39. Midnight
Midnight
Twenty-One Days To Go
B astien is white as a sheet. He paces basement floor minus six as Lex, Lucy and I try to locate a safe room for him.
This floor is mostly row upon row of cages and safe rooms, except for the giant practice room at the heart of this level.
We stride down the gloomy corridors, checking room after room.
Lucy and I continue sharing surreptitious glances; we’re going to have to talk properly.
Things are different between us, and we’re avoiding talking about it.
But we’re running out of time. I have less than three weeks until the final exam and three weeks exactly until my birthday.
If we don’t talk soon, there may not be any more time.
I shouldn’t think like that. I should assume I’ll win the favour, and Lucy will be free of Ignatius.
Whether it’s the incessant tinnitus-like whispering the campus is doing in my ear, or the slick sensation of being watched always present on my spine, I am losing faith.
A melancholy has settled in my bones; an inevitability that things will end. Has fate finally caught up to me? Maybe it’s just the ever-present weight a reaper carries.
“Any luck?” Lucy says, jolting me out of my thoughts.
Lex shakes her head as we walk down the next corridor.
I sidle up to Lucy and lean in to whisper, “We need to talk.”
She snaps her attention to me. “Now?”
“I get that it’s not convenient, but when else are we going to talk? There’s only three weeks until the final exams and my birthday. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Her lips press into a flat line, but she nods. “Okay, talk.”
“Wow, so open.” It’s childish, but I’m hurt.
“What do you want me to say?” she whisper-hisses at me.
“Oh, I dunno, how about how you actually feel?”
She fires me a look that bears the weight of a thousand emotions. She ages a decade in one fleeting glance.
“How I feel is irrelevant.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, if I want to live. Don’t you get that?”
I grit my teeth. I’m pissed at her tone. Pissed that she has feelings. More pissed that she’s not admitting to them and royally fucking pissed that if she does admit to them, she’ll render herself powerless.
I must be seething because Lucy stops dead.
“For fuck’s sake, Midnight. What do you want me to do? Confess and what? Lose my power? For what? A relationship that’s going nowhere?”
“Wow, just wow.”
She looks at the floor, kneads her forehead. “I didn’t mean that. I— Gods. I’m sorry, that was really shitty of me. But… we can’t talk about this.”
She staggers, her hands clutching at her chest.
“What’s wrong?” I say under my breath, the first hint of panic seeping into my ribs.
“This is… This is why I’ve been avoiding you, why I can’t tell you how I feel.” Her voice is softer now. When she steadies herself and moves her hand away from her chest, a wispy ribbon of red protrudes from her skin.
“Oh my gods. It happens that fast?” I say, all the rage seeping out of me and leaving me with a cold coil in my gut.
“All it takes is one slip, one truth told to you in an offhand comment, and I lose everything.”
“I guess, I always thought… So… this really isn’t going anywhere?” I exhale, my throat thick, a hard lump making it tricky to swallow.
She doesn’t respond to that. What would be the point?
“What happened to believing in free will? In our ability to change our future? I thought I was the pessimist?”
She doesn’t respond to that either, and it makes my blood boil in my veins, my stomach swirl with hot thoughts and a crippling pain that shoots between my ribs.
The red smoky magic slides back into her chest and seals itself inside her crystalline heart.
I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste copper, the searing heat and spike of pain calming me and grounding me.
It’s the only thing that stops me from clawing my chest open, ripping my heart out from between my ribs and stamping all over it.
What hurts the most is understanding what she’s thinking: why bother giving your heart to someone when you know they’ll be dead in a few weeks?
My eyes sting.
I move away from her. I don’t want to be near her. All of this was for nothing. Because one way or another, we’re not meant to be together. Be it because I’ll leave her powerless or because her father will come for my soul.
That thought makes me angrier than it has any right to.
Bastien rounds the corner, giving me something else to focus on. “We need the safest of safe rooms, ones where the exterior walls have had their Veil fabric reinforced. Plus, a room with wards on the walls, so that whatever we resurrect can’t go any further than the room we’re in,” he says.
If we were just resurrecting a basic shade or reanimating animals, it wouldn’t matter so much. But bringing a desiccating shade back to Finis is dangerous as fuck, especially when it’s a family member.
“And just to be absolutely clear, you’re all sure there’s no one else we could find?” Bastien asks.
“I mean, sure, there’s a girl I know from a different city who knows literally everyone, but she got married recently so I suspect she’s busy,” I say.
