Past Tense (Schooled in Magic Book 10)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Emily shivered. She knew it was telling the truth.

  “But you will arrive, relatively sane,” the demon added. There was nothing, but amused confidence in its voice. “You will be there because you will make a bargain with us.”

  Emily stared. “I’d rather die.”

  The demon cocked an eyebrow. “You’d rather screw up the timeline so completely that it would never recover?”

  It went on before Emily could say a word. “Whitehall and his commune will all die, rather than managing to gain control of the nexus point. The remainder of the magicians will be hunted down, one by one, by the Manavores. And then the Faerie will attack the mundanes and turn them into puppets, twisting their bodies and souls for their sick enjoyment. And that will be the end.

  “You’ll never come to the Nameless World. Your stepfather will rape you when you turn seventeen. He’ll be arrested, of course, but the damage will be done. You’ll slit your wrists by the end of the year.”

  It paused. “And that’s the good option,” it said. “You don’t want to know what else could happen.”

  “You know what will happen,” Emily charged.

  “Of course,” the demon said. “I know you’ll make the bargain with us.”

  Emily swallowed, hard. Bargaining with demons was dangerous. She hadn’t needed Whitehall—or Aurelius—to tell her that the demons always rigged the bargains in their favor. And yet, she knew that demons couldn’t lie directly. It was the one true restriction on their powers. They could tell the truth in a manner calculated to mislead, they could deliberately omit pieces of information, they certainly never volunteered information ... but they couldn’t actually lie.

  And she had to go back to her own time. To Caleb, she thought. And the demon knew it too.

  No ambiguity, Emily thought. No room whatsoever for misinterpretations.

  She cursed under her breath, forcing herself to think. The demon had her over a barrel—and it knew it. If she turned down the bargain, she could simply be returned to the statue and left there for a few hours—or days. Trapped in that living hell, unable even to scream, she knew she would break eventually. And yet, something kept nagging at the back of her mind, something that didn’t quite add up. The demon couldn’t lie ...

  ... But it can mislead, she thought. And if it’s trying to mislead me now ...

  She met the immense yellow eyes as evenly as she could. “How are you even here?” she asked. “Robin summoned you, didn’t he? You should have gone back to the Darkness when he died?”

  The demon snorted. “Robin should really have been more careful when he made that deal with us,” it said. “But he was so desperate to have you that he never bothered to consider the fine print.”

  Emily contemplated the puzzle for a long moment. “You trade blood—energy—in exchange for spells,” she said, finally. “Your deal allowed you to claim the remainder of his energy when he died, which allowed you to remain close to me.”

  “Correct,” the demon said. It gave her the kind of look a particularly irate teacher would give a moron who’d stumbled on the correct answer. “And you couldn’t banish me because it wasn’t you who summoned me.”

  “Robin was going mad,” Emily said, slowly. “No wonder he didn’t look at the deal very closely.”

  “He tried hard to be quite specific,” the demon informed her. Its voice dripped with malicious amusement. “It was really quite elegant, the way he worded the bargain. If you hadn’t had a few extra protections, my dear girl, you would be his devoted slave right now.”

  “And you goaded him into it,” Emily said.

  “Humans are really quite simple,” the demon said. It made a show of shrugging its shoulders dramatically. “None of you are actually imaginative. It’s always power, long life, or women ... or men, sometimes. Watching how you screw yourselves up is always amusing.”

  “And you kept giving them spells that damaged their minds,” Emily said. “Why?”

  The demon leered, again. “Why not?”

  It hung in the air, mocking her. “Have you never taken pleasure in someone else’s pain?”

  “No,” Emily said.

  “Liar,” the demon said. “Did you not enjoy watching Melissa suffer because of the pranks you played on her?”

  Emily felt a stab of guilt. Alassa had dragged her into the pranking war throughout first and second year, although they’d slowed during third year and stopped altogether after fourth year. And yes, there had been times when she’d enjoyed it.

  “Melissa could strike back,” she said. “She did strike back.”

  “You still enjoyed it,” the demon said. It paced around the mental plane, then slipped up behind her to whisper in her ear. “And that opened the path to greater malice, did it not?”

  “I didn’t,” Emily said.

  “But others did,” the demon countered. It put its lips next to her ear. She felt nothing, not even a hint of breath. “And once you start crossing lines, my dear, it’s easy to cross the next one. And the next. And the next. And then you lose all sense of right and wrong.”

  “Damn you,” Emily said.

  “Quite,” the demon agreed.

  Emily looked into the mists, but saw nothing. “Why do you do this?”

  The demon stepped in front of her, recapturing her attention. “It’s funny.”

  Robin was insane, Emily thought, again. Something kept nagging at the back of her mind, something important. Robin was insane, and that meant ...

  She looked up at the demon. “You said I’d make the bargain,” she challenged. “What sort of bargain will I make?”

  “I can’t answer that question,” the demon said.

  Emily held its inhuman gaze. “Can’t, or won’t?”

  She smiled as everything suddenly fell into place. Robin had been insane; he’d made an incredibly bad bargain because he’d been too far gone to notice the loophole. And the demon could have waited until she was insane too, if it had wanted her to make an equally bad bargain. The demon had her over a barrel, true ... but she had it over a barrel too. If she didn’t go back to her own time, all the demonic prophecies would be completely invalid ...

