by Leigh Kelsey
“Damn bell,” Kati muttered and set off climbing, putting all her enmity into a punishing pace. At the first landing, a mere twenty steps off the ground, Kati wilted against the wall, her legs like jelly and every breath whistling through her nose.
Rahmi laughed, a fair distance behind at a sensible pace, the bright sound repeating until it sounded like a whole chorus of Rahmis were amused at Kati’s stupidity. It should have made her defensive, should have had her snapping and snarling just to diffuse the embarrassment, but … it didn’t. With Rahmi, it just didn’t, and she didn’t feel that her new friend was sneering at her, rather fondly rebuking her.
Fuck, Kati had forgotten what it felt like to have friends, to not flinch at every word and gesture.
“Slow and steady—” Rahmi began with a wry smile, pushing errant strands of hair back under her scarf. Instead of Kati, who was dripping sweat and miserably moody about it, Rahmi glowed with the exercise. Bitch, Kati thought, but with an air of fondness.
“Gets a knife to the throat, yeah I know that one,” Kati interrupted, pointing her finger like a threat, a weapon in itself.
Rahmi grinned. “It’s cute when you threaten me. Like a tiny kitten trying to kill its owner with its teeny weeny claws.”
Kati’s expression darkened, her eyes narrowed but playfully. “Watch it, Qureshi, I know where you sleep.”
“I know where you sleep too, Wilson. Be careful or I’ll sneak into your room in the middle of the night and redecorate it in powder pink and frou-frou.”
Kati rolled her eyes, starting up the stairs again but at a more measured pace. Marathon this bitch, she told herself, don’t sprint it. “The joke’s on you because I actually like pink.”
Rahmi peered at her, mock serious. “I thought you were more of a black and black and black person. What with the...” She waved a hand at Kati’s Ice Nine Kills hoodie.
“I can like heavy shit and feather boas at the same time. Just no rainbows or soulsdamned glitter.”
Rahmi’s smile this time was somehow more genuine, softer than the others before it. Kati got the sense that she’d said something very right but wasn’t sure exactly what. “I like you, Kati Wilson.”
“Back at you, Rahmi Qureshi,” Kati mumbled, a bit surprised to hear her full name spoken in such an accepting light when for the past six months all she’d heard was Kati, Theo Wilson’s sister and Katriona, can you tell me how you feel about your brother being a murderer? and Katriona Wilson, 18, declined to respond.
Rahmi paused after five flights of stairs, heaving for breath. “When I said,” she panted, “go to the clocktower—I didn’t consider the stairs.”
“You and me both,” Kati muttered, red hair stuck to her sweaty face and her shirt glued to her back. She looked at Rahmi, glistening and red-faced now, her hijab slightly askew, and burst into laughter. “This is a good look for us. We should selfie.”
“Yes!” Rahmi said with far too much glee, tearing her phone from the neckline of her choli and, with a speed borne of practise, set the camera in selfie mode and leant her head against Kati’s, pressing the volume button at least ten times.
Kati looked at her in dual outrage and admiration. “Did you just pull that iPhone from your heaving bosom?”
“Not so much heaving,” Rahmi replied with a sigh, flicking through the photos. “None of the women in my family have much in the way of breasts.”
“And your spine thanks you,” Kati, who came from a family of big-bosomed women, replied. Her own bra was a network of straps and heavy duty elastic designed to keep the gargantuan things in place.
Rahmi flicked her a questioning glance but a selfie snagged her attention. “Oh, this one’s not bad.”
Kati peered at it. “Aw look, it’s you, me, and my giant, shiny forehead. What a cute family we make.”
Rahmi snorted but didn’t disagree. Kati punched her in the shoulder. “Bitch, you’re meant to say it doesn’t look that bad.”
Rahmi squinted dubiously at the selfie. “I have an app that can blur that probably.”
Kati scowled but she couldn’t hold onto the expression, a smirk fighting its way free. “Yeah, and you can fix that cute droplet of sweat on the tip of your nose while you’re at it.”
“I do not—” Outrage flashed in Rahmi’s eyes but she zoomed in and winced. “Okay, this selfie never sees the light of day.”
