The Beast of Callaire

by Saruuh Kelsey

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I think so. Shouldn’t you know? It’s your dream.”

  She sinks onto the bed. “I’ve been having that dream for years but … how can it be real when my father says I kept doing things? Like magic. That’s crazy, isn’t it? Magic doesn’t exist.”

  When I stay silent, her eyes gloss over.

  “But neither are Myths, right?” She laughs, brisk. “So it might not be a dream? I might actually have … powers? Is that what you’re saying?” When I still don’t speak she raises her voice. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what you are.”

  “Why do I expect you to have answers? I don’t even know who you are.”

  I wrap my arms around myself. I heard her panic and came here to soothe it but all I’ve done is wake her from a bad dream and give her an existential crisis.

  She stares me down, despite being a head shorter. I take a step back. Beast or not, for some reason this girl has the unique ability to make me afraid. “Who are you? I’m pretty sure you’re not a knight in shining armour come to rescue me. And you’re not a villain—you haven’t threatened or attacked me yet. So what does that make you?”

  “Out of place,” I offer. “And I’m just going to go now.”

  She crosses her arms. “Good.”

  I hook one leg over the window frame and look back. I want to drop to the floor and run but I need to know one thing. “This house—whose is it?”

  “It’s mine. Well, my mum’s. Why?”

  I look at the circular walkway. “That path down there, the one around your house, it has power. And the windows on each side of your house—the crescent moons—they’re a Ward to keep someone from Changing. Like I do. It’s Majick. Strong Majick.”

  She won’t look at me, won’t look at anything.

  “I think your father had this house built,” I say. “When you were a child, not long after your dream. Whatever Majick you’d started to display, he wanted it to stop badly enough to go to the—” I’m talking too much. I’m so close to blurting out something that must never be spoken. “Maybe he went to somebody with enough power to keep your Majick from developing. Maybe they bound this house.”

  “I don’t have any magic,” Fray whispers. Her eyes are swimming. “I’m not like you.”

  “I think you are.” I mentally add, or maybe I’m just so desperate for you to be like me that I’m deluding myself.

  I swing my other leg out of the window and drop. I land with a crouch on all fours, my nails as talons.

  I don’t stop running until I’m inside my flat, and by then the beast has its claws sunk into me.

  FIFTEEN

  THE VISION OF THE PAST

  It takes me an entire day to reign in my monster. My wooden floor is scratched all over, and some of my blankets are irreparable ribbons. But I’m in control now, and possessions can be replaced.

  Fray comes into the Muffin Emporium three days after I intruded on her. She orders a small coconut cake but says nothing else. Muffin side-eyes me as I punch the buttons on the till, no doubt sensing the awkward tension. Fray hands over a five pound note, tells me to keep the change, and bolts with the cake box before I can even thank her.

  Muffin and I share a puzzled look. I put the note into the till, my attention snagging on a neon sticky note on the underside of it. Muffin lets out a low whistle as I separate the money and the note, reading Fray’s phone number twice before pocketing it.

  I think about calling Fray on my break but chicken out.

  Instead of going home where I’ll fret about making a single phone call, I go to the gym. It’s something I do once a month, usually after the Crea moon when I need to get the beast out of my system. That’s not far off what I’m doing now. This growing interest in Fray is a new kind of monster, one that makes me anxious and scared and anticipatory.

  Trick is leaning against the reception desk when I stumble into the foyer. The town’s only gym is a mill conversion on the edge of Callaire central and it just so happens that I can get a discount here. The benefits of knowing the owner’s girlfriend.

  I try to smile but it comes off as a grimace.

  “Bad day, love?” Trick sits on the desk with his ankles crossed, a long tunic falling over his thighs. He pours a cup of coffee and holds it out to me.

  “You’re wearing a sunset,” is the first thing I can think to say.

  He laughs, pleased. “That’s what Willa said. She tells me you went to see her a few days ago.”

  I nod, draining the polystyrene coffee cup. “I needed help with something.”

