Chapter 3

CALIX

Cambridge University

Twelve years ago

“I have a plan,” Lawton whispered as he slipped into bed beside Calix.

Calix groaned into his pillow and blindly fumbled around, not sure if he wanted to pull Lawton closer or slap a hand over his mouth so he’d hush. “It’s the dead of night. Why are you in my bed?”

“I can leave,” Lawton replied just as softly. “But my bed’s cold now and I’ve been thinking about your little conundrum.”

With another groan, Calix acquiesced and turned his head to the right. Lawton was rumpled from sleep and whatever strenuous activities he’d been up to across the hall. Calix had long learned how to ignore the sounds coming almost every night from Lawton’s apartment, but he was surprised the man from the pub had left Lawton before dawn. They usually stayed.

“I don’t have a conundrum,” Calix replied as he let Lawton tug on the thick goose down blanket until it covered them both.

“You do, I’m afraid.”

In that sinuous way he had, Lawton snuggled closer, nudging his knee against Calix’s thigh. That single spark of contact sent a shiver through Calix and under the pillow, he clenched his left hand into a fist.

He’d known playing ignorant wouldn’t hold Lawton back from trying to “fix” his lack of a life in society. Was it so wrong that Calix enjoyed the quiet: his apartment, the University Library, that corner at the Richfield Club none of the other members liked because it was too close to the kitchen (and too close to the servants who were scurrying about to meet their every demand). Calix knew he was incredibly fortunate — wealthy, educated, given everything he could ever want. He was happy in life, too. He had the choice to live quietly even when his means afforded much more. But his head often felt heavy with questions, playing at his sense of morality like a finely tuned instrument. Knowing which keys to play, which strings to pluck. Calix was a lucky, lucky man with too many thoughts about the nature of being and belief.

Having Lawton as a direct source of confoundment made things easier somehow. Like in this moment. Calix could lose himself in the red-orange curls sleek against Lawton’s forehead and stare into eyes heavy with sleep. It was the spark in those eyes, an ember of something precious and panting, that beckoned him near. The heaviness in Calix’s body was not all due to the time of night, but was tangled up in Lawton, the same way Lawton tangled his fingers in the collar of Calix’s silk pajamas.

“Your problem is overthinking,” Lawton whispered. “Along with your terribly grounded sense of ethics. And I realize, dear thing, I may not shake loose your foundations. But I would so love to see one pillar tumble. Crack, even.”

Calix was hypnotized by him. Lured in, pulled ashore. Because for all Calix’s confusion, Lawton could pull apart the knot of it with nimble fingers. One string gently freed, and Calix would bend and his head would feel weightless for a little bit.

Lawton knew. He knew Calix and how to navigate their world of money and parties and comments that complimented and chewed on you at the same time. He had been Calix’s guide since they’d met ten years ago, alone at boarding school and wondering what those storied halls had planned for their futures.

“Don’t you want to stop, dear one? Catch your breath?” Lawton was so close now and the nearness forced some noise out of Calix’s throat. Their dance had gone on for years, but of late, there was an additional urgency. It scared and infuriated and thrilled Calix. As Lawton did.

“You’re the only one saying I’m spinning,” Calix whispered back, the lie so easy it was done in a single breath. “What if I’m not?”

Lawton chuckled softly as he let his hand drop to rest on Calix’s hip. The slide of silk over his skin made Calix want to crawl away and draw closer all at once. “Can I make you spin, then? Wind you up like my own toy?”

“Lawton…”

Calix was pressed into the mattress by two strong hands, Lawton perched above him like a beautiful, strange bird. But the weight, the heat of him, was real. And from this angle Lawton stared down at him as if from on high. Studying his prey. “You think you don’t know what you want, dearest one, but I do. You ache to be seen, don’t you? Well, I see you.”

Lawton leaned down until their faces were even and Calix might only tip his chin up to meet Lawton’s lips. Hunger was a second heartbeat in his chest, and its fangs wanted flesh. “Do you?” Calix managed to reply, his voice strained. He was beyond aroused; his vision was only colored with Lawton. “Show me, then.”

“I would have thought this to be a bit…” Calix looked around the room. “Stuffy for you, Lawton.”

Lawton gasped delightedly. “Are you accusing me of not having taste, my dear?”

“You know I’m not.” Calix gestured to the auction catalog over which they both hovered. “But I’ve never known you to be a fan of auctions.”

