Rising Fury (Hexing House Book 1)

by Rasmussen, Jen

  That same morning, Stefan pulled her aside as she came in and informed her that she was ready for testing.

  “How does that work?” Thea asked.

  “The same as practice,” he said. “You’ll be given some subjects, volunteers from around the colony who will remove their amulets for you. Each one has at least five virtues in their deck. Normally, a fury has to identify at least three in each subject to pass. But since you’re human, the change is more drastic for you. You’ll have to identify at least four.”

  Of course. Thea was past the point of being surprised by Stefan’s—or any fury’s, really—bias against humans. She just nodded and followed him to a conference room down the hall. He left her alone there to go back to his students, but it wasn’t long before Alecto, Graves, and Alecto’s sister from RDM—Megaira, Thea remembered—came in. Alecto’s braids were an unruly mass around her head, but Megaira’s were pulled back into a neat ponytail. Graves, per usual, was wearing a well-tailored suit and impeccably clean, expensive shoes.

  They told her they were there to judge her test. All three had laptops, which they set up at the table.

  “No glass room this time?” Thea asked.

  “It’s not necessary,” Alecto said. “You’ll only be identifying virtues. There won’t be any hexes involved.”

  Graves patted Thea on the shoulder and wished her luck. The other two just took their seats and waited.

  The first volunteer was easy. He came from a large family, it seemed, and was all about loyalty, protection, nurturing. Thea suspected he would have been easy to read even for somebody who couldn’t see virtues. The second and third were tougher, but she managed them, after one tricky moment of sensing what she thought was cold-hearted ruthlessness, but eventually realized was courage in its hardest form. Thea wondered if that guy might be related to Alecto.

  The fourth and final volunteer was a sullen-looking, very old fury whose wings were drooping and tattered. She was angry, defensive, unhappy to be there. It seemed she’d only “volunteered” because it meant the morning off from the janitorial work she did, and had been doing for the last several years as punishment for some unnamed crimes.

  In other words, this was a woman without any obvious virtues. After the first introduction, Thea wasn’t allowed to talk to her or ask her questions. She could only stare, listen, smell, feel, and hope for the best.

  Ten minutes went by without her finding a single thing, and she had to find four virtues in this fury to pass.

  Thea closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The clove smell was there, of course; she had begun to suspect that was fury’s blood. Virtues were much more subtle and tough to pick up, more like the idea of a scent than the scent itself. She took several more deep breaths, and there was something there, something like rain.

  “Purity,” Thea said. “There’s one.”

  “Purity from someone who was punished for thievery?” asked Alecto.

  “No, it’s a different kind of purity.” Thea frowned, trying to figure out what she meant. “There’s an innocence of…” She closed her eyes again. An innocence of what? Sex? Guile?

  “It’s malice,” Thea said at last. “It’s an absence of malice.” She looked across the table at her judges.

  Graves frowned at her and shook his head. “Absence of a vice is not the same as a virtue.”

  “No, I guess not,” agreed Thea. “But there is purity there, in the sense that she’s never wished another person harm, at all. She stole for selfish reasons, I would guess, not with the intention of hurting anyone. A victimless crime, maybe, something she thought wouldn’t be missed, or that could be spared. I bet she was no good at hexing, either. She wouldn’t even want to hurt a human.”

  Alecto tapped some keys and frowned at her screen, perhaps checking Thea’s accuracy against the old woman’s personnel file. Finally she looked up and nodded for Thea to go on, her face blank.

  “And temperance,” Thea said. “She’s even-tempered. She’s not driven by anger, and she can always manage to be patient.”

  The old fury scowled at Thea, but it looked more like embarrassment than annoyance. Her eyes had gotten misty. Thea wondered if it was the first time anyone had ever spoken of her good qualities. Or at least the first time in a long time.

  “Humility,” Thea added. “She doesn’t think much of herself. She settles for being a worse person than she’s capable of being.”

  “That’s three,” said Megaira. “You need one more. Remember, she has at least five.”

