by Amy B. Nixon
“Can we please change the subject? Have you visited any of these supernatural schools?”
He burst into laughter. “I wish! They won’t let our kind near their territory. I’ve only been to Howard’s College and Zolotov. I visited both, when I thought about enrolling.”
“Both?” I asked, suddenly overtaken by the crazy idea of transferring to such a school and getting a magical diploma. “What’s it like there?”
All traces of Maksim’s cheerfulness perished.
“The ones who run Howard’s College take pride in it being the largest magical school in all of Midgard. I went there for a week in January when their second semester was starting. Oh, man, it was a nightmare! Some sorcerers kept the floods and hurricanes away from school grounds, but these forces wreaked havoc everywhere else in Florida. According to the Americans, meddling in nature’s forces would result in global climate changes, so we weren’t allowed to do anything.”
“Bullshit!”
“To top it off, necromancers were forbidden from bringing back those people who died from a natural disaster.”
The trip down memory lane made him miserable. The sadness in his eyes intertwined with something sullen which looked a lot like guilt.
“Max…” I started quietly, wishing for a Sentinel’s powers, so I could ease his emotions and comfort him. He’d been so kind, always helpful and sincere, despite my bitchiness. “I’m sure there was nothing you could have done to save those lives or prevent other damages caused by floods and hurricanes.”
He shook his head with a frown.
“I could have, we all could have, but they didn’t allow it. The necromantic academy in Russia is the exact opposite. Slavic authorities not only allow, but actually encourage us to save lives; and that’s why the goddess Freya created us. I stayed in Russia for Zolotov’s entire second semester. If I didn’t miss having my sister around so much, I probably would have transferred for good.”
“Can’t Monika go there?”
“She can. Dann even proposed to write her a transfer letter, so she wouldn’t have to deal with Slavic preliminary exams.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you Dann’s an excellent lecturer and he taught in two schools. Remember?”
“Duh.” How could I forget the praise for His Excellency’s excellent teaching? “What does that have to do with transfer letters?”
“He was a Zoology teacher in the Swedish Institute–”
“Whoa, wait! Zoology? With magical creatures? But he’s doing History of the Nine Realms lectures.”
“Yeah, after the school closed, he started giving History of the Nine Realms lectures here, since Zoology clashed with Geira Brekke’s big Magiessence book club, and all that… Anyway, Monika attended the Swedish Institute for a year, but because it closed down, she couldn’t use her old credits from that institution to validate her magical potential with the Slavs. They couldn’t take her without forcing her to go through preliminary exams. By the time I went to the Zolotov Academy for a semester, Dann had already scored a Zoology position with them. Being part of Zolotov’s faculty, he offered to write Monika a transfer letter, so she wouldn’t need to take exams or start with first-year students.”
“Oh! Okay, I get it. So, Zolotov’s cool?”
He grimaced with a half-excuse of a smile.
“More than cool. Zolotov has always been the most prestigious school for necromancers. It’s the exact opposite of Howard’s College. Dann even convinced the Council to apply some Slavic principals here. For example, those group exercises you have with guards? The healing spells cast on branches used to be practiced on living flesh up until the summer.”
I gasped in horror.
“Yeah, the Council embraced quite a lot of changes. It’s been good for novices like you, who’ve never been up close and personal with necromancy prior to coming here.”
For the first time, I felt gratitude towards my aunt for keeping the truth hidden from me. “Wow. Okay, the Russians are great and you can’t leave your twin behind. But why hasn’t Monika transferred?”
He shrugged, and the sadness in his eyes intensified. The guy really wore his heart on his sleeve. It bothered me that I had always been so reserved to his amiable approach.
“Monika’s too big of a patriot to turn her back on her roots. She wants to join one of the Scandinavian governments in a few years, so she’s simultaneously juggling her necromantic powers and lectures in a mundane university in Oslo. The last thing she needs is to transfer to a foreign country. It took us an entire year of begging Mom to allow her to enroll in a mundane university while she’s still having problems moving up from a Class Two caster.”
I remained silent, fixing my eyes on the floor.
Maksim’s magic had not only broken out before Monika’s, but he was more powerful than his sister. She had to live in his shadow.
In the meantime, the Council expected her to deal with me, which she did without complaining about how difficult I was to put up with. She also didn’t see me as a complete fuck-up. What was more, she was super friendly all the time. And I hadn’t bothered to at least ask her about hobbies or interests, or the reason why she was always exhausted, or about her plans for the future…
I was hurt and angry because my friends in San Francisco had dumped me, but here I was, being an awful friend to my own roommate.
“What do you want to do when you grow up?” I asked Maksim, trying to atone for my guilt.
He shrugged. “Sentinels with my fighting arsenal make some of the best guardians in any realm, as well as supernatural law enforcement agents. I’ll probably become a guardian. My parents think it’s the smartest choice.”
There it was again – guardian. The word Aurora had said to Monika when I woke up in the infirmary. I had completely forgotten about it.
“What’s a guardian? Do you mean the island’s guards?”
“No. Guardian, as in… Hey, we’re here for your evocation! Have you been putting it off on purpose?”
