1-11 E

“You didn’t have to pay, Alyssa. I have money. She acted like that feather was worth way more than what she gave me.”

That was my attempt to break the awkward silence once my arms stopped shaking.

“Uh – yeah, I guess so. I don’t want to go into that, though.” She shifted so that one wing was crooked over her should and hiding her face. “This was my fault. I wasn’t going to let you pay for it yourself. It’s not gonna be a big thing, anyway, unless my mom finds out. Then she’d be pretty pissed.”

“Well, I won’t tell her. Don’t blame yourself; you had no way of knowing this would happen.” I took another bite and shook at the sudden rush of energy. “You were just teaching me. It’s not your fault that I’m apparently a medical mystery or whatever she meant by all of that. I wonder what other surprises Grandpa didn’t bother to explain that I’ll run into. I totally get it if you don’t want to teach me anymore after this. Your mom can probably find someone else to do it.”

I mean, why on Earth would she want to after seeing me like that? From what Rita had said it would probably happen again if I kept actively working to learn and practice magic. Who would put up with watching me go through all of that, time-after-time, without being forced to?

“What?” The wing dropped. She looked hurt. “Sorry, sorry, but I don’t see where that came from. I literally just told you that you would get through this and that I’d be here to help you, like, an hour ago. I’m not going back on my word just because I saw you hurt. I don’t know why you’d think so little of me.”

“I…”

Now it was me that couldn’t meet her eyes.

“I didn’t mean to say you’d been lying. I just…I don’t see why you’d want to look after me like this. I don’t even remember half of the stuff after we got in here, or what I said or did. I’m not going to get any less depressing as this goes. I don’t get how you can deal with me.”

For some reason her face fell when I said I didn’t remember everything.

“Because I’m your friend! Or at least I want to be. Just because I’m teaching you doesn’t mean I can’t help you outside of lessons. You’re the first person to really talk to me, like, at all. I get that you’ve just met me, and I know it’s probably because you don’t know anything about what I am, but you’re my one chance to feel normal. It’s not like Mom plans to ever let me actually go to Pinecrest and meet new people. She’ll just keep bringing in tutors and having my aunts teach me. I’ll be lucky if I get to even leave town before I’m a fucking century old at this rate.”

“I guess we’re just a pair of misfits stuck with each other.”

“That’s the spirit!” She smiled again, not bothering to hide the teeth. “Now, since we’re stuck together here, specifically – until you’re all better and that bowl is empty – I remember promising you some gossip and a rundown of how the world works. If you’re up for it, I can start now!”

“That would be nice. I felt so lost at the Council meeting.”

“No duh! You said learned everything from books earlier. Not even good ones.” She was getting more animated again. I couldn’t help from smiling back, with how contagious her enthusiasm was after all the stuff that had just happened. Or maybe it was the extra energy from the ice cream. This was the mother of all sugar rushes. “I’ll start with local stuff. You were at the last Council meeting, so you probably saw everyone for a bit. Even though mom said you slept through it.”

“Our setup is pretty normal for an area our size, but our practicing population is more condensed than most. We only cover the one town. Usually a Council our size covers either a city and its suburbs or an entire county, at least out here. We’ve worked on the four-faction model as long as I’ve been alive, and apparently ever since Mom relocated here. The Belmonts and Mordo’s cult have been here longer than us but your gramps was here way before anyone else. It’s not like it’s written into the rules, it’s just that the big players always get a say. An entire Pride of Sphinxes is pretty big, in that sense.”

“Anyway, here’s how we actually get stuff done. Council business runs on a vote between the big three factions for day-to-day stuff. We have like thirty unaligned mages in town at any given time, so usually any single group of us can outvote them, though they make a difference when we all disagree. About uh, eighty of my relatives are considered in good enough standing to vote, though usually Mom casts stuff unanimously for us. Mordo’s group varies year by year, depending on how many initiates they get from the college. Right now they’ve got about as many practicing mages as we do. The Belmonts are around sixty, between the actual family and their apprentices.”

“You just said there were four big factions, not three.”

“Well there’s three for day-to-day stuff. Small stuff that goes off simple numbers, so your grandpa didn’t really impact those votes. Numbers matter for the big choices too, especially for things like Silencing and other disciplinary shit, but power’s a major factor. If your grandpa actively disagreed with something, it didn’t happen. He made a big point about following any reasonable rules that the community here passed, even though most places with someone like him were run more like dictatorships. I uh, don’t know if you’ll still get that kind of veto power, by the way.”

