1-10 E

My arms had started shaking again by the time I parked in the edge of the lot all the small restaurants right off campus shared. My feet, at least, had been steady enough that I hadn’t crashed on the way over. My driving had been a lot slower than normal though, since my vision kept greying out around the edges if I turned too fast. It was a big relief to turn the car off and slump down onto the steering wheel. Even thought it was black and had been sitting in the sun for hours, it felt cool. Somehow.

Mordo’s was only a block or two away from here. This place was the beating heart of the town’s food scene and nightlife. I’d driven by the shop on the way to the Council meeting, apparently, and been too oblivious to notice. Seriously – the building had a stylized decal of a scoop of ice cream wearing a fedora peeking out over a blurry newspaper on the front. That was something I should have seen, even at night. From what I could see over my crossed arms, the inside looked just as gimmicky as I’d expect.

“Let me know if you feel any worse. This, uh, really isn’t normal. I kinda wish I’d gone to Mom about it, but you weren’t this bad earlier. You look pale and the mana in you is fucked up and I have no idea how or why.”

“Wonderful. I still feel worse than I look.” The effort of sarcasm left my stomach groaning in complaint.

“Let’s hope Rita’s in today. She’s our local alchemist, and Mom said she gave you one of her hangover cures at the Council meeting. She should be able to help.”

“I guess she works here, then.” A few hard swallows kept everything down as I focused on deep breaths.

“Owns the place, actually. Her dad left it to her when he died a few years ago and she’s been running it since she turned eighteen. She runs her alchemical stuff in back and uses the ice cream in a lot of it. The crap she sells to college students is more like dealing drugs, apparently.” Alyssa unbuckled her seat belt with a louder click than usual as invisible nails clacked against the metal. “She probably does that too, now that I think of it. Not really sure, Mom’s pretty firm at keeping me from leaving unescorted and none of my aunts are openly into that kind of scene.”

“So you’ll get in trouble for coming here with me.” The nausea calmed down a bit and I got the shakes under control. Everything started tingling, though, and something repeatedly buzzed in my left ear. “I’m not exactly a responsible chaperone.”

“Mom never said that I couldn’t teach you outside of the compound, and this is part of my teaching. It’s her fault if she’s mad, this time. Besides, this is important. Even if we can’t get you some magical perking-up, the sweets are just as good. Even their mundane stuff is great, especially at treating nausea.” There was a sound of feathers scraping something as I assumed her wings fluttered. “Seriously though, I’m worried. Food can’t hurt when it looks like you’re starting to fall apart. Rita’s more likely to know what’s going on than me. Can’t treat someone if you can’t see what’s wrong.”

After taking a bit longer to steady myself, we got out. I was still a little wobbly, but if I moved slowly it wasn’t too bad. Alyssa was hovering at my side the whole walk to the door, the calm mask she’d put on spoiled by her furrowed brows and the constant constant glances whenever I swayed during a step. She might as well have been holding me by the arm with how intently she was focusing on me.

The inside was mostly empty, but it had enough things to look at that I could ignore the staticky feeling that had ran across my back as we went in the door.

There was a teenage guy behind the counter looking bored even as he gave us a forced smile. The hat he had on didn’t seem to fit all that well, especially with his shaggy hair sticking out from under it. The piece of paper saying ‘Press’ tucked into the hat’s band flopped as he moved. An older woman and two young kids were sitting at one of the tables by the window, each with a sundae in front of them. Both boys had on Spiderman shirts. The kind that may or may not glow in the dark.

The only other person was a black woman a little taller than Alyssa standing halfway through the door back to the kitchen. She seemed sort of familiar. Not that I could really think of anyone I knew that wore a trench coat. Their general shape looked right for one of the people I’d seen in Mordo’s basement, before all the stuff happened that night but after I got hammered by a god. Fuck that was a weird sentence.

I’d seen her at Grandpa’s funeral, that was it! The one where we’d buried an empty casket since the police had told us he’d started to rot when they found him.

Wait, hadn’t the house been on lockdown until Scully had gotten me to unseal it? How would someone other than me or Teresa gotten in. How…

“Rita!” Alyssa’s call was loud enough that it made me flinch and lose focus as a pulse of pain shot through my head. Thoughts slipped away and just didn’t come back.

The woman turned, a camera and name tag hanging on two separate lanyards around her neck clattering into each other in the process. She gave the Sphinx a smile, but her response had an edge to it.

“Alyssa! And Miss Aufrey! I can’t say I expected to see either of you like this.”

There probably would’ve been something like the wink that the bouncer outside Mordo’s had done if I’d been up to using the Sight, but the thought of doing it made me gag.

“We finished up early and thought we’d come by. The usual, if it’s no trouble.”

The black girl hummed for a second and stuck her head into the kitchen. “Yeah, that works. Room’s open for the day. I’ll walk you back. Jerry, you know the drill.”

