“That’s very modest,” Bastet said as she made her way over from the fallen tree she had been perched on.
“Actually, compared to supreme goddess of the universe, it is modest,” Tsubame said. “Well, not the universe yet. Only of my world for now.”
“Your world?” Devdan asked.
“Oh yes. I’m not from around here, though my world is similar to yours save for the fact that it’s gotten so boring lately. Being ruler gets boring when there’s no rebellion to squash, no empires to conquer. But here… There seems to be enough of that to keep me entertained for a long time before I manage to make everyone fall in line.”
MaLeila sighed. “Perfect. Another fucking run of the mill nut trying to take over the world.”
Tsubame laughed and said, “I’m far from run of the mill.”
“Not modest at all,” Bastet muttered.
“You three are free to help me if you want. I’m going to need allies, supporters, subjects, begin the royal hierarchy.”
“Really,” Devdan said. “Where did you come from?”
“Somewhere in the universe,” Tsubame said vaguely. “Pity you don’t wish to help me. I guess I’ll have to start by myself, just like last time.”
MaLeila had no time for dealing with another delusional sorceress with a test in the morning that she was likely to sleep through if she didn’t get home some time before dawn.
“That’s all nice and dandy,” MaLeila began, “but we can’t let you do that. If you cooperate, we’ll just take you straight to the Magic Council.”
“I’d honestly like to see you try,” Tsubame said and then she turned on her heel and began to walk away from them in small graceful strides.
Stunned by her audacity, because even the most insane sorceresses and sorcerers MaLeila encountered had enough sense not turn their backs on her, MaLeila watched the woman silently and calmly walk away.
“I should probably stop her, shouldn’t I?” MaLeila asked. She couldn’t be entirely sure. Some sorcerers, while crazy, were little more than harmless and MaLeila wouldn’t bother trying to subdue them.
Devdan shrugged, it was Bastet who said, “Better safe than sorry. I’ve never heard of Tsubame before.”
Contrary to her youthful looks, Bastet was at least a century and a half old. After their old master, Claude Thorne, died in the early to mid-1800s, while Devdan was put to sleep and sealed away, Bastet fled America, not keen on risking being made into a slave again and became a servant of the Magic Council. As such, in the last hundred fifty years or so, the woman had seen and heard of most of the sorcerers and magic users that were registered in the registry of magic practitioners. If Bastet had no idea who the person was, whether they were attacked or not, it was probably a good idea to send them to the council even though neither MaLeila, Bastet, nor Devdan liked dealing with the council to begin with.
MaLeila raised her staff extending her own magic to gather and collected the magic attached to the air around them to create solid streams of wind. The wind streams, barely perceptible by physical sight, wrapped around Tsubame’s wrists, her ankles, and eventually her entire body, stopping Tsubame in her tracks.
“We’re going to have to keep her sealed temporarily,” MaLeila said tiredly. “I do not feel like dealing with the council tonight.”
“That’s assuming you can keep me at all,” Tsubame suddenly said.
“Great. This one’s cocky,” Bastet said while rolling her eyes.
MaLeila sighed as she yanked on the windy chains to pull Tsubame to her. When Tsubame didn’t come to her, MaLeila yanked again and when Tsubame didn’t move again, she frowned.
“What?” Devdan asked.
“She’s not coming.”
“What do you mean she’s not coming?” Bastet asked.
“I’m pulling on her and she’s not coming,” MaLeila said rolling her eyes. “There’s really no other way to say it.”
MaLeila felt Devdan’s magic intertwine with her own to help her summon the woman toward them. She didn’t budge.
Tsubame giggled then and said, “I was like you once. Cocky, with all the magical potential in the world, but weak.”
MaLeila and Devdan lost grip on the wind chains and they unraveled from around Tsubame. Tsubame turned back to them and collected the streams of wind into a compact ball in her hand. She tsked, bored gaze on MaLeila as she said, “Silly girl. You couldn’t even face me without your guardians at your side. A real sorceress calls on them as a last resort. How long have you been using your magic? Five, six years?”
