Chapter Four: Reminders

 

Nine people appeared around the space as if they'd been there the entire time. Maybe they had been waiting—waiting to see if I'd escaped, having seen only the Department's version on the news.

Will jumped to his feet from the cross-legged position he'd been sitting in.

“Ren!”

My shoulders loosened. “Hey,” I said softly. I had gotten so used to having them in my head at school that it had been a blow to lose the connection when I’d left. Frequencies were too easily tracked, though. And too easy for the Department to point to for complicity. I’d tossed mine on the second day of my exile for the safety of everyone.

“Did you get him?” Olivia demanded, arms crossed over her chest.

Constantine's magic shaded each crevice. It was a trick of the mind, device, and magic, that each of them looked as if they were in the room with me, but I knew that if I tried to touch one of them, my hand would only encounter a facsimile of flesh.

“Yes. Liam.” I settled into my own cross-legged position on the floor. With the device active, the room around us could change into whatever view the participant wanted, but a bare interrogation room seemed appropriate on my side. “And I stickered the grunts.”

Will gave a thumbs-up and immediately bent over a square device with Dagfinn and Asafa.

“I almost didn't get them attached this time. The praetorians came.”

Silence greeted that pronouncement, stilling the movement in the holo like old tech frozen on a screen.

Then movement suddenly reinstated itself.

“If the tracking doesn't work, we'll tweak again,” Dagfinn said, voice assured in the way of someone whose code always—eventually—worked, while dutifully ignoring the elephant in the room. Everyone at Excelsine had experienced the terror of the praetorians on campus, and no one wanted a second meeting in a place where the enforcers had no restrictions. “Someone is going to make a mistake on their side, or we are going to get a hit.”

It was a slim hope—that the hunters would lead us to the ferals, or to a secret facility, or to Stavros himself. Julian Dare and his contacts had already checked all the facilities that were known to the public and many that were not.

Not that I would trust Julian suddenly “finding” the ferals. There was no way Stavros thought Julian on any side other than Axer's. And he knew Axer was on mine.

Any discovery of the ferals that wasn't made by us through trickery and stealth was going to be a trap.

“The praetorians have been given emergency powers,” Olivia said. “It's all over the feeds. Any time you show up in the First Layer, or anywhere else, they have permission to take you with excessive force. Your interaction today was broadcast throughout the layer and was used to consolidate support for the emergency action.”

“Yeah.” I rubbed a hand over my elbow, where I'd been hit, then down my leg. “Yeah. I, uh, I think I might ask for help in the rescues.”

Some of Olivia's grimness faded. “Good.”

Constantine's smugness pulsed in the corner and I studiously looked elsewhere.

I lifted the chip imbued with the spell I'd been reluctantly working on. “I designed a device—where I could appear briefly, then pull one of Will’s pads to the position. Like a First Layer GPS locator and portal, but with protections against outside tracking. The receiving side comm needs setting, though.”

Dagfinn looked up from the tracking program and motioned eagerly. “It's not something coded directly into your magic this time, is it?”

“No. I got yelled at enough the last time.” I flicked the edge of the chip's specs with my fingers, sending the package shooting around the sides of the holoroom, and watched as it zoomed into Dagfinn's palm. He opened the packet and looked through it—Will eagerly peering over his shoulder.

A moment later, Will rubbed his hands together and Dagfinn nodded. “Give us an hour,” Dagfinn said. “We can easily do this. Your spells are surprisingly elegant in their chaos, have I told you that?”

I tried to show enthusiasm. Maybe I could sabotage the device on my side.

Olivia narrowed her eyes at me, as if she'd heard my thought, or read it on my face. “I just sent a communication to Dare. He said that his team will be ready as soon as Dagfinn and William deliver the pad and spell.”

“Oh. Great. Great.”

Sometimes...sometimes the efficiency and genius in my group of friends was not a benefit.

Olivia narrowed her eyes further. “Yes. Great. They are extremely capable of doing the rescuing. And if you leave the scene immediately, the praetorians aren't allowed to be in the First Layer without you present. A benefit for the non-magical population, don't you agree?”

Right. Definitely. And I could...totally leave without participating in the rescues.

Rocks formed in my stomach. “The Department isn't without strong first line resources. Their hunters and thieves are well-equipped with containers. They will give anyone a fight.”

I could channel my own magic in the First Layer whereas the others—the ones I would be sending into danger—could not.

Olivia stared at me. “Are you telling me that you don't think Alexander Dare will be able to handle hunters in the First Layer?”

Constantine didn't even attempt to hide his smirk, as he looped one string through another at my side, forming a pentagram.

