Cast into Darkness

by Janet Tait

  “That brings us back to who was chasing him,” her father said. “Odds are they’re also the party behind the attack on Kate. It’s also likely they’ll come after the stone again. Find them.”

  Victor nodded. “I have a few ideas.”

  “Dad, I could help Victor. Run down leads for him, look through records, stuff like that. It would even help me learn about the major players.”

  She glanced at Victor. His grimace made him look like someone just spiked his beer with pickle juice. She knew how he felt. But if working with Victor would get her closer to the truth about Brian, she’d do it and hold her nose.

  “I told you no,” her father said. “You’re too busy training. Besides—” he glanced at Grayson “—we have an advantage with you we want to keep.”

  “What?”

  Her father smiled. “Here’s your first lesson in strategy: never let your opponent see all your cards. No one knows you’re a caster. We maintain that advantage if no one finds out.”

  “Can’t they tell? From my aura?”

  “Grayson can mask that,” her father said.

  Her uncle stroked his chin. “Maybe. It’s not an easy thing to do.”

  “Make it happen. And soon. Our enemies will figure out the ruse the first time Kate’s on a mission, but it will buy us some time. Until then, let only a few trusted casters in on Kate’s secret. Make sure they understand to stay quiet about it. We’ll keep Kate’s new status ‘need to know’ only.” He turned to Kate. “Do you understand what that means?”

  It meant she’d still be an outcast, still be sitting at home while Hayley and her friends teleported off to parties, giggling in their little clique and avoiding her.

  “I thought you wanted me to make friends with other casters. Get to know them.”

  “I do. You don’t have to be a caster to do that.”

  That’s what you think. “Sure, Dad. Business as usual.”

  “Good.” He stood and walked to the door, opening it. “That’s all we need you for. You have homework to do, I understand.”

  That was it? They didn’t need her in this meeting? All she’d done was sit there and listen. Her face burned as she slammed the lemonade glass on the table. Dad invited her to get her to shut up and play nice. He’d thrown her a bone.

  What about the stone, Brian’s death? The others made no move to get up and leave. She knew they were going to keep on talking about all that important stuff. Stuff she really wanted—no, needed—to know.

  Dad’s tight frown and crossed arms made it clear how any pleas to stay would be received. Grayson avoided her gaze, staring instead at the box he’d pulled out of his pocket—the box containing the stone. Victor just took a long swig of his beer. It wasn’t like she expected Victor to take her side. Far as she knew, Hell hadn’t opened its ice skating rink.

  One last try. “Dad, I’m a caster now. I’ve earned a place here. At least let me hear what you’ve discovered about the stone. I need to know what it does. You owe me that.”

  “I don’t owe you—” her father began.

  “Maybe you do, sir.” Victor broke in.

  Kate turned to him, startled.

  “Kate’s been thrown into the deep end of the pool,” Victor said. He leaned back on the couch, cool as ever, no evidence in his steely eyes of how much it must cost him to talk back to her dad. “Don’t you think she needs a life preserver?”

  “And you think knowledge would give her one?”

  Victor’s face was missing its habitual smirk. He just stared stoically up at her dad. “Worked for me, back when I needed it.”

  Kate sat back, the air rushing out of her with a whoosh. Victor was standing up for her? But why? Did she really remind him of what he’d gone through as a rogue caster, newly discovering his powers?

  “All right, Kate can stay,” her father said. “But only through the discussion of the stone. Then it’s back to your studies. Agreed?”

  Kate nodded.

  Her father turned to Grayson. “What have you discovered about it?”

  Grayson hopped down from his perch on the desk. “I ran a full diagnostic but haven’t had time to do more. Here’s what I can tell you: The stone’s function is to create new casters. But it can only work on someone who already has the gene for magic as a recessive. In other words, a Null. It ignores Normals and plants a subtle suggestion in the minds of casters who handle it to pass it along to Nulls.”

  “Is that why Brian gave it to me?” Not because he trusted me?