“Not like it’s secret,” MaLeila replied because as much as she was disdained, the whole magic world whispered about the black girl from America with no magic family who inherited the legacy of Claude Thorne, a nineteenth century white American sorcerer, and had most of the same powers if not more than the famous sorcerer; the girl who gave the Magic Council the proverbial fuck you and held her own against troublesome sorcerers and sorceresses that not even the most powerful magic families wanted to be bothered with.
“You’re still just a baby,” Tsubame said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Let mother show you how it’s done.”
The wind in Tsubame’s hand contracted more, but barely a second afterward, she frowned and let the wind harmlessly dissipate.
“Odd. I’m unable to properly harness my magic in this world,” she said to herself as she stared at her hand. “Hm. I suppose I shouldn’t have tried to jump into this without investigating my predicament first. I’ll have to figure out what’s going on.”
That said the wind pick up, blowing in a fine, but thick fog that obscured their vision. When it was gone, Tsubame was gone, having not even bothered to acknowledge them again, and also gone were the debris and destruction she’d left behind in the aftermath of her landing as though she had never been there in the first place.
2
MaLeila felt eyes on her from across the hall and looked to her left to see Devdan leaning sideways on the wall amongst a bunch of other senior boys. He wasn’t looking at her or at least not anymore because he’d never let her catch him watching her.
“You two really should just get over yourselves and fuck already. I think you’d both feel much better,” MaLeila’s best friend, a Caucasian girl across from her with chocolate brown hair, blue eyes, and a soft oval face.
“Do you know how old Devdan is?” MaLeila asked dryly.
The girls stopped. “Okay, He was near his early twenties when his master died, he was then put to sleep and sealed away and at some point in the last five years or so, he was released from his seal so… knocking on thirty, right?”
“He was born in the 1800’s. That makes him far older than thirty.”
“The time he was sealed doesn’t count.”
“Nina,” MaLeila said sighing, though she was unable to help looking across the room at the young man who looked not a day past nineteen despite his age whether he was thirty or two hundred.
She’d never admit it to Nina, because Nina liked to meddle in affairs that weren’t any of her business, but for a while now there had been a thick sexual tension between her and Devdan. It wasn’t always this way. Back when MaLeila first discovered Claude’s book of magical theory—a theory that allowed sorcerers and sorceresses with a certain special affinity for magic to not just manipulate reality and a single type or certain specific types of yin or yang magic, but control all types of magic and across multiple dimensions—Bastet hadn’t mentioned to her that Claude had a second servant whom he sealed away before he died. Nor had she mentioned that he had probably been long awakened and released from Claude’s sealing spell, was pissed off, and seeking to kill the one who was to become the man’s magical heir.
It wasn’t until she was fourteen and she narrowly escaped Devdan when he tried to put a bullet through her head that Bastet finally relented and told her about her younger brother, not so much biologically but definitely in every other sense that counted. Long story short, he’d been a
slave, Claude bought him because of his strong magic potential and trained him, and when Claude died he sealed Devdan and put him to sleep after giving them instructions to wait for and find his future heir. According to Bastet, the man overestimated the strength he had left and only managed to seal Devdan, leaving Bastet on her own. MaLeila suspected even back when the woman first told her that there was more to the story. The only thing Bastet added was that Devdan had strong emotional ties to Claude and was being stubborn about serving a new sorceress, so the best way for him to deal with her was to kill her. After she finally beat him in a duel, managing to rip his guns away and temporarily suppress his magic, he finally decided not to kill her.
