by Kaye, Rainy
My heart wrenched, like it wanted to run inside and find that life again.
I stood behind the driver seat, one hand resting on Randall’s shoulder.
“Why are we here?” I asked with more edge than I had intended.
He twisted around a little to look up at me. “Otilia Rose lives next door. I figured we’d walk over.”
He pointed toward the blue and white house next to mine.
“Oh.” I dropped back to reality. “Right.”
I turned to find Fiona sitting at the end of the table bench, facing me. As I headed back through the motorhome toward the door, I nodded for her to follow. She dutifully stood and trudged behind as I pushed open the door and stared into my yard. The grass was trampled and dead. The orange cat lounged in a low tree branch, lazily cleaning his back foot.
With a sigh, I stepped out and then, bundling myself together, I headed out toward Otilia Rose’s house. A familiar whiff of vanilla floated on the breeze, in the direction I was headed. My group followed behind then spread out, surrounding me.
A crash broke the thick air.
I came to a halt so fast, Fiona bumped into me. I grabbed her arm to still her and listened.
Shouting erupted from Otilia’s house. A small explosion rattled the windows.
I charged forward. Randall already had his knife drawn as he matched me and then pulled ahead. Sasmita powered up.
I did a system check and found my magic was online.
Randall bounded up the porch steps and shoved open the front door. Sasmita and I were right behind him. Fiona lingered somewhere farther back.
Inside, Randall broke to the left as Sasmita and I filed in.
The couch had been overturned, and a man I didn’t recognize was using it as a shield. A serious gash splintered the frame. Three other men stood to the side. Their skin shimmered with pale green lights.
In the middle of the room stood Otilia Rose, sword in each hand. A short axe was sheathed on one hip.
The man behind the couch flicked his wrist. A series of small fireballs shot toward her. She spun out of the way and, in one deft move, came up in front of him. The tip of one sword lodged against his neck. As one of the men to the side came at her, she jutted out the second sword in his direction. The blade shoved through the man’s abdomen. He paused, blinking. She shook him off the blade, and he collapsed to the floor. Blood puddled underneath him.
The other two moved in from either side, behind her. She remained with the tip of the first sword holding its hostage. The other two men lunged at her. Bolts of electricity streaked in front of them. She dropped down, sprang up, and dropped down again. The electricity hit the couch and it burst apart.
I ducked, covering my head with one arm. Around me, my companions scattered for shelter. Dust plumed up around us.
Otilia spun around and sliced her blade through the first man’s neck. His head and body fell in two different directions.
I choked on dust and surprise as both engulfed me, trying not to fall over as I lost all sense of direction.
When the air cleared, Otilia stood surrounded by fallen bodies. None of the men remained standing.
I shoved to my feet. Before I had even finished straightening, her sword pressed against my chest. She stood at the other end, staring up at me.
Our eyes met.
“Oh.” She lowered her weapon. “What do you want? I thought you’d left.”
I blinked at her. “Um…I forgot my toothbrush.”
Otilia turned, tossing both swords to the ground on either side of her. “Would you like a muffin?”
I caught the familiar whiff of vanilla that I associated with her home, and her baked goods. The difference between then and now left me unsure on my feet.
“I’d like answers,” I said, finding my voice.
Randall and Sasmita came out from their corners, but hung back.
“About what?” Otilia asked, nonchalant as she headed into the kitchen.
I started after her, and then paused before passing the corpses. I averted my gaze from the beheaded body as I took my place in the kitchen doorway.
“Like, who they were, for starters,” I said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the men. “What was all that about?”
She opened an upper cabinet and removed a tea mug.
“Oh, them,” she said, resting the mug on the counter. “They thought I had something to do with a vault.”
I swallowed hard. “You mean, they thought you released the dark witch and mage portraits into the world?”
“You know about those,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.
“Well?” I stood straighter in the doorway. “Did you do it?”
If she was angry enough about Yuto’s wrongful imprisonment, she had plenty of motivation.
She shot me an unamused smile.
“No, but perhaps only because they ensured I could not. The fact they would accuse me is insanity. What a senseless fight.” She glanced toward the living room. “Guess it makes no difference—he wasn’t using his head in the first place.”
“Was that…a joke?” I asked, my brain and tongue numb. I couldn’t believe my life more and more each day.
She shrugged one shoulder, and then reached for the tea kettle. She seemed to think better of it, and opened another cabinet from which she produced a bottle of rum. Forsaking the mug, she uncapped the bottle and chugged a few gulps.
Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she looked at me. As if putting together my days hadn’t been all sunshine and unicorns lately, she gave me a sympathetic smile and offered me the bottle.
I started to accept it, but then retracted my hand. While getting falling-down drunk sounded like sweet relief for a while, I couldn’t afford it right now. I was barely staying alive as it was; the last thing I needed was to impair what skills I had.
“So, you must know where the vault is.”
She made a small hmm noise, as if the accusation had been lobbed at her once or twice in her lifetime, and took another swig.
