15. Lucy #2
It takes a while for an Inferos to be called. It’s reserved for two types of students: primarily the Veilwalkers, but also those who have the most natural magic potential. The elites. Those most likely to win the coveted demon favour.
Every time Inferos is called, I spend a little longer staring at the initiates. They’re my charges now, thanks to Father.
The woman talking to Midnight is pulled into the House Inferos line and a heavy bubble sinks into my gut. Midnight follows, along with the tall blond guy and short girl with turquoise braids.
Shit.
It would have been more convenient if both Midnight and the woman she’s talking to were in another house. That means we’ll all be living within the same damn walls.
When the sorting is finished, Alistair takes the House Mortis students, and Professor Helena Stroud takes the House Vitalis cohort.
She’s our resident head of Theoretical Death Studies.
A short, white woman with a scowl for days, I’m convinced her heart is made of steel, and she has a list of strict expectations for her students as high as the Celestial Library.
Which leaves me and the smallest group.
“I guess that means you’re the lucky group. Keep up,” I say.
“Wait, what about our bags?” The girl with turquoise hair says. She’s wearing yellow shorts with brightly coloured flowers, platform trainers and a boyfriend-fit, tie-dye jumper. The combination makes my eyes hurt but my heart warm. I eye her, indicating I want her name.
“Oh, erm, Lex. Nice to meet you.” She holds out her hand. I shake it.
“Your bags will be taken to House Inferos. Let’s go.”
I manage one step before the earth rumbles.
One of the students with Professor Stroud shrieks. It’s like gunshot. One student screaming after another.
The ground tremors harder. Several tiles slip and fall from the roof of the Hall of Unfinished Business.
I grab Midnight and the two students standing beside her and pull them into the heart of the courtyard as far away from buildings as possible.
I glance up at Finis Tower in the heart of the campus.
Its soaring peak is visible far above the rest of the buildings. Slate tiles clatter from the roof.
The air fills with sandstone dust as the integrity of the buildings around us fails.
Stroud catches my attention, her eyes flick over my shoulder. I turn and peer in that direction, my eyes widening as I back our huddled group up, fast.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?” a girl shouts, pointing behind me.
Midnight cranes her head around and stiffens in my grip. The Veil has torn, again. A rip at least six feet high in the middle of the courtyard.
This is not good.
The ephemeral fabric flaps in the wind. It resembles shimmering air to the eye, but something is off. Usually, the edges are torn and frayed, flapping like loose curtains. But these are sliced, cut neat and tidy like cake; a detail I file away for later.
Behind the fabric lies the underworld.
Dark, mountainous, barren.
Acrid heat billows from the tear. It’s dry, choking and stinks. Fungus fields stretch as far as I can see. And lurking between the slimy black stems are the dark forms of wraiths and ashspawn.
“Shit,” Midnight breathes beside me.
It snaps me back to attention.
“Stroud, get the students out of the courtyard,” I bark. She nods, flying into action.
“Alistair,” I yell, waving him over. He pushes his huddle of students towards Stroud and races across the square towards me.
“Go,” I bark at Midnight and her two friends as the air fills with a pungent scent: sour milk, cigarette breath and fetid meat.
Wraiths.
“Lex,” Midnight cries out, pulling her friend out of the way.
But Lex releases a strangled cry, “Bastien!”
The blond man next to her crashes to the ground. His eyes flit from Midnight’s to Lex’s to mine, and then he’s yanked and sliding along the cobbles. Dragged by his ankle towards the Veil. A wraith clings to his leg, but it’s weak, necrotic.
Its leathery body is curled, skeletal and wrinkled like dried fruit. Flakes of skin shred with every laboured step it takes. Bastien kicks and lashes out. But even weak wraiths are stronger than mortals. And this one has sunk its claws into his calf.
“Alistair,” I shriek.
My heart pounds in my chest. I am not trained in necromantic defence.
But my body moves anyway. My hands furl and twist, making shapes I didn’t even realise I knew.
Dark shadows materialise, peeling off the courtyard buildings.
They lurch and jerk through the air as I try to control them.
But my practical magic is so much more juvenile and unpractised than my contracts work.
I whisper words of the dead, but my pronunciation is off. The caustic tone needed to coax and control the campus’s magic efficiently is missing.
I dig deep, throw my hands towards Bastien and finally, the magic responds. It wraps around his leg, holding him in the mortal realm as Alistair leaps in front to seal the rip. His hands work fast. But my strength wanes faster.
My knee buckles, my nose bursts, blood leaking in rivers to the ground. The wraith screeches at the smell of it. But it doesn’t want to let its prize—Bastien—go.
“Alistair, hurry,” I plead.
His hands move faster, the tear resealing inch by inch.
I’m on my knees, sweat pouring down my back.
Midnight pulls a scythe out and lunges towards Bastien.
“No,” I cry out, knowing damn well the wraith could attack her. But I’m too weak to do anything other than hold on to the shadows gripping Bastien. The wraith screeches again and drags Bastien closer to the Veil. His foot crosses the threshold.
Midnight hurls herself forward and whips her scythe right across the wraith’s neck.
A shrill keening rents the air. A sound that rattles my teeth and makes the hairs on my arms rise.
On the far side of the courtyard, the new students drop to the floor. Bastien lashes out with a vicious kick of his free leg and hits the wraith, booting it clean into the Veil as Alistair flicks his wrists one final time, stitching the Veil shut.
Finally, I release the campus’s magic and sag all the way to the ground.
Midnight kneels beside me, her hands ready to pick me up, but Alistair sprints over, his face lined with concern. “Professor Corvine?” he says.
Midnight blinks, once, twice. Her face tightening with realisation.
Static pebbles my vision as Midnight frowns at me.
“Wait. What? Corvine? As in…You’re… You’re Ignatius Corvine’s daughter?”
“Yeah,” I say and promptly black out.