by Cara Wylde
I walked to the next class, Psychology, with Paz, GC, and Francis in tow.
“Word gets around fast, doesn’t it?” It was a rhetorical question. “Dream jumping, parallel universes…”
“Don’t worry, goddess,” GC tried to reassure me. “They don’t know anything… the important stuff.”
“About my mother?”
“Absolutely not,” Paz said, and the certainty in his voice almost convinced me. “Everyone knows what the Council chose to make public: that dream traveling to parallel dimensions is a thing and Valentine Morningstar can do it. So can you, because you’re his daughter and you’re human. That’s it.”
“Would it have killed them if they made none of it public?” I said through gritted teeth.
“Not revealing any of it would’ve only made things worse.” As usual, Francis was the voice of reason. “Giving the supernatural world part of the truth, the part they deemed harmless, the Council made sure no one would think to dig deeper. It’s called being in control of the story.”
“My story.”
Silence. I’d turned into a bitch, hadn’t I? I was hard to argue with because, lately, I was letting my emotions get the best of me. I felt so scattered… My life – my very existence – had turned into a paradox. I was still the most popular girl in school, but I had no money, and my name inspired fear rather than respect. They hadn’t kicked me out of my luxurious room in the North Tower, and I sometimes wondered who was paying for it now. Did it come out of the school funds? Was the Council making sure that nothing changed, so as to keep the appearance that I was still relevant? That had to be it. Because I knew for a fact that I wasn’t relevant anymore. I was a nobody, just like I’d always been. If only I hadn’t believed the fantasy about how I was the One… I wouldn’t have felt so disappointed now.
We took our places at the back of the class. Headmaster Colin waited for the VDC students to settle down, then he proceeded to give us an overview of what we were going to study this semester.
“This is the first time in the history of the Academy when we have year four. You should have all graduated last summer, but alas… Things don’t always go as planned. There were humps in the road, obstacles we overcame because we chose to stick together and believe in the work we’re all doing here, even when the one who was supposed to guide us didn’t.” He was talking about the former headmaster, Morningstar. He was expertly avoiding his name. “This year, we will study what we weren’t allowed to study last year, but we will also dive deeper into the psychology of a Grim Reaper. This is something we’ve never done before at the Academy, and I see now that it was a mistake and an oversight on our part. We’re teaching you how to be good Reapers, how to do your jobs, reap the souls of the worthy and the unworthy, and save the souls that need saving, but we’re failing you. We’re failing you because for so long, we’ve focused on the beginning of your story as Grim Reapers, on act one, act two, but never act three. Never on the ending.”
I blinked. What was he trying to say? I stole a glance at GC, and he shrugged, just as confused.
“So, this year, after we cover what we didn’t get to cover last year, I will dedicate the second part of this semester, as well as semester two, to teaching you how to retire.”
Murmurs rose, whispers of curiosity and disbelief.
“As the new generation of Grim Reapers, you have to know how to step up, but once your two-hundred-year career reaches its natural conclusion, you also have to know how to step down gracefully.”
“So there wouldn’t be another Valentine Morningstar,” I found myself saying out loud without being invited.
Headmaster Colin furrowed his brows and nodded. Even now that I’d said his name, he didn’t feel comfortable repeating it.
“I can get on board with that,” GC yawned, stretched, and leaned back in his seat.
Paz shot him a theatrically angry look. “Proper decorum must be maintained at all times, Mr. Apis. That’s 20 worth points.”
The whole class burst into laughter. It took Mason Colin a couple of minutes to calm us down. He was a good man, a talented mage, and a wise headmaster, but his authority lacked in class. It was a good thing we all respected him out of principle, otherwise we would have eaten him alive. The Violent Death Cabal especially, but the Righteous Death Cabal could be just as vicious.
The class was boring, though, and I couldn’t focus. I excused myself halfway through it, and went to the restroom, then roamed about, my thoughts and emotions all over the place. Before I knew it, I was standing in front of the Holy Chapel. I sighed and went in.
