More disturbing than Blood magick were Jackson’s illustrations. They were the result of ‘summonings’; a form of hex that a Scrivener casts on themselves or others, allowing an otherworldly parasite to attach to a host. If Blood magick lowers a Scrivener’s inhibitions and dulls their empathy, a summoning can drive them insane. When a demon penetrates your mind, you start to wonder where the monster ends, and where you begin.
Blood magick and summonings were a dark road that, in Jackson’s words, “the most seasoned Scriveners were smart to avoid.”
Whatever she’d become as a result of her sigil, Calista was pretty sure she wasn’t a Scrivener—and if she was, she definitely wasn’t seasoned. Jackson wrote of masters with abilities straight out of a superhero comic: telekinesis, weather manipulation, forging matter from dark energy. Meanwhile, her sole foray into the world of casting had consisted of tracing a design with a pen and paper, enabling her to read the grimoire. That parlor trick was barely enough to rank her as a confused novice.
Despite filling notebooks with sigils, and repeating the corresponding words that were supposed to activate them, she couldn’t invoke a single new spell. What was she doing wrong? She had the spells, the sigils, the instructions in plain English, and she believed in magick—right down to her bones. She’d done it by accident once; with this much effort, she should’ve been able to pull off the tiniest bit of magick on purpose.
At this rate she’d never free her mother, let alone cast a spell. Whatever Jackson was planning, the book didn’t make it obvious, though it was clear he’d been designing spells of his own. He made numerous references to Magnus level Scriveners having the ability to craft and execute home-brewed sigils, and that’s just what he’d been doing.
If Jackson was planning to rescue her mom, what was he going to do: attack a maximum security prison? Blast the walls with mystical energy like cannons in a castle siege, punching a hole through to her cell? Keep her safe while fleeing from the guards?
Even if, by some miracle, Calista was able to perform these high-level spells and managed to free her mother … then what? They’d be homeless, penniless, on the run for the rest of their lives, waiting for the government to track them down and drag them both off to prison. Or maybe, after the trouble they’d caused, the government would have a more permanent solution in mind.
Her detective work wasn’t going much smoother, but at least she had something concrete to work with. Whoever was killing convenience store clerks might’ve also killed Jackson, and if they killed him, they might want to kill her, too. Maybe for being in possession of the grimoire, or for having the sigil tattooed on her back, or for being … whatever she’d become. ‘The best defense is a good offense’ she’d once heard Jackson say, probably a sentiment echoed by his football coach. The sports analogy applied here. She was going to find out who this homicidal bastard was before he struck again, and before he had a chance to burn her apartment to the ground with her in it. Based on The Cobbler’s convenience store footage he went to Hawthorne, but exactly what she was going to do once she identified him was up for debate. Kaz thought calling the police with an anonymous tip would suffice, but a 911 query that began with, ‘Crazy magician on the loose! Send a SWAT team!’ didn’t seem likely to spur law enforcement into action.
The only useful tool she’d pulled from the grimoire was a trapezoidal design, spiderwebbed with arcing lines—a Venari spell (apparently everyone who practiced magick was obsessed with coining their own neologisms—or maybe a spell wasn’t a spell until it had a name?)
The sigil was meant to glow when another Scrivener was nearby. He’d scrawled some guesses about the range and effectiveness of the spell, but had no data to back it up—that, or he’d died before he could perform a field test. Every morning on her bus ride to school, Calista used a Sharpie to recreate the sigil on her forearm, buttoning the sleeve of her blouse back in place to conceal it. She repeated the ritual for weeks, and it hadn’t glowed, burnt, blinked, beeped, or even mildly itched. Either she was more of a novice than she thought, or she hadn’t come into contact with the killer.
The classroom door swung open, and a man who looked nothing like Mr. Beznik burst in, his messenger bag overflowing with dusty volumes. He slammed it on the teacher’s desk, startling Beckett awake.