“He wasn’t too active in town business, from what I remember. Apparently he used to be pretty hands-on about arbitrating disputes all around the country but that was over by the time I got out of the nursery. I think that stopping had something to do with your mom, but nobody likes to talk about her.” She paused for a second when she saw me flinch at the mention of Mom. We’d never even known her. “Fuck. Uh- anyway...”

“For some things we do the votes a bit differently. It’s basically the only time where the big shots give up some power. I’m pretty sure it’s so the independents in town don’t get fed up and fuck off to somewhere else. For the special votes, all of us big shots are lumped together as a single vote each. Every household or independent group does the same, which means the individuals get a bigger say than usual. Basically we poll how popular something that affects the entire town is across every group instead of going by body-count and influence. It comes out to be pretty fair, altogether, since people stick around.”

“My family’s one of the big three that are left, if it wasn’t clear by now. We’re the only major group of Sphinxes this side of the Atlantic. Pacific too, I guess. The other Prides are back in and around the fertile crescent – we’re native there. Used to run a few nation-states and terrorize the others, apparently. Mom led us out here in the 1930s. Oh! I don’t know if she’s mentioned it yet, but we’re the Pride of Inquiry when official stuff comes up.”

She saw my face and snorted.

“Yeah, I know. A group of Sphinxes named after asking questions – not like there’s anything that can go wrong there. Nope, not at all.”

“Anyway, us being here is probably why there’s not quite as many Human practitioners around. Also part of why the government is so hands-off. Some people don’t want to piss us off, others don’t want to be nearby, and the rest are just nervous. We’ve got a reputation as a species and that’s hard to shake even if our Pride is relatively small and civil.”

Yeah, I could see that. I kept hearing about things that could let you talk at least sort of normally with a Sphinx, but nobody had explained them to me. Having to watch your words around them was exhausting and the effect if you didn’t…

Yeah. Definitely understood the people that stayed away.

“Next up are the Belmonts. Or as they insist on calling themselves, House Belmont. They pretend like they’re one of the old families from Europe that can trace their roots back to Charlemagne’s time, but pretty much everyone knows that’s bullshit. They’re about two centuries old here in town, but their oldest acknowledged practitioner came over around 1700 and ended up here around 1830. They try to off or depose your grandpa once or twice a generation. He just never really cared enough to do more than smack the biggest idiots down. Can’t stress enough – all they did was try. I can absolutely guarantee that whatever happened to him wasn’t their fault.”

That was…reassuring?

“I wonder how long he was here. The things I’ve seen inside the house – they feel old.”

“I have no clue, actually. I’m sure someone taught me at some point and I just forgot. You need to remember; your grandpa was Really Fucking Old. Like, older than a bunch of the major spirits around here. There’s sooooooo many legends about him. I, uh, would love to hear what he was like after this if it isn’t any trouble. I never really met him, but according to my Mom I wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t helped her. He was the main reason that the cult and our Pride settled in town.”

“Anyway, back to the Belmonts. They’re rich and snobby, which is pretty normal for a family of mages. About two dozen of them, by blood at least, are actively practicing in town in a given year, but they have a few scattered cadet branches up and down the coast. The rest are apprentices, either recruited from the college or around the state. They do enchanting and have the budget to outcompete anyone else this side of the mountains. At least outside of California – there’s some real heavy-hitters there that even they’re too smart to mess with. They’re just a regional power in the scheme of things and generation after generation of them end up pissed about it. Man, you should’ve seen their faces when one of their exiles ended up apprenticed to your grandpa and went on to a big-wig position in Haven. He’s more famous than the rest of them combined.”

“The last big players we’ve got are the fun ones that Mom doesn’t let me go near. Mordo’s group, the Cult of the Drunken God. It’s – honestly, it’s exactly what it sounds like. And it’s fucking cool. They’ve been here since around 1860.” She ticked something off on her fingers and nodded. “Yeah, 1860 sounds about right. Their deity is what’s left of like two or three dozen festival, fertility, and harvest gods who got smashed together in an attempt to stay relevant. The cult here is pretty small, but they run stuff like Mordo’s club in practically every college town and are one of the country’s most prominent groups of faith casters.”

“They sound like magic frat guys.”

“And sorority girls. They definitely aren’t picky about gender - their clergy can’t actually use gendered pronouns after the initiate levels. Something about being as mutable as the divine, maybe. Mom’s super worried about me giving into any kind of excess or obsession though, so I’m pretty much banned from any meetings they host. Even my fun aunts and cousins are too scared of her to take me out there and it sucks.”

