Archive of Our Own

Melanie rarely bothered to get into work on time anymore; Peter Lukas was either unwilling to nag her about it or uninterested in bothering, and the others understood why she’d want to spend as little time as necessary in that place. So she was used to either Martin or Basira or both already being in the archive when she did wander in, if not at their desks, then knocking about in the stacks somewhere.

That meant she barely glanced at the long, lanky figure standing by Martin’s desk as she breezed by it. After all, it was the right shape and the right size, and who else would be hanging about the archives? “Morning, Martin,” she said with a sigh as she set down her bag at her own desk. “How long do you think I have to pretend to work before I can justify a coffee run?”

“Oh — I’m sorry, I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

Melanie snapped her gaze up as her heart tripped in her chest. The man standing by Martin’s desk sounded eerily similar to him, though the accent was more Glasgow than Manchester. As he turned to face her, she felt like she might be looking at a portrait of Martin in another twenty or thirty years: more lines around the eyes and mouth, strands of white threaded through his hair, but the same height, the same bone structure, same cheery smile. “Can I help you?” she asked warily.

“I quite hope you can,” the man said, and extended a hand to her. “My name is Robert Blackwood, and I’m looking for my son. The receptionist directed me down here, but no one else seems to be in.”

Melanie’s brain worked furiously as she shook Robert’s hand. First there was relief that this wasn’t some kind of evil doppelganger situation, because that was her life now, and it hadn’t been that long since the House of Wax. Then she tried to remember if Martin had ever mentioned his father before; it wasn’t like she was particularly close to him, though, and she tended to tune out most of his chattering.

Then she realized that, if neither Martin nor Basira were in yet, the door to the archives should’ve been locked.

“I’m sorry,” she found herself saying. “But I really can’t discuss employee schedules with the public. So unless you’d like to make a statement…”

Robert chuckled and released her hand. “No, no, I can see where I’ve overstepped my bounds. It was a bit of a desperate measure to come here in any case.  I’ll just be going.” He tipped an imaginary cap to her, and strolled casually back into the hall without a backwards glance.

Melanie didn’t move until he was around the corner, and then scanned Martin’s desk. There wasn’t anything there of particular interest: some reimbursement forms; a statement from the 90s (with a sticky note on the front that said “Meat?”); his latest slowly-dying houseplant, which had been colonized by a tiny money spider at some point. And the tape recorder, which had been left running, or perhaps switched itself on — she stopped it. Nothing Robert could’ve been messing about with, was the point, if he’d snuck in with ill intentions.

That was apparently her life now, too. Worrying about spies in the workplace.

Martin finally appeared after about forty minutes, with wind-swept hair and a pair of coffees. “Oh, good, I’d hoped you’d be in by now, I was just out to Chiswick to check up on an old statement and thought I’d bring back some proper coffee for us. Basira’s not coming in today, did you get her text?”

She nodded and pushed her laptop away for a moment. “Did you come in this morning, before I got here?”

Martin blinked, wide-eyed. “No? I, er, I didn’t actually have, er, permission to be...in the place that I was, and I thought there’d be fewer people about early in the morning…”

“Because there was someone in the archives when I got here,” Melanie explained. “Said his name was Robert Blackwood and he was looking for you.”

Martin’s face fell as soon as she said the name, and he put down the coffees so fast that one of them slopped out of the hole in the lid. “He was here?” he asked quickly. “He actually came here?”

“I just said—”

“Did … did he … he didn’t…” Martin swept a hand over his face and hair, leaving it sticking up worse than before. “What did you tell him?”

“To piss off,” Melanie said, and Martin instantly relaxed, dropping into his chair like his strings had been cut. “Though you might want to tell Rosie not to let him in if he comes back.”

“Yeah,” he muttered into his hands. “Yeah, I should…”

He didn’t move, however, and after a minute Melanie leaned over to snag one of the coffees and then went back to her desultory googling. The archives were quiet for a while.

“It’s just—” Martin started to say.

“No,” Melanie said, and raised one hand to cut him off. That, at least, got him to look at her. “You don’t have to tell me your sob story, Martin. We’ve got little enough privacy around this hellhole as it is. I don’t even care who he is or what he wants, you obviously don’t want him around, that’s all I need to know.”

Martin nodded quietly. “No. I mean, no, I don’t want him around.” He looked down at his hands again and started picking at the too-short sleeve of his jumper. “He hasn’t been part of my life for twenty years and I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

“Got it. If he comes sniffing around again I’ll shout at him.”

One side of Martin’s mouth went up, not quite a smile, but close to it. “You are very good at shouting.”

“Hell yes, I am.”

That seemed to finally calm him, but he was unusually quiet the rest of the day. That suited Melanie fine, though. One less thing to get on her nerves.

XXX

For a hostage situation, the Magnus Institute involved an awful lot of paperwork. Basira did not like paperwork. She especially did not like paperwork that had to be countersigned by her supervisor, because her immediate supervisor was in some sort of reverse coma, and after him there was —

“Are you sure it’s healthy to be spending so much time away from the archives?” Peter asked, instead of giving her a straight answer, and she tried not to grind her teeth.

“I’m asking for a long weekend, not a month’s holiday,” she retorted. “Just for a personal matter.” There had been sightings in the Norfolk Broads of a person matching Daisy’s description, or close enough to it that she could persuade herself it was worth checking up on. If Daisy had survived the House of Wax somehow, she might’ve gone into hiding for any number of reasons. There were fewer clear reasons why Daisy wouldn’t have tried to resume contact since then, or at least given Basira some sign of life … but what was the line about hope springing eternal?

“Hmmm, yeah, but that’s the third one in a row, isn’t it?” Peter’s watery blue-grey eyes flicked up at her once and then back down to her vacation request form. “I did promise Elias I’d protect you, difficult as that may be without him or the Archivist here. Don’t imagine he’d be very happy with me if you got poached by the Hunt. Pun absolutely intended, by the way, I’ve been saving that one.”

Basira didn’t particularly want to hear about Elias, or his ideas about “protection.” And she really didn’t like the implication that Peter knew exactly what she was doing with her time off. “I thought I was his insurance for keeping Alice Tonner in line,” she pointed out. “Now that she’s out of the picture, does Elias even have any use for me?”

“Oh, who even knows. He might just be trying to collect the set.” Peter tossed the forms onto his desk and leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Speaking of poaching, though, I understand you had a visitor in the archives this week?”

The shift in topic threw her off, and it took her a minute to remember: Melanie had sent a barrage of texts a few days ago, and Martin one very short and succinct one. They hadn’t spoken about it since, though. “Martin’s apparently having some personal issues, and someone tried to bring it into the workplace.”

“Did he mention who it was?”

“I try not to pry into other people’s business.”

Peter laughed at that. “You might be better off with the Hunt than the Eye, then.”

“I would be better off,” Basira said, using every ounce of self-control she’d acquired from working with the public to keep her voice level, “if my supervisor processed paperwork in a timely fashion.”

“Touche,” Peter said. He picked up the vacation request and finally gave it a sloppy signature. “Though if Robert Blackwood does come around the institute again, I’d appreciate it if you sent him up to me instead of leaving poor Rosie to deal with him. I’m much more dangerous than she is, after all.”

