“And we know that things are not ideal with Hunter just now,” Lucas said. “Believe me, we miss him. And we miss Nathan, too. But we know you like Hunter. We’ll help how we can but he’s a stubborn man-child at times and… well, we were all dazzled by Nathan. For the moment, though… of course, Amelia. We’re yours. Nothing in that cabin compares to what we’ve got. In fact…”
They separated, and both stalked around to either side of me, before they closed in with a familiar look in their eyes. “I’d say we wouldn’t be missing a thing,” Lucas breathed against my ear as Isaac dipped his head to kiss my neck, “if we just skipped the party altogether and found a quiet corner of the woods…”
My breath was caught in my throat from the expert way Isaac tickled my neck with his tongue, but I managed to croak a thoroughly unsexy, “Uh huh… yeah, okay…”
And we got about five feet from the cabin before that plan was shot straight to hell.
“Hunter,” Isaac said brightly, smiling as he saw the big man. Until, that is, Hunter’s companion slipped out of the shadows.
Hunter rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, look who I brought.”
Nathan Crowley met my eyes, his expression neutral. Maybe disdain was there, maybe blind fury, maybe something else at all—I couldn’t read anything from his face. He shifted his weight to one foot, his hands in his slack pockets. He was already in uniform, as if he never wore anything else. He cocked his head slightly to one side as he stared me down. “Hello, Amelia.”
Nathan
It was said often the Devil was once an angel, beautiful beyond compare. That when one was confronted by true evil, the kind of darkness that knows no real limits, it would always present itself to the unwary as something pretty. Similarly, all the most deadly creatures on the Earth presented with the brightest, most attractive colors.
Humans are the only animals that see the colors and covet them. Everything else in nature knows that ‘beautiful’ is frequently equivalent to ‘deadly’.
I remembered seeing Amelia before, when I first woke from the living nightmare that pervaded my broken psyche upon my return to the sphere of creation. But in my memory she wasn’t like this, with her uncertain posture, that coppery red hair, or those wide, pretty brown eyes. When I’d first looked at her, I’d seen her as she truly was.
Monstrous.
“Hello, Amelia,” I said, taking her in. This was the end of the world. Fitting, I supposed. Look at how Troy ended. “I suppose we haven’t properly met. I’m Nathan—”
“Crowley,” she said quietly. “I know. You… look better. Glad to see you walking around.”
For half a second, I thought I saw a darkness behind her, towering over us with tendrils of liquid black shadow reaching out toward me. It made my blood cold and my spine shiver in an attempt to cause me to flee.
I had iron control before my… odyssey. With Master Larson’s assistance, it was diamond. I kept my face impassive. “It’s good to be back. Hunter tells me I have you to thank for that. You must be quite talented.”
She brushed hair behind her ear self-consciously. “I had a lucky moment of insight, is all,” she said. “If it wasn’t for Isaac and Hunter, and our friend Serena… I couldn’t have done it alone, I mean.”
“I suppose not,” I replied. Beside me, Hunter stiffened, the tension suddenly growing taut between the five of us. There was no need for a confrontation here. It was inevitable, though. “Hunter believes a little fun will do me good. I’m told that drinking could be inconducive to my full recovery, so I’m afraid it’s a sober night for me. But we should go in. I’ll make a grand entrance. I suspect I’m famous by now, hm? The man that lived in the Abyss. And with Amelia Cresswin, the girl who almost destroyed the world, well… we should be practically celebrities if they don’t all flee before us.”
“We were just—” Lucas started to say.
Amelia slipped her arm through his. “Just about to go in. Glad you both made it. Shall we go?”
Ah, there it was. A burst of confidence, and did I detect a hint of challenge in her voice, or the way she set her eyes? I’d hit a nerve, I suspected.
I had to wonder, as I crushed the pang of jealousy seeing her locking arms with Lucas like she did, how many nerves had to be hit before she showed what she really was.
