Chapter 12

12

I t's not so much that she blacks out as that she comes back and time has moved a bit faster than it should.

She's sitting on the mossy damp ground, her head balanced on her knees, her vision swimming and shivers going up her arms, even under the rain jacket.

Chloe's spray painting something on the cracked church foundation, the gold paint sparkling in the mist as she draws something Delina vaguely recognizes as one of the symbols that had been at the cabin before she tore them all down.

It's elaborate already, so it must've taken some time.

Gurlien crouches in front of her, staring too intensely at her, and Maison's hand rubs Delina's shoulders.

"Did you pass out or did you get overwhelmed?" Gurlien asks, clinical. "That just looked like overwhelmed to me."

She blinks at him, then sits upright, twisting to look at Maison.

His face is pinched, his eyes red, but he doesn't say anything.

"I'm okay," Delina says, and even without concentrating, there's the same pull from whatever is in the graves. Like by sensing it at all, she can't go back to not knowing.

A bug crawls over one of the things, moisture trickling in from above.

"Breathe, it's okay," Maison says from behind her, and she takes a big, gulping breath. "Do we need to do the amplification circle?"

"Yes!" Chloe calls over, still spray painting.

"It's standard procedure," Gurlien responds, though he too looks conflicted.

"This is two instances of her immediately sensing the dead," Maison replies, his voice deep. "I don't want to risk calling something down on us for the sake of scientific propriety."

Dead.

Delina pushes her damp hair out of her face. One of the gravestones is smaller than the other, and the years carved into the moss-pocketed granite says the person only lived for two years.

Two years, a hundred years ago.

Again, the punch of awareness, an itch along her fingers to reach out, dig into the ground, shove the dirt aside, and grasp.

"Right, because you have such vested interest avoiding another one of you," Gurlien shoots back.

"Yes!" Maison replies, immediately. "If she tries to bring something back then yes, the chances of a full demon finding her are incredibly high and I don't want that."

"Bring it back?" Delina asks, and they both fall silent. "You mean I could…"

"No." Maison interrupts. "No, you absolutely cannot."

She shoots him a glance, and his jaw is set.

"You don't want me to do any of this," she tells him, and he narrows his eyes at her, flashing red.

"We don't know if you can bring anything back," Gurlien says instead. "But trying on century old bones would be a bit of a bad place to start."

Delina stands, even though she sways, and Maison steadies her immediately.

The bug crawling along one of the bones stills, deep beneath the earth.

"So, what, my mom gave me some sort of zombie powers?" Delina asks, and from her spray-painting Chloe covers a laugh with a cough. "That's what you guys have been all vague about?"

Both Gurlien and Maison remain silent.

"A warning would have been nice, because this is gross."

Gurlien opens his mouth, as if to answer, but Maison beats him to it.

"She doesn't know anything, don't be an ass about it," he shoots to Gurlien. "Delly —"

"Don't call me that," Delina interrupts.

"Delina," Maison corrects deliberately, "I need you to understand, each time you're going to try to use any of your magic, you're going to be in danger."

"That's an exaggeration," Chloe calls out, calmly stepping out of the mess of symbols she has spray painted on the foundation.

"Maybe," Gurlien interjects.

"There's that other Necromancer, she's still alive, and she's been active for a while now, it's clearly possible." Chloe tosses the spray paint in her bag like she's used to keeping it with her. "Besides, an amplification circle doesn't mean she raises the dead, just that she can see more. It's passive, not active, and Necromancers only send up flares when they actively do things."

Necromancer.

She's only known about all of this for a few days, but even her cursory knowledge of fantasy books tells her what that means.

But the word clearly, clearly has more meaning to them.

Gurlien rubs his face, like speaking it aloud makes it worse, and Maison sighs—a deep, weary sigh. The sort that usually only happens when he can't sleep for days.

"Did you know?" Gurlien asks, directed towards Maison. "Did you have any inkling for however long you slept next to her, that she's someone your father would kill in an instant?"

"What?" Delina asks, as Maison shakes his head. "What do you mean?"

