Chapter 2

2

T here is just dark.

And terror.

Striking solitude, clawing down Chloe’s neck, choking her, gagging down her throat. Filling her lungs, pooling in her stomach, spiking through her limbs.

She flails against nothing, her hands and feet swinging uselessly, arching her back against a vast emptiness, writhing, until—

Something slams into her, brilliant and sharp, crashing her back against broken concrete for a split second, before she jerks, her whole body spasming.

She gasps, this time pulling actual air in, and lights spark behind her eyelids, viciously, painfully bright.

“Oh hey, we got you,” someone says somewhere above her, and her head swims. She’s on the ground, the concrete fire hot underneath her shoulder blades, her nerves firing off. She’s cold, shivers winding down her spine, then she’s hot, sweat pooling along the neckline of her puffy jacket.

Her ears ring, high pitched, and Chloe smacks her hands up to muffle them.

“She’s disoriented. Predictable,” another voice says, and this isn’t someone familiar. She doesn’t know this voice, it’s not someone who was here, it’s not —

She snaps her eyes open.

Delina sits next to her, her blonde hair partially hiding Chloe from view as she leans over, her hand on her shoulder.

She’s shrouded in gold.

Chloe blinks, and behind her stands Alette, wringing her hands, and…

A totally unfamiliar man, with black hair and blue eyes. Someone who hadn’t been there before, how long had it been, how…

Chloe jerks upright, and Delina falls back, startled.

Lyra’s behind her, a thoughtful expression on her face, and outside the circle stand the rest, all staring at her.

“Who are you?” Chloe blurts out, and the man exchanges a glance with Alette. “You weren’t here before, who…”

“Well, that answers that,” Alette murmurs in sotto voice. “Congrats, you can at least see Wights now.”

Chloe blinks numbly at this new person. Of course, she had heard in the last few weeks that Alette had a Wight boyfriend, but to think he had been there all along…

She shakes her head, and it’s as if there’s extra space in her skull, her brain sloshing around too much.

“I’m okay,” she says, as both the Necromancers behind her take in simultaneous breaths to say something. “I’m okay, just…”

Just…

She squeezes her eyes shut, pressing her hand against her forehead, and even her limbs are off, both too heavy and too light, like lifting them should be less effort but also less quick.

“Okay, Chloe,” the other Necromancer, Lyra, says, and Chloe really can’t stand how every word that comes from her seems to be coated in comfort. “Talk to us. How do you feel?”

“Come on, shouldn’t we get her inside?” That’s Maison from outside the circle, and there’s a frown on his face as well, a strange flickering of power. Something that immediately sends the hair on her arms raising at something in his appearance.

Beyond her control, Chloe scoots back, something instinctual.

Next to him is Ambra, and she’s even worse. There’s a double outline around her, wavering and glitching, like there’s too much of one person in the body. Her smile too large, her eyes too sharp, her chin too vicious.

And still, even as she watches, a glimpse of the expression made by her friend filters over the double face, something between understanding and regret in the lines of her eyes.

“It’s okay,” Alette murmurs to her, crouching next to where Chloe still sits on the ground, where the concrete is still hot to the touch. “That’s just how they look to us now.”

“What?” Chloe breathes, and Gurlien is standing next to Ambra, scowling, as if lost.

By the time they get her up and down the hill back towards the compound, Chloe’s mind is whirling back and her fingertips itch for a notebook to jot this all down.

“Why was the temperature weird?” She peppers Delina with questions, of which Delina is firmly lost, staring helplessly back at the other Necromancer for answers, who just shrugs. “The concrete was brutally hot, why was that?”

“Same thing happened to me,” Alette says, her accented voice somewhat clipped. “I was on a table. I thought it was freezing.”

“Okay,” Chloe says brightly, snapping her fingers at Alette as they tromp over the frozen forest. “So it’s not just an isolated occurrence. Maison?”

He’s already shaking his head. “I don’t remember.”

“No help,” Chloe says, and all at once gets some major side eye from pretty much everyone around her, including Alette’s Wight boyfriend. Who’s just there with them and most likely has been the entire time, which is another layer of awkwardness. “Gurlien, any research—”

Her best friend just looks firmly away.

“Right, Ambra? Any demon ideas?”

“Most Necromancers don’t live long enough for us to get ideas,” Ambra replies, and even her voice is different, more growly, and it throws Chloe for a second. “So. No.”

The other Necromancer, Lyra, glances away with a slight smile on her face, and Chloe doesn’t understand it at all.

“Okay, Alette,” Chloe starts, walking backwards so she can face the spellweaver directly. “Sensations while under, what did you get?”

“Please stop,” Alette says, and her Wight boyfriend touches her shoulder, gentle.

Chloe opens her mouth, but Delina grasps her by her elbow, turning her around and fitting her directly between the two Necromancers, bracketing her in from bothering anyone else.

Chloe knows that technique when she sees it.

“You have all sensations?” Delina asks, keeping her voice down, as if she’s sparing the others.

“Oh yeah,” Chloe replies, bouncing on her toes as they walk to demonstrate. “Everything’s back to normal. See?” She splays out her fingers, and her hands are cold, chillier than they probably should be, but otherwise fine.

Delina and Lyra exchange a glance over Chloe’s head, which isn’t cool.

“And besides the seeing extra people part, it’s not bad,” Chloe continues, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at the Wight boyfriend, who’s navigating the frozen forest ground just as they are, stepping over roots and avoiding trees. “That means it worked, right?”

“Yeah,” Lyra says, finally some confirmation, and Chloe’s knees almost buckle under the relief. “Something certainly worked.”

To the surprise of nobody, they bully her into a full medical examination with the two Necromancers, and by the time that’s done, the winter sun is setting behind even more clouds and the unsettled quiver is back in Chloe’s chest.

It’s not directly related to the death, not that she can tell, but the moment she gets a second alone, she lets herself collapse in the small bedroom they set aside for her, in the pseudo apartment inside the compound that leaves her utterly lonely.

After a year of living with Gurlien and another few months with Delina and Maison, her own living space is almost torture. A reminder of the prison in Toronto, of the forced solitude and the lack of updates and the itch to do anything else but sit there.

And with Gurlien back staying with Ambra—understandable—Chance the cat has been inseparable with him, so she doesn’t even have a pet to bounce ideas off of.

For a few seconds, she flops onto the army cot set up for her, face down into the pillows, but that doesn’t help the quiet. Doesn’t help the strange panic that’s been welling up in her chest since they got to the compound, the half-eagerness half-terror that she’s actually in a place to do something.

Turns out dying didn’t solve that.

With a huff at herself, Chloe pushes herself up to sit cross legged on the cot, pulling her research off the filing cabinet she’s using as a nightstand and flipping open her notebook. With a quick tap, she unspools the alchemy keeping it in code, transfixing the ink on the page to actual words instead of a mess of incomprehensible symbols.

Her fingertips tingle, a small spark of…something…burrowing into the callouses on her skin.

“Okay,” Chloe whispers to the utter stillness of the room. “That’s different.”

She sits up straighter, then grabs the nearest non-biological thing she can grasp—a cheap plastic BIC pen—and taps it against her thigh, sending a bit of willpower to twist the atoms, twist things to resettle, a task as easy for her as breathing.

Another spark, another small shock, and it shifts in her hand, blurring the air above it, and it clicks into place as a shining plastic set of lockpicks.

So she can still do everything, there’s just an additional bit of haptic feedback. Interesting.

With another tap she transforms it back into a pen and scribbles the thought down, even as unease chases itself across her body.

They had forbidden her from leaving that day (or the next) but the want for action, the drive to do something, anything, eats at her stomach.