Mage of Shadows (10 page)

They had a positive effect on my studies as well. Smart friends kept close apparently didmake one smarter. Monkey see, monkey do. Eliza, Jimmy and Nishi were all a lot more serious about their work than I ever was. I still scoured the internet for inane articles and tried to beat my already ridiculously quick time on Minesweeper, but I was doing it a lot less. I asked them to keep me on track, and they actually did, which was something my high school friends had been unable to do.

It wasn't that my high school clique was stupid, far from it. But it wouldn't have been far in left field to call us collectively stuck-up. We stalked around the school like we owned it; no one messed with us because strange things happened to those who did. The pranksters, the weird kids that hung out in graveyards and probably smoked too much weed, that was what people thought of us.

The pot part was completely unfounded- we had aimed for a different sort of high, a magical one. I could still fondly remember 'Epic Magical Trick of the Week.' Those had been good times. Teenage Users are still teenagers, we had goofed off far too much… it had consequences in the end.

When it came down to it, my town was small- isolated, unimportant. The magical presence was miniscule and consisted of not much more than ten or so mages, and that was just a random guess on our part. It hit hard when a shark swam toward us for the first time… and like a school of fish, we panicked and scattered… and people got hurt.

"Nick, study."

I blinked at the sound of Eliza's voice, shaken from my melancholy memories and looked down at the page of my Bio book I had been on for the past twenty minutes. It was Thursday, a day short of a week after the day that Emily Albright had died. We were currently away from our usual niche at the UGL, in an out of the way study room on the second floor of the SEL- the Science and Engineering Library. With four very white walls only marred in continuity by the solid wooden door, it was a lot more private than the UGL study rooms that were usually horded by students anyways. It also helped that the SEL saw nowhere near the same amount of foot traffic.

But despite the benefits, it felt too isolated. I turned the page of my book with a silent sigh and began to underline the important information on the next page of the chapter. It was boring work, but taking it a page at a time seemed to help immensely. Never get behind, that was the best policy and advice I had received so far.

This morning I had been faced with my first test since the disastrous biology exam. Classical Civilizations was a basic introductory course that was required for all majors. For all intents and purposes, it was an easy class that should be an easy A. My major problem with it was the fact that it took place at half past eight in the morning and was an hour and a half long. Frankly I didn't know what I was thinking when I picked it, I loved sleeping in.

My disjointed and hastily scrawled notes weren't going to cut it for the exam. I basically went on hands and knees to Eric, one of my classmates, to beg for his well-written notes, which I unashamedly took pictures of. I studied straight off of those for three days and was pleasantly surprised by how easy the actual exam was. For the next test I promised myself and my bemused classmate that I would take my own notes. I don't think Eric believed me, but he was nice enough not to challenge me on it. I meant it though, just because I would eat crow and beg to get square in a class didn't mean I liked doing it.

Now it was back to focusing on Bio, playing catch up to make up for the three days I spent deciphering my printed pictures copies of Eric's Classical Civ notes. Jimmy sat typing away on his laptop across from me, and Eliza was chipping away at her own solid pile of notes with a quiet determination that I hoped to one day be able to match.

Nishtha was in her Microbiology class. As a pre-pharmacy freshman student she shared a lot of the same class requirements as Eliza or me, but AP credit placed her above us when it came to Biology classes, something that irked Eliza who muttered something about having a crappy AP Bio teacher- excuses, excuses.

Still it left the three of us alone for the moment, and that three quickly became two, when five minutes later, Eliza began to pack away her book, highlighters, and laptop.

"Bored of us already?" I quipped lightheartedly as I struck another blue line beneath a sentence I deemed important.

"Going back to my dorm to get dressed for the memorial, I'm a mess."

Today was the school's public memorial service for Emily Albright. Attendance wasn't mandatory, but the four of us had agreed to attend. Plus, it seemed right to be present. Eliza, Jimmy and I had all been in the vicinity when it happened. I had casually asked Eliza about her angle of view when Emily had been shot- but she wasn't able to provide me with anything new. She heard the gunshot and saw Emily fall in her periphery- but nothing else. Absolutely no sign of any shooter even though she had been even closer to the crime than I had been.

