by Jill Archer
“Death is certain, life is not,” I blurted out without thinking.
Seknecus looked mildly shocked.
“I mean to do well,” I said quickly. “I will do well,” I added emphatically.
Seknecus grunted. “Do you have your Manipulation materials?”
“Not yet.”
Seknecus rustled about on his shelves and located a couple of dusty volumes. “Maegesters hardly ever buy new Manipulation books. The margin notes from previous students can prove invaluable,” he said, handing the books to me. I accepted with what I hoped was gracious thanks and he continued. “You should think about which Angel you might want to work with too. It won’t be necessary right away, but next semester, you’ll need to pair up with someone from the Joshua School.”
“That won’t be a problem,” I said.
He stood there for a moment, pondering. Finally, he said simply:“You must take great care here, Ms. Onyx.”
I blinked. Take great care. Of course. What student wanted to be accused of being careless? But then I realized he wasn’t talking about any academic threat just now. He was talking about the recent demon attack.
I nodded and then remembered Fitz saying I should tell him about Amaryllis Apatite and my suspicions that the New Babylon train station was the link among the attacks.
“I saw your announcement about the Mederi who was attacked and abducted two nights ago. Do they know who it was yet?”
“Laurel Scoria from the Hawthorn Tribe. She rode up from Emmer last Thursday on the North-South Express.”
“You know there was another Mederi, from the Demeter Tribe, who went missing the week before classes started. The last place she was seen was boarding the North-South Express at the southern terminal… around 2:00 p.m.”
Seknecus grunted his acknowledgment. “Amaryllis Apatite.”
“And there was another Mederi…” I realized I didn’t even know the name of Ari’s old girlfriend. “She was attacked three days before classes started. At the New Babylon train station.”
Seknecus looked at me with a gimlet eye. “You seem to be remarkably well informed for someone who just declared, Ms. Onyx.” His eyebrow arched higher. “And for someone who seemed so reluctant, until recently, to participate in the policing of rogare demons.”
Until recently. Was he kidding? I still wanted no part of policing demons. But I couldn’t resist one last question.
“The Mederi who got away…”
“Bryony Ijolite.”
“Right. Her. How did she do it? How did she get away?”
“Your father, actually. He’s the one that saved her. Thank Luck he chose to walk back from here to the Council offices via the train station. Otherwise, Ms. Ijolite would likely be missing too.”
“What was my father doing here?”
“He’s the executive,” Seknecus said, giving me a look that made me think he was doubting the academic scores my mother must have reported on my application. “Executives have always taken a keen interest in all of the MIT’s trained here at St. Luck’s.”
Well, I was sure to be the exception to that practice. But Seknecus’ next words belied my thoughts. “Actually, someone from the Office of the Executive stopped by this morning to inquire after you. He left something for you too,” he said, his eyes glinting. “That’s the other reason I wanted to see you.”
“There must be some mistake.”
Seknecus walked over to his desk and rummaged in one of the drawers.
“No, certainly not,” he said, finally locating the object he was searching for. He held up a small silver ball, about the size of a Yule tree ornament. The ball was attached to a silver chain and it swung gently back and forth as Seknecus walked over and handed it to me. I took it and examined it more closely.
Mrs. Aster would have loved it. The silver had a lustrous patina that could only mean the artifact was as ancient as it looked. There were symbols and ciphers all over it, most of them I couldn’t read. Someone had lovingly cared for this objet d’art. Though it was old, it shined as if recently polished, its filigreed scrolling metalwork a testament to some long dead artist. I was touched, but confused.
“He sent a letter with it,” Seknecus said, tucking the note in with the books he’d just given me. “You’re to open that first.”
I tucked the little ball into my cloak pocket and left. On the way home, it warmed me better than a brazier. By the time I returned to Megiddo, I felt toasty and warm, almost happy. I dropped the Manipulation books on my desk and carefully pulled the ball out of my pocket. I took off my cloak, keeping one hand on the silver ball the entire time. I walked over to my bed and sat down, the ball in one hand and the letter in the other. I opened the letter.
