The Spell Caster

Chapter 11

LAYLA

T he day of Calamus’s spell circle, I dreamed of Costi. We stood on the shore of a bright blue sea. As he sang hauntingly, the sky turned storm dark, and the air filled with the sharp scent of lightning.

Lately, my dreams had been full of cryptic alarm.

I moved woodenly through getting ready, then passed the morning hours waiting for this to be over and done with.

If I thought I would get to see Costi during his time off, I was wrong. He was supposed to be resting, but he’d been scarce. He was looking into… whatever was going on. The Mountain Circle’s many mysteries.

Before noon, I finally gave in and went to the arena. As Calamus had promised, a sign on the door marked the building as reserved and cautioned visitors not to disturb the circle spell.

The heavy doors banged shut after me. The huge space was eerie and empty, liminal. The skylights high above let in the feeble sun from the cloudy sky, but the main electric lights were off. A circle of flickering candles created a wan glow that didn’t quite banish the dark.

Calamus knelt in the center of the space, referencing a paper diagram and tracing. His face was uncharacteristically blank as he concentrated.

Circle tracing was done with a stick of wax, imbued with various metals, ground gemstones, and herbs, leaving shimmering symbols and lines that extended at least twenty feet. I had never heard of a circle this large. This was a major working.

The spell hummed with magical potential. I didn’t know if it was going to do what Calamus thought it would, but it would certainly light up when he poured magic into it.

I didn’t interrupt Calamus as he worked, and he said nothing, though he must have sensed my presence. I watched him for some time before a slice of light appeared as the door opened again.

A group of witches entered, hushing their voices. I moved to meet them away from where Calamus was working.

“Good morning, darling,” said my mother. “I brought your robes.” She handed me a crimson bundle. She was also attired formally, in a sleek modern business set.

My face froze as I schooled my features into a nonreaction, giving nothing away. I should have known she would show up.

“Thank you all for coming,” I addressed the group without feeling.

Cedar Grey, councilor of the Arcaenum and Calamus’s father, stood with another witch wearing the ceremonial black robes.

“It’s so nice to meet you at last,” said Grey, his tone not quite matching the polite words. “This is my fellow councilor, Elan Quince.”

Quince was tall and hawkish, not quite into his elder years. He nodded to me in greeting.

“Go try on your new clothes,” Mother said. Her eyes seemed to miss the bruise on my upper arm.

I excused myself to one of the training rooms. My breath caught on a sob as I looked down at the spill of cloth in my hands. I hadn’t imagined this strange scenario as my first time wearing the red spell caster’s garment.

I blinked rapidly against tears as I changed into the robe. It flattered any shape with a fitted upper section and a sleeveless tunic that flared out over the legs. I smoothed the fabric down.

When I rejoined the group, we waited, watching Calamus prepare the final strokes.

Councilor Grey nodded at his son. “He’s convinced you’ll be the most powerful spell caster we’ve ever seen,” he said. “If only we can unleash you.”

I turned to the councilor. “Is that why the Arcaenum agreed to try this?” I asked.

He regarded me in the flickering candlelight. “Weapons are useful, but information is what wins the war.”

Unease brushed me. I looked back to Calamus. The circle was nearly complete.

The far door opened, held for longer than normal as another figure entered slowly, followed by a companion. When my eyes adjusted, I could see why. An elderly witch in black robes with a cloud of white hair balanced carefully on a walking stick, assisted by the red-haired witch from the library.

“Councilor Rhodes.” Annoyance saturated Grey’s voice. “We weren’t expecting you.”

Rhodes’s dark blue eyes glittered in an ancient face as she made her way to us. I had the distinct impression that she was amused by making Grey wait.

“Dear me,” the elder witch said mildly. “I think the meeting invitation didn’t make it to me. I would have missed it if I hadn’t heard the youngsters discussing it in the library.”

Grey’s eyes narrowed. “This is not a meeting of the Arcaenum.”

“It’s a matter your son brought before the councilors, which means the Arcaenum is involved.” The library witch dragged over a stool, and Rhodes lowered herself with careful dignity, then folded her hands atop her walking stick. “Thank you, Hazel.”

Hazel wasn’t wearing formal robes but had donned a simple dress in a dark green color that flattered her outsider complexion. She was clutching a bundle of printed papers. I gave her a small smile, trying to defuse some of the tension.

“Suit yourself,” Grey said through clenched teeth. “As you always do.”

“Thank you, I will.”

My mother gripped my elbow, motioning with her eyes for me to turn my attention to the circle. Calamus looked up and nodded once.

