Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Pamela Elizabeth Dawes opened her eyes to a particularly frosty February twentieth, and a lingering sense of unease. The weakened sunlight fought its way through the heavy drapes, faintly illuminating the room so that even though she knew her body had awoken her at six thirty, the room still hung in a perpetual state of twilight.  

She raised the back of her hand to her forehead and, when finding her temperature to be normal, gently probed at her glands and pressure points, hoping to pinpoint the source of her discomfort. Still, she found nothing. She’d slept well, that much she knew. The beds in Il Bastone were superb. She'd changed the mattresses only some few short months ago, when going over the accounts and found that they’d last been replaced some decade and a half ago. She'd taken the personal liberty of choosing the best range she could find, and since Darlington had spent such little time in the Virgil room since his return- stealing more nights away at the Hutch or fettering away at Black Elm, and Pam had occasionally taken to curling up beneath the sheets and breathing deep of his scent until she eventually drifted off.  

Last night she’d stumbled up from the library, bleary eyed from reading all day for her dissertation with less headway for the day than she’d have liked, and fell instantly into a deep, black sleep. She woke up with her glasses loosely resting askew across her face and nose, her headphones still wrapped around her neck.  

Il Bastone was silent in a way that felt it should be eerie, but there was something else that bothered her about the quiet. There were none of the customary sighs and groans of the pipes or the house settling, and the absence grated on her as much as raucous noise would.  

She kicked the sheets off and tucked them away tidily before creeping down the flights towards the kitchen. The perturbing feeling of being not quite... right, persisted. Cooking worked just as well as any healing balm or remedy from Pam, even though the most turbulent storm that troubled her past, the simple routine of following a recipe until she had created something new and delicious had soothed her, and she hoped the habit would help her now and smooth over her nerves.  

She puttered around, taking eggs, milk, sausages and a myriad of other ingredients from the fridge and cupboards to prepare a breakfast. Alex still popped in and out of Il Bastone with an irregular frequency that couldn’t be measured, and Pam liked to cook in anticipation of her unexpected, expected arrival.   

By the time she had finished preparing the shakshuka, quiches, and lemon poppyseed muffins, Alex still hadn’t appeared, though Pam’s recognition of her source of unease had.   

She turned all the burners off and turned the coffeepot to “warm” and thundered back up the stairs to the library, air ever balmy, ever fragranced with sweet orange blossom. She threw open the archive of her most recently logged reports on the magic practices of the eight houses and stared back at her own cramped penmanship with idle confusion.  

Manuscript, Book and Snake, Aurelian. Three rituals Alex had overseen, three reports Pam had written and filed away. Three instances of time she had absolutely no recollection of. She took a closer read of the Manuscript entry, which detailed another ritual of excess, a gin-soaked bacchanal of debauchery and crushed roses on the full moon which had climaxed into a gruesome blood rite. Some washed-up supermodel or other agonising over a birth of a writhing, screaming mass of fat and pus. The ritual seemingly fed into a spectacular piece of mirror magic that allowed the model to emerge a good twenty pounds lighter, fresh faced, her eyes shining, and cheeks decidedly flushed.  

She rifled further back, hunting for more of her own submissions and scanning them as they emerged. Most of the older entries she could place, artefacts and rituals that were familiar to her, but as they crept forward in date, more and more of the details eluded her.   

She pushed the archive shut again, drawers sighing quietly closed as though mournful for shutting away evidence of her own loss.    

There was something else tugging at her. A... a memory. A memory she should never have forgotten. The faded vestiges of it alone heavy in her consciousness and weighing in her stomach like pitch. Pam couldn’t reconcile whatever the lost memory was and gnawed at the skin at the edge of her mouth.  

Her phone in her pocket bleeped, and Pam pulled it out, Tripp letting her know he was nearby. She gnawed her mouth further, and went downstairs to open the door for him, shepherding him through the house’s many wards.   

Bastone groaned and shuddered in protest as he crossed the threshold, a low warning bell echoing through the mud room, and Pam stroked her hand over the ornately carved doorframe, trying to reassure and soothe.   

“Mornin’ Pams. Is Alex about?” Tripp asked, barely finished wiping off his shoes on the mat, pausing to scent the hair like a hound. “What’s that smell? I’m starving.”  

Pam tucked her chin into her chest and smiled a little, pleased at the small shred of normalcy in all the weirdness. As daft as he could be, Pam greatly enjoyed how utterly ordinary Tripp felt, even against all odds and arcane horrors.  

“Nothing I think you can eat. But I can get something ready for you. I think there’s beef in the freezer. We could try a tartare?”  

“Oh bet. You know the last time I came over and you made the sushi? Fucking incred. Still wish I was eating that shit.”  

“Come on through to the kitchen, and we’ll see what we can do.”  

Tripp headed through to the back of the house and the pair filed into the kitchen, Pam using a fork to skewer a mini quiche and nibbling at the edges. She puttered around the kitchen, sharpening a knife, taking the beef from the freezer and listening absentmindedly as Tripp slid into a chair and prattled on about how it was great to not have to sleep anymore because now he had more time to be productive. For Tripp, productive meant finishing the newest RPG in just under four days, as opposed to the weeks it took if you needed to sleep and use the bathroom and all the rest of that unnecessary junk.  

“Where is Alex anyway? And Darlington? I thought we were on the demon busting business.”  

Dawes turned her back, rinsing off the newly sharpened knife so Tripp wouldn’t see her face. Despite all the several years of masking she had under her belt, she had never been any good at hiding her thoughts from her expressions. Tripp, oblivious as he was, would notice something was awry the moment he mentioned the demon busting business and Pam’s face registered surprise.  

What was she missing? She knew they had been to Hell, had sprung Darlington free of his deal with... with... with a powerful demon. His name eluded her. She remembered herself, Darlington, Alex, and Turner visiting Tripp and discovering this new entity and the husk of his old body, but... everything was hazy after that. A lot of things were still hazy before that. A lot of the specifics of Hell and the Gauntlet were rubbed clean from her mind. The merest traces of memories still existed, like pencil marks that had been cleared by a cheap eraser.   

She chewed over their ordeal following saving Darlington, picking across the titbits that she still had access to and tried to see if it aligned with the big, important memory she’d forgotten that sat black and sticky in her stomach. Something about it felt similar, but there was still something else she was missing.  

Pam cleared her throat. “I think Alex and Darlington are at one of our safehouses. I can message them, see what they’re up to. They’ve been out a lot more than before; I just try to be ready for... whatever is coming.”  

“Nah. I’m sure they’re busy. Just thought they would take me with, you know? I got all these new powers and shit.”  

Pam paused, racking her memory to see if either Darlington or Alex had mentioned why they hadn’t brought Tripp along with them, besides him being a bit... well... dopey, but nothing came up in her memory.  

“Probably they’re doing a lot of work in the daytime.” She smiled at him, handing over the newly prepared plate of tartare.  

As she set it down before him, and Tripp shut his eyes and leaned in to breathe deeply of the raw meat smell, a new look crossed his face. A hollow, gaunt look that elongated his face and sharpened his bone structure. A shadow of a primal darkness that immediately corrupted his goofy and boyish charm into a terrifying spectre.  

She leapt back reflexively, her wrist pressed to her mouth in a split second, salt mingling on her lips, but the flash of monstrosity had vanished from Tripp’s face almost as quickly as it had appeared. The aura of ravening hunger that slid from him in cool sheets changed for the salivating greed of a young, twenty-something boy and he opened his eyes to wrangle his features into a lopsided grin. He shovelled a forkful into his mouth and groaned.  

“Fuck me sideways, Pams.” Tripp said around his first mouthful, torn between savouring the mouthful and shovelling it down with gusto. “It’s so good. And I know tartare. This smacks .”  

“Th- thank you. I got the cut from a butcher. Extra bloody.” She slowly lowered her wrist and shaking hands from her mouth, sucking in steadying breaths to reconcile her nerves. If Tripp suspected more, he didn’t say anything of it.  

