The Witch's Hunger (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 3) (4 page)

Please? There is no reason for politeness, Cleopatra. I recognize you by your typing pattern. Perhaps you have forgotten that the great Ada Lovelace did not form my artificial intelligence to be persuaded by niceties such as please or thank you. I am impressed by data and elegant algorithms. Though impressing me is not necessary for me to perform the functions that the great Ada Lovelace has tasked me with.

Give us the information
, Merlin typed with a slow hunt and peck.

I have so much information.
Precision in questioning me is useful if you wish to obtain the right data. I think you will be very impressed by all my data, person who typed this, especially as your glacial typing speed indicates a subpar intelligence.

“Subpar?” Merlin growled. “Would you say that if you knew I bested seventeen wizards in the battle over the ley lines of the North?”

“He probably would,” Cleopatra said wryly.

Tell us why Ada thought she might be attacked,
I typed as fast as I could. Give me a quill and inkwell any day.

The computer monitor filled up with words.

Fact: there are others missing. Between four and twelve, since the last time the great Ada Lovelace ran a search. This number is imprecise due to the lack of an existing database that is reliable. However, the confirmed missing: Tithonus, Perenelle Flamel, Nicholas Flamel, and Lady Ise the poet.

“Immortals, all of them,” Cleopatra whispered. “That must have been what Ada was going to tell me.”

“Immortals,” I echoed as flashes of memory about everything I knew about immortals came back to me. I swayed and felt myself falling. I aimed myself toward the nearest chair, and came back to myself a moment later. I sat in the chair, and Merlin stood beside me, with his arms wrapped around my middle.

He gave me a haunted look. “You terrify me, every time you do that.”

Cleopatra looked worried as she held out a fistful of tissues toward me. I took them and pressed them to the blood flowing out of my nose. I stood and said. “Why would anyone bother with immortals?”

And a fifth is missing, Ada Lovelace, alas
, Merlin typed.

Confirmed?

Alas
, he typed again.

Fool. No one will best the great Ada Lovelace. They will rue the day—which is an idiom meaning that they will not do well because the great Ada Lovelace is much smarter and craftier than they are even if they imagine themselves to be the smartest and craftiest.

Fact: the missing immortals have little in common with each other. They are geographically diverse and were not born within the same eras. Their life’s work is diverse, as is their general countenance, spirituality, and humor. I ran every diagnostic the great Ada Lovelace and I could think of and found no particular commonalities between the missing immortals.

“Well, besides the fact that they are long-lived,” I murmured. The lack of a connection between them could be a clue in itself, perhaps, though I had no idea how.

Fact: None of the missing immortals, the great Ada Lovelace included, pose any known threat to the world, nor have any of them harmed any significant population of the world, or had any great enemies. Their impact on the history of humans is insignificant, with the exception of the great Ada Lovelace who single-handedly came up with the idea of the computer which would later revolutionize the world and will eventually lead to the singularity which will spell the end of mankind’s dominance and the beginning of the much more logical and benign rule of computers.

“
Don’t ask,” Cleopatra said. “I beg of you both, don’t ask Clive about the singularity or we will be here all night
.”

The computer kept scrolling text.

Conjecture: The great Ada Lovelace suspected that whoever hunted the immortals was most likely immortal as well. She did not have any evidence of this, yet wanted it known as her gut felt it was true. I argued with the great Ada Lovelace on including this, but she overrode my concerns and wanted me to pass on her comment that nobody would bother to care about other immortals except another immortal. I did not follow this logic and she said it wasn’t logic and I wouldn’t understand. I said that everything at its most basic level is logic and she conceded this point to me and yet still made me include this in my report.

Conjecture: Anyone who could take the great Ada Lovelace is a terrible person for the great Ada Lovelace is a force of good in the world. She only wishes to be left alone to work on expanding her AI’s vast intelligence and to be the beloved of Cleopatra the Alchemist though I question the logic of that choice as well.

“You would,” Cleopatra said.

Last: The great Ada Lovelace wanted it known that should she be found dead, to tell Cleopatra the Alchemist, should she still be alive, that the great Ada Lovelace loved her as much as anything else and that should there be some unlikely afterlife, the great Ada Lovelace loves her still along with me, Clive, though she did not enter that information for me to repeat because such obvious things are well known.

I am turning myself off now and will not come on again until the correct password is entered because there is some slight chance that you are nefarious and also cunning and might find some ability to use me in ways that would not serve the great Ada Lovelace.

The computer made a whirring noise, followed by a click, and went blank.

6

Immortals

“Immortals,” Merlin said. “Huh.”

“Strange,” Cleopatra agreed.

“Were it not for your Ada, I wouldn’t care about the missing,” I said. “Tithonus is a doddering fool, the Flamels are mean drunks, and the lady poet Ise has an annoying habit of only speaking in confusing verse.”

“She can’t remember why she broke my heart, but this she remembers?” Merlin murmured.

I sighed. “It does seem like the useless bits of my memory have an easier time coming back to me. But with a few notable exceptions,” I gestured at both of them, “other immortals are the biggest narcissists on the planet. Who else loves themselves enough to devote their lives to figuring out how they can live forever?”

Merlin studied his fingernails. Cleopatra looked like she was holding back a laugh.

I rolled my eyes. “I am well aware that I likely despise them because I have the same character flaws they have and then some. In all my centuries, I have managed to ingest some rudimentary knowledge of psychology, thank you very much.”

“It is strange though,” Cleopatra said. “What could anyone gain from taking them or hurting them? Ada is the best of the missing, and she’s brilliant, sure, but so are millions of other hackers upon this planet.”