He came and went after that. Sometimes going months in between visits to come check in on Bastet, MaLeila, and MaLeila’s mother, whom was very aware of MaLeila’s magical talent and whom Devdan had a strange affinity for. Then MaLeila’s mother’s cancer returned, much more aggressive than the first time the woman managed to beat it in her late teens, and none of the magic MaLeila had access to could save her from it. Almost no time later, the attacks from sorcerers, magicians, and other magic users who wanted to be able to use Claude’s theory for their own gain began. When the Magic Council decided to turn a blind eye to it, Devdan finally decided to stay, enrolling in her school with her to be her bodyguard back when her attackers were bold enough to stalk and attack her at school. Somewhere in between the sudden dismissals from school; the hiding; the holding her behind him and close to him—as he either manipulated the shadows, threw black magical daggers, or cocked a gun when they didn’t want their enemy to sense their magic; the pretend kisses; somewhere amongst all that came the realization to her that he was an attractive man who could potentially be more than just her guardian or body guard or whatever they used on any given day. And somewhere along the way Devdan seemed to realize that she was no longer the teenager who used to instinctively summon her staff when he made an appearance.
Neither would ever act on the tension. Devdan because despite all his suave he was socially inept (not awkward, Bastet emphasized) and very emotionally reserved, and MaLeila because she had too much respect for him to force him to remove or close the distance that he put between him and everyone else, even if her distance was small enough that there actually was sexual tension between them. As a result though, because they didn’t know any other way to deal with it, the two were usually either fighting or blatantly pretending to ignore each other.
“Whatever,” Nina said. “I’m shutting up.”
“You can actually do that?” Devdan asked, having approached.
“Be nice, Devdan,” MaLeila said as she, Nina, and Devdan fell into step together and headed to MaLeila’s house.
As MaLeila left the building, she was able to breathe better. Though no one and nothing had attempted to attack her at school in at least a year, MaLeila still had some anxiety about someone not only attacking her at school, but someone getting hurt or worse someone finding out she was a sorceress, which would only bring her unwanted attention from the Magic Council. On that, MaLeila didn’t blame them, because as much as people loved Harry Potter there was no guarantee that people would accept magic as a something normal, that the media wouldn’t metaphorically crucify her.
“Did you send in that report to the council about Tsubame?” Devdan asked when they were off the school grounds.
MaLeila sighed. “This morning before school I sent it.”
“Tsubame?” Nina asked.
While it was a hard and fast rule of the council that no one that had no magic should be involved with, let alone know about, the affairs of the magical world unless they were part of, directly related to or born into a magic family, Nina was the one person that knew about her magic. Not like MaLeila could hide it, even though she tried. Nina was just too nosy for her own good.
“Another crazy sorceress with delusions of grandeur to take over the world,” MaLeila muttered. “The only reason I even reported it to the council is because she’s not in their database of magic users and she’s powerful enough that she might cause them a little trouble. Otherwise, I’d just deal with her.”
“The council treats you like shit and you still help them out by reporting to them powerful sorceresses that aren’t in their databases or sending updates of the ones they already have?” Nina asked dryly.
“Not always,” MaLeila said. “But I figure if she’s powerful enough to cause them annoyance, they’ll deal with Tsubame themselves and that’s one less nutcase I have to worry about.”
Devdan gave her a sideways glance before looking straight ahead and continuing on their way. MaLeila knew what he was thinking, that she was being overly optimistic and giving the Magic Council more credit than they deserved. More than likely, they’d probably let Tsubame destroy her first, then take care of the wayward sorceress before stealing taking possession Claude’s famous book of magical theory. There was only one copy in the world; the original copy in MaLeila’s possession.
None of them said anything more about Tsubame, and MaLeila and Nina became engrossed in a conversation about their Spanish test earlier that day. MaLeila didn’t think she failed, but she had been sleepy after being up so late and having to get in that report to the council before school.
“That’s more than I can say for me. I know I failed that shit,” Nina muttered. Then she looked at Devdan. “Hey, can you teach me like you teach Leila?”
The rest of the walk home was Devdan ignoring Nina as Nina pestered him about Spanish lessons.
“Nina, I’ll teach you after he teaches me. How about that?” MaLeila asked as she opened the door and made her way inside her house.