“You sure I can’t hang out here more often? I meant what I said before, you know. If you always cook like this, I want you to make me fat.” 

The laughter flew out of Pam’s mouth and popped like a dish-soap bubble, hanging frail in the air between them.  

“I think that would provide quite the challenge, given your new dietary restrictions.” She paused, unsure how to broach the elephant in the room without coming off callous. “Speaking if your new condition , how are you finding getting around? I mean, it’s daylight outside now. And your fangs are, well, noticeable.”  

Tripp snorted, scarfing down another forkful. “The fangs are a non-issue. Even if it’s Yale, it’s still college, and there are still kids who never grew out of their cat ears and tails phase. Nobody notices, or if they do, nobody cares.”  

Pam considered this and shrugged, conceding that even with what she knew about the supernatural, college kids really had a penchant for ignoring the weirdness, or simply explaining it away with normal college shenanigans. Costume parties, furries, cosplayers. Nothing was shocking much these days. Heck, if she remembered correctly, there was a Lethe Days Dairy from the eighties where a number of Wolf’s Head and the Virgil at the time had, ahem... romped while polymorphed as rabbits.  

“And the daylight?” She probed gently, mentally taking notes for the ongoing monitoring report she was writing up on Tripp.  

“More tricky, but manageable. I mean for now it’s okay, it’s all overcast as hell and my hoodie covers me up pretty good. Plus, I mean, you’ve noticed, haven’t you? Sky’s been kinda darker these days. Since the whole doorway to hell was propped open and all.”  

Pam frowned and turned to peer out the kitchen window. Sure enough, when she looked up the sky was several shades of gray darker than would be expected for nine thirty. Even in Winter.  

Tripp paused then and looked up at Pam to gauge her reaction, as though he had finally homed in on her oddness. Pam was the one who noticed things. She was the one who noticed everything. That was one of her strongest assets for why she was scouted as Oculus in the first place. She saw and noticed and took note of it all, and took note of it in immaculate detail, especially the unusual. The fact that Tripp was the one pointing anything out to her was almost as good as a warning toll, heralding in the apocalypse itself.  

“Pams?” Concern rounded Tripp’s eyes as he appraised her. “Are you alright?”  

For reasons beyond her, Tripp’s simple question rattled her, and she had no real reason as to why. Her memory was a bit hazy this morning, but that wasn’t anything dreadfully portentous, and it was all very likely stress related. Moreover, she was up well past midnight researching for her dissertation. She was rolling through to year seven of writing about Mycenaean cult practices in early tarot iconography, and the sources were decidedly not readily available. What little had been there before had been thoroughly depleted after her seven years of scouring.  

Pam offered a small, wan smile, settling on the conclusion she was probably just tired and stressed, scooping up one of the muffins now growing cold on the counter.  

“My dissertation kept me up late last night. I think it’s taking it out of me.” She conceded eventually, tearing off a hunk of muffin and pressing it into her mouth. “I’m stressed.”  

Tripp smiled, his wide mouth splitting his goofy face in half, and nodded his agreement. “Valid. All this Lethe stuff is stressful as shit. And you have all your diss to do still? Thank fuck I don’t have to do that anymore.” 

Tripp picked up his now emptied plate and licked it clean, mopping up all the pinkish streaks with his tongue. For a moment, Pam was entranced, watching his mouth snaking across the plate surface, before looking awkwardly away, chewing on more pieces of muffin.  

“Well, I should probably get going. Maybe Darlington or Alex will come by the safehouse you stashed me in. They told me I shouldn’t leave if I can help it.” He scooped up his belongings and strode from the kitchen.  

“I think they said that about you being, uh, dangerous, more than anything.” Pam said, trailing him to the front door.  

“Oh, they don’t worry about me, Pams.” His eyes betrayed the crooked grin he shot her over his shoulder. There was a sadness there that he’d tried to bury. “But I know everyone’s worried about my big world-ending plans of destruction.”  

Pam froze, palms growing clammy as Tripp laughed again.  

“I’m kidding. You should get some rest; you really are stressed. Hey shit, that totally rhymed! Maybe I should write some poetry. Later Pams.” He winked at her as he departed.  

“Bye, Tripp.”  

Pam waved farewell and shut the door behind Tripp Helmuth as he stepped back over the threshold to Il Bastone. The house rang out a quiet trill of relief as he left, the defences that were vibrating with agitation finally relaxing.  

∴  

In the parlour, Pam centred herself in another nest egg of her research and belongings, pulling her headphones up to cover her ears and streaming some gentle lo-fi from her phone.  The music was like a balm, taking the edge off her back teeth and smoothing out some of the static of panic that buzzed through her palms, though she noticed it wasn’t supplying the usual amount of comfort she usually experienced.  

She sat for a moment and let it wash over her, trying to force it to settle her. She didn’t know exactly what she was feeling, but she was feeling a lot of it, and she cupped her elbows and rocked back and forth in an attempt to self soothe.  

Eventually, it was time to open her eyes and get to work.  

Her satchel was strewn just on the edge of her reach, and she dug through it to find the familiar stack of well-worn cards.   

When she was a kid, she had discovered the quirky magicalness of tarot, and theorised for hours on end to her older sister about the iconography, the meanings of the cards, the cultural variants from region to region.  Lorraine had the patience of a saint, and the good nature to ask Pam well timed and vague enough questions to let Pam spiral on and on about her newest hyper fixation.  

Despite the years rolling on and Pam’s interest never waning, her parents never agreed to buy her a deck, outright refusing to buy into that occult devilry, even though Pam explained many times that there was nothing devilish about it. PowerPoint presentations with animated transitions and all.  

Still, they never yielded, and Pam had to make do with reading about tarot where and when she could, until one day Lorraine had come home later from school with a satchel of supplies from the local craft store. She spread the card paper, fancy felt tips, and glitter glue across Pam’s desk and reminded her of a fact she had mentioned offhandedly at one point in a long past conversation; many people who practiced tarot made and personalised their own decks.  

Pam had wanted to personalise her own deck at the time, creating symbolic designs of her own, but being as young as she was, didn’t find herself capable of putting together complex ideas and meanings for a whole deck of cards, and so had decorated her own cards with all the major and minor arcana of a standard deck. She must have performed hundreds of readings for both herself and for Lorraine over the years, and Pam smiled now as she thought how indulging her sister had been in humouring her.  

Pam shuffled her deck of cards, cutting and shuffling and dealing them out as she had a thousand times before, hoping that even if the cards didn’t reveal all- as they rarely did, they could at least help spark an idea in her to figure out what was going on.  

It had been hours since Tripp’s visit, and Alex and Darlington still hadn’t appeared, and Pam’s unease had returned.  

She took a deep breath and flipped over the first card, the one that stood for her past. The magician, upright. The magician symbolised willpower and inner strength, creation and manifestation, and Pam nodded, immediately thinking of how she’d learned to harness her ability to fixate and study intently, her love of tarot turning into a full course of study, encouraging interpretation and a stickler for detail.  

The present was the world, inversed, and Pam frowned. Inversed, the world alluded to a sense of emptiness and incompletion, and Pam thought of an unfinished jigsaw puzzle, the edges smooth and intact but pieces of middle missing. She stared at the card thinking of how last night she went to sleep thinking the next day was a new chance to try again, and how in the morning she’d woken up feeling robbed, but as though her memories and the parts she was missing had been swallowed rather than stolen.  

She flipped the third and final card, the future, and Pam groaned. The Ten of swords. Failure, mental breakdown, and betrayal. A painful and inevitable ending.  She already felt as though she were losing her mind, but now the cards were sending her into the beginnings of a tailspin of panic. Failure. Of all the things she feared the most at the moment, the biggest one was quite possibly failing in her position as Oculus, forfeiting her place in Lethe and her relationships with her Virgil and her Dante. It was her job to recount details, she was as good a living memory of the history of Lethe as there was, and now there were huge glowing holes in what she could recall. What good was she to Lethe is she could no longer perform the basic responsibilities of her job?  

