Chapter Thirty-Four
You won’t believe it!” Sophie said excitedly when Jen emerged from the back door with Kimmie, who, as usual, looked like a model in a pink gingham playsuit. “We’re no longer aux!”
“What?” Jen demanded, immediately flushing and looking at me. “We didn’t do anything wrong—”
“No, silly!” Sophie hugged her and then hugged Kimmie, too. And then hugged them both, stretching so her arms would fit. “We’re clan! Like fully!”
“What?” Jen looked blank.
“If you want,” I put in, because Jen had always been the more reserved of the two, and Kimmie even more so. Maybe they wouldn’t want that level of acceptance if it also tied them closer to the crazy.
“I want,” Kimmie said immediately.
“What brought this on?” Jen asked suspiciously.
“It should have been offered before,” I said. “After you fought for us at Wolf’s Head, or at the very least after Tartarus. You put your lives on the line for the clan when you didn’t have to—”
“I thought the Circle expects it,” Jen said, somewhat bitterly.
“But I don’t expect it, especially when we’ve barely started your training. You put yourselves in danger for us, repeatedly, and I should have acknowledged that more than I did.”
“You didn’t even want us there,” Kimmie said softly. “In Tartarus. You told us to leave.”
“I didn’t want anyone there,” I said. “But you wouldn’t go.”
“Fortunately,” Jen said, staring me down. “Look what happened at HQ, when we weren’t there!”
It looked like Sophie wasn’t the only one upset at being left behind.
“You’re not my bodyguards,” I pointed out.
“No, we’re clan—supposedly.”
“We are!” Sophie broke in. “Especially now—”
“Then why did she take only the boys with her to HQ and leave all of us?”
“She wasn’t thinking—”
“And the next time? Or is this ‘clan’ status still lesser, still aux in all but name, still meaningless?”
“Jen!”
“I just like to know where I stand,” she said stubbornly. “If I’m supposed to sign on to this thing—”
“It’s an honor!” Sophie hissed, looking mortified. And afraid, like maybe I’d resend the offer if they weren’t properly appreciative.
“Okay,” Jen looked skeptical. “But it would be nice to have things spelled out.”
“There are agreements for aux,” I said. “Not that we actually got around to writing any yet, but that’s the usual way of things.
Kind of a cross between a contract and an oath of loyalty, where both sides have clearly defined responsibilities and rewards.
And we can still do that if you want, sit down and hash it all out.
I’m not trying to circumvent that by giving you a different status—”
“How different?” Jen demanded, her eyes intense.
“Like the difference between an employee and family,” Kimmie said softly, making the other girl flinch for some reason.
“That’s… not exactly right,” I said, wondering who she’d been talking to, and why. “Auxiliaries are more… well, not employees. They are trusted retainers, like a medieval lord’s knights. They give service and expect certain rewards in return. But there’s loyalty there, often affection, trust…”
It was hard to put into words for people still trying to understand what a clan was, and I got the impression that I wasn’t doing so great, because Jen was not looking happy. “And clan?” she demanded. “Like full clan status? What’s that?”
I blinked at her, confused. “Family. It’s…
some clan members might actually be farther removed from the locus of power than highly ranked auxiliaries, living their own lives and doing their own thing.
Especially in the bigger clans, where everybody doesn’t live together and, in some cases, might be pretty far flung. But…”
“But family is family,” Sophie said flatly. “Cousin Joe might not be as trusted as a long-term employee, but he’s blood. It matters.”
“Auxiliaries aren’t employees—” I said again, but she waved it away.
“Explain it to me,” Jen said with crossed arms, but she was looking at Sophie.
The blonde shrugged. “Easy. Who are you going get a call from, if somebody lands in the slammer overnight, after plowing his drunken ass into a telephone pole? Your employee or Joe? And who are you gonna go bail out, even if it’s two A.M. and snowing, and you have to work in the morning?
And who are you gonna bitch the hell out of all the way home, but also hug and stop at a drive-through for, so he can get McNuggets ‘cause all they had in jail were moldy baloney sandwiches?
“Here’s a hint, it ain’t the employee.”
“That’s not fair,” I began, but Sophie snorted.
“Tell it to a norm, which I’m not. It’s totally fair.
Aux’s are like trusted friends of the family—at best—while clan are family.
You don’t want to be family?” she asked, turning on Jen.
“To belong somewhere, finally, after all these years? To not be the foster kids who could be sent back at any moment, but adopted?”
“No one is sending you anywhere,” I protested.
“If we’re not clan, they could. The Circle owns our asses.”