  “Possibly. It would have influenced any caster who handled it without the proper precautions. He might have had other reasons, as well. But the spell contained in it certainly played a role.” Grayson took the stone out of its box and held it in his hand, covered in a square of blue silk. “I’ve never seen a primal magic artifact potentially this powerful.”

  Kate stared at the stone, a few feet away in Grayson’s hand. She tried to take her eyes off it, to look down at her lemonade, but its black depths were strangely compelling.

  She blinked and looked at it with magesight. Her eyes widened as the stone zoomed to fill her vision. Beyond the deep black of its surface, beyond the iridescent green flashes that took on a more vibrant aspect through her magical vision, she noticed something else. Stream after stream of dark energy flowed through the stone in an endlessly repeating figure eight. She watched it ripple in and out of itself, but she couldn’t tell where it started or stopped.

  The energy bothered her. Something about its dark purity made the fine hairs on the back of her neck prick up.

  It reached to her. Called to her to touch it, just touch it one more time.

  Blinking, she shut off her magesight. The connection eased, but the stone’s pull was still there, just a gentle tug on her soul.

  “—pretty casual with that,” Victor was saying. She had missed part of the conversation. No one seemed to notice but Grayson, who gave Kate a measuring glance as he held the silk-wrapped stone in his hands with a nonchalance she found disturbing.

  Grayson laughed. “I’m not being controlled by the stone. The silk protects me.”

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” her father asked.

  “As much as anyone can. This thing is thousands of years old and very powerful.” He paused. “There must be hundreds of Nulls. If we could transform them into casters and secure their loyalty, we could change the Game.”

  “The thought had crossed my mind. And also that Nico Makris or Justine Delacroix could do the same if they got their hands on it.”

  “True,” Grayson said. “But they don’t have it. We do.” He put the stone back in the box and closed the lid. The tug on the line connecting it to Kate lessened.

  “But wouldn’t using something like the stone blow the whole Game wide open?” Kate asked Grayson. “Isn’t the whole point to control the Normals from the shadows? I thought the big honking lesson from the First Era is that when casters used primal magic back then, it resulted in lots and lots of Normals getting killed. Then they ganged up on us and did the whole ‘villagers with pitchforks and torches’ thing. Isn’t that what this whole secrecy rule is about? Why the Game was invented? To stop that mess from happening all over again?”

  “A-plus for the history lesson,” Victor said. “That’s why we have an official policy these days about primal magic artifacts.” He quirked an eyebrow at Grayson. “You know, the one you helped write. The cross-clan policy that says to destroy the damn things when we find them.”

  Grayson narrowed his eyes at Victor.

  “I assume there’s an unofficial policy?” Kate asked.

  “An arms race no one will admit to,” her father said. “We keep the primal magic artifacts we find to make sure the other clans don’t get them. No one expects to ever use them, but if someone else does, we want to be prepared.”

  “Prepared for what?”

  “Whatever we need to be.”

  Kate picked up her glass and sipped her lemonad
e. She tried to absorb the knowledge that her father stood ready to use something as dangerous as the stone to counter his enemies’ threats. That thing had killed Brian. Who knew how many other people it could kill? Was this really the world he lived in?

  “This is a lot for you to take in, Kate,” her father said. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing you will have to concern yourself with for a long time. Better get back to your studies. I’m sure you have a lot to do.”

  Kate hesitated. She knew a dismissal when she heard it. But should she tell her father about how the stone had called to her? Grayson had told her he’d handle it….

  She left, her dad shutting the door behind her.

  She put her ear up to the door, desperate to hear something, anything. But his office must have the same kind of protection that the Sanctum did. Not even a whisper got through.

  Kate marched over to the staircase and slumped down, head in her hands. Yeah, sure, she’d promised to study, but how was she going to find out anything about Brian’s death when everyone shut her out?

  Twenty minutes later, the door opened. Her father and Grayson went their separate ways, backs stiff, tension making their steps ring on the marble floor. Neither noticed her. What had happened between the two of them?