  Thea stepped closer to the woman, who flinched, but held her ground. Thea closed her eyes.

  Purity is the rain smell, and that fruity thing, or is it floral? Either way, that’s humility. Temperance is the one like sea air. What else is there?

  She sniffed, embarrassingly loud, but now was not the time to be shy. She had to do this, she had to pass, or else… what?

  For Flannery’s sake, of course. Thea had to become one of them, make them trust her, gain access to them and their secrets. That was why she came.

  And if that wasn’t the only reason, she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to dissect any other motives for wanting to prove herself, not when she had to focus. Her eyes were still closed, and it seemed her fingers ached even more in the dark and quiet. Behind her someone started tapping a pen on the table.

  It’s like the barn. I don’t even know what about the barn, maybe it’s no one thing, but it reminds me of it. Back when Uncle Gary was alive, and there were cows and horses.

  “Fidelity,” Thea finished at last.

  She opened her eyes to see Alecto raising an eyebrow at her. “You wouldn’t consider stealing from your own colony to be cheating?”

  “Of course it’s cheating, but that speaks to honesty.”

  “It speaks to loyalty, too.”

  “Yes, but fidelity isn’t just loyalty. It’s also faith. This woman believes unconditionally. She’s believed in something—no, some person, I think—even when they were abandoned by everyone else, and at great cost to herself.”

  “That sounds like a guess,” said Megaira. “We need something more solid.”

  Burn, witch, Thea thought, although she wasn’t thinking of Megaira.

  Sensing virtues wasn’t all she had. She’d seen Mr. Delacroix’s shame, but she’d also seen Bobby Higgins’s ghost. And it wasn’t some fury-like quality that had made it possible for Mrs. Delacroix to bury her son, in the end. It was that thing Thea’s mother called witchcraft.

  Burn, witch, she thought again, and focused on the old fury one last time.

  She felt a quick tug, then a push. There were glimpses, like looking out the window of a fast-moving train. A male fury, as sullen-looking as the old one was; a small hand, clutched inside a larger one; a crooked smile on a little boy’s face. The sullen-looking fury again, screaming, something horrible was happening, a tearing sound. Was that his wings?

  Thea opened her eyes, unaware until that moment that they were closed again. “Your son?” she asked. “Dale, was that his name?”

  “Bale,” the old fury said. “He died of a broken heart. They took his wings. They wouldn’t believe him. Nobody ever believed him but me.”

  Thea looked at Alecto, just in time to see a look of frustration and distaste cross her face, before Alecto resumed her usual professional mask.

  That look was how Thea knew she’d passed.

  The old fury was dismissed. Alecto nodded and muttered something to Megaira, who rummaged around in her bag. She finally pulled out a vial of something and handed it to Thea.

  “Drink,” said Alecto.

  Thea knew better than to ask why. She did as she was told. The clear liquid had no taste, not even like water.

  “Now give Maggie your hands,” Alecto said.

  Thea held out her hands. Megaira’s claws came out, but Thea barely registered it as whatever she’d just taken hit her, and a searing pain rolled through her head, down her arms, like a shock. She
gasped and tried to pull back, but Graves was holding her wrists, and Megaira was slashing. There was a spurt of hot blood. Was it falling on her feet? Thea felt herself folding, and barely managed to keep herself from fainting dead away.

  Then all at once, her head cleared. The pain in her hands was gone.

  When she looked down at them, she saw claws. Long, sharp, purple claws. Thea found she could retract them, then extend them again, as easily as she could bend her knuckles.

  It was only when Graves started laughing that Thea remembered where she was.

  He nodded at Thea’s claws as she brought them out again and said, “The proper term for that is protract, by the way. Surest way to get yourself mocked is to tell someone here you drew your claws, as if they were swords.”

  Thea blinked at him. What was he talking about? She felt fuzzy-headed and weak. “Um. Thanks.”

  He clapped her on the back and laughed some more. “You think that hurt? Wait for stage two.”