I pursed my lips and made a face.
“Busted. Part of me really wanted to put it off, though I do like hanging out with you. Your head isn’t stuck up your ass.”
He grinned. “Thanks, but let’s work on your summoning. We’ll have time for chats later.”
Maksim showed me a black and white picture of some young dude on his phone. Judging by the colors and the image’s low quality, it wasn’t taken in this century.
“Say hello to my cousin Diuri. Correction, you’ll say hello in a bit. First, you need to draw a Spirit Trap. Do you know how to make it?”
I quickly drew the symbols on an empty sheet of paper on the back of the nearest notebook.
“Perfect pentagram,” he noted with a smile.
A month ago, I would have been bothered by someone congratulating me on my perfect Satanism-associated drawing. But now I beamed from the praise, wishing Maksim could have been my Elemental instructor instead of the Hans Gruber act-alike. Though, honestly, Brühl would have been an excellent Gruber in Die Hard.
“Learyn?” I glanced up. Maksim handed me his smartphone. “Focus, please? Put my phone inside the Spirit Trap and imagine cousin Diuri’s face.”
“I’m looking at his face,” I muttered, doing as instructed. “What do I need to imagine?”
“Think about it this way. You’re in an empty field or in an empty house, or in whatever place where you’re all alone.”
I sucked in a deep breath, closed my eyes and thought of the snow-covered courtyard. Serene, quiet, devoid of all human or necromantic presence.
“Now imagine being surrounded by hundreds of ghosts.”
I immediately opened my eyes.
“The fuck, Maksim?!”
His hands shot up. “Sorry. Imagine you’re alone in an empty place, but there are many apparitions around you. They aren’t paying attention to you; they’re just roaming around and minding their business like they can’t see you.”
&nb
sp; Swearing under my nose, I did as told. The courtyard in my mind filled with numerous translucent apparitions, all looking like the one Patricia Svensson had summoned.
“Do you see them?”
“Yeah. Now what?”
“Picture my cousin Diuri among them, then ask him to come to you through your eitr essence. Think of your eitr as a… I don’t know, a winch? Lasso? Fishing rod? It can be anything you want, as long as it helps you draw him out from the crowd.”
I opened one eye and skeptically looked up at Maksim again.
“Just trust me, okay?”
I had a hard time trusting people in general, especially males, but I tried to picture emerald eitr threads shooting from me and fishing out Maksim’s cousin. As I expected, nothing happened.
“He’s feeling shy today,” I noted after a few moments. “Got any other dead relatives for me?”
He grabbed the phone, unlocked it, fiddled with something for a while, then put it back inside the pentagram. His cousin was staring at me from the screensaver.
“Keep your eyes open this time. Concentrate on his face. Diuri walked both me and Monika through evocation. He’s even chattier than she is, and you know she’s a morning person. So, trust me, he will come.”
I kept trying to summon cousin Diuri, but he kept playing hard to get. During yet another one of my attempts, Maksim’s phone buzzed, swapping the photo with an alarm notification.
“Timeout.” He puffed, as if he had been the one trying to practice magic. “My training session with the self-defense group starts soon.”
“Have fun, and thanks for wasting your time with me.”
“You’re not getting off that easily. Come on, get dressed. You can watch during practice, and we’ll get back to evocation afterwards.”
“Uh-uh. No, thank you.”
He stood up and pulled me off the bed. “It’ll be a good distraction for you. I’ll wait outside while you get dressed.”
I groaned, putting on my boots and long jacket. He was right about the distraction, but the childish part of me which still couldn’t open up to people, let alone make friends, was bitching and moaning about it. On the other hand, our stroll en route to the training grounds was totally worth it. Fresh air and pristine winter landscapes were exactly what I needed.
As soon as we walked inside the training grounds, I saw a bunch of guards standing near the door.
The entire group turned their heads to us. There was a younger man in their circle. Dann. Oh, crap! Out of all types of training sessions, did I have to impose on this one and distract Maksim when he had practice with a Council member? When the Council had already put up with so much of my shit?
“Hey, um, I really don’t wanna impose, so I’ll be heading back,” I muttered quietly. “Thanks for everything.”
Maksim’s eyebrows shot up.
“You’re not imposing. No one’s even here.”
I came to a halt, shifting my eyes between him and the group of men, who had returned to their conversation.
“Are you telling me you can’t see them?”
“Of course I can see them, but my training session isn’t with Dann. I told you, I’m having practice with a self-defense group.”
Right. He had. I ran up, trying to match his wide stride, and followed him to a corner, still feeling uneasy.
“So, what do you do exactly?”
He didn’t get a chance to reply because the door across us opened and, to my uttermost disgust, I heard Axel’s nasty voice.
“First Liv and now her? No way, dude! Why are you always the one getting the chicks?”
The sleazeball wasn’t talking to a group of guys who followed him through the door, but directly to Maksim.
“Maybe it’s because I don’t act like a horny monkey whenever I see a girl, and because I’m always on time, unlike you. By the way, I’m still with Liv.”
Axel gawked at me, dramatically widening his eyes.
