by D. R. Perry
All the same, that was my room, my home. I belonged here, gabled roof and all. But it was time to leave it for the moment, at least. I carried the knapsack into the upstairs bathroom, opened the laundry hatch, and dumped the dirty clothes down the chute. After closing it, I returned the pack to my room and headed back downstairs.
The laundry machine was in the downstairs water closet, a stacked unit with the washer on the bottom and the dryer on top. I took my clothes out of the hamper under the chute and tossed them in the washer, then dumped some detergent in on top. I was supposed to do it the other way around. My generation wasn't killing household chores. I was just in a hurry, wanting to catch Bubbe before she turned in for the night.
I started the washer, knowing this cycle would give me an hour before I needed to put the clothes in the dryer. That would be enough time to chat with my grandmother downstairs.
"Come on, girl." I beckoned to Ember. She leaned against the paper towel holder, stomach distended, with an enormous grin on her scaly little face.
"Peep?" Of course, she wondered why we were leaving when we just got there.
"Were going to go see Bubbe. You'd like to see Bubbe too, right, girl?"
She stood up, fluttering her wings with excitement, but they didn't manage to lift her off the granite surface. After a few frustrated peeps, she made her way toward the edge of the counter and sat looking up at me expectantly.
"Okay, I get it. Pizza belly means you need a little help." I chuckled, stretching my hands out to lift her up to my shoulder, where she draped herself around the back of my neck.
I felt her rounded tummy against my left shoulder where I usually carried my knapsack. Ember weighed way less, even though she’d totally pigged out.
I headed down the back stairs and knocked on the service door for Bubbe's office. I heard voices inside, more than just my grandmother's. Maybe she had an emergency visit or a friend over. I waited patiently and listened to her footsteps coming down the hall toward the door.
"Aliyah, this is a surprise." Bubbe smiled.
"I'm sorry, Bubbe. I'll come back later if I'm interrupting anything."
"No, you're not. I do have some friends over, but you've met one of them before, and I've just been saying how I'd like to introduce you to the other." She pulled the door open wider and stepped aside to let me through.
We walked down the hall toward the kitchenette and break room, the place where she sat with clients to discuss issues with familiars beyond those of a physical nature—and where she brought them when there was nothing more she could do to help.
That was one reason it was fully equipped with a range, oven, sink, and refrigerator. The table had four chairs and enough room for the yellow and white earthenware tea set, which was in use that evening. Bubbe always said kitchens were the one room where anyone felt like they could sit down and talk.
Which was abundantly true that night. “Anyone” was a great way to define the diversity of Bubbe's guests. She’d mentioned before that I'd already met one, but only in a very vague way. Because, although I instantly recognized Dr. Elizabeth Rassmussen from photographs, I couldn't possibly remember her from the one time we met. I was still in diapers back then.
Of course, she looked exactly the same despite the passage of so many years. Round-faced, straight honey-brown hair, eyes that twinkled like the moon on frost. Dr. Liz was a vampire, the one I mentioned earlier from New Hampshire. Bubbe had pictures of her in her office, mostly ones with them at professional conferences. They were colleagues and friends.
I'd never seen the rotund older gentleman seated at the kitchen table before, but I instantly recognized the creature with him.
"Oh! It's the Grim." I couldn't help but smile and wave. "Hello again."
The shadowy canine thumped its tail on the floor, rapidly sitting up and cocking their head. Grims are pure faerie creatures, which meant this one was genderless and responded to they-them pronouns. It'd be rude to call them “it.” But anyway, the man was no magus. Grims couldn't be familiars, but they did make contracts with psychic summoners.
"Dr. Brodsky, this is my granddaughter Aliyah."
"I've heard so much about you. It's lovely to finally make your acquaintance." His voice was heavily accented with the clipped and flipped vowel sounds that indicate a Slavic mother tongue. He extended his hand.
"Nice to meet you, too." We shook. "May I pet your Grim?"
"That's entirely up to them, but it's fine with me." He nodded and smiled.
