《The Witch's Folly》 1.1 - Birdcage ¡°There is a narcissism inherent in witchcraft. To work any magic one must truly believe that reality ought to bend before them. They must look upon the laws of the universe and disagree with such stubbornness that the world itself wavers. A witch steals power from beings incomprehensible to them because it is their right to have, proven by the cleverness with which it was taken.¡± - Theory of Final Magic by Lilian Rivers, 1894
September 30th, 2004 I usually woke up before the alarm clock went off, but I never got out of bed before it did. The earlier I got up, the more time I needed to deal with her. But my alarm was going off, which meant it was time to move. ¡°I have not betrayed you yet,¡± I said to the air. I rolled out of my bed, tucked away in the farthest corner from the door. I hit the alarm on my nightstand as I passed. It was only a few steps to get to my closet. Said closet was fairly barren. The door hung open, showing the same basic patterns of single-color shirts and pants. There was at least one skirt in there, somewhere. It didn¡¯t matter what I wore, but I only had six minutes until she would get upset that I wasn¡¯t eating breakfast yet. It wasn¡¯t consistent, of course, it varied based on her mood and how late I¡¯d been over the last week or so, but trial and error had shown six minutes was the best time to aim for. I went to my desk in the corner, the next step. The mirror showed my hair was a mess, black curls tangled down to my neck. I didn¡¯t try that hard to brush it down. It never mattered to her. My backpack was on the floor, ready to go when it was time. It contained a first aid kit, my ritual supplies, and a few library books. The books were research for personal projects, or maybe I just called them projects so I felt like I was doing something important. In four minutes I was at the door. I let out a sigh, readying myself for the hardest part. I focused on my own thoughts. Each one was a thread, weaving together into the tapestry that made up my mind. I flew through them, my fears leaving them in disarray. I cut them off mercilessly. This was a mental trick, a switch that turned me from Claire the Girl into Claire the Witch. The version of me that woke up every morning was a coward, but the self that walked out of my bedroom was a competent apprentice who knew better than to feel afraid of anything. ¡°I have not betrayed you yet,¡± I said as I left my room and headed for the kitchen. The first floor was simple, a large central room with doors like the one I just crossed along the sides. Her room was directly across from mine, and between them was an open kitchen area in the back. The layout changed sometimes when I wasn¡¯t looking. What didn¡¯t change was that it was always made of natural wood, like the entire house had been built by carpenters by hand instead of components made in factories. Even the refrigerator was wooden, though the internal components were modern. The tableware was the one break in this illusion since no amount of rustic charm made her use non-ceramic plates and bowls. Breakfast was just as routine, taking up to seventeen minutes. I barely paid attention to the food I ate. She wasn¡¯t ever in the kitchen, which was a small mercy, but she needed to hear me moving around to be satisfied. Idly, I considered whether I¡¯d ever seen her eating food. It felt unlikely that she¡¯d magically removed the need to eat, that was pretty far outside the realm of our magic. She probably just ate away from me so I couldn¡¯t poison her. I hadn¡¯t actually tried to poison her yet, but that was no reason to allow me the opportunity. After eating and washing the plates, I walked upstairs to the workshop. The staircase was next to the front door, which I noticed and looked away from. I couldn¡¯t look at the door too long without her getting upset, but not looking at all was just as suspicious. The stairs wrapped around the corner of the house before going up to the next floor. The second floor had an interior balcony, letting you look down on most of the first floor. Most of this upper level looked like a library. Bookcases spanned the walls, which were a few times farther back than the first-floor walls in blatant defiance of local space. Tools and instruments were scattered around shelves haphazardly, mostly protractors and markers. ¡°I have not betrayed you yet.¡± The penultimate step now. Upon getting to the workshop, I had to refresh the house wards, which amounted to pressing my hand against a small circle drawn onto the wall at the top of the staircase and deciding the wards were refreshed. It barely created any backlash. A line from the circle moved up the wall into the attic, presumably where the actual ritual circles were. I wasn¡¯t allowed to see them, because knowing what the wards were was as good as breaking them. ¡°I have not betrayed you yet,¡± I said. The routine was finished. Suddenly, I noticed Margaret. She had been there the whole time, of course. If I searched my memories I would remember having seen an old woman with a glass right eye, graying black pixie cut, and permanent scowl standing against the far wall. But until right now it was not possible to know beyond an abstract sense that she was there. ¡°Finally,¡± she said. ¡°I swear, it¡¯s like you enjoy making me wait. That¡¯s not a very pleasant spell to keep up, you know. It¡¯s your fault I have to.¡± She paused a moment, before asking curiously. ¡°Do you enjoy making me wait?¡± She didn¡¯t seem that strained. One of these days, when I was feeling particularly brave, I¡¯d need to time out how long she could keep that spell active. I¡¯d almost certainly be punished for it, but as long as I noted the time before the curse set in properly I could get a rough idea. Assuming she didn¡¯t intentionally activate it early to deceive me, which she might. ¡°No,¡± I answered. She snorted in disbelief. ¡°What do you want me to work on today?¡± If I was very lucky it would be another day of lessons. She was far nicer during lessons. ¡°You are going to do exactly what I tell you,¡± she snapped. ¡°Now get the protractor, 18 inches, and Redland¡¯s Psionics Volume 3.¡± I suppressed the flinch and started moving. Asking like that had been stupid of me, just giving her an excuse to be irritated. Today was going to be ritual work. An 18-inch protractor meant a big ritual. The book was deceptively heavy, but I was well used to it. There were two types of books about magic, those written by witches and those written by charlatans. Redland¡¯s Psionics was one of the rare books that was probably both. There was way too much useful information in it for him not to be one of us, but Redland had decided to use the foundations of real magic to convince idiots they were psychic. However, they were the only books on mental magic that didn¡¯t contain fake rituals designed to drive you insane, so Margaret had them anyway. When I brought the requested materials, Margaret quickly began directing me on how to draw the ritual. Every once and a while, Margaret would stop and tilt her head like she was listening to something. I used the symbols in Redland¡¯s book as references and used the geometry tools to ensure I got all the interior line angles correct. Ritualcraft is the art of talking to gods, great forces from Beyond our universe so powerful that they can reach into and act upon our world. The gods probably weren¡¯t conscious, they were more like computers than people. And if you knew how to send the right signal, they would respond usefully and predictably. Unsurprisingly, sending signals to extradimensional computers is complicated. You need to draw symbols called glyphs in a circle in such an order that starting from any single symbol and going around in a full rotation constructs a meaningful ¡®sentence¡¯. Each sentence that can be built this way is a component of the ritual, all coming together into the concept of what the ritual does. There were additional factors, of course. Interior lines to skip glyphs in certain sentences or accent markers to modify how a glyph is read in a specific sentence. There was also some very complex math about the interior angles that needed to be done to be sure you were even calling out to the right part of your god. It was all so complicated that a witch could spend days just designing a single ritual. I was only allowed to know all this in theory. Margaret wasn¡¯t quite insane enough to teach me how to make my own rituals. But there was only so much magical theory a person could learn before they got a grasp on magical practice. Which was why I had a pretty good idea of what I was drawing over the next few hours. And it did take hours, the sheer number of interior lines and boundaries I needed to draw perfectly. There was some margin of error but straying too far was liable to drive me insane at best. This ritual was a monstrous thing, a whole seven glyphs. The basic function was yet another attempt to track Witches of the Whisper. It would identify when someone cast almost any mental magic on someone inside the circle, so long as the attacker was within a certain range. I couldn¡¯t guess the range without a calculator, but logically it would be larger than the last one. It also had a secondary function, something else that happened when it found an attack. Maybe it drove the attacker insane? I was far less confident about that piece. Margaret had been ¡°under attack¡± by mind magic for months now. At no point in her war had the voices in her head ever been successfully tracked back to their caster. She took that as a challenge, an affront to her ability that some witch could hide better than the all-seeing eye of the Weaving, our god, could find. I wasn¡¯t allowed to have an opinion, so I drew as I was told. Once I was done, I went to the bathroom, as anyone who didn¡¯t enjoy embarrassing themselves did before such a ritual. ¡°Finally. It wouldn¡¯t have taken so long if¡­ bah forget it,¡± Margaret said as I came back. She sat down in the center of the ritual. ¡°Have you betrayed me yet?¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°Then activate the ritual.¡± I hesitated, looking down at the ritual. The process for activating a ritual was fairly simple. I just had to touch the circle and imbue it with the intent, like I did with the wards. It would only be a temporary effect without a permanent sacrifice, which this one probably didn¡¯t have. Margaret didn¡¯t like permanent sacrifices. She considered them beneath her and since I would be the one sacrificing I happily agreed. However, it had occurred to me in the bathroom that this ritual seemed a bit too complicated for what it would be demanding- An icy chill cut off my thoughts. I gasped and fell to the floor, feeling like I was choking on air. Margaret released the curse just before the dissociation could begin. I hadn¡¯t even been watching her. How stupid could I be? ¡°I don¡¯t seem to notice you activating the ritual, foolish girl,¡± she snarled. ¡°Have you finally decided to betray me?¡± ¡°No,¡± I said weakly, still shaking. My breath was visible as condensation in the air. ¡°No no, you wouldn¡¯t ever actually grow a spine¡­¡± Margaret trailed off. ¡°Are you being affected by the Whisper? All the more reason for you to hurry up and activate the ritual.¡± This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. My choice had been made for me. I took another breath and focused on the ritual, believing with all of myself not only that it would work, but that it ought to work. The pressure in the room built to an impossible height as the ritual was enacted. The Weaving looked upon the ritual and spun a scheme most devilish. The threads turned over one another into a tapestry that fell into the definition of a ruse. I felt the backlash crash into me, shattering my mind into strands. As I wove my thoughts together, I waited for the ritual to¡­ something. After about fifteen minutes, I was coherent enough to realize this whole thing was just a very complicated ward. Nothing would happen that I could see. ¡°Ah, you¡¯re back. Now go away.¡± Margaret nodded to herself. What? ¡°Yes, really. Do something outside of the house. Honestly, is it so hard to imagine I¡¯d do a nice thing?¡± It was. Hell, it was several times more likely it was a trick of some kind, but I wasn¡¯t going to pass up the opportunity. I all but ran downstairs to my room. I grabbed the backpack and turned on my heel. I was out the front door in just over a minute.
In hindsight, running was definitely a mistake. I¡¯d just been hit by the curse so my breathing issues were even worse than normal. I had to stop a few times along my trip to have coughing fits that probably made my whole journey take longer, in the end. It was during one of those breaks that I worked out Margaret¡¯s reasoning for releasing me. She¡¯d needed me out of the house because she thought I was being attacked and anything directed at me wouldn¡¯t trigger the trap I¡¯d just drawn. The fact that she¡¯d sent me out here as if a potential enemy wouldn¡¯t even consider me worth attacking on my own was humiliating but probably accurate. Still, any amount of humiliation was worth being free several hours earlier than I expected. There was a time when I would be going to Felicity¡¯s shop, but that was a dangerous thought to linger on for too long. So instead I was headed to the Reston College library. There was a reason that a witch as powerful as Margaret had chosen this college town to claim dominion over. It wasn¡¯t the college library, of course. That was worthless to someone with the resources she had. Instead, it was the leyline crossing under our feet. Leyline crossings reduced the burden of ritualcasting dramatically. The ritual I¡¯d so casually activated back at Margaret¡¯s house would have driven me insane otherwise. The existence of the leyline crossing meant that some powerful witch was always in charge here, which in turn meant there was a rich magical history here. Many of the books that ended up here were the good kind of magic books, which is exactly what I, a witch without Margaret¡¯s extensive resources, would need. Reston College¡¯s library was a thing of beauty, practically gothic in appearance. The roof sloped upward in long curves that made one imagine a palace. Inside it was mostly cedar wood, but it was all treated with enough of a finish that it didn¡¯t feel like Margaret¡¯s house. There were far more exterior windows than I liked, but it wasn¡¯t hard to find a study room or a quiet corner where I could have peace. Rachael looked up from the front desk on my way in. ¡°You¡¯re here early Claire. No classes?¡± Rachael had only started a few weeks ago. She was a black girl who seemed about my age, which would make her a freshman here. She wore her hair in threaded braids pulled into a ponytail, which looked great and was presumably difficult to maintain. ¡°I got away a bit early,¡± I said. She started to say something else, but I was already moving past her into the library. The fewer people I talked to, the less chance my inability to lie became an issue. Every god had a price, like an entry fee for using their magic, and the Weaving demanded your right to lie. Margaret said it filtered out the fools who weren¡¯t clever enough to outwit others without telling a lie. It didn¡¯t come up that often, but you could only rely on awkward silences so many times before people started getting upset. I settled down in my usual corner as quickly as I could. It was a carefully chosen spot, with the least total foot traffic. Most importantly, it was a comfortable place to sit that wasn¡¯t in view of any exterior windows. I already had the book I was reading in my backpack, a copy of the diary of Madeline Dyer. She rose to middling notoriety, relative to the secrecy of witchcraft, in the late 50s for making advancements in spatial warping and summoning magic. Her crowning jewel was a technique for folding space, creating a hypothetically infinite amount of room within the same finite space. She claimed to have stolen the power from another reality, but it was easily replicable in ours. It was the same technique Margaret used to make her workshop bigger on the inside. The thing that made her famous, however, was how she died. In 1964, she was killed by her apprentice who collapsed a folded space she was in. It turns out that when rooms are bigger on the inside, suddenly becoming the proper amount of big inside is a problem. If you were to punch a hole in the wall of such a space, the matter inside would be displaced, effectively teleporting to the nearest valid location in real, non-folded space. It was disruptive as hell, but usually not fatal. Dyer¡¯s apprentice had found some method to collapse the space without rupturing the boundary, which meant there was no valid location. The result was explosive. There were a few issues with trying it myself.
  1. As far as I could tell, only the second floor of our house was folded. When I entered the house, Margaret would only become detectable once I¡¯d said I hadn¡¯t betrayed her. Intending to sabotage the workshop would count as betraying her. If she wasn¡¯t in the workshop when I collapsed it, she would do worse than kill me.
  2. Unless I found a way to protect them, I would lose all of the books in the workshop. That wasn¡¯t a pleasant trade to make. I wanted to be a witch and those books were my legacy. Generations worth of witches had built that collection of knowledge, allowing each apprentice to advance further than their master had.
  3. Dyer¡¯s damned apprentice hadn¡¯t ever written down how she did it. It was obvious why. So many witches used expanded workshops that she¡¯d probably be able to use the trick again. Unfortunately for her, every other witch with such a workshop also understood this. She was killed in less than two weeks.
Which was why I was currently digging through Madeline Dyer¡¯s journal. I had already found enough details about her workshop to know how she expanded it. I could even do it myself. I just had to figure out the same trick the apprentice had. I had a feeling it was about how folded space worked on a more fundamental level. It wasn¡¯t just making a room bigger on the inside, you were getting more matter from somewhere when the walls expanded to fit the new space. After Margaret was dead, I would immediately and loudly announce how the trick worked. The mad scramble that ensued to use it before everyone worth killing had protected themselves would probably buy me enough time to get my feet under me before someone tried to kill me. It was a laughably bad plan, which is probably why I abandoned it as quickly as I did.
¡°I don¡¯t know anything.¡± Lie. ¡°Please, she¡¯s dead Peter! I¡¯m not... Was anyone upset with her? Enough to do something?¡± ¡°This is ridiculous, the police-¡± Another lie, but she cut him off with yet another question. My quiet sanctum had been breached. I¡¯d seen them approach in my peripheral vision. Some girl had come chasing this poor guy halfway across the library. It was quite a distracting argument the two were having. Normally the girl would be the unreasonable one but communication, one of my two spells, was insistent that the guy was lying through his teeth. Spells were the same glyphs that made up rituals. Instead of being drawn, they were integrated into a witch¡¯s cognition so thoroughly that they could produce simple magical effects. ¡°I was just talking to Jessie. She knows you¡¯ve been weird, are you seriously trying to tell me you don¡¯t know anything?¡± ¡°Yes!¡± he all but shouted. ¡°That¡¯s a lie,¡± I said on a whim. I hadn¡¯t looked up from the diary, but this was far more interesting than Dyer¡¯s opinions about her neighbors. She didn¡¯t like them very much. ¡°No one asked you!¡± he snapped back. I looked up from my book finally, glaring at him. It was quite satisfying how immediately he flinched back. I took the opportunity to look over them. The boy, Peter, was fairly unassuming. White, very scrawny, light brown hair. I took the details in clinically. The girl on the other hand¡­ I had no idea how Peter was taking her in stride because I surely wasn¡¯t. Her bronze skin contrasted strikingly with her dark red hair, pulled back into a low, messy ponytail. She had a dark green, sleeveless tank top that revealed a surprisingly athletic figure. Beneath that, she had a simple pair of denim shorts. They looked worn slightly and were quite tight, proving the athletic figure continued all the way down. It occurred to me that I was staring and I snapped my focus back to Peter. Why was I mad at him again? Ah, right. ¡°If the two of you are going to disturb my reading, the least you can do is stop lying. Lies are much more distracting.¡± Communication rapidly became obnoxious in situations like this. ¡°Except I¡¯m not lying,¡± he huffed. A cat-and-mouse game would get tiring. ¡°Yes or no. Do you know who killed the girl?¡± ¡°Amy,¡± the redhead supplied the name. ¡°Like I said, I don¡¯t know.¡± I paused, thinking back to the wording of the question. The girl beat me to it. ¡°But you do know who wanted to hurt her?¡± She was getting more animated, making larger gestures. ¡°No.¡± Peter had shifted, seeming far more uncomfortable now that he was engaging with two people at once. ¡°There we go,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s the lie.¡± Peter glared at me, but I¡¯d had lessons on intimidation. The poor boy¡¯s nerve didn¡¯t hold long. ¡°It was Nathan, ok?¡± he said finally. ¡°I know he was pissed at Amy for something. It involved Madison. But he wouldn¡¯t- he couldn¡¯t even do that to Amy!¡± The girl looked at me for confirmation and I nodded. None of that meant anything to me, but clearly, it did to her. ¡°Thank you,¡± she said to Peter. ¡°That really does mean a lot, that you want to help.¡± She somehow put enough sincerity into her voice that even I believed it. Then I realized that communication hadn¡¯t gone off which meant she did too. Peter shifted uncomfortably. ¡°I mean¡­ it¡¯s not like I don¡¯t care. It¡¯s just¡­ even if someone did that to her, it¡¯s the police¡¯ job.¡± I tuned them out since the disturbance was effectively done. I focused back on the diary. They exchanged a few more pleasantries. She even hugged him before he left, which was odd. I noticed that I had not successfully read any more of the diary in the time that had taken. I also noticed that she had not left when Peter had. I looked up from the book to find her staring at me, her head tilted to the side. Her eyes were a vibrant golden color. That couldn¡¯t possibly be natural, was she wearing contacts? She might, she was clearly someone who cared about her appearance. Which reminded me that I was not and looked absolutely terrible right now. ¡°Yes?¡± I asked finally. I wasn¡¯t sure I could bear that train of thought much longer. ¡°Thank you for helping with him. My name is Lily, Lily Florence.¡± ¡°Shouldn¡¯t it be Rose, considering¡­?¡± Lily seemed the wrong flower to name someone with such vibrant red hair after. That got me a frown. ¡°My older sister got the name first. There are some red lilies, so Mom didn¡¯t totally abandon the theme,¡± she said. She looked at me expectantly, clearly familiar with the power of awkward silences. ¡°Claire Rivers,¡± I said finally. ¡°Was it true?¡± Lily asked suddenly. She moved towards my seat, stopping surprisingly close. ¡°Are you actually that good at telling when people lie?¡± I hesitated, considering my response. I¡¯d revealed as much already and it wasn¡¯t obviously magic. Some people were just really good at spotting lies. The fact that I couldn¡¯t lie meant my only two options were saying yes or shutting up, which would be very embarrassing. ¡°I¡¯m almost perfect,¡± I said. The angle Lily was at, I had to look up at her. ¡°I¡¯ve only ever met one person who can successfully lie to me.¡± She seemed to hesitate, her hands wringing together in front of her, before talking again. ¡°Can you help me then? I¡¯m pretty sure I know where Nathan is right now, if you came with me it would go so much easier.¡± ¡°No,¡± I said immediately. This had rapidly become a much larger commitment than I wanted to make. I could see it now, if I let this girl drag me to one interrogation I would end up at another and another. It was actually a pretty good ruse. Was she supposed to be the next Felicity? ¡°Please,¡± Lily begged. She reached forward and grabbed my hand, cupping it between hers. ¡°My roommate, Amy, died. I¡¯m pretty sure she was killed. I¡¯m the one who¡­¡± she trailed off, looking like she was fighting back tears. ¡°Please. She was my only real friend here.¡± Lily¡¯s hands were soft, but they might as well have been a vice grip for how well they trapped my freakishly pale hand. She was surprisingly warm, like she was running a fever. That explained why she was wearing a tank top in September. It was also the first time someone had touched me in nearly a year. There was no reason for me to get involved. I didn¡¯t care about this girl. I definitely didn¡¯t care to play detective because I was told a sob story. ¡°Did you know I¡¯d be here?¡± I asked. I needed confirmation. Lily just looked at me, baffled. ¡°Is this a ruse? Yes or no.¡± ¡°No, I have no idea who you are,¡± she said. ¡°Are you in like a witness protection thing?¡± This was going to invite so many questions. It was a terrible idea. She still hadn¡¯t let go of my hand. I needed to think. ¡°If I do this, I don¡¯t answer any question I don¡¯t want to,¡± I said, like a fool. Lily nodded rapidly. ¡°Deal.¡± And the bargain was struck. 1.2 - Lilium Philadelphicum We had left the library, on our way to wherever Nathan was. Rachael seemed surprised to see me leave so early, but she saw Lily and just gave me a knowing grin. I very intentionally did not attempt to draw inferences from that. I was following Lily, though we walked almost side by side. Reston College was the kind of campus that clearly cared about looking pretty. There were winding paved pathways leading just about every direction a person could want to go. The area was carefully populated with evergreen trees that couldn¡¯t possibly be native to the region. I didn¡¯t know the campus beyond where the library was, so I couldn¡¯t even evaluate if she was leading me somewhere that made sense. If this was a trap, which still felt fairly possible, then it wouldn¡¯t be sprung out here in the open. ¡°So, tell me about Amy,¡± I said. Lily tilted her head, putting a finger on her chin as she squinted her eyes in thought. It was an adorably animated gesture. She took a minute before answering. ¡°Amy was the kind of person who checked her horoscope every day because she¡¯s friends with a lot of people who do. Amy probably never even thought about if she believed in horoscopes.¡± Lily paused for a moment, before going on. ¡°I know I called her my only real friend- and I meant it, that was true. You know that, obviously. But I don¡¯t think she thought of me as a friend. She was probably just nice to everyone. She was a terrible gossip though, so I have a pretty good idea of her social circle. ¡°Her best friends were two girls named Madison and Jessie. Both of them hung out in our dorm room a lot. Madison much more than Jessie. Madison didn¡¯t seem to like me very much, but she hid it because Amy did. I¡¯d have guessed Madison and Amy were dating if Madison didn¡¯t talk about her boyfriend so much. ¡°Jessie was clearly the odd friend out, even though she was Madison¡¯s roommate, but I don¡¯t know if she knew that. She certainly seemed to think they were a trio.¡± There was a starling perched on a nearby tree. It had been looking in our direction for a while now, but as we passed, it became obvious it was watching us. ¡°I see,¡± I said, mostly as filler while I sorted the information. The most valuable thing I got from it was that Lily was a shockingly insightful person. ¡°You¡¯ve already talked to both of them?¡± ¡°Just Jessie. She was the first person I talked to. She pointed me to Peter and said he had been acting weird.¡± Lily paused, uncertain. ¡°Honestly I don¡¯t really have a plan. Do you think it would be worth talking to her again, letting you lie detector her?¡± This girl was a very bizarre mix of extremely competent and clueless. Which did prompt a question. ¡°Maybe,¡± I answered evasively. ¡°Why are you doing this? The police normally handle murder investigations.¡± Lily had clearly been waiting for me to ask this. She stood up a little straighter and her words took on an almost rehearsed tone. ¡°I found Amy¡¯s body three days ago. I¡¯d talked to her the night before. I didn¡¯t notice anything unusual about her, but I don¡¯t think I would have. She went to sleep early, said she was feeling sick. The next morning I went to check on her, see if she was feeling any better.¡± Lily paused, taking a moment to rally herself. ¡°Her door was unlocked and¡­ I couldn¡¯t even tell it was Amy at first, she was¡­ too damaged. And in several pieces. The police-¡± she said the word disdainfully, ¡°-decided yesterday that it was a wild animal attack. In our third-floor dorm room.¡± I couldn¡¯t help but snort. That was so ridiculous I wouldn¡¯t believe it without communication. Maybe she was lied to. What could possibly- Oh. It was my fault. When I was six years old, I told the police about Margaret. I¡¯d been punished for¡­ I couldn¡¯t even remember what it was. Considering I was six it was probably stupid. But it was the first time Margaret had used the curse. I was so scared of her afterward that I told the police she was an evil witch who had killed people. They hadn¡¯t believed me, of course, but I¡¯d known that if I said ¡®murder¡¯ enough times they¡¯d have to do something. It didn¡¯t help matters when they realized that they were mysteriously incapable of finding where she lived to question her. Margaret had been forced to act. Accusations of witchcraft showing up anywhere on a police record would bring the Inquisition down on us with the kind of wrath and overwhelming force that only those self-righteous bastards could manage. Honestly, she¡¯d been merciful. I wasn¡¯t sure how she did it, but the police never bothered us or any witch again. Nowadays, if anything sufficiently weird happened in Reston the police would look at it, shake their heads sadly, and pretend it wasn¡¯t there. It was such a nonissue I¡¯d forgotten it. And maybe the police were right to ignore this one. A body torn to pieces overnight in a dorm sounded pretty supernatural. I could think of a dozen things that could do that. A wild monster probably wouldn¡¯t have left Lily alive. No, a better point was that a wild monster wouldn¡¯t be stupid enough to hunt in Margaret¡¯s domain. Anything that reckless would die long before it got to Reston. Witchcraft then. Lily looked back at me and I realized I¡¯d stopped walking. We were in a cross-section, between what looked like dorms and maybe a student building. ¡°Are you ok?¡± she said. ¡°Or is this one of the things I can¡¯t ask?¡± ¡°I have weak lungs,¡± I said, which technically was not a lie. If she drew the wrong conclusion about why I stopped, that was fine. I was breathing heavily anyway. ¡°Give me a minute.¡± Lily nodded, pointing to a nearby bench. ¡°It¡¯d probably be easier to sit down somewhere. Do you need me to help you make it there?¡± Images of that flashed through my mind, and a traitorous little voice said that actually wouldn¡¯t it be great to throw away my pride just this once? But I brushed it off. ¡°I¡¯m not a cripple,¡± I insisted. It was undercut somewhat by having to stop for a breath in the middle of my sentence. Still, I walked myself to the bench, dropping unceremoniously onto the middle. I shifted my backpack into my lap. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± she said quickly. She sat down next to me, close enough for our shoulders to brush against each other. ¡°I didn¡¯t mean to- never mind.¡± I hadn¡¯t realized how much I needed the break until I sat down. We¡¯d only been walking for about ten minutes. Was it getting worse? It could just be a bad day. The degree of weakness in my lungs fluctuated, for some reason. But I couldn¡¯t help but feel like I was having more bad days than I used to. Taking a second to breathe also made me realize I was jumping to conclusions about Amy. How many locked-room murder mysteries had I read? None of those ever turned out to be magic. It would be very bad if it was magic, though. A proper witch wouldn¡¯t be this sloppy, killing so blatantly without permission. Which left hedge witches, fools who had stumbled upon one of the rare books of real magic. ¡°So¡­¡± Lily began. I thought our break was over, but instead, she asked, ¡°What¡¯s your major? Can I ask that? I¡¯m a freshman in business, which I know is kinda boring. It¡¯s really just a major to say I have one.¡± Was Lily just the kind of person who talked to fill a silence? Or did she actually want to get to know me? ¡°I¡¯m not a student,¡± I said. ¡°I just use their library sometimes. It¡¯s one of the best in the country for the right subjects.¡± ¡°The girl at the desk seemed to know you pretty well,¡± Lily pointed out. ¡°You must be there a lot more than ¡®sometimes.¡¯¡± I mentally bumped her rating from insightful to very insightful. But that was a double-edged sword. ¡°I¡¯m there as much as I can be,¡± I said. Her eyes widened and I knew she¡¯d caught the implication. ¡°Ah,¡± she said. Because really, what more was there to say? Another bird was watching us now. Or maybe it was the same starling and it had followed us. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. After a minute, I decided to spare Lily the discomfort I could see building. ¡°Come on, I can keep going now.¡± Lily looked at me even more awkwardly. ¡°We uh, do need to wait actually. He won¡¯t be out of that class-¡± she pointed to the building I¡¯d mistaken for a student center, ¡°-for another 30 minutes or so.¡± Well, that somewhat ruined my chivalrous gesture. ¡°Do you know each other?¡± I asked. Felicity would break the tension with some teasing, which was worth a try. ¡°Or do you make a habit of memorizing students¡¯ schedules?¡± ¡°No, I don¡¯t,¡± she said, laughing a little. I did not like how much better that laugh made me feel. It was her first lie, and what an interesting one it was. ¡°We share the class. I don¡¯t have to go since¡­¡± ¡°How long did they give you?¡± That clearly wasn¡¯t what she¡¯d expected me to ask. ¡°Oh, um it¡¯s not like high school where I need a note. Technically I¡¯d need to talk to each of my professors to work out exactly how long of a grace period I¡¯d get. But attendance isn¡¯t a very big part of the grade anyway.¡± I nodded. I had a much better picture of how high schools worked, based on what stories I¡¯d read in the library. I asked a few more questions about college life, more to have something to talk with her about than an actual interest. I wouldn¡¯t get much use out of a college degree. Once Lily recognized the pattern of my questions she was more than happy to do most of the talking. She was great at it, answering some follow-up questions before I could even ask them. A person shouldn¡¯t be able to project this much enthusiasm about picking electives, but she managed it. I was starting to like this girl.
