Emma giggled. Coral patted both girls on the shoulders and turned toward the closet. She opened the door and took out a towel, which she handed to Emma.
“Lily, darling, show Emma where she can wash up. Dinner is in thirty minutes, OK?”
Lily clasped her hands behind her back. “Yes, Mama.”
“OK, then. You girls be quick.”
As soon as Coral was gone, Lily took Emma by the hand and led her to the other side of the room, where a wooden statue of a woman stood on the bedside table. Large, triumphant-looking wings rose from the woman’s back.
“You’re an Acolyte, right?” Lily said.
“I guess so.” Emma felt proud she could at least call herself that. “Like my mom, I hope. She has these big, white wings. They’re beautiful.” Gazing at the polished wooden statue, she realized that it looked a lot like her mother. “I wish you could meet her.”
“I’ve heard a lot about her. You know she’s famous, right?”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s a legend. People sing songs about her.” Lily touched the tip of one of the statue’s wings and let out a wistful sigh. “I wish I was an Acolyte. It would be so epic to have wings and be able to fly. But I’m a Savant, which means I have to study all the time and read lots of books if I want to be able to use magic.”
“But don’t you like to read?” Emma said. “I heard Savants love to learn things.”
“It’s true. I’ve been told I possess superior intellectual capabilities that…” She covered her mouth and looked wide-eyed at Emma. “Oh no, I did it again.”
Emma tried to stifle laughter but it proved too difficult. She let out a giggle.
“I’m such a geek sometimes,” Lily said. “It’s OK. You can laugh.”
“Don’t worry,” Emma said. “My brother talks like a book sometimes, too. He’s a Savant, but I don’t think he realizes it yet. He grew up reading these really thick science-fiction books, and he would always dress up like superheroes for Halloween. It was really funny.”
Lily gave a smile of embarrassment. “I like science fiction. And comic books.”
“Don’t worry. I like cheesy romantic soap operas”—Emma smiled even wider than her new friend—“and movies with happy endings.”
“Like Disney movies?”
Emma gasped. “You watch Disney movies here?”
“We have some in the library. Illegal imports from the human realm. I’ll show you sometime. My favorite’s Beauty and the Beast. I guess that’s because I’m a summoner and my specialty is Golem Enchantment. What about you?”
“Golem Enchantment?” Emma said. “What’s that?”
Lily gave her a mischievous look.
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you.”
Chapter 21
Milo couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
After showing him his new bedroom, Ascher tossed him a towel and showed him where he could wash up before dinner. Milo had expected a bathroom with a tub and a showerhead, but the place to which Ascher took him looked more like a Roman bathhouse, complete with a high, vaulted ceiling and walls decorated with colorful frescoes. The air was moist and warm, thick with the smell of water, like an underground cave. The floor was decorated with mosaics, little chips of stone pressed into the concrete to form complex patterns and designs. Light streamed in from the windows, illuminating bodies of mist. At the center of the enormous room, surrounded by marble pillars, was a pool of crystal blue water.
Ascher left Milo to wash up alone, and once the jolly bearded man had left the room, Milo took full advantage of the moment. He took off his shirt and pants but left his underwear on in case another orphan walked in, and then he ran, jumped, and tucked himself into a cannonball as he sailed through the air. He crashed into the hot water, and a few seconds later, his entire body was sparkling clean.
Drifting on his back, he looked up at the skylights and beyond to thin wisps of cloud drifting over the ranch. He felt like a cloud himself, floating on the surface of this magical pool with his hands joined behind his head. He had never felt so relaxed.
Then he heard it. A scraping sound like a footstep. He was being watched.
He spun his head around to see who was there. At the last second, he caught sight of something small and black dart behind one of the pillars.
Milo climbed out of the pool, then walked around, bare feet slapping the tiles, and checked behind the pillars. The room was bigger than he had thought, and the air was thick with mist. He could get lost in here if he wasn’t careful.
