Pi flashed her rune. The nearest guard pulled down his shades. His eyes glittered with magic. She guessed he could see in multiple spectrums. He whispered into his lapel, then nodded her towards the entrance.
The inside of the building was no better than the outside. A stuffed pink poodle on a pedestal stood inside the doorway. Orange question marks hung on the hallway wall. Pi had the feeling that the owner thought the experimental art pieces displayed culture.
"What the fuck do you mean I've got a delivery?" came a voice from somewhere deeper inside.
Heavy footfalls made her tense up. Pi suddenly realized that this delivery wasn't as simple as Radoslav had made it out to be. She pulled the hood tighter around her head.
She knew him as soon as he came around the corner. His crew cut, track suit, and nearly seven-foot frame were unmistakable. It was Bannon Creed. His company, Blackstone Security, provided magical protection to high-ranking government officials, heads of major corporations, or anyone else with enough money. His face had been splattered over the media a few years back when Blackstone Security had been accused of providing services to warlords in the east African conflicts. He was also the patron of the Protector's Hall.
"Who the fuck are you?" he asked.
It took a moment to recover from the entrance. He had a forceful presence. "I work for Radoslav."
When she started reaching into her carryall, Bannon's hand went to his hip while the other was held out.
"Not another fucking move," he said.
Bannon bristled with awakened magic. A glance into his crazed eyes revealed he was on drugs, or illicit magics. He looked ready to unleash something horrible. The sharp smell of ozone was in the air.
Pi held her hands up. "I'm here to make a delivery. From Radoslav."
A trio of women's voices called to him from the other room, enticing him to come back or miss the fun. Pi resisted a shiver of revulsion.
"It's in the carryall. Let me just take it out and give it to you," she said. When he didn't move, she added, "Your guard outside checked me out, or he wouldn't have let me in."
Bannon blinked, waking from his daze. The magic slowly receded.
She pulled out the ornate box and held it out. She regretted not just sliding it across the floor to him when he moved to accept it.
His massive hand curled around the box and her fingers. She couldn't pull away fast enough. Bannon's eyes were not on the box, but her.
With the tip of a finger, he pulled back her hood, revealing her short black hair, shaved on one side, and streaks of indigo hanging in the front. A revolting smile lingered on his lips.
"And who are you, delivery girl?" he asked.
"No one," she said.
"Would no one like to make a little extra money?" he asked, though she didn't think it was a question. Fear rippled up from her gut. She was more afraid than when the demon lord had escaped his circle.
Bannon Creed moved his meaty hand to caress her face, but a spark leaped out and shocked him. He stepped backwards, his face creasing with anger for a moment, before switching to wry amusement.
The women called to him again. He gave Pi a long, skin-crawling look before returning to them. Pi thought he said, "Fucking Radoslav," on his way back.
Pi didn't breathe again until she was safely on the train back to the Obelisk, her obligation to Radoslav complete for the moment. If the next delivery in six weeks was back to Bannon Creed, she wasn't sure she would be able to convince herself to step back into his house.
Chapter Twenty
An early November tropical storm battered the eastern coast, bringing sheeting rain to the city of sorcery. The winds were bad enough the gondolas had to be grounded, not that she was allowed to ride them.
Aurie sat with her classmates in the room next to the Verum Locus, waiting for Professor Mali while gusts battered the home of the Arcanium. Violet sat up front with her gaggle of friends, playing Five Elements while they waited. Aurie tried to ignore the sounds of the game by concentrating on the storm.
When the professor wheeled into the room, she was soaking wet. She looked uncharacteristically distracted, though it didn't last long. As soon as she noticed the class staring at her, she snapped her fingers, which squeezed the water from her clothes and hair and deposited it in a glass on the table.
"Truth magic," she began in an elevated voice. "The Arcanium was founded on the idea that knowledge is power. Knowledge is gained through the seeking out of truth, no matter how inconvenient the answer. But before you can master truth magic, you must master yourself. Today we begin that task.
"Through that door is the Verum Locus, the room of truth. In there, you will relive the most eventful moments of your life. If you cannot master them, you will not be able to master the magic of truth. Without that, you cannot be a member of Arcanium."
A wash of vertigo overtook Aurie. Relive her memories? For the first time in her life, she actually questioned joining Arcanium.
"I see that look in your eyes, the slackness of your faces," said the professor. "You're suddenly doubting why you came here in the first place. This is natural. We all have moments in our lives that we never want to return to. When I was an initiate, I was forced to relive the moment I lost my legs. But once I overcame that fear, I no longer wanted to have my legs magically grow back."
A surge of unexpected rage filled Aurie's chest, bringing water to her eyes. She pushed it back down until it choked her.
"One by one, you will enter the room of truth. I cannot tell you what you will encounter there, and only you will know what happened. But know that you cannot fake your way out of this. I will know if you are engaging the truth or a fabrication of your own making."
The professor took a long look at everyone. Her gaze was sympathetic, which worried Aurie more than any yelling could.
"One last thing," said the professor. "Remember that we are at our greatest power when we give up control."
The professor let it sink in before tapping Deshawn on the shoulder. "You're first."