Basira took the forms, but hesitated. She was almost— almost— curious enough to ask how Peter had heard about Martin’s visitor. But she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, and if the answer involved Elias being invasive and malevolent again, she’d actually rather live in ignorance. “I’ll pass word along,” Basira assured him, and fled back down to the HR department with her paperwork.

XXX

When Melanie actually arrived at the archive before nine o’clock for the first time in approximately a month, the universe decided to punish her with a glimpse of Martin’s pants.

She yelped involuntarily, more startled than surprised. Martin shrieked and flung himself back into the storage room. “Where the hell are your trousers?” she called, unwilling to get any closer in case she got another eyeful.

“Sorry!” Martin called, over a frantic rustling of fabric. “I wasn’t—I mean—you’re not usually here this early!”

“Apparently with good reason!” When Martin emerged from the storage room, he was at least fully clothed, though he was wearing yesterday’s shirt with the buttons done up wrong and carrying his shoes in one hand. Melanie abruptly remembered the cot in storage. “Jesus, you didn’t sleep here, did you?”

“No,” Martin said quickly, but his scarlet face somehow got even redder. “I mean, just a bit.”

“A bit?”

He cringed; funny how someone so tall and gangly could look small when he tried. “I just...I didn’t really want to go home last night.”

“And sleeping on the Sadness Cot in the storage room is a better option?” Melanie couldn’t imagine spending one more minute in the archives than she absolutely had to — but then again, she’d been tricked and trapped, whereas Martin had apparently worked here for years without noticing the monsters all around him.

Martin took a deep breath and blew most of it out through pursed lips. He looked down at his socked feet and said, “Robert’s...he’s been coming round to my flat.”

It took a moment for Melanie to remember who Robert was supposed to be, a moment Martin spent squirming like he’d done something wrong. When she did remember him, she was surprised at the hot swell of anger in her chest. Well, maybe not at the anger itself, but at how quickly it latched on to a new target. She grabbed Martin’s wrist to get his attention. “He’s stalking you?”

“No!” Martin said quickly. Melanie just looked at him. “...a bit?”

“A little bit of stalking is like a little bit pregnant, Martin,” she said. “I don’t care who this guy is, if he’s chasing you out of your own home, you need to file a police report.”

He groaned. “I don’t...I just...I can handle it, all right?”

“That doesn’t mean you have to!”

He pulled his hand back and backed away a pace or two for good measure. “I’ve survived worse than him,” he said with uncharacteristic mulishness.

She...had to admit he had a point, actually. On the scale from zero to Elias, estranged and pushy relatives might not even rate. “Fine,” she finally managed to say. “But you’re not hanging around here without showering, and that is non-negotiable.”

Basira arrived just as Martin was leaving, and Melanie filled her in while the kettle in the kitchenette boiled. She frowned, and certainly looked concerned, but only said, “Don’t pressure him, Melanie.”

“Even if he’s being an idiot?”

“I’ve never seen a domestic abuse case resolve itself because somebody shouted at the victim,” Basira replied bluntly. “And before you argue with me, yes, this counts. The last thing you want to do is make him feel attacked from all sides.”

“So, what, we just let him sleep in the cupboard like Harry Potter?”

She shrugged. “Apparently Jon’s let him do it before. Maybe he actually feels safe here, somehow.” Then she bit her lip, staring into the middle distance briefly.

“What? Melanie asked.

“Nothing.”

“That’s not a nothing look.”

“Just...something Peter said to me a couple days back.” The kettle clicked off, and Basira started filling her mug. “It’s probably nothing.”

Martin slunk back into the archives around half ten, wearing a new shirt and with the ends of his hair still dark and damp. He proceeded to discover some extremely urgent filing he needed to do, and disappeared into the stacks for most of the rest of the day.

Fine. Let him hide. Melanie wouldn’t push him. But she did ignore the statements in her inbox in favor of a new topic of research: Robert Blackwood, and what the hell might’ve caused him to suddenly terrorize Martin now.

XXX

Basira turned another page in her book, and glanced up at Martin as she did so. By this point it was almost reflexive. Thursdays were usually the day he left a bit early to visit Jon (or Jon’s body, or … whatever) but today he’d hung around. In fact, he’d barely moved in almost ninety minutes, hunched so far over his computer that her own spine ached in sympathy.

She’d taken up reading at her own desk, mostly for the excuse to keep an eye on him. Since his little revelation to Melanie, she’d started paying more attention to Martin, or at least trying to. She’d definitely started paying attention to the cot in the storage room, and the rucksack that had appeared under it.

Now the clock on the wall said it was gone half-seven, and Martin was still hanging around the archives instead of sticking to his usual routines. Though he hadn’t looked her way once, Basira suspected they were engaged in a a really weird game of chicken.

Martin broke first, straightening up with a grimace and a series of audible cracks and pops as his joints realigned. “I guess I’m off,” he muttered, in the same way you might say The cancer is terminal.

Basira immediately slipped her bookmark into place and shut the book. “Great. Walk me to the tube?”

He froze with his coat half-on, eyes popping a bit. “O...okay?”

“I think we both take the Victoria line, right?” she continued blithely. “I get off in Brixton.”

Martin frowned, like he had figured out the trap she’d sprung, but he didn’t protest as they left the Institute together.

He didn’t say anything until they were settled on the train, in fact. This late on a weekday evening meant they even got seats. “I supposed you want me to talk about … You-Know-Who.”

“Voldemort? Nah, I never liked those movies.” That got a small laugh out of him, at least. “Seriously, though. I just thought walking me home might keep you from sleeping in the archives again. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”

“I do, though,” he said quietly. “Sort of. I guess.”

He didn’t continue until the train had stopped in Stockwell, though. Basira followed him up to street level, walking close to hear him over the noises of the early evening traffic. “So. My mum has multiple sclerosis,” he started, a bit haltingly. “When I was small, it was the relapsing kind — she’d get really sick for a couple of days, sometimes a week,, but then she’d be well again like nothing ever happened. Dad— Robert,” he corrected, “was an architect. Is an architect, I guess. The kind that goes to the site to supervise the builders and make sure everything’s going to plan. So he was gone a lot, but he always seemed to find a way to be home when Mum was having a relapse.

“The year I turned nine, though, she had a relapse that didn’t go away. The doctor eventually told her it wasn’t going to go away. She might have stable periods where it didn’t get any worse, but from then on she wasn’t ever going to get any better.” Martin swallowed hard. “Robert had to leave eventually, for work, but this time he never came back. Left the bank accounts, but stopped putting any money in them. Just … poof.”

Basira grimaced. “Wow. That’s cold.”

“Yeah.” He fell silent for a bit. “About a month ago he looked me up on Facebook. Said he wanted to reconnect, to make up for lost time or something. And, you know, if he done it a year ago, or even six months ago, I would’ve been so excited? I would’ve wanted closure, I would’ve wanted...something. But we’d just lost Tim and Daisy, and fucking Elias…” He clenched and unclenched his hands for a moment, breathing hard; there was no real need to complete that sentence. Finally, he said, “Robert broke Mum’s heart. He ruined our lives. And all the money and apologies in the world can’t change that. But he apparently doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Basira let him seethe for a minute before she asked, “What money?”