Once Headmaster Colin had been reinstated, the first thing he did was to get the Academy back to normal. Morningstar’s ridiculous rules were taken down from everywhere, and the scoreboards were moved back to the Holy Chapel and the Unholy Chapel. No curfew, no rule about dress and decorum, parties were allowed and encouraged, and we were free to spend as much time as we wanted in each other’s dorm-rooms. It was as if year three had never happened. It was as if Headmaster Morningstar had never happened. The Unseelie guards were paid and sent back to their pocket universe, their contracts canceled. After my father ordered Crassus to kill me and he did, I never saw him again. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, though. Crassus the Fay, the soldier who did what he was asked, no matter how horrible, as long as he was paid a fair price, because that was the way of the Unseelie. He’d lost his daughter for it. I wondered if he knew… I wondered if he thought she’d run away from home, fell in love with some Seelie prince, or was kidnapped. He couldn’t have known the truth. That my friends had sacrificed her to save my life. He would have come for me by now. Or maybe he knew and understood that was the price he’d had to pay? Fuck knows. No sane person can understand the Unseelie, I thought as I stepped up to the altar, my eyes searching Jesus’s face for an answer. He was silent, though, his gold lips sealed, so I turned my back to him and walked to the niche where candles were burning for the living and for the dead. I took a candle between my fingers and wondered who I should light it for, who needed my prayers.
“For your soul,” I whispered as I thought of Crassus’s daughter, a girl I’d never seen and never known even existed. “I’m sorry.” I waited a while, watching the candle burn, hot wax dripping into the water – a safety measure against fire. I should’ve moved on, gone to class, but there was someone else. I took another candle and lit it, this time thinking of the woman I’d pushed to her death the day before. Then I realized I was in the Holy Chapel and, for sure, she hadn’t gone to Heaven. Sex traffickers had a nice spot saved especially for them in Hell. I cursed under my breath, snuffed the candle out, and walked out of there.
I felt sick and agitated. I didn’t want to see anyone, so I went to my room and grabbed my scythe for the next class – PE. Mrs. Charon was having a great day. Finally, she could teach us how to teleport without the help of teleportation devices, but I was already way ahead of everyone and got bored in the first ten minutes. Paz, GC, and Francis knew how to teleport too, since Lorna and I had taught them in secret, and they were mostly making fun of the other VDC guys, disrupting the whole class. I couldn’t stand it, so I excused myself again, and with the risk of Professor Charon taking a bunch of my worth points, I skipped the rest of PE and went to the only place where I knew I could wallow in my own misery without being judged – the kitchens.
Patricia was a good listener. It helped that she was always busy and didn’t have to look me in the eye as I complained until I lost my breath. She was baking chocolate chips, and Corri flappity-flapped around her, stealing chocolate and munching on dough when the succubus wasn’t looking.
“Are you done?” she asked in her calm, mature voice that sometimes pissed me off so much. How could she be the same person that she was before… before all that shit happened, and I changed, and… I guess what actually pissed me off was that everyone was the same, when I wasn’t. When I couldn’t be. “Look, Mila, you’re alive. You wer
e dead for three days, and now you’re alive and well. You were given a second chance. What are you going to do with it? Don’t tell me you’re planning on spending eternity feeling sorry for yourself. You’re not the only revenant out there. If they managed, you’ll manage.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Patty, I’m killing people now! I’m making blood sacrifices to a monstrous creature with tentacles! I’m the bad guy, can’t you see? I’m the villain of the story.”
“Villain,” she chuckled. “If you want my honest opinion, I think the only change you’re going through now is that you used to be naïve, thinking everything was either black or white, good or bad, noble or horrendous, and you’re finally seeing the world as it is: gray.”
“Sacrificing people is not a gray area.”
She shrugged. “It is when they deserve to die, when the world is a better place without them. Paz can find you the right ones, the unredeemable ones.”
