1-8 E

As soon as the older Sphinx saw the red crystal light up, she shut down. The glances I managed to make myself take showed a taut frown on her face, clouded eyes, and drooping wings. She slumped there, silently staring at the gem for Blood for several minutes as Alyssa and I fidgeted.

Eventually, she spoke.

“You have a rare gift, Tamara Aufrey. A large base to build on, centered around scarce Elements. For many practitioners you would be the ideal apprentice. At least, were it not for one thing.” She gestured at the crystal. “Blood is a risk, to both teacher and student. At best you would find a teacher who sees you as a tool or weapon to turn on their enemies. At worst, all you approach would see you as a monster in need of culling. It is not right, but it is what is.”

More silence. Slivers of her desk curled off as her claws raked across it. The sound left me shivering.

“I will still teach you as we agreed. The basics, first. When Alyssandra believes you are ready we will proceed to further studies. Hopefully they will aid you in recovering your sister. What I cannot do, however, is to teach you to utilize the rarest of your gifts. To do so would unmake me.”

She pushed a sheaf of paper toward me, accompanied by a pen.

“I swear on my Self that this contains nothing beyond the scope of the agreement we negotiated. No changes have been made or will be made based on your discovered talents, nor will the knowledge of such leave this room without your express permission. Once signed we will both be bound to the terms. It will be filed with your Archivist. The spirit will handle all payment due from your side, as she did for your predecessor.”

The world shuddered as she spoke. Even if I wasn’t sure about anything from that night, I trusted her not to lie. I also really didn’t want to be this close to her for much longer, not with the other effects still fresh in my mind and twisting up my guts when I thought of them. This kind of muddled confusion – I didn’t like it.

I signed.

As the ink soaked into the page, there was another brief moment of pressure in the air that pushed me further down into my seat. Once it was gone the older Sphinx took the papers back.

“Your first lesson will be tomorrow morning. Alyssandra will assess your current abilities and I will design a lesson plan you will be expected to follow. There will be space set aside for your education, both in the grottos and this house. Now, please leave. I wish to be alone.”

Her voice was strained, almost like she was holding back tears. The dismissal was clear that we should both leave. The younger Sphinx was slower out the door than me, saying something I didn’t overhear to her mother. She still caught up with me before the elevator doors closed.

Her wings were folded around herself now, bending in ways that I didn’t think bones were supposed to work to hide her torso in a coat of crimson feathers.

“It’s not anything you did. We hoped you wouldn’t have that gift. Your mom didn’t. We still should’ve expected it.”

“Blood – it isn’t a talent we like to think about. It’s not my story to tell, but Mom used to have more daughters from her own, uh, parts. I’m all that she has left. If something reminds her of that, she gets this way.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“Be here around eight tomorrow. I’ll meet you outside.”

I nodded. More eyes than just hers followed me as I went back to my car, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I needed to sort out my thoughts and feelings if I was going to be able to focus around her again.

And to work on my actual magic. If I needed to meet her expectations to be taught, then I had to find out what I could do instead of reading more about the Fae. Another small step to add into a schedule that was rapidly filling up as the deadline loomed in the distance, each flash of pain from my scarred hand reminding me of what I’d done.

~-~-~-~

Teresa’s statue seemed less desperate in the morning. Its eyes were screwed shut and a pointed twig was held out in front of her, the end seeming to grow from the wooden ground. Like she was standing and fighting something instead of running scared like before.

Hopefully I was doing the same.

Nothing special had happened after I got home. I dug out the only thing we’d found that I’d managed to follow instructions from; the rest had been in Teresa’s bag when she was taken. It hadn’t been much. One small book about shaping external mana. I knew there had to be more, especially with the Archive here, but I didn’t have the time to try parsing through something that might be pointless or beyond me. It was something that seemed fundamental, so I was confident that I’d need it and that it could eventually help.

It was also insanely difficult before we’d awakened. The only way we’d known it worked was that, with enough focus, we could use one of the exercises to bend the fingertip-fires that had started it all into different shapes.

It had been easier last night, barely. I could see the magic I was moving around now, even if I couldn’t get the changes to stick when I stopped focusing. My head was throbbing when I fell asleep and I barely woke up in time to get to the Sphinx compound. I didn’t have time for breakfast before getting into the car with soaking wet hair. The way the jewelry could instantly dry it was useful, but if it wasn’t somewhere directly in sight or contact with my skin it tended to jump around, and that was inconvenient.

