Chapter 10 #2
I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure how this was ‘settling in,’ exactly, but everybody seemed happy, so I wasn’t going to disrupt things by asking questions nobody thought they needed to answer.
That was another lesson I’d started to figure out—when people are happy, don’t wreck it by asking questions nobody else seems to think need asking.
“How’s Victor?” Mason asked, his tone casual, although I knew the question was nowhere near as disinterested as he made it sound.
I watched Vi move around the room, cooing at Zane. “The same,” I answered Mason. “He seems to be able to escape his crate whenever he wants, but he also doesn’t seem bothered by it, since he often goes back to it himself.”
“You got him a crate?” he asked.
I shrugged. “A cardboard box seemed a little insulting,” I replied. “Raj thought he might like something more… stimulating.”
Mason let out a sound that might have been either a grunt or a chuckle, I wasn’t sure. “So our tiger shifter is okay sharing space with an undead rat?”
I shrugged again. “He thought it was weird at first,” I admitted. “But Victor seems to have won him over.”
The big orc snorted softly. “He is weirdly cute,” he conceded. “The rat, not Raj.”
I felt my lips twitch. While I found Raj attractive, ‘cute’ wasn’t really the right word for his physical appeal. I also thought that he would probably object to having that term applied to him.
“Does he eat?” Mason asked, and it took me a half-second to realize he was asking about Victor, not Raj, who Mason knew very well ate food.
“No,” I answered. “He doesn’t seem to be interested in food. He’ll drink, but he hasn’t wanted any food I’ve given him, but he doesn’t seem bothered by that.” I shifted my weight slightly to the other foot. “He likes to chew on things, but he doesn’t really want to eat.”
Mason made a small sound. “Fascinating,” he murmured. “Life, but not life.”
“Does that mean I am a death witch?” I asked him. I still wasn’t sure what I thought about his hypothesis that I was actually a life caster, since as far as I could tell, I hadn’t actually brought anything to life, I’d only ever taken it.
Mason frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think so,” he replied, although he was speaking slowly, which was usually a sign that he was still thinking things through. “Although I’ve had a very hard time finding anything that tells me what, exactly, Victor is.”
“What do you mean?” Victor was an undead rat. That seemed pretty clear to me.
“Well, there are different kinds of undead,” Mason replied.
“There are zombies, wights, and revenants, although there are different words used all over the world. Zombies are mindless—that’s what you normally get with necromancy, a husk that serves as a vessel for the will of the necromancer.
Victor definitely doesn’t seem to be that, as he’s active and moving and appears to have at least some agency. ”
I nodded in agreement.
“Which leaves wights and revenants,” he continued. “But I’m not sure either applies in this case. Revenants aren’t mindless, but they do tend to be hyperfocused on a singular obsession. Revenge, for instance. Or seeking to right an injustice. And that doesn’t seem right, either.”
Victor definitely didn’t seem to be focused on anything other than chewing and grooming, so I didn’t have an argument with that, either.
“So that leaves wights,” Mason went on. “Although while wights are more neutral undead, they are generally considered negatively—for instance, wights known to the Norse as draugrs were generally undead soldiers who continued their duties as guards or warriors, killing unsuspecting travelers or those who would disturb their barrows.”
“Victor is definitely not trying to kill anyone,” I told him.
“No aggressive behavior at all?” Mason asked.
“Not that I’ve seen,” I replied. “He plays with toys, escapes his enclosure, chews on things, drinks water, and cleans himself.”
“Huh,” the big orc mused. “Not really standard wight behavior, but that still seems like the closest option.”
“Does that tell us anything?” I asked.
Mason shrugged. “Honestly, no idea. I’ve asked Fiona to try to track down anything she can find on types of undead, but neither one of us knows exactly what to look for.” He shrugged, grinning. “That’s the fun part.”
I had no idea what to say to that. I did not find not knowing or understanding things to be the fun part of anything.
Although maybe if you were Mason Manning and knew a lot about a lot of things, not knowing something might be fun.
Unlike Mason, I generally knew very little about what was going on around me, and I didn’t at all enjoy that.
For me, knowing something was an exciting novelty.
“Hey, Uncle Mace,” Jackson said, drawing our attention.
“Yes?” Mason replied.
“Can I resurrect a rat?”
“Absolutely not,” came the immediate response.
“Aw. Why not?”