Hawkish Councilor Quince cleared his throat nervously. “It seems like we’re just about to get started.”

Magic rose in the room. At first it was a subtle hum, then increased to a discordant and oppressive sensation that lifted the hairs on my arms and rattled my teeth. Fate, Calamus was dumping in a ton of magic. Maybe Costi had been right about blowing things up. Even the complicated summoning circle paled in comparison to this working.

The circle caught and began to light, fire whipping through the lines, dancing toward the boundary. It was beautiful .

Calamus continued to pour energy into the structure as he added the final stroke, completing the figure. Then he jumped backward. With an inaudible boom that stirred our hair and clothing, magic erupted in a swirling column, dazzlingly bright.

This was like nothing I’d ever heard of before, and Councilor Grey’s stunned face told me he didn’t have any more experience than I did. My mother stared without visible reaction, gripping my arm tightly and holding me in place.

As suddenly as the light had exploded, it collapsed, falling into the core of the burned-out circle and leaving a glowing mass. Afterimage spots floated in my vision.

The silence was broken by Calamus’s hiccupped laugh, which he tried to cover up by clearing his throat.

The councilors, my mother, Hazel, and I crept forward, stepping over the burn lines to peer at… whatever this thing was that had been created. It was a vaguely oval shape floating in the air, shot through with twisting vines of fire. As we watched, the surface solidified and began to harden and clear, for a moment reflecting our shocked faces back at us.

Then the mirror turned translucent, and we were looking into another world.

***

I owe Calamus an apology , I thought faintly.

Councilor Grey strode up to what we could now see was a window to elsewhere. Slightly larger than a full-length mirror with jagged edges lined in metallic vines, it seemed affixed to the air at about waist height. There was no sense of distortion, such as looking through glass or over a video screen. It was like seeing into another room through a doorway—as if we could walk right in.

Looking through, I could see a space illuminated with something like witch lights—less bright than electric bulbs and steadier than fire. The entire scene was taken up by shelves, which were crammed full of stacks of books and a hoard of strange artifacts. Bottles, statues, scrolls, metal ornaments of unknown purpose—even some sort of horned animal skull—all piled and stacked haphazardly.

“It’s… it’s a bookshelf,” Hazel said to Calamus in front of me, sounding dazed.

“A storage closet, maybe?” he responded as they both tilted their heads, trying to get a different angle.

“Look at the text on the spines!”

The chatter cut off abruptly as the two jumped back from the mirror. Councilor Grey straightened in alarm.

Behind them, I craned my neck to see what they were reacting to.

Someone had joined us on the other side.

A striking masculine figure with a bucked cuirass of black leather worn over his otherwise bare chest looked back at us. He could have been mistaken for an exceptionally beautiful human, perhaps an outsider with his straight blond hair. If not for the sharply pointed ears. And the grayish cast to his skin. And the dark horns curling back from his head.

This was definitely not a familiar. But what else could he have been but a demon? We were looking into Hell.

He seemed as surprised as we were.

The demon tilted his head. He spoke unfamiliar words in a low, melodious voice, the inflection rising at the end in a question. He extended an elegant finger with some sort of glove on it and tapped the surface of the magic. It rippled like water as he examined it.

“Can you understand me?” Councilor Grey addressed the creature. His voice sounded tight.

“ Isstu mol coentrin ,” the demon said, peering cautiously at us.

“Hazel,” Grey said without turning.

The witch looked back at us uncertainly with wide greenish eyes. She evidently hadn’t expected this to work any more than I had.

“Go ahead,” Rhodes encouraged her gently.

Hazel turned back to the mirror. Looking at her stack of papers, she stammered through some words, I assumed the demonic tongue she’d been studying.

The demon focused on her. “ Ne baktaumin. Ol ikgam li alabilikim.”

“I… think he’s saying I’m bad at speaking,” Hazel rasped.

“Find out who this is,” Grey said.

After a painfully slow series of exchanges, Hazel cleared her throat. “His name is Adriel, and he is imorigaun palasmanen , but I’m not sure what that means. I don’t know any of the other words.”

“ Baun, scriamartik ol kirmianin? ” Adriel asked.

“H-Hazel,” she squeaked out her name.

“Ask him about Layla,” Calamus whispered, motioning me forward.

Moving only his eyes, the demon focused his unnerving gaze on me as I joined Hazel. She asked him a faltering question with my name in it. Adriel considered me for a moment, raising a gloved hand to his sharp chin.

“ Inuaktamin, ” he said.

“Not… mine,” Hazel translated.

My heart thudded in my chest. Hazel and I looked at each other helplessly.

