by Lan Chan
“You might care one day,” I said, giving in to the worst of my fear.
“And you might one day learn that I don’t change my mind often.”
“Like that’s a good thing!” I protested.
He trailed the back of his fingers along the column of my neck. There was a knock at the door. It said a lot that Raphael didn’t simply materialise. He bent his head to see into the room. “We’re ready,” he said.
I hopped off the bed immediately. Kai huffed. As much as I adored him, nothing would hold me back today. I practically ran beside Raphael to the room that had been set up for Nanna’s unbinding.
When we arrived, Astrid was there with Matilda. Astrid was meant to be guarding the human, but they were engrossed in a conversation about the best way to dispatch a vampire who had succumbed to bloodlust. Basil and Nora were arguing about where I would live if this was successful.
All of the conversations ended when they saw me. I tried to block out the reassuring looks everyone kept giving me. There was no way this couldn’t work. I was adamant.
With Nanna’s consent, Raphael had already put her under. She lay inside a circle Matilda had drawn in salt on the polished marble floor. “Are you ready?” Matilda asked me. Kai squeezed my hand. He and Raphael were here in case something backfired and Nanna needed immediate medical attention. I pushed away my uncertainty and nodded.
Matilda sat down outside of the circle at Nanna’s feet. The circle she’d drawn was perfectly symmetrical. That’s what was wrong with it. Nanna was not a symmetrical kind of person. “Can I have the backpack?” I asked Nora. She handed it over to me. I took out Sophie’s bag of magically imbued salt and reshaped the straight lines inside the circle. I took care not to disturb Nanna. I took care not to even look at Nanna. My hope was balancing on the finest edge. I couldn’t afford for anything to shatter it.
After I was done with the salt, I retrieved the other ingredients from the backpack. Peter had helped me collect sprigs of every herb known to man from the kitchen and walled gardens. I tied them together with string belonging to the wood nymphs. Now I crushed the leaves of the herbs between my palms. The scent of sage, rosemary, and bay filled the air. I placed them around the circle. Inside, the layer of blue magic sang.
I was smiling as I sat down just above Nanna’s head. “You remember how we practiced it?” Matilda asked.
I nodded. “Let’s do this.”
The Ley dimension that I accessed from Seraphina was something else. A cosmos of lights exploded around me. I wanted to explore the origins of all those stunning lights, but I forced myself to focus on the tangle of blue in front of me. “Take your time,” Matilda said. I drew on everything I learned from meditation and reached out to the first string of power. When Hilary had transferred me knowledge, she had given me the solution to the unbinding. Nanna was held together by the threads of both hedge and bone magic. The threads of life and death. She was stuck in limbo. It would take both to bring her back. The spell also required the aid of at least one other low magic user. After all, Hilary had been grand mistress of the Soul Sisterhood. She had hoped I would have an association with them despite their attempts to murder me.
Matilda started snipping. She worked with such precise strokes that I finally understood why she and Giselle were the best of the Sisterhood. I followed along behind her as she split the strings that held Nanna’s soul bound in limbo. It was at the halfway mark when the first signs of danger occurred.
Nanna’s aura was sunflower yellow. It started to emerge beneath the strings of blue. Unfortunately, it tried to use the gaps Matilda had made to escape her body altogether. I latched on to her and dagged each part of her back. Bit by agonising bit, the binding around her lifted. It was no wonder nobody could figure out how to do this. Earth magic was always about balance. I could never have done this without the assistance of another Earth-magic user. That was sort of the point.
My attention locked on the final bit of string that Matilda held up in front of me. It was the one that was darker than the rest. “This is yours,” Matilda said. I reached out for it. As soon as my magic touched it, Hilary’s presence filled my mind.
“Be sure,” she said. She wasn’t referring to Nanna. I cut the binding using both hedge and bone magic. The air howled around us. Nanna convulsed. Her aura fluctuated. It had been suppressed for so long that it seemed unsure how to behave. Its first instinct was to flee. I dragged it back, but it fought with me. It never occurred to me that Nanna should not have been alive. I whimpered at the thought.
What if Nanna should have gone long ago?
“Let me help you, Blue,” Kai said against my ear. He sat down beside me. His green smoothed over Nanna’s erratic soul. It calmed hers in a way I never could. A shudder rolled through Nanna’s body. And then, against all odds, her eyes opened.
I dropped back into the physical world of Seraphina. I could barely breathe as Nanna rubbed her eyes. “What in the world is that smell?” she said.
Unaware of anything but what we had been doing, I looked at the circle that was now a scorch mark against the marble. The herbs had been crushed and burned during the ritual. Nanna had always hated the scent of bay leaves.