This disheveled thirty-something looked the part of an educator—black suit, maroon tie, cufflinks—though he had a peculiar vibe that seemed too un-Hawthorne-like for him to be a teacher at The Academy. A fact that Calista was quick to jot on a scrap of paper and fling over to Kaz’s desk in the adjacent aisle (“There is a significant lack of Hawthorne-ness to this dude”; Kaz nodded in agreement).
Maybe it was his spiked hair, shocked a powdery blond with chestnut roots sprouting from his scalp, or the grin plastered across his face, wide and carefree, exposing a generous gap that separated his two front teeth. No one is ever this happy to be teaching here. By the end of his tenure, this guy’s perma-grin will have been perma-erased—Hawthorne will have surely beaten it off of him.
The man checked his watch, and then glanced at the classroom clock. “Ha!” He pumped a fist overhead. “Twelve minutes late. Three more and I bet I’d be lecturing to an empty room.” He’d evidently heard the same urban legend. He bounded to the whiteboard and scrawled ‘Mason Degray’ in purple marker.
“Greetings. I’m Mason, but I’ll also answer to Mister Degray, ‘hey you,’ or out on the basketball court, my opponents call me, ‘The Delociraptor.’” He mimed a jump-shot, eliciting a smattering of giggles. “Alternatively, you can call me ‘doc.’ I’m technically a doctor since I have a Ph.D. in Philosophy, but I don’t like to brag. Plus a Ph.D. in Philosophy isn’t much to brag about.
“I’m filling in for Mr. Beznik. He went in for gallbladder surgery, and will be recovering for the next eight weeks. But you guys won the lottery because now you get me until he’s back on his feet.”
The substitute trailed his finger down a rumpled sheet. After a quick glance, he balled it up and tossed it into a metal trash bin with a little hop, putting his basketball skills to use. He pulled a canvas wallet from his inside pocket and thumbed it open, plucking a crisp one dollar bill from the fold. “So now that introductions are out of the way, we can dig right in. I’m not going to teach you anything about the Revolutionary War in a single class before mid-terms; you’ve done the reading, and you’re no doubt experts at this point. Plus I’m more of a Cold War fan. But just for turds and titters, why don’t we throw a little philosophy into this history class?” His smile cracked wide enough to expose his gap.
Twenty fidgeting students sat in silence, awaiting Mr. Degray’s next words with baited breath. Even the jocks were at full attention.
“Who is this?” he asked, opening the bill. The stern gray portrait of America’s first president stared back at them.
Half a dozen hands shot up around the class.
He pointed to Whitney, who was in her default position in the front row. “George Washington,” she said, and recited some dry facts about his presidency.
Mr. Degray bobbed his head, still smiling. “You’re not wrong, but what else? Who was he?”
“An army general,” Maddox said without being prompted.
Degray was still nodding. “Getting warmer. But in becoming a general, what else did he become? Because when I look at a dollar bill, I wonder why the greatest country on Earth put the portrait of a traitor on their currency.”
Calista glanced back at Beckett, who was now wide awake. He mouthed the words, ‘what the hell?’ and she had nothing to offer but a bewildered shake of her head. How did this guy get past Principal VanDerberg?
“I see you’re confused.” Degray took the note by the edges and snapped it taut. “Can someone challenge me, though?” His eyes flared at the notion of debate.
Kaz, shrank into his seat when the teacher glanced in his direction, but Beckett confidently raised his hand. Degray prompted him with a quick nod.
> “He’s an icon,” Beckett said. “There were a lot of controversial presidents, but there’s a consensus that Washington was a hero.”
Degray walked halfway down the aisle and jutted a finger towards Beckett. “Ah, there it is: ‘consensus.’ A majority of opinion. In modern day America, we all arrive at that conclusion. But back then, what if you were to ask the British?”
“The British were wrong, though,” Beckett added. “America was right.”
