In the City of the Nightmare King

by V. S. Santoni

  Alison’s sharp commentary died down after the Dreamhaven. She didn’t have her HRT, and I thought that was making her nervous, but she stayed quiet even after Aquila got her some medicine from the neighboring town. No one else noticed her subtle mood shift, but too many times I watched her bite her words and become lost in thought, a vacant look in her eyes like her soul had gone back to the Dreamhaven. Part of me worried she’d go into Everywhen and find her way back.

  Hunter’s headaches persisted, as did his nightmares, but he repeated the same lie about sinuses and lingering anxieties. Not wanting to break his trust, I didn’t tell the Defectors about any of it.

  The Defectors taught us that American wizard society had been organized into a series of confederations, called Assemblies, and that each of these Assemblies was divided into six regions: Mid-South, South East, North East, Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and South West. Each regional Assembly was different, but they were all led by magisters. These magisters worked in tandem with the Institute to adjudicate local issues. Magisters numbered anywhere between three and nine to an Assembly, and they were always members of a Lineage in good standing with their Legacy. The Defectors kept these magisters’ identities a closely guarded secret. No one needed a vengeful Defector in a bloody haze, jeopardizing months, sometimes years, of careful planning.

  Every five years, Lineage wizards in good standing with their Legacies gathered in a great convocation called The Grande Assembly. The Grande Assembly chose leaders for its ruling body, the High Council, from the most powerful and influential in wizard society. And though these candidates didn’t need experience as magisters, choosing someone who lacked such merits constituted a dangerous political faux pax. They called these leaders Prefects of the High Council, and they chose new regional magisters and also acted as the Marduk Institute’s administrators. These prefects served until the next Grande Assembly, but the Defectors assured the ones residing had been there for at least two decades. Rumors about the shadowy admins swirled around the Institute, but no one had ever seen them. Even the Smiths spoke about them like they were urban legends.

  Most wizards, Lineage and non-Lineage alike, didn’t know the Institute’s true purpose. To “proper” wizard society, the Institute offered disadvantaged wizards a shelter. For older non-Lineage wizards, the Institute provided invaluable services that helped them survive: housing, training, free food, medicine. As far as the Lineages saw it, non-Lineage wizards had it easy. Ordinary humans should only be so lucky. But we knew better. We, like the shadowy admins, knew the Institute’s true purpose was to kill non-Lineage wizards, and to train Lineages to shepherd them until execution day. Although Gaspar had argued the quelling existed to maintain the hierarchy in wizard society, with Lineages at the top and non-Lineages at the bottom, I doubted it was that simple. Things rarely are.

  I woke up to Aquila painfully prodding me in the ribs. Our daily routine began anew: Wake up early. Do a bunch of pointless chores. Rinse. Repeat. She’d been alternating responsibilities among us each day. The one thing no one wanted to hear was, “You’ve got babysitting duty.” That meant you had to watch the kids in the reading room all day. It was more like psychological torture than a job.

  “Come on, sleepyheads. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.” She poked me again when I didn’t move. “Come on. Get up.” I groaned like a zombie and slowly rose. Hunter did the same.

  Aquila charged us with fixing breakfast after we cleaned up. Hunter’s camping experience made him a perfect candidate for manning the skillet. What I lacked in camping experience I made up for in my amazing scrounging abilities, so I got to gather ingredients. The pantry’s nearly barren shelves told me the Defectors needed to restock their supplies—and I didn’t know how they planned on doing that. It cracked me up to imagine Aquila using her powers to trick Postmates into delivering us groceries. Luckily, I found pancake mix in the cupboard. Hunter and I whipped up a batch while Alison and Blake set the table, then we plated the pancakes and seven children—four girls and three boys—came running in. The kids asked us about our adventures, and Blake embellished the details and turned our few (horrifying) experiences into exciting stories.

  The kids were a menagerie of life experiences from all over the United States, their stories just as interesting as ours. Their ages ranged between eight and eleven. They spoke fondly when they talked about Aquila because it was she who rescued them. But they also didn’t mind sniping her for her overbearing personality. They didn’t say much about Nephelie, except that she always worked. Before we ruined it, the Defectors used to run a robust liberation network within the Institute. Now that Melchior knew their scheme, they wouldn’t be able to sneak out any more kids for a while.