  Victor waited in the hallway for her. “By the way, princess, we’re in security lockdown. That means you stay here. No driving into Southampton for a fro-yo.”

  She flushed. “I don’t—”

  “Until we find Sparkles and figure out who was behind her attack, no one who isn’t operative-class or above leaves the grounds without an escort. That means you. Got it?”

  “Yeah.” Oh, she got it. She got that Victor’s defense of her didn’t mean a damn thing. But he was dead wrong about her inability to handle trouble. Kate was a caster now. She could shield, even throw a couple of spells. If Brooke tried anything, she’d show her what’s what.

  Kris would be in Montauk tomorrow night. Nothing was going to stop her from seeing him. Not Victor, not his stupid rules. Somehow, between now and tomorrow, she’d have to figure out a way around his precautions. Stomping up to her room, she realized with a sinking feeling she had no idea how.

  Kate cracked open the textbooks. The review material—the names of the Second Era casters who developed modern casting after they’d outlawed primal magic, the understanding of why paranoia was a side effect of modern casting when it wasn’t one of primal magic, the history of when the Game had started, and a list of the Rules—made for fast reading. She’d aced enough pop quizzes to be able to predict what material would be on the test, concentrated on that, and skimmed the rest.

  She opened the binder Grayson had given her. He’d assigned her the tracings of Fire, Light, Lightning, Cloak, and Counterspell. Hmm…Grayson hadn’t assigned her any books that covered the First Era—the era of the stone. They might have been helpful. But it wasn’t like she didn’t have enough to study.

  She sighed. Light seemed the easiest, so she started with that. When she thought she had Light’s square symbol down, she went on to Fire, but she kept seeing the image of her father tumbling back into the hallway, his chest burning. Shaking, she slammed the binder shut.

  Footsteps sounded outside her open door. Hayley walked by.

  “Hey. Got a minute?” Kate said.

  Hayley stopped, her face darkening. “Not really. I—”

  “What’s up?”

  Hayley came inside and shut the door. “Nothing. You wouldn’t understand.” Her face had blotches of red across her cheeks, as if she’d been crying.

  “Brian? I understand that.” She forced back the tears that welled up at the thought of him.

  “Yeah. It’s Brian. We were going to hold a wake for him, a little memorial tomorrow, just his friends. Nothing official. But now I can’t go because Victor’s got his panties in a twist about your safety.”

  Another caster get-together, this one to mourn. Another part of Brian’s world she’d never been invited into. She barely knew his friends’ names. And they knew so little of her that they hadn’t even bothered to invite her to her own brother’s wake.

  She bit her lip until the anger cooled. “Yeah, sorry about Victor’s temper tantrum. I—”

  “Save it. What do you want?”

  Kate hesitated, then plunged on. “Any tips you can give me on memorizing these spells? I’m kind of…”

  “Lost? Well, yeah. You have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “That’s not exactly my fault.”

  Hayley huffed out a breath, then sat on Kate’s bed. “I guess not.” She picked up the spellbook and flipped through it. Then put it down and gave Kate a sideways glance. “So…there’s a trick to memorizing spells. Mnemonics.”

  “You can use mnemonics for spells?”

  Hayley rolled her eyes. “My dad would get around to telling you this after you thrashed around on your own for a day or two. You know how he teaches. But this is how it works. For each spell there’s a rhyme that helps you memorize the symbol or the chant. You know, like how the Fire spell has four points, one at the each of the cardinal directions, north, east, south, and west, but you have to tap the east point again before you go to the west? So all you have to remember is No Easy Spell Ever Works.”

  And Grayson had left her to struggle with them on her own. The anger she’d pushed down a moment ago raged back to redden her face.

  “I’ll dig up my old notes and bring them by later tonight. Got nothing else to do.” Hayley got up and headed to the door.

  An idea popped into Kate’s head. Maybe she and Hayley could help each other.

