She managed, “Will you tell me what’s going on if I come?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” He held out his hand.
Neath purred and flicked her tail. Marley hesitated. Then she surged forward, lacing her fingers in his.
Chapter Eleven
Marley
Corbin’s fingers tightened against Marley’s. “We have to go outside.” After one more look around, he opened the door and tugged Marley out. Neath followed them.
“How do you move via magic?” asked Marley, her curiosity overriding everything now that she’d committed herself to coming along. “That could make getting a new apartment a lot more tempting.”
He laughed. “It helps to travel light. And to be friends with ravens.” He shrugged the backpack onto both shoulders. Then he lifted his hand to the flock above. A small, sleek raven came down to perch on his fist. It clacked its beak and croaked, looking from Marley to Corbin.
“Hush,” Corbin said to the bird. “Maybe later, you little pervert. For now, listen.” But instead of speaking, he brought the bird close to his face and they touched heads.
Marley watched in fascination, until he flung the raven back into the sky again. It sped away from the flock. He watched it. “In a few moments.”
“Have you been travelling this way a lot?”
He glanced at her. “It only works in a local area but it’s convenient for a few reasons.”
“And it’ll work for me?”
“They’ll bring anything that matters to me,” he said, pulling her closer and sliding his hand around her hips. “Get ready.”
The crying of the ravens grew louder. Marley peered up at the patterns of darkness they made against the clear sky. The world grew thin and strange, as if she was about to pass through the veil between world and Backworld. It came from both the designs they made on the sky, and the ravens themselves: some great magic they channeled from the Geometry.
The flock descended, until they were in the midst of it. The sense of alienation and disconnection from the world strengthened. She knotted her hand in Corbin’s shirt and his breath tickled her ear. “Here we go.”
They exploded into feathers.
She was a hundred points of view travelling over the San Gabriel Valley. She was wind and she was breathless. Dozens of voices whispered past her, laughing, joking, playing. One cried out an alarm.
She was a thousand nodes of light and the blackness that webbed them.
She was claws.
She was close to Corbin’s warmth, his arms were around her, and together they were one.
It went on for a period of time she didn’t know at first how to describe. A flight. It went on for a flight.
And eventually, they came to earth again, deposited by the flock in a parking lot behind a cheap motel. The sign poking over the motel and the freeway nearby suggested she was still in the San Gabriel Valley. The flock swirled around them. Then they landed on nearby cars and trees, all except the littlest one, which perched on Corbin’s backpack and gave Marley a smug look.
Marley stood for a moment, letting herself remember what it was like to have feet on the ground. In a downy heartbeat, she’d forgotten. Corbin held her, waiting, his breath tickling her hair.
She thought for a moment and then pointed out, “You used to just use a car to get around. I remember. You never used to do this.”
He laughed into her hair. “No. It’s something I learned recently.”
Marley remembered the black web shadowing Corbin’s nodes. “Since you got sick?”
After a hesitation, he said, “I’ve learned a lot of things since then.” He let her go and started looking through his backpack.
Neath yowled from somewhere nearby and then stepped out of thin air, giving Corbin an absolutely disgusted look.
Without looking at her, he said, “You hunt birds, cat; what do you expect?” He pulled a motel key from his backpack and went to one of the ground floor units.
Marley followed him. It was an extended stay kind of place, with a kitchenette in one corner, a couch in front of a TV, and a king sized bed against the far wall. Neath headed straight toward the bed to investigate the pillows.
Corbin didn’t say a word as he put the backpack on the floor. Instead he sat down on the couch, stretching out his legs and putting one arm over his eyes. After a minute, Marley shut the door and perched on the desk chair. Part of her wanted to join him, return to what they were doing before Neath had interfered. But there was more to worry about than making up for lost time. She needed to learn about the situation he was in, and why he was so angry at Senyaza.
But she waited, observing him, letting him relax. Magic could be exhausting. He was still so long she wondered if he’d fallen asleep.
Then the black shadow webbing his inner form stirred and looked at her. “Ah. You’ve been with Skadi,” the shadow said with Corbin’s voice, lingering on Skadi’s name.
Marley almost fell off her chair. “What? Did you just say that, Corbin?”
He pulled the arm off his eyes and looked at her. “You’ve been with Skadi,” he repeated.
“How do you know?”
The shadow smiled at Marley, the light of Corbin’s nodes shining through its teeth. Corbin said, “I just know. It happens sometimes.”
“Since the virus,” asked Marley. She’d just known things when she was sick, too. Things about Corbin’s parents, about his uncle’s lover. “Corbin, she healed me.”
His expression twisted into a sneer. “I don’t believe you.”
She straightened in surprise. “Why not?”
“Because healing people isn’t what she does.” Corbin shook his head and stood, stretching before going to the rolled plastic Geometric circle.
“Well, she healed me,” said Marley firmly. “I was there. I didn’t want her to, and she did anyhow.”
Corbin considered the room before unrolling the circle in the space between the bed and the couch. It stayed flat easily, but he sat on his heels and adjusted the corners carefully. “I’m glad,” he muttered. “I don’t believe you, but I’m glad she broke her pattern and did that.”
