by M. J. Scott
I had little doubt she could. It might be early in the morning, but for this, the members of the Cestis would come.
I, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to be safe in my bed where I could yank the covers up over my head and pretend none of this was happening.
I definitely did not want to find out I was tainted with demonkind in some way. Or face the Cestis. But that had to be weighed against the trifling matter of my need to be able to do my job and continue to eat. Also my desire to never have a demon—or anyone or anything else—have a magical hold over me again.
Hello, rock, meet hard place. I needed a third option. "What if I can light the candle? Get my power back?"
"Then we would be more likely to assume that everything is okay," Cassandra said.
"More likely" wasn't the same as "would." If the Cestis wanted to test me, I had no illusions that they would. But I could worry about that if and when it happened. "Right. So how about I take Lizzie home and she can help me practice in the morning? She's hurt, and she needs to sleep. If a demon hasn't eaten me up yet, then I doubt it will change its mind in the next few hours. If I can't light the candle, then tomorrow night we'll do it the hard way."
Cassandra didn't look convinced. I shot Lizzie a pleading look.
Apparently she had more faith in me than Cassandra. "I really don't feel that great," she said. "I'll be more help in a test if I can get some sleep."
Cassandra pursed her lips, then nodded. "I can live with that. But I want you at Ian's at eight tomorrow night if you don't light the candle." She stood and bustled over to the desk standing in one corner of the room, pulling out the drawer. She came back and handed me a leather-bound notebook. "Here. This might help."
"What is it?"
"Notes on magical basics. Enough to get you started again."
If I could manage to find my powers. But this wasn't the time to argue the point. I had a reprieve. I was going to take it, and Lizzie, and run.
Chapter Three
"Not even a flicker?" Lizzie asked the next morning. She cradled her syncaf, looking as bleary-eyed as I felt. I'd insisted she go straight to bed when we'd gotten home around two. I'd tried to sleep myself but only managed a few hours before I'd given up and dragged myself out of bed and into the kitchen. I'd eaten a silent breakfast of cold cereal and milk, not wanting to wake Lizzie, and then unearthed a candle and candlestick from one of the cabinets.
I'd been sitting at the kitchen table, alternating between staring at the candle and reading bits of the book Cassandra gave me since about six. It was now closer to ten. The candle remained unlit. I'd gained a bit more information about some of the basics of magic. Fire and wards and psychic shields. The kinds of things that would come in handy if I had to deal with imps or demons again. None of which would do me any good if I couldn't access my powers.
Lizzie, still wearing her pjs with a light cotton robe festooned with otters dancing with robots draped over her shoulders, had joined me only a few minutes ago. Blue hair rumpled and squinting slightly, she slurped from her mug and studied me over its rim.
I shoved the book across the table. "Cassandra could give me the entire Encyclopedia Witchtannica and I still couldn't light that candle," I said, trying to ignore my urge to drown myself in a vat of syncaf. Having access to real coffee when I’d dated Damon had spoiled me. I couldn’t afford it myself, and I missed it. Syncaf tasted nothing like the real thing. But it did, at least, contain caffeine.
Maybe not enough for my current level of tired. Trying to do magic was exhausting. Or maybe it was just the complete failure that had drained me of energy. I'd tried everything I could think of to jolt my powers into action, staring at the damned candle until I was dizzy. "Maybe I need to accept that it's gone."
Lizzie’s mug thumped onto the table. "Magic doesn't just disappear." She tapped the book with her good hand. "Try again."
I scowled. Honestly, if it wasn't for my work problem and the unwelcome knowledge that there was a threat of demons taking me over again, I'd be perfectly fine with not having magic. I'd spent twenty-nine years without it and my life had been happier for it. Mostly.
"Maybe mine never really had time to take hold. After all, the demon had it bound for over half my life."
"It was yours to begin with. Nothing can change that."
