Authors: C.N. Crawford
Fiona’s classmate Sadie pushed to the front, staring at the entrance hall. She scratched a freckled cheek. “This place is beautiful,” she whispered. For once, she wasn’t prattling on about what kind of bagel to eat or what kind of socks to wear. Her blond hair swelled in the heat, and her lips looked pale without her usual makeup.
“Thank you, Sadie,” chirped Munroe. “It has an impressive history, too. It was home to one of the Founding Fathers.”
As they milled around the imposing vestibule, a young woman entered the hall from the opposite door. Her platinum hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore the same chalice pendant that always adorned Munroe’s neckline. “Ms. Ranulf? Your mother has asked that everyone join her in the green drawing room.” She gave a curt nod and then strode off through the doorway again.
Munroe beckoned her schoolmates forward. “Follow me, everyone.”
She hurried through a rounded door opposite the entryway, and the remnants of Mather Academy’s junior class shuffled one by one through the door. Fiona pressed in after them to an expansive room lined with tall, arched windows. On the far side, glass doors led to a grassy field. Above the doors, afternoon light illuminated a stained-glass chalice insignia. Mahogany chairs with tall backs and faded, embroidered cushions were strewn around the room. A portrait of an obscure Founding Father in a powdered wig hung above the fireplace.
Fiona’s eye was most drawn to the woman with the strawberry blond ringlets blazing from her head. She reclined on a mustard-yellow sofa near a marble fireplace. She stood, smiling, her porcelain skin gleaming. With a blue dress draping her elegant figure, she looked like she could have been a beauty queen years ago. And there was that chalice again, on her neck. This must be Munroe’s mother.
She rose. “Hello, everyone.” She held out her hands over a mahogany coffee table. “Aren’t you all just lovely!”
Fiona didn’t feel lovely right now. She wanted to be back in the Adepti room on her beast-embroidered rug, drinking tea and practicing spells with Tobias. If there was a spell for winding back the clock several months, she would really like to know it.
“Hello, Mrs. Ranulf,” a few students murmured.
There was an herbal, medicinal smell in the air, and silver trays holding glasses of a thick green liquid lined a coffee table.
“Why don’t you all sit down.” She motioned to the assortment of wooden chairs, and her eyes lingered with concern on Mariana’s decorated arms. “Isn’t it horrible what those terrorists did? We were worried out of our minds. You must have been terribly frightened. Well, I just want you all to know that you’re safe here. There’s a gate around us, and we have the guards. I’m told the students from the other grades were permitted to relocate as well.”
She picked up a tray of drinks and began offering them around. “I made a nice refreshing smoothie to help you all feel better after that long car ride.”
Fiona frowned at Mariana. Hadn’t Tobias told them that Munroe was part of a blood-drinking cult? The Purgators, they were called, with a long legacy of persecuting witches. She watched as Tobias grabbed a glass from the tray, taking a sip. He didn’t seem concerned about its contents.
The woman was in front of her now, grinning and holding a tray with a few glasses left. Fiona forced herself to smile and picked up a glass. “This looks good. What is it?”
“Kale purée, coconut milk, and lime juice. It’s a perfect antioxidant mixture.”
Maybe Tobias was wrong, and the Purgators weren’t all a sinister cult. Maybe they were just irritating health-food fanatics. After she took a sip of the pulpy concoction, she couldn’t decide which was worse.
“I’ve learned all about nutrition since I found Doctor Mellior. You’ll all be meeting him for your therapy.” Mrs. Ranulf continued to hand out drinks. “It’s why my son Harrison is so advanced. He loves reading books.” She nodded toward a shelf of dusty volumes opposite the windows. “His only problem is that none of the other three-year-olds are clever enough to keep him interested.”
Munroe rolled her eyes. She’d clearly heard this all before.
