Kneeling next to her, I took her hand and noticed that the very rims of her eyes were a rich rosewood hue. “I give you my oath, I will keep you safe from Gregor Cole. And the Immortal.”
“And deliver me to Julius Septimus.”
Who he was, I hadn't an idea. Never heard of him before, and I had a decent enough memory for placing names and facts.
What I could tell was that he didn't sound like he'd been born in the States. Unless he had a family dedicated to keeping the old-fashioned names alive. He also didn't sound very ''creature'', unlike Mordon or Enaid or Feraline or anything else. This meant he wasn't drake, wasn't fey, and I had a good feeling he wasn't sphinx or gryphon. Had to be a man, it was a man's name. Couldn't be that many Greeks around, could there?
Her nails stung as they ripped down my arm when I hesitated, dedicating his name to memory. “And I'll deliver you to Julius Septimus. As soon as I can.”
A part of me wondered how I would find him, and reasoned that she could tell me. It'd be the best solution. I started to ask her, but the color faded from her cheeks.
She half-closed her eyes and gave a final push, whispering, “Catch me.”
I grasped her shoulders, but she wasn't tipping over.
Her child.
“Oh, no, don't you dare push.”
Too late.
A streak of panic tore through me as I realized she'd crowned her child.
Then it happened.
The calm happened. It'd taken over my actions before on a few occasions, a blessed intervention, yet a thing which I could not properly explain no matter how often I felt it.
It was as if all the things I could think, I did think, all at once, before they were peacefully discarded or put into constructive use. It was as if I'd done this a hundred times before, so often that it was a routine procedure invoking little emotion within me.
Once I'd thought of it like a puppeteer was moving me. That I was his marionette.
This time was a little different. This time I was the puppeteer and I was manipulating my own body, without residing within it.
It had been frightening to feel in the past, but not now. Now it was a tool, a thing which I could use to do what needed to be done. It could have been fast, it could have been slow. Time ceased to matter, nothing mattered except for the next contraction.
With her leaning against the counter, I took the infant from her body as it slipped into the world, still and unbreathing and faintly blue. Air wasn't being tugged in and out of its mouth, I knew without having to look at it. No one had ever told me how slick these newborns were; I nearly dropped it, jarring the child and causing it to spit up goop. Almost instinctively, I swirled my probably too dirty finger around its mouth and cleared the passage. Could this final stage of labor happen within minutes, or had I been so involved that I hadn't noticed the minutes going by?
It started up a weak wail. What I knew of childbirth had come to me through first responder classes, and I felt woefully under-prepared as I scrounged around for something to tie off the umbilical chord with, then cut it.
Mordon had everything in that old fashioned medical kit, thankfully in its place behind the counter beneath the register. He even had a sterilized cloth in a sealed bag, which I rolled up around the child. It had been a dry birth, she must have done most of her laboring somewhere else, which meant she'd been desperate to seek me out.
I turned to face Josephina. “Look, here she is. A little girl.”
A little girl who had bugged-out eyes and bright red skin, a baby who didn't look too happy to have joined the world of the living, and looked even less happy when her lids flitted open and she saw me. Despite the lack of appreciation on behalf of the newborn, I felt my muscles slowly unknot.
Around me wasn't as much of a mess as it might have been. The medical kit lay open, scissors and strings out of their usual place, rags helter skelter where they'd fallen while I'd dug through them for a clean one. None of it mattered, because Josephina wasn't excessively bleeding—in my undereducated opinion—and both mother and babe were alive.
Josephina watched as I tried to tidy things up a little, refusing to touch the infant which I half-held out for her to take.
Holding the child as awkwardly as one can, I wasn't sure if I should put the baby in her arms or cradle the little thing close.
“Good thing neither one of you died, coming to me instead of a doctor,” I said, failing to transform it from a joke into an actual question. Josephina reached a pale, shaking hand out to the child and just skimmed over her cheek.
A faint smile touched Josephina's lips. She murmured, “Treat me well,” and slumped to the floor.
I didn't understand. Josephina wasn't bleeding out. So far as I could tell, she hadn't been physically beaten nor was she choking. Yet I knew, sure as I knew my own name, that the life was draining away from her.
What I didn't know was why.
The otherworldly, calm feeling didn't return. My mouth went dry and I felt frantic panic course through every fiber of my existence, wondering what had gone wrong and how I could have stopped it, yet knowing that nothing had gone wrong. Nothing. This shouldn't be happening. Yet it was.
Right before my eyes, she was dying.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
The baby cried stronger now, as if it knew what was happening. I knelt beside Josephina, shaking her with one hand. “Hey, you, I'm getting Mordon. Hang in there. You hear me?”
Heavens knew what he'd do.