“I guess it’s easier to build a savings when you don’t have to pay for a care home?” he said, and then sighed. “He keeps offering me a job with his firm, or money, or — and even if I wanted it, I can’t, and I can’t tell him why I can’t without sounding like a lunatic. But when I blocked him on Facebook he started texting me, calling me, and then he showed up at the institute, apparently, and now … sometimes lately he’s been hanging around my flat. Or at least I think it’s him. I’m probably just being paranoid.”

“Sounds like you’ve got good reason to be,” Basira told him, automatically slipping into her reassuring-the-victim voice. “Have you talked to anyone else about this, besides me and Melanie?”

“Had to talk to Rosie at work, ask her not to let him in if he came round again,” Martin said dully. “And ask my next door neighbor to stop inviting him in for tea and biscuits. She thinks it’s sweet.”

“But not the police.”

“Does that really do anything, though?”

“I mean, not much,” she admitted. “But it establishes a paper trail, and that’s useful if you want to get a non-molestation order.”

“I don’t—” He pressed one hand into his eyes, and when he started speaking again his voice was low and fast. “I spent two weeks trapped in my flat by a worm thing. I spent God knows how long lost in a monster maze with Tim. I hardly even flinch anymore when Peter shows up in the archive unannounced. Why can’t I—” He bit off the end of that sentence, shoulders slumping. “He’s just a person . I shouldn’t be afraid of him.”

And there it was. Basira reached around to put an arm around his...well, she couldn’t easily reach his shoulders, so it was more a mid-back thing. “I don’t think we get a pass on normal terrible things just because we also get to face supernatural terrible things,” she said. “We’re not nearly that lucky. You’ve got every right to be scared of someone who doesn’t respect your boundaries.”

He took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled slowly. “All right,” he murmured. “But what do I actually do about it?”

“Walk me home more often?” Basira suggested. He snorted. “And maybe file that police report. Start documenting any time he tries to contact you, like a log. If it comes to a court order, that’ll help persuade a judge.”

He nodded, but fell silent again until they reached his building. It turned out his flat was a walk-up, with the entrance located around the back; there was one yellowish light over the door, with a bit of cobweb dangling between the bulb and the brickwork, but other than that the area was dark and full of parked cars and overflowing skips. Basira reckoned anyone might get paranoid about going in and out of a place like that, but she didn’t say that out loud.

“Thanks for listening,” Martin told her. “I guess, when I say it out loud like that, it’s stupid.”

“Not the word I would pick,” Basira replied. “I’ll see you Monday, all right?”

“Oh?” He paused with the door half-open, outlined in light from the landing above them. “Not tomorrow?”

“Taking another long weekend.” She thought about explaining more, about Daisy and the sightings on the Broads — but it was late, and they’d already had one heavy conversation for the night. Maybe when she got back. “Night, Martin.”

“Night.”

XXX

Melanie was doing the filing, the most dull and mechanical part of her job description and, she hoped, the least satisfying to any malevolent eyeball gods and their voyeuristic minions. Still taking cues from the Tim Stoker school of direct action, even if Tim was no longer around to encourage it. It was a melancholy thought, but the feeling behind it wasn’t one she could quite get a grip on, always sliding back into a smoldering anger at Elias or Jon or one of the other monsters who kept moving them around like chessmen.

She was at least doing the filing, though, and so it felt deeply unfair that she should be attacked.

The files she’d been pulling fell to the floor as she recoiled. The spider was almost as wide as Melanie’s whole hand, with a tiny body and great gangling legs, and she felt entirely justified in shrieking at it. Because she was startled, okay, not scared — but before she could find something to get a good swing with, Martin was there, with his own great gangling limbs between her and the little monster. “Don’t worry, it’s just a cardinal,” he said in tone that was probably meant to be soothing, but came off vaguely condescending instead.

“It’s disgusting,” Melanie snapped, but she lowered the stack of statements she was about to swat it with.

“Spiders are important to the ecosystem,” Martin said firmly.

“This isn’t an ecosystem, Martin, it’s an archive.”

But he had grabbed a paper cup from the kitchenette, and was now coaxing the massive spider into it with a comical degree gentleness. “Cardinals don’t even bite,” he said, as if Melanie cared. “You were just looking for somewhere warm, weren’t you? Come on, in you go…”

Melanie made eye contact with Basira, who had also been attracted by her yelling. Basira shrugged, and abandoned her, to deal with this nonsense alone. Traitor.

When the spider was tucked into the cup, Martin covered it (with his bare hand!) and headed for the door. “I’ll be right back!” he called over his shoulder.

“Weirdo,” Melanie muttered, and started gathering up the fallen files. Still, if he was going to volunteer to deal with the nasty little thing, or in this case not-so-little, she wouldn’t argue.

Just minutes later, though, Martin clattered back into the archives looking pale and clammy and still clutching the damn spider cup. He dropped into his desk chair and just...shrank, shoulders up around his ears, curling in on himself like his stomach hurt.

“What is it?” Basira asked immediately.

“Robert,” Martin gasped. “He’s—I saw him, I definitely saw him, he was waiting for me—”

Basira started trying to coach Martin into breathing properly before he hyperventilated, but a red haze was already taking over Melanie’s vision. “Which entrance?” she asked him. “Where’d you see him?” He shook his head like he didn’t want to answer, but Melanie grabbed the spider cup out of his hands. “Where is he, Martin?”

“Side entrance,” he finally said. “Facing the museum. Melanie, don’t—”

But she’d already snatched an index card off Martin’s desk, to keep the spider in the cup, and marched out of the archive.

Robert Blackwood was, in fact, across the road, leaning against a bollard next to the Tate Britain. He did look remarkably like Martin in some ways, but in others — he was too still, too nicely dressed. He didn’t fidget, or slouch like he was embarrassed by his height. She charged over to him, trusting her righteous anger to protect her from traffic, and attempted to dramatically upend the spider onto his shiny shoes.

The spider clung to the inside of the cup, though, even when she shook it. So much for dramatic gestures.

“Good afternoon,” Robert said cheerfully. “Can I help you?”

“You can piss off, yeah,” she said. “I’m sure your boss at Missing Sector is wondering where you’ve got off to.”

“Oh, I see he’s told you about me,” he said, sounding utterly unintimidated. “But as it happens, there are certain benefits that come with being made a full partner, and one of those is ample leave time for dealing with family business.”

She gave up shaking the cup and pitched it away — not at Robert, though, however much she might like to. “Stalking him is a funny way to show paternal affection.”

“That’s such a strong word, stalking,” he replied dismissively. “I prefer to think of it as giving him the hard sell.”

“Lurking outside the workplace is a good tactic for you?” she asked, instead of, sell him on what?

He smiled in a wry way that made him look nothing like Martin at all. “Well, it’s been made abundantly clear to me that there will be consequences if I come into your building again.”

Good for Rosie, then. “There’ll be consequences if you don’t leave him the hell alone, all right?”

