- Jessa Lucas
- Apr 19, 2021
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 14, 2021
Chapter Thirteen
Good Faith
Sabbath steps closer to Soren, dragging me along with her. She grabs my hand and sticks it underneath his nose, forcing me to lean closer to him with the movement. “What does this rune mean? Mika came back with it.”
Her defiant glare doesn’t move from him as he drags his gaze down to the ugly, scabbing lines on my palm.
“We think it’s a rune for murder,” I offer helpfully.
He shakes his head, the hint of a frown creasing between his brows. “I see how a novice might think that, but I don’t believe this is linked to the reason you died.”
“Do you know what it is, then?” I ask.
“No.”
“Are you lying.”
He looks up at me, tucking my fingers back into a fist. “Is that a question, or an assumption?” This is the closest I’ve ever been to him, and he’s just as infuriating up close. Possibly more.
“Both,” I breathe. “Mostly the second.”
Soren observes me for a moment, his eyes narrowing infinitesimally in a way that makes me think he might actually smile.
He doesn’t.
“I’m not lying,” he replies. “I don’t know what it is. Come on.”
The moment he breaks away from me, I feel the tension between us splinter. Standing, he marches through the closed door, beckoning us to follow. Sabbath and I exchange a wary glance, but slowly trail after him.
Inside, the paneled walls are painted a hunter green, the herringbone parquet floors stained a deep brown. The ceiling is low and trimmed with a medallion, and a chandelier floats above his bed.
Hot, famous, homicidal and filthy rich. How annoying.
“The pattern of your rune is consistent with binding,” Soren says, moving to the double doors of his closet while Sab wanders the room. Riffling through the drawers, he withdraws a mortar and pestle, and a variety of small herbs.
“Binding? Binding what?” I ask as he returns, cornering me against a long desk.
He watches the way I lean away. Soren must enjoy the unease he causes me, because he stands unnecessarily close as he sets down the items in his arms.
Lifting a brow thoughtfully, his furrowed expression loosens. “I don’t know. I only recognize pieces of the framework, the rest of it—I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I swallow. Binding? Had Peter-Paul bound my powers to protect the world from the madness in my blood? My stomach sinks as I remember his insistence that I shouldn’t come back.
Soren dumps some coarse sediment onto the desk, along with herbs and a few drops of a bottled spirit, grinding it all into an ugly paste. “What are you making?” I ask as he pulls out a knife.
“A salve. For your hand.” The words are so clipped that I wouldn’t have realized this is an act of kindness if not for knowing English. “It’ll speed the healing process, without interfering with the rune’s magic.”
“Do you normally keep a knife in your pocket?”
“Knives, vials, chalk. My pockets are charmed.”
Surprise colors my face. “Oh. So multiple knives.”
Soren tugs my hand away from my thigh and stares down in wonder at the rune branded across the folds of my palm.
“It’s very curious.” He muses to himself but doesn’t offer any explanation to me. Instead, he takes a loamy heap of his charcoal-colored salve and slathers it on my hand.
Our eyes lock for a minute as his fingers spread the mixture across my wound. My skin tingles where he touches me, and as I catch Sab’s eye from across the room, I offer a quick prayer to her God that this is a result of the magic... and not, like, Soren Cain’s touch itself.
My scowl sets, a defense mechanism against his closeness. “What are shadow walkers, Soren? What sort of exceptional demon ghosts stick around the living this long?”
“Shadow walkers aren’t ghosts,” he answers. “They aren’t dead. They straddle two planes of existence, half in our dimension, half in their own. They’re people who’ve chosen—or ended up—in dimensions where they don’t belong. Traveling between dimensions is highly outlawed, as you know. It messes with the continuity of other timelines, their politics and progress. And it’s extremely dangerous.”
“Why have we never heard about them before?” Sabbath asks from the far side of the room. She’s leaning against the window with her arms folded, scrutinizing Soren’s every move, and I almost forgot she was there.
“There’s a reason they don’t tell you. Shadow walkers aren’t usually good people. They’re the ones who wanted or needed to escape their lives so desperately, that they found the last resort. At best, shadow walkers are just lonely people who find themselves lonelier. At worst, they’re the villains from your worst nightmares.”
“Criminals,” Sabbath whispers, coming nearer.
“The worst of them,” Soren agrees. “Walking around just out of sight. Not the sort of thing a noble school would teach.”
“So, what’s the whole part about them wearing my skin?” I ask. A shiver careens up my spine with these words, the ghost of that shadow walker’s breath leaving a trail of pinpricks on my neck.
“Loneliness is a poison. They grow bored. Mad with isolation. Their only hope of a real life is found in gaining physical form, which is most easily accomplished by taking the bodies of those who belong to the dimension they wish to occupy. Revenants in your state are especially vulnerable.”
“What do you mean?” I ask sharply.
“Mostly, they will harass you. They’ve been known to terrorize witches who can see them, until the living gives up his or her form. But with you wavering in and out, it gives them opportunity to slip in themselves.”
“They can interact with her physically,” Sabbath gasps, looking at me, face etched with panic.