Kati nodded sagely. “Bury it.”
Rahmi locked her phone, stuffed it back down her choli, and took a deep breath. Together they eyed the remaining incline like it was Mount Kilimanjaro.
“We could always not and say we did,” Kati offered.
Rahmi’s face took on a stubborn set, her mouth pursed in a way that flattened her top lip and pushed out her bottom one. “Not a chance. Qureshi women don’t quit.”
“Wilson women don’t tend to start in the first place,” Kati replied, inhaling deeply before resuming the climb. “It goes against our delicate constitutions and our fair complexions, you see.”
Rahmi laughed under her breath. “Just think of the stories you can tell. We climbed to the very top of the clocktower—it’ll make anyone jealous.”
Kati gave her a doubtful look, but she trudged up the next few flights of stairs in silence, her thigh muscles stretching and air leaving her lungs in pants rather than breaths. “If anything,” she said breathlessly, “we can act—as a cautionary tale.”
“Just think of the view from the top,” Rahmi gasped. “Just think of the view.”
Kati tried to laugh but she didn’t have the breath for it. “Goddamn, I need to get into shape.”
“We get strength training,” Rahmi said, two landings off reaching the top. “I don’t know about necromancers, but reapers need muscles. Even with handles made of carbon fibre, scythes are a nightmare to carry around.”
Kati knew next to nothing about reaping, except for the basics. “They’re heavy?”
Rahmi managed a snort, but it was breathier than normal. “So heavy. I tried holding my sister’s when she brought it home once and it nearly took my arm off. You might meet her actually, she’s a third year at SBA. Gets here tomorrow.”
“Is she as … um, bubbly as you?” Kati asked, struggling for a non-offensive word.
Rahmi laughed. “Not even a little bit. She’s all doom and gloom.”
“Whereas you’re all sunshine and rainbows,” Kati said with a smirk.
“Exactly! I always try to be—” Rahmi cut off as she rounded the final corner, the tower’s roof rising high above and the bell dangling just in front of them. Kati watched in surprise as the blood drained from Rahmi’s face, leaving her ashen.
“What is it?” Kati breathed, rushing up the final few stairs and startling to a halt. “Souls.”
A man was passed out face down on the landing. For a second, Kati thought he was sleeping off a hangover until she saw the sickly cast to his pale skin, the fingers on his right hand that were locked in a painful looking position.
“Um,” Kati whispered, toeing the man’s side with her boot. “Are you okay, mate?”
“Kati,” Rahmi said quietly, fearfully. “He’s not—I can sense it.”
Kati bent, and it hit her—the sense of death hanging all around him. Too far gone to resurrect into an Eternal, too long spent in the underworld. Kati skittered away, her back slamming into the clocktower’s wall and her faint breaths coming quicker, the world blurring out all around her.
This couldn’t be happening. It was supposed to be a normal day, a normal fucking school year. She couldn’t do this. She scanned his body—what she could see of it that wasn’t hidden by his wax jacket and muddy trousers—for ritual marks, for signs of black magic like her brother had been accused of. Was that a sigil, there in the pool of blood? It was—Kati recognised it from the sketches in the papers. The Sever sigil.
“They’re going to say I did this,” Kati whispered, her heart beating so fast that she thought, for a second, she was dying.
Rahmi rushed across the few steps separating them and before Kati could process her intention, she pulled Kati into a tight hug. Up close, Rahmi smelled of powdery perfume and it filled Kati’s lungs, erasing that dead and rotting scent that had covered the man’s body when she’d bent over him. She could still sense his death though, her magic sparking to life inside her in reaction to it. She gripped Rahmi’s arms and held on tight, not caring that she’d only met the girl yesterday, just that she was friendly and supportive and Kati needed someone to cling to while her world—and her future—crashed down around her.
“Go,” Rahmi said, having caught her breath after a few minutes. “Sneak out now, I’ll say I found him.”
“No.” Kati shut the idea down instantly. “If I wasn’t with you, what alibi do I have?”