The last bit was at the teen as she waved for us to follow her back. Everyone in the room – and a short girl who peeked out from the kitchen – stared at us as we moved to the hallway. Part of it was probably me looking like I was high off my ass and on a bad trip.

The rest was probably because she used my name. The interest was a reminder that Grandpa had actually been a pretty big name in and around town. We were a big name around town – one of the richest families here even if we didn’t rub it in people’s faces like the Belmonts did. I mean, the scholarship we’d gotten was literally named after us. I couldn’t blame them for getting curious. Honestly I couldn’t even think about them much – it was too much work to do that.

There’d been all sorts of urban legends about us growing up, before kids started to know who Teresa and I were whenever we came to town. Things about the family, grandad, and the house. Normal ghost story kind of things.

Hell, some of them were probably true. I lived with an animated bird skeleton and Alyssa had just said something about necromancy. There probably were a few bodies in the house. Or at least, there probably had been.

That was a disturbing thought. So I tried to look around.

There wasn’t much in the main room other than the tables and booths. The walls were decorated with a bunch of old newspaper clippings from the town and stylized drawings of reporters like what you’d see in old comics. One wall had an empty doorway going into a room full of arcade games. Next to it was the hallway we were being led to. It was a fairly long one with a turn to the right at the end. We passed two doors before the turn, each labelled with a number and a different kind of hat or camera, and then two more after it. I was starting to get even dizzier by the time we went through into one marked ‘Staff Only’ in glittery letters that were definitely magical. The part of the hallway after it was lined with shelves, boxes, and propped open doors, with a giant walk-in freezer at one end. We ducked into the first door on the left.

It was a fairly small room, without any windows or major decorations. Just a small table and chairs, really. And an old Galaga machine in the corner. Alyssa pulled one of the chairs out for me.

She and I sat, but Rita didn’t. The smile was still on her face, but her voice was a lot colder than outside. The edge wasn’t just a hint.

“A lot of people would be very worried to hear you two were even in the same room. I’m not sure what to feel about it, but looking at her, something’s wrong and you aren’t just here for the food and ambience.”

It wasn’t a spoken question, but she let the silence drag on long enough that it was clear she wanted an answer. I started to say something before stars shot across my vision and I had to clench my teeth to keep from groaning.

“Well, the plan was for food. But uh, she’s gotten worse since we left and I’m kinda freaking out about it.”

The woman sighed and sat her hat down on the table. She looked me over, slower than outside, and frowned. “That’s…different. Nausea, shakes, and a headache I’m guessing?”

I nodded. The motion alone was enough to make my head start spinning.

“Any fever or chills? Tingling or static?”

Another two nods.

“Good news is, I can definitely help. Bad news first, though: it’ll cost you. This isn’t some dime-a-dozen hangover cure like I gave you at the Council. You’re probably going to have a lot of explaining to do to someone that actually gives a shit if this happens again, since you’ve shot right past mana fatigue into mana starvation. Somehow. Your body’s rejecting your intake and starting to self-cannibalize which is even weirder..”

She must’ve seen my face, because she sighed and went on. “You’re lost, aren’t you? Just like trying to figure out what’s going on and causing it, explaining isn’t my job. My job is to sell you something that will fix the symptoms. It’ll take maybe ten minutes to get it out of storage, but I want paid in advance.”

“I’ll cover it. This is all my fault,” Alyssa cut in before I could get my voice working again.

“Mmhmm. Doubt that, but I really don’t care. Standard is fifteen-hundred dollars or equivalent. This looks like a double would be safer, so call it an even three thousand.”

That – that was a lot. Cheaper than going to the hospital, but still a lot.

The Sphinx flinched at the number, then reached up over her shoulder and pulled out a single crimson feather from the thin air hiding her wings.

The woman’s face smoothed over into a neutral mask with her eyes locked on the feather. “No refunds, no change, no future credit. All deals are one-time transactions and recognized fundamentally as binding.”

“Do three things for me and it’s yours.” She waited for Rita to slowly nod. “First, you give Tammy whatever you have to to fix this. Second, total secrecy. You don’t tell anyone about us. If they ask, we were here to eat. Third, you tell us what you think caused it and how we can stop it. Anything that you personally think we need to know, you tell us.”

“Deal.”

There was no hesitation at all, but the alchemist had been nodding along the entire time. So it didn’t surprise me. I also wasn’t that surprised at the small ripple of pressure that went through the air when Alyssa handed over the feather; that seemed to be a big thing about people making deals with magic. Something I’d have to ask about, eventually, if I wanted to understand everything.

What was a surprise, and an absolutely fucking awful one, was that when it passed over me it felt like I’d jumped right into a fire. The burning raced across and through me in an instant, but it left me shaking and coughing on the table with stars in my eyes. Alyssa’s cry at that didn’t make it through the rush of blood in my ears, but Rita’s follow-up did.