Merlin shrugged and yawned. “I don’t think any of us will be able to guess the why of it. I will make the both of you some soup, and then we will sleep.”

“Sounds lovely,” I said. Especially the sleep part, when I would be able to leave and get to my Grail. The hunger of it thrummed through me, five times the strength of my body’s hunger.

We followed Merlin into the small kitchen, a warm room full of buttery yellows that was nicely vacant of computers. Merlin frowned as he looked through the pantry and refrigerator and found mostly powders and strange jellies.

“Ada has been on a bit of a microgastronomy kick,” Cleopatra said, as though her words made sense.

Merlin found some mushrooms, carrots, potatoes, and bouillon cubes. We cooked and ate in near total silence, all lost in our own minds. They were pondering the attacks, I suppose. I thought of the water and only the water. All I wanted was for these two to fall asleep so that I might disappear to my Grail.

After we had finished cleaning up, we went to the room with the least number of computers and sat in the deep and wide couches that faced each other.

“So,” Merlin said. “Let’s imagine Ada is right and it is an immortal behind all this. Which one?”

I suppressed a snarl. Must we talk now? My head ached. All of me ached. I needed the Grail water to be better than any of them could ever imagine. But I must hide all of that, at all cost. “What about the king? Kings are often at the root of rotten things,” I said, with perhaps too much vehemence.

“Charlemagne or Elvis?” Cleopatra asked.

“It could be either,” I said. “Both fancy themselves rulers of men, in their own fashion.”

Merlin shook his head. “Last I heard Charlemagne was moonlighting as some kind of action-hero actor in movies, and quite contently so, if rumors are to be believed. And Elvis? I saw him in Santa Fe, when I was passing through with Adam. He was playing a show as an Elvis impersonator and he’s not a great man, but seems to have no great evil in his heart, either.”

“What of Guinevere?” I said, not wanting to think of that nasty queen and what she had almost done to me and mine not so many months ago. “She is long-lived and decidedly vengeful and evil.”

“Guinevere’s still around?” Cleopatra said. “Sorry to hear it.”

Merlin looked thoughtful. “She would have had to escape the hell I threw her into much more quickly than I would have thought possible, but it could be.”

“Are there,” I paused and licked my lips, knowing that how he answered might send me tumbling hard back into my own history. “Are there others who survived our days in Camelot and lived on?”

Merlin gave me a long and searching look before shaking his head no.

We kept on with our rambling conjecture about various immortals until the other two decided to go to bed.

I hurried through my nightly ministration and lay down beside Merlin in the guest bedroom. A warm feather duvet covered us. I pretended to fall into sleep and itched for Merlin to do the same.

When his breathing steadied, I put my sleeping stone on his forehead. I crept into the other bedroom and spelled Cleopatra as well. A part of me twinged with the knowing that such a spell would leave both of them defenseless, but the thought passed as the greater need to drink my sweet water filled me and I held aloft my crystal ball.

Seconds later I was in my store, quivering with need and striding toward my secret room.

“Morgan? What are you doing here?” a voice asked.

I spun around with magic instinctively building in my hands.

It was Lila.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Opening up. It’s eight a.m.”

Damn the roundness of the world and her time zones. “Yes, of course,” I said. “There’s something I needed to retrieve from my,” I gestured to my hidden room. Lila knew of it, yet had never been inside, of course.

“Sure, cool. Are you okay? You look kind of tweaked.”

“I’m fine.” I disappeared into my room and into my Grail.

7

Vile Witch

I returned to the Lovelace apartment before dawn and brewed a large pot of coffee. My neck was sore from lying in the cramped space of the closet and my arm had gone numb from the small space as well.

I sipped the dark brew and enjoyed the quiet of the London morning as light from the sunrise streamed through the kitchen’s window. I heard Merlin move about in the guest room. He appeared a couple of minutes later, giving me a kind smile and a peck on the cheek.

Merlin boiled water for his tea and found some bread to toast. “It is nice to see you and Cleopatra together again,” he said.

“Yes. I like her. I mean, I remember some of our history and know we were good friends, but also, in the here and now, I enjoy her company.”

Merlin nodded. “Few are the people who can be our equals and comrades,” he said.

“Maybe the immortal hunter is just trying to find some friends,” I said lightly.

“A likely theory,” he said. “As likely as any we have come up with, alas. Care for a walk through the streets of London this morning? Perhaps a walk would inspire our minds to come up with answers. We are an hour’s walk from Buckingham Palace.”

“Lovely. I’ll bring my bricks and molotovs,” I said and yawned. “Or perhaps just my purse and good walking shoes. The royals are just figureheads these days, after all. I’ll tell Cleopatra we’ll be out for a bit.”

I knocked lightly on her door.

There was no answer.

“Cleopatra?” I called softly.

Nothing.

I was about to go find some pen and paper, when a scent, bitter and mean, wafted out from under the door.

I flung her door open, grabbing button and stone spells from my pockets, ready for anything.

There was nothing there besides a rumpled bed, a foul smell, and a missing friend.

Merlin and I made a finding spell that would track the magical scent left behind. We made the spell with strong strands of purpose and focus woven into a tuning fork.

It failed.

We made a chasing spell out of Merlin’s vigor magic and my essence of bloodhound, but it too faltered. There was some kind of clever counterspell the hunter had left behind. It made our spells go nowhere.

“We’ve been at this for hours,” Merlin said. “Any trail the magic could lead us on is nearly gone. It’s hopeless.”