Chapter 18: Portal Plans and Cousinly Vows
The damp Chicago wind funneling between the warehouses carried the scent of diesel and cold fish, but as Brigid, Aisling, and Nora approached the unmarked service door beside Dock Seven, the air changed. The fish smell deepened into something saltier, older, and the diesel fumes gave way to the crackle of ozone and the earthy smell of peat smoke.
Brigid pushed the heavy door open, and the cacophony of the Dark Market hit them like a wall.
Neon signs in languages that shifted if you stared too long buzzed and flickered. Stalls made of repurposed shipping containers and moth-eaten velvet tents lined a makeshift avenue that seemed to stretch farther than the physical warehouse allowed. A troll with moss-growing skin argued with a wizened creature over the price of glowing mushrooms. A woman with eyes like a cat’s sold bottled whispers. The very atmosphere vibrated with restrained power and a thousand overlapping conversations.
Godfrey padded beside Nora, completely unfazed. He sniffed at a basket of dubious-looking bones, sneezed, and moved on, his tail a placid metronome.
“It’s busier than I remember,” Aisling murmured, her Dublin accent soft under the market’s din. Her hand kept rising, her fingers touching the simple emerald ring on her left hand—a unconscious, constant gesture.
Brigid noticed. She looped her arm through Aisling’s, steering her around a puddle of something that shimmered with rainbow hues. “Still can’t believe it. You’re getting married. To a genuinely nice innkeeper’s son who isn’t secretly a fairy or a con man.”
Aisling laughed, the sound bright and clear. “He’s just Ronan. Solid. Real. Thinks my magic is fascinating but doesn’t treat me like a bomb that might go off.” She bumped her shoulder against Brigid’s. “Unlike some people I know.”
“Hey, your magical bomb is what saved our backsides more than once,” Brigid said, smiling. Then her expression softened, turning earnest. “You’ll be the most beautiful bride. And I mean it, Ais. Maid of Honor. Whatever you need. I’ll be there. I’ll convince my professors, I’ll walk through another portal, I’ll fight a dragon. I promise.”
Aisling stopped walking. The market’s chaos flowed around them like a river around two stones. Her green eyes, so like Brigid’s own, glistened. “Of course I want you by my side. You’re my cousin. My sister. You’re the one who showed me there was another way.” Her voice thickened. “Without you, I’d still be running cons, thinking love was a weakness grifters couldn’t afford.”
Brigid pulled her into a tight hug, ignoring the bump of Aisling’s woven satchel against her ribs. The smells of the market—incense, stale magic, strange spices—were momentarily replaced by the familiar scents of Aisling’s shampoo and wool. “Then it’s settled. We’ll make it happen. After… all this,” she said, pulling back and gesturing vaguely at the magical sprawl. “We deserve a proper celebration. One with cake and terrible speeches and no world-ending threats.”
Nora cleared her throat gently. She stood a few paces away, her perfect features composed, but her eyes held a warmth that was entirely her own, not programmed. The robotic being turned folk healer held Godfrey’s leash loosely. “The sentiment is optimal, but the Féth Fiada’s resonance won’t hold the portal alignment forever. We should proceed. You’ll see her soon, Brigid.”
Aisling wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand, sniffed, and nodded. “Right. Grandmother’s waiting.” She hefted her satchel, filled with Chicago-specific supplies Maeve had requested—rare herbs from the Verdant Pasture’s local gardens, a specific alloy of brass only sold by a goblin smith in the Market, a stack of scientific journals for Nora.
They moved deeper, toward the rear of the vast space where the permanent portals hummed in stone arches. The crowd thinned. The noise became a dull roar behind them.
“Send me the dates the second you have them,” Brigid said, her voice low and urgent. “And color swatches. And tell me if you want me to handle Jan. Because I can, you know. I have techniques.”
Aisling grinned. “Please do. Tell her to behave, or at least to direct her… enthusiasms… elsewhere for the weekend.” She reached the appointed archway, its frame carved with Ogham script that pulsed with a soft, teal light. She turned, her figure silhouetted by the shimmering energy. “Thanks for walking us down, Brigid-Bear. Give my love to Will and Sarah. Tell them they’re invited too, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Brigid echoed, her throat tight.
