Chapter Twenty
CHAPTER
TWENTY
EMBER
Beware the vulnerable moments, intimate ones, moments of relief or breakthrough, moments when you would run to your Counterpart and take comfort in their arms — moments when bonds are most likely to form.
— Helen Blackburn, Echelon to the
School of Mental Magic
Ididn’t hear from Leland until the next morning.
Leland Stray: Another fourth year, Belinda Gatewood, will take you and Skye to the academy. It will be hot. Wear the jacket I left on your porch if you want cooling magic.
The door to Ash’s room was open, and a strong ray of daylight poured in through her gossamer window curtain, warming my face.
It was the first day since my arrival that Hartik’s Hollow hadn’t been partially cloudy or completely overcast. I paused, watching as Nova fetched a rainbow fuzzy mouse.
Centered under a small chandelier, Skye sat on the edge of the dark wood queen-sized bed, surrounded by neatly folded stacks of her clothing on top of the quilted coverlet.
“Are you . . .” I glanced at the closet Skye had made her own over the last three days, now empty but for a few loosely swinging hangers. “You’re coming with me? To the Creation Academy? Don’t you have to be a student?”
She gave Nova a salmon treat for bringing her the mouse. “I am.”
“A student?”
“Yes. A first year. I was here when the tall one told you that.”
“I know, but . . .” She said life would be meaningless if she couldn’t be an Elemental. “Does this mean you’re going to be a Creator?”
She tossed the mouse and stared out the window, gazing longingly at the hills, until Nova hopped on the bed and spat the mouse out in her lap. “I am going to the Creation Academy, yes.”
Okay, so. Still not a real answer.
I still hadn’t established if she was a Seven, but if she was allowed to follow me to the Creation Academy, I guessed she must be?
It was a weird choice for her to make though.
Creatus was in the desert, and Skye hated being hot.
She did things at ungodly hours, specifically to avoid the sun.
There was also the fact she didn’t port.
“But you want to be a mermaid,” I said. She had mermaids tattooed on her body — a mermaid cove from her shoulder to halfway down her arm. If she was switching to creation magic, it was her business. But I hoped she wasn’t doing it for me.
“Yes. For the killing.”
“You hate hot weather — your delicate skin?”
“My delicate skin will survive,” she said flatly, and nodded to her toned biceps as though they might help her fight her way through the desert. “I am very strong and manly.”
“Sure. But in a hundred degrees?”
“I live at the Creation Academy now. The desert is where I belong. Now go . . .” Her silver rings shone in the sunlight as she flicked a hand to shoo me. “You’re not a good packer. That is what you should be focusing on.”
By that point, I knew her well enough to know pressing the issue would get me nowhere, so I kept my thoughts to myself and left to pack, taking the rest of the day to shove everything in my hefting satchel. I could’ve finished it sooner, had Skye not gotten bored.
She decided to entertain herself by tossing grapes in my mouth and clementines at my head, hiding her fists behind her back, telling me to pick one, and then not letting me keep what I’d picked.
I dressed in a tank, cut-off jean shorts, and Leland’s cooling jacket.
Then, around dinnertime, Skye and I watched through the front window as Belinda bounded up the hill path.
Belinda’s straight brown hair swished with her boisterous steps, and her warm, light-brown skin glowed in the sinking sun.
We went out to the porch, and as I was still registering the small face of a white bunny rabbit poking out of Belinda’s lime-green bag, she raced up the steps and crushed me in a hug.
I glanced down to make sure her Familiar was still breathing.
“I have heard,” Belinda said, beaming with enthusiasm, “so much about you. From the papers. From — ” She pushed her hair behind her ear, suddenly hesitant.
“Actually. Not important. This is Pepper.” She swiveled to show me the rabbit.
“I know, I know. Physically, she’s more of a Salt, but once you get to know her gift — ”
Skye slowly shook her head in warning. Familiars’ gifts were just as sensitive as a witch’s was.
“Spiritually,” Belinda whispered, “she’s totally more of a Pepper.”
No one mentioned Nova.
Belinda linked her arm through mine, and we set off for Conventicles Crossing after Skye made a request that I should’ve seen coming. Skye was doing the least amount of porting. Conventicles Crossing to Creatus, and that was it. The rest of the journey was going to be on foot.
We passed multiple Anti-Human Initiative propaganda posters on the way, some I didn’t understand. A human wearing a paper towel bib and eating a sticky rack of ribs. Humans asking for money, holding signs saying they didn’t have a house or a way to feed their family — some had dogs with them.
