by Laynie Bynum
“So what’s the process from here?” I asked as I stepped back through the arched doorway. “What do you need from me to begin your investigation?”
“Investigation?” The mage with the tablet seemed confused by my statement.
My eyes narrowed. “This was clearly a murder. She was attacked and you’re the Guild. This is what you do.”
“According to my records, Winter Quinn has not reported for potions therapy in—” He tapped away at icons on the holographic screen. “Sixty months. Therefore, the Guild is no longer responsible for the safety and protection of this mage.”
Rage boiled in my veins, breaking through the thick layer of ice I’d been hiding under. I clenched my hands into fists at my sides. “That’s bullshit.”
His hair fell into his face as he scrolled through the files. “While it is not against Guild law to deny your potions, it does bar you from the benefits the Guild has to offer its mages. No official charges have been filed against Winter Quinn, but since she is listed as Rogue, no investigation or proper burial procedures will follow her death.”
I noticed his cringe as he said the word Rogue as if it was a contagious disease. But I knew the law even if I didn’t follow it.
“Rogues are still entitled to protection from Guild members,” I said as I felt my fingernails dig into the flesh of the palms of my hands, my magic pulsing through them, longing to escape.
“There is no proof that the alleged assailant was a Guild member. Furthermore, there is significant speculation that your sister was involved in illegal and unsavory magical practices, making it likely that the attack was provoked.”
They had to be kidding, yet the shortest mage crossed his arms as the rest of his body stood as still as a rock. There was no amusement in the blurry shadow of his facial features. Somehow, in this crazy screwed up world we lived in, they actually believed that Winter was capable of harm not only to herself but to others.
Winter, the girl that tracked down mages through blizzards to make sure they could find somewhere warm to wait out the storm. Winter, who cared for patients twenty-four hours a day on little to no sleep for absolutely no profit beyond knowing she was helping someone else.
But I couldn’t say such things in her defense. I couldn’t throw open the door to the basement and reveal all of the sick and injured she took care of. I couldn’t fling open the cabinets and start pulling out the hundreds of medical supplies stocked up waiting to be used. Showing the Guild how the community took care of us for taking care of them—how they paid our bills, fed us, donated everything they could—would have just reinforced their opinion. It would only solidify their opinion of us as criminals rather than prove Winter’s true character as a kind, loving, selfless person.
So I had to stand there in silence as they acted as both judge and jury, convicting her of a crime she never committed, punishing her for her own murder.
I was ready for them to leave. There would be no convincing them that they were wrong. I knew I shouldn’t even waste my breath...
But there was something I could do.
Though not with them around.
Not with anyone around.
I’d seen Winter debate it when Dad died. I watched her study the books she wasn’t supposed to have in her possession. Was aware of her gathering the supplies. Knew when she decided it wasn’t worth it because he would just die again.
But if I could just bring her back for a moment, long enough to tell me who did this to her…
“Thank you for coming,” I said as I walked to the door and opened it— a more than blatant request for them to leave.
The golden-eyed mages looked at each other, clearly baffled at my eager dismissal. “Would you like us to put the body in stasis until the appropriate Guild representative can come and remove it?” the tall mage asked.
The idea of anyone taking my sister away from me was brutally painful. It was as if someone threatened to wrench out my heart, stick it with pins, and place it back in my chest.
But even worse, I wasn’t sure how stasis would affect my plan.
“No, thank you,” I said, making it clear there was no room for debate.
They lined up to filter through the front door, each with their own baffled expression. The smallest one turned around as they walked down the cement steps of the front porch. “I am bound by Guild rule to tell you of the dangers of leaving a deceased body out of stasis.”
He began to list the stages of decomposition, and I attempted to close the door before he could finish.
The hooded mage slipped his shoe in between the door frame and the door, a bold move that was completely against their usual highly regulated behavior.
He didn’t say a word. Just stared at and past me before retreating down the stairs with the other mages.
I watched him leave and then shut the door, leaning against it and sinking to the floor with a sense of relief while closing my eyes and taking deep breaths. So much of those mages’ humanity had been stripped away through their initiation into the Guild Forces.
They had treated Winter as if she was an animal one found on the side of the road, or even less than an animal. A broken toy bound for the trash.
But that was fine. We never needed the Guild before and I certainly didn’t need them now.
Chapter Two
I laid in my bed staring at the ceiling while I listened to the sounds emanating throughout the rest of the house.
The heavy, slow thump of Mr. Allen’s walker as he walked from his assigned room to the bathroom and back over and over again.
The creaky floorboard upstairs in Sean’s room as he paced back and forth
And, most painfully, Lucy’s quiet shuffling and stifled sobs.
Hours passed before the house quieted down. The ghost of Winter was in every square inch of the place. The scent of her flowery shampoo in the bathroom. Her empty bed, the blue and white covers still rumpled from the night before. The whispers of her soft voice singing as she made breakfast on a lazy Sunday morning. Sunday, because every other day was my day to cook. Since I couldn’t heal like she could, I did my best to help by cooking, cleaning and sometimes doing the runs.