“Of course not.”

“Good. Everyone knows the danger. This is not your war alone.”

“No. No, I know. I know.” Knowing was different than doing, though. I chewed a fingernail, wishing it was a pen cap. “I made the spell.”

Her eyes softened. “We'll be with you soon.”

That wasn't something that made me feel better.

Arms wrapped around me and I closed my eyes. The hug didn't include all the sensory details—the one thing the rooms couldn't provide was true physical interaction—but I could pretend. Those were Neph's arms wrapping around me, even though she was a layer away.

I kept my eyes closed and let myself pretend.

“Just another few weeks,” she said soothingly.

“Why does Leandred get to be there now?” someone groused. “We all took Individualized Study to minimize class restrictions this term, and are still confined to campus. How does he keep escaping?”

“I'm special. You should already know this,” Con said, leaning back in his chair and hooking strategically spaced knots into a thicker rope. He was always doing weird things with string these days.

“Your father is going to be crucified, if you get caught there,” Delia said in her blunt, sarcastic way.

“Concerning,” Constantine said blandly, not looking up.

“Your magic feels knotted,” Neph said to me, gently touching the threads around us which were vibrating. “Not like after Bloody Tuesday, but the edges look and feel the same. Is something wrong with the holomagic?” She looked at Constantine.

I scooted out from under her arm. Neph, of anyone, could gather more than the average sensory data from me—even in a virtual room, a layer away.

“What do you mean? What happened, Ren?” Olivia asked, frowning severely at me and ignoring the byplay that was continuing around us.

“Just tired. You know me, sleep is for when I'm dead,” I said. They both frowned. “That was a joke.”

“It wasn't funny.”

“No.” I leaned my head back. “It wasn't, sorry.”

“Ren—”

“Don't worry. Everything is working well! The gear was great today. Really took the load off.”

“You tried out the new pad?” Will hopefully asked, connecting to our conversation and, thankfully, bringing the rest of the room with him.

I smiled. “Worked perfectly.”

“And the traceability pouches?”

“Seems like Bandits Incorporated has a future hit on their hands.”

The involved mages did the magic equivalent of a high-five.

“The Department knows where you are, though, traceability be damned,” Olivia said angrily. “They can't go after you unless they declare all-out war on the Third Layer—they still have to go through the political arena right now—but it's only a matter of time.”

“Way to keep things upbeat, Majesty.”

“We aren't under illusions here,” Olivia said grimly to Patrick. “Stavros and Kaine can track her. They've been able to track her for a long time. She was safe at Excelsine because she was a student, and nothing had been proven yet. Both of those protections are long gone. The only thing keeping her safe is staying in the Third Layer.”

Constantine continued fiddling nonchalantly, emotions relentlessly in contrast to his bored expression.

Patrick nodded. “But even warriors need downtime and fun.”

Olivia's expression eased a fraction and she turned back to me, looking over my body and magic.

I wondered what she saw.

“I don't know what Nephthys can sense, but you painted two days ago. And Leandred is there now. You should be fine.”

I swallowed, shoulders tensing, and forced my hands to remain at my side instead of going to my nose. “I am.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You are lying.” She looked at Constantine for confirmation. He blandly looked back. “Why?”

I looked at the floor.

“Ren?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you bleeding paint right now?” she demanded.

“It's fine. I must not have painted enough Tuesday,” I demurred.

“You need to paint fully.”

“I will.”

“You need to—”

“I know.”

“It's important to—”

“Definitely.” I stuffed a hand under my thigh and wiggled my smallest finger at the holotalk device.

“Ren, you can't keep—”

“Liv? Oh, no, I think the reception is going.” The image wavered with the quick movement of my pinkie.

“Ren—”

“May magic be ever at your fingers,” I said hurriedly.

The device switched off, and everyone abruptly disappeared, taking much of the light from the room with them.

Heavy silence fell.

“Really?” Constantine stated dryly.

I stared at the device, which was furiously blinking while Olivia tried to reconnect the magic on the other end. I grabbed it, extinguished the magic completely, and shoved the box in my pocket.

“Nicely done, darling. The reception? I will forever treasure the look I'm imagining on Price's face right now. You've given me an inconceivable gift.”

I pulled my fingers over my face and didn't respond.

“Good thing you can't get rid of me so easily,” he said, his voice as silky as the ribbon he always had in his fingers.

“No, you are a limpet I just can't shake.” But my voice was unsteady. Paint bubbled up in me again—as if punishing me for the abrupt dismissal of my friends.

