“Pretty much.”
“And now? What do you want?” What could she possibly want? She knows what I am, but she can’t get anything from knowing.
Except she could expose me, and in turn The Red, and Legendaries everywhere. Our exposure would be a beacon for whatever creature is draining Majick and then we’d all be dead or worse. I shudder, considering keeping Fray trapped in here and calling Mavers or Guy to come and fix this. But then they’d know I messed up. They’d despise me again. I’m not ready to go back to being nothing to my brother.
I’m starting to understand what the Shadow Ministry meant about my failings and my judgement.
Fray juts her chin out, fierce and determined. I bite down on an unexpected smile. It took guts to come here and confront a mythological creature. Among my dread, admiration blooms.
“Wait,” I say, “how did you know where to find me?”
She ignores the question. “I want to know how many more of you there are, and if you’re a danger to us.”
“You know I’m a danger. You said yourself people get hurt at the full moon.”
“And my first question. Are there other Manticores in Almery Wood?”
I answer with complete honesty, “No. I’m the only Manticore in Almery Wood.” The only Manticore left on Earth now my father is dead. Fray doesn’t have to know that there are other creatures of myth in the woods. She could tell the hunters, or the police, or someone who might do permanent damage to Legendaries—like, for example, a Numen in mortal disguise looking for a way to get back at Venus. I won’t tell Fray the truth. It’s better for everyone if she thinks it’s just me.
“Good.” She takes a step toward the door, towards me. “Stay out of Almery Wood.”
A full shudder wracks my body. The way she says Almery … the way her syllables run together ... It’s the exact way the Voice thinks it. I watch Fray warily. She can’t be the voice in my head. She isn’t Legendary. She’s completely normal.
“What?” she snaps.
I turn my back on her, my confusion giving power to the beast. My nails lengthen into claws but I clench my stomach against the roiling sensation. I can’t Change without the Crea moon. I breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.
I wrench the door open and hide behind its cover. “Leave,” I say through clenched teeth.
When she’s gone I collapse to the floor and pull myself together with great effort, grateful Muffin isn’t due back for a while.
How can Fray be the Voice in my head? That’s not possible. It can’t be possible.
THIRTEEN
THE CONNECTION
I cycle harder than I’ve ever rode before. The suburban houses of Denham village are nothing but a blur, even with my sight heightened. When I see the house I need, I clamber off the bike and let it crash to the floor. I cross the lawn on unstable legs and knock on the door hard enough to break the skin of my knuckles.
By the time Willa opens the door, I’m on my knees, my breath gasping. She pulls me up and ushers me into the warm living room, trying to soothe me with murmured comfort.
As soon as I got home after work, I set off for Willa. I need answers. I need to know if Fray is the Voice.
Willa’s soft hands on my face bring me out of my reverie. My breathing is under control now, and I’d guess the hot stone tied around my neck is responsible for it. I wrinkle my nose at the smell of herbs and rot.
“What is that?” I ask. I raise my hand to touch my forehead but it’s slapped away. My friend stands over me like a pin-up nurse, a pestle and mortar in her hands and a delicate frown on her face. My head is smeared with something disgusting. Probably green. Definitely staining my skin.
Willa’s voice is rich with a German accent. “It’ll help with the headache.”
“What headache?”
“The one you will get when we start talking.”
I drag myself into a sitting position. “And the pendant?”
“A calming stone.”
I touch the stone again, just under the talisman Guy gave me. “How can the Girl In The Woods be the voice in my head?”
Willa perches on a chaise longue that’s entirely out of place in this cosy front room. She says, “I’m not going to tell you it’s fate—but it is fate.”
“That’s helpful.” I narrow my eyes at her.
