by D. N. Hoxa
The bathrooms were empty, not a thing out of its place. So far, Marcus was out there, waiting for Nana to return, two people were dead, their blood dried on the ground floor, and two were either missing, or they’d run away. Just peachy.
With a deep sigh, I made my way back to the ground floor.
What I needed were books to help me make sense of all of this, and everything I needed was in Nana’s quarters. The books she’d made me read as a kid were always taken back to the third floor, and I was sure I could find this green, strange-looking stone with engraved runes in there somewhere. I’d seen precious gemstones engraved with spells for future use but nothing like this. The problem was, I was not allowed on Nana’s floor. Nobody was, and to break her Guard wasn’t something I could do, even if I’d had my magic.
I went back to the kitchen, hoping to find something else in the mess, but there was nothing in there to give me an idea of who the attacker could have been. Broken wood and glass, burn marks on the walls—all signs of magic use. Nana had fought back—that much I’d expected. That she’d lost was way beyond me.
Back in the main hallway, I sat cross-legged on the wooden floor and closed my eyes for a second. It had happened here, I was sure of it. Nana was taken from this place, probably out the front door, and nobody had been able to do anything about it.
The anger was there, lurking in the back of my mind, waiting for me to give it attention because it knew that I would sooner or later. If I’d had my magic, if I could feel the electricity coursing through the house, maybe I’d know where to look for more. Nana hadn’t taken only my magic from me: she’d taken my sight and my hearing, too. And this is where it had all happened.
Her spell had held me prisoner and brought me here to the middle of the house where all the other students could see my punishment being carried out by her. So that they’d know the price that would be paid if any of them did what I’d done. She’d torn my shirt and exposed my left shoulder, and she’d looked me in the eye for a long second, her facial muscles never moving. She was perfectly immune to my tears, to my silent begging.
Please, Nana. Please, don’t do this.
But she did. She whispered her words and she grabbed her rune marker, and she drew something on my skin—a Futhark rune in the shape of a fish standing upright, drawn in perfectly straight lines. Onpala. Lock, seal, bolt.
And my magic was no longer within my reach.
Now, as I sat in her house all alone, I wanted to cry, to take some of the frustration out, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t cried in such a long time that now it felt like I’d have to give a piece of myself just to produce a single tear from my good eye. I’d walked away from her Enclave after that, and she’d let me. Though I understood her, I never learned how to forgive her. In her place, I might have done the same if one of the people I was directly responsible for went around killing people because she knew they were bad guys, even though she had no proof. I’d have been forced to put an end to it, too, just like she did.
And, boy, did she end me. She ended me for good.
When the sound of the gates opening reached my ears, I jumped to my feet with my chakris in hand. I went to the front door slowly and opened it just a little. I don’t know what I expected, but it was only natural to feel afraid when I had a lot of enemies in this city, and I was standing in the place where one of the most powerful high priestesses in the world had been taken.
But the man walking toward the house with a black briefcase in his hand didn’t seem dangerous, not in the slightest. In fact, the closer he got, the clearer I saw his face, and I recognized him. He was a friend of Nana’s, and he came to meet her at the house very often while I was there, though he was much younger then.
Maybe he was the one who’d taken her and he’d come back to see if he’d left any proof behind? If so, I was the luckiest person in the world.
I pushed the door open and stepped outside, my chakris in clear view. I might have had my magic locked away, but I could still fight and make even the strongest opponent sweat.
The man raised his head and his grey eyes found mine. He saw my weapons but didn’t look the least concerned about them.
“Ah, Miss Monroe,” he said, his voice light as a breeze. “I’m glad you finally showed up.”
“Does that mean you were waiting for me?” I asked, trying to keep the surprise from my face.
“Certainly.” He stepped in front of me and looked me over once more. “I’m Randy Thurman, Ms. Tanana’s attorney. May I come inside?”
Attorney?
“Some ID would be nice,” I said, trying to appear calm. It was hard, considering the circumstances.
With a tight-lipped smile, the man reached for the pocket of his jacket, and I almost threw my chakri. Just a wallet. He’d only reached for his wallet, an old leather thing the color of bile, and he showed me his driver’s license. Randy Thurman, born in Indiana, fifty-nine years old. I saw his address, too, just in case I’d need it later. You never knew anymore.
With a nod, I stepped to the side and let him in. Whatever he was about to tell me, I was pretty damn sure I wasn’t going to like it.
4
Randy Thurman was a short man, about five-four, with salt and pepper hair clinging to the sides of his head, while the top of it glistened under the sunlight streaming through the window—not a single hair on it. He wore an oversized grey suit, and I couldn’t decide whether he did it to hide something or he just didn’t give a shit about his appearance. Either way, I didn’t like it. Ancient acne scars dotted his cheeks and his mustache was combed to perfection, almost as if the hairs were plastic.
I took him to the living room, carefully analyzing his expression while we passed the hallway—and the blood stains. He turned about three shades whiter and quickly looked away. He wasn’t a man of violence—his hands were too soft, his nails perfectly trimmed. That gave me some reassurance.
