Chapter 6

6

C hloe doesn’t so much wake up as she gets forcefully shoved into consciousness, her eyes burning.

For a split second, she’s cozy warm, her favorite blanket pulled up to her neck, her pillow underneath her head. The cabin creaks, like it always does in the wind in the winter, and there’s the faint smell that it’s going to snow outside, barely sifting through her window. She’s repaired that window so many times, alchemy and normal means, but even if she wards it to keep the warmth inside, the fresh scents from outside always leaks into her room.

Her room.

Her eyes pop open, and the familiar sight of the wooden cross beams above her bed meets her. Her favorite jacket—she left it behind—is sloppily hung on the edge of her chair, and…

And all the wards, all the alchemy she’s put into the cabin, is unraveled.

The cabin.

The cabin they evacuated in the middle of the night, back when the college tried to lure out Maison with his mom, before they crossed the county to get her, breaking into Toronto…

…And Maison had said the protections he put around the cabin were taken down.

There’s the sudden moment of terror she knows too well. That she’s going to be stuck here, be handcuffed and a bag over her head, manhandled and thrown back into the prison.

Which prison she couldn’t quite tell, but one of them.

They all end up being somewhat of the same.

Chloe bites back a curse, kicking off her favorite blanket. She’s wearing the entire outfit she got for going underground, sticky to her skin with blood, wholly unsuitable for sleeping—

The sleep spell.

The demon.

Her research.

Her breath hitching, she jerks her head around, searching for the familiar nylon of her backpack, but it’s gone.

In the mirror over her closet door, the blood on her front is black, viciously so, and she gingerly dabs at it with her fingertips.

Because she shot him.

“Oh fuck,” Chloe murmurs, then stills herself, listening.

The cabin is silent, but that never meant anything, Chloe had thoroughly soundproofed it between rooms when she and Gurlien first moved in. Just the creak of the building on a whole made its way in.

Gingerly, Chloe swings her feet over the side of her bed, and someone—the demon?—had removed her shoes, lining them neatly next to the little carpet Chloe thrifted once.

Her skin crawls, and she shudders, the blood cold down her front.

She needs to get out of here, get away from any surveillance on the cabin, needs to…

Needs to get her research back.

Chloe exhales, and her eyes burn again, then she pats her pockets for her phone.

It’s gone, too, of course, along with her orange scarf, and her holster swings empty at her hip.

She has her wallet with three fake IDs and a bank card, a single battery, and two loose lock picks.

And her compass.

Her heart jumps.

She lets her fingertips rest against the compass, still buzzing with magic and a little bit of hope.

So not all is lost.

She exhales, blinking past the sudden tears crowding into her eyes. That even with her research gone, even without the ability to call for help, she can find the next place to go. She won’t have to slink back home, to a group that told her not to go, not empty-handed.

Careful, Chloe stands, avoiding the creaking wooden beam just in case, tiptoeing to her closet. The closet she left behind, with most of her clothes and earthly possessions.

Quickly, she shucks off the bloody shirt, pulling on a warm flannel instead, then grabs an extra backpack from the corner of the closet and shoves as much of her clothing as she can. Grabs her spare locksmith set, the one that didn’t fit into the car, her old broken watch, then the pocketknife that had fallen behind her shoe rack, then an extra pair of shoes.

Out of instinct, even though she doesn’t quite feel out of power, she chugs one of the five-hour energy shots she kept in a box in the closet, so Gurlien didn’t get into them.

It’s awful and warm, but it’ll help if she has to do anything to get out.

Her heart still pounds, and she can’t tell if there’s anyone else in the cabin. The floral curtains are pulled tightly shut, and though it’d be quick to flick them aside and peek out, when they left the college had probably set up motion scanners around and that sort of thing would absolutely trip them.

Gurlien left behind some small items, she knows, but she doesn’t know the state of his room. How much they went through, what they destroyed, all of that.

There are guns in the attic and electronics in the basement, and she has no clue what she can find. What’ll still be there, what she can gather…

What she can run away with.

Careful, she shoves her old clothing into the back of the closet, where hopefully someone won’t find them until she’s long gone, then gently lowers herself onto the floor, just enough so she can see the thin sliver of light from underneath the door.

It’s night outside, that much is obvious, and the blue plastic door to the front still stands on its hinges.

And someone crosses the room, just the shadow of their footsteps making its way to her, before they obviously putter around the kitchen.

Shit.

She briefly squeezes her eyes shut, counts to ten, then opens them again, just in time to see another pair of steps, these ones in combat boots, follow into the kitchen.

So at least two people. Given the unraveling of some of her protections and the relatively untouched status of her mundane items, she doubts it could be anyone but the college. Squatters wouldn’t leave her watch without pawning it off.