“I’ve been looking for it. Can you tell me where it is?”
A scowl started to form on her face, and I added, “Please?”
“There’s no reason anyone should be at that vault ever again,” she said simply, but she picked at the label on the bottle. “Just stay away from it.”
“I’d love to, but I have a vehicle full of portraits that are just biding their time before they rip me to shreds.” I thought of her personal stake in all this, trying to find her weak spot. “I didn’t make Yuto go back.”
Her head snapped up. I expected joy and bliss to radiate from her, maybe a song and dance. Instead, she glowered at me.
“What do you know of Yuto?” she spat.
I was taken aback.
“I don’t…He just asked me to tell you…He wanted me to tell you that he’s alive and well and that he…” The words were strangely difficult to say. “I’m supposed to tell you that he loves you, still.”
Her expression darkened. “Get out of my house.”
I started to back up, but my feet didn’t take more than two steps.
I couldn’t go. She was our only chance at help. We had been through so much, and we had so much more left to do. In all of this, no one had been able to provide us anything we needed; no assistance, no leverage.
“I’m trying to save him,” I said softly. “I’m trying to save everyone I can.”
The words broke me. Tears welled in my eyes, and I did nothing to try to stop them this time.
She brushed me off, but she didn’t move from her spot.
“Something is wrong with Fiona,” I said. “Yuto has destroyed a city and I’m trying to find answers for him. Other mages are on the loose. There’s a seller that distributed them, and I have no idea who he is. Other people are trying to kill us, and I don’t know who they work for or what they want. And soon, the two mages I have caught are going to come back out when their seal breaks, whenever that might be
.”
“It takes a while,” she said softly, frowning into a distant memory. “Several weeks, at least.”
Her information was a comfort, but a small one.
“Please, tell me how to get to the vault,” I said.
“It makes no difference,” she said. With a frown, she turned and clunked the bottle onto the shelf. “You can’t get into it without the keys.”
I started to ask her to clarify, but a strange half-smirk crept onto her face.
“I was going to do it,” she said. “I was going to free Yuto once, a long time ago, when I was a young girl still full of ideas and a sense of righteousness.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked, not at all because I thought freeing mages was a good idea, necessarily, but I needed insight—into her, into the mages, into the vault.
“They stripped me of my magic. Punishment. All the immortality, none of the perks.”
“You’re immortal?” I asked, even though I had already done the math. It just didn’t add up.
“As much as anyone,” she said. “Time doesn’t move in the pocket worlds, and the benefit lingers in the central world. No one can say for how long, but for me, well, it’s been a while.”
She sounded weary in a way I had never noticed before.
She sighed heavily and fingered the cap on the bottle, as if contemplating how much more alcohol she needed to get through this conversation. “When I met Yuto, he was bright and full of big ideas. He wanted to change the world, and I could see in his eyes, he meant it. He understood the big picture, and he loved truly.”
“He loved you,” I said softly, though I wasn’t sure if I was a question or a statement.
She tipped her head in a little bob, her expression floating away to a happier time. “He would create flowers that bloomed in my hands and then burst into butterflies. He crafted little birds to sing me awake in the morning. He and I danced among a star field that touched the ground.”
“Impressive magic,” I said.
With a shrug, she brushed off her clothes, as if removing the memories.
“I had put a backdoor into the vault with the idea that I would sneak in and save him, but they took away my magic before I could use it. Without my magic, I can’t sense the door…and no one else can, either. I had made sure to hide it.” She chuckled, but the sound was bitter and sad. “Eventually, I had to resign that he was gone from me forever. People don’t actually know how long that is.”
“Yeah,” I said, noncommittal. I didn’t know how long forever was, either, but the last few weeks had felt it, at least. I still needed information, though. I still needed to know where the vault was. “How did you have access to the vault in the first place?”
She looked at me sidelong, sucking in a breath. My intentions were not lost on her, not in the slightest.
She answered, anyway.
“I didn’t learn to fight like that by being a baker.” She nodded toward the living room. “I hunted the witches and mages. They were able to cause catastrophic devastation. Some by accident.”
She winced, and then seemed to regroup right away.
“Some relished in the chaos and destruction,” she said. “Some found it to be a necessary byproduct. What were a few thousand deaths in the quest to drink up and shape the power from the earth?”
“Like the carnival mage,” I said, more to myself than to her.
She didn’t seem to care.
“A consortium had formed to instill law among magic users. They turned their attention to search for answers on how to handle the problematic mages. The ones who would wipe out entire civilizations again and again, or maybe worse, the ones who enjoyed inflicting suffering. There weren’t many, but their destruction knew no boundaries.”
“Were you one of the consortium then?” I asked, shifting weight to lean on the other side of the doorway.
She held her hands up in front of her and tapped her fingers together.
