A Practical Guide to Sorcery

Sebastien

Month 8, Day 23, Monday 11:15 p.m.

Sebastien’s mind was spinning so fast and intently that she seemed to blink, look up, and find that they were already outside of the warded room in the depths of the white cliffs, walking back to the University library. ‘How did this happen?’ she wondered, catching herself as she started to trip on a rough segment of the floor.

Professor Lacer gave her an exasperated look. “Please do not forget how to walk because you are too busy thinking. Keep your attention on the present.”

Sebastien cleared her throat and gave a small nod, refusing to meet his gaze. She still couldn’t figure out how Professor Lacer had managed to figure so much out, yet still come to such a strange, erroneous conclusion. She, as Sebastien, had been in contact with the Raven Queen, who had been using her to get into Myrddin’s journal? And as payment, the Raven Queen had given her a boon and protected her from the Pendragon Corps? And, perhaps most ridiculous of all, Sebastien was possibly descended from Myrddin? Professor Lacer had embedded enough clues in his questions that she had some idea of the “evidence” he had used, but it still felt like she was missing some critical connective tissue that could have led from A, to B, all the way to Z.

Furthermore, she couldn’t believe she had been so careless as to leave such blatant clues linking her to her secret identity. Growing up with Ennis had taught her that when one was doing something secret—and usually bad—it was very often growing lazy and sloppy that got one caught.

Which sometimes meant packing up and leaving—running—again.

Sebastien could only be thankful that Professor Lacer hadn’t managed to deduce the real truth. In a way, it made sense that Professor Lacer had thought the Raven Queen simply borrowed Sebastien’s student token. It would take a big leap to realize that Sebastien, who had spent so much time as a student—so much time in Professor Lacer’s presence—and obviously lacked the Raven Queen’s prowess, was the same person. But that didn’t mean that no one could make that leap, if she kept screwing up and handing out clues like they were candy.

As they exited into the library above, Sebastien’s mind returned to the room below. Myrddin’s other three journals looked strangely, exactly the same as her own, to the point that she might not be able to pick hers out of a lineup. That had to have been deliberate on Myrddin’s part, and it also helped to explain why the University wouldn’t have known that one of the five books was missing before they even got to Gilbratha, once it was removed from the expedition records.

Outside of the dormitory building, Professor Lacer pointed imperiously to the door. “Go to sleep. Take your anti-anxiety potion if you need it.” He paused for emphasis, then added, “Do not do anything foolish or incriminating.”

She guessed that he was trying to tell her not to panic and contact the Raven Queen or something similar. If the Red Guard had the same kind of suspicions as Professor Lacer, they could be watching her.

As she walked in, she curled her hands into fists to suppress the trembling in her fingers and crossed her arms. This couldn’t calm the sour feeling in her stomach or the bone-grinding tension in her neck and shoulders. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, but this made her eyes sting, and she gritted her teeth together to shove the emotions back down.

Damien was waiting up for her. As she passed by his cubicle, he darted out, looking from right to left for observers while he waved his hands in what looked like a frantic interpretive dance.

She grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him into her cubicle, since his was overrun with newspapers. She closed the curtain, violently shook a bottle of moonlight sizzle, and then drew out the sound-muffling spell array they had gotten from Professor Lacer.

As soon as she cast the spell, words spilled out of Damien’s mouth with the force of a breath held until the edge of suffocation. “He was using some kind of divination spell on me, I couldn’t lie, but I had to tell him something, and he was so frightening, I couldn’t think, and it was totally obvious why he got his reputation, it’s embarrassing to say but I almost peed my pants from the pressure, and he knew something so I ended up telling him about the Pendragon Corps trying to kidnap you and the person who saved you but I’m pretty sure he thought it was the Raven Queen who saved you.” He sucked in a deep breath, then winced and held a hand to his forehead, as if holding back a wave of dizziness.

“It’s fine. Of the things you could have told him, that was probably the best.”

Damien nodded hesitantly. “Taking out the thirteen pointed star was a sneaky way to ask me if I let anything about that slip, right? Because I didn’t. He shouldn’t have any idea about it.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Damien had picked up on Sebastien’s indirect question with surprising alacrity. “I don’t think he knows anything. But we need to be even more careful.”

“What did he say to you?” Damien asked.

Sebastien hesitated. “He asked me a lot of questions…”

Damien stared at her with wide-eyed expectation that slowly morphed into a speculative squint as she tried to figure out what she could say. “Does this have anything to do with the big secret you’re hiding?”