Yale was full to bursting with scholars who could research and parrot off facts. All Pam had to reassure herself was the fact that scoping out a strong, viable candidate was a difficult feat, and dropping an unsuspecting sophomore into the brutal reality of a world where magic was not only real but violent and ugly, was not a feat the board would consider lightly.  

She paused a moment, musing on the idea of betrayal, and all the different interpretations that could arise from that, chewing on her lip once more. The smallest notion of an idea began to take root in her mind, and the more Pam mused on it, the more she worried about what all the implications could mean, not just for her or for Lethe, but for Darlington, Alex, and the eight magical houses of Yale.  

Betrayal. Since their founding, the history of the eight landed houses of Yale was pockmarked with petty squabbles and disputes on the proper use of magic, the best way to apply magic or the most important schools of magic, not to mention all sorts of other personal grievances between each delegation, and yet nothing had never mounted to more than an easily hashed out conflict between a handful of stroppy privileged kids.   

Even since Lethe was founded, feathers may have been ruffled and some personal slights may have been handed out as liberally as party favours since Alex has commenced her tenure, but... betrayal was still a hefty word to be bandied about, and none of that still explained why someone may want to target Pam, nor did it explain who it was who felt so insulted that they would target her with such animosity and intent to betray or sabotage.  

Besides, Pam’s social circle began and ended with Lethe, and there were less than a handful of people who knew of the role of Oculus, much less who knew that the mantle was currently helmed by Pamela Dawes.  

Still, the thought irritated her, and she picked at it like a new scab, tearing more and more into the partially formed idea.  

If anything, three things seemed clear. First, she had no enemies of her own who cared about her enough to want to harm or sabotage her. Whoever had a grievance against her was not taking it out on her because it was personal. It was business, which meant Lethe.  

Second, if somebody wanted to sabotage Lethe’s very foundation, the easiest way would be to meddle with their records, and to do that, the best way would be to start with yours truly.  

And third, in order to do so, you would need an intimate understanding of the procedures of Lethe house, and that realisation refused to reassure her in the slightest.  

Even through the softened muffle of her headphones, Pam heard the front door slam and felt Bastone hum in anticipation, in such a way that meant Darlington had returned, likely with Alex in tow. Even since his return from hell and the corruption it did to his mind, his soul, and his body- the mansion remained pleased by his presence. Afterall, it could not be denied he was and remained the Gentleman of Lethe.  

Pam’s heart fluttered in her chest in a way that could either be anxiety or pleasure for their return. As much as Pam had always vastly preferred her own company, Darlington had somehow managed to make himself important to her, warming her up and gently inviting himself into her good graces. Alex crashed her way into the same, with all the tact of a demolition ball and brute-forcing her way into Pam’s orbit but still, she was now just as important to her as Darlington. The idea of the pair of them taking on Hell with little more preparation than a vague notion of morality terrified her. Every time the front door clicked shut behind them, she worried.  

Alex came thundering into the parlour, and Pam propped her headphones around her neck, gnawing at her mouth.  

“Hey, did you manage to find anything about that artefact yet? The infernal what's-it?”   

Pam stared at her, slow blinking through her confusion. An infernal artifact? She had no recollection of such a thing.  

“An infernal artefact? I mean I could consult the Albemarle...”  

Alex furrowed her brow, a deep v forming in her forehead as her brows met in the middle and giving her a hawkish expression.  

“Pam, we’ve already searched the library. You said you would check out some other sources.”  

“Are you feeling okay, Pammie?”  

Pam startled. She hadn’t noticed Darlington had followed Alex quietly up the stairs, his long, lithe figure leaning against the doorframe. Her cheeks burned under his scrutiny, his level gaze and dark eyes seeming to see through her defences and cutting through all the masks she usually threw up. It was precisely one of the reasons she had disliked him so vehemently when she first met him, she could tell from that first instant that he was someone who saw everything, and she’d later discovered that was because he wanted so badly to see more than there was to be seen, to glimpse into the buried and the hidden. But being under Darlington’s astute eye felt akin to being nude in his presence, and Pam hated that stripped, vulnerable feeling- no matter how fond of him she had become.  

It was pointless to try and lie to the pair of them, Darlington knew her well enough, and Alex knew people enough that they would both know instantaneously if she tried to bluff or otherwise deceive them. She shook her head.  

“I...” Her voice trailed off, as if not wanting to declare her problem or her fears. She took a deep breath and tried again. “Something’s wrong. I think my memories have been tampered with and I... There’s a lot of things I can’t remember.”  

“Since when?” Alex was straight to the point.  

Dawes knotted and unknotted her fingers, pressed her thumb against her lips. “Today. This morning. I just... I can’t remember a lot of the details and events that have transpired the past couple of months.”  

“What do you mean, couple of months?” Alex asked, but it was Darlington that caught her attention. He inspected her face, and by whatever he saw or didn’t see there, looked down to scan the tarot cards she had flipped over ahead of her.  

“You think there’s more to it than that though, don’t you?”  

Pam held his eye for a moment and looked down at the Ten of Swords again. The man laid out with ten daggers speared into his back. She nodded.  

“I looked over some of my entries in the archive and I don’t recognise a lot of them. I’m murky on a lot of things about the gauntlet or going to hell... Tripp came by earlier and I think he might have noticed something as well.”  

Alex frowned and looked down at the tarot cards, not seeing what Pam saw.  

“Anybody care to fill me in?”   

“This card,” Pam reached over and picked it up, holding it up so Alex could see. “The Ten of Swords indicates failure, or in some circumstances- sabotage and betrayal.”  

“Okay but... I mean isn’t tarot nonsense? No offense to your dissertation or anything, it’s a whole thing and all but- in terms of actual magic ? We've seen magic and it’s ugly and bloody, it’s not convenient miracles.” There was scorn in her voice.  

Embarrassment set Dawes’s cheeks aflame, and she knew she’d turned a shade of red that clashed against her hair. Darlington came to her rescue.  

“There’s magic in everything, Stern.” Darlington said easily, “If you know how to look for it, and you know how to use it.”  

Alex gritted her teeth but took a calming breath. “I’m sorry.” She mumbled. “It’s just, Mira was always into fakey magic like aromatherapy and crystals or tarot. I just... I guess Yale has made me a magic snob. If it’s accessible, it’s not real.” Alex’s voice was gentle, as if trying to keep a frightened kitten from bolting.  

She picked at a hole in her sleeve, and Dawes gave her a small smile. Ever since retrieving Darlington, Alex had made a very obvious attempt at being amicable to the Gauntlet Gang, even though she was also notably more irritable as well.  

“It’s not always an exact science, and a lot of the reading is about interpretation, but they can be a strong indicator of influences and changes. My past-” She pointed to the magician, “indicates inner strength and manifestation. The present-” The world “suggests absence, or incompletion. Both of those seem quite accurate to me. Which worries me that I pulled the Ten of Swords.”  

“So, you think somebody is betraying you? You have no enemies, why would anybody be trying to hurt you ?”  

Dawes gnawed on a hangnail and glanced down at the cards again. “What if... What if it’s not about me specifically?” Her voice was tentative, once again unsure about presenting her ideas without strong evidence. Fortunately, Darlington was quick on picking up the unsaid, his eyes widening as he parsed out what Dawes was implying.  

“You think someone is attempting to hurt Lethe. Since you’re the one who deals with... well, everything, hurting you could be an attempt to take us all down.”  

Dawes nodded.  

“But what’s also concerning to me is that such a person would have to have quite an intimate knowledge of the mechanics and structures of Lethe. None of the other houses even know about Oculus.”  

“Well, that’s not true.”  

Dawes and Darlington both turned to look at Alex, Dawes once again worried, and Darlington with the air of curiosity and intrigue.  

“How do you mean?” Dawes asked.  

“I guess you must have forgotten, but, both Wolf’s Head and Scroll and Key know about you, and loosely know about what you do....” She paused, and in the silence noticed Dawes’s alarm. “But I mean, they shouldn’t have any grievances against us.” She furrowed her brow as she thought. “Well, we did repair the table in the Locksmith’s tomb with the crucible, so they shouldn’t have any more beef with us. Especially after all the grovelling. And there was no real issue with the Wolves.”  

