"Did you get a good shot?" asked Sunil, looking back as if they were taking prom pictures or something much less mundane than torture.
"Got it," said Darrell.
"Send it to her bitch sister, and let's see how fast she comes running. Make sure you explain that if anyone else shows up, little Miss Pi is dead."
Pi thought that was going to happen either way, based on the amount of blood she'd lost. She was feeling rather cold suddenly, not a good sign.
While Darrell was typing away at his phone, Pi eyed the explosive packets she'd hidden on the stone columns. She hadn't planned on triggering them while she, or anyone else, was in the pagoda, but she couldn't let them send that video.
Sunil stuck his face in hers again, leering at her with his side-cocked grin. "What do you think about that?"
Pi couldn't speak, so she spit in his face. Before he could register his outrage, she triggered the packets with the snap of her fingers.
She was thrown to the earth, stone and concrete flying around her. The heavy roof crashed down, chunks splitting and falling into the park. A piece the size of a desk narrowly missed her head.
After the collapse was finished, Pi was lying in a bush, a hunk of stone over her like a lean-to. Her hearing was shot, and the wounds in her shoulder and thigh were throbbing.
"Fuck," she whispered to herself, which was a good and bad sign. She could talk, which was a plus, but she'd heard herself through a tin can. She'd probably blown out her eardrums. But it also meant that Sunil was incapacitated, since his spells were no longer affecting her.
"Guys?" came a voice from outside the collapsed pagoda. "Sunil? Cynthia? Darrel?"
It was Assassin Girl. She'd been in the park, and had avoided being smashed by the falling roof.
"Oh, god," she exclaimed, which meant she'd probably seen one of the bodies.
When Pi didn't hear anything further, she assumed that girl had left. Pi extricated herself from the bush and closed her wounds with a spell so she didn't bleed out. The rest would have to be dealt with later.
She stumbled out of the stone lean-to and surveyed the damage. Sunil's lifeless eyes were peeking from beneath a chunk of golden concrete. Limbs poked out from the destruction.
The cold realization hit her: she'd killed five people.
It didn't matter that they'd been torturing her and planning to capture her sister. It didn't matter that they would have killed her. They'd been alive, and now they were not, and Pi had caused it.
Her hands shook with the realization. She wanted to vomit. She could feel it in her gut, but she didn't have time for self-recrimination. She had to get away, fast, or their deaths would become her immediate problem.
Pi chugged another potion. The aftereffects would be hell on her body, but she needed the energy to get away before the authorities arrived. Before she left, Pi looked through the rubble for Darrell. She found him under a chunk of concrete, ignoring the pool of blood leaking out. His cell phone was lying nearby, screen cracked, but still showing the video and message unsent. Pi quickly deleted the message and shoved the phone in her pocket.
After she got a few blocks away, Pi called a cab. She made it back to Arcanium around sunrise, fixed the worst of the damage with a few Aura Healer spells, and collapsed in bed. It'd been a long fucking night and she wanted to sleep for a week.
Chapter Six
A gust of rain battered against the window of Aurie's bedroom. It'd been raining for the past three days, a wet beginning to the month of October. Normally, it'd have been a great time to get schoolwork done, but without the practical side of magic taking up her every waking moment, she'd had to resort to finding things to do.
Aurie was working on a spreadsheet of spells on her laptop while drinking chamomile tea and listening to the Breaknecks on her phone. Piles of papers and files sat by her desk while she cross-referenced the spells she was familiar with by usefulness, complexity, and location of tome. During her time at the Hundred Halls, she'd found a lot of interesting spells that she thought might come in handy later, but had never gotten around to cataloging them. And while she couldn't cast any of the spells at the current time, she hoped that her work would be put to good use later when Semyon was restored.
It was hard not knowing when that would be, especially with her sister running around the city battling the Cabal single-handedly. Last night, the fourth time in weeks, Pi had come stumbling into her room, bloody and bruised. She never talked about what happened on her excursions, but it wasn't hard to figure it out by the articles in the Herald of the Halls. Violet did her best to suppress mention of Pi, but there were other news sources that had nailed the description of her sister enough that she had no doubt. The Cabal had to know too.
Three nights before, Pi had needed help putting a broken arm back into place so she could spell it together. The time before that, one of her kidneys had been turned to gelatin. It'd taken a visit from Hannah's friend in Aura Healers to reverse the curse.
The situation made it all the more important that Semyon be healed, but it didn't seem like that would happen any time soon. In fact, Aurie kept thinking she was forgetting something that she'd been working on, but she couldn't put her finger on it.
A bang on the door startled Aurie.
"You in there?" asked Deshawn.
"Yeah."
"The professor wants to see you. The usual place."
Aurie paused. "I'll be there. Thanks, Deshawn."
After putting on respectable clothes, as she didn't think her Hello Kitty pajamas would be acceptable to the professor, especially in the context of an unknown request, Aurie left her room only to find a strange runed cylinder sitting on the table in the common area between rooms.
Aurie eyed it with concern. Something tickled her memory, like an itch between the shoulder blades that she couldn't reach. Did Deshawn bring it? But that wouldn't make any sense.
