Succession of Witches (The Familiar Series)

by Karen Mead

  Miri leaned back against the bed, spreading her legs wide. “Everybody’s telling you about this wonderful pure magic you have, and what a super-special snowflake you are, and now you think your virginity is like, the holy grail,” she sneered. “That’s such a spoiled princess thing.”

  “Shut up,” said Cassie. “You’re supposed to protect me, not butt into my life.”

  “I’m supposed to serve my master. And that’s what I’m doing.”

  Cassie nearly screamed. Even though she was irritated with Miri, hearing that tone of absolute obedience somehow offended her on the other woman’s behalf.

  “How can you say that? Isn’t that humiliating?”

  Miri looked confused for a moment, then looked at her with an almost pitying expression. “Cassie, there’s hierarchy everywhere—master and servants, king and subjects. That’s just as true in the human world as in ours, and you know it. The only difference is we’re honest about it.”

  Cassie shook her head vigorously. “It’s different.”

  “Is it? Imagine if I wasn’t a vampire, and I had a job in an office somewhere. I’d have to make my boss happy, otherwise he could get rid of me like that,” she said, snapping her fingers. “I’d have to do things I didn’t want to do, maybe even things I hated, because I couldn’t survive without him. Now, how is that different from a vampire serving a demon?”

  Cassie opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. She wanted to believe Miri was wrong, but she had a sickening feeling that there was more truth to what the vampire was saying than she would ever be comfortable with.

  “Fine, but at least we don’t say ‘I serve my master,’” Cassie mocked.

  “No, you say ‘I can’t quit because I need the insurance,’” said Miri, matter-of-factly. “Because that’s not humiliating.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Despite being shadowed by a vampire, the next few days at school felt surprisingly normal. Cassie didn’t know how Miri had arranged a “transfer” into Silver Crown Academy, but considering the Buckley clan seemed to have copious amounts of money, any paperwork she needed could likely be acquired fairly easily. During class she found herself wondering if there was a whole underground industry set up to enable vampires to phase in and out of human society with ease.

  Cassie was separated from both Jay and Mike for several classes, so she wondered how Miriam was supposed to protect all three of them. It was possible that Miri was somehow keeping tabs on how the other two were doing psychically, but she wasn’t sure. Miri had told her that one of the reasons vampires were so keen to contract with demons was because that was the only way they could use mental powers, but the extent of those mental powers was still somewhat mysterious.

  Cassie also thought it was odd that Miri, who supposedly was only borrowing magic from her master, seemed to have a facility with hypnosis that Sam himself didn’t have, but if there was one thing she was sure of by now, it was that the workings of magic were nuanced and complex.

  Miri didn’t know the material in most of their classes too well, but as she assured Cassie, she didn’t need to get As; she just had to do well enough not to fail out. She seemed to charm the teachers well enough, with the exception of Mr. Golding, who gave her several worried looks.

  When the final bell rang on Thursday, Cassie, Miri, Jay and Mike headed to their lockers together. To do so, they had to pass through a passage where the entire left wall was made up of windows, allowing the strong afternoon sun to flow through the hallway. Miri crumpled up her small face.

  “Can we go around the other way? This hallway smells,” said Miri, averting her eyes from the sun.

  Mike looked at the vampire and narrowed his eyes. “That’s the second time you’ve made a face when we walked through here.”

  Miri shrugged and didn’t answer, squinting in the sun. To Cassie, she looked like she was squinting from more than just the sunlight in her eyes—it looked like she was actually in pain.

  “You’re getting the sun sickness too, aren’t you?” Mike whispered. “You said it’s Nyesha, but it’s both of you.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Miri whispered back. When they were safely out of the hallway, she turned to Mike with a hard expression, hands on her hips. “Listen, you cannot tell anybody that, okay? As far as they know, I am happy as a little clam in the sun. If Eugene knew, it would break his heart.” She sounded almost panicked.

  They all looked at her with pity, but she returned their gazes with a defiant glare.