Lawton gave a noncommittal hum as he turned the page of the catalog. Calix watched his long fingers graze the image of a very old — and very expensive — cabinet from the 1600s. It was a beautiful piece but heavy with carvings and glass and completely not Lawton’s taste in home furnishings.

Finally, Lawton replied softly, “I’m here for the books they’re auctioning off, and you did agree to accompany me. You know I’m doing some trading on the side, supplemental income and all that. And apparently the poor sod who just passed was quite the collector.” Another page was turned. “A few things caught my eye and if I can get them at a reasonable price, they might already have a buyer.”

Calix examined his friend for a long moment. Lawton was a constant schemer, always investing in this club opening or that musician who was bound for bigger and better things. He’d dabbled over the years in arts and antiquities, but books were a recent obsession. Calix should have guessed that’s why they were here, but most of the books he’d seen in the auction catalog were quite old and being sold in lots — which meant they weren’t terribly valuable individually.

Lawton’s schemes didn’t always pay off. Rare books, however, were a decent bet considering the demand for them had skyrocketed of late. Or so the men at the Richfield Club claimed, from all Calix overheard from his hidden corner at the back. Lawton’s finances were constantly in question, so it all made sense.

And yet something prickled at the back of Calix’s neck. A sense of…something. Like a shadow looming over him but he couldn’t make out any details. His visions were often like this, unhurried and blearily ominous. Calix knew to stay alert, but wasn’t going to be too concerned.

Yet.

He left Lawton to the auction catalog, needing the space and air to clear his mind. The Wentworth building housed business offices of all kinds, but its third floor was home to the Sterling Auction Company. Sterling was a fixture in the city for anyone looking to sell or buy antiques and art. Calix had sent some of his mother’s things to them after her death, per her instructions. There were more of her things at the family estate in upper New York, but Calix had left them there. Rosehill Manor had belonged to his mother solely, a strange and oft ridiculed maneuver by a woman with property and wealth in the day and age. He could have never bared to part with any of her things from Rosehill, and certainly not at an auction. Looking at the remnants of a life, so casually displayed to be examined and gawked over? It made him feel uneasy.

Was this all a life could be reduced to? Could all the joy and love and moments of anger and wonder and quiet of an entire life be subtracted to mere objects easily passed on to the next person, and not even a lingering wisp of memory clinging to polished wood and colorful enamel? His mother would have said otherwise, that the spirit lives on in those who had loved and lost. Her God was a kind but inefficient one, leaving humanity to deal with death and destruction and questions about the nature of existence with which They never bothered to assist. It had always felt benignly cruel to Calix, and he felt it again now as he stared at the cabinets and books and jewels on display.

It was a good thing he left Lawton behind to do as he pleased. His friend was never a fan of when Calix got existential.

Calix wandered the auction hall, dodging well-dressed men and women as they blithely glided through the different rooms. Upon spotting a door propped open to the outside, he gratefully slipped through the crowd and followed the scent of rain on the wind to a balcony. From here, one could see the Manhattan sprawl, glittering like its own gem in the middle of what had once been farmland and swamp. Built up from nothing, now home to so many. Even the green of Central Park shone, spring-deep and glistening, beckoning. Calix might be homesick for London from time to time, even years after he’d immigrated, but he couldn’t deny the beauty of New York.

“I see I’m not the only one who needed an escape from the hall.”

It was the clearest voice Calix had ever heard. He looked over to see a tall man in a dove gray suit leaning slightly on a truly beautiful teakwood and gold cane, his ungloved hands dashed with silver rings that glinted in the dull sunlight. The man wore no hat and his black hair was cropped close to his head, leading the eye to a thin scar that cut from his left temple down to disappear behind his ear. He was devastatingly handsome. And then Calix’s left hand twitched. Unwillingly, he gasped and the man frowned.

“Are you all right?” the man asked, stepping forward as if to assist.

“Yes, apologies.” Calix gripped the twitching hand in his other and pressed his thumb into the palm. “It’s just a bit of a twinge and doesn’t happen often. It’s no worry, I swear.” But Calix knew better — the twitches were rare and their appearance only precluded something important. His little gift showing itself once again. There were no visions this time, just a twitch in his hand and a sense of something looming on the horizon. He could ignore his swooping stomach but the hand twitch was obnoxious.

