by Sadie Anders
Megaera turned her head towards Alecto, unhappy with this pronouncement. She turned back to us, plastering on a fake smile. “Yes, guardian, accompany the witch. Keep her alive.”
I released my breath. I could be with Raphael. Thank goodness. His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. We were both relieved.
“Are we finished here?” Raphael asked. It seemed like he was as in a hurry to leave their presence as I was.
“Certainly,” Alecto said. Raphael gave a curt nod and turned to walk away. I began to follow.
“One other thing,” Megaera added. “As an incentive to do your best, witch, we will be checking in on your uncle from time to time. We will make sure that he is doing well in your absence. That he is thriving.” She displayed a grin that was positively devoid of joy. It was the smile of one who relished cruelty, revenge. This was not a benevolent promise. It was a threat. Help them, or my uncle would suffer the consequences. I understood perfectly.
I nodded, then turned to leave. The only sound as we left the hall was the echo of our footsteps against the cold stone floor.
We walked outside and waited in silence in the torchlight for Raphael’s car to be driven up to the front. I wasn’t sure what to say, and Cleon had accompanied us on our exit from the great hall. I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, so I wasn’t about to start any conversations in his presence. Raphael seemed to feel the same way.
A sleek white car pulled up to the entrance, different than any I had seen him drive so far, and Raphael opened my door for me. I sat down and waited for him. He took his place in the driver’s seat and drove us off of the Furies’ estate, still not saying anything.
I began to wonder if it was Cleon after all, or if Raphael just didn’t want to speak to me.
We sailed down the road from the mountaintop where the Furies resided, trees blurring as I stared out of the window. After a long time of agonizing silence, I broke.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Hmph,” Raphael said.
“That’s not an answer,” I said.
“That’s not a real greeting,” he replied.
“Greetings, dear Raphael. Oh, how I’ve missed you. Now, would you please be so kind as to tell me where we are headed?”
A smirk crossed his face as he tried to hold back a laugh.
“Aporia, obviously.”
“Getting started right away, I see.”
“We must. I thought we could start at the Kylix. It seems like the safest place I can think of to get some information.”
The Kylix was a local tavern in the lower city. I had stayed there before in the inn above the bar, and the people were kind to me, helping me out of a bad situation.
“I can think of one problem. Heliodor might find me again. She came after me at the Kylix before. If she knows I’ve returned, she definitely won’t hesitate to come back.”
Raphael thought about this. “You’re right. For whatever reason, she seems dead set on converting you to her side in the rebellion. But not to worry. I have a plan, one that should keep us safe. For now, at least.”
This was the first piece of good news I had heard since meeting with the Furies. The idea of being safe in Asphodel was completely foreign to me, but I would have to see what Raphael had up his sleeve.
I hadn’t told Raphael what Uncle Julian had revealed to me when we had come back from Asphodel, that Heliodor was my mother Beryl. I wasn’t sure how to even process this yet, much less how to share it with others. I hadn’t even brought it back up much with my uncle, and neither had he. It was too painful for both of us to discuss, I think.
Still, my uncle seemed to think that Heliodor wouldn’t back down, that she would seek me out. If he was right, we would need a way to stay off of her radar while we worked in the lower city. Not much happened there without her knowledge, as she worked for the lower city’s big bad, a person whose power was far reaching.
Ember.
I knew very little about her, but I what I did know was that everybody feared her.
I would need to keep my distance from Ember. That much was certain.
“We need to stop by my house first,” Raphael said. “There are things we will need.”
I nodded, and my stomach wound into a knot. I would be alone again with Raphael, alone in the place where we had made love, where I had come alive. My entire body longed for him again, but I couldn’t get over my anger at being ignored by him the past couple of weeks. My hunch was that something wasn’t right between us. In other words, it wasn’t an ideal time to resume bedroom shenanigans. My heart was hurt, and that was difficult to simply get over.
Still, when we got to his house and he tried to kiss me, how on earth could any sane person resist him? It would be impossible.
I shifted in my seat with nervous energy until we arrived at his place. He parked the car in front of the house and left it running. He opened the door for me, but didn’t wait long, as he continued in long strides towards the entrance. Someone was in a hurry.
I jogged to keep up with him, and he went straight to his hidden office, the place where he kept all of his experiments in magic. The cozy room was filled with things that made me feel at home. Cushy chairs. Sumptuous rugs and curtains. A mysteriously lit and crackling fire in the fireplace. I wanted to spend the day in here, nestled up next to him, reading a book and taking in his scent as he lazed beside me.
That wasn’t in the cards for us today, however.
He picked up a leather satchel from a cupboard in the room and started filling it with objects, small vials of potions, a few crystals, a book or two, and a series of metallic nested orbs. This was done with precision, as if he knew exactly which items he would need for our journey. I hadn’t been nearly so organized when I frantically shoved stuff in my bag at the magic shop. Turns out, it helped to know what you were doing with magical objects.
