Neophyte

by T. D. McMichael

  I booted up my laptop, and checked Gmail. There was a message from Becca, my old best friend from Massachusetts.

  From

  To

  Like hey!

  ------------

  From

  To

  Stop avoiding me!

  ------------

  From

  To

  Avoiding me makes an ass out of you and me. I have news.

  ------------

  From

  To

  This isn’t funny!!

  ------------

  From

  To

  Relax, Becca, I’m here! What is it?

  I sent that real quick, and then hopped out in the hallway to get a pick-me-up––an energy drink from the vending machine. While I was here, I lived on stale snack food and Red Bull. I threw the locks real quick. Crazy obsessed staring lady was still giving me the what-for down the hall. I could feel her presence. Becca responded almost immediately.

  From

  To

  Where the heck have you been? I’m practically going crazy without anyone to talk to. It’s been three weeks!

  Never mind that. You’ll never guess what’s been going on. Mistress Genevieve and the other teachers got us all together, those who graduated. (Hey! She says it’s not too late for you. I talked with her. She says that she’s prepared to forgive you. These were her words: “Halsey needs to learn certain things for herself. I cannot help her. Neither should you.” But since when did she ever say anything that didn’t mean a bunch of different stuff.)

  They got us all together. Halsey, we’ve been talking. We want you back. You need to get out of there. Things are really starting to jump up.

  Our magical training isn’t over. It’s beginning. We start combat and fight mechanics. Real sword and sorcery. Where have you been?

  ------------

  From

  To

  Becca, all that I can say is one, congratulations, we knew there had to be some point to all of this, right? And that, secondly, I have been undergoing the same kinds of shocks to the system myself.

  I am not coming back. I’m sorry if that hurts, or if I sound like I’m being a bitch or something, but––that was then.

  I’m changing. I’m a different person now. But I’ll tell you what. You keep practicing. And make sure you get good. We will see each other again. I’m almost certain of it. When we’re both Virtuosos and we can cross oceans in our minds.

  I will fly over the countryside with you one day. But I think we need to go our separate ways. Tell those bitches I said hi and that I miss them.

  I miss you too, Becca. But what I’m doing here is so, so important. I could no more let it go, walk away from it, than you could stopping the continuation of your own self-discovery and magical education.

  We were born with Powers. It’s time we learned to start using them. Blessed be. I love you.

  Halsey

  ------------

  From

  To

  Sisters forever. Your bitch for all time. Go do your thing. It’s a date, kiddo.

  Wherever. Whenever.

  You know where to find me. This is Becca signing off.

  ------------

  I had tears in my eyes. I missed those bitches. But we each had things to do. I think I got up and washed my face in the bathroom, and then I stepped out, and looked out, over the street, and the shops below. My balcony afforded spectacular views. I could see the sun, risen more fully. Fingers of light crept into my room. Becca. She was off, learning how to duel. Real magic. The things we had only heard of, but never actually seen.

  I realized my time had come as well. I would not be learning in a safe environment. I was three days from a reckoning. I was three days from the end of my world, and the start of something More.

  * * *

  Ballard’s email was waiting for me, when I came back in. It just said, “I’ll be here, waiting for you, when you get back.” I sent off a quick reply. It was time to go see him. The only problem was, word had gotten out about me. Not that I was a witch with unexplored supernatural powers. That was still secret.

  The fact was, the Vespa I had rented had been destroyed last summer, in an attack by zombies. Lennox’s mentor’s house had nearly gone up in flames; it was still being restored. Which meant that my ability to lease a motorini had been compromised, I feared, forever.

  There was no way around it. I had to go out and ask my landlady to call me a taxi. I slipped her next month’s rent, and the month after; I had no idea how long the Gathering would be taking place. She jabbed me with mind darts. Why did I feel like I owed her a thousand apologies?

  It would be ten minutes. She put her hand through the tray under the plexiglass, and grabbed me by the wrist. I felt a jolt go through me, that had nothing to do with any kind of spiritual connection. “I know why you are here,” she said, in her strange, eerie voice.

  I shrugged obtusely and tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let me go. She just held on, with her fingernails digging into my skin.

  “I need a room,” I said. “That’s it. I swear.”

  She released me and her eyes blazed with a fiery light; I left the moth-eaten hallway, in the Belle Époque style, and waited in the street. She shouted after me to watch my back. I think that’s what she said. She could have been placing a curse upon my head. Something in her countenance suggested it. As if she had a magic all her own: to creep me out, or at any rate to put me on my guard. But from what?

  All I could think was her; she seemed protective, yet evil. The cab came and took me over the river. I forgot about it.

  Trastevere had the happy habit of making me happy; it was the section of Rome that Ballard’s family resided in, a family, I had come to learn, that was bigger than I expected, for it also encompassed the street gang, I Gatti. They rode around on motorcycles, protecting Rome. I was one of the few people who knew this.

  Part of having a supernatural identity was keeping it secret, and we––or, that is to say, they––were very protective about who they let in on their little secret. If anyone got their hands on my diary...

