Random Acts of Sorcery (30 page)

You touched what’s mine you touched what’s mine I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you touched what’s mine how dare you hurt Hunter you hurt CASSIE she’s mine how dare you

Finally, strong arms lifted her off of the dead woman, and she realized she was sobbing.

“Shh, it’s okay Cassie, it’s over now. You got her,” Miri was saying, stroking her hair.

“I killed her,” Cassie said. “I killed her, but it wasn’t me…I swear, it wasn’t me….”

“Is it too late?” came Eugene’s voice from up above.

“No; I can still reverse it,” said Sam. He knelt down next to the witch’s corpse, and Cassie felt her goosebumps raise as Sam undid what she had done to Andrea. The woman sat up with a terrified gasp, and Miri held Cassie tighter.

“See? She’s alive. You didn’t kill her, Cassie.”

Cassie shook her head. She had killed her; Sam had simply unkilled her. That didn’t erase what she had done, what she would always know she had done.

“That’s Sorcery,” said another voice, which Cassie was surprised to realize was Donatello Arrigio. “What you have just done is Sorcery.”

“Yeah, so they keep telling me,” said Sam. He glared at Andrea, who was slowly catching her breath.

“Do you know why I brought you back?” he asked.

“So you could make me suffer,” she said, not looking at him.

He grabbed her hair and yanked, and she gave a little shriek. “No. So you can tell the officers of the court everything you’ve done, and there will be no confusion. No false accusations.”

Andrea looked like all the fight had gone out of her; in fact, she had looked like that since the sharks started acting up. “I’d rather die than
be a lapdog for the court again.” she said, looking up at Sam with wide, wet eyes. “I could have killed her but I didn’t. I showed mercy. Show me mercy.”

“The only reason why you hadn’t killed her yet is because you were savoring the moment, since you could only do it once,” Sam said, and Andrea started to sob. “But don’t worry; you won’t be the court’s lapdog for long.”

“She won’t?” said Arrigio, sounding curious.

Sam smiled. It was that cold, threatening smile that normally scared her, but now, she was beyond caring; she was just glad that he was back.

“It just so happens that I owe my father a favor at the moment.”

“You mean…we have to take a plane?” said Khalil. He sounded almost offended.

Sam nodded. “I’m sure they’ve figured out that I used the lineage clause to trick them by now. If I ever go back to Realm, it’s likely to be a one-way trip.”

Khalil made a disgusted face, then turned to Dwight, who was bringing in his own overnight bag.

“Can you believe it? I already miss Air Hell.”

“It’s better this way,” said Dwight. Khalil sputtered at that.

“Yeah, says the
white
guy who has to go through airport security! Think of my feelings here.”

As Dwight and Khalil bickered, Sam noticed John walking out to the patio out of the corner of his eye, and went to follow him.

John was leaning against the railing, his pale shirt looking brilliantly white in the abundant sunshine. “I can’t believe Cassie jumped this,” he said, gesturing to the pool down below.

Sam took a spot next to him. “I can. She’s very brave when she needs to be.”

There was silence for a moment, broken only by the muted sounds they could hear from children playing in the pool below.

“You told me my soul was my own,” John said softly.

“I thought it was,” said Sam. “Or more like, I thought I would never have a use for it, so it was effectively the same as being yours.”

John was looking down at the pool, his expression guarded. “What if I don’t want to be your familiar?”

“Then you’ll have to find another demon and get them to make you theirs, because that’s the only way I know to break it,” Sam said.

“Splendid,” John said flatly. Sam started to feel vaguely uncomfortable.

“Look John, I’m sorry. I treated you like dirt out of jealousy, and I should have known better. Now I do know better.”

John looked at him with a curious expression. “You’re jealous of me?”

“Well, you know,” Sam shrugged. “Because Cassie likes you. And she likes you for yourself, not because she’s magically bonded to you.”

“But I am magically bonded to her now, aren’t I?” said John. “We’re both familiars of the same master.”

Sam hadn’t thought about that before.

“I suppose you are,” he s
aid. “But what I was saying is….”

John stepped back from the railing. “I know. You won’t exert any control over me unless you have to…like, for example, when Cassie’s in danger.”

Sam was silent.

“Cassie’s always in danger.”

“I know.”

John laughed softly and looked back over at the pool. “You know what? I think I knew this was the road I was going down when I started giving blood to vampires and hoarding their books. At least now, I can hide better.”