Bloody, mucusy newborn cradled in the crook of one arm, I strode for the door disguised as wainscoting which would take me to where Mordon was cooking dinner. My hand trembled too much to seize the handle the first time, and while I was forcing my hand to work, I heard a whoosh like gasoline touching a match.
Spinning around, I saw a giant ball of flame engulfing the place where Josephina sat propped up against the display case. The child screamed, as loud as a newborn could. I rounded the corner with the antique cash register and my jaw slackened. Josephina's body was an outline, a slightly darker shape within a raging inferno.
Hurriedly connecting with my magic, I threw up a vacuum around the fire, trying to starve it of air, adding a frantic, “Smorae” and hoping that I'd used the correct verb.
It did nothing. For an instant, I doubted my Anglo-Saxon. Then I realized the reason the spell didn't work: the fire didn't take in oxygen and exhale carbon monoxide.
It wasn't a normal fire. But for the smell of smoke in my nostrils and the sight of flames, it didn't exist. Within seconds, the outline disappeared and became a white-hot core which seared my retinas and prompted the baby's wail to new pitches.
Soothing her as best I could, I tried the door again—and felt it wriggle from someone else on the other side starting to open it.
I heard the wainscoting door open and after a second, Mordon yelled something and darted around me. He ran to the inferno and put out his hand. I saw him struggle to connect with the fire, to quench it and kill it, but nothing came of his efforts.
“It's not there, Mordon, I've tried. My element does nothing, your element won't work, either.”
He jammed his hand in the flames.
I rushed forward, yelling, “what are you doing” and grabbed his arm. When it came out of the fire, his hand was white and powdered with...“Frost?”
Mordon slumped back, sitting flat on the floor, staring at the white flames which were now diminishing, getting smaller and smaller, until all that was left of the incineration was the faint scent of singed hair and a tiny handful of ashes.
The baby cried afresh. I looked down at the blotchy-faced thing and tried jiggling my arms in a soft bounce, not having a clue what to do with it now that Josephina was gone. Feeling a little shameful, as if I had somehow brought this about. Or that I could have stopped it in some way. Should I have just walked out on her and left her on her own? But I didn't see how that would have in any way been the responsible, good-person th
ing to do.
Despite this, I couldn't think of a way that this night could have gone worse than it had.
With the white-hot burst of energy gone, a draft tickled my skin and I began to shiver. Slowly I began to catch up with what had happened and accept the reality that my life would never, ever be the same again. Avoiding looking at Mordon, I straightened out the baby's blanket. Red tinted my cheeks and my fingers wouldn't stop shaking. Then I let out a breath.
I wished I could go back in time and have nothing to worry about, to not wonder if I'd somehow caused all of this to happen. But of course I hadn't. She'd come for help, and I'd done my best. She hadn't fought the fire, hadn't been surprised that it had struck, even.
Which begged the question, what now?
Mordon ran a hand through his hair, the jewels of his rings catching on the flashes of lightning, staring at the spot the woman had been. Mordon climbed to his feet in one graceful movement and touched the ragged marks where Josephina's nails had torn into my skin.
“What happened?” he asked.
“She just appeared, after you left. Bam, here. Didn't set off any wards. Didn't seem harmful. I couldn't walk away and leave her. Nothing went wrong. I don't know what happened. But that was a...a...I don't know what to do now. I swear there was no warning.” I swallowed the hard lump in my throat. “She came out of nowhere. Needed help. I made a blood oath.”
“To do what?”
“She said she wanted me to keep her away from Cole. And give her to a man...Julius Septimus.”
“The baby?”
“No,” I said. “She kept referring to herself, not to the baby. Now she's...she's not even ashes. Mordon. What happened?”
Mordon folded me into his arms, gazing at the spot where the fire had been and had left no trace. Not answering, Mordon made crooning noises, and showed me how to hold the newborn. He wouldn't take it for himself, and he wouldn't stop staring at the place where maybe, just maybe, there might have been a bubble in the jewellery counter glass where it hadn't been before.
“Was there anyone else around?” Mordon asked.
“I don't think so.”
“She came here alone, gave birth, and burned?”
I sat stunned. “I didn't see anyone else. She didn't say she was cursed. Was it a curse?”
Mordon stroked his chin. “I do not know.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “What now?”
“Now?”
“Now, you follow through on your promise. If you couldn't keep this Josephina safe, you need to extend that instead to what she has entrusted you with.”
I felt heat rise in my cheeks. The urge to snap at him dominated, so I kept quiet. I clenched a fist. “I meant, should we go to the Magic Constabulary?”
Mordon frowned at the cracks in the floor. “Since we know Barnes, that would help our case. However, another crazy story connected to you might raise some eyebrows. A few members of society believe you are half-mad and unpredictable at best. They may believe you lit her on fire.”
“That's ridiculous. I can't even burn a letter.”
