by Ruby Loren
Her eyes drifted around the living room. It felt a little bleak now that Tor no longer resided here. Even the cactus she’d once made into a fighting machine had shrivelled up. It was sad when a house was left to decay.
“I forgot to say, that lame guy… Bruce Delimon… he disappeared a couple of days ago,” Simon said.
January’s senses sharpened. “Had he found out anything interesting before that?”
Simon’s gaze found hers. “He might have done. Usually, when there’s something found, it gets shouted out, but I saw him whispering with the overseer two days ago. That was before the scary vampire burst in. Right after he’d gone, Delimon was told to go outside, and he never came back.” Simon shrugged. “Maybe he’ll be back when I return to work, but… I just have this feeling he’s gone.”
January thought about what she’d been told about the constant mind-wiping affecting the researchers. Had Delimon lost his mind? Or had he found out something that had meant he needed to die? Perhaps the people in charge of Simon and his colleagues knew full well that their system wasn’t foolproof and had decided to take no chances.
“Simon, what happens to the books you do find stuff in?” she asked.
“They get taken away and put somewhere. I suppose someone must catalogue all the good bits, but I bet they keep the useful books somewhere safe - just in case there’s other interesting stuff in them. It would make sense, wouldn’t it?” He shook his head. “What I wouldn’t give to get a hold of that book collection…”
January frowned. Simon didn’t give two figs about the books themselves, he just wanted to sell what they contained.
“I suppose I should be thanking you… I’m a millionaire for the first time in my life, and the police aren’t sniffing around at all. Selling secrets is what I should have done all along!” January was about to open her mouth to tell Simon he was welcome, when he carried on. “…Of course, I’m still stuck as an unpaid slave, so until you’ve got me out of that mess, no thanks will be given.”
January tried to not roll her eyes again. She was sorry that Simon had been drafted into slavery, but being Simon, he’d turned it into a money-making scam. She was sure in time he’d weasel his way out of being one of the researching grunts, too.
“What kind of secrets have you sold so far?” she asked, suddenly curious.
Simon tapped his nose. “That would be confidential information between me and my customers.” He saw January’s dark look. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing that will come back to bite me.” He tilted his head. “Well, not personally, anyway.”
January sighed and made a mental note to find Simon’s eBay account… or whatever he was using to sell this information. She knew better than to let his schemes lie.
Something tugged on January’s attention. She looked up just in time to see Emerson materialise in front of the living room window.
“Emerson,” she said, standing up from the sofa.
Simon looked around the room. “What? Have you gone loopy?”
“He’s right there. I did a spell, so I could see him when he’s trying to be invisible,” she explained, her eyes resting on Seeing the Unseen - the spell book she’d left lying on the floor - for a second too long.
She looked back at Simon and knew he’d just put two and two together.
Fortunately, (for once) Emerson decided to become visible to Simon and became a little less ethereal.
“You’re not really here,” Simon said, his eyes going all slitty. “And you’re one of them.”
Emerson looked at Simon and then turned to January. “Do you only hang out with him because he makes you feel clever?” he asked, seeming genuinely interested.
Simon stood up from the armchair he’d chosen and stalked out of the room, fixing Emerson with a baleful look when he went. January’s shifter hearing picked up something muttered about unleashing the rabbit.
January hoped he wasn’t serious.
“What’s happening?” she asked Emerson, both eager and apprehensive to know what had gone on since she’d exited the Old Ones compound through the sewer.
“Warwick swore to kill you and was pretty displeased when he realised you were gone. I told him he'd only regret it later. Then I had to make myself scarce until he’d stopped trying to kill me.” Emerson sighed like it was all just another tiresome ‘day in the life’ of an ancient vampire. “Predictably, he calmed down after a bit, and everything’s back to normal now. You’ll probably be invited back any day now to have a chat about the tests. We’re all dying to know how you did it.” His ice blue eyes met hers with a strange burning intensity.
“Did what?” January said, still just as clueless.
Emerson exhaled and shook his head with a knowing smirk. “Okay, I’ll play along for now. We’re all terribly interested in how you were able to open a gateway between the overlapping worlds and bring through an army, when there’s never been a weakness within a hundred miles of the compound. That was part of the reason why the location was selected. It was safe from all things - included the ones who live over there.”
“The fae?” January asked.
Emerson tilted his head from side to side. “That’s what humans who see them call them. Rare sightings are what gets passed down in stories and makes up folklore and fairytales. In truth, they’re beings who live in a parallel world that exists directly on top of ours. There are some places where the boundary between the worlds is thin, and you can sometimes hear them. Not usually see them, though.” He looked sharply at her.
“Did you see the army?” she asked.
He shot her an ‘are you joking?’ look. “Yes. We all did. They weren’t exactly hard to spot in their shiny white uniforms,” he drawled. “It’s interesting that we were visible to each other, though. It’s also interesting that you can apparently open gateways that shouldn’t exist.”
