Chapter Five – Chloe
Ever since Chloe got the pendant, she never let it out of her sight. She preferred to wear it tucked under her clothes, insisting that she didn’t want to waste the opportunity to have a stronger vision if one came.
She… seemed okay, but there was a change after visiting the dryad, enough to make Tiran wonder whether Chloe was actually being completely forthright about the situation. Whatever the suspicion, he kept quiet about it because he didn’t want to tarnish the growing friendship between them. The… something else, less easy to phrase, that also hovered in the background. Flickers of possibility. Tiny projections in his mind, not unlike envisioning the future her magic might grant, of more conversations, of going to different places, of introducing her to his parents and wondering how they might have received her if they were still alive. Suppose he could get a necromancer or something to do that anyway since magic allowed a lot of access to things like that.
They’d like her. At least, he hoped so. And when Chloe mentioned she had a medium friend called Holly, Tiran ended up paying the student a little visit, wondering if his request might seem completely absurd and she’d just stare at him like he was crazy or if she would allow him to ask, and maybe even attempt the impossible.
Holly agreed to meet him, partially at the urging of Chloe.
“It’s honestly not a bad idea. But… if you’re sure. It’s… I mean, it’s not easy,” Chloe had said. However, she seemed more unsure and ill at ease than he felt.
“I may as well try at this point. I’ve… had the time. I’ve processed some of it. It still doesn’t really feel real at times; let me be honest with you. But… it’s something I’ve been thinking about ever since we talked about necromancers and mediums. I realized, well… but I don’t know how… good it is. Spirits – ghosts – they’re not really the same as being alive, are they? They’re like memories or warped versions of the person they used to be. I don’t know. I’m no ghost connoisseur.”
“Me either. But let’s try it. Holly’s a good one. Powerful, too, from what I understand. She dealt with some weird cemetery crap recently. She also has a necromancer boyfriend. That’s another chance there, too!”
Necromancers and mediums. Not exactly Tiran’s first and instinctual thoughts to deal with the whole situation with his parents – but one he might be able to utilize. When he’d mentioned it to Professor Umber, the professor had both looked mildly horrified and mildly intrigued. The possibility had never occurred to him before, despite working in such a magical environment with all manner of bizarre and warped magic turning up every year.
Yet some barriers of thinking were harder to cross than others. Approaching Holly felt nerve-wracking at first.
“You’re up for using your powers, right?” Chloe had asked. Holly, chomping through some apple slices as they sat around the edge of one of the long tables, nodded and held up one hand with the thumb facing up.
“As long as they’re not requiring me to go into highly questionable locations with volatile spirits, it’s something I can do. We don’t have work for our powers every day, Arlo and I, but they’ll whisk us away sometimes if a local autopsy or investigation is happening.”
Huh. He’d never really considered how they might be training necromancers or mediums in the school before. “Do you need to be at the, uh, physical location of the bodies?”
“No! I just need an object that has some sentimental significance or is connected with it in some way. I can pick up some echoes, then. Do you have anything like that in your possession?”
“Uh… I have my parents’ wedding rings. My uncle was able to get them, and he gave them to me.” A lump formed in his throat. He had the tiny box in his bedroom in a small plastic container that had some other small, sentimental things: a teddy bear, an old shirt of his father’s, some gold cuff links from a suit that was too small for Tiran, a few photos, a tiny collection of something that used to be Tiran’s whole world.
As if sensing the drifting mood, Chloe reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to do this, and if you do, you don’t have to do this straight away. There’s time.”
“It’s fine, really.” He appreciated the words coming from her all the same. Fetching the rings felt… odd. They gathered at Holly’s dorm room, with Arlo close by since he could assist if anything odd happened during the process. One of the hall monitor students gave them a curious glance but said nothing about the gathering in Holly’s room. With Chloe close by, Tiran handed the rings over, and Holly nodded, lips pursing.
“Good,” she said. “This is what we need. So… give me silence and a little space, and I’ll do my best.”
They all backed away as much as they could in the room, and Holly leaned against the window, now handling both rings. She closed her eyes, palming the rings, and her eyebrows scrunched up in concentration. At first, nothing happened. The air remained still; no supernatural glow presented itself. Then there was a faint, strange tingling in the air, as if something unseen were there, taking up space beyond what their eyes might normally see.
Now, a faint, cold light wisped around Holly, and a chill went down Tiran’s spine at the sight. A part of this felt terribly wrong somehow, reaching beyond to contact the dead. The glow situated strongest in Holly’s palms, where light escaped from the rings.
Holly’s eyes snapped open, and they also had that lingering blue glow. “I feel… worry from these rings. Much love here, yes, and many years spent together, but also a pervading worry that something might go wrong.” She then gasped and fell silent a moment before continuing, “On that day… they were looking forward to the journey. A long highway was in front of them. Then pain, an explosion of pain.”
“The crash,” Tiran whispered, shivering. Chloe drifted closer and took his hand in hers, trying to reassure him. Her grip was warm and soft in contrast with his own cold and clammy skin. Everything about this ghostly ritual made the hairs stand up all over his body and activated a primal instinct to flee or attack. He did neither and watched as the medium connected with the essence of his dead parents.