The good side to all of this was that something else about the man sparked familiarity within Calix, and he remembered the tailor shop earlier in the week. “I’m so sorry, but I think we passed each other before.” Calix smiled as the man’s frown deepened. He wondered idly if the man could smile at all, so dour was his expression. “At Twisted Silver, that lovely little tailor shop on the edge of the Village. I came in behind you and couldn’t help but notice how beautiful your suit was.” He gestured at the man, who was so still he might have been a statue. “As yours is today.”

Calix might not be one for the social scene of clubs and parlors, but he knew his way around a compliment. The man’s eyes, an incredible green like glass, lingered on Calix’s red carnation brooch as he answered. “I should be the one apologizing. I interrupted your moment of quiet from the din inside.”

Interesting. He seems to either know the symbolism of the brooch…or perhaps doesn’t approve?The question made Calix want to know more, even though the stranger was rather aloof, almost standoffish. Calix put out his hand, hoping this mysterious, beautiful man might speak to him some more. He could be politely charming when needed, though Calix knew he lacked any of the pizzazz and sensuality that Lawton wore like a second skin. “Calix Addington. It’s a pleasure.”

“Aubrey Levine.”

And curiously, the man only nodded to him, dropped his hand, and said no more. Aubrey stepped away to lean his elbows on the balcony railing and stare out into the city’s mid-afternoon glassy gleam.

Well. I’ll just have to try again.

“Are you here as a collector?” Calix asked. “I’m accompanying a friend who has an interest in old books.”

Aubrey continued to gaze out over the city as he slowly replied in that sonorous voice. “It’s part of my work.”

“May I ask what you do?”

“I’m a curator.” Aubrey’s eyes slid over to him. Calix’s hand twitched again, just as he had let it drop to his side. “Rare antiquities and such.”

In England, that would have been said as a point of pride. Scholars of all sorts were cherished in his home land, particularly if they were mechanically or magically-minded. Aubrey’s American accent, and the dry thump of each word, melded, as the man acted as if his work were tiresome. What an odd thing to find tiresome, Calix thought. Unless that’s what I’m supposed to think. Because no matter the cool depths of Aubrey’s words, Calix wasn’t one to ignore his sixth sense.

“That must be fascinating,” he said. “Is it a private collection, or part of a museum? There are so many beautiful ones in this city.”

Calix might have imagined it, but he swore a tiny spark of interest lay behind Aubrey’s reply of, “Glad to see they’re appreciated. The museums, that is. Sometimes I wonder if we’re falling backwards out of our natural instincts toward curiosity. Amongst other things.”

Now Calix was paying attention. After so many years around people like Lawton, he’d gotten rather good at hearing buried layers under the mundane. Works at a museum, appreciates scholarship and scientific curiosity, likely here because the museum has its eye on something.

Calix started to speak but was cut off by the sharp rap of a gavel. With a nod, Aubrey left the balcony, leaving Calix to navigate the surging crowd that piled into the large room to the right. He caught sight of Lawton near a bank of windows on the left, but immediately paused in step.

“Watch where you’re going, young man,” an elderly woman grumbled at him as she barely avoided clipping him with her elbow. Calix apologized but kept his eyes on Lawton. His friend was talking to a dark-haired woman, her sharp features intense as she said something. Lawton gave the room a quick glance before taking a thick, pale envelope from the woman’s gloved hand, then stuffing it inside his jacket. The red velvet of his jacket bulged and the woman rolled her eyes at Lawton before giving Lawton’s lapel a tap, then turning on her heel and walking away. Not to a seat, but out of the room, right past Calix as he locked eyes with his friend. As she passed, he caught a whiff of honeysuckle; on its heels came a deep feeling of dread. Just like the wave he’d been hit with when they’d entered. He was already on alert, but now Calix’s stomach churned with anxiety. There was something here, deeply magical and strange, but he couldn’t pinpoint what or where.

When he turned back to Calix, Lawton was a heartbeat too slow at hiding his expression of wariness and worry, and it brought Calix up short. Worry of his own flared in his chest, making the skin and muscle feel too tight, as if trying to bind his lungs with a band of iron. He went to Lawton’s side as the man shook his head, curls bobbing against his forehead as if he could physically rid himself of that which bothered.

“There you are,” Lawton said, slapping a smile on his face. It was too big and too bright to be forthright, but Calix appreciated the attempt. “Come, come, the auction’s starting and as luck would have it, the knick knacks and books are up first.”