Lucas gave me a long, regretful sort of look as he and Amelia turned to face the Cabin. Isaac lingered a moment longer, brow furrowed as the other two went to the door and turned the dial to white. “It is good to see you out in the real world,” he said, trying to smile as he did. “Hunter says your coming back to classes, too. That’s good. We should—”
“What we should do,” I said as Lucas opened the door to the cabin behind Isaac, “is go inside, and try to relax while we can.”
Isaac deflated slightly. I hated to do it to him, really. But now wasn’t the time for the four of us to rediscover the ruins of an old relationship. Certainly not with her in the equation. Hunter had regaled me with the details of how blissfully happy the three of them were. No. Reinserting myself into their lives wasn’t the smart thing to do, and it wasn’t practical now, either.
I had a mission, and that had to take priority.
Hunter walked behind me as we followed Lucas and The Harbinger of Az-Harad into the famed Rosewilde Academy preterm party night. The white room, which was the first of eight, in total, spread out across a multi-phase lattice of spatial sub-dimensions, was full of students. Mostly freshmen who weren’t yet inebriated enough to brave the other parties that each traditionally had a different theme. Walking into it now, feeling the bass of the music that flooded the vast room, brought back memories. Isaac, Lucas, Hunter, and I had spent half the night in the white room before we worked up the nerve to climb the dimensional ladder out to the blue room, where the tone took a distinct turn for the sensual.
This night, I had doubts that I would go that far. Just being in this room, with the press of bodies and the vibrating air, was a challenge I struggled to hide from my demeanor. There were just so many of them. So much… density, and noise and lights and smells. Hunter pressed close behind me.
“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice close to my ear.
I shrugged off the hand he put on my shoulder. “I’m fine,” I assured him. “Just… acclimating. Follow Lucas and Amelia. I’ll be behind you.”
I stepped aside to let him pass, and he did so reluctantly. Just as I’d said, though, I stuck close to him, letting his massive frame do the work of parting the sea of would-be magicians between us and the bar. The others were already there, ordering drinks from the third-rate magical construct the party’s managers had managed to cobble together this year. It was meant to look like an attractive young woman, but her features were too lacking in detail to pass as a person, and her proportions were the stuff of prepubescent male fantasies. It was lucky the construct didn’t actually weigh anything, or gravity would have toppled her.
“Amelia!”
A shrill sort of voice pierced the din, and from among the sea of swaying bodies emerged an elfin creature in a jean jacket, halter top, and shorts that had barely graduated past ‘belt’ status. She pranced toward us, waving an empty drink that she tossed unceremoniously onto the bar. “Fancy seeing you here. Oh… who are these handsome fellas?”
Amelia’s face was stiff. She forced a smile as she introduced the girl. “Sadie, these are Lucas, Isaac, Hunter and… um, and Nathan. Guys, this is my mentee; Sadie Chapman.”
I reassessed the girl. “As in the Los Angeles Chapmans? Roman Chapman would be your father?”
Sadie beamed, and shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah. He’s kind of a big deal I guess.”
Roman Chapman was a big deal. One of the wealthiest magicians in world, for a start, but beyond that he was the current chair of the Magician’s Court. “Nathan Crowley,” I said, extending a hand.
Sadie blinked up at me. “Crowley,” she repeated. “Like… the one that…”
“Yes.” A
melia answered the unfinished question. “That Nathan Crowley.”
The Chapman girl’s eyes went wide. “You’re… way more handsome than I expected for someone who’s been in Hell for a year.”
“It wasn’t Hell,” I said, barely loud enough to be heard. She had to lean in. “Hell would have been preferable, I assure you.”
“So, now that’s all settled,” Amelia said loudly, “anyone up for seeing what they came up with for the other parties?”
She and Lucas both had drinks in hand. Isaac had one a moment later. Hunter hadn’t ordered, perhaps in a show of pointless solidarity. If it had been safe for me to drink, I would have. I suspected I wasn’t going to shake him of the notion, however. And it hardly mattered in any case. I was here to observe The Harbinger; whatever else happened was of little consequence.
“I was about to head to the violet party,” Sadie crooned as she sidled right up to Lucas and put a hand on his bicep. “Where are you all heading?”
