by S. W. Clarke
I pressed the door open, found the bed where Milonakis had lain now empty. Everything was still and orderly. On the far shelf I found the jar with the violet herb inside it, and I slipped it from the shelf and into the secret pocket of my cloak in one smooth motion.
An old memory came back: M&Ms. Back in the system, M&Ms were a currency. We’d trade them like coins, and in the cafeteria of our home, the staff always kept bags of them. At thirteen, I got so good at sneaking into the kitchen at night, at swiping the bags, that it became almost like a dream when I did it. I knew how to walk on my toes, how to set my fingers on the bags in just such a way that they crinkled the least, and how to soundlessly slide them into my pockets.
Back then, I was rich. Rich in chocolate and whatever else I wanted, which was mostly information—which staff had beef with each other, who had slept with whom, what so-and-so’s file said. And I used that information when I needed it.
Once, when I was caught by one of the male night staff, I hadn’t outright said I knew he’d slept with the pretty blond—and very married—counselor for the twelve-to-fifteen-year-olds, but I’d hinted at it. Prodded. Poked in just the right place to where he’d gotten so afraid that, for the next two years he spent working there, he always looked the other way when we crossed paths at night.
I was a queen of that place. All because I was a thief, and I was good at it.
When I came back out into the hallway, the memory had already slipped away, but the feeling hadn’t. And maybe it was that feeling that drew my eyes down the part of the junction I hadn’t gone before.
Over there, in the darkness, I felt a pull. And because it had been so easy to get the valerian and that false confidence still sang in me, I approached the darkness.
Just to look. Just for a minute.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
When I passed the T of the junction, a torch flamed to life on the far side of the hallway. The darkness shifted into simple reality: more doors, just like the others. But at the farthest end of the hallway, a dark-wood door with a different sort of latch stared back at me.
That was what I’d been called to.
When I came to it, the thing seemed much larger than it had appeared back at the head of the hallway. It was over seven feet high, and the wood smelled different. Almost like gasoline: sweet, addictive, chemical. Toxic.
My hand went up to the latch. Pulled gently at it. To my surprise, it had a give, and that was when I paused.
If I wanted to open this door, I could.
Did I want to?
I stood in vibrating stillness, debating with myself. Umbra wouldn’t want this. She’d already have kicked me out. But the old thief in me—the girl desperate for knowledge, to be a queen—wanted this so badly.
I hated not knowing. Not knowing ate away at me at night, in the shower, in the moments when I couldn’t find something or someone to distract me.
Just open it, a seething voice said, annoyed with my indecision.
With a start, I realized the Spitfire had entered this discussion. It wasn’t Umbra at all who was stopping me—it was Rational Clem. And it wasn’t the thief who was goading me—it was the Spitfire.
Rational Clem against the Spitfire. An age-old battle.
The longer my fingers stayed on the latch, the more tempting it became to give it a push, the weaker my will to do the right thing. But I couldn’t just make myself let go. Walk away. I couldn’t do it.
The Spitfire won out. It always did in moments like this.
When I pushed the door open, it creaked like an old, wailing woman, ushering me into more darkness. I couldn’t see a thing. Nothing.
One step forward made me jump; two torches flared to life on opposing walls, bringing the whole room into relief. It wasn’t a very large room, but a tree grew up directly through the center of it. The roots extended into the walls, into the ceiling, and they emanated that gasoline smell.
A tree within a tree. Because, after all, Umbra’s office was built into a massive tree.
If I wanted to go farther into the room, I’d have to duck around the roots. To climb over them. To really work at it—and that was exactly what I did. Because I needed to see what lay on the opposite side of this massive tree with a room built around it, with torches set into the walls.
It was here for a reason. And that reason was a mystery.
When I came to the first root blocking my way, it stretched from the tree’s base toward the far wall. Something like dirt and stray hairs spread along its length, and I knew enough about the nature of trees to understand that they had an extensive root system with something like hairs or strands designed to suck up nutrients from the ground.