“But if that’s the case, and somebody- potentially a Locksmith or the wolves- wanted to interfere with Lethe, they’re not going to stop with Pammie.” Darlington’s voice was low. Either with fear or anger Pam couldn’t tell, but it carried an undertone, a reverberation that she felt more than heard, piercing through her mind and loosing her joints.  

“Wait a second.” Alex said, her face taking on the pinched expression of deep thought and concern. “Hear me out but I think we know somebody who might want to teach us a lesson and straighten us out. To want to interfere enough to recapture its former glory. Someone who thinks the way we handle our shit is a stain on its reputation."   

A sheen of amber glossed over Darlington's eyes, a glimpse of the demon pushing through as his anger boiled up to the surface.   

"You mean to say you suspect the Praetor is involved?"   

Despite having had only three true meetings and some change with Professor Raymond Walt-Whitely, it was never missed on Darlington how the Praetor had spoken around Alex, attributing her many successes and her own brilliance to Darlington's tutelage, what little he'd given her must be credit to his capability. Darlington also had never failed to attempt to redirect the attention where it was deserved, though his words fell on deaf ears and the professor still refused to acknowledge Alex's ability, or acknowledge Pam at all.   

"I do."   

Dawes shook her head.  

“Alex, I see where you're coming from, but I don't see how it would make any sense." "Think about it. His opening statement when he met us was all about how he doesn't believe women should be allowed at Yale, nor does he believe our sensibilities do credit to Lethe. If he wanted to petition the board to the effect of restoring Lethe to its hey-day, he would have to begin by having proof. If he can discredit us, on top of all that gone on the last two years... he could have a case."  

The three of them lapsed into an uneasy silence, pondering the truths Alex mentioned and weighing the argument that the Praetor could be at fault for the sabotage, sampling the likeliness for truth. It was hard to believe, but not impossibly farfetched.  

Plus, Pam thought, every time we’ve had trouble, it’s come from our praetor. Sandow, Anselm... It wasn’t an illogical deduction, especially for Alex, who had an extremely healthy disdain for authority to begin with. Pam suspected that was one of the reasons she was so wary in her duties as Virgil, experienced or not. 

Still, Dawes didn't see Professor Walt-Whitely as the type.   

"We'll list him as suspect number one." Darlington broke the silence. "But first, we need to figure out how to undo whatever spell has been put on Pam and undo it."  

"Then figure out how to word ourselves against them." Pam said.   

"And deal with the idiot who thought his tenure made him immune to consequence." Alex added.  

 "But first,” came Darlington, "Lunch."   

Dawes nodded. "There's ample leftover from this morning." She said, and Alex thundered downstairs, Darlington trailing her with one last lingering look at Pam over his shoulder.   

Dawes didn't mind as they departed together as abruptly as they had arrived. She had direction now and a lot to think about. The arrow had been nocked, and now she was ready to let fly. She tidied her clutter of index cards and tarot cards and various titbits, ordering them in her bag as she got up to file towards the library.   

She lifted and opened the Albermarle book, cradling it as one would gently caress the finest of tomes, and a humid, thick gust of brimstone smelling heat fell over her like the salivating breath of an unseen beast. The previous search was written in her own penmanship, probing into more theories and hypotheses on the structures of hell. Infernal artefacts, just like Alex had said. More research she would have to explore later on. When she got to the bottom of their current quandary.  

Dawes thought carefully a moment while she considered her search terms, before eventually writing-  

Spells or rituals that erase an unwitting subject's memory.    

The library shelf and the Albermarle book were both silent when Pam replaced it on the shelf, as if they too were searching deep for a memory long buried and forgotten. Eventually, it began to hum as it filtered its’ search, the tune pensive and thoughtful as it worked through her query.   

Eventually, it came to rest, and Pam swung the door open for the second time that day.  

Dismayed, she appraised the turnover the library had churned out. Six small and dusty books, hardcover and small print like those from the regency period, and one Lethe day diary from 1971. She sighed and scooped up the armload and carried them to a small corner table in the library.  

She began to read.   

Chapter Text

Michaels was right about Momento, even though he still won’t tell Pearson and me exactly what it is or what goes into it, or how to make it. Manuscript always keeps their best stuff quiet. But once we found the right way to bind it with the psilocybin from the locksmiths, and a bit of Merity, it was a simple thing to trial our new creation, which we’ve taken to calling Archive.

The effects are better than we’d hoped, but the heightened, receptive state with whatever the actual effect of Momento is, have made any cramming at least ten times more effective. The only truly unexpected side effect has been recollection of long forgotten or repressed memories. Caleb seems to have had some barrier in his mind cleared, and Stephen could recall his first steps and first words.

- Lethe Days Diary of Luis Pizarro

(Davenport College ‘74)

In the end, the Lethe Days Diary was the most enlightening of the small stack the library churned out. The small dusty books had several mentions of memory magic in general, but all of it lay in the realm of theory and speculation from a time magic was largely untethered and unregulated. More likely to explode in your face, to damage the hand of the caster as well as the intended target. 

Only in one, the latest of the six, contained any record of a ritual that was put together to retrieve memories that had been repressed by the mind of a mute, traumatised child. 

It hadn’t worked, the spell backfiring and seeming to deal the five casters a deal of trauma that was similarly affecting similarly afflicting the child.

Pamela sat uncomfortably reading over the reports, a hot, prickly feeling crawling up her shoulders and spine. She shut the books as soon as she garnered that they were of no help to her, choosing not to dwell a single moment longer than was strictly necessary.

The Lethe Days Diary, on the other hand, was more interesting. The Virgil in 1971 was Luis Pizarro of Davenport college, who had been Sandow’s Dante and Walt-Whitely's Virgil. Dawes liked him immediately, his early entries recounting details about some of his social engagements with the societies, particularly the more hedonist ones of Manuscript, Scroll and Key, and Wolf’s Head. It was clear that outside of his Lethe duties, which Pamela confirmed he’d executed and documented flawlessly, he’d genuinely enjoyed the frivolities and escapades that came from making friends within the societies.

He'd admired Sandow and his early brilliance, and scarcely mentioned Walt-Whitely outside of his initial disdain of him. Walt-Whitely had never failed to make his old-fashioned bitterness known, and Pizarro briefly touched upon his Dante’s scorn for Luis's “lifestyle choices” when it came to his romantic pursuits, and his “fiery” character making him less than best suited to his role as Virgil. 

Dawes could sniff out the codes for Walt-Whitely's prejudices through the ages, and her mouth turned sour with disgust. It made her feel nauseated to imagine that Alex could have been on the receiving end of the new Praetor’s racism during the times she’d had to interface with him, and that he’d expected such a ridiculously high level of competence from her, just to be thought half as good as Darlington. If she’d disliked him before, she was certainly close to hating him now, since he’d clearly not mellowed with age.

The relevant passage she was looking for in Pizzaro's diary was nestled amid the later entries of his final year as Virgil, but the passage was short and not exactly what she’d been expecting or strictly looking for.

Pizarro, along with two of his better friends Stephen Michaels of Manuscript, and Caleb Pearson of Scroll and Key, had, in a rare intra-house pooling of information and resources, collaborated on a small, secret project to help better prepare for their final exams. 

Archive- the resulting creation- was a narcotic if Pam had understood the entry properly, and had accidentally unlocked memories for Caleb and Stephen, but the extent of which weren’t recorded. Her confidence in the creation dwindled further when there were no records on how safe their homebrewed pharmaceuticals were, and she was certain there weren’t rounds of testing involved before the three of them taking it. 

She got up and exited the library, penning a demand for the transcripts of the trio, but found nothing to indicate any further negative side effects. In fact, they had all graduated with distinction, and laughingly, Stephen Michaels had graduated Summa Cum Laude in pharmaceuticals. 

