by Anne Zoelle
“Will...Will was the ritual sacrifice.” My voice was barely audible. “The vessel.”
“The first person to touch this paper after it was activated by you would get sucked in to provide the host body. After I melded with and overtook him, you would be able to pull me out. That you got him out alive and intact was nothing short of extraordinary.”
The words strung together in my mind. Agony burned through my veins. I closed my eyes against the knowledge, but everything Raphael had hinted to me in Ganymede...and here...said that the words were accurate. “Are you sure I can’t be used as the sacrifice instead?” My voice was barely audible, my throat needing to force itself to work.
“Never! And it won't work, so don't try it. I did not choose this path—any of it—but I was made...aware...afterward of what was required.”
The grasping root tentacles attacking Will. The paint infused rock guards pointing their spears. Christian's evil voice always wanting to suck out his soul. “I missed you. I miss you, Christian.”
I hoped Raphael Verisetti rotted in hell.
“I miss you too. Please, Ren.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“Give me three days.”
“No. Feel it.” He grasped my hand and pulled my arm further into the sketch, wrapping my fingers around the side of his neck. “Feel it.”
I could feel the pain and turmoil, the...half needing to be whole. Bit by bit clasping more and more of the darkness to it as it strained to be whole again.
“It's going faster now—again—with the touch of the paint. There are no three days.”
The pain made me double over. The paint I had used in the sketch before going to Ganymede... Christian had screamed all night and grown far worse after that. With the amount of paint I had just pushed inside...
I closed my eyes.
Could I have done months ago what I now needed to do? I wasn't sure that I could have. I opened my eyes, and he held my gaze for long moments. It was raining in the sketch again. Fresh, fat, grief-ridden drops.
“Do it, Ren.”
“I can't.”
“Do not leave me in this half-life.”
“I'm so sorry,” I whispered, barely able to choke out the words.
“There are no apologies, Ren.” I could feel the emotions running through him. The firm undying love for me, the twisted darkness of the other, the corruption that had filled his missing half, left wounded and open for too long.
“I love you, Christian.”
“I love you, too, Ren. Don't leave me in here another day.”
I shook my head.
He touched my hand to his cheek. “Yes, and you've already made the choice. You know what is right. Don't ever feel bad. You are so strong. You never accepted that I leaned on you, just as you leaned on me. You thought because I was the extrovert, I carried you. But you were always my strength.”
“But I could—”
“No.”
—put his spirit into a vessel. Some sort of thing or animal or—
“Let go, Ren.”
—or hand mirror or lamp. Like a genie. I had a hundred different spells I could try. A hundred objects to use.
Anything.
“Let me go, Ren.” His voice was gentle. Soothing. Not like the troublemaker or genius he had been. This was the voice in my head that had wanted out at the beginning, but then slowly changed into my constant support, gaining wisdom every day while the splitting voice had become more insane. I could see him holding the darkness back, the evil other shoved in the back of his eyes, clawing, trying to get out.
“I will see you soon,” I whispered.
“Not soon. But when we meet again, it will be like no time has passed.”
“Yes.”
“Like no time has passed at all,” he said gently.
I couldn't see through the film. I blinked to clear my eyes and slowly picked up the lavender-enhanced pencil and touched it to my brother's trunk. He fell to his knees, bark cracking, branches breaking. I concentrated everything I had in making the sketch a happy place, a wondrous world. One in which every breath taken within it was a happy, joyous one.
Christian fell sideways, bark breaking off in pieces all around him, life-sustaining darkness falling away. Flowers bloomed beneath him, spreading everywhere. The winning moment of the game. The feel of a perfect second extended forever.
He smiled. A glorious, lovely smile.
And I sobbed.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: A New Beginning
When I finally looked up, I realized Olivia had witnessed the whole thing.
She said nothing, just tipped her head to the side and levitated a box of tissues to my bed.
“Thank you,” I said softly.
She arranged her pens on her desk, lining them up just so.
“Thank you,” I said more firmly. “You supported me with Christian. You helped quiet the backlash along with Neph and Will. Please, let me know what I can do in return. If there is anything I can do to show my gratitude.”
She hadn't shown disgust of me yet, nor fear, but I would repay my debts by turning myself in, if she asked it of me.
Olivia didn't say anything for a few long moments, then she walked over and placed a key on my desk. “Room with me next term.” It was said quietly and stiffly, awaiting rejection.
I automatically rose and touched her arm. She froze.
“I would love to,” I said quietly. “Without exchange.”
She nodded stiffly. “Good. Come with me.”
I blinked, but scooped the key into the small pocket of my jeans and followed her to her desk. “Sure. Lunch?”
“You have food on the brain far too frequently,” she said, and gathered up a few rather thin, but diabolically barbed rods from her desk and inserted them strategically in pockets in her clothing. Huh. So that was what all those slim, tailored pockets were for. I had thought them an odd fashion for magical businesswomen.
“When it's good, yup.” I watched her put a few marbles into the smallest pockets. The marbles were the kind Mr. Verisetti had carried in Ganymede Circus. “Er, may I ask where we are going?”