With a final wave, Aisling stepped through the light. Nora followed, giving Brigid a respectful nod. Godfrey looked up at Brigid, gave a sympathetic whine, and then plopped at Brigid's feet until she reached down to pick up his leash.
The light faded. The arch was just cold, carved stone again.
Brigid stood alone in the sudden quiet. The market’s distant noise felt muffled, irrelevant. The completion of the walk, the finality of the goodbye, left a hollow space in her chest. It was a good hollow, the kind that came from love, but it was heavy.
She let out a long breath, squared her shoulders, and turned to head back through the maze of stalls. She needed to get back to campus, to Will and Sarah, to the mountain of pre-med coursework that didn’t care about portals or weddings.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she almost didn’t notice the stall.
It was tucked in an alcove, shrouded in shadows that didn’t match the neon glow from the main thoroughfare. No buzzing sign, just a small, handwritten card placed on a velvet cloth: Chronological Curiosities. Authenticity Guaranteed.
The proprietor was an elderly woman with skin like wrinkled parchment and eyes the color of dust. She didn’t speak, simply watched Brigid with a serene blankness.
On the cloth lay a few objects: a tarnished pocket watch with no hands, a single earring shaped like a key, and a small, leather-bound notebook. It was the notebook that tugged at Brigid’s attention. Its cover was worn soft, and embossed in faded gold was a symbol she recognized—the interlaced triple spiral of the Archimedes Society.
Her heart gave a funny little thump. It couldn’t be. Artefacts from the Society almost never left their vaults. This was likely a fake, a clever forgery meant to snare the gullible.
She should leave. She knew she should leave.
Her hand, acting on a scholar’s instinct she couldn’t suppress, reached out and picked it up. The leather was cool, supple. She opened it.
The pages were filled not with equations, but with neat, cursive handwriting in faded brown ink. A diary. The first entry date was nearly eighty years prior.
...the transient stability of the personal timeline is a fiction we tell ourselves. The ego is a point of consciousness moving along a fixed thread, but the thread itself can be knotted, looped, even severed, with the correct application of parametric resonance…
Brigid’s breath caught. This wasn't a forgery. The concepts, the terminology—it was too obscure, too fundamentally accurate to the Society’s most guarded theoretical work. This was someone’s research journal. A dangerous one.
“Where did you get this?” Brigid asked, her voice sharper than she intended.
The old woman smiled, revealing fine, pointed teeth. “A fair trade. A memory for a memory. It came from a man who wished to forget he ever knew certain numbers.” Her dusty eyes appraised Brigid. “You know the marks. You walk the same paths. It whispers to you, yes?”
It did. The book felt like a live wire in her hands, humming with potential and terrible insight. This was about more than time theory. This was about the fabric of personal identity, the very thing she, Will, and Sarah had become—a triad, a knot in their own threads.
“How much?” The question was out before she could stop it.
“For you?” The woman’s smile widened. “No gold. A different trade. A story. A true one. About a choice you made that changed everything.”
A cold trickle, like ice water, ran down Brigid’s spine. This was Dark Market bargaining at its most primal. Stories had power. Truths had weight.
She thought of the choice to forgive Aisling. The choice to bind herself to Will and Sarah. The choice to join the Archimedes Society. Each one a seismic shift.
“I…” she began.
A large, warm hand landed on her shoulder.
“There you are, Brigid-Bear. Mam’s about to send out a search party.”
She jerked, snapping the diary shut as if caught doing something illicit. Johnny stood beside her, his smile easy, his rumbled street clothes incongruous against the market’s magic. He glanced at the old woman, and his blue eyes, usually so casual, turned flat and cold for a microsecond. The woman’s smile vanished. She looked away, suddenly preoccupied with arranging her pocket watch.
“I was just… leaving,” Brigid said, her voice shaky.
“Good plan. This aisle has a bite to it,” Johnny said, his tone light again. He gently steered her away from the stall. He didn’t ask about the book. He just guided her back toward the bustling main path, his presence a buffer against the pressing shadows.
