Bad Apple (The Warner Grimoire) (41 page)

Coming Winter 2013
.

Act One

The Train and The Town

Many folks fear lightning, that they do,

But if I may speak plainly,

Ain’t never been a touch of anything

Weren’t cured by a trip up the burning stair.

––”
Doc” Salvo Mallard, Honest Doc’s Guide to Genuine Southwestern Alchemy

PREVIEW CHAPTER

THE VISITOR

There’s just something awkward about being on fire.

The flames danced over Simon’s skin, a ribbon dance of yellows and orange. At his belt buckle, the flames turned abruptly blue, and the metal glowed an otherworldly silver-blue color. It was icy-cold against Simon’s skin, which Nathan had warned him would happen. Of course, that hadn’t
really
been anything more than a deterrent in Simon’s mind. I mean, Nathan
wouldn’t really
set him on fire for trying to sneak out of his room after curfew, would he?

Like so many other times, Simon was wrong.
Again.

The fire wrapped coldly around his body, twisting and settling in the folds of his clothing. Then, it began to draw tight, tightest around his waist, and then he was being pulled rapidly backwards, hard enough to send bookshelf tumbling to the ground. He struggled a moment longer, then gave up. It was no use fighting the enchantment. He was stuck.

Nathan appeared a moment later at the doorway. Simon was reminded of that night last October, when Nathan had blown into his life like a leaf that found its way past the back door. It had been the beginning of a new life for him, one of
magic
, one of apprenticeship, and Nathan, through a series of events he insisted on calling “personal choices,” had become his mentor.

That didn’t stop him from being a complete ass when he had to be, though.

“Does it tickle?” Nathan asked, leaning in the doorway. He gestured at the door frame. “May I?”

“Come in,” Simon said, barely able to move his jaw due to the oppressive
tightness
of the flame. He suspected it was a false fire, but even then, it was unnerving.

Nathan stepped into the room confidently. In seconds he covered the short distance to the big, mangy, orange couch that occupied the room whenever Simon stayed at Silverwood, a magically-created reminder of
home
, of the tiny apartment where he had lived with Sam, his adopted father. No,
his uncle
. That information was still hard settling into his mind when Nathan had sequestered him away to begin his training at Silverwood, the forest estate of his people, and the locus of a great many magical energies that permeated the world. At least, that’s what he’d been told was under them. From what he could see, there was plenty of weirdness on the
surface
, let alone enough strangeness underneath to keep a person occupied their whole
life
.

Nathan started rummaging through Simon’s backpack. He had brought it with him from his old life, and Nathan had even showed him a few wards to place on it to stop intruders from going through it. Those wards, obviously, were either not strong enough to stop Nathan, who had recently achieved the rank of a full wizard, or it had been misinformation, which he was apt to use in Simon’s unconventional education.

“Nothing in there,” Simon said, pulling against the bonds. “Not that it won’t stop you from looking.”

“Nosey is the best policy,” Nathan said. “We don’t need any more surprises, y’know.”

Simon’s eyes involuntarily flicked to the floor behind the couch. Just like at his apartment, there was a loose floorboard back there, where he kept just the sort of secrets that he knew Nathan would frown on him having. Nevertheless, the secret compartment was
his
, and he relished having it. No matter what he saw here, or how much he was subjected to the rigors and hardships of his training, this one tiny spot was his,
all his
, and it was the one place where he was fully, undeniably in control.

“
He knows,”
the Other Voice whispered in his head. The Other Voice has appeared in his mind the day he was attacked by Streaker, the Hound of Par Jabbah. It appeared as a warning first, helping him defeat the dog, but then it had stayed, growing louder every day, more confident, more secure. Once he had returned to Silverwood, the Other Voice has become almost like a companion to him, a tiny demon sitting on his shoulder, ready to teach and give advice. In many ways, the Other Voice had become his other teacher as well.

Simon ignored the Other Voice for now. Instead, he held still, feigning an inability to speak from the flames. He put up a show of struggling, then quieted, letting Nathan dig through his empty backpack. Nathan was shoulder-deep in the backpack, rooting around an impossibly-larger inside. That had been Simon’s first piece of spell work since he’s become an apprentice, and he was pretty proud of it, to be honest. Still, that didn’t change the fact the bag was
empty
, after all, a fact that Nathan determined independently a few moments later.

“
He knows
,” the Other Voice repeated.

“Toasty?” Nathan said, standing. Simon nodded, and it was true. The fire was slow to burn, but it was increasing in temperature. That much was becoming very obvious. Nathan let him sweat. “Where were you planning on getting off to this time of night?”

The flames receded from Simon’s face. “The Archives.”

Nathan quirked an eyebrow. “Oh. Is that so?” A cheshire grin accompanied his remark, and Simon’s cheeks flushed with heat. He
had
been going to see Penny, but not for the reasons Nathan was assuming. She had been teaching him
membromancy
, the art of sharing your soul between multiple places, of controlling inanimate objects with your will. Penny was unnaturally gifted in this magic, and Simon held a great interest in it, and Latin, which was the tongue he had chosen to wield his magic. They’d had to reinforce this lesson to him when he first arrived. A wizard’s speak is always tinted with their magic, and laced with emotions. When the intent to work magic was behind their words, it had a way of drawing on their own innate source of energy within them--that is to say, their
soul
. Too much self-magic, as Nathan had called it, could leave somebody soulless, or worse--
hollow
. “A foreign tongue for a foreign source,” as Nathan had put it.