  After breakfast, Linh headed upstairs to attend to the rooms. She got the easiest job because of her seniority at Sanctuary. Foisting babysitting duty on someone gave Aquila a perverse rush. Today, she assigned that duty to Blake. Everyone who “won” that (not-so) coveted position also got Aquila’s complimentary gum stick, which she said helped stave off the edge. Blake huffed, grabbed the gum, and put it in his mouth. Then he left for the reading room, looking back at us sadly as he opened the door.

  Aquila pulled Alison and Hunter into the kitchen and handed them buckets and scrub brushes. “You two have the floors today.” Alison’s dewy-eyed expression melted into a nasty glare that Hunter echoed. I imagined two pit bulls barking viciously at each other. There weren’t two people in the world more different than Alison and Hunter. They’d be fighting before day’s end.

  Aquila walked me through the kitchen to the laundry room, and through there to the garage. The whole place stunk like engine oil and Lake Superior—a fishy, moldy smell—and the temperature dropped ten degrees. Boxes piled to the ceiling filled the space. A few sported the word Junk in thick, black Sharpie while others were labeled Housewares, Kitchen Appliances, and Bathroom Supplies. An old green truck was awkwardly parked there, stuffed black trash bags littering its cargo bed. Aquila switched on a hanging lamp in the garage and handed me a box of trash bags.

  “We’ve been trying to clean up in here forever. You can just throw all the junk in the trash bags and toss them on the cargo bed. If you’ll break down the boxes afterward, that’d be great too.”

  Busy work. They didn’t really need the garage cleared out; they just wanted us out of their way. Most days Nephelie and Aquila locked themselves in the office, where they planned their next scheme. Luther, however, stayed gone, slipping into the armoire in Nephelie’s office every morning like clockwork.

  I dug through a soggy box labeled Junk. Not that I thought the Defectors would’ve thrown away anything important, but I hoped they had. There was nothing in the box except for old, mildewed newspapers and wires for machines that didn’t exist anymore. The next box had broken picture frames, tarnished silverware, a busted VCR—more of the same. Fifteen minutes (and a whole box packed with rusty lunch tins) later and I still hadn’t found anything. Disappointed, I filled up the first bag and tossed it on the cargo bed, and repeated the process. Before long, boredom settled in and curiosity overtook me. They hadn’t left us alone since we got here, so I hadn’t been able to investigate. Now was my chance. I snuck up to the laundry room door and peeped inside.

  “It’s going to take us forever to clean the floors if you do it like that,” Alison said.

  “This is how you’re supposed to clean floors,” Hunter said. They were arguing. Just like I’d predicted.

  “Poor, feeble boy. Don’t you understand it would be easier if we just did it like this.” Alison dumped the soap bucket all over the floor.

  Hunter was aghast. “How’re we supposed to clean that?”

  Alison did a quick search and spotted a broom. She snatched it and scrubbed the floors. “See,” she said, stepping on the sudsy tiles, “easy peasy.” Alison miscalculated a step and slipped. Hunter tried to keep her from falling and they both went do
wn. They overheard me giggling behind the door.

  “Get off me, Alison,” Hunter said struggling to get up.

  Alison crawled off Hunter and picked herself up using the sink as an anchor. Hunter got to his feet but stumbled on the slippery floor. He balanced himself against a chair to keep from falling again.

  “Johnny”—Alison hopped over the spill—“what’re you doing?”

  “I thought I’d go look around.”

  “I’ll cover for you,” Hunter said.

  I headed into the foyer and spotted Nephelie’s office—empty. Sanctuary served as the central hub to countless Defector operations, and Nephelie played an integral role in their leadership. That guaranteed I’d find something useful among all those books and documents. I hurried inside.

