by Jill Archer
But this time was different. For one thing, I’d always had a return ticket. And for another, I’d never been trying to pull off the near impossible. Hiding my magic at St. Lucifer’s would be infinitely more difficult than it had been at the Ajaccio Academy, my Hyrke high school, or Gaillard University, my Hyrke undergraduate college. But declaring I was a woman with waning magic would not only brand me as the freak I didn’t want to be, it would also set me on a career path I most emphatically did not want.
Just before six, a tiny beat-up boat chugged across the water toward the dock. Its paint was faded and its engine sputtered, but it was as fast as it needed to be and soon a scrawny boy of about twelve was jumping to the pier and tying it off. I sat on my bench and stared. The boat was about fifty feet in length. A cabin occupied almost half of the deck. The rest of the deck was covered with benches. The boy gave a wave to the captain and the engine shut down. The captain, a short, stocky, gray-haired old man, came out and they exchanged a few words I couldn’t make out. Likely about something insignificant like fuel or fees. I heard more thumping on the dock. I guessed I wouldn’t be the only one taking the 6:06 this morning. Someone with a determined step approached. But when I looked up to see who it was, I wasn’t prepared for my reaction.
Instead of cold, I felt suddenly hot. Like my body was the letter I’d inadvertently burned last night. I could feel Peter’s spell kick in. It acted as a counterforce and I realized my magic had flared up unbidden. It would have been only horrifyingly frightening had it stopped there. But the magic tug-of-war continued in my body unabated. My waning magic wrestled with Peter’s spell. The battle raced across my skin, over my scalp, into my fingertips, skittering into the pit of my stomach where it roiled there, threatening to boil over. I clenched the arm of the bench and gritted my teeth. The man with the determined steps slowed, then stopped and turned, looking straight at me. I didn’t recognize him but he stared anyway, making no movement except, perhaps, a slight widening of his eyes.
Whether it was Peter’s spell or my own sense of self-preservation that prevailed, I don’t know, but the electric revolt of my stomach stopped, moving out as a feeling of pins and needles in my legs and arms. The feeling finally settled into a numbing coldness that I might have mistaken for simply sitting too long if I weren’t still looking at the man who had been the mysterious catalyst of the whole incident.
He was young, around my age, and good-looking in a dark, imposing way. This was a man who would feel at ease threatening, or possibly even torturing. But I got the impression he’d turn the screws with a smile, which made him seem even more sinister. His hair was short, very short, as if he’d just come from the barber. Was he a Hyrke? I didn’t think he was an Angel or a member of the Host. I’d memorized every face in the Etincelle Register (it was easier to avoid other waning magic users if I knew what they looked like). His face hadn’t been in there. I would have remembered. But his eyes were more piercing than any Hyrke’s I’d ever seen. They were so brown they were almost black and they bored into me with an intensity that made me feel as if I were a butterfly pinned to a box frame. Then the moment was broken and he walked over to me.
“Are you crossing on the six oh six?” he asked. His voice was deeper than I’d expected.
I cleared my throat and pulled my hand free of the armrest. I opened my mouth but no words came out. I’m sure I looked like an idiot. Like I was fourteen again and someone had just asked me to the school dance. Part of me actually wanted to get on the boat if he was going to be on it.
“No,” I said, surprising myself. What else was I going to do? Of course I was getting on the boat, which would make me look doubly stupid after this response.
He nodded but kept staring down at me, frowning.
“What?” I snapped. He was undeniably attractive but right now I just wanted him to go away. I had to figure out what I was going to do.
He shrugged, turned around, and walked toward the ferry. I watched him the whole way. He was tall and solidly built. He moved gracefully for his size and, too soon, he bounded over the rail of the ferry, into the cabin, and out of my sight. A few other passengers boarded. None were strangers but there was no one I knew really well either. At 6:05 a whistle sounded and I knew it was the last call for boarding. I stood up and grabbed my leather backpack, lacing one of the straps over my right shoulder. But I did nothing else. I just stood there.