I had missed having someone to talk to. So much that I nearly lost track of time. ¡°How long until that class ends?¡± Lily looked at her phone and then got up suddenly. I felt a chill in the air. ¡°Shit. Five minutes ago,¡± she said. ¡°Let¡¯s hope he¡¯s slow.¡± I got up much less gracefully than she had managed. I followed her brisk pace as she explained what we really should¡¯ve been talking about all along. ¡°So, Nathan. He¡¯s dating Madison, I¡¯m pretty sure. He and I kinda know each other. We had a bi-weekly gaming group for a few months over the summer, which was the only time we really interacted. We haven¡¯t talked since I got kicked out of the group.¡± ¡°What happened?¡± I asked. It was hard to imagine happening to someone this charismatic, but backstabbing was an inevitability when enough people were involved. ¡°I broke up with the GM,¡± she said sheepishly. ¡°We¡¯re still friends-ish, but it¡¯s the worse side of ¡®ish¡¯.¡± As we walked into the building I made a mental note to figure out what a GM was. It was more obviously a building for classes on the inside. It broke into a maze of concrete corridors with classrooms and the occasional lecture hall. I had no choice but to trust Lily to guide me through. I could at least retrace the route to the door we¡¯d come in, probably. I noted some of the fliers on the wall as we passed. Various clubs and student events, mostly. How much of it would the cult have their hands in? Thoughts of that led me to Felicity, so I tried to avoid it. We finally stopped at a classroom on the second floor. Lily looked around for a minute, before stepping back outside. A few class members reacted to her presence, murmuring among themselves. ¡°He¡¯s already gone,¡± she said glumly. ¡°I don¡¯t know the rest of his schedule. The next class is in four days, because of the weekend.¡± ¡°Do you know where his dorm is?¡± I asked. Earlier, she¡¯d said that a lot of people go back there between classes. She shook her head. ¡°But I might know someone who does.¡± She pulled out her phone and started texting someone, pausing to move out of the doorway when someone needed to leave the classroom. I leaned against the wall next to her. Lily didn¡¯t hide her phone from me, so I looked enough to read a name before looking away. Jason. I didn¡¯t want to look like I was snooping, which I probably was. I settled on watching the crowd moving through the hall, communication idly pinging me that one of the words I could half-hear was a lie. Lily seemed to know a lot of people, for someone who had called Amy her only friend here. If she was as friendly to everyone as she was to me, I could see why. What had made Amy special then? Several people in the crowd were staring at Lily and me, some more subtly than others. It wasn¡¯t a position I was used to being in. I started to say something to Lily, to suggest we wait somewhere else when one of the onlookers approached us. ¡°Lily? What are- I mean how are you doing?¡± The girl seemed about our age, with light blond hair she wore down and an adorable gray sweater. Naturally, she was also very pretty, because today was just going to be like that. Lily looked up from her phone, where she had been typing. She was having quite the back-and-forth with Jason. I had no idea how she typed as fast as she did, but she was clearly experienced. ¡°Madison.¡± From the way Lily¡¯s tone dropped, it seemed the animosity between the two ran both ways. ¡°I¡¯m doing ok. I was actually looking for you this morning, I wanted to see how you were doing. I know you and Amy were close.¡± Madison started to say something before looking over at me. Her expression shifted in a way I couldn¡¯t read. Lily glanced over at me, seeming to remember I was there. ¡°Oh, yes. Madison, this is Claire. Claire, Madison.¡± If Madison noticed the careful exclusion of a phrase like ¡®my friend¡¯ she didn¡¯t react. ¡°It¡¯s nice to meet you, Claire.¡± She turned back to Lily, her expression full of exaggerated concern. ¡°Have you seen Nathan?¡± Lily cut off whatever Madison was about to ask next. ¡°I know he has this class.¡± There was a pause before Madison responded curtly. ¡°I don¡¯t know where he is.¡± Lily glanced at me and I gave a slight nod. Madison did notice that interaction, raising an eyebrow, but seemed to decide not to comment. Madison reached out and put a hand on Lily¡¯s shoulder, which Lily flinched away from. ¡°Are you sure you¡¯re ok? No one would blame you if you needed more time. I know you¡¯re the one who-¡± ¡°Really, I¡¯m fine,¡± Lily said. She had clearly been asked that far too many times by now. I decided to jump in. ¡°I¡¯ve heard a bit about Amy from Lily, but she said you knew her even better. Can you tell me about her? I never got the chance to meet her.¡± Madison looked fairly uncomfortable. ¡°I think Lily could tell you more. Sorry, if Lily¡¯s fine then I should go.¡± She gestured apologetically and just as quickly as she arrived, Madison turned on her heel and left. Lily looked like she was about to follow for a moment, but decided against it. ¡°Well,¡± Lily turned back to her phone but still talked to me. ¡°Did she lie about anything before you scared her off?¡± I winced. Maybe that had been too forward. I ran back through the conversation for a minute before responding. ¡°A few, but none of them were useful. It wasn¡¯t nice to meet me, she did think at least someone would blame you if you needed more time, and she didn¡¯t think you¡¯d be able to tell me more than her.¡± Lily didn¡¯t seem surprised. Her cheeks were flushed, I noticed. Had she moved closer to me at some point during the conversation? ¡°Figures she¡¯d lie through her teeth.¡± ¡°She didn¡¯t lie any more than normal,¡± I said. I didn¡¯t particularly care about Madison, but it felt unfair to her somehow. ¡°You don¡¯t have to make a conscious choice every time you lie, that¡¯s just for the big things. Most people don¡¯t even realize when they¡¯ve told a small lie.¡± I couldn¡¯t remember a time before I lost my ability to lie, but that was Felicity¡¯s explanation for why people lied so much. Margaret just said people were inherently dishonest. Lily seemed about to say something else before she saw another message on her phone. She nearly threw it down after she read it. ¡°I give up!¡± she said with clear frustration. ¡°I cannot seem to convince Jason to tell me where Nathan¡¯s dorm room is. So I asked for his phone number and he won¡¯t give me that either! I don¡¯t know if he thinks I¡¯m trying to hook up with Nathan or murder him or what.¡± The crowd had thinned considerably by now, but what was left was looking at us again. I considered how to phrase my request and decided to go for blunt honesty. ¡°I don¡¯t like how many people are watching us here. We should go somewhere else.¡± Lily looked around and then back to me apologetically. She closed her phone, putting it back in her pocket before she answered. ¡°Yeah let¡¯s find somewhere- just follow me.¡± She led me out through a different route. We still came out of the same door, so I wasn¡¯t sure she¡¯d meant to. She led us to the same bench we had been at previously, though she didn¡¯t sit down. I didn¡¯t sit either, since she clearly had something she wanted to say. ¡°Well,¡± Lily began. She had her hands behind her back, presumably wringing nervously. ¡°I¡¯m not sure what to do now. I don¡¯t want to just sit on my hands for four whole days. But I got the lead with Nathan kinda through dumb luck. We could go try to find Jessie again, but I really don¡¯t think she was lying to me.¡± I took a moment to think. The bird was blue this time and on a different tree. But it was always watching. ¡°Can we go to your dorm?¡± I asked. Lily blinked. ¡°I want to see where you found the body. It seems easier to look at it than to have you describe it to me, which is why I didn¡¯t ask you to earlier, but if you aren¡¯t comfortable with that¡­¡± I wasn¡¯t remotely confident in my ability to play Sherlock, but I could cut down my list of magical murder methods a lot based on the room¡¯s layout. It was still pretty unlikely, but I was starting to hope for it oddly enough. Lily seemed to relax herself by force of will as I spoke, evidently not as distant from Amy¡¯s death as she claimed. ¡°Ok, that makes sense. Um, but I don¡¯t think we¡¯re allowed back there yet. The police closed the area off, I¡¯m in one of the overflow housing dorms right now.¡± Her eyes lit up, brilliant gold shining as she made the most captivating smile I¡¯d ever seen. ¡°But I¡¯d bet you a lot that they don¡¯t have anyone watching it. The dorm locks are easy to pick.¡± Holy shit. I was suddenly extremely out of breath again. Lily was clearly waiting for me to respond in some way, so through herculean effort I rallied myself. ¡°Let¡¯s go check,¡± I managed to say. I even sounded mostly normal. ¡°Just give me one second.¡± I closed my eyes before she responded. I had been letting my persona slip, not expecting to need to reinforce it. I was already falling apart. I followed the threads, trimming them even more aggressively than usual. In the end, I was left with an orderly form. There, much better. I opened my eyes. ¡°Let¡¯s go break into a crime scene.¡± 1.3 - Lilium Philadelphicum 2 The dorms turned out to be surprisingly close to Margaret¡¯s house. I could see it from the front entrance, a spooky wooden house on a hill. It looked like the cover of a children¡¯s horror novel. The dorms looked like every other building, except Lily had to swipe a card to get in. According to her, there were a lot of complicated rules around allowing guests in that we were ignoring since they never got enforced. Indeed, when we walked in the student at the front desk didn¡¯t even look at us. The lobby was fairly busy. I guessed that it was late enough in the day that people were getting out of their last class. Inside, the floor quickly transitioned into carpeting and the walls became white-painted brick. Lily¡¯s dorm room was on the third floor. I followed her to a door by the side, which led to a stairwell. I hesitated. ¡°Could you point me to the elevator?¡± I asked. I was absolutely capable of walking up to the third floor, but that didn¡¯t mean I wanted to. The walk here had been bad enough. Lily¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°Oh, right- of course. This way.¡± She somehow looked more embarrassed about it than I was. I tried not to be upset by that. I followed her a little further down the hall until we reached a set of double elevators. Lily got there first, of course, so she hit the button. That was another reminder of Felicity. Presumably, an elevator was waiting on this floor because it opened right away. I took the opportunity on the elevator to catch my breath, obviously leaning against one of the walls. My cough sounded so much worse in this small space. Lily moved her hands about nervously and my irritation grew. It was the longest elevator ride of my life, both literally and figuratively. The dorm elevator was shockingly slow, which was probably why Lily preferred the stairs. Finally, mercifully, the elevator opened to let us out. Lily let me get out first, for some reason, so I just went in the direction she pointed. We stopped at suite 306, a door that looked like any other. ¡°You know,¡± Lily said suddenly, ¡°they didn¡¯t take my key and I doubt they changed the lock. So we don¡¯t even need to break into it.¡± She sounded almost disappointed as she pulled a keyring out of her pocket. ¡°How long would it take to pick the lock?¡± I asked. ¡°It depends on a lot. How good your tools are, how good you are, if you¡¯re trying not to be obvious about it, and a bit of dumb luck,¡± she said. She swung the door open with a bit of apprehension. ¡°Could be anything from a few seconds to several minutes.¡± We stepped into the suite and I closed the door behind us. I took a minute to look at the layout. There was a fairly small central area with a couch and window on the far wall. We were high enough that the birds probably weren¡¯t watching through it, but I still felt exposed. Along the side of the door was a kitchen area, the only uncarpeted part of the room. It amounted to a sink with a few cabinets hanging over it and a small refrigerator. Each of the side walls had a door leading into another room, as well as one on the far end that seemed to lead to a bathroom. Which task to do first? We could look at Amy¡¯s room, but Lily would probably be in a worse mood afterward. So, the question first then. I could dance around it, but she¡¯d responded well to directness so far. Lily was looking at the door on the right, she had been since we walked in. ¡°Why do you know so much about lockpicking?¡± I asked. It had been a curiosity when she first brought it up, but she spoke about it far too confidently. She was either an expert or quite full of herself. Her awkwardness made expertise the more likely of the two. ¡°It¡¯s just-¡± she started to say, before cutting herself off. She turned to look at me with an expression I couldn¡¯t read. ¡°I¡¯d rather not talk about it.¡± I paused, weighing options. It was very suspicious that Lily started to lie about it on instinct. The redhead had been surprisingly honest with me, which made the lie stand out all the more. I needed to get an answer. I might be able to if I leveraged my utility to her as a lie detector. The fact that the doors could be picked fairly easily shifted the balance of probabilities towards a mundane explanation for Amy¡¯s death. Without a reason to suspect a hedge witch, I could just walk away. I didn¡¯t have a sense of justice or anything as ridiculous as that to keep me here. ¡°Alright,¡± I found myself saying. ¡°I assume that door is Amy¡¯s room?¡± I nodded to the door on the right, my mind spinning rapidly. Lily sighed with obvious relief, tension leaving her body, before returning from the subject matter. ¡°Yeah. I found her in there Monday.¡± Lily walked over to the door, seeming to take a moment to ready herself. I had to work backward to determine why I had made the decision. Was it a sense of fairness? She doesn¡¯t pry into my life and I don¡¯t pry into hers? I hadn¡¯t needed to invoke the terms of the deal yet. Was it- Oh, that was it. I didn¡¯t want to threaten to walk out because I might have to follow through and then this would be over. Lily opened the door and stepped into Amy¡¯s room. I was an idiot. I¡¯d made this exact same mistake before, was I seriously going to do it again? I stepped into the room after her. It wasn¡¯t cramped, but it was tight enough that we¡¯d need to move around each other. Amy¡¯s bed was against the far wall, with all the sheets stripped off it. There was a window over the bed, but this one had blinds closed. The bed was clearly where Amy had died. While the body itself was gone, the blood spray had not been cleaned up yet. It was extensive, reaching well above my head on the walls. A sheet had been thrown over the floor, which was the only reason we weren¡¯t stepping in it. I did a quick survey of the rest of the room. Amy¡¯s backpack was by the door, fortunately spared most of the blood spray. She had a desk in the corner, but it was fairly barren. In contrast, there was a small closet practically stuffed with clothing. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I¡¯m going to have to ask you about the body,¡± I said. Lily shook her head, still staring at the bed. ¡°It¡¯s fine. It¡¯s not like I can forget it.¡± Her voice was surprisingly strong given the circumstances, though it still shook. ¡°She was on the bed. Like I said, multiple pieces. Somewhere between ten and twenty, it¡¯s hard to say with how much blood there was.¡± ¡°Did it look torn or cut?¡± She looked confused, so I adjusted the question. ¡°How much of the guts were still inside the body?¡± ¡°Not a lot. Lots of¡­ extra flesh there. Like I said, I couldn¡¯t even tell it was her at first.¡± Probably torn, then. ¡°Do you know what she wore to sleep? And did you see that clothing on her body?¡± Lily focused for a moment, closing her eyes and grimacing at what she imagined. After a second, she shook her head. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. ¡°I don¡¯t know what she wore and I didn¡¯t get a good enough look to tell if there was anything... mixed in there.¡± Each answer eliminated magical options, but what was left was a blurry picture. The sheer extent of the damage described implied ritualcraft. You could probably pull it off with a wand, but no hedge witch would have that. I didn¡¯t even have a wand. I knelt down, looking underneath and around the bed. I even asked Lily to step outside so I could pull up the sheet over the floor. She jumped at the opportunity, her discomfort finally overwhelming her. I couldn¡¯t find any drawings or a spot of missing blood to imply that someone had cleaned off the ritual. Would this be possible with a spell? I didn¡¯t have a great grasp on combat magic, but this level of damage seemed quite excessive for that. Felicity would certainly know. Lily watched me from outside the door, clearly curious about what I had been looking for. Since I couldn¡¯t lie, I just kept silent. Amy¡¯s backpack, which the police hadn¡¯t felt worth taking, had two library books. I took them both, transferring them to my backpack. ¡°The Mind of Monsters: Murder Cults¡± and ¡°Honest Polyamory¡±. I couldn¡¯t guess what they said about Amy, but someone had to return them. I took a bit to go through her folders. The only thing of note other than classwork was a flier she¡¯d shoved into her bag for a club. They called themselves a supernatural studies club, but- well they spelled magick with a ¡®k¡¯ and that was all I needed to know they knew nothing real. I looked in her closet too, for the sake of thoroughness. Amy¡¯s clothing looked fairly generic but tucked into the back were a few gothic outfits. I quite liked them, though I couldn¡¯t imagine wearing anything like it myself. We were missing a phone, but that was probably with the police and therefore out of our reach. I considered asking Margaret if whatever she¡¯d done to the police could get it, but I doubted we¡¯d get anything. Not to mention, I really didn¡¯t want Margaret getting involved in this before I had no choice. From the light in the window, I could tell I¡¯d spent a lot longer than I thought going through this room. There just wasn¡¯t anything more to find. ¡°Alright,¡± I said finally. ¡°I think we have everything we¡¯re going to get.¡± I couldn¡¯t help but feel unsatisfied. I essentially had no more information than I¡¯d walked in with. I should¡¯ve expected it really, I wasn¡¯t a detective. My expertise began and ended with magic. Even my supposed interrogation skill was just that. Lily was giving me an odd look. Her golden eyes felt oddly piercing in this light. ¡°Did you figure anything out from that?¡± she asked. She didn¡¯t seem surprised when I shook my head. ¡°Damn. I guess all we have is the long shot then.¡± ¡°Nathan?¡± ¡°Him too, but I was thinking of the occult club.¡± She held up the supernatural studies flier, which she¡¯d grabbed at some point. ¡°I remember Amy got back late on Fridays, which means she probably went. It¡¯s definitely her type of crowd. And it¡¯s another group of people for you to read.¡± I gave it some thought. On one hand, I really did not want to have to deal with the kind of people who spelled magic wrong. But on the other hand, if I was looking for a hedge witch, a supernatural studies club would be the best place to do it. It¡¯s the group of people most likely to both find real magic and be dumb enough to use it. Lily spoke up. ¡°Sorry, I know you only agreed to talk to Nathan. I didn¡¯t- I¡¯ve just been assuming you want to keep doing this. You probably have your own stuff.¡± She seemed to have misread my uncertainty. ¡°I¡¯m the one who asked to come here,¡± I pointed out. Besides, ¡°I¡¯ve actually enjoyed this. It¡¯s¡­ probably not right to enjoy it, you¡¯re trying to help your friend. It¡¯s been a long time since- I don¡¯t really have any friends.¡± ¡°You have one now.¡± She said it so resolutely that I was taken aback. The blush on her face made me think she was just as surprised. ¡°I mean- I shouldn¡¯t-¡± I decided to save her from her floundering. ¡°Thank you. Yes, I¡¯ll come with you to the club.¡± I checked the flyer. The club met at 6 pm, which was well after I¡¯d be done with Margaret. Lily seemed to calm herself considerably. ¡°We should part ways for today though, it¡¯s already getting late.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± she nodded. A flicker of some emotion I couldn¡¯t decipher passed over her. ¡°We should exchange numbers, so we can work out somewhere to meet.¡± My third phone number. I tried to act less excited about that than I was. The third person, at least. I also had the local police, fire department, poison control, and a suicide hotline Felicity had put into my contacts when I wasn¡¯t looking. We left the dorm room, riding the elevator down in relative silence. It was a comfortable silence, a far cry from how we¡¯d gone up. I could see Lily was preparing herself for something, though. When we stepped outside, we both seemed to realize simultaneously that we were headed in different directions. Lily looked back into the door, seemingly not liking how many people could still see us. She grabbed my hand, pulling me off to the side of the building, out of view of the front windows. Her hand was just as warm as last time, very noticeable over the chill in the air. Control your breathing, Claire. She let go fairly quickly once we were out of sight, but the heat lingered. She turned back towards me with a light blush on her face. ¡°I just realized that I haven¡¯t thanked you for helping me today,¡± Lily said. The hand wringing was back with a vengeance. ¡°You didn¡¯t have to do that, I practically ambushed you back at the library and you have your- whatever thing that you can¡¯t talk about. It¡¯s been so nice just talking to someone who isn¡¯t walking on eggshells around me.¡± She seemed to hesitate, before pressing on. ¡°So, if I were to stop by the library tomorrow, just to talk- not about Amy- well, about Amy if you want but just to hang out, I mean. Would that be ok? I don¡¯t want to bother you.¡± It somehow didn¡¯t hit me until that moment, that this girl didn¡¯t just find me useful but genuinely wanted to be my friend. Hell, she was nervous about me not wanting that. ¡°Yes,¡± I managed. ¡°That would be fine- good. I¡¯d like that.¡± There could be issues if she saw what I tended to research there, but I could deal with that. I would find a way to deal with that. Lily smiled that same wonderful smile, golden eyes sparkling. And then, as if she was trying to kill me, she threw her arms around me in a quick hug. ¡°See you tomorrow,¡± the monster said before spinning around and walking away. It never looked back, which was good because I don¡¯t think I could have explained the look of terror on my face.
I stood at the front door of the house, fighting down the dread that threatened to overwhelm me. I had already reinforced my persona as far as I could. This was not going to be pleasant. I put my hand on the doorknob, hesitating again. I¡¯d spent as much time planning out this conversation as I could. Ideally, there wouldn¡¯t be a conversation, but that was a ridiculous fantasy. I made myself push the door open. ¡°I have not betrayed you yet.¡± And there she was, looking down at me over the railing of the workshop. Her glare threatened to freeze me in place as surely as any curse. I was allowed to close the door before she spoke. ¡°What did we agree,¡± Margaret asked, ¡°after that Felicity girl?¡± ¡°That my sexuality was a weakness and I would not form relationships that could use it against me.¡± Meeting her eye would be an act of challenge, but looking away from her was a sign of guilt. Therefore, I looked at her feet. All on script so far. ¡°So then. Would you please-¡± A pause. Margaret looked behind herself before continuing. ¡°-explain how that harlot is not you betraying me?¡± ¡®Harlot¡¯ was a bad sign. ¡°She is connected to what could be a hedge witch within your territory. I was using her to investigate them. The witch left a body mutilated in improbable circumstances with no-¡± ¡°And what part of that,¡± Margaret snapped, ¡°necessitated you whoring yourself out to her?¡± ...what? I could feel each moment tick by as I searched for an answer. Saying I hadn¡¯t would just make her angrier. Did I fold now? A memory resurfaced, Margaret¡¯s fury that she hadn¡¯t been able to kill Felicity without declaring war on the cult. Lily had no such protections. ¡°The-¡± I tried to say ¡®harlot¡¯ but I couldn¡¯t think of Lily that way, ¡°-girl has the same weakness I do. I intend to take advantage of it.¡± Her ¡®weakness¡¯ was just a guess, an inference from a couple of things that were maybe just hopeful thinking. The silence stretched. Each second was agonizing. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. ¡°To think,¡± she said finally. I successfully repressed the flinch at her finally speaking again. ¡°That our legacy has fallen so far that you must resort to this to find a simple hedge witch.¡± There was genuine sadness in her voice. ¡°¡®Pride is an errand for fools and-¡¯¡± ¡°Don¡¯t talk back to me!¡± Margaret snapped. But the quote had landed, I could tell. She¡¯d have cursed me if it hadn¡¯t. ¡°Fine. Deal with this hedge witch on your own, I have more important things to do than care about you debasing yourself.¡± She evidently did care, but she turned around and retreated into her workshop. I didn¡¯t let out my breath until I was in my room and the door was closed. Once it was, I collapsed to the floor in a fit of horrible coughs.
Two hours later, I got a text from Lily. Lily: ik what you said abt the library. if you want to talk im here 1.4 - Hedgecraft I fussed with my hair in the mirror, wondering if I¡¯d gone insane. My deep blue eyes, in sharp contrast to the sickly pale and rat-like face around them, stared back at me with equal uncertainty. I had a simple, dark green shirt on. A different color than yesterday, because wearing the same one would make it look like I hadn¡¯t changed. I had tried and failed to locate the one skirt I owned, so it was jeans again. I knew logically what was happening. If I took a step outside of myself, it was kind of obvious. A lonely girl plans to meet someone very pretty and immediately decides to care about her appearance more. She would not be doing this if she wasn¡¯t going to meet that someone, therefore she is doing it for them. The problem was that stepping back into myself with that newfound knowledge was terrifying. I¡¯d done this song and dance before. I knew myself well enough to know I was very gay. Inconveniently so, even. It was a weak point, but one I thought I had walled off after Felicity. And then this flower-shaped wrecking ball had crashed into it at full force. I sighed. My hair was as good as I was going to get it and it had been for the last five minutes. It at least looked better than yesterday. Enough of the tangles were gone and I¡¯d managed to pull it into a black, wavy lob. I¡¯d known this girl for one day. I had reinforced my persona in the middle of the day and it barely lasted an hour before she was tearing it down again. I was definitely too lonely. I glanced down at my phone on my desk. Lily had also only known me for a day, but she¡¯d sent that text. She¡¯d even been careful enough to word it so that it wasn¡¯t clear why she was offering, in case whoever I went to the library to hide from read my texts. She actually cared. That was the thought that let me recenter myself. I could not afford to have this schoolgirl crush be an issue with the first real friend I might have in years. After I had recharged the house wards this morning, Margaret had unceremoniously told me to go do something useful. The Whisper ward from yesterday had failed yet again so presumably she was designing an even better one. Which meant I had effectively an entire day to do my research.