The demon turned his head to the side, as if something had diverted his attention.

He began to speak again as he turned elegantly toward the shelf behind him and plucked what appeared to be a piece of thin, pliable leather that had been covering a golden vase. Hazel asked him another question, and he repeated something slowly. He pushed the leather at the mirror, causing it to distort and then go dark. He had covered it.

For moments, no one moved.

Quince’s face had taken on such an alarming shade, he looked ready to pass out. “That was—”

“Extraordinary,” Rhodes mumbled.

“He… um… wants us to come back tomorrow,” Hazel said. Her face was moon pale in the now-darkened arena. The candles had been extinguished by the force of the magic blasting out of the circle.

Councilor Grey, his brow pinched in a scowl, glanced at the darkened mirror. He walked quickly in the direction of the private practice spaces. “Follow me,” he said. “We may still be observed out here.”

We reconvened in the back, a small room that seemed to be dedicated to free weights.

“Calamus, how long will that spell be stable?” Grey said, wasting no time.

Calamus still looked shocked. “It’s… I’m not sure. The… mirror seems to be existing independently now. As long as no one smudges the lines too much, I don’t imagine it would be disrupted.”

Grey’s robes fluttered as he paced back and forth, scrubbing his chin. “Quince, when we’re done, call Daire and have her send two guardians. One for each door. We need to keep everyone out.”

“Of course,” Quince said.

My face must have betrayed some disbelief, because Grey narrowed his eyes and looked at me directly as he spoke to the group. “We’ll call a full meeting of the Arcaenum for a long-term plan later, but for now we should assume this is immediately dangerous.”

“We can’t just leave that thing there,” said Rhodes.

“It’s a good opportunity, though, isn’t it?” My mother’s silky voice drew our attention. “We could learn more about Hell. It’s obvious we’re… underinformed.”

Grey’s eyes glittered disconcertingly, and he gave her an approving nod. “We’ll meet here again tomorrow. Question the demon.”

“What about me?” I said through numb lips, my instincts screaming at me to run as far away as possible. Whatever this was, I did not want to get involved.

“I don’t think Layla needs to join us,” Calamus said quickly. “I’ll try to find out more if I can,” he told me gently, placing his hand on my shoulder. “Can I walk you out?”

Without saying goodbye, I allowed him to lead me toward a back door.

His father followed us. “Layla.” When I turned, Grey’s steel eyes were cold. “You will not speak of this to anyone.”

I froze. My insides twisted sharply, but I said nothing. To allow myself to be commanded went against everything I knew.

“Remember what I told you, Layla,” my mother prompted, sidling up behind us. Under her sweet tone was an iron knife at my jugular.

I stared at her. “Of course.” My voice burned in my throat.

Calamus guided me outside. Even the overcast sky was too bright after being in the dark arena. I looked up at him, wanting some reassurance that my suspicions about what just happened were wrong.

“Can you believe it? That was amazing ! An entirely new species,” he said, his face exuberant.

I blinked. “I guess… your old books were right.” What else were we in the dark about?

“I don’t blame you for not believing it until you saw it,” he said with a soft smile.

Irritation flared hot, and I bit my lip to keep from screaming at him.

“Thanks for trying,” I grated out. “To ask about me, I mean.”

“Of course,” he said. “With this new source of information, we’re bound to be able to find a solution.”

I thumbed open my phone to a series of messages from Costi:

I don’t hear any fire alarms, guess Grey didn’t burn anything down.

Where are you?

Layla.

Calamus cleared his throat. “Would you like to—”

“I need to get going,” I interrupted.

“You don’t want to talk about what just happened?”

Not with you. “Maybe later.”

“Sure,” he said. “We’ll talk later.”

I was already walking away.

I’m headed to the barracks , I texted Costi, heading in that direction. A misting rain picked up as I walked, but not enough to make me run.

The barracks was a stone building with two stories that wrapped around a central courtyard, much like our apartment building. When I approached, Costi was waiting outside the main door under the covered entrance. I smoothed my damp hair.

He seemed to be in one piece, but he was frozen, staring at me with his head tilted and his mouth open, one hand holding something wrapped in cloth.

“What… what’s wrong?” I had a sudden fear that something about looking into Hell had changed me in a visible way.

“You look good in red,” he said in a husky voice that tumbled around my insides recklessly.

Right. The spell caster robes.

His eyes shuttered with a sudden sadness that resonated. My lifelong desire to be his spell caster was still there. We just kept piling up wants. Too many incongruous, impossible things.

Costi pushed the small bundle he was holding into my hand. Curious, I lifted the edge.

