Greek Revival: Chapter 11

XI.

The warm, golden sunlight of late afternoon was streaming through the windows of the little white house, and Ari and Damian were slathering themselves in a pungent mixture of fat, manure, and olive oil.

“Invisibility is fucking disgusting,” Damian said. Ari had re-translated the instructions three times to make sure they hadn’t misread, but unlike many of the spells they’d struggled with before, this one was remarkably straightforward. Mix three ingredients, albeit three truly gross ingredients, together until smooth, smear the paste all over your body, and pray to Helios.

“At least we know pretty much for sure what the ingredients are,” Ari said. “There’s really no mistaking this stuff. Although I do kind of wish we didn’t have to be naked for this.”

“If this doesn’t work, you’re dead to me, Ari,” he said, although the smile in his voice made the teasing obvious.

“If this doesn’t work, Hermes is a liar, which means we’ve got bigger problems.”

“Do you think the smell goes away when the magic happens?”

“Gosh, I hope so.” Ari carefully worked the mixture over their hands and between their fingers. “Alright, am I good? Do you see any spots I’ve missed?”

“Looks like you’ve got it all covered. God, I hate this so much. Do the fuckin’ prayer so we can shower.”

Ari glanced down at the magic words they’d copied down onto a notecard for easy reference. “Io, io, zizia lailam, o Helios anax, io, io. Me poiei aphaneis, o Helios anax, phrixrizo io.”

As soon as they had finished the last syllable, they felt a horrible, slimy, slithering sensation. “Ew, what?” they said. It felt as if the mixture on their skin was wrapping around them, sinking in, spreading itself, like something between a snake and a particularly fast-acting hand lotion. They shivered as a cool breeze seemed to whip up around them, although none of the many papers or flowers scattered around the house seemed disturbed. But the sensation lasted only a few seconds, and then it was over.

They handed the card to Damian, whose eye had gone wide and round and whose eyebrows were practically in his hair.

“Here,” they said, shaking the card at him.

“Holy shit, Ari,” he said. “Look at yourself.”

Ari looked at themself – or tried to – and saw Nico and Penny’s hardwood floors and one of the glossy ibises perched near them and the notecard with the invocation written on it. They did not see themself.

“This is so disorienting,” they said. “Quick, do the words, I want to see if it works for you too.”

Damian repeated after Ari, carefully following their phonetic English transcriptions, and Ari watched as he faded from view like a mirage. One moment his body was there, covered in a sticky pale brown paste, and then it seemed to warp the light around it until it shimmered and disappeared.

“Holy crap. That was so cool.”

“This is so cool.”

“Do we still smell bad?”

Ari heard a long sniff from the empty air where Damian had just been. “I don’t think so? Either that or I’ve gotten so used to it that I can’t tell anymore.”

“I don’t smell it either. Maybe we’re just good?”

“I still hate that we have to be naked for this.”

“Would you rather not be invisible?”

“Fair enough.”

Ari moved toward the kitchen table, edging around the birds. The glossy ibises didn’t seem to notice them, but the white ibis trained its gaze on them and tracked them across the room.

“How are you doing that?” they asked.

“Doing what?”

“Not you. The ibis. It can tell where I am.”

“I dunno,” Damian said. “Try being quiet.”

Ari tiptoed delicately across the room. The ibis watched every step.

“I’m telling you, these are magic birds,” Ari insisted. “It can still tell where I am. And Hermes asked it why it was a bird, remember?”

“I don’t remember anything Hermes did. And – wait, hang on.”

Ari heard Damian padding across the floor, and then they felt something poke their cheek.

“Is that your face?” Damian asked.

“Um. Yes.”

“The bird’s not fuckin’ magic. You’re just not completely invisible.”

“What?”

Damian poked their cheek again. “I can see your pupils.”

Ari searched the empty air for a few moments, training their eyes on where they thought Damian’s hand should be, then his arm, and following the unseen line of his neck and jaw until they got to where they figured his face was. It took time to notice, but once their eyes adjusted to the idea that there was a person there, they could see a single black dot hovering at Damian’s eye level.

“Dang,” they said. “I guess that makes sense. I… gosh, I really have no idea how light works. But I think we maybe wouldn’t be able to see if our pupils were invisible? Which would be kind of inconvenient.”

“D’you think that’s gonna get us in trouble?”

“I don’t know,” Ari admitted. “But I will say, even now that I know what to look for, it’s still really hard to find you. Hopefully anybody we want to sneak up on will be distracted enough that they won’t be looking for pupils.”

“What happens if you close your eyes?”

“I don’t know. Watch my pupils, I guess.”

Ari closed their eyes. They entertained, for a moment, the idea that they might be able to see through their eyelids, but the world was plunged into blackness, just like it usually was.

Woah, weird. I guess the paste was only on the outside of my eyelids and not on the inside, so that kind of makes sense, but still. Does this mean – how the heck does this work, then? Am I bending light around me? Or I guess it would be Helios doing it, but still. And I can’t bend light around the insides of my eyelids if there’s no light getting to them in the first place? But the Greeks probably didn’t even know how that worked, so it’s probably not working in any particular way other than magic. But clearly it follows rules, I think? I wish I had scientist friends.