“Yes,” Degray said, “from America’s point of view. But from the British perspective, Washington took up arms against the crown. High treason.” He waved the bank note like a tiny flag. “This little rectangle represents freedom and democracy, but it’s also a weapon, kids—remember that. With enough of them, you can finance an army, build a bomb, or spy on every person on the planet. But even though our elected officials have access to an unlimited supply of these, they don’t hold all the power. With enough conviction, the will of one person can turn everything around.”
Most teachers at Hawthorne delivered their lectures by rote, like slightly annoyed guides leading a tour through a museum. Degray had the loose swagger of a late-night talk show host, and it mesmerized the class.
“Let’s dig deeper.” Degray hopped up on the desk, folding his legs beneath him in a yoga pose. “Our buddy George believed he could take down a more powerful enemy, and he did it with improvisation. Lacking weapons, he turned church bells into cannons. But as innovative as he was, he didn’t do it alone: outgunned and outmanned, how did he pull it off?”
“He had bad-ass dudes ready to fight for him,” Parker called out. Maddox nodded in agreement.
“Were they really ready and willing, though?” Degray asked quizzically. “By all accounts his soldiers were rebellious, and were growing uncertain before battle.”
Whitney raised her hand. “Washington was known for his speeches. He told his men that happiness and moral duty were connected. He inspired them.”
A sudden thought bristled the tiny hairs on Calista arm. “It was a memeplex,” she said under her breath, though it came out much louder than she’d intended. Like every room in Hawthorne, the History class boasted a ridiculous amount of square footage, with soaring arched ceilings and crystal-clear acoustics; it was like trying to whisper in an opera house, where every decibel amplified like a megaphone.
The teacher focused on Calista. “I’m sorry, what was that?” He gave a curious tilt of his head. “Miss …?”
“Scott. Er, Calista.” Her cheeks lit up like Christmas.
“All right, Scott-comma-Calista, I think you said something about memeplexes. You’re a fan of evolutionary biology?”
Calista cleared her throat while the class waited on her reply. Degray added a nod of encouragement.
“A speech alone wouldn’t make his soldiers believe they could win a war,” she began, working the tremble from her voice. “They had to believe it was not only possible to defeat the British, but that they had the power to do it, too. Inspiration alone wasn’t enough.”
“Ah!” Degray said. “Interesting. So by stacking multiple beliefs—telling his troops they were fighting for God, country, and future generations—they opened their minds to the possibility. After all, we’ll often do more for others than we will for ourselves.”
Once a memeplex gets into your head, it can change your brain chemistry.
“Interesting point of view.” Degray scooped a history book off the desk and waved it overhead. “That’s what these dusty old volumes need: fresh perspectives. Learn to read between the lines, kiddos. You’ll be amazed at what you discover.”
The teacher abandoned his lotus position, stretched his arms and circled back around the desk. “Feel free to split into study groups. Or work independently—whatever butters your popcorn. I’ll be sorting through Mr. Beznik’s lesson plans.”
Students dragged their desks across the hardwood and pushed them into groups. As Kaz and Beckett shoved theirs towards Calista, Ashley Flowers materialized, adding hers to make a foursome. “Mind if I crash the party?” she asked brightly, though she’d already kicked down the door and let herself in.
Beckett waved her in. “The more the merrier.”
“Yeah, join the merriment,” Calista said. She scratched at her forearm through her blouse, and noticed Maisie seated alone. Whitney, Maddox, Parker, and one of her dark-haired minions had made a foursome of their own, but Maisie hadn’t been invited.
Calista scrawled a quick note, folded it into an origami star and flung it towards the redhead, landing it on her desk.
Maisie pulled it apart. She looked up from the sheet, eyes filled with cautious optimism.
“Come on over,” Calista said, inviting her with an exaggerated wave.
Tugging at her bottom lip, Maisie glanced back at the note. After a moment she stood and shoved her desk into place, joining the group.
“Scott-comma-Calista,” the teacher called out. He was sorting through reams of Mr. Beznik’s immaculate paperwork, coded with a rainbow of sticky notes. “I know that phones are a big no-no at Hawthorne, but I’ll make an exception so you can chat with Miss Niven.”
