tohearthesound | oomm: we have the answer to all your fears

Matt’s note isn’t that much of a surprise.

Rache understands the impulse not to linger where the memories are unpleasant, and the odds of running in to Nita are much reduced in someone else’s universe.

He hopes it helps.

With Matt gone, he straightens up his room. He finishes the last of his books, takes a long shower and goes to bed.

He dreams of magic, of Sitri and silver and prisons made of chalk. He is not afraid this time. He watches from the outside of things, insubstantial, and waits.

In the morning, Bar provides a journal and he writes down everything he can remember. The barbed, clutching symbol for summoning. The shape for binding, with thick lines like prison bars. Spirals, like water down a drain, to draw power from one place to another. He fills pages and pages with the remembered designs from inside the engine.

It quickly becomes apparent that further research is called for. Bar is an able helper, but best at providing what is asked for, not when one scarcely knows where to start.

There’s really only one place for things like that.

It’s just a room.

It’s just a place where something happened.

He isn’t sure how long he stands outside the library door, the journal clutched to his chest like a shield.

Eventually, he moves.

On the floor near the hinges, there’s a little wooden wedge to prop the door open. Rache makes sure it’s jammed firmly into place, that the door cannot swing shut behind him, before he finally goes inside.

Much to his relief, the Occult and Supernatural section is subdivided into history, theory and practice. He pulls down volumes at random, searching through them for symbols that resemble in any way the ones from his world.

In The Universal Dictionary of Practical Magic, he finds the summoning glyph laid out like sign post. The entry beneath the picture states that there are few extant references for this type of work, but that the best authority can be found in Demonographia by A. Harper.

The name stops him cold. He can still see it on a faded wooden sign, outside a crime scene: Aloysius Harper, Purveyor. The shock doesn’t last long; it makes too much sense. The man was hardly a novice, not if he could make those damned silver cuffs. Rache had always assumed the coven tortured Harper for information about who had purchased them, but what if they wanted more?

Three rows down and four rows over, he finds it. Demonographia: a Field Guide by Aloysius Harper. The vast majority of the book holds a new symbol on each page, with descriptions crammed beneath; the first narrow section reads less like instructions and more like Harper’s own musings.

It deserves closer inspection. Rache stacks it and the journal in his arms, then heads for the exit.

He doesn’t follow his path back exactly; he’s not even paying attention to his surroundings, just thinking about how much there is to learn and what he might do--he should talk to Matt--when he walks straight through the middle of a small grouping of chairs beside a fireplace.

He stumbles, staggers to a halt. Is this the same place? He wants to think about it so little, he can’t be certain. Surely the architecture up here is as apt to change as anywhere else in this building. It could be coincidence. Does it matter if it is? It’s still close enough to stop his breath and make his heart ache. He closes his eyes, squeezing the books until his fingers are numb.

When he opens them, the chairs and the fireplace are gone, replaced by a pair of stools and a high table with a chessboard.

”Thank you.”

He leaves. He walks very quickly, but he does not run.