Tiana mastered it in days.
It saved her that night.
Ribbons of mist reached in through the street-facing iced-over window. The ribbons writhed in the air, flailing about wildly, touching everything. And wherever they touched, they left black frost behind. One touch of those on flesh and it was frostbite, gangrene, amputation. As slowly as possible Tiana put her other arm around Des and hugged her tightly. She wanted to cover as much of her friend’s body with hers as possible. If anyone got hurt, it should be her.
The misty tendrils stretched to the bed and ceased flailing. They seemed to sniff the air like serpents. They extended from the window to Harrison now and it would be so easy if she had her blades to hurl one and cut the head from the creature.
But she left her weapons at home.
This was pure recon. A fact-finding mission.
Cho squirmed in her grasp so Tiana hugged her more fiercely.
The icy tendrils probed around the bed. The wards on the bedposts glowed bright and then brighter still. The magic shields were keeping the thing at bay. It wasn’t going to win tonight. It’d return and push harder tomorrow, but tonight the professor would sleep safely.
The end of the tendrils pulsed and swelled, becoming spherical. They looked like white grapes on a vine, dripping with frozen mist. The bulbs peeled open and Tiana flinched when she saw mouths inside. Not human mouths—the lips were the wrong shape—but mouths nonetheless with teeth and tongues all white as snow.
The mouths took a breath in and the tendrils of mist shivered like guitar strings and an awful cacophony shook the room. A whispered song issued forth from the tendril-mouths and it was the most wrong thing Tiana had ever heard.
It was the opposite of music. It was an anti-lullaby.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her heart slammed in her chest. Cho went limp in her arms. She passed out completely, which felt like a great idea but Tiana had to keep watching.
The runes in the bedposts glowed brighter still and then melted, the gold running down the wooded posts and sizzling against the rug, sending up wisps of acrid smoke.
What could do this? What creature was this? It was like nothing she’d ever heard of.
The pressure of the song stopped now that the runes were gone.
Tiana opened her eyes, not even realizing she’d been squeezing them shut.
The tendrils were now flowing into Harrison’s mouth and nose. He choked and spluttered.
If she hadn’t made him sleep, none of this would have happened.
She’d been cocky, arrogant, and now he was paying the price.
Harrison’s body floated off the bed, trailing frozen mist behind him. His clothes froze and then cracked, falling away like a calving iceberg.
He hung in the air, nude and regarded himself in the mirror. His skin was an unearthly blue and his eyes were pools of blinding light. He wasn’t Harrison anymore. That creature was wearing him like a suit of clothes.
It gestured in the air and a wand of ice coalesced in its grasp. In one fluid motion it carved an enormous binding circle into the professor’s chest. The spell looked almost familiar, but it was backwards and upside down. The creature was binding itself inside Harrison’s flesh.
This wasn’t a joyride. This was colonization. Invasion.
The creature then walked down the stairs in Harrison’s skin, its feet touching the ground but not placing any weight there. It was practicing walking like a person.
Tiana listened to it moving things around downstairs and smashing apart furniture.
It was looking for something.
It didn’t find it.
She sat there on the bedroom floor, hidden behind her silly little spell, until the sun rose.
6
Penrose, as the sun crested the pine forest to the east, was bathed in shadows and cold. Mist clung stubbornly to the ground, refusing to burn off as the morning grew. The stillness was that of the grave as Tiana and Desdemona walked the long mile back to the dorms. They didn’t see a single soul. It was as if they had awakened into a new, lifeless world and they were the only inhabitants.
“What was that thing?” Des asked, breaking the silence.
“I don’t know,” Tiana snapped. She’d held her spell up all night long, keeping sleep at bay and holding Cho safe and tight while that thing prowled. It was gone. They were alive. But it wasn’t enough.
“I’ve never heard of anything like that,” Des said. “What do you think it was?”