He tapped a finger against the table, and a blanket of emotion crashed over me, pushing the paint back down again. He looked suddenly pale, oddly, as if he had encountered a snacking vampire. I blinked, and he was flush again with health. A trick of the light?

“Tell me about your paintings, darling.”

Dark thoughts immediately returned with visuals—darkness, despair, the end of the world. “I thought it was obvious that I didn't want to talk about it.”

“Why you think that would make a whit of difference to me, I have no idea.”

Affection and relief shuddered through me. I crossed my arms on the table and let my cheek rest on top of my sleeve. “The need to paint is getting worse,” I whispered.

“I know,” he murmured, and for a moment he almost looked pale again. “I can see the swirling in your eyes. The fever. The color seeping from you.” He looked at the specially made handkerchiefs filling the hazard container. “Literally.”

“Do you think…” I swallowed. “It was a week at first, then half, now three times a week… Do you think I might…?”

“Turn into paint? If so, try for a tasteful chromaticity.”

“You might get grayscale,” I said ruefully, thinking of the darkness and despair.

His eyes narrowed. Fingers touched my neck. “Show me what you’ve been painting.”

“No.” I quickly pushed all mental images away from his grasp.

“I’ve watched you paint countless times at school.” I could feel someone else mentally join with him, lightly pushing, asking permission. The complicated swirl of Constantine’s emotions told me who it was. The one person he couldn’t seem to get rid of.

“Not like this, you haven’t,” I whispered, denying the images to both boys.

“Why?” He watched me, seeking out weakness. “You’ve painted grim pieces before. But they were all beautiful.”

I swallowed with difficulty, keeping the images firmly out of reach. “Not these.”

His fingers stilled. “All of them?”

“Each and every one of them,” I murmured. “The images grow worse, and it takes more paint each time because I struggle to make something else.” Desperately trying to create anything else. “And still, the images form in the same suite of patterns.”

“When did this start?” His gaze took in the papers strewn around my desk on mind techniques, meditation, and garments that regulated magic flow.

“Soon after I left campus.”

“Let me see, Ren.” His cajoling tone switched to a softer one, and that of anything had me pushing up with reluctance.

I closed my eyes and let the images filter through, each growing successively darker and more disturbing.

When I finally opened my eyes, I could see the unease he was trying to hide. An impossible task, since I could still feel it through our connection.

He tipped his head. “You win. Have you tried creating new paints?”

My gaze automatically shifted to the supplies littering the counters. “Yes.”

He frowned, and I could feel his mind shifting through data. “But the result is always the same? You can’t control your own output?”

“No, and it takes more each time—more of everything, effort, paint, magic. It all just becomes...horrible. No matter what I do. What if...what if I turn into something horrible?”

Like my pictures. Like a portent. A heavy portent of doom that was increasingly trying to gain attention.

“Impossible.” He waved a hand, mind still on the problem.

“But you've been here when I clean my brushes.” He couldn't follow me if I wasn't there to take him. But he had arrived while I was off painting a few times, and he always waited until my return. Constantine Leandred was exceptional at waiting. “Think about what it took to create those things.”

Think of what kind of person made those things.

“Exquisite monsters and terrifying hybrids. A dark Fae Queen working her magic—all wormholes, monsters, missing limbs, and bloodstained teeth.”

“The last thing tried to eat three of the workers in the compound’s menagerie,” I said bluntly.

“I’m certain the menageríer was thrilled.”

“He...he asked if I could go back to fire breathing lizards instead of dark matter burping frogs.”

Justice Toad was still very much with me in spirit, even if he was in Will’s hands on campus now.

Constantine’s quick gaze looked around the room, furtively checking for dark matter frogs. “Where are the paintings now?”

I cleared my throat.

His eyes narrowed on me. “Ren?”

“Well...you’ve seen my brushes. I brought the first painting back here and...” I cleared my throat again. “Well, then I rebuilt the eastern wing.”

I felt him sigh. I could feel him adjusting his timeline to never-leave-Ren-alone-again status.

“Which means you can’t paint here.”

It was more a sorrowful statement than a question, but I shook my head all the same.

Heaviness settled over his thoughts. “Of course not, because fate hates me,” he murmured. “Where do you leave the paintings?”

“Er, I don’t exactly leave them...”

“Ren.”

“The, uh, Origin Book, um, eats them as soon as I finish.” It ate them while I sat frozen, staring at the horrors looking back at me.

He said nothing for a long minute before settling on, “Both healthy and wise.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “Neither.”

The layers only shifted the tiniest bit each time the book ate one, though. Way better than the alternative.

