The Dying of the Light by Derek Landy Page B

imagination,” she said, and led Axle to the car.

13
MY FRIEND. MY FURNITURE.
    anguine moved through the wall, stepping into the quiet kitchen. A man sat at the table. His name was Levitt. The chatty one, Maksy, was missing. That could mean one of two things – either Tanith had killed him out of sheer irritation, or Darquesse had needed Maksy’s Remnant to inhabit someone she wanted to talk to. Sanguine didn’t know what would have become of Maksy after that. Darquesse had probably killed him.
    He moved on. The safe house was quickly becoming his least favourite place to be. Sure, it had its upsides. It was where Tanith was, so that was nice, even if she’d barely spoken to him the entire time they’d been hiding out there. But it was enough to be close to her, he reckoned. And once they were married, all this awkward tension would just drain away and leave them with the rest of their lives to get on with. Assuming the rest of their lives meant anything longer than a week.
    And then there was the downside.
    Darquesse.
    Every time he returned to the place, he had to steel himself before he saw her. It was a good thing she usually stayed in the spare room these days, conducting her terrifying little experiments. Sanguine didn’t think he’d be able to handle it if she took to roaming about the—
    Goddamn.
    Darquesse was in the living room, sitting in the armchair with her legs crossed. The man on the sofa across from her would have looked like a normal, middle-aged college professor were it not for the black lips and all those black veins that he wasn’t bothering to hide.
    “Billy-Ray,” Darquesse said, smiling brightly. “Allow me to introduce Nestor Tarry, my new best friend. Nestor was just telling me about his work in quantum mechanics.”
    “That so?” said Sanguine, leaning against the doorframe, trying to appear casual and not at all intimidated. “Just your average, ordinary, everyday conversation about quantum mechanics, huh? You managing to keep up?”
    “Actually,” Tarry said, “Darquesse is quite well versed in quantum theory.”
    “I read a lot,” Darquesse said, shrugging, “and absorb information instantly. It’s a talent.”
    Tarry smiled. “One of many, it seems. But I have taken you as far as I am able. The answers you seek are, I’m afraid, beyond me.”
    “So who takes me further?”
    “I could give you a list of names – but it would be a short list, made even shorter by events over the last few years. Actually, I think your next port of call is a book, not a person. The
Hessian Grimoire
is a collection of, essentially, theories about the next stages of magic. Where we can go from here, how we can expand our knowledge, the ways in which we can use what we know to delve deeper into the source of all magic. I don’t know who is currently in possession of the book, unfortunately, but if you can find it, I think it could help you.”
    “The
Hessian Grimoire
,” Darquesse said, nodding. “OK then, sounds good. And after that? The list of names you were going to give me?”
    Tarry raised his chin and moved his head from side to side, acknowledging the request, but see-sawing between options. “There are two or three people left alive who could help you. Really, the person who could have helped you the most would have been Walden D’Essai.”
    “Argeddion.”
    Tarry nodded. “His work was just … it was far beyond any of his contemporaries. I never liked the man, I was always far too jealous of his accomplishments. That’s something I could never have admitted without this Remnant inside me, by the way.” He chuckled, and didn’t seem to notice when Darquesse didn’t join in. “But his mind was an astonishing thing. His work, his research … Even the questions he posed in his field outshone the answers I got in mine. If you truly wanted to master this thing called magic, if you truly wanted to touch infinity … I would have said talk to D’Essai. Talk to Argeddion.