I pursed my lips into a frown, tilting my head at her. I didn't really understand what she meant by 'a mess.' Dressed in sweatpants and sweatshirt with her kinked brown hair pulled back in a ruffled sort of ponytail I supposed she wouldn't be setting the world on fire- but so what? I dressed similarly all the time… minus the ponytail, of course. I told her as much.

She rolled her eyes and muttered something that sounded very much like "Guys are idiots," as she walked out, leaving Jimmy and I alone with complete privacy, something that didn't happen very often.

"Looks like trouble in paradise to me." Jimmy said dryly without looking away from whatever he was working on, "I think she's gonna break up with you soon."

"Ha ha." I deadpanned; the running joke that Eliza was my girlfriend was a steadily repeated one in the past week, despite her quite vehement denial to Nishi when she made the mistake of tentatively broaching the subject.

I didn't understand why she was so against the idea- I wasn't that bad, was I?

Not that it really mattered; Eliza was in love with her books and studying to ever be interested in me. I had never considered her more than a friend and didn't think I ever would. Her personality was still a bit standoffish even now. I firmly believed that it was possible for a guy and girl to just be friends- though the line was invisible and hard to draw- and easily mutable, because people changed their minds all the time.

Still, possible.

"I figured out the words, by the way." Jimmy announced casually, ten minutes later.

I looked up from my notes to stare at him. I didn't have to ask what words he was talking about. "Really? And you didn't mention this before… why?"

Swann shrugged, "It took me a couple days, and I wanted to really be sure I fully understood what the message was saying. I don't want to mention to Nishi that we're looking into this, and your girlfriend is always around too. Plus… I don't know man; I have a bad feeling that we're sticking our noses into something that we have no business in."

"Just tell me." I demanded, annoyed he'd been keeping it from me, "We're supposed to be partners. Maybe you don't know what that means, but that means when you promise me you're going to find something, you tell me when you find it."

"Temper." James replied sardonically. In that moment of pressure between us I was suddenly reminded that this 'friendship' began as a partnership, nothing more. Whatever had been built on top of it was as fluid and ever-changing as water- and could evaporate very quickly if things got hot.

After another long moment of silence between us, Swann adjusted his glasses, something I noticed he did whenever he started to say something he thought was particularly smart.

"I ran the words through basic translators and got their general meaning. 'Et in Fraternitatis Ego,' best as I can tell it roughly translates to 'Even in brotherhood, I am there.' I took a few general leaps in logic when going from Latin, since it doesn't sound right in the direct translation."

"It took a couple days to get that?" I scoffed, "I thought you were some sort of genius."

He rolled his shoulders again, "Your words not mine, dude." Jimmy replied mildly, "But that wasn't really what took so long. The translation didn't really tell me much other than the fact that we're probably looking for a fraternity if we want to find Archanos, and that was something we already suspected. I wanted to try and figure out who the hell 'I am there' in the translation referred to. That took longer. At first I thought it referred to a person, but then I found this."

Swann turned his laptop around and came to take a seat next to me. My eyes scanned a Wikipedia page that he had opened, "Et in Arcadia Ego." I read the title, "A painting by Nicolas Poussin."

"Right. Look at this." Jimmy highlighted a line of text with his mousepad to draw my attention to it.

I read aloud, "The literal word-for-word translation of the phrase is 'And in Arcadia I am there,' 'I' being death, and 'Arcadia' being understood as a utopian land." I stared down the words, thinking aloud, "So 'I' in the murderer's message can be taken to mean death as well. Brotherhood… Emily Albright was in a sorority, a sisterhood, obviously not a coincidence."

"Nope," Swann cross his arms and leaned back in his seat, "I also have been thinking, brotherhood was the replaced for Arcadia in the translation… maybe they're both supposed to represent utopian land. The perfect place, the perfect society."

