“But I don’t know anything,” she said shakily. “Not much, anyway.”
“Perfect. Now run along, live your life, and stop tinkering with sigils—in fact, don’t even think about magick anymore. It’s safer that way. And stop with your investigations. Be normal, and think normal thoughts.”
“But if this Foxcroft guy does reach out to me, how will I contact you?” By the time her words had finished tumbling out she was standing in the hall, the door slamming at her back.
She pulled out of the apartment complex as police cars flooded in, lights spinning, sirens wailing. She made it to the onramp and sped down the highway. As she passed the ‘Welcome to North Valley’ sign, Malek’s words began to resonate. Monsters chasing monsters. Is that what he was? A man who’d become something numb, and calloused, and irreversibly horrible?
A piece of her felt missing, like the sigil on her back had shorn away a slice of her humanity. Maybe the process was gradual, like a glacier drifting through a warm current; given long enough, whatever remained of her would melt, one drop at a time, vanishing into the lapping waves.
Then another thought crept into her mind. Maybe to survive the coming challenges, the process was a painful necessity. To make it through—to maintain even a sliver of her crumbling sanity—she might need to become even more of a monster than she already was.
Myths and legends are fiction, but they’re often based on historical facts. Some are more factual than we realize.
– Passage in The North Valley Grimoire
19. ‘Tis the Season
CHRISTMAS LURCHED BY slower than Calista had expected, the way it tends to do when the entirety of your holiday plans consists of a single family gathering. The morning of the 25th was an understated affair: sitting on the couch with hot chocolate in-hand, next to a scrawny, sparsely-decorated pine tree that curled to one side under the weight of a star-shaped topper. It was a little sad, but in a humorous way. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in Whoville.
On this blustery, overcast morning, Uncle Frank was less Grinch-like than usual. She gave him a ‘World’s Greatest Uncle’ mug to mark the occasion, a series of paperback spy novels, and the largest sweater she could find with Rudolph stitched on the chest, complete with a battery-powered blinking nose. To her surprise, it fit his near seven-foot frame. More surprising? He actually liked it.
When it was Calista’s turn to tear into the wrapping paper, Frank shocked her with some wonderfully thoughtful gifts. The clothes and accessories were nice, but the big reveal was a shiny new phone, glittering rose-gold. He’d noticed her old one looked out of date, and that she needed something glitzier—especially when matriculating at Hawthorne.
It was a brief but pleasant exchange. From breakfast to gift-giving, the experience lasted forty-five minutes. And just like that, Christmas had come and gone.
She retreated to her room with her phone, books, clothes and bags, all gathered into her arms in a bundled mess. She dropped the heap on her bedspread.
What would a normal seventeen-year-old do now? It was a question she asked herself with increasing regularity, and during staggeringly mundane situations. It was too early to storm Kaz’s house and mingle with his relatives—their festivities don’t start until dinner—so she had most of the day to kill. She face-planted on her bed next to her haul, burying her head under a pillow. Normal. Her brain wasn’t wired to understand the concept of the word anymore.
Against Agent Malek’s instructions, Calista had spent the last week thinking about nothing but magick, which was the antithesis of normal. “Stop tinkering with sigils,” he said. Like that was possible. She couldn’t un-see the things she’d seen, or un-know the things she’d learned. And who was this Malek guy anyway—this liar, this double-agent, this cold-blooded murderer—to start barking orders?
Malek’s plan to take down The Agency involved waiting for a fugitive to contact her, or attempt a prison break—but it had been nearly a year and it still hasn’t happened. Maybe it never would. He might be playing the long game, but her timetables were considerably tighter.
She started with research, jotting down the names of every tattoo parlor located on or around the waypoints dotting Jackson’s map. Searching local news, she confirmed that a number of parlors were given ultimatums from the government: start using synthetic ink, or risk having their businesses shuttered—just like Alfonso’s.