She banged on Pi's door. "Hey, did you leave something on the table out here?"
When there was no answer, Aurie rattled the handle. Locked.
Hands on hips, Aurie surveyed the item. She was already heading to Professor Mali, maybe she would know what it was.
As she touched the cool metal, a surge of thoughts ran through her mind, like a life on fast-forward. Images she didn't recognize flooded her memory, then disappeared.
Aurie rubbed her hand as if it'd been painful. It hadn't, but the item clearly contained magical powers. It wouldn't be safe to accidentally activate an unknown trinket.
Using a towel dampened with water and olive oil, which was a wonderful inhibitor, Aurie wrapped the cylinder up and hurried to Semyon's apartment, concerned that whatever the item was, it was important.
Professor Mali was slumped in her wheelchair, and for a moment, Aurie thought the worst until the professor stirred, yawning and stretching her arms above her head. The professor had a sleepy expression until she saw who was standing in her room, and her face hardened.
"Miss Aurelia. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice."
"Of course, Professor."
She wanted to add, it's not like I have anything else to do, but decided that snark wasn't the appropriate response at this time.
The moment the professor straightened in her wheelchair, Aurie knew it was going to be bad. She might as well have spit in her hands and hauled an axe out for chopping, for what she was about to say next.
"Miss Aurelia." She paused. "Aurie. I'm afraid I'm going to ask that your sister leave Arcanium."
"What? Are you kidding me?"
The professor's eyes went wide with surprise. She tilted her head in a dangerous manner. "Excuse me? Would you like to rephrase that?"
Aurie choked back her anger, but it was hard. It was like she'd shaken up a bottle of champagne and was trying to open it without making a mess.
"I'm sorry, Professor." The title was said with a hard emphasis. "But my sister has been the only thing keeping Cabal students from messing with Arcanium. Li
ke a month ago when they tried to kidnap Isabella's parents, or the time they put a spell on Felix through his open window. If she wouldn't have been around, Semyon would likely be dead, along with the rest of us."
A muscle in Professor Mali's jaw pulsed. "I am well aware of your sister's contribution to the defense. However, she crossed a line when she killed those mages."
There'd been no proof that it was Pi who'd caused it, and Aurie wasn't about to admit it to the professor, but her resoluteness suggested that she had learned the truth.
"If she killed them, a big if, I might add, it was entirely in self-defense," said Aurie.
"The issue is not whether or not it was in self-defense, but that she killed them, and because of that, she has to go," said the professor, crossing her arms.
A blind rage welled up in Aurie's chest. It was like her sister was being taken from her, and she didn't want that to happen. Aurie swallowed down her fear and responded as sanely as she could muster.
"Please, Professor. She's my sister. She has no place to go. I'll make sure she doesn't go out anymore. No more excursions, no more battles with the Cabal."
The professor's eyes rounded with sadness. "I'm sorry, Aurelia. It's not about her anymore. It's about the safety of the Hall. The other major halls have requested that we turn her over to them. They seek retribution."
"For what crimes? I thought we were immune from such things? My trial last year was only because of the public's outcry and Camille's maneuvering."
"You're absolutely right. Hall mages are immune from prosecution for self-defense, or other magic related events, within reason. But this is not about crime. Five mages died, representing the other major halls, which puts her in a precarious position politically, and second, your sister is not a member of any hall. Pythia is free game to them, and by harboring her, we put Arcanium at risk."
"But she's still tied to them through..."
The words trickled to silence when she realized the problem. Pi had renounced her spot in Arcanium, and the Halls didn't recognize the soul fragments. She was technically a member of the Hundred Halls through her many souls, but legally had no standing.
"Merde," said Aurie, squeezing the towel-wrapped tube against her chest.
"You understand now."
"What will we do without her? Can't we hide her or something?"
"How can she defend the Hall if they know she's here? And the moment they come barging into Arcanium with the full authority of the Halls, don't you think they might cause mischief? Leaving enchantments or other charms to lure away our students in the thick of night?"
"Fine," said Aurie, shaking her head. "But why do I have to tell her?"
"Because you're her sister. She'll listen to you. And because you asked that she could stay, so she's your charge. And lastly, having to deliver this kind of news is good training."
"Good training for what?"
"Leadership. Being able to deliver bad news is an important skill."
Aurie wanted to tell the professor where she could shove that skill, but kept her mouth shut. Or maybe she didn't have to say anything. She could leave with her sister. Why did she have to stay in this place anyway?
"Aurelia. I can see what you're thinking. You'd be a fool to leave. They'd hunt you down and force you to use magic. You know the right thing to do is stay in Arcanium. Just like you did when you stayed away from the Engine of Temporal Manipulation. You're a good student. There's a reason Semyon spoke so highly of you."
Engine of Temporal Manipulation. Memories from her visit to Oba came rushing back, revealing the meaning of the object in her arms. Why did she have it? Did that mean he'd given up on Boann? But why?
"Yeah," said Aurie, swallowing, mind whirling. "I...I have a question about that."
The professor's lips went white.
"Uhm," began Aurie. "The guardian you mentioned. Is he—or she—a dangerous person, or thing?"