“That’s…to be honest, I don’t even know.”

I heard the door slam and felt someone rubbing my back as the coughs stopped and I started sucking in deep breaths while the phantom heat faded from me. The only part that had been spared was my left arm past the elbow, where the Fae bracelet and the brand both sat. They felt almost normal, but both seemed warmer than usual. Unaffected by whatever was ripping the rest of me apart, even if they felt like they were burning into me.

My head definitely didn’t have whatever protection they did. Thinking was getting harder and harder, even with the actual pain that had followed the pulse fading away.

“Tammy, seriously, say something. You’re scaring me.”

Oh, the person rubbing it was Alyssa. Weird; where were the claws? It felt good, until the hands went away.

“Don’t stop. Please. Just…” My mouth felt like it was full of cotton and I lost focus on words after that. Maybe I said more? It felt like my lips were moving anyway. But her hands came back and they felt better than the pain and the nausea and the chills. Something to focus on, just like how the world had faded away around me that night. That would be even better but it was a bad idea. Even if Alyssa was nicer and not old and definitely prettier. She’d said not to ask or answer questions, so I couldn’t. Even if it would be so much better than everything else and I could actually forget things during it.

The rubbing on my back stayed at least. It gave me something to lean into and focus on as the pain faded into numbness as I stopped thinking about it.

When they moved up to my shoulders and pulled me off the table I had to start thinking again. It wasn’t much better overall, with how my entire body basically screamed for attention as soon as I did, but it wasn’t worse and I could see enough to tell that someone had come in. I couldn’t think of who.

“…should do it. Bites will need spaced out; I’ll figure out the interval after the first one.”

“Thank you. I know I’m paying but…”

“Don’t worry about it.” The woman sat a blurry bowl in front of me. All I could really make out were what looked like sparkles dancing around in it. “Her arms look like putty, you’ll have to feed her. One spoonful.”

One hand left my shoulder, but the other got heavier and something else poked into my back as other stuff dragged across my shoulder and fell in a red blur around half my face. It tickled my nose.

So I sneezed. That really, really hurt.

I felt whatever was behind me, jump at that and heard a muffled curse from the other side of the red shuffling curtain that pulled away along with the warmth behind me. All that was left was a hand on my shoulder and a blur that moved close to my face.

“C’mon Tammy, open up. This’ll help, I promise. Just eat it, please.”

Reaching up didn’t help. My hand just brushed against something soft and stayed there. The blur was still there, though, and it got closer as I opened my mouth to try and say something.

Then it went in and magic happened.

First was the cold. A shock that drove the fuzz from my head and snapped things back into clarity, with a wave of chill spreading out from my head like I’d just dunked myself in ice water. It covered up – but didn’t push away – the chaotic sensations it spread over. Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. It barely reached the edges of my torso before fading, leaving me with shaking arms and a head clear enough to realize that the rest of me felt like complete and total shit.

Clear enough to realize, too, that Alyssa had just spoon-fed me ice cream while Rita looked up at the ceiling. The spoon was still in her hand and stuck in my mouth.

It was right after that realization that the sweetness hit as whatever was there dissolved on my tongue. Vanilla, with chunks of cookie dough that were just starting to fall apart when I reflexively swallowed. Somehow, even with the spoon clicking against my teeth, I didn’t end up choking. The taste lingered, honestly better than anything I’d had lately.

Right on the heels of the taste was a tingle that buzzed out of my stomach. It raced up along my torso and into my head but didn’t push any further. Where it went, though, the pain and discomfort faded. Breathing didn’t hurt so much anymore, my stomach wasn’t on the verge of exploding all over the table, and my pulse didn’t feel like a jackhammer anymore. It pushed even more of the fuzz out of my head.

At this point I could see that Alyssa had dropped her illusion. Her cheeks were almost as red as the fur that started halfway down her neck. I could also see that my still-trembling hand was holding onto the arm with the spoon tightly enough that she couldn’t move it.

Her fur was really soft.

As soon as I let go she pulled back and looked down at the floor between us, with her wings fluttering behind her.

“Unaligned mana transfusion worked, good. You were fading fast and everything else I could do would’ve taken at least three hours to get together.” Rita pulled out a chair and sat down, steepling her hands on the table. “Listen closely, since I’m not going to explain this twice. I’m about to tell you my best guess at what caused this and what might stop it from happening again.”

The first few words were hard, but so much easier than before. I could actually feel where my tongue was now. “T – thank you so much.”

“Mmhmm. Don’t thank me, this is business.” She waited for me to nod and sit up, a little bit steadier than when I’d come in, before going on. “What I just gave you was essentially a week’s worth of passive mana intake for a qualified magus. That bowl has around six months of it in total, all purified of intent and alignment. Looking at the rate you’re soaking it in, you need to wait at least three minutes between bites.”

