Terrestrial Magic (Jordan Sanders, #1)

by Marina Ermakova

  What kind of person even did something like that? What was I supposed to do against someone like that?

  “I’ll leave you alone.” She pushed off the wall, then hesitated. “I wouldn’t suggest staying in here,” she advised, before leaving.

  I definitely wasn’t planning on staying in this room, advice or no. There was a blood-spattered room behind the curtain.

  Instead, I headed for the other curtain, returning to the first bedroom we’d been assigned. Tony huddled on the bed, white as a sheet. He glanced briefly at me, as I entered. “I’m. Not. Moving.” In a quieter tone that I wasn’t sure I was meant to hear, he added, “I’m never going to see them again.”

  I couldn’t handle the despair in his voice, couldn’t bring myself to think about his words. If I let the reality of our situation penetrate, I’d be huddled up right beside him, instead of doing my best to help us. Tony could stay there and have his moment if he needed it, but I couldn’t afford to sit around, no matter what. I was shaken, and the Hercules had intended it. As soon as I realized that, mom’s voice started echoing in the back of my mind.

  Your enemy is expecting you to fall apart, she might have said. This is the moment he’s not paying attention to you. This is an opportunity, if you pull yourself together.

  I needed to keep looking around, even if it meant running into more of the Hercules’ diabolical plots. Especially, I needed to know what was beyond the room with the blood. If it led to another exit, that was important.

  Oh, I did not want to go back in there. Damn it. Why did doing that have to make so much sense?

  I steeled myself, taking a shaky breath, and moved. All the while, a tiny voice in the back of my head screeched at me to turn back, demanded to know why I was doing this to myself. I forced myself to pull back the curtain and step into the bloody room at the same time, avoiding a puddle of red at my feet.

  All I had to do was get to the other side of the room, walk through the next doorway. I made my way, trying not to step in the blood. Or look at it. Or think about it. Which, it turns out, were all contradictory goals. So of course, I ended up failing at all three.

  The next room was, thankfully, free of blood. It was dominated by a loom in the middle, and mostly empty otherwise. Surveying the room carefully, I assured myself there weren’t any bodies or severed limbs lying around.

  Okay. I was past that. This new room didn’t contain an exit or magically solve all of my problems, but I least I knew what was here. Even accomplishing this little thing brought with it a sense of relief. It pushed me to keep going, to map out this place so I could do something with that information.

  Normally, when I needed to keep track of something like layout or geography, I’d grab some kind of device like my phone or a tablet. The impulse to reach for something like that hit me instinctually, my hands moving to my pockets out of habit—and feeling the outline of my phone through it.

  It felt like providence had tossed me the key to our salvation.

  Or rather, reminded me that said key had been literally sitting in my pocket this whole time. How did I not realize it sooner, that they hadn’t actively taken anything away from me? My bag and tablet were gone, but I’d lost them all by my own damn self. It was like the isolation of being here, of being at their mercy, overwhelmed me to the point that I’d credited it with more power than it had.

  I was careless. They were careless—the House of Hercules. Why wouldn’t they have checked us for phones?

  But of course, they wouldn’t have, because it wouldn’t have occurred to them. House of Remus aside, there was a strong streak of technophobia in legend communities. The House of Hercules wouldn’t have a lot of contact with anyone outside of their territory, excepting the other legends. And the humans who lived here, their followers, were just as cut off as they were.

  Even if they knew about mobile phones, they might have thought that they relied on towers—which was fine for safe spots, where those towers could be maintained, but not so useful outside of them. With the post-Boom decline in our population and the danger outside of our safety zones, we needed a feasible mechanism to keep in contact anytime, anywhere.

  And one already existed. The world quickly transitioned to satellite phones. Satellite phones, like the one in my pocket right now.

  I couldn’t risk calling anyone, because if someone overheard me, I’d have thrown away this advantage. Putting the phone on silent, I sat down under the window, so I wouldn’t be the first thing anyone saw when entering the room. The position also gave a good view of the doors.

  Shaking as I took out the phone, I let out a breath of relief when it connected to the network. Thank God.

  I sent a text to Hayley. “Are you there?”

  And then I prayed. One second passed, then two. Hayley could generally be counted on to keep track of her phone, but what if today was the exception?

  What if the House of Hercules knew more than I thought, and had some kind of jamming technology? Or magic? Maybe I was still cut off from everything. Maybe—

  The phone vibrated in my hands, and I scrambled to open Hayley’s reply—“Jordan! You okay?”

  Her message, simple as it was, nearly brought me to tears. I could still contact everyone. It wouldn’t get us out of here on its own, but it would seriously help. This was the key, the thing that changed everything. “Tony and I are both okay. He says we’re in Tivoli. What’s happening?”

  The fear of discovery made the wait for a reply seem like forever. I’d been given this one lifeline, and I clung to it desperately, afraid of it being taken away. Please, please, just let us have this one advantage. I listened for footsteps, constantly glancing between the entryways.

  Finally, Hayley sent another reply. “Remus and Simonetta opening up negotiations to get you back.” Under Dr. Berti’s name, probably, since it would be better if the House of Hercules didn’t realize the extent of the Remus’ involvement.