I spent the walk to the library reorganizing my list of priorities.
  1. Develop a long-term strategy for Margaret and Lily. Margaret wouldn¡¯t be satisfied by my excuse forever, especially once the question of a hedge witch was resolved.
  2. Research methods that could have been used to kill Amy. It was still very uncertain that it had been magical, but I was willing to bet I could make a lot of headway in determining that using the library.
  3. Dyer research. This was the least pressing issue, though it couldn¡¯t be completely ignored. Margaret¡¯s condition was deteriorating and the longer she was left to fester, the more likely she¡¯d do something drastic.
  4. Figure out what a GM is.
It had been a long time since I¡¯d made it to the library this early on a Friday, so I wasn¡¯t sure who would be at the front desk. It turned out to be Levi, who was always on his phone. He didn¡¯t even see me come in. Despite the order I¡¯d put them on the list, I decided to work on the second priority first. The first one was the kind of task my subconscious would be passively working on in the background anyway. So, let¡¯s say I wanted to kill Amy. How would I do it? If I were a real witch I¡¯d have a plethora of options. However, a hedge witch was someone who had just stumbled upon something real. They would have one or two tricks at most. Tricks felt like the wrong word considering the state of the corpse. That¡¯s what was bothering me about this. The corpse had been torn into pieces. I could do that, maybe, with very creative use of animation. It was my only other spell, a fairly weak telekinetic pull. However, every creative option I came up with involved some form of explosive. Putting enough into the spell to reduce a person to chunks of meat would kill me a dozen times over. There was no world where a hedge witch could do that with a spell. No, this had to be a ritual. There were no signs of ritual marks in Amy¡¯s room, which meant¡­ I had no idea. The biggest problem anyone making a ritual encounters is that rituals don¡¯t discriminate. A ritual that affects a city block will affect everything in that block. If you constructed a ritual that would make Amy explode, it would also blow up everyone else within its range, including you. If you weren¡¯t careful, it could even explode things vaguely similar to humans, like mannequins or dogs. You could create additional conditions, but only ones that would make sense to a god. People were all just interchangeable bags of meat to them. I immediately dismissed the possibility of any kind of precision targeting from a hedge witch. But what did that leave? I knew what books I needed to find now though. Witches had been working on this problem for centuries. I needed to find a solution that was possible for someone who didn¡¯t have proper training.
Five hours later, I was in a study room with several books strewn about and at least a dozen diagrams for possible rituals. It was a simple room, just a rectangular table and six chairs. I¡¯d picked one essentially at random and pushed all but one of the chairs on the side away from the door up against the wall. That lone chair was left on the side, for when I got tired of standing. Several of the books on the table were in languages other than English, but communication was kind enough to provide me with translations. I had just triple-checked the math on the ritual in front of me. Either this hedge witch was the second coming of Baba Yaga or... Fuck, they¡¯d summoned something. Summoning was the only simple way to precisely target a ritual. It was still complicated as hell, but you didn¡¯t need the magical theory expertise required for any of the other solutions. You could just copy the work of a real witch who¡¯d already made the summoning ritual. I knew a decent amount about summoning since it was one of Dyer¡¯s specialties, enough to know that I really didn¡¯t want it to be that. Summoning was the act of pulling a creature from Beyond, called an outsider, into our world and binding it with enough restrictions that it would do what you wanted. Summoning solved the problem of targeting a ritual the same way a grenade solved the problem of targeting a barrel of gunpowder. It was still going to make a mess, but you could at least make it happen in the face of someone you didn¡¯t like. It was also the kind of field where each advancement was paid for in the corpses of the fools who¡¯d tried something new. The Inquisition cracked down hard on any signs of summoning. Honestly, I couldn¡¯t blame them. The ritual in front of me, if drawn out properly, would summon something that could kill everyone in this town. Worse, using it would kill me, meaning I couldn¡¯t control the creature to stop it from doing that. And this was just what I¡¯d been able to put together from scraps. A significant part of me wanted to destroy these books. It would burn away the goodwill I¡¯d cultivated with this library over my life, but maybe it would be worth it to stop some reckless idiot from destroying Reston. An equally significant part of me screamed in horror at the idea of destroying something as sacred as books. I decided to set the issue aside for another day. If our hedge witch had summoned something, then that explained the state of Amy¡¯s corpse. It wasn''t possible to get the precise control necessary to force an outsider to restrain itself. It would keep going until its alien mind was confident the target was dead. A knock on the study room door pulled my attention. I looked up to see Lily had opened the door. Lily¡¯s ponytail was looser today, and a few wavy red tendrils framed her face. She had on a v-neck blouse, a pinkish shade of orange. Or was that orange-tinted pink? I had no clue. A pair of denim cut-off shorts completed the outfit. I had no idea how I had missed someone so extremely noticeable. She looked better than she had yesterday, though considering my hormones I¡¯d probably say that any day. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. She looked down at the table as she stepped into the room. I realized I was standing over a bunch of extremely magical diagrams. ¡°What on earth are you trying to build?¡± she asked. I considered for a serious moment just telling her it was magic. Her friend Amy had believed in magic and it hadn¡¯t seemed to bother her. Then the rest of my brain managed to catch up with the situation and pointed out the many, many ways that could go wrong. Lily didn¡¯t know about the Inquisition and would never believe me if I told her. Hell, for all I knew she could be part of the Inquisition. Though if that was true, I was already dead for the circle she¡¯d seen. ¡°One of the things you can¡¯t ask about,¡± I said finally. She looked at me incredulously before realizing I was serious. ¡°Alright then,¡± she said. She clearly found this funny, which made irritation bubble up inside me. ¡°Did your phone die?¡± I paused, reaching into my pocket to pull out my phone. I¡¯d left it on silent out of habit. I flipped it open and read the text from three hours ago, though I made sure to keep Lily in my peripheral vision. Lily: got email from reston. classes are canceled bc prof lansberg is dead Lily: ill try to find more then meet you at library Then one from only ten minutes ago. Lily: r u at the library yet? I flushed as I realized she¡¯d had to search for the whole library for me. ¡°Who is Lansberg?¡± I asked. Lily¡¯s expression straightened out as she remembered the subject matter. ¡°Math teacher. He taught the class we were trying to find Nathan in,¡± Lily explained. ¡°From what I could figure out, his wife found him dead. Same condition as Amy.¡± I took a moment to think. The same situation, going after one person in the night and leaving another completely unharmed. ¡°Did Amy have a class with him?¡± I asked. ¡°Nope,¡± Lily said. She¡¯d settled in one of the chairs at a right angle to where I stood. ¡°Her math work we saw yesterday had Mr Manton¡¯s name on it.¡± It figures that a girl who memorized people¡¯s class schedules would have stored that away. ¡°Impressive,¡± I said. Lily grinned at the compliment and I made a note to give her more. ¡°So, who knew Amy and took his class?¡± That made the smile drop. ¡°I don¡¯t know that much,¡± she said. ¡°Nathan, but probably a lot of other people too.¡± She looked to the side for a moment before continuing. ¡°We¡¯ll need to try to find more at the club today. Though actually, I guess that might not be happening. People are really freaking out now that a second person has died.¡± ¡°I suppose it¡¯ll all die down when they decide it¡¯s a second wild animal.¡± If my current theory about an outsider was right, the police might have been onto something. I couldn¡¯t help but chuckle at that. Lily gave me a sour look, though a yawn broke her glare. That someone new had died only four days later was a problem. One or two murders under implausible circumstances were interesting, but not enough for anything but local media to care. If this pace kept up though, we would have a lot of eyes on us uncomfortably fast. With how bizarre the murder method was, that would draw the Inquisition here. How many serial killers had been caught by Inquisitors looking for witch activity? Sometimes it surely had to be just a mundane lunatic. Did the Inquisition call the police on them? They might just ignore mundane mass murderers. They were exactly the kind of stupid to decide it wasn¡¯t their place to interfere with that. No, focus Claire. What I really needed to do was more research. If this was an outsider, then a lot depended on figuring out what kind it was. Lily was subtly inspecting one of the diagrams in front of her. She probably wouldn¡¯t be able to make heads or tails of it, but I still snatched it to let her know she¡¯d been found out. She looked suitably embarrassed to have been caught. ¡°Come on,¡± she pleaded as if the curiosity was hurting her. ¡°You can¡¯t just go making- I don¡¯t even know what these are. What are they?¡± ¡°Why-¡± I stopped myself, too much of my irritation had bled into my tone. ¡°Please, Lily. I said there would be things I wouldn¡¯t talk about. That was part of the deal. If you can¡¯t do that, then leave.¡± She flinched. ¡°Ok, ok,¡± Lily sounded so apologetic I almost felt bad. ¡°I didn¡¯t- never mind.¡± She started looking everywhere but at me. ¡°I need to keep working on this for a while,¡± I said. ¡°Probably only two or three more hours. I imagine I won¡¯t be very good company.¡± Lily hesitated. She raised her hand as if to touch me and then jerked it back almost violently. ¡°Is that like you asking me to leave or- I mean I will if that is but if not would you mind if I stayed? I kind of don¡¯t have any other friends.¡± God dammit. That was me asking her to leave. She¡¯d be reading over my shoulder and I highly doubted she was capable of being quiet. But she was lonely. ¡°Yes, you can stay.¡±
Lily was shockingly good at being quiet. Most of the time she faded into the background, doing something on her phone. Every so often I¡¯d ask her to grab a book and a few minutes later I¡¯d turn around to find it on the table in front of me. After an hour, my need for new books had dried up. At some point, she put her head down on the table, and after another hour I realized she¡¯d fallen asleep. The results of my research were not inspiring. There were two types of summoning, based on which glyph the ritual was focused around. If you summoned an outsider with intrusion, you would get something akin to an echo of your target. It would be held together by the ritual itself, so keeping it permanently would require a permanent sacrifice. These were the kind that could just be banished. It might even be possible with a spell, though not one I knew. This made them the generally weaker but safer version of summoning. If you were insane, you¡¯d summon something with manifestation. That would actually reach into the Beyond and pull something here. It was still an unnatural form, translated through the god since the worlds Beyond didn¡¯t tend to agree with our silly concepts like euclidean geometry. Since was technically a distinct creature, this kind of outsider could even use its own magic. The rest of the ritual bound your outsider, restricting its behavior and forcing it to follow certain commands. The rules and limits of bindings varied so much that I didn¡¯t even try to guess the restrictions of the ones the hedge witch used. Most importantly, if you tried to banish a manifested outsider, you would just break the bindings on it. This would leave you with a creature who is quite upset to exist in a world of euclidean geometry and has nothing stopping it from killing everyone it sees. The one piece of good news was that there was a way to ward against outsiders of any kind. ¡®Not of this reality¡¯ was one of the categories that did make sense to gods, which meant I could probably make a ritual to hurt it. There was, of course, the other option. The one where this was just some mundane lunatic. But if that was the case, there really wasn¡¯t much I could do. Yesterday had well established that I was no detective. I set the book in my lap aside. I¡¯d been reading it more to double-check what other books were saying than for anything of value. I looked over at Lily, fast asleep. I hadn¡¯t even realized she was tired. It couldn¡¯t possibly be comfortable, leaning against the table like that. With each exhale, she blew a strand of hair away from her face. With each inhale, it fell back to where it was. It was adorable. Lily was a baffling person. There was clearly a lot of confidence buried in there, she showed it to both Peter and Madison yesterday. But the rest of the time she was a ball of constant anxiety. I couldn¡¯t find the common thread. When did Lily the Girl become Lily the Brave? She was socially competent enough that she could have friends, easily. Hell, she was pretty enough that she didn¡¯t even need competence. Yet for some reason, she was lonely. She didn¡¯t think her only friend had thought of her as a friend. Though she had seemingly decided that I was a friend. Maybe she could only ever have one at a time? So when Amy died, she latched on to the next person she saw. It didn¡¯t fit. Well no, it did, but it fit loosely. I was spinning threads around the real Lily but I wasn¡¯t properly capturing her. The rainfall was sliding down the shell. Something was wrong. I stood up suddenly, unsure of why. My instincts were screaming that I needed to act. I did an inventory of the room. Lily was still asleep. My backpack was by the far wall, which had my first aid kit and ritual supplies. The table had books and diagrams on it. I gathered all the diagrams, since I couldn¡¯t afford to leave them here and didn¡¯t want to destroy my work. I put them in my backpack with my ritual supplies, then put the backpack over my shoulder. My instincts were frustratingly vague about what the actual threat was. I knew better than to ignore them, but there were too many things I could be reacting to. Did I need to run or hide? I didn¡¯t have a weapon, which was stupid. My only options for defending myself were getting into a fistfight, which was a terrible idea, and animation, which barely qualified as combat magic. The shell broke against the water. Something was wrong. Being prepared this time let me recognize the cause as unraveling, the tears in reality that occurred when gods pushed against our universe with enough force. It happened when activating most rituals, but who would be reckless enough to do that in the library? Probably a hedge witch reckless enough to leave two obliterated bodies. ¡°Lily, get up.¡± I moved over to her and started shaking her awake. She withstood a surprising amount of shaking with only mild grumbling. Finally, I grabbed at her neck and pinched until she had to wake herself up enough to stop me. ¡°What?!¡± Lily all but screamed at me as she slapped my hand away. ¡°Something is wrong. We¡¯re leaving,¡± I said. Lily looked at me with suspicion, as if I would be doing this as a joke, but she got up nonetheless. Very worrying dots were connecting in my head. The list of students who had a connection to both Amy and the professor. There was some common thread there, and the odds were good that thread crossed Lily¡¯s too. I opened the study room door and saw the library extending out into infinity, corridors duplicated and twisting in more than three dimensions. Lily screamed in horror and I couldn¡¯t help but feel like she had the right idea. 1.5 - Folded Library We were clearly in a library corridor, the hall ahead of us fading off into infinity. The left wall was entirely bookcases. As I followed it to the top I realized that the ceiling was also bookcases, the books on it refusing to fall in defiance of gravity. The right wall was gone, replaced by a railing overlooking a library that seemed more akin to an Escher painting than any coherent space. What used to be the library was duplicated and folded over itself. I could identify pieces, like what was probably another study room, but they didn¡¯t connect in anything approaching reason. I also recognized I couldn¡¯t see a ceiling above us if I started looking for it from the right, only more of the library folded over itself. I could feel my mind attempting to grapple with this impossible geometry, to conceptualize the folded library the same way it would a normal three-dimensional space, but I didn¡¯t allow it to. Instead, I forced my mind to engage with the world around it entirely theoretically, as I would a diagram of a multidimensional shape. Margaret teaching me to do that had put me in a coma for a week, though I was grateful for the lesson. Gaining that awareness of my own mind inspired the technique that made me into Claire the Witch. The first step was damage control. There was absolutely no world in which Lily would believe this was mundane, which meant she needed to be inducted fast. ¡°Lily, do you believe in magic?¡± ¡°No,¡± she said immediately, her eyes still locked on the impossible shapes before her. Her whole body was trembling. I stepped into her line of sight, golden eyes meeting my blue. Lily regained some of her composure as I blocked the folded library behind us. We were close enough that I could feel some of her breath, faintly. ¡°Don¡¯t look at things like that,¡± I said harshly. ¡°Your brain will try to make sense of them and it can¡¯t. Just focus on me.¡± She nodded weakly. Strands of her hair, askew from where she slept on them, drifted in the¡­ wind? Was there wind here? ¡°Huh- oh right, lie detector.¡± Lily¡¯s eyes widened, but she kept my gaze. ¡°Holy shit you¡¯re a wizard.¡± ¡°What?¡± ¡°That¡¯s what the drawings were, they were magic.¡± She grabbed onto my shoulders far too tightly. ¡°You can magic us out of here.¡± I laughed. It was mean, but there was something very funny about her immediate and arbitrary assumptions of how magic worked. She¡¯d broken my attempt at a commanding presence almost immediately, but it was probably for the best. The laugh seemed to do far more to calm Lily. ¡°No, I¡¯m not a wizard,¡± I said, smiling despite myself. ¡°I¡¯m a witch.¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t that just a female wizard?¡± ¡°Then why would you call me a wizard?¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t it like an actor and actress thing- never mind.¡± She was smiling too now. Her grip had relaxed enough it was no longer painful. I quite enjoyed the feeling, but I forced myself to remain focused. ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll go through the things that you need to know right now. You can get the full explanation once we¡¯re safe.¡± And I would tell her, consequences be damned. ¡°First, don¡¯t look at anything too confusing, like the hallways behind me.¡± She nodded, eyes still locked on mine. ¡°Second, in case I die, you can¡¯t tell anyone about magic. Don¡¯t try to find out more, pretend this never happened. Don¡¯t even report me missing to the police. You will be hunted down and killed.¡± More hesitation this time, but another nod. ¡°Third, you need to do what I say. Things could start happening very fast and I won¡¯t be able to explain.¡± Another quick nod. I didn¡¯t want to leave this moment of closeness, it was the most I¡¯d had in a long time, but we were probably in danger here. I put a hand on one of hers and turned us so she was facing the bookcases. I started to step away from her. ¡°I¡¯ve been hearing voices,¡± Lily said suddenly. Her grip tightened and her voice shook. I stopped, turning back to her. ¡°Since yesterday, I think. They were really faint, but they kept getting louder. I¡­ I thought I was going crazy.¡± I deliberated for a moment, based on my understanding of her. She was scared, she was tactile, and she still hadn¡¯t let go of me. Her fear put us both in danger. I made a snap decision, channeling Felicity. I stepped forward, embracing her from underneath her arms. She released her grip on my shoulders in surprise, her arms forced awkwardly over her head. ¡°You are not crazy. We are going to make it out of this.¡± I felt the air cool as I moved away from her, but there was no resistance this time. I surveyed our surroundings. Our corridor led off into infinity and the bookcases I could see from here didn¡¯t seem to be broken up by another door. We could technically jump off the side of the railing, but that felt pretty suicidal. Looking down confirmed it was more of the same. I walked over to the bookshelf, grabbed a random book, and looked at a random page. Something was wrong. I did not allow my mind to understand the words and snapped the book shut. It was a similar trick to how I looked at the impossible geometry, albeit much harder when done on reflex. ¡°Don¡¯t read the books,¡± I told Lily as I put it back. She was staring at me silently. Something had happened to Amy and Professor¡­ I had already forgotten his name. Books that were dangerous to read generally drove people insane instead of making them explode, which implied that something else here would kill us. It was probably the outsider, although that theory might be shot. What I was looking at now exceeded what a hedge witch could manage. It might even exceed what Margaret could manage. The Weaving had some authority over spatial manipulation, but this was ludicrous. There was something there, distant threads that I ought to be connecting but couldn¡¯t. ¡°You¡¯re a very different person right now,¡± Lily finally said. I wasn¡¯t sure what she meant, but there were more pressing issues currently. ¡°Are you still hearing the voices?¡± I asked. She nodded. ¡°What are they saying?¡± Lily tilted her head as if she was listening to a real sound. After a moment, she winced in pain. ¡°I can¡¯t really make anything out,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s saying a lot, but it¡¯s too much. They¡¯re all... talking over each other.¡± ¡°The same voice multiple times or different ones?¡± ¡°Different, very different. One of them sounds like a kid.¡± Lily said. Oddly enough that sounded like divinatory static, junk information that came along with what you were looking for. It happened sometimes with poorly constructed rituals and was almost always worthless, only serving to disorient people without training. That was another thread that surely would lead somewhere if I pulled on it, but there was too much competing for my attention. For the time being, it probably wasn¡¯t a danger to us. I looked out at the maze of the folded library for another study room and eventually spotted one, next to a set of stairs. It seemed like the kinds of corridors we were in were duplicated over and over, each stretching out to a different point. There was a matching set of stairs near our study room, though it was too far away to be accessible. That wasn¡¯t how folding space was supposed to work. Rooms that were bigger on the inside didn¡¯t multiply themselves. Although, I had already theorized about- A flicker of movement caught my eye. As complex as this place was, it was an unmoving complexity. Millions of years of evolutionary history had trained my eyes to be very good at catching small flickers of movement. It didn¡¯t take long to find it again, far off in the distance. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. It was trying to hide from us, but occasionally there would be a sliver of obsidian black jumping between two points. The object was bony like a crab but seemed to adhere to surfaces like a spider. It was difficult to tell in this place, but it seemed to be getting closer. Snap decision time. I glanced behind me, confirming it was still the same room. ¡°Go back to the study room,¡± I told Lily. I saw her turn around in my peripheral vision. I looked for one of my ritual markers from my backpack, mentally sketching out the ward against outsiders. It was still my best guess. Rummaging around in my backpack took far longer than I was comfortable with. The distance I could see probably didn¡¯t mean anything here, so I could have seconds or hours. Some distant part of me made a note to find a better solution for ritual supplies. ¡°What are we preparing for?¡± Lily called out. She was shouting like it was difficult to hear. ¡°A monster is coming, probably.¡± I was shouting too, so I guess I couldn¡¯t blame her. Fancy ward or simple ward? Simple, I decided immediately. A half-drawn ward was worthless. I¡¯d be doing this free-handed as well, which limited the complexity of what I could do without going insane. I finally found the marker and started drawing. I drew onto the ground around the doorway. Four glyphs, two accented, and an interior line. A ward is essentially a landmine. When some condition is met, usually contact with the ritual surface, the ritual releases the power imbued into it at the offending creature. In this case, it would burst when the outsider got too close to it but leave Lily and I, who belonged in this reality, mostly safe. It would only have one shot since I didn¡¯t know how to design rechargeable wards, but I was building some of the Weaving¡¯s authority over spatial manipulation into this. If I was lucky, it might eject the monster from this place. Most likely, it would just hurt it a lot. It only took me a few minutes before I was done. I activated it with a thought and was surprised by a splitting headache. I wasn¡¯t getting any assistance from the leyline crossing here. If I¡¯d tried something fancy the backlash could¡¯ve incapacitated or killed me and I hadn¡¯t even thought of that. ¡°My phone doesn¡¯t have a signal here,¡± Lily called out. That was interesting. It meant we were completely outside real space, or at least very far away from it. Or it was a trick of some sort. I looked out for the monster, trying to figure out where it was. A jet-black limb appearing a few feet down the corridor answered that question. It was as long as I was tall and surprisingly thin, only as thick as my wrist. Definitely more spider than crab, it had far too many joints. It was also slightly indistinct, like I was looking at it and only it through dirty glass. I screamed and retreated into the study room. As soon as I was inside Lily closed the door. ¡°Help me with the table,¡± she said. We pushed the table behind the door to form a barricade. It made a horrible sound as it scratched against the floor, but the weight was more assurance than anything. I sat down against the far wall and tried to think. I was so tired. Lily looked at me expectantly as if I knew what I was supposed to do now. I should¡¯ve used animation to fling it off the side when it came over the railing. I was an idiot, I learned that spell specifically because it was one of the only forms of combat magic the Weaving could provide. It was for exactly this situation and I¡¯d been too stupid to use it. Lily grabbed my hands and I realized I was shaking. She was kneeling next to where I¡¯d sat down. Was she going to kill me? It would make sense, considering she no longer had a use for me. Or maybe she had gotten me to move the table to block off my escape route and the spider was just an illusion- ¡°We are going to make it out of this.¡± Lily echoed my words, my futile promise earlier. The fatigue was clearly wearing on her too. I let out a raspy breath, closing my eyes. I was suffering backlash, but I knew how to handle this. Find the threads, cut the bad ones, and reexamine the problem. I opened my eyes with surprising difficulty. What could I do? I only had one plan, I could give her to the monster. In both of the previous murders, it had shown that it would leave bystanders alone to get its real target. That was unacceptable as a solution. I couldn¡¯t quite remember why, but it just was. Lily¡¯s eyes started to droop and I realized that we¡¯d been here for minutes, not hours. We shouldn¡¯t be this tired. ¡°Pull me up,¡± I asked. It was challenging, but we managed to lean on each other until we were standing. ¡°We need to talk, can¡¯t go to sleep.¡± ¡°Ok, talking is good.¡± Lily pulled us to the center of the room so we wouldn¡¯t lean against a wall. Good idea. I decided to think out loud. For some reason, the pain in my head didn¡¯t interfere with the need to sleep. ¡°The books, the sleeping, it¡¯s all to immobilize us. The monster made this place, I think. Or maybe it just evolved to be a predator in this environment, pulling people into the perfect killing field. Dyer talked about that in her diary, an outsider she had which could fold space.¡± That¡¯s why I¡¯d latched onto the idea of the folded library so quickly. I would¡¯ve caught it if I¡¯d said the name out loud. What I¡¯d seen here had large implications for the study of folded space, but I was together enough now to realize that was a problem for later. ¡°It¡¯s here because someone told it to kill you. I don¡¯t know how they did that so I probably can¡¯t undo it.¡± ¡°If it¡¯s after me¡­ is this the thing that killed Amy?¡± Lily was behind, but she caught on quickly. There was a sharp banging against the walls. The sound made both of us jump. It happened again, another bang every few seconds. ¡°Should we be scared of that?¡± Lily asked. She was looking around, trying to locate the source of the sound. ¡°Probably,¡± I answered. Lily was faring with the tiredness far better than I was now. She squeezed my hand to let me know my eyes were starting to droop. ¡°So, if I can¡¯t make it stop attacking you, I need to get us out of here. It waited until each victim was asleep so if we can get out and keep you awake-¡± The banging was louder this time and a crack appeared on the wall beside the door. It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening. I kept explaining aloud while I thought. ¡°Some bindings force it to keep charging straight into danger, but most of the time it¡¯s better to leave it with some self preservati-¡± ¡°Breaking the wall to avoid your circle, got it!¡± Lily interrupted to keep me focused. ¡°Can you stop it?¡± ¡°I don-¡± I cut myself off as the loose threads I¡¯d been reaching for this entire time finally met. ¡°Actually yes. Kind of.¡± Where had I put the marker? I¡¯d had it in my hand at some point but looking around the room I couldn¡¯t find it. Lily, seeming to realize the point of my search, reached into my bag and pulled out a second marker. Oh, right. ¡°You¡¯re gonna do more magic?¡± Lily asked. I nodded, taking the marker. I would need the minimum possible folding, which was five glyphs. I started drawing in the center of the room. Being free-handed for something this big was normally insane, especially while fatigued, but the margin of error here was uniquely high. I just had to make any fold at all. Lily stepped back out of the way to give me room. ¡°It was Dyer,¡± I explained as I worked. Explaining aloud had let me see some of these threads earlier, so it would be good to continue. ¡°She was a powerful witch back in the 60s. She claimed to have copied the technique of folding space from another dimension. Since she was a summoner, it must have come from something like that thing out there.¡± The banging was getting louder, the crack in the wall widening. ¡°She was killed inside a folded space when her apprentice collapsed it. Everything inside was atomized.¡± ¡°Please tell me that¡¯s not what you¡¯re doing!¡± Lily shouted. The shouting made more sense now, to talk over the assault on the walls. ¡°No.¡± I hesitated. I was nearly done, but if the crack got much bigger it wouldn¡¯t serve as a viable boundary. ¡°Well actually I kind of am but it won¡¯t explode us. Lots of witches still use folded space, because of what normally happens when folded space ruptures.¡± I cut off my explanation, kneeling on the ground in front of the finished ritual. Five glyphs, all of them accented, and three interior lines balanced by guesswork. This might kill me. Even if it didn¡¯t, it was going to be hell. Lily was leaning against the wall, on the opposite side of the crack. The combination of fear and fatigue led to a very amusing expression. It would be so much easier to sacrifice her. I could avenge her even, if I felt like it. I probably would. ¡®We are going to make it out of this,¡¯ she¡¯d said. I¡¯d certainly changed my mind as soon as the monster appeared, but she¡¯d still been telling the truth. For some reason, this girl thought I could save her. ¡°I might try to kill you after this,¡± I warned Lily, placing my hand inside the ritual. ¡°Please don¡¯t let me.¡± I activated the ritual and the Weaving spun thread which stretched without fraying and my world became madness.
