by Angie Fox
He had no idea. “We need to talk,” I said. Where to begin? “First off, there’s this—”
“Patience,” he instructed.
He had to be kidding.
“Trust me, demon slayer,” he said, a bit too amused for my taste. “I’ve done this before.”
Yes. Exactly how many years had old Rachmort been teaching?
I studied him from his gold-buckled spats to the garnet stud in his left ear. “You don’t look like a necromancer.”
Not that I’d ever seen one, but still—he looked positively cheery for one who manipulated death.
“Why does death have to be gloomy?” he asked.
Why indeed?
No matter. From day one, I’d said I needed instruction, and here he was.
Rachmort turned his cane over and tapped the open end to the ground. “Go on,” he said. “Get some air.” Three dark-skinned humanoids tumbled out onto the grass. No larger than my hand, they were bug-eyed and spindly, made up mostly of arms and legs.
“Um,” I said as the creatures began shoving large fistfuls of grass into their mouths. They chewed noisily with mouths open as half of what they jammed in fell right back out. “Should you be letting those go here?” I asked. “Most countries have rules about foreign plants and animals.”
“Ha!” Rachmort snorted with glee. “Oh, you’re serious,” he said, shooing them into the garden, where they chattered loudly and climbed the nearest tree.
“Yes,” he said. “Well, these little fellows were most useful in purgatory. They’ve earned a break.”
“What are they?” Not that I wasn’t used to strange magical creatures by now, but I at least liked to know what we were setting loose on Dimitri’s estate.
Rachmort polished his round gold spectacles on his burgundy waistcoat. “North American tree nymphs, and excellent trackers, I might add. Hmm…” He pulled a chambray hankie from his back pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “The Lakotas first found the Canotila and named them, but believe me, plenty have found their way to the Mediterranean. If you ask me, they have a little too much fun with the dryads.” He made tsking sounds to himself as he added a purple flip-down sunglasses attachment that seemed to appear from midair. “I forgot how sunny it is up here.”
If I ever considered myself nonmagical (and I did), Zebediah Rachmort was my opposite.
“Well at least let us set up a room for you in the house,” I said, leading him toward the back porch. He didn’t need to be staying with the biker witches, if only to protect him from whatever drink had flattened Talos.
“Oh goodness, no need,” Rachmort said, adding a bifocal attachment onto his overloaded spectacles. “I’ve been offered the owner’s suite of rooms off the main tower.”
I stopped. Dimitri’s rooms?
“I’ve inspected them and they are more than appropriate. There I will be close enough, should you have questions.”
Of course. Why not? It wasn’t as though Dimitri was using them. I watched a Canotila scamper from one tree to the next.
Rachmort pulled his starched collar away from his neck. “I came straight from purgatory and have all the wrong clothes. It’s a bit nippy there, you know.” He yanked off his gold cufflinks and rolled up his crisp white sleeves. “Not to worry. My housekeeper is sending a few things.”
“Sure,” I said.
A part of me rebelled at the idea of anyone else being up in Dimitri’s rooms. I hadn’t even made it up there. He’d moved down to be closer to me. It brought home again just how much I’d disrupted his life without even trying.
Not that a room change was a big deal. It was more of an inconvenience. Still, it had been a quiet one. Dimitri had done it. I’d accepted it, the same way I had when he’d chosen to stay in Las Vegas for me when his family needed him here, or the way he’d given up his prospects of marrying a pure griffin in order to be with me.
Slow, cold realization crept over me. If the situation were reversed, I didn’t know if I would have made the same choices.
Rachmort tilted his head. “What are you thinking, demon slayer?”
I hesitated, annoyed that everything I thought tended to show up on my face.
He removed his top hat. “The better I understand you, the more effective I will be in your education. While I sculpt your skills, I also work on what is up here,” he said, tapping the mess of white hair on his head.
“It’s nothing big,” I lied. “I’m only thinking that perhaps Dimitri is too loyal.” Sure, I needed him, and he’d needed me in the past. But that’s not what it took to build a long-term relationship.
“Ah, that he has sacrificed his own future—his pure griffin blood, the fiancée who fits into his world and would help him recover his clan. That he has done this in order to secure your future.”
“You have done your homework.”
“It would be a disservice to you if I didn’t.”
“Good point.” On that and on so many other levels. This estate was Dimitri’s life. I had no doubt the Dominos clan would have been here in a heartbeat to defend it if it was going to be Amara’s future home. And what if we did manage to save his home? What then? I couldn’t live like a happy housewife in Greece—even if we were heading toward marriage, which we weren’t. Not yet. I’d have to leave to do my duty, and Dimitri would either have to come along…or he wouldn’t.
Did I even want to do that to him?
He was a sacrificing person, and for the first time I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to sacrifice all this goodness and beauty and magic for me.
“Yes, yes. Such heavy thoughts,” Rachmort murmured. “This is good, Lizzie.”
“Good?” What universe was he from?
“You must stop confusing what is good with what is comfortable,” Rachmort said. “True learning will come when you are willing to step outside of what you think you know about yourself, the people you love, your abilities. I’m not saying it won’t hurt. It will. Embrace that.”