Noon,
The familiar’s name is Serafina. She is small, but powerful enough for practice. Read Chapter 9 of Alexios Skleros’ Lesser Demons before you release her. Practice alone and for no more than two hours a day. The ball is for your protection… and everyone else’s.
I never wanted this for you. A long time ago your mother made a foolish promise and we have all paid the price.
Your father, Karanos
p.s. push the button to open the ball
A familiar? My hand shook slightly as I held the ball up by its chain to peer at it more closely. There was a demon in there. No matter how small, the thought should have been mildly terrifying. But instead I felt wonderfully intoxicated and numb around the edges, like I’d drank too much wine at a party. I looked for the button but couldn’t find it. I twisted and turned the ball, holding it up to the afternoon light streaming through my dormitory window, and finally found the catch. I pushed it gently with my thumb and the ball sprang open.
Immediately the intoxicated, numb feeling went supernova. Serafina’s signature made me feel like my body had been liquefied and then turned inside out to congeal in the cold. I suddenly craved warmth and this demon was the only source that could satisfy.
I stared at her, hardly able to reconcile her with a lifetime of imagined fears. Haljan myths and legends spoke of brutish beasts hell-bent on fury and destruction. Haljan paintings, bas reliefs, and statuaries also often depicted demons as cruel fiends and vicious monsters. But Serafina didn’t look dangerous. She looked ungainly.
She belched and stretched, glaring at me through two black eyes the size of beads. She was naked but it was no pretty sight. Her body, though diminutive, was bloated as though she’d died in the Lethe and been left too long. Her skin was a grayish, sickly looking green, and she rubbed her distended belly with one clawed hand as she grinned malevolently at me.
“Do you speak?” I said.
The creature cocked her head, a puzzled expression on her face. Great. A demon who didn’t speak my language. I held out my hand, wondering if she would jump to my palm. I wanted to walk over to my desk to see if I had a reference book on one of the three primary demon languages, but suddenly five feet seemed too far to walk without her.
She jumped to my palm without hesitation. The sensation was like being bitten by a spider. My palm stung and a sharp pain started moving up my arm. At the same time though, the all-over numb feeling I’d experienced before increased so the pain didn’t seem to matter. I cradled Serafina to me and started riffling through my desk searching for a primer on Vandalic, Venetic, or Vestinian. I found one and repeated my earlier question in all three languages. Or at least what I hoped was the three demon languages. I’d never learned them and my tongue stumbled on the unfamiliar consonants and odd guttural sounds. Eagerness turned to muted interest and then finally to outright displeasure when it became clear to Serafina that I wasn’t going to say anything she could understand. She viciously clawed my palm and I transferred her to my shoulder, absentmindedly sucking at the base of my thumb where she’d cut me.
With Serafina safely ensconced on my shoulder and pumping out the magical equivalent of ten tons of serotonin in her signature, it was time to call my mother back. I walked over to the el
ectro-harmonic machine that hung on the wall. I picked up the receiver and cranked the lever. The line crackled as it came to life. The operator connected me with our house line in Etincelle. Three jangling rings later I was on the verge of hanging up when my mother answered. Her voice was smooth and rich, like ice cream, and just as cold.
“I guess you heard the news,” I said, skipping the preliminaries that never went well between us anyway. I wondered who’d told her. The school? Doubtful. Peter? Doubly doubtful. Mrs. Aster? Luck forbid. Winifred Aster and Aurelia Onyx had never really hit it off.
“Your father told me,” she said.
That must have been an interesting discussion. I was glad not to have been around for it. Watching my parents try to talk to each other was like watching two towns try to destroy each other through simultaneous siege. Their brand of psychological warfare was all about deprivation. Any real fight would put them dangerously close to a confrontation where talking and touching might occur. I had an instant vision—my father passing my mother a note, “She declared,” and my mother crumpling up the note, tossing it in a trash can, and lighting it on fire—with matches, of course—and my father simply walking out. I’m sure the discussion hadn’t actually taken place like that, but something similar had likely occurred.
