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Gertrude Robinson was getting old.
Not older, as that young new receptionist liked to say. Not the "you don't look a day over 50, Ms. Robinson!" kind of young at heart. Old, simple as that.
When had life become a shopping list? Remember to buy oranges, milk, bread, and - oh, that's right, don't forget the C4. Stop a ritual before lunch and then remember your doctor's appointment after because you're not getting any younger.
"You don't look a day over 50," said that receptionist - what was her name again? The names and faces tended to blur together after a while.
"What's your secret?" she continued. She was teasing, but Gertrude managed a wry smile.
"Wax," she replied. She leaned in closely, conspiratorially. "Wax is wonderfully moldable," she said, with her best charming grin.
Rosie. That was her name. Rosie laughed in response. "Oh, Ms. Robinson!"
Gertrude's smile lingered long after she had passed Rosie's line of view.
Wax. Agnes had taught her that one. A trick of the Desolation, to mold yourself into someone else, pass for human, stay young forever. Agnes looked forever as she had, presumably, as she did in 1974, even when she passed, and here was Gertrude, getting old.
Agnes, who was left behind by devoted followers, and Gertrude, who made the willing choice to sacrifice all the others.
Pick up flowers. Oranges, milk, bread, C4, flowers, stop the next ritual.
She had been surprised to see Agnes accepted her request to meet, to finally see her in person last year at a little coffee shop some blocks away from work. It was an overcast day where the sky was more white than gray.
Honestly, she didn't know what she was expecting after forty years, but certainly not the young woman sitting at a table with a light smattering of freckles and a nose bump and the warmest brown eyes that made Gertrude think of when she was twenty-five and drinking spiked punch at a Christmas party with Eric and Emma again.
Agnes had grown old, too. Her eyes were as tired as Gertrude's.
"Ms. Robinson," she said, in a voice that was soft and determined like the newly lit match as it hit gasoline. There was calmness in that voice, milliseconds away from catastrophe, but, much like Agnes herself, trapped in a moment in time, never to burn out.
"Agnes," Gertrude said, calmly, in response. "You look well."
"Well," Agnes echoed. "Well, I think, is not the correct word. You look well yourself, Ms. Robinson. How long has it been now?"
"Some thirty odd years, give or take," Gertrude replied.
It was a trendy coffee shop, the kind with plastic white tables and chairs. There was some sort of glaze or film over the tabletop, where Gertrude could see her own shadowy reflection, and Agnes's across from her. In the blurry reflections, they looked the same age, although to anyone watching them, Gertrude could pass for Agnes's grandmother. Agnes leaned in, both hands wrapped loosely around her cardboard cup.
Gertrude was all too aware of her own hand, midway across the table, about six inches away from Agnes's hands. She could reach out, easily, if she wanted to.
"The famous Gertrude Robinson," said Agnes with a soft laugh, a dry laugh, one that she didn't quite believe in herself. "It's an honor to meet someone who has stopped so many rituals."
"We do what we must," Gertrude replied. She pulled her hand back, put it on her own cup of coffee. The warmth of the coffee replaced the still coolness of the tabletop.
"Is that your destiny, Ms. Robinson? To stop the rituals?"
Agnes stared out the window of the shop to the street beyond. The streets were busy - people in suits rushing to buy lunch, a young father pushing a stroller with a frazzled expression and wild hair, a girl focused on her phone with a dangling charm of a bear of some sort - they all passed within seconds. If Gertrude really tried to, she could tell which ones had been affected by an entity. In a crowd like this, it was easy to find someone. Perhaps one of them would come in to give a statement, or perhaps one might even die before they could. Perhaps that was destiny, too.
"No," said Gertrude. Agnes turned to look at her, eyebrows raised slightly. Gertrude continued, "Like I said, we do what we must. I have a duty to stop the rituals, and that is all."
Agnes nodded. "I see," she said softly. "And us?"