“No, not a crash. Something behind.” Holly grimaced again. “Something from behind. She – she didn’t see it before she died and slumped over the wheel. He – he caught something in the mirror. Black eyes, a smile – something not human. Then… nothing. And then the crash.”
She finished and placed the rings down.
“It… wasn’t the crash that killed his mother and father?” Chloe asked, her eyes wide, surprised.
“No.” Holly folded her arms, and Arlo rested both his hands on her shoulders, massaging them in a soothing, oddly intimate way. “Something killed them, and the subsequent loss of control over the car caused the crash a few seconds later. That was about as much as I could get.”
It was more than Tiran ever expected, and a sick sensation swept over him. “They were murdered,” he growled. “My uncle… those scum-sucking bastards. They must have planned this; they must have wanted this…”
“I can’t tell you more than that. I don’t really have any power left now. We could, if you want, try to contact their spirits if they’re still around. Arlo can do this if there is a body, and I… well, I’m the body.” Holly sighed.
“No,” Tiran said. “I don’t want to put you at any more risk. You’ve already done so much.”
“But don’t you want to know?” Chloe insisted. “You suspected your uncle. These two – they’re willing to help!”
“It means nothing. I can’t use this as evidence. And they still have a will that cuts me out of everything.” He clenched his teeth, suddenly remembering the last evening of meeting his uncle before returning to the school before all this happened. “He asked me if I was going to be with my parents on the trip.” The memory bloomed and took on a twisted, sinister light. “Why would he ask me something like that out of the blue, and then… a few days later…”
“He sounds like a piece of work,” Arlo said. His piercing eyes bore into Tiran. “If you do want us to help further, we will. Chloe seems to like you, and we like Chloe, so the help is there if you wish for it.”
Tiran nodded but didn’t say anything else. He didn’t know what to say, really. All he could think about was the memory. His uncle sneering at him. Likely taunting him about the upcoming trip. The trip he knew that Tiran’s parents would die on.
But who ended up killing them? Who made it into the back seat without either of them even noticing? They had draconic senses. They could hear intruders and sense that something wasn’t right. So how was this possible?
“There is one thing more I can add,” Holly said softly, almost as if reading Tiran’s mind. “The thing that seemed to be responsible for the deaths – while I didn’t really see it properly in the vision because neither of your parents saw it properly – there was a strong, wild fae aura. Something I remember from when they made our class go and visit Jenny Greenteeth.”
Fae aura. A chill went through Tiran. Chloe caught his eye and reached out to squeeze his hand. “We’ll find the answers. Don’t worry.”
Taking a deep breath, he attempted a smile at her. It was hard to smile when contemplating the possibility that his uncle Randall had organized a dangerous fae contract. The wild fae did not enter into them lightly, as the fae would attempt to extricate deals often to the detriment of the person asking for the contract in the first place. If he had hired an assassin, what had he traded for this to happen? Or had he managed to persuade one of the shills following him to do the deed instead?
It gave him a headache, considering it. Plus – if the assassin killed his parents – then why not kill him? Surely, as long as he lived, he proved a liability.
Though his uncle had asked if he was going on the trip…
“Tiran.” Chloe’s voice held a trace of concern. “Are you okay? You’re looking a little… pale.”
“Understandable,” Arlo said then, folding his arms. “Fae assassins demand a high price if they are to work, and generally, they’re whimsical when it comes to contracts as well. Something very valuable must have been offered for such a deal to take place.”
“Ah.” Chloe frowned. “I don’t really know much about these things. Could Tiran be in danger as well?”
“I’m not sure,” Arlo growled. “Generally, with these hits, it’s very hard to escape them. I presume you haven’t been jumped by anyone suspicious lately.”
“No.” He probably would remember something like that.
“They can work with magic, too,” Arlo said, stroking his chin. “Some of them can create intense feelings of sadness in someone to the point where they stop thinking rationally and just end it. Others, well, they’re more hands-on.”
Chloe and Tiran exchanged looks. Then, thanking Arlo and Holly, Tiran backed out and dragged Chloe with him to a secluded part of the academy.
“D’you think,” he started; at the same time, she exclaimed, “Is it possible –?”
They paused.
“For real, is it possible?” Chloe asked. “You – when you – you haven’t been depressed so much before, right?”
“No, never. I’ve never felt like that before.”
“It can’t be true…” But they both had come to the same conclusion. “I really don’t know,” he said. “I can’t say I’ve ever felt so… bad. I mean, we have bad days; of course, there are bad days. And what happened, it was so extreme, I was so sad.”
“But it’s really not a normal thought that you’d have, is it?” Chloe whispered. Her hand twitched for a moment as if she wanted to lift it toward him. At this moment, he became aware of an almost palpable tension between them, but he didn’t know exactly what kind of tension it was. Shared horror from the possibility of magical influence? Their proximity to each other? “I don’t think you ever mentioned that you felt suicidal beforehand. That would be a pretty big thing to mention.”
