A Burning in the Bones (Waxways #3)

Chapter 25 Ren Monroe

25 REN MONROE

Her feet set down in the Heights.

Ren moved quickly. She took the front steps two at a time before knocking. Theo was there, squinting out through the crack, then fussing with the locks to let her inside. She walked past him without speaking. Went straight to the kitchen. She located a pen and an empty notebook. Careful to keep her eyes fixed on Theo, Ren began to write. A detailed set of instructions. It was an enormously difficult task to write it all down while simultaneously keeping her mind fixed on some other thought. But Ren had trained for this exact moment during her time at Balmerick. When she was quite certain all the steps were written down, she slid the notebook to Theo. Again, she made sure not to look at anything she’d written. Theo began to read.

His eyes went wide with shock.

He snatched the notebook and bolted from the room. Ren could hear him rummaging in the library. No, don’t think about that. Don’t think about what he’s looking up. Think about… Balmerick . She fixed her mind on an image of the campus at sunrise. How the fog would slowly burn away to reveal the rest of the campus’s secrets. She was imagining herself strolling across the main quad when Theo returned. He was clutching the notebook and a book he’d found in the library. Ren kept her eyes averted from the title. She avoided the great temptation to check whether or not he’d found the right text. Ren suspected that this was one of the few subjects Theo had as much training on as her.

A full minute later, Ren felt Theo’s first spell strike her in the chest. She sagged helplessly back into her chair and heard the sound she’d been hoping to hear. Like an eggshell cracking. Theo circled quickly then, casting a rotation of two particular spells: stun, summon, stun, summon. On his tenth repetition, Ren heard the cracking sound again. She let out a sharp cry as her entire right pant leg burst into flames. There was a mad scramble then. Ren trying to strip out of her pants while Theo both helped and hindered her.

Finally, she managed to peel them off and rolled free of the licking flames. Theo brought his boots stomping down on the sudden flames, completely forgetting that he possessed an arsenal of spells that could douse a flame far more quickly. The old-fashioned way still worked. The fire went out with a gasp of smoke. Her pants were irreparably damaged. The piece of red cloth had started to burn, too, but it had been salvaged by Theo’s efforts.

Ren’s thigh looked pink and fleshy. A small price to pay for what she’d just won in return: her mind was her own again. Theo knelt down beside her. His eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“It’s me,” she said. “I promise. It’s me.”

He nodded. “What the hell happened?”

“I was manipulated . An incredibly powerful manipulation spell.”

Ren shook her head. It was like her mind was waking up, stretching its limbs. Whoever had been inside had moved with flawless efficiency. Closing some doors. Opening others. It was stunning to realize how deeply the magic had infiltrated, and just in the amount of time it had taken for her to return from her mother’s house to the Heights. Theo’s quick reaction had likely saved her from permanent damage.

“I don’t understand. You were visiting your mother. She manipulated you?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. She’s the only person I saw. No one else was there.”

“But you said she doesn’t do magic,” Theo pointed out.

“She doesn’t. Actually, she can’t. My mother was an early test subject for the plague. She hasn’t used magic in a decade. The manipulation didn’t come from her.”

Theo looked confused. “Was there someone else there? Hiding in the apartment?”

Ren shook her head. “No. I would have known.”

“Then how were you manipulated?”

There was only one possible answer. Ren’s eyes fell to the half-burned scarf on the ground.

“It’s a chain spell. Gods. My mother is being manipulated , Theo. No wonder she sounded so obsessed. You should have heard the way she talked. I’ve never seen her like that. Now it makes sense. She’s being manipulated by someone. And the spell that’s manipulating her… it jumped to me.”

Theo frowned. “Ren. That would be…”

“The most complex manipulation spell in history?” she finished. “Agreed. It would be. Whoever cast this… they’re brilliant. The spell was really nuanced, Theo. It didn’t just try to batter up against my defenses. It waited until I was vulnerable. My mother and I had been arguing and there was this moment where I just… I broke down. I was crying. She was holding me. And that’s when the magic wormed its way inside. The actual spell is woven into the fabric.”

She pointed again to the scarf. Theo took an involuntary step back.

“How’d you know? That you were being manipulated?”

“I’ve had training. Dockery offered a course on it. Our senior year.”

That jolted a laugh from him. “Seriously? You actually took Compartmentalization in Magic? I thought the joke was that no one signed up and he just sat in a lecture hall talking to himself.”

“There were only three of us,” Ren confirmed. She felt another twinge of guilt when she remembered one of them was Timmons. “All of us were born in the Lower Quarter. I know the great houses train for it at a young age so there’s not much point in relearning the theory, but we all thought it was useful. It’s all about organizing your mind. Specifically, your arsenal of spells. If you have a particularly complex system, outside forces have a difficult time infiltrating your thoughts. It’s kind of like if someone came into your kitchen while you were out. Most manipulators can memorize which cabinet you keep your teacups inside. They know how to set them back in the same place. But if you add another layer—like facing all the teacup handles to the northeastern corner of the cabinet—it’s obvious when someone who’s not supposed to be there has visited. The same rules apply to the mind. I felt the alterations. I knew things weren’t where they were supposed to be.”

Theo shook his head. “How is it that you only finished fifth in our class?”

Ren snorted. “One of my credits didn’t transfer. I would have been first if the petition had passed. Anyways. The point is that I recognized the manipulation right away. And whoever is doing this must be incredibly strong, because my mother had no idea she was being influenced. It would take incredible skill to sneak past her defenses without being noticed.”

Theo frowned. “So that’s why she got caught up in all of this?”

Ren knew it would be easy to claim that as the truth, but she didn’t want any more secrets to exist between them. Not after a secret almost destroyed their bond. She also knew that she could not be blamed for her mother’s action any more than Theo could be blamed for his father’s.

“No. My mother has been involved with the Makers for a decade. She truly believes that the great houses must fall, but I know my mother: what’s happening right now would bother her. People are dying. Some people were sacrificed to spread the disease. Whoever created this spell was smart enough to target a group that was already leaning into revolution. The best manipulation magic doesn’t change someone’s mind. It works with someone’s natural sensibilities. I think this spell is built into her actual beliefs. Think about it like… like a hand on her back. It’s there to nudge her a little farther than she’d normally be willing to go on her own.”

Ren clawed back through her memory for details of their exchange. There were moments when her mother seemed to retreat. When she seemed less like herself.

“When I brought up Lana, it was like my mother retreated. I was talking about the death of an innocent, young girl… and the emotion just vanished from her face. I think that’s when the manipulation magic activated. It took over, because I’d touched on the part of what they’re doing that my mother would never agree to do. I’m not claiming she’s innocent, Theo. She’s involved in this, but I think whoever started all of this has finally reached the part where their coconspirators are getting cold feet. It’s not easy for someone to watch innocent people die. So, how do you convince them to keep moving forward with the plan?”

“You force them to do it,” Theo concluded. “With a manipulation spell.”

“Cast on a group of magicless people,” Ren pointed out. “And it’s not like we can go back to my mother’s apartment and snap our fingers in her face to wake her up, either.”

Theo was nodding. “That’s why the houses train on it. If you don’t assess and treat within the first two hours, the magic digs in to the subject and can’t be excavated. You can’t even sever the connecting thread of magic where it attaches to the victim. It’s like steel. You have to go back to the source and cut the thread there.”

“We have to find the person who cast the spell,” Ren concluded. A shiver ran down her spine that had nothing to do with the subject matter. She looked down and realized she’d been half-naked for most of the conversation. “Let me go get some pants. I have a theory.”