Backlash was a complicated thing. Truthfully, the term was unhelpful. It implied that it was something from the ritual happening to you, but that wasn¡¯t how it worked. Backlash was what happened to the human brain when it tried to interface with something as grand and cosmic as a god. When the Weaving moved through my mind to read the ritual in front of me, it changed me by osmosis. It hurt, of course, but that was fine. The world became correct. I could now understand that the thing my former mind had labeled as ¡®the monster¡¯ was no such thing. Monster was not a meaningful category to the thing that broke through the wall. One of its appendages had come through slightly, the end getting caught inside the ruptured boundary created by my ritual. As had to happen when a folded space was ruptured, everything inside was moved to the nearest non-folded point in space, outside the bounds of the extradimensional space created by the thing that was not a monster. The space around me had not visibly changed much. The ritual under the wooden rectangle at the front was gone and the concrete wall was no longer cracked, which implied that the far wall was the boundary of the space the creature which was not a monster had made. Had it warped the entire rest of the library? That would be monumentally inefficient, so likely not. Several of the objects within the space had moved as well. I studied them for a time, trying to discern their function. The wooden rectangle on the far wall connected to another point in real space, which I identified as a concept called a passage. I was attempting to identify the rounded glowing objects above me when there was a sound from my left. Another not-monster, a colorful one this time. It was a mix of browns, reds, blues, and¡­ a pinkish shade of orange. Or was that orange-tinted pink? It was still making sounds. Was it trying to attack me? It was doing a terrible job of it if so. It was moving towards the passage, perhaps trying to flee. It wasn¡¯t much of a threat, but that was no reason to let it become one. I reached out with one of my threads to try and¡­ how did these creatures work? Before I could figure out how to kill it, it left, firing another sonic attack to cover its retreat. Strangling, that¡¯s how I would¡¯ve killed it. The information was too late, but it was still comforting, a final puzzle solved as I drifted off to sleep. 1.6 - Idiocy I woke with a splitting headache. I groaned in agony, shifting against the cold floor. ¡°Please tell me you¡¯re ok this time.¡± A voice said. I liked the voice, it was gentle. It was also red, which I didn¡¯t think voices were supposed to be. I opened my eyes but was immediately blinded by the lights. Eyes closed then, for now. ¡°Probably,¡± I answered the voice. ¡°Where am I?¡± ¡°Are you sure you¡¯re ok? You¡¯re not gonna decide I kidnapped you?¡± ¡°Well, that very much depends on if you¡¯ve kidnapped me.¡± I didn¡¯t think the voice would kidnap me though. ¡°How many times have I woken up?¡± ¡°This is only the third time,¡± she said. The voice was feminine. And a flower? ¡°Lily. That¡¯s your name.¡± The information started to pour in now, who she was, why I liked her, why she was red, what we had been doing. ¡°I¡¯m suffering backlash.¡± I opened my eyes again, squinting but fighting to keep them open. We were still in the study room, it seemed. I wanted to see¡­ there she was. Lily sat in a chair, facing where I lay on the floor. She looked upset, but she wasn¡¯t hurt. She also wasn¡¯t quite looking at me. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said. ¡°Whatever I said or did, I¡¯m sorry.¡± ¡°I get the feeling that what happened to you was a lot worse,¡± she said. She seemed to have accepted I was back but still looked extremely uncomfortable. ¡°I brought these. I wasn¡¯t- I didn¡¯t want to change you- I¡¯m sorry.¡± She held up a plastic shopping bag. It was transparent enough that I could see denim inside. Oh, I had peed myself. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, this happens,¡± I said. It¡¯d been a while, but it could get far worse than this. Lily stepped outside to let me change. As I looked at the space around me, I realized there were now two tables and several more chairs than there had been. That was a clue, the first thread to some grand tapestry, but I couldn¡¯t see it. Lily and I were not the same size, but it wasn¡¯t enough of an issue to be more than uncomfortable. My old pants and panties went into the plastic bag, which I twisted and tied closed. As I transferred my phone from the old to the new pants I checked the time. 3:43 pm. I hadn¡¯t thought to check the time when we went into the folded library, so I couldn¡¯t tell for certain how long I¡¯d been out, but it had likely been a few hours. I put the plastic bag in my backpack, deciding against carrying it. I understood that I was supposed to be embarrassed by this and I probably would be eventually, but I was not fully my normal self yet. I accepted that small mercy for what it was. Future Claire could process the shame later. I also looked around for the piece of the outsider. I had a half-memory of a piece of it breaking off. After a minute I found it, a piece cut out of obsidian. It looked rough but was smooth to the touch. It was small enough to fit entirely in my hand. I shouldn¡¯t have been able to notice it breaking off, it was so small, but the Weaving was a god of connections. Excess information would often come with the backlash, which had a much better chance of being useful than divinatory static. Lily was waiting for me just outside the room. She looked down to confirm I was wearing clean pants and then seemed to need to look anywhere else. ¡°So¡­¡± Lily trailed off. ¡°We need to talk, but I really don¡¯t want to spend any more time in that room and you really want to be in clothes that fit. Is¡­ is it better if I come with you to your place or if I wait for you?¡± That was an excellent question. Honestly, I¡¯d rather just go to another study room and have the conversation there. Except, I hadn¡¯t killed the outsider or even hurt it. ¡°Are you still hearing voices?¡± I asked Lily. She nodded, looking almost embarrassed about it. So it was still after Lily and would be back eventually. Margaret would be the best equipped to identify and remove the targeting mechanism from Lily. Even if she couldn¡¯t, the house wards would make her safest there. ¡°Come with me,¡± I said reluctantly. ¡°My mother can probably help with the outsider too.¡±
Lily managed to last an impressive five minutes¡¯ worth of walking before she started asking questions. ¡°So¡­ magic is real?¡± I looked around us, but the campus seemed to be pretty barren. Right, no classes. It was¡­ probably safe. The bird perched on a bench told me Margaret would know but Lily had already said it out loud. That damage was done. ¡°You¡¯ve been introduced to magic by a hedge witch,¡± I said for Margaret¡¯s benefit, ¡°so there¡¯s one thing you need to know about first. The most important thing.¡± Lily nodded, rapt with excitement to hear about magic. I was impressed, considering her introduction to it. She walked slightly behind me as I led her to Margaret¡¯s house. ¡°The Inquisition.¡± How do I explain this in a way that doesn¡¯t sound insane? ¡°The reason magic is secret isn¡¯t because witches want it to be secret. A lot of us do, but we don¡¯t have a choice. The Inquisition is¡­ a secret society. If they find out you know about real magic, they will kidnap and torture you for everything you know about me and my mother, then do the same to everyone they think you¡¯ve told.¡± Then they would come for Margaret and I with overwhelming force. It was an extreme case, but I knew of one witch who had her home quite literally blown up while she was inside. They¡¯d called it a gas line explosion. Lily was quiet for a moment as she processed the implications. ¡°That¡¯s why you told me to pretend nothing happened if you died,¡± she realized. ¡°To protect me and your mom from them.¡± I nodded. Some witches killed witnesses and called it a mercy. I wasn¡¯t sure I disagreed. On a bad day, I might say that I¡¯d hand Margaret over to the Inquisition gladly. I wouldn¡¯t actually. Not even she deserved that, and the witches she knew about definitely didn¡¯t. A thread tugged at me, a detail I¡¯d forgotten in the chaos of the folded library, but I couldn¡¯t find it. ¡°They have people who you¡¯d never suspect, who live their entire lives normally. Or maybe they recruit people later in life, it¡¯s hard to figure out how they operate. They have people in the government, the FBI, not all of them but enough. Every person you tell, you are putting everyone you know and everyone they know in danger.¡± ¡°Keep the secret, I got it,¡± Lily said glumly. I didn¡¯t like the dismissive tone, but the severe look on her face made me think she understood. ¡°Why do you even do this, then? If you get attacked by monsters and hunted by the Illuminati?¡± I reached for something positive about magic. ¡°Well, I didn¡¯t get much of a choice,¡± I began, which earned me a look of sympathy, ¡°but I think I¡¯d be doing this anyway. Magic is¡­¡± Was it too embarrassing to say? Screw it. ¡°There¡¯s a great quote from one of my predecessors, Lilian Rivers, where she calls witchcraft inherently narcissistic. Magic so clearly does not like humans but we insist on making it work for us anyway. Something is inspiring about that. It¡¯s proof we can control things, make them better.¡± I was met with a painfully long silence. I couldn¡¯t look at her. I hadn¡¯t realized how much I needed her to understand. This was the only good part of my life. ¡°I see,¡± Lily said finally. Dammit. ¡°So, the lie detector thing, that¡¯s magic?¡± ¡°It is,¡± I answered. I did a fairly good job keeping the agitation out of my voice. ¡°The spell is called communication, it¡¯s the first one I learned. It also makes me fluent in every language.¡± ¡°That does sound really useful,¡± she admitted. ¡°How many spells do you know?¡± ¡°Only two,¡± I said. Lily didn¡¯t look impressed. ¡°My other is called animation.¡± Eager to show off, I pointed at her and imagined a thread running from the tip of my finger to the palm of her hand. I flicked my finger up and her hand rose too, much to her surprise. ¡°Woah! That feels weird.¡± She fought the pull and I immediately dropped the effect. Trying to overpower her would turn the otherwise negligible backlash fairly strenuous. ¡°It works on anything, not just people.¡± I explained ¡°But it isn¡¯t very strong as you can tell.¡± ¡°I get it. That¡¯s why you didn¡¯t use it against the spider demon,¡± Lily said. I fought back the embarrassment. ¡°Anyway, they¡¯re quite hard to learn, which is why I only have two. I¡¯m pretty close to my third though.¡± Lily gave me an odd look as if she was evaluating me. Margaret¡¯s house was in sight now. ¡°You fought off a spider demon. You basically have superpowers. You¡¯re a great wizard.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not a good witch,¡± I said immediately. ¡°The spider only avoided my ward because it didn¡¯t know what it was. I¡¯m pretty sure it could¡¯ve barreled right through it.¡± Lily looked like she was going to say something else, but I cut her off. ¡°Let me show you something,¡± I said. I pointed across the street at Margaret¡¯s house. This magic would be impressive, which might even help her understand my passion for it. ¡°Count how many houses there are on that street. Don¡¯t look too hard, just give me the number.¡± Lily complied, her eyes moving over the street. I took the opportunity to covertly catch my breath. ¡°Five.¡± Perfect. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. ¡°Now tell me the color of each of their front doors.¡± She eyed me curiously, but I just waited in anticipation. Lily said each one as she looked at them. ¡°Blue, dark brown, a bit darker brown, and a light brown.¡± I couldn¡¯t hold back my grin. ¡°That¡¯s only four colors.¡± Lily paused, looking back at the houses. ¡°I miscounted,¡± she tried. ¡°Wait- no there are five houses still. What?¡± I stepped behind her, pointing over her shoulder at the house. I noticed the spot on her neck that I had pinched to wake her up was bruised, a smear on her bronze skin. ¡°Follow the line of my finger. Just focus on the point at the end there and you¡¯ll get it.¡± Margaret¡¯s house looked jarring compared to the rest of the street. It was several feet further back from the road and twice as large as any of the others. The pure dark oak looked rotten, which I knew Margaret had to do on purpose. It truly felt like the place an evil witch would live. After a minute, Lily made a gasp of surprise. ¡°I see it!¡± she said excitedly. ¡°How could I not before? I¡­ I remember it being there.¡± ¡°That¡¯s my mother¡¯s specialty,¡± I explained. I was so glad she enjoyed this. ¡°Information magic. That specific effect makes it almost impossible to notice unless it¡¯s pointed out to you. Even if you knew something was there, you wouldn¡¯t be able to find where.¡± ¡°So, is that where we¡¯re going?¡± Lily asked. My mood dropped immediately. ¡°It is,¡± I confirmed. Lily¡¯s expression dropped to match mine. ¡°So, the rules. Don¡¯t speak unless spoken to. Don¡¯t lie, she has communication too. And don¡¯t¡­ interfere, no matter what she does to me. It won¡¯t last forever.¡± Her look of sympathy grew with each rule. How much had Lily put together by now, from how I acted? She was shockingly observant, but this was far more direct. ¡°Let¡¯s go,¡± I said, stepping away from her and starting towards the house. The incline of the hill was sharp enough that I was breathing a little heavier by the time I got to the front porch. It very well could¡¯ve been made that way to spite me. I rehearsed the script I¡¯d made in my head. I needed to spin a narrative where Margaret and I were conspiring to manipulate Lily, leveraging Margaret¡¯s need to feel superior over her anger. I knew what was probably going to happen. Lily followed me onto the porch, stopping to squeeze my hand in reassurance before dropping it. That did help. ¡°I have not betrayed you yet,¡± I said as I opened the door. Margaret looked down from the banister of her workshop, obviously knowing we were coming. From the corner of my eye, I saw Lily processing the implications of me saying that before she schooled her expression. We walked in and waited just outside the entryway. ¡°Every day you tell me that,¡± Margaret said. She glared at Lily while speaking to me. ¡°And yet for the past few, it seems less true each time.¡± ¡°You know-¡± I began before collapsing. The icy feeling overtook me. I¡¯d expected it eventually, but usually she lectured me first. I could hear things happening, someone was moving then someone else yelled and the movement stopped. I never knew how long this was, in the moment. It was like my body wasn¡¯t my body. The pain, because of course it still hurt, wasn¡¯t enough to remind me that it was my body and I was real. I wasn¡¯t sure I was real. After some length of time, I reemerged from the icy prison. I regained feeling in my body and weakly twitched my fingers. I had fallen in such a way that I could see my hand, which had flakes of frost on it. I guessed I¡¯d been out between five and ten minutes. Margaret allowed me enough time to struggle to my feet. Lily stood almost perfectly still where she¡¯d been, but I didn¡¯t look longer than to confirm she was alive. The glance gave me a surprising impression of restrained fury. ¡°Now, why do you think I did that?¡± Margaret asked. Fuck. ¡°Be¡­¡± Speaking was difficult after being frozen for so long, which was a good cover as I thought. I ran through today¡¯s events desperately. ¡°Because I¡­ showed the girl¡­ the house.¡± That was what Margaret would care about the most, the leak of information. Calling her ¡®the girl¡¯ depersonalized her and made her seem unimportant. Worth letting me keep, I hoped. ¡°Yes. Why on earth did you show her my demesne before you made your request? If I disagree now, I have more than enough cause to kill her. You gain nothing doing it this way. It isn¡¯t even betraying me for a reason, it¡¯s just stupid. So why?¡± That¡­ was a good point. Of course, of course, the one time that Lily saw was a time when I actually deserved it. ¡°Because I am stupid,¡± I said. Stupidity was the greatest sin in Margaret¡¯s eyes- ¡°No!¡± Margaret snarled. ¡°I am not so worthless a teacher as to make you stupid. It is because you are weak! It¡¯s because you are chronically incapable of thinking with your head instead of your snatch. How many times must we do this? Will you just give my entire legacy away to the first harlot who waves her tits at you?¡± I shamefully waited for another round of the curse, almost preferring it to this, but Margaret seemed to make an effort to calm herself. ¡°Please tell me you brought her here for a good reason? You¡¯ve exposed her to enough of your foolishness already.¡± The plan was worthless now. Direct approach then. ¡°This girl was attacked by a hedge witch. It sent an outsider capable of folding space after her. She and I were both pulled into a clearly magical place. The hedge witch left me no choice but to induct this girl into our world. I ask that you find and remove the targeting mechanism placed on this girl.¡± ¡°Yes, yes, I know why you told her. Why would I help her?¡± She honestly sounded curious, which was good. ¡°Because she has valuable information that can locate the hedge witch before they bring the Inquisition down on you,¡± I said. ¡®You¡¯ not ¡®us,¡¯ she wouldn¡¯t respond well to us as equals. ¡°Have you fucked her yet?¡± Margaret asked. What? ¡°No.¡± ¡°Then why are you wearing her clothing?¡± Really, that was it? She wanted me to say it. ¡°I peed myself amid backlash after constructing a ritual to escape from the outsider.¡± I decided to play up the humiliation and let her have her fun. It¡¯s not like this could look any worse to Lily. ¡°I panicked when I saw the outsider and failed to consider the lack of a leyline crossing in extradimensional space.¡± Margaret snorted. ¡°Yes, that does sound like something you¡¯d do. Both of you, up here then.¡± I didn¡¯t look at Lily as I walked upstairs, though I could hear her following me. The stairs creaked under our combined weight. ¡°Have you betrayed me yet?¡± Margaret asked as we reached the top of the stairs. ¡°No.¡± ¡°Then recharge the wards. You, girl, stand over here.¡± Margaret led Lily to the center of the room, where we would draw rituals. I pressed my hand against the ritual point on the wall, noting the frost hadn¡¯t yet melted. I saw Lily pause, noticing the walls not lining up with the area below, but she didn¡¯t say anything. I took the opportunity to observe her, gauging her body language. It was tight and tense, but she was holding her composure well. She was doing almost no fidgeting, which Margaret may or may not know to be surprising. I didn¡¯t understand the mechanics of how Margaret saw through the birds. She couldn¡¯t possibly be processing all that information at once, but her knowledge seemed too extensive for her to be manually choosing to watch through a specific bird¡¯s eyes. I couldn¡¯t imagine her intentionally choosing to watch me all day. Even if she could stand that, it would undermine the bird¡¯s value as a tool of espionage. There was a bit more backlash than usual when I charged the wards, enough to surprise me. I dove into my mind to repair the combined damage from the backlash and the curse. It took far longer than it should¡¯ve, but I managed to get the threads orderly. This had the added benefit of reinforcing my persona at the same time. ¡°Claire!¡± Margaret pulled me out of my mind. ¡°Let¡¯s see you learn something from this. You¡¯re going to be drawing a modular diagnostic ritual.¡±
It took an hour and a half, but this ritual was a thing of beauty. Margaret was understating it when she called this ritual modular. With only minor changes, this could divine information about people, objects, and even concepts if you could somehow get them inside the primary circle. Modifications to the subrituals, connected by a line drawn to the main circle, would change what information was obtained. You could even change the subrituals based on the information obtained without redrawing the primary circle. Margaret wasn¡¯t having me reference a book, which implied she¡¯d made this ritual herself. It definitely had her style of genius about it. After a trip to the bathroom, during which I also took the opportunity to change into my own clothing, Lily stood in the center of the primary circle. I placed my hand against one of the three subrituals, which would be enough to activate the entire thing. ¡°Have you betrayed me yet?¡± ¡°No,¡± I said. Lily had long since stopped reacting to the question. She looked tired and I realized she¡¯d never seen real ritualcraft. What I did back at the folded library was all free-hand, which was suicidally reckless unless you had no choice. She probably hadn¡¯t expected us to spend as long as we had drawing the ritual to precision. ¡°Then get on with it.¡± I activated the ritual, feeling the backlash wash over me. It was only a sharp headache, despite the complexity of this ritual. A combination of the precision to which it was drawn and having access to the leyline crossing again. The ritual flooded my mind with information about magic on Lily. I could see it, the marker that had been placed on her. It wasn¡¯t a physical mark, instead being attached to¡­ the concept of Lily? There was also something else. It was too blurry to make out, though I probably could with modifications to the ritual. ¡°What do you see?¡± Margaret asked. I weighed the options in a split second. Was this a test? No, she wouldn¡¯t teach me this ritual if she wanted to curse Lily. She¡¯d do it and then berate me for not thinking of it. ¡°It¡¯s a conceptual marker,¡± I said. ¡°No distinguishing characteristics, any god could do this with a spell.¡± ¡°Could you remove it?¡± She asked. I shook my head immediately. ¡°Good, hubris like that could be the death of you. Go get Irregular Disenchantment volume one.¡± Margaret was always nicer during lessons, I noted while I hunted down the book. Maybe she enjoyed teaching, or at least talking about magic. I certainly did. Just as any god could make a conceptual marker, any god could remove one. In general, the more specific the effect was, the more specific the countereffect would need to be. It only took another half hour to build a ritual to get the Weaving to remove the marker from Lily. I could probably do it free-hand in five minutes if I accepted the backlash. It wasn¡¯t surprising that Margaret wouldn¡¯t have been in danger from the spider monster, but it still stung. A reminder of how inferior I was to her in so many ways. Margaret seemed finished with us, walking back over to her ritual drafting table. I could tell how badly Lily wanted to leave. Her eyes flicked to the door every few minutes and her fidgeting was getting less suppressed. I felt quite bad as I spoke up. ¡°One more thing.¡± I intentionally did not say a name, since both ¡®Mom¡¯ and ¡®Margaret¡¯ had upset her before. I held out the shard of the spider monster I¡¯d found. ¡°Would this be enough of a point of connection to find the outsider?¡± Margaret turned around, looking at the shard for a moment. ¡°Have you betrayed me yet?¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°Then bring it here.¡± I walked over and Margaret grabbed it out of my hand without letting our skin touch. She stared at it in her palm for a moment. ¡°It isn¡¯t in real space currently,¡± Margaret said. I blinked. She could not possibly be doing that with a spell. ¡°But its history is very short. I can tell you where it was summoned.¡± Did she have a spell connected to a ritual somehow? But why would she need to do that kind of divination on demand? Then my brain caught up with the rest of what she said. ¡°You know where the ritual is.¡± Margaret nodded, smiling for some reason. Did she look strained or was I imagining it? Which answer did that make more likely? ¡°It¡¯s an apartment building, Lunatics. What an awful pun. Room 412. I¡¯ll be keeping this as payment.¡± She pocketed the shard and turned her back to me again. What would happen if I just brought a knife and stabbed her one day, while her back was turned? She had knives in the kitchen, so unless she were stupid she¡¯d have a plan for that. This was a well-worn thread of logic. ¡°I have not betrayed you yet,¡± I said as I left, which was met with a snort from Margaret. Lily was by the top of the stairs, looking relieved. The reason for Margaret¡¯s amusement was clear. If it was at Lunatics, then it was my fault the hedge witch had been able to avoid Margaret¡¯s notice. Neither of us said anything as we descended the stairs. Once we were out the front door, Lily sighed in relief. I kept walking, not trusting my voice until we were at the bottom of the hill. Now comes the almost-as-hard part. ¡°So¡­¡± Lily began. I¡¯d stopped at the road to let her catch up to me. ¡°Can we talk about¡­ that?¡± ¡°No,¡± I said. I kept my eyes forward. We really were shockingly close to the dorms. Did Margaret do that on purpose? Why would she? ¡°Claire¡­¡± She reached for my hand but I pulled it away. ¡°Ok, ok. Can we go by my dorm room and drop off my clothes then? Before we go to the apartment building, I mean.¡± She seriously still wanted to¡­ ¡°Ok.¡± I managed. 1.7 - Sentimentality Lily¡¯s temporary dorms were a lot further away from Margaret¡¯s house. It occurred to me then that they might have multiple dorm buildings. Of course they did, she left the dorms with me yesterday. This one was a smaller building. Lily still had to swipe a card to get in, but there was no front desk person to not look at us. Everything inside was slightly dirtier too. What decided who got to live in the nice dorm and who lived here? Lily and I hadn¡¯t said a word since agreeing to come here, which meant Lily¡¯s fidgeting was slowly building. I didn¡¯t understand it. She stood in front of Margaret, but now Lily was afraid? Lily¡¯s room was on the first floor and she silently invited me in. It was very clearly a temporary space, with no meaningful decoration. It was the same size and layout as Amy¡¯s dorm room, which I took to mean it was standard. Just like Amy¡¯s room, the window was covered by blinds. I shrugged off my backpack onto the floor, pausing before I unzipped it. This would be the best chance to discuss what had happened, but I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted to. Lily had sat down in the center of the bed, staring at me. I realized I was looking at Lily the Brave again. ¡°Claire.¡± Her golden eyes felt like they were pinning me in place. She patted the spot on the bed next to her. ¡°Can we please talk?¡± ¡°No?¡± I tried. Lily blinked, before sighing. ¡°Look, I¡¯m trying to be nice about this but your mom threatened to kill me at least twice. If you don¡¯t want to talk about your stuff, that¡¯s fine. But we have to talk.¡± She was right, that was the problem. It would be ridiculous not to talk about how I¡¯d nearly gotten her killed. I left my backpack on the floor where I¡¯d been, sitting down to her right. I was reminded of the bench yesterday. It somehow didn¡¯t feel like yesterday. ¡°Ok,¡± Lily began. ¡°So first, how much danger am I in? Is¡­ is your mom gonna kill me?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think so,¡± I said. I couldn¡¯t look at her while I talked about this. ¡°It¡¯s not the first time I¡¯ve told someone things I shouldn¡¯t have. She hasn¡¯t killed any of them so far.¡± It was just Felicity, who wasn¡¯t as vulnerable as Lily. I was lying without lying. Margaret would be proud. ¡°That¡¯s good,¡± she let out a sigh of relief. ¡°Though¡­ you¡¯re saying this has happened before?¡± ¡°There¡¯s a reason Margaret calls it my weakness,¡± I said glumly. ¡°We¡¯re probably about to go meet one of them.¡± If I went anywhere near her apartment building, she would find a way to be there. ¡°R-right.¡± Lily glanced away awkwardly, but she rallied quickly. ¡°Does she use that ice spell on you every time?¡± I looked down at my hand, a few flakes of ice left. ¡°Yes,¡± I said. I tried not to fault her for being curious. I would be too. ¡°Though it¡¯s not an ice spell. It¡¯s¡­ a little complicated.¡± Lily grabbed my hand with both of hers, absently rubbing away the last of the frost. I couldn¡¯t help but look at her now. ¡°I would like to know,¡± she said. Her expression was gentle and earnest. There wasn¡¯t any harm in indulging her. ¡°The best way to describe it would be as a curse. Our kind of magic, which would be eldritch magic, doesn¡¯t treat curses as a separate category. It¡¯s more a label that gets applied to some types of rituals.¡± ¡°Rituals are the magic circles you draw?¡± I nodded, happy she was engaging. She was still rubbing the back of my hand lightly, but her eyes were focused on me. ¡°Right. So, curses usually refer to a ritual anchored to a specific person. Not many gods can do that, only something with some authority over connections or divination.¡± Lily paused in her ministrations. ¡°Gods? Wait, so you get your magic from-¡± ¡°Not like you¡¯re thinking,¡± I hurried to correct her. ¡°They aren¡¯t- they don¡¯t care about us. Closer to Cthulhu than Zeus, and even that¡¯s not fully right.¡± Lily still seemed hesitant, but she nodded for me to continue. ¡°So our god, the Weaving, specializes in connections. It¡¯s about how things relate to one another. That¡¯s why, when you give it a concept like communication, it monitors the connection between people to detect if someone is lying. You can use that same kind of connection to find information about things. Like using a book to find its author.¡± ¡°Or like what Margaret did with the piece of the monster.¡± I nodded again. I wanted to pull away from her for this next bit, I wasn¡¯t sure I could handle it while she was- but she wouldn¡¯t let me. Her grip tightened and after a moment I stopped trying. ¡°So you can use that same principle to directly affect the connected object. It¡¯s a lot harder, and there are some defenses against it. But the stronger your connection is, the more you can do. If, for example, you could put a baby inside a ritual circle for a full day to really impress upon the god that you were talking about this specific collection of carbon atoms and that when skin cells fell off it didn¡¯t become less of the target-¡± I was rambling, needed to focus, needed to breathe ¡°-then you could get a nearly perfect connection. You could do almost anything to that baby. You could manifest the Quiet inside it or maybe the lost winter court or the Lantern no one really knows what they do but they probably could or maybe you push its soul out of alignment or maybe you just paralyze them some other way and make frost disguise it-¡± Lily hugged me and I realized I was crying. I hated myself sometimes, how easy I was. But god if it didn¡¯t feel good. A reminder that I was here instead of that icy hell, that I could feel something, someone. I felt the last of the aches from frozen muscles fading. ¡°Why?¡± I asked. Why, why do you care? I can¡¯t give you anything. I might have just killed you. When Lily spoke I could feel how the movements traveled from her body to mine. ¡°Claire, a few hours ago you put yourself through hell to save my life from a spider demon. I saw what that ritual did to you. I don¡¯t think you remember all of it, but it was bad.¡± Her voice broke slightly. ¡°And then you went and did it again to keep it from coming back for me. You knew, didn¡¯t you, that she¡¯d do that to you today? If it wasn¡¯t showing me the house it would¡¯ve been telling me your spells or¡­ something else.¡± I needed her to stop, needed her to stop thanking me for ruining everything and for not being smart enough- ¡°Can you tell me?¡± Lily asked. ¡°What does it feel like? I could feel the chill in the air, but I can¡¯t imagine what...¡± ¡°It¡¯s¡­¡± I was happy about the question, something to focus on and explain, but it was difficult to describe. I leaned my head against her shoulder as I thought, the warmth comforting. ¡°One of the possibilities I said, having my soul out of alignment. I don¡¯t know if people have souls but that¡¯s what it feels like. My body stops being mine. I can¡¯t tell how long it lasts or even form a thought that complicated. I think the cold is just a side effect of whatever does that. It also hurts, but that¡¯s less bad.¡± I added the last part almost casually, as if I¡¯d forgotten about it. Talking about the worst thing in my life like this was surreal. But somehow Lily let me do it. ¡°I just wanna check,¡± Lily said hesitantly. ¡°I think you do, but you know that isn¡¯t right, don¡¯t you? I mean I know she¡¯s your mom but that doesn¡¯t mean-¡± ¡°I know,¡± I said. It wasn¡¯t that much different than physical abuse. I imagined most people who hit their kids would rather do it magically if they knew how much worse that could be. ¡°But you can¡¯t stop her,¡± Lily said sadly. I appreciated that she hadn¡¯t stopped holding me, maybe understanding now what it meant. ¡°Are you sure- I guess you can¡¯t go to the police about your evil witch mom.¡± ¡°I tried that one already,¡± I said. I told her the story of when I went to the police as a child and what Margaret did to them. Lily was silent for a moment after I finished. ¡°Oh, that¡¯s why they ignored Amy. I thought that was ridiculous, even for cops.¡± I started to apologize but before I could even say a word she cut me off. ¡°Claire, you were six and being tortured. I don¡¯t even know how that could be your fault.¡± I let the words die in my throat, tears threatening to well up again. I didn¡¯t deserve someone like Lily. I let myself enjoy it for a while, the feeling of being safe in someone¡¯s arms again. I had no idea how I had survived so long without this. After another few minutes though, I spoke up. ¡°As nice as this is, we should get going.¡± I pulled away from her, once again met by the cold air. I regretted the choice almost immediately, but it was necessary. ¡°We have one more hell to go through and we¡¯ll need to be back in time for the club.¡± Lily nodded, standing up and stretching. I fought very hard not to watch. Really Claire, now of all times? ¡°After this one,¡± she said, ¡°you need to let me do something for you. I have no idea how I¡¯m supposed to pay you back for all this.¡± ¡°You¡¯re already doing great,¡± I assured her. I picked up my backpack, almost forgetting to take Lily¡¯s clothes out first. She took them from me and just tossed them on the bed over her shoulder. ¡°Alright, what¡¯s the hell this time?¡± Lily asked. ¡°We need help,¡± I said bluntly. ¡°I thought we were looking for a hedge witch, someone with no training who found a bit of real magic by mistake. And maybe we still are, but that bit of magic they found was quite powerful. We almost died just running away from it. So, we¡¯re going to talk to someone who deals with things like that. A monster hunter, for lack of a better word. But to get to her, we need to talk to someone else.¡± ¡°And this someone is the hell?¡± Lily guessed. I nodded. We would have to see her anyway, so it might as well be on my terms. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. ¡°She is the one person who can lie to me, my ex-girlfriend, and the first person I ever tried to kill. We need to talk to Felicity Doe.¡± Lily giggled, which earned her a frown. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯m sorry, you just said that so dramatically.¡± ¡°It¡¯s an important part of being a witch,¡± I insisted. I couldn¡¯t stop myself from smiling back. ¡°I¡¯ve had lessons on it.¡± And that made Lily burst out laughing.