A quick check of the Armoury and Pamela found the entry for Archive catalogued in the entries between 1965-1975 under consumables, experimental. The yellowed card with faded blue lettering led her to an ornate snuffbox of silver and mother of pearl, the inside filled with a creamy coloured, crystalline powder with a faint, musty scent wafting from it. She made a mental note of its reference, and filed it away. The possibilities slowly puzzled away in the back of her mind.

One tentative solution found, she set her mind to the next two problems. One, she still didn’t know what kind of effect she was under to have stolen her memories from her in the first place. Second, the question of who had done it to her. 

The list of suspects was still only one name long, and while she did find it unusual to immediately run into the Virgil who had trained the Praetor, and Alex’s immediate suspicion of the man, Pamela still didn’t find herself convinced his bitterness should be aligned with spite.

  On top of that, she’d fallen back on her duties collaborating with Centurion, monitoring for any suspicious deaths within or around Yale, making sure the other houses were still falling in line while the world fell apart around them. 

And then there was the ongoing issue with a backdoor to hell being left cracked open. The infernal artefacts that she had been researching, any hope or expectation that she could deliver some deus ex machina type of weapon slimmed to none while her mind remained addled. Pam herself wasn’t some kind of divine warrior, and she would be of very little use in a true battle of good against evil. A heavy sensation sank in her stomach at the very thought. No, she was far better applied in setting her mind to ways the real fighters could win. She had to find solutions for Alex and Darlington to apply in the field. 

She sucked in a deep breath and headed to the kitchen, where Darlington and Alex should be finishing up their lunch. They had gone to their respective rooms before going down to eat, scrubbing off the scent of ozone and sulphur after a night of wrestling with who knows what kind of paranormal entities.

Proving her right, Alex sat back and belched as Pam entered, wiping tomato sauce from her lips with some kitchen towel. She excused herself and smiled her compliments to Pam. Pam’s chest tightened. Alex might not come with all the decorum and manners expected from a Yalie, but Dawes preferred her that way. Preferred her honesty, the blunt way she conveyed her thoughts and suspicions, the clear way she thought and reasoned without pretensions, and cared a great deal about the wisp of a woman who had gone to hell more than once to save a man she had barely known for a few months.

“Found something, Pammie?” Darlington idly swirled a delicate fork across the surface of the fine plateware, pushing the scraps of food around but expressing no interest in eating it. 

“Maybe. A stimulant from the seventies called Archive.”

“Sounds like a street name.” Alex said, leaning forward to prop her elbows on the surface of the table, holding her head up as if her meal was racing to put her to sleep. “But for some white-bread drugs for college kids.”

“Astute as ever. It is, technically, all of those things.” She said, crossing the room to lean against a counter, facing them both as she told them of what she had found in Pizarro’s diary. “As a side effect, it seems to be able to let the user recall repressed memories.”

“Well, that seems very convenient.” Alex spoke up again, tsking her teeth and earning a frown from Darlington.

“Perhaps it could help in being a temporary remedy for right now,” He said, “but that still doesn’t answer what the spell is or how to break it, or if it is indeed progressive.”

Dawes nodded. “That’s what I thought. There’s no way of knowing what condition I might wake up in tomorrow if the spell worsens. Or if it’s going to start affecting either of you.”

“Maybe not, but that's one potential failsafe you could try for now.”

“It could be good for all of us, if it does indeed undo at least some of the effects of the spell .” Darlington said, casting a sidelong glance at Alex, but concern rounded his eyes as he carefully regarded her. “Though I suppose, it could be a risk to re-find memories that have for various reasons been forgotten.”

Dawes winced in realisation. If any of them had dangerous or traumatic memories to reawaken from the taking of Archive, it would probably be Alex. Before receiving her scholarship, she rent herself in a drug-induced fugue state most every day just to cope with a gift she had no experience in dealing with. The greys that would have dogged her steps, would have been prevalent in abundance during school, following her home, to her bedroom if it caught wind she could see them. There was surely a lot that she had forced far from the forefront of her mind.

No, it was no solution at all for Alex, who was likely still running from the things she could see. The very things Darlington craved a glimpse of.

Alex swallowed thickly, as though she knew exactly what Pam’s thoughts had turned to. 

“I’d rather stay awake until my eyeballs dried up and I died of coffee overdose before I took that.” She said, confirming Pamela’s suspicions. 

“We’ll need a better solution.” Pam nodded. “And soon.”

“As dire as fighting the rogue demons are, this no doubt takes immediate precedence.” Darlington murmured his agreement.

“I’ll call Mercy. We could use her help.” Alex pulled out her phone, and punched in her code, calling Mercy from the shortcut on her home screen.

Pam forced herself not to react at the mention of Mercy Zhao, while she agreed they could use her help. She was brilliant and astute, could be an invaluable asset to Lethe or any of the other houses if they’d bothered to tap her. Despite Pam’s being on edge the moment she’d met her, every instinct screaming about all the rules of Lethe that were being broken at her introduction to the crash-course to The Veil and proceedings of the nine landed houses, Mercy had triumphed over every expectation Pam hadn’t known she’d had about her.

No, it wasn’t derision that set her heart to racing at the prospect of Mercy coming here now. Wasn’t scorn that made her palms cold and clammy.

“Should I call Tripp back? He was only here earlier.”

Darlington shook his head. “Let’s not push our luck in seeing how long Il Bastone will let him stay before setting the jackals on him. But you make a good point, we should keep a closer eye on him. He shouldn’t be leaving the safehouse."

Dawes nodded. “I’ve got to run home quickly.”

Darlington fixed her with a sharp look, but Pam hurried to reassure him. “I just need to clean up a bit. Tend to some things at home. Feed the fish.”

Darlington didn’t question her as she pushed off from the counter, raising a manicured brow as she slid from kitchen and squeezed her arm as she passed. As much as she may have hated the contact from anyone else, her lips tugged up into a small smile as his fingers trailed from her. It was as though even his touch said, I see you.

∴

Dawes didn't live far from Il Bastone, just over a twenty-minute walk to East Rock, or as it was better known, the grad school ghetto. The walk never bothered her whenever she made it. It was fascinating watching the shiny façade of the college peel away to the more grubby face of New Haven, where the real people were, where the real lives were lived- away from the keggers, a-Capella groups, basketball shorts and yoga pants.

Her apartment was a small thing a short ways from the gas station on Willow, and Pam slid key after key in the numerous doors between herself on the street to the cramped interior space of her place, flights up from the sidewalk.

She didn’t have a roommate, thank goodness, and she was grateful every day she came back to a quiet apartment, and that she was lucky enough to afford the small luxury of privacy. Her parents still supplied enough to cover her living costs, and her small stipend from Lethe covered the rest.

She tossed her things down on the loveseat in the living area and kicked off her shoes as she crossed to the bedroom and the bathroom beyond it.

The shower she took was brisk, the water pressure weak enough to discourage a lengthy dousing even though the water itself was delightfully hot, her skin pinking at the steaming rivulets that ran down her body. She attacked her hair, dragging her prescription shampoo through its lengths and unscented conditioner quickly thereafter.

As much as Dawes told herself that she truly did need the shower, to wash her hair after it had been tied up in its greasy bun for several days too long already, there was still the quiet voice in her mind that whispered she was doing it all for Mercy’s benefit. For her to notice. Trying too hard to impress the new girl that she liked perhaps more than she should.

She told herself it was basic hygiene, looking after herself for her own needs, but she couldn’t deny that perhaps she was putting in more of an effort when it took her several long minutes to select clothes out from her wardrobe, the drab choices spanning before her.

She loved her cargo pants, they were comfortable and practical, but even she could admit they weren’t exactly eye-catching. Weren’t designed with style in mind. And yet, they took up the vast majority of the bottoms she owned. A safety net. The rest were sweats, and she couldn’t bring herself to put those on, regardless of how uneventful her day was predicted to be.

Eventually she settled on a monochrome pair of camo patterned cargo pants that were a little less baggy than the rest, and a fitted black t-shirt. Nice, but not enough to scream look at all the effort I put into looking nice.

