by S. W. Clarke
When we came up to the third story, I found the rest of them up there. Elijah and Isaiah were playing chess, Fi was staring at the globe, Keene and Circe were arguing in one corner, Akelan paced the circular landing, and Liara sat at the meeting table facing away from me, her arms folded.
Akelan stopped. “She’s here.”
Fi stepped away from the globe. “All to the table.”
Everyone stopped what they’d been doing—which I sensed all amounted to passing time, waiting for me—and filtered toward the table Liara was already seated at.
Mishka and I both sat down at the table, and Loki hopped up on the table before me, sat with his tail curled neatly around him.
Fi stood at the head. The blood had been cleaned from her face, and no wound was visible. She looked exactly as she had the day before, only she wore a gray weariness around her eyes that Neverwink’s healing magic couldn’t erase.
I wondered if she’d slept.
She tented both hands atop the table, leaning forward. “We need to talk about last night.”
“You mean that clusterfuck,” Isaiah said.
“Yes,” Fi said. “That.”
Liara straightened. “I was chasing the target, and then the team wasn’t with me anymore. Elijah was gone, Isaiah peeled off, I couldn’t hear Clem’s horse…”
“We were ambushed,” Fi said. “There were at least twenty of them out last night. They came at me from the side, and then they went for Clem.”
“Isaiah and I went off chasing a couple of them,” Elijah said. “But they led us away from the main group. Diversions, I think.”
I chewed on my cheek, listening.
“Diversions?” Mishka said. “But that’s impossible. They don’t divert.”
“They did last night,” Isaiah said.
Keene glanced at me, then at Fi. “They ‘went for’ Clem?”
“Yes,” I said. “One broadsided me on my horse, and six of them surrounded me in an intersection.”
Everyone stared at me. Apparently this was entirely outside their typical behavior.
“I came to help Clem,” Fi said, “and one pulled me off my horse. After that, Clem and Loki managed to fight them off. We both got on Noir, and then we regrouped and headed for the leyline. It was a total failure.”
“Hold on,” I said. “We didn’t fight them off.”
“Of course you did. Who else would have?”
Loki and I exchanged a look. It was clear he remembered the whole thing as well as me.
“Fi, do you remember the man?” I said. “With the sword and the armor?”
Her mouth opened, and she stood up straight. “ I thought he wasn’t real. I had a concussion, and there was so much blood in my eyes…”
“You may have had a concussion, but you didn’t imagine him.” I set a hand on Loki’s back. “We were saved last night by the demon prince.”
Around me, no one spoke.
Finally, Circe said, “He’s real?”
“He’s real.” I nodded at Loki. “My familiar and I have seen him twice.”
“Ho-ly shit,” Elijah offered with folded arms.
“And he aided you,” Circe said. “Why would he even be there?”
He knew I was there, I thought at once.
Umbra had once told me he could track anyone anywhere in the world if he’d touched them once. Now I knew he and I must have touched on that night so long ago, when I’d stood in front of the gates of Hell.
Which meant he could track me anywhere.
“I don’t believe it,” Keene said. “The demon prince—the Shade’s right-hand man—helped you.”
I pointed at Loki. “Want to ask the cat? He doesn’t lie.”
Loki gave an unmistakably loud, decisive meow.
“Gods,” Fi said. “Why would he help us?”
My conversation with Umbra entered my mind. She had suspected the demon prince might be helping me, but she hadn’t speculated as to why.
“I have no idea,” I said. “But what I do know is everything has changed. We can’t operate the way guardians did for however long you’ve been in operation.”
Fi finally sat down, looking woozy. “We need Umbra in here.”
“For more reasons than you think,” Liara said. “She needs to teach us how to cast that telepathy spell.”
Elijah pointed at Circe. “I do not want you in my head.”
Circe set a hand to her chest. “Just me? What did I do?”
“Everything.” He eyed her meaningfully.
“We need better communication,” I said overtop the two of them. “Yelling to each other isn’t going to cut it. If we can learn the telepathy spell, we’ll be at a huge advantage.”
“And if they’re ambushing us,” Liara said, “then we need to operate differently. We can’t just be watchers and guards and chasers anymore.”
She was right. This wasn’t just a hunt—it was a battle.
Keene went to find Umbra, and a half hour later she stood in front of us. We told her everything that had happened.
“Well,” she said. “It seems the Shade’s army is no longer composed of halfwits.”
Akelan snorted. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Umbra said, “that she has gained more intricate control over her creatures once they’ve left the underworld. She can control them to not simply steal and run, but to coordinate elegant attacks as they did last night.”
“She’s grown in power,” I murmured.
“Yes.” Umbra nodded at me. “As we had expected, though not nearly so fast. And as a result, we will have to grow in power and cunning as well.”
Mishka sat forward. “Where do we begin?”
“We begin with the suggestion Clementine put forth.” She raised her thumb. “I’ll teach you all how to seamlessly communicate with one another.”
Liara crossed her legs. “My head’s already too crowded.”