  ... And if that happened, she had a feeling that it would cause the demons more problems than they could handle.

  They depend on everything falling into place, she thought. And they have very little wiggle room.

  “You need me to get back relatively sane,” she said. “And you’re in a poor position to bargain.”

  The demon snorted. “So are you,” it pointed out. “I could put you back in the stone for the next five hours, you know.”

  “But you won’t,” Emily said, with a confidence she didn’t entirely feel. “You need me to complete the time loop. And I won’t do that if I go mad.”

  “How true,” the demon said. “But tell me. Are you sure you really understand what’s going on?”

  “Yes,” Emily said.

  She pushed on before the demon could say a word. “This is what I want,” she said. “I want to be petrified, my body and thoughts frozen in time, until ten minutes after my past self touches me. To me, it is to seem like an instant between now and the moment I wake up. A blink of an eye. Nothing more.”

  “Of course,” the demon said. “We wouldn’t want you messing up the timeline because you’ve gone insane.”

  Emily took a breath. She could ask to be healed, but she doubted the demon could be trusted to do it properly.

  “And this room is to remain hidden until Cabiria and I come along,” she added, carefully. Cabiria had entered the statue room first, after all. She might just have avoided a major hiccup by the skin of her teeth. “No one else is to enter until the time-loop closes.”

  The demon smiled. “Close shave there, eh? You wouldn’t want to miss anything important.”

  Emily looked it in the eye, ignoring the jibe. “Why me?”

  “Destiny is tangled around you,” the demon said. It rubbed its hands together
with amused glee. “And the choices you make will reshape the world.”

  Its smile twisted into a bitter grimace. “For better or worse.”

  Emily frowned. What did it mean?

  The demon gave her no time to think about it. “And how much are you prepared to pay for it?”

  “You have to send me back,” Emily said. She fought down the urge to match it, smirk for smirk. “I don’t have to pay at all.”

  “You do,” the demon said. “There’s always a balance, human. Everything must be paid for.”

  It leaned forward. “I will honor my side of the bargain,” it said. “But in exchange I want two things from you. First, I want your word that you will not destroy either of the two books Lord Whitehall asked you to take into the future. And second, I want some of your blood.”

  Emily shuddered. She’d had more than enough experience with blood magic to know that giving a demon some of her blood would be disastrous. There were spells to cut the ties between her blood and herself—she used them religiously—but she had no idea how effective they’d be against a demon. Blood magic had always been a danger to her, if only because she had no close relatives in the Nameless World. There was no risk of the magic becoming confused, unsure who to target.

  And I can’t destroy the books, she thought. Whitehall had asked her to destroy the books, yet he hadn’t made her swear an oath. And yet, she didn’t want to disappoint him. There’s nothing stopping me from handing them over to someone else to destroy—or merely throwing them into a pocket dimension and forgetting the coordinates ...

  She forced herself to think. If she was right, if the demon had to help her, she had more bargaining power than it wanted her to think. But if she was wrong ...

  I have to be right, she thought. They have to give people what they ask for, even when it isn’t precisely what they want. And if all those visions of the future are suddenly rendered invalid ... what happens to the deals they made with the DemonMasters?

  “I can swear not to destroy the books,” she said, wondering if the demon would insist on closing the loopholes. Demons were supposedly subtle, but it had left her a loophole big enough to drive a car through. Or did it want her to cheat in some way? “But you can’t have any of my blood.”

  “I need your blood, freely given,” the demon stated. “There has to be some trade.”

  Emily swallowed. Just for a second, the demon had looked disconcertingly like a drug addict.

  But it might be telling the truth, she thought. If the demons draw on power—on life—it might explain why they don’t already rule the world.

  “Very well,” she said. “And the blood ...”

  She glared at the demon as it looked up, eagerly. Blood ... for all she knew, the demon planned to lay claim to a gallon or two of her blood. She wouldn’t survive that, any more than she would survive a demand for a pound of flesh. And the demon wouldn’t be amused by an argument that it should only take a pound, no more. It had the power to make sure it kept the letter of the agreement if it wished.

  “I give you a droplet or two of blood,” Emily said, carefully. If she didn’t set the terms with no wiggle room, the demon would take advantage of her. “No more than two or three milliliters. And I get to separate the blood from me first.”

  “Well,” the demon said. “Of course.”

  Emily paused. “And the blood cannot be used for anything else.”

  “I will use it to complete the bargain,” the demon said. “And nothing else. But you must not destroy the books.”

  Emily closed her eyes for a long moment. She had a feeling that she wasn’t going to get anything else, not when she was in such a poor bargaining position. And yet, the loophole was still open, taunting her. She might not be able to destroy the books, but she could render them useless. The demons would never be able to use them to cause havoc in the future ...

  “Very well,” she said, again. “Do it.”

  “Cut your palm,” the demon ordered.