When they were safely lost in the crowd, he spoke quietly, his lips barely moving. “Chronology vendors are bad news, Brigid. They deal in stray seconds and orphaned causes. That stuff gets under your skin.”
“It was a Society journal,” she whispered, clutching it to her chest.
“I know. That’s why I came looking. Felt a ripple.” He glanced at her. “You didn’t trade anything for it, did you?”
“No. She wanted a story. I didn’t give one.”
“Smart. Keep the book. The Society will want it back. But be careful what you read.” He put an arm around her shoulders, giving her a brief, brotherly squeeze. “Come on. Let’s get you home. Your triad’s probably worried you got eaten by a goblin.”
“I have Godfrey,” she said automatically, the normalcy of the statement absurd. The puppy at her feet barked an assent.
“Godfrey’s impervious to magic, not to being led astray by interesting smells.” Johnny grinned. “You okay?”
Brigid looked down at the worn leather cover in her hands. It pulsed with silent, dangerous knowledge. She thought of Aisling, stepping into a future of love and stability. She thought of the intricate, beautiful knot of her own soul intertwined with two others.
“I will be,” she said, and let her brother lead her out of the dark and into the chill, mundane Chicago night.
The echo of the market’s strange energy clung to Brigid’s skin like static as she emerged onto the waterfront, the leather-bound journal a secret weight against her ribs. Johnny gave her shoulder one last squeeze before vanishing into the stream of pedestrians, his departure as casual and unexplained as his arrival. Brigid stood for a moment, the lake wind cutting through her coat, solidifying her resolve. She wouldn’t open the journal again here. Some truths required the sanctity of her own space, with Will and Sarah’s steady presence as a bulwark.
She took the train back to Evanston, the rhythmic clatter a mundane counterpoint to the chaos in her mind. The diary felt like a live thing, a sleeping serpent. Its pages promised answers about the nature of the triad bond, about the stability of self—questions that had haunted her since the binding. She thought of the old woman’s price: a story of a pivotal choice. Brigid had many now. She clutched her bag tighter, protecting the secret inside.
Back in the apartment, the familiar smells of Sarah’s lavender detergent and Will’s burnt popcorn grounded her. They were on the couch, Will’s head in Sarah’s lap, a physics textbook open but ignored on his chest. They looked up, and a synchronous wave of concern washed over their faces. The bond thrummed with it, a warm, worried pulse in her chest. “You’re buzzing like a downed power line,” Sarah said softly, without preamble.
Brigid didn’t need to explain the journal’s origin. She simply placed it on the coffee table. The triple spiral gleamed dully in the lamplight. Will sat up, his kind face serious. Sarah’s fingers stilled in his hair. The shared silence that descended wasn’t empty; it was full of their collective curiosity and a shared, instinctive caution. They would face this secret together, as they faced everything. That decision, unspoken, calmed the last of Brigid’s market-born tremors.
Later that afternoon, in a gleaming Chicago high-rise that pretended to be a boutique investment firm, Jan pushed through a door marked ‘Agent Pendragon – Asset Management’ without a hint of ceremony. Godfrey trotted in at her heels, his service vest slightly askew.
The scene that greeted her was one of focused, vigorous reconciliation. Bethany was bent over her sleek, modern desk, her charcoal-gray suit jacket discarded on a chair, her pink-spiked hair trembling with each deep thrust. Liam, still in his work-stained jeans and flannel shirt, held her hips in a firm grip, his own movements a relentless, driving rhythm. His thick cock slid in and out of her with a wet, slick sound that filled the quiet office, each withdrawal glistening before he slammed back into her clutching heat.
“Fuck, right there, Liam, don’t you dare stop,” Bethany gasped, her words muffled by the desk blotter.
“Wouldnae dream of it, mo ghràdh,” he grunted, his Scottish accent thickened by effort. He leaned over her, one hand bracing on the desk, the other tangling in her hair to pull her head back. “Yer cunt’s gripping me like a vise. Gonnae come for me?”
