Chapter 4
Quinn
Vera looked over the notes I’d written across several pieces of lined paper which I’d set on the table in front of her. She raked a slim hand through her cloud of salt-and-pepper hair and nodded thoughtfully to herself.
“You certainly applied yourself to the task,” she murmured.
I’d spent most of the last two days in the large room around us, which had a gloomy vibe that was more what I’d have imagined for an enclave of sorcerers off in the mountains. It was the enclave’s library: the walls were lined with built-in shelves packed with books, journals, scrolls, and loose notes gathered into folders. If there was a set system of organization, I hadn’t been able to decipher it.
It wasn’t totally gloomy though, despite the relatively dim lighting beyond the lamps positioned on each of the several birchwood tables. A large fireplace lined with stones crackled at one end of the room, casting some extra warmth and an appealing whiff of pine smoke into the space. The floor in front of it was clear of furniture, holding only a thick fur rug that I’d sometimes seen a small group of sorcerers hunker down on to hold hushed discussions in front of the hearth.
The enclave did seem to use the library quite a bit, with many of the sorcerers coming and going while I’d been completing the tasks I’d been assigned. I hadn’t been able to get a clear read on how many lived in this place, as there hadn’t been any mass gatherings during my time here.
Vera, who’d appointed herself my examiner or mentor or whatever exactly she was, had told me everyone operated fairly independently—that I could grab food from the kitchen area when I was hungry without worrying about specific mealtimes and make use of the laundry facilities if I needed them whenever they were free. From the number of different figures I’d seen wandering through the vast network of rooms, I guessed there were a few dozen sorcerers in residence at the moment.
So far, Vera’s assignments had felt a lot like schoolwork—in a way that’d given me a pang of homesickness for my architecture courses back home. The two summer classes I was increasingly falling behind on, in particular. But there wasn’t anything I could do about that other than throw myself into the work here in the hopes that eventually I’d find something that would let me get my old life back.
Two days ago, right after I’d arrived, Vera had set me searching through the library’s various volumes and documents to compile notes on the most established meditation strategies. When I’d finished that task yesterday, she’d gotten me gathering information on different types of identified shadowkind beings.
I’d actually learned a few things, but nothing I expected to help me conquer a duo of immense monsters with sorcerer powers of their own. Knowing the enclave had divided animal shifters into two distinct categories wasn’t exactly earth-shattering information.
One benefit of the haphazard organizational system was that I’d encountered various items I wanted to come back to later. Like a journal written by a sorcerer who’d apparently specialized in enslaving particularly powerful shadowkind. And a book that sounded like it had strategies for dampening magical energies. But there were some questions I hadn’t come across any answers to. Maybe now, while Vera was at least somewhat happy with my progress, would be an okay time to ask.
“It’s fascinating,” I said. “But I still find it hard to figure—how do we end up with the power to control these monsters at all? Why us and not everyone?”
Vera glanced up at me with a momentarily wary expression. “We put in the work—we made the sacrifices. Or those before us did. You don’t understand because you had no one to teach you to honor those efforts.”
I didn’t think that was true, because none of the sorcerers I’d spoken to outside of the enclave, those who’d learned from their families, had seemed to have any clue where their powers had come from either. But arguing wasn’t likely to get me very far.
“I want to understand—I’d be willing to make sacrifices too,” I said.
She grunted and looked down at my notes again. “If you continue showing your dedication like this, perhaps you’ll get there. We don’t initiate newcomers without plenty of vetting.”
I guessed that made sense, or they wouldn’t have been able to keep this place or the powers they taught so secret. But if it was a year-long process, I really didn’t have that kind of time.
I tamped down on my impatience, another question that had dogged me for as long as I’d known about my magic rising to the surface. “If there are ways of provoking the powers… are there also ways of removing them? No one could steal my potential from me, could they?”
It seemed wiser to frame it as something I was scared of rather than something I might hope for. Maybe my powers were the key to stopping the menace that might threaten everything I cared about, but they’d also made me a target in the first place. I couldn’t help still wondering whether I might be able to get rid of them completely.
But Vera was already shaking her head with a wry smile. “Once it’s in you, it’s in you. No one can take your rightful inheritance away. Believe me, there’ve been a few I’ve thought should be shut down, but—” She shook her head again as if dismissing that thought. “That’s why we’re so careful about who we accept for the rites.”
My heart sank even as I forced a sheepish smile in return. So much for that hope. If even the sorcerers here didn’t believe there was a way, what were the chances I could find one elsewhere?
I’d heard about these “rites” multiple times since they’d first agreed to let me stay. I still didn’t know anything more about them other than that they could apparently awaken sorcery in a person. But Vera and everyone else I’d overheard mention them had been incredibly tight-lipped on that subject.
Vera shuffled the papers into a neat bundle and handed them back to me. “You should hold on to these—you might want to look them over again to really absorb the information. The better you understand the creatures, the more adept you’ll be at controlling them. But I think that’s enough for today. You should get some dinner into you.”