Willa is the closest thing to a best friend I have, someone I became close with when I left the Red. Willa is a Crea, like me, but she doesn’t Change in the woods itself—she’s an Oceanid, one of the million daughters of Oceanus, and a patron of the pool in Almery. After a really bad moon, she found me bleeding and brought me to her home to patch me up. I’d gotten into a fight with another Crea and my skin was shredded. At the time I didn’t know there were other Legendaries in Callaire that lived apart from the Red like I did, so I became friends with Willa easily. We have a lot in common despite her being eight years older than me.
She grimaces. “I’ll be serious. First, I want to say how upset I am that you haven’t visited in weeks. Second, I can only think to Scry your mind.”
I sit up further, unnerved at the idea of having my mind searched. But how else will I find out if Fray is the voice? “Do it.”
She brings a clear bowl of water from the kitchen, telling me to focus on it. I do as she says, frowning a little until she snaps at me to clear my expression and my mind.
Willa doesn’t know her lineage, only that her father was a human who must have been at least distantly related to Apollo. That’s why she can Scry—she’s a Cross-Blood Divine. There’s not enough Legend in her veins to give her visions like Minnie’s, but she can look into things by Scrying. She won’t tell me how she discovered the ability but I’ve always been curious.
I stare at the still water in the bowl, trying in vain to empty my mind. Willa dips a crimson-nailed finger in the bowl and suspends it above me until water drops onto my forehead. The drop rolls down my nose and I shiver, my eyes becoming unfocused. In that second a shard of ice jabs into my heart and bolts of cold charge through my body, probing my chest, my throat, and lodging in my brain. I’ve heard having your mind Scryed is uncomfortable, but this is bordering on painful.
The cold retreats and Willa gasps, a hand over her heart. Her apple-green eyes are wide and glossy. She looks suddenly younger. “That is unexpected,” she says cryptically, then refuses to explain further.
“Willa, tell me. If it’s something bad, I’ll just deal with it.”
“They’re the same girl. That’s the answer you wanted, yes?”
I chew the inside of my lip. “So Fray is the voice?”
“Yes.”
“But I thought the voice was one of us, a Legendary.”
Willa’s hair loosens as she shakes her head. She fixes the rolls of curls with fast, agitated fingers. “She’s Pure, as far as I can tell, but there’s something about her I don’t like. It’s like she’s marked.”
“Marked by what?”
“For what. And I do not know. I’ll tell you when I find it.”
“That’s it?” I cross my arms over my chest. “That’s all you’re going to tell me?”
“That’s all I know.” She chips away at her nail polish—her tell.
“I know you’re lying. So just tell me.”
Instead of answering she walks into the kitchen and starts putting various foodstuffs into clear boxes. I trail after her, my arms awkward at my sides.
“She’s under your skin,” Willa remarks.
Fray—the Girl In The Woods, the voice in my head. The girl who took in a wounded creature notorious for hurting people and helped it. The girl so intuitive she noticed a pattern in animal attacks, and so determined for the truth that she researched every mythology, folklore, and legend in the world until she found it. The girl who confronted me, heedless of the fact I could easily have killed her with the Crea moon in my blood. The girl with a dark past, with a father who wanted rid of her so badly he
begged the Shadow Ministry to take her away.
She’s more than under my skin. She’s settled deep in my marrow.
“Did you see the dream I keep having?” I ask Willa, running my fingertips over the grooves in a Tupperware lid.
“Flashes of it.”
“Her father wanted the Shadow Ministry to take her—because she has Majick. If she’s Pure, how can she have Majick, Willa? She has to be Legendary, even if she’s just the great-granddaughter of a Cross-Blood. She has to be something.”
Willa gives me a sad look. “I wish I could give you a half-truth and tell you she shares our nature, but she was born human.”
“Then why did they—”
“Yasmin. She’s not Legendary. If she has Majick it is some human kind, and not because she was born Dei, not even Crea. I tell you this with absolute surety. She’s not Legendary.”
I slump against the counter. My hope fizzles into nothing. She’s just another human reaching out for my help—she’s not Psychic, she doesn’t have answers to my questions, and she can’t help me understand myself. I spin my ring around my finger, giving up.
