Chapter 6
Bayla
Mansion
NF, Fleurie
When I opened my eyes, I had to blink. The sun’s rays danced across my face, and I felt their warmth with an intensity I had never felt before in my life. So much warmth cocooned me, flooding every pore of my skin. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so carefree, so...
I snapped my eyes open, completely and startled.
My pain had disappeared. For the first time in weeks, it was gone. My head felt light, as if all the weight had been taken off me. The migraine seemed to have vanished into thin air.
I looked around and realized I was still in Blairville at my mother’s house. Memories whipped at my mind as if I had just opened the door to them, and then it all happened too quickly.
Suspenseful Investigation Piano
Real Tunes Studio
Panicked, I clutched at my neck, but felt nothing except for the silver band of my necklace, which I couldn’t remember ever putting on. What’s more, I was sure that the psychopath from last night would have bitten me. Bitten... On my neck … Like a vampire from those bad horror movies, Larissa had forced me to watch once.
If I could believe Julian’s descriptions, this man had been a Ruisangor.
Julian...
Something was there, but I couldn’t place it. That night... There had been someone besides him…
“Larissa…” I whispered, startled, and jumped up from the bed, crashing into my closet and hitting my head so hard that there was a creaking sound and the inner parts of the wardrobe all collapsed audibly.
I touched the back of my head, which didn’t hurt a bit. Then I looked inside the closet, completely astonished and disturbed by what I had just done with my bare head.
The next thing I heard was footsteps.
“What’s going on up there?” asked an unfamiliar, high-pitched female voice, and I did the next best thing, slamming the cupboard doors shut, hearing a mighty thump from inside, but it was too late to fix anything. I slipped back under my covers and waited to see what happened.
It had sounded like someone had been at my door, but I seemed to have been mistaken, because there was no one there.
Suddenly, there was a sweet smell in the air, and I couldn’t help but soak it up completely. Had Mum been baking?
The door burst open and a slim woman in her late thirties with red hair pulled back in a topknot entered the room. She wore dark amber-colored glasses that made her feminine contours look more severe. With her arrival, the smell became more intense, almost as if it emanated from her. This woman smelled like the most delicious food I had ever smelled, and she was just standing there in my room... with a clipboard?
Her freckles caught my eye, but something about them made me shudder. I perceived them with an intensity I couldn’t describe. Every pore of her face, the fibers of her gray irises, the small brown irregularity in the right eye... I noticed everything, even the air bubbles in her crystal-dark amber earrings.
What the...
“Bayla Adams. Finally, you are awake,” the woman said, strangely loud, scrutinizing me insistently. “They were right. How bizarre. I would never have thought that a Quatura could disguise herself so well.”
“I don’t quite understand,” I said, puzzled by her presence.
“Your elemental magic, my dear. One cannot sense it, not even if one has been trained in it, like my humble self,” she murmured and came closer, causing me to scoot back a little.
She held out her hand to me. “Professor Rebecca Harlow. There’s no need to be afraid of me.” She gave me a brief smile, but it seemed rather artificial, before reaching for a chair in the corner, carelessly shoving my folded clothes onto the floor, only to sit down afterward.
Who in God’s name was this woman? And what was she doing in our house?
“I would like to ask you a few questions now.”
“I...”
Overwhelmed, I tried to resist the urge to smell her.
What was wrong with me?
“I think I need some more rest...”
“Fine. Let’s get started.” She didn’t even let me finish.
How rude .
“Are you in pain somewhere?”
I shook my head, completely taken by surprise.
“Show me your neck.”
Without hesitating, she grabbed my neck and brushed my now shoulder-length hair to the side, her smell getting deeper and deeper into my nose.
Damn, why did she smell so good?
“Any strange sensations?”
I paused and looked at her.
“Hallucinations, nightmares?”
I shook my head slowly, wondering if I should tell her about the closet or her smell, but I didn’t, because on second thought, the fact was beyond weird and inappropriate.
The woman wrote down all the answers with a rather expensive-looking pen decorated with an R entwined with thorns, made crosses, and continued.
“Your attacker. Describe him in more detail.”
Slightly overwhelmed, I began to stammer, “Um... well... I don’t really remember.”
She looked at me with expectation, which put me under slight pressure.
“Little hair... or none... and a skull tattoo? I think?”
“Slight memory problems due to near-death experience and trauma,” the woman noted, talking to herself.
“Near-death experience?”
She looked up. Then she smiled. When I took a closer look, I realized that she was laughing at me, which I took personally. “Dearest, you should be dead by now. You’re the first Quatura who has managed to survive a Ruisangor bite once the Ruisangor venom was already in your system.”
A little confused, I looked at her and only now realized what she had said, that all this from my memory had really happened. I grabbed my neck again.
“I’ve looked at it at least ten times today. Your neck is intact. You are healed. We assume that your magic is very strong, unlike what we first expected. But you’ll have to take part in the rite of passage again.”
