by Lan Chan
“Justine,” the man said, “please take your pets out of the classroom. It seems to be distracting our new students.”
The girl who had escorted us here clapped her hands. The zombies stood to attention. They marched out with Justine like well-trained soldiers. I couldn’t help thinking about the undead I had to face during my first semester trials. If Justine lost control of her pets, they would undoubtedly tear us to pieces. I made up my mind to carry the demon blade with me at all times.
When Justine returned minus her pets, I only relaxed marginally. “Alright, everybody,” the man said. “Let’s settle in.” He indicated to a few spare cushions. Dragging one of the bigger ones out to the front of the room, he sat down on it. The other students followed suit facing him. I tried not to think who and what might have touched the cushions as I sat down with my legs crossed in front of me.
“For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Professor Flint. I’m glad to see we have some new faces. I congratulate you on getting past your prejudices. Few of the supernatural community ever trespass over these hallowed halls for no better reason than ignorance.”
I sat on my hands, thankful that he couldn’t read my thoughts. Right now, I wanted to run out of these hallowed halls. I’d made the mistake of staring at the bones on the floor. I swear I could see maggots burrowing into the bone marrow. I fought hard to keep my gag reflex in check.
“This semester you have signed up to learn Undead Magic. The name itself does a poor job at describing what is a complex and elegant branch of magic. The Council would have you believe that the skills you possess are evil. But what is life without death? What is light without darkness? If there is no horror, how can there be beauty? Everything is about balance. We bring that balance to the world even though we are shunned for it.”
I could see the other students around me nodding. Sophie was glancing surreptitiously at them, her mouth in a soft but thin line. With her reputation and ancestry, I was pretty sure she could relate to what they were saying. At the same time, it probably scared her. That was exactly how I was feeling.
“Now,” Professor Flint said. “Let’s try and get as much of the theory out of the way early on in the piece so we can concentrate on the practical. Turn your textbooks to page six.”
I did so. It was a chapter on the origin of the undead. “Who would like to read for us?”
Justine raised her hand. The professor nodded at her. She started at the top of the page. “‘For as long as sorcery has been present, there has been necromancy to balance it,’” she started. As she read, I noticed her pointed incisors snagging on her bottom lip. She was a vampire.
Mixed feelings warred inside of me. The history of undead magic was like the inverse of Herbology. It was mostly the same trajectory. The only difference was that one arm was about life and the living and the other arm was about death. Both of them had a heavy emphasis on balance.
I wasn’t sure whether Justine was unwittingly adding compulsion to her voice while she read but I found myself in an almost trance-like state. “‘It is a little-known fact that the mage who founded the First Order was a necromancer,’” Justine read. “‘The field of necromancy has steep connections to the Hell dimension. Thus, we are best equipped to guard against it.’”
“Thank you, Justine,” Professor Flint said. “Now if you could all open the packages you have in front of you, we will try some basic reversion spells.”
I wasn’t sure when he’d done it, but a hessian sack had appeared by my feet. Inside was a smoothed piece of obsidian rock, a red thread, a black candle, and some salt. I was thinking it was all pretty tame when Professor Flint stepped in front of me and handed me another bag of bones. “Um…”
He smiled. “It won’t come to life unless you ask it to,” he said, like it was somehow comforting. He stepped away and handed Sophie the same. I mimicked screaming. Sophie promptly dropped the bones on the floor. She prodded them with her foot.
“Now,” the professor said. “Turn to page two hundred and three in the textbook. There you will find the basic summoning spell and wards to keep the spirits in the bone circle.”
Everyone else in the room got to it. I couldn’t keep my eyes off Justine. She arranged the bones into a circle. Next, she placed the obsidian rock in the centre and dripped black wax over it. She sprinkled salt around the edge. It was when she slashed her pointer finger with a razor blade and pressed it to the obsidian that my alarm bells blared. I flipped to the page in question. Yep. There it was. The tip that blood made necromancy stronger.