"We were bound together by the Web," Gertrude answered. "Do you regret that?"
"Not at all," Agnes replied with a small shake of her head. She pulled her coffee cup closer to her, so now an entire table spanned hers and Gertrude's hands. Two shadows sat at opposite sides of the white tabletop. "It stopped the ritual back then, and I'm sure my people were angry, but I can't say I was."
She brushed her long hair over her shoulder, rubbing her neck briefly, her eyes still trained outside. "Even now, you keep me grounded here."
"I'm sorry, Agnes."
"Don't be," said Agnes, with the same sad expression. "I'm only sorry we couldn't have met sooner."
"We've both been busy. You know, opposing each other," Gertrude reminded her.
Agnes laughed, turning back to face Gertrude. "That's the way with these things, isn't it? Have you always been so scary, Ms. Robinson?"
"I think sensible people have reason to fear me, but I don't find myself scary, personally, no."
The lights danced in Agnes's eyes. If Gertrude had not known better, she would have thought it was merely the shifting reflection of the light from the windows, but Gertrude had known better for decades now. Knowing was exhausting. "Do you find me scary, Agnes?"
"No," said Agnes. She could have been lying, but Gertrude didn't care. "I find you interesting. I would have liked to know you as you were, I think."
"Oh, I've always been horrid," Gertrude said with a smirk. She sipped her coffee, which had grown bitter in its lukewarm state. "A proper monster, in fact."
Agnes's eyes sparkled through the steam that rose from her cup. Her nose and cheeks had turned pink from the heat, though she had not taken a single sip from the time Gertrude had sat down. "I can imagine. I was the same way."
For a moment, Gertrude was tempted to react in the conventional way. It would have been easy to slip on the mask of a kind old lady, to reassure Agnes that, no, she wasn't a monster, that she never could be. Neither of them was naive enough to believe those words. The lies died on her tongue, mingling with the bitter, lingering taste of cheap coffee.
"I had been told you died," Gertrude said instead. "Back in 2006."
Agnes shrugged. "I'm here now."
"I'm sorry."
"That I'm here or that I supposedly died?"
"That we couldn't have met sooner," Gertrude said with her own rueful head bow. "Perhaps we could have been friends."
"Friends," said Agnes softly, tracing the lip of her cup with her finger. The cardboard crumbled and warped beneath her touch, the light cream color turning a singed tan. "I don't think I had any friends."
Eric was gone. Gertrude had never trusted Mary. Fiona had been much older than Gertrude when they first met, and Sarah and Michael, much younger. All of them were just assistants anyway. And Emma...
"Maybe monsters like ourselves aren't meant to have friends," said Gertrude.
Agnes examined Gertrude with pursed lips and raised eyebrows. She stared for a few seconds before replying, "I think you're right. Still, it's nice to imagine what could have been."
This time, Agnes reached across the table, her hand an inch away from Gertrude's cup. Her palm faced upward, beckoning. Her hand rested casually on the tabletop.
"Are you married, Ms. Robinson?"
"No." Gertrude said flatly. "I never had time to get married."
"Ah yes, stopping the rituals," said Agnes, nodding. "I wanted to get married when I was a little girl. Problem is, the Desolation doesn't take kindly to marriage. One might say it takes kindling to it, in fact."
Gertrude sipped her coffee silently. Eric had gotten married, and look where that got him.
"My mother... disposed of my father. So I suppose it was inevitable that marriage wasn't meant for me," Agnes continued. Her hand remained on the table. "I used to try to pick flowers into a bouquet to hold a mock wedding ceremony with just myself. It was silly, of course. The flowers used to just burn away in my hands the second I plucked them."
She laughed, her eyes far away, misty through the steam of her coffee cup. She held the cup with her pinky extended, her thumb and index finger lightly touching the body, as though picking a dandelion. "I remember one time, I dropped the burnt flower on the grass and almost burned down the yard."