The gate opened without any voice from the speakers, this time. The red Sphinx was leaning up against the doors as I pulled up but it didn’t look like anyone else was out and about. She was done up to look like a regular human again, no outside signs of her wings or fur even though I knew it was still there.

“You’re on time, great! Not many people are up yet, but the cooks have breakfast going if you need anything. Make sure not to overeat, but we’ll be at it for a while. An empty stomach makes it harder to focus.”

I was about to ask what there was before I remembered the thing about questions.

“Saw that! Come on, they always make sausage biscuits. Even though most of the older women are traditionalists, almost everyone born here prefers American food. They still refuse to make pancakes for me, but they gave up on keeping me out of the kitchen ages ago. We’ve got some of the good syrup from Canada too since Mom refuses to get anything that won’t scream opulence at the world.”

Yeah, she was definitely just as upbeat as before the meeting yesterday. No sign of the depressing stuff from the end of it.

“Pancakes would be nice, I guess. I slept in and didn’t have time for breakfast or anything but a shower.” At least I’d gotten that in after forgetting to set an alarm.

“Great, I’ll make some! We can chat some while we eat, then head out to our grotto to start. I don’t really like the interior rooms because they’re too bland, even if that’s important for some lessons and meditations.” She opened the door for me and waved me through into the largely empty hall. There was one other leonine Sphinx inside, rubbing at her eyes blearily and wearing a pajama shirt covered in ducks while she headed our way. Alyssa’s next words were quieter. “Remember, no questions. You’re the only Human here that isn’t bonded or layered with protective spells.”

We went through the largest side exit – a set of double doors on the left side of the room – and came out into the most extravagant version of a cafeteria I’d ever seen. The ceiling was vaulted, stretching up at least thirty feet, and the exterior wall was lined with windows that went its full height. Their lower halves were simple glass, but the upper parts were stained with vibrant colors. Most had an image of Sphinxes inside, but I didn’t know anything about the scenes to guess what they were.

The eating area itself was only about half of the space. There were a lot of tables with low benches around them, arranged not as regular seating but so that a leonine Sphinx could rest on them and still eat from the table. Only a few of the tables had spots for human-shaped people. Those were padded chairs with large backs, and all were at smaller tables. It was one of those that Alyssa walked me to, one with just four seats. She peeled off into the kitchen while I looked around, humming something off-key until she got through the door.

The other part of the room was against the interior wall. It was lounge area based around a conversation pit that the floor gently sloped down to. There were a few flatscreen TVs over there – two playing news, one on a soap opera, and the last of the set that was turned on had some WW II documentary playing. A few more sat dark, the tables surrounding them empty.

There were two half-asleep Sphinxes sitting and eating, with six others lounging around in front of the various TVs. The only one that wasn’t in their larger form was sitting in front of the soap opera, cuddled up to a man that looked completely human.

I tried not to stare at how his head was resting on her chest.

The Sphinx in the pajamas that came in after us got back from the kitchen before Alyssa, carrying two plates. One looked like some kind of breakfast taco, the other piled high with bacon. She didn’t even seem to notice I was here when she sat down at the next table. Her hair was mussed up more than anyone else’s and the blue pajamas were draped across a nearly snow-white coat where her Human half met the body of a winged lion. She looked like even less of a morning person than Teresa.

The pain in my palm was from my fingernails this time, not the scar.

It didn’t take long after that for Alyssa to come back with two plates of pancakes and a big pitcher of syrup balanced in her arms. From the way nothing fell, I was ninety percent sure magic was involved.

“Here you go! Just regular ones, sorry. The cooks didn’t give away where they hid the chocolate chips this time. I think they’re still upset that I made a batch that were almost half chocolate for the cubs last year.” She put one of the plates in front of me and started dousing hers with syrup. “Since we’ll be doing this a lot, I’ve got a bit of advice for talking to us. We’ve all been raised to avoid questions, so we use imperatives instead. Like, instead of asking about someone’s day, we just tell them to say how their day was. It comes across as pretty rude to most people, but I promise that I don’t mean to be. My aunts – well, some of them are just bitchy.”

That made sense. If something wasn’t phrased as a question, I could see why their magic wouldn’t trigger. According to the books, symbolism mattered more than intent, and intent more than reality.

Then again, a lot of books outright contradicted each other. I decided not to waste time going down that rabbit hole again. Last night’s headache was still fresh in my mind.

“I understand, I think. Tell me how you’ll be teaching me.” It felt wrong to say it like that. It was the way interviewers with the college and the scholarship had asked us questions. There was no lurch in my stomach from it, nothing like what had happened at the meeting when I answered her mom at the meeting.