  “Wait. What if there was a way you could go to that…get-together of yours?”

  Hayley turned around. “How?”

  Kate took a deep breath. “Invite me.” Before Hayley said anything, Kate rushed on, “I won’t stay and cramp your style. I promise. But I think I can convince my dad to let us both go.” After all, he’d told her to get to know more casters.

  Hayley crossed her arms and gave a little snort. “No one knows you’re a caster. They don’t even know you. How do you think—”

  “I told you, I’m not staying.” The last thing I want is to stand in the corner all alone, listening to you and your friends weep over your good times with Brian. “I have someplace else to be. I need you to cover for me. You do that, and I’ll get you permission to go to the memorial.”

  “What’s so damned important that you’re willing to break Victor’s security lockdown to get it?”

  Kris. The solidity of his chest as she lay her head on it, the feel of his fingers as they pushed her hair back from her face, the way he listened to her pour out her tears. She’d mourn for Brian in her own way. Dad didn’t have to know about it. “Not your problem. Do you want to go, or not?”

  Hayley gave her a long look. “I’ll cover for you. But this better not come back to haunt me.”

  “It won’t. My lips are sealed. And so are yours, right?”

  Hayley nodded and slipped out the door.

  Kate wore a little black skirt, white silk shirt, and pearls and stood, mojito in hand, in the corner of a Georgetown apartment belonging to one of Brian’s friend’s. So much for not really staying at Brian’s wake. It’s not like Victor gave me a choice—hovering over Hayley and me until she teleported us. I’m out of here the minute I can tear Hayley away.

  Laughter and the tinkle of glasses echoed across the leather-upholstered living room. Music pounded over the stereo—something fast and European that Kate didn’t recognize.

  A jar of silver talismans sat on the bar, half empty.

  The partiers lounged across the plush furniture, their skin covered with reptilian scales, exotic furs, and the long, multi-colored feathers of birds Kate had only seen in the Washington Zoo, their eyes slitted and gleaming with a thousand jewel-like colors. Illusion spells. Their animal guises melded seamlessly with the elegant, inhuman design of the floating silk and tight leather garments they wore.
/>   They dressed like this for a wake?

  Hayley leaned against the wall sipping a margarita. A talisman gleamed from her blue leather corset. Her eyes angled up, like a cat’s, green with a single vertical slit. Black-and-white fur, like a snow leopard’s, flowed across her body, looking so soft and smooth that Kate wanted to reach out and pet it. Hayley’s tufted ear twitched.

  One of Brian’s friends waxed on about some pointless fight Brian had been in a few months back with a Tanaka family girl on top of a skyscraper in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district.

  “And then Bri yanked her levitation talisman and tossed her off the building. He let her fall for a few floors before he dove after her. When he hauled her up, she was shaking so hard she spilled everything: the location of the dead drop, their plans to discredit the Secretary of Defense. Before he let her leave he even got her phone number.”

  Raucous laughter filled the room.

  Brian would never… He just wouldn’t do something like that. Not the brother I know.

  She turned to Hayley. “Brian never acted like that—” Kate swept her arm across the room “—at home.”

  “We’re not at home.”

  The host rushed up. His foxlike eyes lit up with interest, paired with a total lack of recognition as he scanned her. He pressed a talisman and a small bag into Kate’s hand, his imaginary claws feeling real as they scraped her palm.

  “Here’s a little something to get things rolling. This may be a wake, but it’s still a party. You know what they say: live fast, die crazy.”

  The sharp edges of the talisman bit into her hands. It looked cheap—probably made on the fly in someone’s garage. Nothing like the combat-grade talismans her uncle’s people crafted.

  She handed the talisman back to the boy, along with the bag. A caster drug, she assumed, something black market like Chill or Smooth. Nothing she wanted to mess with. Ever.

  “Thanks, but I can’t exactly use these. I’m Brian’s sister. Kate.” Might as well make sure someone knew she was here. Wasn’t that the point of an alibi?