The stranger emerged from the cabin just as the scrawny boy was untying the ferry’s ropes from the dock. The boy threw each rope to the stranger, who caught them easily and stowed them under the benches. The boy jumped aboard and entered the cabin. I knew the boat was seconds from leaving.
If I was going to go, it had to be now. What other choice did I have? My mother had made it clear I wasn’t welcome back home. Night couldn’t take me in. My waning magic would stunt or kill everything his tribe would try to grow. At least Peter’s cloaking spell gave me a chance to hide at St. Lucifer’s, passing as a Hyrke, while Peter continued to look for the Reversal Spell that might turn my destructive waning magic into the nurturing waxing magic I was supposed to have been born with.
I started walking across the pier just as the ferry was leaving. I hurried my pace. The boat’s bumpers squealed as it began to maneuver out of its spot. The engine rumbled and the ferry slowly started to pull away.
I wasn’t going to make it. I started running and covered the last few yards in seconds, but in those seconds the ferry had moved almost as far. It was now at least five feet from the pier. I stood paralyzed with all manner of emotions—anger (at myself), disbelief (at the situation), and fear (my constant companion).
Someone yelled.
“Throw your pack!” It was the stranger. He was motioning impatiently with his hands to underscore his advice.
Without thinking I unshouldered my pack and tossed it into the air. It sailed over the water in a great big arc and landed in the stranger’s arms. I should be so lucky, I thought. Now I was committed. I stepped to the edge of the pier and jumped out over the water as far as I could.
It wasn’t far enough.
I slammed into the side of the ferry and almost fell into the water. I would have too if the stranger hadn’t caught both of my hands with his own. The jump hurt a lot more than I thought it would. I’d naively thought that I’d either land on the boat with both my feet under me, or I’d fall in the water unharmed. Landing only halfway, smashing my head into the side of the railing, and then being dragged by the ferry, now gaining speed at an alarming rate, with my legs half-submerged in the water, just hadn’t occurred to me.
“Are you okay?” the stranger yelled to me. “Try to drag yourself up.”
My head was still pounding and I think I was partially in shock at what I’d just done. I vaguely registered that my hands hurt too. The stranger was squeezing them so hard I thought he’d crack the bones. Fear replaced dazed confusion as I realized I might actually drown if he let go of me. We were now hundreds of yards from the dock. With my water soaked snow boots, a heavy cloak, and a banged up head, my chances of surviving the ice-cold water were maybe fifty-fifty. What in Luck’s name had I done?
I took the stranger’s advice and tried to drag myself aboard. But my arms were weakened by pain and shock and the drag of the water on my boots was greater than my resolve. After a few seconds’ effort, I fell back and let myself go limp again. I felt my hands slipping from his.
“Come on! You can do it,” the stranger shouted. “Don’t give up now!”
I looked up and met his gaze. He was so determined. His ruggedly handsome face was grimly set with the effort of holding my weight against the side of the boat. He wasn’t going to let me fall into the water. I was no one to him, but I could tell that he would do anything and everything to make sure I made it into the boat. And from what I’d seen, anything and everything included more than most Hyrkes had to give.
He let go of my left hand. I screamed. But then he leaned over the rail, p
utting himself at substantial risk of falling in too, and shoved his hand under my armpit. It was awkward because of my cloak, but somehow he managed to get his arm almost all the way around me. He started pulling and I finally started helping. It suddenly mattered what this man thought of me. I’d lied to him on the dock and now here he was trying to save me from a drastically stupid, ill-timed jump to the boat I’d sworn I wasn’t boarding.
After a full minute of further struggling—obviously everyone inside the cabin was oblivious to my plight—we managed to get me over the railing and onto the boat. We collapsed together on deck, entangled in each other’s arms, my cloak billowing out and settling over us like a blanket. For a few seconds neither of us said anything. We just lay there, panting from our efforts. I had no idea what he was thinking, but my thoughts were positively racing. What, in all of Luck’s scorched Hell, was I going to say to this man?
