Between the Blade and the Heart

by Amanda Hocking

  “Well, I assumed you were either staring at my tits or my scar,” she said, still smirking playfully at me, but now my cheeks were burning with shame. “If it’s my tits, I ought to point out that it’s not polite to stare, though I suppose that works for the scar too.”

  “I didn’t—I wasn’t—I’m sorry,” I stammered.

  Quinn ignored my apology and ran her slender fingers across the scar. “It’s from the scratch of an ennedi, which is sorta like a saber-toothed tiger. I returned it a few weeks ago, but not before it left me this nice permanent gift to remember him by.”

  “See? She’s already teaching you something,” Samael had said brightly and put his hand on Quinn’s shoulder, attempting to diffuse the tension, but honestly, I’d forgotten he was there. As soon as Quinn had smiled at me, everything else had fallen away.

  Back in the present, Samael cleared his throat and scratched his head. “Though, I suppose it wouldn’t be appropriate for you two to work together, given the nature of your relationship.”

  “Since we’ve broken up, I would rather not be teamed up with her again,” I admitted.

  “That’s understandable.” He walked with me toward the door, seeing me out, with his hands in his pockets. “I’ll look into other options for the future. But how is school going? Everything on track?”

  “Yeah, it’s all going great,” I lied. “I’m working on a project for school, and I’ve been kind of learning about the Mortal Equation.”

  His blue eyes widened in surprise. “Are you a math major?”

  “No, I’m horrible at math, actually, but my professor was talking about it, and I just got kind of curious to know more. Do you know the Mortal Equation?”

  “I know some,” he allowed, choosing his words carefully. “But I don’t work on it myself. That’s for the higher-ups.” He motioned toward the ceiling. “I just interpret the orders for Valkyries like you.”

  “That makes sense, but…” I paused, trying to figure out how to phrase the question burning on my tongue. “Math can be difficult. I make mistakes all the time, and I know that the bosses upstairs are way smarter than I can even comprehend, but … do they ever make mistakes? They forget to carry the two, and the whole equation is off?”

  Samael chuckled. “No, they don’t make mistakes. That’s not how they work. Everyone they send the Valkyries to return was meant to be returned.”

  “But what does that mean?” I pressed. “How can anyone be ‘meant’ to die? Unless everything is preordained, and if it’s all preordained, then how can we ever veer off course?”

  “You can’t,” Samael said firmly. “But the concepts of free will and predestination are rather lofty. If you’re really interested in learning more, I suggest you talk to your professor. I’m certain he’d be able to explain everything far better than I ever could.”

  “Right, thank you. I will.” I forced a smile at him. “I should get going. I have homework and all that.”

  Samael opened the door for me, telling me to call him if I had any problems. I promised that I would, but I didn’t know if I meant it.

  FOURTEEN

  Oona and I sat in the booth in the back corner of the restaurant. Aprazivel was a dark little hole in the wall that happened to serve some of the tastiest, cheapest Brazilian cuisine in the city, and it also happened to be only a few blocks from our apartment.

  “So?” Oona asked. She sat across from me, sipping her cachaça—a liquor distilled from sugarcane—and stared at me expectantly with her big dark eyes. “How did it go with Marlow?”

  On the wall behind Oona, the head of a tamanduá chifres had been mounted. The Brazilian great horned anteater. It was huge, roughly the size of a moose, with massive antlers to match and a long gray snout with its slender tongue poking out. Its two black eyes stared down at me, and for a moment I felt almost as if it were looking straight through me.

  “I don’t know,” I said finally.

  “You did go see her today, right?” Oona pressed on, undeterred by my apathy. This was the first chance I’d had all day to tell her about my visit with Marlow, but I wasn’t ready to just dive into the topic.

  As soon as I’d gotten home from meeting with Samael, Oona had demanded that we go out and get something to eat. I’d hardly eaten anything all day, and she claimed I was looking pale. Her solution to most problems in life seemed to involve food.