“No. My story is for another day. All that matters is, I was one of the four to form the quorum. Two manned the vault, one painted the portraits, and then there was me—the huntress. And I did my job.” She grimaced, as if she were in physical pain at the thought. “I did it without question, without failure. Over the next fifteen hundred years, I remained primed and ready for when the consortium determined enough was enough. Then the portrait would be made, and I would be unleashed.”
“Until Yuto,” I said as her story fell into place.
Her expression tightened. “I tried everything, first to save him, and then to do as I was told.”
“What happened?”
“I couldn’t,” she said simply. “Yuto…”
She shuddered a breath, and I knew without her finishing the thought.
She loved him.
“So, they punished you? Even after fifteen hundred years of service?”
She nodded. “They took away my magic and found a replacement for me that would imprison Yuto.”
“Joseph Stone,” I said on a breath.
“Yeah, Joseph Stone wasn’t a bad man, but you can imagine why we never would see eye to eye,” she said with a forced smile. “He served them for five hundred years. When the pictures were released, he came here first, believing there was some connection with Eliza Brown showing up in my own little neck of the woods. I guess he didn’t believe me.”
“Joseph is dead,” I said without any inflection.
She clicked her tongue. “I had warned him that taking on the mages back to back would be the end of him.”
I sucked in a harsh breath at the reality of her words. They were the same as the fear that gnawed at the back of my head every waking moment: Joseph had failed, and so would I.
“As I’ve told you,” she said, “stay away from the vault. This isn’t a role you can just step into. Heroic intentions don’t mean anything. We trained for it, we prepared, we were blessed by the gods themselves. And look what happened—Joseph and I both failed, in our own ways.”
“I caught two,” I said, strangely defensive. I didn’t want to convince anyone, not even myself, that I was capable of this task. “I just want to put them back in the vault.”
“You can’t get in,” she said with an edge of impatience. “I can’t find the backdoor without my magic, and I hid it from prying witches. There’s no way it will be recovered.”
“But where is it?” I sounded whiney, but I didn’t care anymore.
“Not in this world, but adjacent.”
Her answer came in such a rush, I had to rewind what she had just said.
“It’s in a pocket world,” she continued. “They can be as simple as a room or as vast as a planet. It doesn’t matter, though. Your only chance of opening the vault requires both keys.”
Randall stepped up behind me, and I realized he and Sasmita had been just out of sight around the corner, listening.
“Where do we find the keys?” he asked.
She looked between us, and then stood taller. I no longer saw a grandmotherly, elderly woman, but the strong, fierce person she had been. That she still was.
“I’ll show you,” she said, “but under one condition—let me determine Yuto’s fate.”
“Of course,” Randall said without missing a beat.
Relief washed through me that we were finally making progress in the right direction. At least, as far as the vault was concerned. We still had other problems.
I held up a finger. “One more thing.”
She raised her eyebrow at me.
“Fiona is sick,” I said. “Can you please look at her and tell us what is wrong?”
“Sure,” she said, as if it was all par for the course.
I stepped aside, and she strode through the doorway and into the living room.
Fiona stood by the front door, a sliver of a shadow against the wall.
Otilia took her in, then crossed the room towards her. Fiona did not move, did not acknowledge her presence.
Otilia scanned up and
down Fiona, and her face pulled together in a scowl.
“Who did this to her?” she asked, voice soft as if in awe and fear. “What happened?”
Randall crossed the room to them. “We have no idea. Some men took her and when we rescued her, she was…”
“Different,” I finished.
Otilia turned to us. “I’ve never seen anything like it, but if anyone would know what has happened, it would be Amari.”
“Who is that?” I asked.
“She’s the painter, but I don’t know where she is these days.” She gave a wry smile. “We’ve fallen out of touch.”
The painter would have taken part in imprisoning Yuto; her allegiance wasn’t difficult to determine.
“Who would know where to find Amari?” Sasmita chimed in.
“Besides the consortium? The quorum, I would imagine.” Otilia waited, as if letting us process what she was saying. “The keys. They would know where the painter is.”
Randall tilted his head at her. “I’m assuming the keys are people?”
“Of course,” Otilia said. “As I said, the four of us made up the quorum that the consortium called on to bring in unruly witches and mages. We used to play cards together.”
“Until they helped imprison Yuto,” I said.
She nodded tersely.
“Well, he’s free now,” I said, and then let out a pent-up breath I didn’t know I had been holding. “He’s all yours to sort out. We just need to find the keys—first to unlock the vault, and then to find Amari the painter.”
“The keys have lived in the same place since they took their role in the quorum,” Otilia said. “I’ll take you to the portal.”
11
We took Otilia’s jeep, Randall in the passenger seat and Sasmita and I flanking Fiona in the back. I couldn’t say I minded having a break from the stares of the portraits, though I probably should have been more concerned leaving them unattended with only a flimsy motorhome door lock to protect them.
If anyone made off with the portraits, though, the joke was on them.
Not that many people remained in Green River, anyway.
“So, where is this portal located, exactly?” I asked, trying to catch Otilia’s eye in the rearview mirror as we neared the edge of town.