“Is it really like that?” asked Belinda, still holding tight to my elbow. “People don’t have places to live?”
“Oh.” I thought for a second. “Sometimes. In some places it is.”
“And your leaders do nothing? They don’t care?”
“Um.” I pressed my lips together, then parted them. “Some do.”
Belinda was a Seven, so it felt unkind to mention Everden had its own problems. The majority of Aspirants forced to deteriorate and work menial jobs.
Dark Witches outcasts on the mainland. There might not have been a housing crisis, but certainly some people lived better than others.
And I’d only seen Hartik’s Hollow, the capital, the wealthiest part.
Skye’s green eyes enlarged to the size of moons, her mouth quivering as she looked up from under her dark lashes, holding out her arms like she was carrying a large box. “Did you see the one about the kitties in the field?”
“Oh my Goddess, yes!” Belinda said, and stroked Pepper’s head to soothe her. “How could they!”
Belinda finally let go of me when we reached Conventicles Crossing, but only because that section of Varanus Street, with its hordes of witches bustling from ingress to egress in a constant, chaotic stream, was too crowded for her to keep holding on.
I briefly lost Skye, but after getting spun around a few times in my search for short black hair and a dozen stud earrings, I found her a few paces back from the madness, standing like a sad tree.
I wove through the crowd to where she was.
Beside her, Nova’s back was contracted in a high arch, her black hair standing on end as she hissed at the silver gateway to Creatus.
But Skye only looked vaguely forward, silent and unmoving, not even checking her back the way she always did so diligently.
The length of black hair that swept over the left side of her forehead hung flatly.
“You doing okay?” I asked.
“Do you know how long it takes to walk to Creatus?” she asked.
“I don’t,” I answered.
Skye flipped her transmitter around to show me. “Fourteen days if we don’t stop. We could make it before Selection.”
“Isn’t Selection here in Hartik’s Hollow?” I asked. “So, what, we’d have like four days to walk back here for it?”
“Yeah,” Skye sighed. “Maybe if we took a horse . . .”
“Oh, Skye,” Belinda said, stepping forward, her face swelling with an unnatural amount of empathy. “Do you really want to do that to the horse? You’d need like gallons of water at your fingertips. Is that something you have?”
“No,” Skye sighed again.
“Come on,” I said, taking her hand. “The worst part is the lead-up . . . and the motion sickness afterward. But you’ll survive. You’re very strong and manly.”
“I am,” Skye said a bit pathetically as we dragged her to the egress.
We hurtled through the roaring tunnel of light, my stomach swooping more violently than the last few times I’d ported.
Midway through the portal, Belinda turned back to us with her cheeks flapping. “It is,” she shouted, “unanimously agreed. That this is the worst porting route. In all of Everden.”
I understood why. Whatever magic had come together to forge the path between Hartik’s Hollow and Creatus seemed hellbent on splitting that vortex apart.
I had to brace my hands on my knees when it spat us out.
Skye rushed for the first random building in sight, clutching her stomach.
When I straightened, a heavy gust of hot wind smacked me in the face, bringing a million different smells that hit me all at once.
Iron and rust. Peppers and potatoes. Sweet and heavy smoke. And the earth — dusty, warm, baking.
In the distance was a desert, but the center of Creatus was essentially Manhattan. It had some of the tallest buildings I’d ever seen. Glittering and shining, sleek, silver and steel.
Then there was Skye. Retching over a potted shrub.
“So,” I said, not sure what to do with Belinda’s brown eyes twinkling up at me as we waited. “How’d you get stuck with this job?”
“Oh? Me?” asked Belinda.
I blinked at her, wondering if I’d misread the expectant way she’d been looking at me.
“I just asked!” She shrugged, turning out her palms. “I’m in the same boat as Leland, us being Sevens and all. An odd job is good for my resume. I’ll really do anything if it gets me into fifth year!”
I heard almost none of that. “Leland’s a Seven?”
“Help,” Skye said weakly.
We walked over and Belinda gave her a shot for nausea, plus some electrolyte water from a hot-pink water bottle.
Skye took a few tiny sips, wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, and grunted before saying, “This is gentle puking, very mild.” Then her head sagged as she braced both hands on the rim of the concrete planter and spat.
I looked up at the pinnacle of a skyscraper behind her. “Were all these buildings made by Creators?” I asked Belinda, figuring I’d give Skye some privacy as she finished decorating the wood chips with hocks of spit.