“That tidbit will make the conspiracy theorists very eager indeed. Can you truly not command a lick of flame, or is it a carefully constructed lie? After all, fire elementals are far more common than wind.” Mordon scowled. “Any hint of scandal will make keeping the infant under your care difficult.”
He was right. There were people who inherently distrusted people with fey in their blood, and my half-feral magic compounded matters. I was in the public eye now, and a story like this would stir up questions. Right when I'd hoped to start a 'normal' life, too.
“We have to tell our coven the truth,” I said.
“Yes, but they may agree it is best to not spread the word around.”
A whisper of wind moved the ashes. A glint of light reflecting off a shiny object caught my eye.
Something compelled me to advance on the spot, to reach a bloodied hand into the pile of dust, I felt dizzy and revolted. Mordon said nothing until I drew back from the ashes with a pea-sized gemstone in my fingers.
“What is it?” Mordon asked.
I shook my head and dropped it into his waiting hands. He held it between thumb and forefinger, examining it from the backlight of a green ember.
“It's a teardrop. Amber colored.” His lionlike eyes met mine. “It's very powerful.”
“Powerful enough to kill for?”
“Without doubt.” Mordon frowned. “We need to be rid of it as fast as we can. Sweep away the dust, no good will come of leaving trace of her presence. Hurry, we haven't time to waste if anyone was following Josephina.”
I did as he asked. Mordon knelt on the floor, marking out a circle and symbols, preparing what seemed like nasty wards. I knelt to help him, then decided that my time would be better spent cleaning the baby, as Mordon was not only faster at doing the symbols, he also hadn't told me what he was doing and I knew from the set of his shoulders that he was in no mood for a lengthy lesson. All we'd do was start a snipping, stressed-out fight. Explanations could wait, I reasoned.
As I started to swab down the child with the cloth dampened from a day-old water bottle beneath the counter, there was an explosion from the back room which shook the airplane overhead and made everything leap half an inch on their shelves. A sudden shield popped up in front of Mordon and me, vibrating as bits of wood and porcelain struck it. Belatedly I recognized the shield as one of the shop's automatic defenses—I'd never seen these particular ones in force before.
I clutched the infant to my chest.
The door leading to the back room was in a million little shards embedded in anything soft enough to accept the shrapnel. Dust drifted like fog out of the busted opening.
Our eyes met and Mordon slowly set down his chalk. Then he curled his fists around his rings, the gems one by one starting to radiate a light from within. Even the shop itself tensed, every ward standing at ready.
Waiting to see what had penetrated through the defenses.
The first sign of its movement was the noise. It sounded like rocks sliding one against the other, a groaning roll of rubble which I thought was the tumbling of the brick wall and the means by which it had entered. But the noises got louder and louder, and with it came the cool, damp chill which I normally only ever felt when I was at the site of a particularly bad haunting. The hair on my arms rose and the infant had gone strangely quiet.
Mordon just stayed there, kneeling on the floor, his eyes on mine reading my expression. Waiting.
It approached the door, those grinding noises getting louder and louder until I at last saw the first sign of it—the stubby, gray fingers grasping the remains of the door frame. What they were I didn't know, but they weren't human, nor anything so easily identifiable. Still I waited. A slow simmering ball of white heat crouched in Mordon's palms, needing the signal for when he had a target.
With greater chill its head entered the room, a thing with two horns, huge eyes, blunt nose, and a mouth which seemed to encompass all of its face. There was no color to be found at all, the beast rendered a solid gray, its skin rough, its features deeply set as though chiseled. Under my fingers I felt the infant's breathing increase but I didn't remove my eyes from the new face which was looking slowly, ever so slowly, around the room. It eased its chest out of the door right when its head turned in my direction. It saw me and smiled.
“Now,” I said.
Mordon spun. The firebolt left his hands and streaked through the air. Mordon rolled behind the shelter of a heavy chest right as the firebolt struck the intruder full in the neck and upper chest. Its head slapped back and it tumbled to the floor. Mordon's expression asked his question.
“I think you got it.”
The infant, though, screwed up her face into displeasure. When I next saw the thing, it had its hand to its head, shaking, and it glared at me with a snarl. Mordon looked at it and made a wild dash over the counter, urging me downwards with him.
; “It's a grotesque.” This statement he accompanied with a few choice words which would have made Nest scowl at him, given his present company.
“Well, it is ugly,” I said, watching through the glass as it got to its feet and started to crawl on all fours towards us. The wards assailed it, flames soaring higher, higher, higher, up towards the ceiling, hot enough to burn, melt, and even forge metal, yet leaving the shop's contents untroubled. The intruder hissed and withdrew, leaping to the relative safety of the top of a bookshelf.
Mordon gave me a look which said he wasn't pleased with my levity. Except I wasn't trying to be funny, I was making an observation. People often didn't appreciate my observations. Mordon said, “No, it's a guardian.”
Lost Magic (The Swift Codex Book 3) Page 2