He pouts at me and continues pacing up and down and around us in circles until I grab him by the wrist and hold his hand, forcing him to stay by my side.
“You’re doing my head in,” I mumble.
“Sorry,” he says.
I rub the back of his hand trying to give him some reassurance.
“It’s going to be okay, bud.”
He tilts his head at me and mouths, “Is it?”
Probably not, this is wildly dangerous, but thankfully I don’t have to answer him because Lucy stops dead at the end of the corridor and says, “This is the one.”
Mortem materialises, chewing on a translucent tail. It’s honestly beyond me how that floof ball keeps finding mice tails. He’s never managed to catch a moth let alone a rodent, at least not to my knowledge. Makes me wonder where he’s getting them.
Lucy seals us in the room, just to make doubly sure that Bastien’s sister can’t escape, and then calls her magic. It zips away from the walls in thick, shadowy wisps. She places them around the door frame almost like Sellotape, ensuring there are no gaps. When she’s done, she turns to us.
“No one in, no one out. That means you too, Mortem. I know you can materialise, but I don’t want any out routes for Calyx.”
“Meow.” Mortem dips his head. He’s been far better behaved since the library, and quieter too. I don’t know if it scared him into behaving. But I miss the grumpy bastard and all his quarrelling.
He sits at my feet while we wait for everyone to get ready.
“Lex, you’re on salt and demonic runes. Bastien, we need your blood on the mirrors,” Lucy says, jostling everyone into position.
Lex makes the circle large enough that trapped-in-the-middle Calyx won’t be able to reach us, but also small enough that we have room to step back and her not touch us if she lashes out.
Bastien steps into the middle of the circle and places the mirror in the centre.
“Wait,” Lucy says, holding her hand out as Bastien has the serrated edge of the blade millimetres from his skin. “You don’t have to do this.”
Bastien rolls his eyes. “When are you going to let your friends look after you?”
Lucy’s lips part. Her eyes go glassy. Then she lowers her head and nods, stepping back.
Bastien slices his hand and lets it drip onto the glass. He takes a vial out of his pocket and opens the lid.
He mumbles words under his breath, sprinkling Calyx’s ashes onto the mirror. Then he hops out of the circle, his skin looking as grey as his features are grave.
I open my arms and wrap them around him. Lex jumps in on the other side and Lucy, to my surprise, throws hers around him, too.
“We believe in you,” I mumble into his shoulder.
We step away to give him space. He takes three long, deep breaths and calls his magic.
Dozens of gnarly dark ribbons peel off the walls and wrap around his fists and arms, making him look like a swollen thundercloud.
He throws the first thread of magic towards the circle, using his hands to coax them into spinning.
Another goes, then another. Until the salt circle is no longer visible.
The black shadows spin and swirl around so fast, they become a seething mass.
It’s a fucking tornado in my mind. A tornado of magic and chaos.
I edge back, both impressed with Bastien’s magic and mildly concerned we’re all about to die.
Bastien buckles to his knees.
“Keep going, Bastien,” I shout. I want to go to him, to slide my hand in his and give him my energy, but it’s impossible and it wouldn’t work anyway. I’ve mastered resurrecting the rodents and small mammals needed to get a good grade, but it isn’t my speciality like it is his. He’s on his own.
He bares his teeth, his brow glistens with beads of sweat, but the ribbons of magic keep spinning faster and faster.
Resurrecting family isn’t just forbidden, it’s also difficult. Our bodies and minds fight doing it subconsciously because we know it’s wrong.
Bastien lurches forward and throws up, the pile of liquid far too bloody.
I glance at Lex, her face wrinkling. Bastien holds his hand up.
“Stay back,” he says. “I’ve got this.”
His nose erupts, blood pours over the floor, straight onto the salt circle.
“Oh fuck, he absolutely does not ‘got this’.” I lunge for Bastien and yank him back.
“SALT,” Lucy bellows at Lex, who is already opening the canister and hurling salt onto the floor to complete the circle.
The dark ribbons of magic surge and spiral into a funnel, swirling so fast it creates wind inside the room.
This was such a bad idea.
I drag Bastien away, but he passes out cold becoming a dead weight. Sweating and puffing, I manage to get us to the edge of the room—the safest distance I can.
“I’m sorry about this,” I whisper to him and then slap him hard across the face.
He jerks up, gasping for air. “Did I do it? Is she back?”
We glance behind us, and as the black sinuous ribbons dissipate, there, standing in their shadowy remnants, is the most hideous creature I’ve ever seen.
“Yeah, I think you did it.”