Marley pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them, watching Corbin as he worked for a few minutes. She tried to figure out what to say, where to start. His family wanted him back; his family was sending their private soldiers to bring him back. He had been sick, was still sick in some fashion, sick enough to be contagious and sick enough for that black webbing to pry apart his Geometry. His understanding of magic, already deep beyond his years, had expanded past anything Marley had read about.
Finally, she said, “Corbin, what’s going on?” She had great hopes for the question.
He stood again. “I didn’t want to make you unhappy.” He stepped into the center of the circle and his hands glowed blue. One eye became a black pit while the other glowed blue before shifting to red. Light refracted around him, and then a Geometric circle crafted of light expanded from the plastic circle and vanished through the walls of the room.
When it was gone, the blue light faded from his hand and his black eye returned to normal. The red glint in his left eye faded more slowly.
Marley forgot her irritation at his non-answer, distracted by the circle and the puzzle it represented. She’d never seen anything like it in her studies: not in Zachariah’s intermittent lessons and loaned books, and not Corbin’s lessons before he’d left town.
A Geometric circle was the foundation for almost all Geometric magic. Even charms had to be crafted via a Geometric circle before they could be attached to a person’s nodes. Stepping inside a wizard’s circle gave them power over you. And most circles were small, just large enough for the wizard to use, because the bigger they got, the more the variables, tangible and intangible, had to be accounted for.
Charms were usually limited to personal effects on the user they were attached to. They could influence how others saw the wielder, create minor changes in their environment and lend quite
a bit of direct power and defense. The formulae for most of them was a valuable secret, although there were a few commonly used utility charms that did things like open doors into the Backworld.
Circle-based Geometric magic could also do a lot more than make charms. But the magic crafted was time-consuming to cast, took effect as soon as it was completed, and tended to have a fixed location. Admittedly, sometimes it was a very large location, like the whole world. It was, for example, how the Hush had been created. It required specialized components and the right instructions. It was the magic of legendary grimoires and dragon’s tears and dew harvested under the midsummer moon. It was the stuff of epics: prized, traditional, old. The books containing powerful spells were treasures.
But Corbin’s plastic circle was new. Marley could understand some elements it, and more importantly, she’d seen what it did. It was custom-built to cast a single spell, and that spell was… another circle, a virtual circle, formed from the lines of the Geometry and able to manage a whole host of spells. A lot of the symbols were ones she didn’t recognize. But some of them she did, from a totally different context: her college Intro to Computer Science course.
Corbin pulled the laptop from his backpack and opened it as he sat down. Neath jumped onto the couch next to him and started chewing on the corner of the laptop until he pushed her away. Marley focused on the machine.
“Are you using a computer in your magic now?” She tried to imagine how that would work.
He gave her a quick, pleased smile. “I haven’t worked out how to make completely virtual circles yet but I invented something to help me draw exactly the right circle for what I wanted to do. We mostly use general-purpose circles and then adjust them with inclusions and components, but that makes them clunky and fragile.” He tapped his foot on the edge of the plastic circle and Neath leapt playfully onto his foot. “This isn’t.”
Marley frowned. “Do you just do it with an ordinary computer? It seems like it wouldn’t have the… the inputs to do any good tests.”
The look he gave her made her feel like she was made of gold. “I had to put something together.” He pulled out a cobbled-together thing with a circuit board and a cable and gave it a critical look. “It’d work a lot better if I could get Branwyn’s help, but it does work.”
She moved closer, peering at the device. “What are you using as the sensor?”
“Some of my blood.”
Marley stopped short. “Oh.”
Corbin added, “It’s just a drop or two every time I run the program.”
“Would anybody’s blood work?”
The black shadow within Corbin’s form looked at her as Corbin said, “Maybe just nephilim blood. I haven’t really been in a good situation to experiment.”
“Have you been working on this for the last year?” Marley found she was twisting her fingers together and stopped. Instead she picked up Neath, the big cat’s back legs draping over her arm and her front legs resting on Marley’s shoulder.
He looked to one side and blew his hair out of his face. “Among other things. Longer, really. But I started making headway in the last year. When it became important.”
Marley waited hopefully to see if he’d go into detail, stroking Neath’s back. When he became absorbed in his computer screen instead, she resisted the desire to go shake him. In the back of her head, an imaginary Branwyn whispered, Why resist?
Imaginary Branwyn probably had the right idea. She rubbed her face against Neath’s, thinking about how much she appreciated the cat’s insistence on following her everywhere. Then she put Neath down, and went to the couch. He was looking at some kind of diagnostic report on the screen.
“Hey.” She put her hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t touch me!” Corbin cried, jerking away, his eyes showing white.
Marley yanked her hand away like she’d burned it. For a moment they stared at each other, and then Corbin rubbed his hand across his face. “I’m sorry. I forgot… I forgot. You’ve already been sick.” His mouth twisted at the thought. “I infected you.”