The redhead opened her knapsack and extracted a device halfway between a phone and a tablet, almost too large to palm. She plucked a stylus pen from a divot in the casing. With a few looping swirls she wrote a message, presenting it to the group.
Calista knitted her brow. “Why wouldn’t we?”
She scribbled a message and held it up.
“Not to brag,” Beckett said, “which is what everyone says before they’re about to brag, but my cousin in San Diego is hearing impaired, so I picked up some ASL.” He made a series of animated gestures, raising Maisie’s eyebrows in the process.
He shrunk in his chair. “Was it that bad?”
Maisie grinned and typed another reply.
“Oh my gosh, I just remembered!” Ashley shouted, slapping her palms on her desk. Kaz let out a tiny gasp. “Callie, do you still have that book?”
A moment of silence followed; Ashley often communicated in non-sequiturs, and it took a moment for everyone in her periphery to catch up.
She cracked a brace-filled grin. “You know! That book of designs you were showing Mrs. Post?” When she said ‘Mrs.’ her lisp made it sounds more like ‘Myth’. “Midnight Obituary needs a new logo, and I can totally picture one of those sigils splashed on our bass drum.”
“Midnight Obituary,” Beckett said. “I’m guessing you’re not a country band.”
“We’re like Nordic metal mixed with reggae speed rap,” Ashley explained, “but since our Norwegian drummer and Jamaican keyboard player both quit last week, we’re going through a transition period.”
Calista continued to scratch at her forearm. “Sorry Ash, that was an old art project. I trashed it.” The itch was like a nest of termites burrowed in her skin; raking her nails across the surface only pushed them deeper.
Ashley made a pouty face. “That blows. Oh well, maybe you can sketch me an original sometime. I’ve seen the doodles you do during class—they’re pretty sick.”
“I didn’t know you were an artist,” Beckett said.
Maisie scribbled a message on her tablet.
A wave of heat flushed Calista’s cheeks. The itch was so pronounced she wanted to stab her forearm through her blouse with a freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil. She felt like everyone in the room could see her thoughts floating above like a word balloon in a comic strip, and she couldn’t shake the notion that she was being exposed; that someone knew about her grimoire, about wha
t she’d been doing … or maybe it was something else?
“So,” Kaz blurted out, “maybe we should talk mid-terms. I have a stack of flash cards, and they’re not going to read themselves.”
“I’m down,” Beckett chimed in. “I vote for sushi and study at Callie’s place. That’s cool, right?”
With her forearm concealed beneath her desk, Calista unbuttoned her cuff and rolled it until the sigil was in view. It crackled, brimming with fizzy pops of yellow and orange. If the room hadn’t been flooded with daylight, it would’ve lit up like a glowstick.
Then it vanished. All that remained were hashes of raised skin crisscrossing her forearm, prickling and raw from her fingernails. She rolled down her sleeve and buttoned it back in place.
“Callie, is that cool with you?” Beckett asked, probably for the third or fourth time. He waved his hands in comical little circles.
Calista scanned the faces around her, wondering if one of them had been concealing a secret of their own.
“Yeah,” she finally said. “It’s cool. Let’s head back to my place.”
It has always been difficult to identify a Scrivener. Dating back to 7th Century France, one of the only reliable techniques was to create a potion and spill it on your suspect. The liquid known as le diable bleu (‘the blue devil’) starts clear, and turns blue when it makes contact with mystical residue, staining the Scrivener’s skin.
Once word about the potion had spread, it wasn’t long before villagers started abusing it. Want revenge on a non-magick user? Douse your target with blue dye in a public area, and let the horrified witnesses do the rest.
In the court of public opinion, the conviction rate is one hundred percent. It doesn’t matter if you’re guilty or not: once you’re marked with la tache du diable (‘the devil's stain’) you're finished, and nothing you say or do can wipe it clean.
The North Valley Grimoire Page 15