  Wall to wall, the office stretched wider than I remembered, so big I didn’t know where to start. My eyes snagged on a picture sitting on a shelf near Luther’s cabinet: a young Nephelie standing arm-in-arm with Aquila, the Keep towering behind them. Their past as Crowns lay cloaked in mystery. Did both their bloodlines belong to Lineages? Had they betrayed their families to fight for the Defectors?

  Nephelie never smiled, but she cheesed hard in the pic. An innocent warmth pervaded the image. But time changes everything, including the people in that picture. Nothing else on the shelf caught my attention. Next up: her desk. The drawer on the upper right-hand corner squeaked out, and inside I found some well-organized paperwork. Ordinary stuff like maintenance bills. In the next drawer down, a supply list:

  Laundry detergent

  Fabric softener

  Food for that cat hanging around outside

  Wood cleaner

  Paper

  New pillowcases

  And it kept going. Nothing interesting. No secret magical weapons. No pet Void-spawns to do all the dirty work. Running a rebellion was a lot more boring than I had imagined.

  The door to the office opened. I quickly crawled into the leg nook and hid. A few clunky footsteps sounded, then the door closed.

  “What’s up, Neph?” Aquila said.

  “Maleeka contacted me. She said her and Penn ran into some witch-hunters in Menominee, told me the hunters had been chasing them for miles. It looks like the witch-hunters ran them off the road near a cemetery just within city limits.” Witch-hunters didn’t sound like good news, especially when you considered we might be the witches they were hunting.

  “Sounds like they’re in Maple Grove. That’s not far from here.”

  “She said her and Penn were able to save a few pieces from the shipment, but most of it was lost in the wreck. Can you find them? I’m going to contact Estaban and see about another shipment. If things get too hairy, get out of there.”

  “Even if it means leaving them behind?”

  Nephelie didn’t respond. The Defectors were nothing if not expedient. A minute later, the office door opened and closed again. They had left. The name Maleeka sounded familiar. Blake and Linh had mentioned her before—they all came to the Institute around the same time, but Maleeka escaped before them. From what I remembered, though, she had mysteriously vanished.

  I left the office and lured Blake out of the reading room and told him everything. Epiphany and dread swirled on his face in equal parts.

  “Do you know when Aquila’s leaving?” he asked.

  “No clue.”

  We ran into the antechamber and cracked the front doors. Aquila got into a gray sedan parked out front. It looked as old as the truck in the garage, and its undercarriage dipped when she took a seat. Blake pulled out the gum in his mouth, balled his hand around it, and closed his eyes. The car grumbled to life and its exhaust pipe poured out gritty smoke. Blake tried to fling the gum but it clung to his hand. His face contorted furiously. He shook the gum loose, and before the car tottered off, he threw it and it stuck to the back bumper. Aquila headed to the road between Sanctuary and the forest, took a left, and the car wheezed loudly as she sped off.

  “Why’d you do that?” I asked.

  “I put a locator spell on the gum, should help me track Aquila’s car.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “I’m going to go find Maleeka.”

  “But Aquila—what about the witch-hunters?”

  “Johnny, you heard Nephelie. Maleeka’s in trouble. And the Defectors won’t do anything to save her if it isn’t convenient.”

  Blake’s sudden willingness to go up against witch-hunters we knew nothing about surprised me. He didn’t get into fights without knowing the odds. Even with his life on the line, his guilt-born desire to protect others informed his actions. Reservations aside, we were friends and I wouldn’t let him go alone. “I’m going too.”

  “What’re you two doing?” Alison said from behind us, Hunter next to her.

  “Blake’s friend is being chased by witch-hunters.”

  “What’s a . . . witch-hunter?”

  Blake told us that the Institute hired other wizards when its resources were stretched too thin. Trained agents were a valuable commodity. They took months to train, and the good ones—rare because the job was so dangerous—spent years developing their talents. Outsourcing to mercenaries allowed the Institute to save its agents for more important roles.