I leaned toward the shadowy dog, my hand extended at a level with their eyes. I let them sniff and form their own opinion of me. At first, they leaned back, lifting their head to study my face. It was up in the air at that point whether they'd be okay with me.
Ember stirred on my shoulder, lifting her head and extending her long neck to get a good look at the Grim. They locked gazes, and something passed between them that my bond with Ember only let me sense to a small degree.
"Peep." She said this with certainty, for all the world like a person giving a definitive answer to a question I couldn't possibly guess. I mean, what kind of query would a Grim straight out of the Under have for a young dragonet? Apparently an important one.
The Grim looked at me, then stepped forward and did the last thing I expected at that point—they licked my hand. Smiling, I reached out to scratch behind their ears. The tail wag got more intense, to the point where Dr. Brodsky put his hands on his teacup and saucer to keep them from rattling.
"Well, she's certainly got your touch, Mildred." Dr. Liz smiled, showing fangs that were just slightly elongated. That meant she was well-fed, which made sense because the teacup in front of her was half-full of bagged blood.
Bubbe always kept some on hand. Vampirism happened. Any psychic or magus could get turned just like a regular human. She wouldn’t turn away a critter in need just because the person with them happened to be undead. As an extraveterinarian, she even had a license to keep stuff like that here in her office. Some magical creatures also drank blood.
As I continued playing with the Grim, moving my scratches from behind the ears to under their chin, I tried to remember where I'd heard the name “Brodsky” before. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but it seemed familiar, and recent, too. One thing for sure, nobody at school had mentioned him. Maybe on television? Could he have given a Ted Talk on summoning or something?
"Do you need anything, Bubbe?" I stood, stepping back toward the doorway. "I was thinking of heading down to Walgreen's."
I decided that our conversation could wait until her guests had gone. Some of it was sensitive, and critical of the Fairbanks family. They might have been more influential than I imagined. Coincidence was a thing, after all. After the week I had at school, the last thing I wanted to do was tempt it.
"Yes, if you don't mind." She nodded, bustling about with her teacup at the sink. "I'm running low on dish soap." She held up the bottle and shook it, sloshing green sudsy dregs from side to side.
"Okay, I'll be back in about fifteen minutes or so." I waved and smiled. "It was nice to meet you, Dr. Brodsky, and to see you again, Dr. Liz."
"Don't tell me you remember the last time, child." The vampire doctor grinned. "You could barely speak back then."
"All the same, you remember it."
Her grin grew into a smile. "Just so. And thank you."
This time, I headed out through the front of the office. There was a back door, but the small fenced yard behind the house was where we exercised the critters who needed it. We had quite the obstacle course back there, mostly for the benefit of four-legged earthbound creatures recovering from sprains or broken limbs.
At the end of the driveway, I glanced up at Izzy's house, which was dark. I should've expected that because she’d already told me it was Parents’ Night at Messing Prep. "Parents" in the Mendez family always meant everyone, including Abuela and her grouchy old cat. I grinned as I turned right down Hawthorne Street, picturing Mittens ignoring
a gymnasium full of psychics.
Ember hummed softly on my shoulder, contented with the bellyful of pizza and the cool night air. Salem's traffic picked up in September, even though all the big Halloween events were a month out. Folks interested in visiting during the busiest time of year sometimes came up early to familiarize themselves with the general area ahead of time. Others just wanted to see the history and didn't mind missing all the live events, costumes, and carnivals.
As I turned the corner onto Derby Street, I saw a trio of teenagers staring at the wax museum. They were not from Hawthorn Academy since I didn't recognize them. One tapped the others on their shoulders, jerking her chin at me. They whispered, smiled, and cooed, making it clear they’d noticed Ember. Back before the Reveal, kids like me had special amulets to prevent that kind of thing from happening.
It was a freer world now, something I tried not to take for granted.
"Go on, say hi," I murmured.
"Peep!" I felt Ember lift her head off my shoulder, and in my peripheral vision, saw her stretch out her neck as far as it would go as she greeted the mundane kids.