She brushed the salt off her clothes and glanced around the room. I held my breath. She smiled at Raphael and then Kai. It was only when her gaze rested on me that she paused. My fists were balled so hard I could feel my nails cutting into my palms. She looked me up and down. Her hand went to her mouth. Tears suddenly filled her eyes. No, I thought. She was going to have another breakdown. But then she opened her arms.
“Look how big you’ve grown,” Nanna said. I screamed and ran to her. I could barely hear or see anything because I was sobbing so hard. She held me for as long as I cried, just like she had when I was a kid. Then she wiped my tears with her sleeve and shook my shoulder.
“Don’t you feel better now?” she said. “Come on, big girl. I’m not sure what’s happened, but you can tell me all about it.”
They were the exact words she’d said to me a hundred times while I was growing. Back when I’d come home from school after having an argument with my latest bully. Nanna turned around the room. “You know,” she said. “I don’t have the faintest idea how to get back to our house.”
I burst out laughing. It was the first time I remembered laughing like that in forever. That light feeling lasted about ten seconds. Nanna got a really good look at Kai.
“Malachi,” she said. He approached us and took her hand. Right. So she clearly hadn’t lost her recent memory. She hugged him and whispered in his ear. It was loud enough that I could hear without having supernatural powers. “We need to have a discussion about what your intentions are with my Alessia.”
The stunned look on his face as she pulled away had me grinning. “I’m not sure what you’re smiling about, young lady,” Nanna said. I knew then we were both in trouble. Basil took the opportunity to introduce himself. He guided Nanna away with his pitch about the mansion and how he wanted her to move in there. Nora interjected.
“Umm…” Kai said.
I nudged him. “How do you think Nanna would get along with Jacqueline?” I asked him. He sighed and scrubbed at his face with the palm of his hand.
“Don’t remind me. I’m surrounded by incorrigible women.” He was smiling, but I noticed how dark the smudges under his eyes were. He could withstand an endless battering from the supernatural world, but the soul barrier had almost killed him. Raphael saw it too. “Come, Malachi,” Raphael said. “You need rest.”
“I don’t need babysitting,” Kai snapped.
Raphael simply stood there in all his glory. Kai surrendered easily. I had to remember to ask Raphael how he did that. Matilda approached me when they were gone. She cleared her throat. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I haven’t forgotten.”
Astrid escorted us to the cells where Matilda and I repeated the same spell to unbind Giselle. The other woman reacted completely differently than Nanna. As
soon as she was released, her body sprang into a crouch as though she was ready for a fight.
Matilda smirked at her. “Always showing off,” she said.
Giselle blinked. “Mattie?”
“At least we know her mind is intact.”
Two of the Nephilim guards helped Matilda return Giselle to the human world. She was no longer a prisoner, but the Council had yet to come up with a suitable punishment. When they were gone, I slumped against the wall.
“Are you okay?”Astrid asked.
I blew out a breath. “It’s been a long semester,” I said.
She nodded. “Indeed. I think you’ve well and truly earned the break.”
If only she knew. I had a feeling I would be spending all of my time stopping the Terran students and the supernaturals from killing each other. Story of my life really.
42
Nanna and I glared at each other over the dining table. We each had a dessert spoon in our right hands. In front of me was a carton of plain vanilla ice cream. My theory was that vanilla would be the easiest to ingest quickly. Hers was the rainbow flavour that I had discovered was really just caramel with additional food colouring. She refused to believe it. Funny how the mind works.
Odette paced beside us with a metronome. For some reason she thought that was a substitute for a stopwatch. “On your mark, get set…” I gripped the spoon and narrowed my eyes. Nanna’s nostrils flared. “Go!” Odette shouted.
I dug into the ice cream and scooped out as much as I could. My mouth could barely open wide enough but I forced it in nonetheless. The cold numbed the inside of my mouth in seconds. I chomped down. My strategy had always been to get as much into my mouth as possible before the inevitable brain freeze. It hit me like a sledgehammer. I groaned and dropped the spoon into carton. You would think my grandmother would have some sympathy for my pain. Instead, she sat opposite me demurely eating spoonful after spoonful.
“Times up!” Odette called. She peered into each carton.
It was a landslide win for Nanna. I was still clutching at my head. Nanna shook hers at me.
“Really, Lex,” she said. “Eighteen years and you still can’t come up with a new strategy?”
I slammed me fist gently on the table. “I swear one day it’s going to work.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” She closed the lid of her carton. “I guess I’ll be choosing what we do tonight.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Another trip to Morgana?”
She flashed me a wide grin. I moaned. She was head over heels in love with the Fae city. It was my own fault for showing her in the first place. While Basil had managed to convince her to stay at the mansion, she spent much of her time exploring in between counselling session in Seraphina. So far, she hadn’t shown any signs of a bad reaction.