I had said that I would do anything. And maybe helping her take over the world would be a diversion to take my mind away from the devastating loss that was still drowning it.
She tucked an invisible strand of untamed hair into her perfect up-do. “We are going to clean up a bit of business.”
Maybe those barbed rods trapped dirt really, really well. Or maybe we were going to do some mining. Gather up some gold nuggets or some such.
I trailed her down the hall, then froze at the top of the stairs as Will's Marsgrove alert system went off, drumming against my skin in triple time.
Olivia turned to me. “What are you doing? Come on. I want to get this done.”
I forced my body to move again and stepped after her. It would be too late to port to Marsgrove's anyway. Everything was coming to roost.
Olivia. I had just promised to room with her, but I was soon going to be carted off to a cell somewhere. I could at least do this for her, whatever it was.
Four arches later and we entered the Administration Building. Olivia immediately headed for the long ramp that spiraled upward along the rectangular edges of the walls of the gorgeous modern atrium. The giant compass surrounded by five concentric silver rings was still hanging in the middle of the atrium, each ring rotating in asynchronous, nonuniform directions around the ones inside it. The inmost circle still lay mostly flat, provoked only by a ripple here and there when the ring around it bumped or bulged against it. The second ring repeatedly bumped the ring outside of it as well—the middle ring, which looked to be at turns violent and utterly lethargic. The fourth ring was dark and whirling—its shadows and darkness suggesting a mysterious void. The fifth ring was a riot of instability.
The layers.
The sudden comprehensive thought jarred me. The rings represented the five layers of the world. It
was entirely within the scope of the magical that they were presenting real time fluctuations.
I let Olivia lead me up the ramp as I watched them expand, whirl, ripple, and contract.
The office we entered was white and brown, mixing modern and traditional elements.
The man behind the desk who turned around...was Marsgrove.
Magic crackled.
The door slammed shut and locked. My shields snapped together. I didn't run. Instinct screamed at me not to turn my back on Marsgrove. Three escape routes took shape in my mind, the building layout shifting into a mental construct as I populated it with all of the people, obstacles, and assets I had seen on our way up.
I could see Marsgrove's magic pulsing, his core shields nearly mirror images of mine.
“I wondered if you two had previously met.” A queen pushing her pawns around, Olivia took a seat. “I see that you have.”
The snare I had made for Marsgrove was in our room. Options flipped through my mind like my Grandma Florence's old rolodex, and I pulled out or discarded each card.
“Ren, sit.” Olivia folded her hands together. “Time to iron things out.”
Betrayal stirred, but I took in Olivia's expression and felt the lines of the key in my pocket. I nodded slowly and sat beside her, my actions indicating my trust. The look on her face was fierce. I had a feeling if Olivia was the hugging type, I would be in the middle of an embrace.
“A door won't hold her,” Marsgrove said.
“No.” The fierce expression was still in place. “Friendship will.” Olivia cocked her head at Marsgrove. “Such a strange thing. I think I could like it.” She nodded.
Marsgrove was far from slow, and he could add two and two together quickly. His expression was dark as he watched me. “So this is where you've been. You took my papers and finagled a way inside.”
“You knew I wasn't at the house?” I asked tightly. He was an enemy, and I needed to gather as much information as I could, while I could.
The lines around his eyes clenched. “The house didn't feel right, but I had no time to investigate and all the spells were in place. Even my papers were. But the pile of stash money I remembered leaving on the desk wasn't a figment of my imagination after all.”
“You wouldn't have even known if I'd died.” Bitterness flowed unchecked.
“There was a first-aid enchantment on the room,” he said stiffly. “It would have immediately patched you up, if you'd harmed yourself. And if you'd done something truly foolish, it would have put you in stasis until I arrived. Death would have alerted me immediately.”
Like some kind of pet alert that vacationing mages set up for their cats. My hands formed fists. “You imprisoned me illegally.”
His eyes narrowed. “You have no idea what I could do to you legally.”
Olivia folded her hands together. “Technically, you can do nothing legally at the moment, Cousin.”
Cousin? I closed my eyes and chastised the memory of my almost eight-weeks-ago-self. That was the reason he had had those documents on her—finding a roommate for her had been a personal task, not an administrative one.
Olivia continued on. “No tests have been done on her, and you are currently persona-non-grata with the Department. As Ren's lawyer, my client will say nothing more about her personal affairs.”
I closed my mouth on what I had been about to say.
“Of course, illegally, there is much you can do, Cousin.” Olivia looked at him steadily. “But you won't.”
“I was trying to find you a roommate, Olivia, and she took advantage of that. She used you.” The look in his eyes wasn't one of outrage, though, it was one of calculation—the two of them sizing each other up.
“I am well aware of it. I knew it from the first moment she showed up, when she was trying to pick the lock to the door.”
Oops.
Marsgrove's face took on a startled look of comprehension as he gaze turned to me. “That was how you...? But that is a triple grade magic lock,” he hissed.
I pressed my lips together and stared at him.
Marsgrove really disliked me, and it showed clearly in his expression. “Olivia, surely you can see—”
“That she has the strongest magical sympathy to mine of anyone I've ever encountered. Yes.”