“Great,” Damian said, and Ari opened their eyes. “So if it seems like someone’s about to notice us, we just close our eyes.”

Outside, the sky was fading into pale pinks and oranges. Poole was full of tall deciduous trees, which made sunset much shorter than it might have been in places with nothing but wide-open sky. It was easy to tell when the sun finally dipped below the tree line, because although the colors filtering in through the windows remained, the whole world dimmed as if someone had thrown a switch.

Damian reappeared, no longer covered in paste, but still decidedly naked.

Ari glanced down at themself. Their body, too, was visible again.

“What the hell?” Damian said.

Ari scanned their translation of the spell. “Helios, make me invisible until sunset,” they recited. “I guess that’s not metaphorical. Which kind of makes sense, since Helios would only be in charge of what is and isn’t visible while the sun is up.”

“Is there an invisibility prayer to whoever does the moon, then?”

“Artemis? There might be, but if there is, Hermes didn’t flag it as something we need.”

Damian swiped an experimental finger over his stomach and came away with nothing. He sniffed, then shook his head. “At least the smell’s gone. Are we sure Hermes is being totally up-front with us? I mean, he does have to steal my body every time we call him.”

“We can’t afford not to trust him. We don’t have time.”

“I guess. But we’ve still got a couple weeks.”

Ari examined Damian’s face. Wide eye. Chin peppered with the day’s stubble. The usual creases surrounded his eyes and mouth, but he didn’t look even half as worried as Ari felt.

He flicked an eyebrow up at them. “What?”

“How are you so chill? It’s September. I’m terrified. We don’t have much time.”

“I know. But we’ve got spells that work, assuming you’re right and we have to trust Hermes. We know who’s in the PGM and we know where they work and we know what they look like and we know how to protect ourselves from these fuckers. We know Nico’s – not safe, but not dead – until the equinox, unless Pryor is lying, but he’s got no reason to lie in his own notes. We know he’s not gonna hurt Penny, not when he worked so fucking hard to brainwash her in the first place.” Damian took a deep breath. “You remind me a lot of Nico. And I know how much it helps him to have someone be the chill one when he’s freaking out. That’s probably why he put up with me for all these years. That’s definitely why he and Penny are so great together. This is a scary-ass situation, I agree. But one of us has got to be the chill one.”

Ari nodded, but as they did so, they thought, Hard disagree. Neither of us should be the chill one. Both of us should be freaking the heck out. I never thought I’d miss the crazy guy who threatened me in an alley with a knife, but at least he had a sense of urgency. I feel like I really shouldn’t be more invested in this rescue mission than he is.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” they asked.

Damian smiled, the grin that made Ari think of a goofy puppy still growing into itself. “I’m sure,” he said.

Or maybe I’m just overthinking this? Probably I’m just overthinking this. That does sound like something I would do. But.

Damian stretched his arms high over his head. “Well, I think it’s shower time. You coming?”

“I’ll go after you,” they replied, already turning back to their translation of the invisibility spell.

“C’mon. Save some water.” He nudged them with his elbow.

“You go.”

“Fair enough.”

Ari flicked through the photos of the spells Hermes had saved, past Snake Protection, past Invisibility Paste, past a few longer spells that they suspected would require special ingredients and days of testing time, and settled on the next-shortest spell, only a few lines of Greek text. By the time Damian emerged from the shower, wrapped in a threadbare yellow towel and wringing out his hair, Ari had wrestled the spell’s ingredients into a readable form. By the time Damian was completely dry and had begun mixing more of the Invisibility Paste, to be stored in old bottles and jars until the two of them needed it, Ari knew the spell’s purpose, too.

“Hey,” they said as Damian walked into the living room. “What did that fabric in the secret drawer look like?”

“Huh?”

“The fabric. You told me about it when you snuck the book back in.”

“It was dark, Ari, I dunno. Couple lines of shit I couldn’t read on it.”

“Did it look like linen?”

“Maybe? What does linen look like?”

Ari showed him their phone screen and zoomed in on the text of the Papyri. “Was that what was written on it?”

Damian squinted and said, “Maybe? That looks kinda familiar, but all the writing looks the fuckin’ same to me. That’s why I’ve got you.”

“This is the only spell I’ve seen so far that specifies using fabric as a medium,” Ari said, turning back to their translation. “And Hermes picked it out as one of the ones we need to know, which means it’s probably important. I guess we could maybe use it to sneak Nico back out, but it feels like kind of a weird contingency plan. So why would it be important?”

“Who knows?”

“Hey. Look at me for a second.”

Damian looked up at Ari, a bemused half-smile crinkling the corners of his eye. “What’s up?”

“When you think about Nico. And Penny. About the fact that Dr. Pryor and the rest of these guys kidnapped him and brainwashed her and might be planning to kill him and use him as a sacrifice so they can keep on living and being jerks forever. How do you feel?”

“Like you think I need a therapist?” he said wryly, raising an eyebrow.

