by B. C. Palmer
“It’s nothing,” he said, waving a hand to dismiss my concern. “Just had a thought about a problem, is all. You go clean up. I’ll Whisper Isaac. It’s a weekend; chances are he’s with Lucas.”
I knew better than to try and crack him—hell, I was still amazed he was willing to talk to me—so I left the room and made my way to the bathrooms. This time of day they were empty, just me and the hot water, so I took my time and tried to wash away both the grime of a whole day and some of the headache. The heat only helped a little.
As I rinsed soap from my back, the door to the restroom thudded closed, but I didn’t hear footsteps. I hurried to try and finish up. Not that I minded other students showering the same time I did, but I had always been the girl that was uncomfortable showering in the locker room after gym.
“Amelia,” someone whispered.
I froze. It wasn’t a whisper spell—it had come from somewhere else. The stall across from me? I peeked out around the edge of the stall. “Hello?”
“I can see you,” they whispered. It wasn’t deep enough to be a male voice, not really high enough to be another girl. Sort of raspy and genderless. It sent a shiver up my spine that the hot water did nothing to prevent.
“You and everyone else,” I called back. “It’s a magician school. Hope you’re getting a good show, jerk.”
I shut the water off and reached around the edge of the stall to get my towel from the hook. It was gone. That bit of fear turned to anger. “Okay, asshole. Ha ha. Super funny.”
“Ha ha,” the voice whispered. And then again, and again, until the whole restroom seemed filled with a hundred voices all whispering mirthless laughs.
I growled and flicked my fingers through Briggson’s Arcane Lens and peered through my fingers, looking for some sign of a phantasm or astral projection.
The room’s aura was solid black.
It was so sudden and drastic a change that I stumbled back, away from the stall’s edge, and banged my head against the tile wall, dropping my hands. I almost screamed, but my throat had tightened like someone’s hand was on it and I couldn’t.
The laughing continued, and the water turned back on but was icy cold. When I scrambled to turn it back off, I saw something tar-like pouring down my arms and stomach. It spread and pooled on the floor as I clawed at the handles for the water, but they were off. Panicked, I took a step back and slipped.
I went down hard, no fault of my clumsy legs this time. The entire floor was covered in the oily black substance, and worse—it was rising, crawling up the stalls, the walls, and thick tendrils of the stuff reached for me, prodding at my legs and stomach from all directions.
“No,” I whimpered. “No, no, no. Stop it! Whoever this is, stop it right now!”
“Mine,” the voice whispered, and like the mocking laughter, it turned into an echo from all sides. “Mine.”
The tendrils pried at my calves and knees, trying to spread my legs. I bent forward and tried to pry them off me but my fingers passed through them. An illusion, maybe, with some kind of telekinesis? My thoughts raced, searching for escape, and I stumbled mentally over the banishment sequence from the primer.
I gave up on trying to free myself conventionally, and instead ignored the grasping oil-tentacles in favor of focusing on the hand signs and the Sanskrit for Chandra’s First Banishment. The magic almost didn’t come—second time was the charm, and a soft burst of light broke from my hands to unravel the basic elements of the majority of simple spells.
Nothing changed. I tried the second banishment, and the third, and by the time I was done with them my legs were encased in the stuff and my legs were spread almost painfully wide. I was out of options and it was clear what the attacker wanted. All I could do was scream.
When I did, full of fear and anger, the magic screamed with me, howling out in an uncontrolled torrent. The room exploded. Stalls went flying, tiles shattered and rained down along the walls, and shower fixtures snapped and went rattling over the floor.
I shielded my eyes against a brief rain of ceramic razors, shocked at myself and the sudden destruction. When the last stall had tipped and fallen, crashing to the floor, I slowly took my arm down.
The black substance was gone. The restroom was totaled.
“What the actual fuck?”
I gasped, shivering, and looked to the end of the row of what were once showers to see Serena, staring at the decimation. She settled on me after she’d taken it in. “Girl… do you need like a Midol or something?”