  “Yeah, I saw her,” I replied, looking down at the table, and then I noticed her hands. “What’s that?”

  Her dark skin was covered in elaborate white henna designs from her wrists down to her fingers, stopping just before her long fingernails, which were shaped to a point and painted a matte gray.

  “What?” She glanced down, then waved me off dramatically. “It was just something I did for class today. Don’t change the subject, Mal.”

  I gulped down the rest of my beer, then I put my arms on the table and leaned forward. The lighting in Aprazivel was dim and low, and it was crowded enough that the noise from the other customers should keep our conversation private. But still, I felt edgy about someone overhearing, and the unblinking gaze of the tamanduá chifres did nothing to ease my nerves.

  “He was right,” I whispered.

  “What?” Oona leaned forward to hear me better.

  “Asher Värja,” I said, and it was at that moment the waiter appeared with our food, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “For the lovely lady.” The waiter smiled, putting a bowl of rice, beans, and curded cheese in front Oona. “And the palmito for you.”

  Another day, I would’ve made a comment about his lack of a descriptor for me when he put my plate in front of me, but today I couldn’t focus enough to come up with something to say.

  “What do you mean?” Oona asked after the waiter had gone.

  “I mean … she didn’t do it,” I explained in a hushed voice.

  Oona had taken a bite of her food, and she stared at me for a moment, her mouth full, not chewing. Finally, she swallowed and asked, “Marlow didn’t do her job?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “She had one thing to do, and she didn’t do it.”

  “But Marlow loves her job, and it’s a really important job,” Oona said. “Why wouldn’t she do it?”

  I leaned back in the booth, and the warped plastic seat groaned underneath me. “She said she thought he could do more good alive than he would dead.”

  Oona put her hand to the side of her face, as if she just couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “That’s not how your job works, right? The people that are chosen to die are chosen for a reason. Leaving them can only do harm.”

  “That’s pretty much exactly how it works,” I said.

  “Oh crap.” She took a long drink of her cachaça, then motioned to me with her fork. “Eat your food. Starving to death won’t help anything.”

  I sat up straighter and did as she commanded, cutting into my baked heart of palm. It was normally one of my favorite meals, but today it just felt tasteless and empty.

  “So what’s the plan?” Oona asked.

  “What plan?” I shook my head. “Everything is totally messed up, and I don’t know how anything can ever be made right.”

  “For starters, finishing the job that Marlow left undone would be good,” Oona suggested.

  “But he’s already killed someone. Asher only knows about his mother, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others,” I realized. “He might have a whole trail of dead behind him. The damage is already done.”

  “The longer he’s left alive, the more damage he can do,” Oona countered.

  “Probably,” I conceded. “But I have no idea how to find him. Asher’s been looking for him for years, and he has no clue.”

  “But he was looking on his own before,” Oona persisted between bites of food. “He didn’t have you or the connections you have.”

  I snorted. “What connections?”

  Oona held up her hand, raising her fingers as she went down h
er list. “Samael. Your professors at school. Other Valkyries.”

  I shook my head adamantly. “I can’t tell any of them what’s going on or they’ll string up Marlow.” I paused as I came to a dark realization. “That’s probably what she deserves, but I can’t be a party to that. She’s still my mom.”

  Oona’s expression softened and her voice was gentler when she spoke. “No one is suggesting that you turn Marlow in. But maybe if you team up with Asher and pool your resources, you two could figure something out. Without dragging the authorities into it.”

  “Maybe,” I admitted grudgingly.

  “Look, you can’t undo what Marlow did, but you can do what she wouldn’t.”

  I laughed sourly. “That doesn’t really make sense.”

  “No, it does,” she insisted. “You’re just overthinking it.”

  “But that Asher guy seemed too unstable,” I reminded her.

  “Breaking into our apartment was extreme, but just imagine how pissed you’d be if you were him. I mean, when he broke in, he thought you were Marlow,” Oona reasoned.

