Fury Convergence

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  Cat watched Jen walk away. He looked odd without his glasses. “Come on,” Brynn said. “Let’s go see the mass murderer.” She marched away, not missing that Haliel drifted after her.

  After a moment, Haliel called, “Would you consider saying ‘natural disaster’ instead of ‘mass murderer’? I think it works better.”

  Brynn applied years of skill development and ignored this.

  Cat of the stupidly long legs caught up with her before she’d gone far, but he too now appeared capable of ignoring Haliel. Together they stalked over to where Gale was still bound to the whipping post Imani had dreamed into existence.

  Whatever Severin had been doing to him before departing, it hadn’t damaged him physically. He slumped there, staring at the ground. Even when Brynn smacked the back of his head, he didn’t move. “Oh well, Severin broke him. Let’s just get Honeychord here and get rid of him.”

  “Honeychord won’t be coming for him,” said Haliel. “I must not have mentioned that. Sorry!”

  Brynn forgot her plan to ignore everything the angel said and looked up. “Why not? How do you know?”

  Haliel tickled her chin with her quill’s feather. “Faerie proprieties? Some rule of theirs about questers, I think. I didn’t really pay attention when it was explained.” She smiled brightly. “But don’t worry. If this doesn’t turn into the Apocalypse and he’s still around, I’ll deliver him to Honeychord myself. It was a personal request from their Duke.”

  Cat inspected the lightning-like restraints holding Gale, then pushed his hand into one. The lightning flared against his hand and continued on the other side, attenuated and weak. “His magic, not hers. Brynn, interrupt the other one and we’ll get him out of this.”

  Grudgingly, Brynn did as requested. The lightning blazed into her palm and she gritted her teeth, because if Cat wasn’t yelling, neither would she. It hurt, though, as if hundreds of needles were pricking her.

  But as soon as she interrupted the flow, Cat reached over and yanked Gale away from the post by his hair, throwing him down into the shadowy road. He rolled as he fell, then curled up loosely.

  When Cat and Brynn pulled their hands out of the lightning restraints, they shot forward and then fizzled out, sparking a few times before vanishing entirely. A moment later, the whipping post vanished, too. Brynn frowned at the absence. “Huh.”

  Cat crouched by the faerie, taking Gale’s wrist in one hand. “What do you think he’s afraid of, Brynn?” He asked it like a rhetorical question, but Brynn knew from experience that he always expected answers to his rhetorical questions. He was great at helping her with homework, but this wasn’t homework.

  Brynn knelt too, but only so she could see Cat’s face. Looking at Gale’s curled form made her feel sick. Cat, on the other hand, gazed at the faerie in the same clinical way he’d listed off the haunt’s issues. It was strange without his glasses, but she’d grown very familiar with that expression over the past year. And looking at his face, remembering how he looked at Jennifer, she knew the answer to his question.

  “Being ignored. Being ignored by her.”

  Cat looked up. “Good answer. That would be why he’s woven himself through the haunt. Mattering means more to him than self-awareness.”

  “So we’re going with ‘natural disaster,’ then?” queried Haliel. “Nice choice.”

  “No!” said Brynn. “Stop it. The next thing you’ll do is blame Imani for what happened here.”

  “Oops,” said Haliel and scribbled something out. “Are we not there yet? I may have gotten ahead a little.” She tickled her chin again. “Although it does seem to me that this Imani is the one who chose to linger on, binding all her enemies into this wicked quilt, yes? I mean, what makes him so sickening that doesn’t also apply to her?” She tossed her blonde hair like a shampoo commercial and added, “I hope you don’t mind me asking. I just want to get motivations down properly.”

  Cat said, “Brynn, if you keep talking to her, I’m going to have trouble controlling myself. That would be distracting. Shall we focus instead?”

  Brynn unclenched her fists slowly. “Right. Actually…” She rolled Gale over so that his blank face pointed up at the angel and said to him, “She’s going to take you away. And you can’t use the haunt to stop her, because I’m suppressing it. If you want to fight back, you’ll have to pull yourself together.”

