by S. W. Clarke
I had never told Umbra where I kept the weapon. And she hadn’t asked a second time. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her—after a summer spent together, I did. Mostly.
But after Frostwish’s betrayal, I wouldn’t show the weapon to anyone else. Not unless they were Eva, Aidan, Loki, or Liara—or they were my opponent, and I was in a bind.
No, that was one secret I wouldn’t share. Not even with Umbra.
We had a light breakfast with Umbra’s daughter—a sweet, keen-eyed woman in her late twenties—and the daughter’s husband and two children. Loki entertained the children from the edge of the table, walking lightly in circles with an arched back as they petted him.
When it was time to leave, Umbra hugged her daughter and the children with more emotion than I’d ever seen from the headmistress. Like she hadn’t seen them in forever, and wouldn’t see them in forever.
And yet they were maybe the safest people of all. Their home would remain under Maeve Umbra’s enchantment. From what I understood, only a few mages in history had ever learned to enchant like her. I didn’t even expect to rival her—only to become good enough to do what I needed to do.
When she knelt to the little girl and boy, she pulled toys for each of them out of her robes like a magician. Two tiny walking sticks appeared, rubbed smooth like her staff. They’d been imitating her all summer with thin branches they’d plucked from the ground, in absolute adoration of the old, grand woman.
The children cried with delight. And again when they realized their grandmother was leaving.
When we came out of the house into a cloudless morning, I squinted over at her. “You sure the Shade’s infecting the world?”
She drew in a deep breath, eyes drifting the length of the landscape. “It’s hard to believe when you emerge into a day like this, isn’t it?”
Loki appeared beside me, blinking up into the sky. He’d always hated direct sun. “Bring on the darkness.”
I tsked him as we started down the path. Then, as we came through the gate and Umbra’s white hair glinted into my eyes, the question I’d had since the beginning of the summer came back to me. “Umbra,” I began. “How old is your daughter?”
She pressed the gate shut behind us with her staff. “Twenty-six. Where has the time gone?”
I didn’t know how to be graceful about this. So I just said it. “You must have had her late.”
“Yes.” She pressed a little bit of mirthful air from her nostrils, as though remembering. “Quite late.”
I paused, then barreled right into it. “How old are you?” She must have been in her fifties when she’d had her girl…
She glanced at me as she walked, lips curling. “How old do you think I am? If you say anything over forty, I’ll fail you for the year.”
She’d evaded my question. “That’s fine. You aren’t even one of my professors.”
“Aren’t I?” She tapped my ankle with her staff. “How do you expect to learn my magic without even a paltry year’s worth of lessons?”
I stopped. “You’re going to be my professor?”
She and Loki kept walking, her staff tapping along the road. “Keep asking like that, and I may very well change my mind.”
“That’s my witch,” Loki added in a sing-song voice. “Can’t ever contain her dismay.”
I caught up to them. We were about to pass through the curtain of her enshrouding enchantment on our way to the train station. “It’s just me in the class, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She paused at the edge of the enchantment; it shimmered in front of us as though caught in a breeze. When I’d first been trained to see Umbra’s enchantment magic, I’d never expected it to be white. But not bone-white, or even antique—more like the palest shade of blue. “Come next to me. I’m going to enshroud you.”
I stood next to her. “I’ll enshroud myself.”
“Not for this trip, child.” She swung the top of her staff in a small circle, bits of electricity sparking around it. “You will have your chance. Be patient.”
When she touched the top of the staff to my breastbone, electricity zinged through my body, my heart clenching and then giving a jarring, large beat in my chest. Around me, flashes of lightning peppered my vision, disappearing and reappearing as the enchantment took hold. If I had cast it on myself, I’d be seeing nearly transparent flames circling my body. The enchantment derived its power from your element, and fire worked a charm.
That was, if I could maintain it for longer than a half hour. And that was when I wasn’t stressed. So for all purposes, I was invisible to the world. Except for one half-demon.
