The Key

Chapter 29

It isn’t often Dan enters his parents’ chambers, but that is the meeting place of the night. Mary already waits for them in the sitting room, a line of hot drinks on the low table and not a servant in sight. Midnight in early May is still chilly, and Dan becomes aware of his cold hands for the first time in hours.

Rather than sitting next to Mary on their couch, King John takes the letter to a side table and begins to pull out spell ingredients from drawers. Understanding his intent, Dan joins him. The spell is a simple one, crafted for even the use of the talentless, and it crackles oddly over the paper.

“Traces of magic inside,” Dan reports for Bobby and Mary’s benefit. “Doesn’t look like a spell, though, more like a magic item.”

“More like magic ink,” King John corrects, indicating the pattern of lines shining through the paper.

They join Mary and Bobby. Dan picks back up his tea to better warm his hands. King John breaks the seal and removes the paper inside.

Frowning, Dan scoots to perch at the edge of his seat. “Is that…?”

“Blood,” Bobby confirms.

“Why would angels write in blood?” Mary asks Dan, who has become the assumed expert through sheer proximity.

Dan shakes his head, having no idea. Having maybe the hint of an idea. He stoppers his mouth with hot bitterness, no trace of honey in his tea.

“That explains where the magic’s coming from,” Bobby says. “Magic creature, magic blood.”

“Dad, is that written on your letter?”

King John nods, eyes already scanning the pages. He holds them up as he reads, and Dan can see the original missive on the back, set in the normalcy of ink. The angel’s reply is made across the entirety of the other side.

“Archangel Raphael thanks us for the discovery of Lucifer’s spy, and alerts us that we are in possession of stolen property best returned to them,” King John summarizes. “He offers nothing concrete in return.”

“He sent us some angel’s blood,” Bobby says. “Could be intimidation, could be a show of power. Could even be an offer, if the blood can be used against them.”

“He also guesses that Lucifer is currently unconscious,” King John continues. “Depending on how close Casper was to him, Lucifer could be unconscious for days or months, but no longer than half a year. He would have been sent directly away from the sigil, and the distance between the casting site and the landing site will show the severity of the spell. Archangel Raphael offers their aid in destroying Lucifer as ‘a gesture of good will’ but reminds us that their stolen property must be returned first.”

“So they really do need that tablet to break themselves out,” Dan concludes.

The rest of the letter is much the same: a long, staunch refusal to admit any wrongdoing. In several spots, they explain why they are free from any wrongdoing without so much as acknowledging the accusation. It concludes with a request to return Seraph Casper’s body to them for proper funeral rites.

“They’ll think we’re keeping him prisoner when we can’t return the body,” Mary predicts.

“If they know so much about that blood sigil Casper used, they have to know his body is missing,” Bobby adds, slow and musing. “That’ll be a pretense to claim we’re the ones who won’t cooperate.”

“So if Lucifer got blasted one way from the sigil, Casper went the other way,” Dan reasons. “Tomorrow morning, we grab a compass, head up to the tower, and see what’s what before sending out search parties. Anyone who sees an unconscious man with wings isn’t going to keep their mouth shut about it. If Casper’s wings did burn off when he… after, then we’re still talking about a body with a sigil carved into it. Unless they both landed in the middle of the woods somewhere, someone’s bound to spot them.”

“Everyone in the maze tonight already has a warded jacket,” Bobby says. “They can be the first search parties, easy enough.”

“We find Lucifer and ward him securely before he wakes,” King John decides for the kingdom, for the world. He turns to his wife. “Mary.”

“I’ve written down as much of the immediate forecast as I can scry from here,” Mary replies. “If demons start swarming in that range, we’ll know the omens for what they are.”

King John nods in approval, but Mary continues.

“Once we know which direction Lucifer was blown in, I’m heading that way,” she says.

“No,” John says immediately.

“If he fell outside my range–”

“I don’t care,” John says.