Twenty minutes later, I clutched a mug with shaking hands in the dining hall, with Serena, Hunter, Lucas, and Isaac arrayed beside me and across from me, all of them staring at me like I was a crazy person. I hadn’t bothered to dry my hair, opting instead to tie it back. More pressing concerns at the moment. I related to them as confidently as I could manage the events in the restroom.
“Could it have been a student?” I asked. “Someone giving me a hard time? It was terrible. Those tentacles tried to… they wanted…”
“It’s okay,” Serena said. “We know what you mean.”
I sipped warm tea. There was food, but my appetite was gone. “I should be able to say it,” I muttered. “They tried to get inside me. Who would do that? I haven’t pissed anyone off, I’ve kept my head down and studied. No one even knows me, not really. They all ignore me.”
Except these four, I told myself, but refused to believe any of them would have pulled that shit. Though, Serena had been there just moments after it ended. After I ended it—at least I thought. Had I, though? Or had it just gotten out of hand for whoever was responsible?
There was another possibility, of course. One that I think Hunter was considering, given the deep lines of worry around his eyes and brow, and the way he stared at me like he was trying to send his thoughts into mine. I met his eyes only briefly before attempting to pick at my food. A slice of apple wasn’t a meal, but it gave me something to do with my mouth besides go over the details again.
“If it was a student,” Isaac said, “there will be some lingering magic left for a while. Assuming your… defense method didn’t wipe everything away. The headmaster has an index of every student’s signature, though if it was more than one student working together that can muddy things up. We can ask for an investigation, though—there aren’t many rules set in stone here but among the ones that are, any kinds of sexual coercion or assault are strictly forbidden, magical or otherwise.”
“Did you get a look at the aura?” Lucas asked. “At least to see what kind of magic it was?”
I nodded. “Black,” I said. “Blacker than black… not even a color. I can’t get it out of my mind; it was like… just looking at it was horrifying. Sound familiar?”
No one answered right away.
“All magic has a color, sweetie,” Serena said softly. She reached out and put a hand on my arm. “Black isn’t one of them. Even necromancy is a kind of marbled gray.”
“I know what necromancy looks like,” I shot back, harsher than I meant. Serena snatched back her hand. I felt immediately guilty. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. We covered the colors of magic in thaumaturgy, first week. None of them were like this, but maybe it wasn’t complete?”
Hunter’s lips were almost white they were pressed so hard together. He had something to say but wasn’t saying it.
“What do you think, Hunter?” I asked.
All eyes turned to him.
Hunter shifted in his chair. He looked at them all, and then settled on me. “Nothing I’m familiar with.”
His eyes flicked to Serena. Just enough to make me think it was something he didn’t want her to hear. Was he worried about her as well? Serena was an illusionist. And she’d said before that she’d give her tits to get between Lucas and Isaac. It couldn’t be a jealousy thing, though. Serena wasn’t the type. Was she?
I’d only known her two weeks, I reminded myself. Which was to say—I didn’t really know her at all.
I took
a deep breath and let it out as if I were putting it behind me. “In the end, I’m fine,” I said. “Nothing bad happened. Not as bad as it could have been, anyway.” I turned to Serena. “Thank you. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for my drama to interrupt your weekend. You don’t have to stay with me.”
Her expression was hard to read. Flat, then a ghost of compassion, and then she straightened in her seat and got up. “Just glad you’re okay,” she said, affectation gone from her voice. “Let me know if you need anything. You boys take care of my girl.”
With that, she turned and stalked off. I felt awful for even thinking she could have had anything to do with it. “Serena…”
But she didn’t hear me or ignored it. A few seconds later, she pushed through the doors to the courtyard and was gone. I turned back to the boys, miserable. “Dammit.”
“No,” Hunter said. “No, it’s okay. She’ll get over it. Serena has the memory of a goldfish and doesn’t hold grudges.”
“That’s patently false,” Isaac said. “That woman can hold—”
Lucas elbowed him in the side.