Simon squirmed. “Please let me down.”

“Repeat your lesson first,” Nathan said. “Do you see magic with your eyes?”

The heat in Simon’s face grew, but he obeyed. “I do not see magic with my eyes. My eyes are human and weak, and magic hides in the Dark.” The flames began to loosen. “When gloom is the path set before me--”

“
Algul I curse your name,”
The Other Voice whispered seductively

“Well?” Nathan said, standing up. His aura bristled. This was something Simon had first seen last year, when Nathan had confronted Luke, the thief boy from the Delta Order. It was a form of compulsion the mentors had over apprentices, and Simon was no different. “Finish it,” he commanded.

“--Algul let me see with my mind,” Simon said, ignoring the laughs of the Other Voice in his head. The flames grew slack and he dropped to the floor. He came down on his ankle hard, and his weight carried him all the way to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he swore he saw the loose floorboard rattle.

Simon winced at the pain that was lancing up his leg, and he shot Nathan a harsh look, which bounced off him. The aura around Nathan settled a little, and he helped Simon to his feet. “Can you walk?”

Simon tested his leg. “I think so,” he said. Anger flushed through him. Nathan had been pushing him the last few months, and what had started as a deep resentment was only just beginning to harden into respect. There was deep steel in Simon, Nathan had said, and it was going to take time to unearth. Until then, he had been warned, their relationship would have to be one of mentor and student, or master and apprentice. Begrudgingly, Simon had accepted these terms, even though it had meant stepping back from the near-friendship that had begun to grow between them from the day they met. No, that wasn’t right, it hadn’t
grown
between them, more like it had already been there, hidden, and uncovered the moment they met. Simon still remembered that moment, when Nathan had swept into his home, just minutes after the skeletal being calling himself Fellis Boeman had darkened their door.

Boeman. The
boogeyman.

“
Praise his name,”
the Other Voice whispered at the memory. “
Praise be to Boeman, who serves our master in the shadows
.”

And what is your name
, Simon thought, and the Other Voice fell silent. Nathan had told him there was power in names, and to know someone’s name gave you a sense of power over it. In most cases, this made you and the other person equals, but in this case, Simon was still at a loss. The Other Voice was clearly a separate consciousness from his own, and it was cagey, secretive, the demon sitting on his shoulder.

But...it was not without its own benefits. The Other Voice had warned him of the danger when Streaker, the hound that accompanied Boeman last year, had attacked him on the way home from school. And the Other Voice
had
made itself useful many times sense then, so it wasn’t all bad, Simon figured. It was just a pest, a little fly in his ear, and he did his best to ignore it. The fact that it wanted Simon to
praise
Boeman though was unsettling. Simon had watched Boeman die, or he thought he had, and the occasional call to worship was more a reminder that the boogeyman was still out there, waiting to claim him once again. “I still have your soul,” Boeman had said, before disintegrating at Whateley’s Rest. “You can never be free of me.”

“Earth to Simon,” Nathan said. With a start Simon realized he had fallen into his own thoughts again, and his cheeks reignited with embarrassment. This was happening more now, more since he had returned to the place of his family, Silverwood, and his father, the fallen wizard, the acolyte of Boeman’s master who they called the
Walking Shadow
.

“Sorry,” Simon said. “Yeah, I can walk.” He limped his way over to the couch and flopped down. Just like the couch back home, this doppelgänger had a loud, squeaky spring right in the middle, and it squeaked and screamed in protest from the sudden weight. Simon began to remove his shoes, as it was obvious he wasn’t going anywhere that night.

Nathan hovered in the room. “Something on your mind?” The question was sincere, and his aura wasn’t flickering with the mentor’s compulsion. He was, for the moment, in friend-mode.

“I just...” Simon had to pick his words carefully. The Other Voice chittered incessantly in the back of his head, and he didn’t want to reveal its presence. Not yet, maybe not ever. “I just wanted to see Penny.”

“Young love,” Nathan said, smiling. Simon’s cheeks couldn’t get any hotter, so he simply stared. Nathan sat on the couch next to him. “Take my advice, Simon. Don’t sign away your heart so easily. You’re still very young, and you don’t need the extra heart ache.” He smiled, but Simon could see the insincerity behind it. Deep down he could sense Nathan didn’t believe his own words, but he said them for mentoring’s sake. “Love isn’t as wonderful as you might think. It can outright distracting if you’re not careful, and besides, wouldn’t you rather be spending your time on
adventures
?”

All this talk made Simon extremely uncomfortable.

“Besides, you have plenty of time for love when you’re older,” Nathan continued. “Now, I know you’re not going to fully take my advice on the matter, but if you take any part, take this one small piece.” He smiled again, and this time it was sincere. “Take baby steps. You don’t need to...” Nathan hesitated. “You know, be...thinking about...”

Simon stood abruptly. “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Okay?”