“Seriously. Damian. How do you feel?”

He took a deep breath, closed his eye, clearly deep in thought. “Sad,” he said. “I miss my brother like hell. Hopeless, sometimes. But mostly now I’m determined. You and I have got this. This fuckin’ rescue mission. It’s gonna be great.”

“Really? You’re not upset? You’re not angry?”

“Why should I be?”

Ari fought the nausea that threatened to overtake them. They felt as though they were seeing Damian, the living room, the whole of the little white house, for the first time. His hair had dried haphazardly and he hadn’t put it back up into a ponytail. The fading blond stuck out at impossible angles from his head, and it didn’t look like he’d brushed it. The whole room was in disarray – papers and vases and birds watching everything unfold like tennis fans at a match, bouncing their heads back and forth between Ari and Damian. The Invisibility Paste smelled awful. The urge to drop everything and tidy up, an urge that hadn’t overpowered Ari in weeks, threatened to burst from them now. They noticed their leg was bouncing and they couldn’t stop it. This wasn’t their house. It wasn’t Damian’s house. The guest bed that they’d been sharing every night, whose covers were always still unmade the next day, wasn’t theirs, and it was only marginally Damian’s. They had turned Nico and Penny’s oasis of secret gay married life into a wreck and Nico and Penny weren’t even here to see it.

I think if I’d known Nico and Penny before this, Ari thought, the idea bubbling up to the surface of their brain as the rest of their thoughts churned and whirled, we would have been friends.

“Because I’m angry,” Ari said at last. Their voice was tight, inching up half an octave as they spoke. “Because you were angry. I – every time I think about what happened to them it makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me want to work twice as hard and twice as fast and get them back now, and it makes me even angrier that you’re not angry anymore. I think Dr. Pryor did something to you, and I think I’m an effing idiot for not noticing it sooner.”

They showed Damian their notebook. Across the top of a fresh page, where they’d begun translating the newest spell, they’d given it a title in bold letters. CHARM FOR RESTRAINING ANGER.

“Oh,” he said, peering at the title. “Shit. You’re sure?”

“Well – no, no, I’m not sure. But I haven’t seen any other spells that are supposed to be written on linen. Or any fabric, actually. And what are the odds that Dr. Pryor really didn’t notice his magic book was gone before we brought it back? If I had to guess I’d say he put this anti-anger charm in the drawer because he thought you’d stolen the book – I mean, you did show up at his house yelling, and I think he thought I’d already left at that point? I don’t really know. Point is. I think he charmed you.”

“Huh. That sucks.”

“Obviously,” Ari snapped. Damian’s eyebrows shot up. “Ugh, sorry. See, I feel like I’m overreacting, but I don’t actually think I am. I think you’re under-reacting.”

“What do you think we should do, then?”

“I think we’re gonna have to sneak back in and figure out if that’s actually what’s going on. And try to get Nico the heck out of there while we’re at it. Although I’m not sure I can really do that without you, and I don’t know how helpful you’re gonna be right now.”

“I don’t know either,” Damian mused. “It’s weird. I don’t feel any different. But I must be, right?”

“Well something sure as heck changed, and this is our best lead. Go mix up more gross paste. I’m going to try to power through the rest of these spells to see what we can use to get back into Dr. Pryor’s house.”

It took three more evenings of intensive translation before Ari was certain they had everything correct. Beyond Snake Protection, Invisibility Paste, and the Ring of Asclepius ritual, Ari knew how to calm someone down with a scrap of linen, open a door by chanting various epithets for Helios, cure a man’s ophthalmia with oil and nasturtium seeds, ensure victory by writing magic words on the soles of their shoes, and forcibly restrain and silence someone with a piece of cold-water pipe (although Ari supposed that was possible without magic too, depending on how hard you could swing the pipe). Although Damian had not made himself particularly useful under the effects of the anti-anger charm, he had helped dismantle Nico and Penny’s kitchen plumbing with great relish.

“You’re pretty good at that,” Ari noted as Damian unscrewed pipe couplings with practiced ease.

“Living on a commune for a decade will do that to you. Gotta do everything yourself.” He wriggled out from under the sink and began passing Ari sections of pipe. “Besides, I’ve got someone to impress.” He winked, which looked no different from a blink, making Ari giggle.

The night he first kissed me was the night he returned the book.

Ari didn’t know where the thought had come from, but it made the laugh stick in their throat. Has any of this been what he wants, or has it all been because of some weird effed-up brain magic? Is this what happened to Penny?

“Nope,” Ari muttered. “Nope. Not going there. Not worrying about it.”

“Did you say something?” Damian asked, his head back underneath the sink.

Ari glanced at the ibises, who had crowded around to watch the amateur plumbing take place. The ibises looked back at them, impassive. “Nothing,” Ari said.

The equinox was days away, and Ari had made the executive decision that they didn’t have time to test out all the spells. Some of them, like the ophthalmia cure, didn’t seem worth testing, and others, like the victory charm, were going to be too difficult to assess the results of until they were already in dangerous situations where they would need the help of the victory charm. The restraint spell was another matter.