I couldn’t fault its effectiveness. Justine chanted the summoning spell. Right before my eyes, a cloud of mist appeared inside her circle. One by one the other students completed the summoning.
“Is everything okay?” Professor Flint asked. He crouched down in front of Sophie and me. Sophie scratched at her head absently.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “We’re just getting used to everything. Bloodline doesn’t allow necromancy.”
“Yes, of course. This will take some getting used to.” He turned to me. “But I understand both of you are gifted in this field. I’m glad you have decided to venture out of your comfort zone.”
Sadly, we stayed well within said comfort zone for the rest of the class. The others summoned and extinguished spirits left, right, and centre. Sophie and I merely watched.
It was both a relief and a disappointed when the bell rang. I groaned silently as I got up off the cushion. I was massaging my right thigh to dispel the pins and needles when Professor Flint appeared again.
“Alessia.” I glanced up to find him right beside me. How did these supernaturals move so silently?
“Yes?”
“I understand Andrei Popescu had been giving you a bit of a hard time.” Hah! Total understatement. It was only then I remembered I still had the cat’s heart in my backpack. “I know it’s hard to see right now. But Andrei wasn’t always so...bleak. I apologise in advance for his actions. And I hope you’ll try and be open-minded for his sake.”
I didn’t know what else to say. He gave me a nod. “Oh, Professor? How exactly would someone go about removing a curse from a still-beating cat’s heart?”
He didn’t even blink an eye at my strange question. “You need to pierce it with a magical weapon and speak the words of light for rest.”
I scratched at me cheek. “And those words of rest would be...”
Okay, now that chagrined look I was used to. “Shamayin.”
He made me repeat it a couple dozen times until I wasn’t completely destroying the pronunciation. Then he made me repeat it again for good measure.
“Is it just me,” Sophie said as we raced to Herbology, “or were the Nightbloods a hell of a lot nicer than the other so-called enlightened species?”
I had been thinking the exact same thing.
Sophie and I were a tiny bit late for Herbology. Thankfully, this was the one class where I could coast a little. It was no surprise that only one or two of the Fae from Pantheon had chosen to join this class. It wasn’t even all that popular with the Bloodline students. I wasn’t surprised to see the Evil Three amongst the weeds. Peter and Thalia were making us “identify” foreign plants. Otherwise known as weeding the raised beds using free student labour. I was hunched over the Tuscan Kale bed cursing the prolific nature of chickweed when Peter found me.
“How are things going?” he asked. He sat down heavily on the knee-high wooden sleepers that bordered each bed.
“Not bad. Though right now I’m wondering why we don’t use spells to stop weeds from growing in here.”
He only smiled at me. “Weeding gives you time to think.”
True. Unfortunately, all I could think about at the moment was whether the cat’s heart was leaving blood stains in my backpack. It occurred to me that he was referring to his own thinking. While he was talking to me, his attention often strayed to where the Evil Three were kneeling in the dirt. I suspect it wasn’t them he was actually seeing.
“Is she still not speaking to you?” I asked. Though I had been able to force her to let go of Terran, Rachel was on no-speaking terms with a lot of people.
Peter sighed. His entire body hunched over as though he was weary to his very bones. “Her mother was always the one who dealt with this kind of thing,” he said. “I never know what to say to get through to her.”
I reached out for his hand. “Maybe she just needs some time.”
“I suppose so.”
After helping me with a small patch of chickweed, he groaned and got up. “Peter,” I said. “Any chance I can leave class ten minutes early to do something important?”
He cast a wary glance at my backpack. “You can leave now if you like. Thalia is already saying she needs to do a cleaning spell to get those bad vibes out of the garden.”
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure if it was something different you’re trying on account of your newly acquired powers.”