  “Look, it’s still in the early stages and I can still go to school during the day for a while. I may be able to for years, okay? So drop it.”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” said Cassie, opening her locker. “We’ll drop it if you wear a better outfit to school tomorrow.”

  “Hmm?” said Miri, looking down at her clothes. “What’s wrong with this one?”

  “Maybe that’s how people dressed for school in 1993, but it’s totally out of style. Do you see anyone else wearing a micro skirt and thigh highs?”

  Miri leaned against a nearby locker and crossed her legs, showing off the pale ovals of flesh between her stockings and her short skirt. She was wearing a Silver Crown Academy vest, but that was her only acknowledgement of the school dress code. “So what? I’m not going to let other people influence what I wear.”

  “You know, if you want to pass for a real 16-year-old girl, you have to stop with the healthy self-esteem,” Mike murmured.

  “Hey, I have healthy self-esteem—I think,” Cassie protested.

  “Only because you have demigods fighting over you,” Mike said, closing his locker.

  Miri smirked. “He has a point.”

  Their conversation fell silent as Mr. Golding approached. Cassie and Mike shared a worried glance: what now?

  “Cassie, I’m glad I caught you,” he said, coming to stand before the four of them. Cassie was momentarily taken aback by his casual address, then remembered that he’d put the two of them on a first-name basis for some reason. “I actually have an academic opportunity I’d like to discuss with you. Can you stay for five, maybe ten minutes?”

  “Uh, okay,” Cassie said, puzzled. “What kind of opportunity though? I’m not that good at English.”

  Golding laughed gently. “All will be explained. Shall we?” He nodded to Mike and Jay. “Trepkowski, Peglioni, see you tomorrow. Actually do the reading, please.”

  Miri, whom he’d been ignoring, stepped between the teacher and Cassie. “I’ll go with you two, if you don’t mind,” she said with an innocent smile on her face. “Cassie and I usually walk home together.”

  Golding’s smile tightened. “Actually, Ms. Buckley, this is something I’d like to discuss with Cassie in private. It’s about her future.”

  Miri’s smile widened, nearly revealing her fangs. “Actually, I don’t care. I’m coming with you.”

  There was an awkward pause as the two stared at each other. Golding licked his lips and swallowed. “Fine. Please, both of you follow me.”

  Shooting a puzzled glance over her shoulder at Jay and Mike, Cassie began to follow Mr. Golding. Miri followed, never more than a step behind.

  The teacher led them from the math and science wing of the school, still emptying out of students, to another hallway Cassie had only been to a couple of times. As far as she knew, this was where they used to hold a lot of the clubs that were discontinued after budget cuts a few years ago.

  “It’s an academic opportunity out in C-Wing?” asked Cassie, starting to get nervous. She didn’t really think Mr. Golding had anything nefarious planned, but she didn’t like being so far away from all the other students. Maybe he was taking her so far out of the way so he could finally unburden himself about what he knew about demons without fear of being overheard.

  Golding chuckled. “This is where they’re keeping all the paperwork. Anything too important, they won’t let me keep it in my office.”

  “I guess the administration doesn’t trus
t you too much, do they,” said Miri softly. Cassie tried to nudge her in the ribs, but it was like elbowing a steel plate.

  “No, I guess not,” said Golding, seemingly distracted. He pulled a key out of his pocket and put it into a door at the end of the hall, jiggling it a few times.

  “He’s hot, in a kind of old-school, cowboy way. Is he more your type?” Miri whispered in Cassie’s ear.

  Cassie glared at her bodyguard. “He’s my teacher, okay? I don’t think about him that way.”

  “Lying little princess,” whispered Miri in a singsong voice.

  “Undead skank,” Cassie responded.

  Golding finally got the door open, and they followed him. They walked into the classroom, typical except for the fine sheen of dust on some of the surfaces. A plastic skeleton in the corner hinted at a past as a biology classroom. Golding tossed the keys on the table and went to go open the supply closet.