"That's why necromancers are rare, Demons kill them." Gurlien crosses his arms to the cold. "This subsect of magical beings that can teleport across the globe and wreak havoc on local power structures…kill necromancers on sight."

The words hang in the mist, with Maison refusing to look at any of them and the dead bodies lying cold in the ground, and Delina scrapes at her mind for something to say.

"So this circle, it'll do what?" Delina asks, instead of the fear and the horror and everything else. "Any chance of summoning vampires or any other mythical creature I need to be aware of?"

"No," Chloe says sunnily. "Don't touch anything dead though."

"Cool." Delina shakes out her hands, approaching the cracked pavement. "At least you'll talk to me normally. What do I do, what do I look for?"

Chloe seems just as hell bent on not discussing dire things as she is. "Step inside, same prompt as before. The world will be a lot busier, a lot more intense, and whatever you're getting from the bones will feel a lot more real."

That doesn't sound terribly pleasant, but Delina cocks her head at it anyways. "Can you teach me all of these symbols?"

"Gurlien would be better at teaching it," Chloe says, and Delina's not going to look back at the two men bent on being dire. "But sure."

"So all I need to do is avoid raising things from the dead and I'm cool?" Delina asks, and to this, Chloe looks back over to Maison. "Cause I'm pretty okay with not touching dead things."

And before she can convince herself otherwise, for the second time in only a few days, she steps into a spray-painted circle.

There's a pause, when nothing happens, before the world blooms once more with gold. Gold dripping from Chloe's fingertips, gold highlighting in Maison's hair, gold illuminating Delina's skin.

"It's just the everything has gold on it again," Delina calls out, though she can still see and hear everyone just fine. The world doesn't shift, the sound of the wind still echoes around her, and the mist still drifts around her hair.

The bones in the ground grow larger in her mind, until it's almost a physical itch under her skin. Until all she wants to do is dig, claw her fingernails into the dirt, and pull something up.

Even more, beyond the century old bones, there's a dead mouse in the church, an assortment of dead bugs under the canes of blackberries, and something that might've once been a cat but just gives her echoes of terror and cold.

So instead, she just looks towards Maison, and he tucks his chin in, staring at her. His eyes glint red, of course, but every other line in his face and motion in his body is immediately familiar.

"That's not a bad sign," Gurlien says, though he too looks pale. "Look out to the street."

It takes her a moment to break eye contact with Maison, but she glances out towards the broken pavement and empty buildings.

Flickering in the road, like a drip of a current, is a single line of gold, fluttering merrily along, completely unencumbered by the wind or any physical barriers.

"So there's a rope?" Delina asks. "Right in the middle of the street."

"That was easy," Maison murmurs.

"I didn't expect Dr. Frisse to do anything by half measures, much less any experiments on her flesh and blood," Gurlien says, dusting off his hands, though his face is still pinched. "Of course it was easy for her."

"Congrats, even without the Necromancy you'd be considered powerful, that's neat," Chloe says, completely sincerely. "Normally we'd try for a demonstration but…"

"No," Maison immediately interrupts.

"Yeah," Chloe finishes lamely. "Not the best idea."

"There's a dead mouse—maybe squirrel—in the church," Delina says, and even though the bones are closer, the mouse reads fresher. More possible.

Like it would take less.

"No," Maison repeats.

"And bugs in the brush, those seem small," Delina finishes, raising an eyebrow at Maison. "A lot easier on the mind than all the bones."

"Oh my god," Chloe mutters. "Oh my god she's going to be like this."

"Though," Gurlien starts, "why your mother would attempt to give you powers that are close to a death sentence is a bit of a mystery."

"And if she unlocked the powers but never got trained, she'd absolutely bring down a demon on her within the month," Chloe continues, which isn't helpful.

So instead, Delina just focuses on the world around her.

Without the pounding headache, the gold isn't that bad. Almost pretty, definitely surreal.

Maison's head isn't hurting him anymore, though his legs shift restlessly and his shoulders are tight, though she could've told him that just by looking at him. Gurlien's wrist aches—worse in the cold—and the skin on his cheeks is a bit chapped. Chloe herself is a bit headachy, in the sort of lack of caffeine way (despite the espresso and the coffees), maybe dehydration.

