There was a body on the floor. At first, I thought Books was just having a moment. He had a lot of moments. Along with an affinity for locks. Anything meant to stay shut, Books got into. He couldn't help it, took it as a personal challenge, like someone had dared him even though no one had. People asked, hey, can you open this, but they weren't usually the people who owned whatever it was.

Was Books a criminal? Technically, I guess. But it wasn't about the crime or what was inside the lockboxes. It was about the magic of puzzle solving, and solving the magic equation needed to solve the actual puzzle.

That probably didn't make any sense. Didn't to me either. I'm just a battery, mostly. I don't know how magic works, I just channel it. I'm a mine shaft straight to the Deeps.

Books, though, he was...complicated.

He was also dead.

I sauntered into his study as a large metallic cat, a preferred form of mine, on a Sunday afternoon. Light streaked through the windows he'd splattered with black paint, creating a smoky den of dust, bookcases, and schematics. Books had his face squished to the boards like he was listening. I'd seen him do this before, he'd said he was listening for the answer. Magic equations weren't really math. They were a give-and-take of random words, paraphernalia, and gestures that had to appease whatever you were trying to cast a spell on.

Like I said. Zero sense.

One time Books was hired to crack open a safe in the sub-sub-basement of a local gang lord by the gang lord himself—long story—and the safe insisted on some of the weirdest shit I've ever seen. Making him paint his whole body three shades of green, slap together a tuna sandwich, and dance a rare jig. Then, just like—wait for it—magic, the safe allowed him to enter. He looked like an utter loon, but nobody questioned his methods. They never did.

Suffice it to say, Books wasn't listening for anything anymore. I trotted over and bumped his head. "Listen, Books, the lighting in here is garbage and you're gonna lose your eyesight faster than you lose poker." I settled on the ridge of his arm, like a casual mountain goat. Except, I was a cat. I mean, I could've been a mountain goat, but I wasn't really into it at the time.

Books, understandably, said nothing.

That's when I got concerned. Books always said something. I climbed off his shoulder and nudged his cheek, twitched an ear, and listened, now that I knew I should. My tail bristled. I was about to shift human to access the fine art of thumbs when a heavy banging shuddered the apartment.

There wasn't much to shudder. I mean, Books lived in the one room and worked in the other. The outside door was only about twenty feet away.

"Books, we need to talk!" That was the unmistakable voice of Cheralyn "Cherry" Jones. The Nemesis. Books always thought she was nice (she wasn't), and that they were friends (they weren't). She was definitely Archenemy Number One.

I stayed in cat form and slunk into the barbaric pile of discarded shoes under Books's desk.

You might think I'm heartless.

You'd be right too, but not in the metaphorical sense. If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm a familiar. I'm not made of people stuff—I'm actually made of a soul housed in a transformative metallic body—but I have feelings. I knew Books was dead by now, but I also knew something colder. He'd been murdered. If he'd died in any ordinary sense (even ordinary murder), I would've felt it. I, as his familiar, would've known. But I hadn't noticed a thing, and only one thing could prevent that. Magic.

The murdery kind.

Did I think Cherry Jones was the killer? Maybe. Wasn't gonna take my chances. If Books was dead, I had forty-eight hours before I had to return my body and rejoin the nearest obelisk where unaffiliated familiars resided. Obelisks were all over the place. Big towers of space rock that dropped from the sky in a meteor shower one day, and boom, humanity had familiars and they had magic. Honestly, iffy choice by whatever aliens decided to jettison their luggage that day. Even I don't know and I am alien.

Anyway, obelisks aren't the greatest hangouts. It's like being entombed in Jell-O without the entertainment value. I'd been with Books since the nerd was eight. Twenty-six solid years outside bodiless, gelatinous jail. I wasn't going back without finding out who'd taken that from me.

Who'd taken Books from me.

I didn't have a heart, so all of me just ached instead.

Cherry bullied her way inside the apartment. She must've had some kind of ward dazzler that hypnotized all Books's safeguards into thinking they were getting the input they wanted. Not very nice. When she appeared in the study door, her face collapsed in an ashy expression.

"Gare, clean this up. We can't have anyone finding the body," she said. Exactly the kind of thing a murdering murderer would say.

One might be misled to believe that, Gare, her familiar, was short for something loveable and unassuming. Like Gary. It wasn't. It was short for Garrote. What sort of respectable familiar named themselves Garrote? The Archnemesis kind, that's who.

Gare, in the form of a hawk, fluttered down from her shoulder and went human. He made his form lean and retro clockwork, all glass and gears. He was snazzy, I'll give him that. But he was also an asshole, so I won't.

I hunkered down among my shoes as Gare shuffled the body. It wasn't Books. I couldn't think that or I'd rip someone's throat out. Before any bad ideas overcame me, I teleported right out.