“Have you heard from Night?” I said, grasping at something to say.
“Not since his last letter. I gave Peter the one he sent for you. Did you get it?”
“Yes. Thank you. But you haven’t heard from him since?”
She must have heard the concern in my voice.
“No. I guess you’ve heard about the other Mederi who was taken.”
“They put an alert up here at school.”
“Laurel Scoria. I knew her, Noon. A long time ago. We trained at Hawthorn together. She was almost as good a midwife as… Well, it doesn’t matter now.”
“I’m sorry, Mother.”
A few seconds passed and then she said, “I suppose you wouldn’t believe me if I told you I wished you were here at home.”
I had to hold the receiver away from my ear for a moment in disbelief. Nope. She was right. Wouldn’t. Didn’t.
“You were the one that enrolled me here in the first place.”
“I know,” she sighed. “It’s where you need to be.”
“Have you heard from Peter?”
“No.”
I was running out of things to say.
“Someone put an evergreen in my locker,” I blurted out. I don’t know why I said it. Looking for sympathy in the most unlikely places, I guess. My mother was silent on the other end for so long I thought she might have hung up. But then she said: “I put the evergreen in your locker, Noon.”
I exhaled sharply. Serafina snarled in my ear and started scratching my neck and pulling my hair. I tried to bat her off my shoulder but she avoided my swipes, getting nastier. Her magic had a poisonous feel to it and nausea replaced the numb feeling from before.
My mother had given me the evergreen?
“Why?” I croaked, finally managing to grab Serafina around the belly. I squeezed hard and yanked her out of my hair. She squirmed and tried to bite my hand. Did my mother have any idea how that evergreen had made me feel? Did she have any idea what it felt like to know you could kill a thing just by touching it? I threw Serafina down on my bed and blasted her with a jolt of waning magic to stop her squalling. Of course my mother didn’t know—she was a Mederi. Leaving an evergreen, a symbol of eternal life, for me to kill was unbelievably cruel, even for her.
“I told you,” she said in that rich, creamy, cold as ice voice of hers, “you were the one who had to decide to use your magic. You were the one who had to declare.”
“Well, if you wanted Night and me to use the magic we’d been born with, why did you hide it from everyone? And why did you raise us to be so ignorant about it?” I was practically shouting, something I almost never did when speaking with her.
“Noon, I—”
I stopped listening. Something was happening in my dorm room. All of a sudden it was hot. Suddenly I remembered accidentally burning my admission letter and the napkin at Marduk’s. Was I about to set the whole room on fire? I raised my hands in front of me, palms up. A meaningless physical gesture, the only purpose of which was to focus my energy inward. I searched for the source of the surge. It wasn’t coming from me.
I hung up on my mother and walked over to my bed where Serafina fumed. She flexed her small rapier-sharp claws and snorted actual fire, singeing tiny little spots on my quilt and pillows. Must be a demon trick, I thought crazily. Even I can’t do that. Serafina met my eye and her look was full of dark emotion. Blistering waves of malevolence pulsed from her, like sickening magical radiation. My stomach threatened to revolt and I sat down heavily on the bed, my palms falling out at my sides. Serafina took it as an invitation and jumped back into my palm. This time, the sting of her touch was less. And the numbness infinitely more welcoming. I sank back into the pillows.
My dorm room’s harmonic jangled again sometime later. I had no idea how long we’d been sitting there like that. I had the vague, unsettled feeling of being woken up from a dream too early. My mind was unfocused and my muscles were stiff. I got up, carrying Serafina like she was some live, grotesque version of a children’s stuffed bear, and yanked the receiver off its hook.
“Noon, where are you? Aren’t you coming?”
The voice was concerned. For a moment I couldn’t place it. The feeling was frustrating, like when you’re late and can’t find your house keys. Finally, I realized.
