Arcane Dropout 2

by Edmund Hughes

  CHAPTER 44

  “When did you gain your mystic abilities, Zoe?” asked Lee. “I’ve been wondering that since you first noticed Tess.”

  Zoe’s rented room was small and simple, with two chairs, a small table, a bed, and a fake fireplace that was really an electric heater. She sat down on the bed, while Lee took a chair.

  “Oh, you mean the sight?” asked Zoe. “I’m not sure. The first ghost I ever saw, if you can believe it, was of Mary-Anne Antioch. My mystic abilities aren’t on par with yours, but that doesn’t mean I’m unaware of the relevant dangers that come with them.”

  She shot an accusatory look at Tess, who instantly wilted under the intensity of Zoe’s gaze.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” snapped Lee.

  “You never answered my question back during our encounter in the Seruna Center bathroom,” said Zoe. “Did you or did you not make a pact with this entity?”

  Lee scowled at her. “Yes, Tess and I have formed a pact. But it wasn’t a sudden decision. I trust her implicitly.”

  Zoe looked Tess up and down and proceeded to roll her eyes. “Oh yes, I’m sure you thought long and hard about it before coming to a decision.”

  “Hey!”

  “I know the tricks the sight can do, Eldon,” said Zoe. “You’re fucking her, aren’t you?”

  Tess cringed, and even though she was in her ethereal state, Lee could see the obvious flush that came to her cheeks.

  “That’s none of your business,” he said.

  “You’re my little brother, of course it’s my business. I get it, Eldon. She’s cute, young, waifish, probably down for whatever you throw at her sexually. It’s an easy trap to fall into.”

  “I’m not… like that,” whispered Tess.

  “Zoe, I already told you I trust her,” said Lee. “Cool it. This isn’t your place to pass judgment.”

  “Yes, actually, it is,” said Zoe. “I have a pact ghost of my own. One who I’ve set proper boundaries with. A servant that knows how to obey a master without emotional complications. Lucas, you can come in now.”

  A bald, muscular ghost wearing no clothing beyond a tight pair of shorts phased through the back wall of the rented room. Lee recognized him immediately as the specter who’d possessed Eliza, instigated the fight with the frost trolls, and of course, tortured him for control of his body. He pulled out his kris dagger and fell into a fighting stance.

  “The two of you have already met, I believe?” said Zoe. “Go ahead, Lucas. Just as we discussed.”

  The specter took a step forward, but instead of attacking, he fell to his knees and bowed his head. Lee stared at the entity, completely dumbfounded. The specter, Lucas, as Zoe had called him, began to speak.

  “I apologize for any pain or inconvenience I may have caused you,” said Lucas. “I was acting on my master’s orders, but we lacked a full understanding of the situation. On top of that, I misinterpreted her desires and engaged in methods which went beyond what was called for. I am truly, deeply sorry.”

  There was no insincerity in Lucas’s voice. His expression was humble, with no tensed jaw or gritted teeth. He was the same specter who’d fought Lee and taunted him, but freshly chastened.

  “This is what a pact ghost should be,” said Zoe. “A servant. An obedient tool.”

  She wasn’t speaking to Lee. Zoe’s words were meant for Tess, and she flinched at them as though they’d been physical blows. Lee took a step, moving to stand between her and his sister.

  “What works for you doesn’t work for everyone, Zoe,” he said. “That’s not how I’m going to treat Tess. You can do whatever you want with McSpeedo, here, but don’t try to impose your method on me and her. Speaking of which… uh, I guess it’s my turn. Are you and him, well, you know…?”

  “I am not nearly as horny or impulsive as you are, little brother.”

  “Also, it’s ridiculous for you to try to judge the fact that I made a pact with Tess by bringing up his loyalty. He possessed a friend of mine! He tortured me, Zoe!”

  Zoe sighed. “He made mistakes, that’s why he’s apologizing. What else would you ask me to do? Destroy him? Is that what you threaten your dimpled sweetheart with each time she bungles her responsibilities?”