The chatter in the room stopped abruptly as the auctioneer raised his gavel, and on cue, liveried attendants turned up the gas lamps on the walls. “All the better for you to see these lovely items,” the auctioneer, a stout, middle-aged man said with a chuckle. “Bidders, please have your paddles ready.”

The first few items passed in a blur. Calix’s mind was too preoccupied with watching Lawton, cataloging his expressions, his movements. His entire world, it seemed sometimes, revolved around this one man.

“Are you all right?” Calix whispered, leaning into Lawton’s space. “That woman seemed angry with you.”

“It’s fine,” Lawton replied tightly. “And my lot is coming up, so if you don’t mind, dear…” He sat up straighter, his shoulder nudging Calix’s. Dismissed, thoroughly; all Lawton’s attention rapt on the cart wheeled up on stage by two attendants.

To Calix’s eye, the cart full of neatly displayed, leather-bound books was nothing special. And according to the auction catalog, lot 34 was two-dozen books on varying subjects: natural history, the human body, a book Calix knew to be a rather dry study of the Madagascar cave bat. The catalog noted not all books were described therein, only the ones with “educational” value.

“This one?” he asked Lawton, confounded.

The gavel rapped again.

Lawton’s hand tightened on his bidder paddle.

And across the room, the tall man in the dove gray suit sat up straighter as well.

Somethingswirled through Calix’s mind with a flash of pain so startling he nearly cried out. Instead, Calix dug his again-twitching hand into his left temple and watched through a squint as Aubrey cast the first bid for lot 34. And he bid twenty dollars higher than the opening ask.

Lawton gasped. “That cad!” The look Calix saw him cast toward Aubrey was full of seething shock. “Sixty dollars!” he called out, and the entire room breathed in at once.

“Seventy,” Aubrey said, matching Lawton’s volume. But his voice was dry, serious in a professoral kind of way. Calix peered around Lawton’s back, trying to catch Aubrey’s gaze. But the man was firmly fixed in his seat, all attention on the baffled auctioneer.

“You gentlemen do know these are just books, right?” the auctioneer said. A few grumbles rose up and even one cry of, “Ah, get on with it!”.

“Yes, and I will pay handsomely for them,” Lawton cried out. Aubrey simply shook his head.

Calix’s entire head burned with pain now, the fastest it had ever come on. He was waiting for the vision — something, anything — to appear. But even as he closed his eyes and tried to ignore the voices calling out in the room around him, he saw nothing.

Wait

Wait

There is something

Something here

Someone?

No. Yes.

Strange, this feeling.

Calix opened his eyes and the world rushed back at him. He felt sick, dizzy and nauseated, his skin clammy to the touch. Beside him, he registered Lawton shouting, “One hundred and twenty!”, his hand clutching the bulge in his jacket.

Lawton was desperate. Calix could see it now. And whatever tied that woman, the money, and those blasted books he wanted together was making Lawton come undone. But Calix’s vision swam and he was forced to put his head between his knees and breathe. Otherwise he’d vomit all over the place.

The room faded once more, until all Calix could hear was his breathing and the furious beat of his heart; all he could feel was the soft wool of his trousers; and everything else tuned into the strange sensation rippling over his skin. Magic, but different.

Not just an awareness. Something else. Bigger. Deeper. An ocean of magic next to the puddles he was familiar with.

Between those beats of his heart, Calix understood he wasn’t alone in the dark.

He was terrified. And so, so thrilled.

Around him, the room erupted into applause and a flushed and sweating Lawton collapsed beside him, his grin a little too big. “My god, what a rush! I mean, that man should be commended for his steely will but he was no match for me!” Lawton paused, then put a hand on Calix’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, darling one. I got carried away and completely ignored your distress. Let’s get you outside for some air and…oh, yes, wonderful. Finally some wait staff in this dreadful place. Yes, can we get my friend some water?” Gentle hands cupped Calix’s jaw, helping him to sit up. “Water, or do you want something else, Calix?”

Calix murmured that water was fine. He could see Lawton’s amber eyes were hazy with victory but Calix would take any attention in the moment, even if distracted. He was completely exhausted. Whatever that thing had been was gone now, dissipated like the way spring fog burned out with a morning sunrise.

Calix let Lawton steer them to the balcony where he’d met Aubrey, then found a glass bottle of water pressed to his lips. “Drink,” Lawton said quietly, other hand coming to rest on the back of Calix’s head.

“I’m not an invalid,” Calix replied.