I thought Amelia might go apoplectic. Nerve number two, clearly. She took a step toward Sadie, opening her mouth to say something, but Lucas spoke first as he removed Sadie’s hand from his arm. “Sorry,” he said, “we weren’t clear before. Isaac and I are Amelia’s boyfriends. We’re here with her.”
Sadie bit her lip and winced. “Wow. Gosh, sorry. I just figured… I mean I know the Turner and Roth families, obviously. Kind of surprising is all. What with her being… you know.”
“No,” Isaac said flatly. “We don’t know. Enlighten us?”
Amelia pushed between them. “You have a safe night, Sadie,” she said through gritted teeth. “Head on over to the violet party; I hear it’s nonstop fun if you like that kind of thing. Guys, do we want to get moving?”
“Absolutely,” Lucas said and turned to lead Isaac and Amelia along the bar toward the door that led to the next party room. I started to follow, but Sadie put herself in front of Hunter next.
“What about you?” she asked, looking up at him. Compared to Hunter, she looked absolutely child-sized. “Doesn’t sound like you’re part of the harem.”
“Uh,” Hunter grunted. “I’m not really interested.”
“God, I know,” Sadie lamented. “Sharing with those two? You look like the kind of man that needs a woman all to himself.”
Hunter stepped around her. “I meant I wasn’t interested in you. No offense. I’m gonna catch up with my friends now. Nathan?”
“It was a pleasure to meet you,” I said. No sense pissing off a Chapman, after all. I dipped my head, and followed after Hunter, but was still in range when Sadie made a disgusted sound of irritation at having failed. Probably, I judged, it was not her first strike for the night. Or possibly her second.
The Chapmans were a powerful, wealthy, A-List kind of family. I suspected that Sadie had never been told ‘no’ before in her life. She probably wouldn’t hear it often here, either. At least not from the faculty. Students, of course, were another matter entirely—unless one had the requisite maturity and interest in politics, one likely hadn’t heard of the Chapmans, or any of the other seven families with members on the Court.
I’d certainly make an ally of her over time, but I couldn’t quite muster sympathy.
Already, she’d proven useful. Amelia had reacted to her blatant flirtation with hostility. I tucked that away. Insecurity, then—Amelia wasn’t entirely certain of her place with Lucas and Isaac. Or, she had intentions for them and was territorial due to whatever use she had in mind for them. Either way, it was something to take note of.
We wandered the parties at a leisurely pace. The red party this year was styled like ancient roman baths, and was filled with a haze of mist that I smelled a hint of cannabis in. The red room was always the abode of the philosophical students who preferred substances and long, rambling talks about ethics and metaphysics to music. It was more my speed at the moment, but I dared not linger and fall behind as the others made their way to next door.
This year’s orange party was unusually open, a facsimile of a broad stone terrace overlooking a vast, glittering valley under a sky full of fabricated stars that all shone with a pale orange light. The terrace was dotted with stone tables and plush chairs where students gathered to the sounds of a string quartet to talk theory and drown themselves in wine, rather than alchemical cocktails. This was where I had lingered the longest when I first arrived before. Now, the glare of the orange stars irritated me.
As we passed into the yellow room, I had to take stock of myself. I paused at the threshold to a sunny meadow where students threw footballs and toyed with illusions of blooming flowers. There was a flash of images in my mind’s eye. This very thing, a sort of déjà vu, except I recalled it as a distinct memory. Reaching for it grazed some mental scar. I had been here before. I had seen this. Something was meant to happen.
I clutched at Hunter’s arm. “I need to go.”
He turned to me, and glanced over to Lucas, Isaac, and Amelia, who were seemingly debating whether this was where they wanted to remain. Lucas glanced at me, concerned, and put a hand up to forestall the other two as he strode toward me and Hunter. “Nathan, are you okay?”