“I need to get back to my dorm. I need to call my dad. And I really, really need to use the bathroom,” Tiana growled.
Cho flinched. A quietness split them apart like a wall.
Tiana closed her eyes and sighed. She’d just lost a friend. She snapped and growled and showed Des the real her, the fighter, and now the girl wouldn’t talk to her again.
The distance home was conquered step by step, block by block, in silence. Tiana’s limbs were wooden and sore. She needed a shower and coffee and a nap and she needed her father here, right away, to help her make sense of everything. And she needed Des not to hate her.
When they arrived at the doorstep of her dorm, Tiana turned to Des and braced herself for the blow-off.
Instead, the girl hugged her.
Tiana lost her breath.
“You’re not mad at me?” she muttered.
“Why would I be mad at you? You totally saved my life last night.” Desdemona Cho grinned at her.
“I’d be mad at me.”
“You’re just tired, girl. Plus your boyfriend got body-snatched by an ice snake. That’s bound to mess with your head.” Des took Tiana’s shoulders in her hands and gripped tightly. “I’m going to go get some things from home, and coffee, and like a barrel of pastries and then I’ll come back here and we are going to figure this shit out. And in the meantime, you are going to shower. Maybe twice.”
Tiana sniffed herself. She’d sweat through her clothes more than once while sitting terrified. She was extremely rank.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” A thought occurred to her. “Where will you get food? Everything on campus is closed?”
“Yes,” Des winked. “But everything in New York is open.”
“New York?”
“I know a girl who knows portals. Trust me. Coffee and pastries, within the hour.”
In response, Tiana’s stomach growled loudly.
Tiana pulled Desdemona in for a hug. They were still friends. Hope still existed in the world. All wasn’t lost. “I think you’re the first person who isn’t one of my relatives I’ve ever hugged.” Tiana sniffed away tears.
“Okay, you need a shower and a cat nap,” Des patted her gently on the arm, nodded, and hurried away.
The halls were empty. The front desk was shuttered. A handwritten sign said, “All mail is being held until after the holidays.” It was a ghost town.
Except in her room.
Tiana shouldered the door open and started undressing immediately when a polite cough made her scream and jump and flail backwards with her shirt halfway off. She landed hard on her ass on the floor.
Ruby sat on her bed with her suitcase and her mirror in her lap. She’d barely moved since the day before.
“I thought I was alone,” Tiana said.
“You will be soon,” Ruby said. Her voice was chirpy and dismissive. “I’m just waiting for my parents.”
Tiana nodded at her. What did she know about Ruby? Almost nothing. Despite being roommates all semester, the entirety of their communication had been transacted by a white board on the back of the door assigning dorm room chores and shopping.
“Hey, is everything okay?” Tiana asked, undressing again. Her shirt smelled unnaturally foul, as if by being in the same room as that creature it had been tainted forever. “Do we have an incinerator?”
Ruby looked up from her mirror. “A what? How should I know?”
“Never mind. I’m going to shower, because I need it. And then I have a fr
iend coming over to help me,” she caught herself before saying plan a rescue of my professor from some frozen snake ghost thing. Tiana coughed and added, “Study. We’re going to study.”
Ruby rolled her eyes. “Whatever. But if this is a booty call I am not leaving. You can do it in the student lounge. I need to wait here for my parents to call.”
“Are they calling you on the mirror?” Tiana asked.
Ruby gave her a withering look, but didn’t answer.
Tiana shrugged. At least the girl wasn’t crying in her cone of silence again.
As she showered, she replayed the events of the previous night in her head, asking all of the questions her father would ask when she called him. Well, she ignored the “Why didn’t you call me first?” question. And the “Didn’t we tell you no solo hunts?” questions. And all of the other recriminations she had coming her way.
Why did the creature target Harrison?
Why the ice and cold? That was unusual. It was much more common for creatures to give off heat.
It stretched in from the window but never showed a tail, suggesting that the actual body or source of it lay somewhere else. So where?