“First,” Mason began. “Because Rayn didn’t do it on purpose, which ought to tell you just how unpredictable—and therefore potentially dangerous—necromancy can be.
And second, as you’ve been hearing, since I know you aren’t actually listening to music, Rayn may very well not be a death witch, which means that whatever he did isn’t something you even can do. ”
“I could try,” Jackson replied, his tone a little bit of a whine.
“And if you did, you could end up not only resurrecting something a whole lot bigger and meaner than a rat,” Mason replied, his tone clipped. “But you could accidentally lose control of it, and then whatever it is might come after Grace or Zane.”
Jackson dropped his gaze, the brown skin of his cheeks darkening. “Oh,” he murmured. “I guess that makes sense.” He pulled his headphones back on, and proceeded to start typing on his laptop, seeming to focus intently.
Mason gave a soft grunt in acknowledgment, then turned back to me.
“The point I was getting at,” he said, his tone evening out.
“Is that Victor doesn’t behave the way undead typically behave—which means that there’s something different about him, which suggests, by extension, that there’s something different about you. ”
This logic made sense. If there was something unusual about a spell, generally that meant that there was something unusual about the witch or warlock who performed it.
Whether that meant I was a life caster or a death witch, however, I had no idea.
“But how am I different?” I asked him. “I can see ghosts and feel death, so wouldn’t that suggest death magic? ”
Mason shrugged. “Death witches are pretty rare,” he said. “But life casters are actually rarer. Which means that there just isn’t that much known about them.”
“So why do you think I am one?” I asked him.
Mason smiled. “Your magic mingles life and death—Ward saw as much.” I frowned, remembering his description of the magic surrounding Victor. “Which only makes sense if you can use both.”
“But wouldn’t a death witch be able to access life magic?” I asked, remembering what he’d said about how the balance of witch magic worked.
“Yes, and no,” he replied. “We have sympathetic magics, but we aren’t usually very good at manipulating our oppositional magics—of course, that doesn’t seem to apply to you either way, whether you’re a death witch like we originally thought or a life caster.”
I frowned again. “Vi said my magic was red, when she was looking at me. Wouldn’t it have been gold if I were a life caster?”
Mason thought about this. “Gold is life-magic, but not life-casting magic,” he replied.
“Hart’s magic is gold—his life magic is intrinsic, part of him.
He doesn’t cast with it. Whatever you did to Victor gave him intrinsic life magic—because rats do not have that naturally.
Or, at least, not enough to reanimate themselves. ”
I thought about this. “So then what color is life magic?” I asked him.
“No idea,” came the response. “I can’t see magic.”
“Vi?” I asked.
She turned, then danced over, still carrying Zane. “Yeah?”
“Does my magic look the same as Jackson’s?” I asked her.
Mason let out a small noise that I had come to recognize as his way of berating himself for not thinking of something.
“Kinda?” she replied after a pause, during which she alternately squinted at both me and Jackson. “His is a darker red than yours.”
I looked over at Mason. “Is that because they’re two sides of the same spectrum?” I asked him. “Or because mine is weaker?”
Mason’s gold-flecked eyes were wide. “I have no idea,” he replied.
“And I don’t know how we’d find out, either,” he continued.
“Warlock magic is different, innate magic is different, and I don’t know anyone else who is a life caster or any one else whose primary is harm to tell.
” He paused, then spoke again. “But it seems plausible that the same pairing would be the same color.”
“Cuz you’re not weaker,” Jackson put in, looking up again. “My magic’s not weak, but it’s not like yours or Mason’s. And definitely not like Ward’s.”
I swallowed. I didn’t particularly like thinking about the fact that I might be considered a powerful witch—of whatever type of witch I actually was. “I’m not—” I started to say, but Violette let out a laugh.
“Oh, you’re much stronger than either of us,” she said. “I mean. Jackson’s stronger than I am, but you and Mason are even stronger.” She paused, rocking Zane. “Ward is… something else entirely.”
Mason grunted. “He is that,” he agreed.
“He’s a warlock?” Vi asked.
Mason nodded.
Vi shook her head. “Jesus,” she whispered. “I mean. Usually we’re not as strong as witches. Like, I can tell that most warlocks are augmenting with amulets and sh—stuff, but it’s almost like we have to, because witch magic just tends to be stronger. But Ward…” She trailed off.
“Indeed,” Mason replied. “He is definitely something else.” The way he said it was clearly affectionate.