The indignation was strong. Huffing, I grabbed a trowel from the potting shed and stole out of the kitchen garden. I cast around in all directions. Where the heck should I do this? Definitely somewhere obscured. The last thing I needed was for someone to walk in on me. If I were a cat, I’d like to be buried close to a wide-open space where I could run and climb.
There was a dense patch of catnip in the grove of olive and fig trees in between the junior and senior campuses. Giselle would rip my arm off if I was late to training so I bolted as quickly as I could. The shifted Academy layout didn’t help. Finally, I found the right path. The high brick wall of the walled garden came into view. It was only a short distance from there to the junior campus bridge. I turned the corner at a breakneck pace and almost snapped my spine when I screeched to a stop at the sight in front of me. Beneath the dappled shade of a pair of figs, Kai was standing there with his arms around Chanelle.
19
They raised their heads at the sound of my stomping feet. For the millionth time I cursed my human noisiness and my inability to teleport. I wasn’t sure which of the two of them was more surprised. What got me was that I wasn’t. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the voice of my twelve-year-old self piped up. “Told you so,” she said. “Did you really think you could hold on to him?” Everybody you care about goes away.
Kai immediately dropped his arms but Chanelle reached out and clung to his shirt. I couldn’t breathe. Without speaking, I turned on my heel and ran the other way. I wasn’t sure what hurt more, the stabbing stitch at my side or the feeling of my heart constricting. It wasn’t long before I had to pause to catch my breath. Somehow, I’d run across the bridge to the junior campus and almost to the track field where the kids did their physical training.
I kept walking despite the acute pain that kept lancing through my chest. Equal parts of rage, hurt, and betrayal warred with each other for dominance. I tamped down on all of it and forced myself to be numb.
Inside me, the dark magic smothered the blue hedge magic that was making the trees around me shake like they were being thrown around by a tornado. I stood there in the middle of the field with my eyes closed, trying to contain my reaction. It was difficult but old habits began to stretch their muscles. My eyes snapped open to a landscape of stars. I’d inadvertently slipped into the Ley dimension again. My aura pulsated. The perimeter of my light expanded. It ate up the other colours close by. Dread quelled some of my turmoil.
Until of course I heard the flap of wings above me. Kai landed soundlessly, his aura a duller green than I had ever seen. He took tentative steps towards me. I forced the Ley dimension to dissipate. In the real world, his expression was guarded.
Calm. Serenity. Detachment “Blue,” he said, “I’m sorry –”
Nope. In a feat fuelled entirely by rage, I stepped up and hammered my foot into his groin. There went playing it cool. Hopefully it took his ability to procreate with it. My human strength was pitiful against a Nephilim, but a surprise attack was a surprise attack. It was totally worth the crack of pain that radiated up my leg to see his eyes widen. He stumbled like a fallen soldier. His angel blade appeared. Kai stabbed it into the ground, using it as a crutch. He took a laboured breath. The way he kept blinking soothed some of my anger.
What I wouldn’t give to capture the moment and play it back over and over again. Unfortunately, his ability to heal would make this a short victory. I turned around and was prepared to hightail it out of there.
“Wait,” he gasped.
I kept walking. I could hear him limping along with me. “Today is the anniversary of her father’s death.”
My legs stopped moving. Sympathy tried to tear down the walls I was building around my heart. Then the implications of what he was saying sank in. Both their fathers died in the same battle. I turned back around. He was leaning over slightly but that was the extent of his injury.
“So it’s the anniversary of the massacre of your entire family and instead of telling me about it or spending the time with Jacqueline and Cassie, you’re out here playing handsies with Chanelle?”
His expression clouded over. “Screw you, Kai. You don’t get a free pass for the rest of your life because of one tragedy. I’m sorry for what happened. If you want to wallow in self-pity, then by all means do it. But don’t you dare use it as an excuse.”
I started to walk off. “Blue –”
“Don’t follow me!” I screamed.