Odette sat down on my right and picked up the spoon. She popped it into her mouth and smiled when I made a sound of disgust. Despite living on the streets, I was now suddenly obsessed with hygiene. “At least use a different spoon,” I said.
Basil walked into the room. He glanced at the ice cream and groaned. “You do realise you’re over sixty,” he reminded Nanna.
“Does he always say such sweet things?” Nanna asked Odette. The other woman laughed. Basil was not amused. I don’t think he really thought through what living with three women might actually mean for him.
“It’s time,” he said to me.
“Home by six,” Nanna called out as Basil opened a portal for me.
“It’s a guard shift,” I reminded her. “I’m not going to a party!”
It made no difference. Basil and I exchanged looks before I stepped through the portal. I landed at the outer edge of Bloodline’s perimeter. Wanda already had the car running. I slid into the driver’s seat.
Sophie and Astrid waved at me from the back seat. “Here we go again,” Wanda said as I put my foot down on the gas. This time, there were no trespassers on the tower platform. We did a routine sweep while Astrid stood guard below.
“How is she?” Sophie asked me.
“As well as can be expected,” I said. I switched on the monitor and went over the surveillance for the last two days. “She sometimes freezes and it takes her a while to remember where she is but it’s not as bad as it was when she first woke up.” That had been two weeks ago. So far so good.
I was more concerned about what we would find out here. After out last disastrous patrol, Wanda and I were slightly on edge.
“Colour me surprised,” Wanda said. She was checking the armoury. “Nothing has actually gone wrong so far.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Sophie suggested. We had just stepped out of the guard tower when the speakers crackled. I peered down below to make sure Astrid wasn’t doing anything to set them off. A second later, I wished that was all it had been. Wanda froze mid-step and turned back to the surveillance screen. It had gone dark. Static flickered and then a picture materialised on screen. It showed the face of a middle-aged man I didn’t recognise. He was dark-haired with a square jaw peppered in stubble. There was nothing remarkable about him save for the intense look in his eyes.
“Greetings,” he said. The technology in the tower was decades old so I knew it had to be a recorded message. “My name is Declan Summers. My associates and I are supporters of Ben Cochran and all he tried to do. Ben might be gone but his manifesto lives on in the Human League. For too long we humans have lived with the consequences of having monsters in our midst. We will no longer be silenced.”
The message played on a loop. We heard it twice more before Wanda had the good sense to shut it off. “Astrid,” Wanda said. “You’d better come up here.”
Sufficed to say, the Council were not happy with this new group coming out of the woodwork. Astrid and I left them arguing in the Council chambers about what to do with this threat. I could still hear Matilda yelling that she didn’t know who they were.
Astrid took me on the scenic route around Seraphina. We were just passing over a white stone and golden-trimmed bridge that arched over a waterfall. I was so busy looking over the side that I didn’t see the figures coming towards us until they were mere metres away.
“Hello, Astrid,” a soft voice said. For some reason, Astrid’s spine straightened. I turned back to find her face had reformed into that cool expression she’d had when I first met her.
“Hello, Chanelle.”
The Nephilim girl in front of us was perfect in every way. Where Astrid was light embodied, Chanelle’s sultry, dark colouring held an undertone of ripeness. She was a head taller than me. Her black hair curled in natural ringlets down to her waist. I had a sudden image of her sitting in a half clam shell as cherubs played instruments around her. There were two golden-armoured guards behind her. Michael’s crest was emblazed on their chests.
I cleared my throat. Astrid didn’t introduce us. Instead, she latched onto my forearm. “We’re on our way to urgent business,” Astrid said. I was taken aback by her tone. Never mind the outright lie.
Chanelle’s plump lips drew into a smile. In deference to my friend, it immediately got my back up. Chanelle’s eyes flicked to the necklace Kai had given me. She dragged her attention back to my face. Lucifer might be the devil, but the look in Chanelle’s eyes could have killed me.
“You must be Alessia,” she said. She didn’t try to shake my hand. The way she said my name made my hackles rise. Astrid tried to pull me away but I wouldn’t budge. That would make it seem like we were running away.
“Who are you supposed to be?” I said.
She raised her beautifully sculptured brow and smirked at the two guards at her back. Most of the Nephilim guards were flawless in their execution of their duty but these ones broke ranks and smiled back at her.
When she deigned to give me her attention again, there was something predatory in her eyes. “I’m the woman the Nephilim Council has chosen to bond with Malachi,” she said. She reached out for my necklace. I was too stunned to sto
p her. “I believe this is mine.” She yanked the necklace from me.
Somebody was going to die.
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