“Wait here while I get a few clothes from my bedoom,” he said. “I’ll be quick.”
My eyebrows shot up in surprise. I had expected him to invite me to his bedroom, not bar me from it.
What was going on? Did he not feel the same way about me?
He wouldn’t have been the first guy to bed a girl and then feel differently about her afterwards. Still, I really didn’t get that impression from him. I was convinced that what went on between us was real.
Wouldn’t I be able to tell the difference?
I thought I could.
I sat down in the chair by the fireplace, staring at the flames as they licked the wood, mesmerized by the combination of their dance and my wandering thoughts. In my wildest dreams, I never would have expected to be in the home of some ancient vampire in a faraway realm, never would have expected that I would be asked to be a spy or go on some sort of quest. My life had somehow led to this, and it all didn’t feel quite as strange as I might have expected.
“It’s caught you, hasn’t it? The fire?”
Raphael.
I shook my head, breaking my train of thought, and looked at him.
“I was just daydreaming.”
“No, you were entranced. I know that look.” I wondered what he meant, what look I had been giving.
“Did you go upstairs yet?” I asked.
“All finished.”
I had no idea how he could be. That was impossibly fast.
“I’m ready to go,” he said.
My heart fell. Even though I didn’t know what was going on between us, I knew that I was disappointed that he hadn’t invited me up with him. Every part of me remembered what it had felt like, to be attended to and cherished by this man. There was no way to forget it.
I stood slowly, my body betraying me, revealing my reluctance to leave.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Still lost in the flames?”
“Not exactly. I mean, yes. I’m okay.” I took a deep breath, his scent washing over me as he stood towering above me. Amber and cedar and something I couldn’t quite guess. Whatever it
was, he smelled divine. I closed my eyes, taking him in. My lips parted slightly as I remembered every magnificent detail of his body.
I heard a sigh escape from his lips. My eyes flew open, and he was looking down at me, hurt and angry, but I had no idea why.
“What do you want from me, Alexis?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I think you do.”
“You know what? You’re right. And you know what I want from you, too.”
He lifted me up, pressing me against the wall, my arms above my head. I felt the weight of his body against me, and my own screamed out for him. His lips grazed the side of my neck, gently whispering against my skin.
“Is this what you want? Another moment like this?” He ran one hand down my torso and down across my backside. A flare of pure heat erupted inside me.
“Of course it is,” I said, not quite catching my breath.
“Unbelievable,” he said, backing away and shaking his head.
All of this was giving me whiplash. He had given me the cold shoulder, then had basically devoured me, then turned cold again.
What was going on?
“What is your problem, Raphael?”
“Nothing. I’m just not sure I’m the man who can give you what you want. Let’s try to get our business over with, okay?”
A chill ran through me. He was being incredibly difficult. I had no idea what had happened to him since we last spoke in Asphodel, but whatever it was, everything was not right. And I didn’t know what to do.
He gathered up his bag and exited the room, and I followed behind him, neither of us speaking another word as we got back in the car and made our descent towards the lower city. We parked the car at the station where the tram would take us down the cliff into the lower city. Raphael barely said anything to me during this entire excursion, merely escorting me in the right direction and politely opening the doors for me.
We boarded the funicular, the small train that would take us down the rest of the way. I stared out the window at the city below, lights speckling the blanket of buildings beneath us. It was such a stark contrast to the sparsely populated upper city, where forests and nature dominated. The lower city, Aporia, was alive with people and movement and life.
Before we arrived, Raphael opened his bag and took out two vials filled with crimson liquid. He handed one to me.
“We will need to take these. They are long lasting, and they should help us do what we need to do.”
“What is it?”
“A potion that will cast a glamour on your body. It will make you look like someone else for a sustained period of time. I can’t go around the lower city looking like a guardian, and you can’t draw the attention of Heliodor or the snatchers.”
“That makes sense. Who will I look like?”
“You can look however you wish. Focus on the image, think on it as you swallow the contents of the vial. That form will take shape.”
I shrugged, and tipped the scarlet shot back into my mouth. It tasted like cherries and mint, not a great combination, but not too bad. I licked my lips to get the last of it, and I found Raphael staring at my mouth, looking completely distracted.
“Did I change yet?” I asked him. He shook his head back into focus.
“No, not yet. You have to think about the form you wish to take first.”
I closed my eyes and thought about it for a second. Did I want to be someone with completely different features for a time? Or did I want to look basically the same as what I was used to, only like a different person? Would one be too disorienting? Would the other be too similar? This decision was more difficult than I first thought it might be.
I finally decided to go more or less with what was familiar. Similar build, similar features. I figured that I had spent my entire life so far learning to navigate the world as I was. Navigating a new world with a totally different image, one that was a far cry from what I was used to, would be too much for me to handle right now. As exciting as being someone completely different could be, something felt weird and touristy about it. I had to rely on what was the same, what kept me grounded. Familiarity could be that anchor.