“I saw that, Munroe,” Mrs. Ranulf cautioned. “It’s a shame I didn’t know about purity of diet before I had Munroe. She’s very pretty, of course, but unfortunately she didn’t inherit the Ranulf brains. I let her eat too much sugar when she was younger, but I didn’t know any better. It causes learning difficulties.”
“Mom!” Color rose in Munroe’s cheeks.
Fiona was beginning to think Munroe’s mother could achieve the impossible. She might actually get Fiona to feel bad for her daughter.
She swallowed hard. Whenever she felt slightly tense in group settings, she tended to fixate on the most inappropriate things she could say or do. All of the things she knew needed to remain unspoken burned in her mind like wildfire, and Fiona struggled to douse the flames. During an ice-breaker game at the start of the school year, her health teacher had asked each student to stand and state a “fun fact” about themselves. Fiona couldn’t stop thinking of the worst thing she could say, and so she’d risen and declared, “Once I saw a dead body with no face,” before plopping back in her chair. There was a visit to a counselor after that.
And now, she’d seen lots of dead bodies. More fuel for the fire.
Mrs. Ranulf smoothed out her layered dress. “We have some very bright sparks here, I know. I was particularly impressed with your test scores, Fiona. You’ve obviously been blessed with a very strong memory, even if you haven’t worked up to your potential. We’ll soon remedy that.”
Fiona tensed. “Those tests are bullshit.”
Mariana smacked her arm.
“Sorry, Mrs. Ranulf,” said Fiona. “I don’t know why I said that.”
Mrs. Ranulf blinked. “Grief does unfortunate things to the mind. I suggest that you all rest as much as you can. One of our assistants will show everyone to their rooms. The boys will be staying in the north wing, and the girls in the south. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that you cannot go in the north wing if you’re a girl, and vice versa. Your parents entrusted you all to us, and I can’t send any of you home defiled. You may use this drawing room for co-ed study under our supervision.”
Defiled?
This kept getting weirder, but Fiona still wasn’t getting the impression of a blood-drinking cult. They seemed more like the type of people who’d host really boring parties to fund the opera.
She glanced at Tobias, who sipped his viscous drink with an expression that was difficult to read. Had anyone ever defiled him? Mrs. Ranulf wouldn’t approve of the direction her thoughts were taking…
“A couple more things before you go,” said Mrs. Ranulf with a nervous smile. “We don’t let our children have cell phones, as we believe they are a distraction from learning and socialization. I have told your parents we would take care of you like our own. So I will need to collect those. But you will be able to use our house phone to call your parents each week.”
And there it was. The blood cult theory was back in play.
Thomas dipped a piece of stale bread into the smear of pig lard on his wooden plate. It shouldn’t have tasted as good as it did, but on his empty stomach, it was glorious.
He sat on a three-legged stool in the center of a dark cottage in the forest. A fire burned in the misshapen fireplace, and iron basins lay on a table next to the hearth. Tanned animal skins and dried bundles of rosemary and thyme hung overhead.
Tobias’s father, William, eyed him from across an uneven table, a pitcher of beer between them. He had to be about thirty-five, a little over a decade older than Thomas. A few rays of sunlight pierced chinks in the cottage’s walls, illuminating William’s chiseled features. He was a glimpse of Tobias’s future—his golden skin a mirror of Tobias’s, his dark hair peppered with a few flecks of silver.
Thomas took a sip of weak beer and sopped up another smudge of lard with his bread. He and Celia had been left behind after the brief battle in Maremount, though Celia, for all her betrayals, was probably eating goose at a gold-laden table with her royal cousins.
“Whose home is this?” he asked, looking around. The room had an earthy smell. “Tobias showed me where you lived in the city, above the bakery. The whole neighborhood was wet cinders and rubble.”
“A lot of the houses outside the city, the ones in the Tuckomock Forest, were abandoned. Like this one. Either abandoned, or Rawhed slew the inhabitants. The fields outside lie fallow.” He continued peering at Thomas, his chestnut eyes twinkling with curiosity. “There aren’t many here who look like you.”
