32. Lucy
Lucy
T hree weeks later, after countless evenings of training and practice, an inordinate amount of tuna bribes for Mortem and several evenings of completing extra defence classes and perfecting their Veil cuts back to our realm, we’re ready.
It’s ten to twelve, the night is cool and thankfully misty, providing ample cover for us. Though that just makes me worry more.
It’s too easy.
Mortem pads across the Great Library roof towards us, his belly swings left and right.
“Have you put weight on?”
“I was hardly going to say no to the tuna, was I?” He radiates contempt. I tut at him.
“You’re cute with a bit more fluff, but if you don’t fit through the very precise Veil cuts we’ve practiced, I’m going to resurrect you just to murder you myself,” I say.
“Everyone got their kit?” Lex asks.
Bastien holds up two necroflares. Something that will ward off wraiths if it comes to it—and if they’re aimed well, blow them up, sending them right back through the Veil.
“Timer,” I say, holding up the stopwatch I pilfered from Thalia’s desk earlier.
Lex waves a celestial dictionary of runes she found. It’s nearly eighty years old and half the pages are missing, but it’s better than nothing.
“We have two minutes for the shift change of the wraiths, on the strike of twelve.”
“Yeah, easy,” Bastien drawls. “All we have to do in two minutes is reverse abseil up several hundred feet of tower, cut a hole through the Veil, twice , throw a cat through, open a door and hope we’re all inside before the new wraiths return.” His skin is a sickly white colour.
“I resent the phrase ‘throw a cat,’” Mortem hisses.
“This is going to be fun,” Midnight says, bouncing on her feet.
“I think you and I have two very different concepts of fun,” Mortem says. “I’ll see you up there.” He vanishes.
“Call your magic,” I say, and all four of us open our hands and draw ribbons of campus magic towards us.
They carve the night up, eight jet black threads of billowing smoke slicing through the mist. My gut drops, chills settle over me.
I don’t like this.
We’re too open, if anyone were to look up. And it doesn’t matter if the students are meant to be asleep. Someone is always out of bed after lights out. I shouldn’t be asking them to risk their places here for me, but what choice do I have?
“Ready?” I ask, glancing at my watch. All three of them nod at me.
“In three. Two. One. Go.” I whisper the last word and hit the timer. All four of us throw our ribbons up to the turrets, looping them around and tugging them tight. We’ve practiced this so many times, our hands bare the calluses of tired necromancers.
“Locked in,” Lex says.
“Me too,” Bastien follows.
“Locked and ready,” Midnight says.
Together the four of us lean over the edge of the library roof with nothing more than hope in our hearts.
Bastien bares his teeth. “Hate heights.”
The shadowy ribbons lock around our bodies and jerk us off the edge, drawing us all the way up to the top of the tower. I try not to look down, but as the wind rushes in my ears and we’re pulled hundreds of feet into the air, I falter.
I instantly regret my life choices. My vision swims so hard I have to hold a hand over my mouth so I don’t puke.
I check my stopwatch. Twenty seconds have passed as we finally climb over the parapet ledge and drop onto the exterior balcony outside the Celestial Library.
“Go, go, go,” I say. “Make the cuts.”
Midnight and Bastien are the most effective at cutting, so they take the lead. Bastien twists his fingers and makes a sweeping motion as Mortem materialises at his feet.
A sheen of sweat appears on his brow as he stitches the frayed edges with campus magic, giving them enough stability for us to hang the second cut off the first.
Midnight shuffles into place.
“Forty-five seconds down,” I say.
Midnight’s features crumple in concentration as she examines Bastien’s cuts and swipes her hands this way and that.
“Close your eyes, picture the library, feel for the difference in vibration. It’s a different kind of notch compared to the Veil. It will feel lighter, fluffier, like blowing bubbles in the night sky.”
“Got it,” she says, and slashes her fingers apart.
The three of us gawp at the hole. A tunnel sliced right through the fabric of not just our realm but the celestial one. No one has seen inside the Celestial Library for four decades.
“Go,” Lex barks. We don’t have time. She picks up Mortem, tickles him under his chin and says, “Don’t fuck this up or I’m feeding you to a wraith.”
He hisses at her, but she’s already pushing him through the tunnel.
He, inevitably, gets stuck.
“Demon’s sake, Mortem,” Midnight growls and shoves his furry arse hard. He yowls, though much of the sound is lost between worlds. I’m pretty sure he calls Midnight some expletive that really shouldn’t be coming from a cat.
“You could always poke him in the arse,” Bastien says.
There’s a moment of reflective pause. Mortem goes deathly still. Bastien brings his finger towards Mortem’s puckered butt. “Last chance, Mortem,” he says.
The cat explodes forward.
In all the months of living with Mortem, I have genuinely never seen his legs move that fast. Suffice to say he plops out the other side of the Veil in a plume of fur clumps and hissing. The glare he gives Bastien is vicious enough to slice the lips off his smirk.
“Go,” Lex wafts a hand at him. If a cat could pout, that is the expression he gives us. He turns his back on us and trots off, a few remaining fur clumps fluttering off his back.
“Shit, look out,” Lex says as a sinewy black finger nudges at the Veil edge.
“Seal the cuts,” I shout.
Bastien and Midnight launch into action as the wraith’s arm tugs at the stitching.
“Midnight,” Lex urges.
The stopwatch shrieks at me.
“Fuck, thirty seconds left. Come on, Mortem,” I breathe. My foot taps as Midnight and Bastien battle to close the haemorrhaging Veil. The wraith’s finger bursts through, slicing a one-inch cut.
Midnight’s nose erupts, blood pissing down her face.
“Shit,” Lex grabs Midnight and hauls her out of the way as the wraith’s hand bursts through the stitching.
“Use the flare,” I bark at Bastien.
“Pocket,” Bastien says, jumping in to pick up the threads Midnight dropped.
I yank the flare out and snap it, shoving it into the gap around the wraith’s hand. Light flashes, and an explosion makes the fabric bulge, shoving all four of us back against the parapet.
Lex slips.
Bastien and I grab her as she teeters on the edge.
“MORTEM,” Midnight bellows as my stopwatch chimes.
“We’re fucked now,” Bastien says, hauling Lex back away from the edge.
Three wraiths materialise, their dark sinewy bodies creeping across the parapet, mouths hung low, teeth yellowed and far too sharp.
The magic that binds them to the tower is looped around them in the form of golden collars and leashes and masks.
But they do nothing to slow them down in the face of an attack.
The library door clicks and swings open. The four of us sprint across the balcony. The wraiths scream; a shrill sound like the shattering of glass and grinding gears.
I make it through, followed by Bastien and Midnight. But Lex halts in the door. Her eyes go wide; she blinks once. Twice.
And glances down at her shoulder, where a wraith finger has punctured right through.
Midnight grabs her, yanking her inside, pulling her off the wraith’s finger. I slam the door shut. Blood billows down her shoulder.
“This is not good,” Lex says as she slides down the door. “Go. I’ll just wait here, okay?”
“We’re not leaving you,” Midnight answers.
“You will or we did this for nothing. You’re going to have to come back for me, anyway. The wraiths know we’re here, and we can’t go out the same way we came in, which means cutting new holes in the Veil. I just need a minute.”
Her dark skin turns grey.
Mortem hops onto her torso and licks at the wound. And to my surprise, it stems the flow of blood.
“Delicious,” he says, “Just the dessert I need after cleaning my arse.”
Lex’s skin goes from grey to green, and I swear Mortem smirks as he resumes licking.
“Go, before I commit cat-icide,” Lex says.