He began walking with me toward the house, his hands behind his back, his walk not unlike that of one of my favorite professors in college. “It is my understanding that some of your best moments as a demon slayer have come when you were experiencing this discomfort you seem to want to avoid. Be reassured that I shall endeavor to make you as uncomfortable as possible.” He grinned. “That’s when you’re going to step out of your old ways of thinking and start looking for new possibilities, new ways to do things.” He glanced at the house. “Now go fetch your training bar.”
“Of course,” I said, even though I dreaded the thought of touching the bar again.
Understanding change was one thing. Facing the thing that had predicted my death was another.
“Wait,” I said to Rachmort as he began polishing his pocket watch on his waistcoat. I explained what I’d dreamed last night and what I’d seen in the woods right before he arrived.
He frowned, tapping his finger on his angular chin. “It’s an unusual situation. You suspected that already, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, appreciating the fact that he hadn’t reacted like the others. Rachmort didn’t doubt me or give me any funny looks or tell me I was imagining things. He took me at face value. It was a refreshing change of pace.
“We may be able to use this connection.” He looked at me as if the weight of the universe hung on what he had to say next. “Do you trust me to teach you?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Tell me why,” he instructed, his expression earnest.
As if it weren’t obvious. This guy was the magical equivalent of Harvard. Everyone said so. “Well for starters, you’ve trained one of the greatest demon slayers in my family. There’s something to be said for references. You’ve been chairman of Demon Slayer Development for the last nine decades.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “You’ve won the Department of Intramagical Matters’ Gold Halo Award for twenty-eight years running.”
I’d done my research.
He wrapped my hand in his, gently closing my fingers as he brought it down between us. “Those mean nothing. You should trust me because of this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold cord, thin as a piece of twine.
He tilted his head and I offered him my right hand, just like that. I watched with an utter lack of understanding as he tied the ropy cord around my wrist.
“When you understand this”—he held my wrist—“you will have learned much.”
“Okay, Yoda.”
“Yoda?” he asked with the seriousness of a scholar. “I don’t understand.”
I felt my ears turn pink. “I’m sorry. It’s a dumb popculture reference.” One that was completely out of place, given what this man wanted to do for me. I’d been a teacher. Granted, my classroom had consisted of a motley bunch of three-year-olds, but I did know good teachers taught through experience instead of just lecturing endlessly. He was trying to help me learn about myself and my powers, and I was making light of his methods. Well not anymore.
Praise be, I’d learned something already.
I left Zebediah Rachmort talking with Grandma and went upstairs to get the training bar. Dread settled in my stomach as I opened the door to my room. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the bar was nothing but trouble.
Pirate nearly leapt out of the armoire. “Lizzie! Whatcha doing?” he asked, eyes wide.
“I could ask you the same thing,” I said as the door of the armoire swung back an inch or so.
“Oh, you know,” he said, his white and brown body strangely motionless, except for his slightly shaking ears. “Just hanging out.”
“You?” I said, moving for the armoire. Pirate never hung out in a room unless there were ghosts around to play Scrabble with. Sure enough, Pirate was up to something.
I opened the doors to the armoire and found the dragon. And it had grown.
It was as big as Pirate.
The snaggletoothed beast sat on top of my best—and only—pair of black heels, blinking at me with big orange eyes. Next to him lay the charred remains of my Adidas Supernova cross-trainers, the white and silver stripes now curled and black. The soles had melted and the singed laces were still smoking.
“Pirate, that was my last pair of comfortable shoes!” I exclaimed. The dragon had slopped birth goo and Lord knows what on my other ones.
“I’m sorry,” Pirate insisted. “He sneezed.”
“I told you we couldn’t keep it.” We had enough going on without my dog adding pets to the mix.
The dragon unfurled a pair of dingy white wings and fluttered out of the closet. He landed on his chin, popped up and toddled over to Pirate.
“He needs me,” my dog protested. “He even likes Healthy Lite dog chow and look! I taught him a trick!” Pirate turned in a circle and sat. “Okay, Flappy—,” he began.
“Flappy?”
“On account of his wings. Okay, Flappy,” Pirate said in his most stern voice. “Roll over.”
Flappy tottered back and forth on tiny dragon legs.
“That’s it!” Pirate said. “Roll over!”
Flappy licked Pirate’s paw.
“He did real good this morning,” Pirate said, trying to nudge the dragon over with his nose.
“That’s what they always say.” I slipped my key into the locked compartment in the bottom of the armoire and retrieved the small wooden chest with the training bar inside.
“Don’t get too attached,” I warned. “Flappy is a wild animal. We’re going to have to let him go, okay?”
Pirate let out a loud doggie whine.
I felt bad. I really did. But Pirate was a pet. He didn’t need a pet. We were here to save the estate—and my life—not to foster wild animals. Besides, I could do without any more complications.
Or sandpapery dragon tongues licking my leg. My heart softened for a moment before reality crashed down again.
“No. No pets and that’s final.”