“I didn’t know Nana had an attorney,” I said when he sat down on the sofa and set his black briefcase on his lap. I thought before that he was just a friend, someone Nana knew back when she could actually leave the Enclave, but never did I guess he was an attorney. Thurman said nothing. “What exactly are you doing here, Mr. Thurman?”
He opened the lid of the briefcase and froze, looking up at me. “I’m here for her will, of course.”
“Her will? What will?”
He searched for something in his briefcase, holding the lid up as if he didn’t want me to see what was inside. All I heard was paper rustling. He finally found what he was looking for—a folder the color of ripe lemon. He put the briefcase away and opened the folder, clearing his throat.
“I’ve worked for Miss Tanana for over a decade now, and I’m the executor of her last will and testament. It’s why I’m here.”
“But Nana isn’t dead.” She couldn’t be. I would have felt it.
Wait, would I feel it?
“I sure hope not, Miss Monroe. But I was told to come to the Enclave at your appearance if something like this were to happen to Miss Tanana.”
Now, hold on a minute…
“Something like this? You mean, in case she got kidnapped?” The man nodded. “And you know that, how?”
Thurman smiled. “You returned.”
Shaking my head, I sat on the other side of the sofa, so confused I wanted to laugh. “How did you know that I returned?”
He waved his index finger around the ceiling. “The Guard. Miss Tanana keyed it to me with your blood.”
Slap me in the face, will you. Where the hell had Nana even gotten my blood? Did she keep a supply of it in her fucking room?
“I understand this is a lot to take in, Miss Monroe. Tanana told me you’d be confused.”
“Confused? No, confused doesn’t come even close.” I jumped to my feet again, unable to sit still. “You’re telling me that she knew she would be kidnapped, and she keyed the Guard to you with my blood so that you’d know when I crossed it.”
“Correct,” he said, like he really didn’t get it. “Though she thought she might be kidnapped, she didn’t know for sure.”
“That certainly clears things up, then!” I said, my voice echoing in the wide ceiling.
“Miss, I don’t claim to know Tanana’s reasons or motivations. She named me the Executor of her will, and I’m just here to do my job.” He took out a piece of paper from the folder and handed it to me. “The will.”
I looked at it like it was a venomous snake. “Go ahead and read it.”
Thurman had nothing against that. Clearing his throat again, he read:
I, Tanana Kaur, declare this to be my Will, and I revoke any and all wills and codicils I previously made.
Article One:
I direct my Executor Randy Thurman to deliver this Will to my sole beneficiary: Ruby Eleanor Monroe in the case of my disappearance for more than forty-eight hours, or in the event of my death.
Article Two:
I give my Enclave together with its property to my beneficiary, Ruby Eleanor Monroe, until my return. She has complete freedom to all my tangible personal property and all spells and Guards within my property. My executors may pay out of my estate the expenses of delivering tangible personal property to beneficiaries.
Article Three:
In the event that my beneficiary does not claim the Enclave and all that comes with it, I appoint as guardian of my person and property my attorney and Executor, Randy Thurman, to do with as explained in this Will’s codicil.
Signed, Tanana Kaur.
His words repeated themselves in my head, over and over again. She’s made me the sole beneficiary of the Enclave. The Enclave was her whole life. She would never trust me with it, no matter what. To do that, she’d have to pass down her title as high priestess, too, which wasn’t possible, considering she’d locked my magic away.
But she knew…she knew I’d be here. She knew she would be taken and that I’d return.
“When did she write this?” I asked Thurman.
“Two months ago.”
Two months. She’d known for two months and she hadn’t come to me. Why?
I chewed on it for a bit. She was still angry at me for leaving.
She couldn’t find me.
Maybe she didn’t know how to tell me?
Bullshit, all of it. Unless she was trying to tell me something without saying it outright. That was her style, after all. She told Marcus to tell me to find my father. She knew my father was dead, so it must be a code. She was sending me a message, and the message just got longer with her will while I was no closer to decoding it.
“So, Miss Monroe,” said Thurman, calling my eyes to him. “Will you accept the will?”
I sat back down. “No,” I said without hesitation.
I couldn’t. I’d run away from the Enclave for a reason. I didn’t trust Nana or what she stood for. I’d made it all clear to her the day I left. I just couldn’t understand why she’d want to drag me into all of this. Why now?
“Just to be clear, Miss Monroe—”
“Call me Ruby.” It felt like he was talking to someone else when he called me Miss.
He smiled. “Ruby, just to be clear, if you accept her will, this house will be yours until she returns. All of it.”
From the folder, he took out a small, white envelope and left it on the sofa between us. My fingers itched like the envelope had cast some sort of a spell on me. I took it because it couldn’t hurt to see what was inside.
But it did hurt.
Inside was the key to the third floor.
I recognized it because Nana had kept one just like it locked on a silver chain around her neck. It was barely bigger than my thumb. The shaft was thin, the key wards shaped into half hearts.
That wasn’t the only thing inside the envelope. The small, square piece of paper had a line of Futhark runes—to unlock the Guard around the third floor.