“You should,” Mary tells him. “I don’t care if he is an archangel. He hurt my boys, and I am going to find him.”

“We’ll discuss this later,” John says. “Dan, here.” And he hands Dan an envelope in a clear method of distraction.

For Dan, at least, it works immediately. The seal is already broken, and the words For Prince Dan have been added in blood beneath For Casper’s siblings . The envelope itself is coming apart at the seams, and when Dan opens it, the cause immediately becomes clear: the inside of the envelope was used as a second sheet of paper.

The first part of the reply is on the back of Dan’s letter. His condolences. His questions. The answering handwriting is less like a man’s or a woman’s, and more like a stone mason’s.

To What are the names of his siblings, alive and dead? they answered We are Seraphim Hannah and Balthazar. Our fallen siblings are Uriel and Seraph Anna.

Dan had written, He learned something here he said he would teach you. Do you know what it was?

They answered, He taught us to dance.

Dead had written, Whose belt was he wearing?

She answered, Mine, Hannah’s.

Dan had written, Whose idea were the ribbons?

The confusing answer, in a different handwriting: I, Balthazar, did you that favor. Below this, in the original hand: It was only in jest, to embarrass him.

The truest answer is the flurry of questions they ask in return. Was Casper able to fly before he met his end? Did Casper leave a message for them? How did Casper learn of Uriel’s betrayal? These, and more.

It is a long list of questions to be written in blood, and the handwriting grows cramped as it extends onto the inside of the envelope. The use of space was economical to begin with, and the legibility fades slightly. Blood doesn’t set as the best ink, forcing the letters larger.

Dan looks at the letters. At reused paper and words set in blood. He looks at these, and all he sees is the uncertain look in Cas’ eyes as, down in the vault, he reached furtive fingers toward more paper. Cas’ uncomprehending stare when Dan promised he was welcome to use as much as he wanted.

He’d said they couldn’t afford paper. He’d said…

“They don’t have ink or paper,” Dan says, first to himself, then to the room. “They don’t have anything.”

The paper. His clothes, well-preserved but old, and borrowed besides. The utter lack of adornment.

That much was true.

“Dan?” Mary asks.

“Does this look like what someone does when they have paper?” Dan asks, gesturing wide. “You’d think they’d at least want to keep Dad’s letter. Sending mine back, fine, but Dad’s? That’s bad record-keeping, especially for people who carve s**t into stone.”

“Could’ve carved a copy over there,” Bobby points out, but he sounds doubtful.

“What else does it say?” King John asks.

“It’s about twenty variations on ‘how did he die’,” Dan answers, skimming back down the painful list until the questions stop. He reads on and has to stop. “And…” He clears his throat and refuses to blink. He’s got nothing that needs blinking back. “They’re asking for his body back, too.”

Both John and Mary hold out their hands for the letter. Dan hands it to Mary, ostensibly because she’s closer. They read. Mary’s mouth tightens into a thin line. King John’s eyes harden before he orders, “Don’t let this sway you.”

“Of course not,” Dan answers. He holds out his hand and Mary passes him back the letter and reused envelope. “I should get to bed. Got an archangel to track down in the morning.”

Mary rises. “I’ll walk with you.”

“Mom.”

“I’ll walk with you,” she repeats.

Folding his letter up, Dan bids Bobby and King John goodnight. Outside the door, he flinches a smile at Jo, who nods back. She stays in place, as she must, but Dan would take her over Mary right now.

As they take the very short walk to Dan’s room, Mary asks, “Have you been back in since this afternoon?”

Distantly, Dan knows he changed clothes and showered at some point today. He has no idea when. “Think it was before lunch,” he says, as if he knows whether he ate lunch today. He might have. He’s not sure.

Mary nods, relief painting her features a slightly deeper color than stricken pale. “Good,” she says. “I didn’t want you to be surprised.”

Dan stops walking. Two steps later, Mary also stops. She turns back to him, more resignation than fear in her face.