She opened her mouth to tell him she hadn’t been the one to open it. She’d thought Warwick had done it by dragging her back into the memory, but now she thought about it… that hadn’t been the way it had happened. If that clearing had been accurately depicted, then the thin place would have been there from the start - just like it was in real life. Instead, it had only appeared after she had come.
January didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell Emerson about the girl with the amber eyes. She was like a secret weapon who turned up occasionally, to save January from danger.
She shut her mouth and frowned, remembering that technically, this time the invading beings from the world next door had been out for her blood. Not to mention the nuclear death spell Warwick had launched at them and her.
“The spell made it so I can see them… at the thin places,” she clarified, wanting him to know it was nothing more special than that.
Emerson raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to explain the other part - the more important part.
“I’m not sure how it happened,” January confessed. “But, maybe I’ll be able to figure it out if I know more about what Warwick did right before that moment. How does he make the tests?”
Emerson grinned and sat down on a sofa, just as if he were solid. “Didn’t I say you’d regret asking him what he could do? There’s a reason why Warwick has always been the leader.” He opened his mouth as if to say something else but shut it again, looking at January for a second. “He’s got powers like no one else. He’ll say he doesn’t have a specific talent, hence the superhero remark, but he’s a creator. That means, he can arrange particles into whatever he wants. He can make his thoughts solid, and more than that… he can make yours solid, too.”
January frowned. “So, it’s all illusion?”
“It’s real. All of those tests were real.” Emerson looked at her like she was stupid. “Surely you realised that when the beast was drooling all over you, or the dragon tried to barbecue you.”
“But the bottomless canyon… I just walked across it,” January protested.
Emerson blinked. “Yeah, using magic
.”
“I don’t think I used magic. I just thought it was a test of faith, or something. You mean, he really made a fathoms deep hole in the middle of the compound? And I could have fallen in?”
Emerson looked even more bemused. “Wow, you didn’t even know you were using magic?” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to say to that. I can’t tell if you’re lucky, or just stupid.”
“Thanks a bunch,” January said, not happy with this post-test analysis. Where was the pat on the back for not having died?
“What did you see after the dragon?” he asked, curiously.
January kept her expression closed. “What did you see?” She bounced back.
“Can’t we just be mature and pretend to trust one another for a few seconds? You’re just making this take longer. If you try this with Warwick…” He shook his head.
“What will he do? Try that spell he used in the arena again?” January said, her voice flat.
For the first time, Emerson looked at her with something that might have been fear, hiding deep in his cool eyes. Then it was gone and January couldn’t be sure if she’d imagined it.
“I know what Warwick did, but beneath all the mist, I couldn’t see anything other than trees.” When January kept her mouth shut, he continued. “It was a test where Warwick pulls up a memory that contains elements he’ll have used to his advantage. He usually picks a memory that caused the person being tested a lot of confusion and mixed emotions. Then, he inserts his own little twists, and that’s usually the end of the tests. No one makes it through that.”
January realised what he was saying. “Other people have gone through the same thing?”
Emerson smirked. “Oh yes… did you really think you were the first person in the world to claim to be an enchanter? Word always reaches us, and we always check.” His eyes flashed. “You’re the first one who might be telling the truth.”
“You already knew I was an enchanter!” January protested.
“Leah did tell us something along those lines, but you know what they say. Seeing is believing.”
“So, Warwick is another mind reader.” She wanted to get back to solving the mystery of how he'd dragged that particular moment from her mind.
“No, only Max can do that. Warwick can just make things real again.” Emerson shrugged. “I don’t know much beyond that, it’s just what I’ve seen. Even after all this time, we don’t share.” He gave her a significant look.
January was starting to wonder where Emerson’s allegiance really lay.
“I was confused in that memory. I’d gone for a walk in the woods and fallen into a pit. Then, I discovered that there was a portal in the middle of the woods that led to another world,” she said, hoping the edited version would be enough to satisfy Emerson.
“There was a doorway through in the memory? That is interesting to know,” he said. “That could be how it happened. Warwick made the memory real, and then you somehow… added to it.”
“It must be what happened,” she agreed, still wondering in private.
Perhaps it was plausible that an enchanter was able to open up a thin place where none had previously existed. However, she didn’t think she was the enchanter responsible for it. When the girl with the amber eyes had appeared, she hadn’t behaved the way she had in January’s memory. Might it be possible that somehow… she’d really been there?
It was yet another thing to think about later.
“When Warwick flattened the arena… what kind of creation was that?” January asked, sarcastically.
Emerson smirked again. “You must have noticed his tattoos. All of the writing and symbols? Warwick has never been one to rest on his laurels. As well as his gift, he has honed his magic over the years. We all have, to some extent, but Warwick favours high magick.”
“My favourite kind,” January said, dryly, remembering the first time that spell had been used against her by King Bob.
“You’ve seen it before,” Emerson observed. “What happened?” he asked.
