Succession of Witches (19 page)

Despite Cassie’s kidnapping, life continued more or less as normal. Mike and Jay went to school, the DG crew served coffee to the thirsty morning hordes, and the vampires continued their guard duty, which Sam had to remind himself was still necessary: Pascal was still out there, as was Quentin. Meanwhile, Ethan stayed in the back room of the Daily Grind, clearing video games with incredible speed.

I will definitely figure out what to do with this kid
, thought Sam, looking at Ethan over the rim of a mug he was washing.
Right after I get Cassie back
.

Jay entered the break room in time for his 4 p.m. shift, noting the rat cage from the fall was back on top of the sanitizer and had a new inhabitant. “You brought a rat? Are you making amulets today?” he asked eagerly.

“Not today,” Sam responded evenly. The rat banged a paw against the glass, as though it could hear him.

Mike walked in behind Jay. The whole employee/not employee distinction had kind of faded ever since the entourage started. “Got a question for yo
u,” said Mike.

“Oh?” said Sam, suddenly intent on his washing.
Not about the rat. Don’t ask about the rat.

“Mr. Golding wasn’t in school today. You were the last person I saw with him yesterday, so I was wondering if you knew anything.”

“That’s not a question,” Sam said pedantically. The rat tapped against the glass of the cage again.

“I mean, do you know where Mr. Golding is?”
             

“I might,” said Sam quietly. Well, there was probably no getting around it now.

“Sam…” Mike started, then was interrupted by the sound of the rat throwing its whole body against the cage. Jay ran to the sanitizer and crouched down so the rat was at his eye level.

“Oh my God, is that rat Mr. Golding? Did you do this to him?”

“I might have,” said Sam, putting a teacup on the drying rack with the utmost care. “Don’t worry. I’ll change him back by the time you need recommendations for college.”
If I can figure out how
, he added silently to himself.

“What’d you do that for?” asked Mike, clearly shaken. “You know he didn’t want to kidnap Cassie, the vampires just used him!”

“I know,” said Sam, wiping his hands on a clean towel. “And I could forgive that if he would tell me where they are.” He threw the towel away with more force than was strictly necessary.

He gritted his teeth; if only John hadn’t been so stubborn, and just told him where to find the Liddell vampires, this never would have happened. For some reason, even though he had severed all ties with them, the man had refused to disclose the location of his former employers. Another demon could have easily gleaned that information from Golding’s mind, but Sam wasn’t capable of that, certainly not when his nerves were already shot from worrying about Cassie.

Though he’d threatened to curse the man, he hadn’t really intended to do it. Yet somehow, before he knew what had happened, he had said the word and John Golding was a small rodent. It was the first time he’d ever cursed anyone into a different form.

“Listen, I’ll get him back the way he was, okay? Don’t tell Dwight or Khalil, and for the love of God, don’t tell Serenus!”

“Or what?” asked Mike, raising an eyebrow. Jay reached a hand into the rat cage and pet his shaking English teacher gently, mesmerized.

Sam sighed.
“Or nothing. Just give me a chance to fix it before you squeal.”

Suddenly, Ethan piped up. “Can I play with him?”

“No.”

They had ended up watching a Kung-Fu movie, with badly dubbed over dialogue. Bennet, who seemed to be something of a martial-arts movie connoisseur, explained which scenes were done with wires and which were the real deal. He also lectured her on which films she simply needed to see: demon or not, it seemed all movie snobs were ultimately the same. Cassie fell asleep in the guest room with visions of dancing ninjas in her head.

When she awoke, she was surprised to find her cell phone on the night table next to her with a note.

I thought you might want this back so you could play games. Don’t try to contact anyone or I’ll have to kill them. I’m trusting you. Don’t make this weird.- Bennet.

Cassie picked up her phone and frowned, wishing she’d had the foresight to put more games on it. All she had at the moment was Asteroids and a chocolate shop simulator. Still, it was that or read the Book of Succession again, and she certainly wasn’t doing that. Immediately, she checked the map application to figure out where she was, and saw that she was somewhere in Oregon; however, the feature that indicated her own location had been turned off. She briefly considered turning it back on, but decided it was too reckless for now. No point in having people racing to rescue her, only to get cut down.

She sat cross-legged on the bed in her nightgown, playing the sim game with half her attention while she tried to figure out how she could use her phone to contact someone in a way that wouldn’t backfire. Just because she and Bennet had made nice didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try to escape, if she could. After about an hour, there was a knock on her door and Poor Man’s Serenus (whose name was actually Walter) deposited a tray with oatmeal and orange juice on a side table. She caught a glimpse of the Knight over his shoulder before he closed the door.