“I’m trying to help him, as little as he seems to appreciate that,” Robert said, finally betraying a shred of irritation. “And the window of opportunity is closing rapidly. Martin has a choice to make and avoiding me isn’t going change that. Speaking of which — how’s your leg feeling, Miss King?”

Melanie’s stomach flipped, and gooseflesh broke out on her arms that had nothing to do with her lack of coat. “What are you talking about?” she growled, torn between fight and flight.

He just gave her an infuriating bright smile. “Nothing of consequence, I’m sure. And now I’m afraid I must be off. Good afternoon.”

She watched his long, long legs carry him away towards the Embankment, and if she’d had anything she could use as a weapon — but no, she didn’t even have her purse with her, and she’d thrown the paper cup onto the pavement. She retrieved that, out of some vague sense of guilt, to toss in a bin; the spider seemed to have finally made its exit.

The archives were empty when she got back down to them. Basira had left her a sticky note: Leaving while Robert’s distracted. She could just imagine her herding Martin towards the Tube like a hijabi sheepdog, but the thought didn’t make her feel any better. She fished her mobile out of her purse and started typing.

RB might be Spooky. Knows things he shouldn’t.

She hesitated, and then decided to send it to Basira only. No point in giving Martin even more to worry about, not without more proof.

Basira texted back after a short delay. I think Peter was hinting that. Want to start a bg check?

Already done, Melanie replied. Creeped me out from the moment I met him.

She got a thumbs-up emoji in return.

XXX

Basira climbed to her feet and started rolling up her rug. One of the few advantages of being press-ganged into the archives was no more rushing through prayers kneeling on the pavement, or squeezed into a corner of the station with other constables tripping over her feet. Of course, on the balance with the rest of it, the corner hadn’t been so very bad; she’d pray on bare concrete five times a day if it meant getting Daisy back, healthy and reasonably whole. But wishes, horses, et cetera. She could appreciate convenience when she saw it.

Melanie was still prodding the timeline she’d made out of sticky notes when Basira returned to her desk. By this point they had Robert Blackwood’s biography down cold — dates, addresses, jobs. That included, much to her discomfort, an address in Greater Manchester that was almost certainly Martin’s childhood home. Also two marriage licenses, though the second marriage hadn’t produced any children she or Melanie could find.

(There was a reason they weren’t looping Martin in on this bit. Not just to spare him the unexpected revelations, but to spare themselves the awkwardness when Robert’s life and his were inextricably intertwined. Just being in the archives was invasive enough without having to snoop into each other’s private business.)

What they didn’t have were any statements that could plausibly be associated with Robert. Not for lack of trying, obviously, but without any kind of catalogue or index there was no way to really do a focused search. Just flipping through box after box, skimming for names and dates, and coming up with a lot of nothing.

“Maybe we should tell him,” Melanie said, prodding the sticky note that said Cardinal Construction Ltd → Missing Sector Designs on it. “Martin’s got like a sixth sense for navigating this place. Maybe literally, he’s been working here so long.”

“I don’t want to stress him out more than he already is,” Basira said. “It’s bad enough having a perfectly human stalker…”

“Which this is not,” Melanie said firmly.

“I believe you,” Basira assured her. “What Peter said...last time I went looking for Daisy, he said something about poaching, which I thought was just him being, you know,” she made a little hand-wave. “Like That.”

Melanie’s eyes narrowed. “But if he knows Robert’s trying to — what, free Martin from the institute?”

“Or just trap him somewhere else.” Basira looked back at the sticky note, searching for anything they could get a grip on. “Is there any way to work up a list of all the properties Missing Sector has designed?”

“Maybe? Not tonight,” she said, slumping in her chair. “I’m telling you, we leave this for the rest of the night and get Martin’s help in the morning. At the very least, three heads are better than two..”

That was probably the reasonable thing to do, and Basira had to fight down the stubborn urge to keep worrying at it. Martin deserved to know, frankly, and at the very least he had more experience with the insane filing system than either of them did. Supernatural statement-finding abilities wouldn’t be anywhere near as scary as Jon’s compulsions or Elias’s … everything, but at this point she wouldn’t put anything past the damn eyeball.

Basira stopped toying with the dregs of her tea and considered that thought. Maybe Martin didn’t have any kind of unnatural powers, but he’d been working for the institute for something like a decade, and the archive for, what, two years? Didn’t that count for something?”

“What?” Melanie asked.

“What?”

“You’ve got your idea face.”

“I don’t have an—” Basira waved her off and stood up again. “Call this a hunch. It’s probably nothing.”

Melanie yawned. “More than we have got.”

Basira walked up to the edge of the first long row of shelves. So many statements — all two hundred years’ worth, maybe — receded into darkness. Under her breath, so Melanie wouldn’t hear, she said quietly, “There is no god but God, but this is your territory, Watcher. Martin’s one of your people, so if you want to keep him, then help me.”

Then she started walking.

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting — a sudden flash of insight, a trumpet from on high, a file to fling itself off the shelves at her feet. Probably nothing, honestly; it was the longest of long shots. But she kept going, slowly, trailing one hand over the mismatched shelving and thinking help me, help him, do something useful for once. Not praying, exactly, because she wasn’t on her knees. More like walking into a temple and prodding the idol with a stick.

And then she stopped.

She couldn’t even say what had caught her attention — a flicker of movement? Of light? She looked at the box her hand was resting on, but the label was alphanumeric gibberish. Inside, there were only a handful of statements, some empty folders that seemed to have once contained statements, and two smaller cardboard boxes, one of which was sealed with a biohazard sticker.

The first file in the box was marked 9840712, but the information sheet on top of the written statement said the incident happened the 70s, in Leeds. She skimmed through statement itself: something about spiders? A house full of spiders, so thoroughly infested the family had to flee. No, it was a whole council estate — no wonder someone thought it was supernatural enough to bring to the Magnus Institute. A newly-built garden estate, and every house a spider nest, different species mixing together in ways they shouldn’t.

Behind the statement were some much more recent follow-up documents, judging by the laser-printed quality of some of them. Lots of medical records documenting spider bites, a few newspaper clippings, an email from a professor at King’s College dated 2015, a photocopy of a contract listing Fenestralis LLC as the planners of the estate. And then there was a printout of a list — a spreadsheet? — with a note clipped over the first page. She thought she recognized Tim’s looping scrawl.

I assume you gave me this one because you’re a sore loser who can’t admit I’m right about Smirke? There’s something weird about the layout of the place, sure, but not like anything I could find in the library, and Sonja won’t let me see any of the books in Artifact Storage. You’ll just have to do the legwork yourself on that.

Fenestralis has also been known as Sheetweaver Architectural Concepts, Nobilis and Grossa, Blackwood and Grossa, Silverside and Associates, Cardinal Construction, Missing Sector Designs, and probably a couple of others that I can’t find because it’s all a mess of shell companies and mergers and corporate bullshit. This is a list of all the buildings I could find linked to one incarnation or another, and if you give me any trouble for it being incomplete, I swear Elias will never find your body.

There was no cassette tape with the file, though — maybe Jon had never gotten around to recording this one, or maybe he’d deliberately skipped it for some reason. Basira highly doubted it was because it had recorded on digital.