  Gale blinked, but his face remained slack. Brynn sat back on her heels, annoyed. Cat tapped Gale’s forehead thoughtfully. “That might work if he had enough of a mind left to understand you.”

  “Well, how do we do that?” Brynn asked shortly. “Could we use your knife to cut him loose from the haunt?” Cat had a knife he called the Ragged Blade that he’d described as having unusual powers of separation.

  “Ooh,” said Haliel. “I’d like to see that.”

  Cat did glance at Haliel then, but all he said was, “Perhaps. We’d have to find the right surface to place the edge on. And I don’t think it would be good for Imani.”

  “Well, what are your ideas? Jen said she thought you’d be able to reach him. Is she wrong?” Brynn was breathless even suggesting the idea. Jen could totally be wrong, but Cat might not appreciate the idea.

  But Cat smiled faintly. “Brynn, you’re the nice one. What would you do if you cared about him?”

  “Ew,” said Brynn. “Ergh. I guess I’d get him somewhere warm and cozy, and then I’d start asking more questions. Why was he here in the first place? How was he involved in Imani’s death? Why did he do this?” She frowned at the faerie. “Everything’s all wound together. I don’t know if there’s a yarn end here.”

  “It’s tangled,” said Cat. “Those are good questions. Personally, I’d ask: Are there any more of those lightning flows of his magic around town that we can interrupt?”

  Brynn blinked. “That’s… a good idea, too.”

  Cat nodded. “Let’s go explore, shall we?”

  Amber strode through the haunted town ahead of Yejun, following Imani’s distant song through the phantom buildings and the chained ghosts. As she moved farther away from Brynn, the structures simplified and the faces of the ghosts became indistinct. A building Amber had recognized as a general small-town mercantile when she’d passed before with Brynn was now a butcher shop, complete with sausages in the window. Grim, frisking back and forth between herself and Yejun behind her, paused for a long stare at those sausages before racing back to Yejun.

  Imani’s song lost none of its substance, though. It was a complex piece of music: mostly pure vocalized notes in a classical style, with occasional lyrics. Amber wondered if she’d composed it, or if it had come along with the ballgown when Imani had become a Hellqueen.

  Amber had written her own bit of magical music when she’d been bound to her master, although ‘hacked together’ was probably a better description. It wasn’t art, but it had done the job, and nothing else would have worked. Imani’s song had seemed like a complete inversion in those shattering moments before Shatiel had locked her down; while Amber’s song had been a lullaby, designed to soothe both prey and her master to tranquility, Imani’s song had been an anthem of rage, calling the world to wake up and riot.

  Now, while the haunt was drained and suppressed, it was… pretty. Just pretty.

  Amber walked down a blackened road with ghostly ranch houses on either side until she came to a crumbling church with a fire still burning in its depths. Imani sat on a bench across the street, her hands demurely in her lap, humming as she watched other ghosts desperately scurry around the church.

  “Hey, Imani,” said Amber. She’d watched AT talking at the ghost in exactly the same way she talked to her mother’s ghost. But Denise knew AT, was bound to her, and AT didn’t have to work to get her attention. Amber was pretty confident just talking wouldn’t work here.

  “They ran here,” said Imani dreamily. “When the fire came. I was waiting for them. They’d always wanted me to come to church, so I did.”

&n
bsp; “What a treat,” said Yejun, slouching up to Amber. “So what’s the plan?”

  Amber watched Imani sway back and forth, her red ballgown flickering and her dark, translucent skin glowing. “Do you think ghosts are people?”

  She could hear Yejun’s surprise. “That’s, uh… an unexpected question.”

  “Brynn and AT think they are. I’m not so sure. Do you think I’m a person?” Amber glanced at Yejun.

  With a disgusted twist of his mouth, he said, “You’d damn well better be, given the work I put into saving your ass.”

  “Me or Denise: who would you rather have a conversation with?”

  Nastily, Yejun said, “Isn’t there a third option?”

  “Me, of course,” continued Amber blithely. “I’ll remember what you said ten minutes from now. Why is that?”

  Yejun pushed his shaggy hair away from his face and looked at Amber over his sunglasses. “I think I may have liked you more before you started attending college lectures.”