What was it looking for in Harrison’s house?
Why possess Harrison?
And, most importantly, was Harrison still alive somewhere inside or had the beast consumed his soul?
Tiana finished her shower with a swirl of questions in her head and then dressed in her workout clothes. She sat on her bed and meditated, silently casting Marian’s Breath of Spring to rejuvenate herself. It wasn’t the same as sleep, but it would keep the need for sleep at bay for another twelve hours or so. At which point she would either need to recast it or fall asleep for a solid day.
“Mind if a call my dad?” she said to Ruby, who was still gazing into her hand mirror.
“Whatever,” Ruby sneered.
But he didn’t pick up. The call went straight to voicemail. He must be on a hunt or doing something important. “Dad, it’s me. There’s something going on here that I need your help with. My friend has been taken by . . . something. I’m not sure what. Call when you can. Please.”
She could text him 911. That was there admittedly obvious code. But if he saw that in the middle of a hunt, it could distract him. She wasn’t tied up or trapped in a killer’s lair or even under any threat at all. It could wait. He’d call.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Ruby asked.
“How could that possibly be a joke?” Tiana snapped. “Who would find that funny?”
“Says the girl with the collection of knives in her closet.”
Tiana jumped to her feet. “Were you going through my things?”
Ruby rolled her eyes and groaned. “I was looking for pads. Don’t be paranoid.”
The two girls locked eyes in a battle of recriminations that was only broken when Desdemona Cho kicked open the door and swept in with an immense bag of Magnolia pastries.
Tiana had a will like iron, but on the other hand, chocolate raspberry croissants. She tore her menacing glare from Ruby and groaned, “Holy shit what is that it smells so good gimme gimme,” all in one quick breath.
“I got two of everything, more or less. Not the pumpernickel.” Cho glanced up and saw Ruby and nearly jumped out of her shoes. “Whoa. There is a person there. Hi.” She grinned and hefted the bag high. “Pastries?”
“That’s Desdemona Cho,” Ruby said with a sneer.
“That’s accurate,” Des said, plopping the bag onto the floor and pulling out an Emmenthaler and pesto croissant.
Tiana ignored her and followed her nose to the raspberry and chocolate creation. “I’ve never smelled anything so delicious in my life.”
Cho spoke with an extremely full mouth. “It’s something about going through a witch’s portal. It makes food taste better? I think it has something to do with removing toxins or improving the chirality of the electrons?”
Ruby got to her feet. “You can’t have Desdemona fucking Cho in our dorm room. People will talk.”
Tiana refused to meet her roommate’s challenging gaze. If she did, she’d have to get to her feet. And if she got to her feet and Ruby continued her path, there’d be punching. “Well firstly, who is going to know? And B, why would I care if they did?”
“Not all of us are social pariahs, Tara!” Ruby yelled, stomping her feet like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
“It’s Tiana, you absolute hydrant,” Cho drawled.
“It’s not like you have friends, Ruby. I don’t mean to be cruel, but you spend every night crying in your little bubble of silence. I don’t think anything I do is going to damage your social standing.”
Ruby squeaked in alarm and sat heavily down on the bed. When she spoke, her voice was dripping with tears. “It’s not every night. I’m just finding it hard to adjust is all.” She blew her nose wetly on a tissue. “All I need is a little trip back home. Then I’ll feel like myself.”
“In the meantime,” Des said brightly. “How about a breakfast cupcake?” She held up a crumble-top blueberry creation that almost glowed with the sugar content inside.
“Do you mean a muffin?” Ruby asked.
“Join us,” Tiana said. She could be nice to Ruby. She could pretend that Ruby was one of a hundred shattered clients she’d met with her father. Delicate people whose worlds had been destroyed by something evil and vicious. After all, another few days and she’d never have to see Ruby again or Penrose again.