That wasn’t so creepy. It was that the pale, almost see-through hairs off the roots swayed in the non-breeze, almost like they were conscious. They were everywhere, on every root, reaching out.
I stepped high over the first root, avoiding touching it. The next one—ropier and fat, the smell more potent—I had to duck under. And beyond that there was a cluster of them blocking my way, and I couldn’t avoid touching at least one.
Be a big girl, Clem. It’s just nature.
But nature had never smelled like this.
I crouched, my fingers touching the floor, and made my way through. My free hand went out to lift a root, and I found it heavy and damp, like a clump of hair in the shower. The threads on it reacted to my touch, straightening like they’d been shocked, then veering toward me.
Disgust broiled in my stomach, and I swung under the root, pulled my fingers away. I couldn’t help rubbing them together as I moved on; my fingertips were coated in something sticky or abrasive that I wanted to wash off, but couldn’t. I knew if I held them to my nose, I’d smell that gasoline perfume. And I knew instinctively that I should smell it as little as possible.
Some part of me sensed this was a mistake. I ignored it and kept on, pressing roots aside as I made my way around the room. If I didn’t reach the end of the mystery, it would itch at me.
When I had gotten far enough to see the other side of the root system, I slowly rose, keeping my head tilted to avoid bumping into a higher-slung root. There, in front of me, they wove into an intricate braid, forming the center of the tree-within-a-tree.
It wasn’t made of bark like it should be. And it didn’t smell like it should—earthy—but like the heart of that sweet chemical smell.
Those roots enclosed something.
Deep in the center, I could swear I caught a glimpse of a feathery orange-red in the torchlight. A flash of unusual color that didn’t belong.
Here, now, I was the M&M thief, the queen of knowledge. She’d completely overtaken me with the Spitfire’s help, and nothing could stop my hand from lifting.
I stepped closer. Then closer, the smell intoxicating and overwhelming and making me lightheaded, too. I squinted, leaning closer. My fingers went out, touching the roots’ heart, pressing them aside.
Red hair. Pale skin.
A scream rose in my throat, didn’t escape before it got stoppered off at the top. Everything closed up: my voice, my eyes, my fingers jerking away, curled into a tight, safe fist.
But nothing helped. The sight was seared into my eyes. The feel was on my fingertips. The smell was in my throat.
A person was trapped inside there. Dead and preserved with her green eyes shut. I knew they were green. I knew exactly what shade—emerald with darker rims—because they were my eyes.
The person I had uncovered was me.
When I came into my dorm, Eva and Aidan spun. They held a book between them and had clearly been arguing about it. Beside them, Eva’s desk was laid out with various tools and instruments for preparing the valerian.
“Tell him,” Eva began before really seeing me, “exactly what you saw Umbra do with the mortar and…” She trailed off.
“Clem?” Aidan said, turning fully toward me.
I stood in the open doorway, sticky fingers clutching the frame as though
for balance. My breath came fast, my heart out of time with it. And then, with a start, I turned, yanked the door shut. Locked it.
Even as they said my name, I kept my face to the door. Set my forehead against it with my eyes shut.
Now wasn’t the time. It wasn’t the time for this.
I sucked air in through my nose, let it out between my lips. Again and again, until I was ready to turn back. When I did, I found the two of them standing less than a foot away.
I swallowed, reached into my cloak and fished out the jar of valerian for Eva. “Will this do?”
She accepted it; her eyes never left me. “It’s more than enough for one dose.”
“Then make more than one dose. Give me all you can make.”
She didn’t move. “Why?”
The urge to snap at her broiled up my throat, but I kept it down with a twitch of the muscle near my nose. Instead, I said, “I might need it.” I knew my voice brooked no argument. “As soon as you can. Please.”
Eva nodded, took the jar to the desk. She sat down, referred to the book as she began her work.