“What’s in my room?” Dan asks, exhausted beyond all measure.

“A servant found your mask and his in the courtyard,” Mary says. “Both of them are on your desk.”

Dan is holding a letter written in the blood of a dead man’s siblings. He is standing in the hallway of the royal apartments, staring at his mother, holding a letter written in angel blood.

“Do you want me to take it away?” Mary asks.

Wordlessly, Dan picks up his pace back to his rooms. He enters without even noticing who’s on guard duty outside his door tonight, just another stupid, idiotic failing, but he can’t stop. He can’t stop messing up. His mother follows him in, closes the door, and follows him farther, all the way into his bedroom.

The masks are there, silver horns next to jet black feathers.

Dan turns around to leave, but Mary’s in his way and she misunderstands. Or maybe she knows and out-stubborns him anyway, holding him tight until the need to flee lessens. He holds her back, a strong clench of the arms that can’t be as painful as the rest of him. As the rest of everything.

“Mom, I,” he starts to say, tries to say, and then he’s crying.

“I know,” she says, even though she doesn’t. “I know,” she keeps saying, petting his hair, tacit permission for him to bury his face in her shoulder.

She holds him and holds him and holds him. When he tries to pull back, she holds him even tighter.

“I need to put this down,” Dan says, not sure how much he can crumple the letter before the blood flakes off. She lets go of him then, and Dan promptly puts his foot in it, shoving at the tension with the poor joke of, “How much of that hug was Sammy’s?”

Mary wipes at her own eyes before she sighs. “If I couldn’t hold either of my boys, I don’t know what I would do,” she says honestly, too honestly.

“Sam’s gonna be fine,” Dan says, and he puts the letter next to Cas’ mask. The feathers gleam in the magelight, and Dan doesn’t touch them.

“There’s a trundle bed in his room now,” Mary says.

“He and Jess aren’t meant to be sharing a bed yet,” Dan agrees, like that’s what she’s talking about. “Good compromise.”

In a moment of extreme hypocrisy, Mary rolls her eyes the exact way Dan and Sam—but mostly Sam—aren’t meant to do in public. “They could use a chaperon, if you’re up for it.” She takes him by the wrist and draws him away from the desk. “I’ll tell Bobby where you are. For tomorrow.”

Compass measurements in the observatory, right. Because Dan’s the only one who knows where Lucifer was standing. Where Cas was slumped, legs sprawled, wings ruined.

“Give me a minute,” Dan says.

“All right,” Mary says. “Just don’t stay in here alone tonight.”

“I’ll be looking out for Sam, don’t you worry,” Dan says.

She gives him that look she gives their dad too often, the one where she’s picking her battles. She hugs him again, and this time, he hugs her back too long.

“Go up to the tower with Bobby early tomorrow,” Mary tells him when she pulls away. “It’s going to rain.”

As she heads out, he makes a show of going for his sleeping clothes. He takes clothes for tomorrow and adds them to the small pile. Once he hears the door to the hall close, he forces himself to brave the desk.

Entirely aware that he’s punishing himself, entirely aware that he deserves it, he rereads the last of the letter.

Having only each other left, we ask you together: return him to us. Send his body back. Let the ash of his wings lie where it fell. Let it blow away and allow him to fly his last. If the ash fell upon a human’s skin or clothing, we ask that human to wear it until it falls, and not to wash it away.

If his blade did not die with him, keep it. Our arms are full, and with the way Casper spoke of you, it would have become yours in due time.

If you would honor his passing, honor his mission. Return him with the tablet, or both of our brothers will have died traitors in Archangel Raphael’s eyes.

They who share his light,

Seraphim Hannah and Balthazar

For all the first paragraph is obviously sincere, Dan knows a guilt trip when he sees it. He’s not sure what they mean about their arms being full, but he’s certain the bit about Cas’ blade is bullshit. Even just telling Dan that Cas would have pledged his sword to him is a bribe.

