Chapter 24

24

A fter that, Delina gets complacent.

Oh, sure, everything she does still has the edge of lurking danger at the back end of it, but even that becomes a bit normal.

Expected.

There's no new sign of the College, nothing to indicate to them that they're at all looking for them. No new demon threats, no new dangers in the world around them, and even the dead bird outside of the cabin lessens over time.

Instead, Delina gets to relax. Let her shoulders come down a bit, lean more into the thought work of the magic, into the practices and information. Chloe works with her on basics of defense, Gurlien grills her on histories and theories, and Delina gets a more comfortable grasp of how her mind works with the added sense of…all the dead.

She and Maison skirt around each other, caught between the awkwardness of the reveal of the bond and the itch inside her chest to make sure that the patchwork healing stays true. He paints a lot, and the small carved table is more often filled with drying scraps of paper than not.

Sometimes, it's hard to even think about him.

But they fall into a rhythm, just like Delina does with everything in her life. Of careful emotional distance, of not talking about their past. Of moments of connection and smiles that sear through her and immediately remind her of what they had, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. Of him watching her like a hawk whenever she does anything with her magic, and of her pretending to not notice.

So when she has the chance to drive alone, actually alone, all the way back to deal with the rental car, she does.

It's a peaceful drive over the frost encrusted mountains and into the farmland below, much better in sunshine than the midst of the night. Where instead of the anxiety of her mother's letter, she has something actually approaching knowledge of herself.

She secures the rental car at the sketchy location for another month, figuring after that she'll be in a stable enough place to figure out buying a car. Or, somehow, getting back down to Arizona and driving her beloved car back up.

She can't imagine Maison liking that one at all.

On her way back, the Wight stands on the side of the road, just outside the trap, and Delina stops the car again.

"Yeah?" she asks, when the short woman does nothing but stare at her for a few seconds.

"People were looking for you," she replies, finally. "On the other side of my territory, off the mountain and into the woods."

Delina swallows. "Thank you."

"I don't want them there," she continues, with a critical eyebrow raised. "Ask your friend with the glasses how to throw them off the trail."

And with that, she disappears.

"Both of them wear glasses," Delina mumbles, getting back in her car.

Predictably, nobody likes that piece of information and Gurlien and Chloe immediately set out in the car to reach out to a contact, leaving Delina with an exceptionally antsy Maison.

"You can paint," Delina points out, after he paces by the window for the third time.

"Or I can put an additional level of protection around the demon circle and make it even harder to find the place," Maison says, bouncing on his toes.

Delina eyes him.

"Put some sort of befuddling spell on the road, so unless someone knows how to get here, they won't remember why they're coming here, or some sort of alarm so we know when cars are on their way or people walk over it," Maison continues, twitching the floral curtains. "You can go hide in the basement, it'll be safer."

She shuts the overlarge textbook with a snap. "I'm not hiding in the basement."

"It'd be smart," Maison argues, and she stands, sticking her chin up. "Make sure anyone looking would miss you."

"How long have you known me, Maison?" Delina asks, dipping her voice down low, and he blanches. "Have I ever come across as a person who wants to hide?"

"No, but it'd be for your safety," he says, but she can see in his face he knows it's a losing battle. "There's a chance they'd be on the lookout for my brand of magic and come running."

"No," Delina says, squaring her shoulders at him.

He crosses his arms.

"You can take it as an opportunity to train me," Delina points out. "I'm not some helpless person with no idea of this magic anymore, make the time useful."

"It'll be boring and difficult for you to do," Maison protests, but he's reaching for his jacket again.

"I don't care," Delina declares, grabbing her own sweater.

They walk along the long gravel road, and the mist is so thick she can barely see the trees that line both sides, until they come to the burned in line of the demon circle.

"You don't know the runes yet," Maison says, and it's the first words he's spoken to her the entire walk yet. "And Necromancy isn't the best at that anyways."

"Still don't care," Delina replies, churlish.

A ghost of a dimple appears on Maison's chin, before he shakes his head. "When doing this, you'll need spray paint. I don't, but watch."

