were talking about.”

“How many Twos do you think I know?”

“I’m not sure how to answer that without sounding like a smartass,” he said.

“I am not certain I should ask for her aid if I cannot be assured she will receive the gratitude it warrants,” Dee said.

“I’m not sure why you’d ask for her aid in the first place,” I said. “I mean, her maker was a powerful wizard, but his background was enchantment, not diabolism… and her personal interests are a lot more domestic.”

“Substantially, yes,” Dee said. “But she has an interest even more personal in your kind… or have you forgotten?”

“What?” I said, then it came to me: a library book on demons Two had been a bit too interested in, and then a strange injury. What was it she had said about it? I had been too freaked out to really remember the details. “Okay, maybe there was one time…”

“More than the one time,” Dee said. “She undertook a study with the same single-minded rigor with which she undertakes anything. I would hesitate to term her an expert given the specialized nature of the subject and the lack of information available in public resources, but I believe she knows as much as any layperson we might come across.”

“I didn’t have any idea,” I said. “How do you know this?”

“We have been roommates for some time,” Dee said. “When she perceived that her studies upset you, she made the decision not to trouble you with the information.”

“I tried to… I told her to drop it,” I said. “I didn’t want her poking around after demons, I was worried she’d get hurt.”

“She had already been hurt,” Dee said. “If you would have listened, the purpose of her study was to prevent a recurrence.”

“She… she said something like that,” I said. “I didn’t understand… I still don’t.”

“Two, would you come in here?” Dee asked, in a carrying voice. “She says she will be in here shortly. I believe it would be prudent and courteous to allow her to explain herself, if she feels the need to.”

“How exactly did you wind up friends with a golem?” Rowan asked.

I gave him a hard look, but there was nothing in his face that suggested he meant anything more by the question than the question.

“I didn’t like the way people treated her,” I said.

“You felt sorry for her?” he asked.

“We felt sorry for each other,” Two said, from the bathroom door. “Though I did not know it yet. Hi, Mack. Hi, Dee.”

“Hi, Two,” we said.

“I did not like the way people treated you, either,” Two said to me. “Including you.”

“That’s… pretty fair, actually,” I said.

“So, you’re the most moral person they know?” Rowan said.

Two’s eyes flickered up and rolled a bit to the side very briefly, before she said, “Yes.”

“Are you able to lie?” he asked.

She visibly considered that, but so briefly that someone not familiar with her cognitive facial tics might have considered it.

“Yes,” she said. “But I wouldn’t. That’s what makes it moral.”

“I like that answer,” he said. “It’s somehow more reassuring than no, since a person can lie about being able to lie. Or does that cause you problems?”

“People lying?”

“Paradoxes,” Rowan said. “I mean, if I tell you that I always lie, and then say that this statement is a lie…”

“Then I will conclude that you were lying when you told me that you always lie,” Two said. “Or that your second statement consists of words that are literally true but with deceptive intent.”

“Two’s friend Hazel is not the most moral person we know,” Dee said, in response to Rowan’s confused look.

“She has taught me a lot of things about truth and falsehood,” Two said. “Some of them may even be true.”

Rowan started to laugh, though he choked it off with a sputter when he realized that Two wasn’t laughing.

“Amaranth would also say that a person may say a thing that is not true but be unaware of it,” Two said. “And so if a person says one thing and then does or says a thing that seems contradictory, it does not mean that they are dishonest, only that they are complicated.”

“Funny, I wouldn’t have pegged Amaranth for the philosophical type,” Rowan said.

“Yeah, and how well do you know her?” I asked. “About as well as you knew Two?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I know she’s… I know she’s important to you. I mean, I’ve heard… but then, I’ve also heard you’ve been spending a lot of time with the elves, and to be honest, I’ve heard a lot of things besides that, and while I’m sure it’s ninety percent bullshit, I don’t know which ninety percent it is. In case you haven’t noticed, most of our catching up has been you questioning me about our childhoods.”

“…you’re right,” I said. “Sorry, Rowan. As hard as it is for me to come to grips with the idea that my memory’s been messed with, you’re in the same boat now… and however weird it is to know that I have a friend I don’t remember, I don’t think I’d trade places with you. So far, I think you’ve got the worse end of the deal. I don’t know what I’m missing.”

“Thanks,” he said. “That means a lot.”