She scoots away from the door, glancing up at the window. It’s small, but she’s a tiny person and could easily squeeze through it if necessary, but there’s a drop outside, of course, as this is the side of the cabin that is above the slope, and half off the wall to the basement is above ground.

She could open up the wall near the floor, less of a drop, but way more attention-grabbing for any alarms. She could blast open her door, knock out the two people in the kitchen, stumble down the gravel path in the back until she reached the road, walk the twenty minutes to town, borrow a car…

And it’s all a bit too far-fetched. Too reliant on everything going right. Too reliant on there being no one else watching the cabin or any outside patrols.

She really doesn’t want to cause too much damage to the two people in the kitchen, either. It’s probably a boring assignment, to guard an abandoned cabin, and she doubts that they really want to be there.

And Chloe tries really hard to not kill people who are only there because someone ordered them.

A pair of footsteps pace towards the hallway again, and Chloe lets her hand rest on the soundproofing spell, untwisting it just enough.

“…Ottawa base, just gone,” a female voice says, with the air of someone gossiping. “Wiped off the face of the earth, just a few smoldering bricks.”

“Bullshit,” replied another female voice, this one substantially less interested. The voice paces close to the bedroom, matched with the combat boots.

“No, that’s what they said! First email that loaded once I got a signal!” the first insists, and the second scoffs.

“Before or after the eighteen emails from your boyfriend?” the second asks dryly, and Chloe shuts her eyes out of annoyance. “Or is he still too busy tracking that hot spellweaver?”

“Fuck off,” the first says idly, like this is a common conversation. “He does not think she’s hot.”

“You sure about that?” Combat Boots asks, before the footsteps clatter down the stairs to the basement.

So they found the basement, that’s for sure. All the research, painstakingly left over from the insane Dr. Frisse, now firmly in the college’s hands.

Delina would be furious.

Careful, Chloe pushes herself up to standing, digging out her supply of batteries from the bedside table.

A flash bang to take out one, steal their car, drive away and get to town before they can find her, grab another car, make her way to Bellevue, call her friends, Ambra can teleport her to the next spot…

“But seriously, Ottawa!” the first voice calls back.

“I don’t belieeeeeve you!” the second answers, muffled from the stairs.

By their voices, they could very easily be younger than Chloe, and that hurts, a bit, too. That the college just continued after she left, hurting more people.

And here she’s going to at least cause temporary harm to one of them.

If the demon was gonna knock her out and leave her someplace, why the hell did he have to leave her someplace so difficult to break out of.

Come to think of it, how did he get past the demon circle Chloe carved into the forest floor, back when they were worried about a demon coming in after Delina? Did all the protections get so destroyed that even that was easy?

Quickly, Chloe taps the battery in her hand, elongating it into a bog-standard military flash bang, the sort used by too many police forces across the country. They’re unpleasant, they might get some hearing damage, but they’ll live.

She pulls out another one, flicking it into the shape of a pepper spray canister, and holds that in her other hand. Ambra had laughed at Chloe when she showed her she could do that, back when they were first back in the compound with them and recovering. Gurlien had called her a show-off, which of course she was, but still.

The footsteps tromp back up the staircase, followed by the familiar clatter of scrolls getting dumped on the table.

“Are we still on the g-h shelf?” the first voice asks, plaintive. “Still?”

“Yes,” Combat Boots says wearily.

Oh, so they’re cataloging, as if Chloe and Gurlien hadn’t done so themselves in their first few months here and left behind a detailed description of each shelf. As if they couldn’t trust their documentation.

Careful, Chloe flattens the flash bang until it’s malleable in her hands, then squeezes her eyes shut.

She doesn’t want to do that.

Which only gives her one other choice.

So she straightens, pushing herself up to standing, and plasters a smile on her face.

She’s absolutely talked her way out of worse scenarios. Talked her way out of trouble, convinced people to let her go, convinced people that the college meant more harm than good. If it’s just two people, two already annoyed people, stuck in a cabin with no cell signal and an overwhelming amount of incomprehensible documents to catalog, she can prey on that, convince them the college lied to them—which it has—and get them to let her walk out of here without trailing.

She wouldn’t have lasted this long outside the college system if she couldn’t.

So, giving herself a chance to count to three, she grips her doorknob like she’s done hundreds of times before, and swings the door open.

Immediately, both people jolt up from sitting. Combat Boots—with a sweet round face and two golden needles in her hands—almost snaps to attention, her back ramrod straight, so close to fear. The first voice—who looks like she’s barely twenty, she still has acne—has loups over both eyes, a hunch in her shoulders, and one hand grips one of the scrolls.

“Hi!” Chloe says suddenly, and Combat Boots gapes at her, her mouth open. “There’s actually a full and complete catalog in the Z section, you don’t have to do everything.”