Sam cleared his throat. “About that. How did you figure out how to change at will? I had no idea you could do that.”

John shrugged. “When you compelled me to protect Cassie, and I slammed into Arrigio, when he recovered I thought he was going to kill me. I was more frightened then I’ve ever been in my life—maybe even more frightened than the first time you turned me into a rat. I was trying to think of something, anything I could do, and suddenly I found myself small and hairy. I don’t know if I ever would have figured out how to do it if I hadn’t been desperate.”

Sam thought it had been something like that, but he was still worried. “The thing is, that really shouldn’t have worked. It was supposed to be a curse, not a superpower.”

John smiled at that. “Ah, but you’re not the only one who’s touched my curse.”

“You think Cassie did it? That when she played with the curse, it changed somehow?”

“I think, when you don’t understand how something happened, looking to her is probably a good place to start,” said John. Then he went back into the apartment, leaving Sam alone with his thoughts.

I have a witch, vampires, an army of bats, and now a were-rat. How has this happened, and how do I stop it from growing?

“Sam?”

He turned and saw Cassie, then had to remind himself not to stare at her. Whenever he looked at her now, he pictured her as he’d seen her when they’d found her last night; bruised, soaked, her dress in bloody rags, emptying a clip into the blond witch’s chest while her large eyes burned with something dark and primal.

It had created a strange mix
of feelings in him: shame, that he had so thoroughly failed to protect her that she needed to fight so hard; sadness, that she had been pushed to the point where she was capable of such violence; and a strange pride that he knew he probably shouldn’t allow himself to feel. Still, it seemed right that his familiar—no, his witch—could slay her enemies if she needed to. It felt like she was closer to him than he’d realized.

And there was also the fact that he’d found her incredibly desirable in that moment, but he was trying not to even think about that. “How’s the shoulder?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms. Andrea’s bullet had grazed her, but it was a shallow wound that should heal quickly. “Just got a call from Yamanaka. They’re done questioning Andrea, and she was behind everything—finding the former vampire pets, turning them into a cult, all of it.”

Sam considered that. “So her master is completely innocent?”

“Yamanaka said she did something called ‘partitioning her mind.’ Like, whenever that demon looked in on her thoughts, he saw her thinking about clothes and shopping and stuff—whatever he expected to see. He had no idea what she was plotting.”

“It’s impressive that she was able to do that,” said Sam, squinting in the sun. “I don’t think I could do it if I wanted to.”

Cassie sat down in a deck chair, looking tired. “You know, she’s kind of right in a way.”

Sam had to raise an eyebrow at that.

“I mean, everything she did was crazy. Trying to kill me, trying to blow up a hotel full of innocent people just to get to the demons, it was all nuts. But her point—that witches are treated like crap, and it’s awful—well, she’s right about that,” Cassie said. “It’s better for me because I’m supposedly special, and it still pretty much sucks for me.”

“Well, maybe we can do something about it now. You and I are rather important people to the court, you know.”

Cassie broke into a small smile at that.

“After all, not only are you the famous Virgin Witch, but you’ve seen the future.”

Her smile disappeared. “I was going to tell you about that, I swear. It just seemed wrong to drop it on you right before court, when you had so much else to worry about.”

“I understand,” he said.

She keeps so many secrets from me though; how does she keep track?

Sam leaned back against the railing, hands in the pockets of his slacks. “So, you saw me in the future.”

Something changed in her expression.

“Do I lose my hair?”

He’d meant it as a dumb joke, but for some reason, she paled and stood up. “It was just weird, okay? People shouldn’t see the future.” She moved as though to go back inside, but Sam stepped in front of her.

“That little girl…she’s really ours?” he said.

She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Yup.”

“Look at me.”

She looked up. “Yes, she’s ours. Who else’s would she be?”

Well, she looks just like you, so there’s no doubt that you’re her mother. That’s not what worries me.

“Will you tell me everything you saw in the future?”

She swallowed, and it looked like the action was painful.

“That bad, eh?” he said.

“It’s just…not now, okay? Maybe when we’re back at home, and things get back to normal for a little while, then I can talk about it. Right now just thinking about it makes me
want to scream.”

My c
hannels have mostly reset, I think. I could look into her mind right now and find out everything she saw, if I looked hard enough. But if I do that, she’ll never trust me again. Nor should she, really. I’m going to have to wait.