I disentangled first, and hauled myself up from the deck. I thought I saw a flash of disappointment in his face but I couldn’t be sure. Then he rose too and stood in front of me. His frank assessment of me was unnerving. His gaze swept over me as if he already knew every one of my secrets. That would be dangerous, I thought, and doubled my resolve to play the part of a credible Hyrke.
“Thank you,” I gushed. At least my gratefulness wasn’t fake. I stuck out my hand. “I’m Noon.”
“Ari Carmine,” he said, shaking my hand. His grip was gentle and he turned my hand palm side down and rubbed his thumb across my bruised knuckles. “I’m sorry I hurt your hands,” he said, and for a moment I thought he might raise my hand to his lips in some antiquated chivalrous gesture. But he switched his gaze from my hand to my face and something he saw there must have made him change his mind. He released my hand and let it drop.
“Do you have a last name, Noon?”
I hated that question. My last name produced reactions in people that I’d rather avoid. I paused and thought about making something up, but I’d lied to him once already. Now that he’d saved me from possibly drowning, I didn’t want to lie to him any more than I had to.
“Onyx.”
He nodded. Like he’d expected it. Which wasn’t what I’d expected. Hyrkes who didn’t know me usually looked wary when they first heard my last name.
“I know your father,” he said.
Doesn’t everyone? I thought, but just nodded. The Demon Council, that body politic that ran Halja and everyone in it, had an executive head. The executive position was always held by a Maegester. For the past twenty-one years, that Maegester had been Karanos Onyx, my father.
“So you’re the executive’s daughter. One of the Hyrke twins born to Host parents.”
I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like he might have put a little too much emphasis on the word Hyrke. On the other hand, it seemed more likely that deciding to attend St. Lucifer’s was increasing my normal paranoia.
“That’s right. My brother’s Nocturo,” I said, careful to use the Maegester’s name Night had been given at birth instead of the nickname he’d adopted later.
“So, what brings you to cross the Lethe, Noon?”
I could have just told him. Hyrkes attended St. Lucifer’s too (otherwise my plan to masquerade as one wouldn’t work). But this guy seemed a little too well informed of my background and I didn’t want to get into any discussion about demon law or anything to do with Maegesters, executives, demons, or otherwise.
Still, I was trying not to lie.
“You,” I blurted out. He looked surprised for a moment and then grinned. What a sight. I couldn’t help thinking of that pre-Apocalyptic nursery tale, something about a wolf and the line, “the better to eat you with.” He looked positively carnivorous.
“I wondered why you changed your mind,” he said, chuckling. The rumbling sound of it made me swallow. I shook my head. This whole introduction had gone horribly wrong.
“No. I just meant if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be crossing at all,” I said, with as much dignity and sincerity as I had left. “Thank you, again.” I turned to go.
There was something about him that made me nervous. I couldn’t say whether it was a bad nervous or a good nervous. But I had too many other things to worry about to stick around figuring out which one. I walked over to the cabin door and reached for the door handle. His hand closed around mine in a way that was becoming too familiar, too fast.
“Mind if I sit with you?”
I stared down at his hand over mine wondering what to do. I would look seriously horrible if I couldn’t just sit with someone who had recently rescued me from falling into the Lethe.
“On one condition,” I said.
“Anything,” he said. I raised my eyebrows. He grinned again. I fought a tickly feeling in my stomach—fear or excitement?
“No more questions.”
He looked disappointed but then brightened. “Fine,” he said. “We can talk about me instead,” and he locked his arm in mine and led me over to a seat near a heater.