“The person doing it died,” she told him, fixing her gaze on his.
He smiled back, showing her what he thought of the implied threat. “What did you do to survive it this time?”
January nearly said ‘I don’t know’ again, but she decided to think about it. What had she done? Her first thought was that the amber-eyed girl had saved her again, but she didn't think she had. Instead, she herself had done something to stop it.
“I think my horn focused my magic. I just thought about cutting through the spell, in the same way I would a vampire, and it sort of… broke,” she said, referring to the destructive energy.
Emerson chuckled. “More like it created a supernova. What it looked like - until you destroyed the bullet and spell-proof glass -” He paused to shake his head. “It looked like you tried to match the energy of Warwick’s spell - a spell that is designed to multiply its own energy far beyond the creator’s power until it blows itself out - and you managed to beat it.” He looked at her with a crease between his eyebrows. “That’s more than you were expected to be able to do.”
“Did I pass the tests?” January asked, not being serious.
Emerson gave her an unreadable look. “You were never supposed to pass them.”
“I figured that much out,” January said, walking over to look out of the living room window. “What was supposed to happen? Was I meant to be eaten, fall to my death, or be barbecued? Was it supposed to be a creative way to dispose of me, once and for all?”
Emerson stood up and moved to stand next to her. Even though he wasn’t really there, January wasn’t sure she liked him being so close to her. It almost made her feel like he was a normal person. She never wanted to slip into that way of thinking. It could be a fatal mistake.
“It wasn’t something that was discussed or predetermined. Nobody has survived before, but that didn’t mean the same would be true for you. If you’d had a fatal accident in the arena, the tests would have ended. Then we’d have all seen what happened next…” He looked at her, curiously.
January snorted, thinking of just how easy her sister had found it to do the job the vampires had failed to do. Jo had got a point when she’d said that January had let her ego make her sloppy. She expected big and dramatic attacks - not someone hiding next to her front door with an axe.
It wasn’t information she was going to pass on to the Old Ones.
“You wanted to see me die,” she clarified.
Emerson nodded. “What better way to finally know for sure? The only creature with the ability to rise from the dead and be truly alive again. The only thing in all existence with the potential to live forever.”
January bit her tongue. She’d never wanted this thing that Emerson clearly considered to be so desirable. Tor had theorised she’d somehow turned her magic on herself and moulded herself into the impossible… but she still didn’t have a real clue about who she was. The only person who might know kept disappearing before she could get a straight answer.
“What now? Will I be dragged back to the compound to do it all again? Are you going to keep trying to kill me to see if I come back?” she asked.
“You’ll just do your job again, until it’s decided otherwise. Warwick tends to have the casting vote.” A muscle twitched in Emerson’s jaw.
“What happened to Gregory?” January asked, feeling a rush of guilt.
Emerson cocked his head at her. “I was wondering when you’d ask about him. I thought it would be the first thing you did.”
January tried not to let him get to her, but she felt her fists clench. She stared out of the window at the mother and child walking by carrying groceries. The normal sight was a strange juxtaposition against the be-spelled house and its unique occupants.
“He’s fine. Warwick thought about keeping him as bait to get you to come back when he wanted to obliterate you, but I convinced him that someone as powerful as you so clearly demonstrated you are, would never be interested in
a garden-variety vampire.” He looked sideways at her, but January betrayed no reaction. “Anyway, we shipped him back home to his pub.”
“You said you were going to give me magic lessons,” January said.
“I may have done, but I don’t remember us discussing the price…”
January sighed, loudly and at length. “How surprising it is that a vampire wants something in return for offering aid.” She shook her white blonde curls. “How about you give me a freebie, and then I’ll decide if it’s worth paying for, or not. You can start by telling me how to undo whatever you've done to Gregory.” Her face screwed up when she remembered the sight and feeling of that mould eating away at her bubble of happiness she’d used to surround Gregory. “Why would you even do something like that to him? He’s hardly important.”
“There’s a phrase I never thought I’d hear you say,” Emerson said, with a smug grin.
January lifted her eyes to the sky outside the window, silently despairing. “Will you help me, or not?”
“We’ll see,” he said and disappeared into particles of light.
January tried not to demolish a wall in frustration.
“He sounded nice.” Simon walked back into the room, carrying a cup of coffee. It smelt like a proper brew, but somehow… not. She squinted and realised it had a fuzz of blue magic over it. Apparently Simon’s laziness extended to not even bothering to brew coffee without cheating and using magic.
“I think you two could be friends,” she said, reminded of how slippery both men were.
“He certainly has the looks, and I am attracted to power… but there is such a thing as being too close to someone who could wipe you from existence in the blink of an eye. Especially if he found out about the scam I’m running.” Simon looked delighted.
“I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but be careful what you say and do, even when you’re alone. Emerson can watch without anyone knowing he’s there. That’s why you didn’t see him at first, when he appeared in the room.”