  I thought about it for a bit. I couldn’t imagine what sort of terms would pacify the Hercules. There was no guarantee that Dr. Berti could offer him to ensure no information would be leaked. Rome would know he did this, sooner or later. The Hercules was in a difficult position, and I personally couldn’t see any way out of it for him. How long could he reasonably hold us hostage? Because that was the only advantage he had.

  And if he decided that it wasn’t worth the effort, and that there was no covering up his tracks, he might take drastic measures. Like maybe killing us as a warning to the human communities. I couldn’t afford to let this be resolved by official channels.

  It might be better if I didn’t tell Hayley any of this, but...if I couldn’t talk to her, I couldn’t talk to anyone. And then I’d really be alone. “Don’t tell them, but that won’t work.” I explained my reasoning as best as I could by text.

  “Understandable,” she replied. “Situation’s bad. How will you get out?”

  “I’ll think of something.” I’d have to.

  “I’m tired of losing people,” she texted back. It took me off guard. I knew Hayley worried about us to an almost nonsensical degree, and covered it up—like she covered everything up—with an in-your-face humor that could be more abrasive than funny. But it was so rare for her to deliberately show it. Every time she did, I always felt a little lost.

  Another text came from her, this one even more surprising. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  That didn’t make any sense. Hayley was never alone. She connected with everyone, and yeah, sometimes that connection was antagonistic—like with Tony or Pradip—but no one could ever fail to notice her. She got along with our inscrutable mentor, attracted dates like moths to a flame, and even managed to form a friendship with someone like me. Why would she ever be afraid of being alone?

  When my phone vibrated again, I was almost afraid to look, wondering what sort of dark revelation of my best friend’s soul was coming next. But instead, it was a logistical detail, a warning I needed to hear. “Be aware the
y have flying horses patrolling the area.”

  I stared at that last text for a few moments, a sinking feeling in my gut. I hadn’t known that. But at least I could take it into account, now. “I’ll still think of something.”

  “Okay. I’ll think about it too, let you know if I have ideas.” And just like that, we weren’t talking about Hayley’s moment. I filed it away, in case I lived long enough to check in with her about it.

  Strange revelations or not, I felt better after talking to Hayley. Knowing she was there, a text away, even if she couldn’t do anything—it brought an unreasonable kind of comfort to me, something I didn’t know how to describe.

  And she’d given me a necessary bit of information. Because, flying horse patrols. That was probably why the House of Hercules wasn’t concerned about keeping track of us. As soon as we stepped outside, they’d see us. I needed to know if we were permitted out of the building or not. But first I had to check in with Tony.

  Time was of the essence, and I only knew of one route to get to my teammate. Forcing myself to make yet another trek through the bloody room—it wasn’t actually that bad the third time around, which in itself was almost as unsettling as if it had been—I emerged in the bedroom Tony had claimed with yet a little more blood on my shoes. The only thing that’d changed since I left was his slouch, which had gotten more pronounced. He lifted his head just enough to greet me with his signature glare.

  We didn’t have time for that nonsense, so I put a finger up to my lips, and showed him my phone. His eyes locked on it. Then in a flurry of movement that would’ve been funny if the situation wasn’t so serious, he dug through his jacket pockets and pulled out his own phone. He stared at it with a surprised reverence.

  Looked like I wasn’t the only one here who’d forgotten to think about the obvious. Still, I was glad he had his phone, because that meant he probably wouldn’t wrestle mine away from me, to keep as a security blanket.

  “Silent,” I told him. He nodded. Then I gave him my phone and showed him my conversation with Hayley. It would make him feel better, if he didn’t think too hard about it.

  “Okay,” Tony said, as he handed back my phone. “What do we do next?” He was doing better than I’d hoped for.

  “We look around, get a feel for the area. Test our boundaries so we know what they will and won’t let us do.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Let’s go outside, first, if they let us.”

  I wasn’t sure if he’d come with me or not, but he stood and squared his shoulders, like he was ready to follow my lead. We headed back the same way Xanthe had brought us in, from the courtyard. Fortunately not running into any of our captors on the way. Once there, I realized we couldn’t get out the same way we came in, seeing as how we didn’t have flying horses.

  Observing the sky above us for a minute, I noted pegasi flying by every now and again. It filled me with this sense of trepidation. I really hoped there was a way out of this building on foot. Because if there wasn’t, that would be very not good.

  I led us through one of the other doors in the courtyard, wandering through the rooms inside. Then we finally, thankfully, found a door that brought us outside. It opened onto a small piazza. I brazenly walked out into the middle of it, taking a moment to be grateful we’d even made it this far.

  “Should we be this out in the open?” Tony asked.

  “Yeah. We want to know where our boundaries are first, remember? We won’t be able to get away if we don’t know anything about the area. Even if we did, how would we get back to Rome before they caught up with us?”

  A rider on a nearby pegasus leaned over it to look at us, but didn’t approach or interfere. We picked a road, and started walking. The pegasus followed us at a distance, probably just keeping us in sight. That was it.