Her eyes focused once more on Gertrude, all traces of dreaminess gone. "But marriage was never meant to be. Not for people like us."
Her hand lay still just inches away from Gertrude. "The Desolation burns, and the Eye observes its carnage."
"And the Web links the two, somehow," Gertrude added. Agnes's fingers curled inward. The distance between them grew again.
"I suspect that's why you're here?"
"I have a favor to ask," Gertrude confirmed.
Agnes sighed. "I'll do it."
"You don't even know the favor yet."
"It's like you said, isn't it? We do what we must. And like I said. You and the Eye only watch. I have to be the one to burn." Agnes paused. "I'm sorry. About your assistant. I... She seemed lovely."
The cold coffee in Gertrude's hand shook slightly. "I was not particularly close with Sarah."
"Still."
"We do what we must."
"Exactly," Agnes said. "So I'll do it." She drummed her fingers absentmindedly against her cup. The soft pitter patter prompted Gertrude to look out the window, half convinced there was rain. No droplets accompanied the sound.
"You were close with Emma, who got her killed," stated Agnes.
So it was true. Gertrude brought her coffee halfway to her lips before changing her mind and setting it down once more. "Once," she said after some pondering.
Agnes nodded in understanding. "Must have been nice."
"Were you never close with your followers? That Jude Perry is a bit volatile for my tastes, but..."
"Not any more close than you were with your young assistants. You called them followers, after all."
"It must have been lonely," Gertrude remarked as Agnes's thin shoulders drooped. "Being the messiah of a cult of destruction."
"Quite," Agnes agreed. "I was somewhat relieved when you came along and, well -"
"Ruined it?"
Again, Agnes nodded. "I thought it was a relief more than anything. Ironic, isn't it? That you ruined something the Desolation held dear?"
Shaking her head, she continued, "But then I suppose I should thank the Web. I've never been close to anyone but you, Ms. Robinson."
She flexed her hand, curling and uncurling her fingers. Reaching for something, it seemed.
"You have the admiration of your entire cult," Gertrude said. She held tight to her coffee with both hands. Agnes's hand was inches away, but she wasn't fool enough to touch it. Gertrude was not a sentimental person, and Agnes needed no comfort.
"So many admirers," said Agnes drily, "and yet no one even comes to lay flowers on my grave."
"Perhaps we should have served the Lonely instead," said Gertrude.
"Perhaps," Agnes laughed.
There was nothing more to say.
Gertrude cleared her throat. "Well. Thank you for meeting with me, Agnes."
"Of course, Ms. Robinson."
Standing up to leave, Gertrude paused. Agnes's hand lay on the table still, extended with palm up and fingers uncurled, as if holding out a gift. "It's been nearly forty years, Agnes. Please, call me Gertrude."
The hand drew back, grasping the steaming cup of coffee. "Of course. Gertrude. Perhaps we'll meet again someday, under kinder circumstances."
"I would like that," said Gertrude.
Of course, life got in the way, and Agnes was still dead, and there was little that Gertrude, for all her abilities, could do about that fact. It had been a year since she last saw Agnes, a year since the last of her assistants perished in a fire in her own home. Gertrude liked to think that Emma understood why it had to be. Agnes's thin hand had looked so small when they met, almost irreconcilable with the visions of the raging flames and thick smoke that Emma had choked on.
Gertrude had been the one to fill out the employee exit interview after. Cause for leaving: death. Then, she had turned the files in to Elias, put on her jacket, and gone home to fix herself dinner.
Still sitting at her desk, Gertrude was about to add "buy flowers" to her shopping list, but she stopped when she saw the pile of papers on her desk. More statements. Applications for archival assistants. A note from herself regarding a meeting with Jurgen Leitner.
Gertrude Robinson frowned and began to make a new list: Meet with Leitner, review statements, call Dekker, investigate Gerard Keay, drop by artifacts storage, file more statements, and then go home and buy oranges, milk, bread, and, as always, she needed more C4.