About a thirty-minute walk from the Reston campus was a shopping district. I wasn¡¯t sure of the name of the area or if it was just an emergent phenomenon, one of those things that happens when you put a college in a place like Reston. It was far enough away from the campus that you didn¡¯t have to feel like it was a part of the campus while being close enough that students could easily access it. On a corner in that shopping district, there was a very peculiar store. The sign on the front called it ¡°Charming Magicks¡± and promised all sorts of things. Good luck charms, protection against evil witches, tomes of ancient lore, and more. Every one of them was of the charlatan variety of magic. Lily and I were here to see the fortune teller. Charming Magicks was not in the same direction as the Lunatic apartment complex. It was at a right angle to it. But I knew that whichever one I went to first, Felicity would be there, because Felicity¡¯s magic was bullshit. The bell rang as Lily and I walked through the door. We¡¯d actually arrived here about five minutes ago, but we took a break in the next store over to let me catch my breath. One of the customer attendants called over to us. ¡°Be right with you.¡± I could go to the back to talk to Felicity now, but I decided to wait for the attendant to come over. Lily hadn¡¯t quite believed me when I told her how much this place would bend over backward for me and I wanted her to see. The store was far too large for how niche its market was, even in Reston. The lighting was kept intentionally dim through tinted windows and weak bulbs, presumably for the atmosphere. There were several aisles worth of trinkets, oils, and whatever else people told themselves was magic. In the back, there was a door cloaked in velvet fabric. There was only one other customer in the store, checking out with the attendant at the register. The attendant was a tall brunette who had some light freckles on her cheeks. She finished up with her customer and walked over to us. Her eyes widened with a flash of recognition. ¡°Lily?¡± What. ¡°Jessie, it¡¯s good to see you.¡± Lily covered for my surprise. ¡°I didn¡¯t know you worked here.¡± It took me a moment to remember who she was. The less liked friend of Amy. ¡°It¡¯s a new thing-¡± and then Jessie looked at me and I got the reaction I was looking for. ¡°Oh wow, you¡¯re her. They have a photo of you in the back, are you like the boss¡¯s daughter? I¡¯ll go get Felicity.¡± I gave Lily a smug grin and she gracefully admitted defeat. ¡°No need, we¡¯ll head back ourselves,¡± I told Jessie. While we had her here, might as well. ¡°I heard about Amy from Lily, how are you feeling?¡± ¡°I mean¡­ not great?¡± Jessie said awkwardly. ¡°I dunno how you¡¯re supposed to feel, so I¡¯ve just kinda been trying to keep going.¡± ¡°Me too,¡± Lily said. The animated gesturing was back with a vengeance. ¡°I talked to Peter yesterday and he was very helpful. I know you said you didn¡¯t know anything else, but are you sure?¡± ¡°Yeah, that was all I know. But the cops will have to reopen the case now that someone else died, right?¡± Lily glanced over at me and I confirmed with a slight nod. ¡°They might,¡± Lily said. ¡°It was good seeing you, Jessie.¡± ¡°You too.¡± Jessie walked off towards some door by the register. Lily followed me towards a door on the side. ¡°Any interesting lies?¡± she asked. ¡°Nope, just that she was telling the truth when she said it was good to see you.¡± Lily paused, seeming actually surprised. ¡°Oh, before I forget,¡± I said. The conversation with Jessie reminded me of something I should¡¯ve brought up by now. ¡°I can¡¯t lie. Magically incapable, it¡¯s the sacrifice for using the Weaving.¡± ¡°So you¡¯ll need me to lie for you sometimes.¡± Lily nodded. Clever as always. ¡°Anything I need to lie about here?¡± I shook my head. ¡°No, almost all witches will know I can¡¯t and want me to do the talking.¡± Lily nodded her understanding as we made it to the velvet door. I took a deep breath and Lily reached out to squeeze my hand. I appreciated this new habit. I reached for the doorknob only to find it turn itself and the door pulled open. ¡°Oh, Claire! What a surprise, do come in.¡± Felicity looked like she was designed intentionally to be beautiful, which she had. She had emerald green eyes and strawberry blond hair that fell down her back in perfect curls. If you searched her mature features, which I could see Lily doing in the corner of my eye, you wouldn¡¯t find a single blemish. She was even wearing soft red lipstick, which would never get in the way of anything because it wasn¡¯t actually there. The outfit it had selected today was a dark blue, short-sleeved blouse, and a ridiculously frilly gray skirt, naturally short enough to reveal her long legs in all their splendor. It always chose skirts because I liked skirts. ¡°It¡¯s always a surprise,¡± I said, ¡°and yet I know that¡¯s not the glamour you wear for your customers.¡± It was all fake. The kind of fake you could only get when someone spent hours on a computer making you look that good, brought to real life. So fake that it made communication think every word she said was a lie. ¡°I can change very quickly.¡± Felicity grinned like we were sharing a joke and I had to fight not to smile back. She spoke like she was royalty, always an air of elegance even in mischief. ¡°What..?¡± Lily seemed dumbstruck. Felicity tended to cause that kind of reaction, especially when she turned her glamour up to eleven like this. Felicity walked back into the room to sit in her chair. Her steps were bouncy, like she was giddy at just the sight of me. It would be endearing if I didn¡¯t know it was intentional. The fortune teller¡¯s room was only a bit bigger than Lily¡¯s dorm room, which could¡¯ve made an awkward fit if we¡¯d all tried to move around each other. The back wall had a shelf with a wide variety of fake magical tools like a crystal ball and a dowsing rod. I wouldn¡¯t have spotted the small door hidden by the dark against the far wall if I hadn¡¯t known it was there. ¡°Did you not warn her about me?¡± Felicity asked. Lily was still openly staring with a violent blush on her face. My heart skipped at the confirmation that Lily was interested in women. What was she seeing? It wouldn¡¯t be the same thing I was. The glamour looked different to everyone, tailoring itself to their tastes. ¡°I did,¡± I said, ¡°but it¡¯s always a shock the first time. Felicity, this is Lily. She¡¯s been inducted, by the way.¡± Felicity¡¯s beauty affected me too, but resentment was a great insulator against other emotions. I walked over to the table but didn¡¯t sit down in the chair. Felicity raised an eyebrow but didn¡¯t comment. Felicity¡¯s table was a dark oak wood and I saw tarot cards laid out on top of it. Only two cards were out of the deck, the magician and the reversed chariot. From what I remembered, it was too few for any sort of tarot reading. Two major arcana were quite unlikely to draw naturally, so was she trying to imply something with them? ¡°Shouldn¡¯t her name be Rose?¡± Felicity asked. ¡°My older sister,¡± Lily said, coming up beside me. Amusingly, that seemed to have knocked her out of her shock. ¡°Some varieties of lilies are red,¡± I offered. Felicity¡¯s eyes moved between Lily and me, coming to some conclusion. ¡°Wait,¡± Lily pointed at the cards on the table. ¡°Is fortune telling real?¡± ¡°No,¡± I said immediately. ¡°If it was, she¡¯d be playing the stock market.¡± Lily looked slightly disappointed. ¡°Are you certain I¡¯m not? I could have a huge stock portfolio funding this place,¡± Felicity suggested airily. ¡°If you were, you¡¯d have offered to cut me in to join your cult.¡± ¡°Bah,¡± she waved her hand. ¡°You¡¯ll have more than enough money once you kill Margaret. I wouldn¡¯t try to bribe you.¡± It would be so easy to fall back into the pattern of banter. ¡°I need to speak to Bethany,¡± I said instead. Felicity grinned like she could tell what I was fighting. ¡°She¡¯s out of town, something about a carnival? But perhaps I could help you with your monster problem. A lot of that is my side of the fence.¡± That was a problem. The news that the Carnival was back was also concerning, to say the least, but not actionable. It also might be a lie, Felicity did enjoy being the only person who could do that. ¡°Your kind of problem doesn¡¯t cause unraveling,¡± I said, a split second before realizing my mistake. Felicity¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°Unravel- What kind of monster are you dealing with?¡± She looked so concerned she must have practiced in the mirror. ¡°Sorry,¡± Lily jumped in. ¡°Unraveling?¡± ¡°Unraveling is a side effect of powerful eldritch magic,¡± I explained. ¡°Tears in reality between moments. You can train yourself to notice them, it¡¯s how I knew to wake you up.¡± ¡°And it¡¯s seldom caused by monsters,¡± Felicity added. ¡°Which means you¡¯re dealing with something serious. Let me help.¡± ¡°No,¡± I said immediately. Felicity had played me for years and I could already feel the bitterness I¡¯d built failing under the weight of her charisma. ¡°Princess, I know you don¡¯t like me-¡± I snorted, ¡°-and that¡¯s fine. You know I need to get to you to stay in the movement¡¯s good graces.¡± Felicity slid from her seat gracefully and started walking towards me as she made her appeal. ¡°And what that means for you is I¡¯m about the only person in Reston you know for certain will keep you and your new girl safe from a monster. I¡¯m a resource, so take advantage of me.¡± She finished with a wide smile, arms up only a step away. Instincts I thought I¡¯d cut away tried to pull me closer to her, to accept the implied embrace. She wasn¡¯t making a bad argument, but I couldn¡¯t trust any of it, that was the problem with Felicity. She was an incredible actor, enough to convince me she was my friend for years while she used me to gather information for the cult. She had the only magic I¡¯d ever seen that made someone immune to communication and by the end I¡¯d thought I was in love with her, that¡¯s how good she was. I looked at Lily, her fierce blush renewed by something Felicity had said. If the hunter was gone, who else could I turn to? Everyone else in this town would demand things I didn¡¯t want to give, while Felicity was offering herself freely. Felicity was a skilled war witch. I knew she could handle herself in a fight, she¡¯d done so to protect me before. Oh god, I was going to do this. This morning I¡¯d sat in front of the mirror wondering if I¡¯d gone insane and now I was bringing Felicity with me as a bodyguard. ¡°Fine,¡± I said defeatedly. Felicity practically twirled around to the door behind her. I felt her skirt brush against my leg, how the hell did that work? I knew she always wore pants under the illusion. ¡°Just let me get my things and we can be on our way.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t you need to be here?¡± Lily asked. ¡°You can¡¯t just leave your job.¡± ¡°I¡¯m her job,¡± I said, breathing a little easier now that Felicity wasn¡¯t so close. She had gone into the back room, ducking under the door slightly, but left it open to talk to us. From the angle I was standing, I couldn¡¯t see the small couch off to one side. ¡°Not just you,¡± Felicity explained, ¡°but you know you¡¯re my favorite one. Also, this establishment runs at a loss. It¡¯s mostly a recruiting ground for the movement.¡± That didn¡¯t seem to sit right with Lily. It didn¡¯t sit right with me either, but Margaret had some kind of deal with the cult that let them be active in her territory. Felicity reached into a drawer and pulled out a heavy black pistol. She put it¡­ my mind couldn¡¯t find continuity but one moment she was holding it by her leg and the next it vanished. Under the glamour then. An extra magazine of ammo disappeared in the same way. Lily didn¡¯t seem to have reacted to it. If she didn¡¯t see unraveling she probably wouldn¡¯t see that either. I made a mental note to teach her. Felicity notably did not grab a pocket knife. She might¡¯ve just already had it in her pocket, kept ready as emotional leverage against me. She walked back into the room, ducking under the door again. ¡°So, where are we headed?¡± Felicity asked cheerfully. ¡°Your apartment,¡± I said. ¡°How bold!¡± Felicity said, not missing a beat. I decided I had definitely gone insane. 1.8 - Thieves in Crisis Lily was having the weirdest day of her life. She¡¯d had some very weird days, like when Rose stole her first boyfriend to prove that she could. Or when her mom had been forced to reveal that Lily and her siblings were all from different fathers. Or when she¡¯d found Amy¡¯s body, though that was more horrifying than weird. But not many days beat finding out that that the psychopath who killed Amy was actually a magic monster, her new friend was a fucking wizard, and then being thrown directly into that wizard¡¯s troubled relationship with her impossibly beautiful ex-girlfriend, who naturally was also a wizard. There was some important stuff between those two points of ¡®Claire is a fucking wizard¡¯ and ¡®how can a human physically be this hot¡¯ but Lily had firmly shoved those thoughts into a corner marked ¡®later¡¯. For now, she was still waiting to wake up from this wild dream. The three of them were walking down the street, only a few minutes away from the Charming Magicks shop. Claire was leading and seemed to know where to go. Lily followed on Claire¡¯s left and Felicity on her right. As always, Claire was much more tense when she was outside. It was such a sharp contrast, noticeable even over her agitation towards Felicity. Lily knew there had to be a cause. She was so pale, was she a vampire? Were those real too? Claire had said they needed a monster hunter, which implied monsters. They were sharing the street with too many people to ask Claire. Inquisitors or something like that. But without being able to talk about that, the only thing left was the tension in the air. It was practically choking Lily. Felicity seemed unaffected. She was still distractingly attractive, with literally flawless tan skin, long brown hair, and a short-cut, flashy dress that looked like it belonged in a nightclub rather than walking down the street in the afternoon. Lily couldn¡¯t stop herself from glancing every few seconds, as if to check again that such a person could really exist. It was just so much, so much that she¡¯d embarrassed herself in front of Claire over it earlier. There was an undercurrent of resentment to Lily¡¯s thoughts as well. Felicity looked barely old enough to drink, but she carried herself in a way that said Lily was a girl while Felicity was a woman. Claire said her appearance was fake though, so how old was she? Felicity seemed to catch Lily staring and her chocolate brown eyes gave Lily a wink. Lily quickly looked away, face flushed. It wasn¡¯t fair. They stopped at a crosswalk. Claire took the opportunity to breathe, which Lily tried not to react to. Finally, the silence became too much for Lily to bear. ¡°So,¡± Lily said to Felicity. ¡°Claire says you¡¯re part of a¡­¡± Lily floundered, trying to decide between calling them a cult or a movement. Felicity called them a movement, so not calling them that could upset her. Lily didn¡¯t know much about them and mostly trusted Claire, but she also felt sure that much of Claire¡¯s opinion was bitterness over their relationship. Though Claire might also be upset if Lily seemed to take the side of her ex-girlfriend... Mercifully, Felicity decided to save her by answering. ¡°The Moonrise movement isn¡¯t one thing,¡± she explained. ¡°We have a name because we need one, but it¡¯s merely a group of people who know each other. If clubs and cliques are forming regardless, why not a community based on helping one another? That¡¯s what Moonrise is, building a network of friendships people can rely on.¡± Felicity spoke like she was giving a political speech about her passion project, with large and sweeping gestures. Claire decided to chime in, turning back to face them. ¡°Felicity, if you kill her I will never forgive you.¡± Claire¡¯s voice was calm, but it had a clear note of warning. She said this like it was a severe threat, which from what Lily understood about their relationship, it was. Felicity needed something from Claire badly enough that Claire trusted her to protect them even through her bitterness, and Claire was holding that leverage hostage for Lily. It was an odd mix of emotions for Lily, learning that her new friend, who couldn¡¯t lie, really cared that much about her at the same moment she realized she was probably in serious danger. A few people around them were staring, but most seemed to write it off as a joke thankfully. Seeing people turn and notice Felicity for the first time was a bit funny. It made Lily feel a bit better about her reaction, at least. Felicity turned to Claire in surprise. ¡°Already?¡± she asked incredulously. Claire nodded and Felicity turned back to Lily with an appraising look that deepened Lily¡¯s blush. ¡°Oh my, you work fast.¡± The light changed and the three of them kept walking, Claire¡¯s break over. The poor girl pushed herself way too hard. ¡°Very well,¡± Felicity said after a moment. ¡°I¡¯ll leave her alone.¡± ¡°If she dies due to your lack of intervention, I will be absolutely furious,¡± Claire added almost nonchalantly. Felicity gave an exaggerated sigh. ¡°You¡¯re putting a lot on me here princess, bullying me into protecting a rival.¡± Claire responded with biting sarcasm. ¡°Oh how awful it must be to have someone play with your heart like that.¡± Felicity and Lily both winced. The tension was back, stronger than ever. Lily could only bear another minute before she had to speak again. ¡°So¡­¡± Lily was desperate to move away from the grenade Claire had just dropped into the conversation. ¡°Don¡¯t go to one of your clubs then?¡± ¡°Do not,¡± Felicity confirmed. She seemed to lose the discomfort quickly, but Lily couldn¡¯t tell if it was a front. ¡°You would find yourself in a hugbox meant to render you dependent enough to sacrifice parts of yourself in rituals.¡± ¡°Sacrifices don¡¯t work if you don¡¯t know what you¡¯re giving up,¡± Claire explained. The street had cleared enough that she seemed to be taking the risk, though she still lowered her voice. ¡°But that doesn¡¯t mean you can¡¯t be manipulated into doing it or even have to be of sound mind. It¡¯s an efficient solution for getting sacrifices at scale, which is why cults are so common. You can even get some people to sacrifice their own lives.¡± ¡°That¡¯s much harder than you¡¯d think,¡± Felicity added, ¡°and too much of it gets unwanted attention.¡± Claire and Felicity talked about this like it was mildly distasteful, the way you would discuss a boss keeping their workers just barely part-time to avoid paying benefits. Claire had said that she sacrificed her ability to lie to her god, so maybe that was just the kind of thing wizards did. It was more than Lily could stomach. ¡°Um...¡± Lily wanted to move the conversation away from this as well. She remembered her question from earlier. She could probably get away with asking what she needed to, Claire liked it when she was curious earlier. ¡°I¡¯m pretty new to all this, so can I just- is anything else real too?¡± Claire looked at her confused but Felicity laughed softly. ¡°How new are you precisely?¡± Felicity asked. ¡°I learned about magic from Claire a few hours ago.¡± If either of them noticed the careful wording, they didn¡¯t comment. ¡°Very new then,¡± Felicity nodded. ¡°We could play twenty questions, running down the list, but the answer to almost all of them will be ¡®yes but they are very peculiar¡¯. Many of the things that go bump in the night existed in fiction first. Then some witch with more skill than sense decided to try and make them real. This means the monsters that do exist don¡¯t usually work how you¡¯d expect from movies. Except for werewolves, those aren¡¯t real in any sense.¡± ¡°Actually,¡± Claire jumped in, ¡°there¡¯s a Witch of Claws down in Audra¡¯s territory that turned herself into a wolf monster. She also has a dozen other creatures spliced in, but supposedly she looks enough like a werewolf that a hunter tried to go after her.¡± ¡°Does she do anything with the phases of the moon?¡± Felicity asked. ¡°Not as far as I know.¡± ¡°Then that hardly counts.¡± ¡°One could even say that it doesn¡¯t work how you¡¯d expect.¡± Felicity tutted but seemed to concede the point. Lily couldn¡¯t help but notice how well Claire and Felicity got along. Claire carried an incredible amount of resentment, but at the end of the day, Felicity was a wizard and Lily wasn¡¯t. They lived in a different world to her. Lily largely filtered out their conversation as she tried to understand where the feeling of trepidation was coming from.