She ended up bringing the whole box out of the stacks and emptying it out across Melanie’s desk. “Is ‘spiders’ one of the entities Elias goes on about?”

“I think so.” Melanie pushed her chair back slightly when Basira pulled out the biohazard box. “Did you find something?”

“A lot of spider statements,” she said, “and they all happened in or around buildings linked to Robert’s firm.”

Melanie took the top statement, the one from Leeds, and started reading through it. Two pages in she reached for her phone. “We need to tell Martin.”

“Yeah,” Basira agreed, and resigned herself to not getting much sleep that night.

XXX

When Melanie finally fell asleep that night (well, early morning) she dreamed about spiders boiling out of the walls, caching in her hair, crawling into her mouth. Another reason, she supposed, to hate Robert Blackwood and all his creepy bullshit. Martin hadn’t returned either of their texts last night, but she’d assumed he’s already been asleep at that point, and telling him in the morning wasn’t any worse than telling him immediately.

She awoke to the sound of her phone, and she fumbled with it for a bit before realizing it wasn’t an alarm but an incoming call. “Hello?”

“Martin’s still not answering his phone,” Basira said immediately. “Did he text you back last night?”

Melanie took the phone away from her ear just long enough to check. Hell, it was already gone nine. “No. D’you think Robert—?”

“Meet me at Martin’s. If he’s just forgotten to charge his phone or something, we’ll update him and head into work together.”

She left the “if not” unspoken, and gave an address. Melanie started pulling on clean clothes as quickly as she could.

She lived further out from Martin’s than Basira, and didn’t have a car besides; by the time her Uber dropped her off, Basira was already on the landing, chatting with an elderly woman from one of the flats. The other door was shut. “Mrs. Greene, this is my colleague Melanie, we also work at the library,” Basira announced with a slightly raised eyebrow, as if to signal just go with it.

“Martin hasn’t mentioned her either,” Mrs. Greene said, peering at Melanie through tremendously thick glasses. For all she appeared to be about a thousand years old, her eyes were still quite sharp.

“Well, I’m new,” Melanie said. “Do you know where he is? We’re worried sick.”

“How do I know you’re not thieves? Or police? ” Mrs. Greene challenged.

Oh, lord. “We just want to have a look inside his flat,” Basira said in a very polished talking-to-the-public voice. “If he’s not home, we’ll come right back out.”

Mrs. Greene harrumphed. “That’s just what you’d say, isn’t it? Martin asked me specifically to stop letting people into his flat, for any reason at all. Said it was dangerous.”

“He wasn’t talking about us, though,” Melanie said. “He was talking about — his dad, right? His creepy dad?”

“He didn’t specify,” she said primly.

Basira gave Melanie a pleading look over the top of Mrs. Greene’s head. “Right,” Melanie said, getting her Oyster card out of her purse and turning to Martin’s door. “Would the police do this?”

As she slid the card between the door and the frame, Mrs. Greene shouted, “Now, wait just a minute there!” and Basira shushed her with some soothing words. It had been a while since Melanie had had to use this particular skill, but eventually felt/heard he plastic catch on the bolt, and with a hard shove, she managed to pop the lock. Surprisingly, Martin’s door didn’t have a chain or deadbolt, and it swung open easily.

The first thing she saw inside the flat was darkness; the air inside was cold and still. She felt around the door for a lightswitch, but her fingers immediately caught on soft, clingy strands of cobweb. “....Basira?”

Basira broke off her conversation with Mrs. Greene and pulled a small torch out of her pocket. “Do you see—oh. Oh no.”

The single main room of Martin’s flat was draped with spider webs. The windows were nearly opaque with them, and when Melanie finally found the switch, the overhead light fixture was so thickly swaddled it only shed soft, dim light over the scene. It took her a minute to work out which web-draped shapes corresponded to which pieces of furniture: a desk; a bureau; a table, one chair on its side; a futon in the flat position with the cushion hanging off.

Basira stepped far enough into the flat to peer around the furniture and into the bathroom. “He’s not here,” she said. “We’re too late.”

“No.” Melanie racked her brain. “No, it can’t be—”

“Robert must’ve grabbed him last night,” Basira continued flatly. “And once a kidnapping proceeds to a secondary location, the victim’s already good as dead.”

Melanie shook her head. “We can work out where he took him, though, right? We’ve got that list of Missing Sector buildings—”

“I can call one of the sectioned constables,” Basira continued, as if Melanie hadn’t spoken. “If he’s already filed a report about the stalking—”

“I’m not letting him get away with this!” Melanie wasn’t even sure why she was shouting. All the hate and fear and free-floating anger had coagulated into something hot and heavy in her chest, and all she could think about was taking that condescending smile off Robert’s face with the aid of something sharp.

Basira grimaced, opened her mouth—and shut it again. She looked around the lonely little studio again, playing her torch over the cocooned bookshelves and fridge. “All right,” she said. “All right. But we’re going to need a plan, and we need to work fast.”

“Do you have your car with you?” Melanie asked. Basira nodded. “Archives first, then. That’s where all my notes are.”

Mrs. Greene was still on the landing, holding an ancient brick of a cordless phone in one hand like it was a deadly weapon. “I’ll tell Martin what you’ve been up to,” she said. “He’s a good boy, he doesn’t deserve—”

“Martin’s in danger,” Basira said crisply, and produced a pen and a bit of old receipt paper from her pockets. “You hear anything from him at all, call this number, okay? That’s my mobile.”

Mrs. Greene took the number, reluctantly. “I’ll consider it—” she started to say, but Melanie was already racing down the stairs, and didn’t hear the rest of it.

XXX

The building on Stephenson Street had been a glassworks, once, a long time ago. Then it had been renovated into something for the Olympics. Then it was supposed to be renovated again, into an office or something, but there was some sort of hang-up with the permits or funding or mold in the walls. Most of the windows were broken by now, and while a chain-link fence still surrounded the property, the banners on it were so faded it was hard to make out Missing Sector’s logo at all.

Of all the projects in London linked to Missing Sector (by any other name), this was the only one currently standing empty, no builders or residents or workers to accidentally stumble upon a crime in progress. And eight schools in the same area had been forced to close due to infestations of venomous spiders in the past two weeks. Melanie was confident about it. Basira was not.

The chain that held the front doors shut was intact, but one of the side doors swung open freely when Basira tried it. The interior was dark; for a brief moment she thought back to the Callum Brody kidnapping. There was still time to file a police report, to get proper back-up for something like this….

On the other hand, it had taken them hours just to get this far, and the sun was starting to set. She switched on her torch — a nice, heavy Maglight — and slipped inside.

It was almost immediately clear that the ground floor was empty. She took her time searching it just in case. Nothing but dust, though, and cobwebs too old to be threatening. At the back of the building there was office space and a loading dock, and she could just make out some sort of large trap door or hatch flush with the floor. She knew this building had a lower level, from the broken windows on the facade. And what spider didn’t love a cellar?

The stairs, it turned out, were next to the office. Metal spiral stairs that she wouldn’t be able to descend quietly, even if — yeah, when she flicked her torch down the stairwell she saw more webs, fresh ones, with strangely silvery spiders just visible around the edges. She wasn’t going to be able to do this stealthily.

