“Assassins?” Tiana asked. “What town was this?”
“Partridge Junction was the name back then.”
“That’s impossible,” Tiana muttered. Every hunter on the west coast knew of Partridge Junction. It was the worst case example of any hunt. Nine hundred people all vanished overnight after a trio of supernaturals held a grudge match in the town square.
“How is it that I am the smartest witch in the room in every room, except when I’m in the room with you, Tats?” Des asked.
“On her twelfth birthday, three assassins came, each sent by a different royal family. She was no longer a child anymore, by their rules, and so she was a target. House Yorz sent a verminous Trell with a beak so sharp it cut snip steel. House Tourmarist sent a Facewalker with order to usurp, not kill. And House Draedos sent a gemwraith.” Ruby, her eyes still close, shrugged. “What could she do? The girl was untrained. She had no martial skills or magic. She had no great protector yet. It was just her and her parents and her odd small town.”
“What did you do?” Des asked.
Ruby coughed politely.
“What did she do?” Tiana asked.
“She ran and she his and she heard her parents being murdered. And her neighbors. And her mail carrier. They would have killed everyone in the town until they found her. You see, every single person in Partridge Junction carried a lock of her hair and a drop of her blood in a locket around their necks.”
“They were all decoys,” Des whispered, still picking crumbs out of the pastry bag.
“The girl did the only thing she could do. She stepped into her mirror. And when she did, she walked on the world on the other side. No longer was she twelve and weak, but in the world on the other side, she was a full grown woman, with a warrior’s skills and a wizard’s arts. The three assassins followed her into the mirror and she dispatched them with terrifying ease.”
Tiana and Des shared a look that said Is this girl nuts?
“She wandered the land and found it had fallen into disrepair. Monsters had come from the shadows. Evil had poisoned the hearts of men. But she fought against it for years, and won. She found her true parents, not the constructs that had watched over her on Earth, and eventually she forgave them for hiding her away to keep her safe. The world on the other side is a dangerous place. More beautiful than you can imagine, too.”
“And then what happened?” Cho asked.
“She ruled there.”
“I bet she fucking did,” Des laughed.
Tiana fought back a snicker.
“For twenty years she ruled first as a princess and then as a queen. She took lovers—Mirrorworld is a very sensual place—and had three daughters. But in time a sickness overtook her flesh. She was a woman of two worlds, and she’d remained too long in one. Her life-force was out of balance. So she returned here to this Earth, to find some equilibrium.” Ruby’s voice grew sour.
“Partridge Junction,” Tiana added, “that happened a long time ago.”
“When the girl—when I—returned here, I was twelve again. Physically it was if I’d never left, but my whole village was a burnt out ruin. In my heart I was a woman in my mid-thirties. But my flesh didn’t agree. There was no way to speed up the process, either. I was stuck here. Only able to travel back to Mirrorworld for a few days a year, when the barrier between the worlds is weak.”
“What about your daughters?” Tiana asked.
“I still see them. We talk in the mirror occasionally, but they have busy lives full of boys and court intrigue. They plan to visit here one day, but we’ll see.”
A moment of silence dragged out between them.
And then Desdemona spoke. “That has got to be the craziest damn story I’ve ever heard. Do you really expect us to believe that? You say you’re thirty five but to me you look like a skinny-ass fifteen year old. Is this how you get your kicks? Playing at being a real faerie changeling lost princess?”
“You say the gemwraith took your friend?” Ruby’s eyes were deadly serious.
“Yes,” Tiana answered. “Last night.”
“Then we need to hurry. The gemwraiths are a plague on my world. When they find a host they lay eggs in his soul. We need to find it. Tonight.”
“That’s great, but how? I tried scrying spells and searching spells but nothing works,” Cho huffed.
“Magic in Mirrorworld isn’t like magic here. And the creatures from Mirrorworld—your magic isn’t tuned for them. They’re on a different frequency.” Ruby was about to begin a lecture when Tiana cut her off.
“How do we find it?”