Deshawn got up, glancing back at the class as if he were a prisoner on his way to execution. After he was gone, the room fell into a sullen silence. Violet and her friends tried to resume their game, but it sputtered to nothing but lip biting and feet tapping.
It seemed like it was forever before Deshawn returned. It seemed like it was only a few seconds.
He came back ashen. He wouldn't meet anyone's gaze and took a seat on the far side away from everyone else and held himself.
Professor Mali sent Xi into the room next. The Chinese initiate came back sobbing twenty minutes later. The professor gave him a comforting nod.
One by one, they went in. Everyone came out affected by whatever experience they had in the room. Each time, Aurie mentally begged to get sent in, wanting to get hers over with, but was then relieved when it was someone else.
When Violet went in, Aurie found herself wishing that it was an awful experience. But when the blonde initiate came out in tears, and ran out of the room before anyone could stop her, a wave of guilt hit Aurie.
"Aurelia," said Professor Mali.
Aurie startled, kicking the seat in front of her, receiving a withering glance from Jacqueline.
The professor gave her a terse look as she went by. Aurie found she could hardly swallow as she entered the room. The door clicking shut felt like a tomb closing over her.
It was an ordinary room, except for one feature. It was filled with the golden speckled light of faez. The raw magic made her skin tingle as if she'd been dipped in mint.
She waited a moment, but nothing happened. She turned, facing each of the four directions. She rubbed her eyes, wondering if something was wrong.
"Maybe—"
The words were ripped from her lips as the world dissolved around her. The colors of a different life painted in as the old one faded. They were the shades of memory, of dreams.
She was in her old house—the three story with the brick front.
It was an idyllic spring day. The kind you visited in your memories of childhood.
Aurie sat in the living room playing a game of Senet with her sister, Pi. Her hands moved without thought, lifting the smooth stones from one bowl on the board to another. Aurie remembered that her mother had brought the game back from Egypt as a consolation prize for being gone so long. She'd been on a research trip investigating ancient artifacts.
Adolescent rage filled her like a balloon, then popped with the thoughts of what would happen that day.
You know nothing about rage yet, Aurie told herself, but you will.
Across from her, the ten-year-old version of Pi moved her stones. She wore her hair long, past her shoulders. Wisps of curls haunted the edges, especially around her face. That fierce spark was in her sister's eyes—buoyant beyond reproach.
She'd forgotten how different Pi had been before the accident. It made her skin itch and she wanted to tug at her hair, but the vision wouldn't let her. She was being marched down the path of the worst day of her life. Why would they do this to her? What kind of school forced people to relive events like this?
It wasn't like she needed to see this day again. Aurie knew this day like the beating of her own heart. It was the day their parents died. She wanted to reach out and gather her sister in her arms and hold her tight, to protect her against what was to come.
"Do you think they'll let me take Scratches to Arcanium?" asked Pi as the orange tabby weaved between her feet.
Scratches was an old cat with gray around his muzzle. The younger version of Aurie gave the cat a long look before answering, "Yeah, Pi. I'm sure they'll let you."
It won't matter much longer.
Aurie tried to get her body to move, even a twitch like yanking on a string of a marionette, but she was trapped in her own memory. A cold dread filled her chest, made her face numb. She vacillated between fear and rage. This was worse than watching a movie of it, because she could feel her emotions at the time, yet also feel her own present day ones.
Pi tilted her head. "I'm not an idiot. I know the cat's old, but I was hoping you could help him live longer. Maybe Dad could help you, since you're gonna be a healer like him."
Their mother, Nahid, stepped into the room. Even before Aurie turned her head, she wanted to scream: No! Get out! Get out now! But as soon as she laid eyes upon her, those feelings were swept away by the longing to be held by her mother again.
Aurie had forgotten how beautiful she was. Her crackling blue eyes contrasted with her dark hair laid out like a silky waterfall upon a floral scarf. Her intelligence was held like a sword before her. Aurie had watched many a man be skewered on her wit, thinking she was an assistant or secretary. Though she could display moments of cold calculation, her heart was as warm as a summer day.
Aurie found herself trembling. She wanted to rush into her arms, smell the lilac perfume she wore, bury her face in her shoulder, and let the pains and agonies of the last few years pour out in a torrent. She felt like a starved dog chained to an old post with salvation within sight. It was an ache that went down to her roots, until she felt like her chest was going to cave in from the pressure.
Memories bubbled up: huddling in bed with her mother and Pi, reading adventure novels and giggling with abandon, sitting in her lap as a small child watching storms light up the night sky, mother chasing her around the kitchen with a scoop of icing on a spoon to dab on her nose.
"Girls," said her mother with a faint Iranian accent. "Your father and I have work to do in the basement. It's very delicate and we cannot be distracted. So you'll need to play quietly up here until then. Now would be a good time to do your homework."
"Yes, Mother," they said in unison, while the real Aurie screamed, NO!
"Dooset daram," said Nahid, her love coming through the phrase.
"Dooset daram," the vision girls repeated.
Nahid left the two girls to their game of Senet.
No, Mother. Don't go. You won't come out again. You won't come out at all.