I looked at her as if she had made a bad joke, then I slid back even further until my back hit the white headboard of the bed, and it cracked slightly. The woman didn’t seem to care much.
“I heard that something went wrong the first time. That won’t happen this time, we’ve made sure of that.”
“We?” I asked, confused now because I couldn’t quite follow her despite my realization of recent events.
“I’m here on behalf of the Councils. It’s about time someone takes care of this mess here.”
The Councils... Hadn’t Grace told me that this group of Quatura was the opposition to Amara and the Circle? There had been something else...
If anything was indeed somehow demolished, it was my memory.
“But don’t worry about it.” She smiled at me again as if I were the mailman who had rung her out of her sleep. “I’ll make sure that order is restored here soon. The Copelands have let this institution and its students wither away for far too long with their mismanagement.”
Something about her words made my alarm bells ring, but I didn’t dare to ask. I had only just woken up, and it had probably been days as I knew myself by now. I would have to see what awaited me next. Hopefully, everyone was still alive. Even that wasn’t a guarantee by now, in a town where bloodsucking criminals waited for you at your doorstep, monstrous dogs lived on campus and dagger-wielding witches walked around unhindered without anyone caring.
I wonder if there were people who cared about such things? People, like me, who weren’t supernatural, and who cared that no one got hurt? Surely there must have been something in the media a long time ago? How could such creatures survive for so long without being discovered by the public?
I remembered that there was a forgetting potion that I still longed for.
I looked at the woman who had just strutted into my room and asked me endless questions.
“How long have I been out?” I asked, genuinely interested, and the woman answered without looking up from her clipboard.
“Three days.”
Okay, at least it wasn’t a whole week. I remembered how Larissa had called me some time ago... Larissa...
“Where’s my friend? I’d like to see her.”
My request caused the woman to look up. “I’m sorry, but your companion has disappeared without a trace. The only thing that could be identified from her was her blood.”
“Her blood...” I said, distraught, which made my stomach growl. I was so hungry, but I had no appetite at all.
“You must be hungry after going seventy-one hours and thirty-seven minutes without any food.”
She smiled as if we hadn’t just been talking about Larissa’s blood.
My best friend was gone, probably hurt and taken by this guy, and all that mattered right now was me? What was going on with the people in this town?
“Where is she? Someone must be looking for her,” I said, unable to hide my despair and worry.
“She is no longer part of our affairs, except for the fact that, with her, another person was most likely killed on our land. However, her blood alone is not enough to convince the Domini that it would be best to take action against this vile race.”
I looked at her, stunned, but she ignored me completely. All she cared about was filling out that stupid paper. Anything could have happened to Larissa, and the Councils or whoever was behind this us at the end of the day didn’t give a damn. All that mattered was that their laundry was clean. Their stupid grounds!
Reflexively, I reached for my cell phone because I had to try to reach Larissa. But there was no cell phone.
“We had to take it away.”
“What?”
The woman kept a straight face.
“You’ll get it back, no need to worry. It’s downstairs in the kitchen.”
I wanted to ask if that had been necessary, but instead, I asked something I hadn’t even thought about until now. “Where’s my mother?”
She looked at her gold wristwatch, which looked as if she had stolen it from a grandma, which I could well imagine from this woman. “She went grocery shopping thirty-two minutes ago. She should be back soon.”
Mum was fine.
I breathed a sigh of relief. As I did so, I realized that I hadn’t breathed in at all.
“Excuse me. I’ll go down now and let the Domini know we’re starting in an hour.”
“Starting? With what?”
Rebecca Harlow pulled her glasses down and raised her eyebrows. “With the rite of passage.” My expression must have changed from questioning to horrified. “If you hadn’t woken up today, we would have had to wait a month. But the phase of the moon is very fitting, even if it is more daring.”
“More daring?” I whispered, terrified.
How could this woman make me feel so much antipathy for the Quatura?
She pushed back her glasses. “You shouldn’t worry unnecessarily anymore. Put on something more… decent.” She looked down at me, slightly disgusted. “Because you look terrible.”
Wow, how could anyone be so kind? What did she expect? That I would jump out of bed like America’s Next Top Model after three days without being conscious? I was neither Larissa nor any model.
She smiled sweetly as if she had just given me the nicest compliment in the world, and I felt the urge to give her my middle finger, just like Larissa always did. Damn it, I needed my best friend. Without her help, I was lost here. But she was gone, and no one seemed to care about finding her again.
I felt the panic and a stabbing feeling of loss in my stomach.
“We leave in twenty-three minutes.” With those last words of smugness, the woman disappeared through my bedroom door and downstairs, just as strangely as she had appeared here. And again, I heard her footsteps as if they were right outside my door.
“What the hell?” I asked myself quietly, taking a minute to process everything.
I had to find a way to help Larissa. She couldn’t be dead. I didn’t want to believe that. If anyone had a strong will to survive, it was Larissa.
