“Now don’t bother trying to escape, dear,” Lucrezia sang out from a workbench. “I gather from the wide variety of items you were carrying—some in rather uncomfortable places, I’d imagine—that you are very well trained.” She used a forceps to exhibit a cleverly made sheath housing several small, wicked-looking knives.
She put the knives down and fastidiously wiped the forceps with a moldering rag. “But you won’t get out of that, dear. I’ve been tying people up since before you were born.”
“You don’t have to do this! We’re on the same side, Auntie,” Zola protested. “I’ve been spying on your daughter and her minions even before they shut down the Castle!”
Lucrezia stared at her. “She . . . ” Lucrezia looked down at the body that her mind currently occupied. “My daughter has shut down Castle Heterodyne?”
Zola blinked. “You couldn’t tell?”
Lucrezia waved a hand at the cavern walls. “Not from down here, darling. This little retreat was so perfect because that interfering Castle wasn’t even aware it was here.” She gnawed gently at her lower lip. “Dead. Well that changes a few things . . . ”
Zola tried again. “Auntie, I was going to help you.”
Lucrezia raised an eyebrow and smiled wistfully. “My, you are just like dear Demonica, aren’t you?” She twirled around and whisked a dust sheet off of a mid-sized machine that sat lifeless to one side. “Well, don’t you worry, my dear, you are going to help me.”
Zola looked at the device and flinched. “AH! That’s some kind of Beacon Engine!”
Lucrezia was a bit thrown by this. How did the girl know about the Summoning Engines? That would need to be answered, but later. For now, she tried to hide her confusion. “Not exactly, darling, this is some of my earlier work. It produced some amusing results and was very helpful in developing my later, most useful, devices. With a few simple adjustments, I think it will do very well for what I have in mind today.”
So saying, she lifted a panel off the machine and began tinkering. Zola stared and then, with a small shudder, looked aside. Trying to watch a spark at work was just asking for violent headaches and disturbing flashbacks.
Lucrezia blithely chatted on as she worked. “You are obviously familiar with the plans of the Order’s Inner Circle. That will save us all so much tedious exposition.” Lucrezia looked at Zola expectantly, but the girl kept silent, eyes narrowed and averted. Lucrezia sniffed and continued to tinker with the machine. Finally, she could stand the silence no more. “Well, if you must know,” she continued, “my poor, stupid admirers in the Grand Sycophantic Order of the Knights of Jupiter, or whatever nonsense they called their ridiculous secret society, were supposed to do little else but search for this girl Agatha—my daughter. She was supposed to be the perfect receptacle for me. For my mind.” Lucrezia slumped back against the bench and frowned. “But now that I’m in the girl’s body, no thanks to them, it appears that I might have made a . . . a mistake depending on her.”
Zola spoke slowly. “I don’t understand. A mistake? How? She was—”
“Yes! Yes, yes, yes! My child! Prepared and conditioned—and maybe if those fools had found her ten years ago. Or if that Barry—” she spat the name “—hadn’t interfered by giving her that wretched locket . . . ”4
Lucrezia turned with a glare, and Zola spied the locket shining amidst the clutter atop the workbench. Lucrezia seemed to deflate slightly.
“But . . . maybe not.” She picked up a small mirror and stared into it. “Maybe she simply has too much of her father in her after all.” Zola was astonished to see a tear well up in one of her aunt’s eyes. “This is all his fault,” she whispered. Lucrezia became aware of Zola’s interest and slammed the mirror down hard enough to crack it. “The point is that, for whatever reason, Agatha is too strong. It has become too easy for her to seize control of this body and keep me from taking it back. I am not winning. And worse, she’s learning things from me! Reaching into my mind and pulling out my secrets! She knew to look for this place! She intuitively grasps the principles of my work!”
She took a breath and Zola dared to interject, “But that’s not uncommon. Your own work, while magnificent in its own right, of course, is a recognizable extension of some of your father’s theories. Many sparks within a family have a natural insight—”
She flinched as Lucrezia’s fists slammed down on the bench before her, punctuating her words. “SILENCE!” she shrieked. “This! Girl! Must! Die!” She glared, panting, at Zola, who wisely said nothing. After a moment, Lucrezia regained control of herself and straightened up. Zola was immediately reminded of a cat that had fallen off a table and was nonchalantly pretending this was exactly what it had wanted to do.
“Ideally,” Lucrezia muttered, “I would just destroy this body now while I still have control.”
Zola blinked. “That’s ideally?”
Lucrezia was obviously thinking about something else, but a part of her blithely chatted on. “Of course. Now that my priestesses have my Summoning Engine working, all they need to do is call me into some other suitable vessels. I’ve managed to expand the operating parameters so I should have ever so many more choices now. Destroying the part of me that’s occupying this wretched girl won’t destroy me at all. Not even close. Redundancy allows one to be much more relaxed about sacrificing individual iterations.”5 She frowned, “But . . . but in this calling, I have gained valuable information. Killing this girl before I have had a chance to pass it on . . . ” She shook her head and, once again, focused her full attention on Zola. “Luckily, I won’t have to go through the whole ‘summoning’ rigmarole with you, dear.” She smiled reassuringly and patted the machine’s carapace. “That wouldn’t help me at all in this situation. The new calling would have none of the knowledge I have gained in this body. No, instead I can simply use this lovely old toy of mine to copy myself from this troublesome girl into you. Then I will kill her.” She smiled at Zola. “After that, I shall rendezvous with the Sturmhalten hive, round up a few more suitable girls, and then give myself all the important information over tea. Yes, that sounds perfect. I think I’ll have those little jam sandwiches. I’ve really missed them . . . ”
“No.”
Zola’s quiet but emphatic statement caused Lucrezia to laugh with delight. She regarded Zola with genuine amusement. “Oh, I do so love a truly defiant subject! They’re so much fun! If only I had the time to do it right!”
Zola kept talking. “It won’t work, auntie. If you try to force yourself into my brain, you’ll suffer rezzok tig-zaffa.”
Lucrezia’s hilarity cut off as if a switch had been thrown. Zola nodded, “That is what your Geisterdamen call mutual brain death, yes?”
Lucrezia scowled. “I see you are very well informed, aren’t you?”
Zola nodded. “Yes, I am. All those years ago? When you sent the Geisterdamen here to build your machines and hunt for your daughter Agatha? Some of those priestesses began to question the divinity of the great goddess they served so blindly. They began to think, to ask questions, and to see you for the fraud you are.”