The book was clear on that. Powers could be blocked or bound away but not removed. "So everyone keeps telling me. Yet I can't light candles, I can't see the energy fields, and if an imp tried to attack us right now, the only thing I'd be good for would be running away screaming. And now I have to worry about demons again." And demon stone. "You could have warned me that was a risk."
She shrugged. "You weren't ready to hear it. And we took precautions. There's been no sign of demons or lesserkind or anything remotely magical anywhere near here."
Just elsewhere. Wherever they'd been hunting down imps and afrits and whatever. "And yet, if I can't light this damned candle, the rest of your Cestis friends are going to either want to rummage through my mind or use demon stone on me." The thought of letting demon stone touch me again made me regret my breakfast.
Lizzie grimaced. "Don't worry about tonight. No one is going to hurt you. Despite what you think, we want to help you. I think this is all in your head. It'll come back. You just need to get over what happened."
Easier said than done. Nat was dead. How was I supposed to get over that?
Not to mention the man I'd loved had walked away, unable to handle the fact that I was a witch. Both things still hurt every day. And, if I was completely honest, part of me hoped the magic would stay away and somehow that would bring him back to me. Which only meant that part of me was stupidly over optimistic.
"Next you'll be suggesting I see a therapist again."
"I already did suggest it," Lizzie pointed out. "You refused."
The Cestis, via Lizzie, had offered to hook me up with a therapist who was also a witch to help me immediately after Nat died. I'd refused. I'd eventually tried one of the regular kind but had skirted around the issues of exactly what happened to her. "It didn't help."
"You tried a normal therapist. You need one who understands magic," Lizzie said. "And before you say anything about not having enough time, let me just add that you can do virtual therapy. All from the comfort of your own sofa or car or wherever."
As if doing it virtually made the prospect any more appealing. I hadn't set foot in a VR environment since my encounter with the demon. I looked down to the barely visible scar on my left wrist. There was no longer an interface chip beneath my skin. I didn't miss it, even though I couldn't deny that code wrangling had been easier with the chip. But easier wasn't enough to overcome the fact that the chip had also started my demon problem. "Me and my sofa are fine, thanks."
Lizzie looked at the candle and raised her eyebrows.
I pushed back my chair. I needed a break. Lizzie needed breakfast.
"What do you feel like eating?" I asked. My mind was blank as to what there was in the fridge. I hadn't paid attention last night when I grabbed dinner.
Lizzie squinted at me and then looked down at the sling. "Maybe just toast. I can eat that one-handed."
"Toast isn't exactly nutritious," I said.
"It’ll do for now," she said. "I'm not super hungry. I'll have more later."
I pulled bread and jelly out of the fridge. Found plates and peanut butter. I held up the two jars. "Which do you want?" Lizzie didn't believe in PB and J. One or the other only. Given everything she'd put up with from me, I could indulge her breakfast quirks.
"Peanut butter," she said. "Am I imagining it, or did Cassandra give you a bag of cookies when we left?"
"She did," I said. "I'm not sure cookies are breakfast." I sounded like Nat. Who would laugh herself stupid if she heard me lecturing someone else on eating healthy. She'd had to nag me to not subsist entirely on takeout when we'd lived together.
"Oatmeal. Cranberries. Those are things peo
ple eat at breakfast." She pushed her chair back.
"Sit down," I said, sliding the bread into the toaster. What the hell. She was a grown-ass woman. She could eat cookies for breakfast whenever she wanted. I might join her. Sugar might help with the exhaustion.
Lizzie sat, fidgeting with the sling a moment, looking cranky.
"Is it hurting?" I asked.
"No, not really. But it’s itching like mad."
Itchy was better than painful. Itchy meant it was healing and whatever Radha had done to help her injury along was working. "Don't fuss with it."
"I'm not twelve," she said.
I fished in the cabinets, found the bag of cookies, and poured them into my Nano Kitty cookie jar. I carried the whole jar over to Lizzie. "Sure. Eat your adult cookie breakfast."