By the time she’d eaten, and gotten her imaginary chocolate shop up to Confectionary status, Bennet made an appearance, this time wearing an expensive looking blue suit.

“Good morning. Sleep well?”

“Okay I guess,” she said, barely looking up from her phone. “You don’t have an iPhone charger, do you?” she asked. Let him think she was happy playing games all day.

“No. I can get one.” Walter walked up behind him, and he cleared his throat. “Listen, Cassie, I have to go to a meeting. Walter’s coming with me.”

“Okay, I’ll hold down the fort,” she said with mock cheer.

There was a pause, then he continued. “No, you don’t understand. I can’t just leave you like this.”

“Eh?” she said, looking up. Bennet walked over to a panel at the foot of the bed and pressed what must have been a hidden button; the section of the wall popped out, revealing a set of wrist manacles bolted into the wall.

Cassie gaped. “Chains? Seriously?”

“You know I don’t want to, but I’m not an idiot; I can’t take the chance you might summon…someone,” he said. Cassie noted he seemed to be avoiding using Sam’s name.

She stood up and put her hands on her hips. “So what if I did? Your magic Knight would just kill him, right?”

He pulled out the manacles slowly, looking slightly pained. “I’d rather it not come to that.” He looked at her and gestured for her to come get manacled.

“Look, I couldn’t summon him if I wanted to, I have nothing on me!” She yelled, gesturing to her nightgown-clad form. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“I’m not taking chances,” he said quietly, and beckoned her once more.

Cassie only hesitated for a second; what was she going to do, kick and scream? She wasn’t going to get free by getting into a fistfight with him. “Fine, but just so you know, you are so not hot.”

He smiled a sad little smile. “I know you’re just saying that because you’re mad,” he said as he clamped the manacles around her wrists. Cassie grimaced; those things hurt.

“No, seriously, you are getting less attractive to me by the second. Your eyes are too big for your face, and you have a widow’s peak, and your hands are all soft and girly and not manly at all, and—”

Walter
laughed, the choking cough of a chain smoker. Bennet winced and stepped away from her, now chained to the wall. “You’re lucky I’m nice, Cassie.”

She rattled her chains.
“Oh yeah! This is what
nice
people do.”

“You know I have no choice but
— ack, this is pointless,” he said, wiping his forehead and turning to go. “I’ll see you later—and do me a favor? Try to grow up a little bit.”

“If you want a grownup, next
time kidnap a grownup!” she yelled after him, but he had already closed the door behind him.

After a few minutes, she felt the vibrations of the garage door opening nearby, and knew they were gone. She collapsed against the wall and sank down; the chains gave her just enough slack that she could sit on the floor, thank
goodness. Now however, she couldn’t even play the stupid chocolate game to pass the time.

She leaned her head against the wall and sighed.
How long is he going to be at that meeting? How many hours am I going to have to sit here and do nothing? Sometimes, being a magical wellspring just sucks.

However, barely any time had passed at all before the Knight opened the door. She stood on the threshold for a while, looking down at Cassie.

“Come to gloat?” asked Cassie bitterly.

But something was different about the strange figure. Instead of moving with a brisk sense of purpose, it hesitated, putting one foot in the room and drawing it back, as though afraid to close the distance. It shook its head, sending the blond rope of hair cascading around its shoulders, then entered the room with a blur of speed, drawing an ornate sword from some scabbard that Cassie couldn’t see.
The sword that had killed Miri.

Seeing the Knight approaching with the sword drawn, Cassie felt any icy wave of terror and backed up as much as she could, knocking her shoulder blades painfully against the wall.

“Wait! Please don’t kill me—”

The Knight moved her blade in a sweeping arc, and Cassie shut her eyes, trying to brace for agony. Instead, there was a clink and her arms dropped to her sides and she realized that the Knight had cut the chains above her head. Her wrists were still manacled, so the Knight dropped to one knee and pulled the restraints off of her. She ripped through the steel like it was paper, and in seconds, Cassie was free.

As the shock slowly subsided, Cassie considered the strange figure kneeling before her. “I don’t understand. Are you going to help me escape?”

There was a pause,
then the Knight slowly shook her head no, her ponytail fishtailing behind her.

Cassie licked her lips, her mind working feverishly. “But you don’t like seeing me chained up, do you?” she asked.

Another pause, another small, but definitive shake of the head.

Cassie massaged her wrists, which were still a little sore despite only being in the manacles for a few minutes. She should have seen this coming when the Knight knocked her hand away from the pink nightgown last night. Why would an emotionless battle golem care about that? Somehow, there was a girl inside there, and the girl cared what happened to her. For some reason, she felt confident that it was a girl, too—not a woman.

“Who are you?” Cassie asked. “Do you know me? Can you speak at all?”

