by Jen Ponce
“How did Ravana hide you from her spawn?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. She did not see fit to explain anything to us. I believe the closer we were in proximity to her, the more hidden we were from her spawn’s senses. But of course, she could not keep us all close. She found someplace to hide most of the souls, someplace with strong magic of its own so she wouldn’t have to expend much energy on her own part to hide them.”
“Well, that’s good. The whole, hidden in proximity thing. Do you think it works with me too? I mean, I’m not a true Originator.”
“I suppose the only way to know would be to invite one of your spawn here and see if he notices.”
“Can any Skriven sense any soul?”
His let his head sink into the pillow though his eyes stayed on me. He reminded me of an abused dog in the pound: wary but hopeful. “Yes. Our resonance sings to them. But most Skriven don’t care about other souls but their own. They don’t want to help their fellow Skriven ascend, after all.”
That made sense. Might help me out in the long run too. I just needed to keep Ellison far away from Jasper. The rest of my spawn―whoever or whatever they may be―might even help.
Yeah, like I’d be that lucky.
“Final question. For now.” I rubbed my forehead with my fingers, the headache from earlier still making a nuisance of itself in the back corners of my skull. “Do you know anything about magic? Working magic? Using it?”
“Yes. I learned quite a lot from my captors before the split. They taught me quite a bit about the wild magic to be found on Midia.”
Maybe I wouldn’t have to put up with grouchy ass Medusa head after all. “You think you could teach me? I mean, from the beginning as if I were a newbie?” Or an idiot?
“Of course. But why do you need instruction?”
“Long story.”
A spark of life made the corner of his mouth twitch upward. “I love stories.”
I eyed him. Did I dare trust him? Was there anyway he could want to harm me? I assumed he was a good person because, well, he was a soul and because the only way he could hope to kill me would be to die himself.
Some instinct, something inside of me said I could trust him. That same instinct kicked in when working with some of my clients. A little niggling doubt or a stubborn strand of hope despite all signs to the contrary. My instinct was usually correct. But it wasn’t one hundred percent.
Maybe I would tell him most of the story, but if there were parts I thought he didn’t need to know or that would endanger my family, like the lodestones buried around the house, I would leave those out.
“It all started with a fight.” I talked late into the night. He didn’t interrupt or fall asleep; his grey eyes stayed on me as I related all the craziness that had happened since wandering into the bazaar. I left out having Neutria and Arsinua both in my head, as well as the heart. In fact, there were a lot of things I realized it wouldn’t be safe to tell him. If another Originator got their hands on him, they might be able to torture those things out of him. I didn’t need any of them knowing how I came by my power; that I had a magic heart inside me made by a witch. Nah.
The story was still a good one, albeit one with quite a few plot holes by the time I edited it. I also had to leave off the ending, because it involved Lucy and Arsinua and the soul transfer that gave Arsinua a new life outside of my head. The end made me nervous because I expected him to ask lots of questions, to frown at me and say, “That doesn’t make any sense. What about...?” But he just nodded, appearing to accept my version of events.
“What’s your story? I mean, I know the Originators’ version but I know there’s more to you than just being a pawn in some elaborate cat and mouse game.”
His eyes gleamed. “And perhaps we are just pawns.”
I studied him with a growing sense of unease. There was more to him than I thought. He wasn’t just an innocent caught up in politics. Perhaps because he’d been weak when he arrived I dismissed him. Damned if I wasn’t so sure about how harmless he was now, looking at that light of intelligence on his face. “Are you here to harm me or my family?”
“No. I keep you alive, you keep me alive. Trust me, Mistress, I do not wish to die at the hands of my other half. I believe that would be a fate worse than death. I do not know what it does to Skriven to kill their own souls, but it cannot be anything good.”
Damaged. That’s what every one of those Originators were, each one without a soul to complete them. I thought of Tom’s soul inside me and the strange ritual of the Originators and was doubly glad I didn’t trust them. How could creatures without souls know how precious they were? “Do you have power of your own?”