The bowl in front of me, that I shakily moved the spoon back to, looked like a slightly-more-sparkly bowl of regular old cookie dough ice cream. Three thousand dollars’ worth of it, apparently.

“You had three main problems that I could see. The first was mana starvation, the second was mana rejection, and the third was self-cannibalization. I’m going to say now that there’s no records of any of those happening in a Human that hasn’t twisted themselves past the stricter definitions of Humanity. The third one is actually interesting to me and I’d be willing to either pay or barter for some samples once you’re fully recovered to look into it.”

“Moving on. Alyssa might have heard of the problems, but I’m just going to assume neither of you have any in-depth knowledge of them for the rest of this explanation. To be polite and avoid any unfortunate mishaps, I won’t be asking or taking any questions.” She waited for us both to nod. “Good. So, first off, the mana starvation.”

“It’s a more extreme version of mana fatigue, which is the discomfort every practitioner gets when their internal reserves run low. Generally, it’s only observed in entities where magic substitutes for biological needs. Elementally aligned beings and pure elementals are impacted the worst. To be called starvation, you have to reach the point where the body, spirit, or amorphous form of a subject neither stores nor takes in enough mana to run its own processes. At that point, it begins to break down. Everything I saw lined up with that, for all that a baseline Human mage should be incapable of experiencing it.”

“The second issue was mana rejection. This is what most likely caused the starvation, especially if your internal reserves were drained before the onset of symptoms. It occurs when the passive intake from the environment – and in extreme cases the active intake from ingested materials – is rejected by your body. It’s a lot rarer than starvation even outside and generally affects living things highly aligned with specific flavors or aspects of mana, ranging from elemental associations to regional abnormalities. It’s analogous to immune responses or food poisoning, in a way. While embodied creatures are rarely affected as severely as immaterial ones, it’s occasionally seen in any being susceptible to mana starvation. In fact, it’s the cause of the majority of chronic cases. Creatures found in the Roads are often affected much, much more heavily than those found on Earth and our sub-planes. For them, the outcome is often lethal. Again, this isn’t something that Humans or any being that can filter and assimilate mana should have to deal with. I watched what little mana you still had spit out everything it pulled in even as you were starting to shut down, though, so here we are.”

She gestured at the bowl. “Take another bite, the first’s been absorbed. What this is doing is giving you something that your body, thankfully, isn’t rejecting. As you refill what you lost, the symptoms will fade. I can’t tell you the exact cause without testing, but whatever association gave you a metaphysical allergy to the local mana was clearly filtered out when I made this.”

I did. Still the best ice cream ever.

It went through the same steps, each burst pushing slightly further than the last set had and letting me relax and let out the tension that had wound me up. The stuff on my left arm seemed to relax too, a pressure I hadn’t noticed before fading away as the Fae magic noticeably cooled down.

“My best guess at how you ended up with rejection, though, is that something in your upbringing or lineage attuned you specifically to the surrounding and internal environment in Blackleaf Manor. You must have pushed yourself below some form of critical mass and stopped converting and storing your intake, somehow. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it happening, but it’s still the most believable cause for someone that I can visibly see isn’t an elemental. I can’t stress enough that all of that is just a guess; I do not know for sure what caused it, and I might well be wrong. Still, avoiding extensive mana use outside of your home would be my advice for preventing another episode.”

“The third issue was the reaction to your starvation. Self-cannibalization. Not the literal definition where you actually eat parts of yourself, but a magical variant. It’s more common, honestly, but still isn’t something I’ve heard of happening in people that I’d still consider Human. Even in active and old practitioners our mana is stored more metaphysically as opposed to occupying actual tissue. The process itself is either an adaptation or a reaction – depending on who you ask – to low-mana conditions where creatures that physically store mana will break down the structures that contain it. Usually to deleterious effects when the part of their biology that relied on the stores starts to fail. If I hadn’t been watching your body ripping mana out of itself to stave off the starvation, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’ve seen enough of it from our local Pride to recognize the symptoms, so I’m confident that you are, somehow and in some way, different from a normal Human. My guess is something to do you’re your mom. Like I said, I’d be willing to trade for samples once you’ve recovered.”

She pushed out her chair and stood up, grabbing her hat from where she’d sat it earlier.

“There’s my explanation and my guesses. That’s what you paid for, so I’m done here. You two can have the room for the rest of the day to finish what you paid for. Just come find me if you want actual food or drinks; no cost for them. You’ve paid more than enough.”

Alyssa didn’t say anything and I was too busy savoring the third bite and the way my body was starting to feel normal again to thank her again. The door shut with an echoing click, leaving me alone with the red-faced Sphinx who still wasn’t meeting my eyes.