Then he saw it. The cat studied him for a moment, and then darted away. He followed it. Something about the creature made him extremely curious. It had shied away from him the way a person would, tilting its head downward while glaring at him with its weirdly shaped orange eyes.
“Here, kitty,” he said. He didn’t like the way it sounded. What if it was a male cat? Would it appreciate him using a feminine word like “kitty”?
“It’s just a cat,” he told himself, turning toward the pile of his clothes on the floor. “What’s the big deal?”
He stopped. The cat was sitting a few feet away, its narrow shoulders up by its triangular face. The eyes were large, disproportionately so, and there was something strikingly human and feminine about them.
A dangling white thing swung from the cat’s mouth. One of Milo’s socks.
“OK,” he said. “Hand it over.”
He walked along the edge of the pool toward the cat. The creature backed away, lowering its head as if to pounce. It let out a soft purr.
“Come on,” Milo said. “I’ll be late for dinner.”
He got down on his hands and knees and crawled toward the cat, realizing as he was doing so that this was all just a game. The cat shied away from him just enough to make him think he had a chance of reaching it.
He stopped and waited. The cat turned in a circle with the sock hanging from its mouth. It turned again, and when it had its back to him, Milo reached out and grabbed its tail.
The cat let out a shriek and slashed Milo’s wrist, leaving three bleeding marks on his skin.
“Ow!”
He fell back on his butt. The cat dropped the sock and lunged at him, claws first. Teeth flashed in its open mouth. Milo made a swiping motion and caught the cat’s body with his right forearm. It let out an angry whow! and landed in the pool with a splash.
“Uh oh,” Milo said. He had heard many times in his life that cats hated getting wet.
He watched, waiting for the cat to surface. Instead, the water began to bubble and churn as if a violent chemical reaction were taking place.
Milo stared, paralyzed by a sudden sting of fear. What would Ascher do if he found out Milo had killed the house cat? And what about the other orphans? They would think he was a murderer, a horrible animal killer. And then there was this poor creature, dying right in front of him.
“I’m sorry.” Milo stood at the edge of the pool, bent over in case he had to reach out an arm to help. “I didn’t mean to.”
A hand—a distinctly human one—reached out of the pool, gripped Milo’s wrist, and pulled.
“Whoa!” he said, slamming face first into the water.
When he surfaced, he heard laughter. A girl’s laughter.
“Serves you right!”
Milo sputtered, choking on water that had found its way into his throat. He coughed and looked around.
A girl with black hair floated before him. Strands of her hair were dark orange, like unrefined gold, and it gave her a strange, fiery look. Her eyes were orange as well, the color of Halloween pumpkins. They stood out sharply against the pale skin of her heart-shaped face.
“Wha—what’s—h-help!” He struggled to stay afloat. “The cat, it’s drowning!”
The girl frowned at him, bobbing up and down as she treaded water.
“I am the cat, stupid.”
“Oh,” he said, kicking his legs to stay afloat, finally in control of
himself. “You’re a Feral, then.”
She frowned at him a second time. Milo got the feeling she didn’t like him very much. He looked down at her body, curious to see if she had a tail like a normal Feral—but then he noticed something that hit him like a slap in the face.
She wasn’t wearing any clothes.
“Um—are you naked?”
“Oh, crap!” The girl’s eyes widened and her cheeks turned pink. “The spell didn’t work!”
“What spell?”
“Get out!” She splashed at him and the water stung his eyes. He couldn’t breathe. “Get out, get out, get out!”
Milo scrambled out of the pool. He looked back at the girl just once. She had gotten out of the pool and was standing by one of the pillars, wrapping herself in a huge towel. But the towel didn’t hide the black cat’s tail swinging down around her legs. She was a Feral, all right.
Her voice filled the room.
“I said leave, pervert!”
He picked up his clothes and ran soaking wet through the door and down the hallways until he reached the dining area, where Ascher was helping Coral put the finishing touches on the dining room table. The smell of hot food was thick in the air. A paper banner hung on the wall that said, WELCOME MILO AND EMMA BANKS!