“I’m sorry. I can’t give you what you want. But this girl, this Fray, she’s calling for you. Legendary or not, she’s in need of you.”
I look at the ceiling, at the linoleum floor, at the lime coloured door. “What do I do?”
Willa smiles, seeing me as only she can, knowing the terrible parts of me and the parts that yearn to be good. “You push her far away from you so she can no longer reach you. Or you let her in.”
“What would you do? If you were me?” She gives me a look. “Fine, then which is the best option? You know me—do I really want to let her in? I don’t even know what she is, let alone who.”
“You do what is right for you. And don’t you go asking that Divine to look forward. You’re not ready for the future. You just let things happen naturally.”
I sigh.
“You hear me?”
“I hear you.” I take my coat off the back of a chair—not sure how it ended up there—and slide it on, eyeing the growing pile of food. “So, what am I supposed to do now? Do I just go to her?”
She tilts her head. “You want advice?”
“I might.”
“Answer her. The girl is calling out for you in her sleep. Answer her. Or follow her cry.” She smiles slyly, hiding something. “You never know what could happen until it has happened.”
“That’s bad advice.”
Willa fills a backpack with food containers. She regards me with a frown and settles the straps on my shoulders. “So you don’t starve to death,” she explains. “Now be gone with you. I’m tired of your face.”
I smile and we fall into our routine of goodbye; I try to get her to stay still long enough for a hug and she squirms more than a fish out of water.
With the frame of my bike beneath me, the evening flies past, dragging my hair with it. By the time I get home, the sun is setting and darkness is inches away. The voices in the wind are audible. The Lost whisper, as they always do, but tonight they’re insistent.
As I urge the bike over a cracked pavestone a cold breath whispers over my face, followed by another, and another—and more and more until the voices are only a soft buzzing. I curse my Majick. By far the worst trait of being Psychic is hearing voices of the dead. I separate the voices so they make sense.
The Halfling will fall.
Beware the Chaos with two faces.
The ancestors are watching.
The Red—Chaos—Cursed enchantment—Majick—Chaos—Red—Death—Halfling—Callaire—Numina—Chaos.
I drown it out. I drown it all out. In my mind, I throw up walls as high as towers, shivering as I do. The beast delights in my emotions.
If the Lost are warning me, something is bad enough to have the Underworld in turmoil. My mind lingers on one word, whispered in a hollow voice: death.
FOURTEEN
THE WARD
By the time I’ve gone home and scrubbed the headache remedy off my forehead, it’s already stained. I grimace at my reflection. My eyes look weird, the gold of my pupils darker than I remember them being. I’m glad; without the marker of my Dei nature, I look a bit more human. The bags under them don’t look so good, though. I cover them with concealer but it does little to hide how stressed and tired I’ve been lately.
When I set out on my bike again, gloaming has already fallen. It’s the time of night that hasn’t met true darkness but makes the streetlights flicker on regardless. A darkness that’s alive, and a time I avoid at all costs. Whispers slide across the air, caressing like fingers. Whispers that I know are not the wind or my imagination. Whispers that are as real as the twisted steel beneath my body, as the hairs that stand on end along my arms. Whispers of the wronged and troubled and half-dead. Of angry men and vengeful women and teenagers who are still rebelling, even against the Otherland. The shadows are worse, though. The shadows in the shadows are worse still.
But there’s nothing I can do about it. At least the Lost aren’t trying to warn me now.
The yellow lights strewn across Mount Tabor shadow me as I follow unspoken directions to Fray’s house. The Academy looms atop the vast height, dark and uninviting under the purple sky.
I took off the Akasha pendant, so I can hear Fray’s voice now, weaving through the silent compartments of my mind. She’s dreaming, and she’s scared, and she’s calling out for me. I’m helpless—wholly, hopelessly helpless—to the dreaming telepathic voice of a girl who is a stranger to me.