“But that said, let me give you some advice I also heard as a freshman: if you don’t know what you’re talking about, maybe think twice before saying it?”

“Fair,” he said.

“Two,” Dee said. “We were discussing a subject with which I believe you have some familiarity: the abilities of demons.”

“Yes,” Two said, nodding.

“Why the hell were you messing around with demons in the first place?” I asked. “I remember, you tried summoning one, didn’t you? You got hurt.”

“Yes,” Two said. “But I got healed, and I learned what I needed to know.”

“What the hell was so important that you would risk that? Don’t you know you could have been seriously hurt?”

“Yes,” Two said. “I was. But I tried to tell you, I did it so I couldn’t be hurt.”

“…isn’t summoning demons super illegal?” Rowan asked.

“No,” Two said. “I checked. Consorting with demons is illegal, but I did not consort.”

“Two, how did summoning a demon help protect you from being hurt?” I asked.

“It didn’t,” she said. “The demon was only there for practice.”

“Practice… for what?”

“Warding,” she said. She held up an arm, and a set of faint blue runes faded briefly into view before fading away again, but not before I took an involuntary step backwards.

“You…you demon-proofed yourself?” I said.

“Yes. You could not hurt me, if you lost control again. I did not know if it would work on the fire,” she said. “That’s why it took me more than one try. But I didn’t only want to know how to ward myself. Dee can hold you, and Amaranth can repel you, but they can’t do it without hurting you.”

“Because they’re divine,” I said.

“I am a vessel for the divine,” Dee said. “As we all are, after a fashion.”

“Okay, because their magic is divine,” I said.

“Yes,” Two said. “It is not easy to block a demon using arcane magic, but it is possible.”

“It’s still risky as hell!” I said. Memories of my grandmother raging against fools who’d tried a summoning with a less-than-perfect circle rose up inside me. “People study it for years before they even try with lesser bound infernals! Every symbol has to be perfect, it takes total concentration, a completely unified purpose of…”

Two stood there placidly, utterly calm and utterly still. I think she was waiting for my mind to catch up with my mouth.

“Oh, right,” I said.

“I say this with the greatest possible respect,” Dee said, “but Two was designed to be a tool for replicating and aiding in the creation of some of the most complicated and powerful mystical bindings used by your kind. If a magical working is not too intricate for a human to perform, then I must believe Two could emulate it.”

“Where did you get the information to do it, though?” I asked Two. “I know we found that book of lore, but actual magic involving demons is pretty heavily restricting.”

“Abjuration of demons isn’t,” Two said.

“And the summoning?”

“That was easy,” she said. “They want to come through.”

“…yeah, I guess if I was chilling in hell and a call came up from a tiny little freshman girl, I’d probably jump on it with both feet,” Rowan said.

I felt a little bit vaguely annoyed that he was underestimating Two, but that wasn’t terribly fair since I’d been underestimating her… so of course I felt even more annoyed, a lot more vaguely. But at least he was clearly thinking of her as a person now, even if it was in the most dismissive way possible.

“Two, you learned as much about the capabilities of demons as you could, yes?” Dee said.

“I did, according to the priorities I set,” Two said. “If I had learned as much about the capabilities of demons as I could, I would have still been studying them when you called me.”

“We have some questions about the capabilities of demons, which we hoped you could help us to answer,” Dee said. “Can a demon who is currently manifested in corporeal form in the mortal world send its consciousness forth into another’s mind, absent the sort of telepathic gifts I possess?”

Maybe it was the fact that I had sat through so many speeches recently about the nature of memory storage and retrieval, but when I saw Two’s eyes pull up and twitch to the side, it hit me that she must not have thought about this recently.

I wondered if her memories were as fragile and tenuous as ours. From the way the owl-turtle thing described her mind compared to mine, I kind of doubted it. I wondered how far it went, though. Did her mind have a literal record of everything she’d seen, heard, felt, or thought in it? Did she have to wind her way back through it all until she got to the books she’d read on demons, and then pull together a conclusion from them?

“I don’t know,” she said. “No one who wrote about it knew for sure. Though some of them were pretty sure they did. They all had different opinions, and they were all very sure they were right.”

“Damn it,” I said. “Was there anything like a professional consensus?”

“There was a consensus a demon with a body wouldn’t want to enter someone’s mind,” Two said. “So it wouldn’t matter in most cases if they could or not.”