  “So I heard. She won’t tell me what, of course. My Lady is noble.”

  I attempt a smile again and wish I hadn’t. “Can I just?” I motion to the door that leads to gym equipment. “I’ll pay after, okay?”

  He sweeps an arm through the air, smiling easily. “Of course.”

  I make my steps unhurried as I go into the wide room. I don’t want Trick to think my discomfort is because of him. I just don’t interact with unfamiliar people well.

  Inside, a couple of women use side-by-side treadmills and there’s a guy on something I don’t know the name of. I find a quiet corner and lose myself in the rhythmic movements, the sharp noise of weights lifting and falling, the slow burn in my muscles.

  By the time I’m worn out and aching, an hour has passed and the beast is contained. I feel physically weak but mentally powerful. It’s a rare feeling for me to feel power over myself.

  I call Fray before I can back out of it, sat on a bench in the musty changing room, my heart pounding from overexertion.

  “Hi,” I say when I hear her answer. “It’s Yasmin. I think you gave me your number.”

  I’m an idiot.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Hi.”

  She doesn’t speak for ten seconds so I feel forced to fill the quiet by pointing out how awkward the silence is.

  She laughs breathily. “Sorry. I didn’t think this through. I just figured it’d be easier than me going to the cake shop every time I have a question.”

  “You have questions? For me?” Isn’t she scared of me? Isn’t she freaked out that I can hear her mind, that I share her dreams? “I broke into your house.”

  “And that’s throwing up major red flags, don’t worry. But I have a million questions for you. I need to know if I have magic, and what it changes if I do.”

  “It doesn’t change anything. It just means you can do something you wouldn’t be able to without it. Like …. Can I try something?”

  “Alright,” she says warily.

  “Don’t freak out,” I whisper, then Fray? in her mind.

  “What the shit!”

  “You … sound like you’re freaking out.”

  “You—you just—”

  “Spoke in your mind,” I finish. “Telepathically. I have telepathy. I’m sure I said that.” I might have told Fray to not freak out but I’m not taking my own advice. “Sorry!”

  “No—you did. You said that. It’s just … really weird. Sorry. I wasn’t ready for that.”

  “I’m not going to do it again. I was just trying to show you what I meant, when I said it doesn’t change anything. It just means you can do something different, like I can with my Psychic Majick.”

  “Do it again,” she tells me in a determined voice that shocks me. I remember the fierce look on her face in the Muffin Emporium and realise something about her. She faces everything, even things she doesn’t want to do, with unflinching resolve.

  Hi, I think. This time she doesn’t swear aloud or flinch mentally.

  Hello, she thinks back tentatively.

  Can I put the phone down? I’m on credit ….

  “Oh. Yes,” she says, accidentally shutting our link down. The ‘line’ of our mental communication becomes background static, the default sound of my Majick without a tie to someone’s mind. Most of the time I ignore the drone but when I’m focusing on it and it cuts out,
like now, it’s a blaring buzz.

  I block it out and say, “Thanks,” before ending the call.

  What other questions did you have? I ask, reaching for her again.

  Is there a way you can tell? If I have Majick?

  Maybe, I answer, thinking of Minnie. I wonder if she can Divine an answer. You’d have to come out of your house, though. The Ward is repressing Majick, whether you have it or not.

  That doesn’t make any sense, she argues. I go out every day to college.

  Oh. She’s right, that doesn’t make sense.

  So I leave my house—what then?

  I don’t know. If you give me time, I’ll figure it out.

  Maybe Mavers has record of her—he keeps archives full of information on Legendaries. Fray has to be a distant descendant of a Cross-Blood. That’s the only thing that makes sense. If anyone has answers about her lineage, it’ll be Mavers.

  Thanks. Her telepathic voice is a whisper. I have to go. I’ll err … talk to you later.

  My mind becomes static again and this time I don’t remake the connection. I haul myself from the bench and go to pay Trick for the gym time.