Like I should have done that morning. It should have been me. But Winter had insisted on doing that particular large Sunday run that required someone to go downtown.
Downtown wasn’t dangerous per se, not in the earthbound sense of danger. It wasn’t any worse than any other large metropolitan area. But for a mage, it meant a higher chance of discovery by the earthbounds, the normal humans that lived their lives unaware of the secret world that resided just beneath the surface. And for a rogue, it also meant a higher chance the Guild found would find an excuse to harass you.
It was as though they could read the rebellion on our skin, and with their advances of tech and hidden magic, chances were they probably could. Being a rogue wasn’t illegal. They couldn’t just arrest you in the street because you refused their infusions, but they could make up reasons to stop and detain you until you could clear your name. And then, even if you could, they would continue to follow you until they had another excuse to apprehend you.
It should have been me taking the brunt of the harassment. It was something Winter and I had argued about over and over in recent years after tension between the Guild and rogues increased. Those in power were losing their grip on their following, and they knew it. High-Level rogues were the first to feel the brunt, and were known to just… disappear, as if there one day and then gone the next.
Just like they were trying to do with Winter.
Just as they had done to Winter.
I sat up from my bed and stood, careful not to let the old, weathered springs creak and alert anyone I was awake. It was the dead of night— the ‘witching hour’ as our mother used to call it. Perhaps it was meant to be. Perhaps the universe kept everyone in the house from falling asleep until my powers could be at their full strength. Fate knew I needed it for what I was going to try.
My bedroom was on the main level of the house, so getting to Winter’s body on the couch without alerting the others should be a piece of cake. Retrieving the book and supplies out from under the floorboards near the couch where I stored them earlier that day, however, was noisier than I would have liked. In my nervous haste, as I scrambled as quickly and quietly as possible, I fumbled. Materials threatened to tumble and one of the vials of glowing yellow liquid I so desperately needed nearly shattered on the hardwood floors as I scrambled to remove it from the silk black bag that kept it safe.
I didn’t know what I was doing.
I wasn’t even sure if I could do what I was trying to do. And when, or if, I completed it, I didn’t know what the possible consequences would be.
But I needed to know. I needed to speak to Winter one last time. I needed a name, a description, anything that would help me bring her murderer to justice.
Her body remained stiff as I laid the silver trinkets on her chest and stomach. Placing a coin in each hand was difficult, given the tightness of her fingers. The black crystals placed over her eyes gleamed in the darkness like sinister diamonds.
I stepped back, inspecting my setup one more time. It didn’t look wrong, at least from what I remembered from the diagrams in the book, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t. Dark magic was forbidden for white mages like me, and not just by the Guild. The other rogues who trafficked in and out of our makeshift infirmary warned against it.
We never listened, of course. Those were fairy tales. White mages couldn’t even use dark magic, not that we ever wanted to.
At least, we hadn’t. Until now.
I closed my eyes and summoned the strength from deep in my soul to pull on magic somewhere hidden within me. Magic I hoped existed despite the warnings.
As my hands worked, my hope grew along with a feeling of power, rising up to the surface, stronger and stronger.
My eyes flew open as I heard movement coming from the couch, but I couldn’t lose focus. It was working, her abdomen was lifting and lowering back down. She was… breathing.
I increased the speed of my hands and the chants under my breath. I pushed harder.
My blood was pulsing in my eardrums, blocking out everything around me. My vision was blurring. It felt as if the life I was giving her was coming straight from my own life force.
And then, from somewhere beyond the couch, I heard my name cut through the whirring.
The blur faded and Lucy’s big round brown eyes stared back at me, filled with tears. “Autumn, what are you doing?” she asked, her voice sounding hesitant, fearful.
“It isn’t what it looks like,” I said, lowering my hands and walking toward her.
She backed away from me slowly just as another figure walked through the kitchen doorway and into the dark living room.
It was a man, about Winter’s age, with the trademark midnight black hair of a high-Level dark mage. His arms were tightly wrapped around his waist and the sharp lines of his face were contorted as if he was in pain.
His presence brought Lucy back from her shock, but her skeptical look and refusal to come anywhere near me remained.
“I thought you would have heard the back doorbell,” she said as she walked out of the room and into the kitchen, I assumed to grab supplies.
When she came here two years ago, she was just a hungry child. Orphaned and unsure of her powers. She’d heard about our house through the grapevine, the same way so many mages in the Boston area did. She thought we could help her.
She didn’t realize how much she was helping us. We needed hands. And even at then she’d had both the wherewithal to deal with the gruesome injuries we saw, and had the same desire to help that Winter and I were so passionate about.
She’d become Winter’s prodigy, her apprentice. I would have been lying if I said this didn’t cause a bit of jealousy to rise in me. But I wasn’t meant to lead, not like Winter. Not like Lucy. I was meant to follow.
“I—” I had nothing to say for myself. I hadn’t heard the doorbell at all. And even if I had… would I have stopped? I wasn’t sure.
She walked back in, arms full of gauze and antiseptic, and directed the man to sit down on the chair beside the couch.