She sensed the moment the gravity of the situation hit Rahmi. Kati had thought about nothing but alibis, murder, and death for the last nine months, but Rahmi hadn’t dealt with this shit.
She was dealing with it now, though.
“Good,” she said. “Okay, that’s good. I was with you, I know you didn’t do it.”
“They’re still going to accuse me,” Kati said, everything about her heavy now that the shock and panic had worn off. All it left was resignation in its wake. “They’re going to expel me, Rahmi.”
“Like hell they are,” Rahmi snarled, drawing back. “Send up a flare. When they get here, let me do the talking.”
“My silence will admit guilt,” Kati argued, hating to say it but knowing it was right.
“Okay.” Rahmi stood straighter, wiping the sweat from her face and brushing dust off her sari. “I’ll take the lead, you just back me up, ‘kay?”
Kati nodded.
“And ignore them,” Rahmi said, her voice steely as she caught Kati’s eye. “Whatever they say, the teachers, the students, ignore the whole damn lot of them. I know you didn’t do this. I’ll back you up. So will Naia.”
Kati nodded. She didn’t feel any better for the pep talk but it was nice to have someone try nonetheless. She slipped her wand from its holster and, her hand shaking, pricked her thumb with the thorn, drawing blood that her wand greedily soaked up.
“Alarm,” Kati commanded, thrusting her hand into the air, and a stream of purple magic shot into the air, pushed through the rafters and the roof, and—though Kati couldn’t see it—hung over the clocktower in a giant sparkling exclamation mark.
She took a tight breath, and then another, and another, ignoring her shaking hand as she put her wand away. The inquisition would be on their way, ready to rip her apart for answers the way they had after Theo had fled. The vultures and journalists would swarm. The students would turn on her, Alexandra Chen and her buddies would fucking love it. And Kati would live a nightmare every day of every term, assuming Madam Hawkness even allowed her to stay.
But she glanced at Rahmi, her arms crossed over her chest, eyes narrowed on the staircase, and a stubborn tilt to her chin. She looked ready to face down a whole army.
At least Kati wasn’t alone this time.
THE OPPOSITE OF WORST CASE SCENARIO
Mrs Balham questioned them for a whole hour, during which Kati and Rahmi went over and over what had happened, earning a frown of disapproval for their unsanctioned exploration but no accusations of murder. They learned that Mrs Balham, the hard ass, leather jacket wearing teacher who’d greeted them off the bus yesterday, was head of security at Second Breath Academy. Kati would have guessed Madam Hawkness would be, since she’d taken down Lady LaVoire herself, but she probably had better things to do than respond to what would inevitably turn out to be dumbass pranks.
Once Balham was done screening them for their story, she opened the door to her classroom—potions and poisons etched on a gold plate nailed to it—and with a deep frown, said, “Don’t go finding any more bodies, Miss Qureshi, Miss Wilson,” and then she let them go.
No expulsion, no arrests, no gentry come to cart Kati away.
Which was good, Kati told herself. This was what she wanted—to stay, to learn, to graduate as a necromancer with actual prospects for her career. But faced with the knowledge that she’d have to endure the students’ reactions, she’d have almost preferred being kicked out and locked in a jail cell.
“It’ll be fine,” Rahmi assured her, successfully hooking her arm around Kati’s after several failed attempts; Kati was as rigid as a wooden ruler and it didn’t make for easy elbow linking. “If anyone says something, I’ll bite their heads off. Then they can’t say anything, problem solved.” Her gentle smile coaxed Kati to smile too, but she didn’t quite have the emotional capacity to form one. Rahmi’s expression melted into worried sympathy. “I mean it, it’ll be fine, Kati. We’ll get through this and everyone will forget about it in a couple days. You’ll see.”
“We found a dead body, Rahmi,” Kati said miserably. “Nobody’s ever going to forget that.”
The weekend was unbearable.
Rahmi spent the whole two days fending accusations and insults aimed at Kati, Naia brooded that she hadn’t been with them when they’d found the man—Williams, the keeper of SBA grounds who had since been replaced by a big, burly woman Kati didn’t want to get on the wrong side of—as if finding a dead body was a bonding experience they’d intentionally excluded her from.