  “I don’t threaten Tess, and I never will.”

  He reached his hand out and touched Tess’s fingers, though they were still cold and prickly against his, ethereal as she still was.

  “This line of conversation isn’t going to be productive,” said Zoe. “Let’s move on to another topic. I didn’t just invite you here to talk, Eldon.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  He took in a slow breath, feeling more conflicted in the moment than he had when he’d walked out Primhaven’s gate.

  “I know you’re still suspicious, of the Dealmaker, of the House of Shadows, even of me. But you’re in danger at Primhaven. It might not seem like it, you might not realize it, but it’s true.”

  “The only real danger I’ve seen to the school so far has been you and your people,” said Lee. “You drugged my friends, attacked my teachers. Hell, you killed someone, Zoe.”

  “What? Who?”

  “The prisoner,” said Lee. “She never told me her name. You killed her, and as far as I can tell, she was one of your people.”

  “Esmerelda is—was—her name,” said Zoe. “We didn’t kill her.”

  “She’s dead, there’s no denying that!”

  “You came to the obvious conclusion, but also the naïve one. Think carefully about the situation, Eldon. Why would the Dealmaker attempt to break someone out of prison, try a second time to rescue her from being confined at Primhaven, and then kill her once he’d finally succeeded?”

  “Maybe you didn’t want the Order to find out what she knew.”

  “She was imprisoned for over a month at the Upper Valley Penitentiary and then several days more at Primhaven. We’d assumed that she’d already given up her secrets to an illusionist. The Dealmaker just wanted to save her. He’s not evil, Eldon.”

  Lee shook his head, but he couldn’t find the holes in her logic that he knew must be there.

  “You should give it some thought,” said Zoe. “She was killed by someone at the college. That’s what I’m talking about. Primhaven is dangerous, far more than it was in my time, and it wasn’t exactly safe then, either.”

  “I don’t know…” muttered Lee.

  “Tell me the truth, little brother,” said Zoe. “Why did you come here tonight?”

  “I was hoping that I could talk you into leaving with me. Leaving Primhaven, leaving the House of Shadows. That the two of us could just go and get away, get back to our old lives. I just wanted you to come with me and be my older sister again.”

  “I’ve been your older sister all this time!” snapped Zoe. “The money, Eldon. You still had your allowance deposited into your account every month, even after I’d been forced out of Primhaven. Where do you think it came from?”

  “I stopped needing your money around that time,” said Lee. “I worked and paid my way. I wouldn’t have missed the allowance, Zoe. I did miss you.”

  “If I thought that I could have reached out to you, I would have. Maybe I could have sent you a message, but I knew if I did, it would only convince you to start searching for me, which would have attracted the Order’s attention.”

  “You know me, Zoe. You know I would have searched regardless. And I did. And I found you.”

  “You did.” Zoe reached out and took his hand. “Eldon. You found me. The question now is whether you’re alright with losing me again.”

  “We can leave, Zoe. Together.”

  “We can’t,” she whispered. “But if you wanted to, you could come with me. I’ve already spoken to the Dealmaker about it. Come with me, Eldon. I’ll show you what the House of Shadows really is.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Lee followed his sister out of the Frostfire Tavern and into the cold night. Neither of them said muc
h as they made their way out of the core of the small village, Zoe walking alongside Lucas, with Lee beside Tess a short distance behind them.

  Zoe had a snowmobile parked behind a small patch of boulders, and she immediately set about starting it up. Lee furrowed his brow, unsure of what he’d committed himself to.

  “How far are we going?” he asked.

  “Just a few miles,” said Zoe. “We have a small base nearby, along with the means to travel to and from the area. The others have already gone ahead. I promise I’m not leading you into a trap, Eldon.”

  “It’s a little hard for me to trust you, given that you’ve done it before,” he said. “Speaking of which, did you know about the specter in the old shipwreck?”

  Zoe pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at Lucas. “I thought I told you to take care of him?”