"That's still weird," Maison says, voice a grumble, the same tone when she made salads for dinner. "Do all necromancers do that?"

"How would I know?" Gurlien asks.

"You're the one who's dealt with one before," Maison responds, though beyond the red glinting in his eyes, he's thoughtful.

"They hid her from me, I never actually met her, just one of the people she raised," Gurlien says, and he shakes out his wrist, an unconscious action that momentarily relieves some of the discomfort. "They didn't like me, remember?"

"Does anyone actually like you?" Maison shoots back, but he narrows his eyes at Delina.

She narrows her eyes right back.

"Tell me," he says, stalking closer to the circle, which draws Delina's back up straight. "What do you see when I do this?"

He waves his hand, some elaborate motion, the sort that he'd make fun of on their movie nights, and the ribbon of gold from the street jerks itself over, snapping around his fist.

A shiver races down Delina's spine.

"Shit," Chloe mumbles, then grabs a gawking Gurlien by his collar, pulling him a few steps away.

Clearly, it's meant to impress her, so Delina crosses her arms. "The thing in the street is now in your hand," she says, pouring every bit of authority she doesn't feel into the sentence.

Maison hates when she turns that tone to him, and his jaw twitches from it, before a hint of the dimple appears.

Like somehow, she answered correctly.

"And this?" Somehow, he digs his fingertips into the ribbon itself, and it shreds apart and…

Detonates.

The pavement underneath him cracks, dust and pebbles floating upwards, his hair lifting in the air. A root beneath the foundation snaps, sudden and green.

A warping, blinding sphere of gold surrounds him, his clothes fluttering around him, and somehow…

Everything in it, everything but him, is dead.

Every bug beneath the surface, every small microorganism she hadn't even known existed, dead. The root, dead. The fly buzzing around his head hits the cracked pavement, brilliant against her mind.

"Are you okay?" Delina blurts out, completely against her wishes, as Chloe drags Gurlien further away, against the hollowed-out shell of the church.

Maison blinks at her. "Yes?"

"Okay, cause you killed a lot of bugs with that," Delina says, then, before he can stop her, steps forward and reaches out, tangling her fingers in the warping sphere of gold.

Maison flinches forward, but stops himself.

"That was foolish," he says, still within the sphere. "Never touch anything magical without knowing what it can do."

"What, should this hurt me?" Delina shoots back, and the gold threads are warm and pliant against her hand. "Feels like yarn."

"Oh my god," Gurlien mutters, barely on the edge of her hearing.

Maison cocks his head at her, eyes narrowed, as she twists a strand of the gold in between her hands. "We need to have a long conversation about basic magical safety," he says, but there's something close to wonder in his voice, as she weaves the gold in between her fingers. "But that should not be that easy for you."

It's not a rebuke, this time, at least.

"Then why'd you do this?" Delina asks, and even though she's outside of the amplification circle, the bubble still glows bright.

"Because if you see anyone else but me do this, you need to get out of there," Maison replies, voice dipping down low. "This is the basis of what demon magic looks like, and if you see this, you're in danger."

There's something serious on his face, something that gives her pause, so she bites back the sarcastic comment, bites back what she wants to say out of hurt.

"Why'd all the bugs die?" she says again, staring down at the dead fly at Maison's feet.

"Because any living thing—"

"Besides Necromancers! We proved that with the last one!" Gurlien yells over.

"—that's in here when I do that, dies." Maison's eyes glint red, sudden, and her heart jumps. Like she's looking at a predator. "This isn't something you mess around with, this isn't something kind and friendly, this isn't just a new curiosity for you to chase after. Demons wreak havoc on people around them, they take lives without any respect for it, and any time you use that power, you become a beacon to them."

She stares down at the ground, at the cracked pavement and the pebbles still stirring in an invisible wind around his feet.

"And to you?" she asks, finding no other words that aren't hurtful. "Do I look like a beacon to you?"

Surprise filters over his face, before he grins, sudden, foreign and strange. "You do when you do that."