The Lunatic apartment complex was a fairly impressive-looking building. It was tall and better maintained than anything else around it. The logo on the front, with the name written inside a crescent moon, stood out among the drag and nondescript surroundings. When they arrived they all silently agreed to give Claire a few minutes to catch her breath on the sidewalk outside. Every time they did this, Lily was overtaken by the urge to help Claire, although she couldn¡¯t figure out how to protect Claire from her own lungs. The lack of any way to help left Lily fretting to herself nervously. Claire almost certainly noticed, which if anything made Lily feel worse. Reston did have buses, but Lily wasn¡¯t sure if Claire didn¡¯t have a bus pass or if she was just too prideful to use them, because she never even looked at the bus stops. Lily didn¡¯t use them either, though she had far less of a good reason to. Claire tried so hard to pretend that she was unaffected, but sometimes she needed to stop in the middle of long sentences. She gave a hacking cough, seeming to have pushed herself too far to get here. It was a cruel irony that this person so much more powerful than Lily was also so much weaker. Felicity tried to rub Claire¡¯s back to comfort her and Claire nearly jumped out of her skin. Felicity flinched back, not quite hiding the look of hurt. A tiny, vicious part of Lily felt satisfaction, safe in the knowledge that Lily wouldn¡¯t have caused that reaction. Another part of her pointed out that Lily had been too embarrassed by the situation to do it and Felicity hadn¡¯t. There was a soft thud behind them and Lily turned to see a dead bird lying on its side against the sidewalk across the street. Now that she looked for them, she could see a few other birds around the hotel that met the same mysterious fate. ¡°It¡¯s in room 412,¡± Claire said suddenly. ¡°We should stop wasting time.¡± Claire led the way into the apartment complex. Lily and Felicity followed behind, a little surprised by the sudden start. Claire clearly knew the building, heading straight for the elevator. Because Felicity¡¯s apartment was here too, Lily remembered. Felicity sped up to get to the elevator button before Claire did. A moment passed between them before she hit it, calling an elevator down from the second floor. When the elevator came, Felicity also hit the button for the fourth floor. Claire seemed resigned. Lily looked between them, trying and failing to deduce what this strange ritual was. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Felicity gave Lily a wink again, her blue eyes sparkling as she caught Lily. That¡­ didn¡¯t seem right, but Lily couldn¡¯t place why. Was it just childish jealousy? Lily didn¡¯t think she was that petty, but she couldn¡¯t help but notice how quickly her thoughts had turned against the impossibly perfect woman. They stepped off the elevator and turned left. Lily realized that they hadn¡¯t gotten a key from anywhere. The doors all used an electronic keycard lock, which was hardly the most secure but the lockpicking tools Lily kept in her shoe certainly wouldn¡¯t do it. However, when they reached door 412, Felicity pulled out her wallet and swiped a card. The door clicked. It would not occur to Lily until much later that Felicity¡¯s dress had nowhere to keep a wallet. ¡°How do you¡­¡± Felicity grinned at her. She and Claire were in front of the door while Lily trailed behind them. ¡°The cult owns this building, so I have a master key.¡± Before Lily could process the implications of that, Felicity opened the door and Claire hissed at whatever she saw inside. Literally hissed, like a cat. It would be cute if not for the look of horror that accompanied it. Felicity¡¯s eyes narrowed and she stepped into the room first. Claire walked in after her and Lily saw what had shocked Claire. It was a magic circle drawn in black marker, like the ones Claire and her mother made, but far more complicated. It was a mess of tangled lines and had several smaller circles connected to it, as well as one triangular shape. Claire looked at it like it was a live bomb. ¡°What¡­ what fucking lunatic would make this?¡± Claire was pacing back and forth several feet away from the offending magic as if a different angle would change what she saw. ¡°They¡¯re using an eldritch ritual of this complexity with god damn fey subcomponents. That¡¯s insane! You could kill half of Reston if you missed too many contradictions.¡± Lily closed the door behind her, looking around the space. It looked more like a hotel suite than an apartment. It had a central living room area where all the furniture had been pushed back to make room for the circle. To her left was a small kitchenette area and in doors on the left and right side of her seemed to be bedrooms. All of the blinds in the apartment were closed. Lily tried to parse what Claire was saying, but she could only get one thing from it. ¡°Wait, fey? Fairies are real?¡± Claire looked at her, seeming to remember she existed. Felicity walked out of one of the bedrooms and Lily realized she was holding a pistol in one hand, pointed at the floor. ¡°Indeed,¡± Felicity said cheerfully. Her briefly focused demeanor had vanished again. ¡°Though they are the sort that steal your name and your firstborn, not Tinkerbell. Some of them are even vampires.¡± Felicity walked over to examine the triangular shape while Lily tried to figure out what the hell that meant. ¡°What does it do?¡± Claire asked. She seemed almost unsteady on her feet. ¡°Give me a minute, not all of us are savants like you Claire.¡± Felicity¡¯s tone was teasing, which only seemed to agitate Claire more. Claire rocked back and forth on the heels of her feet, tension clearly building. The combined pressures of Felicity and this magic circle were too much. Lily decided to intervene using an old trick. ¡°Can you tell me how it works?¡± Lily asked. ¡°Your part of it, I mean.¡± Claire seemed to deliberate for a moment. In the end, her desire to share her passion with Lily won. ¡°This is the ritual that brought the outsider here.¡± Claire¡¯s tone shifted immediately to something more relaxed. Felicity stiffened somewhat, recognizing the shift, but didn¡¯t comment. ¡°The outsider is the spider-thing?¡± Lily asked. Claire nodded eagerly. ¡°Right. So that glyph there-¡± she pointed at a jagged symbol towards the top of the circle, ¡°-is manifestation. It¡¯s actually going to be my third spell.¡± ¡°What does manifestation do as a spell?¡± Drawn magic seemed so complicated and boring that Lily doubted she¡¯d ever want to do it, but spells were basically superpowers. Could that be what the gifts were? Claire hesitated, glancing over her shoulder at Felicity. ¡°She doesn¡¯t want me to know,¡± Felicity explained for her. She¡¯d pulled out her phone and seemed to be referencing something to understand the triangle. Claire gave Lily an apologetic look but didn¡¯t contradict her. Lily waved the moment off. The point of this was just to get Claire talking, after all. ¡°It¡¯s fine. Keep going about the summoning circle.¡± The look on Claire¡¯s face when she realized that Lily was still interested in the magic nearly broke Lily¡¯s composure. The sheer joy that glittered in her vibrant blue eyes was breathtaking, but the implications of getting such a look for so little were heartwrenching. Lily¡¯s mind wanted to start analyzing, start putting together the puzzle of why her new friend was the way she was. Lily already had quite a lot of pieces, but she could see enough of the picture to know it would be too upsetting to assemble now. More for the ¡®later¡¯ corner then. ¡°Right, so the manifestation component is the primary circle, the large one in the center. That pulls the spider from the Beyond, which mostly just means another reality. That-¡± Claire pointed at one of the smaller circles attached to the main one, ¡°-is the subcomponent that picks the correct creature. You don¡¯t want to grab just anything, you might get something too weak or worse, too strong. So once you¡¯ve got it here, those glyphs-¡± she pointed at another attached circle with a set of three very similar symbols, ¡°-are interdictions, each with a different accent mark to make them bind the creature differently. Those are the rules that the spider has to follow. It can¡¯t disobey them, but its own mind makes any judgments involved. That can run into issues when they don¡¯t understand certain things about our reality.¡± Claire was like a different person when talking about magic. She smiled easily and made animated gestures, almost dancing around the circle as she spoke. The effect was captivating. Lily was sure she¡¯d listen to this girl talk about anything. That was a familiar thought. Her joy was somewhat jarring given the subject matter, though Lily knew better than to blame Claire for that. Lily had assumed the monster was made by magic, but as Claire described it, it was a creature from another dimension that had been kidnapped and enslaved. It was arguably as much a victim in this as Amy was, twisted against its will by some evil wizard. ¡°Can you tell what the rules are?¡± Lily asked, trying to hide her agitation. Claire looked embarrassed, shaking her head. ¡°No, that¡¯ll take a long time to figure out. There are so many variations on interdiction, I¡¯ll need to find books about it.¡± ¡°What rules would you make?¡± Felicity asked. She was still kneeling by her portion but seemed to have decided to take the opportunity while Claire was in a good mood. ¡°If you were designing this ritual.¡± Claire thought about it for a minute. It was a very specific gesture, her head tilted slightly and eyes unfocused. Claire did it often and Lily found it just as adorable each time. Claire¡¯s eyes were striking, deep blue whirlpools that stood out among the rest of her vampiric visage. Though hypnotic eyes also fit the vampire theme. Lily certainly felt drawn to them, enough that she had to remind herself that staring into the eyes of someone who wasn¡¯t looking at her was probably weird. Definitely weird. Eventually, Claire answered, speaking slowly. ¡°First is non-interaction, sort of an umbrella ¡®no killing people I don¡¯t tell you to and do your best to stay hidden¡¯. One of them has to be the targeting mechanism, the thing that makes it go and kill the people I want. And then the last one¡­ a kill switch. Something that forces it to kill itself on command, for emergencies or just when I¡¯m done with it.¡± ¡°When you¡¯re done with it?¡± Lily asked cautiously. ¡°But it¡¯s alive isn¡¯t it?¡± Claire blinked, focusing her eyes back on Lily. ¡°Alive is a complicated question,¡± she said. ¡°Biology designed for alien physics translated through a god probably doesn¡¯t meet any technical definition of life. But I think it is at least sentient. That¡¯s why you can¡¯t leave it around for too long, it could learn and plan. It¡¯s safer just to kill it and summon a new one if you need it again.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t send it back home?¡± Lily held her hands behind her back to hide the wringing. Claire shook her head. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t want to anyway,¡± Claire explained. ¡°If it went home it could explain what was happening to the others. Then you have a whole planet of outsiders trying to resist you.¡± Claire didn¡¯t care. Of course she didn¡¯t care, she was a wizard and the spiders were monsters. Wizards didn¡¯t care about using evil magic, Claire was just upset that some wizard had used it recklessly. She stared at Lily like she was confused as to why Lily would care about these creatures. Lily had to look away, scared she would drown in those eyes. ¡°Never mind, stupid question,¡± Lily said. Claire frowned, seeing the lie, but Felicity spoke up before she could say anything. ¡°I believe I know what this is now.¡± ¡°Finally,¡± Claire said, diverting her attention. ¡°It¡¯s a sacrifice isn¡¯t it?¡± Felicity stood up, her dress flowing with her movement. She glared at Claire, though it was lacking any actual malice. ¡°How could you possibly know that? You cannot have learned fey ritualcraft better than me, I am a fey witch and even you aren¡¯t that good.¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s because the eldritch parts don¡¯t have one and the circle is too small to sustain temporary bindings for four days, they¡¯d have fallen off yesterday. Some kind of sacrifice was made to turn the bindings permanent and there¡¯s only one part of the ritual I can¡¯t read.¡± ¡°You can tell that?¡± Felicity asked incredulously. ¡°You know how long this circle would sustain temporary bindings you haven¡¯t seen before merely by looking at it?¡± Claire blinked. ¡°Yes..?¡± she said hesitantly. ¡°It¡¯s just estimates so there are large error bars, but I¡¯m very sure they¡¯d be gone by the time it attacked Lily and me.¡± ¡°Princess, it¡¯s very frustrating that you don¡¯t know how amazing you are,¡± Felicity said bluntly. Claire rolled her eyes, though she didn¡¯t seem as irritated by the praise as before. ¡°Yes, this is a sacrifice. In particular, it¡¯s a cherished memory. There¡¯s no way to tell what memory was lost though.¡± ¡°That¡¯s so stupid.¡± Claire sounded annoyed like the ritual had been made this way to spite her. ¡°Cherished memories, that¡¯s what counts as a sacrifice for you people? How do any of you still have those left in your heads? That¡¯s basically free.¡± ¡°I cannot be certain if I¡¯ve done it before,¡± Felicity said. ¡°Giving up a memory to the fey also takes away memories that would let you reconstruct the details. I doubt I would, however.¡± ¡°Me either,¡± Lily said. It seemed insane that Claire was so dismissive about that. That wasn¡¯t even a wizard thing because Felicity understood what that would mean. Claire looked between them, clearly quite surprised. She looked like she was about to say something, but changed her mind. ¡°I need to record the interior angles,¡± Claire said instead. She took off her backpack, rummaging around inside it. ¡°It¡¯s going to take a while to figure out which god this ritual is pointing at, but figuring that out will tell us a lot about whoever made this ritual.¡± Claire pulled out a shocking number of measuring tools and got to work reading and photographing the magic circle. Based on the complexity of it, Lily imagined it would take quite a while.
Lily had expected it to take a while but after twenty minutes of measuring with no end in sight, she had to lie down in the bedroom. In keeping with the hotel vibe, the bed was large in the center of the room. The sheets were comfortable enough for Lily to settle in on top of them. Alone with her thoughts was the last place Lily wanted to be right now, but she couldn¡¯t bring herself to play the same old games on her phone. The realization that Claire was still a wizard at heart had been put into the same corner as everything else today, marked firmly for later. Lily wasn¡¯t sure exactly when this ¡®later¡¯ would be, but it was shaping up to be a miserable experience. Soft footsteps told Lily that her rest had been interrupted. She sat up in the bed to see Felicity closing the door with a finger to her lips. She reminded Lily of a vampire, with long black hair and a dark dress tight against her figure. The memory that Claire had needed to force Felicity not to kill Lily was fresh in her mind. ¡°Let¡¯s talk,¡± Felicity said softly. ¡°As long as we aren¡¯t too loud, I¡¯m sure Claire won¡¯t hear us.¡± Lily shifted so that she sat on the side of the bed, her feet against the ground. Not aggressive, but prepared. She knew Felicity had a gun¡­ somewhere. More importantly, Felicity was a wizard and they were always dangerous. ¡°Is this the part where you threaten to kill me unless I stop being friends with Claire?¡± Lily kept her voice as low as Felicity¡¯s. Felicity laughed softly. She hadn¡¯t moved from her spot in front of the door, blocking the way out. ¡°No, nothing like that. You have a role in this now, I cannot merely get rid of you.¡± Felicity¡¯s voice was gentle, but her eyes held a predatory glare. ¡°Then what do we have to talk about?¡± ¡°Have you met her yet?¡± Felicity asked. ¡°The real Claire, the one underneath all that false pride and fear.¡± Her tone was wistful. Lily could guess what this conversation was about and she almost wished it was threatening to kill her instead. ¡°I have,¡± Lily said. Each word was measured, painfully aware of how vulnerable she was. Yet she still needed to... what? Prove herself? ¡°I gave her a hug and let her cry on my shoulder.¡± Felicity nodded. ¡°Good, you¡¯re doing better than I did.¡± That was so unexpected it threw Lily off balance. Felicity continued. ¡°That real girl, she¡¯s forced to be so strong. You likely know some of what she faces by now. Margaret tortures and torments her. Claire is the best fucking witch in a generation and she¡¯s been convinced she¡¯s awful at witchcraft.¡± Lily could almost see the venom dripping from Felicity¡¯s voice as she discussed Margaret¡¯s abuse. ¡°Do you know about the curse?¡± Lily asked. ¡°She shared that with you?¡± Felicity tilted her head, seeming surprised and oddly hopeful. Lily shook her head. ¡°I saw it. Margaret punished her for showing me their home.¡± Claire had called Felicity a perfect liar, but Lily had a hard time accepting that the mixture of hatred, concern, and guilt that flashed across her face was fake. It was too raw to be a performance. ¡°How long was she¡­¡± Felicity seemed to hate herself for asking, but she had to. ¡°I¡¯m not sure. Maybe five or six minutes.¡± Margaret had told Lily that if she touched Claire, she would kill Lily. So Lily just stood there uselessly, watching Claire¡¯s body freeze like a corpse in a blizzard. Felicity was silent for a moment, staring at the floor. Lily wondered if she was trying to calm herself from the revelation. ¡°I hurt her,¡± Felicity said finally. ¡°Almost two years ago now. I was the one good thing in her life and I betrayed her. It¡¯s taken her this long to recover enough to trust anyone again.¡± Felicity¡¯s gaze met Lily¡¯s, her eyes burning with fury. Lily couldn¡¯t help but flinch at the sudden intensity. ¡°She¡¯s chosen you to be that person, a test to see if she can allow herself to be human. If you betray her too, I promise you that she will never find your rotten corpse.¡± Felicity turned and opened the door. ¡°Wait, you can¡¯t just-¡± But Felicity was already gone, the door closing softly behind her. Lily sat there for a minute incredulously. Eventually, she accepted her fate and laid back down on the bed. ¡®Later¡¯ was looking more and more like it needed to be very soon. 1.9 - Supernatural Studies I had a very uncomfortable feeling as I looked at the list of internal angles to this ritual. I¡¯d spent half an hour getting them, then checked several of them again, worried I was wrong. The internal angles of a ritual said which god the ritual called out to, but in truth it was more complicated than that. The gods were like points in space and each ritual was sent to a different point in that space. Depending on which of a god¡¯s dominions you wanted to call on, you could even pick different points within the same god to get different results. How important the exact point was increased with the complexity of the ritual. I didn¡¯t know what these components pointed to, of course. Despite Felicity¡¯s insistence, I was not a magical savant. I would need to spend a very long time doing very complicated math with all of these angles to have any degree of certainty about where they pointed. But they looked so familiar¡­ Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Felicity walk into the room with me from the bedroom. I hadn¡¯t seen her leave, but logically she must have. For a split second, I caught the expression on her face before she hid it. It was so severe I almost asked her if she was ok, but remembered myself in time. After a few more minutes of triple-checking, I accepted I was done. ¡°I¡¯ve got what I need,¡± I told Felicity. I had photos of the entire ritual, so at worst I would be able to reconstruct any mistakes I made. ¡°I just made a dramatic exit,¡± Felicity said. ¡°Would you mind going to get-¡± ¡°I heard!¡± Lily called from inside the bedroom. I raised an eyebrow and Felicity smiled, making my traitorous heart flutter. ¡°Yes, we were having vigorous sex while you did your measurements.¡± I smiled back despite myself. ¡°Didn¡¯t think you one to kiss and tell.¡± ¡°Oh, only for you princess.¡± ¡°How convenient.¡± ¡°My morals are quite flexible, as am-¡± ¡°Enough,¡± Lily pleaded as she stepped out to join us. While Felicity¡¯s teasing did a great job of distracting me, Lily¡¯s worn-out expression made it clear that a serious conversation had been had without me. Most likely about me. I made a mental note to check in with Lily about that. Felicity might try something drastic to remove a so-called rival, even over my objections. I should¡¯ve been watching her. ¡°We don¡¯t have long now until the club meeting,¡± I said. ¡°Felicity should probably come with us to that, just to be safe.¡± ¡°By any chance,¡± Felicity asked, ¡°do you mean the supernatural studies club?¡± It took me an embarrassingly long moment to connect the threads. Of course she would know, that had the cult written all over it. ¡°Is it Moonrise?¡± Lily guessed. Felicity nodded. ¡°That¡¯s great, it¡¯s one of the only leads we have for Amy.¡± ¡°Amy?¡± I blinked. ¡°We never told you what we were doing,¡± I realized. Felicity had the grace to look embarrassed about it. ¡°I assumed you didn¡¯t want to tell me. I am merely the bodyguard after all.¡± I nodded, content with that situation. Anything Felicity knew, the cult knew, so it was best to keep secrets close. Lily seemed to disagree. ¡°Amy Neilson, my roommate, was the first victim of the spider-thing summoned by that circle.¡± Felicity¡¯s eyes widened as she realized the implications. ¡°So the killer on campus is a hedge witch.¡± ¡°No,¡± I said reluctantly. ¡°They¡¯re definitely a real witch. This summoning ritual is far too well made. They have a thorough enough understanding of eldritch magic to balance out the contradictions with the Dreaming.¡± The Dreaming was the technical term for the fey, one I chose to use entirely out of spite towards Felicity. ¡°That¡¯s two separate schools of training, at least. I won¡¯t know how they did it without more research, but the fact that this building isn¡¯t a conceptual smoking crater is proof they did it right.¡± ¡°Which means this is an attack on Margaret¡¯s territory. But who... Could it be a new coven? The mixture of distinct magic certainly implies such.¡± ¡°Except,¡± Lily interjected, ¡°neither of the two deaths had anything to do with whatever wizard politics you¡¯re talking about. They were a freshman and a professor whose class she didn¡¯t have.¡± That was the problem. It was too magical a method for a hedge witch but too mundane a goal for a real one. ¡°There¡¯s a piece we¡¯re missing,¡± I theorized. ¡°Some additional thread that ties together these two stories.¡± ¡°Which we won¡¯t find by standing around here,¡± Lily said. ¡°Should we erase the circle?¡± ¡°God no!¡± I almost shouted. Lily took a step back in surprise, which I immediately felt bad about, so I rushed to explain. ¡°If we erase it then the bindings come undone. It could do almost anything if it got free.¡± Lily frowned, clearly unsatisfied by my explanation. Felicity gave her an odd look. ¡°Outsiders come from worlds very alien to ours,¡± she said slowly, like she was speaking to a child. ¡°It is probably suffering a great deal right now.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t have to be there when we kill it,¡± I promised. Lily nodded, though she still seemed uneasy. I hadn¡¯t expected her to be squeamish, but maybe that was common for mundane people. ¡°Well then, shall we go?¡± ¡°While we do,¡± Lily turned to Felicity. ¡°You said this place was part of Moonrise? Which means you can find out who booked this room.¡± Felicity and I both paused, sharing in the embarrassment of not considering that. ¡°I¡¯ll have a word with the people downstairs,¡± Felicity promised. We filed out of the room, Felicity in the lead. She got the elevator again, just as she had while we were dating. She mercifully skipped the routine of informing me that ¡®the royal carriage¡¯ had arrived. She¡¯d seemed to have so much fun with it and like a naive fool, I¡¯d enjoyed the feeling of being pampered. In hindsight, it was a very clever strategy. The difference between that and how Margaret treated me had made me practically addicted to Felicity. There was still a shameful part of me that wanted to leap back into her arms every time she called me her princess. Felicity would let me. That was the worst part, the absolute certainty that if I pretended I didn¡¯t know the truth, I could have it all back. The elevator arriving on the bottom floor cut off my musings. I prayed that Felicity couldn¡¯t see the flush on my face, but I had little doubt she was watching me. When we got to the front entrance, Felicity stopped us. ¡°I¡¯ll be just a moment,¡± she said, before going to speak to one of the staff. In a split second, I weighed the odds that she¡¯d lie about who rented the room against the value of checking in with Lily now. Lily won. ¡°What did you two talk about while I was measuring?¡± I asked. Bluntness usually paid off for me with Lily. Lily paused, golden eyes searching my expression as she did calculations of her own. It struck me once again how breathtaking she was. Strands of dark red hair framed her face, her expression guarded. It¡¯d been easy to forget in the face of such an impossible ritual, but there was no such distraction here. ¡°You, obviously,¡± she said with false nonchalance. I waited expectantly for her to say more, but that seemed to be it. ¡°If she threatened you, I can probably help,¡± I said. She just shook her head, but I pressed. ¡°Just tell me she didn¡¯t threaten you then.¡± Lily scowled, such an unfamiliar expression I took a step back. ¡°Don¡¯t do that,¡± she said. ¡°Don¡¯t try to trap me with your lie detection.¡± I hesitated, unsure how the conversation had derailed so quickly. ¡°We¡¯ve been using it on people for the last two days,¡± I pointed out. ¡°Also I can¡¯t turn it off.¡± Lily sighed in frustration. ¡°Then when I say I don¡¯t want to talk about something, we don¡¯t talk about it.¡± ¡°Ok,¡± I agreed immediately. I didn¡¯t want to lose my only friend, not over this. Not over anything, actually. Lily blinked, surprised. Did she think I wouldn¡¯t agree to that? I¡¯d already done it about her lockpicking abilities. ¡°I really only wanted to be sure you were ok,¡± I said. ¡°I am.¡± Before I could figure out if I should press her on that lie, Felicity returned. ¡°The room is vacant,¡± she said. ¡°It has been for several months. The doors do not keep logs, so we cannot even tell when it was broken into.¡± ¡°How hard would that be?¡± I asked Lily. I tried to tell myself it wasn¡¯t a probing question and almost believed it. Lily shrugged. ¡°The equipment is expensive, but electronic stuff isn¡¯t much about skill. If you had the tools, anyone could.¡± Felicity did not react to the discovery of Lily¡¯s breaking and entering expertise, which was almost more interesting than the expertise.
To say I was not looking forward to this club would be an understatement. The odds of it turning into any clues were tiny now that we knew it couldn¡¯t be a hedge witch. I should be spending this time studying the madman¡¯s miracle of a ritual we just saw instead of talking to people who thought magic was wishing for things really hard. The idea of being in that environment with an unusually agitated Lily and a faux-jealous Felicity sounded like torture designed specifically for me. However, I had promised Lily I would go with her, which made it impossible for me to consider otherwise. Not magically, an inability to lie still let me change my mind, but it might as well have been a binding oath for how committed to the choice I felt. Not to mention that it was getting increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that I was now walking around Reston with not one but two beautiful young women. I¡¯d mostly been resorting to not looking at Felicity for the sake of my composure. Being around some normal people would be good for my health. I opened my eyes, finished reinforcing my persona. Claire the Witch wasn¡¯t looking forward to this either, but at least she wouldn¡¯t make a fool of herself. ¡°Are you ready?¡± Felicity asked. She had reduced the beauty of her glamour and changed her clothes to a much more casual plaid shirt with a blue sleeveless vest and a mid-length skirt. I also noticed that much of the makeup and lipstick was gone. I nodded. Lily and I hadn¡¯t changed, since we were wearing real clothing. We¡¯d come straight here from the apartment regardless, Lily filling Felicity in on the details of our investigations along the way. It was a building that to me looked like any other. The interior was virtually indistinguishable from the building we¡¯d failed to locate Nathan in, but supposedly this was a student center and therefore completely different. It had rooms that could be reserved for club activities, which were not classrooms except sometimes when they would be used as classrooms. Colleges were very strange places. The clubroom we wanted was on the second floor, directly across from the stairs. Felicity opened the door to the clubroom and Lily sucked in her breath. I peeked around the corner to see what had caught her attention. The room had a large table in the center, around which a dozen or so chairs had been arranged. I counted eleven people sitting at the table, one of whom I recognized with surprise was Rachael from the library¡¯s front desk. A girl stood up, clearly about to say something before she saw Felicity. A moment seemed to pass between them, and then the girl was waving us in, all smiles and charm. As we drifted in, I looked at Lily curiously and she whispered to me. ¡°The guy in the green shirt is Nathan.¡± Well then, maybe we would be getting something from this.
You could learn a lot about a group of people just by sitting and listening to them with communication for a few hours. We¡¯d been seated on the side of the table by the door. Lily was to my right, directly across from Nathan. Felicity had been on my left, but Lily gave her a note and a few minutes later she had somehow maneuvered herself into sitting on the right side of Nathan. Both girls had turned their charm up to eleven, but I mostly kept quiet, trusting they¡¯d be better at this than me. The basic structure of club activities was people discussing news events that were supposedly supernatural. Interestingly, I could identify at least three different kinds of beliefs among the group. Each member individually believed or disbelieved in each category.
  1. Monsters, or cryptids as they insisted. Their news events seemed to mostly consist of blurry pictures, of which about a third might be something real. One of them also pointed to a strange number of coincidental deaths among zoologists that I realized with some surprise might be the Inquisition. After all, somebody had to keep the most reckless monsters under wraps.
  2. Magic. They thought it was an instinctual, animistic, and/or shamanistic practice. At least, that was the most I could synthesize from how they discussed it. If I had to hear any more about chakras or water crystals freezing, I would hurt someone with real magic just to see how they¡¯d react.
  3. Psychic powers. I had been compelled to ask if that wasn¡¯t also magic and was told in no uncertain terms that it was not. Psychic powers, supposedly, were superpowers that some percentage of the population was born with but would lie dormant until awakened. None of them agreed on what awakened them.