He reaches over to her and taps her arm, and the world blooms in gold.

Just like it did when Maison was killed.

Swallowing hard on that memory, Delina nods.

With the gold in her vision, the demon circle blazes in a brutal crimson, the air wavering with the heat of it.

"Do you always see the world like this?" Delina asks, once she gets her voice back.

He eyes her sidelong. "Mostly."

"So why'd you step into the demon circle on the porch?" Delina asks, hugging herself against the chill of the mist, even though she can swear she feels the heat from the circle. "You had to have known."

"The entire house was one large beacon of bullshit," Maison grumbles, looking out at the demon circle. "Your mother was a lot better and more subtle than Chloe will ever be, so it was hidden among general protections."

It makes some sort of sense.

"And I was a bit more focused on getting you out," Maison continues, nudging some gravel with his feet as if testing it. "I thought you were kidnapped, I thought they might be hurting you. Remember the bond thing?"

Like she could forget.

"I could just tell you were upset the entire time. I thought I would be able to come in guns blazing and get you out and then deal with anything afterwards." He sweeps his feet across the gravel, clearing a small pathway to the dirt underneath. "I miscalculated."

Delina snorts. "That's an understatement."

"Thanks," he snips back. "All I knew is that you disappeared, your dad didn't know where you were, you were upset, and I rolled up to the house and it's covering in intense magic."

"My dad knew," Delina replies, and he narrows his eyes. "Of course I went to him first. He told me everything."

"Of course," Maison mutters, then clears his throat. "He's a lot better at lying than I gave him credit for, then."

"He had kept something for my entire life for me to test when I asked him about it," Delina says, not quite sure why she's still needling him. "A pager, of all things. Touched it with my thumb and it shattered."

He blinks at her, then back down to the road. "At least I wasn't the only one who miscalculated," he says, "the documentation on him was that he hated all things magic because of what it did to you."

"No, he was fine," Delina replies, then gestures broadly at the cut of dirt he's revealed. "What are you going to do?"

He watches her for a long second, before his eyes flash red, and before she even has time to think, both of his fists are full of magic.

Delina flinches back, it's too close to Korhonen and his attacks.

Maison's face softens, like he can read her mind. "I'm not gonna hurt you." His voice is gentle, and it's suddenly like they're back in the condo in Prescott and he's talking her through a depression spike. "I will never intentionally hurt you."

"I know that," Delina says, then swallows.

"I'm going to use this to cut into the ground," he says, his eyes still unreal, and the hair on the back of her arms raises. "Then carve in the runes. Here."

Just like before, he dumps some of the magic into her hands, and a jolt goes up to her shoulder.

"Do this," he says, pulling the remaining magic in his hands between them, until they stretch like a dough.

She imitates his motions, and her fingers tingle.

"Don't aim this at someone or something you don't want to hurt," he warns her, and she nods, before he snaps the stretched-out magic into the dirt in front of him.

Gravel sprays up, and a vivid red line stains the ground, precise.

He gestures her over, a hand clinically on her hip, arranging how she's standing, and her breath sticks in her throat.

"Here," he says, then, gently, stands behind her, a hand on each of her wrists, guiding her into the motion, solid against her back.

She leans against him for a split second, cozy and comfortable, until she realizes what she's doing and straightens.

He clears his throat, then spreads her arms a bit wider. "When I snap your arms down, release the magic, just like you did before with the threads, but this time try to place it in a straight line."

"That's it?" Delina asks, and he's warm against her, her heart pounding.

"No, I'll activate them after, that's the complicated part of this," he says. "It'd take a bunch more training before you can do that part. Ready?"

Delina swallows again. "Sure."

Like the one time he tried to teach her to paint, he guides her arms down, fast, and she lets the magic slip out of her fingertips with the motion.

It sends another jolt through her, and he hisses, as if he could feel it too, before he releases her and steps back.

A thin line of red glows on the dirt, much wavier and less precise than Maison's.

"Oh hey, I did it," Delina says before she can think of something more clever. "Look."

