#invocation

Now, o Bacchus, we fall, humble, before your altar: Give me, father, peace and favoring sails. You have the power to check the pride of raving Venus: With your pure wine comes medicine for cares. Lovers are yoked through you, through you their yoke's undone: You, Bacchus, wash the fault out of my mind.

Nunc, o Bacche, tuis humiles advolvimur aris: da mihi pacato vela secunda, pater. tu potes insanae Veneris compescere fastus, curarumque tuo fit medicina mero. per te iunguntur, per te solvuntur amantes: tu vitium ex animo dilue, Bacche, meo.

Raum, the 257th Known One.

Remedios Varo (Spanish-Mexican, 1908–1963)

Invocation, 1963

Oil on canvas

97 × 74 cm (38.19 × 29.13 in.)

Charles was bored and Niko was running out of ideas to keep him occupied.

He’d already turned down her suggestions of playing Cluedo and watching Scooby-Doo together. He’d ignored her prompts to tell stories from past cases—normally a surefire way to cheer him up—and expressed evident disinterest in conducting supplemental research on shapeshifters. Niko refrained from requesting his help with the paperwork. Everyone working with the Dead Boy Detectives loathed the stacks of forms the Night Nurse insisted the agency complete after every closed case, but Niko had found herself rather skilled at it, and claimed it as her job after she rejoined the team in London. After all, if she wasn’t doing much field work anymore, she had to find some way to stay useful in the office.

“We could practice sketching binding sigils?” Niko suggested, but Charles was already shaking his head.

“I think you’ve got the hang of those by now.” He smiled, but it was strained. “You’re really good at the detail work on runes.”

“I’ve had lots of calligraphy practice,” Niko said, trying to sound modest.

Charles started to say something else and then grimaced. Niko’s gaze strayed to the cast on his leg.

Detective work was dangerous, Edwin had emphasized time and again. Still, Niko hadn’t known there were creatures that could seriously injure a ghost until Edwin and Crystal had hauled Charles back to the office with his leg mangled from a skirmish with an escaped hellhound. It would heal, Edwin insisted, but Charles needed to keep his weight off it for a full week. He’d asked Niko to keep an eye on his partner and ensure Charles didn’t overexert himself.

Charles clearly hated being cooped up indoors while Edwin and Crystal continued working on cases without him. He served as the self-declared protector of the team, always putting himself between his friends and any danger, which was how he’d wound up getting mauled in the first place. Today, Edwin and Crystal were only out interviewing suspects for the current case, but Charles was likely imagining all sorts of terrible scenarios that could happen to them in his absence. With his leg in a cast, he couldn’t work off his nervous energy as he usually did, and Niko had her work cut out keeping him seated on the sofa.

“You’re a good student, Niko,” Charles assured her. “Pretty soon, Edwin and I will run out of things to teach you.”

“You haven’t taught me how to use the bag-of-tricks backpack yet,” Niko pointed out. She turned to survey the bag in question. It sat innocently on the floor within Charles’ reach. One would never guess by looking at it just how many things could fit inside it.

“It’s better if I’m the one who handles that.” Charles sat up straight and mimicked Edwin’s precise manner with his next words. “It is a highly temperamental and potentially volatile magical artifact, as Edwin would say.” He relaxed his posture again. “We don’t want anyone losing fingers.”

“I’ve put things in the bag before,” Niko reminded him.

“Putting things in is easy. It’s getting them out again that’s the difficult part.” Charles pulled the bag onto his lap and began fiddling with the straps while he spoke. “Or finding them again, if you weren’t careful about putting them away. There’s an infinite void in here connected to about a thousand different pockets, and some of the things we stored are too dangerous to risk letting out.”

“You must have figured out how to navigate it somehow,” Niko pressed. If she could get Charles talking, maybe he could forget his pain and frustration for a little while.

“A lot of it was trial and error at first,” Charles admitted. “It took me a while to get a feel for how things worked. Spent a lot of time talking to the bag. Oh, we don’t think it’s sentient or anything,” he was quick to clarify. “But I think Edwin might’ve hurt its feelings in the early days, and that’s why it doesn’t let him use it.”

Niko nodded, considering. “Should I introduce myself? If it has feelings, then I want to be considerate of them.”

“Go ahead.” Charles passed her the backpack. “No clue if it understands human speech, but I figure being nice never hurts.”

The bag felt rather heavy in Niko’s lap, and she tried not to think about Charles’ mention of losing fingers. She cleared her throat. “Hello, Charles’ backpack.” She paused. “Does it have a name?”

Charles looked embarrassed. “Guess I never thought of that.”

“Well, my name is Niko,” she told it. “I’m a friend of Charles and Edwin. I get to help them with their cases sometimes.” Less often now that she was relegated to desk work, but Niko tried not to dwell on that. “I know you help them out a lot, and Charles is really glad to have you.” She turned to Charles. “If it doesn’t have eyes, how can it recognize me? I know most animals recognize people by scent, so it’s courteous to offer your hand for them to sniff.”