Marsgrove's eyes darkened. “Enemies can have perfect sympathy,” he said, bitterness underlying every word.
She lifted a shoulder. “And you think such a thought would sway me?”
I could answer that. Olivia was nothing, if not coldly practical. After talking to Neph, I had done a little research. Sympathetic magic made mages stronger because it made recovery times faster. Ambitious mages would room with their satanic counterpart, if it meant they would achieve more.
Awareness that Olivia had known I was a fraud right from the start, and that only the strong magical sympathy bond had made her overlook it, should have been unnerving. But I had gotten to know Olivia—by soul-sucking magic at first, then chip by chip over the last weeks—and I also knew that she wouldn't be dining with me or speaking with me at all if it was just that. We would simply continue coexisting in the same space. Her actions right now were about more than just sympathetic magic. And that thought kept me quietly in my seat.
I wouldn't ever be deluded into thinking that our sympathy wasn't important to her. It was an aspect like any other compatible or incompatible trait in our relationship.
“She's dangerous. I'll bet everything that has happened on campus is because of her.” I could see Marsgrove already piecing it together. “I should have returned immediately. Before losing the trail of...”
“Of whom, Dean Marsgrove?” I asked as lightly as I could.
He bared his teeth. “You well know whom.”
I could feel him checking his spells on me. I had gotten far more sensitive to anything magical touching me after every soul ritual and with each death. He watched me steadily and darkly, as I did him, as he checked each one. An old western stare-down.
I let one particular thought run free in the front of my mind. Try another paint spell, I dare you.
It was a bit of a conceit that I dared him to do anything. That I thought I could get rid of anything he tried by going to the Midlands.
He drummed a militant finger against his marble desk. “Olivia—”
“No, Cousin. She is my roommate now.”
“Olivia, you don't know—”
“Don't I?”
“Your mother—”
“Is busy with her projects.”
“I cannot allow—”
“I know all about Genesis Omega.”
Marsgrove's mouth pulled tight. “You are blackmailing me?”
Olivia shrugged. “It is the family business.”
“If anything happens with her—” a sharp finger pointed to me “—you will lose everything.”
“Risk and reward, Cousin.”
“She is dangerous.”
Olivia gave a sharp smile. “So am I. You will do nothing for a term of three months' time and you will swear it now.”
“You will not be able to control her.”
“Swear it. You know the words I want.”
“I will not approach or spell or imprison, nor assist any other in those aims, for a term of three month's time starting today.”
“Excellent. I will not reveal my knowledge of Genesis Omega to anyone other than you for three months' time starting today.”
I could see the magic wrap them both.
“You are making a mistake, Olivia. A grave one. The Department will take her the moment they see her.”
She smiled at him—her legal smile. “We will let you return to your work now, Cousin.”
Marsgrove's dark eyes followed us out the door.
~*~
Our four person ritual worked, and the shard was found by Camille, ironically. Joy was had around campus. Joy enough even to cover the lurking fear of the world at large and the turning political tides.<
br />
I sat in my room pondering the nature of sorrow and joy and that letting go carried both in unequal measures.
The Department was still coming to campus, but our academic reputation was intact and the strange magical knots had been unwound. Marsgrove left me alone, though I frequently saw him around campus, watching me.
Olivia smirked a bit every time the subject of Marsgrove or the Department came up and told me that we would discuss many things after finals. I hoped that a clue to whatever Genesis Omega was might slip past her restriction then too.
The real prize given by the last two weeks of school, though, was that Olivia was smiling every other day now—real smiles that unexpectedly popped up. Just seeing one gave me a fierce moment of joy.
When I coaxed her to lunch three times in a row during final's week with Nephthys, Will, Mike, and Delia—well, I won't say it was perfect, as Olivia and Delia were...opposites...but they seemed to enjoy disliking each other. And Olivia started eating in the cafeteria without coaxing.
And that was when we became a full-fledged table.
~*~
Olivia and I stood with our bags in hand in the Administration Building, waiting to port to the First Layer for the December holidays. I had been beyond surprised when she had accepted my invitation to come home with me for break. She had had no plans to go home, so I'd just assumed she would turn me down and remain on campus in our room studying. Instead, she was patiently waiting beside me, with a sanctioned defensive magic container tucked in her pocket and a sheaf of discussion topics and tactics for us.
Constantine smirked at me from a few lines over and I could see him rubbing the smooth rock I had given him for his birthday that could contain all of his martini supplies indefinitely. The rocks I had infused to kill the beast had given me the idea, and I was determined to make storage jewelry next with the test results.
I darkly amused myself contemplating the possibilities of hiding myself in an earring.
My covered wrist itched, and Dare walked by in all his beautiful glory. He gave me an unreadable look.
Christian's sketch, now completely overtaken by a mound of beautiful wildflowers, was carefully tucked in the bag against my side. I hadn't told Will or Neph about the sketch and Raphael's visit. In this instance, I thought it better to protect Will. The sketch couldn't be used against him anymore. I had willed it to be so as I'd touched a drop of paint to the page. The paint had spread into gently curling grasses surrounding the burial site.