He looked cautiously between Winter’s body, covered in black magic runes, and me… standing beside her in light colored jeans and a white t-shirt, my blonde hair the only indication of my mage class.
I closed my eyes and tried in vain to shake off my nausea and panic in order to slide into robotic caretaker mode.
“Hit the light,” I called out to Lucy as I walked away from the stone fireplace and deeper into the room.
Even in the dim light, the fire in her eyes when she stopped working at his shirt buttons and turned toward me was scorching. “I’ve got this. Why don’t you hit the light?”
I’d have to explain to her. I’d have to somehow plead with her to understand. I couldn’t do nothing. I couldn’t just let this go. I needed answers. Any way I could get them.
She loved Winter. If anyone on earth understood what could possibly drive me to this point, it would be her.
But at that moment, with the shadowed stranger sitting in our living room, I knew it was best if I kept my mouth shut. Even among other rogues, talk like this could get you sent to the Grey.
And no one ever came out of the Grey.
It was a death sentence. Tall tales and horror stories were carved into magical children’s minds from infancy. The way the Grey stripped your magic, stripped your humanity. The way people went in and never came out, including those that worked there.
The Grey was the Guild’s version of Alcatraz or Devil’s Island. Only, ours was worse. Ours struck fear into even the most rebellious of rogues.
I flicked the switch beside the kitchen and a soft light flooded out of the chandelier and onto every surface in the room. The slick oil painting of my parents above the mantle came into view, and even in their frozen state, it seemed as if they were glaring at Winter’s body, and the black magic artifacts surrounding it, with shock and horror.
The dark stranger made a pained growl and I snapped to attention. “Are you using numbing spells? He shouldn’t be in pain.” I tossed a throw blanket across Winter as I crossed the room to the chair where Lucy knelt in front of him. “If his blood pressure gets too high you’re risking bleed out. Here,” I said as I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let me.”
She turned her head, but her fingers continued working on the stitches in the man’s arm. “I’ve got this,” she said again. “You think you’re the only one in this house that can heal because she’s gone? You’re wrong.”
There wasn’t anything to say. She was right. She was the prodigy. I was the maid, the cook, the runner. “I’m sorry.”
I began to walk to the stairs, fully intending to leave the two of them alone. No matter how many alarm bells were going off about leaving a twelve-year-old with a mostly grown man we didn’t know. But the man made a groaning noise again. And when I looked back, he was staring at me.
“No,” he said through gritted teeth. “Stay. Talk to me. Distract me.” His eyes flickered to the painting of my parents, looking at my mother as if he recognized her. “Are those your parents?”
Walking back to the area in front of the fireplace, I put one arm against one of the high-backed chairs. “They were. Yes.”
“Were?” His heavy eyebrows lifted, and I started to wonder if telling this man that there were no “real” adults around had been a good idea.
“Correct.”
“Did you kick them out or something?” He had an accent but I couldn’t place it. British? Irish? No. I would have known those right off the bat. We got people from all over who were looking for our help. Boston was a well-traveled city after all.
“You ask a lot of questions for a nameless injured man,” Lucy said, saving me from possibly opening us up to a robbery or worse. Sometimes her life in the streets came in handy, protecting us
from things that Winter and I hadn’t had to deal with during our own childhoods.
He laughed, the action bringing on another bought of pained groans. “One of them just looks like someone I’ve seen recently is all,” he said as he carefully regarded the painting once more.
It would have been impossible for him to have seen either of them recently. Mom had been gone so long that I couldn’t even remember her voice, and Dad… Well, the pain was still fresh, but it had been years. And even before his death, he hadn’t left the house much after he got sick.
At least Mom’s was quick, if not painless. One morning she was putting us on the bus to school and that afternoon we were picked up by our sobbing father telling us she was gone.
Our neighbors said it was a run of the mill car accident. But our father spun a different tale. That the Guild had purposely caused the wreck she died in. That they knew about her growing frustration with the way things were run.
His eyes shifted back to me slowly. “If you’re uncomfortable with the question, you can just say so. You don’t need to make your little sister answer for you.”
It was Lucy’s turn to growl. “We’re not related,” we said in unison.
“Winter was my sister,” I said, motioning to her still form. Talking about her like this, in the past tense, stung. Hell, standing near her stung.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
It was the first thing he’d said that actually sounded genuine.
The silence stood still between us. I knew I was supposed to say something. Thank you. We’re coping. We will be okay. But it was so far from okay. I was so far from okay.
“All done,” Lucy said as she sat back and regarded her handiwork.
The stranger moved his arm in a circle, as if testing the stitching and pain spell, before he looked up at her with a wide grin. “You have truly been a lifesaver, Miss—” He halted, waiting for her name.
“Oh no,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “You don’t get to ask any more questions until you tell us who you are.”
His eyes shifted uneasily under the weight of her gaze. Lucy was a tiny thing, only five foot on her best days. But she was fierce. She was strong. She lived by the motto “take no shit but do no harm.” The last half of which was engraved in Latin above the underground entrance to our house. It’s how people knew they were in the right place.