“Thank you, Two,” Dee said. “I am sorry, Mackenzie… I had hoped we could provide a definitive answer to at least one possibility this evening.”

“Yeah… I guess that means my theory’s still in the running, though?”

“I still do not find it to be likely,” Dee said.

“Likely enough that you wanted to check it out,” I said.

“To be quite honest, I had hoped we could eliminate it,” she said. “The slim chance that any diabolist on campus would have more recent or more definitive information on what is apparently a purely academic question does not seem worth the debasement to either of us in pursuing it further.”

“Hey, I don’t mind being debased,” Rowan said. “I mean… I’m not a cleric, or a demonblood. Is there any reason I’d have for not consorting with the diabolists? Or am I being naive? I mean, are they scary in a way normal people have to look out for?”

“My impression… from a distance… is that they’re mostly like super intense nerds,” I said. “They keep to themselves even more than the necro students do, but they sure came out of the woodwork when I was selling excess energy this past summer. They kind of came sniffing around one by one, asking leading questions if there was anything else I wanted to sell, or if I’d be interested in making some real money.”

“…what did they want?”

“Blood, probably, or my participation in their projects,” I said. “Getting the full-blown demons and other infernal critters they summon to cooperate in their tests is probably pretty hard.”

“What did you say to them?”

“That if they wanted a demon to play with, they could go to hell and find one,” I said. “…or, actually, I mumbled that I was getting by fine just selling raw power and left it at that. I didn’t think about that line until much later.”

“So is there any reason I shouldn’t go asking around?”

“None that I can think of… though I think it’ll go better if you don’t mention any connection to me,” I said. “Dee?”

“I can see no obstacle, though I would not ask anyone to associate with practitioners of such light magic,” she said.

“Light magic?” Rowan said.

“My knowledge of the infernal reaches is far from complete, but I gather it is bounded by a dimension of fire,” Dee said.

“That’s a surprisingly good point,” he said.

“Very well then, Rowan Hartley,” she said. “We have the beginnings of a plan.”

“What are the rest of us going to do?” I asked.

“Laundry,” Two said. “Would you please excuse me?”

“Yes, thank you, Two,” I said.

“You’re welcome. Goodnight, Mack. Goodnight, Dee. Goodnight, Rowan.”

“Goodnight, Two,” we said, Rowan about a quarter of second behind.

“I will be pursuing a line of inquiry I would rather not disclose,” Dee said. “Mackenzie, can you be satisfied for now that progress is being made, even if you are not a party to it?”

“I guess,” I said. “Dee… not that I don’t appreciate this, but you’re really going above and beyond what I would have expected. Why are you so invested in this?”

“…I would rather not say at this time,” she said.

“Oh, right,” I said.

“Understand, it is not merely the danger I referenced before that forestalls my speech,” she said. “I have no desire to be premature when dealing with a matter of this suspected magnitude.”

“…not at all making me more satisfied about not being a party to things.”

“My apologies,” Dee said, sweeping low. “In any event, I believe there is little more to be said or done tonight. If you would excuse me, I will retire.”

“Goodnight, Dee,” I said.

“You have interesting friends,” Rowan said when she had rejoined Two on their side of the shared suite.

“Do bear in mind that one half of those interesting friends can still hear every word you’re saying,” I said. “Her cultural conditioning is that it’s polite to pretend she doesn’t, but that’s not the same thing as not hearing it.

“Yeah, I still think you might have told me that up front,” he said. “But I didn’t mean it in a bad way. You ever notice that they kind of talk the same?”

“Well, they’re both super polite by most standards and they’re both struggling to express themselves in a language that isn’t nearly as precise as their thoughts,” I said. “But Dee’s more likely to go for nuance, while Two tries to state things simply.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Mackenzie?”

“What?”

“The thing I said about catching up… I know it’s got to be weird for you, but… I know I don’t have a really accurate picture of your life,” he said. “Would it be okay if we got together sometime not to talk about the mystery of the missing memories, but just… you tell me what your life has been like?”

“I’m not keen on reliving high school even with the people I know are my nearest and dearest.”

“It doesn’t have to be high school,” he said. “What about college? I saw you on the news, I’ve read the school papers that you were in, and I’ve damn well heard the rumors… I want to know the real deal. I want to know who you are, now.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t we all?”