As soon as I materialized on the street, I shifted human—inconspicuous, ambiguous, with pointy teeth because it scared the hell out of people—and went to the Crossroads. A division of the police dealing in less mundane and more arcane affairs. It had a formal name no one used. Most people just called them Exers, because an X was like a crossroad. Nobody said most people were creative geniuses.

Anyway, I knew a familiar who rode with an Exer, and she'd help. The familiar, not the Exer. The Exer was alright, but he didn't like Books, he didn't like me, and his rules were so legal. Why would his familiar be any different, you say? Well, we are individuals, thank you very much. Besides, Fairweather and I had a long history and she owed me a ton of favors.

I loitered outside the station, looking human by planting my nose in a tech device Books forgot among his shoes. It played this stupid game where you bounce a ball into these brick-things until they whittle down to nothing. Stupidest thing ever. So addicting.

A little too addicting.

"You're a shit human," said Fairweather. Which was ironic because she might've been wearing a human head, but her eyes and hands were all robo-reptilian.

"What do you mean? I was being self-absorbed. I was perfect."

She opened her mouth, clearly about to snark me down the block. But she didn't. Fairweather took one look at me and her eyes softened to human with all the emoting involved.

Gods, I couldn't—I couldn't deal with that right now. I had to find Books's killer.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

I choked. Dammit, but I choked. "Books," I said. "Is dead." I don't know what scared me more: Losing my body to the obelisk or emerging into a world without Books.

Fairweather shrank into a fox form and put her nose in my hand. Quiet, steady. Sad.

I morphed back to a cat because being a human sucked.

"We should get Waring" –her Exer witch— "he can help. We'll find who did this."

"Not until I nail Cherry Jones to the wall. She was there. I want you to help me get evidence."

"Is that a phone you dropped?" Fairweather asked flatly. "Did you take a picture?"

I looked at the tech device on the ground. "This has a camera?"

"Gods, how did you ever survive. Well, what's the plan then?"

"We'll search her place," I said. "I know she was cooking up something against him. She hated Books."

If a fox could look skeptical, Fairweather was doing it. "No, she didn't. They were slee—"

"Sleeting down horrible hexes on each other. Duh, that's what mortal enemies do." I flicked my tail at her. Sometimes Fairweather could be so obtuse.

She snapped after my tail with her teeth. "What about Rochester?" she asked like I'd been dodging it the whole time. What can I say? Hospitals make me squeamish.

But I should've been better. See, all the money Books got from his safecracking jobs he sent to Rochester—or Roach. Yes, it's a terrible nickname, yes, Roach gave it to himself. He was Books's twin and he was terminally ill. None of the experimental treatments, magical or otherwise, were working. Roach might've been a textbook genius on everything magic, but he didn't have a drop himself.

"Noooo," I said, cocking an ear back. "I haven't talked to Roach. It's not like I didn't think about it. I just...didn't want to go without answers."

"You're a horrible liar."

"Thank you."

"No." Fairweather sighed. "I mean you're horrible at lying."

"Oh." That was much less complimentary.

"Let's go see what Cherry Jones is about then."

We did. I always kept tabs on Books's worst enemies (Cherry was the worst), so I knew where she lived. She had decent wards on her place, but they weirdly let me right in. Not Fairweather though, they zapped her good until I unlatched the door so she could walk instead of teleport in.

Cherry's home was...not what I expected from an evil lair, but I could adapt for modern times. There were a lot less human skulls and torture devices than there were smoothie mixes and yoga mats. Whatever, archenemies have quirks, what are you gonna do?

However, there was a lot of evidence. She'd pulled a transparent marker board into the middle of her living room, scribbled with lists and taped with photos. I plopped down the tech device and investigated. The pictures included Books, that old gang lord, Officer Waring, and Roach. The lists definitely looked like ingredients for a spell, something nasty.

12 jars of silt from the Neo-Styx

1 tablespoon cayenne

3 ½ toenails from a fully shifted werewolf

1 ancient amulet from the ruins of Wyrrygh Caider

66 thimble-fulls of blood of a loved one

1 murdered witch

"Gods, look at this." Fairweather shivered. "Place amulet on deceased's chest. Press toenails onto the tongue and fill the mouth with cayenne. Take the blood and spill in a circle around the body. Make another circle with the silt around that. Hold out your hands in the sign of Alban's Vigil and say these words."

Fairweather clearly didn't want to say the words. So I said them for her.

"I release thy power from thy soul and send it to the obelisk. Thy spirit shall be thine own, but thy power and thine will shall be mine. I bind thee to myself and thus are thee mine. Thus is thy power mine. The power of the Deeps that runs in thee, shall run in me. The power of the Deeps is mine."

Silence frosted the room.

"This is a spell to create...a familiar," said Fairweather. "That's not possible. We come from the Deeps, power given self. The obelisks brought us here. We don't—we aren't—"

"Souls," I said grimly. "We're still souls, and she's going to Frankenstein a familiar to life with the soul of a murdered witch. My murdered witch. We can't let Cherry take Books."