“This must be what they used on Nico,” Damian mused as Ari sat at the kitchen table, head bent over a section of pipe, carefully inscribing it with Greek letters in permanent marker.

“And now I’m gonna use it on you,” Ari said. “And you are, bizarrely, fine with that.”

“It’s fine. It’s kind of kinky.”

“Choosing to ignore that.” They laid their marker down. “Oh, huh, cool. This is an invocation to Osiris.”

“He’s Egyptian. Kind of ruins the whole Greek part of the Greek Magical Papyri, doesn’t it?”

“Not really. By the time all these spells got written down there probably would have been significant overlap between Greek and Alexandrian cult activity, and a lot of gods got their own blended cults. Thoth was conflated with Hermes a lot, to the point where the cult of Hermes Trismegistus was actually a syncretic cult of both Hermes and Thoth, and –”

Ari cut themself off. Damian was watching them intently, wide puppy eye, half a smile playing on his lips.

“What?” they asked.

“You’re a fuckin’ nerd,” he said, breaking out into a full smile. “I lucked out with you, Ari. For real.”

Weird effed-up brain magic. This isn’t him. Not really.

“We’re running out of time,” Ari said, dropping their gaze back to the section of pipe in front of them.

When it was done, Ari and Damian adjourned to the bathroom, where Ari tied a short length of wire around the pipe and began running the water in the bathtub. They consulted their translation again as Damian leaned against the wall, waiting.

“So as long as it’s under moving water it should work, but as soon as I yank on the wire and pull it out of there it’s supposed to release you. But you don’t have to be the person to test this if you don’t want to. You’ve already gone through enough with – everything. And if it doesn’t release –”

“It’s fine, Ari. Seriously. I trust your Greek skills. And I’m sure as hell not letting you test it, because if you get perma-frozen I can’t read the magic book to figure out how to undo it. Chuck it in.”

Ari double-checked that DAMIANOS CAPPELLETTI was written clearly on the pipe and, keeping a tight hold on one end of the wire, threw the pipe under the running water. Then, they sucked in a long breath and held it.

Nothing about Damian visibly changed at first. He was still leaning against the wall, still looking at Ari. But as they leaned closer to inspect him, they realized he wasn’t breathing. His eye stared straight ahead, unblinking, even as Ari moved their finger as close to it as they could without actually touching his eyeball. They flapped their hands around his head, but the breeze didn’t so much as flutter his hair, although it was still soft and pliable to the touch. It was as if Damian had been replaced with an obsessively detailed statue of himself.

When Ari’s lungs started to burn, they yanked the wire backward, dragging the pipe out from under the water, and Damian melted back into himself. Ari let out a gasp.

“Whoa, you alright? Did it work?” Damian asked.

“Yeah.” Ari heaved in another breath. “Just holding my breath to make sure. Just in case. Didn’t want you to suffocate.”

“I’m touched.”

“So? What did it feel like?”

Damian’s eyebrows knitted together. “Nothing, to be honest. I don’t think I would’ve noticed anything had happened at all, except the tub’s fuller now and you look like you forgot how to breathe.”

“I mean, that’s good, right? If this is what Dr. Pryor is using to – to hold onto Nico, it means he’s not in pain or anything.”

“That’s a relief,” Damian said, tilting his chin up at Ari. “But soon it’s not gonna matter. Because we’re gonna get my fuckin’ brother back. We got everything ready to go now, right?”

“I think so. I’ll add Victory Charm to the bottoms of your shoes, make a couple more Snake Protections, and write down the phonetic transcriptions of the door-opening spell before I leave tonight so you can do them without me reading over your shoulder. We can go during the day on Monday – the fall term has started, so Dr. Pryor will be out of the house.” Ari felt an uncomfortable pang in their chest. Fall term had always been their favorite at the college – watching the leaves on the beech trees surrounding the quad turn from green to a brilliant pumpkin orange, feeling the chill in the air as they walked across campus, ready to study tragedy with Dr. Pryor before most of the student body had even woken up yet.

“You’re leaving?” Damian asked.

“Yeah, I –”

I can’t be sure of what you really want. I don’t want to be complicit in you getting magically roofied any longer.

“I should check on my apartment anyway. Make sure no invisible shadow people are lurking around waiting for me. But I’ll see you after work tomorrow. We can put together our game plan.”

“Sure, yeah,” Damian said. “Get home safe.”

Ari patted their pocket, which contained a folded square of tinfoil. “As safe as I can be.”

***

In hindsight, the simplicity of the plan may have been part of the problem. Maybe Damian’s supernatural chillness had rubbed off on Ari more than they would have liked to admit, or maybe they were taking Hermes’ admonition not to fear to heart, or maybe the power of real, actual magic can make anybody over-confident. Whatever the reason, Ari and Damian’s plan boiled down to little more than ‘turn invisible, magically open the doors to Dr. Pryor’s house, destroy the anti-anger charm, find Nico, and get him out.’ They had a section of pipe with Dr. Pryor’s name on it and another section with the name field left blank, in case Gilbert Applewhite or another member of the PGM happened to swoop in and try to stop them. They had Damian’s knife, sheathed and tucked in among the pipes. But even so.

