Chapter 8

8

S etting up for the Wight’s tracking spell takes surprisingly little time, considering that Wights have a reputation for being fussy and precise about all their casting and spend more time planning than actually using their magic.

Chloe worries at her nail, watching as the Wight spreads out wild magic like it’s a piece of paper, glimmering in the light of the sconce, twisting it and folding it in on itself, using a polished wooden stick barely bigger than a toothpick to manipulate it.

It’s kinda neat to see it so easily.

After only a little bit of time, the Wight gestures for Chloe on the couch. “Take off the undershirt.”

Chloe clutches at the flannel, before relenting, stripping it off and then pulling off the undershirt, leaving herself in just her bra.

It’s warm in the little cave, at least, but still, she shivers.

The blood on the undershirt well and truly dried, flaking off in giant chunks, but the Wight meticulously scrapes it into a small bit of water, reconstituting it into a gloppy paste.

“Do you know why they bleed black?” Chloe asks, having asked Ambra once and gotten nothing but a rolling of the eyes.

The older Wight’s eyes flicker up, before she draws the polished wooden stick through the blood, twisting it onto the golden magic spread out. “Something to do with oxygen content, I suppose.” It’s a surprisingly science-y explanation for a creature of the land.

“Then why does it happen immediately?” Chloe asks, leaning forward watching as the paper of magic turns muddled with the blood. “As soon as the moment of possession happens, bam, black blood.”

“Then you officially know more about demons that I do,” the Wight murmurs, and it’s a weird thought, that Chloe’s knowledge would rival someone who’s way closer to them than she.

“Ambra’s fun with a few glasses of wine in her,” Chloe says, and the Wight flinches, eyes narrowing. “She’s willing to say all sorts of things.”

She sets aside the now bloody paper of magic, then reaches a hand out to Chloe. “Shoulder?”

Chloe stares at her.

“Which grip point—I assume you don’t want me to use your hip?” the Wight says.

If Chloe thinks too hard, she can still feel the ghost sensation of him gently picking up her hand, at odds with the massive amounts of power seething beneath his skin.

So she holds out her hand, impatient.

“Really?” the Wight says, finally showing a bit of personality besides being strict. “He held your hand?”

“More like grabbed it so I’d stop touching maps,” Chloe shoots back.

The Wight rolls her eyes this time, then gingerly props up Chloe’s hand, folding the strip of magic around her palm, sticky with the blood. It’s viciously gross, clammy and cold, but Chloe represses a shudder.

“And something useful?”

“Will he be able to see it?” Chloe asks, just as quick.

“No, he should see just you,” the Wight shoots back, and that’s new information. “Near as I can tell, it’s more of a tunneling appearance, the demon can’t tell anything about what’s around you or who’s near you.”

“That’s a risk,” Chloe says, and her mouth is dry with the implications of a Wight tracking spell. That all of a sudden, they get a glimpse of someone tracking them down, no context, nothing.

“Well,” the Wight says, threading the magic between Chloe’s fingers, concentrating, “he already knows where you are, he dropped you just half a mile away.”

He knows her name, her research, and exactly how much power to channel into her to knock her out cold.

“Here,” Chloe says, pulling out the compass from her pocket, cradling it in her non-bloody hand. “Don’t damage this.”

The Wight just wrinkles her nose at the item, just swipes it with the bloody stick, then leaves it the fuck alone, thank god.

Against Chloe’s palm, the magic warms, then sparks, nestling in the thin skin at her wrist, and she sits back, triumph in her smile.

“I take it that means it's working?” Chloe asks, lifting her hand, and another few sparks swirl against her, and she shivers, vicious.

The older Wight just nods absentmindedly, watching the magic instead of her. From the other room, Stella pokes her head out of the room, watching just as avidly.

“Huh,” Chloe says, and the sparks are something akin to the pinpricks one gets when their leg falls asleep, or one hits their elbow a bit too hard. They burrow into her skin, briefly visible against the translucency around her veins, before disappearing into her muscles, the tendons, the small bones of her wrist. “Is it supposed to be visible?”

Another flicker of her eyes, like Chloe said something truly unremarkable, before returning the attention back to the magic. “Not to you.”

“Well, that’s interesting,” Chloe says, and she’s not sure if it’s the raising from the dead or the close contact from the demon or what. “Ever run this on a human?”

“No,” the Wight says, a rough undertone to her voice, before, “and…there.”

For a moment, nothing happens, and Chloe’s heart sinks. “I don’t…”

Until her breath sticks in her throat, and the entire world blooms with gold, then with black, the stone room and the clean floors falling away.

Sure, she’s still sitting cross-legged on the rickety couch in just her bra and her Carhartts, but besides the pressure of gravity on her leg, it disappears.