"Does all magic feel like that to you?" Maison asks instead, shaking out his hands as she nods. "Jesus Christ."

"What now?"

He stares at her for a few seconds, then shakes his head, as if clearing his mind. "They should have never sealed you away."

She bites the inside of her cheek to stop her retort.

"Literally they could've just kept you away from Frisse and actually train you," Maison starts, his face twisting in frustration, "and they'd have a powerful necromancer at their use and you'd have a grasp of these things."

"Well, they didn't," Delina says, smarting a bit.

"No," Maison almost cuts her off, "this is not on you, this is on them."

She eyes him, then down at the cut of red in the ground.

"They did the most convoluted system of keeping you ignorant, they arranged your entire life, when literally all they had to do was train you. That's it. It would have been the easiest thing, you would have grown up knowing about yourself and your power, and we could have met without secrets." He turns his eyes down to the red mark she left. "Instead, we have…this."

"What, so you could've met me while in the college and wouldn't have had all the pesky betrayal to worry about?" Delina asks, and he straightens, folding his arms over his chest.

It might've been a bit of a cheap shot.

"Are you asking if it would make my life easier? Cause that answer is yes," he says, voice clinical, and she hates it. "Yes, then I wouldn't have had to lie all those years and we could've actually been honest with each other. Yes, then they wouldn't have used my mom to literally make me afraid of my own relationship failing, and that would have been easier."

Delina shrugs into herself. "I'm still having trouble getting over it."

It's honest, too honest, and her face twists the moment the words are out of her mouth.

He stares at her over the vivid red lines in the ground, his mouth unhappy, before he squeezes his eyes shut. "How can I fix it?"

It's such a stark question.

"I want to fix it, how can I fix it?" He stalks closer to her, over the red lines in the ground, and the hair on the back of her neck raises. His voice dips low. "Tell me there's a way to fix this."

Her mouth goes dry, and she stares up at him.

"Because I will," he continues. "I swear I will."

"I don't know," she breathes, and her heart pounds, every part of her body suddenly aware of him, of how close he is.

They had always had chemistry, and she can't forget that.

"I don't know," she says, clearer this time, lifting her chin, attempting to project some sort of control in the situation, even though her hands tremble. "Maybe start by actually teaching me what to do with this?" She slashes her hand towards the red mark in the gravel.

He leans back, and she's not sure if it's disappointment or relief in his eyes.

"Will you be able to use this with the defenses?" Delina asks, after a long silence in the mist.

"Yes, Delly, yes I can," he says, still frustrated. "This is something that way more advanced people have cast far worse, and you managed something like this with your first try."

She nods at that, unsure what to do. "So when you expected me to be useless in this, you didn't expect this?"

Finally, there's a hint of a smile, just a hint, beyond the frustration. "Serves me right for underestimating you," he replies, then shakes his hands out again. "Training you is gonna be intense."

She likes that he's talking about that, despite all the strangeness. "I'll have to knock you on your ass in the forest some more."

He bares his teeth at her in a grin, surprising her, before the expression fades into something more clinical. "The next part is demon magic, not human. Watch."

She nods once more, stepping back.

He eyes where she stands, then, in between one blink and the next, twists the magic in his hands over the red marks on the ground.

Power surges up from the marks, engulfing his hands, and her breath catches in her throat as he deftly, somehow, writes with it in the very air, red and black shimmering in the mist. It coalesces, solid, a warping smoky wall of magic, impenetrable to anything she can see.

All in all it takes only a few seconds, but the power reflects in his eyes and, for a split second, her heart jumps.

This is the Maison her mother called vastly powerful.

Until he smiles at her, releasing the magic in his hands, and abruptly she stops seeing the shining gold, and there's nothing in the air. Nothing but the uninterrupted mist and the chill.

"Alright," Delina says, unnerved.

"Anyone who doesn't know exactly where the cabin is will cross this line, get confused and turn around," Maison says, dusting off his hands and examining his now-invisible handiwork. "Unless they're specifically on the lookout for this, it'll work, and this is an obscure one."

She swallows down the sudden adrenaline in her system. "Okay."