“Cute trick,” I said. “I give it a B+.”
Umbra snorted. “I’m not the wizard I used to be, but it’ll do.” She turned her gaze down to Loki. “And you, my dapper man, shall be my familiar for the day. What do you say?”
His tail flicked in the air. “My allegiances are to one witch.”
Umbra reached into her robes, pulled out a small tin. When she opened it and sprinkled it over Loki’s head like fairy dust, I said, “Is that catnip?”
“Yes, child, it is.” She flashed me a grin. “You never know when it’ll come in handy.”
Loki closed his eyes, nose raising. “More.”
I prickled with jealousy. “You conjured that, didn’t you?”
“Certainly did.” Umbra gave another sprinkle, then closed the tin back up. “Off we go, then.”
Loki darted after her, eyes focused upward, already a junkie. That was all it took. Why hadn’t I ever thought of conjured catnip?
We boarded our train in downtown Zurich—the same line we had taken to get here in May. It would take us just over a day to arrive in Bucharest.
Aside from her love of trains, Umbra had said she didn’t trust the leylines. When I’d asked her what would happen if we parted the veil of a corrupted leyline, she’d only said, “Nothing good.”
When I’d asked her why we didn’t take a plane, she’d laughed. “The only thing I want carrying me through the air,” she’d said, “is a litter on the shoulders of four shirtless men.”
Loki and I had exchanged a look. So Umbra did have eyes.
As I’d learned over the summer, Maeve Umbra was in fact human, and an old-fashioned lady. Her sense of technology seemed to have paused around the time cars became ubiquitous, and sometimes I felt like the one guiding her.
Like, for instance, when I took her smartphone from her and brought up our ticket for the conductor. He appeared at the doorway of our roomette not long after, his eyes only on Umbra. She was the only one he could see. Well, her and the cat.
After the conductor left, Umbra stared at the phone’s screen like it was itself magic. “My daughter insisted I have this. You’d think for someone who can call lightning from the sky, I could manipulate a bit of plastic and metal the size of my palm.”
I sat back for the ride. “There’s a learning curve to everything.”
She eyed me. “That sounds familiar.”
“Can’t say I don’t pay attention during your lessons.” I nodded at her phone. “The ticket said we’ve got a stop in Vienna.”
“Yes. No direct trains from Zurich to Bucharest, I’m afraid. And even if there were, the whole of Europe travels in August.” By which she meant we’d gotten the only tickets we could get.
“Hmph.” Loki licked one paw from his seat on the windowsill, the world now rolling by. “Don’t suppose it had anything to do with procrastinating on booking those tickets.”
I could have given her flak for waiting too long, but it was enough just to know that Umbra was human. That she had a few of my flaws.
And, more importantly: the situation this summer had been touch and go. For much of it, she’d hoped we would be able to travel by leyline on our return, that we could find a way through the veil back to the academy.
That hadn’t been the case.
The Shade’s army had seen to it.
“You don’t think we’re at
risk?” I nodded out the window, visible through the skein of Umbra’s enchantment magic. “When the sun goes down, that is.”
“The train has one thirty-minute layover in Vienna. Outside that, we’ll be in motion. And that’s assuming anyone will be looking for us in the first place.”
If Umbra was confident in our safety, then I couldn’t ask for more.
We spent the rest of the day in the roomette, and even took meals there. Sometimes Umbra and I trained, and sometimes we read books, and sometimes we were silent, just looking out the window.
I couldn’t leave our room. And while I’d thought it would be torture in such close quarters with Maeve Umbra, I found the opposite was true.
She was clever, and funny, and a fine listener when she wanted to be.
“So,” she said after a time, her fingers running along the edges of her book, “Callum Rathmore. I certainly don’t blame you.”
I nearly inhaled the bite of rice pudding I’d just taken. When I’d finished coughing, I took a long drink of water, avoiding Umbra’s eyes.