I thought about this new me. Dark hair still, but a shorter style. Better eyebrows. Longer eyelashes. My build but a little curvier.
That couldn’t hurt, right?
Simply a little wishful thinking, like going to the spa or salon and trying to be just a little bit hotter. Everyone wanted that.
I opened my eyes again. By the look on Raphael’s face, I was changing before his eyes. A little smile crept up in the corner of his mouth.
“What?” I asked.
“I prefer the original. But not a bad choice, either. Always a beauty, inside and out.”
After how he had treated me at his house, I didn’t know how to take this compliment, so I just avoided responding altogether.
“Your turn?”
He nodded. “Any requests?”
I laughed. Deep down, I wanted to tell him to be somebody less attractive, someone who wouldn’t completely disarm and distract me. Yet, it was his choice. Just as I was allowed to choose, so should he.
He drank the contents of his vial and immediately began changing shape. It appeared that he didn’t have to think too long about what he wanted to look like.
His sapphire eyes morphed into more of a hazel color, and his dark hair lightened into a cross between a sandy and golden blond. His skin became less pale and more golden. The strangest thing about all of it was that his aura changed too. Instead of the deep burgundy waves that typically surrounded him when I concentrated on him, his aura now turned into the shining luminescent aura of a wizard.
All in all, he looked like some Renaissance portrait of an angel or something. Radiant and handsome as ever. Not exactly the most incognito look, I would imagine. He raised his eyebrows at the look on my face.
“Is something wrong with how I look?”
“Not really low key. But it will work.”
Raphael reached into his bag and pulled out a cloak, pulling its hood up over his head to obscure his light hair and his bright aura. This helped tone down the whole otherworldly effect, but he was still remarkable looking. He stood up and headed to the door of the train as we pulled into the lower city station.
“Ready?” he asked as the doors to the compartment slid open.
“I have to be.”
We headed out into the chilly evening to start our lives as secret agents in the land of perpetual twilight.
5
The area where we exited into the lower city was quiet. Nobody was on the streets, and I wondered if something was wrong, if the residents had taken to their houses for some unknown reason, some imminent threat that was looming.
The vampires of the upper city had made things in Asphodel seem dire. It would make sense if residents were keeping to themselves to avoid all of that unpleasantness.
But as we wound through the streets on our way to the dockside, the place near the River Acheron where the Kylix was located, I noticed that the city blocks gradually became busier, more densely trafficked.
It wasn’t that the people of Aporia were afraid to be out and about. Rather, they chose not to populate the areas near the border between the upper and lower cities. It was like they were avoiding the areas where vampires might be. Perhaps it was to diminish the chance of conflict, maybe it was because they didn’t care to be in their presence. But whatever it was, the tone of the heart of the city was completely different from the border.
We crossed through a square where a market was taking place. Vendors sold their wares from their carts or makeshift booths set up around folding tables draped with cloth. Friends greeted one another, exchanging embraces, catching up on their lives.
When we had walked through this square together before, I had been terrified. It was a new and foreign place. I felt out of my element, singled out for my unique magical signature. This time, however, it felt familiar. It remind
ed me of my neighborhood in Portland, where the local shop owners and their regular customers greeted and took care of one another. Where we were a community. I could understand a place like that.
My attention was diverted by a booth selling crystalline figures.
They were exquisite.
Something about them was drawing me to them. They were multi-colored and sparkled even though they had no direct light from the sun.
I wondered what was making them shine.
Raphael caught me eyeing one in particular, a small replica of the solar system, or what I at first thought was the solar system. It was more like a series of concentric circles or rings that resembled space, but it was different than our own solar system in certain respects. The orbs representing the planets were jewels encrusted in a crystalline orbit that seemed somehow less solid, like everything was connected by something dynamic yet tangible. In the center, there was a luminous orb, one that was shining on all the others, giving them a brilliance.
“You like that one, don’t you?” he asked.
“It’s spectacular. I just don’t understand what it is.”
“She’ll take the celestial spheres,” he told the woman who ran the booth.
He reached into his pocket and fished out a blue currency note. The vendor’s eyes widened. This must have been a lot of money, and Raphael had not even asked about the cost of the item. We would have to be more discreet if we wanted to avoid unwelcome attention.
“How much?” I asked.
The vendor’s eyes narrowed, sizing me up. She looked from me to the note in Raphael’s hand.
“Five hundred.”
I raised my eyebrows and looked at Raphael. I turned back to the woman.
“One hundred.”
She raised her finger into the air and closed her eyes. Her voice rang out in an incantation as she lowered her finger to touch the center orb. A sheet of diamond-like, but sheer, material sprang forward, encrusting the entire set of spheres in its brilliance. It now looked like the orbs were floating on the surface of one, large starry surface, yet you could still see the details within. I was so astonished by its beauty that I could barely contain my excitement.
