It irritated me that Lucia hadn’t told me this. I reminded myself that she was busy and said, “Unless there’s some similarity we just haven’t seen yet.”
“I’m certain some Warden or other is busy digging deeper into the mystery,” Harriet said. “There has to be some reason those targets were chosen. The ones that aren’t named Neutralities, I mean. It’s obvious the invaders would want to deny those to the Wardens.”
I recalled what the oracle had said about ‘guardians’ and wondered, not for the first time, if that had a literal meaning in addition to the metaphorical one. “Have either of you ever heard the named Neutralities referred to as guardians?” I asked.
Harriet’s brow furrowed. “What makes you say that?”
“It was something the oracle said. The other custodians said it was because the named Neutralities are like mascots for all of magery, but I wondered if it might mean something more. I guess it’s because the oracle is cryptic, but it never says anything unimportant.”
Harry rubbed his nose with one long, bony finger. “Interesting,” he said. “There are lots of theories about why the named Neutralities are even a thing—you’ve never heard those?”
I shook my head. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“Well, there’s really no reason for the named Neutralities to exist. There’s a whole chapter in A History of Magic about them, but it’s all nonsense as far as I’m concerned. Not all nonsense, I suppose—the book does point out that as far as any glass magic is concerned, they’re all just really big nodes. No magic has ever revealed how they work or why they even exist. And they resist being investigated.”
He chuckled. “When Harriet and I were kids, there was some Warden or other who attempted to discover what made the Labyrinth work. She and Iakkhos got into a huge fight about it, and Iakkhos finally said if she was so hot on the subject, she could take her chances with the Neutrality. She went into the Labyrinth and came out five months later, after everyone believed she was dead. She claimed it had only been three days and that’s all she would say on the matter.”
“I know Abernathy’s can’t be inventoried, or it would destroy the oracle,” I said. “But I don’t know if it’s ever taken direct action to stop that happening. There’s always been a custodian to prevent it. Even when Silas had to move the store—”
I stopped, struck by a thought. “Abernathy’s didn’t take its node with it, right? It moved from one node to another. Rebecca Greenough is custodian of that Neutrality in London.”
Harriet nodded. “You look like you’ve had a revelation, dear.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s more a thought. If the oracle is independent of its node—oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. I just had an image of the oracle as a lightbulb that could be screwed into any socket. And if that’s true for the oracle, it might be true for the other named Neutralities. So the attack on Abernathy’s and on Berryton wasn’t on the node, it was on the Neutrality.”
Harry and Harriet had politely confused looks on their faces, but Malcolm said, “You mean there must be something about Barga and Kalgoorlie that has nothing to do with their nodes.”
“Maybe it was who the custodian was, or what the Neutrality produces, or—”
“Lucia probably knows this already,” Malcolm said, “but you should call her anyway.”
“That sounds like you’re ready to go,” Harriet said with a laugh. “Let me get you some cheesecake to take with you. There’s always far more than Harry and I can eat.”
“Far more than you’ll let me eat, you mean,” Harry grumbled.
Cheesecake box in hand, we got in Malcolm’s Mustang, and I called Lucia as Malcolm navigated the driveway in reverse and headed for home. I left her a message I hoped was intelligible without being too wordy and hung up. “Now that I’ve said it twice, it doesn’t seem like much of a breakthrough,” I said.
“Possibly. I mentioned they’ve already eliminated the obvious qualities, like geography and population, but I don’t know that anyone’s examined the purely practical output of the node. Or the possibility that it might be the custodians the invaders intended to eliminate.”
“That hits a little too close to home, Malcolm.”
“Sorry.” He rested his hand briefly on mine. “You’re speaking with the other custodians tonight?”
“At midnight again. It’s going to be another late night. You’re sure the work on Abernathy’s won’t be finished tomorrow?”
“The store is scheduled to reopen Monday morning. We can both sleep in tomorrow to our heart’s content.”
I smiled. “That sounds lovely. Then we could have a picnic and go to an afternoon movie, just like ordinary people who never have to work Saturdays from ten until six.”
“I like the sound of that. Though—” He laughed. “I admit ten years ago I would have hated the idea. Of course, ten years ago I was in the Navy and a thrill-seeker. A picnic was something we guys did to impress girls we wanted to sleep with.”
“That still works, you know. I never realized how sexy it is to watch a man doing dishes of his own free will.”
Malcolm roared with laughter. “Did you just tell me that so I’ll do the dishes all the time?”
“No. Maybe. Did it work?”
“You’ll find out tomorrow.” He winked, making me laugh.
When we got home, Malcolm disappeared into the office to do finances, something he enjoyed more than I did, and I got into my pajamas and curled up with Old Tin Sorrows for a few chapters. More than that was too much to take; the story had grown more intense, and I couldn’t guess who the villain was. Maybe that was what the oracle was trying to tell me—that the true villains were hiding in plain sight, and I lacked the understanding to identify them. The idea that more humans might be behind the attacks filled me with horror. The Wardens had eliminated the Mercy as a serious threat, but they’d never eradicated every single member, and while it was unlikely that any of those who remained were leaders, maybe that just meant some people had gotten major promotions.
I went downstairs and made hot chocolate, maybe a little weird on a warm night like this, and took a mug to Malcolm. He accepted it with a smile, and I sat near him and enjoyed my own drink in companionable silence. “I’m almost done,” he said. “We could watch a movie until midnight.”
“That would be nice. Something funny. Something without death in it.”
We settled on My Favorite Wife and cuddled together on the couch while Cary Grant made a fool of himself trying to avoid telling Gail Patrick his long-missing first wife had come back. Back in the days when we’d done this in the apartment over the store, movies had usually ended with the two of us taking each other’s clothes off and occasionally making it as far as the bedroom. Now, I felt so content, lying there in my husband’s arms, I didn’t need sex to bring us close together.
“Remember what I said about the man I was ten years ago?” Malcolm murmured. “He had no idea what waited in his future. And he wouldn’t have appreciated it if he knew.”