The two of them knew everything I had learned about the undercity, the ghosts, what I might find when I went to retrieve the thief’s blade. What they didn’t know was that I believed Callum might be down there. In the light of day, him being inside the soul labyrinth seemed almost ridiculous, far-fetched, a hope instead of a potential reality.
Aidan remained standing before me. “Did you see Umbra when you went under her office?”
“No.” Without anything to hold, my fingers curled into fists, their tension a natural reflection of the fact that everything else in my body was taut as a wire.
I wished I had seen Umbra down there. Then I would have been able to ask her the one question I hadn’t stopped asking since I’d rushed—tripped—stumbled—out of that room.
What the fuck?
That had been me in that clutch of roots, if a few years younger. Maybe me at eighteen. But fully preserved in death, her freckled skin as pale and unbroken as mine was now.
Even the thought of it now made me nauseous. And I couldn’t feel nauseous—not tonight. Not with what I had to do. After. When I came back, then I could think about it. I could scream and cry and force Umbra to tell me what the hell she’d done.
Because I knew it was Umbra who’d done it. That was why she’d forbidden me from going down there. Whatever had happened between those roots and my doppelgänger, Maeve Umbra had been responsible.
I couldn’t decide if I trusted her or despised her more for ever having trusted her. Nothing could justify what I’d seen.
“Clem.” Eva’s voice drew me to the surface, and I realized something was scraping against the door. “Open it.”
When I unlocked the door and cracked it open, Loki’s face appeared. Then the rest of him, his green eyes traveling as he surveyed us all. “What a morose crowd.” He hopped onto my bed, began bathing himself with his pink tongue.
Aidan hadn’t stopped watching me, and I forced myself to meet his eyes, setting my jaw. Willing him to leave me alone.
I had nothing to say. The world felt like the overturned snow globe he’d described years ago, back when the academy and magic changed my whole life.
Now, it had changed again.
Aidan shrugged, finally got the message. He crossed to Eva, stood over her, pointing and giving short directions as they both resumed bickering about the recipe. Eva fell into an angry grinding with the mortar and pestle, and I sat down next to Loki on my bed and watched, waited.
Loki knew something was wrong; it was why he leaned against me, butting me with his head, forcing me to pet him.
I had to admit: it worked. He was a cat, after all, and he was my cat, which made me doubly susceptible to his lures. So I rubbed at his ears, just like he liked, and I said, “You don’t have to come. I know you’re afraid of the dark.”
His eyes closed as I found the right spot by his left ear. “Funny how I’m the only thing that’ll stand between you and the darkness if that valerian wears off. But sure, I can stay here and nap if you’d prefer.”
“Bluff called,” I whispered, moving to his other ear. “We’re leaving as soon as these two herbalists are done with their masterwork.”
“I heard that,” Eva deadpanned, never looking up from her grinding.
“Not like that,” Aidan said, lifting the book. “You see, it’s got to be finer. Much finer.”
She groaned, passed it to him. “You win. Grind away with your strong, manly hands.”
And Aidan did.
I spent the next half hour getting ready. I showered, braided my hair so tight to my head not a single curl escaped, and after pulling on jeans and a long-sleeved Henley, I put on the calf-height, lace-up boots Eva’s mother had gotten me a few winters ago.
When I came out of the bathroom, Aidan glanced up from leaning over the desk, where Eva was pouring out a purple liquid into a vial. His eyebrows rose above his glasses as he discovered my ass-kicking boots. “So, it’s going to be a fight.”
I crossed to my bed, picked up my cloak. “When isn’t it?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Just after two in the morning, Loki and I left the academy with Eva’s promise that she would keep a watch out in the woods for when I returned. She’d pressed the two vials into my hands and said she wouldn’t sleep until I was back in case I needed her.