  Miri followed Golding’s back with her eyes as though she was prepared to rip him apart the second he became a threat; in fact, that was probably exactly what she was planning. Unable to stomach the tension anymore, Cassie swallowed and called out to her teacher. “Look Mr. Golding, what’s this really about?”

  “I told you to call me John,” he said, fumbling with the combination lock on the supply closet. “And it’s about this.”

  He opened the door, and there was a noise as someone, or something, began to step out of it. Before Cassie could see what was happening, Miri was in front of her, hissing. Standing up on tiptoe, Cassie stared, open-mouthed, over Miri’s shoulder.

  What stepped out of the closet looked like a medieval knight in armor. Steel clinked as the bizarre figure oriented herself, turning towards Cassie and Miri with an agonizing slowness. There was no doubt it was a she; despite covering her entire body, the shape and design of the armor hinted at feminine curves, and she was petite, no taller than Cassie; maybe even smaller. John towered over the figure, yet that did nothing to decrease her presence. It was like the whole room was vibrating around her.

  The armor was a strange hodgepodge of material, alternating between chainmail and riveted iron plates. There was an opening in the facemask where Cassie should have been able to see the Knight’s eyes, but it was strangely dark; there was a brief flash of green whenever the creature moved her head, but that was all. It was like nothing Cassie had ever seen.

  “Whatever you do, stay behind me!” Miri snarled at Cassie. “What the hell is that?”

  There was another clink as the figure turned in Cassie’s direction; when she tilted her head, a stream of golden hair fanned out behind her. I don’t get it, Cassie thought. It’s a medieval knight with a blond freakin’ ponytail?

  “I’m sorry, Cassie,” said John, his expression betraying nothing. “They gave me no choice. But in the end, I’m still on your side in all of this. You’ll see.”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” said Miri. Her words sounded slurred; Cassie wondered if extending her fangs made it more difficult to speak. “If you don’t shove that thing back in the closet, I’m going to gut it.”

  Slowly, as though in no particular hurry, the Knight began to walk towards Cassie and Miri. Cassie felt the vampire shift her weight, preparing to attack.

  “I’m especially sorry about you, Miss Buckley,” continued John. “There was no need for you to be involved, but I knew I would never convince you to abandon your duty.”

  “Shut up,” spat Miri, then she lunged for the Knight.

  What happened next was strange, and Cassie was never sure she fully saw what happened. Miri moved with vampire speed, and the Knight did not, yet somehow, the Knight had time to pull a long sword from seemingly nowhere and impale Miri’s torso. When Miri made pained sounds and struggled to remove the weapon, bloodying her hands on the exposed blade, the Knight pulled the sword out cleanly, and with a swift and seemingly effortless motion, lobbed the vampire’s head off her shoulders with a diagonal cut.

  Cassie began to scream, only to be cut off and realize that John was covering her hand with his mouth. She felt the world begin to vibrate and then John pulled back suddenly—she only realized later that her protection amulet had triggered, causing him pain.

  She started to scream again, but the sight of Miri’s corpse robbed her of breath. Tears streaming down her face, she looked at the headless body in disbelief.

  “Now you have her,” said Golding, grimacing from the pain the amulet had inflicted. “But I want you to make it clear that I did everything possible to assist with this. I didn’t interfere in any way, and my duties have been carried out. In their entirety.”

  Using her hair to clean her blade, the Knight cocked her head to the side—that same strange, birdlike motion—and nodded slowly. Her armor made soft clinks when she moved. The tiny, metallic sounds seemed to echo endlessly in Cassie’s head.

  “Listen, this isn’t over. Help is on the way,” John whispered from behind her.

  “I hate you,” she yelled, her voice thick with tears.

  With that, she felt metal-covered arms embrace her from the back, and that was the last thing she was conscious of for a while.

  A minute after the Knight had used the teleportation amulet to transport the two of them away, John took out his phone and did a search for “Daily Grind.” After seeing a bunch of numbers pop up for locations on the west coast, he refined his search to “Daily Grind Sterling,” at which point he found the number he was looking for.