But there was no joy in that idea anymore. Tiana was surprised when she pulled the idea of leaving Penrose off the shelf in her mind and gave it a look over that it was no longer a thing she wanted. When had that happened? Would it pass? Was it just the exhaustion and the sugar?
The three women ate together, talking about nothing more than the food. They compared the coffee blends and the mochas that Cho had somehow smuggled out on New York. They tasted bites of every croissant and muffin and morning bread and even at some point began laughing together.
Tiana had never heard Ruby laugh. She laughed in a way that was girly and proper and princess-like and was as far from Des’s whooping belly laughs and suggestive chortles. Everyone else in the world laughs like a weirdo, Tiana decided. Clearly she had the only normal laugh in the universe.
But eventually the pastries ran out. Or, to be more accurate, the good pastries had been consumed and only the weird ones were left.
“Salted caramel mint is just not a good flavor pairing,” Tiana murmured.
Cho coughed politely. “I think we need to transition to talking about our plan for tonight.”
“I called my dad, but he didn’t answer. He turns his phone off when he’s on a hunt. For obvious reasons.”
“Can we talk about this around her?” Cho asked, pointing at Ruby with her eyebrows.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” Ruby said. “I’m just going to Insta this cupcake.”
She still gripped the mirror in her hand.
“We can’t get into the library here,” Tiana began. “But could we get into an arcane library elsewhere? Like in New York, with your portal trick?”
Desdemona shook her head. “My contact with the portals, Cassie, is leaving right now to go to her boyfriend’s for the holiday. And anyway, it’s not like the wizards in New York will just let some undergraduates pop in and ransack their stacks. The protocols would take teacher approval and months to work out.”
Tiana slurped her mocha. The sugar and caffeine and butter were making her nerves jangle like a silverware drawer in an earthquake. “Is there an expert we could contact?”
“Like Professor Harrison?” Cho asked.
“Someone who might know about weird serpents made of frozen mist that screamed unsongs that melted runes.” Tiana rolled her eyes as she said it. It was impossible.
“What did you say?” Ruby interrupted.
Tiana shook her head. “It was a thing we saw last night.”
“Did it reach in from a pane of glass with finger
s of whipsaw ice? Did those fingers grow mouths and did those mouths scream?”
The girl’s face had gone white as paper.
Tiana nodded. “And it took Professor Harrison.”
“Do you know what it is?” Desdemona asked.
Ruby put down the mirror and folded her hands in her lap. “It’s a gemwraith and I fear it’s here to kill me.”
7
“Why would it want to kill you?” Tiana asked.
Ruby took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl.”
“Named Ruby?” Desdemona drawled.
“No interruptions please. I’ve never told anyone this story. You’re the first to ever hear it.” She sat crosslegged on her bed. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl. Named Ruby.”
Des opened her mouth to make a crack and Tiana kicked her in the knee gently and shook her head.
“This girl grew up on with a mother and father that adored her. She lived in a perfect small town in California. She went to a perfectly pleasant school and had perfectly pleasant friends and yet she was miserable. For you see, the girl knew in her bones and blood and meat that she didn’t belong in this world. Her dreams told her so. And she knew that her parents were not really her parents. There was nothing behind their eyes. At times she suspected that no one else in her perfect small town was real. It was as if they were putting on some ridiculously elaborate performance just for her.”
“Like The Truman Show?” Des asked.
“C’mon, Des,” Tiana warned.
But Ruby only nodded. Her eyes were squinched shut. “Just like that. And the little girl went to outlandish attempts to spoil the performance. She dumped coffee on people. She threw rocks through windows. She leapt off the bus on the way to school and ran as far from the town center as her little legs could take her.” Ruby sighed, her head falling forward. “She almost made it. But the more she fought, the more pleasant and accommodating the whole town became. It went on that way for years. Until the day of her twelfth birthday, when the assassins came.”
Light Up The Night: a Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy Romance (Lick of Fire Book 2) Page 23