Meanwhile, Umbra smiled like a grandmother who’d just stumbled correctly onto my secrets. Thank god Loki was asleep on the windowsill, his faint reflection passing through the countryside in the dusk.
I set my spoon back in the pudding. “You could have warned me.”
“I had expected feelings, but not ones that strong.” Her head tilted. “If he came to help you in Siberia, I hope you know what that means.”
I stared at her, waiting.
“The moment he turned his blade on Ora Frostwish, he turned against the Shade. He lost control of her army. He put himself at her mercy.”
My gaze dropped. Once more, I saw a thousand of her creatures rushing toward us across the snow. Blackness on whiteness, and he was only one man.
“I left him there.” I swallowed past a rock in my throat. “I left him because he told me to. I didn’t think. I wasn’t thinking.” I paused. “Did I leave him to die?”
Umbra pressed her meal aside, leaned forward, her eyes a gravitational pull. “William Rathmore would never kill his only son. I imagine he still hopes Callum will retake the mantle, and so he keeps him.”
“Keeps him?”
“In Edinburgh.” She lifted the latest copy of Witches & Wizards, passed it to me. “The Mages’ Council has convened in the last week, and that’s where they’ll stay until the threat has been dealt with.”
The threat. She meant the Shade.
I opened to the dogeared page, skimmed the article. “Callum was on the council.”
“Once. No longer.”
I set the magazine on my lap. “You think he can’t leave?”
“If I know the Rathmores, I know it for a certainty.” She unwrapped a mint from her tray, set it on her tongue. “And that’s why you’re going to master enchantments, my child.”
A slow-dawning understanding filtered through me. “I don’t just need to enshroud myself.” I also need to enshroud him.
She gave a single nod, her mouth working over the mint. “If you have the heart for it, Callum Rathmore deserves to be free. He’s proven himself, has he not?”
“Yes,” I said. “He has.”
As I said it, my fingers curled, squeezing tight, the conviction like a weight settled onto my chest. I would save Callum Rathmore like he had saved me. I would get him out of Edinburgh.
“Good.” Her head tilted. “Do you know why he’s a half-demon, Clementine?”
“His father’s a full demon?”
She waved dismissive fingers. “There hasn’t been a full demon for hundreds of years. No, it’s because a demon’s blood is so potent, it cannot be easily diluted. So if anyone were to mate with a half-demon, their child would be no less than half of one. Something to consider for your future offspring.”
This time, I nearly choked on my own mint.
Umbra set a hand over her mouth as she yawned. “Gods, I truly am old. I think I’ll call for the turndown service.”
When the train’s attendant arrived, Umbra requested that the second bed be made specifically for her cat. Meanwhile, I tried not to snort in the corner.
When the beds had been made, Loki and I took the top one for the night. Umbra came to stand beside my bed, her hand lifting, only her thumb extended. “Just a caution, child.” When she pressed it to my forehead, I felt the soft electricity of her magic.
Sleep well, Umbra said into my mind, patting the bed. And I ask that you not leave this room tonight. Not for any reason.
Before I could say anything, her face had already disappeared, and I was alone on the bunk with a cat curled up at my side. Umbra really knew how to tuck you in.
Chapter Three
I woke to thunder, pattering on the roof. Then, Maeve Umbra’s voice in my head: Be still. Don’t speak.
When my eyes opened, the train’s motion had stopped. Around me, darkness and stillness. Loki still slept by my side.
I lifted my head, glanced right. A form stood in front of the door to the roomette, where the curtains had long been drawn. Umbra’s white hair was silhouetted by an ambient light from the outer window.
She pulled aside a corner of the curtain, forming a small triangle to see the hallway beyond. She listened, watched.
As though she sensed me, her head turned, eyes on mine. She gave an infinitesimal shake of her head, recognizing my body language. Don’t move, child. Someone is on the train.
Someone.
What time was it?
My eyes moved to the digital clock across the room: 3:34 a.m.
