The Weirdness(88)

“Jørgen,” Barry offers, as they cross the second floor landing.

“Yes! Jørgen! Shame about the two of them; we may be able to get them later, very tricky right now, though, very tricky. So—where was I? Oh, yes, in our court. You say you’re not. And to this we say: Of course! Of course you’re not. Dark Oath, you know, it works that way. You probably see us as the enemy right now, it’s terribly ironic, actually. But in a physical sense? We have you here in the building. Literally in our court. And that’s very, very, very good.”

“You can’t stop Lucifer,” Billy says. “He came and he took Jørgen and Elisa away from you. He’ll take me, too.”

“Well,” Laurent says. “We’ll see about that.”

“Yes,” Billy says. “We will.”

They emerge into a hallway on the third floor and hustle him toward a pair of black double doors at the far end. As they approach, Billy’s dad, Keith, still in his commando garb, throws the doors open. Billy glares at him as though he’s an enemy.

“Is he—” Keith says.

“It’s as we thought,” Laurent says. “Dark Oath.”

“Shit,” Keith says. He looks like he might rip a phone book in half.

“Don’t hurt him,” Denver says, hurrying to catch up. “It looks like you’re hurting him.”

They enter the secure room. Fluorescent lighting, nacreous tile. Various personnel toil busily at racks of arcane-looking equipment. The room resembles a hospital operating suite jammed full of card tables, half-finished cups of coffee, empty take-out containers, and at least one ashtray. Billy sees Anil sitting in a plastic chair, safely out of the way of most of the bustle, in front of a glossy black bank of dormant technology.

“Seal the room,” Laurent says to Barry. Barry lets go of Billy’s arm finally and begins to do something to the door, something that involves a brilliant light flowing out of his fingertips. It hurts to look at, like an acetylene torch. Billy moves his arm gingerly, rotates it tenderly in its socket.

“We can undo the Oath,” Laurent says to Keith. “It’ll just—it’ll just take some time.”

“How long?” Keith says.

“Two days?” Laurent says.

“Two days?” Keith says.

“It’s unfortunate, I agree. But we don’t have the right components and we don’t have the right staff. I could get you this Yoruban guy, a specialist, but he’s in Nigeria, and even if we could get in touch with him—”

“You can’t keep this room secure for two days,” Keith says, pressing his fingertips against his temples like a character in a commercial for a headache remedy. “Not against the Adversary.”

“He has a name, you know,” Billy says.

“Billy,” Laurent snaps. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable. Go sit over there by the God detector. With your friend.” He waves in Anil’s direction.

Billy takes one more look at the double doors. They are barely visible behind a gleaming magical glyph. So, okay, fuck it, he probably can’t run. He dismally considers whether he’s going to need to turn into a wolf again and kill everyone in the room just to keep his word. But he feels no special compulsion to do anything other than wait for Lucifer to show up. So he goes, and he sits down in a chair next to Anil. Denver comes and joins them.

“Hey, man,” Anil says.

“Hey,” Billy says. He dumps Anton Cirrus’s duffel bag onto the floor.

Anil puts a hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Listen, man, these guys say that they’re going to help you get out of this. This Oath or whatever it is that you’re under.”

“But that’s the thing,” Billy says. “I can’t really root for that. I gave my word.”

Anil gives him an incredulous look. “Are you kidding me?” he says. “Of all the people I know, you’re like the first person to try to weasel out of your obligations. You break promises all the time.”

Billy turns to look at Denver, in the hopes that she’ll defend his honor, but all she does is give a palms-up gesture.

“So what the fuck makes this promise so special?” Anil says.

“I made it to the Devil,” Billy says.

“Right—which means that it fucks you even worse than the average stupid shit you agree to! And now you’re in a room with people who love you—your friends and your dad and an entire staff of fucking magicians who are working overtime to help you get out of this and you won’t even allow yourself to root for them? No offense, man, but it’s kind of a dick move.”