“Why?” he asked bluntly.

“I don’t...” I closed my eyes. “I don’t want to be a destroyer, Con,” I whispered. “But I can’t paint anything else. I asked the book for advice. And it...it just dove down and ate the first two pieces, and I just...never looked back.”

It meant I never had to look at them.

“Have you asked the book to help before you paint?”

“It doesn't want me to control anything my magic wants to do. It knows I need to paint. That's why it's angry right now. It's a...free rein, might is right, every book for himself type of thinker.”

It buzzed my head again, angrily flipping pages as it tightly soared in a clear message to go and gather all my people.

I ducked. We had already had this argument.

He drummed his fingers on the table, then reached over and touched my skin with all ten tips.

His gaze went distant, though it stayed on me. “The magic—it bubbles up from within you. It feels like the whispers the people here utter when they think you can’t hear them—like the magic will destroy you. Like you won’t be able to—”

“Stop.” I swallowed. “Stop reading my mind.”

“A lock, a key, a tower,” he murmured. “I thought I had been pretty specific, Fate.” He leaned back, fingers tapping again, his gaze focused on the bend between the wall and ceiling. “But you need this,” he murmured to me, magic wrapping around me in an almost fearful way.

The moment was gone before it was fully realized, and his gaze focused back on me. “Well, where are we off to, then?”

I stared at him. “No. Absolutely not.”

His expression was unimpressed. “I’d prefer you stay here for the rest of your days, but seeing as that would mean your days were numbered, we will be making a quick trip. And you aren’t leaving this tower without me.”

He rose.

“I didn't realize you disliked living so much,” I said tightly.

“I like it very much, thank you.”

“I’m dangerous when I paint.”

“As am I when I’m kept waiting.” His smile was sharp.

“You were just advocating for me to stay away from danger. You were practically martial about it.”

He looked at me like I was being particularly slow. “To stay away from saving others. This is you saving yourself.”

“Con, that's not—”

He leaned toward me. “Are you trapped here?”

My brows drew sharply together. “No.”

“Then why do you act like you are, but only when it suits you?”

I ripped my gloves free and threw them on the table, then slammed my palms down. Lightning sparked across the surface. “I blew up three Magi Marts last week—four hundred miles away and a layer down. I just burned a hole into the Fourth Layer that I patched with a prayer and some tape. There were giraffes with canines and hooked nails. Not to mention the closet pinprick into the insanity of the Fifth. And you want me to start slinging paint around you?”

“Perhaps not slinging. A nice set of waterlilies would look lovely on my—”

“I can't paint waterlilies.” Lightning sparked the surface again.

“Not with that attitude.”

“Not with any attitude. I'd destroy the whole compound probably, if I tried!”

“I would have you pave Tus Onus instead,” he mused, barely sparing a glance at the lightning. “Nasty town. And to build a castle upon its banks. I've been playing with a building material for you. Veins of gold and ivory, but not like one of the tacky things you sometimes create when left to your own devices.”

He nudged Guard Rock with one of my pencils. Guard Rock stabbed back.

“Constantine, I swear—”

“Please do.”

“I'm going to push you back to Excelsine.”

He smirked and poked a little harder at Guard Rock, who drew blood with his return strike, his pencil tip razor sharp. “No, you won't,” he said, sticking the sliced end of his finger in his mouth. “You like being surrounded by vicious things.”

“You are going to drive me to insanity before my magic does.”

“Likely. That's what friends are for, isn't it?” The words were blasé, but the feeling from him was not.

All anger drained from me. “I don’t want you in the crossfire when I go.”

Axer was fighting on the table between us again, but I could see the pinch of his eyes—he was still listening in.

Constantine reached out and touched my cheek. “You forget that you’ve already imbued me with your paint. And I won’t let you go.”

He turned abruptly on his heel. “Come, Ren. Stop trying to pretend I don’t know what I’m doing. Get that blasted book and pick a place. I hate being the reasonable one.”

Discombobulated without knowing why, I rose. “I've picked nine places,” I stressed, as I followed him to a rack where he started flipping through papers I'd collected and been given in folders stamped with National Security, Confidential, and Myths. “Nine uninhabited sections of land. They are all craters now. Every one of them.”

“Your picking sucks, then. I'll pick.”

Our connection threads pulsed as he pushed comfort and determination across them.

Something in me loosened abruptly, because I had touched Constantine with paint before. We’d created paint together countless times, and contact was inevitable. I wasn’t the most sterile lab assistant.