Touching the hilt of Michael’s sword, Dan continues to reread the letter. For the more innocuous questions, he formulates answers. Sitting, staring at blood-marked paper, he doesn’t write, merely thinks. His mind turns over with his stomach, and he blames the taste in his mouth on bitter tea.

Watching him with empty eyes, Cas’ mask sits on his desk. Dan stares back.

Much too long later, he slams his chair back. He stands. He leaves. He stops, returns for his clothing, and leaves again.

The next time he stands still, he’s in Sam’s sitting room. He stops to breathe. He stops to look calm. Clothing in a bundle under his arm, he knocks on the bedroom door. It’s after one in the morning, maybe closer to two, but Jess calls him in by name anyway, awake between first and second sleep.

“Hey,” he says, entering, wondering what’s so distinct about his knock. Or, maybe, of the few people allowed past the guard at the door, Dan’s the only one likely to show, this time of night. He doesn’t ask.

“He sat up on his own earlier,” Jess tells him from the trundle bed. She gets up and moves onto the bed. Immediately, Sam shifts, but he doesn’t manage to roll over. When she tucks herself up behind him, Sam settles down, even with the blanket barrier.

“Waiting for your chaperon, huh?” Dan asks. Jess smiles at him over her shoulder, still with more fear than joy.

Dan changes clothing in the bathroom. When he slides the sheathed archangel blade beneath the trundle bed pillow, he expects to get a whiff of that flowery perfume or shampoo Jess uses, but all he smells is clean linens. He flips over the pillow anyway before settling down for the night.

They lie there, breathing, listening to Sam breathe.

“They want Cas’ body back,” Dan says into the dark. “His siblings.” Even through the pillow, the blade is hard against the back of his head. “They’re who he said they were. Y’know, not human, but. He never actually specified.”

“I’m sorry,” Jess says, quiet sounds to fill the air.

“Yeah,” Dan says, and they go to sleep.

“He was in front of you here,” Bobby says, pointing.

Dan nods, looking down. He presses his back against the observatory tower door, against the sigil now painted over his botched carving. “A little bit more forward. Yeah. I think that’s where his feet were.”

Bobby leans down and marks the spot with chalk. He turns around and looks at the broken stone slabs behind him. There are three main cracks, two side by side, the third a few feet away. With the wreckage of the glass and the telescopes removed, those broken stones are all that remain from the fight. In preparation for an entirely new glass dome, even the remains of the old one have already been stripped away. Probably couldn’t risk having broken glass falling into the courtyard below.

If anything had remained of either one of the angels after Cas’ spell, Dan and Bobby wouldn’t need to be sketching out their best guesses up here. Blood would have done the trick, once kept in a vial, or maybe a feather or two; anything intrinsic to the body will work for one of Victor’s tracking spells. But whatever blasted them away, blasted all of them away, and so estimating the direction of that blast is all they have to go on.

“What made this?” Bobby asks, pointing to the broken stone slabs and eyeing Dan more warily than he ought. “Hard landing?”

“No,” Dan says, shaking his head. “He was, uh. He got forced down. To his knees. There.”

Bobby looks, craning his head as he pieces together the positions. “And a blow went through him hard enough to c***k the stone under him.” When Dan says nothing, Bobby points to the third break. “He get to kneeling there, too? The one knee, by the looks of it.”

“That was his head,” Dan says, and Bobby looks to him with a face like grief’s exasperated cousin.

“Still not as hard as yours,” Bobby says after that one moment of gaping. “So where was he when he set off that spell?”

Leaning against the door, Dan tries to picture it. The breeze doesn’t bite. The sun shines fitfully against the growing clouds. The air still smells the same, the threat of rain where there’s so much more to threaten.

“He was on the floor,” Dan says. He swallows and points. He directs Bobby closer, and then slightly to the side. “Yeah, I’d say his chest was around there.”

