Lucius made it back to the house in Queens with an evidence bag on his lap and a lawyer's business card in his pocket, which felt like the kind of protection that worked only when other people still cared about rules.
Caldwell drove like a man who had seen enough stupidity to stop trusting traffic lights. He did not fill the silence either. He let Lucius sit with it.
Queens slid past the window in winter colours. Detached houses with short driveways. Lawns cut down to a neat stubble. Wreaths on doors. Strings of lights clipped along rooflines, blinking in tired loops. Upper middle class. Not rich enough for gates, not broke enough for bars on the windows. People here paid their mortgages, paid their taxes, and told themselves that meant they were safe.
Caldwell stopped in front of a two-storey brick house with white trim and a porch that had been swept recently. The driveway could fit two cars. The garage door looked new.
Caldwell cut the engine.
"If they call, do not answer," he said. "If they show up again, do not open the door without calling me or a warrant you can read."
Lucius nodded and looked at the house.
Caldwell handed him a card, stepped out, and shut the door.
"Try not to leave the state today," Caldwell added, in a dry tone. "It irritates them."
He walked back to his sedan like the entire morning had been an annoying appointment.
Lucius stood on the porch with keys in one hand and the evidence bag in the other. The air smelled like cold pavement and somebody's fireplace. A dog barked down the street, furious at a passing car as if it had a personal history with it.
He unlocked the door.
Warm air met him. The entryway opened into a sitting room that looked like a catalogue layout. A wide sectional in grey fabric. A dark wood coffee table looking heavy enough to survive a small war. A bookshelf filled with books on chemistry, arranged in colours like they were a social signal. A big television on a low console. Hardwood floors under a soft rug that did not have stains, because someone here had been the kind of person who did not spill.
It was a good home.
It was not his.
He dropped the evidence bag on the coffee table, sat down, and leaned back until his head touched the cushion.
He closed his eyes.
The refrigerator hummed in the background. A wall clock ticked, steady and smug. The heater cycled on, then off.
He let his mind settle. This reality check was what he needed more than anything.
No shouting, no explosion, definitely no Paris. What in the name of God was happening to him?
His death in France had been caused by what their government called doctors and engineers, and a peace offering in a religious package. He woke up to this reality after his death. The was not asking an imaginary question. The damn thing was arranging his next great adventure. Then an UNKNOWN sender welcomed him to a universe that should not have existed in reality.
Now he had a house in Queens.
He was not going to complain. This was a nice home. It could have been the Bronx.
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling for a long moment, then sat down.
Proof first. Explanations later.
He raised his hands, palms up, like he was about to ask the universe for a refund.
"Grimoire," he said.
The air tugged.
A weight dropped into his hands.
The book looked old in a way that did not come from dust. Black leather, worn at the edges, the cover darkened as if it had been touched by too many hands. It smelled like leather and smoke.
He did not want to know what kind of leather it was.
Whispers crept into his mind the moment his hand touched the cover. Not words, more like people talking behind a wall when you were half asleep, close enough to make your skin tighten.
He set the book on the coffee table and opened it.
The pages felt thick and expensive, almost waxed.
He turned one.
Blank.
Another.
Blank.
He flipped faster.
Blank. Blank and another blank!
His jaw set. He kept going until the annoyance turned into rage and the rage turned into the kind of heat that made him want to throw furniture.
The book was empty.
He stared at it, waiting for the trick to reveal itself.
Nothing.
He slammed it shut.
"You useless piece of crap," he muttered.
He stood, lifted it halfway off the table, then stopped because throwing the only magical object he owned seemed like a bad long-term strategy.
A sharp ping cut through the room.
The Nokia.
The Nokia was still inside the evidence bag. It was supposed to be off. It pinged anyway, because 'fuck you, why not'.
Lucius snatched the bag, ripped it open, and dumped the contents on the table.
He slid the screen up.
Sender: UNKNOWN.
It is a magical book, you dumbfuck. Three drops of your blood on the cover will bind it to you.
Lucius stared.
He could not even refute it. He did not have the dignity for that anymore.
"No need to be rude," he said, because if a cosmic entity was going to insult him, he was at least going to pretend he had standards.
He walked to the kitchen and grabbed a knife from a block that looked like it had never seen real work. The blade was clean, which was a comforting detail.
He returned, set the grimoire on the coffee table, and rolled up his sleeve.
He considered his fingers, then his palm.
Then he shook his head.
"Fingers and palms are for idiots and dramatic people," he said to the empty room. "Forearm is smarter. It will not turn every movement into torture and heals faster."
He made a small cut on the inside of his forearm.
A thin red line appeared.
He smiled, satisfied.
"See how smart I am," he added, smug.
He waited for blood.
The cut closed.
The skin smoothed.
No bead. No drop. No scar.
His smile died.
He stared at his arm.
"Well," he said slowly, "that is inconvenient."
He made a second cut, a little deeper.
It healed even faster.
He watched it seal like his body was laughing at him.
"Rapid healing," he muttered. "Great, fantastic. Ten out of ten."
He leaned over the grimoire and thought for half a second, then did the only thing that made sense.
He got violent.
He made a longer cut, deeper this time, enough to hurt like hell. Blood welled quickly and bright.
He tilted his arm over the book and forced three drops to fall before his skin decided to behave.
One.
Two.
Three.
The drops vanished into the leather as the book drank them.
The whispers sharpened for a heartbeat, then died.
A low dark glow seeped from the seams. The cover warmed under his fingers. The leather surface shifted, smoothing into a plain black book with no title and no decoration, as if it wanted to look innocent.
Lucius pulled his arm back and watched the wound seal again.
He exhaled through his nose.
"I love and hate my new metabolism," he said.
He opened the book.
The first page had writing now, clean and sharp, the kind of script that looked like it would correct your posture if you held it wrong.
Name: Lucius Noctis
Race: Homo Superior
Class: Wizard
Affinity: Alchemy, Rituals
Racial Skills
- Rapid Healing
- Mental Shields
Class Skills
- Veil of Fate
- Blessed Brewing
- Sacrificial Array
The moment he finished reading the last line, pain drove into his skull like a nail. His breath hitched. His hands slammed onto the coffee table. An ugly sound tore out of his throat before he could swallow it.
The pain intensified in hard pulses. His vision darkened at the edges. He tasted blood in his mouth.
He clenched his teeth and held on, because passing out alone in a sitting room with a magic book on the table sounded like volunteering to be on the daily obituary.
Just as he reached his limit, the pain vanished the same way it arrived.
Lucius blinked hard.
Knowledge flooded in behind his eyes.
Not only memories, instructions and experiences as well.
Symbols, ratios for ingredients, sequences, and dozens of potion recipes. How to build a ritual circle without it collapsing. Which runic script is better for different kinds of rituals? How to draw lines that mattered and what it cost to draw them.
The kick had been mental, but he felt it all over his body. His muscles twitched, as if his nerves were trying to catch up.
He swallowed and forced himself to breathe.
Then came the memories of his new body.
Lucius Noctis, chemical engineering graduate, about to turn twenty-five. Columbia SEAS. Top tier. Ambitious and disciplined. Dead parents in his second year. They left a considerable inheritance as well.
"Such gentle souls, may they rest in peace." He murmured.
The former owner of the body bought this house in Queens and a 2005 Tahoe. About eighty thousand dollars in the bank were waiting to be turned into bills.
He sat back, staring at the book as the new life settled into place like a coat that did not quite fit.
The other Lucius was gone. He did not know why, nor did he care.
He had enough problems that were actually his.
He ran a hand over the cover.
"Let us call you Bob," he said. "You look like a Bob."
The book remained silent.