Searching the dark web filled in some more holes. She stumbled across an open forum where members shared selfies of their tattoos—sigils, angular and precise, mirroring designs from the grimoire. A Texas-based practitioner with the handle ‘Lone Star Aphrodite’ claimed she’d performed a low-level somatic gesture by accident, sending a tiny flame from her fingertips that twirled like a drunken butterfly, igniting her living room rug. She offered to sell the formula for both her sigil and the gesture for two hundred bucks, though it had been months since she’d appeared online; dozens of follow-up posts complained that they’d made a cash transfer, but never received the goods.
There were scores of fakers and wannabes, all easy to spot. But anyone providing even quasi-credible evidence that magick existed—a video, photo, or descriptions of a spell—vanished from the forum, never to be heard from again.
Calista kept a log of where the more legit sounding accounts were located, assuming the user included a city alongside their handle. Some left the field blank, while others filled it with nonsense (‘Wonderland’ and ‘Hogwarts’ were the two most popular gag entries). After a few days, her data was all heading in the same direction: anyone who talked the talk like a bona fide Scrivener lived precariously close to a mystical hotspot.
This must have been where FATHER began their hunts. Anyone who’d sampled a taste of the mystical was at risk of being arrested, or whatever Malek and the goons at The Agency were being paid to do with them. It made her stomach churn. Innocent kids being targeted by this ruthless black ops division for the crime of curiosity, or selecting the wrong tattoo at the wrong time and place. She imagined them being captured, and tortured, and who knows what else … and Jackson, breathing his final breath …
She took a sharp breath of her own and blinked the thought away.
Her focus has been split between researching FATHER and the incessant itch she couldn’t seem to scratch … the bloody sigil she’d painted on the doorknob a week prior was calling to her, beckoning for a repeat performance. It was a sensation she wanted back; that feeling when her nerve endings popped like firecrackers, and her blood pumped like lava. For a split-second, it felt like anything was possible. Blood magick was a tempting shortcut, but it wasn’t the path she wanted to take. If she applied herself she could learn to draw Elemental sigils with ink, just like Jackson. But that would have to wait.
As much as she yearned for the power to cast spells, she needed to know more about the sigil on her back. It might be on lockdown at the moment thanks to Malek’s Blocare Ward, but as long as it was a part of her, she needed to know what it could do, and what it meant. Some of the vernacular in the grimoire outlined obscure portmanteaus and bizarre retronyms, none of which she could look up.
‘Transmogrification,’ on the other hand, was an actual word.
An hour of research led to some interesting results. There were links to Greek mythology, and she decided that was as good a place as any to direct her studies. A volume on her bookcase might hold some answers; a thick hardcover book she’s had since middle-school. She laid it flat on her bed, lifted the cover, and the spine let out a crack—a stern reminder it had never been opened. The first page wafted with new book smell.
Morning drifted into afternoon while she pored through the text, and then there was a knock on her bedroom door. “You have a guest,” Uncle Frank’s voice boomed.
She hopped off the bed and pulled open her door to reveal Frank, still wearing his blinking sweater and nursing a cup of eggnog, standing next to Beckett, who was decked out in a sweater that rivaled Frank’s in its
sheer absurdity: a royal blue eyesore with a smiling cartoon dreidel splashed across the chest. The anthropomorphized wooden top was holding a menorah, shouting ‘Light it up!’ in a friendly speech bubble.
Beckett cracked a smile. “So what do you think?”
Calista nodded in approval. “Classy.” The butterflies returned, sending a flutter through her midsection. She tried to fight it, but she couldn’t stave off her giddiness around Beckett. There was something about him—his awkward charm, his optimism—it was like he’d been genetically engineered to make her happy.
“I had another sweater that said, ‘This is how we Jew it,’” he explained, “but I figured this was more subtle. Didn’t want to take all the thunder away from you Christians on your big day.”
“Very considerate of you.”