Almost none of them lied about which groups they believed in, but most lied about the evidence they provided. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. The other most noteworthy thing was that none of them brought up the killings on campus. I couldn¡¯t figure out why. It was more suspicious than anything else presented and was even correct to call it magical. But Lily¡¯s attempts to ask about Amy naturally were met with nonanswers and rude glares. Rachael only believed in psychic powers and was the only one of them who didn¡¯t assume she herself was psychic. She didn¡¯t bring any news of her own and offered little commentary on topics that weren¡¯t psychic. I¡¯d had to ask her directly to confirm which groups she was a part of. She seemed shocked I was talking to her but quickly grew animated once she got to talk about psychics. It was surprisingly endearing. Lily interestingly avoided the topic of psychic powers altogether, despite being willing to lie like a salesman in her efforts to inundate herself with the group about the other two topics. Nathan believed in monsters. He kept his dirty blond hair long for a boy, though still shorter than mine, and he was quite sociable. It was his first meeting, so he didn¡¯t bring any news, but he very noticeably engaged the most with the ones about monsters. He also pretended to be willing to hear out topics of magic, lying through his teeth that it made sense to him. This was probably because Felicity was acting most receptive to stories about magic. Nathan was practically drooling over Felicity, who was doing her best to court his attention without seeming like she was. At some point, she¡¯d switched back to the outright beautiful glamour and was finding progressively more excuses to be amazed by whatever Nathan said. The one time he looked at me he flinched away from whatever expression I was making. It was clear from the room''s momentum that things were wrapping up, moving to more social chats than anything on-topic. Lily seemed to realize this as well. ¡°I have a case,¡± she said abruptly. A few people turned to her annoyed, as if that wasn¡¯t why they were here. ¡°The deaths of Amy Neilson and Professor Lansberg.¡± The room immediately quieted to an oppressive silence, no one willing to respond to her first. It wasn¡¯t until someone dropped a pen that everyone seemed to remember they were allowed to make noise at all. Someone, a girl who believed in monsters and psychics, spoke up first. ¡°Doesn¡¯t that seem a little¡­¡± she trailed off. ¡°Well,¡± Felicity jumped in, ¡°something is supernatural there. Both of their bodies were torn apart in locked rooms. What could have done that?¡± She faked a shiver like she was frightened by the topic. Nathan put a comforting hand on Felicity¡¯s shoulder, which she leaned into. I looked away, not wanting to ruin her ploy by scaring him again. Another voice spoke up, a guy who only believed in magic. ¡°I knew Amy. It wouldn¡¯t be right to talk about that at our club.¡± ¡°What was the point of lying about that?¡± I asked him. I was getting tired of this group and we¡¯d gotten nothing by playing nice. He stared at me in confusion, so I clarified. ¡°You didn¡¯t know Amy.¡± ¡°What, and you did?¡± he asked angrily. Was he mad because he¡¯d been caught or just posturing? ¡°Not in the slightest,¡± I said. I saw an opportunity. ¡°Did anyone here know her?¡± I scanned the room, trying to read faces. The general mood was against me. Rachael was just surprised, Nathan was mostly annoyed, Felicity looked confused, and Lily was unreadable. ¡°Anyone?¡± I tried. At a minimum, Nathan wasn¡¯t responding and I knew he did. ¡°Do speak up.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think anyone does,¡± Rachael said hesitantly. It was an ambiguous statement and communication was inconsistently literal. ¡°Do you think anyone in this group does? Do you know if she ever attended?¡± Rachael seemed surprised by the intensity of my questions. ¡°Um, no she¡¯s never been at the club,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯ve been here since I was a freshman.¡± This was a waste of time then. No, not really, we¡¯d gotten Nathan. Some distant part of my brain also noted Rachael was presumably older than I¡¯d guessed. I was content to let the issue drop. I¡¯d broken the flow of the room though and people seemed unsure how to move back to their conversations when I stopped asking questions. ¡°Are you some kind of cop? What the hell was that?¡± It was the guy I¡¯d called out for lying. A bruised ego, probably. ¡°No,¡± I said curtly. He didn¡¯t seem satisfied with that, but no amount of awkward silence would make me care what he thought, so eventually the room moved on. Before we left, there was a surprising amount of social pressure applied to get us to come back next time. The girl who had reacted to Felicity when we came in was especially pushy about it, getting embarrassingly affectionate in her efforts to extract a promise I¡¯d be here again. I almost agreed before Lily intervened to smooth things over. Lily¡¯s agitation seemed to spike again for a while after that incident. I did notice some people who were quicker to leave than others. Among this group were Nathan and Felicity, who seemed to be talking in hushed tones as they left. Felicity giggled in a way that sounded so fake I don¡¯t know how he bought it. Lily and I got up to follow but she gestured behind his back for us to wait. We filtered out with everyone else about ten minutes later, though Felicity was nowhere in sight. ¡°So¡­¡± Lily said. ¡°What do you think her plan was?¡± ¡°No idea,¡± I admitted. ¡°There¡¯s no reason to do the interrogation without me, so unless she wants to fuck him first-¡± I cut myself off. What was wrong with me? Lily didn¡¯t seem to know what to say to that. Mercifully, my phone started buzzing a minute later. It was a call from a number I didn¡¯t recognize. ¡°Hello?¡± I answered. ¡°Claire, we¡¯re behind the building, back exit on the first floor. Red SUV. Do hurry, he¡¯s quite upset I took his phone.¡± Felicity hung up and I was already headed down the stairs, Lily following me. ¡°Why did she call you from his phone?¡± Lily asked curiously. She had good hearing it seemed. ¡°Because I have her numbers blocked.¡± ¡°¡­numbers?¡± ¡°She tried a few phones.¡± I¡¯d had to get a new phone before they stopped. Though apparently, she knew this number too. What did that mean, that she hadn¡¯t called it? Lily was quiet the rest of the way down.
It was already past sunset when we got outside, the parking lot lit only by bright overhead lights. The red SUV was in the parking lot behind the building. There didn¡¯t seem to be too many other cars, but there were enough to worry me. We found Felicity straddling Nathan¡¯s lap in the back seat with a pocket knife against his throat. When she saw us, she opened the car door, kicking it as far out as it would go. ¡°Claire, why would you block my number on a new phone?¡± She seemed genuinely confused. It was somewhat funny, how casual her tone was compared to the situation. ¡°What the fuck is this?¡± Nathan asked. He was terrified, eyes flicking between us frantically as he tried to piece together what was happening. I sighed, checking to be sure Felicity was using the pocket knife I thought she was. It had a fake wooden rounded handle and a shining silver blade she must¡¯ve replaced at some point. Of course she would still have it, it was the only birthday present I¡¯d ever given her. ¡°Felicity,¡± Lily sounded like she wanted to scream but kept her voice down. ¡°What are you doing?¡± ¡°You have questions for him, don¡¯t you? Ask them.¡± I hesitated. It wasn¡¯t like Felicity to act this aggressively if she didn¡¯t have to. She was a finesse instrument. ¡°Did he try-¡± ¡°I promise I will explain later, just ask him your questions.¡± That seemed reasonable, Nathan was getting more agitated. Lily too. ¡°Did you kill Amy Neilson?¡± I asked him. ¡°That¡¯s what this is- oh god who the fuck are you people?!¡± Nathan started to struggle before Felicity pressed the knife deeper into his neck. She seemed to enjoy it, though she might¡¯ve been playing it up for me. I could see a small line of blood run down his shirt and tears well up in his eyes. ¡°Well,¡± I said. A glance told me Lily was still too uncomfortable with this situation to lead. ¡°That¡¯s a particularly telling reaction. So you did kill her then?¡± ¡°No! No, I didn¡¯t.¡± ¡°Then why did you just start panicking?¡± I asked. ¡°Because there¡¯s a fucking psycho with a knife to-¡± ¡°Watch your tone,¡± I snapped. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t want to upset the psycho, now would we?¡± Felicity practically purred, a smile on her face as she teased his neck with the knife. Her movements were so slow and sensual, but the blade stayed perfectly controlled. It was unsettling how hot she was doing this. Focus Claire. ¡°I know when you¡¯re lying to me,¡± I said. ¡°What are you trying to hide?¡± I risked another glance at Lily, who seemed to have resigned herself to what was happening. ¡°How do you know?¡± Nathan asked. His tone had gone up another octave in fright. ¡°Magic,¡± I replied sarcastically. ¡°Oh god you¡¯re a witch.¡± I blinked. I rapidly went through what he said back at the club. He¡¯d honestly believed in monsters and dismissed psychic powers as fake. He had lied about believing in magic¡­ no he¡¯d lied about believing in the examples given. Which was also what I would have done since I knew what real magic was. ¡°You¡¯re a hedge witch,¡± I guessed. A real witch would know the area enough to recognize me as Margaret¡¯s apprentice. Even if they didn¡¯t know my face, knowing I could detect lies would mark me as a Witch of Weaving and basic deduction would connect me to Margaret. ¡°You found a bit of real magic somewhere, enough to know that the club¡¯s version is nonsense. A summoner¡¯s book?¡± He couldn¡¯t possibly have made that ritual, but it was the only version of events I could see. If this boy turned out to be some sort of prodigy, I might go mad. There was a limit to how much stress I could take. Nathan¡¯s eyes widened, but he didn¡¯t respond. ¡°If you don¡¯t talk to me we¡¯re just going to kill you,¡± I pointed out. The odds of him leaving alive at all were fairly low by now, but he didn¡¯t need to know that. I heard Lily suck in her breath. ¡°Ok ok,¡± he pleaded. ¡°If I talk you won¡¯t kill me?¡± ¡°Of course,¡± Felicity lied for me. It was incredible how quickly she could shift to such a reassuring tone. She pulled the knife away to seem like she was backing off, though she kept it close enough to be there in an instant. ¡°Look¡­ I only found out about magic three days ago.¡± Nathan kept his hands up as though surrendering. He didn¡¯t seem to trust this new version of Felicity, which was smart. ¡°I found this book- it was one of those stupid occult horror things, like bloody mary type shit. It¡¯s never real! It said you could mark people for demonic beasts to feed on them. You just have to touch them while thinking of a magic rune- I didn¡¯t actually¡­¡± ¡°That¡¯s so stupid,¡± Lily said. It was the first thing she¡¯d contributed so far and I couldn¡¯t help but agree. However, a little thread of possibility was forming in my mind. ¡°And you used it on Amy?¡± I asked skeptically. He wasn¡¯t lying, but that didn¡¯t mean he wasn¡¯t an idiot. ¡°No, Professor Lansberg.¡± He started speaking quicker, the justifications spilling out of him. ¡°He¡¯s been giving me shit all year, I figured I might as well try it on someone who deserves it you know? Just to see, but it wasn¡¯t- it¡¯s never real!¡± ¡°What was the rune?¡± Felicity asked. ¡°I don¡¯t,¡± Nathan floundered, ¡°I mean, I can¡¯t describe it. It was weird, three points-¡± It couldn¡¯t possibly... I pulled out my phone and found one of my pictures of the interdiction glyphs, showing them to him. ¡°Yes, that¡¯s it,¡± Nathan said. He seemed relieved, which was amusing since he¡¯d just signed his death warrant. It was a mistake. Whoever summoned the spider was so reckless they had made the targeting mechanism something you could find in some random occult nonsense book. How the hell were we supposed to contain this? No, a horrifying thought had just occurred to me, which was far more important right now. ¡°Have you used it on Felicity?¡± I asked him aggressively. ¡°I can remove it, I just need to know if you did it!¡± If he had marked Felicity then I wasn¡¯t sure how I could do the ritual on her without letting Nathan run away. We probably had a decent amount of time before the spider showed up but I wasn¡¯t willing to risk it. We¡¯d have to- ¡°I didn¡¯t,¡± he insisted. I blinked. ¡°Why on earth not?¡± ¡°¡­because I didn¡¯t think of it?¡± he admitted quietly. Twice now, this boy had surprised me with sheer stupidity. Felicity was staring at me with an expression I couldn¡¯t understand. When our gazes met, she turned back to Nathan suddenly. ¡°Where is the book now?¡± Felicity asked. Nathan seemed to hesitate again, but not for long. ¡°Madison¡¯s dorm room. That¡¯s where I found it- I didn¡¯t take it, just looked at it. She¡¯d bent the page about the symbol. But she didn¡¯t- she wouldn¡¯t...¡± Nathan trailed off, perhaps realizing the absurdity of his claim. I¡¯d worried Amy¡¯s killer would be someone who had found an unrelated book, leaving us no way to track them down. This was certainly more convenient. Though why would Nathan¡­ oh they were probably dating. Lily had said something about that. ¡°Madison touched me on the shoulder yesterday, outside the classroom,¡± Lily said. She pulled out her phone and started texting someone. ¡°Why would you come out here with-¡± I cut my question off. I didn¡¯t care about the health of his relationship. ¡°Where¡¯s Madison¡¯s dorm?¡± ¡°My dorm,¡± Lily answered my question for Nathan. She seemed to be waiting for a response to her text. ¡°Fourth floor.¡± Nathan nodded as if I wouldn¡¯t trust just Lily saying it. Felicity decided to finish my aborted line of questioning. ¡°Why were you in Madison¡¯s dorm room?¡± ¡°We¡¯re dating- but it¡¯s an open thing!¡± he said defensively. Felicity found this hilarious, giggling softly. The interrogation seemed to have put her in a great mood. A thread from yesterday tugged at me, Amy¡¯s books. ¡°Amy?¡± I asked. Nathan looked confused again. ¡°Was Amy involved in the arrangement?¡± ¡°She was,¡± he confirmed, ¡°with Madison.¡± That made her even more of a suspect. She wouldn¡¯t be the first jilted lover to try to kill their partner. I certainly had. Lily looked up from her phone with incredulity. ¡°And you were ok with that?¡± she asked. ¡°That is what open means- Wait why are we talking about my relationships now?!¡± He wasn¡¯t wrong, we¡¯d gotten well off-topic. Which reminded me why we¡¯d wanted to talk to him in the first place. ¡°A scrawny boy named Peter seemed to think you had reason to be upset with Amy, a reason involving Madison. Did he-¡± ¡°He caught Amy and Madison one day. He told me and I pretended not to know because I didn¡¯t- you know what people think about stuff like that.¡± I nodded. In hindsight, we should¡¯ve been far more thorough when interrogating Peter. Lily¡¯s phone buzzed. ¡°Madison didn¡¯t go back to her dorm last night,¡± Lily said, reading the text. ¡°Jessie hasn¡¯t seen her since.¡± ¡°It seems we¡¯ve found our way back to your love life yet again,¡± Felicity said amusedly. ¡°How was Amy and Madison¡¯s relationship, any trouble in paradise?¡± Nathan shook his head. ¡°I don¡¯t know. Madison didn¡¯t like to talk about Amy to me. She said she wanted to keep the relationships separate.¡± ¡°She talked about you all the time,¡± Lily pointed out. ¡°It¡¯s the only reason I didn¡¯t think she and Amy were together.¡± ¡°That might have been the intention,¡± Felicity suggested. ¡°To keep you from suspecting she and your roommate were engaged in a tryst.¡± Tryst? She really was having fun. Felicity¡¯s answer didn¡¯t seem to sit right with Lily, but she didn¡¯t argue it. Nathan seemed unbothered, or maybe just more concerned about Felicity in his lap. I felt we were done with Nathan, but I¡¯d already made the mistake of not being thorough. ¡°Is there anything else you think we¡¯d want to know from you?¡± He shook his head. ¡°Answer aloud, please.¡± Felicity drifted the knife closer, though not at his throat yet. ¡°No, there isn¡¯t.¡± ¡°Lily,¡± I kept my eyes on Nathan as I spoke, ¡°you might want to turn around for this.¡± ¡°What are you-¡± Lily¡¯s question was cut off as Nathan seemed to realize what was about to happen. He tried to shove Felicity off of him, but she jammed the knife into his throat before he could touch her. Felicity quickly dragged the blade across his throat, opening up a sizable gash. Nathan sputtered for a few seconds as the blood dripped down his neck and he died. Felicity wiped the knife against his shirt and fished around in his pockets for his car keys. ¡°Why¡­¡± Lily¡¯s voice was almost a whisper. ¡°Why did you do that?¡± I turned away from the body to answer her. I had seen people die before, but not very many. ¡°A few reasons. He had already killed someone and he knew the glyph. We can¡¯t have him arrested for magical manslaughter. More than that, if he started researching and experimenting with magic he could bring the Inquisition here.¡± And because if he lived, we would be forced to kill the spider immediately. ¡°You can¡¯t just¡­ you don¡¯t get to make that choice.¡± ¡°It is what it means to be a witch,¡± Felicity said. She¡¯d found his car keys and was pushing the corpse over the back seat into the trunk. ¡°If you need to feel better about it, tell yourself the Inquisition killed him. Or if the professor¡¯s death does not bother you, that he was an accessory to Amy¡¯s murder for not reporting Madison to the authorities.¡± She¡¯d successfully gotten it over the side and out of view, though plenty of blood still stained the seat. ¡°Can you handle the disposal on your own?¡± I asked Felicity. She nodded. ¡°All right, meet me at the library tomorrow morning. I¡¯ll have more on the ritual by then.¡± Felicity nodded again with a smile as she closed the car door and climbed up into the front seat. I turned back to Lily, but neither of us said anything until Felicity had driven away. Lily¡¯s golden eyes practically glowed in the darkness of the night. I spoke first. ¡°Madison almost certainly killed Amy, so your part in this is effectively done. You don¡¯t need to-¡± ¡°Seriously Claire?¡± Lily interrupted me incredulously. ¡°You¡¯re kicking me to the curb because I¡¯m not ok with you murdering people?¡± I winced, realizing how my words had seemed. ¡°I was trying to give you an out,¡± I explained. My tone wasn¡¯t quite under control, desperation breaking through. ¡°You aren¡¯t a witch, you shouldn¡¯t have to be a part of this.¡± ¡°And will you kill me too? Because I know enough about magic to bring the Inquisition here?¡± I hesitated for a moment too long. ¡°Are you fucking-¡± ¡°No!¡± I shouted. Lily wasn¡¯t wrong, that was the problem. She¡¯d seen the glyph. More than that, she knew where Margaret and I lived. She could bring the Inquisition right to our doorstep, which was far more risk than Nathan had posed. I couldn¡¯t do it. It was stupid and irrational and more than anything it was weak. But it was true. ¡°I won¡¯t kill you,¡± I said pathetically. ¡°I don¡¯t know if I even could.¡± Both of us stood there for a minute, not saying anything. ¡°The library tomorrow morning,¡± Lily said finally. She turned and started walking towards her dorm. Margaret¡¯s house was in the same direction, so I let her get out of sight before I went back. 1.10 - Kaleidoscope For the first time in my life, I wished I was worse at math. It was an odd thing to want. I¡¯d spent much of my life studying math since geometry was crucial to ritualcraft. I¡¯d considered before what my most valuable skill would be if I didn¡¯t want to be a witch. What kind of mundane job could I get? All the answers I¡¯d found related to that mathematical ability. The calculations I was doing now to find the cosmic coordinates of the summoning ritual were time-consuming, but far too routine. They left far too much of my brain free to think. When I¡¯d gotten to the house, Margaret had asked why I was with that Felicity girl again. I had explained the need for a bodyguard and she¡¯d accepted it. She even called the idea of using Felicity clever. I knew I never would¡¯ve gotten away with it if she hadn¡¯t used the curse on me earlier today. She always got more lenient for a while after that. I¡¯d pushed my luck, showing her the photos of the bindings I needed to identify. She¡¯d promptly animated a book from her workshop into my hands, mildly berating me for not remembering the contents of a book I hadn¡¯t read. I didn¡¯t use animation so casually, because I was at least an order of magnitude worse at spellcraft than Margaret. She hadn¡¯t even needed the crutch of a gesture to do it. It was probably an intentional reminder, so I didn¡¯t think to try using the book against her. I now had the book, Crossplane Summonings by Illia Foucault, in my backpack. I planned to memorize as much of the book as I could in a day. I doubted I¡¯d be allowed it for much longer. When I put the book in my backpack, I noticed I still had two of Amy¡¯s books. I took them out to keep them on a whim. I would eventually return them to the library, I wasn¡¯t a monster, but I was somewhat curious about this person I never got to meet. Reading her books seemed like the best way to do that, but I had far more important tasks at the moment. Which left me here at my desk with a scientific calculator, my math, and my thoughts. Lily and Felicity took up most of my brain, of course. Just once, I¡¯d like a problem that I agonized over to be something other than my hormones, but I doubted that would ever come to pass. I wasn¡¯t sure which was the easiest one to process. Felicity first, I decided on a whim. I¡¯d met her first, a decade ago. I still had feelings for her. Of course I did, we¡¯d dated for half a year and I¡¯d known her to some degree most of my life. All the best memories I had involved her. No amount of cutting away my own thoughts could stop the biochemistry happening in my brain. Except every one of those happy memories was a lie. Felicity was a member of the Moonrise cult, using me to get information about Margaret. In some ways, it was horrifying to imagine little nine-year-old Felicity forced into engaging in spycraft. But when her target was little seven-year-old Claire, I couldn¡¯t afford to consider that. She¡¯d already been wearing her glamour that first day we met. I had caught her following me and ambushed her at knifepoint, using the same pocket knife I would give her years later. Though it might be more accurate to say she¡¯d taken the knife from me for my own good. I still couldn¡¯t convince myself that was a purely calculated act. So yes, today revealed quite thoroughly that avoiding her as much as I could for two years had done little to unwind her influence over me. Not that I¡¯d successfully stayed away the whole time, of course. She always found ways to run into me, to remind me of how happy the lie had been. I needed to be very careful not to fall back into old patterns. I¡¯d asked her to meet me at the library without even considering if she was truly needed there. The library led my thoughts to Lily. I allowed them to move to the new topic. It had been two days. That was the craziest thing. My mind couldn¡¯t possibly accept that it shouldn¡¯t care about this person who it has known for so little time. Margaret would be able to kill her without any hesitation. Margaret killed people whom she had worked closely with for longer than I¡¯d been alive. Few witches make it even into their forties. Most were closer to my age than that. The fact that Margaret lived for over seventy years was a testament to her ruthlessness. It was how ruthless I would need to be. Claire the Witch should be able to kill Lily. Maybe I should, just to prove to myself I could. I didn¡¯t even have to get my hands dirty. I could simply tell Felicity that Lily¡¯s protection had been revoked and she would remove her rival without me ever seeing. Felicity had done it before, after all. Considering the conversation Lily had refused to tell me about, maybe Felicity had already done something. If so, then all this agonizing was for naught. I would be furious at Felicity and there would be no Lily to fret over. That would solve both of my problems simultaneously. I wanted to move on from the thought process and leave it there on such a cruelly ironic note. My mind, however, insisted on dragging up the memory of the lonely girl who had wanted to be in the library with me. In hindsight, that probably had more to do with the fact she was hearing voices, but at the same time she¡¯d come to me instead of anyone else. It implied she didn¡¯t think she had anyone else, a problem I was intimately familiar with. She was the same girl who had learned I was a ¡®wizard¡¯ and in the space of a minute was convinced I would be able to save her. She had even helped me save her. If I had been the outsider¡¯s target on my own, I would¡¯ve died to it, spiraling into mania from the backlash of a basic ward. Then I had made something far less basic, gone so far into backlash that I forgot I was human. I had a hazy memory of trying to kill something that was probably Lily. She¡¯d also mentioned waking up at least once more than I could remember. I was a paranoid lunatic pissing myself and Lily had gone, gotten me a change of clothes, and come back. She¡¯d sat there talking me through my delusions for hours. I had responded to this undeserved kindness by putting her life in more danger than she knew. Not even out of a calculated decision. Margaret had been right, I might have killed the only friend I had because of my weakness. And even then, Lily had decided to comfort me. She¡¯d practically tricked me into talking about the curse and then held me as if she understood how much I needed that in particular. That conversation was the kindest thing anyone had done for me in years and possibly the kindest thing done with honest intent for me ever. Margaret had to die as soon as possible. I couldn¡¯t let her hurt someone as kind as Lily. I¡¯d had an inkling of an idea with this spider outsider. It was part of why I¡¯d killed Nathan, because- no that was too dangerous a thought to allow consciously. Lily might skip town. She had intentionally not said she would come to the library tomorrow because communication would know if she meant it. Which meant at minimum she wasn¡¯t sure if she would. I could probably track her. If I spent enough time on it, I could divine her location reliably enough to send people after her. Margaret had never taught me tracking divination directly, but the Weaving specialized in things like that. I wouldn¡¯t though. Leaving was a message that anything more would be a hostile act. Oh, that was why Felicity hadn¡¯t called my new phone. I looked up from my calculations, fishing out my phone to unblock her numbers. She deserved that, at least, for today. I returned to my math, my mind racing no less than when I began.
Lily had decided it was ¡®later¡¯. She was in her dorm room, the original one again. Today they finally decided she was allowed to return as long as she stayed out of Amy¡¯s room. So she was there now, staring at Amy¡¯s door with a glass of milk in her hand. Amy had been her only real friend here, even if she hadn¡¯t thought of Lily as a friend. Lily was bad at making friends. She knew how to make acquaintances, she had tons of those. She could name random people all over campus and recall enough details about their lives to creep them out. But Lily had no clue how to turn acquaintances into friends. Maybe it was that Amy had reached out first. Genuinely reached out, not in an attempt to get something from her or to hit on her. It was as if she could tell Lily needed a friend and just decided to do it. That meant a lot to Lily, enough that she had repeated the gesture herself yesterday. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Lily had to repeat the gesture because her only friend had died. She sipped her drink, fighting back a sense of foreboding. Madison had probably killed Amy. Madison had also touched her yesterday, which Lily noted because it was the first time Madison had done it willingly. Lily was a very touchy person. She tried to suppress it because some people got very weird about it, but her instincts were almost always screaming to touch people. It gave her something to do with her hands so they weren¡¯t flailing about ridiculously and it just felt nice. Amy had gotten this and been totally fine with it. She hadn¡¯t thought it was clingy or weird when Lily wanted to sit very close while talking or even hug for no real reason. Claire didn¡¯t mind it either, though Lily suspected that was for very different reasons. No, Lily wasn¡¯t quite ready to deal with that one yet. She should start with an easier thing. Lily took a sip, the milk noticeably less cold than it had been a few seconds ago. Margaret then. There was something very wrong with Lily that the death threats were the easiest thing to unpack. Margaret was a powerful archwizard who was torturing¡­ her daughter and now had a reason to want Lily dead. Maybe she should just run. Lily would hate to lose Reston, she¡¯d had to argue with her mom for years to be allowed to go to college, but no amount of wanting a normal life was worth dealing with an angry archwizard. Truthfully, Lily should¡¯ve run the minute they removed the magic marking her for the monster. But Lily wouldn¡¯t have been able to live with herself if she¡¯d ignored her new friend after that and she definitely couldn¡¯t abandon Amy. Could Lily even run? Apparently ¡®the weaving¡¯ was about connections. Lily had been told by the person she wasn¡¯t unpacking yet that you could do things to people via stray hairs. There was no way Lily could get rid of all of them without burning the dorm down. Lily could ask the expert. She would tell Lily, easily. She loved doing that so much. Lily had a plan for that now. She took another warm sip. Next death threat, Felicity¡¯s. Felicity was just not fair. Lily knew she looked weird, of course. She¡¯d never been allowed to forget it. As if always being the new girl at school wasn¡¯t bad enough, she had to stick out like a sore thumb too. Her anxieties had made her spend far more money than she¡¯d ever admit to her mother tweaking her appearance as much as she could. At some point, Lily realized she could look good, and now it bothered her if she didn¡¯t. Unlike Rose, however, it took a lot of effort for Lily to make it work. She made sure to take proper care of her hair and face. She almost always had some degree of makeup on and she kept in great shape despite not really needing it for anything in Reston. And then in walks Felicity who is literally magically pretty. Lily felt like such a bitch for caring about that, but she was unpacking and that meant being honest. Seriously, how was she supposed to compete with that? It didn¡¯t even seem to take work, Felicity just existed in a permanent state of physically unachievable beauty. Felicity also threatened to kill her, though not for anything that made sense like jealousy. Felicity had basically delivered the kind of speech a father holding a shotgun would make to the boy who wanted to date his daughter. That relationship was clearly very complicated and most of Lily wanted to stay out of it in any way possible. Except Felicity¡¯s speech had very strongly implied that staying away was what would earn her the proverbial shotgun to the face. Supposedly, the mental health of Felicity¡¯s ex was riding on Lily¡¯s shoulders now, which was a lot more than she wanted to be burdened with this close to cutting and running. Felicity had also killed Nathan in cold blood. Lily knew Nathan. They hadn¡¯t ever really been close, but still. She had quite a lot of memories of him and their time in the gaming group. Nathan had killed Professor Lansberg, but he very clearly had no idea what he was doing. He didn¡¯t deserve to die for that. Lily had never seen anyone die before. She¡¯d seen dead bodies, of course. She¡¯d found Amy¡¯s body, which had looked a hell of a lot worse than Nathan¡¯s. That was probably the only reason she was together now: she¡¯d been through this so recently. Lily had mostly succeeded in mentally separating the Amy who was her friend from the pile of indistinct gore she¡¯d found. It probably wasn¡¯t a very healthy coping mechanism, but it had worked well enough for her to stop wanting to vomit every time she remembered Amy. This time though, she saw the moment Nathan¡¯s eyes stopped having a soul behind them. She didn¡¯t know if she would ever forget that. Nathan was so clearly a real human even once he¡¯d died. Lily wanted to blame Felicity for it, but it wasn¡¯t Felicity¡¯s decision. Felicity probably would have let him go if Claire- Lily dropped her glass in shock as she felt the milk that had bubbled over come spilling out of the top. Fortunately, the glass didn¡¯t shatter or even visibly crack against the carpet. Some ¡®gift¡¯ she had. Lily started to find something to clean the spill up with before she stopped. She didn¡¯t actually care about the spill. She was being ridiculous, trying to unpack without acknowledging the elephant in the ¡®later¡¯ corner. No wonder her control slipped to the point her drink boiled over. Claire. Claire was so vulnerable, physically and emotionally. She was also an evil wizard. Claire had put herself through hell several times over for Lily¡¯s sake. Claire had killed Nathan without even caring. Claire reminded her so much of Jason, another emotional landmine of a memory. If Lily left, Felicity had made it very clear that Claire would be shattered- Lily was forced to shove those thoughts back down. But that, in and of itself, was an answer. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and went to find something to clean up the spill with. Lily would stay long enough to find Madison, Amy deserved that much. Then she would get the fuck away from all these psychotic wizards before they sunk their claws in any deeper. She was such a coward.