“I could take you to the club sometime. Once we get through all of this, anyway. I think I scared the shit out of their bouncer last time so I should apologize for that. Maybe Mordo would let us in without IDs, if we asked nicely, too.” The suggestion went out before I could think about it. That last spoonful had left me vibrating in place and too hyper to really filter out my idle thoughts.

“It’s a date, then!”

Wait, what?

“That’s the town though. We’re pretty small, since you can have a couple thousand practitioners in bigger areas that cover a county or two, but we’ve got more freedom than pretty much anywhere else. The Belmonts have an in with the government on their own, my Pride’s basically a foreign government that the PID doesn’t want to provoke, Mordo’s a single step below an actual deity and has a direct line to one, the Blackleaf Archive is here, and – until he died – we had one of the world’s recognized Archmages. Or Archmagi. Whatever the fuck the different cultures and casting lineages called him.”

“That’s a lot of things.”

“Yep! We’re like Switzerland. I think that’s the country that nobody really wanted to mess with because of all the shit they could pull if you tried, anyway. Mom never focused much on Europe when she was teaching me and a bunch of purely Human politics is boring. The interesting bits were up near Scandinavia and down along the Aegean.”

She scratched the back of her head and grinned.

“I uh, don’t actually know enough about the world to tell you much. You probably know Human shit better than me and I try to avoid paying attention to lectures. I know the PID is super oppressive in other places around the US, but it’s the norm everywhere to have a government group doing oversight. Mom always has snarky comments about all they amount to being a patchwork authority that falls apart whenever something strong gets near it. She ends up muttering about give-and-take and how the Hunters orders do more to keep the actual peace than the law. Usually when she’s dealing with paperwork from somebody screwing up.”

“I don’t know what those are.”

Statement, not a question. Talking this way was getting kind of annoying, but it was worth it to actually learn something.

“Oh! Hunters, or technically Witch Hunters, are a big fixture of society. I can’t remember the ones that work around here very well. Something something Keepers, might be a bit about a grave in there too. They’ve always stayed pretty far away from us, though. Something about your grandpa or my mom, I think. She made clear that I should never, ever, get close to one and told me how to recognize them. Their job varies based on the order and country, but worldwide the Hunters are the groups that make it their business to kill anyone that goes too far. Doesn’t matter if it’s stuff in a war, a power feud, or attacking unawakened people – they’re the bogeymen of anything magic. Some are genuinely good people from what I hear, but a few are racist shitbags that think anything that isn’t Human deserves to die. Our group’s not that bad according to mom. I’ve heard horror stories when she thought I couldn’t hear about entire counties of practitioners getting purged when the local Council didn’t keep order.”

“That doesn’t sound like they’d be a popular thing. To do or to keep around.”

“They usually aren’t popular, per-se. They’re definitely powerful, though. They’re split between mages and regular people, but they gear themselves up to kill pretty much anything supernatural. Most groups have some kind of powerful patron or gimmick that keep them running. The one around here has some death-aligned spirit from what I’ve heard, but nobody that hasn’t joined has seen it up close. And come back, anyway.”

“That sounds kind of scary.”

“Yeah. You uh, don’t want to get on their bad side any more than you already are. Trying to explain all this without asking questions is hard, sorry. Just speak up if there’s anything you want me to talk about! Or maybe I can go get some burgers and fries from Rita. The regular food here isn’t anything special, but it’s greasy enough to make you feel guilty.”

The ice cream was good, but my stomach still felt empty. Especially since I couldn’t eat fast. Maybe it would help me not be so hyper, too.

“Yeah, food sounds nice. I’m starving, now that I think of it. Just get me whatever you think’s good, please. I uh – don’t really want to see if I can walk out there myself yet.”

“No problem! I’ll be back with it soon! Stay safe and be sure to scream if something goes wrong!”

She shimmered back into her illusion and went out the door, humming some old pop song slightly off-key. The next bite shoved even more energy into me, so I had to get up and move around. My legs were still wobbly for the first few steps. With the table there to lean on I could manage it, at least. A few laps around it got me used to moving again and burned out some of the restlessness before I hobbled over to the Galaga machine in the corner. I’d noticed it when we came in but hadn’t been able to focus.

I hadn’t seen one of them in forever. The last one I remembered was in the game room at the buffet by our boarding school. Grandpa would take us whenever he visited, but we hadn’t been there since we were thirteen. Fiddling with it was nostalgic, even if my shaking hands made digging around for enough quarters to play difficult.