Well, that was why they’d made plans B through F. She checked her pockets, checked in with Melanie, straightened her back, and went down.

The basement was divided into bays or cubbies, probably to hold coal or sand for the glassworks. It was also just as thickly webbed as Martin’s flat had been, or close to it. Spiders scuttled along the floor, forcing her to move slowly to avoid crushing any — she wasn’t sure how Robert would react to that and didn’t want to make this harder than it had to be There was a steady drip of water somewhere nearby, but further on she thought she could hear heavy, irregular breathing, and if she lowered her torch she could make out dim light.

She was still a good ten feet away from the light when she heard Robert’s voice. “Ah. It appears we have a visitor. And here I thought the Ceaseless Watcher wasn’t going to get involved after all.” The noise that followed was a shaky whine, but it was definitely a person’s voice. Martin’s voice, she hoped.

The sound of spiders scurrying across the walls and floor started to resemble the sound of a gentle rain. Basira stopped in her path and raised both hands level with her head. “I’m not armed,” she called out. “I’m just here to talk.”

Robert didn’t say anything, but the spiders she could see paused in their movements. The hiss of tiny legs faded again. Still keeping her hands up, Basira walked forward the last few feet.

The bay was maybe twenty feet wide, and just as deep. The main light came from a camping lantern, diffused through layers of webs. The only other possible illumination came from a small, high window, which was facing the wrong way to catch the last rays of sun even if it hadn’t been webbed over. Robert Blackwood was sat in a high-backed office chair, holding a book in his lap — John Grisham, it looked like. He was smiling at her with bland pleasantness, utterly at ease.

Martin was on his knees, close to the far wall. He wasn’t naked, which Basira took as a small comfort, but he was down to a pair of frayed boxers and his socks. Both of his arms were wrapped in webs up to the elbow, twisted behind him and up in a position that seemed on the verge of tearing them from his shoulders. Even from a distance, she could see the red welts of spider bites on his chest and legs, and at least one spider crawling along the side of his neck. His eyes met hers for a moment, but they were glassy, and his face was so contorted with pain she couldn’t interpret his expression.

“Miss Hussein, is it?” Robert asked, setting his book on the floor. “A pleasure to meet you. I don’t think we’ve properly been introduced.”

“Mister Blackwood,” she said, nodding to him. She tentatively lowered her arms, just enough to focus the beam of her torch on the web-shrouded window. When no wave of spiders swarmed forth to attack, she lowered them completely.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be too terribly surprised that a servant of the Eye managed to run me down eventually,” Robert continued. “Though with the current state of the Institute, I don’t expect you’ll be able to stop me, either.”

“Probably not,” she said, and pretended to be interested in the cobwebs instead of Martin’s soft whimper. “Your intel’s been good, so I assume you know we’re understaffed.”

Robert nodded. “Of course. I wouldn’t have dared this otherwise. But the wee baby Archivist went and gave himself up to stop the circus, and Elias Bouchard’s been hoist on his own petard, as I understand. Should’ve left the web-weaving to those of us with the knack for it.”

“Like you and Martin?”

“Well, I’m not one to brag,” Robert said, but his shit-eating grin said otherwise. “And Martin’s not yet accepted his new position. But I think he’s coming around—aren’t you?” Martin didn’t react, and Robert sighed. “I’ve already explained how you get out of this, lad.”

“May I take a closer look?” Basira asked him. “So I can give a complete statement later.”

Robert looked suspicious, and there was a soft hiss of spiders in motion. “The Eye and the Web have been allies in the past,” he said, eventually. “Don’t make me regret this.”

Basira again showed him her empty left hand. “There are enough spiders down here to eat me alive before I make it back to the stairs, aren’t there? I’m curious, not stupid.” She said it with a straight face, even.

He eventually nodded, and Basira approached Martin, trying to clearly telegraph her movements. He was drenched in sweat despite the chill of the basement and breathing erratically. She couldn’t tell if he was shivering from cold or shaking from the strain of holding himself up: if he sat back on his heels he’d probably dislocate both shoulders, but the web-ropes binding him to the wall weren’t long enough to let him get all the way upright on his knees, either. There was a streak of dried blood on his forehead and tear tracks on his cheeks, and he flinched as Basira brought her torch up. But his pupils reacted normally, so she had to assume he wasn’t concussed, or drugged.

She didn’t dare say anything to him, even at such close range. The most she could do was brush the spider from his neck, under the pretense of examining one of the blistered bites there. The spider climbed over her gloved fingers, flashing the skull-shaped pattern on its abdomen.

When Basira stepped back, she almost collided with Robert, who’d crept up behind her while she was distracted. “Well?” he asked. “What do you think?”

“Not very subtle, is it?” Basira replied. Magic spiders and fear demons might be a little out of her depth, but men trying to physically intimidate her? Please. “Say what you like about Elias, he closes the trap before you know you’re in one.”

Robert frowned. “I tried subtlety, as it happens,” he said. “But between this one being a stubborn brat, and your war-dog snapping at me every time I came near him, it wasn’t exactly productive.”

“So you resorted to kidnapping, knowing it’d be obvious when he didn’t show up for work.”

“Not an elegant solution, but undeniably effective.” Robert reached past her and cupped Martin’s chin, running his thumb along his cheekbone. Martin tried to jerk away, as best he could given his position. “One has to intimately understand the power of the Web in order to join it. And in the meantime, we’ve had some nice father-son conversations, haven’t we?”

Basira swallowed bile, and used Robert’s momentary distraction to glance at the small, high window again. The drape of webs fluttered a little, and she could now see light filtering through on the other side. “Thank you for letting me observe this, Mr. Blackwood.”

“My pleasure,” Robert said, straightening. “I trust you’ve seen what you came for?”

“I think I have, yes.”

“Would you like to say any final words before you take your report back to the Institute?”

Basira looked down at Martin, who had screwed his eyes shut. “Hold your breath.”

That was the cue Melanie had been waiting for. Two bug bombs, spewing a fine white mist, dropped through the window and into the bay; one bounced off Martin’s arms and rolled away, but the other landed just behind him and immediately wreathed him in a pesticide fog. Robert’s head snapped up, and in the moment his eyes were averted Basira flipped her grip on the torch and swung it as hard as she could at his head. She heard bone crunch when the blow landed, and he toppled over like a sack of potatoes.

The sound of crawling spiders was almost louder than the hiss of the foggers. As Melanie lowered herself through the window, Basira pulled the respirator mask she’d hidden under her hijab into place. She pulled the second one out of her pocket and slipped it over Martin’s head. “Can you stand?” she asked him.

“Don’t know,” he croaked. His voice sounded wrecked, and she wondered briefly if he’d been screaming.

Melanie came to Martin’s other side and passed Basira a utility knife, courtesy of the same hardware store that had provided the bug bombs and respirators. She’d also taken the wheel wrench out of Basira’s car, it seemed, and tucked it into her belt like a sword. “Where’s the stairs from here?” she asked, muffled under her own mask.

“To the left, sixty feet, takes you up to the loading dock. How long do these bombs last?”