Sebastien stared at him with silent misery.

“Alright, alright,” Damien said, waving his hand between them as if to shoo away a fly. “You don’t have to tell me. But is there anything specific that I should know? I just went through a traumatic experience. Surely I deserve something.”

Sebastien scratched the nape of her neck, where some of her fine blonde hair had stuck to her neck with sweat. “You do,” she admitted, before Damien could grow upset. “It’s just…I don’t know what I can say.” Almost everything she had talked about with Professor Lacer was either something she needed to keep secret, or a clue to something she needed to keep secret.

“He told me the Raven Queen said you were in danger.”

Sebastien let out a slow breath between pursed lips. “Okay. Well, there was that. But he also was concerned that my Will is growing too quickly.” She decided to give Damien something that seemed big, but that wasn’t related to her real secret. Perhaps it would help to lead him off the trail, because she very much doubted he would be able to stop speculating if he thought there was some huge mystery that he was being left out of, with the clues lying all around him. She crooked her finger to draw Damien closer, then leaned in and cupped her hands around his ear to cut off any possible sight of her next words. “He thinks I might be distantly descended from Myrddin.” She pulled back.

Damien’s eyes had grown as wide and round as two silver coins.

“You can’t tell anyone,” she added. “Not even a hint. Pretend you don’t know. It might not even be real.”

Damien inhaled sharply, then started coughing. When his violent fit had passed, he sat staring at the cubicle wall for a minute, then looked at her, and then back to the wall. “Wow.” After a long pause he said, “Wow,” again. Finally, he seemed to regain some of his wits. “Does anyone else know?”

Silently thankful that he had refrained from asking for further details about this “discovery,” Sebastien shook her head. ‘Though, technically, I guess the Raven Queen knows.’

“Is…anything going to happen? I mean, are there any implications?”

“Not unless anyone finds out. But Professor Lacer thinks it could be very dangerous.”

Damien nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep tonight. This is…a lot.”

Sebastien knew she too would not be sleeping, though, for once, she almost wished for the oblivion it could bring. A reset of sorts.

Damien puffed out his cheeks like a chipmunk stashing nuts, then slapped them hard enough to force all of the air out and leave his cheeks red. Then he cleared his throat and straightened, turning to her like a cat who had just done something embarrassing and was determined to pretend it had never happened. “I think we need to discuss the communication issue. I know that ever since we got rid of the bracelets, neither of us has really been doing any dangerous missions. But stuff like today can still happen. Did you pass along my previous feedback to the higher-ups? We need a better way to communicate with each other during emergencies. This isn’t a small matter. You and I may just be low-level members, but leaving us stuck out in the metaphorical wilderness to fend for ourselves endangers not only us, but the organization as a whole.”

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Sebastien was already nodding before Damien could finish. “I know. I’m a bit of a special circumstance because of…” She leaned forward and whispered, “the boon. It’s caused difficulties. Most sympathetic magics just won’t work on me unless I cast them myself. But I already have a plan to improve communications. I will handle it tomorrow.” Damien was right—she should have handled it long ago. She had been preoccupied with other things…and, to be honest, she had gotten sloppy, despite thinking that she was being more careful than ever.

When Damien went somewhat reluctantly back to his cubicle, Sebastien used Newton’s humming spell to calm herself down, then took a few hours to plan out everything she needed to do when the rest of the world was awake.

The next morning, Damien was like a huge squirrel, exhausted to the point of jitters, but still breaking out in random smiles, juxtaposed by bouts of looking around suspiciously, as if he expected to find people who wanted to kidnap Myrddin’s descendant hiding among the student populace.

At breakfast time, Sebastien snatched away Damien’s coffee, made him drink an entire glass of water and a quarter dose of her anti-anxiety potion, and ensured he finished the same amount of food she did. Damien fell asleep for the last twenty minutes before classes started and drooled on the table.

While Damien slept, Alec drew whiskers on one of his cheeks with a dull-tipped fountain pen. If not for Ana shooing Alec away, the whiskers would have been accompanied by even more embarrassing scribbles.

After classes, Sebastien took her shopping list into the city and bought one third of the items from a huge list of components, potions, and various supplies. She stopped by her apartment and spent a few hours creating sympathetically linked bracelets. Unlike her initial creations, her improved design was made of several linked metal segments. It was significantly larger than one of her old bracelets, but would only require one for each person within the network.