A strange old fear gripped me. It was the same fear I’d felt the night I’d been abducted from my bedroom. It was also primal, from childhood, back when I’d been helpless. Back before I’d known I was a witch who could ignite fire from thin air, who could paralyze with a few words.
That helplessness swept over me like ice water. I had to lay here and wait on my back. I had to hide again.
A scuffing sounded on the train platform. A man’s voice called two words in a language I didn’t know. And far down the car, footsteps thudded inside the train.
I’ve placed Loki under my enshroudment with you. Keep him close, and I’ll be back shortly, Umbra said to me. She grabbed her staff, unlocked the door. Just like that, she slipped out, and I couldn’t even question her. Couldn’t even object because I didn’t have the connection to her mind like she did mine.
She’d left me alone.
She closed the door behind her, and I went on staring at it through the skein of her enshroudment. She must have masked her footsteps, because I couldn’t hear her at all once she’d left the roomette.
“Loki,” I whispered.
He crawled up close to my head, fur tickling my cheek. “I’m already awake. I woke when we stopped.”
“Did you hear someone on the train?”
“I smelled them.” He paused. “The scent is stronger now.”
“Scent of what?”
His green eyes glinted in the dim light as they focused on me. “The creatures.”
As he said it, a scrabbling noise sounded up the side of the car, like something was climbing it. And then, having reached the top, it began moving down the length of the roof.
“Wouldn’t the conductor have noticed?” I whispered to Loki. “There are regular humans on this train, aren’t there?”
“Almost all. Umbra chose this train for that reason—so we wouldn’t be suspected.”
Much good that did.
Then it hit me. “The humans can’t see the creatures. That’s why they’ve done nothing.”
“Right. The humans think it’s a regular stop in Vienna. They haven’t heard or seen a thing.”
The scrabbling drew near, and my eyes lifted to the ceiling. Above us, what sounded like claws scraped lightly over the metal and paused directly overtop us.
I went still. My hand automatically went up to my neck, and I found the moonstone. Even if Umbra’s enchantment failed, I still had t
his to protect me.
And I still had my own magic.
Nothing moved on the roof, but the footsteps inside the car came nearer. They thudded down the hallway, a man’s walk, and I wondered why the Shade’s minions had come to this train full of humans.
All my senses were reduced to two: hearing and sight. My face turned toward the door as the footsteps came closer, closer, and I began to understand I might have to fight. Except I’d hung my cloak on the hook across the room. The weapon was inside.
Fool of a witch.
“I’ll go and see.” Before I could stop him, Loki leapt off the bed, landing silently atop one of the seats with his fur lifted. As he did, I watched Umbra’s enshroudment slide off him.
So much for keeping him close.
From above, I began to make out the sound of sniffing. The creature on the roof above us was sniffing the air—but it couldn’t have scented me. I was enchanted, which blocked all scent…
But Loki wasn’t.
And now that he’d fought the Shade’s creatures more than once, it was possible they had his scent.
I leaned halfway off the bed, and my hands went around Loki. I pulled him tight to my chest as the latch to the door clicked. And out of new instinct, I wrapped my own enshroudment around the two of us in case Umbra’s didn’t take. I did it just the way she had shown me a hundred times over the summer: closed my eyes and focused on the space around me.
Igniting a flame wasn’t the issue; I could do that in a second. It was spreading the flame, directing it into a contiguous shape. In this case, it had to form around my familiar. And it had to be invisible. That part I’d yet to fully grasp, as well as sustaining it.
But the door was about to open, and I knew it wasn’t Umbra. Her footsteps weren’t thudding, or even audible. This was someone else—someone who shouldn’t be here at all. Who, I sensed, was working with that creature above us.
So I sent the flame out over Loki’s body, enshrouding him. I didn’t know if it had worked, if the guise would be complete, but it was this or fight. And in a space this enclosed, a fight wouldn’t go well for me. If one of those things touched me, it would sap my fire.