I took one for myself, scarfing it down as I wandered back over to the counter to wait for the toast. "Are you sure your arm isn't hurting?" The last thing I needed was Cassandra on the warpath if Lizzie developed a complication.
"Yep." She yawned, then nibbled at her cookie. "You know, I've been thinking about your work thing more. Maybe until we get this sorted out, you need someone to help you." The swift change of subject made it clear she wasn't going to be talking any more about her injury.
I raised an eyebrow. "I work alone." Primarily because no one else did what I did. Sure, I'd used virtual assistants on and off to handle admin when I was busiest, but I couldn't exactly delegate the actual TechWitch part. By the time clients came to me, they'd usually already tried conventional IT consultants. My job was a weird little niche I'd fallen into by accident. I wouldn't know how to train someone to do it. Especially not if it turned out that my intuition for computers was somehow related to my magic.
"Yes. But if you can't work, then no money for Maggie. Or Maggie's house. It would be nice to finish the rebuild sometime this decade."
She had me there. "I take it you have someone in mind?"
Her enthusiastic nod made me wonder if she'd had this idea even before she knew about my problems.
"Someone who can do what I do?"
She shrugged. "I don't know exactly how you do what you do. But he's a very fast learner. He's ice when it comes to tech, that's for sure. He does all kinds of things."
"White hat kinds of things or black hat kinds of things?" There were all sorts of options open to someone who was good with tech. Some of them involved activities ranging from faintly shady to outright criminal. In my line of work, I couldn't afford to be associated with anyone who operated in the murkier shades of the web.
"White hat," Lizzie said. "Trust me, I've poked around in his background. Unless he hides his tracks very, very well, he's one of the good guys."
"Being able to hide your tracks very, very well is pretty much the job description for the wrong sort of hacker," I said.
Lizzie rolled her eyes. "When you do what I do, you get an instinct about people. So the question becomes whether you trust me."
Trust wasn't something I did easily. My childhood with my mother—who'd been the magical equivalent of a grifter and had taught me more about hightailing it out of town under cover of darkness than normality—had left scars.
I stared out the window.
Lizzie was right. I needed cash. Which meant I needed to work. And Lizzie was one of the people who I could trust. After all, she'd stuck by me so far, for no good reason other than she thought I'd needed a friend, as far as I could tell. "Let me think about it. Maybe I could give him a trial."
"Chill. Just let me know." She looked satisfied, then sniffed the air. "Toast's about to pop."
It was, and it did. I made two platefuls of toast and peanut butter, then let Lizzie eat in silence.
I finished my toast before her, hungrier than I should be given I'd eaten breakfast earlier, but I knew I needed the fuel to keep trying to light the candle, let alone face the consequences if I failed. I pushed my plate away and pulled out my datapad, pretending to check my mail. Lizzie nibbled and looked at her own datapad, alternating bites with swiping with her good hand. I couldn't help noticing she kept glancing at me. By the time she'd finished her breakfast and started chewing her lip instead, I got the message.
"There's something else, isn't there?" I asked.
Her gaze stayed fixed firmly on her datapad as her mouth twisted slightly
"Spill," I said when she didn't start talking.
"I'm not sure you're going to like it," she said. She looked up slowly, nose wrinkling.
My stomach squirmed again, but I was apparently becoming a proponent of the just-rip-the-Band-Aid-off-because-it's-going-to-hurt-either-way school of communication. "Just tell me."
She pushed her datapad across the table. "Have you seen this?"
I leaned closer, trying to make out the image. Then froze as I recognized the logo hovering in the corner of the screen. Riley Arts.
An ad. For a new game. Feathery letters—creamy white on a summer-sky blue background—spelled out "Archangel." The game Damon's company had been developing when I'd worked for him. When I'd fallen for him. When I'd found out I had magic.
The game previously infested with a demon.
With an effort, I sat back, shrugging as though my heart wasn't jumping around in my chest like a mad rabbit. "Well, he had to release something new sooner or later. Good for him." Guilt warred with a jumble of other emotions I didn't want to examine too closely. Because of me and my demon, Riley Arts had recalled a lot of games. One of the biggest recalls in gaming history. It could have broken the company.