The first one recovers first. “Who are you?” she says, and she taps her hand on the scroll, her fingertips grazing a pencil, and it transforms into a knife, stiletto sharp, like she thinks Chloe won’t notice.

“Well,” Chloe says, and Combat Boots obviously glances past her to check out the room she just left, like she’s expecting more people to appear. “My name is Traci, I lived here for a bit,” she says, then gives them the biggest smile she can muster. “Don’t mind me, I’m just passing through, but thought you’d want the tip!”

If she confuses them, they’re far less likely to act.

“Wha—” the first says, before Combat Boots rocks back, like she put things together.

But Chloe doesn’t really give them a chance to put the conclusion into action, swinging on her old backpack and tromping out of her room, like it’s the most normal action she can take.

“Why are you here?” the first says, and she’s so young, so incredibly young, and she grips the new knife as if it can save her. “Nobody was here, nobody can get in, how…”

“Don’t mind me,” Chloe repeats, then, to act as normally as she can, swipes one of the power bars from the kitchen counter, like she would if it’s any other day. “I left all the windows unwarded, super easy to climb in.”

It’s a misdirect, but better than giving them something else.

“Is that blood?” Combat Boots asks in sotto voice, like Chloe couldn’t hear her. “Why is it black?”

And at first, the youth barely old enough to graduate, stands, slow, the knife in her hand.

“Was there a demon here?” she asks, and her voice wobbles. “Gracie, step back, that’s demon blood.”

As if she could compel the answer out of her, she points the stiletto at Chloe.

“You lived here?” she asks, and Chloe flattens the flash bang even more in her hand, like it’s made of putty. “You’re a terrorist, you’re the reason why Toronto fell.”

“No, the people in Toronto were that lawyer asshole and the Half Demon guy,” Combat Boots shoots back, but her brows are furrowed all the same.

Figures that Chloe could literally take down a base and people wouldn’t remember her.

“Don’t mind me!” she repeats.

Combat Boots takes a step back, like Chloe’s something to be feared, before she loops magic into the two needles, strips of magic that will bound, wrap around wrists, and keep her in place.

An action meant to arrest someone.

Chloe’s stomach drops, her breath catching in her throat as she stares at the strips of magic. She wanted it, she wanted the peaceful solution, without harming these people so young they’re practically children.

“You let all those monsters out,” the first continues. “You’re the one who killed Nalissa—”

“That’s an exaggeration,” Chloe says. “I had nothing to do with Nalissa…”

And before she can stop herself, before she can hold back her hands and try to speak more, Chloe tosses the flash bang onto the table with the scrolls, then claps her hands over her ears and spins in the other direction, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Wha—” Combat Boots starts, just in time for a thundercap to crash over the cabin.

Even through her eyelids, light flashes, so bright it burns red, and the blast almost knocks Chloe back.

But she doesn’t have time to react. Doesn’t have time to check to see if the barely-adults are okay, doesn’t have time to make sure that Combat Boots drops the magic meant to arrest her, doesn’t have time for anything but running.

And Chloe knows the footprint of the cabin by heart, from late nights pacing across the floor to debates with Delina to measuring every aspect for remodels, so without opening her eyes she sprints, throwing her shoulder into the blue plastic door that she made herself, and throwing it open.

Outside, grimy snow blows past the dim lights from the cabin, before disappearing into the dark of the forest night. Screams echo through the trees, and there’s a single jeep, shining bright with barely disguised wards, primed to explode if someone unapproved tried to activate it.

Which sucks, but Chloe pivots, plunging along the gravel path of the cabin, deeper into the forest by the side. She can stumble through the pathway, it intersects with another road, follow it to the town, break into an unprotected car, and—

She shakes her coat around herself, thickening it with a flash of her alchemy, and grabs the battery in her pocket, transforming it into the flashlight with barely a click.

It’s the same pathway she once brought Delina down to practice shielding, back when Delina could barely grasp her power and both Gurlien and Chloe had been terrified that Maison would turn them in. It’s the same direction of the first bunker Chloe ever found in the woods, the first time she broke into anything in the state, and the first time since fleeing the college that she felt she could actually practice.

But she keeps the flashlight tucked against the palm of her hand, as the door clatters back open behind her and one of them staggers out.

Impressive, most people don’t recover from her flashbangs nearly that fast.

Chloe plunges among the trees, keeping herself low, deep into the smudged line between the snow and the blackberry brambles. The thorns, long ago stripped of any leaves that would soften them, catch on to her coat and her hair around her throat.

Unconsciously, she lifts a hand to her neck. Her little orange handkerchief is gone too. She’s had it for ages.

“Motherfucker,” Chloe whispers. Demon took that, too.

Or, more likely, it fell off somewhere in their battle, somewhere between her shooting the gun and getting his blood all over herself and him knocking her out for the second time in two hours.