“No one is unredeemable. No matter what they did, they deserve a second chance.”
She wiped her hands on her apron and turned to me.
“Does your father deserve a second chance? He ordered your death, but by all means, go ask for an apology. He might say ‘sorry, my bad’, and then you can be a happy family again.”
I rolled my eyes at her.
“You’re a Violent Reaper. You get called to dark alleys, torture chambers, prisons, warzones… Do the perpetrators deserve a second chance? Is that how you feel when you reap the souls of their victims?”
I sighed, defeated. “No.”
“That’s what I thought. So, here’s an idea. Next time you go reaping, remember the face of the murderer. When your cosmic god gets hungry, you’ll know where to find a meal it’ll enjoy.”
“That thing is not my god.”
“That thing made you immortal, so I beg to differ.”
“You don’t get the god you want, you get the god you deserve,” I mumbled.
“We should meet,” she ignored my pathetic remark. “All of us. Down in the cavern, the Arcane Cabal…”
“The AC,” I laughed.
“Hah. The AC. We need a plan.”
“I’m tired of plans. They never work.”
“So, are you just going to give up?”
I shrugged.
“You said you’re a villain. Didn’t you know that villains never give up?”
Fuck. I had to give her that.
CHAPTER FOUR
Corri and I were the last ones there. The AC was waiting for us. Why did I let Lorna choose the name? It doesn’t even abbreviate right. Francis and Sariel were tending to the candles, while GC and Pazuzu were whispering heatedly in a corner, arguing about something.
“Morningstar was all up in my ass, I couldn’t do shit,” GC was saying.
“You didn’t try hard enough. Teleport in, teleport out. It’s not rocket science.”
“As if it’d have stopped him from killing her…”
“It could’ve.”
“Don’t blame this on me, mate.”
I walked over to Klaus and Lorna. Joel was there, too, sitting a few feet away from them, on a rock, his head in his phone. He was playing something. Weird. When they were in the same room, Joel and Klaus were usually smooching. Something’s not right here. Patty came over to me, arms crossed over her chest.
“Finally! We don’t have all day. I have to go back and help the girls make the smoothies for breakfast tomorrow.”
It struck me she was the only one who was doing actual work around here. She and Joel, that was. He was working in the kitchen, too, mostly peeling veggies and doing the dishes. My super-secret group was made up of people who would’ve never talked to each other if it weren’t for me and my problems.
“You look good,” Lorna said.
“Thanks?”
“Not dead and rotten at all. Your first ritual went well, then?”
Did we really have to talk about this right after dinner? I nodded, hoping she’d let it go. Corri flew off my shoulder and onto Klaus’s, as if Lorna had just reminded her what her Mistress was.
“I like your tat,” the mage girl tipped her chin toward my inked arm. “It’s cool. I heard Pandora say she wants to get one. It’s becoming a trend.”
“Never thought I’d be a trend setter…”
“Enough with the chitchat,” said Patricia. “Let’s gather round and figure out what’s to be done to catch that bastard, so I can get back to my chores.”
“There’s nothing to be done.” There was no point in wasting everyone’s time, and I had every intention to make them see that. “We have no clue where he is, he’s probably in some parallel universe by now, and even if we found him, I wouldn’t be able to retire him. We all know why. I don’t even know why we’re here, having this conversation.”
“We’re here because Patty insisted,” said Joel, never taking his eyes off his phone.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Lorna stepped up. Fire blazed in her deep blue eyes. “What kind of hero are you? Is this why we risked everything to bring you back to life? Is this why I let you have the only man I ever loved?”
Sariel scratched the back of his neck in discomfort, avoiding Lorna’s gaze.