I'd tried to avoid the news, but it had been hard to miss the fact that Riley's stock price had plummeted, people had been screaming for him to resign as CEO, and there'd been calls for criminal charges.
And, okay, it wasn't my fault, but that was how it felt.
Somehow Damon had survived it. Fixed the problems, made amends, put in the hard work. Now, it seemed, he was back in the game. No pun intended.
"That's all you're going to say?"
"What more is there? I don't game anymore. And—"
Lizzie made a disgusted sound, face scrunched with displeasure. "You're going to give me the 'Damon Riley walked away and that's that' speech again, aren't you?"
"Nothing's changed, so what else is there?"
She pushed the datapad closer. "I think you should watch the whole ad."
I stared down at the screen. I'd rather have held a ticking bomb in my hands. The walls I'd managed to scrape together around my beaten-up heart were thin and shaky. It wouldn't take much to blow them to smithereens, leaving me hurting and battered all over again.
Damon had caused part of that damage, even if, logically, I couldn't blame him for walking away. But it seemed I hadn't learned the lesson yet, because even while my brain screamed not to, I lifted the datapad and looked at the ad.
The feathery letters fluttered slowly on the screen, looping around each other slowly before settling back into formation. Like everything Riley Arts did, it was beautiful, breathtakingly real work. Light seemed to reflect off the letters as they floated as though touched by the lightest of breezes. All I had to do was touch the screen and the ad would play.
No doubt it would be just as beautiful.
But beautiful didn't mean it wouldn't hurt.
"I don't think this is a good idea." My voice shook.
"Trust me."
Now it was me chewing my lip. Luckily I wouldn't be ruining my lip gloss. I wasn't wearing any.
To watch or not to watch, that was the question.
"You're going to see it sooner or later," Lizzie said gently.
"I'm good with later," I muttered. But she was right. Damon had made it through. He'd stood his ground and kept his company afloat. The fact that he was now launching his first new game since his problems would generate even more press than the recall had. There wouldn't be a billboard or netflash or newslink that wasn't covering the return of Righteous, as the gamers called Riley Arts.
&nbs
p; This ad, and Damon's face, were going to be everywhere.
In order to stick to my "just rip it off" theory, I needed to just watch the damn ad and see whatever it was Lizzie thought I should see.
Still, I would've preferred the ticking bomb and having to reach down and cut the red wire or the blue one over having to tap the screen and start watching something I knew would have Damon's stamp all over it.
I tapped anyway. And held my breath as the screen bloomed to life.
The feathers dissolved into black, which then shimmered back into a familiar landscape.
An alien planet, heavily forested, the trees a thousand moody shades of green. It looked very real, and the memory of standing in that landscape, plugged into the VR via the interface chip I no longer had, smelling the remarkable recreation of that world, rushed over me. I stopped the memory in its tracks. Before it could turn to pain and filth and demons.
My pulse started to hammer in my ears. I told myself to breathe. I was safe. There was no chip. No demon. It was just video on a screen.
The ad took off at high speed. Winged characters battling monsters, epic landscapes, day and night and life and death cut together in a montage that made me wish I could play. And I'd never been a total game head.
Like everything Righteous did, it was a brilliantly executed piece of marketing. The snippets of scenes set up the fragments of an intriguing quest. A search to save the Archangel, cruelly imprisoned. To free her so she could save everyone else. Which sounded simplistic, but the world that unfolded in the images was anything but.
The ad finished with a swooping shot that started long before zooming in on a tower that looked like something out of a fairy tale on speed. Narrowed down to the shape of the window, then moved through it to settle on a steady shot of a spotlighted winged figure, viewed from the back. The feathers of those glorious wings shone with the same glowing white light as the original letters. This, I assumed, was the Archangel, the object of the quest.
And when she turned around, there were my green eyes glowing in the golden skin of her face.