“You’re not, but you look terrible right now and I’m worried.” The bottle was pressed against his lips once more and Calix drank. “Good. Ah, that’s very good.”

Calix spared a stray, panicked thought to how they must look — in Manhattan, during the day, at an auction filled to the brim with upper crust society-types, and the two of them wearing their red carnation brooches and locked together so. But the water was cold along his dusty throat and he caved, to the delight of the water and the pressure on the back of his head.

“Apologies for interrupting. But I’m afraid I need to speak with you, Mr. Adler. It’s rather important.”

Lawton nearly snarled as he yanked the bottle away from Calix’s lips before shoving it at him, not even stopping to ensure Calix had a grip on it as he marched over to Aubrey. The man had appeared in the doorway like a wraith and now stood, half a head taller than either of them and impeccable in that gray suit. Calix thought for sure Lawton would go on the defensive, simpering and somewhat sincere, smoothing over any slight he may have done the man in their…exuberant bidding war.

Instead, Aubrey shocked them both by holding out a cashier’s check. “Double what you paid and good at any bank.”

Lawton’s gaze narrowed and it made Calix shiver. He’d seen that look many, many times. “Just who do you work for, sir? Your desperation speaks volumes, I’m afraid, but provides no specifics.”

Aubrey froze in place. Against Lawton’s bright red and navy blue outfit, Aubrey’s dark gray gave off no light, no color, but reminded Calix of a suit of armor. A knight going to war. And with his ramrod posture and unwavering gaze, Aubrey did look all the more like a storybook knight come to life.

Somehow, it endeared the man to Calix, almost as much as Aubrey saying, “I’m a curator at Darwin’s Attic, in special collections. I’m willing to buy the book we’re interested in for the amount on the check.” Aubrey towered over Lawton and in the moment, Calix swore he saw Aubrey’s shadow widen. “A single book for double what you paid for the entire lot. If that’s specific enough for you.”

Calix stifled his laugh in his fist, pretending to cough, but neither man paid him any mind. “I’m afraid it’s an all-or-nothing lot, as I’m a book collector and dealer, good sir, and I won’t know the value of any individual book until I inspect all of them. Thoroughly. And even then, I’d not sell to your slummers’ paradise and tourist trap for anything. Darwin’s Attic is the worst of scholarship, meant to pander to the lowest.”

Aubrey was unmoved, and unmoving from the doorway. “One book. For nearly three hundred dollars. Anyone would take it.”

Lawton smiled thinly. “I’m not anyone. And the answer is no.”

“Lawton,” Calix said as his friend made to leave the balcony. “Surely you’re being a little unreasonable. What’s one book?”

Bothmen stared at him. Lawton in utter shock, and Aubrey with his cool, even gaze but a head tip of what Calix hoped was agreement. “I won the auction,” Lawton explained, his tone whiplash-quick in the jump from angry to patronizing. As if Calix were a child in need of instruction. “Therefore, I get to do with my winnings as I please. And right now, I’d like to leave the balcony to go pay for my lovely books.”

Lawton squeezed past Aubrey with a huff, leaving Calix clutching his empty bottle and staring after him.

“Your friend does not understand,” Aubrey said as he approached Calix.

“He’s stubborn, and a bit of an arse on occasion,” Calix replied. His words were weaker than he intended, but the twitch in his hand was back; painful now, like a throb buried deep in the muscle. A particularly violent twitch forced Calix’s left hand to spasm, and the bottle fell. Glass shards, white-green and glinting, now lay in a circle between he and Aubrey.

A perfect circle of glass. Those appearing where they shouldn’t is an omen. You know this. Mother always believed some of the tales of the Cunning Folk, and had proven their instincts to be right more often than not. And their omens were not to be ignored.

“That may be,” Aubrey said as he motioned to the glass. He had stopped his progression forward as soon as the glass shattered. “But I believe you may have a better appreciation for the severity of his decision.”

“I don’t, I’m afraid.” Calix couldn’t look away from that circle on the ground.

“That twitch in your hand says otherwise.” Aubrey knelt and picked up a jagged shard, holding it up to the light. “As does the absolutely perfect circle at your feet.”

His breath left him in a gasp, and Aubrey took the opportunity to hold out a black and gold business card. “For when he changes his mind, or you do it for him, Earl Batherton.”

Calix took the card and Aubrey turned on his heel, giving no more consideration to Calix or the glass before disappearing inside.