“I reckon it goes by touch. You can put your hand here, if you like.” Charles moved Niko’s hand to the open flap. “Feel free to pet it, too. It won’t mind.”

Niko concentrated on calm, happy thoughts as she stroked the weathered fabric. It didn’t feel anything remotely like a pet animal’s fur, but that was probably the closest analogy, judging by how Charles spoke of it. And by all observations, the backpack was far friendlier than the Dandelion Sprites she’d kept in a jar in her room for weeks. Still… “Has it ever bitten someone’s fingers off?”

Charles launched into a tale about a warlock who had captured him and Edwin in ’97 and been tricked into sticking his hand in the bag. He cut himself off before going into any grisly details. “But the bag knew he was a bad guy,” he assured her. “It would never do that to a friend of ours. It’s a good bag.” He stroked it fondly and beamed.

There wasn’t enough room on the sofa for Niko to discreetly shift a few inches away. “I think I’ll respect its boundaries,” she said. In spite of her caution, or perhaps because of it, she was still curious to learn more. “Could I watch you retrieve something from it?”

“Sure.” Charles hefted the bag and reached inside, pulling out his cricket back in one well-practiced movement. “I always keep this in a pocket that’s easy to reach. Never know when you might need it in a hurry.”

“Are some pockets harder to access?” Niko asked.

“Yeah, we put some of the more problematic stuff in those. There was this one time during a case, we found an ancient scroll detailing an invocation for the spirit of spring.” Charles smirked. “Edwin read it, and the spell made every plant in the area start growing like mad. Couldn’t figure out how to make it stop, so we put the scroll in the bag. Best to leave that where we won’t pull it out again by accident.”

“Can you show me how you get an object from one of the hard-to-reach pockets?”

“Sure.” Charles stuck his hand in the bag and visibly concentrated. His arm disappeared into the void up to his shoulder before he fetched out a bundle of white yarn that sparkled in the light. “This is from one of the waterproof pockets. Don’t want it getting wet; it takes ages for this stuff to dry out.”

“What is it?” Niko asked eagerly. She really wanted to touch it, but knew better than to do that without approval.

“Enchanted cotton yarn. You can use it to make clothes that are fireproof, bulletproof, and curse-proof.” His smile morphed into a thoughtful look. “You know, maybe we should leave this out for Edwin. He was talking the other day about a project—oh.” He grimaced.

“What’s wrong?” At first, Niko thought his leg might be paining him again, but Charles’ face now wore a familiar self-deprecating expression.

“He doesn’t have the tools he needs.” Charles looked away. “I lost the enchanted knitting needles back in ’92. They’re somewhere in the bag, but it could take ages to find them.”

Niko frowned. “What makes you say that? You’ve always found things quickly before.”

“I wasn’t careful putting them away, was I?” Charles huffed. “The bag doesn’t magically give me stuff I ask for,” he explained. “I have to look in the right place. If you just drop something into the void, it could wind up anywhere. I’d have to search every pocket manually to find it again.” His face twisted with regret. “I did try looking for a while, but it wasn’t enough.”

Niko decided she couldn’t let Charles wallow in his misery. “You said there are about a thousand pockets, right?” She did some quick mental calculations. “If it takes you two minutes to search each one, then you can search thirty pockets an hour, seven hundred and twenty a day, and five thousand forty a week.” She tilted her head in consideration. “Although it might be fewer than that because you’ll want to take breaks occasionally.”

Charles frowned. “I can hardly sit here searching the bag all day and all night while we’ve got cases to… oh.” His face fell. “I guess I do have plenty of time now.” He smiled ruefully. “Not going to be much use on cases for a while, am I?”

Niko huffed in indignation. “Edwin says being a detective is more than just legwork.” She began listing things off on her fingers. “You’re good at runes and crafting disguises. You’ve got an excellent memory and really good people skills—better than anyone else at the agency. And you’re the one Edwin trusts to navigate the backpack.” She crossed her arms. “You’re not useless, Charles, and Edwin would have sharp words with anyone who said that about his best friend.”

Charles looked taken aback for a moment, then he brightened. “Yeah, you’re right.” He knocked his shoulder against hers. “Thanks, Niko.”

“We can make this a case of our own,” Niko declared. “The Case of the Missing Knitting Needles? Or the Case of the Backpack Inventory?” The Backpack Blunder was alliterative, but Niko needed an antonym for blunder to apply here. Solution? That wasn’t alliterative. She needed a solution synonym…

Charles chuckled. “We can pick out a name later. Right now, I’d rather keep this under wraps. I don’t want to disappoint Edwin if we don’t turn up anything.”

“All right,” Niko agreed. “It can be a surprise.”

It had been some time since Niko had actively participated on a case, and she’d never paired up with Charles for one before. She found she was quite looking forward to this.