I got what he was trying to say, "Even in the Archanos society, a perfect society, there is death."

Jimmy nodded gravely, "Utopia can only be reclaimed when imperfections are removed… so death is necessary."

"You mean murder." I replied bluntly, angered, "So Emily Albright died because she didn't agree with Archanos for some reason that we still don't know."

"More than that," Jimmy disagreed, "Her death wasn't quietly done, it was left in the open with a magical message meant to spread to others- others like her. Dissenters; this will be you."

"That's sick." I said in disgust, "And we're going to join these people?"

With a sigh, James rose to move back to his seat, "What other choice do we have? That's why we're here. Covens… you know the rumors, they aren't nice a lot of the times. To survive, you can't show weakness. Dissent among the ranks… it's dealt with, harshly."

"You want to expose Nishi to these people?"

He was visibly angered by that barb, something I hadn't seen from him before.

"Look," Swann replied harshly, "Sometimes you have choices in life and that's great. Other times- you don't, and that sucks but you have to move forward anyways. Nishi understands that more than anyone, Stratus." Jimmy looked visibly pained by the notion, and I wondered if I struck a nerve, "I should have just kept quiet about this. You want to find the guy who did this, don't you?"

"Of course." I replied without pause, "You don't want to? He killed someone who didn't deserve to die."

"How do you know she didn't?" Jimmy demanded, arms crossed.

I could recall her wide grin; arms linked with two friends, caught in a moment of joy captured forever in a photo- the likes of it never to be seen again. Not in this world. How many times had I stared at it in the past week, wondering why anyone would want to destroy such happiness? The malicious intent I had felt behind the taunting magical warning left behind had been pungent, noticeable in its malevolence even when I had no idea what the words meant.

"She didn't deserve it." My instincts insisted, "I'm sure of it."

Swann gave me one long, hard look, before groaning into the palms of his hands, "I can't believe it. You're in love with a dead girl. You're going to risk everything to go up against people who have years of experiences over you. Well I don't want any part of it, you hear me? If you go down, I wasn't in on this stupidity."

I gave him smile that wasn't so nice. "Yeah, I hear you." Then I looked down at my book again as if nothing had happened at all.

Something had happened, though. Jimmy may have very well been the best friend I had here, but he wasn't going to stick his neck out for me, and definitely not for some girl he didn't know from Eden. I didn't hate him for it; I could understand that need for self-preservation.

But Jimmy didn't know everything about me. Yeah, I wasn't used to this whole studying thing, but that didn't mean I was stupid. I understood the depth of power I was going to be playing with, and if I did this wrong, I could end up buried… but my rationale still held. A girl was dead and I didn't believe she deserved to die, and if I went the same way, I would want someone to do it for me.

Back in Virginia when I had been over my head, someone had stuck their neck out on the line to lend me a helping hand. They didn't have to, but because they did I was still alive today. It was a debt I couldn't repay and they hadn't wanted payment anyways. That kind of self-sacrifice was something I had never seen before and probably wasn't likely to see again.

I would have never done that before. Help someone who was drowning in their own mistakes, diving in without thought to make sure they made it out just because it was the right thing to do. It was a dimension of being human that I had never known before, simply doing the right thing just because it was right.

It needed to be done slowly, because in many ways Jimmy was correct about the situation. It would be beyond me to go charging in and demanding answers expecting to come out of it alive. I had to play it smart. If I did it right, hopefully, I would be able to help put a dead girl to peace.

111

There are certain moments in all our lives that pass us by without seeming significant at the time. Later, sometimes very much so, in an instant of reminiscence we realize that those moments have defined our lives in a way we could never imagine at the time.

It could be a certain person met on a certain day, one that may turn into a lifelong friend or lifelong enemy. It could also be some decision or small epiphany, a thing of little consequence that turned out to be earth-shattering later. We don't know the ramifications of our actions sometimes until years later.