“Right,” I breathed. “So, fucked that up. Still, though—I tried to touch the… the tentacles and my hands went through them. That sounds like an illusion, right? You don’t think Serena…?”
“There’s another possibility,” Hunter said softly, his words weighted with meaning. He raised an eyebrow.
“What?” Lucas asked, looking between us. “What possibility?”
I could see in Hunter’s face he was letting me decide whether to say anything to them. And since there was only one thing I’d shared with him that I hadn’t told the others, I knew what he must be thinking.
“He’s talking about what I saw when I wigged out on the memory pill,” I said, my stomach curling over itself with worry, banishing whatever bit of appetite the apple slice had managed to wake up. My throat was tight when I spoke again. “It’s mostly faded, but… I think I might have seen the Abyss? And… I’m not sure it’s done with me. Maybe now that I’ve seen it, it can see me. And maybe it wants me back.”
Amelia
With Hunter’s help, I told Lucas and Isaac about what I’d seen. When the story was told, both of them looked like they’d just murdered my dog in front of me. Lucas was the worst, his lips even twitching as if he were on the verge of breaking down. Isaac refused to look at him, and I wasn’t quite tracking what the problem was. It hadn’t happened to them, after all, and it’s not like they’d sent me there on purpose.
Except…
A lump rose in my throat. “You’re both very quiet,” I said.
Hunter glowered sideways. “Tell her.”
I was surprised for him to say anything—and quickly realized it had been his suggestion to ask Isaac for help. “Tell me what?”
Lucas swallowed and looked not exactly at me but off to my left. “There is a lot you don’t know,” he started. “About yourself, about your parents, about this school. About us—the three of us.”
“Don’t bullshit,” Hunter grumbled. He leaned on his elbows and met my eyes. “I’m sorry, Amelia. For what we did. We had a good reason, and if you want to know it, we’ll tell you—”
“Hunter, she doesn’t need to—”
“I’ll tell you,” Hunter said, forcefully enough that Lucas quieted. Lucas seemed to bend under the weight of Hunter’s voice. “Isaac had the memory formula prepared because he and Lucas suspected that you might be led to remember something your parents had said that would shed light on the problem I’ve been—well, we’ve been working on. Because it might be connected to them, and what happened when they were here. We didn’t know you were coming to the school, and we’ve hit dead end after dead end.
“So when we realized you were going to be so far behind everyone else, Lucas suggested the memory pellet. Isaac made it. They asked me, and although I didn’t like the idea… I agreed to be there. Because I was desperate, and because I knew that if it went badly, I had the necessary magic to pull you out of it. There were risks, though, and we all knew what they were. These are the reasons, but not excuses. It was wrong. I’m sorry, Amelia. You have to believe me, I didn’t want you to get hurt. I just didn’t have another way to go. You told me you didn’t remember anything about your parents and I… I couldn’t see past my own desperation.”
I stared at him, and then at Lucas and Isaac, sick to my stomach. “So you… you all planned this?”
“We are all equally culpable,” Isaac said quietly, his eyes downcast. “Lucas thought of it, but I made the pellets. Hunter was against it, but we convinced him.”
“Oh,” I laughed mirthlessly, “well, as long as one of you was against it to begin with.”
“Amelia,” Lucas said.
I cut a hand through the air and stood from the table, nearly tipping the chair over. “No. I feel so manipulated. Why the fuck would you do this? What did you need from me? You could have just come to me, all of you, and said what you needed. How do you know I wouldn’t want to help? You think I don’t want to know anything about my parents? Who they were, what they wanted, why they wanted to—”
My throat closed, and a sob tried to escape. I composed myself with sheer will, and had to turn away from them to do it. I refused to let them see me break, what they’d done to me. When I had finally managed to get myself under control, I turned back to them, wiping my eyes. I folded my arms over my chest to hold myself straight and managed to speak steadily. “So. You did this to me. What did you get out of it? Was it worth it, at least? What is it you’re all so obsessed with that was worth my sanity and whatever it is I’ve walked into?”