“No,” I rasped, as I scrambled mentally for a solid hold on my sense of place and time. I was here, now in the Cabin. Maybe it was the spatial prism enchantment, interacting with the psychic stitches in my mind. “I have to… I should go… it’s not…”
Hunter put a hand on my back and began to usher me toward the door that would take us in the opposite direction. The feel of his hand stoked my irritation further. It was callused and rough, even through my shirt, and made me aware of seemingly every stitch of clothing I wore. Worse, it made me more aware of my skin, of the hair growing on it, of the air around me. There was so much existence and all of it seemed to dig at me, taunting me.
I pushed Hunter’s hand away. “Leave me,” I snapped. “Go amuse yourself with the others; I want nothing to do with you after what you…”
Except, that wasn’t now. I swayed, disoriented, and looked up at Hunter’s confused, hurt eyes. “Just… I can get out on my own. It was too early, that’s all. Let me be, Hunter. I’m not a wounded animal that needs your babysitting.”
He took a step back, nodding slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I know, of course. I’ll see you after. We won’t stay long.”
I turned, located three doors in the space, and oriented myself to the one that would take me out of the Cabin entirely, just as I began to lose focus on what was happening immediately around me, events beginning to bleed together until I wasn’t sure if I was already outside or not.
And then, very suddenly, I was outside and halfway up the path to the Academy. I was breathing hard, my nerves tingling with magic that I had apparently worked, though I sensed no spells around me at the moment. Some kind of defensive instinct, perhaps. Master Larson had gifted me a number of minor psychic spells to help reinforce the work we’d done together. Perhaps it was one of those.
I found a tree at the side of the path and slumped against it, pressing my palms to my eyes as I combed through my thoughts, checking for anything that seemed out of place. My disorientation, at least, had faded. I had a sense of time and place, and could ground myself in the present. I sighed as I took steadying breaths and recounted to myself the events of the evening, step by step, in what felt like the right order. There was a gap, but that was to be expected. Master Larson had assured me that those gaps would fill in like any other memory.
Hubris. That was always my particular downfall. I looked back down the path at the Cabin. She was in there. In there with Lucas, Isaac, and Hunter. Some part of me suspected that she might have played a role in driving me off. Some Abyssal magic that was impossible to sense directly… except, that wasn’t yet, either.
I pushed off from the tree, shoved my hands into my pockets and immersed myself in my thoughts as I ambled up the hill to the Academy. I was at Rosewilde, my sophomore year, the last Tuesday before class. It was ten
fifty-five PM.
It was still at least two years before the end of the world.
Hunter
“What happened to Nathan?” Amelia asked as he slammed the door behind him on his way out.
I stared after him a moment. The door wasn’t going to re-open. Even if it did, it wouldn’t necessarily be from outside. “He wasn’t ready,” I said, kicking myself for having even suggested he come. “I should have realized. I have to go after him, I’m sorry, I—”
“You should,” she said gently as she put a hand on my arm. Lucas and Isaac were some distance away, looking on, concerned and exchanging words too quietly and too far away for me to hear. “But, before you do can we…” She glanced back at the others. “Can we just talk for a second?”
Her hand felt warm on my arm. Soft. It reminded me of the last time we’d really been together. The time when I’d had her in my arms and nearly kissed her. It felt like more than three months ago. It felt like a lifetime, back when everything was different, and I had a good idea what she wanted to talk about. I owed it to her. “Sure.”
She licked her lips and seemed to compose herself briefly. “Look, I know that… with Nathan back probably changes some things. But the last time I saw you we… I guess, I just want to know if you’ve changed, you know, how you feel? I know we had that moment before he woke up and, well, we’re still at least friends right?”
“Amelia.” I took her hand from my arm and held it as I gave a bit of thought on what I would say. “I…”
She looked up at me, hopeful but already hurt.
It was so different, being in front of her now. I’d rehearsed conversations a hundred times over the summer while I worried over Nathan. I’d told him about her, about what we’d been through, about everything that made her wonderful, hoping that it would somehow bring him around. That he’d want to know her, or at least release me. He hadn’t, though. And there were promises I’d made to Nathan, before he fell into the Abyss. Promises he’d returned. Now, though?
A Spell for Shadows: Rosewilde Academy of Magical Arts Page 5