Midnight
How is it I find myself with yet another ticking clock? I am so tired of being in these situations that I can’t bring myself to move.
For two long hours, I stare into space, churning everything that’s happened over and over. Eventually, I get up off the medical room floor, find my clothes and quietly discharge myself.
I slope across campus, my muscles still aching from the battle, though loosening with every hour I continue to move.
The demon magic fizzes inside me, as if it hasn’t quite worked out how it fits.
I don’t know how to use it. I’m not sure I even want to.
It’s Lucy’s, so I’m not even sure I could wield it against Ignatius.
My foot hits a step when a weedy voice calls out.
“You have secret,” Vetch says.
I glance up, surprised to find myself outside House Inferos.
“Don’t have time for this, Vetch.” The exhaustion is obvious in my voice—I don’t want to play today. But he ignores me, delightfully pleased to find himself chewing on another secret.
“You. Have. Secret,” he repeats. Slower and more punctuated like I’m an idiot that needs it spelled out.
“I don’t. What possible secret do you think I have.”
He grins, baring stony teeth at me. A wisp of ruby-coloured smoke protrudes from my chest. How did he—
“Stop that, you little shit.” I waft my hand to dissipate the magic.
“She must have loved you,” he says.
“Way to go to make me feel like shit,” I snap and shove the door open.
“Everyone knew you loved her. It was only a matter of time.”
I halt, my teeth gritting. “Either tell me something useful or go to sleep.”
He grumbles at me, spitting stone dust on the floor. “You worked out how to use it yet?”
Okay, he has my attention. I lean against the doorframe. “No. Not sure I want to.”
“Hmm. Well, it’s easy…”
I fold my arms and wait.
He blinks at me.
I wait longer.
He blinks again.
“Demonsake, Vetch, you going to enlighten me or are you just fucking about?”
He pouts. “I don’t know about the contracts side. But using demon magic is easy. Whatever you want… just decide there’s no other plausible possibility.”
“Just like that, yeah?”
The little stony toes he sits on wriggle and make him appear to bounce, which I assume is a shrug. “More or less.”
“Helpful.”
I slope my way upstairs, scratching at my head. My scalp itches in a couple of places, it’s annoying as fuck. Probably the magical drugs they gave me in the medical wing.
I find Bastien and Lex in our apartment. I take one step through the door and they both fling themselves at me.
“You’re here!” Lex says and leaps into my arms.
Bastien grips me by the cheeks and kisses my forehead. “We were so fucking worried. We came to your room, but Arcadius was shouting—”
“Yeah,” I say, squeezing his arm.
“You look exhausted and like there’s a whole boatload of shit you need to tell us.” He puts the kettle on.
“There is, but I just need to sit for a minute.” I still hurt, but my muscle aches are easing dramatically now.
Bastien doesn’t look great either. Though the pair of them are rested, showered and changed, both of them have mottled bruising in various places and the odd cut starting to scab.
Bastien is limping and appears to be in a world of pain despite the brave face.
Lex has a split lip that seems to be the worst of her injuries. “You changed your beads,” I say.
She twiddles the beads at the end of her hair. “Yeah, I needed to do something.”
“They look cute.”
She smiles but it doesn’t meet her eyes. She encourages me to the sofa and throws the blanket over me, then huddles me into her arms.
“The tower is more or less fixed,” Bastien says as he places a tray of tea and some nibbles on the table before perching on the arm of the chair.
I reach for a biscuit, dying for the sugar. Anything to pep me up.
“Ignatius went into your room, and you’re still here… we weren’t sure if he’d…” Lex says.
“Not that we’re unhappy about that,” Bastien laughs.
Lex wallops him in the arm. “Obviously not. Dumbass,” she says, giving him a sweet smile.
I narrow my eyes at the pair of them trying to work out what’s going on.
“It’s not like that,” Lex says.
“No, I’m actually seeing someone,” Bastien says.
“Yeah, and I am seeing my studies right now. Did I tell you I discovered a book called Sacrificial Contracts? Unfortunately, I can’t find it in the library. But if I can find it, I might be able to finally work out what happened with my sister,” Lex answers.
I shrug, too tired to work out what they’re hiding. Maybe they’re just trauma bonded from the fight and the tower collapse and the shitstorm on campus the last few days.
“So, what’s happening?” Bastien asks, cupping my hand and squeezing.
“Lucy… She… erm…” But a surge of emotions rise up, not sadness anymore, but heat. Thick and frothing, it coats my bones and burns my tongue with a sour taste. I take a slurp of tea and start talking.