“You brought me a cookie ?” I said with possibly undue excitement.

“Thought you might want one.” He pushed his hair up in the back and glanced away in an endearing way that was almost bashful.

I flushed and couldn’t stop my smile as I held my prize to my chest.

Costi’s eyes darkened as he took in my reaction, and he leaned closer. “You’re easy to please.”

“You know what I like.” This conversation was tumbling rapidly off track. We didn’t seem to be able to focus well when we were around each other. I swallowed thickly. “Is there… somewhere private we could go?” I cringed. “To talk. I need to talk to you.”

With a slight smirk, Costi raised an eyebrow but said nothing, motioning me through the door.

Inside the barracks was a hall with rows of identical, evenly spaced doors. A sign on the wall directed visitors to numbered dorms. He led me to the end of one hall, past a computer lab, to a library that had been propped open. The small room filled with bookshelves and a stack of board games was unoccupied, and he shut the door. Light from the cloudy sky filtered through the windows. We left the overhead lights off.

Costi was still limping, favoring his right leg.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Better,” he said. Getting Costi to fess up to physical pain was impossible. I didn’t exactly know why he couldn’t stand to be seen as having a weakness, but I had my suspicions.

He sat in a plush armchair, the only concession to his injury he seemed willing to make.

I couldn’t sit. I blew a breath out noisily from trembling lips. “Hell is real,” I blurted. Five seconds with Costi made me entirely unable to keep my promise not to tell anyone.

“Fucking Grey,” he growled, as if the existence of such a place was Calamus’s fault. “What did he do ?”

“His circle spell worked. We talked to a demon . But he didn’t look like a familiar, Costi—he looked… almost human . He had pointy ears and horns like some outsider’s idea of the devil.” I wrapped my arms around myself to keep it together and paced around the ornate rug in front of his chair. “What does it mean? Is every old story real? Are the angels gathering to impose Inperium?” Now that I admitted everything out loud, panic was starting to seep in.

“Layla,” Costi said, grounding me.

I paused and turned to him. “I don’t know what’s going on,” I said, trying to be calm. “My mother, my coven mentor, the councilors, they all seem… wrong.”

He made a rumbling sound of disgust. “They’re using the attack to make changes without agreement.”

“Calamus’s father warned me not to tell anyone about what happened today.”

Costi didn’t reply. His mouth was set seriously, his eyes narrowed in calculation as he looked into the distance, contemplating.

“We didn’t find out anything,” I murmured, drawing his attention back to me. “About me.”

He held out his hand. I put the cookie into it, and he gave me a faint half smile, setting my snack on an end table before reaching for me again.

I tentatively placed my hand into his, and he wrapped his fingers around it, pulling me to him until he could hook an arm around my waist and tumble me into his lap. I made a surprised squeak. He pushed his fingers up into my hair and held me against him.

“Tell me,” he said.

My throat tightened at his tender tone. He’d always been able to draw every hidden worry out of me.

I sank into his warm embrace, careful not to press his injured leg. We shouldn’t be doing this—not in public, and definitely not while he was in uniform and my crimson clothes marked me as off-limits . But I couldn’t move. I needed this badly.

“The… demon … said I wasn’t his.”

Costi considered my words quietly. “What does that mean? Is someone else… like him involved?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, leaning my head on his shoulder.

“Your magic was different,” he said after a quiet minute.

A vague memory of him mentioning that after the attack brushed through my mind. “What was different?”

Costi ran his fingers along my scalp and through my hair as he thought for a moment. “Caster magic is kind of like fire.”

“Yeah,” I said, starting to feel sleepy.

“It’s always like that, as far as I can tell. Different sizes, different intensity, but always fire. That’s the only thing I’ve ever seen. Everyone I asked said the same thing.”

My heart flipped. “You’ve been asking around?”

“I wanna get this figured out for you,” he said. “The fight was intense. Thought maybe I was seeing things, but…”

“What did you see?”

“Your magic was like water, like you pulled it up from the sea. And huge, bigger than any spell I’ve ever seen. It was boiling —it burned all six of them dead immediately.”

I kept my head tucked against him as I stared sightlessly at the bookshelf across the room. I felt… a connection with his words, my stomach churning. I’d been raised to kill angels, but it was something else entirely to be confronted with scalding them to death by the half dozen. But I knew, without a doubt, that spell had come through me.

“What does it mean?” I asked quietly, but neither of us had an answer.

The rain picked up outside, spattering against the windows, throwing the library into shadow. With no one to judge us, I clung to him, the only constant in my life that I could count on.

We stayed like that, quietly, until the night fell and the rain ended.