I wasn’t sure what I would do until I got home, if I’d try to forget Fray or if I’d go to her. But her fear sliced right into me, strong as my own, and there was only one decision I could make.
I didn’t pay attention to the house when I was here last. I was so puzzled by a Pure helping me in my Manticore form that I was oblivious. But now that I’m stood at the edge of the surrounding field, staring at it straight on, some things are starting to make sense.
There’s a gravel pathway around the house in a perfect circle. I’m willing to bet it’s been meticulously measured to give the house a precise three metre radius. In the exact centre of the sandy brick, on the second floor, is a window in the shape of a crescent moon. I’m off my bike and running before my mind has time to catch up to my legs.
She’s not Pure. She might not be Legendary but she isn’t fully human, not by a long shot.
The Crea moon is in my blood, vying for domination, but I won’t surrender control, not tonight. Not when this house exists and holds a human girl who is calling for me. Not when my own soul, my own essence is coiling and releasing, coiling and releasing. The beast feels alive. I feel alight.
I circle the building. I don’t need to. I already know what I’ll find. Four crescent moons, one on each wall of Fray’s home, one for each type of Elemental Majick.
It’s Warding Majick.
I step over the gravel, my body tingling with anticipation of being hurt. Nothing happens.
Warding Majick that allows a Crea past its barricade.
A low growl slips out of my mouth. If the Ward isn’t keeping us out—is it keeping her in?
*
Going against my screaming instincts, I scale the ivy trellis and let myself into the only room with a light on. Fray’s bedroom. The room is warm, in both colour and temperature. Everything is plum and gold, fleece and velvet, crystal and fairy lights. Her bed is pushed against a wall, swamped by blankets and cushions. No wonder she’s having nightmares, she must be burning up under there.
I take a deep breath and walk to the bed, to the girl I’ve only met twice before. I’ve never felt like a stalker before, but I do now. This is wrong. I shouldn’t be here.
Fray lets out a quiet whimper and her cry echoes around my skull. I can’t leave her, even if this is a million kinds of intrusive.
Kneeling on a plush, lilac rug I realise that I have no clue what I intend to do, or what I should do. Although
I’m pretty sure breaking and entering and then watching someone sleep is the exact opposite of what I should do. But I do it anyway. Technically, I tell myself, the breaking and entering is already done.
Fray is still murmuring in her sleep but unlike when I slipped through the window, she’s not tossing and turning. Her breathing has evened out. I want to write that off as sheer coincidence but my mind isn’t cooperating. What if your presence calms her? it whispers. What if you were brought together by a cosmic force because you’re meant to be?
It remembers Minnie’s reading and that card—The Lovers. What if she’s the one who will finally see past everything you are, who will love you?
They’re carefully placed words like knife blades, delicate fantasies of something I will never have, can never have because I am not an ordinary girl. I am not a normal, angsty teenager. And I am not a Pure human. I’m a beast and I can never know love.
I growl under my breath, half beast half girl.
Fray comes awake, comes apart, gasping and clutching at the blanket across her body. It takes three seconds for her to react—shooting upright and dragging the covers with her, backing against the wall and staring at me with fear-filled eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
“You were calling out for me.” I wring my hands. Why am I here?
“I wasn’t.”
“In your sleep. In your mind. You were crying for me in your mind. I’m … I’m Psychic. I can communicate telepathically—I heard you.” She stares at me in horror so I rush on. I tell her everything I can. The voice. The dreams. How I thought she was like me (though I conveniently miss out the fact that I’m a part of a bigger race of Crea, and an even bigger race of Legendaries.) How I now know she’s not Legendary at all.
I tell her everything I know, everything the dreams have shown me. When I finish I’m heaving for breath, scared she’ll call the police.
She doesn’t talk for a full minute. She stares at the black decal of a twisted gate that frames her door.
Then she says, “You saw my dream?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it … is it real?” Her eyes fix on mine, pinning me in place. I’m bewitched by the way the gold flecks capture the fairy lights. I have to blink a few times to free myself.