  I had stowed it away in my room, underneath a pillow. But it was guarded by her. My own fire-breathing dragon lady. And a four-story window.

  Lennox liked it because it meant vampires could not get to me. They had to be invited in. He had stood on the balcony, before I knew what he was. But what about those things that did not need an invitation? What about the thing that was hunting me?

  I shivered, feeling a tingle of fear. Whatever it was could not get to me while I was here, in Trastevere. Trastevere was like a bulwark against outsiders. It kept its own secrets. And it was also a repository of the past. For only here were mortals that knew of Immortals. Besides witches and wizards, I mean.

  Had that been why Lennox could tell me? Because he knew I was a witch? I tried to remember having ever shown in front of him, but I couldn’t. I was sure he had made it all up, perhaps to trick himself into thinking we could ever be equals. He was so far beyond me it was not even funny. Maybe he thought we couldn’t be together unless I was somehow supernatural like him. Otherwise the Lenoir would try and kill me, wouldn’t they?

  That gave me something else to think about. What if I were exposed to these tests and nothing happened? What if I were not magical at all? What if they made a mistake? There I would be, walking around with knowledge of Immortals, not to mention Magic, but decidedly not one of them. The Lenoir would take me out back, wouldn’t they? They would drop all this nonsense and eat me right there. And the magicians would
applaud.

  I needed to get away from these thoughts. Luckily Ballard’s uncle’s motorcycle shop was coming into view, around the chamber of high, stone buildings, that blocked out all but direct, midday sun. Risky had known the Rookmaakers; he was Ballard’s uncle, and it had been he who had suggested to Ballard––rather, required––that he contact me. I wanted to know why.

  The cabbie let me out, and I paid up. I was left staring at the autofficina, that doubled as the Trastevere Motor Club. The home of The Cats, Ballard’s dubiously-named biker gang, I happened to know were werewolves, and not the innocuous felines that prowled in remarkable numbers through a city as old and lineaged as they were. That was a Wiccan word. It meant they could trace their roots back to Rome’s twin founders, Romulus and Remus.

  Romulus and Remus who were werewolves; anything else just didn’t have that same authenticity of my cobbled-together history. I tripped across the stones to go say hi, and hoped the time apart had not done to my relationship with Ballard what it had done between Becks and me. Namely, for all intents and purposes, made us just two people on opposite ends of increasingly dispassionate emails, who had grown apart.

  Chapter 5 – Gambalunga

  Out front, a collection of all manner of broken-down automobiles had collected in the month, or so, since I had been gone. An old and crushed-in ape van, that looked like it needed a ton of work, sat parked in pride of place, in front of a huge and dented in roll up door, through which I could hear the sounds of someone hard at work. There were sparks flying out the door, a stereo was blasting.

  The Trastevere Motor Club was empty except for a single employee with a welder’s mask covering his face, bent over a beautiful red bike, the likes of which I had never seen before. Part of me attributed freedom and responsibility to the machines, that I saw everywhere as I traveled through Rome; they meant safety, and to be part of a gang. The stereo was an old boom box with a broken-off antenna and cassette player.

  I paused the tape.

  “Lia... I don’t have time for this,” he said, turning to face me. His hands were covered in thick leather gloves. The welding torch he was holding cut off in his hands. He raised his visored helmet to me like a salute. We stood like that for some time, staring past one another, at our own shadow reflections.

  “Halsey?” he said.

  “I sent you an email,” I said.

  Ballard had an old PC in the corner of the shop, he used to communicate with the outside world. There were brothers in California, and parents in Greece. I marveled at the work around him. A collection of bikes on racks, all of which needed his attention. He was the go-to mechanic for the street gang responsible for safeguarding all Rome. That was some responsibility. Did it at least pay well?

  I looked at all the thingy-what’s-its littered across the floor. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” I said, realizing it was mid-September. I had gotten so used to not having to think about St. Martley’s Academy, I forgot he was still underage.

  Ballard shrugged. “Everything has gotten so much more... complicated,” he said.

  He put down the oxy acetylene torch, and took off his gloves. He was sweating slightly. I could see faint splotches of oil, where he had cleaned his face with a dirty rag. He came forwards to give me a hug. “I missed you,” he said.

  “Ballard? What is that?” I said. It came out muffled, because I had my face pressed into his chest. He was big, almost as big as Gaven, I Gatti’s leader.

  “Huh?”

  He looked where I was pointing. On the floor, next to the bike he was working on, in among the crescent wrenches and other ancient well-used tools, was a letter with a dripping, red wax seal. The kind I had seen before and knew so well. The kind of the Gathering.

  Ballard had received a letter. Was it from the Lenoir, too? Did they know he was a––whatever he was?

  He saw what I was staring at. There was no hiding anything from Ballard. We had worked together, all last summer, figuring out there were vampires in the world, and that witchcraft existed. He knew just as much as I did. In some respects, more. He had grown up with it, face-to-face with the fact that there were unexplained phenomena, not least because his own family included shape changers.