Beckett lingered in the threshold, clutching a wide box topped with a loose silver bow. He cut a nervous glance back to Frank.
“Oh, sorry. Come in.” Calista opened her door and stepped aside.
“Keep it open,” Frank instructed. “I’ll be checking back every fifteen minutes.”
“And if you come back with more eggnog,” Beckett said, “make mine a virgin. I drove here, and once I get my nog on, watch out!” He mimed the drinky-drinky motion and then paused for the gales of laughter.
Frank glared at Beckett’s infectious grin, but he wasn’t catching the fever. “Funny,” Frank said dryly, and left it at that.
She waited until her Uncle was out of earshot before apologizing to her guest.
“No problemo,” Beckett shrugged. “When big buff jocks like myself come calling on his niece, he probably gets a little nervous. Just wants to keep you respectable.” He handed her the gift. “Shalom.”
“But I didn’t get you anything,” she said.
“Oh, that’s okay.” He nudged the box towards her until she took hold of it with both hands. “My parents go bonkers around Hanukah, so I get spoiled. It’s like a financial competition to see who loves their son more, and the winner is always me.”
She sat on her bed, tugged the bow, and the silver ribbon drifted to her feet. She pulled her new sweater from the box. It was a carbon copy of his.
“I did some sleuthing,” he admitted. “Kaz told me hilarious Christmas sweaters were kinda your jam, and since I don’t know a yule log from yarmulke, I figured I’d introduce you to some of my own traditions.”
She slipped the sweater over her tank top, pulling her hair out of the neck hole. “There,” she announced proudly, sidling up to him. “Twinsies.” They looked like escaped mental patients.
“We do look pretty dope,” he agreed.
“Now we can be classy together.” She thanked him with a soft kiss on his cheek, careful not to linger for too long.
“You can wear it to my place. My dad will love it. It’ll be a fun ice breaker.”
“You want me to meet your dad?” She winced a little and quickly wished she hadn’t. It was a reflex. And it was a gesture he clearly noticed.
He waved his hands. “No, not like that. I mean, if we’re ever studying, and we happen to be at my house. Not like, meet my dad, as in, I’m introducing you as my …” Beckett trailed off, gazing around her room for anything that might be a conversation changer. He caught a glimpse of the book on her bed. “Ooh, Greek Mythology. Catching up on some reading before next semester?”
She breathed out a small sigh of relief at the topic change. “No, it’s for fun. Getting acquainted with Zeus and the gang.”
He flopped stomach-first on the duvet and began paging through it. “Shapeshifting. Pretty cool.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Not much.” He ran a finger down a paragraph. “But—ah! This is my favorite. Most people know about Zeus changing Lycaon into a werewolf, but Artemis was totally bad-ass. When it came to strong female protagonists, she was the original.”
The illustration on the adjacent page was an oil painting; a radiant young girl stood in the forest, gripping a bow, poised to loose an arrow at an unseen target. She looked every bit a goddess with her flowing robe, silver jewelry, and a wild mane of chestnut curls.
“She was the goddess of the hunt,” Beckett explained. “She wasn’t just an immortal, though. She had powers.”
Calista studied the painting. “Like magic?”
“Totally. One day she’s bathing in the river, and this dude named Actaeon comes wandering along and decides to peep on her. She catches him in the act and transmogrifies him. Next thing Actaeon knows he’s a stag, and his own hunting dogs are chowing down on him.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Interesting. And super gross.”
“That’s what you get for messing with a god. They bring down the hammer. Or the lightning. Depends on who’s doling out the wrath.”
“So being transmogrified is a punishment,” she said.
“In Greek mythology it usually was, yeah. A pissed off deity would turn you into a spider or a pig, and before long you were dusted. Shapeshifting wasn’t always a human-to-animal thing, though. Sometimes it was subtle, and that’s what made it so cool. Take Artemis: she was a shapeshifter herself. Like right here in this image.”