Bobby marks this estimate down in chalk before pulling out a compass. He takes his time while he takes his notes. Downstairs, they’ll extrapolate from the directions. Draw out a pair of long triangles on a map, one for Lucifer and one for Cas’ body. The search will begin, and people who aren’t Dan will leave to clean up Dan’s mistake.

Once Bobby finishes, he stands, groaning at his own knees. “Give me a hand here?”

Dan gives him a hand and immediately discovers that groaning as the ploy it was. Bobby tugs him in tight. Bobby holds him hard.

“I proposed to a security breach,” Dan says.

“Fool thing to do, but I ain’t telling,” Bobby answers. He pulls back but claps Dan on the shoulder. “Sam and Jo’ll keep their mouths shut, too.”

“Servants heard me,” Dan says. “Some of the musicians, too.”

Bobby sighs, too light a huff compared to the berating Dan deserves. “They don’t know he was a security breach.”

“Dad knows,” Dan says. “And they’ll talk. It’ll… I think it was already circulating last night.” All the condolences. All those people waiting for him to break, looking at each other every time he said Cas’ name.

Bobby looks at him with Sam levels of tiredness. “Well,” he says, “what’d he say?”

“Dad?” Dan asks.

“No, idjit, your security breach fiance,” Bobby corrects. “He break and tell you the truth at all?”

Dan shrugs, hands deep in his pockets. “He figured out Nick was Lucifer, stole my sword, and ran off. So… Yes?”

“You let him steal your sword?”

“I was pissed off,” Dan says, which is no excuse.

Giving him the look to end all looks, Bobby makes a grab for the angel blade.

Dan blocks him, easy.

“At least you learn from your mistakes,” Bobby says. He looks back over his shoulder, taking in the cracks and indents Cas left. “Besides, I get the feeling he’d have had it off you even if you were paying attention.”

If that’s meant to make Dan feel any better, it doesn’t work. Dan’s been physically outmatched enough that it doesn’t bruise his ego, not anymore. But being outmatched and never even realizing? Seeing only a bookish man with a rough past? Cas had been someone Dan could have protected, someone who could have needed Dan to protect him.

Seraph Casper is someone else entirely. Was someone else. Some thing else.

“Good thing you never took the tablet out of that box for him,” Bobby adds, another gruff attempt to bolster Dan.

Except.

“I did,” Dan says.

Bobby stares at him. “You what?”

“He could have had it off me,” Dan realizes. “Right then.”

“Would have blown his cover,” Bobby says.

“The tablet’s the only thing they’re asking for,” Dan says. “Besides, uh, besides his body back, that’s the one thing. He could have grabbed it, and I wouldn’t have known how to stop him.” If Cas had used an ounce of sense, he’d never have told Dan about the angel warding. He shouldn’t have explained the blade, either. There’s so much Cas shouldn’t have told him, so many things it makes no sense for Cas to have told him.

The i***t even used his own damn name. Who does that?

“He did talk you into sending it over,” Bobby points out. “Didn’t exactly need to use force at that point.”

“Maybe,” Dan says.

They leave the discussion on the broken tower, and as they close the warded door behind them, it begins to rain.

Parliament and King John jointly draft a reply by six o’clock. King John reviews Dan’s answering letter as well, and he censors only two of Dan’s responses to Hannah and Balthazar’s questions.

The drive of Dan’s questions tonight are in line with King John’s, and it’s hoped that the supposedly more “open” line of communication between Dan and the two seraphim will yield the answers Archangel Raphael won’t.

This time, they also send a writing kit. It doesn’t compare to the one Dan had planned to give to Cas, but then, it doesn’t need to.

In return, Dan receives a letter written in ink, in Hannah’s hand. Tonight, she skips straight to the point.

If Casper used the sigil you described, his body should be there. The angel activating that sigil should be unaffected. This has always been the case when the sigil is drawn on another surface. Casper cutting it into himself may have negated that protection, or increased the power of the sigil past the point of that protection.