One of the teenagers, clearly my age or even older, clapped her hands. I smiled at them as I went by. It wasn’t just me who appreciated this new, open world. Kids like these wouldn't even have believed in magic thirty years ago, or if they had, they would have feared it.
Overall, I thought the world had changed for the better, although vampires and some of the shifters still fought for their rights. That made me wonder again how the brother of someone like my mom, who raised me with this viewpoint, could take the opposite.
Because he's an extramagus like you.
"No." Stupid inside voice. And my protest didn't even work, because it continued.
Yes. Someday you'll be the one watching the world burn.
I shook my head, keeping my mouth shut because I didn't want to frighten my awestruck peers or anyone else on the street. And if that insistent little voice in my head was right, I'd better hold on to that feeling as long as I could—the one where I cared about other people even when they were total strangers.
Ember sensed something wrong. She curled her around my arm, twining it down my bicep, and rubbed her cheek against mine, humming softly. I recognized the tune, the one Bubbe always sang in her office.
"Thanks." This time I didn't keep my voice quiet. Instead, I reached up and scratched her under the chin to make it obvious to any passersby that I was talking to my familiar and not myself. Besides, who could possibly have taken a word of kindness as a threat?
Your magisupremacist uncle, for one.
I sighed, refusing to give in to that line of thinking. Besides, I was at Walgreen's already. Well, across the street from it, anyway. I stood on the sidewalk in front of the crosswalk, waiting for traffic to stop. When it did, I strode along, eyes up and waving at the drivers.
As I stepped inside the drugstore, I realized there wasn't anything I wanted from here. The errand was only a ploy, after all, so I headed down the aisle with household items and grabbed dish soap for Bubbe. I wanted to be convincing, I'd have to pick something for myself as well, so I wandered up and down the aisles, looking at nothing.
Finally, I knew what to do. I strode toward the registers, grabbed a pack of gum, and put it on the counter with the soap. I went through the motions of paying, exchanging common pleasantries with the changeling behind the counter. Yes, she was a changeling, and I knew because her glamour slipped as she helped me.
"Your dragonet's adorable." She smiled, flashing green teeth. In a moment, she covered her mouth with one hand. "Sorry."
"It's okay. I understand."
"You're at the prep school, aren't you?"
"Yeah, but I grew up here in town. Going to hang out with my family off-campus for the weekend." I smiled. "It's kinda nice to be home."
"Oh, that's true. I can't wait until Thanksgiving when I can go back to Fitchburg."
"Are you at Gallows Hill?"
"Yeah, just started. To be honest, I kind of prefer working here?" Her voice lifted at the end of her sentence as though asking me if it was okay to feel that way.
"Hey, my name's Aliyah. Me and my friends know this town, so if you ever have questions, you know, like cool places to visit or spots to escape the tourists, just message me here."
I flipped my receipt over and jotted down my chat handle, then tore the bottom off and pushed it toward her.
"Wow, thanks." She shook her head. "I'm Brianna. It's not easy to make friends around here, and most of the other changelings at school aren't cool with Goblins."
She scribbled her handle down on a section of blank receipt that she got off her register. I took it and smiled, tucking into my pocket.
"I'm not on much during the week because Hawthorn’s a no-phone zone." I chuckled. "But I'll probably be here on weekends with friends from town and school."
"That's good to know. The only folks I know here are co-workers. I didn't know Hawthorn had rules against cell service."
"It's just impossible to get a signal on campus. Anyway, one of my friends goes to Gallows Hill and isn't even a changeling. Send me a message tomorrow, okay?"
"I will. Talk to you later!"
I headed out of the store, retracing the route I took there to get back home. The streets had quieted down a bit, and the walk back proceeded without incident. When I arrived at Bubbe's office again, I headed through the front door.
When I got to the kitchen, the guests were gone. My grandmother had tidied up—well, at least as much as she could without dish soap. I fixed that problem for her, taking it from the bag, opening the bottle, and squeezing a dollop onto the sponge she was holding.