“We look for its phylactery. They can’t go too far from it, even in a host body. If we hold the phylactery we can control the wraith.”
“What if we destroy the phylactery?” Tiana asked. Every bit of information was watering the seeds of her plan.
“Then we destroy the wraith. But we can’t do it while it’s inside your friend or it’ll kill him, too.”
Tiana tapped a finger on her lips and glanced as Desdemona. “Let’s worry about that part next. I think I have an idea.”
Desdemona pointed at Ruby. “Bait?” she asked.
“Bait,” Tatiana agreed.
Ruby jumped to her feet. “Now hold on a moment. I never agreed to that part. These wraiths are deadly and as the missing queen of Mirrorworld, I am surely the target.”
“What do you do about them there?” Desdemona asked.
Ruby’s face darkened and she pursed her lips. She looked like she was going to explode. She took a breath and closed her eyes and counted to ten silently, with her lips moving. “In my home, I am a goddess. The wraiths burn away before my glory. But here, on this stupid world, your magic doesn’t work right. I say the words to a spell and it all comes out backwards and upside down.” She sat down hard on her bed, causing a half-eaten muffin to catapult up and into Tiana’s hands. When Ruby spoke again, she sounded once more like a petulant teenager. “It’s why I’m totally failing all of my classes. My mind knows one kind of magic and my body wants to do another. They’re totally disconnected.”
Tiana knelt before the girl and took her hands in hers. “Look, we can’t solve your magic issues by sunset, but we can try and save a man’s life. His soul is in danger because of you, princess. The gemwraith is here for you and is using Harrison’s body. And I’m not saying it’s your fault. But it is your responsibility.”
Des chimed in. “We’re real people. We’re not constructs made from sticks and mud to keep you company as you grow up. We’re real. Professor Sexy is real.”
“Professor Sexy?” Ruby blinked.
“Professor Sexy is real . . . sexy,” Cho muttered.
“Can we focus?” Tiana said coolly.
“Sorry, Tats. Sugar gets me silly.”
Tiana turned back to Ruby. “My dad is a hunter. Of monsters, not deer or whatever. He told me once about a phylactery of a Rakshasa that he destroyed. It took a very special material to pierce the crystal. In the Rakshasa’s case, it was olive wood. Do you know what we need?”
Ruby nodded. “And I have it and alone can wield it.”
Desdemona caught up. “Oh snap, it’s the jewel thingy that the Professor had, right? With the changing motif around the edges?”
Tiana nodded. “That’s my guess.”
“You know where it is?” Then we can’t lose any time. She grabbed her hand mirror and stormed out the door. Tiana and Desdemona looked at each other, shrugged, and followed.
8
“It’s in there?” Ruby asked, staring up at the looming administration building. “We have a tower like this in my world. It’s called the Font of Pain and no one ever enters.”
“Sounds like we should cross that off the bucket list then,” Des drawled.
“His office is in there. And if the phylactery wasn’t at his home, it must be in there.”
“Do we know he doesn’t already have it?” Desdemona asked. “Maybe he found it last night.”
Ruby shook her head, her straight red hair catching the morning light like a forest fire. “I’m still alive. He didn’t find it.”
“I can get myself in,” Tiana said. “I did it before by passing through the walls.”
“We should split up,” Ruby said. “I can check the basement and Desdemona can fuck off.”
“We should definitely not fucking do that,” Des replied, hands on her hips. “I know you spent thirty years in Wonderland Narnia Gemworld but you have seen horror films, right? If we split up we get picked off.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Ruby hissed.
“Says the actual drama queen,” Des replied.
“Says the bitch who jinxed the water fountains to make everyone look like goblins for a day.”
“Enough, both of you,” Tiana snapped. She turned to her friends and put a hand on each of their shoulders. She was wearing her hunting clothes, black and brown leathers with inactive runes worked into every available surface. It gave her a certain authority. “We all have history. We’ve all made mistakes. We all had opportunities to be better people, kinder people, and chose not to. But today we can change that. Today we can choose to give a fuck about the world and to save a man’s life and prevent Ruby from devoured by an ice snake.”