“Yes, and no,” Soren replies. “They interact with space much like any other being, but since they don’t properly belong, we don’t see the ripple effects of their actions. A shadow walker might open a door to a room, waltz in, kick over a table, but the living perceive no difference. It’s a bit like—”
“A pocket dimension,” I cut in. “Layered on top of our own?”
He nods. “Revenants have sight into this limbo space, but they also have bodily forms that ground them to this reality. A shadow walker can only interact with you physically, Mika, if you will it. That’s why it’s vital you don’t acknowledge them. If one reaches out to hurt you, and you believe in its ability to do so, it will accomplish its task.”
“So, I’m just supposed to trick my mind into not seeing things happening right in front of me?”
“Yes,” he smirks. “Better yet, find a cure.”
The worst part of Soren’s little lesson is how he thinks he’s just ended it with a funny joke. His humor is what needs the resurrectionist, if you ask me.
Blinking down at my fisted hand, I watch the grey paste ooze from between my fingers.
“Let me see.” He motions me, and I present my hand to him. Taking it into both of his, Soren unfurls my fingers and begins to push away the salve with his thumbs, as though he’s a sculptor and I’m made of clay.
His hands are rough. I hate that I notice. I hate that it’s on the mild side of hot.
Once the paste is adequately removed, Soren gives my hand a good flick. I yank it away, hissing.
“Did it hurt?”
“Does it ever not hurt when you do that to someone?”
“You aren’t writhing on the floor in distress.”
“No,” I agree. “Sorry to disappoint.” The rune is now a whitish pink, a faint sheen where it catches in the light. “How do you know all of this? Shadow walkers, dimensions. Soul spells.”
Eyes glued on me, Soren sweeps up the mess he’s made on the desk. I can see him weighing his words carefully, assessing their value to me against the cost of discretion to him.
Trapped by his gaze, I worry for a moment that I’m not breathing.
“There was a secret society at Burnbright called the Shadow of Knights. Both of our parents were in it.”
Yeah… I’m not breathing. I inhale sharply.
“That sounds promising,” I finally mumble. I stare at Soren, feeling the tension in my jaw, the lump in the back of my throat. Is Soren Cain really the way I’m going to get the answers owed to me by my evil, dead mother? “Was this society, like, an after-school club for crafting explosive spells, or...?”
“The Knights were ferrying people between dimensions.”
“They were...”
“Bringing shadow walkers to our world.”
It takes more effort than it should to swallow. Guess mommy dearest had a penchant for law-breaking from an early age. It suddenly strikes me that this is why my father is so cautious with me. Maybe he wonders if explosive spells and holding open the door to darkness are a hobby of mine at Spellfall.
I take inventory of my surroundings. To my father’s credit, it seems likely this is very thematically in line with what I will be doing at Spellfall.
Soren watches me carefully, like I’m one of these explosives. I slowly take a breath, steadying my reaction. “Guess I should have known,” I finally shrug, feigning disinterest.
But I know Soren can see right through me, and not because I’m practically a ghost.
Lifting a hand to his neck, he sighs. “So, do we have a deal?”
Sabbath walks over to us, holding out her hand to him. “We make a witch’s bargain.”
“Fine.”
Soren withdraws one of the many knives that apparently lives in his pocket, pricking his finger until a bead of blood wells up from his flesh. He passes the knife to Sabbath, and she mimics this action with a grimace. They touch their fingers together.
“I, Sabbath Winters, swear to gather you five witches, one from each Brood, and to participate in your soul spell in exchange for your help bringing Mika back to life.”
“And I, Soren Cain, swear to help Mika Carrow regain her life fully and completely, in exchange for your participation in my soul spell, and your help gathering the five Broods,” he swears in return.
The bell tolls a quarter past the hour, an ominous witness to our irrevocable agreement, and we wait out its melody in reverence.
When it finally stills and the night goes quiet, I turn to Soren. “Hook me up with this cure fast. We gotta get back to serving our detention sentence.”
“No can do.” Soren folds one arm over the other.
“What?” Sabbath demands. “We just agreed!”
“Agreed. You’ve yet to deliver.”
“It’s been, like, twelve minutes!” I cry.
“We didn’t specify terms. You bring me five, and I’ll take care of Mika.”
My teeth grind together. I want to punch stupid Soren Cain in his stupid stoic face.
“I made a binding promise to help you, and I will,” Soren says, his eyes roaming my indignant expression. “I don’t know what you’ve been told about Burnbright, but we aren’t all double-crossers and traitors.” Soren nods at my hand. “Take that as a sign of my good faith.”
But his traitor comment slices through me, my short-lived hope withering in light of this new cruelty.
“Good faith?” I counter. “You said I have a week left! My arms are already moving through walls, what if my feet start ghosting out, too? I could fall through the floors of this tower right now!”
“But then, it might not hurt so much when you land.” Soren gives me a once over. “Besides, your feet will be the last to go.”
“What about the shadow walkers!” I insist, throwing my arms in the air. “They’re already trying to take over my body!”
“Better hurry then,” Soren says.
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