Each bracelet carried dozens of small pieces that could be removed. Doing so would trigger a response in one or all of the other bracelets and convey various meanings. She had labeled each piece with an enamel paint in various colors, which could even glow in the dark if necessary. If any of the pieces were activated, they would only need to be replaced, and the single-use sympathetic spell attached to those pieces recharged.

After that, she turned on her divination-diverting ward, made a roundabout trip through the city, entering and exiting carriages several times to lose any pursuers, and entered the Silk Door to change into her other body. After leaving the Silk Door, she stopped by a nice restaurant—one that had a bathroom for customer use—and re-disguised herself before leaving through the small window.

Sighing at the hassle of it all, Siobhan finally made her way to the market for the other two-thirds of her shopping spree.

This included a new internally expanded, magically lightened bag that looked different from the satchel she had been carrying around everywhere, and that had the additional feature of being able to change color from red to black. Just like her shoes—which disguised themselves by changing size—the bag could be something that would identify her when she switched bodies. No matter how expensive a good one was, she didn’t want it to be another lazy mistake.

She had even picked up some essential oils and fragrant extracts, prepared to make distinct scents for both of her bodies.

The last task she completed before returning to the University was to check the drop box, where she found another letter from Professor Lacer. It was quite short and simple, and only informed her that they had completed the agreed-upon preparations and requesting that she make herself available for the first journal exploration session that Sunday at midnight.

Tanya had included a package of her own for Siobhan, which she waited until she was back at the Silk Door to examine. It contained two books on shamanry, obtained through the secret thaumaturge meetings that Tanya had attended on Siobhan's behalf, as well as a small box of black tar beads made from the laughing poppy—a small tribute from Tanya. To Siobhan’s surprise, the latter had been obtained not from the secret thaumaturge meetings, but from Tanya’s superiors among the Architects of Khronos.

Laughing poppy was not illegal, per se, but it was a restricted component that one was supposed to have a license to purchase, due to the potential for abuse.

Siobhan tucked it away in her new bag, which she stashed away at the Silk Door, and then went through the whole ordeal of changing identities in reverse. The books, she transferred into her old satchel to read during the upcoming nights.

Wednesday evening, she went through her paranoid transformation process once again. There were absolutely no signs that she was being followed or tracked, but there might not be, if her opponent was the Red Guard. This was a sensitive time, so it was better to be as safe as possible. There were things she needed to do as the Raven Queen that she didn’t feel safe putting off.

First, she visited Lynwood Manor. Rather than go to the front gate, she approached from the back. With a mental model of the grounds’ layout in her head, she sent a tendril of her shadow forward to where she knew a couple of guards would be stationed. She closed her eyes and tried to see through light her shadow was absorbing, but managed only the vaguest impression of brightness in certain areas.

When her shadow had reached the spot in her memories, she grew the end into a three-dimensional raven, which hopped around cutely.

This was immediately followed by a dog’s frantic barking and a man’s shout.

She froze the raven in as non-threatening a pose as possible, frowning as she tried to sense what was going on around it. ‘Agh!’ she let out a mental exclamation of frustration when this continued to yield nothing useful.

Tentatively, she raised up an arrow beside the shadow raven, pointing back towards her. Then, she let the raven hop back in her direction, slow enough that the guards should have no trouble following.

The sound of the intermittently barking dog drawing let her know that at least something had noticed and was coming her way.

A couple of minutes later, the solid iron gate set into the wall in front of her opened up to reveal two Nightmare Pack guards and a dog—or rather, three Nightmare Pack guards.

The dog, a medium-sized mutt whose hackles were fully raised, wore a cute yellow and black bandanna embroidered with the symbol of the Nightmare Pack as well as a few extra badges that announced what he had been trained to do.

When Siobhan and Liza had done the blood magic rejuvenation on Anders’ dog, Bear, dozens of former strays had been left behind at the Lynwood estate. Rather than dumping them back on the street, the Nightmare Pack leaders decided to keep and train them. They had several skinwalker members—or so rumor had it—which made the training process much smoother. Now, at least half the enforcer teams were accompanied by a bandanna-wearing canine, many of whom were trained to track down and subdue targets.

A few of the bigger dogs could even deliver messages or supplies in the small packs attached to their backs via harness.

The mutt watched the small raven dissolve back into Siobhan’s shadow, then met her gaze and bristled even more, pulling back his lips to snarl at her while taking a step to interpose himself between her and his handler.