For once, he actually listened. Will wonders never cease. I walked around aimlessly. The bell rang. The kids in the junior campus streamed out of their classrooms. Most of them would be hanging out now that school was over for the day. If I didn’t get to my training session soon, Giselle would lose it. What else was new?
I found Cassie in the library. She sat there with a book open staring out the window in the quiet reading section. When she saw me, her face brightened. I indicated for her to follow me outside.
“Hey!” she wrapped her arms around my waist. “What’s wrong?”
Maybe I wasn’t as suave at hiding my emotions as I thought I was. “This is exactly the position I found Kai and Chanelle in about fifteen minutes ago.”
She squeezed harder. When she let go there was a flash of something evasive in her eyes. “It sucks, doesn’t it?” she said. She looked up to the sky. “Today’s a bad day for him.”
“Did you plan to see him?”
She shook her head. “We usually try and leave him alone.” I couldn’t quite interpret what I had seen in her eyes until this very moment. I thought of her sitting there in the library staring off into space. It occurred to me that today was a bad day for her too.
“So,” I said. “Any chance you want to come along while I bury a hexed cat’s heart?”
“Excuse me?”
“Andrei was involved.”
“Oh.” She didn’t ask any more questions. We agreed that the place I had chosen prior to my slight meltdown was ideal. I bit my tongue and tried to avoid looking at the spot in question.
I dug a ten-inch hole that was twice as deep as it was wide. “Ready?” I asked her.
“Not really.”
That made two of us. I pulled the cat’s heart out of the backpack. The paper was soaked in magical blood. It beat in my hand. My stomach roiled. I dropped it into the hole. Cassie gave a squeal and backed up a little.
“That’s disgusting.” She made dry retching sounds. I tried to breathe through my mouth. I called to Morning Star. The demon blade appeared in my hand.
Just before I was about to stab it through the heart, Cassie stopped me. “Umm, maybe you should practice pronouncing the word of light again.”
It was prudent advice. “Maybe you should do this instead,” I told her.
“No way. I’m not going anywhere near that thing. Can’t you hear it beating? That’s so super creepy.”
I practiced the word of light until Cassie said it would be okay. My hand was shaking when I gripped Morning Star’s handle
. I took a couple of deep breaths.
“Here goes nothing.”
I stabbed the heart. I swear I could feel it beating right up to the palm of my hands. “Shamayin!” I said. White light exploded out from the hole. It struck us both and threw us across the grass. I drew a circle around Cassie and me before either of us hit the ground. A little late, in hindsight.
My vision slipped into the Ley dimension. There was a moment when my blue light flared so brightly it blanketed all the other stars. What the hell? Every time I performed some kind of magic, it busted up my vision in the Ley dimension. I heard Cassie groaning. Feeling slightly winded, I coughed and pushed myself up. The world became dull again.
“Cassie?”
She scrambled to her feet. “I’m okay. Should it be smoking like that?” She was referring to the hole in the ground. I covered my nose because now the air was permeated with the stench of something rotten. A cat’s heart well past its prime.
Seeing that nothing had gone too wrong, I kicked Morning Star out of the way and filled the hole with dirt. I compacted it with my foot and blew out a breath. It didn’t seem right to just leave the thing bald on the ground like that. So I placed my hands over the patch of dirt and directed some of my hedge magic into it. The grass from the surrounding area extended their runners out. Slowly, the mound stitched together into an unbroken field of green.
“There,” I said.
Now that I’d flouted all the rules, I decided to have dinner on the junior campus with Cassie and the boys. Charles kept eying me throughout the meal. “Shouldn’t you be training right now?” he asked.
“I’m giving myself a break.”
“You’re going to give yourself an early grave if you don’t train.”
“When did you become such a buzzkill?”
“Since I have all of my pocket money on you winning the games.”
My fork stopped mid-way to my mouth. “You bet on me?” I asked, completely shocked.
Charles banged his head on the table. “Duh!” he said. “You think we’d bet against you? Luther has even more money on it.”