“Is this why I joined your stupid secret group? I’m friends with a succubus who makes my breakfast, and a merman who peels my veggies, for crying out loud! My ancestors would turn in their graves if they knew!” She raised her gaze to the ceiling, a silent apology in her eyes. Oh, she sometimes beat my ass so hard at being a drama queen! She shook her head and fixed me again with an unforgiving look. “You promised the Council you’d track down your father. I know you spent your summer drinking and smoking weed. Fine. You needed time to recover, to get used to being a revenant. I gave you a break. We all gave you a break.”
“You gave me a break,” I chuckled sarcastically. “As if I needed you to…”
“You needed us to save your life!” She cut me off. “Now we need you to save everyone from whatever Morningstar’s cooking in his self-imposed exile. Because he’s up to something, and we all know it’s not unicorns and rainbows.”
I sighed, exasperated. “I can’t dream, I can’t find my father, and I can’t find my mother, okay? It’s over. You know what the Council should do? Find themselves another prophecy and another savior.”
“Forget about the prophecy,” Paz said. “That’s not how you’ll defeat him. He’s a hybrid – a nephilim, – he must have a weakness. We just have to find it. GC was supposed to talk to his grandfather, the original Golden Calf.”
“I told you,” GC groaned. “We were all being watched. I couldn’t teleport to the bloody Himalayas.”
“All summer, Apis? You couldn’t go investigate all summer? You had one job…”
“Guys! Knock it off!” Last year, we’d established GC would talk to his grandfather who’d retired in the mountains, Patty and Joel would research the Great Old Ones, and Paz would see what he could find about Valentine’s parents. GC had masterfully failed at his task, too distracted by my insatiable sex drive last summer, and I don’t know what Paz had done. For the most part, I’d been drunk and high, but if I wasn’t mistaken, there’d been days when he wasn’t around. Patty and Joel hadn’t found much on the cosmic gods sleeping in our universe. They concluded that if there was any serious information on them, it wasn’t in written form.
“Come with me, Mila,” GC said. “We’ll visit him together. He’ll be glad to meet my girlfriend.”
“Our girlfriend,” Paz growled, his demon eyes turning red.
“He’s old school!” GC protested. “He doesn’t believe in polygamy!”
Lorna laughed out loud. “He’s from the Old fucking Testament! There was no monogamy back then.”
“A man could have more wives, not the other way around. If I tell him I’m sharing Mila with three other guys, he’ll disown me.”
That made Lorna cross her arm
s over her chest and sneer at him. “Fucking patriarchy.”
GC ignored her. “Mila, will you come?”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. I doubt we’ll find out anything useful about the nephilim, but whatever makes you happy. I already read the Old Testament. Twice. It doesn’t say how to kill someone like Morningstar.”
“There are things, secrets, they never put in the Old Testament,” said Klaus. “I think it’s worth a shot. If nothing else, you get to see the most beautiful mountains in the world. Merciful Reapers and Neutral Reapers get called there all the time. Violent Reapers… not so much.”
“A vacation in the Himalayas,” I said sarcastically. “That’s what I need. Clear my head… maybe I can come up with a way to dream travel again.”
“Maybe you can come up with a way around that,” Lorna said, tired of hearing me complain about not being able to dream jump and see my mother. What she didn’t know was that I didn’t only want to see my mother again, but to bring her back where she belonged. In this universe, with me. “You think all is lost because you can’t dream jump anymore. So what? There are other dream jumpers out there. Learn to delegate.”
My eyes went wide, and my jaw dropped. I could almost imagine myself as a cartoon character, jaw hitting the floor, light bulb blinking yellow above my head. Good gracious, Lorna was smart! I didn’t have to do it myself. I just had to find someone to do it for me, dream, travel, then travel some more, until they found my mother. I could describe her universe to them.
“It could work, in theory,” Francis said, looking at me worriedly. I pulled myself together and gave him a smile. It was as if he could see the cogs in my head turning, and he was afraid I might come up with a crazy idea. “But where would we find a dream jumper?”
Lorna poked Patricia in the ribs. “You’re half succubus, half human.”