But more than that, I had wiped paint across his forehead to heal him. And that had been Awakening paint. Ultramarine Awakening paint, at that. Powerful, protective paint.

“Let me guess.” Heavy, painful relief made my voice shake—because I wouldn’t hurt him, and I didn’t want to be alone. “Tus Onus. Because you think the shops there have terrible merchandise.”

He paused, internally assessing my heady, abrupt, out-of-character relief for a moment, before resuming his search. “I'm willing to list it as a detour. But no, I, too, was listening, when the madman proclaimed an 'Origin Circuit.'”

He said the last part reluctantly. He didn't want me to go near any Origin Magic zone—the feelings were all over him. He was just afraid I was going to damage myself if I didn't.

“I landed in one of the buildings on the Circuit. That's where the book took me after we disappeared from campus.”

“And?”

“It's a crater now, too.”

“Well, this layer would hardly notice another.”

“It's a crater bracketed by spires of death, and it's in the Second Layer which is excessively full of healthy magic.”

He paused again. “Endovar?”

“Yes.”

I could see him putting the pieces together—the news reports, timelines, and my flight here, which I'd glossed over heavily in mortification

He pursed his full lips. “Of course. that was you. The after pictures were quite...stunning in a certain way. I'm certain they are beautiful death steeples, in the right light. But come, darling, where are we going now?” He looked down at me through his lashes and a strange knot of emotion coiled in me. “Don't make me the voice of reason.”

Magic, stoppered up and shoved down, started to seep upward and swirl under my skin. I wiped the corners of my eyes and knew my fingertips would be stained with turquoise.

The book sensed the change—the excitement and dread I couldn't contain—and its tight circles became tighter in anticipation. It narrowed its view on Constantine as it waited to swoop, and I sensed its dark approval.

“So,” I said, swallowing the paint down. “Just to make this clear—you want to find an Origin Magic safe house with me so that I can create something dripping with death and destruction? A house probably loaded with booby traps and world-ending magic that will want to devour you?”

He didn't answer for a moment. “Yes,” he said with a sigh, flipping open another folder.

“And if I refuse to take you.”

“You won't,” he said lightly—dark, forbidding promises underlying each word.

I looked at the book circling tightly, felt the edges of my magic, thought of consequences and outcomes and responsibility to those surrounding me. I looked at Constantine—the face of my entire community, brimming with the combined magic of it all.

“You aren't alone, Ren,” he murmured, and his absolute trust filtered through me.

I swallowed and raised my arm.

The book immediately dove downward and landed like a hawk on a glove—only I didn't have a glove and the book's taloned corners made its delayed displeasure known.

“The other Origin Mage hideouts—”

The book didn't wait for me to finish, its covers opened, and a complicated construction of color and dimension ejected into the air, like a squid releasing its ink.

“A map?” Constantine asked.

I could tell from his tone that he couldn't read it, but the longer I stared at it, the more the moving picture made sense. The outer edges peeled back to reveal the inner petals of direction—a map of space that wasn't limited to a single layer of the world. This one included space in a way that wasn't of the normal human mind.

My brain stuttered on the image for a moment as it tried to dismiss the notion of abnormality, then I forced myself to take a breath and relax and the whole thing zoomed into something that was more than a feeling. It was a certainty that I couldn't explain using words that I knew. It was like I'd have to invent a new language to describe it, or the way a powerful emotion just owns every thought.

Once I dismissed the idea that I needed to be normal, the extraordinary bloomed.

There were so many places to go. Two sets of points shined so brightly, that I nearly had to shade my eyes from their brilliance. I knew immediately who the residences had belonged to, but those were for another day—one fraught with far more peril. For this journey, I needed one like...that one. A dimmer set, but with a steady hue and some sort of jewel at its center.

Constantine, though unable to read the map, had no trouble reading me. “Where are we going?”

“There.” I pointed to a single spot in the jumbled mass, then two more. They were pieces separated in the space of the visual dimensions, but part of the whole in the dimensions of more.

“Specific.”

I shook my head at his gentle mocking. “It's the same way that I can't explain where the Awakenings are until I get there—my magic decodes it and sends an...image. It can't be explained in three dimensions. But I can take you with me.” I looked at him in chagrin. “It's, er, sort of a leap of faith in that way.”

“As are all things with you, darling.” He held out his arm.

“Are you sure?” I asked uncertainly. But I wanted him to go now. Now that the buffet had been offered and opened, I was starving.

“I'm here,” he said, and for Constantine, that was as simple and honest as it got.

I nodded and tucked my arm into his. Guard Rock vaulted onto my shoulder, and I let the book enfold around us.