ItCP12

## Chapter 12

**Chapter 12** of **Into the Crooked Place** is told by **Wesley**.

## **Full Version**

*WESLEY HAD A GUN in his hand and a man on his knees.*

*“It’s a gift,” Ashwood said.*

*Only Wesley’s sixteenth birthday was months before. Besides, he thought it looked more like an offering.*

Take this and give me your soul*, it seemed to say.*

*The man by Wesley’s knees had a sack over his head, and there was a girl—the girl who was destined to haunt his thoughts—standing resolute at the Kingpin’s side, smiling at Wesley like she wasn’t bound in chains with blood in her teeth.*

*Smiling like she knew she would climb inside his mind and punish him for the choice he was about to make.*

*The gun in Wesley’s hands was a bone gun, which was not a fancy term, but a very literal thing. The only metal was the bullets, and everything else was as gray-white as the Kingpin’s fingertips, carved from person to weapon, with a grip engraved in swirls of red that Wesley thought might actually be bloodstains.*

*He stared from the gun to Ashwood, to the girl who was just now starting to see how awful he was.*

*When the sack was removed from the captive’s head, Wesley was not at all surprised to see his underboss.*

*His face was caved in on one side from the beatings, the scar of an old knife fight now nothing more than a splinter in the hollow.*

*“Wesley,” the underboss said, still on his knees.*

*He didn’t look surprised either.*

*“Make it quick when you—”*

*Wesley pulled the trigger before he could finish, which was the quickest way he could think of.*

*The gun made no sound.*

*Wesley felt the kickback, saw the smoke appear at the end of the barrel, and a hole spread through the center of the underboss’s forehead. But there was no noise from the gun. No gasp from the spectators.*

*Only the sound of the girl, whose legs collapsed beneath her.*

*“I liked the other future better,” she said.*

*Wesley knelt down and ran his fingers over the underboss’s eyes to close them. Then he slipped the seal from the dead man’s thumb and onto his own.*

*That was how street kids became street kings. How buskers became underbosses.*

*It was the only way to survive in a realm hungry enough to swallow the weak whole.*

*Trust no one, betray everyone.*

*Kill or be killed, always.*

WESLEY HAD barely managed to sift down an entire city’s worth of buskers to fifty who could probably, maybe, if he paid them enough, be trusted and who would probably, maybe, if he paid them enough, not shit their pants once they learned the mission. People who were intrigued by the shiny offers he made: freedom from their life debts, a clean slate, and an honest job, all in exchange for one tiny little coup.

They were waiting for him now, at the old railway tracks the tourists used for novelty. Having a Doyen as an ally had a few perks, including wiping the train schedule so Wesley and his buskers were free and clear to commandeer, leaving Uskhanya for the realm of Wrenyal, where they could gather supplies and allies.

It was not going to be as glamorous as the floating railways, but Wesley was used to playing whatever hand he was dealt.

He shifted.

The waiting room at the consort’s headquarters was liquid black with wall-to-wall mirrors that reflected his dead eyes right back at him. Tonight was one of the few times in the month that the consort was in Creije, and with the shadow moon only weeks away, they had to act.

If not now, it was never.

“What if something goes wrong?” Tavia whispered. “I don’t fancy dying today. I haven’t had time to properly prepare what I want you to say at my funeral.”

Karam regarded her incredulously. “This is not the time for jokes,” she said.

“Lighten up,” Tavia teased. “Who doesn’t love a bit of breaking and entering?”

Karam glared. “This is supposed to be stealthy. We are not *breaking* anything.”

“Just skulls,” Tavia said, and Saxony bit back a laugh.

Wesley stretched out his arms to adjust his cuff links and then scolded himself for it, but there was a wrinkle in the wrist of his sleeve that he couldn’t seem to get out.

“Nothing will go wrong,” he said.

He tried not to make it sound like a prayer.

Someone cleared their throat and Wesley looked up to see the secretary standing over him.

“The consort will see you now,” Leifsson said.

Wesley squeezed the shift charm in his hand, straightening his suit as a cover while the charm melted in his skin.

Magic was a language made from wishing, with glyphs in desire and consonants shaped from dreams. When the charm sank into Wesley’s skin, he didn’t need to think about what he wanted. He could feel it weaving through the map of his mind and finding its place in the center.

It already knew.

“This way,” Leifsson said.

He clasped a gloved hand behind his back and gestured to the mirror. It surged like a vortex.

“Your hand,” Leifsson said.

The charm was well into Wesley’s blood now and he tried to breathe through the pain, not even letting his fingers twitch as his skin was pulled and filed away, replaced by something new.

Shift charms lasted an hour at best and were a migraine waiting to happen. They didn’t just glamour someone to look a certain way, but quite literally morphed and mutated their body, burning away the old to make way for the other.

Wesley could feel his skin sizzling as Leifsson looked at him expectantly.

He could feel it reshape and remold, his head pounding as the rest of him adjusted to this new, foreign part of himself. Skin that wasn’t his. A hand that wasn’t his. It was the only way to stop the glass from reading Wesley’s true intentions.

*Clever, clever boy.*

He lifted his new hand to the glass. The pain was a dull sensation now, tingling in place of searing, the pounding in his head reduced to nothing more than an echo.

Wesley’s body had accepted this new part of him with ease and open arms.

*Welcome*, it whispered, *to the lion’s den.*

The door swirled under Wesley’s touch, his reflection distorting and then righting itself as it read the magic on his hands. Read secrets that weren’t his and tucked them away somewhere for safekeeping.

When Wesley pulled back, the glass dissolved.

He tried not to look relieved, and turned to the others with a curt nod before they stepped through the doorway and straight into the harsh red of the consort’s office.

“Walcott,” came a lazy drawl.

The consort lounged on a maroon sofa, wearing a brand of arrogance that matched her suit perfectly. She took a sip of something as white as milk and winced like it burned going down.

“It’s not often I get a visit from the Kingpin’s most precious toy,” she said, watching for a twitch in Wesley’s eyes that never came. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Wesley pulled the bone gun from behind his back. It felt light, fitting perfectly into the grooves of his hand as he took aim.

“Pleasure’s all mine,” he said, and pulled the trigger.