“Yes. We can sense moments of great happiness or great despair. Unlike Skriven, who usually use those moments to gain souls or power, we can bolster the feelings or provide the gift of hope to those who need it most.”
Another memory I’d like to forget, one of Ty and me collecting the blood of murder victims, rose in my mind. I hadn’t wanted to participate but hadn’t had a choice at the time. They had all been dying but it still felt like I’d participated in their deaths. “So, you’re like angels?” It sounded ridiculous to my ears but I had to know. Maybe Ann was right.
He laughed, a low, hoarse laugh that made me smile. “No. Though perhaps some of those I’ve been fortunate enough to help might have thought me so. Most of us are locked away, hidden for fear our Skriven will find and kill us. It’s rare indeed we can roam freely.”
“Do you think you could kill a Skriven?”
He looked puzzled. “Why would we do that?”
“Well one, if you killed your Skriven, you’d be free. And two. Well, there would be one less Skriven.” Sorry Ty.
“I’m not sure killing our base form would be any better than one of them killing their soul form.”
“Then what if you reunited? Made yourself a whole again?”
He blinked, looking as if he’d come across a revelation. “I don’t know. I don’t know any of us has ever had that notion. What would happen indeed?”
I yawned, my jaw cracking at the force of it. “Sorry. Tired.” I smiled and he returned the gesture. He really was pretty. “We need to figure out a story for you and why you’re here. My kids will notice you eventually.”
“I’ll think on it. Mayhap you should go to bed. I’ll stay up and keep watch. I’ll know if any danger comes near and I will alert you.”
“Don’t you need sleep?”
“No.” Mischief lit his eyes.
I grinned. “So you were faking it when Ann was in here?”
“She’s a bit overwhelming. I thought it easier to feign unconsciousness.”
“Clever. Though she’s just stoked about your aura.” I rose from the chair and stretched, feeling the hours in every heavy, tired muscle.
“My what?”
I waved in his general direction. “The glowing light surrounding you.”
“Ah.”
He didn’t say anything else so I eased out the door. “Good night Jasper.”
“Good night Mistress.”
“Devany.”
He inclined his head. “Mistress Devany.”
Rolling my eyes, I shut the door behind me. Mistress Devany. Damn it. That shouldn’t sound good at all. What kind of ego maniac was I turning out to be? Hard not to be a little bit excited, though. I mean, in the course of the day I’d managed to collect a bodyguard, a slave, and a . . . what was Jasper? My knight? Ugh. That sounded to romance-bookish. Better not to even go down that silly, rose-laden path.
I looked down the hall at my room and curled my lip at the thought of crawling back into bed with my cousin. Instead, I padded downstairs and settled on the couch, pulling the throw over the top of me to keep the chill night air away.
I couldn’t stomach the thought of sleep. Sleep might bring dreams or worse, nightmares. I didn’t want to relive Tom’s death over while I slept. I’d done enough replaying awake. Wi
th that in mind, I turned the TV on and surfed until I found a 24 hour news station.
That was a mistake.
“Twenty eight people have disappeared from the greater Omaha area in the last five days. Police are scrambling to figure out what is going on, where these people have vanished to, and what relation those missing might have in common. We’ll show the pictures of each of the missing. If anyone knows anything about the whereabouts of those who have been reported lost, please call the special hotline number police have established specifically for this matter.”
It had gotten worse. I watched in mounting horror as picture after picture flashed across the screen. It wasn’t until the fifteenth photo I recognized one of the missing. Katy Reinhardt, twenty-four years old. Missing since Wednesday. My client. One of my clients, anyway. She’d been carefully putting the pieces of her life back together again after her boyfriend broke her leg when he shoved her down the stairs. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that to her, but that time she’d been holding her son Blake. She’d broken her leg trying to catch herself so she wouldn’t crush Blake. Blake had severe whiplash from the fall but otherwise was unharmed.