“They do, at least until we’re eighteen,” Kimmie agreed. “And in some ways, even after.”
“But as part of Fireborn, we’re clan,” Sophie said. “We have rights. Under Were law, they can’t touch us!”
“And did you anticipate that when you made the offer?” Jen asked, watching me. “Did you think it through, talk it over with Cyrus, with Sebastian?”
“No,” I admitted, because it was the truth. “But I will.”
“Uh-huh. Then we’ll talk about it after that happens,” she said dryly.
“The hell?” Sophie exploded. “Do you not get what Lia just—”
“We found a dead body on the floor, in that merchant’s shop, down in Tartarus,” Jen said, changing the subject and cutting her off with a look. She wasn’t going to discuss this without confirmation, and I didn’t blame her.
Cyrus was gonna lose his shit.
Sebastian might just kill me.
But this was a hill I was willing to die on, I realized.
There was no way I was sending these kids back to the Circle, to be used as cannon fodder in their war.
It was bad enough with my old students back at HQ, which I’d had before being tapped for this job.
I hadn’t liked training wide-eyed nineteen-year-olds then, but had told myself to give them the best chance they had of surviving this.
But what chance would my new kids have? When the Circle not only didn’t value their lives, but would frankly probably prefer it if they didn’t make it through the war? Fewer problems afterward, that way.
No one had ever said so, but I knew how things worked, like I knew these kids would be put on the harder and more dangerous missions.
Their abilities would make that likely, even if the prejudice against them didn’t exist, and I couldn’t allow that.
Any more than I was willing to allow Sebastian to use the rest of the clan.
And full status would protect them.
I just didn’t know who would protect me.
“Jen!” Sophie was glaring at her friend.
“I’m done,” Jen told her shortly. “I’m not getting my hopes up for nothing, not over this. And the man hadn’t been dead long,” she added to me, “so I decided to go in and take a look.”
“Go in?” I repeated blankly, and then I saw her again, kneeling on the floor amidst a shattering of glass, reaching into the dead man’s mind… literally. I’d always thought, when I thought about it at all, that a necro’s job was more spirit-adjacent, but she’d just kind of dug in there.
Not that I could talk.
“I don’t know why people always look like that,” she said, frowning at whatever was on my face. “It’s no different than someone doing an autopsy, except it’s on the brain and sometimes more useful.”
“And how did you learn to pick a dead man’s brains?” I asked, wondering if I wanted to know.
“I didn’t know that I could for a long time. My parents wouldn’t let me practice my abilities at home, even when my uncle offered to train me. I think they were hoping they’d just go away. But I was at Meadowbrook one day—”
“Meadowbrook?” Kimmie asked.
“That was the local facility,” Jen told her, and looked at me. “You know, for people like us. They always call them something that sounds pretty, I guess to reassure the parents. Sending your kid to ‘Meadowbrook’ sounds better than magical juvie.”
“Or torture dungeon,” Sophie muttered.
“Anyway, if you’re identified as having necro abilities—or anything else the Circle disapproves of—you have to get tested every year. If your power is weak, they mostly let you alone, as long as you stay out of trouble. But if you test above the threshold—”
“And they never tell you what that is,” Kimmie added.
“Then clang, clang,” Sophie summed up.
“Yeah,” Jen agreed. “I’d been identified because of my uncle—they watch the bloodlines of known necromancer families—but I was only nine, and my power was thought to be weak—”
“Thought to be?” I repeated.
She grinned slightly and pulled over a couple of chairs from the table, one for her and one for Kimmie, but put them behind me.
“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to turn around without the full range of motion yet.
“Relax,” she said. “We have to deal with this hair. Or whatever you want to call it.”
“I’ve seen worse,” Kimmie said staunchly.
“Where? On a homeless person?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not that bad,” I protested, as the girls all but attacked my poor head with a couple of combs they must have brought with them. So this ambush had been planned. And it felt like they were trying to pull the hair out by the roots. “Ouch!”
“You’re a big, bad war mage,” Jen said. “You’ll survive.”
“Yeah, but will I have any hair left?”
“We’ll do our best,” Kimmie reassured me.
“What does that mean?” I asked, slightly panicked now.
“Have you considered a pixie cut?”
“Stop it,” Sophie said. “You’re freaking her out.”
“Well, it’s either scissors or it’s gonna hurt,” Kimmie said. “It’s like, you’ve got mats in here…”
“Were,” Jen said.
“We don’t get mats!” I snarled and tried to get up, only to be forced back against the chaise by a couple of torturers.