  “I am pissed at Marlow, and I haven’t even lost what he lost,” I agreed.

  But that wasn’t exactly true. My mom hadn’t died, but I had lost the idea I had of her.

  When I was growing up, she’d been cold at times—well, most of the time—but she was also strong and infallible. I’d always thought of her as a lighthouse, guiding the immortals safely to the end of their journey so they didn’t go crashing into the shore.

  But that wasn’t her. She wasn’t a hero or a savior. She had managed to become the villain in her own story.

  “He left his business card, right?” Oona asked, drawing me from my thoughts. “You can give him a call tomorrow.”

  I picked emptily at my food. “Maybe I should wait until Monday. It’s the Feast of the Dead this weekend, and it’s gonna be crazy.”

  “Malin,” Oona said firmly, causing me to look up at her. “Don’t make excuses. You’re going to have to deal with this, and it’s better sooner rather than later.”

  “You’re right,” I said with a heavy sigh. “I’ll call him tomorrow.”

  “Excellent.” She beamed at me. “Now eat your food and order another beer.”

  “I don’t see how that will help.”

  “Alcohol and food may not fix everything, but I’ve yet to encounter a problem they haven’t at least helped with,” Oona assured me.

  FIFTEEN

  Most of the historical texts had been transferred onto digital formats for ease of reading, but not all of them. Ravenswood Academy had a whole wing dedicated to books that weren’t permitted to ever be transferred into digital.

  Those who oversaw Ravenswood Academy—a joint effort between an elite board of education and the Evig Riksdag—believed that some texts contained information too valuable and dangerous to be distributed en masse to the population, and they feared that digital media was rife for pirating.

  The “sacred texts” were all carefully locked up behind secure doors in the Sacrorum Wing. As an added level of security, several Sinaa roamed the halls, guarding the books and chasing out troublemakers. The Sinaa looked just like jaguars, except some of their spots were actually additional eyes, so they could see everything, and they were obsessed with preserving knowledge at all costs.

  Two dozen bomb-shelter-like rooms filled the wing, and each had shelves filled floor-to-ceiling with books. Some of the books dated back centuries, worn tomes bound with leather made from human flesh, and others were brand-new, with hardly a crack in the binding.

  Once, between classes, Quinn had shown up and taken me down here, under the guise of studying, which for some reason I had believed. Leading me by the hand, she had chosen the room titled PLANTAE VITAM AETERNAM.

  As soon as we’d gone in, she’d thrown me up against a bookcase—so hard it nearly toppled it over—and began kissing me roughly on the mouth.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” I protested as her hands slid underneath my shirt. “What if someone comes in?”

  “These are all books on immortal plants. Nobody wants to read these,” she assured me between kisses, but it had only been a few more minutes before a Sinaa caught us.

  A dozen tiny dark eyes locked on us, staring up from the spotted camouflage, and the Sinaa let out a low growl. We’d raced out of the room, Quinn laughing all the way as the beast chased us down the hall and out of the sacred library.

  What I remember most about that afternoon was the way my heart had been pounding—terrified the Sinaa would maul us if it caught us, and also terrified I might get kicked out of school. Quinn had ignored all my fears, and then, after, once I was certain we were safe, I’d been so exhilarated and relieved. I told Quinn that I never wanted to do that again, but she’d only laughed and silenced me with kisses.

  Today I had an hour-long break between my first and second class, so I headed down to the Sacrorum Wing to see what more I could find out about the situation with Marlow and Tamerlane Fayette.

  The search took me to a room marked by a plaque above the door that read ET VIRGINES IN MORTE. My Latin wasn’t as good as Oona’s, but I deciphered it out to be DEATH AND THE MAIDENS. The Valkyrie room.

  Last night, after dinner, Oona and I had proceeded to get drunk on cheap beer, but that hadn’t done anything to help the situation. Before I left for class this morning, she’d reminded me to call Asher, but I thought it might be better if I did some research on my own first.