So many times, we had been chased or even attacked, even seriously injured, by strange men in Sacramento. Larissa had defended us over and over again. While I’d stood by like a helpless hamster and let everything happen to me, she’d been there, beating the crap out of the guys.
There was only one problem: this time we were dealing with more dangerous creatures, supernatural beasts. I could only pray that she was still alive, because why hadn’t they just left her there and disappeared like they had done to me?
Nothing in Blairville seemed to explain all the strange things going on, so I decided to get up. I threw back the blanket, which crashed into the wall with a little too much vigor, and swept down all my picture frames.
Confused, I looked down to the floor, where – thankfully – everything had landed on the soft comforter, then to my hands. I spotted so many details that I hadn’t noticed before. The tiniest pores, the scar from my childhood that I had thought had healed completely. I held my arm up to the light and looked at the fine hairs, whose structure was now clearly visible. Then another strange thought occurred to me.
I jumped up and rushed to the mirror, a little too fast, because I suddenly found myself directly in front of my reflection. My body felt much more energetic, more agile. Probably because I had been so unwell that I had forgotten what it felt like to be healthy.
The thought that it could be different again in an hour because I was once again at the mercy of this witch torture, made me shudder.
My gaze wandered to my reflection, and a feeling of joy overcame me when I saw that I had gained weight again and my hair had become fuller. Even my complexion seemed to glow. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.
But it made no sense. How could I have gained weight if I hadn’t eaten anything? Why was I feeling so well? Where was all the pain?
I was turning away from the mirror when I spotted a yellowish glow, so I turned back to the mirror to reassure myself that I hadn’t imagined it. I examined my eyes suspiciously. There was nothing there. The left one shimmered turquoise, the right one blue, as always. The sunlight must have reflected unusually yellow in the crystal lamp above my bed.
I tried to free myself from my terribleness as elegantly as possible so that the Madame would hopefully be satisfied while I repressed what was about to happen to me.
It was strange that my clothes suddenly fit again. And another thing: all my bras were... too small?
Luckily, Mum came home at some point and threw her arms around my neck, sobbing. I hadn’t seen her this upset for a long time. She’d looked at me for a moment as if I was a different person before she’d almost taken my breath away again.
Madame had then asked us to get into her expensive-looking convertible, and I had realized straight away that Mum didn’t like her. This woman stank of trouble, just like her car stank of some kind of spice, which made me sick to my stomach, and I almost threw up in the unfriendly Quatura’s car, but my stomach was probably too empty because I’d barely been able to swallow anything.
Larghetto -Piano, Celestra, Strings
“Kendall’s Return”
Nicholas Britell
As I entered the Blairs’ living room – or rather, the spacious and sunlit drawing room – I immediately remembered the last time I had sat here. Shortly after, I had almost died.
I never thought that fate would bestow this honor on me again.
Why hadn’t I just fled a month ago? Why had I listened to Julian?
“Bayla, hey!”
I caught sight of Grace, had to smile, but eventually saw what she was wearing. It was the robe her mother had worn last time. Elegantly decorated with shimmering golden ornaments, a little more extravagant than those of the other participants in the ritual. Julie, who was sitting next to her, was wearing simple everyday clothes, with a light gray robe on her lap.
“Is it true that the bite has healed?” Grace asked, stepping closer. She seemed a little agitated because her hands were shaking, which made me even more nervous.
“Are you okay?” I whispered as she brushed my hair aside, making sure that it wasn’t just rumors that had apparently been floating around within this satanic coven.
She looked around at my question, and then I realized that we were alone. Mum had disappeared into the next room with Amara and the annoyingly meticulous Madame. The strange thing was that at the moment I was concentrating on it, I heard them communicating quietly.
“She really is very inexperienced when it comes to performing such complicated procedures.”
“We don’t care about that. She’s your daughter and should be able to do it by now. Or should there be any reason here to question her future position as Domini?”
Silence. Whatever it was about, the conversation seemed tense. And I had understood everything as if they were standing right next to me.
What on earth was wrong with my ears?
“I don’t know if you’ve been told, and I don’t want to scare you, but today I‘m going to lead the temple ceremony.”
I stared at Grace for a long time. Then I looked at Julie, who seemed to be preoccupied with herself. She also seemed very nervous. And from that moment on, I started to feel anxious.
“You...” I began hesitantly, hoping that my panic wouldn’t be obvious.
“I tried to convince Amara to do it, but...”
“Grace!” Amara’s voice rang out loud and clear from the next room, as if we were all deaf.
Grace looked at the source of the shout, then at me again, and said, “I’ll make it work, don’t worry.” And then she made her way to her mother. The black robe billowed behind her until she finally disappeared behind the door, which was pulled shut.
I tried to hear something, but the voices were gone, almost as if they had never been there. Only the sound of cracking branches crashing against the facade of the house in the approaching autumn storm was almost ear-splitting. The howling wind, like a warning. The cry of ravens in the distance. The atmosphere seemed to want to communicate with me discreetly. I had never believed in signs as much as I did here in Blairville.