Opening the front door went as well as they could have hoped for. The hide-a-key rock was missing, almost certainly thanks to Damian’s previous break-in, but Ari recited a list of alternative names for Helios eight times and entreated him to open the door, and with a soft click, it swung open as if someone had invited them inside. The morning sunlight streamed through the windows and tinted the whole interior of the house gold.

“Damn, it’s nice in here,” Damian observed under his breath. Ari could hear the sound of his ponytail swishing as he turned his head back and forth. “This fucker must be loaded.”

“Yeah, well, having access to literal magic that only about fifty other people on Earth know about will do that, I guess,” Ari murmured back, hefting their plastic bag of supplies over their shoulder. Ari and Damian had spent the previous evening debating the merits of going invisible when they had to carry supplies around but had finally agreed that being able to drop the bag and run without being tracked far outweighed how weird a floating plastic bag of weapons would look to a casual passer-by.

One of the red-figure amphorae by the door thunked softly and tilted up on one of its corners. Damian, presumably examining it, asked, “Are these legit?”

“No, they’re –” Ari bent down to take a closer look at the other amphora. Dr. Pryor had whisked them past the foyer into the library on their first pass through the house, so Ari had assumed they were convincing replicas. But up close? “Holy cow,” they breathed. “I – okay, I’ve only gotten to take one archaeology class so I can’t be totally sure, but – holy cow. I think they’re real.”

“What an asshole,” Damian said, no malice in his voice. “These could be in a museum and they’re just sitting in some rich guy’s house.”

“You really are Indiana Jones, huh?” Ari asked, their own voice sounding far away and hollow to them as they ran a hand over the pottery. Their one archaeology class hadn’t been what they’d imagined. It was mostly classroom work with occasional excursions around New Hampshire to sift through the buried foundations of little religious towns built, and later abandoned, by the Shakers. Ari had been fascinated by the possibilities, if not the actual Shakers, but they’d also been one of Dr. Pryor’s student research assistants at the time, and his exacting standards were higher, if anything, outside of the classroom. But now Ari’s skin was pressed up against something that they were sure had endured for millennia. It felt different than any piece of modern pottery they’d ever touched. Lighter, somehow, and strong. They brushed a finger over the glaze, the little people and stick-legged horses chasing each other across the amphora’s surface.

Someone got to be the person to find this. Someone pulled this from the earth and dusted it off. Someone’s hands might have even been the first hands to touch this since the hands that made it.

“You still with me?” Damian asked. Ari jumped. “Or did you ditch the bag?”

“Still here,” Ari replied, standing up and dusting off their invisible knees. After a moment of searching the empty air, they saw Damian’s single pupil staring at them. “C’mon. Let’s make you angry again.”

Dr. Pryor’s study looked just as it had the last time Ari had been inside. Every book in its place, the baby grand piano gleaming in the mid-morning sun. Ari rifled through the papers on the desk, checking for charms or spells or anything mentioning the PGM. Nothing seemed obviously related to magic. The desk was instead covered with the detritus of normal life: a half-finished letter of recommendation for a student, an invoice from an antiques restorer, a to-do list with all but one item (‘replant garden,’ crossed off in one neat, straight line) still to do.

Finding nothing of interest, Ari felt along the side of the desk until their hand met the secret panel. They pushed in, and the drawer slid out with a satisfying click. Inside, a folded scrap of unbleached linen sat atop Dr. Pryor’s hand-bound copy of the Papyri. Ari peered in further. The eye charm was still affixed to the back of the drawer, too.

“Cross your fingers that my eye doesn’t explode,” Ari muttered.

“You want me to do it?”

“Absolutely not. For one thing, you don’t have a spare eye. And assuming it’s a spell affecting you, I don’t know what’ll happen if you mess with it, which means it could be a lot worse than we think.”

Ari reached into the drawer and carefully unfolded the linen, making sure not to remove it from its wooden confines. It was covered in Greek capitals and hand-drawn symbols – a box, a horned snake – all surrounding the words DAMIANOS CAPPELLETTI in Dr. Pryor’s neat handwriting. Ari rummaged around in their plastic bag until they found Damian’s knife.

“Brace yourself,” they said.

They unsheathed the knife and worked the blade into the center of the cloth, right between Damian’s first and last name. Then, in a quick jerking motion, Ari ripped the knife through the fabric, tearing the linen charm in half.

Behind them, Damian made a noncommittal noise. “I don’t feel any –”

The torn edges of the linen began to smolder. Ari jumped backwards as the embers glowed orange, then yellow, then white as the fire traveled through the warp and weft of the fabric. In a few moments, the entire cloth had burned away, although the rest of the wooden desk and its papers were completely untouched. Other than a light dusting of grey ash atop the leatherbound Papyri, the linen charm might never have existed at all.

“Damian?” Ari asked.

“Fuck.”

“Good? Bad? Angry?”