“Instructions said leave them for two hours, but I don’t think they keep spraying the whole time.” She produced another fogger from the bag on her shoulder and began shaking it as she moved towards the doorway to clear their path.

Basira hadn’t expected this bit to be easy — she hadn’t known what to expect, to be honest — but it was far harder than she would’ve thought cutting through spiderwebs would be: the silk was soft and a bit stretchy, gumming up the blade instead of parting cleanly. She couldn’t easily tell where Martin’s arms were under the thick white mass, either, which forced her to be methodical lest she slice off a finger. The pesticide seemed to be working, at least for the moment, to keep the spiders at bay, but it also made her eyes water and burn, and the exposed skin of her face was starting to go numb. God only knew how Martin was holding up.

“You legs aren’t tied, are they?” Basira asked as she tore through another layer of web. Martin shook his head. “If you can scoot back a bit—”

A growling, clicking noise filled the space, and Basira froze, then tried to peer through the chemical fog. Robert was standing up — she must’ve only stunned him — but his silhouette was wrong, too many joints, too many limbs. He loomed over them, and Basira’s stomach fell —

— but Melanie answered the growl with a feral-sounding roar of her own. She appeared from behind him, swinging the wheel wrench two-handed and hitting Robert in the ribs. He shrieked, a sound no human throat could’ve made, and twisted to lash out at her, but she followed up with a blow to his knee (was that a knee? Which one was a knee?) that took him off his feet.

Basira tried to focus on sawing through webs, and not on the sounds of steel hitting flesh. Or something like flesh, anyway.

Martin groaned when she finally got enough of the web that he could lower his arms, and nearly collapsed flat on his face. It didn’t take much longer to separate his arms, even if the webbing was still clinging to his skin. “My car’s outside,” Basira told him. “You just have to make it a little farther.”

“I-I don’t know if I can walk,” he panted.

“Then we’ll bloody carry you.” She coaxed him to throw one arm around her neck, and together they got his shaking legs under him, but he couldn’t actually support his own weight, not yet. “Melanie!”

Thought a prism of her watering eyes, she could just make out Melanie pounding away at a shape on the floor, whatever it was. She swung again and again, and each blow was followed by a cracking sound, a sound that might’ve been bones or … not bones. “Melanie, we have to go,” Basira called again, but Melanie seemed to not have heard her, or heard her but didn’t care. “Melanie, please.”

Another blow landed, a two-handed overhead swing, and Melanie finally stopped. She stood over what was left of Robert for a moment, panting, and though Basira couldn’t see her face through the fog and her own tears, she still felt sure Melanie was looking right at them.

“Please,” Martin said, and whatever frenzy had seized Melanie finally seemed to pass. She dropped the wrench and came to Martin’s side, tucking her shoulder under his other arm.

Together, within the protective haze of insecticide, they fled.

XXX

They collapsed against the side of Basira’s car in the parking lot; Martin slid all the way to the ground. Melanie braced herself against the boot  and ripped off the respirator mask so she could suck in as much clean air as she could. Well, for London values of clean, anyway. Her blood was still singing with violence, the feeling of the wheel brace shattering bone or carapace or whatever Robert had had under that suit, the smell of the gore she’d splattered across the concrete—

“Get your jacket off,” Basira barked. She had already stripped off her coat and was unwinding her hijab. Slowly, Melanie’s rational brain resurfaced: there might be spiders caught in their clothes. She should check herself for spiders. That was part of the plan.

They stripped off their outerwear—Basira right down to her panties, so she could shake her trousers out. Melanie popped open the boot of the car and started passing around bottled water, as much to wash off the pesticide residue as anything else. There was also a checkered blanket, which smelled faintly of petrol, but was probably still better than leaving Martin shivering in the open air..

By the time she’d poured a whole bottle over her face, her eyes had stopped watering, and she thought she could form sentences again. “We need to get out of here. Robert might not have been the only person-shaped one about.”

“Do you want to go to a hospital?” Basira asked, doing up her trousers again.

“No,” Martin said vehemently. “I want — I just want to go. I want to shower. Please.”

She nodded. “We’ll go back to mine, then. I’ve got a first-aid kit, and I can probably borrow a change of clothes for you from one of the neighbors.”

Together, they bundled Martin into the blanket and ensconced him in the back seat of the car. Basira didn’t say anything when Melanie climbed into the back with him. He was still shaking, and hyperventilating a little; she put an arm around him and let him lean into her. The weight helped ground her back in herself, helped her forgot the split second when she’d looked at them and only seen targets.

Please, they’d both said, and something in Melanie had liked that.

Basira’s building was a block of deck-access flats, which meant there was no real way to avoid an audience as they emerged half-dressed and covered in spider bites. At least Martin was able to limp along under his own power by this point, although when Basira guided him into the flat he immediately sank onto the couch again.

Basira vanished into what was probably the bedroom, and came back with towels, clothes, and a massive toolbox that proved to be her idea of a first-aid kit . “I’ve got ibuprofen or paracetamol, but nothing stronger, sorry,” she announced. “We need to wash and bandage the spider bites, and I’ve got ice packs in the freezer if your shoulders—”

“I’m,” Martin said, but even he couldn’t possibly say fine under the circumstances. “I just — really want a shower, please.”

Basira nodded, and passed him a towel. “There’s plasters and some antibiotic ointment in the bath already, but I’ve got more in here if you need them.”

“Thanks.” Martin need two tries to get to his feet again, and shuffled off down the hall

Once the water started up, Basira went into the kitchen, and Melanie followed her for lack of anything else to do. She watched from the doorway as Basira started the kettle and drifted from cupboard to cupboard: tea bags, sugar, mugs, spoons, milk. And a bottle of whiskey, a bit dusty but clearly less than full. “Didn’t know you drank the hard stuff,” Melanie said.

Basira gave her a measuring glance. “Nobody’s perfect,” she said dryly. Then she picked up her mobile and dialed a number. “Hello, yes, I’d like to make anonymous tip,” she said when the call connected. “There’s a dead body in the cellar of 101 Stephenson Street in Newham. Make sure whoever you send over has signed a Section 31.”

“Sure that’s safe?” Melanie asked when Basira hung up.

“If he’s dead, I’d like confirmation,” she said quietly. “And if he’s not, well, I’d like to know that, too.”

Melanie could still feel the wheel wrench in her hands, the impacts rattling her bones, the thrill of finally letting all that poisonous anger out at a deserving target. She wanted to ask, are you afraid of me? But the words caught in her throat, and then Basira was sliding by her, off to find someone to lend Martin some clothes.

Martin didn’t emerge from the bath until long after Basira had got back; she’d left the clothes in the hall, and goaded Melanie into a listless debate about pizza toppings while she ordered from an app. He crept into the kitchen, wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and no shirt. He’d scrubbed his hands and forearms raw.

“S-sorry,” he stammered, twisting the t-shirt in his hands. “Just … I can’t get some of the bites on my back.”

“I’ve got it,” Melanie found herself saying, before Basira could. She flipped one of the kitchen chairs around back-to-front. Martin set the shirt aside and straddled it, giving Melanie a clear view of the constellation of reddish-purple welts across his shoulders and up his spine.