Chloe clenches her hands into the fabric of the couch, but the world tunnels away, wind whipping through her hair, tearing bits of the black strands out of the bun she tied it in too long ago. Her cheeks sting, like the wind is something physical, before it snaps into place.

And in front of her, close enough that she could reach out and tangle her hands in his shirt, is the demon.

He’s standing, arms crossed, leaning against a wall and conversing with someone. She can’t hear his words, can’t hear his voice, but his mouth moves and his jaw works, like he’s stressed.

Her backpack leans against his legs, like he propped it there for the conversation.

Chloe’s blood runs cold, and she twists her fingers to stop herself from reaching out and grabbing the backpack, and the movement catches his eyes, jerking his gaze away from the conversation until he stares right at her.

For a split second or an eternity, their eyes meet, before he grabs the backpack, teleporting to a different location.

But still, she can still see him, somehow locked on him instead of being left behind.

“Why are you here?” he whispers, and she still can’t see the area behind him, just knows that it’s different.

“You have my things,” Chloe says numbly, and his eyes widen. “I need them back.”

“You should be unconscious,” he says, voice sharp, and all of the sudden she gets an overwhelming power, an overwhelming sense of being, under which she has no prayer of overcoming. “You should be unconscious for the next few days.”

His eyes scan her, meticulous, looking at the black blood lining her hand and where her fingers grab at the couch before his mouth twists with some frustration.

“That sort of scanning spell is dangerous work, little alchemist,” he says, voice low. “Be careful of who you’re associating with on this search.”

Chloe opens her mouth to respond, but—

As fast as it begins, Chloe snaps back, and she’s back on the couch that’s more springs than not, and the Wight’s scribbling frantically on the sheet of magic with the polished stick.

Chloe opens her mouth to say something, but it’s dry, and she shivers, suddenly soaked with sweat.

“Here’s your shirt,” the Wight says absentmindedly, handing back the undershirt, still covered in an amount of blood. “Shower’s over there.”

After a less than stellar shower where Chloe turns extra towels under the sink into extra clothing for herself, she emerges to find the Wight finishing writing on the pad and Stella sitting cross legged on the floor, peering at it.

“So here,” the Wight says, pushing the incomprehensible scribbles over to Chloe, “I got a good lock on him, you’ll know where he is—and where that thing he grabbed, I think it's bag shaped—is at all time.”

Chloe glances at the scribbles, then over at Stella.

“Ugh, humans,” the Wight mutters, then taps the wooden toothpick against it a few times, until a series of coordinates appear, along with a set of kilometers. “There. Can you read it now?”

At the very least, she can see he’s about fifty kilometers away, and she’ll have to touch up on her coordinate reading.

“That’s way closer than I thought,” Chloe replies numbly.

“It won’t last, demons go all over the place,” the Wight says grimly, then tears the paper from the strip of wild magic, folding it and handing it to Chloe. “Two coordinates will appear if he separates from the backpack, the pack will be the second one.”

“That’s…extraordinarily useful,” Chloe says, and her mouth’s still dry from the scrutiny of the demon, despite the lukewarm shower and the cup of stale water she took from the bathroom sink.

“It’s tied to your levels,” the Wight says, conversationally, like it’s something Chloe should know. “I watched you in your cabin for over a year, I know you skate close to that line far too often.”

“What does that mean?” Chloe asks, and the Wight closes her eyes, like Chloe’s the exasperating one.

“It means if you don’t take care of yourself, the writing will fade,” the Wight says. “If that happens, get some sleep, get some food, it’ll come back.”

Chloe shoves the paper into her pocket. Fifty kilometers is way too close for her to not track it down, though…

Though the compass points in a different direction.

“I got to get it before the college finds my research again,” Chloe says, standing. “This entire area is crawling—”

“Your college isn’t going to exist for much longer,” the Wight says, and it stills Chloe, and that’s something new. “The Toronto base fell last month—”

“—yeah, that was a fun afternoon,” Chloe interjects.

“—and now the Ottawa one. The Paris catacombs got breached, the leadership council is in shambles, so many humans are getting killed by random things imprisoned for centuries,” the Wight says, her smile sharp.

It’s a nice thought.

“There’s not going to be a college to go back to,” Wight finishes. “Just a bunch of scrambling humans trying to get power.” And she stares, hard, at Chloe.

Chloe pauses, tries to understand what exactly she’s trying to communicate. “I’m not gonna be sad about that,” she says cautiously. “They locked me away, they tried to kill my friends, they’re not good people.”

From the doorway, Stella makes a soft noise.

The older Wight’s eyes flicker down the hall, then back. “Don’t let the spirit fox fall to them,” she commands. “They still can reverse their fall.”