  “I thought that I had,” said Lucas. “I saw him retreat from the area, at least. I assumed he had the good sense to stay gone for longer than a few hours.”

  “Look, I’m sorry about that,” Zoe said to Lee. “I take full responsibility and hope he didn’t trouble you and Harper overly much. Now, please. Just trust me for a little while longer, okay?”

  Lee sighed and climbed on the snowmobile behind him. Tess and Lucas merely needed to hang on to the back of it to be pulled along at the same speed, insubstantial as their bodies were. Zoe seemed to have a sense of where she was going, following along previous tracks through the snow using the snowmobile’s surprisingly powerful headlight.

  The endless snow gave way to a dense thicket of evergreens. Zoe slowed down, weaving through the trunks and branches and appearing, at least momentarily, to lose her bearings. She looped back around, found the original tracks, and sped forward again along a trail that was more pronounced than the one they’d originally been following.

  A few minutes later, they reached their destination. A log cabin stood at the center of a clearing, by the edge of a partially frozen, crystal-clear pond. Zoe brought the snowmobile to a stop, stretching her shoulders as she climbed off. It was still dark, but the moon and stars were visible in the sky, despite the slow encroach of clouds above.

  “Here we are,” said Zoe.

  “Where is here?” asked Lee. “I thought you said the rest of your group had already moved on.”

  “They have, and this is where they left from. We have a way of traveling large distances easily. It’s not the most convenient method, but it works for us.”

  Lee glanced around the area, trying to pick out anything that might clue him in to what Zoe was inferring.

  “Helicopter?” he asked.

  “Water spryte,” said Zoe. “She can create a teleportation whirlpool within any body of water she’s tasted. You have to get wet to make the trip, and it’s limited to a certain number of people per day, but it’s still quite useful.”

  “In this climate, getting wet is life-threatening,” said Lee.

  “Hence the cabin. We’ve had our eye on Primhaven for a while now. I’ve spoken to the Dealmaker about finding a way to rescue students who might be forced into undergoing the Cropping and bringing them to the House of Shadows.”

  Lee almost fell victim to his gut reaction to object, until he remembered his own struggle with Primhaven’s admissions test. The terror he’d felt at the prospect of undergoing a mandatory mind wipe and potentially forgetting about Zoe had been unbearable. If he’d had the option at the time to reach out to a mysterious third party for help, he’d have done it without question.

  “That’s a little manipulative, isn’t it?” he asked. “It’s not as though failed initiates would have any other option. It’s like pulling recruits from death row.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic. It’s still just an idea, not something we’ve managed to put into practice. At least not yet. We would give them the choice about joining afterward, obviously.”

  “A choice between being hunted by the Order or committing themselves to an organization they know nothing about?”

  “The same choice I had,” said Zoe. She stared him straight in the eyes, and Lee didn’t know what to say.

  “Come on,” she said. “We still have a while before the scheduled transfer time. Let’s head inside the cabin where it’s cozy. I think there might still be some hard cider left.”

  “Scheduled transfer time,” repeated Lee. “Zoe, you can’t expect me to just…”

  She set a hand on his shoulder and smiled as she pushed the heavy wooden door open. Lee wasn’t sure what to say, how to put his feelings into words. He’d left Primhaven that evening ready and resolved to never come back. He didn’t have that same certainty when it came to throwing his cards in with a group he knew almost nothing about, other than that they’d taken in his sister.

  But… they had taken in Zoe, in her time of need. She might not still have her memories of him, or even be alive, if they hadn’t. He felt a heavy pit form in his stomach as he tried to figure out what he really wanted moving forward, and more importantly, whether he’d be making a decision he could stand by.

  Zoe had found a bottle of hard cider, and though there didn’t seem to be any clean glasses inside the cabin, she still pulled the cork and passed it to him. Lee took a slow sip, wilting under the weight of the missing words in the silence between them. Zoe was the one who broke it.