Instead of answering, the Knight slowly raised a hand to Cassie’s face. Cassie recoiled at first, but soon realized the Knight was just trying to caress her tenderly. With her gauntlets though, she could barely move her hand for fear of leaving a bruise.

“Here,” said Cassie, catching the Knight’s hand. “Let’s see…” she said, tugging at the gauntlet on the Knight’s left hand. To her surprise, it came off easily, revealing a tiny, pale hand, much smaller than her own.

At that, the Knight tried to back up, but she was off balance and Cassie was ready. Quickly, she snatched the Knight’s bare hand.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “You can…touch…”

But at the moment their skin touched, Cassie felt a jolt of electricity pass though her whole body, so jarring she thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head. Then
came dizziness, and the muffled sensation of her head hitting the carpet. Before passing out, she was conscious of a clinking noise; the Knight had fallen as well.

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Their names hadn’t been Cassie and Aeka: in those days, they were called very different things, and Cassie could never pronounce them. That’s why, whenever she remembered this moment, for the rest of her life, she always thought of the two girls sunning themselves in the time of the flood as Cassie and Aeka.

The earth was warmer than it was now, and the sea was infinite: there was nowhere that wasn’t water. She and Aeka had only found a few tiny, rocky islands on which to relax, and stretch their tails out. Well, Aeka stretched out her tail; Cassie didn’t have one, exactly. When she tried to turn her legs into a fish tail, all she got was some ugly brown thing that looked nothing like Aeka’s glittering green scales, so she had given up. She was a little slower, swimming on mostly human legs, but Aeka didn’t like going very fast anyway, so it hadn’t been much of a problem.

Today, under a merciless sun, her dominant mood was boredom. They had been frolicking in the sea for days now, and while it had been fun at first, it was beginning to seem as though it would never end. Cassie sighed and dropped her foot into the water, playing with the seaweed between her toes.

She said something to Aeka, who looked like every schoolboy’s fantasy of a mermaid: flowing golden blond hair, full tanned breasts, and eyes the same color as the sea. Later, Cassie wouldn’t be able to remember the words they had said (which were in no language she had ever heard), but she remembered the substance of the conversation.

“Dullllllll,” said Cassie, kicking her feet in the water impatiently. “I wonder how long this will go on.”

“As long as it has to,” Aeka said; her voice made everything sound a little bit like a song, even when she was being serious.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” said Cassie, lying back and putting her head behind her hands. “I miss land. I miss playing. I miss boys.”

“You’re too forward about that,” said Aeka primly. “It’s better to take no notice of them.”

“Liar!” said Cassie, sitting up straight. “You like one of the boys on the boat, I know you do! I know you like him.”

Aeka’s tail stopped flicking all at once. “I do not.”

“Do too! I saw how you smiled and waved at the ship and everything!”

“Let’s not talk about this,” said Aeka.

Cassie sighed, and nestled into a crook in the rocks, the best protection from the glaring sunlight that she could get on land. That was the problem with Aeka: she refused to fight, even when you were bored out of your skull and all you really wanted was a fight. She could meet up with the other girls, but she found she really didn’t want to do that either; they probably all had shiny, perfect tails like Aeka, and she would never hear the end of it.

“I’m going to sleep,” she said. “Wake me up if I’m out for more than a few days.”

“No,” said Aeka, kneeling on her tail and brushing the sand off her hips and bottom. “Let’s hunt. I’m hungry.”

“I’m too sleepy to hunt.”

“But I’m
hungry
,” said Aeka, and there was no mistaking her tone.

Cassie gave up and rolled out of her hideaway, dropping off the ledge and into the water with a huge splash. “Okay, but this time let me have some of the heads. You were hogging everything last time.”

“Was not,” said Aeka, and in one smooth motion, dived off her perch. Cassie looked away as her friend hit the water with barely a splash, a familiar pang of jealousy running through her: would she ever be that graceful? Breathing the sea air one more time, she dived underwater herself, where Aeka was already waiting.

Aeka cocked her head towards the north, streams of blond hair coiling slowly around her like languid serpents. Cassie nodded and began to follow, kicking her legs hard to get a head start on Aeka. They swam in silence for a while, just enjoying the scenery on the bottom of the ocean. The two could breathe water just as easily as air, and there was no hurry to surface. They passed several schools of fish but Aeka let them be, clearly looking for a more substantial meal. Maybe they would find a shark, or a small whale.

You know
, thought Cassie, swimming upside down for a moment to see the faintest trace of sunlight penetrating through the water above her,
It hasn’t rained in some time
.

Aeka’s mind was quiet, all dark bubbles, for a moment before she replied.
No, I don’t think it has.