It shouldn’t have made her feel better, applying plasters and antibiotic cream, but doing something with her hands helped exorcise the memory of the frenzy. Maybe this was the reason why Martin kept showering everyone with tea, why Basira was so assiduously trying to get them clean and fed. It provided a sense of control that didn’t involve stabbing anyone.

Martin squirmed a few times when she wasn’t gentle around one of the welts, and drank his tea too fast considering how much whiskey he’d added to it. When he spoke again, it was quiet. “I thought I was going to died down there.”

Melanie froze. Basira put her hand on Martin’s forearm, careful of the red skin there, but didn’t seem to know what say.

“He wanted … I was … he told me to beg,” Martin continued. “That he’d let me go if I did.”

“He was never going to let you go,” Basira said quietly.

“I know that,” Martin said. “But I … I decided I wasn’t going to do it anyway. I wouldn’t — wouldn’t give in to him. To it. I had a choice, and … and I chose.”

“Jesus, Martin,” Melanie blurted. She nearly squeezed his shoulders, before remembering that they probably still hurt like hell.

He dropped his head until it was nearly resting on the table top. “Thank you for coming for me,” he said, muffled and scratchy. And then, surprisingly, he reached up and put one of his raw, bitten hands on Melanie’s. “Thank you for … for stopping him.”

Melanie was saved from having to respond to that by arrival of their pizza, and when she brought it back to the kitchen, Basira was helping Martin into his shirt.

XXX

They were all fairly sure that Peter didn’t have the same all-knowing powers as Elias, but he also didn’t look surprised to see Basira when she barged into his office. “Good morning, Basira. Congratulations on your valiant efforts yesterday, although the research staff was rather put out by the archives being closed all day. Still, I can hardly fault your priorities—”

“You knew what Robert Blackwood was,” she said flatly. “And you knew what he was trying to do. So why didn’t you warn us?”

Peter leaned back in his chair, looking just slightly amused. “I think you did a commendable job, even without my help. Elias might be onto something with his sink-or-swim approach.”

“Answer the question.”

“It’s always tricky.” Peter picked up the small ship in a bottle from the corner of his desk, one of several tchotchkes he’d added to the place during his tenancy, and started to toy with it. “The different powers, the different hungers. Some of them are actually quite compatible with each other. But compatibility doesn’t mean cooperation, and ultimately none of them, I think, are what you would call pack hunters.”

Basira considered this. “You’re saying you don’t actually care what happens to us, if it doesn’t affect your patron?”

He laid a hand across his chest. “Well, that is reductive, and hurtful besides. I am still an individual capable of making choices, Basira. My family’s been deeply involved with the Institute since the days of Jonah Magnus, and I count Elias as a personal friend. I certainly don’t want to see the archive destroyed, unlike certain people I could name. But imagine if I’d kicked off a feud between my family and the fine people over at Missing Sector Designs because of a bit of family drama, hmm? Shabbos dinners would be so awkward.”

“‘Family drama?’” Basira repeated incredulously.

“Let me put it another way,” Peter said, as he set the bottle aside. “It was Elias’s idea to take a hostage to guarantee the good behavior of the Web. Elias should’ve been here to deal with the fallout when that idea was revealed to be stupid and counter-productive. He asked me to keep the Institute running during his absence, not to clean up his mistakes, and I warned Robert that he was underestimating you lot when I told him to stay off the premises.”

Of course it would all circle back to Elias, wouldn’t it? Elias, and the human chess games he and every other monster played on behalf of their patrons. “Martin and Melanie won’t be coming in today, just so you know,” she said crisply. She’d left them both passed out in her living room with the largest bottle of ibuprofen she owned and the rest of the bottled water.

“Oh, naturally,” Peter said. “I suppose Martin might need a few days after all this, won’t he? I’ll have Amy from HR send him the form for bereavement leave, it’ll be easiest.”

Basira walked out of his office before she said anything he could later make her regret.

Martin stayed with her for a few days, and Basira resigned herself to the neighbors gossiping about her strange white man who apparently didn’t own any clothes of his own. Saturday they met at his flat again, though, and Basira and Melanie helped clean up the cobwebs, as Martin still couldn’t lift his arms without pain. Mrs. Greene monitored the situation from the doorway, shooting Melanie particularly suspicious glances, and Melanie was snappish and horrible to Mrs. Greene when she thought Basira and Martin weren’t paying attention.

When Martin did come back to work, the visible spider bites looked almost healed, and he picked up the tape recorder from Basira’s desk with steady hands. He gave his statement alone, in Jon’s office, and neither of them asked to sit in.

They did the follow-up, however, sitting around Basira’s living room with take-away. She’d gotten the report from a former colleague in the Met who still owed her a favor. “The police did find a body at 101 Stephenson Street, but it’s officially a John Doe. According to the medical examiner, identification wasn’t possible due to extensive trauma and, quote, anatomical irregularities, unquote. That’s as close as you can get to putting ‘bloody giant spider thing’ down in writing,” she added bitterly. “I’m betting that medical examiner has been sectioned, too, so no point in following it up further.”

“Do we need to worry about the police tracing us to the scene?” Melanie asked. “We weren’t exactly careful.”

“I doubt it,": Basira told her. “Something like this is more likely to get covered up than actively investigated. And Peter called it ‘family drama,’ which says some troubling things about the Lukases, but I assume that means he’ll also let it lie.”

“Let’s hope everyone at Missing Sector agrees with him,” Melanie muttered.

Martin chased a few pieces of rice around his plate.“Robert said that the Institute was weak, without Elias or Jon around,” he said. “If that’s right, then … this won’t be the last time one of the other powers comes for us, will it?”

“What were we supposed to do, let Elias get away with everything?” Melanie snapped.

“I just meant we need a...a long-term solution,” he said slowly. “Not — not the one you’re thinking of, though. Probably?”

“Let’s not discuss that here,” Basira interjected loudly, before Melanie could retort. If they were going to take any other action against Elias, they needed to go back to the tunnels, and not have a running tape recorder among them. “But I think you’re right. We need to have each others’ backs, because God knows no one else does around that place.”

Martin actually gave a weak little laugh at that. “It isn’t paranoia if they actually are out to get you, right? But maybe if I’d trusted you both a bit more I wouldn’t...this wouldn’t have happened like it did.”

Melanie got a funny look on her face, like she wanted to say something and didn’t want to at the same time. Her knuckles had gone white around the bottle of beer in her hand. “Turn it off,” she eventually said in a strangled sort of voice. “The tape. Now.”

Basira stopped the recording, and ejected the tape entirely, because it had become clear that was the only way to make the damn things behave. “What is it?”

“There’s something wrong with me,” Melanie said, slowly and carefully, like the words took effort. “I thought it was the archive’s fault, or Elias’s. But it’s getting worse. And … and I’m not sure you should trust me right now.”

She was staring at the table top, not meeting their eyes. Basira reached for the hand that wasn’t clamped around a bottle, and Martin, after a moment, gingerly touched her other arm. “You know we’ll help you if we can.”

Melanie took a couple of deep breaths before speaking. “When I was in India, I got shot by a war ghost…”