  “Eldon,” she said with a tremor in her voice. “I… I just want you to know that I’ll always love you. I hope you knew that already, but if you didn’t, if you needed any sort of reminder… I’ll always love you, and you’ll always be my—”

  The rumble of an approaching engine came from outside the cabin, followed an instant later by the flash of headlights passing across the gap in the half-open door. Lee swore under his breath and set the bottle down. Someone had found them.

  His heart already knew who it was before his mind managed to logic it out.

  Harper brought her snowmobile to a stop at the edge of the clearing and slowly climbed off. Zoe hurried outside, but she didn’t close the distance, lingering instead by the cabin’s door. Lee stomped out into the snow, coming to stop somewhere in between the two women.

  The snow had finally begun to fall in fat, crystalline flakes, each one descending on the slow air, glinting in the moonlight. It was like watching the sands of time in an hourglass as Zoe and Harper stared at each other, neither of them speaking, neither of them moving, white precipitation softly accumulating on their shoulders and in their hair.

  “I missed you,” said Zoe, in a voice so soft that Lee wasn’t sure it traveled the full distance to Harper. “I missed you so much.”

  Harper didn’t say anything. Her golden braid was tucked into the neckline of her white winter parka. She had on a pair of black cotton gloves, sweatpants, and knee-high leather boots with fur lining that poked out over the top. Her eyes never left Zoe, and her expression was tight and guarded.

  “I was so afraid,” said Zoe. “I thought that if I ever reached out to you, it might put you at risk.” She bit her lower lip, and then shook her head. “But it wasn’t just that. I was scared, Harper. So scared that if I told you the truth, you might not believe me. Scared that you might not choose me over the Order, in the end.

  “I got caught up in what Head Wizard Antioch was doing. They killed him. They would have killed me. I didn’t have a choice, but even if I had, knowing what I know now, I don’t think I would have done anything differently.”

  She waited, staying silent for the span of a few breaths, giving Harper room to speak her mind. No response came. Lee felt pain in his own heart, as though Harper’s silence was a mortar of emotion, shrapnel tearing into all near enough to witness its intensity.

  “I still remember those first few weeks after…” Zoe swallowed hard and shook her head, her face scrunching at the edges. “After we started being honest with ourselves. I asked Mia to switch dorm rooms with you. We had our own little world, each night, each morning.”

  Zoe closed her eyes, her shoulders sh
aking in a noiseless sob. Harper finally reacted, shaking her head with a small, sluggish movement.

  “Tell me…” Harper’s voice was just as stiff and choked with emotion. “Tell me you made a mistake, Zoe.”

  “A mistake,” she echoed. “The only mistake I made was choosing not to die.”

  “Did you agree to terms with him, then?” asked Harper. “Did you make a deal with the Dealmaker?”

  “You put so much contempt into his name, when really he’s just a—”

  “Just a what?” snapped Harper. “Are you really going to tell me that you think he’s just misunderstood? How much do you really know about him, Zoe? About the murders he’s committed in the dark. The deals that we know he’s made with demons. Let alone the fact that he’s running a supernatural faction that’s openly hostile to the Order’s authority.”

  “You’re just repeating what your superiors have told you!” shouted Zoe. “You don’t know the truth.”

  “Because you never told me!” screamed Harper. “Five years… Five years, Zoe, since I last heard a word, even just a whisper from you. I thought you were dead. Five years. You just left… and left me to pick up the pieces.”

  Harper’s expression wavered, her eyes blinking too fast, her mouth moving like she wanted to say more, but couldn’t. Her hands were balled into tight fists, and the anguish in her posture was unlike anything Lee had seen from her before.

  “I’m sorry,” said Zoe. “I am. But it’s not too late. Come with us, Harper. I’ll explain everything in a way that makes you see and understand what’s really going on.”

  “Come with us?” Harper raised an eyebrow at Lee, her instructor reflexes poking out underneath her emotions.

  “I haven’t committed to anything yet,” said Lee. He could see the way his words hurt both Harper and his sister, and he felt ineffectual, a fence sitter in a conversation where the balance was shifting in the wind.