To our knowledge, no one else has ever done as Casper has. We are as without a frame of reference as you are. Please, find him. Archangel Raphael will send no representative until we can see my brother is dead and not merely your prisoner. No matter what condition you find him in, return him to us.

Balthazar has a few choice words after that, all of them dripping with both aggression and sarcasm. Indignation carries Dan through before the pain of truth can bite too deeply.

After begrudgingly showing it to his father, he puts the letter away with the first. He hides them in his desk drawer. Atop the desk, Cas’ mask watches over them.

Tonight, Dan touches it. The sleek feathers. The worn strap, made of a bootlace. The mask’s structure is more dependent upon the feathers themselves than the cloth holding them together. He turns it over and over in his hands until he’s sure.

He restrains himself from running out into the night. It can wait until morning, until it’s light out.

Putting the mask down, forcing himself to put the mask down, he gathers up his clothes. He spends the third night in a row in his little brother’s bedroom, and this time when Dan enters, Sam wakes up.

“Hey,” Sam says, Jess already in bed with him. The trundle bed has still been left out, though.

“You know you’re not supposed to be doing that yet, right?” Dan whispers, closing the door behind him.

“You know we’re getting married in five days, right?” Sam counters.

“You know you’re loud?” Jess groans, shoving her head under a pillow. Then she lifts back up the pillow to say, “And if Dan’s back, it’s in four days. It’s after midnight.”

Dan changes in the bathroom while they mutter to each other about calendars and wedding plans. When he settles down into the trundle, he interrupts them with the good news.

“I have Cas’ mask, and I’m pretty sure he made it with his own feathers.”

Jess rolls over to frown at Dan through the dark, but Sam sits up. He promptly sways and lies back down, but the speed of the motion is promising.

“You can use a tracking spell,” Sam says.

“Yeah,” Dan says, heart pounding while he lies still, looking up at the ceiling. “Gonna grab Victor in the morning, have him haul out his specialty.”

When it comes down to it, sympathetic magic is tricky stuff. Most magic not tied to a mage’s innate gifts is. Sure, there are spell formulas that are easy enough to follow, but tracking spells are, by their very nature, personalized. Ungifted or not, Victor’s found people with blood and hair before. There was a memorable time with a child’s milk teeth, and an even worse time with a man’s entire severed fingernail. By group consensus, nobody talks about that time with the intestines.

Feathers will be new.

“I’ve done feathers before,” Victor surprises him by saying. They’re in the knights’ communal space that has long since become Ash’s artificing studio, though this early in the day, Ash is nowhere to be seen. “Chicken thieves. Different species here, but it should be the same principle. What are the parameters?”

“Dead angel,” Dan says, trying to shrug.

“Besides that, Prince,” Victor says.

“Dead angel to the north-northeast,” Dan says.

“So you don’t know his age or weight,” Victor concludes.

“At least seven hundred years,” Dan says, a number he’s still trying not to think about. “And light enough to fly.”

A headache visibly pinches Victor, and he pinches it back at the bridge of his nose. “That’s a place to start.”

“I’ll ask that tonight,” Dan says. “Don’t know how much lighter he’ll be without the wings.”

“Without the wings,” Victor echoes.

“They burn off when an angel dies,” Dan reminds him tersely, because this is supposed to be common knowledge. It’s been three days since Cas died.

“No, I know,” Victor says, eyes on the mask. “I’m wondering if that will change the tracking spell at all.”

“We’ve followed a vial of spilled blood to an exsanguinated body more than once,” Dan says.

“True, but tracing hair back to a bald man is surprisingly difficult.” Victor keeps on frowning, not that Dan expected anything different. “Feathers are closer to hair.”

“Try anyway,” Dan orders.

Victor sighs without sighing. “Would you prefer to watch, Highness, or should I find you when I get the spell to take?”

“I’ll watch,” Dan says.

To Victor’s credit, he’s at it for nearly three hours before he runs out of ideas.

“If I narrow the parameters for you,” Dan asks, “can you do it?”