  “Wonderful,” said Thea. “Can’t wait.”

  Megaira sighed and closed her laptop. “I have to get back to work, if there are no other candidates today?”

  Alecto shook her head. “She’s ahead of her class, I’ll give her that. There’s one other who’s doing better than average, but he’s still probably got a few weeks left.”

  Megaira shook Thea’s hand. “Well, congratulations, Thea. The first stage is the easiest and the shortest, normally, but you’ve got some great potential.”

  The sisters left the room, but Thea took Graves’s elbow to hold him back. When the others were out of earshot she said, “You said you’d try to track down Flannery.”

  “And so I have been. I haven’t got anything definite yet. One possible lead about her turning up on a ranch in Montana.”

  “Montana? Why the fuck would she be in Montana?” It came out harsher than Thea had intended.

  “Like I said, it’s just a possible lead. I called in a couple of favors to get a human private investigator to check it out. I’ll let you know if it comes to anything.”

  “And that’s it? Montana is the best you’ve got?”

  “Staffing is tight right now. Everyone is overworked. And this is not an approved project. I’m afraid you’re just going to have to be patient.”

  Thea stalked back to her residence, but by the time she was halfway there, she knew it wasn’t Graves she was angry with.

  She’d seen into that old fury’s mind. Focused, willed herself to do it, and then simply saw. Yet night after night, sitting with The Book of Flower Friends, she couldn’t see Flannery, someone she’d been connected to since girlhood. Why was that, exactly?

  It wasn’t the book that was betraying her, she suspected, but her own subconscious. She’d given up everything, up to and including her humanity, and taken a huge risk to find Flannery. But maybe some small part of her didn’t really want to succeed. Because of old resentments; because she wanted to stay at Hexing House and keep getting stronger; because she was still afraid of closing her eyes and finding herself trapped with a headless girl carrying a red balloon.

  She needed to do better.

  That night at dinner, Thea steered the conversation around to Nero’s coworkers, and to Hester in particular. It was easy enough. Nero had proved to be a relentless gossip, and it seemed Hester was the source of several rumors.

  “She’s gotten really flaky lately,” he said. “Making all kinds of mistakes in the lab, and mistakes in that lab can be dangerous.”

  “Even with your amulets?” Thea asked. “You can’t be hexed with them, right?”

  “We can be hexed,” Nero corrected. “They block magical intrusion to a degree, so you can’t see our vices and virtues. But if a hex is powerful enough, especially if it targets something we’ve got pretty high up in the deck, it’ll hit us.”

  “So has Hester gotten into trouble?” Cora asked.

  “That’s what I was about to ask you,” said Nero with a grin. “She got pulled into Mag’s office today. They were in there for maybe half an hour, and then Hester left. Middle of the day. Didn’t clean out her desk or anything, so she wasn’t fired, but she did not look happy. She looked really out of it, actually. I was going to ask you to have a peek at her file, see if she was drunk or something.”

  Cora gave her brother a dirty look. “You just live to get me into trouble, don’t you?”

  Thea jumped at this new chance. “How much trouble? Is it a really big deal for you to look something up? A personnel file like that, or, say, a case file?”

  “Depends,” said Cora.

  “On what?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Bolstered by her resolution to do better, Thea didn’t hesitate. At some point, she would have to trust someone, at least a little bit. “Did I tell you how Graves found me in the first place?”

  “No,” said Cora and Nero at once. They both leaned forward. With a human recruit being such a rare and novel thing, Thea had no doubt that Nero would love to gossip about it.

  “He hexed my cousin,” she said. “Then she disappeared. I came to help my aunt, who was going nuts with worry, and I ran across Graves.”

  “And what, he just happened to notice your aptitude?” Cora asked.

  “That’s exactly it,” said Thea. “I think he may have already known about it, or suspected it. Maybe it runs in families. I think he may have been targeting my family specifically.”

  “Targeting you for what?” Cora asked.

  “I have no idea, but he sure seemed interested in getting me here.”