True to his word, he told me about himself. He’d been raised in Bradbury, a working-class Hyrke neighborhood in the southwest section of New Babylon. He had a younger brother, Matt, who was seventeen and trying to decide where to go to college. The top contenders were my alma mater, Gaillard, and the Engineering Institute. Apparently Matt was some kind of mechanical genius. I told Ari that I’d gone to Gaillard.
“You’re kidding?” he said, sounding genuinely surprised. Was he surprised at finding a connection between us, no matter how tenuous? New Babylonians tended to do that when they found they shared something in common with a stranger. That’s what happened when you lived in a city populated with a million people. Or was he surprised that someone who’d willingly jumped off a pier to a moving boat would be accepted at Gaillard? Gaillard wasn’t for academic slackers. You had to have excellent grades just to get in, let alone stand out against your peers. My parents had sent Night and I there before the ink was dry on our Ajaccio Academy diplomas. It was the perfect solution for them. The urban campus had no plants for me to kill and the Hyrke curriculum offered no occult training to confuse (or educate) us.
Ari told me he’d gone to Etincelle last night to stay with his aunt. She was his mother’s sister and I gathered they were close. He’d brought her a birthday present—a garnet pendant on a silver chain—because the sisters’ favorite color was red.
“What’s your favorite color?” he said suddenly.
I opened my mouth to answer but then realized I’d be opening the door again to further questions about myself so I said instead, “What’s yours?”
“Black,” he said slowly, looking at my hair and then bringing his gaze back to my eyes. My heart skipped a beat. I hoped he’d think my rosy cheeks were due to the cold.
“Who’s your aunt?” I asked, thinking I would probably know her.
“Judy Pinkerton.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “She lives on the Decemai estate.” He nodded. The Decemaus family lived off the Lemiscus too but miles from us.
I felt myself opening up a little as we talked. Ari wasn’t the type to burst into spontaneous laughter. But I had fun. It had been a long time since I’d chatted it up with a Hyrke. Their conversations always seemed so normal. Maybe pretending to be a Hyrke at St. Lucifer’s wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Too soon the crossing ended and our little ferry started docking on the north bank. I grabbed my pack from underneath my seat and prepared to go. Ari grabbed my hand—a not unpleasant habit he had adopted over the last hour or so.
“Let’s get together again,” he said.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Why? This crossing was one of the best I’ve ever had.”
Wow. Really? Surprisingly, I felt the same, but I knew he wouldn’t have said that if he’d known he’d been sitting next to someone who could instantly turn him to ashes.
“Come on, I want to hear more about you, Noon. You made me talk about myself al
most the whole time. Next time, it’s your turn.”
I just stared at him, speechless and nearly numb with the power of my wanting things to be different.
“Come on, you can’t hide forever.” Was that my plan? I hope I didn’t look as pained as I felt.
I shook my head. “I’ll see you around.”
I resisted the impulse to hug him. Sure, he’d maybe saved my life and we’d spent a pleasant hour crossing the Lethe, but I didn’t even really know this guy.
“I’m sure you will,” he said and smiled. Then he turned around and walked in the opposite direction of where I was headed.
I watched him for a while, wondering if I’d made a mistake. I’d had Hyrke flings before. He might be a welcome distraction from all the stress St. Lucifer’s was sure to heap on me. On the other hand, it was more likely the guy would become an unwanted complication. I turned away. I walked for a while and then couldn’t help myself. I glanced over my shoulder. Ari was gone. I could see our ferry though, tied up and loading passengers bound for Etincelle. Its name was as faded as the rest of it, but I could just make out the lettering: First Light.
So much for the augury idea. A boat named after its arrival time told me nothing about my future. I turned my back on it and kept walking.
Chapter 4
My boots squished with every step so I took a cabriolet from the waterfront instead of walking. My cabbie, a polite nontalker who expressed zero reaction to my destination, dropped me at a courtyard in front of what appeared to be the main building. I tipped him extra for his reserve on the way over. He looked at the money, grunted, and sped off. I turned to face my new home.