  It would be easier for me to be able to just ask my professors or Samael about things, but that would only raise a lot of red flags. I mean, I was a Valkyrie in training, and if I kept asking what happens if a Valkyrie doesn’t kill her mark, people were liable to think either I was plotting something or that I had already screwed up.

  And I definitely didn’t need that added scrutiny.

  I’d just sat down, leaning back against a shelf with a small stack of books on my lap, when my phone started ringing in my messenger bag. I scrambled to answer it, before one of the Sinaa came in and chased me out, because the last thing I needed was a supernatural jaguar angry with me.

  “Hello?” I whispered into the phone, glancing around to make sure nobody was around.

  “Malin, it’s Marlow,” she said wearily, sounding irritated that I had disrupted her, when she had been the one to call me.

  “I’m kinda busy—”

  “I’ve been looking into that Värja boy’s claims,” Marlow interrupted me. “And it seems like something went wrong.”

  That something being her failure to do her job, but I couldn’t say that to her. So I just waited for her to explain what she meant.

  “Mistakes were made,” Marlow said, still skirting any culpability. “But I want to help make things right. Before things get worse. Do you know how to contact the Värja boy?”

  “Yes,” I replied cautiously.

  “I’d like you to arrange a meeting with him,” Marlow instructed me. “Today, if possible. I’m free this afternoon, so that would be best.”

  “You want to meet him?” I asked, so shocked I forgot to keep my voice down.

  “Yes, I feel that we should talk,” she elaborated. “There’s a nice coffee shop near where I work—Kahvaltı. That should be good. See if you can get him to meet there, and let me know what time.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  And that was it. She hung up without thanking me or saying goodbye. Which was just as well, because a Sinaa poked his head into the room, his ears back flat, and let out a low rumbling growl before stalking off to quiet someone else.

  I sat in a stunned silence for a few minutes, then I decided that I ought to text Asher before I lost my nerve. His business card was in my bag, so I pulled it out and quickly entered it into my phone.

  Hi Asher—this is Malin Krigare. I’ve spoken to my mother, and she wants to meet today to talk to you. Would that be possible?

  Roughly twenty sec
onds later, he replied back with, Yes. Of course. Where/when?

  I gave him a time and the place, then forwarded his response to Marlow. Then I turned my phone off and shoved it way in the bottom of my bag. I couldn’t handle dealing with anyone else.

  I finally opened the book on my lap, and then I buried my hands in my hair and stared down blankly at the words. My mind was still reeling and I barely noticed the sound of footsteps until it was too late.

  “What are you doing here?” Sloane demanded, like she’d caught me digging through her underwear drawer instead of reading a book in the library.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” I shot back.

  She stood over me, glowering down at me with her arms crossed over her chest. Her plaid skirt was short enough that I would’ve been able to see her underwear, if it weren’t for the opaque nylons she wore.

  “Sucking up and doing an extra-credit project for History of Supernatural Professions and Their Modern Applications,” Sloane said.

  “Yes … that is what I am doing,” I said, since that sounded much better than telling her I was trying to figure out how to save my mother and the world.

  Sloane rolled her eyes. “I should’ve known you’d pick Valkyrie. It’s so obvious.”

  “Why wouldn’t I pick something that’s relevant to me?” I asked, growing irritated about a fictional problem that I didn’t even care about. But if Sloane Kothari was going to accuse me of something, I was damn sure going to defend myself. “Why did you pick it?”

  “I’m trying to broaden my horizons and stretch out of my comfort zone.” Sloane pursed her lips and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “My career adviser said it would be good for me.”

  “Sounds great,” I said, hoping that would be the end of that.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Well, what are you doing? Maybe I can approach it from a different angle.”

  “I doubt it—” I tried to deflect her, but she was already bent over and lifting up the cover of the book to see the title.

  “Predestination and Divinity?” Sloane asked, wrinkling her nose. “That doesn’t have anything to do with the history of your job.”