Loki and I arrived at the top of Arthur’s Seat not long after, where even in April it was cloak-clutchingly cold. We came down enshrouded, the wind held off by my enchantment, and made our way through the half-dead city. Only drunks or young people were out at this time, and as we moved through the streets, they sometimes made themselves known with yells and whoops and glass shattering.
If I hadn’t become a witch, that’d probably have been me on a night like tonight. Happy for as long as I wasn’t sober.
We came to the bridge on Milonakis’s map, and I stood at the head of a staircase leading down toward Blair Street and the vaults below. Loki started down, paused, looked back at me. “Cold feet?”
“You know me better than that.” Even though he was half-right and I would never admit it. My own pride made me start forward down the stairs, and at the base of the stairs and across a short walkway we came to the gated entrance to the vaults. A chain and padlock blocked our way.
Loki slipped through the bars as I gripped the padlock in my hand, sending a surge of heat and flame over the metal until the inner mechanisms melted, and the lock came free with a simple jerk of the hand.
I removed the chain, pressed the gate open to find Loki’s green eyes staring up at me from a few steps down. More stairs—always stairs. Above him, an unlit wall scone promised daytime ghost tours of this place.
If only the tour guides and tourists knew how right they were.
“See any ghosts yet?” I said to Loki.
His green eyes shifted, disappeared for a moment. Then appeared again. “Tons of them. Hundreds. No, thousands—”
“Thanks, smartass.” I pulled the vial of valerian from my cloak, uncorked it with my thumb. In one swig, I upturned it and drank the whole thing, which tasted sweet and viscous. And it only gave me somewhere between a half hour and an hour of protection from ghost madness. “Let’s do this.”
As we started down, I slid the Backbiter from the pocket in my cloak, allowing the chain to dangle as I illuminated the stone walls and steps with flame in my left hand. Thom had told me the blade was guarded every night. I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t be tonight.
Soon the scent of dampness and decay filled my nose, along with humidity. I didn’t want to know what was damp, and I most definitely didn’t want to know what was decaying. My lips parted, and I stopped breathing through my nose after that.
I followed Milonakis’s map in my mind, orienting myself when we reached the bottom of the stairs and arrived in the vaults proper. If she was right about this labyrinth, then there were two spot
s inside the vaults where the souls would gather, each of them at separate ends. And those were spots I needed to avoid if I wanted to keep the ghost sightings to a minimum.
In an ideal world, the blade wouldn’t be hidden anywhere near one of those spots. But let’s be real: this was my world. And if someone was going to hide a piece of one of the most powerful weapons in the world, they’d do it in a place so dangerous, no one would want to go near it.
So, when I’d gotten my bearings, I started toward what I’d dubbed in my head Soul Trap #1, the weapon out before me. It hadn’t illuminated yet, but the radius was only about thirty feet, and we had lots of vault to cover.
Loki kept close to me, gently brushing against me every so often to let me know he was there. As we walked, we passed open stone doorways into darkness, which could have been storage rooms, taverns, brothels, even homes to the homeless. One room could have been all of those things at different times.
Someday, for shits and giggles, I’d come back and pay for the tour.
“Stop,” Loki whispered.
I went still, staring into the darkness ahead. I couldn’t make out a thing beyond the cone of my flames. “What is it?”
“A man.” My spine went cold as Loki paused. “He’s coming toward us. Get against the wall.”
I moved with Loki, the two of us pressing ourselves up against the cold stone as footsteps sounded from down the hall. And the sound of something dragging.
Then, a man’s voice, gravelly and deep and angry. “Fecking hen thinks she’ll have one over me. I’ll hollow out her skull and stick my…” His words disappeared beneath the rushing blood in my ears as his face appeared in the light of my flames, lips twisted in fury as he stopped, yanked something along behind him, took another two steps, kept yanking.
My eyes lowered.
A body. It was the body of a middle-aged woman, her eyes open, blood trickling from her mouth.
The flame wavered as my hand wavered, and Loki’s centering voice said from beside me, “Ghosts, Clem. They’re just ghosts.”