  He eyed Miri’s corpse with a combination of pity and disgust while he waited for someone to pick up.

  “The Daily Grind,” said a slightly nasal voice. Not the man he was looking for.

  “I need to speak to the son of Sammael, and if he isn’t there, I need a number where I can reach him,” said Golding slowly. He nudged the body below him with a toe, as though making sure it was still firm to the touch. “I have something that belongs to him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sam dropped his disguise spell for a fraction of a second when the woman at the front desk asked them to sign in, complementing his typical glare with a hint of his eyes’ natural red. Clearly rattled, she sputtered helplessly as Sam and Khalil walked past her to the stairwell. She would probably spend the rest of the day trying to convince herself that she hadn’t seen what she’d clearly seen.

  It was sloppy, he knew, but he didn’t have the patience to come up with an excuse to be in the school building—his familiar had been kidnapped. Again.

  “I never should have let her keep coming here,” he muttered as he led the way up the steps. “Too many empty hallways, too many opportunities for this to happen.”

  “What were you going to do, have her drop out of high school? Babysit her every waking moment?” said Khalil. “Where was that bodyguard of hers, that’s what I’d like to know.”

  Sam looked around at the empty second-floor hallway; they were surrounded by hundreds of lockers and a huge banner that said “Go Silverhawks!” According to the teacher’s directions, they still had a little ways to go before they found C-Wing. “I think Miri was here.”

  “The vampire?” Khalil whispered, even though the school appeared totally abandoned aside from the woman at the front desk. “What could have taken Cassie that could have fought off a vampire?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sam through gritted teeth.

  There was silence for a moment as they walked the halls.

  “Look, whatever happens, don’t lose it, okay? I’m pretty sure we need this guy alive,” said Khalil.

  Sam looked over his shoulder at the other man, then turned back, slightly puzzled. Khalil had said it in his typical flippant manner, but he wondered if he knew the truth of what he spoke. Though he had grimaced when Khalil insisted on coming with him to the school, secretly he was glad he wouldn’t be alone with the teacher who had helped kidnap Cassie.

  When they reached the classroom, Sam was ahead of Khalil and got a good look at the room a second before the other man
followed him. For a split second, he thought of slamming the door behind him and shielding Khalil from the sight of Miri’s body, but decided against it. Behind him, he heard a muffled curse and a slap as Khalil covered his mouth with his hand.

  “Oh my god,” Khalil murmured through his fingers, then a string of obscenities. This time, Sam didn’t scold him for it.

  Looking at Miri’s headless form before a row of desks, her new school vest splattered with blood, he felt an absurd urge to pull down that short skirt of hers and see that she was covered properly. Lifting his eyes from the corpse, he focused on the man standing across the room. “You could have mentioned on the phone that she was dead,” he said quietly.

  The teacher, who looked entirely too calm lounging against the windows, shook his head. “A vampire is always dead, technically.”

  Sam only narrowly resisted the urge to race across the room and throttle him; he would have done it, but with his newfound strength, he might just kill him by accident. And they would need his information to find Cassie. Next to him, Khalil stared down at the body, transfixed. The teacher cleared his throat.

  “Listen, if you’re going to do it, I don’t know how much longer you can afford to wait.”

  When Sam looked at him with confusion, the teacher continued. “She’s was never alive, Sam—can I call you Sam? That means she isn’t dead, not really. Not completely,” he said, moving away from the window and putting his hands in his pockets.

  Sam blinked, still confused. “What are you saying, that she can be healed? I can’t heal people.”

  “You don’t have to, because a vampire isn’t a person. As far as magic is concerned, a vampire is, and always will be, a thing,” he said, meeting Sam’s eyes over his glasses. “Do you understand?”

  After a moment of thought, Sam nodded, and moved past the teacher to the flash of orange glinting in the afternoon sun that he had noticed in the corner—Miri’s hair. He derived a moment’s satisfaction from the fact that the teacher noticeably tensed up when he approached. The man might be doing an excellent job of playing calm, but he was more afraid than he was letting on.