“A fine point.” Umbra crossed to Fi, mimed setting her thumb to her forehead. “Except none of you will be proficient enough to stick in one another’s heads for long. The beauty of your own inefficiency is this: you must touch your thumb to another guardian’s forehead to initiate the connection. Given your inexperience, it won’t last more than a few hours.”
Akelan tapped his fingers on the table. “It sounds like air magic.”
Umbra lowered her hand. “For those who use air magic, it will be. But for those who use earth magic, it will be an earth spell. The connection is between your magic.”
It seemed like the best option. So we agreed.
Next came battle strategy.
Umbra sat while Fi went to the chalkboard, drew a map of the fight that had taken place the night before. How I’d been knocked off my horse and surrounded. How she’d been taken down. How we’d survived.
Umbra glanced at me. “The demon prince helped you.”
Loki’s tail flicked. “He certainly wasn’t hurting her.”
“Yes,” I said. “And without him, I wouldn’t be here. I couldn’t fully use my magic after the creatures got ahold of me.”
Fi turned to us. “You didn’t mention that.”
“I didn’t think of it until now.” I rubbed at my hands in memory of last night. “It was harder to access my magic after they touched me.”
Umbra let out a long, contemplative breath. “This, too, was to be expected. The underworld is the realm of the dead, and the creatures the Shade controls are of death itself.”
“Of death?” I repeated. “So she’s dead.”
“Oh no.” A vague, sad smile appeared on Umbra’s face. “She is very much alive. But when surrounded by an army of death, you deal in the hand you’re given.”
Death. Their touch was death.
This was a new wrinkle: I absolutely could not let the creatures touch me. If they did, I wouldn’t be able to summon the Spitfire properly. I wouldn’t be able to defend myself.
And I wouldn’t always have the demon prince to pro
tect me.
The strategy session went on around me while I took this all in. Now that a mission had occurred, the two teams would become one again—ten of us (including Loki) on the missions. Except, after much deliberation, it was decided the floating day benefit would remain.
Each of us would keep two floating days a month, for our sanity.
Fi argued for a tight ship on missions. We would stick close together, no one straying more than a block away. The guards wouldn’t just focus on corralling the creatures ahead of us—they would also focus on keeping the core team protected. And two of the watchers would keep an eye on our flanks.
The goal: never allow ourselves to be ambushed.
More chalk drawings appeared on the board, like we were members of a football team. Elijah and Isaiah got heavily involved, suggesting a playbook.
Meanwhile, a vision of the demon prince appeared in my mind. And I focused on one small detail I had forgotten until this moment.
His bare hand, two fingers folding. Which left three straightened fingers.
Three fingers.
It was a message, but I didn’t know what it meant.
Chapter Thirty-One
Two hours later, we broke for a meal. We had to return in an hour; Umbra would begin teaching us how to use the telepathy spell. And we couldn’t afford to go on another rescue without knowing it.
Loki and I came out into the afternoon sunlight, and instead of darting straight for the dining hall, he passed in front of me as I walked.
“Woah.” With a hop-skip, I managed to avoid plowing right into him. “Rude much?”
He trotted toward the meadow, tail upright. “This way. We need to talk.”
This was unlike my cat. He never used the “we need to talk” line, which made our walk a little terrifying.
When we had arrived in the meadow, he crossed to my favorite tree on the far edge. A flight class was in session on the other side, and he sat on the frozen ground and observed them as he waited for me to arrive.
I stood behind him. “Don’t keep me in suspense, now.”
He glanced back. “You’ll want to sit. Neverwink will hate me if you fall over and injure yourself already.”
Could he make this any more foreboding?
I took a seat against the tree, ignoring the cold emanating up through my cloak and skirt. “What is it?”
Loki went on observing the class. “I need to tell you something, but you won’t be happy to hear it.”
“You can leave the happy part up to me.”
“The demon prince.” He paused. I had never heard him so serious. “I smelled his scent last night.”
“And he smelled like death?”
“No.” He gave a long sigh, turned around to face me. “He smelled like someone we know, Clem.”
My eyebrows went up as a bird took flight in my chest, batting against my ribcage. “Oh? Don’t tell me Lucian is Goodbarrel in disguise.”
He didn’t even snort. His green eyes glittered in a rarely beautiful way as the sun hit them at a slant. “He bore the same scent as Callum Rathmore.”
My eyes closed the moment that name entered the air between us.
It sounded ridiculous, but it also sounded right.
“He couldn’t possibly be,” I whispered.
“Couldn’t he?”
“Callum Rathmore isn’t a demon.”
“And how can you be sure?”
My eyes opened. “His mother was a witch. Can a witch sire a demon?”
“I don’t know, Clementine. But I know what I smelled.”
The two parts of me contended for rational dominance.
It was ridiculous. He’d been here at the academy for a whole year, teaching us how to use fire magic. He’d taught me how to control the Spitfire and to fire ride. His father was a professor at a Scottish university. Callum was the center spread in a magazine, a mini-celebrity.
He was too high-profile. And he was too…good.
Yes, he had problems. His mother had been killed. He clearly had a troubled relationship with his father and the government he lived under. But looking back, he’d had my best interests in mind. He’d been harsh but fair. He’d made me the witch I was today.