Nana had given me access to her life, to everything she kept hidden from the eyes of the world, something I thought she would never agree to, even if she were kidnapped. A shiver washed down my back.
“Do you know what happened to her, Mr. Thurman?” I heard myself say as I studied the key.
“I don’t,” he said with a defeated voice.
“Did she talk to you about her suspicions? Did she mention a name, something that could help me make sense of this? If she knew she could be kidnapped, she also knew by whom.”
“She never mentioned anything else,” Thurman said. “I’m afraid I’ve done just about everything I can do for the both of you.”
“What about her students? Can you tell me how many she had, at least?” He would have had to come to the house to take Nana’s will, and he would have seen enough.
“Five,” Thurman said, moving uncomfortably. “If you’ve come to your decision, I really must get going now.”
I wanted to push him to tell me more, but my gut said that he knew nothing that could help me. He was right, he’d already done all that he could—he’d delivered the rest of Nana’s message.
A nasty headache developed almost instantly in the back of my eyes. Nashville felt like such a long time ago. I’d have taken a bar full of drunk weresnakes over this any day. Now, I was backed into a corner, and I could see no light at the end of the tunnel. Too bad there was nowhere else to go but through it.
“I accept.”
5
I looked at the key in my hand and felt the weight of the Guard spell in the back pocket of my jeans. The stairway was right in front of me. All I had to do was take a step. Just one step and the rest I wouldn’t even notice. The beginnings were always the hardest parts, right?
That’s what it had felt like when Thurman had given me access to Nana’s Guard around the house. She’d even prepared a little piece of paper with the runes already written in her handwriting. All I had to do was put a drop of my blood in the middle. I thought that would be the hard part. I’d never done anything like it, so I definitely didn’t know what to expect. I ran my thumb on the edge of my chakri just enough to draw blood and watched a drop fall onto the piece of paper.
That was the easy part. The rest was torture. It felt like someone had put two pumps inside my ears and they were filling my head up with air. I literally felt like I was about to explode, and when the pressure settled, the ache on the back of my neck began, like a hot and cold touch at the same time, putting an invisible layer upon my skin, a layer that breathed and lived on its own. Nana’s Guard. I didn’t know if it felt so foreign to me because it was someone else’s magic or because I didn’t have my own magic to connect it to. Either way, it was uncomfortable as hell.
Nana’s floor, a place I’d only ever seen in my dreams, was waiting for me, ready to spill all its secrets to me. I could do this. I just had to take one step…
“Goddamn it!” I shouted at the house and kicked the first stair until my toes felt like they were going to fall off.
Thurman had left minutes ago, and I couldn’t bring myself to face my decision yet. I’d accepted Nana’s will—the Enclave and everything that went with it. In normal circumstances, I could have gone straight into the Magian Ministry and demanded that they give me every tool at their disposal to investigate Nana’s disappearance. I could have opened doors and spoken to people I never would have even met otherwise.
Could have being the key words. I had a price on my head and even inheriting an Enclave wasn’t going to erase that.
Without thought, I raised my left leg and…something moved outside the house, behind the half open door through which Thurman had just left. I felt it on the back of my neck, like a prick, the layer of magic willing me to react to something it could hear. All thoughts of Nana’s quarters fled from my mind, and I spun around, standing very still for a second. Nothing.
Maybe I’d imagined it? Maybe I was just very uncomfortable with the pressure on my neck and shoulders and thought I felt something when I didn’t.
Probably… but i
t wouldn’t hurt to check, would it?
Stepping on the tips of my toes, I approached the door and pressed my back to it, slipping two chakris into my hands. I held my breath and closed my eyes, turning all my focus to my ears.
Maybe Nana had another lawyer, one who’d come to tell me that Randy Thurman had just come to mess with me, that there was no will, and that even if there was, I wouldn’t be part of it, not for any reason. That sure as hell would have made a lot more sense to me.
But a second later, I heard it, loud and clear. It was a whoosh, the kind metal makes when it rubbed against plastic. The kind a gun makes when it’s pulled out of a holster.
“About time you graced us with your presence.”
The sound of the voice pinned me in place. It was hard and rough around the edges, almost as if the man speaking was just recovering from a cold.
And he knew exactly who I was.
Had it been Thurman? Had he turned me in? If so, I was going to pull out the remaining hairs on his head one by one before I killed him.
“I know you’re in there, Monroe. I can feel you,” the man said. He could feel me. High priests sometimes felt other magians from a distance, but it was very rare. Spirits couldn’t feel others as far as I knew, and vampires couldn’t come out in the sun, which meant whoever was in Nana’s driveway with a gun pointed at the door was some kind of shifter. By using his sense of smell, he’d have no trouble narrowing down my location since I was the only person in the house.
“Are you just going to let me talk to myself, or are you going to step outside? I promise I won’t bite,” the man said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. Asshole.
God, I was going to kill Thurman if he was the one who turned me in. For now, this stranger was on Nana’s property—my property—and if he was holding a gun in his hand, pointing it at me, I wanted to know who he was. Holding on tightly to my chakris, I took a deep breath and stepped to the side.