Katy had blamed herself. But she’d pushed through the worst of it and found out a lot about how strong she was in the process. She had an apartment, a car, a great job.
Now she was missing.
I pushed myself off the couch, glanced at the clock, then slammed my eyes shut. Concentrated on the hook and on the one woman who might be able to help me figure out how to stop the Theleoni once and for all.
-EIGHT-
The hook landed me in jail. Arsinua lay on a cot in a corner, her hair wild and unkempt as if she’d been rolling around in here without a comb for a while. The cell didn’t have any metal bars, only the thick energy-field humming just out of range of my hearing, bothering me the way a kernel stuck in my teeth might drive me nutty. It also smelled like urine, sweat, and other things that made me cover my nose with my hand.
“What are you doing here?” Her words slurred. Under her cot in a puddle of foul smelling liquid lay several glass bottles.
“Are they saucing you up?”
She snorted. “It’s Padrigal. They use it to keep us subdued. Addictive but delicious.” Her head flopped onto her arm. “Why are you here? To ruin the tattered remains of my life?”
A stab of betrayal shot through me I tried to ignore. I’d been glad to see her, damn it. “Come on, I’ll get you out.”
“No. I deserve to be here. Think of all the things I did? Things we did.” She laughed, but the sound was sick and watery, the evil twin of real humor. “They’re deciding whether or not I should be banished to the Anwar or the Swamp.”
“Arsinua.”
Her eyes fluttered shut. Way to avoid the conversation. My lips compressed into a line and I silently apologized for my pissy thoughts. I also apologized as I shut my eyes and formed a hook under her. It was coming easier with practice but it still felt like I was the only kid in the class doing math longhand while everyone else used their calculators.
She landed on the floor in my workout room in the basement. Softly. I’m not a total incompetent. Her snores were noisy but I knew no one would hear her down here. The kids rarely came down because there wasn’t cable or video games. Hell, why hadn’t I thought to bring Jasper down here?
I opened up the storage room, finished but full of holiday decorations, books, and the accumulated detritus of our family. With a little rearranging . . .
I started on the boxes. Shifting, hauling, moving. Arsinua stayed passed out on the floor and I paused a moment to toss a blanket over her before continuing my transfer of stuff from the room to the dark corner where the water heater and furnace huddled, gathering cobwebs. The sun had started lighting up the windows by the time I’d hauled everything out of the room. Almost everything. The bookcases I left because I didn’t want to pull a muscle and our sleeping bags for Arsinua and Jasper to use. Tom’s tent, the one that had given away his affair, still sat in the corner. It made me sad to see it and a pang of remembered hurt rose up inside me.
I grabbed it and hauled it out too, leaving the room spare without all its junk. It wasn’t great but hell, how was I supposed to know I’d be taking in the wounded? I went out to Arsinua and managed to drag her into the room. She flopped onto the sleeping bag and I didn’t bother trying to wrestle her inside it. She’d figure it out if it got cold.
Jasper next. Hopefully he wouldn’t mind bunking with a drunk witch.
He was awake, of course, and more than willing to sneak downstairs to the basement. Listening solemnly to my brief update―I’d told him my story after all―he vowed to protect her at all costs.
“No. Don’t pop a vessel. Just keep an eye on her.”
He nodded but I could see the vowing going on behind his closed lips. I heaved a sigh then gave up. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“Of course, Mistress.” His mouth quirked. “Devany.”
“Mm hm. I’ll bring you food down later when I have the chance. And I’m going to tell the kids about you all. I just haven’t figured out who you are yet.”
“Friends.”
I nodded slowly. He might just be a friend. Arsinua too, though she seemed bitter at the moment. “Came in late last night for the funeral. I like it.” I left him down there to guard and protect as I went upstairs to start my day. Thank goodness for the heart or I would’ve been dead on my feet. My steps slowed as a sharp tug hit me in the gut. Then another. I put my hand on my stomach. What the hell?