But the small spritz of her single bottle of perfume behind her ears and pulse points might have been a bit much, especially since her usual scent was her stick deodorant.

She dragged oil and mousse through her hair, and she watched it dry into the soft curls she usually had no time for, usually tried desperately to keep pinned away from her face in her typical bun. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, trying to see her face as someone else might. Someone who hadn’t avoided peering at herself in the mirror for her twenty-odd years.

She supposed her hair could be pretty if she took better care of it. Her face was long and round, smatterings of freckles across her pale cheeks and her straight nose. Her eyes, almond and dark, dark brown, held a sort of gravity that drew light in, caught your gaze and wouldn’t let go.

Pam usually tried to avoid looking at her reflection, not wanting to be perceived even by herself, but found herself now wondering if she could be nice to look at. Pretty to someone. 

It didn’t matter, she grabbed a spiral scrunchie from the top of her dresser and bundled her hair up at the back of her head, leaving a few choice curls out to frame her face.

At long last, she shrugged on her Puffa coat, devastatingly unflattering, and set off back for the mansion on Orange.

∴

The trio had settled into the library by the time she returned, dusty stacks of tomes piled high alongside mounds of fresher books, all with various titles that could be even loosely memory related, from Observations of the Hippocampus to The interpretations of Dreams, Nightmares , and Astral Projections.

The three of them looked up as Dawes entered, Darlington taking in the strands of hair curling around her cheeks and temples, Alex pointedly noting the less-than-hideous clothing she’d dragged on. Mercy smiled up at her as she approached the table, the only normal reaction of the group, and a far cry from the cool gaze that had frequently iced over her expression when they’d first met.

“Hi Pamela. Alex filled me in on the whole memory spell.” She held up the book she was trawling through, Differentiating Traumas of the Long- and Short-Term Memory.

“I hope it doesn’t constitute as severely as a trauma.” Pam replied, the new worry causing her to gnaw at the corner of her mouth.

“I’m sure it’s fine. But better to double check, don’t you think?”

Dawes nodded, sitting down at the spare chair at the table and taking out her own notebook and stationery, swiping a book from the top of the nearest tower.

“How’s the fish?” Darlington asked with a teasing smile, eyes glittering knowingly.

There was no fish, of course, and Darlington certainly knew that. Could probably tell why Pam had excused herself an hour ago, had it confirmed for him as she trailed back in the library smelling faintly of cranberry and vanilla.

She couldn’t think of a witty response to either appease him or snipe at him, so she said nothing at all as she flipped the book open and began skimming her way through it.

The first book was a bust, as was the second and the third. The fourth was amounting to be just as useless when Alex finally spoke up again. She’d offered her thoughts throughout the two hours they’d been researching, adding to any other thoughts Mercy or Darlington had posed, listened to the concerns Pam pitched, though they’d all inevitably trailed off into nothing more useful than they had already considered.

She shut her book in frustration. “Have you tried taking the Archive you found earlier? You might remember something about how this spell got put on you.”

Pam bristled. “It’s not like I asked for this to happen.”

“I didn’t say that, but usually the spellcaster has to interact with the intended victim. Like the red dust the gluma blew on me. Or the bridegroom needing Tara’s retainer. I’m guessing the first thing the caster would try to conceal from you is the memory of who they are. Maybe we have a way around that at our fingertips”

Pam sighed, seeing the logic of Alex’s argument.

“No, I haven’t tried it. I...it worries me.”

“Why?” Mercy asked gently, and it took everything in Pam to keep from wilting under her eye.

“I- I don’t even like to take baby aspirin.” Pam admitted, cheeks burning. “I’ve never, you know...” She stared at the table, wishing she could melt into the floor, that Bastone would grow a mouth in the lacquered wooden planks that made up the library floor, and swallow her down into its maw.

“Never taken drugs?” Darlington coaxed.

She shook her head.

“That’s not embarrassing, Pamela. It’s admirable, in fact.” Mercy said, gaze steely as she furrowed her brow. No doubt thinking about the effects, intended or otherwise, that could come from taking them whether it was your choice or not. A thick, heavy lump settled in her stomach like cold oil. A nerve feathered in her jaw as she gritted her teeth, and Pam reached out to soothe her. she thought better of it as she lifted her hand, and settled it back down on the desk in front of her.

Mercy smiled, seeming grateful for even her intention to extend her kindness. “Nobody is going to make you do anything, but at least you’d be amongst friends if you did choose to see what happens.”

“It would also be useful to know if it’ll be useful tomorrow. If we need it.” came Darlington, his mouth a grim line for asking more of Pam than she was willing to give freely.

“Dawes, If it had really terrible side effects, the Lethe Day Diary would have mentioned a warning. And it would probably be kept more securely.” Alex tried to appease her fear, but her flippant tone did nothing to help soothe Pam’s nerves. 

Pam glanced at her, and she could swear she noticed a tremor of impatience buried beneath her attempt at being understanding.

Still, Dawes’s mouth dried up as she thought about taking any quantity of the mystery drug that, for all she knew, hadn’t been taken since its creation. She stood abruptly, almost sending the chair tipping over.

“I need some water.” She said, and quickly fled the library. 

She filled a glass from the faucet in the kitchen and tipped it down her gullet before filling it again, this time resting the cool surface of the glass against her flushed forehead. A throat cleared from behind her, and Pam turned to find Mercy and Darlington standing there. Pam noticed the slight pink tinge to Mercy’s cheeks at the closeness between the two of them, crowding the doorway. Noticed it just as easily as she made a note of the cropped white cardigan she wore atop her beautiful floral dress, well fitted at the top and turning flowy as it fell past her waist in whorls of orange and purple and pink, reminiscent of the bold flora of Georgia O'Keefe's yonic paintings.

“Hey,” Mercy said, padding over to stand by her. “We shouldn’t have ambushed you. You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to.”

Darlington waited in the doorway, waited for a moment to weigh in.

“Thank you.” She said, though she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be thanking her for, and involuntarily withdrew a few inches, putting a fraction more breathing room between them. If Mercy saw, she said nothing of it.

Mercy smiled, a small, soothing thing as if to stop Pam from bolting again. “I understand why you’d be wary. I think it’s the only reasonable reaction, to be honest. I don’t take anything I don’t implicitly trust anymore, and unless I’m completely comfortable with the people I’m around.”

Pam nodded again, sipping from the water and considered what it might be costing Mercy to admit to all of this, especially in front of Darlington, who she likely couldn’t trust for not knowing him too well. Even if she had helped fight to retrieve him. As if picking up on any unease, Darlington stepped forward, an apologetic look etched into his features.

“I’m sorry for asking it of you, Pammie. Nothing has to come from Archive if you don’t want it to. We can go straight back upstairs and keep trawling through the books we’ve dug up. Eventually, something has to come up.”

Pam smiled at him, grateful, and turned back to Mercy again as she spoke. “We just thought, being as erudite as you are, you might be more upset about pieces of your mind being tampered with than any of the negative consequences that could arise from Archive. And, well… you found it. You could have hidden it away again.”

“But that’s the thing. Maybe it could be useful, but Archive is untested, unregulated, unmonitored, and nobody has the answers if it goes wrong. We don’t know why memories may have been recovered for two of its initial users, or why it didn’t do the same thing for Pizarro. What if it affects my mind worse than whatever spell has its hold on me? I didn’t hide it in case anyone found and tried it without considering all of the risks.”

“Excellent points.” Darlington weighed in, “To which we have no answer. But Stern is right, if something dangerous had occurred, there would be a note of it, or the Archive would have been destroyed.”

“We can’t know for sure. It’s risky.”

“Then I’ll take it first.” Pam and Darlington whirled to face Mercy; face set with grim determination as she met Pam’s eyes. All of them knew what it could cost her. What she was offering, but she squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “At the very best, maybe it’ll help me read through the books we need to get through. At the worst... I’ve survived my memories once before. I can do it again.”

Something small and hot deflated in Pam’s chest at Mercy’s brave words, shame rising to heat her face, her lips. More than that, she thought the shame would rise up and kill her as she nodded and said, “Alright.”