Jan leaned against the doorframe, a wide grin spreading across her face. She crossed her arms and watched as Liam’s pace became punishing, the slap of skin against skin accelerating into a frantic crescendo. Bethany’s knuckles were white where she gripped the desk edge. Her back arched, a sharp cry torn from her throat as her orgasm hit, her body clenching and shuddering around him. Liam followed with a ragged roar, pumping his release deep inside her with a few final, jerking thrusts.
Jan brought her hands together in three slow, loud claps.
Bethany jolted, her head whipping around. Her face, flushed with pleasure a second before, burned scarlet with instant mortification. Liam, however, slowly pulled out, turning with a surprisingly graceful motion to face Jan, and executed a shallow, utterly unselfconscious bow. He then calmly reached for his discarded boxer briefs.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Bethany hissed, scrambling to pull her skirt down and straighten her blouse. She glared at Jan, then at Liam. “A little privacy? A knock?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Jan pushed off the doorframe and strolled in, Godfrey sniffing at a potted fern. “That was a stellar finish. Really committed performance from both parties.”
“We’re busy, Jan,” Bethany snapped, though the heat was fading from her cheeks, replaced by her usual exasperated fondness. She gestured vaguely at stacks of personnel files on a side table. “Training new Wand agents. Processing the remnants of Bedivere’s faction. The Merlin and Percival did the purge, but I’m sorting the rubble. We’re handing a lot of them over to Arlene and the Green Moons, as requested.”
Jan plopped into a client chair, spinning it slightly. “Sounds about right. I have zero idea what Arlene will do with a bunch of suit-wearing traitors, though. Make them garden naked or something.”
“I only care that they stay locked up, or at least incapable of causing trouble for a long time,” Bethany said, finally achieving some semblance of professional composure, though her hair was still a disaster.
“Obviously,” Jan agreed. She watched Liam pull his shirt on, completely at ease. “So, what brings me by?”
Bethany stared at her. “You’re in my office. You tell me.”
“Right.” Jan leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “I was thinking. We helped save magic. The whole Nexus thing. We should probably go celebrate. Or something.”
A long sigh escaped Bethany. She rounded her desk and sat, the leather of her chair creaking. “We saved magic by diving between each other’s legs in a dimensionless void for three hours while a diplomatic conference happened nearby. It was cosmically significant, sure. But I, for one, might like to have a fun time with you that doesn’t involve stripping naked and giving each other screaming orgasms. Once in a while.”
Liam, now fully dressed and leaning against the window, chimed in. “I’ve no problem with it. Wouldn’t mind pictures, if I can’t participate.”
“Quiet, MacDougal!” Bethany snapped, but a playful glint was in her eye.
Jan laughed. “I’m just saying lunch. Gossip about our friends and shitty bosses. A couple beers. With or without him.” She jerked a thumb at Liam. “We need to set a good example. Show that a Green Moon and a Golden Wand can be seen together in public without causing a reality tear. Fatima and Amir are apparently bonding over policing their kid brother’s sex life now. We should be more evolved.”
Bethany’s lips twitched. She looked from Jan’s hopeful face to Godfrey, who had settled with a contented huff by the door. “That does sound… fine. Fatima mentioned the shed incident. Said it was the first thing they’d agreed on in months.”
“See? Progress.” Jan spread her hands. “You need to get out of this box and relax. Even Godfrey agrees.” The puppy let out a soft woof without opening his eyes.
Bethany glanced at the mountain of paperwork, then at Liam’s encouraging smile. She exhaled, the last of her resistance leaving her. “I am due for a lunch break. Liam, you can watch the hound. And… field any calls.” She stood, grabbing her jacket. “After all, it isn’t every day a Golden Wand and a Green Moon can claim to have fucked the universe into its proper order.”
Jan’s grin was triumphant. “Now you’re talking my language. Let’s go. I know a place that does terrible nachos and fantastic margaritas. We can dissect Percival’s wardrobe choices.”
“His suits are immaculate,” Bethany objected, following her out.
“Exactly! Unnerving!”
Their bickering faded down the hallway. Liam shook his head, smiling, and moved to scratch Godfrey behind the ears. “Just you and me, lad. Guard the fort.” Godfrey sighed, already asleep. The office, still carrying the faint, musky scent of recent passion, settled into a peaceful quiet.