  I could work with that. Tony and I spent the rest of the day strolling through the town, almost as if we were visitors rather than prisoners. The one thing that struck me wherever we went was the total lack of motorized vehicles, the streets strangely empty without them. I concentrated on forming a mental picture of the layout, frantically trying to commit every detail to memory.

  But we didn’t want the House of Hercules to suspect we were becoming too comfortable, so I had us pretend to get lost on the way back—walking in circles, backtracking, that kind of thing. The pegasus’ rider noticed, flying down to give us directions in a bizarrely affable manner.

  This entire jaunt through the town made our captivity feel a bit less real. Tony must have felt it too, because he stopped twitching at every sound. But I knew I couldn’t afford to let my guard down. My interactions with the Hercules and Xanthe left me with no doubt that either of them could be nice one second before murdering me the next. Offering either the carrot or the stick.

  And sure enough, once we got back to our prison quarters, the first thing the Hercules held out was a carrot. Or rather, a steak.

  He invited us to dinner.

  Chapter Thirteen

  IT WAS A PRIVATE DINNER, with four of us—me, Tony, the Hercules, and Xanthe—seated on benches at a table. If we hadn’t been in imminent danger, I was sure Tony would’ve been pleased by the spread of food on the table, curious to learn if it was more modern or ancient in style. Personally, I didn’t know enough to be able to tell. There were breads and cheeses, fruits and vegetable soup—and meat.

  Bloody, rare meat, barely scorched over a fire that had been built in the same room as we were—I’d watched as strangers came out and cooked it, for a liberal interpretation of the word ‘cooked’. After running into the blood-spattered room next to mine, I felt myself getting sick at the sight of it. Given that the Hercules had placed the bloodiest, rarest piece in front of me, then kept tossing sly smiles my way, that was probably the point.

  The Hercules insisted on nominally treating us as guests, except for passive aggressive stuff like this, apparently. It was enough to keep me just a little bit on edge at all times. Was that deliberate? I had no idea what he was up to. I had no idea what to make of any of this. And, psychological warfare or not, I still didn’t really understand why he’d gone through the trouble of setting up that bloody room for us to find.

  The Hercules ate his food at a leisurely pace, while Xanthe dug into it with gusto. Notably, neither of them touched the nearly raw meat. They didn’t speak, and neither Tony nor I dared to start a conversation as we picked at our food. The quiet pressed at me. I didn’t want to eat, or drink—especially since the only available beverage was wine, which, totally not a good idea. I wasn’t sure if I should talk.

  But then again, our hosts had already lashed out at us without any prompting. Since I didn’t know what would set them off, why shouldn’t I probe for information? I had no idea what was and wasn’t risky. For all I knew, staying quiet was the worst option.

  Gathering my courage, I decided to ask the Hercules a question. “What was the purpose of the room?”

  I could imagine my mom’s disapproval. Not an important question. Not worth the risk. But she wasn’t here. I was.

  The Hercules examined me with a quizzical look in his eyes. “You are a straightforward person. To answer your question, it occurred to me that you may not have been taking us seriously.”

  I blinked, wondering what exactly had given him that impression. Our trying not to die by the chimera his House had trapped us with? Our literally hiding from him by camping out on the Aventine? Because I was fairly sure I took someone trying to murder me quite seriously.

  The sense of unfairness almost had me responding to him. Until I heard mom’s phantom voice, telling me to keep my mouth shut. Don’t talk back now—there’s nothing to gain by it.

  Without my interruption, he continued. “Xanthe explained to me what she had arranged for you, and how you and your companions have reacted. I find it surprising that humans such as you managed to kill the chimera.” He leaned back and chuckled. “To think! Puny little things like you.”

  Then h
is amusement quickly faded. “But I find it offensive that you lingered in the area where my House attacked you instead of running away, and that you took the time to butcher the chimera.” Butcher the chimera? The phrasing confused me for a moment, before I realized he was referring to the tissue samples we’d collected.

  But if he knew we’d done that...then someone in his House had to have been there to see it. The people who’d set up our assassination had been watching us the whole time. It wasn’t that we hadn’t suspected they could’ve still been in the area, but I’d never imagined them witnessing the entire thing. Suddenly, my memory of those events felt eerier, darker. We’d been struggling to survive, terrified, and they’d been there for it. Watching the chimera chase us, watching as we scrambled out of the way. Watching as we stood there, arguing amongst ourselves.

  Of course, now that I thought about it, it made sense. They’d put up the wall manually. At the time, I thought it’d been set up like a trap, left alone to do its job. But they’d been there while we were observing the chimera, putting up the wall around us without our noticing. That was a strangely disturbing revelation, even with the buffer of knowing how it ended.

  The Hercules’ continuation only added to my discomfort. “From a legend, these actions would have been appropriate, a show of strength. From humans, it is arrogance. As if you had nothing to fear from us. As if we were no threat to you. You are fortunate I chose such a benign method to remind you of your place. If I knew I would not have to return you in one piece, I would have chosen another.”

  He grinned then, as if he hadn’t just threatened us. As if he was glad to have us there, instead of deeply resentful over it. “But do not worry,” he added. “I have taken my retribution for those actions. For the time being, consider yourselves guests. Guests are, of course, to be taken care of.”