Something taught and fraught with misery stretched between them as they filed back up the stairs, threatened to snap as they rounded into the room and Alex read their decisions across their faces. Darlington levelled a steely glare at her as she began to protest, and Alex, as she so rarely ever did, wilted. She bent over, grasping at the floor and brought up the cursed snuffbox from under her chair. Waiting, as they had all been, for its inevitable use.

Alex flipped the lid open, and under the orangey light of the library, the Archive looked more a dim grey than the smooth cream it had appeared as earlier. Mercy broke the silence.

“How much do you think is enough? And how is it taken?”

Alex flipped over the cataloguing card that she slid from under a notebook, scanning it quickly.

“It’s snorted. And...” She trailed off as she read the rest of the text, replacing the card in her hands with the box. She shook it gently side to side careful not to spill any of the powder- almost sifting it like flour, and gradually a tiny silver spoon emerged from within its depths. The spoon was thinner than a matchstick and shorter than her pinkie finger, its bowl smaller and shallower than a pinkie nail.

“It says one spoonful is enough.”

Mercy stared down at the tiny snuff spoon, glaring at it warily as one might a viper poised to strike a deadly blow, then reached over to take it. Dawes bit her lip as she scooped up some of the powder, levelled it off, and reached it up to her nose, pinching one nostril as she sucked in one sharp inhale.

The three Lethe delegates watched as Mercy blinked and rubbed hastily at her nose, swearing as if to abate a burning there, and returned the spoon. Moments passed and, from the stillness, it was as if the very library itself was holding its breath, waiting for whatever effect would take place to make itself known.

And then it did.

Mercy’s eyes slid into blackness as her pupils dilated, wider than Dawes had ever seen eyes go, even after her last eye exam and the optician dilated her eyes with strange orange eye drops. 

Mercy smiled.

“Holy shit...” She breathed, large, unblinking eyes taking them all in, scouring the still room, glancing over the books they had amassed around them. “This is incredible.”

“How do you feel?” Darlington asked tentatively. Pam waited, tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth in rising panic.

“Like... like I’m awake. Like I’ve been half asleep my whole life and doing everything on hard mode. I feel like I could read and entire encyclopaedia like it was a leaflet.”

“And... your memories?” Alex prompted.

Mercy’s tiny smile of awe slid from her face as she frowned, a shadow slipping into the deep pits of her wide eyes.

“Crystal clear.” She paused, as though an errant thought crossed her mind and she gasped, smiling again. “Oh. Oh, there are things I had forgotten that I... Oh...” She trailed off again after a moment’s pause, shook herself from her reverie. “I feel fine. Just... staticky. But in a good way.”

“Well, that’s a good sign.” Darlington said, voice tinged with an optimism Dawes knew he didn't dare to hope.

Alex inclined her head as if to agree but said, “That’s to say nothing of the comedown, or the withdrawal.”

“Well,” Mercy breathed, looking between them as if seeing them, not seeing them, and seeing far more than just them, “We can keep going with the research and wait until I come down, or...” She let the unfinished sentence dangle.

Or Dawes could grow a backbone and take some too. After all, she was the one who had needed it. To see if it snapped whatever barrier in her mind and let her reclaim her thoughts that had been locked away. What was she scared of, when Pizarro and his friends had graduated with distinction –allegedly thanks to Archive- and had not mentioned any side effects besides the one she so desperately needed? The one she’d be taking it for.

She cracked her neck, and gripped the spoon. 

Staticky was right. Pam’s fingertips and toes seemed to thrum with energy, electricity whispering through her veins, and warmth spread across her mind from the base of her neck through to her forehead.

It was like breaking the surface of water and gulping down lungfuls of sweet air, even if she hadn’t realised she had been struggling and sinking against a current determined to pull her down. Lightness spread through her chest, as though taking the first real breath of her life, and knew by the way Darlington and Alex gawped at her that her eyes had come alive, widening so that her pupil dominated her iris. The still silence hanging across the warm air around her became a gently hummed song. A harmony of absence. A symphony of nothing.

“Holy shit.” She said, echoing Mercy’s earlier sentiment. “Holy shit .”

She caught Mercy’s eye who raised an eyebrow, cocky. As if to say I told you so.

“Do you remember anything?” Darlington pressed, his expression intense. Concerned.

Right. She could marvel at the sensation later, and she furrowed her brow as she turned her thoughts inwards, wending her way towards the wall of adamant in her mind. She could see it now, a huge, ugly hewn wall thrown up to keep parts of herself locked away. Thick black bricks that mounted ever upwards, blocking out her entire view. She watched for any sign of its decay, but it stood firm, only the tiniest crack appearing in the mortar between two blocks. She drew nearer to inspect it, but as she grew nearer and drew to a stop to observe it, she could still feel herself being tugged forwards; towards it.

She dug her heels against it, burrowing into some mental ground, holding back against the wall that was trying to pull her behind it. She didn’t know what would happen if she - her consciousness- slipped beyond it. Into its grasp. Cold, absolute terror gripped her at the thought.

She could feel her body, her real body, beginning to tremble. Sweat breaking out across her forehead, curling her hair at her temples and making her warm shirt cling under her arms.

“ Pam, breathe! Come back to us!” The voice was distant, dredged through aeons and light-years of distance. A male voice. Darlington.

Her feet slipped and she gritted her teeth, bracing herself to turn away from the looming cold rampart.

“What’s happening to her?” Another distant voice. Feminine, and Pam had to fight to remember why it set her heart to thumping. Mercy?

“Clear the space!”

Dawes heard a distant sweeping and several echoing thunks before ice broke over her. Her eyes snapped open, chest heaving as she gasped in rapid shallow breaths. Her eyelashes dripped, and her hair sat plastered against her forehead. Her arms flailed, catching something bony, eyes zipping back and forth as panic operated her motions. 

Eventually she managed to focus on the person in front of her, gripping her shoulders and meeting her gaze with an uncomfortable intensity. A small, olive skinned woman with a sheet of oily black hair and frenzied eyes stood there. Alex. Her breathing calmed.

“She’s okay.” Alex released her, collapsing back in a chair and rubbing at her ribs from where Pam had punched her. “Jesus. She’s okay.”

Pam looked around, the once dim light of the library now piercingly bright against her eyes, throbbing in time with the migraine now growing behind her eyes and around her temples. The silence that once consoled her now replaced by the high whine of the electricity coursing through the lightbulbs, grating heavily at her senses.

“What happened?” Her voice came out as a wavering rasp, as though she’d been screaming.

Her heart began thrumming anew when she took in Darlington’s trembling hand as he raked his fingers through his hair, took in Mercy’s pale face, eyes widened no longer in wonder but fear.

“You froze for like five minutes.” It was Mercy who spoke. “We thought you were just unravelling the spell, but then you started... whining. You went pale and started shaking...”

“I threw water on you.” Alex added.

Pam looked down at herself and across the table they sat around, and indeed saw splattered water there, pooling and dripping from the table. Cubes of ice melting in the small puddles. Alarm coursed through her.

“The books!” She leapt to her feet, fighting against the sharp pain at her temples and looking around for the stacks, and at last Darlington loosed an uneasy chuckle.

“She’s fine.”

Dawes continued looking for the books, found them piled haphazardly on the floor between Darlington and Mercy as though they swept them away from the incoming watery attack. Pages lay creased and torn, spines cracked and covers wedged open. She narrowed her eyes.

“What happened?” Alex asked, still watching her with a cautious eye.

Dawes whirled on her, heat flooding her cheeks again as quivering rage flooded through her. Rage she struggled to put a damper on.

“This is exactly why you don’t just start snorting everything you find in the armoury. I said it’s not safe! We don’t know how it’s going to react to most people, we don’t know how it’s going to react to the damned curse put on me! We don’t know and we can’t all just hope for the best!”

Darlington leapt to his feet and planted himself in front of Pam, taking her shoulders in his hands.

“Pam, you need to calm down. This isn’t Alex’s fault, we all thought it was a good idea.” Dawes wrestled from his hateful grasp, shoving him from her.