When the sensation didn’t return, I put it on my mental holy-fuck-what-now list and shoved it to the back burner. Needing not to think about things for a while, I started breakfast, making dough to make homemade pastries with scrambled eggs and bacon. The phone call so early took me by surprise. The caller ID didn’t register a number. “Hello?”
“Don’t you answer when I call?”
I pulled the phone away from my head to stare at it as if it would tell me why I was getting a telephone call from Tytan. “What the hell?”
“I tried to let you know Arsinua popped up on my radar.”
I plopped a spoonful of sour cream into the scrambled eggs I was pushing around in the pan. “You’re calling me on the phone.”
“Apparently so.”
“From the Slip?”
“No. Of course not. The tugging was me pulling Source through you to get here. Took a public hook and now I’m somewhere in the zoo.”
I snorted, trying to picture Tytan at the zoo. He’d probably terrify the animals. “Why not just come here?”
“I’m being watched. Using a permanent hook let me leave without attracting much attention.” I heard a roar in the background and Tytan muttered something along the lines of ‘my what big teeth you have.’
“Who?” As if I didn’t know.
“Your own spawn. You need to do something about the barriers and soon. They’re giving way faster than that little bloodless football let on.”
“Shit.”
“They’re gathering. And they think I’m feeding you information so none of them are too happy with me.”
“You are feeding me information.” I pulled the eggs off the heat while they were still a little soft. They’d cook more in the pastry and I didn’t want them rubbery.
“Yes. I know.” His words were amused but clipped, as if he were talking to a dummy.
Maybe I was a dummy, because I didn’t get why he was helping me still. Oh, he’d told me his reasons but damned if I didn’t trust him, either. “I’ll try to get away after the funeral.” I thought of Jasper and Arsinua in my basement. “Where did you find her?”
“I haven’t. Yet. But I know her magical signature appeared on Earth then vanished again. Weird, that.”
“Very weird.” In jail, Arsinua had been hidden. Now she was hidden again by being near me? Or Jasper? Or both. “Well, keep up the hunt. I need her.” I tried to keep my voice light to hide the lie in it.
Why wasn’t I telling him where Arsinua was, anyway? I’d asked him to find her, after all.
“Everything all right? Maybe I need to come see you.” His voice dropped to that low, seductive sound that made my toes curl. I dropped my spatula and cursed. He laughed.
“Stop that.”
“Maybe I need to do more than just look at you.”
“In your dreams.” And in some of mine. But dreams weren’t real and I could indulge in the privacy of my own imagination without giving into temptation. “Keep looking for her. And Marantha too.”
“Not too bad, for a witch. What do you need her for?”
“She might be easier to find than Arsinua,” I said, avoiding the question.
“Mm. My clever little mistress has something up her sleeves.”
The way he said mistress sounded nothing like the the deferential tones Jasper used. When Tytan said it, images of me in black leather and him naked on my bed intruded. My fingers tightened on the phone. “So. Is there a way to mitigate the time difference between here and Midia? I don’t know how long it will take me to figure out how to replace the barriers.” I stopped myself from saying ‘in the swamp’ in time. He didn’t know the souls were in the swamp. And I didn’t trust him, I reminded myself.
“Not that I know of. Then again, I’ve never been concerned with the time difference. I’ll ask around.”
“Thank you.”
“You thought of me naked.”
My mouth went dry. “Stay out of my head.”
“I like that you think about me naked.”
“I said--” but the phone was dead. Growling, I slapped in onto its base and then took the rolling pin to the pastry. Poor dough didn’t know what it did to deserve the harsh punishment but when the pastries were made I almost felt okay. Except for the strange flush on my skin I tried to ignore away.
The phone rang again while I was wrapping and bagging the extra pastries. This time the caller ID told me it was the police. My heart fluttered in my chest as I answered it. They were releasing Tom’s body. I leaned against the counter and squeezed my eyes shut. I told them the funeral home we’d decided on, Tom and I, five years back. We’d made an appointment and toured it, giggling to keep ourselves from thinking too seriously that we would need the place any time soon.