"Why are you asking?"
Aurie tried not to look at the towel in her arms. "Curiosity. I did the research to find that it existed, and I was wondering about the guardian. Not that I'm going to do anything about it. Honestly, your warning last time spooked me off it, but I am my mother's daughter, and artifacts were kind of a thing for my family."
The professor gave her a suspicious side-eye. "You're not trying to pump me for information so you can try and get it, are you?"
"No, Professor. Curiosity only."
It could have been because the professor felt bad about making Aurie tell her sister to leave Arcanium, or due to her exhaustion at watching over Semyon day or night, but the request worked.
"Without getting into specifics, I can tell you that the guardian is extremely dangerous. Let's say that Invictus was a clever man, and eliminated two problems—the guardian and the artifact—without resorting to direct measures."
"Invictus tricked the guardian into watching over the artifact?"
"It keeps him from causing trouble. We have enough complications without him running around in the world," said the professor.
Though she couldn't prove it, Aurie suspected that Invictus had caused whatever had happened to Boann so Oba would watch over her. He was a selfish, self-absorbed man-god, and Aurie had unleashed him on the world.
But he had given her the artifact, which in her eyes had been worth it. At least until she knew the full extent of the price, which was hopefully never.
"Professor Mali. Could I watch him for a while?" she asked, nodding towards Semyon's lifeless body.
"I'm perfectly capable of overseeing him," said the professor, a little peeved.
The wrinkles around her eyes had deepened, and shadows haunted the grim set of her lips. Aurie could see the guilt in her stiff shoulders. The professor felt responsible for what had happened to him.
"It's not that," said Aurie softly. "I need some time to think before I give my sister the bad news. This is as good a place as any, and maybe it'd be like he was listening to me, and I might figure out what I need to do."
The professor's lips lost their hard edges, and her eyes rounded. After one succinct nod, she rolled out of the room.
Aurie waited until the front doors to his apartment clicked shut, then she unwrapped the runed brass cylinder. It looked so simple, so innocent, but it was a frighteningly powerful artifact because it could manipulate the relative speed of time. Aurie worried that she wouldn't know how to use it, but as soon as the questioning started, the answers appeared in her head, another gift from Oba.
Keeping the damp towel between her hands and the artifact, Aurie set it on his chest. She wouldn't be able to keep it there, or the professor would find out, but that was the best place while she activated it.
"Time belongs to no one, it is a master unto itself, we can only use what we have until it's gone."
The activation phrase seemed contradictory with the device's purpose, which indicated the sense of humor of its maker.
Aurie traced the runes with her forefinger, keeping a set of matching patterns in her head. No false memories blew back through her.
When she finished, the runes glowed like embers, and time stutter-stepped like an irregular heartbeat, or a case of rapid déjà vu. The moment between the stutters, when time for her stood still, was horrific. It was as if she didn't exist and was aware of that feeling at the same time.
The runes cooled until they were back to their original brassy shine. As far as Aurie could tell, she'd performed the activation ritual correctly. Next, she hovered her hand over it and whispered the command word "white rabbit" while moving her hand across the length of the tube as if it were a slider bar, adjusting the flow of time for Semyon Gray.
Concerned that she might not be able to control it, Aurie kept the setting low. She could always make the cylinder run faster as she understood how well it was working. Plus, she was turning up Semyon's time, but the balance had to go somewhere, which meant something else was slowing down, but she didn't know what. That part of the instruct
ions had been left out.
Aurie looked for a place to hide it. It only had to be near Semyon. She placed it under the medical bed, sticking it in the place between the frame and the mattress. The hum it created was hardly noticeable, and she knew what to listen for.
"That's the best I can do for now," she told the lifeless body of her patron. "I know the professor thought this way was too dangerous, but I had to do it. I hope when you wake up that you understand why. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to find my sister. And to let you know, because I'm certainly not going to tell this to anyone else, I'm not telling my sister she has to leave Arcanium because Professor Mali told me to do it. I'm telling her so she'll be safe, not us. If she stays, something will happen because she thinks it's her duty to protect us."
Aurie paused, the weight of her words heavy on her shoulders.
"I hope to god she understands."
Chapter Seven
Pi woke to a knife of pain in her side. It felt like her ribs were rubbing together, which wasn't a good sign if it were true. She'd rolled over in her sleep. A spot beneath her right shoulder, on the side of her ribs, felt like it had been attacked with a jackhammer. She moved her breast out of the way and examined herself while buried in her covers. A massive purple nebula covered her whole right side, the flesh mangled and leaking blood. After digging out of the covers with ample groaning and air-sucked-between-teeth grimaces, she realized her blankets were soaked.
"Great. I need new bedsheets again," she said, rolling over, which only took her breath away as she pinched her side.
She'd placed a pain blocker on it before she passed out last night, but had forgotten to fix the wound.
Last night hadn't gone as well as she'd hoped. The Cabal students had figured out that she was spying on them, and they'd laid an ambush. The only thing that had saved her was that she'd been late, a result of her constant exhaustion. A few minutes earlier, and they'd have captured her with a Rathbone's Miniature Cage Spell.
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