The Fool was having a great day. She knew she shouldn¡¯t be, her final sacrifice was fast approaching and all of her schemes around it were unraveling quickly. However, the long game had paid off. She practically skipped away from the SUV as it rolled down the hill. She¡¯d found a great spot where one strong kick sent the truck and the corpse inside right to the bottom of the lake. This was a favorite dumping ground of hers. The Fool started the long walk back to Reston happily. Her Princess had come back to her! She still loved the Fool, it was obvious in a thousand things. Her struggles to resist and eventual acceptance of the banter the Fool offered. Her longing looks on the elevator. Her jealous disdain for that boy she¡¯d seduced. Her need to defend the Fool¡¯s honor when that very same boy insulted it. Her absolute terror at the thought of a monster coming for the Fool. Even her occasional cruelty towards the Fool was raw and emotional, a need to lash out to convince herself. It was enough to turn the Fool into a giggling schoolgirl. Oh, there were things the Fool hadn¡¯t expected. The plan had failed, but in a way that still moved things forward. She thought she was in tune enough with the stories to see that coming, but it still caught her off guard. The new girl wasn¡¯t completely a surprise. Her Princess needed someone and right now it couldn¡¯t be the Fool. The girl¡¯s role in the story was still very fluid. She was a change to the status quo, but that change could come in a hundred different archetypes. She was mundane and ignorant, yet curious. That spoke to an Apprentice. Her moralizing could also make her a good Heart. Her knowledge of electronic lockpicking was interesting, but a Thief overlapped too much with the Scoundrel, who lived within the Fool. It didn¡¯t seem right. A shift in the music told the Fool that something was approaching. What was that melody? Opportunity or danger? Probably both, as it usually was. The Fool spotted it before long, a single gray pickup truck headed toward Reston. She was far enough away from the rest of civilization that the roads were mostly bare, with only a few cars in sight. If not for the music, she would have expected this one not to see her in the darkness of the night. Instead, she stopped walking and watched the driver slow down to a stop next to her. ¡°Hey miss, are you ok?¡± The man rolled down his car window. ¡°I¡¯m headed to Reston, do you need a ride?¡± The Fool tried to read the story here. There would be some conflict, there had to be. However, the refusal would be a story in and of itself. If the Fool didn¡¯t accept the hand offered, someone in turn would refuse hers. The Fool donned the mask of the Virgin in order to speak. ¡°I¡¯d love that,¡± it said. The man gestured to the passenger seat and she walked around the front to reach it. As she got in the car, she tuned her glamour with a twist of her hand, dramatically decreasing her attractiveness while increasing her approachability and innocence. The man¡¯s image of her shifted, though he had no training to notice it. The Fool had her gun and her oathblade, should the worst come to pass. The Virgin made idle conversation with the man, almost entirely on instinct. It was a well-worn mask, useful with older people and especially men. It would continue to flatter her driver in such a way that its appearance of innocence was maintained. The Fool¡¯s mind returned to the task at hand. Her Princess and the new girl were hurtling toward conflict, the climax obvious to her and her alone. The Fool needed to decide if she wanted to make them regrow stronger or fall apart. Her instincts said to tear them apart. Her Princess, desperate for comfort, would come to the Fool and she would be more than happy to provide it. The Fool felt sure that if she could get an opportunity like that, she could barrel her way back to the center of her Princess¡¯ life. The Fool struggled to think of an act she would not commit to have her Princess back. She still fantasized about those good times. Her Princess would quite literally leap into her arms at the first opportunity, looking up at her Fool with such elation that it made the Fool¡¯s heart skip even now. She would plead and beg for her Fool¡¯s affection like it kept her alive and her Fool was more than happy to drown her in it. There were smaller things too, quiet moments that the Fool recalled longingly. Sometimes, in the middle of her studies, her Princess would reach out as if to check that the Fool was still there and give this wonderful smile when she found that the Fool was. She would do it all without looking up from her book, seemingly unaware it had even occurred. However, if her Princess ever truly returned to her lover, her Princess would die. The story was crystal clear, a tragedy told a thousand times over. No. If there were an act she could not commit, it would be to betray her Princess for a second time. Her Princess deserved better than that. Better than the Fool, certainly, but she was all her Princess had. Though what if her Princess could have someone else, another pillar to hold her up once the Fool was gone? The mask of the Virgin apologized for startling her driver, for it could not hide the wicked grin of the Fool as she concocted her master plan. 1.11 - Nescient Irony My morning routine was disrupted somewhat by my alarm jolting me awake at my desk. I blearily inspected my desk, noting that I had seemingly finished my calculations and fallen asleep while trying to identify the interdictions. ¡°I have not betrayed you yet.¡± I wiped a bit of drool from my mouth as I spoke. I knew from experience that trying to reverse engineer my work right after waking up was a fool¡¯s errand, so I simply gathered all the papers and put them into my backpack. I estimated I¡¯d gotten about five hours of sleep, which wasn¡¯t great but would hardly be an issue. As I stood at the door, some distant thread told me I was missing a step, but it was quieted once I transformed from Claire the Girl to Claire the Witch. ¡°I have not betrayed you yet,¡± I said as I stepped out the door. I could see Margaret in her workshop, which was already a surprise. ¡°Get up here and recharge the wards,¡± she called over her shoulder. Accepting that my morning routine was thoroughly worthless, I climbed the stairs and pressed my hand against the anchor point on the wall. I staggered from backlash, surprised by whatever new ritual she¡¯d included in the house wards. Margaret might have just tried to kill me. Giving me too much backlash would be a good way to do it deniably. She didn¡¯t gain anything from not warning me about it other than spite. Being prepared for backlash would let me reorganize my thoughts faster, which made me more useful to her. I looked around the workshop, noting that I could no longer find Margaret. Since her assassination attempt had failed, she¡¯d used her spell to hide again. What was the move from here? If I went downstairs to have breakfast, what message would that send? I wasn¡¯t sure. Instead, I turned and inspected the anchor point. It was a small black circle on the wall, hollow inside, with a drawn line running up it into the ceiling. The purpose of anchors like this was to allow a person to touch the ritual from farther away than the actual glyphs. The wall was just as much loose wood as everything else in the house, an infuriating aesthetic. Parts of it even looked rotten. It was definitely too weak to be climbed. So how did Margaret get to wherever the glyphs were? Did she have to rearrange the house, like she somehow did to the first floor? It had to be difficult, otherwise her assassination attempt would have worked. It was child¡¯s play to construct a ritual that would drive its user insane. Picking glyphs and inner lines at random would produce one more often than not. Though that came with the risk of killing far more people than you wanted it to. It was a small miracle that no particularly reckless witch had destroyed an entire zip code yet. Actually, maybe they had. What percentage of terrorist attacks globally were a cover for witchcraft gone wrong? That might indicate something about how much influence the Inquisition had within governments broadly. It couldn¡¯t be easy to cover up something on that scale, but maybe people accepted it because they couldn¡¯t imagine what else it could be. Finally, mercifully, I gathered enough of my mind to remember the far more obvious solution to what I should do next. ¡°I have not betrayed you yet,¡± I told the air. Margaret reappeared in an instant, breathing heavily. ¡°Finally,¡± she said. Her one real eye glared at me harshly. ¡°Another minute and I¡¯d have killed you.¡± It said something that I was allowed to see Margaret in this state of exhaustion. She normally went far out of her way to seem as though she had no limits. ¡°Have you identified the hedge witch yet?¡± Margaret asked. Her tone was insistent, demanding. What had changed overnight that made her care now? ¡°No,¡± I answered, picking my words carefully. ¡°I have only been able to identify one of the glyphs so far.¡± ¡°Bah,¡± Margaret shook her head. ¡°You aren¡¯t going to find the hedge witch from the symbols they used. There are many, but not enough to make them a signature. Why did you not divine the author from their connection to the ritual itself?¡± ¡°Because I didn¡¯t think of it.¡± That was a brilliant idea. You couldn¡¯t make a ritual that complicated without leaving an impression. It might be enough to get something if I accepted the heavy backlash. ¡°Then you are a foolish girl,¡± Margaret said bluntly, before flicking her wrist. I was shocked to find yet another book animated into my hands. I just barely caught it and it still landed with enough force to knock the wind out of me. I looked down at Threads That Bind by Lilian Rivers. Holy shit, Lilian Rivers. ¡°Leave the house, now,¡± Margaret ordered. I hesitated, trying to discern what her angle was. What the fuck was going on, giving me not one but two books? And then telling me to leave with them? My uncertainty was met with a frozen pain in my chest. ¡°NOW!¡± That was all the convincing I needed.
I stifled a yawn just outside the Reston library. I went through my list of priorities once more.
  1. Identify the bindings placed upon the spider. Determine if I can alter the spider ritual to change the targeting method. Do not think about why this is priority 1.
  2. Obtain as much information from Crossplane Summonings and Threads That Bind as possible by the end of the day. This is an incredible opportunity that should not be missed.
  3. Find Madison. Delegate to Lily?
  4. Determine a method to identify the designer of the spider ritual. Divination: author/script connection? Retro-clairvoyance?
  5. Dyer research. Subsidiary to priority 1.
  6. Teach Lily to see unraveling/other breaks in continuity.
  7. Find a better way to carry my ritual supplies.
  8. Figure out what a GM is.
The list was growing quite rapidly. I¡¯d need a better way to organize them soon. I walked into the library, nodding at Rachael. She gave me an odd look for a few seconds before she spoke. ¡°Good morning Claire. I didn¡¯t expect to see you at the supernatural studies club yesterday.¡± I paused, deciding on a whim to engage. ¡°What made you decide to come?¡± It took a second to compose an honest answer that wouldn¡¯t prompt difficult questions. ¡°Lily wanted to go,¡± I said. Rachael gave me that same knowing grin she had when Lily and I left two days ago. ¡°So Lily¡¯s her name this time, oh?¡± Rachael paused. ¡°Wait, shouldn¡¯t it be-¡± ¡°There are red lilies,¡± I cut her off, not wanting to lose this thread. ¡°Has she been here before under a different name?¡± Rachael shook her head. ¡°No, that¡¯s not what I mean. You have quite a reputation among the library staff. They said you were taking a break, but clearly you¡¯re back at it Casanova.¡± She sounded excited like it was gossip. Which I guess it was. ¡°Everyone who has been here more than a year talks about it. It¡¯s been so many girls for years at this point.¡± It hadn¡¯t, which was why it took me a moment to understand. Felicity¡¯s glamour meant that when different people saw me with her and compared notes, they would see me with several other girls. The same people might even see differences if she shifted her glamour. Oh god, what kind of reputation did I have? I¡¯d basically grown up in this library with Felicity. Especially during the time she and I were dating¡­ ¡°Um¡­¡± I floundered, not sure how to process this new information. ¡°I guess the roguish charm thing is in right now. Any chance you could tell me why you started again?¡± A possibility seemed to occur to her. ¡°Oh! Did you get your heart broken and then suddenly a new girl reignited feelings you didn¡¯t think you had any more?¡± I blinked. ¡°Actually yes,¡± I said slowly. ¡°That¡¯s basically what happened.¡± ¡°I thought so. How romantic!¡± Rachael seemed satisfied by that, so I left to find a study room to contemplate where my life went wrong.
I had identified the second interdiction from the spider ritual when Felicity called to ask which study room I was in. Just like she used to, she preferred calling to texting, even for quick things. She sounded startled when I answered the call, which was fair. Felicity walked into the study room a few minutes later, finding me with notes and diagrams scattered across the table, just as always. Her glamour had chosen the same outfit it did last evening, with the plaid shirt, blue sleeveless vest, and a long skirt. Other details, like the lack of lipstick, matched as well. Maybe she didn¡¯t want to make a scene in the library, though she could only do so much to suppress the inherent beauty of the glamour. ¡°Good morning,¡± she said as she found a seat. It was just to my right, like she used to. Normally we didn¡¯t talk much while I was researching, but the conversation with Rachael had prompted a question I thought I might get away with now. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. ¡°Say, why does your glamour always look like the same person to me?¡± I knew for certain her appearance could change almost completely for other people, but I always got the same face. Her blond hair barely even changed color. Felicity gave me a surprised look. ¡°Haven¡¯t I told you that already?¡± ¡°You gave me a joke answer,¡± I shook my head. ¡°I don¡¯t remember what it was.¡± Felicity tutted at me, the pouting extremely amusing. ¡°It wasn¡¯t a joke,¡± she insisted. ¡°I promised you I would stop changing when we first met. It¡¯s been quite difficult to change anything but the details for you since.¡± I read a note of hurt in her tone. Calculated, of course. ¡°That¡¯s odd,¡± I said. I kept my hands busy, to seem less focused on the conversation than I was. ¡°Do promises usually change your magic?¡± Felicity shook her head. ¡°I doubt it would¡¯ve done for almost anyone but you. Perhaps my mother.¡± Felicity never talked about her family. It was bait, a thread begging to be pulled, but I had to take it. ¡°I don¡¯t see the common thread there,¡± I said. ¡°Are you and your mother close?¡± Felicity paused, green eyes searching my expression for something. She¡¯d told me she was a runaway who became a hedge witch, but in hindsight the story was too implausible to be true. Felicity wasn¡¯t a good enough witch to learn glamour so young without real training. ¡°I was. Not anymore though.¡± I thought that was it, but after a moment she continued hesitantly. ¡°She and I have some disagreements that soured the relationship beyond repair. I wasn¡¯t supposed to¡­ never mind.¡± There were several more threads to grasp at, but I let them fall. She seemed to regret what she¡¯d told me already. Had I found a rare moment of vulnerability or was it another layer of ruse? It quickly became exhausting to talk to Felicity. ¡°Another question then.¡± I turned to her fully, letting my hands rest. This topic deserved my full attention. ¡°Nathan.¡± Felicity nodded, clearly expecting this question. ¡°No, he did not attempt anything untoward. We had not even kissed before I had the blade to his throat.¡± ¡°Then why did you do that?¡± I asked. Felicity seemed somewhat embarrassed, pointedly staring at a spot on the table. ¡°I did not want you to assume that I had¡­ done anything with him.¡± I nodded. Of course she would have picked up on my jealousy, reading me was practically her job. Even I was surprised by the degree to which that jealousy had manifested. Still, it was reckless. ¡°Please don¡¯t do stupid things like that for me. If he hadn¡¯t turned out to be a hedge witch, we might have had to kill him anyway just to keep him from going to the police. It creates additional risk for all of us.¡± I wasn¡¯t sure how far into mundane crimes Margaret¡¯s protection from the police extended and I had no desire to test it. Felicity nodded solemnly and I decided to throw her a bone. ¡°Aside from that, you did an excellent job yesterday. I didn¡¯t miss that you checked the hotel room for anyone hiding before examining the ritual. And you got Nathan isolated without raising anyone¡¯s suspicions.¡± I returned to my research without looking to see her reaction, but I could practically feel the smile emanating from her. I tried to tell myself I had done that as part of stringing her along to keep her useful as a bodyguard. I knew I wouldn¡¯t be able to say it out loud. I was trying to find the third glyph, which I suspected of being a kill switch. The targeting glyph had been an interesting discovery, but I wanted to wait for Lily to talk about it. I couldn¡¯t believe I¡¯d just said ¡®the morning¡¯ instead of giving an actual time. It was stupid and meant I¡¯d probably be here until at least noon before I gave up hope.
At 10:12 am, my phone buzzed. I tried not to overreact to the sound, but from the amused look on Felicity¡¯s face, I figured I had failed. Lily: which study room? Claire: 1C A few minutes later, Lily stepped into the study room. The first thing I noticed, with some amusement, was that her hairstyle had changed yet again. This time it was a straight, tight ponytail resting over her right shoulder. How long until she reused a hairstyle? It might be worth tracking. She wore a gray graphic T-shirt with a logo I couldn¡¯t recognize and denim shorts. Altogether, this was a far more casual version of Lily, though still just as beautiful. Lily stopped in the doorway, inspecting me as I inspected her. Her brow furrowed and her gaze lingered a slightly embarrassing amount of time on my chest before moving on. ¡°She gets like this whenever she has a breakthrough,¡± Felicity explained. She seemed to have some context that I didn¡¯t. ¡°She probably fell asleep at her desk.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve identified the bindings,¡± I told Lily. She stepped into the room and sat across from me while I found my papers. ¡°So, the first one I was right about. Non-interaction, though an aggressive form. This one prohibits violence against anyone not marked as a target, even in self-defense.¡± ¡°Would you have used this one?¡± Lily asked. Her body language was tight and controlled like she¡¯d been with Margaret. Was she scared of me after Nathan? I gave the problem a minute¡¯s thought, letting the puzzle disguise my worry. ¡°It depends on what the spider is for. If this is an assassin for one person like I think it is-¡± Lily¡¯s eyebrows shot up, ¡°-I¡¯ll get there, I promise. So if it¡¯s an assassin for one person, then probably. If you know the environment of your target is one that it can infiltrate, there¡¯s no reason to kill more people than necessary. That¡¯s assuming the people surrounding your target aren¡¯t people you want dead anyway. But if this was a multi-purpose murder spider then no. This level of restriction forces it to use hit-and-run tactics and puts it in a lot of danger in situations where there are multiple war witches, like a coven.¡± ¡°Covens are very rare in this region. Margaret has spent a lot of effort stamping them out,¡± Felicity pointed out. I conceded to this with a nod. ¡°Now, the second glyph.¡± I found the appropriate paper after a few seconds of digging. ¡°This is why I think it¡¯s an assassin. The target is chosen once at the time of activation- mentally chosen. No way to know who that is, since this is applied to the spider itself. It takes a lot of work to put your thoughts into a format the gods can understand, so I bet whoever made this is a diviner or similar tradition.¡± ¡°But then how¡¯d Nathan-¡± Lily stumbled over the name, which was worrying, ¡°-how did he mark Professor Lansberg?¡± ¡°It¡¯s really stupid,¡± I warned her. ¡°When he cast the interdiction he didn¡¯t even cast it right because he wasn¡¯t a witch.¡± That was just guesswork, but it seemed likely. There was no way that boy had learned spellcraft in three days. ¡°So the pseudo-spell did nothing but the summoning ritual still read the command to put a binding on the professor. And this version of non-interaction doesn¡¯t affect marked targets.¡± ¡°So the spider attacks anyone with a binding on them?¡± Felicity asked, surprised. ¡°Yes- well sorta. The existence of a binding makes that person exempt from non-interaction, so the spider is free to hunt them down. Which it clearly enjoys. At least, it wasn¡¯t being forced to kill you, which is probably why it waited for you to go to sleep.¡± I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. ¡°Like I said, it¡¯s stupid. This is the wrong non-interaction glyph to use for a preselected target. This version is used when your targeting mechanism is a binding of some sort, but since it wasn¡¯t set up properly it excludes any binding. You¡¯d have to be a horrible summoner to miss that, but everything else about this ritual would require you to be a great one. It doesn¡¯t make any sense.¡± ¡°So Amy¡¯s death was... an accident?¡± Lily said slowly. ¡°Probably,¡± I confirmed. ¡°Well, maybe. She was the first one to die, so Madison might not have known for certain it would work or even what it would do. At a minimum, some amount is unintentional thanks to the idiot who built this ritual-¡± ¡°The third glyph?¡± Felicity prompted. Ah, we¡¯d gotten sidetracked. I shuffled my papers until I found it. ¡°Yes, this one is interesting. It¡¯s the one I was both the most right about and the most wrong. It is a kill switch but it isn¡¯t- it doesn¡¯t work like one. It automatically makes the spider kill itself once it has confirmed the target, the one set by the second glyph, is dead.¡± I watched them both digest this information. ¡°So we cannot stop it,¡± Felicity spoke first. ¡°We must hide any books with such a glyph until the assassin finishes its task.¡± ¡°We can¡¯t just leave the primary target to die,¡± Lily objected. ¡°Or the spider to suffer until it can kill... actually, why isn¡¯t the primary target dead yet? Who could it not get to?¡± ¡°That is too many witches to name,¡± Felicity said. ¡°We tend to keep secret how we protect ourselves, for obvious reasons. We cannot discern the primary target from the mere fact of their survival.¡± ¡°Primary target, that¡¯s a good term...¡± I mused. I got strange looks from both of them. ¡°Er, regardless, Felicity is right. We need to focus on containing this. I think I have all the books from the library with the glyph,¡± Felicity was almost as good a book gopher as Lily, ¡°but I know we¡¯re missing one that¡¯s probably checked out. The staff know me, so I¡¯ll see if they¡¯ll tell me who has it.¡± Felicity nodded. ¡°That very well could be Madison¡¯s book. Either way, we need to recover it.¡± Lily didn¡¯t seem happy about the course of action we were deciding on, but she didn¡¯t argue. ¡°Can you track Madison with magic?¡± she asked me. ¡°I doubt she left the book behind if she ran.¡± I nodded. I hadn¡¯t been able to stop myself from going through what I knew of tracking divination last night. ¡°Probably, within a degree of certainty. Precision drops off over distance, so- well if she took a flight we probably won¡¯t be able to tell more than the state even under ideal conditions. We have your interpersonal bond and if she marked you with interdiction, that¡¯s magical entanglement. It¡¯s the strongest type of connection since it¡¯s already in a form the gods can understand. It¡¯d be better if we hadn¡¯t removed it, but- well obviously that wouldn¡¯t have been worth it.¡± ¡°Would you and I have magical entanglement?¡± Lily asked curiously. That was a good sign she wasn¡¯t too upset, so I jumped at the opportunity. ¡°Oh yeah, we have a ton by now. It¡¯s part of why communication is the first spell every Witch of Weaving learns. Each lie I hear is a separate magical entanglement to the liar. Also, I used two rituals on you to remove the binding.¡± ¡°Would I have many entanglements or none?¡± Felicity asked. I hesitated. The truth was that I didn¡¯t know, since I¡¯d never divined her, though her glamour¡¯s interference with communication implied that other divinations would face issues. But it could be dangerous to tell her how protected against me she was. Felicity, seeing my plight, retreated gracefully. ¡°It was merely a passing curiosity. Pay it no mind.¡± There was a pause as no one seemed sure how to continue the conversation. Lily broke the silence first. ¡°Felicity, does Jessie work today?¡± ¡°She does not,¡± Felicity shook her head. ¡°However, I could tell her that the store needs someone for an emergency shift. If I offer her enough, it ought to get her out of the room for us.¡± ¡°Bring me back a hair,¡± I said. ¡°Blood would be even better. Also grab something she values, if you know what that¡¯d be. The more distinct forms of connection we have the better we can track her.¡± They looked at me with surprise. Oh, they¡¯d assumed I¡¯d be coming with them. ¡°I do not wish to leave you here alone,¡± Felicity said. Lily seemed uncertain, but I couldn¡¯t tell from what. ¡°When would someone have put a binding on me?¡± I pointed out. ¡°Besides, I need to finish this research and the two of you can¡¯t contribute anything more to that than carrying books.¡± I paused, reading the room. ¡°Which you¡¯re both great at, by the way.¡± Lily rolled her eyes but Felicity stood up and curtsied. ¡°Thank you, your highness. I am but a humble book steward.¡± I was thankfully too tired to be embarrassed by that. As they left, I wondered if it was a mistake to leave Felicity alone with Lily. Felicity had already threatened her, so her return today might inspire further action. But the truth was I would be wasted out there. My calculations last night had confirmed that the spider was summoned by the Weaving and I couldn¡¯t stop until I knew what that meant. Announcement of Hiatus This story is going to go on a brief hiatus. So, here''s the thing, I fucked up. There''s no other way to put it. I made serious and severe story drafting mistakes that I''m ashamed of and I''m currently in the process of fixing them. So what that means for now is that our weekly-ish schedule is on pause and the last few chapters are going to receive major rewrites and might have extra chapters put in between them. Yes, I am aware this is infuriating as hell, especially when the most recent chapters were already such a major reveal. There''s absolutely no excuse for releasing the story in this state, I should''ve made this decision before I allowed that to be posted. I''ve deleted it now to preserve that mystery for the people who will find the story during the hiatus, but I am aware that for most of you the damage is done. I don''t know what to say other than that I''m very, very sorry. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. When I come back, you''ll get the entire rest of arc 1 over a few days, I won''t make you sit through retreads for weeks. Again, my sincerest apologies for this, but I truly believe that this is what''s best for the Witch¡¯s Folly.