Hell, he’d even told me he believed he was supposed to fulfill the prophecy to defeat the Shade. If Callum Rathmore believed that of himself, how could he possibly be the demon prince?
The other part of me knew it sounded right.
That night outside the gates of Hell, I had seen a man. That man looked like Callum Rathmore, and that was why I’d been terrified of him the first moment I’d seen him outside the academy. My instincts had been right—he was one and the same.
It was how he’d known where to find me when Noir had spooked and taken me outside the academy grounds. Callum had touched me once already, and he could sense where I was.
He could track me anywhere in the world.
In the end, I was still conflicted. Neither side dominated, because I couldn’t bring myself to believe that he was a demon. That he would serve such evil. That he was my enemy.
“You look like you’ve witnessed a death,” Loki said. “A gruesome one.”
“Maybe I have.” The death of who I thought Callum Rathmore was.
“Do you believe me?”
“I don’t know.” I leaned my head against the tree trunk, already knowing how I felt. “I need to think about it.”
His ears twitched as one of the first-years yelled from the far side of the meadow. “You saw what happened when he took off his glove last night.”
“Three fingers.” I held them up myself, only my index and thumb pulled together.
“He’s helping us.” Loki licked twice at a paw, as though it was an uncontrollable urge. “But I have no idea what it meant.”
“Let’s say he is Callum Rathmore.” I pulled the page from Jane Eyre out of my skirt pocket and unfolded it. “What do three fingers have to do with the trefoil knot?”
Loki stared at the tiny symbol. “Three triangles. Three fingers.”
“Umbra suspected Lucian was helping me.” I paused. “And she was right. She thought he was the one who infused the leyline with magic back in August, who sent us to Siberia.”
Loki straightened. “And?”
“If it was Callum who sent us, then it’s another clue related to the trefoil knot.” I studied him. “Loki, how fresh does a magical scent have to be for you to sniff it out?”
“Fairly fresh.” His tail flicked. “But the amount of magic it would have taken to affect the leyline in that way would be simply massive. It would leave the strongest trace of all.” He knew exactly what I was thinking.
I ran a hand over his head, under his jaw, and started scratching. “We need to go back there.”
His eyes closed in pleasure as his chin stretched out. “We need to be back in the common room in an hour.”
“As if I would skip telepathy training.” I stood. “We go after.”
“No,” he said, eyes opening. “I go after. You stay here, on the grounds.”
Loki made good on his promise.
I sat in the guardians’ common room and practiced Umbra’s spell as she had taught it to us. Meanwhile, he went back to London to investigate the spot in the leyline where Aidan and I had encountered the strange magic back in August.
I had just pressed my thumb to Keene’s forehead for the third time—unsuccessfully—when Loki entered.
He and I exchanged a look, and I stood. “Be right back,” I said to Keene.
“It’s my receding hairline, isn’t it?” Keene swept a hand over his head, mussing his hair into an unpleasant disarray.
“No, it really isn’t.”
Loki and I passed into the empty upstairs kitchen. He hopped on the counter as I leaned against it. “Well, I found a faint scent.”
My eyebrows went up.
“It was the same.” His tail swept across the countertop, back and forth in agitation. “It was the same s
cent, Clem. It was Rathmore.”
I leaned hard against the counter, staring at the kettle on the burner across from me. “You’re certain.”
“It was him who sent us to Siberia.”
“Okay.” I tapped my fingers on the counter behind me, all the possible meanings spooling out in my head. “I need to talk to Aidan and Eva.”
“Aren’t you telepathic yet, fire witch?”
I shot him a look. “Not even close. Liara seems to be getting it, though.”
“No surprises there.”
“Yeah.” She was, after all, just like Umbra in that sense: they both channeled lightning. And she was another person I could trust with this information.
I pushed away from the counter. “Let’s go.”
We spent another hour at work on the spell, and by the end of it, only Liara and the other fae seemed to have any real sense of it. Despite what Umbra had said about it being a universal spell, evidence proved otherwise.
Except I had an ace up my sleeve: Liara was teaching me things. No doubt I could cajole her into teaching me this, too.
The next morning, I was on my way to the library to meet with Aidan and Eva when I was stopped in the clearing by Ora Frostwish.
“Clementine.” She stepped into my path. “How have you been?”
Of course she didn’t want to know; she’d only asked it to pretend she had. I knew why she was standing in front of me.
“I’ve missed your class,” I said. “I know. I’m sorry.”
One imperious eyebrow rose. “Eight times. You haven’t returned to class since winter recess.”
I grimaced. “Ah, you know. Guardian things.”
“Guardian things.” She nodded. “And yet I’ve heard from others in House Whisper that you’ve been training with Liara at night.”
“More guardian things. She is one, you know.”
“Of course. So the two of you practice air magic together under the moonlight.”
“Right.” I sidestepped her. “I’m meeting someone in the library, and I’m late.”
She stepped with me. “I was also notified by my librarian friend that you and Miss Youngblood visited the Kowloon Library in Singapore.”
I went rigid. “You know Rosewort?”