A hush fell over them, all eyes looking away.
“Seriously?” I pressed. I couldn’t fucking believe them. I thought at least Lucas and Isaac had been my friends, especially after… fuck, had that been a part of all of this too? I felt shame wash through me, quickly replaced by anger.
“Come back to the room,” Hunter said, breaking the guilty quiet. “We’ll explain everything. It’s… a lot. And it’s not safe to talk about it here. Bring your food—you should eat something.”
I did bundle up the food, and we made what felt like a funeral march back to our room. At that moment, I had no idea what else to do. Like I had told them, no one else really knew me. I had nowhere else to go.
We went to our room, Hunter explained, not because it was closest but because it was safe to talk there. “Once I started looking into this,” he explained, waving at the glyphs and crystals and crests around the room, “I knew the faculty would not like it. What happened was considered a hazard of irresponsible magic, and no investigation was made. They want us to break rules, but there are some laws of the universe which aren’t meant to be ignored. So I warded the room every way I knew how and learned a few new ways to ensure no one would be looking in on me. The faculty all rely on scrying and projection to check in on the rooms, and the spells are mostly automated. They don’t make visits in person unless they have a good reason.”
“All right,” I said, crossing my arms as I sat in my desk chair. The food bundle was dropped on my desk, but I ignored it. “So, what don’t you want them to see?”
He handed me a notebook. I opened it, but while I could now read the mix of Akkadian, Greek, and Sanskrit, it didn’t make the meaning any clearer. “Some kind of… what is this, a ritual of some kind?”
“We had a friend,” Lucas said. “Nathan Crowley. Ah… more than a friend really. A brother. A lover. We all came to the school at the same time, but our families knew one another. Mine, Isaac’s, and his.”
“I met them a few weeks before term started,” Hunter provided. I looked between the three men, and realized I was finally about to learn why there was tension between them. I was still angry, and I hated that when I saw the pain in their eyes I wanted to comfort them. Hell, I even felt like Hunter needed a hug, and if I hadn’t been so mad at him I might have been brave enough to do it. They didn’t deserve my comfort, though,
not yet. Maybe not ever.
Lucas nodded, taking the notebook from my hand. Hunter took it from him before he began to flip through it, and Lucas put his hands in his pockets. “Nathan came to the Academy on a mission, we learned,” he went on. “He had an obsession with the events of 1999.”
“The class that died,” I said. “Or most of them, anyway.”
“Not just the class,” Isaac corrected. “Everyone, including faculty.”
“All but seven,” Hunter said. “Your parents were two of them.”
I slumped down in the chair and picked at a thread on my skirt. “All right, I know that part. What did Nathan have to do with it? Why was he so interested?”
“That’s what we don’t know,” Lucas said. He heaved a sigh. “All we knew at the time was that it was important to him, and the more he learned the more secretive he became. He seemed to think there was some kind of incomplete work that had been started then and never finished. Something that needed to be ended, but although we were all very close, Nathan was…”
“A prodigy, even more so than us,” Isaac said softly, smiling sadly. “Genius like you can’t imagine. He lived and breathed magic in a way none of us had ever seen. He consumed knowledge like water, mastered everything the day he learned it. Created new spells in his first year, things brand new to the Great Canon—the compendium of every spell ever authored.”
It was clear, hearing the way they spoke and seeing the sadness on all three faces, that whatever happened was a great loss, not just to the world. Nathan wasn’t here, after all. “Something went wrong,” I surmised. “What happened?”
“He was enabled,” Hunter growled.
Lucas whirled on him. “Fuck you,” he spat. “You knew Nathan as much as we did. Do you really think he would have just dropped it if we hadn’t been with him?”
“We’ll never know, will we?” Hunter shot back, crossing his thick arms. I felt my eyebrows raise at the anger between the two. Forget magic, it seemed like they were moments away from a good old-fashioned brawl.