“Alright, but Cassie…there’re a lot of things we’re going to have to talk out, and it can’t wait much longer. All this time, we’ve been trying to take the line of least resistance, and it doesn’t work. We have to start taking charge of our lives, and that means no dumb little secrets that could get us in trouble. Too many people depend on us for that.”

“I know. Just let me have one day of working at the shop, or doing homework, or something. Just a little time to decompress before we have to go back into War Mode again.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “But my time standing back and hoping for the best is over.”

“I know.”

There was a pleasant breeze, and strands of jet black hair fluttered around Cassie’s forehead. He liked the way her hair framed her face, although he wondered what it would look like if she grew her short hair out.

This is my future wife. I hate hypotheticals, but is our future together even hypothetical anymore? Can there be such thing as a definite future?

“What?” said
Cassie. “You’re staring at me.”

“You’re going to have to get used to it,” he said softly, and her eyebrows lifted in surprise.

They were interrupted by a gentle knock on the glass door.

“The C
hairman is here,” Eugene said, opening the door a crack.

Sam moved quickly, passing Cassie and Eugene to stand in the living room. Arrigio was standing in front of the door, holding a suitcase in one hand and looking pensive.

“Guys? Can we have a moment?” Sam asked, turning his head towards Dwight and Khalil.

“Sure, Ethan hasn’t
beat me at that stupid card game in a whole ten minutes. Can’t have that,” Khalil said, leaving the room; Dwight followed with a nod.

“I’ll go watch,” said Cassie with forced casualness. It was clear she didn’t want to be in the same room with Arrigio if she could help it.

After the group had left the room, Arrigio turned to Sam with his usual humorless expression. “I want you to know, even though the hearing was interrupted, it won’t be resumed.”

Sam didn’t respond; he was sure there was more.

Arrigio cleared his throat and continued. “I realize this is the second time you’ve protected the entire court; to try to incarcerate you, on the basis that you might be dangerous us, is at odds with reality.”

“It was Cassie and me both who protected the court,” Sam said. “But do the rest of them agree with your judgment?”

“Yamanaka does. The rest can hang,” Arrigio said.

Sam was surprised to
hear the Chairman discount the opinions of his fellow board members so glibly. “Will they accept it, though?”

“They’ll have to, now. I’ve named you the Guardian.”

“What? Chairman—”

“Call me Don.”

“I don’t want a title, Don.”

Arrigio shrugged. “It was the easiest way to make it so that no one could demand that we continue the blood status hearing where we left off. Whether you fulfill any of the traditional duties of Guardian is your business; we’ve managed to do without one for hundreds of years.”

Sam only vaguely knew about the Guardian; he knew it was a rank that was given to a member of the court in earlier eras, but it had fallen into disuse as fights between demons became less martial and more political. He would have to add information about the Guardian to the long list of things he was going to ask Serenus about when the man was finally released from his captivity.

The C
hairman took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt; it still seemed odd to Sam to see the man act so casually. “In any event, I just wanted to let you know that. I have a plane to catch soon as well.”

“I’m glad you told me,” said Sam. “I guess this means I should forgive you for trying to kill Cassie while I was gone,” he continued in an even tone.

He didn’t think I‘d forgotten about that little detail, did he?

Arrigio coughed. “That was…a mistake. I think, after I saw that strange child and realized what lie before
us, I was temporarily out of my head. I would like to apologize to her, if I could. Will you call her back in here?”

Sam was impressed that the demon would offer, but he knew that Cassie definitely did not want to see Arrigio right now; she could accept his apology another time, when she’d had time to recover and the very sight of him didn’t upset her. “I appreciate that, but it’ll have to be another time.”

“Of course,” said Arrigio, then he picked up his suitcase and turned to go. “I wish you and your entourage a safe trip home.”

“Thanks,” said Sam, and he was about to let Arrigio go until something occurred to him. “Wait.”

Arrigio turned with his hand on the doorknob. “Yes?”

“What is Sorcery?” Sam said. “I thought Sorcery was just another word for magic, but last night you said that I had done Sorcery…and all the demons in Realm kept talking about it….” He trailed off.

“Oh. That.”

Arrigio looked off to the side for a moment, perhaps considering where to begin. “Much of our magic accomplishes things that could also be achieved in mundane ways. You can kill someone with a spell, but you can also kill them with a gun, or a knife. Magic is simply a more efficient way of doing so. Sorcery, however, refers to things that can only be done with magic.
Things that test the limits not only of our power, but our comprehension.”