  “I had to keep from falling asleep in Philo 101 somehow.” Amber looked at Imani again. “If you ever tell AT this, I will skin you. But I don’t think a ghost is a person. I think it’s a prison.”

  Slowly, all expression faded from Yejun’s face. “How do you figure?”

  Amber smoothed her hair away from her face. “If I’m ever unbound from the Horn, I’m going to stop existing. No soul. AT says she doesn’t have a soul either. Though I tell you, if somebody like AT doesn’t have a soul, I’m not sure what the point is.”

  “Get to the point, Amber? Please?”

  “You’d get lost if I didn’t draw you a map, you dropout,” Amber said sweetly. She tapped her foot on the ground. “Last night we learned something pretty important: that energy can be drained from a soul. Yeah?” Yejun’s gaze went far away, and he frowned. Amber paused. Despite her snide remarks, she knew Yejun was brilliant. If he disagreed with her, she was probably on completely the wrong track.

  “Why did you stop?” he demanded. “Keep going with this lecture of yours.”

  Amber relaxed. “I think a soul is composed of two parts: a self and a bundle of energy. And I don’t think a soul can stick around in the world unless it’s been… stabilized somehow. Like in a body.” She took a deep breath. “I think when they say I don’t have a soul, or AT doesn’t, it’s because that energy isn’t bundled up with our selves anymore. It got used up, or used differently, or something. We’re still ourselves, though. Unlike Denise or Imani here, who are supposed to be souls but don’t act much like people.”

  Yejun frowned, looking at Imani. “Get back to the prison part.”

  “Well, if a bodiless soul wants to stick around, it needs to be stabilized, right? So it makes a ghost to inhabit, like a tiny little haunt. I think the self is inside the ghost, unable to manifest properly because ghosts are pretty shitty vessels. So unless they’re really good at making their ghost, they just walk around like animatronic versions of themselves, only able to respond to certain stimuli.”

  Yejun swung his gaze back to Amber. “Hmm. And where does this get us?” he said, sounding so much like Cat that she wanted to punch him. Really, it would be much better for everybody if Yejun lied his way into college and had teachers other than Jen and Cat.

  Instead she said, “Jailbreak her, Yejun. Just like you jailbroke me. Get the person out of the ghost.” He didn’t say anything so Amber kept talking. “I think she’ll still be stabilized by her haunt, but we can communicate with her. And if the haunt doesn’t hold her, she goes away and most of our problems are solved.”

  “You’re kidding,” Yejun finally said, his voice flat.

  “Oh, come on, Ye.”

  “No, you come on. I didn’t ‘jailbreak’ you, I stopped you from evaporating when your boyfriend dumped you.”

  Amber blew out her breath. “But you saw what happened to me when he tried to unbind me. And you rebound me to yourself. Yes, ew, gross, but I know you can do this.”

  Yejun looked away. “If this worked, somebody would have done it before.”

  Amber furrowed her brow. “Why? Who? When?”

  “Philosophy and journalism. Haven’t you been working hard?”

  Amber grabbed Yejun’s arm. Farm work had left it nicely muscled, but he was still basically a twig in her hands. “Yejun, you can do this, but that doesn’t mean anybody else can, or would. The last Wild Hunt certainly didn’t care. What is your problem?”

  Yejun yanked himself away from Amber and took a few steps away, looking up at the church. “I don’t like how we keep coming up with ideas that require me. Jen and AT believe I can copy what Branwyn did last night and now you want me to… peel ghosts open.” He did a complicated shrug and Amber could smell the magic pouring off him.

  “Yeah, well, you’re special. Why is this a problem?” Yejun was special. He’d been born with an entirely different node structure than any other human, as well as a native ability to see the magical Geometry. Magical experts hadn’t expected him to survive childhood. His religious family had believed he was a witch they were obligated to shelter until he died. But he’d grown up instead, and he could do things with the Geometry that regularly blew Cat and Jen’s minds.

  Yejun looked up at the sky. “I don’t want solutions that mean I have to stay in the Wild Hunt forever.”