“Hi,” Ascher said, looking at Milo and then at the puddle of water forming at his feet.
When he saw the small cuts on Milo’s wrist, he frowned.
“I see you’ve met Calista.”
Chapter 22
Lily, acting as though they had been playmates all their lives, took Emma by the hand and pulled her out of the bedroom and into the darker end of the hallway, where it was cold and creepy. There were no windows here. Emma studied one of the lanterns hanging on the wall and saw a shimmering blue flame that radiated cold instead of heat. There was an odd, chemical smell in the air, and it seemed to be coming from beyond the plain wooden door in front of them.
“I don’t know about this,” Emma said, taking a step back.
“It’s OK,” Lily said. “It’s just Barrel. He’s a chemist. The only way I can summon golems is by drinking a special elixir he makes. But that’s because luminether crystals are too expensive, otherwise I would use one of those. I wish I had a luminether crystal, or better yet—a crystal-tipped staff.”
“Luminether?” Emma said. “Crystals?”
Lily knocked on the door. “Hey Barrel, open up!” She turned to Emma. “You’ll like Barrel. He’s a little strange, but he’s a good boy. His real name is Baraltimus but we call him Barrel because that’s what he uses to make some of his potions. He’s from Astros, unlike you and me. Oh, and his room is a little dark. He doesn’t like the light very much. It hurts his eyes.”
“OK,” Emma said, nodding along with each word. “Gotcha.”
The door opened, and at first Emma saw nothing but dark shapes squatting in the room. Then a blue flame sparked in front of her and hung in the air as if dangling from a string. She leaped back with a cry of alarm, the tip of her nose burning.
“It’s all right,” a voice said. “I won’t hurt you.”
The voice was light and soft, almost girlish, but Emma could tell it was the voice of a boy. The flame backed into the room and illuminated a hooded figure standing a few feet in front of her. He was a thin, white-haired ghost of a boy with pinkish eyes and skin as white as cream.
“That wasn’t nice,” Emma said. “You could’ve burned my eyebrows off.”
The boy smiled, a devilish grin but pleasant all the same. There was something small and birdlike about him, and Emma felt a stab of pity.
“Come in, please,” he said, stepping back into the darkness of the room.
He snapped his fingers and four more flames, shimmering blue in color, appeared in different parts of the room. They created a spooky, astral glow that just barely illuminated tables and barrels and a small bed in the corner. On the tables were glass beakers and networks of tubes connecting vats full of liquids both dark and light. A chemical smell crept up Emma’s nasal passages, making her wince. Barrel watched her from inside his hood.
Lily skipped into the room as if she’d been there a thousand times.
“Do you have any Manaris Brew? I want to show Emma what I’ve been practicing.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Barrel said, waving a thin white finger in front of Lily’s face. “No unsupervised summoning. You know that. You could get in big trouble, Breezy.”
Lily slapped his finger away. “Oh, look who’s talking. I know what kinds of rules you’ve been breaking. I can smell the beer right now.”
“Beer?” His eyes widened, and then he scowled. “You skinny little woodpecker. Go bang your head against a tree. Maybe you’ll stir up some wits while you’re at it.”
“Woodpecker? Just wait ’til Rocky gets bigger. Then you’ll be as quick with words as you are with fists, which is to say, not very quick at all.”
Emma watched Lily and Barrel exchange insults, too entertained to speak.
“All right, Breezy. Calm down.” Barrel made a fist with one hand and started cracking his knuckles with the other.
“Ew,” Emma said. Barrel looked at her. “I—I mean, you should stop that. It’ll give you arthritis.”
“An urban myth.” Barrel shook the tension out of his hand. “But I appreciate you looking out for me. You’re very pretty. What’s your name?”