“Angry,” Damian confirmed, his voice sounding strained. “I – Jesus fucking Christ, I feel like I just got punched in the chest, or – or hot coffee poured down my throat, or something. Like the shitty version of getting possessed by Hermes. Fuck, I hate this.”

“Maybe it’s all coming back to you at once?”

“Damn right it is, kid. Let’s find my brother and get the hell out of here before I start breaking shit.”

“So I’m ‘kid’ again?” Ari asked before they could stop themself. Oh, my gosh, Ari, shut up. Not the point. Why are you like this.

Damian’s pupil hovered in front of them. Ari heard his intake of breath, like he was about to say something.

“Pretend I didn’t say that,” they added quickly. “Let’s go find Nico.”

He let out a short exhale. Relief, maybe? Don’t analyze it. 

“Where do we start?” Damian asked.

“Basement, I’m pretty sure. When I was here for dinner Dr. Pryor said something to Penny about checking on something downstairs, and it sounded really suspicious and menacing so I can only assume he meant Nico. Besides, if I had a house like this I’d want to show the whole thing off anytime someone came over, which means he’s probably not in any of the rooms a guest might be in.”

“Great.” Damian’s footsteps thumped ahead of Ari, through the study into the dining room. Ari rearranged the plastic bag on their shoulder, closed the secret drawer, and followed.

They found the basement easily – it was the only locked door on the whole ground level of the house, and Ari’s repeated chants of acheburkom and thakhurnia made quick work of the lock. A set of sturdy wooden stairs accompanied by a thin wooden banister descended into indiscernible blackness.

“It’s weird that I’ve never heard either of those names for Helios before,” Ari mused as they eased the door shut behind them. “I wonder if they’re attested anywhere besides the Papyri.”

“That gonna be your dissertation topic?”

Ari snorted. “Okay, one, that’s not nearly enough to build a dissertation on, but two, that’s assuming I survive this rescue mission long enough to make it to grad school. This basement could be full of evil shadow guys.”

“Probably is. I can’t even see the steps.”

Ari glanced down and saw nothing. The basement was completely dark. Not even a crack of light beneath the door they’d just closed. “Shoot, I didn’t bring my phone in with me. It’s still in the car. Your brick doesn’t have a flashlight, does it?”

“Nope.”

“Dang. Okay. I can open the door again if –”

“No,” Damian said, cutting them off. “If Eddie gets home and sees the basement’s open, we’re fucked for sure. Just have to feel our way forward. Here – where are you –”

Ari felt a large, strong hand fumble around their wrist for a few moments before grabbing theirs, fingers interlaced.

“I’ve got you, kid,” Damian said. “We’ll go slow.”

“Thanks,” Ari murmured, following Damian, clutching his hand, feeling his calloused palm pressed against theirs, and keeping their other hand on the thin wooden railing as they descended further into the dark, one step at a time. After a few minutes, Damian let out a grunt of surprise.

“Shit. That’s the bottom. Okay, one more step and you’ll be on the ground.”

At the bottom of the stairs, the first thing Ari registered was the noise of dripping water. Every few seconds, a bright plink, like a droplet falling into a porcelain sink, sounded somewhere to Ari’s right.

“Split up and search?” Damian said.

“Fred, you go with Daphne. Velma, you take Shaggy and Scooby,” Ari replied with a snort. “I’m gonna go figure out what’s up with that water.”

It took several minutes, but Ari’s eyes adjusted to the blackness of the basement enough to make out dim shapes and outlines rather than having to walk around with their hands stretched out in front of them like a kid playing Marco Polo. The basement was jam-packed with stuff, only thin walkways of stone floor separating broken antiques – a three-legged chair with the fourth leg laid across its seat, a child-sized upright piano with chipping keys, clay vases and bowls that Ari hoped weren’t as old as they felt at a touch – from cardboard boxes of photographs and books – embossed leather volumes, cheap trade paperbacks, photo albums and three-ring binders – from much stranger objects. Ari bumped into a wooden rack almost twice as tall as them, shoved up against the wall, making the whole thing rattle and tinkle. Every shelf was packed with glass jars and bottles, all of which, unlike the dusty items in the rest of the basement, felt smooth and polished, like they saw regular use. Ari pulled one from the shelf and squinted at it, but even straining their eyes, all they could make out were some grape-sized orbs floating in some sort of dark, viscous liquid. They put it back and checked another – it was filled with thick paste, the foul smell of which floated up to meet Ari’s nose even through the cork pressed tightly into the bottle’s stopper. Ari felt their nose wrinkle reflexively at the familiar stench.

Hey, wait.

“I think this is Invisibility Paste,” Ari called across the basement. “Dr. Pryor is keeping all his magic ingredients down here.”

“Along with everything else under the fuckin’ sun and about a metric ton of dust,” Damian groused. “Who knew this guy was a hoarder?”

“You find anything interesting?”

“Not yet. I’ve been opening every box big enough to fit Nico inside, but no dice. Keep looking.”