  *

  My mind won’t stop running, not even with the bath I’ve taken to relax myself. My tiny bathroom is overwhelmingly floral, too strong for my Crea nose. The closer it gets to the full moon, the stronger my senses become. The fact that I can see, hear, and smell everything in this apartment building doesn’t help to calm my mind one bit.

  I give up on peace after half an hour and crawl into bed in the fluffiest pyjamas I can find. I snag the runes Minnie gave me from the bedside table and empty them onto my green blanket. If I can’t clear my mind, I can at least understand it.

  I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, other than choose runes that stand out to me, so I close my eyes and run my fingers through the air above them. I pick out two runes based on a faint tingling in my fingertips I might be imagining.

  A quick internet search identifies them as Ingwaz, a diamond shape, and Ehwaz, an M shape. The diamond means family, internal growth, and love, which is fine until I add the meaning of the M shape—a journey and transport. So I’m going to travel with family? I’ll find love on Holiday? These Runes can’t read me any better than Minnie can.

  I scoop them up and am just about to put them back into the bag when two images flash into my mind. Trees blanketed by darkness, and then a cold white landscape. I see them so fast they’re layered over each other, hazy and distorted.

  Yasmin? someone says in my head. It takes me a moment to place the voice as Fray. My mind feels like water—indistinct and in turbulent motion. I’ve fallen face first into the runes and my breath is scraping up my throat. The Akasha pendant!—I took it off when I spoke to Fray earlier. I forgot to put it back on.

  No. My vision is going bad, the same as when I passed out in Callaire and woke up in hospital. Not now.

  Yasmin? What’s wrong?

  Please—please don’t talk to me now. My words get lost in the middle of a vision. Shadows take me away from Fray’s panicked voice, from my bedroom, from consciousness.

  *

  I’m in a study. Bookshelves and diplomas line the wood-panelled walls, a soft light unfurls from an upstanding lamp, and in the middle of the floor is a box. In front of me, inching towards the cherry-wood trunk, is a girl. She’s a year or so younger than the dream of the cave but I still recognise her as Fray. She has the same green-gold eyes, the same stubborn determination on her face.

  Fray runs her chubby palms over the inlaid lid. She puts her face close to the ivory engraving of a woman stood at a crossroads with hands reaching as if to touch the wind. I watch as Fray pushes her frail body against the lid until it lifts from the base.

  Malach rushes into the room then, shouting words that are indecipherable to me. He hauls Fray back just as she’s about to fall into the trunk.

  I sense something in the room—the same feeling I get when I meet a Dei for the first time. I sense Majick and the blood of Numina.

  The stricken look on Malach’s face is the last thing I see before the blackness takes me again.

  SIXTEEN

  THE MYSTERY

  When I go into work the next day, the dream vision on a loop, I find Fray on the steps of the Muffin Emporium.

  “It’s five o’clock,” I say when the shock has worn off. “What are you doing here?”

  She jumps up at the sound of my voice. “I thought you were dead!”

  “What?”

  “I—I tried to talk to you and you were just … gone. And then I saw that—the memory. But when it was over, you still weren’t responding.” She pulls on her coat sleeve. “I thought I’d killed you.”

  “Oh.” I chew my lip. “You didn’t.”

  She huffs. “I see that. Why didn’t you answer any of my calls? And when I tried to talk to you—the mind way—you didn’t answer. Why?”

  I lift the Akasha pendant from my chest. “This protects me from what happened. It stops me getting sucked into your memories.”

  “Then—”

  “I didn’t have it on. I took it off to talk to you. Last night wasn’t supposed to happen. I should have been more careful.”

  She winds a lock of hair around a finger. The mist has made it a deep chocolate colour. I frown. The dark hair makes her look different. It turns her soft face into something unfamiliar.

  “Sorry if I worried you,” I say. I step around her and unlock the door.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Free pastry to say sorry?” I add, “I’ll even let you choose which.”

  She brightens at that. “I suppose I could go for a strawberry tart.”