  Amber went cold all over. “What does that mean?”

  “Come on, Amber, who’s being dense now? I don’t want to stay in the Wild Hunt forever. Some day I’d like to get out. Do other things.”

  “You can do anything you want now,” snapped Amber, feeling that familiar dreadful sense of a lit fuse she had to stomp out.

  Yejun gave her a pointed look over his sunglasses. “Not anything I want.”

  Amber shook her head fiercely. “You’re talking about—”

  “I’m saying we’ve already bumped into some boundaries. We might encounter more. Someday I might want out.”

  “But the Hunt requires six riders,” said Amber urgently. “We can’t break the Hunt or I’ll die. Jen probably will too. You can’t.”

  Yejun shrugged and looked up at the sky again. “I wouldn’t leave without finding a warm body as a replacement. I don’t even know how to leave right now, Amber. It’s just… hypothetical. But if everything we do depends on me in particular, replacing me is going to be a lot harder. I don’t want to be trapped.”

  Sullenly, Amber said, “I’m trapped.”

  “And it hasn’t bothered you one bit, has it? You love it. You and Brynn both love it, and AT’s happy to have a family.”

  “Have you told AT this?” Amber demanded.

  Yejun gave her a sharp glance. “Hell, no. And you’d better not either, or I’ll tell her your theory that her mom’s in a prison.”

  “Have you told anyone other than me?”

  “No! And this is why!”

  Amber waved her hands. “Then why did you tell me?”

  Grim, looking between the pair, whuffed questioningly, and Yejun crouched down to rub the dog’s ears. “Because I saw how to do what you wanted and I didn’t have time to come up with a lie.”

  Amber tightened her mouth. “If you don’t do this and we have to devour the haunt, Brynn will cry. You know how she cries. She tries to be brave, but her eyes get all shiny and she wipes them a lot. And AT will growl and say she’s a monster and then she’ll hug her pillow in bed and sob. I’ve heard her. It’s heartbreaking.”

  Yejun’s eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses as he looked up at her, but she could feel the glare all the same. “You’re scum, Amber.”

  “I’m not the one who’d rather destroy souls than risk his future ability to kiss one particular girl.”

  “I don’t want to destroy—gah!” Grim yelped as Yejun’s hands tightened and Yejun pushed himself away to sit on the ground. “You’re the soul expert all of a sudden. Can’t you come up with something else?”

  “No! That was already really hard!” Amber took another deep bre
ath and tried cajolery. “Come on, Yejun. Try this here and… and I won’t tell anybody what you did. Even if it works.” She brightened. “Maybe if it works, you can figure out how to make a ritual out of it. Something anybody can do.”

  “Hah,” said Yejun hollowly. He hunched his shoulders, folded his arms under his knees and stared off into the distance. Irritation surged through Amber as she looked down at him. He had no right to look so… so young. He was almost her own age, dammit, and Brynn and AT were even younger. Cat, too, if you were being technical about it.

  Amber didn’t enjoy thinking about how she was the second oldest person in the group. It made her feel upsettingly responsible. Usually Cat was a pleasant reminder that chronological age wasn’t everything; his body and identity might be fresh from the factory floor, but his mind and personality belonged with the tenured senior professors at Amber’s university. He’d been strange lately, though. Between him and Yejun that fuse just kept relighting.

  “Fine,” said Yejun suddenly. “Don’t say a word to anybody.” He rocked back and sprang to his feet.

  “Oops,” said an unwelcome but familiar voice. “Do I count for anybody?” Capricorn was leaning on the back of Imani’s bench, looking extremely stylish in her dark suit. While she’d been away, she’d picked up a curly-brimmed hat that only made her look more delicious.

  “Great!” said Yejun, clapping a hand to his head angrily. “Just great. This is all your fault, Amber.”

  Capricorn’s eyes widened. “Oh no. I’m very good at keeping secrets.”

  “For a price, right?” Yejun said.

  “I sell secrets for a price,” corrected Capricorn. “And other things.” She gave Amber a particular smile and Amber shook herself out of unconscious dreams of indulging herself.