For some reason, it hurts more than the gun. She can replace the gun, she can’t replace a piece of cloth she’s had since she broke out.

Combat Boots swings a flashlight—a real one, not an alchemied one—around the trees, and Chloe ducks her head even further. She can be sentimental about items later.

“Where’d she go?” the first voice says, almost high pitched. “What the hell was that, where’d she go?”

“She can’t vanish, don’t get panicky,” Combat Boots replies. “Make something useful and search for her.”

Chloe hunches herself into the bramble, sending a tendril of her magic to change the color of the coat, blending in with the branches.

The flashlight sweeps over her, sweeps over the dead branches, focusing right where the old dead bird lay, the one that Delina experimented with only a few short months ago.

Chloe feels like she’s aged years since then.

“Something weird over here,” Combat Boots says, and Chloe squeezes her eyes. At least it’s not at her, at least it’s not focusing on her, she can still go elsewhere once their attention is shifted.

The first voice still has the loops of magic in her hands, vivid even behind Chloe’s eyelids.

She didn’t used to be so fucking sensitive to see magic such as that. Before it was just vague awareness of the abilities not…intimate awareness that the person in front of her, however young and inexperienced she may be, wanted to take her in. Throw her behind bars, imprison her once more.

Fucking demon, dropping her in the most inconvenient place.

The flashlight swings back to the other side of the cabin, nearer to where Chloe would’ve had to climb in through the window. Chloe grits out a breath between her teeth, then slowly, as slowly as she can stand to, starts to creep further into the forest.

It’s less than ideal. It’s so far less than ideal that it hurts her mind to even think about, but she softens the soles of her shoes to the dead branches on the ground, stepping ever so slowly in the direction of the woods.

If she has to call Gurlien and Ambra so soon after failing, after losing her research, she might as well get to someplace safe to do so.

Hearing something, the flashlights slice back through the woods towards her, and she ducks again.

This time, the two people know enough to whisper, and Chloe strains to overhear them, her heart pounding into her throat.

If she had her research, she could use the explosion spells she has already written out, deep in the bag. Rip the little piece of paper and leave it behind, waiting for them to come after her.

Again, though, murder.

The first voice loops more magic out into the woods, a snare, and Chloe’s breath hitches. She can’t, not without her research, not without her friend, she can’t doom herself to more prison, she can’t…

A crunch echoes, all the way across the clearing, and the flashlights swing over towards the driveway instead.

Chloe freezes, the air cool against her unprotected skin, chapping at her lips, as the jeep lights up, all alarms splitting the air, wailing into the cold and blowing snow.

The strip of magic, intended to capture her, flies harmlessly over her head as the spellweaver twists, turning towards the jeep.

The horn wails, too loud to be normal, and there’s the barest hint of a silhouette in the driver's seat, someone turning it on and—

Before she can fully comprehend what’s happening, a small hand closes over her wrist, pulling Chloe upright.

And staring into the face of the child Wight. The one from Toronto. The one next to Ambra in the stasis chambers.

Sure, her hair is a bit better brushed, but the horrified sunken eyes still dominate her face, and her cheeks are still more hollow than not.

But she blinks at Chloe, her face pale, before jerking at her arm again, tugging her up.

Chloe scrambles up, tossing a glance over her shoulder at the jeep, but both the other magicians are approaching it, weapons out.

The small Wight—Stella?—tugs her arm again, so Chloe inhales, then follows, her footsteps faltering, as they plunge deeper into the forest, deep between the trees, in the places so full of roots and moss Chloe never fully explored.

But the child’s path is sure, like she’s crawled over the trees many times in her life, and her grip on Chloe’s wrist remains.

“Where—” Chloe begins with a whisper, but in the dim light she gets a glimpse of Stella lifting a finger to her lips.

And…and Chloe had helped save the child, back in Toronto, so now…now she has to trust her? Trust that she’s taking her somewhere safe? Trust that she won’t drop Chloe off in a hole in the middle of the forest, leave her behind for more people to find, lead her right to the demon…

Though if the demon has her research, it might not be the worst.

Behind them, even though the cabin has been removed from her view, the jeep wails again, and the two magicians yell, unintelligible, before between one step and the next, an older woman with wiry gray hair appears, giving Chloe an appraising glance in the low light.

Chloe almost stumbles again at the sudden appearance.

“They won’t follow us now,” the woman says, and her appearance wriggles under Chloe’s recognition. “Though you should pick up your speed.”

She gives a kind nod to Stella, like she’s affirming something, and the tilt of her chin is similar to the child’s.

Oh.

Chloe had only seen her face once before, back in the cabin when they had first discovered what Delina was, and only for a few seconds. She’s another Wight, the one native to the forest around the cabin, and the only reason why they were able to make it out of Toronto at all.

“Hi,” Chloe says, lame.