Well, nothing that wasn’t already there.

“Yeah, like that! Just watch the inflection.” She shoved half of a pancake into her mouth before I even got the syrup on mine. “First, we’ll be seeing what you can do. Spells, mostly. Then you can describe any rituals or longer-term magic that you’ve pulled off. After that I’ll give you a few exercises that Mom uses to test someone’s skill at the basics. We’ll finish up with just running you through those until you feel like you’re going to puke or pass out.”

“Wh…” I cut myself off before I could finish the question. “That doesn’t sound pleasant.”

“Nope, but we’ve got to set a baseline for how much mana you can spend before you run dry and start to suffer. That’s what decides how long we can go on actual exercises and how much is lecture and theory.”

I finally got to eating my own pancakes. They were a lot better than anything I’d had since we went into the Roads. Definitely better than anything I’d ever cooked for myself. “Thanks. Having someone explain stuff is…”

I trailed off because I really didn’t know how to finish that. She didn’t say anything until we were both almost done.

“Hard to put into words. I know. I was raised to know all of this and people are still dismissive about me when I need help. I get so much more shit for everything than my cousins do. Believe me, I understand how it feels. I bet people are treating you like a mini-version of your Grandpa.”

I nodded.

“Yeah, big shoes, there. I’ll tell you what I know about him later, after the tests. If you want me to, anyway. But I’m ready to get started when you are.”

“Sure, ok. Let’s go.”

There were more Sphinxes trickling in to eat as we got up and took our plates to the kitchen door. The vast majority of them were in their lion-like forms – what I’d come to think of as ‘regular’ – which made me think that not all of them could change like the Matriarch or Alyssa. Maybe reading up on Sphinxes would’ve been a good idea.

There was a pair of girls playing air hockey as we went back into the main hall. One waved at my guide. The other was small enough that she had to be a child. Her hand froze and let the other girl score as her head turned on a swivel to follow me. I could almost feel her eyes even after we left the hall.

“Two of my cousins. Demetria and Euanthe.” The Sphinx’s illusion flickered for a bit, glimpses of her wings and extended talons showing through, as the door slammed shut. “Euanthe should not have been up here while we had a visitor, but obviously nobody said anything to them about it. Mom will just sigh like usual and say that I should be able to handle it. I can hear her now: why didn’t you do something about it, Daughter?”

It took her a second to realize she’d said that out loud before she whirled around to add, “Don’t answer that! Rhetorical question, sorry. It’s a bad habit that Mom said I got from watching too much TV. Just like my sarcasm. Don’t worry though, you’re fine as long as you don’t respond at all to any slips I let through. I’ll get the thing with Euanthe sorted out later, so don’t worry about it.”

We went across the main street and around the pool. When we stepped inside the colonnade the concrete sidewalk faded to pale sand that crunched lightly beneath our feet. Nobody was out by the water this early and the street itself had been empty. The only other person we passed came out of the shadowed nook behind the stone the water fell from, walking by us in a daze.

“Like I said earlier, I prefer to work out here. The grottos have a bit of spatial expansions set up, so you might feel a bit nauseous as we get inside. Don’t think about how all of it fits in here too hard and you’ll be fine.”

The nook led into a smoothly sloping ramp of rough stone, lit by sunlight pouring in at a weird angle from small gaps in the rock above it. The ramp ended in another bed of sand, well below where the water outside would’ve been, and had air that smelled like the sea. The walls were twisted rock streaked in places with moss and lichen and broken regularly by holes I couldn’t quite see through. It was one of those, four down from the entrance and definitely a longer walk than the pool was wide, that Alyssa led me into.

The room was straight out of a tropical vacation. The sun shone down from a small hole in the roof, illuminating the center of a pool of cyan water and leaving the rest of the room in a pleasant twilight of reflections. The walls were the same rock as outside and small pieces of what looked like coral grew near the bottom of the pool, nestled in the sand that made up most of the floor. It was balmy, almost, and felt like I’d always imagined the Mediterranean would.

“These are my favorite spots to practice. Apparently, they remind Mom and some of her sisters and cousins that followed her here of home, too. Not that I’ve ever been. Take a seat, doesn’t matter where. I changed my mind from what I said earlier, by the way. I’ll run you through the basic exercises first, then we’ll see you run your own things. Mom would kill me if I let you exhaust yourself before getting the baseline. Watch closely, this first one is about mana control…”