I explain everything, starting with the fact that Lucy and I cracked the third rune and the night walk we took right before she made me reap her.
They both wince at that point, which serves to make me feel vindicated.
“Let me get this straight. Lucy told you she loved you, thereby handing her magic over, then made you kill her?” Bastien asks, his eyebrow set firmly to raised.
“I can understand why you’re so cross with her,” Lex says.
Bastien nods. “I can’t believe she made you reap her. Who does that?”
“Well, it’s not like she had anyone else she could ask, though,” Lex says, flipflopping between understanding my fury and sympathising with Lucy. I glare at her as if to say ‘whose fucking side are you on’, and she gives me an ‘I’m sorry’ shrug.
“Hold on, so you’re now a demon?” Bastien says, his face crumpling as he tries to do demonic math.
“No? Well, maybe? I don’t really know. How does one even become a demon?”
Lex raises a finger and opens her mouth and then closes it again. “I’m adding it to the research list.”
“Vetch told me I just need to figure out what I want and then decide there’s no other plausible possibility, and poof! whatever I want will happen. But I’m sure there are other layers of complexity.”
Lex tilts her head. “Maybe, but that is probably the basis of it. Sure, you’ll have to draw on the magic, and that might be different than taking it from campus. And then there’s the entropy moths and contracts too.”
I place a hand over her mouth. “Much as you overwhelming me is delightful, I don’t have time to learn any of this stuff.”
Bastien lifts my hand off Lex’s face. “What have you done now?”
I put my head in my hands. “I fucked up.”
“Define fucked… because from where I’m sitting it looks like the opposite of that. Ignatius hasn’t reaped your soul, and you’re still breathing,” Bastien says.
“I was in the medical ward and Ignatius came in. I overheard the chancellor ripping him a new one. He did not appreciate me witnessing that. So, really, I was just trying to survive… you know?”
“Of course, you had to do whatever you could.”
“He offered me a deal.”
“Another one?” Bastien groans.
“It’s not like I had a choice,” I snap, a little too harshly.
Bastien holds up his hands in defence. “I’m not saying you did, it’s just… deals are what got you into this mess in the first place.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Midnight…” Lex says, her hand stretching to find mine. Where her warm skin meets mine, it jolts me back to reality.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” I look up at Bastien. “I’m sorry, okay. That wasn’t called for. I’m exhausted. I only have five days to save my life again, and I’m still grappling with the fact I have Lucy’s magic coursing through me. And the fact she broke my heart.”
“It’s fine, you’re having a shit week…” He smiles.
“She’s having a shit year,” Lex adds.
“Make that decade,” I say.
Lex lets out a muffled snort. Bastien and I glance at her lips pressed so thin they’ve turned yellow.
She shakes her head, the pressure building.
I burst first. I can’t help it.
It’s all so ridiculous.
Bastien cracks next, and then Lex promptly follows. The three of us laughing at absolutely nothing. We reach a hysterical fever pitch. All of us bent over, eyes leaking. None of us even knowing what’s funny anymore.
Lex mumbles half an incoherent sentence about a wraith hand, and Bastien rears backward laughing so hard he falls off the arm of the chair. Which sets all of us off again.
We laugh and laugh and laugh until there’s no air left in any off our lungs.
And then the heaviest silence I’ve ever felt settles over the room. We stay like that, all of us wrapped in the weight of what’s happened and the horror of what’s coming when I finally pluck up the courage to tell them.
“She did it to get away from him…” I whisper.
“Ignatius?” Lex asks.
I nod. “He was awful to her. And she made me reap her so that she was free of the contract he created at her birth. It was what was keeping Architecti locked up. Reaping Lucy’s soul didn’t just set her free, it freed Architecti, too.”
“I’m sorry she made you do it,” Bastien says.
But I shrug. “That’s not the worst bit of it…”
Bastien and Lex share a look before turning back to me.
“What did you agree to?” Lex says.
I sigh. “Ignatius cornered me. He gave me a choice. A soul for a soul…”
“Oh gods, he wants you to bring her back?” Bastien breathes.
“Yeah, he says she’s powerful beyond comprehension. That if I return her to him, he will give me my soul back. And at the time… I was so pissed. I mean, I am pissed with her. I’m fucking furious. But it’s also Ignatius, and if I do that to her, after what she sacrificed to get away from him…”
“Son of a whore,” Lex says.
“What a cunt,” Bastien adds.
This time, Lex puts her head in her hands. “You can’t bring her back. You reaped her, she doesn’t have a soul…”
“Then how the hell are we getting her back?” Bastien says.
I sag into the sofa. “I have absolutely no idea.”