Lily broke in. “Oops, sorry! Barrel, this is our new sister, Emma Banks. She’s the daughter of…”
“I know, I know. Daughter of Maximus, son of Sargos, and Zandra, daughter of Aliara. We’ve all heard the news, even those of us who choose to be shut-ins. Well, it is a pleasure to meet you.”
He held out a hand and Emma took it, almost recoiling when she felt how cold his skin was.
“Thank you,” Barrel said.
“For what?”
“For not showing how uncomfortable you are. Usually when people feel how cold and clammy my skin is, they have to look away to hide their disgust. But you looked me in the eyes the entire time.”
“That’s because I’m curious,” Emma said. “You’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”
Barrel laughed. His hood trembled, and she saw once more the strange color of his irises, purple in the bluish light.
“You’re very kind, Emma Banks. You must be an Acolyte.”
“I am,” Emma said. “Like my mother.”
“One moment.” Barrel snapped his fingers and gave Lily, who was across the room, a sour look. “Stop playing with those tubes, Breezy. You’ll blow us all sky high.”
Lily had been running the tip of one finger along a tube extended over two tables. She hid her hands behind her back and smiled sweetly.
“That’s better,” he said.
Barrel walked past Emma, his robe brushing her arm as he passed. He opened a box on a nearby table and rummaged through it.
“So you’re an Acolyte without wings, eh? That’s understandable. You’re still young. What are you, fifteen, sixteen years old?”
“I’m fourteen. My birthday was a month ago.”
“I’m almost sixteen!” Lily interjected from across the room.
“I see,” Barrel said, ignoring Lily and focusing on Emma. “You’ll mature in a couple of years. Then you’ll have yourself a nice, white pair of wings. Won’t that be nice?”
“I can’t wait,” Emma said, looking up at the ceiling with a wistful smile on her face.
Barrel pulled a small tube half-filled with green liquid out of the box. Lily’s eyes sprang wide open with delight. She skipped over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Yes, OK, very good,” he said, frowning. Then he looked at Emma and bowed. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Emma. I hope to see you again under similar conditions in the near future.”
“Likewise,” Emma said, curtseying though she was not wearing a skirt or a dress. Barrel was so formal that a curtsey seemed the only proper way to excuse herself from his presence
.
Back in the hallway, Emma and Lily looked at each other, giggled, and ran quietly to their bedroom.
“I could get in so much trouble for this,” Lily said once the door was shut.
Emma was breathing fast. “Are you sure you want to?”
“Yes! You have to meet Rocky. He’s just a baby at the moment, but as I become more and more adept at manipulating luminether, he’ll get bigger. Someday he might even be as big as a house. I’ll be able to shrink him as I see fit, of course.”
“Rocky,” Emma said. “Is he like a dog? Or a gorilla, or something like that?”
Lily smiled, flashing perfect white teeth. Whenever she smiled, her eyes would narrow, giving her the most jovial of expressions. She really was beautiful, and it made Emma feel frumpy and awkward, especially since Lily was almost two years older. Back in New Jersey, she would already have her driver’s license.
“Rocky’s a golem. Basically, he’s a beast made out of rock, but he’s not just an average rock golem, ohhh no. He’s an elemental golem, which means that he can light himself on fire and create ice shields around himself—not at the same time, of course.”
“Whoa,” Emma said, sounding like her brother. “Can I meet him?”
“Sure. But keep in mind he can’t light himself on fire right now because I haven’t learned that ability yet. Same with the ice shields. I might need a few years to…”
“It’s OK,” Emma’s face was flushed. She was practically shouting. “I want to meet Rocky.”
Lily closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “OK, I’m ready.”
She brought up the tube Barrel had given her and uncorked it. The liquid inside was a vile green sludge that filled the room with a bitter, leafy smell. Lily kept her eyes shut and drank it down.
Then she sent the tube rolling across the carpet, empty.
All Emma could do was stand there gaping, unable to take her eyes off her strange new friend. Lily’s eyes were still closed. The lids had begun to stir as if she were now immersed in a vivid dream.
Savant (The Luminether Series) Page 13