Ari pulled a few more bottles and jars, but other than Invisibility Paste, which they knew there was plenty of back in the kitchen of the little white house, they couldn’t discern what anything was well enough to tell if it might be useful to them. Also, despite everything – despite Penny – they still felt a little lurch in their stomach at the idea of stealing from Dr. Pryor. Lying about whether they’d gotten a good night’s sleep was one thing, but this?

I’m allowed to have lines I won’t cross, even to mess with bad people. That’s fine. That’s, like, Batman’s whole thing. If Damian is allowed to be Indiana Jones, I’m allowed to be Batman.

Finally, Ari picked their way through the darkness and the clutter to the source of the dripping water: a small clawfoot bathtub crowded against one wall of the basement. The tap was leaking, producing the drip-drip-drip that was audible all the way from the stairs. Along the edge of the tub dangled half a dozen wires. Ari pulled on one until the heavy object tied at the end of it met their palms: a round metal tube. They pulled another: another tube. The restraining spell.

The third wire they yanked out of the tub ended in an empty loop, dangling limply from Ari’s hand.

Beside the bathtub, Ari noticed for the first time, was another large white shape, about Damian’s size. Dropping the wire and lunging for it, Ari felt that it was a twin mattress. There was an indent in its center, as if someone had been sleeping there and only gotten up moments ago. Ari glanced back and forth between the mattress and the empty loop of wire. It was too dark to read the names inscribed on the pipes, but they felt an absolute certainty that none of them would contain Nico’s name. Nico’s pipe was gone, leaving a useless length of wire behind. And the mattress –

Oh my gosh. The thing Dr. Pryor told Penny to check on ‘downstairs’ was the garden. And the to-do list said he had to replant the garden. And it was crossed off.

“He’s not here,” Ari called out.

Damian let out a loud sneeze. “Shit. It’s this fucking dust. But he has to be here. Keep looking.”

“Damian, no,” Ari said, turning back towards the clawfoot tub and picking their way slowly past it, stepping around a pile of cardboard boxes stacked all the way up to their shoulders. “The equinox is in three days. They must have moved him already, I don’t know where to. But I found where they were keeping him, but – that’s what ‘replant garden’ meant. On the to-do list. It meant move Nico.”

Ari heard Damian let out a frustrated growl.

Ari heard the door at the top of the basement stairs open and close.

“Hey,” they called out, “wait for me –”

“Who’s there?” called Penny’s voice from the top of the stairs. A flashlight clicked on, its beam slicing through the dusty air as Penny’s footsteps creaked down the steps.

Ari froze.

The flashlight beam swung in their direction, and Ari closed their eyes. No pupils.

“Ari Tan?” Penny asked. “What are you doing down here?”

Ari opened their eyes. They glanced down at their body. Visible. Also naked. Hidden, for now, from Penny’s view by the towering stack of cardboard boxes that came up to their shoulders, but visible and naked nonetheless. They glanced frantically across the basement – sure enough, there was Damian, half obscured by an old wooden chifferobe, but also decidedly visible and naked.

There’s no sunlight down here. The magic only works until sundown, but Helios – or magic – or science – whatever it is has no way of knowing that it’s not sundown while we’re in the basement. No sunlight, no invisibility.

Shoot.

Penny walked a few steps closer to Ari, angling the flashlight beam down enough that it wasn’t shining directly into Ari’s eyes. “Um. Hi,” Ari said.

“Did Eddie send you?” Penny asked, her voice light and airy. There was an odd quality about the way she said Dr. Pryor’s name, almost childlike, and Ari swallowed down the revulsion that rose in their throat.

“Uh – yeah! Yes,” Ari said, talking loudly and slowly. Please don’t look behind you. Please don’t see Damian. Also, preferably, please don’t see the fact that I am not wearing clothes. “He – he’s teaching a class right now but needed some supplies from his shelf of ingredients, and I had the day off, and I guess he didn’t want to bother you? Or maybe he didn’t realize you’d be home? I definitely didn’t realize you’d be home, or – or I would have said hi. Hi.”

Ari punctuated this statement with a lame little wave.

“Well, that’s awfully sweet of him,” Penny said, still sounding dreamy and childish, “but he knows he can ask me for anything and I’ll bring it to him. Why did he send you?”

“It’s…” Ari cast about desperately for an explanation, racking their brain for anything else Dr. Pryor had said during their dinner. “It’s – oh, it’s for the equinox! The annual meeting. On Thursday. He… okay, I don’t think I’m supposed to mention this, but he’s going to propose. After the meeting. On Thursday. And he wanted to do something really special, but that means he couldn’t ask you to get the ingredients. So he asked me.”

A moment of silence stretched between Ari and Penny, long and quivering and terrible. The flashlight’s beam bobbed slightly in Penny’s hand. Then, finally, she let out a piglet squeal and beamed at Ari.

“Oh, that’s so sweet of him! I won’t peek, I promise. I wish you’d told me you were coming, though, even if you can’t tell me what for. You gave me a real scare when I came downstairs!”