As she made her offer to Nina, MaLeila spied Bastet in the living room ahead, siting on one of the couches. She opened her mouth to greet the woman, who was sitting straight up with her legs crossed at knee and her arms lying crossed in her lap, but then saw the young man sitting across from Bastet with a cup of coffee in his hands. He had tanned clean shaven skin with thick messy dirty-blonde hair and even seated, MaLeila could tell he was around Devdan’s height, with broad shoulders and chest and a slim waist, accented by his perfectly tailored suit. Unlike Bastet who was tense and guarded, he was the picture of relaxed, leaning back on the couch with his coffee and the top buttons of his shirt undone.
“Who’s this?” MaLeila asked Bastet.
“Pardon my rudeness,” the young man said as he sat his coffee down and stood to his feet. Just as MaLeila had predicted, he was around Devdan’s height.
He approached her and reached out a hand to her. MaLeila warily took it. When he let go of her hand, he reached out to Devdan, who looked at the man’s hand and then back at the man’s face before nonchalantly grasping it and letting go. It was as he was letting go of Nina’s hand that he said, “I’m Marcel Brandt.”
MaLeila raised her eyebrows while saying, “And that’s supposed to matter to me because?”
“He’s from the Magic Council,” Bastet said. “They got your report about Tsubame.”
MaLeila looked from Bastet to Marcel in surprise. He certainly wasn’t the usual representative that the council sent. Most of the representatives the council sent were stuffy old looking average powered sorcerers who looked down on her because of her lack of connections in the magical world and because they were racist and didn’t think a black girl who grew up around the hood deserved to be the heir to the legacy one of the most powerful white sorcerers in history. Marcel didn’t seem condescending or uncomfortable, nor was he old—or at least he didn’t look it, because the more powerful the sorcerer, the slower they aged. Some could even simply stop aging after a while. MaLeila would be able to, if she wanted to. She still hadn’t decided how much she wanted magic to intrude in her adult life yet.
“Oh,” MaLeila said as she went to sit next to Bastet. Nina came to sit beside her while she felt Devdan stand behind her, eyes undoubtedly on Marcel.
When Marcel was settled back in th
e arm chair again, MaLeila said, “I didn’t expect the council to respond right away.”
MaLeila hadn’t expected the council to respond at all.
“Well, when a sorceress supposedly drops out of another dimension and we have no record of putting her there, nor of her ever existing, that’s a problem we have to look into.”
“Glad they were so concerned,” MaLeila replied dryly. “They usually aren’t.”
“Try not to take it too personal. If it doesn’t directly affect them and the magical world isn’t about to be exposed to the general masses, the council doesn’t care about anything but themselves and their power. In fact, you should be flattered that you ruffle them so much. It means you’re special,” Marcel said flashing a quick smile.
Nina and MaLeila snickered. While Nina didn’t have many experiences with the Magic Council because most representatives preferred that she leave the room when they wanted to talk to MaLeila, MaLeila’s encounters with the council always consisted of brainwashed representatives who thought the council could do no wrong, so Marcel’s jibe at them was a welcome breath of fresh air. It did cross her mind that he was trying to get her to drop her guard, but that’s what Bastet and Devdan were there for. Bastet hadn’t cracked a smile and MaLeila knew Devdan enough to know that he hadn’t either.
“Now, describe her again for me,” Marcel asked.
“We did that in the report,” MaLeila pointed out.
“I know. But see if you can remember any additional details. We want to ensure that she’s not someone that’s in our database in disguise.”
MaLeila shrugged. “She was wearing a long red kimono dress and red lipstick and had olive skin, almond shaped brown eyes and wavy black hair. There’s not much to tell.”
“So it might be safe to assume by her outfit and her name that she’s also of some Japanese decent,” Marcel said and then added, “That could still be anyone. You can’t remember any distinguishing characteristics.”
The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Awakening Page 2