I was halfway through the fifth level and on my last life by the time Alyssa got back. The sound of the door opening and the accompanying smell of hot grease and salt distracted me long enough that I jerked into one of the goddamn bee things. It also knocked my focus off enough to notice that the tingling was starting to come back and I probably needed to take another bite of the concoction she’d paid for.

“Hope you’re having fun! Mom never got us any of those games when they came out. She’s still picky about what electronics she lets us kids have. Especially for the younger ones. Nothing even remotely violent for people inside the nursery, that’s for sure. You saw Euanthe, so you can probably guess why.” She sat the tray down and stepped back. “Anyway, I got us the same thing. A cheeseburger with all their usual stuff and fries. The shake’s mine, though. I’m not sharing my only fix of chocolate today.”

I ate a few fries before taking more of the insanely magical ice cream. The surge was less energetic this time, but it overrode the tingling again. That was enough for me to shy in relief.

“So, I’m not really sure what else to go over. I guess you should just tell me what you want to know. Remember; careful about the phrasing!” She’d dropped the illusion sometime between me picking up and putting down my burger and started sucking rather loudly on the shake that was definitely too thick to drink.

“Yeah, yeahI know. Still getting the hang of it. Uh, let’s see – tell me about anything you think might be important around here. Or anything that would get in the way of me saving Teresa.”

“Well, there’s only one thing that comes to mind.” She frowned and put down the shake. “Hopefully they won’t be a problem, but you might have trouble with the Hunters. I said you wouldn’t want to piss them off more earlier. That’s because – uh – you do it already by existing.”

“So that’s another thing Grandpa left for me to deal with.”

“Kinda. His legacy’s not always bright and your track record of – and I’m really sorry to bring it up – losing your sister to the Fae under mysterious circumstances is the kind of thing that gets their attention. They don’t come into town very often after the Archmage made a deal with them. Auditing his labs and apprentices, a few oaths for everyone in town, and some random checks. They were satisfied that he wasn’t going to snap and that we’d handle killing, binding, and imprisoning anything too bloodthirsty in the area, so they left us mostly alone. Nobody’s really sure where that’s going since he disappeared and you showed up though – they haven’t reached out to us yet and it makes mom pretty snappy whenever someone asks.”

“Sorry, rambling. Our usual liaison is a Belmont girl that cut ties like twenty years ago or something to join them. She’s with that Keeper sect I mentioned earlier, the one with the death spirit. I still can’t remember their fucking name. She’ll probably come to visit you at some point.”

“Please tell me you know what it would be about or how to get through it. I don’t know if I can handle more problems without help.

“Well, maybe. I’ll definitely help if I can though! Anyway, the stuff in your Archive and what Lord Blackleaf had for himself is what they’ll be asking about. I think. There’s bound to be things you could just stumble onto or ask the Archivist for that shouldn’t get anywhere close to an apprentice. Especially one with your affinities. Nothing you’ve done is worth a kill-team, so you should be safe. Just stay out of anything murderous and swear some oaths when they ask if the ones your grandpa had didn’t carry over. Just for the love of whatever you think’s holy, don’t try to avoid them.”

“That’s – not as bad as I expected.”

“It’s all part of the legacy you inherited. People are going to watch you closely, but they won’t be too eager to actually do anything hostile. He had centuries worth of rapport with everyone from gods to kings. Even people that hated him on principle respected that he had control of himself and wasn’t afraid to put down his own apprentices and colleagues if they went off the deep end. You’ll get some of his respect from people and the benefit of a doubt, even if you go down the same paths he did.”

“Just tell me what’s so bad about that, please. People keep saying that what I have is dangerous and I have no clue what they’re talking about. I just want to know what the big deal is.”

“It’ll be hard to tell you without questions. Like, harder than the rest of this has been. But I’ll try.”

She took a deep breath.

“Your affinities mean you can do most of what he did. He was a famous necromancer – I think I told you that already – but that wasn’t even his big thing. Mom said working with the dead was just a hobby for him. He considered himself a biomancer by trade. Most people just lump them in with necromancers, but the distinction is working with and changing living bodies. Magically speaking, manipulating living tissue is very different from dead flesh. Socially speaking, either one is enough to get a bad reputation. Most of his infamy came from his primary affinity, though. The one he didn’t use often and that you at least sort of inherited.”

Fuck. I already knew which one she was going to say.

“Blood.”

Yeah, there it was.