“And I’m really sorry about that! Like I said, I didn’t even realize you’d be home. I’ll just finish up down here, then. No need to wait for me – I don’t want you to see the surprise – and then I’ll –”

A muffled sneeze issued from behind an old wooden chifferobe on the other side of the basement.

“What –”

Penny swung the flashlight around, catching Damian in its glare as he dove behind the broken antique furniture.

“You again,” Penny said. “Are – what – are you naked? Ari, is he –”

The beam caught Ari again.

“Are you naked too? What’s – okay, I’m calling Eddie.”

As Penny reached into her pocket for a cell phone, Ari felt their panic subside into crystal-clear determination. They reached into the plastic bag hooked over their shoulder and retrieved a length of pipe and a permanent marker. As Penny dialed a number, Ari scribbled a name in capital letters in the blank space on the pipe. As Penny pressed the call button, Ari threaded the pipe through the empty loop of wire still hanging from their fist. As Dr. Pryor picked up the call, Ari tossed the pipe into the bathtub.

Penny said, “Eddie, come quick, that guy Damian is back and –”

Ari threw open the taps.

Water gushed over the pipe bearing Penny’s name, and she froze, the phone halfway to her ear, the flashlight still clutched in her hand.

“I am so sorry,” they said aloud, hanging up Penny’s phone call. “Oh, my gosh, Penny, I am so sorry. We will make this up to you, I promise.”

“What happened?” Damian demanded, scrambling out from behind a pile of furniture. “She called him?”

“She called him. Which means we have to get out of here, now.”

“But Nico –”

“He’s not here.” Ari said, gesturing to the sunken mattress with one hand and pulling pipes out of the bathtub with the other. “We can talk about where he might be when we get home, but it’s not going to do us any good right now with Dr. Pryor on his way here. Take these.”

“Why aren’t we invisible –”

“No sunlight down here.”

“What are we doing with –”

“Trying to give ourselves the best possible chance of not getting frozen. Do you see any other pipes around here?”

Damian whipped his head back and forth, taking in as much of the basement as his one eye would allow. “Just these.”

“We’ll have to hope he’s too busy to dismantle his plumbing. Or that Snake Protection works. Or both. Come on, we have to leave. And grab something to cover up with on the way out.”

Wrapped in dusty blankets from one of the many basement piles, Ari and Damian dashed up the basement stairs, out the front door, and into Ari’s car.

“I can’t believe you sneezed,” Ari said, jabbing Damian with their elbow as they turned the key in the ignition. Don’t think about Penny, frozen in that pitch-black basement. Dr. Pryor will be home soon. She won’t even feel it. Damian couldn’t feel it. She’ll be fine. Don’t think about it.

“It was fuckin’ dusty down there, okay? I held it in for as long as I could. Anyway it’s not like…” Damian trailed off, gritting his teeth. Ari could see his neck muscles working and turned their eyes toward the road, pressing on the gas pedal, aiming for a speed somewhere above the legal limit but somewhere below the threshold for Poole P.D. to pull them over.

“It’s not like Nico was there anyway,” Damian finished, letting out the rest of his breath in a long, hissing exhale. “He – they moved him already. God fucking dammit. Goddammit! This was my big fuckin’ plan. And he’s not there.”

“We’ll get him back on Thursday,” Ari said. “We’ll hole up at home and research our butts off and figure out how to get him back on Thursday.”

“Home?” There was a vein bulging out in his neck now, lines creasing on his forehead. For the first time since Ari had met him, they thought, Damian looked older than his age rather than younger. “That’s the one fucking place we know he’s not. Kid, I can’t sit at home for three days knowing he’s out there somewhere.”

“You sat at home for three months knowing he’s out there somewhere. You can survive another three days.”

“Fuck, sure, I’ll survive, but Nico? Is Nico gonna be alive on Thursday?”

“I don’t know!” Ari felt the car speeding up too much and eased their foot off the accelerator. Their knuckles were pale, gripping the steering wheel like it might wriggle out from beneath their hands. Like a snake. “I don’t know, Damian, okay? I don’t know any more than you do. But neither of us is going to be any good to Nico dead or frozen somewhere, and you know it. I know you know it, because you turned yourself into a hermit with no fashion sense for months because that house is the only place you felt safe. Currently, a dude who knows how to do extremely powerful magic knows for a fact that you broke into his house and froze his quote-unquote girlfriend. He doesn’t know I was there yet, but he will soon. Neither of us is safe, period, and I don’t want to have to worry about saving you when I’m already busy worrying about saving Nico. Please don’t make me regret undoing your magic tranquilizer spell.”

Damian grimaced. He took a deep breath in, held it, and let it out. Then another. Ari drove, keeping their eyes straight ahead. Neither of them said anything until Ari was pulling into the driveway of the little white house. Ari moved to open their door, but Damian put a hand on their arm to stop them.

“I’m sorry, kid,” he said. “I was being an idiot. But all that anger coming back at once – it feels bad. Feels like I just gotta do something. To have somewhere to put it. I feel, like, itchy.”

Despite themself, Ari cracked a smile. “Have you tried deep-cleaning your kitchen?”

Might Makes Write and all the writing shared herein are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.