  “Sure. A human recruit gives him a certain notoriety.” Cora smiled. “And Graves has always loved attention. Hence the dapper suits.”

  Thea shook her head. “There’s something off about Flannery disappearing like that.”

  “What hex was it?” asked Nero.

  “Sacrifice.”

  He nodded. “It’s not an uncommon side effect, actually. People give up all they have. She’ll come around when it wears off.”

  “Which is when?”

  “When she’s learned her lesson.”

  “That’s exactly what Graves said.”

  Nero shrugged and licked chicken grease from his fingers. “Well, he was right. I don’t see anything suspicious about it.”

  Thea bit her lip. “I’d feel better if I knew who took out this contract on her, or whatever you call it.”

  Cora laughed. “We’re not the mob. We just call it ordering a hex. Or if we want to get fancy, ordering an infliction.”

  “Fine. I want to know who ordered the hex.”

  Cora narrowed her eyes. “Is that why you always seem so skittish? You don’t trust us? You think there’s some conspiracy going on, that Graves recruited you for some evil purpose?”

  “I seem skittish because I’m skittish,” said Thea, ignoring the other questions.

  Diana came to take their dessert orders. When she left again Cora said, “Fine. I’ll look into it. But case records can be tricky. It’ll probably take me a while to hack in.”

  “It was an honest question, when I asked how much trouble you could get into,” said Thea. “I don’t mean to put you at risk.”

  “Well, I’m pretty good at getting around certain things. But I have a favor to ask you, too.”

  “Sure.”

  “When you start stage three, you’ve got to shadow an Inflictor for a while, to learn hexing. Will you request Elon to be your mentor? Nobody will think anything of it, he’s the—”

  “—best they have,” said Thea and Nero together.

  Cora smiled, unabashed. “Have I mentioned that?”

  “Once or twice,” said Thea. “Sure, I’ll ask.”

  But Cora must have noticed the wary look in her eyes. She sighed. “Yeah, I know, I get touchy when he’s around pretty girls. But I know you now. I trust you.”

  “Be better if you could trust him,” Nero muttered.

  It was clear from the stiffening of her shoulders tha
t Cora heard him, but she didn’t acknowledge it. “They’ll give you local cases, with you having no wings. All within a day’s drive. It’d be nice to have him in town for a while.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Thea went back to her residence that night feeling glad to have friends, and even gladder that she might be making some progress at last. She was glad she’d passed her test, glad she was one step closer to being viewed more like an insider than an intruder. Glad, she reflected as she protracted them, to have claws. She could think of several situations in which they might be handy.

  All in all, it had been a pretty good day. Maybe the best since she’d gotten Aunt Bridget’s call.

  But her flare of hope was extinguished when she went to brush her teeth.

  GO HOME SLUT

  It was scrawled across her bathroom mirror in red paint, the shade of human blood.

  Leaving signs and notes was one thing. Actually getting into her residence was quite another. Had she remembered to lock the door on her way to dinner? Surely she had. She never forgot to lock the door.

  What would they have done if they’d found her home?

  Thea had already checked the bells three times, as was her ritual when getting ready for bed. She went and checked them twice more. Then she fished around in her closet until she found something she’d been very proud of herself for putting away: her roll of tape. She stretched three long strips of it across the crack in her door.

  And here she’d been thinking of putting away the bells, too. So much for that.

  Thea felt completely drained by the time she got into bed, and fell asleep almost immediately. But it seemed the power she’d finally managed to rally during her test was not ready to go dormant again.

  Burn, witch.

  She was inside Flannery’s head again, seeing things through her eyes. The clown on the cow, the human-headed birds, the headless girl. The girl walked up to Thea-Flannery and offered a bloody balloon. Thea shied away, not wanting to touch it.

  Then the string of the balloon wasn’t a string anymore, but a snake. Thea struggled, but she was still unable to leave the bed. The snake plopped out of the girl’s hand and began to wind its way around Thea’s arm.