Calista flopped down next to him, studying the illustration. “How’s that?” The girl looked perfectly normal, and not the least bit shape-shifty.
“Think of it this way,” Beckett said, “Artemis was the daughter of Zeus—an immortal. These gods changed things about themselves all the time. She liked to appear as a mortal maiden: a dainty girl, innocent and weak. It gave her the drop on everyone because no one saw her coming.”
She sighed. “Greek Gods had it easy. Change who you are, be whoever you want …”
“You can’t change?” he asked thoughtfully.
“School is over in six months,” Calista said, resigned. “I don’t have a choice in the matter.”
“So who are you going to be when you graduate?”
“Wish I knew. Probably a more confused version of the mess I am now. Everything is going to be different. Doesn’t that scare you?”
He pushed his glasses up his nose, smiling broadly. “Sure. But think of the possibilities: it’s a chance for reinvention.”
At Hawthorne, Calista felt like a supporting cast member; an extra who stood idly by, blending into the scenery like her pressboard bedroom furniture. She was the girl with below-average grades from a below-average family, who went slightly mental and quit the field hockey team. That was pretty much her high school legacy—if a word that lofty could even be used to describe her academic career. She liked Beckett’s idea of starting fresh, but the deeper she tumbled down her current rabbit hole, the less convinced she was that she’d have the chance to become someone else.
“You make it sound so easy,” she said wistfully.
He seemed genuinely confused. “Does it need to be complicated?”
“Not everyone is like you. You’re one of those ‘carpe diem, the world is my oyster’ type of people.”
He snorted. “Since I’m allergic to shellfish, I’d be dead if my life was oyster-like, but yeah, I’m into seizing the day.”
“I wish I knew your secret.”
He flashed a conspiratorial smile. “Want to know it?”
“Know what?”
“My secret.”
Calista’s eyes brightened. “Definitely.”
Beckett threw his legs over the edge of the bed, sat up and lifted his sweater, exposing his chest. As he raised the fabric, it revealed a thick rope of jagged skin, starting above his navel and stopping just shy of his collarbone. It was gruesome, like he’d been clawed by a bear. “My first birthday present. When I was born my heart stopped beating, and they rushed me into surgery.”
Calista cupped her mouth with both hands.
He let his sweater fall. “It’s okay now. But my twin brother Cameron was born six minutes later, and his heart was worse than mine.”
“Did he end up with a scar as bad as yours?”
She bit her lip after asking the question; it sounded more tactful in her head.
“I’m sure he would have. They worked on him for hours, but he wasn’t strong enough.”
She felt the heat rising in her cheeks, eyes filling with tears.
“No, you don’t get it—this story has a happy ending.” Beckett reached out and took her hands. “Cam and I were identical twins—he was like my clone. And against all odds, one of us made it. I’m here, and he’s not, and that isn’t a sad thing, because I get to do all the things he never got a chance to. That’s a gift I get to enjoy every day.”
Calista smiled, and felt warm rivulets streaking her cheeks.
He wiped her face clear with his thumbs.
“Crap, I made you cry on Christmas. I’m new to this holiday, so you’re gonna have to walk me through it.”
“No, that was … I think I needed that.”
Then she leaned in and pressed her lips to his. Soft at first, then firmer, wrapping her arms around his neck until their bodies met. She’d worried about moving Beckett out of the friend zone, but it was too late now. She was seizing the moment and carpe-ing the hell out of this diem.
Their kiss intensified, and the world disappeared around them. So much so that neither were prepared when they slipped from the edge of her duvet, tumbling arm-in-arm, screaming in unison when they hit the floor.
Their laughing fit was cut short when Uncle Frank stormed in, spy novel in hand, demanding to know what the racket was about.
They were splayed flat, like they’d been making indoor snow angels.
His eyes trailed between them, taking note of their matching sweaters.
The North Valley Grimoire Page 20