When I went back outside, Zebediah Rachmort was doing a pretty good impression of Rip van Winkle under an oak tree. Before I could figure out how to wake him, he opened his eyes.
“Ah, very good,” he said, eyeing the wooden box under my arm.
“Are you sure about that?” I asked. When he didn’t make a move to stand, I sat across from him in the grass, placing the box between us.
“This is a tool. Nothing more,” he said. “You must learn to stop assigning meaning to things.”
Easy for him to say. “But I’m afraid—”
“Nothing is to be feared except evil,” he said. “This bar is not evil.”
Yes, well my encounter with the thing hadn’t been pleasant. “You have to understand. I touched it already and it showed me a vision of my death.”
I waited for him to be horrified. Instead, Rachmort shook his head. “This bar does not predict. It merely showed you a possibility. Now take it. Without fear.”
That was tougher than he thought. I hesitated before touching the thick iron bands that supported the bottom of the chest and wrapped around the lid.
Now or never.
I touched each of the fingers on my right hand to each of the five switch-star adornments on the box. They warmed under my fingers and I fought the urge to leave Zebediah—and the box—out here on the lawn.
Instead, I pulled the lid back. A wisp of smoke seeped from the box. It snaked across the ground below. The tips of the grass crackled and browned. The lavender velvet at the bottom looked empty. I knew it wasn’t.
Heart hammering, I reached down for the bar.
“Without fear,” Rachmort reminded me.
Right. And snakes don’t bite. Fire won’t burn. And imps bake cookies.
I did my best to tamp down my dread. “I’m not afraid,” I said, not convincing anybody.
“May I?” Rachmort asked. He ran a ringed hand lovingly over the box before sliding the invisible bar out of its holder. I watched as he placed it in his other hand, palm up.
Bit by bit, a cloudy glass bar took shape.
“Holy Moses,” I gasped. “How did you do that?”
“I decided to do it,” he said simply. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Now?” Part of me was still waiting for yet another horrible vision.
“Take it,” he said, sliding it into my hands.
It felt smooth and cool. “Amazing,” I said, shaking slightly and watching the cloudy glass shift. “How can I hold it now, without the visions?”
“This is a tool,” he said. “Nothing more. I can only guess that when you first held it, you projected your fears onto the bar. As a consequence, it showed you what you should most fear.”
I didn’t understand. My vision had seemed so real. “So what I saw wasn’t true?”
“No,” he said, “it was true. And you should strengthen yourself against it. But your, er, method is only one way to use the bar.”
He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you ask it to show you a triumph, Lizzie?”
That seemed kind of beside the point.
Wasn’t I supposed to be looking for things that were wrong? Not that I wanted any more visions.
Darned it if there wasn’t something downright persuasive in his wind-chapped cheeks.
“Okay,” I said, holding the bar tight in both hands. I closed my eyes and focused on what it felt like to win a battle.
“Clear your mind,” I heard him say.
“Yes.” I let my body go and focused on using the bar like the tool it was. It felt heavier than it had been. Heat pooled in my hand and raced up my arm. I gripped the bar tighter, and a door opened in my mind.
The grass shifted as Rachmort planted himself next to me. “Let it in,” he urged.
I swam through a murky current, the vision just out of reach. I concentrated hard on my defenses, willing each of them to drop until I saw myself. Only it wasn’t me. It was a shadowy copy. I could feel the malice and the hate dripping from it. It flung a volley of switch stars directly at my chest.
The cold sting of impact swept the breath right out of me.
My eyes flew open. “Make it stop!”
Rachmort gripped my shoulders, “What did you see?”
“Me. Only it wasn’t me, but it tried to kill me!”
He pulled back. “Interesting,” he said, tugging at his chin.
“Is that all you can say? I was almost gutted by a blast of switch stars.” I was gutted. I felt the impact.
“Are you sure you focused on a great triumph?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said with more force than I meant. I couldn’t help it. I felt tricked, betrayed. “Why does this flipping bar think I have to die?”
Rachmort didn’t answer. He simply looked at me, stroking his chin.
Lovely.
I glanced down at the bar. It was invisible again. One step forward, two steps back. “Why can’t I see it?”
Rachmort seemed deep in thought. “You see it as invisible,” he said. “You saw it that way from the start and choose to see it that way now.”
Part of me doubted it. So far, I hadn’t gotten to choose much about my new life.
“Try,” Rachmort said. “You’re more in control of your destiny than you imagine.”
I found that hard to believe. If I were in control of things, I’d have been lounging on the beach with Dimitri with no imps, biker witches or trouble in sight.
I focused on Zebediah, his intense expression almost willing me to succeed. Okay. I could do this. I focused the bar, asking it to show itself. To my surprise, it appeared solid in my hand. “Amazing.”
“Yes,” he mused, “I suppose it is. The world is a shocking place, more so if you are a new demon slayer. I can’t tell you what to think of the bar or of your vision. That is for you to decide. But you will find that no matter how situations seem to unfold in strange and unpredictable ways, you have more control than you imagine. Whether it is with a pack of rampaging imps or a boyfriend,” he said with a wink, “the same rules apply.”