“It’s okay. I’m fine now, remember?” said Marley. She rubbed her hands together. It was clear he was exhausted, and worn to a thread. “All right. Have you eaten anything lately? Maybe I can—”
“Marley,” he interrupted quietly. “I don’t want you to take care of me.”
Her temper frayed. “You don’t want to answer questions, you don’t want me to touch you, you don’t want me to take care of you. Why did you bring me along?”
He pushed the computer away from him and stood. “Because I…” He shook his head. “Because you make me happy. Because I didn’t listen. And neither did you.” He sat back down again and put his head in his hands.
His black shadow smiled at Marley again. “You should go,” it said with Corbin’s voice. “There’s work to do and you’re in the way.”
Neath hissed in Corbin’s direction. Marley set her teeth and decided to ignore the shadow, or Corbin’s suggestion, whichever it was. She sat in the other chair and said, “Tell me about the people who died.”
Corbin didn’t lift his head, but said. “They were my friends. I went to them after I escaped from Skadi. They were nephilim too. A family.”
Escaped from Skadi. Marley filed that away but didn’t interrupt.
“Three generations of nephilim, all living and working together. They trusted each other.” His mouth twisted bitterly. “And the virus took them too quickly for them to ever stop trusting me.”
Marley put herself in Corbin’s place and shivered. “That’s awful. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “You understand now why I wanted you to stay away.”
“And why you won’t go back to Senyaza?” Marley guessed.
Corbin’s teeth clacked together. “Oh, I’ll go back soon enough. When I’m ready.” He turned back to his computer.
Marley clasped her hands tightly and offered, “I met your parents.”
“Really? That must have been boring.”
Marley blinked, taken aback by that response and then abandoned the whole line of thought. “Corbin, I don’t know if you’ve looked in a mirror recently, but something’s really wrong with your Geometry.”
“I know.”
“Like, it keeps talking to me.”
The black shadow winked at Marley and said, “I know.”
Marley shot to her feet. “What is it?”
Corbin gave her a tired look. “A secret.”
Marley’s phone rang. She pulled it from her pocket and glanced at it: Zachariah. She put it right back into her pocket. “But why are you keeping secrets from me? I’m already in it now, there’s no point in trying to keep me away. There was never any point.”
He didn’t answer right away, and Marley’s phone rang again. This time the caller ID said, “Lissa.”
“You might as well answer it,” said Corbin as Marley blew her breath between her teeth. “Maybe it’s something important.”
“This is important,” snapped Marley, and silenced her phone. “Corbin, you’re still sick.”
He rubbed his fingers against his head. “I was. I got better.”
“But you’re still contagious. You’re still… infested.”
“As if I have fleas. Thanks,” he said wryly.
“It won’t keep me away from you,” Marley told him seriously. “But I was sick too and Skadi helped me—”
Her phone vibrated. Then it started to twitch in her hand, as if it was coming to life. Marley glanced down to see text crawling up the case.
where r u?
The words rounded the edge of the phone and marched up the screen in a diagonal path.
r u ok?
worryed
Kari can unlo…
Corbin’s eyes tightened. The black shadow said, “Answer them, woman, before they break something too soon!”
Marley’s fingers tightened around the phone. They’re kindergarteners, she reminded herself. But she couldn’t h
elp also thinking, But Zachariah could handle this if he wanted to.
She called him, the words circling her phone and tickling her cheek.
“Hello, Marley,” said Zachariah. “How are you this morning?”
“I’m fine. Can you tell Lissa to stop texting me, please? I think she has the wrong idea about how it’s supposed to work.”
“She and Kari were worried after last night,” Zachariah said mildly. “And then you didn’t answer when we called.”
“I’m feeling much better,” repeated Marley, her gaze directed at Corbin. He was staring at his computer screen, but neither his eyes nor his hands were moving.
“Will you be coming over today?”
Marley hesitated. “I don’t know.” Then her incurable honesty got the better of her. “I’m talking to Corbin right now.”
Corbin lifted his hands from the keyboard and his shoulders hunched.
“Ah,” said Zachariah. “Is Skadi with you?”
“No.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d see her again before the next time you visit, then.”
“A responsible idea,” agreed Marley stiffly. “Though she didn’t seem to think reinfection would be a problem.”
A hint of roughness entered Zachariah’s smooth voice. “Marley, I’m worried. About you.”
“About your babysitter,” she corrected, bitterly. “I’m just another implement, aren’t I?” It was surprisingly easy to say the words over the phone while looking at Corbin’s profile.
“No,” he said flatly. “You’re useful—which few people are, by the way—but you’re not just an implement, any more than the children are. If I’m distant sometimes it has nothing to do with my affection for you—”
Marley laughed without humor. “This isn’t a good time to talk about your affection, Zachariah.”
Softly, he said, “You’ve been running away every time I try to talk to you lately. I told you once you would.”
And suddenly it wasn’t easy any more. Corbin stood and went past her to the bathroom. She tried to work out what to say, and then there was only Neath to look at, curled up in the middle of the plastic circle. “You want things.”
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