  I let her inside and step into the backroom, producing a leftover dessert from yesterday’s batches. As she bites into it, I power up the coffee machine and check my phone. “Dead.” I hold it up to show her. “Sorry.”

  “It’s alright. I forgive you.”

  I give the surfaces a wipe down, not wanting to get into my embarrassing hairnet while Fray’s here, even though she’s already seen me in it. “How long were you waiting out there?”

  “Not long,” she answers. “About ten minutes. I didn’t know what time this place would open but I figured I could ask your boss if you were okay.”

  “And then I showed up ….”

  She smiles, a full genuine smile directed at me, and my stomach flips. “You did.”

  I turn away to make myself coffee, glad my skin is so dark a blush isn’t obvious. If I were pale, my ears would be bright red.

  “Can I have one?” Fray asks and I yelp at her proximity. She steps back, smiling ruefully. “Sometimes I forget about personal space.”

  I’m incapable of anything but a nod.

  “It’s why I don’t have many friends,” she goes on. “I’m either too much all at once or I’ll forget I have friends at all. One time I didn’t call a friend I had for two months—you know, during the summer holidays. I went back to school expecting everything to be normal and she was furious with me.” She leans against the counter as the coffee machine churns milk into froth. “Apparently I’m a bad friend.”

  I blink for several seconds. “Coffee? Which one?”

  “Latte. I think I talk too much, as well. My sister always said I should make a career out of it and become a presenter. But I was always more interested in art, so I chose that instead.”

  “You’re an artist?” The full force of Fray’s personality and attention is overwhelming. I realise this is the first time I’ve spoken to her in person without her being mad at or scared of me.

  “Yep. Sculpture specifically. I go to Callaire College, you know up,”—she twirls around and points out the window—“there.”

  “How old are you?” She looks young to be at college.

  “Sixteen.” Obviously used to my reaction, she adds, “I know, I look too young to be at college.” She shrugs. “My birthday’s in August, at the end of the school term, so I sho
uld really have been in the year below. But I graduated early.”

  “Oh.”

  It’s quiet for a single second before Fray bursts out with, “So what do you do? Do you go to school or college or uni? Wait!” She smacks her forehead with her palm, smudging icing sugar on her temple. I itch to wipe it away but lose my nerve. “You work here. I knew that.”

  I can’t seem to keep a smile off my face. Her energy is infectious. “Are you sure you should be having coffee?” I ask, giving her latte. “You seem kind of awake already.”

  In answer she takes a long drink of the liquid, her eyes swimming with mischief. If I wasn’t already fascinated with her, I would be now. “So does your employer know you’re a Manticore, or …?”

  “No. And she can’t know. No human can know.”

  “I get it. It’s Super-Secret. But I know about you ….” Her happiness fades all at once. “But I’m not human, am I?”

  For a second I’m frozen. How do I reply to that? I don’t, I decide. I avoid it. “What else do you like to do?”

  “I like knowing things.” She hops onto the counter and crosses her ankles. “I like to read and research.”

  “What kind of things?” I glance at the clock. Muffin will be in soon to make up the morning’s bakes. I decide to risk her finding me here with someone just to hear more about Fray.

  “Mythological creatures,” she says with twinkling eyes. “I like to research those. Did you know there’s a Manticore in the woods behind my house?”

  “I had no idea.”

  “I think there are other creatures, too.”

  I break eye contact. Should I tell her? Can I trust her? I walk to the far wall and pull my apron from the peg, tying it around myself as slowly as I can. “I think there’s a chance you might be right,” I say to the wall.

  If this ends badly, if Fray turns out to be someone I think she’s not, if she tells the police or worse—the internet—it’ll be my responsibility to clean it up. I’ll have to find a way to fake the transformation, to prove it’s impossible, and I’ll have to—

  If Persuasion doesn’t work on Fray, I’ll have to kill her. That’s the second rule of the Legend Mirror. We’re not supposed to tell a single Pure, but if we do and it ends badly, they have to die.

  “It’s dangerous for you to know anything else,” I confess.