"Thanks, Bissell."
I helped, drying the dishes and setting them on the rack. I wasn’t sure where she kept the yellow tea set, and I didn't want to go rummaging through her cabinets. I studied the china, certain I'd never seen it used before and wondering why. Perhaps this was just for when Dr. Liz visited, to make the bagged blood more appealing.
When we finished the simple task, Bubbe gestured at the table. I took a seat and she sat in the chair opposite, leaning forward on her elbows. Instead of tea, a tall glass sat on the table between us, beside a spoon on a folded napkin, a can of plain seltzer water, and a bottle of chocolate syrup. She put the spoon in the glass, dumped in some of the syrup, then popped the can and poured the seltzer over it all.
The mixture foamed up, reminding me of the disastrous lab experiment. I closed my eyes and sighed. Would my experiences at Hawthorn Academy ruin even the simple pleasure of sharing an old childhood treat with my grandmother? I hoped not.
"Sha got your smile?"
"I wish it were that simple, Bubbe."
"Everybody says high school’s supposed to be the best time of your life. Well, almost everybody. I won't say it, and you won't hear your mother repeat that platitude either. So, what's wrong?"
I explained to her. Not everything, though. Absolutely not about being an extramagus, and I didn't tell her that Noah had turned on me or bring up the rivalry between DeBeer and Luciano. But I mentioned that I was being teased about Richard Hopewell.
Bubbe didn't interrupt. It wasn’t her way. She liked to hear the entire story before asking more questions, let alone commenting. I wasn’t sure where her patience came from, but it wasn’t a trait I inherited, at least not for anyone but magical critters.
That was how I avoided naming names or getting into details about the incidents. She’d heard about the fires in the cafeteria and the lab, and I left the formation of Hal's clique for the end. That way, at least she’d know I’d be okay. After that, I moved right along, changing the subject to Logan's problem.
"So, remember the dragonet you had here in your office? The blue one? Logan painted a picture, and I think that's the critter his parents sent from Vegas with him."
"But Bissell," Bubbe shook her head. "That little fellow's not bonded to anyone."
"Are you
sure?" I blinked. "He's supposed to be my friend's familiar."
"I've been in this business for a decade longer than your father has been alive and studied with your great-grandfather in this field for half as long as that to boot. Are you really asking if I'm sure?" The twinkle in her eye and her smirk told me she wasn’t angry, just engaging in a little banter.
"Okay. There's more." I took a deep breath before continuing because this was a whammy. "I also think I know the magus who belongs with that dragonet, and it's not the friend I just mentioned."
"It's your fellow, isn’t it?"
"Excuse me?" I blinked.
"You know the one. He was around half the summer with Izzy and Cadence."
"Dylan? He's just a friend."
"Well, then your friend fellow." She nodded.
"How did you know I meant him?"
"He's at least as powerful as you are with magic, and dragonets are particular about that sort of thing."
"That can't be right."
"Why?"
"Because he said his parents had him tested and he's average."
"That's nothing. Your tests were average too."
"What? Nobody tested me."
"Your parents didn't, but your grandfather did."
"I didn't know that." I stirred my egg cream absently.
"It was a secret between him and me."
"I thought he was mundane."
"Yes, that he was." She sighed, her eyes focused inward on something buried deep. "But his work was not."
"What did he do?" I knew already, but I thought Bubbe would feel better saying it out loud.
"He was a military doctor who cared for the early extrahuman enlistees." She smiled kindly. "This, of course, was why you were so inspired by that mundane student down at Providence Paranormal."
"He never had the sort of opportunity Lynn Frampton did, and I think it's pretty amazing how times have changed for the better." I closed my eyes, tears threatening a critical breach. "So, how could my own uncle try to murder her?"
"Your grandfather and your uncle never met, but they'd have been enemies if they had. Some see change as a miracle—people like your mother, your father, and I. But others? Well, they see it as a threat."