"She already has a familiar," Fairweather protested. "It doesn't make any sense."

"Maybe she wanted to give old Gare the boot. Books was strong, he understood spells like no one else. We have to find Cherry Jones."

"Oh Gods, oh no." Fairweather placed a paw under one of the pictures on the board.

Roach, a circle around his face.

"Shit, blood of a loved one," I said. "She's going to the hospital. She's going to use Books's own brother to steal his power!"

We didn't stand around babbling after that. Martyred Saints Hospital was built around its own obelisk. Medical witches had been circulating familiars through there for years. Roach lived in the north wing. Employees were used to familiars running around so they didn't pay us much mind as we beelined for our destination.

Green-black light roiled underneath the door. We were too late. Fairweather shifted human long enough to open the door and then busted in as a bear. I kept the cat shape, only made it bigger, much bigger.

It took me a beat to digest the scene inside.

Cherry slumped against the far wall, bleeding a lot, I couldn't see from where, but it was a lot. Gare was pinned to the ceiling in flaming chains, writhing from shape to shape, unable to escape. Books lay spread eagle on the floor in a double circle of blood and river silt.

Roach himself sat crosslegged on his hospital bed, calmly intoning the words we'd just read from the board in Cherry's house. Cherry, who...wasn't the villain?

"You bastard," I roared.

Metal clinked on the ceiling, the chains restraining Gare shifting into a flaming collar. His eyes lit red and he descended in human form, enormous mechanical wings blooming from his back. It was obviously a thrall enchantment, and on any other day I would've loved taking that smug prick down a peg or two, but not like this.

Fairweather growled and leaped in front of me. She'd hold Gare off while I did...something. Yell, apparently.

"You murdered your own brother for what? Jealousy?" I shouted. "Everything he did was to help you!"

"Pay for me, not help me," Roach snarled. They were twins and he had Books's same golden skin, angular jaw, his curls, and three-shades-of-brown eyes, but not his heart. "To pay for these idiots to do nothing when he could've looked for ways to cure me himself. He had the potential, he had the power, and he did nothing but make it someone else's problem!"

"Now it's my problem, and I'm not going back into that cosmic Jell-O Top without making you pay." And now that I'd nicely interrupted him, he had to start the incantation all over.

I hissed and launched myself at the bed. I like to think I'm a decent person, and I'm not going to take out a defenseless man in his sickbed, but I had mighty designs to roll him up like a burrito and deliver him to the Crossroads.

Thrall-Gare had other plans. He'd locked horns with Fairweather and tossed her to the side with Cherry, and now he came for me. He shifted into a bull and careened me off my flight plan and into the wall. Roach's smile spread dark and grim as he picked up his incantation again.

No. I struggled up and faced down Thrall-Gare. The flaming collar flickered at his throat. We both roared and struck again. Stomping, slashing, shifting into whatever shape would give us the edge. It was fast and brutal and there was no time to think.

No, there was no time to fight and I had to think! I had to stop Roach. I tried to lurch around Gare's next attack, but he intercepted and flung me away. So I leaped onto the monitoring equipment and threw myself into the air, diving toward Roach.

Just as he finished the words.

No!

Books's body glowed, rimed in that green-black light. The obelisk pulsed outside the window. Two stone top-like structures, huge and always spinning. Like all obelisks, this one carried the souls of familiars until they were called. Soon it'd take Books and transform him to be like me, bound to serve.

But I'd never served Books. We'd been allies, friends, protected each other, and if I was still connected to his spirit for the next forty-eight hours or (much less) until the obelisk took him, then I was going to do my damn job.

I was just a conduit. I couldn't reach the Deeps myself, and Books could only do it through me. His soul was still here in this room, going fast, but in this moment he was here. A shadow of thought hovering over his body. I felt his sorrow at being unable to help his brother, anger at having no control over leaving me, desire to protect.

Just as I desired.

"Come on, Books," I said. "One more time. Reach."

I felt a rush, like time speeding up, like every molecule in my body pinching awake. But Books was fading and I was here, more here than him, more solid, so I took his reach and twisted.

Roach wouldn't get his brother's power. He'd get mine. He wouldn't bind his brother.

He'd bind me.

I know this sounds like nobody won, but if I'd had a heart it would've felt a modicum of peace. I wouldn't return to an obelisk, and Books would be free. Sure, his conniving brother would gain my powers as a familiar and transitively become a witch, but if you can't beat them, join them, and then beat them later if they don't change their ways, right?

I think ultimately Roach was scared. Not that being scared is an excuse to kill your brother for his magical powers. So I might still make his life a living hell, haven't decided yet.

But I have decided to put more effort into honing my human shape. It'll be a familiar face.