But then she remembered she would come out as a charred and broken body. Aurie remembered sitting on the back of the ambulance getting questioned by a police officer about what happened when they'd pulled her mother's body out of the remains of their house. The smell of death choked her.
Eventually, young Pi said to Aurie, "I'm bored with this game," and gave a shrug before moving towards the stack of homework on the kitchen table.
"I don't want to do homework," said young Aurie.
Pi had her hands on her binders. Little colored tabs stuck out from the papers. Pi was looking out the front window. Her head was slightly tilted.
"Wanna play Five Elements? The real way, with faez?" asked young Aurie.
Pi's forehead scrunched. "But Mom said we're not allowed to play it that way. We have to play finger exercises only."
"Come on, Pi. Everyone at school plays with faez. Don't be a chicken, bawk-bawk," said young Aurie, flapping her arms, elbows out.
Pi put her hands on her hips. "I'm telling Mom and Dad you called me a chicken."
"You heard her. She said not to bother them. Now come over here and play me, or are you afraid you'll get beat again?" said young Aurie.
Pi's face went through contortions, caught between her sister's mocking taunts and the desire to listen to their parents. The origins of her sister's persistence were glimmers in her eyes.
No. No. No. Don't listen to me. Go get them. You shouldn't let me bully you like that. She shook her invisible head. Dammit, I forgot how much of an idiot I was.
Pi plopped down in front of Aurie, her expression one of fierce determination. They went right into a match of Five Elements.
The surge of faez surprised Aurie. She didn't know if it were the vision Aurie or the real one using magic, but it felt raw and uncontrolled. She was sure sweat had beaded up on her brow back in the truth room, but she couldn't wipe it off.
Pi, despite being younger by three years, beat Aurie three games in a row. Then she got up and made a face.
"See. I'm not afraid. And I'm better than you," said Pi.
Aurie remembered the rage coursing through her veins like hot lead. It felt just as bad the second time.
"I was letting you win," said young Aurie. "Best out of seven."
"I don't want to," said Pi.
"Fine, but I'll tell Michael that you like him," said young Aurie.
Pi threw her arms to her side and sat across from Aurie again. This time she looked mad enough to spit.
The game began like the others, but this time, young Aurie tapped into her well of magic and hammered her sister with it. Inside the vision, the real Aurie was swallowed by the overwhelming feelings of angst fueled by the potent raw stuff of magic. The more she fed her feelings, the less in control she was.
It wasn't fair, she told herself. I was young and everyone did it. How was I supposed to know what would happen?
But she did know. The dangers of magic had been drilled into her again and again. At school. At home. The government mandated safety classes for all children who could wield faez beyond the barest spark.
She knew, she knew, she knew. This thought sat on her chest like acid, burning into her soul. Through the haze of tears the vision persisted. The feedback loop kept growing. Fountains of raw faez flowed from Aurie. She lost the understanding between the vision and reality.
The world whirled around her, spinning out of control. She was no longer playing the game, but fighting against the wave of magic flooding from her body.
When the fire came rushing in, she instinctively formed a shield around herself and Pi. The blast threw them out of the building.
Later, the investigators would tell her that the uncontrolled magic had hit a gas line and triggered an explosion. These types of accidents were not uncommon. Youngsters with access to powerful magics was like giving a toddler a gun, they reminded her afterwards. As if she didn't already know.
This did not reassure her like they thought i
t would. But what did they know about comforting a thirteen-year-old girl who just caused the death of her parents?
Aurie became aware that she was back in the room of truth. She felt strangely numb, drained. Salt lines crisscrossed her face. She rubbed the scar on the inside of her left forearm where shattered glass had cut her. A section of lumpy flesh along her ribs ached from the memory of the explosion. The raw faez had warped her flesh as it flowed from her body.
After collecting herself, Aurie exited the room, squeezing her arms around her chest. She desperately wanted to see her sister.
But she didn't make it far. The pinched lips and hard, distinctive jawline on Professor Mali stopped Aurie in her tracks. The words came hissing out above a whisper, loud enough for the rest of the class to hear: "If you're not going to take this seriously, then you're not going to even last until the winter break."
Aurie stumbled out of the room, her insides barren as ground zero of a nuclear blast. In a daze, she wandered through the wing until she found a dark corner in one of the Hall's many libraries. She shoved herself into the corner, as far as she could go, until the shelves bit into her back. Then she curled around her knees, pulling so tight she could barely breathe.
When that wouldn't do, she punched the floor hard enough to break the skin on her knuckles. And again. And again.
"It was my fault. It was my fault. It was my fault."
She kept repeating the words like a spell, hoping that somehow admitting her mistakes might bring forgiveness, and more importantly, her parents back. But that wouldn't work. Nothing would. They were gone. Buried in the ground seven years. She would never see them again, not even in that room, because she was never going back there again.
Chapter Twenty-One
Orson Rutherford stood in front of the class naked as an imp. Wisps of white material hung over his muscular body. He was doing his best to cover himself with his hands, but given the circular nature of the classroom, he had to practically cup himself.
Trials of Magic (The Hundred Halls Vol.1) Page 13