38. Collar
Collar
“Where is this?” Arcturus whispered, jogging out of the mirror quickly behind him and compulsively grabbing Bones’s shirt when his balanced wobbled. Even after he’d gotten his footing, he didn’t let go of Bones right away.
“Where are we?” he repeated.
“A pub.”
“Yeah, okay. But where?”
Caelum brushed himself off, doing his best to look unbothered and ignoring stares as well as he could. He walked further out of the mirror and towards Alaric, who had already gone through and stood by a wooden beam that held up that part of the roof.
“What does it matter?” Bones asked, his eyes still scanning the room. “You have pubs in your world. I know you do. Now stop talking.”
It felt faintly bizarre to be there now, barefoot and only wearing a black satin shirt and thin trousers at roughly ten o’clock at night. He was also conscious of the gold collar around his neck, which had already gotten a few double-takes and stares, in addition to his bare feet.
He growled out of the side of his mouth to Alaric.
“We need to find someplace else. Not here.”
“I know a place,” Alaric said, pausing to push Wraith’s head back inside his satchel so he could refasten the top flap. “It’s not far.”
“So we made it, then?” Arcturus pressed. “This is that place you both told me about? The invisible city outside your school?”
“Yes. Stop talking.”
Caelum had formally invited Arcturus to Bonescastle before they’d walked through the mirror. He wasn’t entirely sure what would’ve happened if he hadn’t remembered the kid would need an invite from a resident to be able to see the city at all.
It seemed unlikely Arcturus would have exploded, or even gotten sick, but he might have found himself standing in a field somewhere, with no way to talk to them, or even see them.
The official Bonescastle greeter, the elderly mage who’d invited all his classmates when they arrived here for the first time, used a special spell that made him visible in both dimensions.
“Go that way,” Alaric whispered. He pointed to their right, nudging Bones’s arm. “Take a left when we get out the door. It’s only a few blocks––”
“Greythorne!” a voice said loudly, from the other side of the pub.
Voices quieted around the nearby tables and booths.
Bones and Alaric froze.
Arcturus turned his head, puzzled, and stared in the direction from which the voice had come, like he thought he might recognize them.
Bones didn’t.
He also didn’t wait around for them to yell Alec’s name a second time.
Without looking back, he began to walk, moving fast for the exit now that his eyes had found the green-painted door.
He wove and slid past a crowd by the bar, then pushed through the wooden door and into the night air, Alaric right on his heels.
Arcturus followed soon after them, and Bones began walking in the direction Alaric had described.
He’d only made it about four steps when the pub door opened again, and a small crowd of wizards and witches stumbled through the opening after them.
The same voice from inside the pub shattered the night’s quiet a second time.
“Hey!” he snapped. “Hold up!”
Bones turned around. He stared at the tall, black-haired mage standing there, his jaw clenched hard enough to hurt.
“Fuck off, Joran.”
Draken Joran, the irritatingly handsome son of a movie star and one of the more all-around wanker wizards Bones had ever met, stared at him in surprise.
Shock bled over his features as he seemed to realize what and who he was staring at, then anger replaced the shock in his dark brown eyes as soon as he knew for sure.
A scowl replaced his usual moronic expression.
“You,” Joran said coldly.
“Not now!” Jolie Harringbone inserted herself between the two of them, holding up a hand at roughly chest-height for each of them, and sounding actually angry. “We don’t have time for this now, either of you!”
She turned to glare at Bones. “Are you going to find Leda?”
“Yes,” Bones growled. “Get out of my way.”
“There’s guards all over the school gates,” another voice piped up. We barely got out ourselves. You can’t go in that way.”
Bones remembered the mage from New Year’s.
His name was Darragh-something.
“He’s right,” Miranda Rook piped up, appearing on the sidewalk beside Joran. “You’ll never get in that way. Believe me. We tried. They’ve changed the chimaeras somehow, and an alarm goes off when you even get near the outer wall.”
“Who said anything about us going in that way?” Bones snapped. “Leave us the fuck alone.” He paused when something occurred to him then, and motioned towards Jolie. “Alec. Give her the cat. And maybe you should go with them too,” he added, looking at Arcturus.
“No!” the kid snapped angrily. “You’re not dumping me!”
Caelum lost his cool.
“We don’t have time for this shit!” he snarled. He glared around at all of them, then stopped to stare extra hard at the kid. “Now go with them! I’m not going to be able to get your sister out if I have to worry about you!”
“Sister?” one of the witches murmured in surprise.