  Emily frowned, inwardly, as she reached into her belt and found the knife she’d borrowed from Julianne. They were on the mental plain. She could cut her palm all she wished and no blood would flow. Or was the mere act of cutting her palm symbolic, granting the demon permission to take what it wished? She was tempted to ask, but she suspected the demon wouldn’t give her a straight answer. It might not even have one.

  She made a cut in her palm, wincing at the pain. Blood—or the impression of blood—welled up onto her skin. She muttered the spell to separate the blood from herself, hoping that it would work properly. The demon might have given its word, but she knew better than to trust it. There might be a loophole she’d missed.

  “Two droplets,” she said. The pain was real—or was it? “Where do you ...?”

  The demon sprang forward, grabbing hold of her wrist in an unbreakable grip. She yelped and tried to pull back, but it was impossible. It bent over, a long leathery tongue—impossibly long—emerging from its mouth and licking at her palm. She shuddered in horror at the sensation, struggling against the disgust that threatened to make her throw up. And then the demon let her go, blood dripping from its teeth. Its tongue caught the last droplets before they could fall into the mists.

  “Very tasty,” it said.

  “Fuck you,” Emily managed. She felt dirty, horribly violated. Her palm felt as though it would never be clean again. She rubbed it against her dress, but the sensation refused to disappear. “You ...”

  “I’m afraid we lack the equipment for such ... matters,” the demon said. It was laughing at her! She felt a hot spike of anger mixed with embarrassment and forced herself to calm down before she did something stupid. “Although a few of the DemonMasters believe otherwise.”

  It lowered its voice, as if it was confiding a secret. “You won’t believe what some of those guys are up to.”

  “I don’t want to know,” Emily said.

  The demon shrugged. “Time is pressing,” it said. “Are you ready?”

  Emily nodded, curtly. “Do it.”

  The demon raised its fingers, snapping them in the air ...

  ... And the world blinked.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  DUST. DUST EVERYWHERE.

  Emily cursed her own mistake as she swallowed hard, then hastily cast a spell—using her dwindling reserves—to filter the air. She’d forgotten the dusty air. Her past self had left the chamber with Cabiria and the spell, as she’d planned and the demon had promised, had worn off shortly afterwards, returning her body to normal. She’d felt stiff, the last time she’d been turned into stone, but this time she felt almost normal, save for the tiredness plaguing her bones. Maybe she was just too tired to feel stiff.

  She stumbled forward, carefully picking her way down the corridor and out of the chamber before her past self—her contemporary self—returned. The statue of her couldn’t be there, as she recalled. Professor Locke had to dismiss the statue as nothing more than an illusion, just as she remembered. The wards felt normal, pulsing against her mind; this time, she sensed a faint acceptance within them that marked her as one of the founders. No, the last of the founders. Whitehall and the others were long since dust.

  They didn’t recognize me before now, she thought, numbly. Or perhaps they did—they let me twist aspects of themselves against Shadye ...

  She forced herself to remember the twists and turns of the underground passageways as she heard the sound of her past self heading back down the corridor. There should be a door ... there. She slipped through the door, then sent a mental command into the wards; the door slid closed, then vanished. No one could find it, let alone break in, without access to the control systems. And that level of access had long since gone.

  Until now, she thought. I can manipulate the school at will.

  She sagged against the wall, then sat down and took a long moment to gather herself. How long had it been since she’d eaten, since she’d had a chance to rest? The wards pulsed around her as she dre
w on them for strength, even though she knew she’d pay for it later; she’d have to sneak up to the surface long enough to find a cache of food before the school started its long collapse into rubble. She scanned the underground tunnels, watching through the wards as Professor Locke led her past self into one of the power control rooms, then closed her eyes as the entire school rearranged itself. Professor Locke had inadvertently triggered a defense system.

  The wards have grown, Emily thought.

  She shook her head in awe. It was a shame that Master Wolfe had not lived long enough to see what his work had become. He’d definitely been a genius. His network of spells had adapted to changing circumstances until they’d developed a form of intelligence in their own right. She wondered, absently, just what had happened between her disappearance and the tunnels being sealed, then dismissed the thought. The remains of the Manavore—the twists in the pocket dimensions under the school—would have discouraged anyone from exploring long before Bernard had closed and hidden the gates.

  He probably thought it would be better if no one had access to the control room, she decided, as she stumbled to her feet. Her body felt tired and worn, but she couldn’t rest just yet. And as long as he kept the link to the wards, he was probably right.

  She checked the wards to make sure the path was clear, then placed the books in the sealed chamber before she started to make her way to the upper levels. No one would come to steal either of the Books of Pacts, ensuring she would have time to hide them within a pocket dimension and throw away the key. She would keep her word to the demon, she told herself; she wouldn’t destroy the books. But they’d be rendered completely unusable. No one could hope to find them, even if they had her under their control. The coordinates of the dimension would be completely scrambled.

  And if I hurl them into the future, she thought, they’ll be lost forever.

  Her fingers traced the covers of the books as she frowned. They felt ... dead, as if something was gone. Even the aura of evil seemed much diminished. Perhaps she was now blind to their evil—she’d carried a demon on her shoulder for nearly a week—or perhaps it was gone altogether. The demons bound within the book might be gone too. And that meant ... what?