“Ivy,” I said, my voice slurring a little. I tried desperately to remember where it was I was supposed to be. Thankfully, her note to me was right in front of me. I read it, puzzled that I didn’t remember reading it in the first place.
Was she calling from the Black Onion or Corpus Justica? What time was it?
It didn’t matter.
“I can’t come,” I said. I sounded like I was underwater. “I’m meeting Ari to go over some Manipulation stuff for Monday.”
I hung up and walked back over to the bed, disturbed. Something was wrong.
There were things I was supposed to be doing, but I couldn’t remember what they were. And, if I did, I wasn’t sure it would have mattered, which worried me more.
Curled in the crook of my arm, Serafina dozed contentedly, her signature drowsy and warm. I wanted nothing more than to curl back up with her. In fact, the more I focused on her, instead of trying to remember what I’d forgotten, the better I felt. But before I could lie back down, the harmonic’s bell rang again. This time, the clanging jangle woke Serafina up and my sick, nauseous feeling returned. I wanted nothing more than to get rid of it. And whoever was on the other end of the line. Again, I dragged Serafina and myself across the room, and unhooked the receiver.
“Get some good studying in?” It was Ari. His voice cut through my haze like a metal shaft through water.
“No.”
“You didn’t?” His voice sounded sharp. “What have you been doing?”
I looked down at Serafina, who was rubbing her belly and glaring at me. I didn’t want to tell him about her. There was something about the situation that made me feel guilty and defensive.
“I had other things to do,” I said.
“Like what?” He sounded annoyed. Now that our mutual interest was obvious, did that mean I had to account to him for every minute of my day?
For a moment I debated telling him about the meeting with Seknecus, how it had been predictably terrifying, yet oddly heartening. I thought about telling him how hurt I’d been to find out my mother had been the one to leave the evergreen for me to kill. And I considered sharing Serafina with him… but then an inexplicable possessiveness took hold. I wanted her all to myself.
“I can’t meet you tonight,” I said.
“Why? Noon, what’s going on? I thought you understood how precarious your situation is. Manipulation starts Monday. The Council i
s watching. You don’t have a lot of time to catch up.”
None of that seemed to frighten me anymore. Serafina was a demon and we were getting along fine.
“Seknecus gave me the books I’ll need for Manipulation,” I said, “and I told Ivy I’d study with her.”
“Seknecus gave you your Manipulation books?”
“Yep,” I said breezily. “So I’ll see you Monday.” I started to hang up.
“Noon, wait! What about tomorrow?”
Tomorrow? Today was all that mattered. And getting back to Serafina.
I hung up.
I was setting personal records. Today, I’d hung up on three people and hadn’t cracked a single book.
What in Luck’s Hell was the matter with me?
I went to bed early that night, with Serafina tucked in safely by my side. I briefly considered trying to put her back in the ball for the night but the thought of not being able to feel her signature, vile though it was at times, made me uneasy. In fact, it would be fair to say that I had a minor panic attack at the thought. So I hid the ball deep in my desk drawer, absent the demon that went with it. I snuggled up to Serafina’s cozy warmth—nasty, repugnant little creature that she was—and promptly went to sleep.
I woke prematurely. Two things alerted me that something was wrong. The relatively loud sound, in the hushed silence of my darkened dorm room, of Ivy dropping her keys and books on her desk and Serafina’s suddenly rapid-boil signature. Still groggy from sleep, but acting on instinct, I threw the covers off me and swung my legs to the floor.
“You were sleeping?” Ivy asked, surprised. She looked down at the load of stuff she’d just dumped on her desk. “Sorry. I thought you’d still be with Ari. Speaking of which…”
Ivy’s tone grew more concerned and I started to feel feverish in a horrible way. I knew Serafina didn’t like Ivy. I could feel it. But that singular thought was the only coherent one I had. Everything about me was sluggish—my thoughts, my movements, even my magic. I tried to control Serafina by shielding her magic with my own but it was like trying to broadside someone with a sled underwater. My magic wobbled and swayed. It shimmied and swerved. It did everything but hit its target or work like it was supposed to.
