Page 8 - World of Darkness

is called “oroboros.” Arrayed around the snake were 10 symbols: a lightning bolt, a cube, an Egyptian
ankh, two overlapping circles, an hourglass, a spiral, a crescent moon, a skull, an open eye and a spider
web. I had been sitting in the coffee shop on Hanover for 45 minutes, idly playing with the card. It was worn
at the edges, with a faint stain on the face and a crease at one corner. Then the waitress asked me if I wanted
another latte.
She wasn’t the woman who’d been waiting on me earlier. She couldn’t have been more than 17, with a
punked-out hair cut, a ring through her lip and a dozen thin silver chains around her neck. Part of a tattoo
was visible on her collarbone, a flourish of dark ink peeking out of her tank top. I looked into her eyes and
felt like I was breathing helium.
She sat down across the table and gestured at the playing card. “Is that yours?” she asked.
“Someone told me to bring it.”
She nodded. “You look tired. Are you sure you’re awake?”
I considered that for a few seconds. “I think I’m half asleep,” I told her. The noises of the coffee shop, the
clinking of silverware and scraping of chairs across the floor seemed to fall away. The smell of coffee beans
and pastries faded. I saw her reach forward and put one finger on the back of my hand. “The dream
equation,” she said, “told me someone was coming.”
An electric warmth flowed from her hand into my body. I turned my head and it seemed as if I could see
afterimages. Everywhere I looked, people left trails as they moved, reflections of themselves that stretched
behind them like time-lapse photography. I opened my mouth to speak, but everything was changing.
Everyone, everything was merging with its own reflections. Heads had a hundred faces. Faces had a
thousand eyes. A million fingers on my hand. An old man with an infant at his core. A toddler with a coiled-
up crone inside her.
It was too much. I looked at the girl, the waitress, and her body was like glass. Inside it, in place of her
heart, a star of blue light beat. I saw her lips move. “The time equation is incomplete,” her voice said in my
mind. “We’re compressing like paper dolls.” I stared at her eyes, which were shining like rain puddles in the
sun. I felt my lungs swelling like balloons and my stomach knotting. “Stop,” I wanted to say. The chains
around her neck were dull as lead, but below them a silver design flickered and pulsed. Her tattoo, I thought.
I could see right through her shirt and realized the design was a bird, a hook-billed falcon that would have
looked at home engraved on the side of an Egyptian tomb.
“The lady with the bird,” I thought. “Tell her.” I
heard my voice say the word “Seven,” a few sec-
onds before I opened my mouth and spoke.
“Seven?” she repeated. “Seven?” Laughter like
thunder. “Seven! That’s it, there are seven!”
I realized my eyes were closed. I counted to
three and opened them. I was standing in the alley
behind the coffee shop. It was raining. I was hold-
ing an umbrella. It wasn’t my umbrella. The handle
was in the shape of a parrot, just like in Mary
Poppins.

*** I CONSIDERED INVESTIGATING THIS
COFFEE SHOP, BUT OUR MASTERS AD-
VISED ME TO HOLD OFF AND WAIT FOR
MORE INSTRUCTIONS. ***

*** SECTION MISSING ***

‘We meet again, Rath Street, tonight. Answers.’

*** SECTION MISSING ***

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