“It’ll only devour my eyes,” Ruby added.
“Jesus Christ woman,” Des groaned. “This is no time to be pedantic.”
Ruby shrugged. “Gemwraiths like eyes.”
Desdemona gave Tiana a look like Can you believe this girl? But Tiana just shook her head.
Ruby wasn’t what she expected. She’d had the girl pegged as someone who’d grown up normal and only recently developed magic. Someone who had been tossed into the deep end of magical theory and practice and was barely treading water. But that wasn’t it at all. For all intents and purposes,Ruby was an alien refugee, hiding out on Earth. She was a misfit. An outcast. And that made her family.
“We stick together. We move quietly. Once inside, no bickering. No smart comments.” Tiana sounded like her father. “Aim for total operational awareness. The gemwraith is inside Harrison. That’s going to make it more dangerous, not less. We get in. We get the phylactery. We get out. Understand.”
Ruby nodded stiffly.
“You are so cool when you’re badass,” Des grinned.
Tiana pointed at the looming gothic door of the building. “Des, can you get us in?”
“Totally.” The girl withdrew her wand—pink, glittery—from inside her sleeve and drew a circle around the door knob and lock. She muttered a spell in a language Tiana didn’t understand and the circle grew dark and darker still and within seconds the part of the door that had held the doorknob was gone. Just a hole remained.
“What was that?” Tiana whistled.
“Ancient Korean magic,” Des replied. “The name of the spell is something like Bound in Darkness and Sent to Where Only Memory Can Find You.”
“Where did the door handle go?” Ruby asked, peering through the hole.
“To where only memory can find it,” Des’s voice dripped with friendly sarcasm. “Keep up, Red.”
Tiana reached into one of her belt pouches and pulled out a spray can hardly larger than a tube of lipstick. She sprayed it on the hinges of the massive old door.
“What is that?” Ruby asked. “Some sort of silencing spell?”
“It’s WD-40,” Tiana whispered. The girl gave her a quizzical look. “It’s door oil?”
“How remarkable,” Ruby said. “This world is so obsessed with machines that even the doors run on oil.”
Tiana stashed the oil. “We go to the office first. If that fails, we check the basement storage.”
Desdemona nodded. “Space is at a premium in these buildings and the offices are tiny, so every professor has a sort of storage unit in the basement.” Before Ruby could say anything, Des added. “It’s like a walk-in closet full of teaching materials that they don’t have room for.”
“On my world, if you need more space you simply make more space.” Ruby shook her head. “Earth is so limiting.”
“But we have great food,” Tiana said as she pulled open the great hulking doors. She walked quickly and silently, moving from shadow to shadow. Without even thinking she tapped the runes on the backs of her soft leather boots and activated the noise dampening field. Not that she needed it. Every inch of her outfit was oiled and softened and tied down so as to avoid jingling in the slightest.
Behind her, Desdemona stomped and Ruby walked without lifting her feet from the ground in a maddening scuffing shuffle. Tiana turned, scowled at her friends, and took the time to trace the runes of silence on their footwear as well. It wouldn’t do any good to be silent if her friends were as loud as a marching band.
They moved up the stairs in silence. Tiana took the lead, with an enchanted dagger in one hand and her wand in the other. She scouted ahead, looking for any stray grad students or janitorial staff or security measures, but found none.
There should have been something.
Most campus buildings employed sophisticated golems to serve as night watchmen. They patrolled and watched for intruders and if they saw them, they gave pursuit and attempted restraint. Tiana’s father had a special mixture he used on golems that dissolved their feet and stuck them firmly in place. She’d packed exactly one vial of it in her belt—enough for one man-sized golem’s knees.
But no golems appeared and none could be heard heavy-stepping down the halls.
They continued up to the seventh floor without incident. Several times Desdemona had stopped her, pointed to a well-concealed marking on the railing or wall or stairs, which the girl then drew her own symbols around, negating the magic. They were alarm sigils. Paralysis runes. And in one case, a teleportation trap that would have dumped them in the dean’s office. But Desdemona Cho was an expert at this sort of thing and she hadn’t met.