Since there were no official classes or events until first thing Monday evening, Kati stayed in their dorm, holed up in her room eating food her new friends sneaked out of the dining hall or scowling at the TV in the living room.
There was a brief, bright spot in her weekend when, Sunday, along with every other first year, she, Naia, and Rahmi followed Miz Jardin’s bright voice down dark, dingy hallways lined with portraits and death-inspired paintings until they came to the library.
“That down there is my classroom,” Miz Jardin said, gesturing at a room they’d just passed. “Some of you will be with me bright and early Monday evening for health and safety, the rest of you will be upstairs with Lavellian for supernatural history.”
Groans echoed all around; Kati knew just how they felt. What a way to start a Monday; with dreary droning about old wars or dreary droning about magic safety procedures.
“But that’s tomorrow,” Miz Jardin went on, oblivious to the complaints. “Now you’ll be picking up your workbooks, quills, ink, and most importantly, your timetables! The second years should just have left, but don’t be alarmed if you happen to run into one of your peers—they’re not all that scary, they were just like you last year.”
Her tittered laugh made Kati wince, both her ears and her sulky mood complaining.
“In you go then, dears. Main desk, you can’t miss it. Veesa will sort you all out, but do queue in an orderly manner. She’s a distinguished lady and deserves better respect than to have you all demanding your timetables at once.”
Kati raised her eyebrows but filed through the glass-paned wooden doors, peering over the shoulders and heads in front of her to catch her first glimpse of the library. Like everything else at SBA, it wasn’t quite what she’d been expecting, which was warm woods and bright jewel toned spines and racks after racks of books. The racks were true to life, at least; the room held at least a hundred bookshelves, all of them made of rich ebony that seemed to soak up the light and trap it rather than welcomingly beam it back at them. The shelves seemed to warn against removing a single tome.
The rest of the room, by comparison, was ordinary. Made of black stone like the rest of the castle, lit by white lights at intervals along the aisles, there were no foreboding statues, no eerie paintings, no portraits with eyes that felt to watch them. But there was a sense about the place, something Kati had only felt once before, while visiting York Minster with her mum, dad, and Theo. But that place had been the home of a wicked and cruel reaper posing as a holy man centuries ago.
Like the hunters of Salem had burned witches, Duncan Reid had skinned necromancers. It was an unknown, unspoken part of York’s history, an
d something that had taken supernatural society decades to recover from. Places like SBA, where reapers and necromancers studied as one body of students, would have been unthinkable in those days.
The Minster was soaked in the blood of lives stolen and brutal massacres, but the library … what the souls had happened here?
Kati debated asking Miz Jardin, but the woman was busy explaining how to read the timetables to a group of students across the room, scrolls of parchment already in their hands—timetables, Kati assumed.
“It’s the books, if you were wondering,” a soft male voice remarked at the end of the aisle Kati had wandered down. She, Rahmi, and Naia glanced towards a little alcove set in the wall beneath a stained glass window and found Mr Worth sat at a desk, a large book open in front of him along with a worn leather notebook, a pen, and a pot of ink. His floppy hair was in total disarray and ink had stained his fingers black. There was a smudge on his nose that Kati cursed for its adorableness.
He’s a teacher, she hissed at herself. Stop it, you idiot. You’ve already found a dead body on your second day here, the last thing you need is a crush on one of the damn faculty. But she couldn’t help it. His expression was full of enthusiasm and open in a way Kati wasn’t used to, and those damn eyes snagged her every time until she felt like she was floating in warm Caribbean waters.
He was cute. He was fucking cute and she could admit that much. His goodness called to something dark in Kati, the opposite of like calling to like but just as powerful. She wondered what noises he made when he came and—immediately shut that thought down, cursing her face as it heated.
At least the dimness of the library would help cover it.
“The books?” Naia asked, her curiosity blazing to life. Kati was grateful; Mr Worth’s attention diverted to Naia and his smile brightened at the wide cast of her eyes, her eager thirst for knowledge. Kati exhaled slowly, yelling at herself in her head. “What do you mean?”
“Some are bound in human skin,” he told them with relish.