“No other black people?”
He shook his head. “None. You said you’re trained as a fighter. Boxing, was it? But in your home, you’re also a teacher?”
“That’s right. Well, I’m a graduate student. I study New England folklore. To be honest, I thought Maremount was just a legend until a few weeks ago.” If he were
very
honest, he still wasn’t sure that Maremount was real. Since the terrorist attacks had begun, this was his first quiet moment to puzzle it over. The most likely explanation was that his family curse had finally infected his mind.
He’d been acting like his mother and grandfather recently, staying up until four in the morning every night on an insane mission to save the world. Panic clenched his stomach at the thought of a slow descent into madness.
I traveled to another realm, one ruled by magicians.
It was exactly the sort of thing his mother would have said during one of her episodes.
A small part of him hoped he
had
gone mad. That would mean that all those lives he’d taken during the battle—strengthened by the spirits of the unjustly killed—none of it was real. It meant he had nothing to atone for, no blood on his hands. And why couldn’t it be a fantasy? People had all kinds of psychoses. There were people who believed they were shapeshifters.
Staring at the nicks in the old oak table, he took another bite of bread. “Clinical lycanthropy.”
Did I say that out loud?
William swallowed a sip of beer. “Beg your pardon?”
Thomas cleared his throat. “I just—I’m trying to get my head round everything. One possibility is that this is all real. The other is that I’m having a psychotic episode.” The words sounded almost distant, as if someone else were speaking for him. “Did you know there’s a mental disorder where patients believe they can transform into animals? That’s clinical lycanthropy.” He scratched the stubble on his chin. “Only I’m seeing other people transform.”
William shifted in his seat. “You’re used to a scholarly life.”
“The mind’s ability to tell itself stories is a powerful thing. There are people who have convinced themselves that they’re already dead, or that they no longer exist. Cotard delusion, it’s called.” Thomas fiddled with his silver watch absentmindedly. How was it possible to believe you didn’t exist? And yet it had happened to him when he’d fought the Harvester.
“Maybe they just got their personal chronology a bit mixed up.” William was staring at him now, his square shoulders still. “But I can tell you that Maremount is real, and magic is real, and I’m sitting here talking to you. And you’ll have to get used to the idea.”
Thomas nodded. He’d never be able to make up the amount of sleep he’d lost in the past few weeks. He swigged the warm dregs of his beer. If the first option were true—if this wasn’t a delusion, he might as well work on getting himself home and to some semblance of normality. “I’m sure you’re right. But now that Rawhed has been driven out of Maremount, things can go back to normal, yeah? You can heal the wounded, rebuild your homes, get your bakery going again.” He leaned back in his chair, having devoured the last crumb of bread. “And when we find the right spell, I can get back to Boston.”
William rose, taking the plates to a basin of water by the hearth. “It won’t be that simple. The good news is that we’ve been granted amnesty from the magic we used to defeat Rawhed. Thanks to you and Tobias, the bone wardens have been defeated and can no longer detect an aura. But the bad news is that we still have no access to spell books. Only one spell book existed outside the Throcknells’ control. And Rawhed burned it.”
Thomas shook his head to clear his mind. “You can’t be telling me that I’m stuck here forever. I won’t exactly blend in.”
William turned, drying the dishes with a cloth. “I wouldn’t say forever. But we don’t know how to get you out yet.”
There must be a solution. “Aren’t there people you can pay for spells?” Not that he had any money.
“There are the Theurgeons.” He crossed to the table, picking up the pitcher of beer to pour another for Thomas before sitting again. The Tatters seemed to drink nothing but beer—not that he was complaining. “But, they’re not trustworthy. They work for the Throcknells. Celia’s family.” Another pour into his own cup. “I’m certain the Theurgeons could have saved my wife and daughter, but instead they kept them alive just long enough to bleed us for what little money we had. The Throcknells and their ilk will sooner watch Tatters die in the streets than give up a simple spell.”