The two guards tried to bow to her, pull back the dog, and apologize all at the same time.

Siobhan waved away their words, but was slightly hesitant to move past the dog when it was in such an agitated state. After a moment’s consideration, she brought the free portion of her Will to bear on the creature. She impressed the certainty of her own harmlessness and friendly nature into her Will, and pushed it out toward the dog.

Slowly, the dog calmed, then looked away from her gaze and wagged its tail.

She let it sniff her hand, refrained from petting it, and turned toward the mansion on the other side of the gardens.

Miles burst out of the back door before she could make it very far. He raced up and grabbed her hand, babbling about how happy he was to see her and any random tidbit about his life that popped into his mind. He dragged her to the side of the garden, where a poorly constructed tiny house had been nailed to an old tree.

Miles held his fingers up over his lips. “Shh. They might get scared if you’re loud.” Within the tiny house, which he had made “all by himself” with the help of some of the adult Nightmare Pack members, lived a family of sprites.

A mother tended to a wriggling pile of grubs within the dimly lit interior, which was luxuriously appointed with silk scarves and cloud-cotton.

“Did you know they can sense your Will?” Siobhan whispered.

“Like you did to the dog?” Miles asked.

Siobhan blinked, surprised for a moment, but then realized that Miles must have heard it on the wind. “Well, yes.”

“Can I learn to do that, too?”

“Very likely, though it will probably take a lot of practice.”

“I’ve been doing a ton of meditations. It helps with the whispers, and when I get afraid or have the bad thoughts.”

“That is good. The meditations should help to prepare your Will for other things, too.” Siobhan remembered some of the books on mental trauma that she had skimmed through. “Do you have someone you can talk to about the bad thoughts?” It was always easier to give advice than to take it oneself.

Miles let out a tiny, uncomfortable grunt. “My mom, I guess.”

Gera and Lynwood exited onto their back porch, and Siobhan shared a nod with them across the distance.

Miles and Siobhan stared at the sprite family for a while, and then made their way slowly up to the mansion, holding hands. “My birthday is soon,” Miles reminded her. He looked up at her with wide, innocent eyes. “You’ll come to my party, right?”

“I plan to, as long as nothing goes wrong.”

“And you’ll bring a gift?”

“I will.”

“I know you’ll come up with something amazing. Something unexpected. Something that makes people jealous.” He held up a forefinger. “That last part is most important. A gift so awesome and special that other people won’t be able to sleep because they can’t stop thinking about how jealous they are.”

Siobhan’s lips quirked up. “By ‘other people,’ do you mean Theo?”

“Yes,” Miles stated unashamedly. “But, you know, everyone else, too. Is that something you think you can handle? Something better than the book you made for him.”

Siobhan rubbed one of the feathers sprouting from her hair. “This feels like a lot of pressure.”

Miles patted the hand he was holding. “I believe in you,” he said reassuringly.

After greeting Gera and Lynwood, Siobhan handed over the detailed sleep-proxy spell arrays that she had copied down for them. While the Lynwood’s thaumaturges were setting up and double-checking everything in preparation for Siobhan’s supervision, she took a few minutes to teach Gera the esoteric humming spell.

“Thank you,” Gera said, very calm and strangely loose-limbed after having practiced the spell on herself. She even smiled.

Siobhan realized that Gera must almost always be tense around her. She hadn’t even known the other woman could appear so at-ease.

Soon after, Siobhan supervised the first casting of the sleep-proxy spell for Millennium. Since she was not very magically powerful, and her presence as a joint-caster might make the spell more difficult to cast, she only watched from the side of the room.

Instead of ravens, which apparently everyone had felt was too sacrilegious to sacrifice, they were using a raccoon that they had prepared and boosted with the death of its brethren ahead of time. Siobhan and Liza had tested this, too, and it worked fairly well, though raccoons already slept so much of the day that they weren’t quite as effective.

Still, it would be enough for Miles, since the raccoons were also less likely to die from sleeping for a few days straight. And the dreamless-sleep spell would always be there as a backup, or if Miles simply preferred the comfort of sleep.

When the spell took effect and Miles started jumping about with wild, exuberant energy, Siobhan turned to Gera. “I understand that Deidre Johnson has set up an…organization, of sorts, who call themselves the Undreaming Order and have been acting in my name. I would like to see them.”

Any lingering ease drained from Gera’s body language. Her arms held straight to her sides, she nodded stiffly. “I will escort you, my lady.”

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