“I…” he hesitated. He tried to recall all the various emotions that had influenced him, although he didn’t like reflecting too long on the spike of despair he’d felt. It took part of him back there when he’d rather stay away and not remember. It was like a stamp of shame in his memory, an unpleasant echo of a side of him he never realized he had. Except… “It really was weird. I wasn’t thinking normally at all. I was so… upset. So caught up. It just… it came out of nowhere. And then I never felt it again. I just assumed – I thought maybe you’d helped me. And you did, you really did. But…”
She did help him. Perhaps to interrupt him in the middle of a spell. But then, how would such a spell influence him? The thought that some random powerful fae could just cast a spell from afar and entice him to suicide terrified him. Though surely, if that was possible, a lot more people might be dying…
“As far as I understand with spells,” Chloe said when he voiced the concern out loud, “for something like this, you have to know the person, and you have to be in the same room as them when casting it. Professor Z’Hana covered this after the visit with Jenny Greenteeth, and a few of us were nervous if the fae could do something to them. Z’Hana said emotional spells cannot be cast at will. You will have had to have met the caster or know of them.”
He considered that for a moment, finding some reassurance in what was being said, which left him drifting back to the party. Any number of people in that room might have cursed him. Any number…
Then he thought about his other uncle, Professor Max Umber. Uncle Max had been the last person he’d talked to. And then, after the meeting, he’d felt the overwhelming desire to…
The thought of his uncle betraying him settled like a knife in his gut. It sent a cold wave of shock through Tiran.
Surely, his uncle wouldn’t. He’d been helping the whole time.
Unless he hadn’t.
Chloe took his hands in hers, almost without thinking, probably just to comfort him, and her thumbs ran lazy circles over the tops of his knuckles. “Whatever you’re thinking about now, it’s probably best to let it go, at least until the morning. You’ve received a lot of information today. You’ve found out about some creepy fae assassin. It’s probably your uncle. But there’s not much you can do about it right now.”
“Yes. But I have one more thought. What if Professor Umber is in on the whole thing?”
Now, this caused the thumb movements to still and her eyes to widen. “Come again?”
“I didn’t get the impulse until after he gave me the news when I went to his office.”
Chloe bit her lip. “That’s an accusation. Do you have anything to back it up?”
“I…” He replayed his thoughts, trying to remember the incident as best he could. Being called into the spacious office. His uncle liked to keep it neatly organized. He tried to picture everything in the office. The file cabinets, the neat desk, and the leather chair. The computer was in the corner, and some dragon figurines were in the background. His uncle had gotten a phone call. A call that he handed to Tiran as proof of what was being said was true.
A man on the other end, voice full of pity, identified himself as the sheriff who had gone to the scene of the accident. They had already visited his other uncle, Randall, and now they were calling to inform distant relatives. How sad it must be for him.
Then… when Tiran tried to think further, he just couldn’t. It was as if his memories had become knotted, weighed down instead by grief and despair, and he was unable to rise above it.
“My uncle handed me the call from the sheriff who had been at the scene of the accident. That’s all I really remember.”
“A sheriff, you say,” Chloe said, a tinge of suspicion in her tone. “Is it normal for them to call?”
“I don’t know. I’m not exactly versed in what happens when people suddenly die in fake car accidents.” He then winced. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to come out so harshly.”
“It’s fine.” Her thumbs continued to rub, and honestly, the motion was a little distracting because he found it quite… stimulating. “If this is the case, we can’t know if your uncle knew or if he was just an unwitting messenger. If we think this, uh, ‘sheriff’ might have been the one responsible for whatever you felt. This is, assuming, that you were enchanted by magic and that it wasn’t just a moment of despair and madness.”
That was the infuriating thing about it, wasn’t it? Not knowing for sure. He decided to take Chloe’s advice at that moment, as he didn’t want to keep agonizing over all the information delivered.
“Thank you for being here with me,” he said, taking a moment to flex his fingers and rub her hands like she’d been doing. “I wouldn’t expect anyone to want to help me out with this type of madness.”
“Helping you is a pleasure,” Chloe assured him before flushing slightly. “And you helped me with the dryad thing as well – you didn’t need to come.”
“It was my pleasure, too,” he said, looking deep into her dark eyes and now feeling a little more positive about everything. It was easy to feel positive when in her presence.
Perhaps he studied her face for too long, for she examined him in return, one crooked eyebrow denoting curiosity.
Their hands remained locked together. Maybe that was the curiosity. He pulled away from her with a guilty smile. “I should… go to sleep. As you say, there is a lot to think about and not enough hours in the day.”
“That’s one way to put it.” She grinned, gently releasing his hands. Still smiling at each other, they parted, and when she completely vanished from sight, a warm, fuzzy feeling continued to linger in his body, along with something else. A growing desire to run after her, grab her, touch her cheeks, and… well. Those thoughts would follow him to bed, along with all the other chaotic knowledge he’d learned, knowledge of a stirring happiness and that of a sinking darkness, of suspicion and worry about the uncle he thought he could trust.
Hard to know whom to trust these days. Hopefully, Chloe was one of the good ones. He needed her to be one of the good ones.