“Don’t touch me!” She yelled, burning tears dribbling pathetically from her eyes.  “You endorsed this half-cocked idea with no idea of the consequences. We haven’t so much as identified the curse on me, and you want to poke at it with untested stimulants?”

A shimmer of gold flashed across Darlington’s eyes, his features gaining a hellish sharpness before he stilled, visibly calming himself. The barely leashed demon fading back into dormancy. Tightly shackled beneath his skin.

Pam’s chest heaved as she stared him down and flinched at the tugging sensation on her hoodie sleeve. Mercy stood there, face drawn and sincere. In her other hand she clutched Dawes’s headphones and a swathe of turquoise fabric. Pam’s cheeks flamed as she recognised her sensory body sock. Mercy must have rummaged through her bag to find it. Pam didn’t know how she’d have known she needed one, or that she had one- much less that she kept it with her.

Pam froze, then swiped it from her, turning on her heel to leave before she could say anything more she would regret. 

∴

An hour and a half later, Dawes fought the tide of embarrassment that surged up towards her after recovering from her outburst. It had been a long time since she’d been so overwhelmed that she’d cried and shouted in front of her friends. So long since she’d been in any situation that would grate against her senses to a point where she couldn’t stand it. As much as she knew that moments of overwhelm were... normal, and that the heightened state the Archive put her in had definitely aggravated her further, she still couldn’t help the guilt that coiled around her stomach for the way she’d acted. Neither Darlington nor Alex had seen her that way before and it rubbed her the wrong way that they had now, and for Mercy to have seen her outburst- humiliation sat thick in her throat.

She’d locked herself away in the parlour, shuttering the windows and darkening the lights when even the dimmest settings strained her eyes, and had clamped her headphones over her ears to gently soothe her with the soft, echoing melodies of Morrisey and his lilting tones.

She could still feel the effects of the Archive in her system, the sensation of reawakening still thrumming across her skin and firing her synapses. Sure, she felt as though researching while under this effect would be inanely easy, but she certainly didn’t feel in the apt state to do so.

 It was thanks to the Archive that it had taken her so long to try and soothe herself. As much as she’d wished she could simply calm down, there was nought to do but endure the flood of emotions as they rose and wait for those surging feelings to eventually, gradually, abate.

She’d had little to do while calming herself but go over all she’d seen during her ‘trip’. The looming blockade of adamant that threatened to pull her inwards. The minute crack that had appeared between two bricks.  Under better circumstances, Dawes might have considered the weakening of the wall, however small, to have been a good sign- or at least an indicator of what could help in eventually tearing it down. 

She could feel the barrier now in her mind, the cold, icy wall almost a tangible thing that she could not perceive beforehand. Perhaps the part of the curse that had made it invisible to her had been shattered, the illusion broken. She no longer felt that deadly pull towards it though, the immediacy of being forced up against the wall lessened now that she was no longer scrutinising the inside of her mind from under a microscope. 

With the modicum of quiet came a moment of realisation. In her blind panic, she hadn’t noticed any defining features within the wall. Now, as she recalled the image, she was certain. It was not the massive expanse of plain black brick that she thought it was. In the base, a perfectly symmetrical black double door stood in its foundation, almost indistinguishable from the black slabs that framed it. Each half was magnificently engraved with five ornate panels in neo-renaissance style, the centre of each holding a raised, carved rose. Above the top of the door, its top panel was carved in almost an art-deco style, divided into five vertical segments, and carved to almost resemble scales.

More than she was surprised to see the door there, she was perplexed to recognise it. She knew she’d seen it before, but much like many things recently- she had no idea where she’d have seen it. She let out a grunt of frustration and looked around the darkened parlour for pen and paper, swiping a notepad that waited perpetually on the coffee table. 

Dawes had never been much of an artist. Her drawings for her tarot cards had required unending hours of meticulous planning, and her sketches in general held no promise. The same could be said of the crudely drawn door that took shape on the notebook she cradled in her lap. She decided it didn’t matter, as she detangled herself from her sensory sock and took off her headphones. She couldn’t hear the others in the house, but headed to the library to search them out.

She took in a deep breath as the familiar waft of warm, orange-blossom scented air that met her as she swung open the library door, but stopped in her tracks as she came in to view of the reading tables.

Alex and Darlington were nowhere to be seen, but Mercy sat at the same table, the numerous books around her divvied into three piles, and as Dawes stood and watched, Mercy flipped rapidly through the last pages of the book in front of her, finished it, and placed it on the tallest of the three piles. As she set it aside, she looked up towards Pam who continued to loiter in the shadows.

“You gonna come sit?” She asked, eyes still shiny and largely pupil. 

Dawes’s cheeks flamed, but she crossed the room and sat back in her old, vacated seat and fiddled with a hangnail. Mercy slid another book from the second tallest pile and flipped it open in front of her, rapidly scanning the contents just like the previous one.

“I never knew all this magic stuff could have such wicked perks.” She said, motioning to the tallest and shortest pile, which only had three books on it.

“Wicked?” Pam asked, curiosity and amusement lifting her eyes to meet Mercy’s.

She grinned in response. “Experimenting with British slang. It was either wicked or bully . Or maybe wizard next time?”

“Wicked is better for sure.”

Mercy nodded her agreement. “Alex got a call from the Praetor and had to run off. Darlington’s... I’m not sure. Elsewhere.”

“Why did you stay?”

Mercy cocked her head. “We still need to break the curse on you, and these books needed trawling through. If it’s a progressive curse as we suspect, time is a crucial factor. Plus, I’m the best for the job right now.”

Dawes nodded, looking towards the pile of discarded books.

“Are you feeling any better?” Mercy asked, voice softer now. An expression of concern crossed her features- only slightly ruined by the high glaze in her eyes.

Dawes nodded again, dropping her gaze to her hands splayed on the table. “A bit. How did you...” She let the sentence trail off, thinking better of asking. From the corner of her eye, she watched Mercy as she closed the book back again and turned her full attention to her.

“One of my cousins. I used to babysit him a lot, and I know what a meltdown looks like. I know how to help manage one.” A pregnant pause settled over the two of them and Pam fidgeted under her appraisal. "I won’t say anything further if you don’t want. Not to the other two either.”

“Thank you.” She said, bobbing her head sharply in a spasm of a nod. “I just- I can’t... I don’t like getting overstimulated around other people.”

“The Archive most likely wasn’t the brightest of ideas then.”

“Right.”

“I should apologise for that too, really. I felt fine but everybody reacts differently. That’s my fault, and even though I said nobody would pressure you, I kinda feel like I did exactly that.”

“I mean- Everybody had the same idea. We all hoped it would help.”

“Alex feels terrible, by the way. She didn’t say it, but I can tell. It was all over her face.”

Pam blinked. “I’ll speak with her. I should apologise to them both.”

“No apologies needed, Pammie.” Darlington’s dulcet baritone sounded from behind her and he crossed the room to come sit besides them both. “We were reckless, and you had several good reasons for not wanting to... experiment.” He crossed a long leg over the other, resting an ankle on his knee as he sank back into the stiff-backed chair. 

Dawes envied the endless ease with which he always manoeuvred his body. The suave Gentleman of Lethe. Pam looked over at Mercy and caught the soft way she watched him.

“What’s that?” He asked, gesturing to the scribbled drawing of the door still in front of Dawes, forgotten on the spiral bound notepad. 

“Oh. I saw this in the cursed-wall I saw. In my mind,” She passed it over to him, and watched in surprise as his eyebrows leapt up his forehead.

“This door? You saw this exact door in your mind?”

“Yes. Why?”

“You don’t recognise it?” A pause of consideration, “No, of course you wouldn’t, those bastards would erase it from your memories.”

“Are you going to stop being cryptic any time soon?” Mercy said with a dramatic roll of her eyes.

“Sorry. This is a tomb.” He prompted. “On the corner of Whitney and Trumbull.”

He paused and when Pam showed no signs of recognition, he sighed.

“It’s Berzelius.”