Glass
an excerpt

Part I: Saturn

Happy is he who comprehendeth the Letters and Numbers. [...] Seventy two Names on Twenty-four Crowns of the Schema.

Thou shalt write these Names upon Thirty-six Talismans, two upon each Talisman, one on each side. [...] These Thirty-six Talismans will be a Book which will contain all the Secrets of Nature. And by their diverse combinations thou shalt make the Genii and Angels speak.

- translated by Eliphaz Levi, and given in his "Philosophe Occulte."--Serie II, Page 136.

~*~
 
The First Pentacle of Saturn:

It being shown to the Spirits, they shall submit, and kneeling before it, they shall obey.

~*~

Death made Ash more uncomfortable than he liked to admit, and today more than usual. Dying. The road to dust. The seven steps to heaven. The grim spectre: Thanatos. Sleeping six feet deep. The last refuge for the immortally challenged. Ash would have avoided thinking about it if he could have—and since he was immortal, it wouldn't have been that hard, if circumstances had been different—but maintaining a friendship with a vampire made it a struggle, at times, to ignore the fact that mortals died. Though, it could have been worse. At least this vampire didn't hunt.

All the same, Byron would end up killing Marshall if he wasn't more careful.

Across from Ash, Byron Lovelace, flushed and healthy for all that he was actually dead, studied the chessmen on the card table between them. Marshall, who was still alive for the time being, shuffled in from the kitchen unsteadily, looking disconcertingly like a zombie: disheveled, with a pale blue pallor to his skin, particularly around the mouth. Even his movements were stiff and uncoordinated.

As he settled himself onto the floor beside Byron's chair, he bumped the table, jolting it so hard that most of the ivory and onyx chessmen slid off their squares, and several turned over when they slid completely off the board. Ash grabbed the edge of the table to stabilize it lest they lose their entire game. His sudden movement disturbed the girl sleeping with her head in his lap, Kai. Not a girl, really. A unicorn in the shape of a girl.

She curled her fingers into his sweater and pulled at it. He couldn't tell if she was trying to tug it over her face or tuck it under her head, but even though it was a little oversized, it wasn't large enough to stand in for a feather pillow. She made a disgruntled sound, which turned into a small mew when she stretched. She didn't sit up; she rolled onto her back and blinked up at him, rubbing her eyes with the back of one arm. Her hair—her mane—swirled in an untidy mass all around her. Knots and braids and bits of ribbon twisted wildly through it so there could be no mistaking her as anything other than the fey creature she was. But the shadows cast over her face by the edge of the table painted her ghost-white skin blue and green and gray. Colored like that, she looked more like an undine or a naiad, or maybe some sort of sea nymph. Not a unicorn. Only the mother-of-pearl star on her forehead gave her away.

On the table, two pawns rolled in lazy arcs, their ever-increasing spirals looping in slow motion toward a drop that might have left them shattered on the black marble tile. Byron caught one and righted it. Ash caught the other.

Oblivious to the havoc he'd wreaked, Marshall closed his eyes, curled his arms around Byron's leg, and pressed his face into the man's trousers, next to his knee. Marshall looked pasty, and sweat glistened on his brow. Two angry and puckered punctures on his throat glared like little red eyes; wept too, tears of blood that oozed over the pink and white scars dotting the skin of Marshall's neck.

"Did you lose yet?" asked Kai. She tapped the underside of the table, drawing Ash's attention back to the game that she couldn't see.

"I don't always lose."

"Yes, you do." Kai and Byron said it together. Almost in stereo.

"Only when I play Byron."

Byron snorted and moved a pawn. "When did you last play chess with someone other than me?"