The door to Professor Harrison’s office had been shattered. Not just pulled off its hinges or opened forcefully, but shattered. Something—probably the gemwraith—had turned it into a piled of matchsticks and sawdust and splinters.
“Holy shit,” Des breathed.
The office looked even worse. While the windows were untouched, everything else had been torn and cracked and ground down to dust. It was as if the creature thought the broach could’ve been hidden inside anything. Even the potted ferns had been torn apart, leaf by leaf.
“It’s angry,” Tiana said.
“It’s scared,” Ruby added. “Desperate. It’s weak. It needs to return to its phylactery to rest. It’s been away from home for too long.”
“They found the jewel in Kansas,” Des said. “Why would it be in Kansas?”
“It’s a jeweled broach as big as an egg,” Tiana said. “Anyone who saw it would think it was valuable. Maybe the creature was out at night, hunting for Ruby or food or something else, and someone stumbled upon it? It could have been a thief or a housekeeper or who knows? And that persons picks it up. They pawn it or they run. And the jewel keeps changing hands.” She pushed aside debris with her boot. “And meanwhile the wraith is chasing it down at night, trying to find its home, hiding during the day.”
“It hides in mirrors or reflective surfaces,” Ruby added from the hallway. She didn’t enter the room.
“So now it’s desperate. It’s dying. But the phylactery falls into the hands of an empath. Someone who is using all of his arts to understand the gem. Harrison would have been like a beacon for the gemwraith.”
Ruby held up her mirror and looked at the reflection of the room. “It’s bleeding,” she said. She pointed to a spot on the door and Tiana cast Rittlepop’s Revealer. Suddenly every drop of spilled blood in the room glowed an intense deep purple.
Des dipped a finger into the blood.
“Wait!” Tiana yelled, but it was too late.
Desdemona Cho screamed out in pain as frostbite bit into her finger, spreading up her arm to the elbow. Her skin took on a sickly gray
sheen, as if she’d rubbed a pencil all over it.
“Oh no,” cho cried. “Oh no oh no oh no oh no.”
Tiana cast a warming charm and then a healing spell, but they slid off as if they couldn’t touch Desdemona’s frozen flesh. “It’s not working. The magic is too alien. I can’t counter it.”
“Let me try,” Ruby said. She knelt on the floor next to Desdemona and took her frozen hand in hers. She began chanting in a singsong voice, but the words were nonsensical to Tiana. The syllables sounded wrong, like listening to a song played backwards. A bright red light exploded from within Ruby and she and Des floated up into the air along with stray bits of door and fern leaves and a hundred pages torn from the professor’s books.
“What’s going on?” Des asked.
Ruby’s eyes were gone, replaced by a warm light that seemed to push away all fatigue and doubt and hate. Her hair floated up from her head and danced like a candle flame. When the song ended, Ruby planted one kiss on the back of Desdemona’s hand and they plopped back onto the ground. The creeping chill was gone. Desdemona was fine.
“That was extraordinary,” Tiana said. “Thank you.”
Desdemona tackled Ruby with a hug, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks. “Incredible,” she breathed. “Just incredible.”
The place where Ruby’s lips had touched the back of Desdemona’s hand glowed still. The imprint of her lips left a mark there, like a tattoo.
“The gemwraiths are creatures of absolute hate and cold. They can’t stand positive feelings at all, especially love. So I shared with you, just for a moment, a fraction of the love I feel for my daughters.”
“It was a gift,” Des said. “Honestly.”
Tiana hated to interrupt the warm feeling parade, but they had to move quickly. “That blood was fresh. The wraith can’t be far. Let’s get to the basement.”
9
Tiana took the time to write runes of speed on her friends’ shoes and then the three of them raced back down the stairs, stumbling only slightly, until they found the basement.
Light Up The Night: a Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy Romance (Lick of Fire Book 2) Page 24