“You’re still wearing the collar.” Nyx Minh stepped closer to Bones on the cobblestone walk, and squinted at the gold ring around Bones’s neck. She glanced at Alaric, quirking an inquisitive eyebrow. “Why haven’t you removed it?”
“We’re going to deal with that now, Nyxy,” Alaric explained.
“Where?” Miranda asked, coming up to stand by Harringbone.
“For fuck’s sake!” Bones burst out. “Follow us, if you want! But I need this thing off me, now. Either help or shut the fuck up!” He pointed at Arcturus, giving him a death stare. “And you’re staying here where it’s safe, with your sister’s friends! It’s not a discussion!”
Everyone fell silent, staring between Bones and the younger Shadow.
Annoyed by their astonished looks, Bones aimed his ire at Greythorne.
“Where?” he snapped.
Alaric jumped, then pointed. “There. Right there. The monocerus stable. See the sign? No one will bother us in there… and I know the owner a little.”
Bones was already walking before Alaric finished speaking.
“Fuck! No… STOP!” Caelum gasped. “STOP!”
He winced as Alaric eased off, and realized he was still gripping Jolie Harringbone’s hand, now tightly enough he had to be hurting her.
He relaxed his fingers guiltily, giving her what probably appeared to be an annoyed look, but she stubbornly held on, seemingly unfazed.
He wasn’t even sure which part he felt guilty about.
He knew Jolie was more tolerant of the shit that came spewing out of his mouth on occasiona, but he also knew Joran was definitely not liking him touching her.
“Joran, huh?” he said, still panting from the pain.
Harringbone glanced at Joran, her lips twitching, before she looked back at Bones and shrugged. “Suppose so.”
“You could do better.”
Nyx burst out in a laugh, but Joran wasn’t amused.
“Fuck you, you murderous prick,” he snapped.
Alaric continued to flip through the book he’d pulled out of his satchel, muttering in Sanskrit as he stared at the ring around Caelum’s neck. “What am I doing wrong, Minh?” he asked. “I did the spell exactly the way it’s written.”
“What about blood?” Nyx suggested. “Could he have locked it specifically to himself, using blood?”
“Pretty dark,” Darragh muttered, casting another diagnostic over the collar. “But definitely possible.”
“Possible?” Caelum scoffed. He frowned up incredulously at all of them. “You say you’ve been working on this with Leda and Mocking and this is the first time that’s crossed any of your minds? That Malefic Bones might’ve used dark magic to chain me to him?”
He scowled, then scanned through their faces.
“Where is Mocking?” he asked.
Jolie squeezed his hand, as if in warning. Bones felt a flicker of alarm when he saw Miranda Rook’s eyes grow suddenly bright.
“He’s still in there,” Jolie said.
“He opted to stay behind,” Darragh explained. “Something to do with Blackstone. He took those drugs Leda asked me for,” he added, glancing at Jolie. “It’s probable it has something to do with that. Or maybe old Blackstone has something up his sleeve.”
Caelum frowned, looking between them as they spoke.
“Even if it’s blood, you should still be able to break it,” Nyx insisted next, her attention still on Bones’s collar. “He has a divinity primal, right? Like Leda? Is there some way to harness that? It should be able to override the blood, if he can convince it to.”
“He should be able to use his own blood, in theory,” Alaric mused. “His father’s mixed their blood a few times… with the loyalty pledge to Dark Cathedral, and with the do-no-harm thing he forced on him as a kid.”
Joran scoffed, but neither Alaric nor Nyx glanced at him.
Caelum frowned, listening to their back and forth.
Just how long had they been working on this?
And divinity primal? Had Leda told them that?
He glanced in the direction of the barn door, fighting the urge to snap at all of them again, or maybe just search the barn until he found a good set of cutting sheers.
He was almost willing to risk the collar murdering him if there was a better than half chance he might break free.
His anxiety, now that he was out of the dungeon, was off the charts.
It was making his heart hammer in his chest. He still couldn’t feel Leda, or talk to her, which was unsettling enough.
“Can you use your Obeah weirdness to see any more about what’s going on at the school?” Caelum asked Arcturus, for what had to be the fifteenth time. “Can you sense Leda’s magic? Is she still there?”
Arcturus gave him an exasperated look.
“No. I can’t. Don’t you think I’d tell you, if I could?”
Caelum didn’t trust himself to answer that, so he didn’t.
The wave of anxiety and fear that rose in him, and he fought to control it.
He needed to control it well enough that he could think.
“What’s the problem, do you think?” Caelum asked next, addressing his question to both Alaric and Nyx. “Not enough magic? That’s the problem, right? You need more magic to break through the blood element of the curse, which is making the collar stronger.”