“I’ll do that,” I said, and then paused. There was one other subject I needed to broach with her, and I had no idea how she’d react. “Would it be a problem if I left the enclave for a little while tomorrow? I’m learning so much—I feel like I need to take a break so everything can get settled in my head before I stuff more in.”
The wariness came back into Vera’s eyes. “Where would you go?”
I made a casual wave toward the front of the building. “I figured I’d just take a little drive, maybe go back to the nearest village up the road and grab some lunch with a change of scenery. If that’s not a problem. Obviously I wouldn’t mention the enclave to anyone there. But if you have rules about everyone needing to stay in the enclave until they’re finished their studies, I totally understand.” I just had no idea how I was going to communicate with Rollick if that was the case.
To my relief, Vera’s stance relaxed. She motioned for me to follow her out of the library. “It shouldn’t be an issue. It’s not as if you know significantly more now than you did before you came here. But if you’re gone too long, we may not welcome you back, so don’t disappear on us.”
“Of course not,” I said quickly. “I figured it’d just be a few hours.”
Would their rules be different once they did let me in on their more guarded secrets? Obviously plenty of sorcerers did leave the enclave, or they wouldn’t be living all over the world.
There was still way too much I didn’t know.
As we walked down the hall toward the kitchen, we passed two men I’d seen before—an elderly sorcerer with a short, pointed white beard and a young man who I didn’t think was much older than me, whose shaggy wheat-blond hair always seemed to be falling into his eyes. This time, the younger man was mumbling to himself, his eyes eerily vacant. His skin looked almost as pale as his hair. As we strode by, his body twitched, though he gave no other sign he’d noticed our presence.
“Who’s that?” I whispered to Vera. “And what’s going on with him? Is he okay?”
Vera’s next smile was tighter. “That’s one of our two current trainees. He’s almost ready for his rites—it takes a lot out of a person. You’ll need to be prepared for the same if you want to expand your connection to the shadows.”
“Definitely,” I said automatically, but I had to force myself not to glance back at the sickly-looking guy. Just what did the sorcerers put their new initiates through?
* * *
When I left the enclave building the next morning, I half expected someone to yell out at me to stop. But Vera must have passed on word about my plans, or else the sorcerers here really didn’t care all that much about people coming and going. I guessed they had a certain amount of security simply in the fact that if I had tried to tell any regular person what was going on here, they’d think I was insane.
The drive back to the village where Rollick and I had spent our first two nights was a little faster than the trip to the enclave because now I knew where I was going. I reached the bakery he’d mentioned around eleven thirty. Not seeing him inside, I popped into the village’s one corner store to buy a few snacks out of the unfamiliar options on display and then went back to the bakery to buy a slice of what the owner haltingly translated as “spinach pie” for me to eat for lunch.
I’d just sat down at one of the three small tables at the front of the bakery when Rollick ambled inside with a ding of the bell over the door. He asked the owner for a puffy pastry that was stuffed with a creamy filling and dropped into the chair opposite mine, looking no different from how he had the last time I’d seen him, three days ago.
We couldn’t talk all that openly here. He glanced me up and down and seemed to make a similar assessment of my state as I had with him. “You’ve survived.”
“It’s been all right,” I said. “But I haven’t found out much yet. They know a lot, but they’re very cagey. I’m keeping my eyes out and doing my best to get into their good graces. We’ll see.” I took a bite of the cheesy pie and almost groaned at the richness of the flavors. “How’s your searching been going?”
The demon shrugged. “I’m chasing down some theories—and becoming increasingly convinced of what I thought I saw at that mountain camp by the lake.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And are you ever going to tell me what your theories are? You think you know what kind of… things we’re dealing with, don’t you?”
Rollick gave me one of his sly grins that always turned his movie-star looks twice as striking. “I think you’ve got enough on your plate without me adding that to the heap.” His gaze slid away from me, his expression turning unusually pensive. “If I’m right, there’s no way that enclave will have anything useful to tell us about our specific foes. They’re one of a kind or close to it.”
My stomach twisted, diminishing my enjoyment of the lunch. I swallowed hard. “That would make them pretty hard to beat, wouldn’t it?”
“Let me worry about that.” Rollick flashed me another smile, and a different sort of twinge ran through my gut.
He was all I really had here—the only ally, the only being remotely on my side. Before, I’d had my three monstrous lovers to count on. Protecting them and taking this on without them meant it was just the demon and me in this mess together against forces I could barely comprehend.
Maybe some of my uneasiness showed on my face, because Rollick’s smile softened a little. He tapped my hand, not drawing out the touch long enough that I’d have felt the need to flinch away, playful but with a gentleness I wouldn’t have expected.
“Look at how far we’ve come already, Quinn,” he said. “You ferret out those mortal secrets as quickly as you possibly can, and between the two of us, we’ll be unstoppable.”
He sounded confident enough to settle my nerves a little. I sucked in a breath and brandished my fork again. “One thing’s for sure: I’m not giving up.”
The demon beamed back at me. “And that’s exactly what I like so much about you.”
The warmth of his expression came with an underlying flicker of fear. Because I still couldn’t say for sure that being “liked” by Rollick put me in any less danger than if he’d hated me.