  Bratty Lineage wizards would never soil their persnickety hands “witch-hunting.” Non-Lineage wizards, however, lived a perilous existence outside the Institute’s walls, facing myriad dangers, not least among them poverty. Lacking their former support structures forced many non-Lineage wizards to seek employment with the Institute, for safety and financial benefit. If they rejected the Institute’s employment, for whatever reason, few options remained. Witch-hunting, however, allowed them to survive on their own terms, and it paid handsomely. Likely, the Institute removed the death curse as an added benefit, but I didn’t know that for sure.

  “Aquila said the cemetery wasn’t far from here. Let’s get going,” said Blake.

  “What about Linh?” Hunter asked.

  “She’d probably just rat us out. Let’s leave her here,” Blake said.

  “Wait a second,” Alison said. “We can barely use magic. How the hell are we going to deal with witch-hunters?”

  “Tenacity?” Blake said with an uncomfortable grin. In a straight-forward fight, our chances against those witch-hunters looked dismal, but Blake refused to leave Maleeka out there alone.

  “Look,” I said, “we beat that sandman, didn’t we?”

  “Kind of. Your boyfriend sort of . . . died,” Alison said.

  “I’m good, though,” Hunter said optimistically.

  “See. He’s good. Plus, we got out of the Dreamhaven, didn’t we?”

  Alison patted my shoulder. “I’d believe that hopeful optimism of yours if your leg wasn’t shaking so hard, J.” My leg had indeed rattled the whole time. I made it stop. “Anyway, I’m not short on bone-headed courage. But if we all end up dead, I’m going to haunt you guys in hell.”

  Blake’s spell allowed him to use his wizard senses to follow the gum on Aquila’s bumper. For him, it was like a towering light in the vivit apparatus, an immense glow visible for miles. Without looking into the clockwork, Blake’s wizard senses registered it as a sublime feeling, like experiencing a revelation, and that feeling grew the closer he came to it.

  The forest provided the fastest route to the cemetery. Taking the truck in the garage would’ve alerted Nephelie, so we decided to walk. Being this close to Lake Superior, storms buffeted the forests, uprooting trees and leaving them partially tipped up. Mushy detritus covered the forest floor, making our quick journey a slog. We found a short, wrought-iron fence around the cemetery and easily scaled it.

  Blake huddled us together before going any farther. “Those witch-hunters could be anywhere,” he said. “I wouldn’t head straight for Aquila’s car. We don’t know where o
ne of them might pop up.”

  “What’s your plan?” Hunter asked.

  “It’ll be easier for us to sneak around if we pair off in teams of two.”

  “I’ll go with Alison,” I said.

  Blake and Hunter gave me a funny look, which Alison took quite personally. “Why’re you two looking at us like that?”

  “What’re you two going to do,” Hunter said, “have Alison snark them to death?” Blake chortled loudly then took one look at Alison and sucked in the rest. Even Hunter clamped up when he saw the scowl on my face. We didn’t find Hunter’s joke very funny.

  “I mean—you know,” Hunter said, “we’re a team and all, but like, me and Blake do a lot of the heavy lifting. Just being honest.” His decision to dig in his heels left me glaring. “We just don’t want you two getting hurt, that’s all.” Wrong thing to say to someone like Alison. Few things gave her a rush like proving people wrong.

  She scoffed loudly. “We don’t need you two to protect us. Come on, J, let’s go ahead and give our lovely boyfriends a head start. They’ll need it.” Alison haughtily tossed her hair over her shoulder and we walked away. “Can you believe those two?”

  “Sadly, yes.” The late morning coolness gave way to noon’s warmth. “You’ve been kind of quiet . . . since we got to Sanctuary, I mean.”

  Her brown eyes walked silently among the tombstones. “Hmm,” she said, my words finally reaching her. “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry. But . . . do you miss the Dreamhaven?”

  She watched her feet. “I don’t know. Maybe. Kind of.”

  “Are you mad at me . . . for making you leave?”

  “No.”

  “So, what’s wrong?”

  “None of this even feels real, you know? It’s like we just go from place to place, and I still don’t understand why any of this is happening. And I . . . I still just want to see Mom’s grave. I want to move forward, but I can’t. It’s like there’s this unfinished chapter of my life, and I can’t start the new one until the old one closes.”