“Did I hear that right? You’re still on the market, Dustrikke?”
I winced with a nauseous feeling rising in my guts.
“On the market? Do I look like a fucking camel to you?” Axel’s group booed and laughed. My revulsion became unbearable. “I’m serious, Maksim, put a leash on him and keep your promises, otherwise I’ll keep mine!”
“Man, you’re killing me!” I heard Maksim groan at the sleazeball as I stormed past his group and bolted for the door.
Evocation be damned!
I wasn’t going to sit there and subject my nerves to Axel’s repulsive behavior for forty minutes! Even if it meant losing my chances of practicing with Monika’s brother later and failing on my next exercise with Svensson - again. The hell with that! I actually preferred failing next to spending another second around Axel.
“Learyn!”
Turning back, I saw Dann running towards me through the snow.
I opened my mouth, but the world around me spun, erasing whatever answer I meant to give him.
We were standing in this very same courtyard, only it wasn’t winter anymore. I could tell there were no traces of snowflakes, even though everything was too washed out, like it didn’t belong to this world.
Because all I could see was Dann.
And what I saw made the blood in my veins curdle with self-disdain. I loathed myself for doing this to him.
His eyes were wide open and still, as though every single nerve ending in his body was petrified. His forehead, usually smooth and calm, was now creased with furrows of shock. His lips were slightly parted, curled down, no breath escaping from them. His chest was completely tranquil, as if the oxygen had left his lungs and their invigorating function had failed him.
If he wasn’t standing up, I would have thought he was dead, because every inch in his body hung silent and lifeless.
The only description in my mind was a single word – broken.
In the blink of an eye the snow reappeared.
The fuck? Another hallucination? Seriously? After I had managed to forget about the previous one? My irritation meter sprung up as Dann came to stop a few footsteps away with a worried crease between his eyebrows.
“Christof’s last report stated you were asking him what would happen if you failed your evocation test in January.”
“Well, Christof Brühl needs to shut his fucking pie hole!” I snarled, equally irritated by my new hallucination and my mentor’s blabbing mouth. “And I might not be here in January!”
“Maybe so, but Max has always been a patient and prolific instructor. He can help you with evocation if you need some tutoring.”
How had he made such conclusions? Was it obvious that someone needed to babysit me? And why was it always Monika or her brother? Because you don’t have any friends, a quiet voice inside my head noted wisely, because you’re best at pushing people away instead of keeping them. I wanted to shove that voice right up Axel’s ass.
“I can get it right on my own, sooner or later.”
He took a step closer and shook his head with a sigh.
“You’re constantly refusing help, as if it’s the worst thing in the world.”
Because I’m not worth someone’s help, the voice spoke again. I reached for the Eitrhals hanging on my neck, pulled the chain, and dangled the pendant out of my collar.
“I accepted this sort of help, didn’t I?”
Dann’s face stretched into a half-smile. “Yes, but only after you rebelled against it.”
“I guess it should have been my second strike.”
“Come again?”
“After I yelled at Heimir Aagard during your lecture, you said you’ll allow me a third strike for profanities, but that was my third strike. Swearing in front of the Council should have been my second one.”
Something resembling a chuckle escaped him.
“All right. If it will make you feel any better… Please accept my sincere apology for overlooking your marvelous feat of fluently using profane language in front of the entire Counci
l. You truly went down with a bang, and you deserve bonus points for it.”
His sarcasm should have been irritating, but I couldn’t hide my smile. That last part sounded exactly like something I would say.
“Thanks. You said apology, but it was a touching compliment.”
Another chuckling sound followed. A few weeks ago my irritant receptors would have gone insane, but now I grasped the truth. Dann wasn’t lying when he said he wasn’t ridiculing me. He really found my cynical humor refreshing and funny.
“How are you settling in your new home?”
The change of subject caught me off guard. I bit my lip, thinking about my real home, which was nothing more than a house built upon lies. An entire lifetime’s worth of them.
“Just because it’s your home, it doesn’t make it mine.”
His glance drifted away, scanning the courtyard.
“Home is Lofoten, not Nordstrøm Island.”
“What’s Lofoten?” I asked in confusion. “I thought the Nordstrøms lived here.”
“Only a handful of us do. Lofoten is an archipelago of Norwegian islands nestled in the Arctic Circle.”
“Whoa! Seriously?”
His eyes landed back on mine, almost glazed and dreamy.
“Hard to imagine someone calling the Arctic Circle their home, isn’t it? Due to the Gulf Stream, we get four seasons and notably mild winters, albeit being near the North Pole. Unkindly enough, most people see Lofoten as nothing more than a bleak group of dramatic rocks. Depressing scenery, freezing temperatures, too few sand strips and too many rainstorms. I assure you, it’s quite the opposite.”
“Yeah, the same narrow-minded people think San Francisco is a windy hellhole, abundant on constant haze and lacking on flat roads.”
“Which brings us exactly to my point. Simply because you can’t imagine calling Nordstrøm Island a home at first, it doesn’t mean it can’t become one.”
Right. Creepy shit happened here all the time. I’d have to be insane to perceive this ominous place as my home.