  I had never seen Ballard transform. Standing in his presence now, I could not be sure I hadn’t invented the whole thing. What had that enormous creature been, that had come to my rescue, when Marek, possessed by the necromancer, had tried to end my life? For certainly it was not a figment.

  It was as real as the sixteen-year-old with the curly black hair. But not a werewolf.

  Then some other shape changer, then.

  I was so certain it was Ballard who had saved me. He had never denied this. I remembered confronting him with a theory that he could be a wolf. He categorically denied it. His explanation, then, had been that he was too old, that somehow he had come through puberty without showing.

  This exposed some knowledge on his part. A familiarity with the fact that there were werewolves. He was just not one of them.

  The only problem was, if he wasn’t a Supernatural, what, oh, what, was he doing with a letter I could only assume was an invitation to a meeting with all the Supernaturals? An invitation I had received myself.

  “Ballard....”

  I waited for what his reaction would be. He picked up the envelope with dirty fingers and left paw prints on it.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said. “It’s for Lia.”

  * * *

  So many questions went through my mind. Every time I turned around I seemed to be asking the same thing: What did I really know about anything? Lia...?

  Lia was Ballard’s sister. She was several years older than he was, and she also happened to be a world-class frenemy.

  My world-class frenemy.

  Lia had received a letter to the Gathering, and Ballard had not? It didn’t make sense.

  “It’s ten times worse,” he said. “You should’ve seen her. She’s been insufferable. Strutting around.”

  “Worse than normal, you mean?”

  “Ever since this letter showed up, and they asked I Gatti to get the meeting place put together... Gaven and the rest of the crew, and some warlocks, have been working on it overtime, trying to get it ready–– I’m stuck here, fixing motorcycles. Not that I’m complaining. Hey, check this out.” He had been so busy yakking, he hadn’t noticed that I was undergoing a major life change. “It’s a Gambalunga.”

  “Ballard...” He caught me before I hit the floor.

  * * *

  While I was out, I had composed a very pretty speech. It went something like this. “This pussyfooting must stop. I am a witch, Ballard. One of the Three. There are also vampires, and now you, The Sons and Daughters of Romulus. Whatever you are. In case you missed it, I have been looking for some sign of a larger world.”

  Well, it was throbbing inside my forehead, that sign, in bright, shiny lettering, that gave me a headache. I came out of my faint, and felt Ballard brushing aside a wild lock of my hair. I still felt groggy. When I could finally open my eyes, and focus, he was smiling at me. “There’s no easy way to talk to you, is there?” he said, and then laughed. It sounded like a bark.

  Grr.

  “Not funny. You should have told me,” I said.

  “You were gone,” he said. He helped me to my feet. I was suddenly standing face-to-face with the red motorcycle. There was no point, really, telling Ballard I had also received a letter, he seemed to take it for granted. But Lia. It was a kind of weird moment. Was she a witch too? I thought she was a werewolf. We were almost sisters.

  Did that mean I would have to be working with her?

  According to Ballard, the Gambalunga I was looking at was an Italian motorcycle made in the late-forties, early-nineteen fifties. It was designed for racing, alone. It looked to be a very fast red rider. It hunkered low and had a single red headlight, round as a circle of magic.

  “I want you to have it,” he said.


  I looked at Ballard like he was joking. “I can’t, Ballard. It must’ve cost a fortune,” I said.

  “Ordinarily. But I happened to find it in a scrapyard friendly to our kind,” he said. “That is to say, my family and I. We are werewolves, Halsey Rookmaaker, ailuranthropes, and other shapeshifters. Therianthropes for long, and therians, or Shifters, for short. Dog Shifters, by some. It is my pleasure to meet you. The door’s right there, if you can’t stand to stay a moment more, which, by the way, I completely understand. I am as freaked out by this as you are. Heaven knows, if I could run from it, I would, but I can’t. I’m stuck. I––”

  I kick-started the engine. The Gambalunga puffed and snorted, like a dragon with a cold, before it caught fire. The throttle stuck some, but it just needed a little TLC, and some oil. That was like what being hit with revelation was like. You just needed to work out the kinks.

  “Acceptance is the first step to awesomeness,” I said.

  Was that what Ballard was so worried about? That I might not approve if he was Supernatural like me? As far as I was concerned, it was the best day of my life.

  “I feel like I just got my best friend back,” I said. “If you like howling at the moon, and running around humping people’s legs, I don’t mind.”

  “Do you mean it?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  Ballard unstuck the throttle, and I flicked it. It demanded to be taken out. Now. This very moment.

  * * *

  As we wheeled the bikes out, and started them––Ballard on his own that he had fixed––I could not help feeling like my dreams were an elaborate ruse I had rigged up to persecute me for some unknown reason. Ballard handed me a helmet and kicked his own ride into life. I could see Mistress Genevieve, if she knew what I had been up to, scolding me for my reckless behavior. (“Fraternizing with a vampire! Your parents would never have approved!”)