“Goddamit, this is like history class. Are you telling me New York is in a state of perpetual Cold War with other places? With what? New Jersey? Connecticut? Canada?”
“Less of a Cold War, and more of an eternally strained friendship,” Rosefinch said. She showed me her teeth. “One step at a time, little Mageling.”
She was right. That wasn’t pressing knowledge. The trial was. “So, going off what you said, I just walk into places and start asking questions? To who? The lonesome man in the corner booth? It just seems unlikely that anyone is going to start being a chatterbox off the bat.”
“The first conundrum was where. The second knot in question is how,” Rosefinch said. “Tell me. Do you have friends?”
“Uh, no?”
Rosefinch tilted her head in a questioning gesture. She gave a quick shake and resumed her languid demeanor. There was a bit of pity in her next words. “Then you will have to learn how to make them.”
“How do I make friends with preternaturals?” I left out ‘when I don’t even know how to make friends with people’.
“The same way you make friends with people, of course,” Rosefinch said with a knowing smile.
The fact that I was being told by a vampyr —a non-human— was insulting enough. Add that onto the fact that I wasn’t sure if vampyrs went to schools or not, it was just rubbing salt on the wound. It hurt to think that preternaturals might have better social skills than I did. Better yet, she assumed that she knew enough to dangle it in front of my face.
I didn’t feel like playing along and felt the conversation coming to an end. “Christ, six days.”
“Mmm,” Rosefinch said, looking at the sunset with a mysterious smile.
There were other questions I could ask, but I doubted she’d answer them. A part of me said that her giving me until sunset was just her way of toying with me. She’d answered the questions she’d answered, but the rest she’d either dodge or just outright keep it from me. Rosefinch would have made an excellent queen B at Charter.
But she was staying, and I thought of another question to ask. “Are you still my second?”
“No, my nanny duties ended the moment I brought you here,” Rosefinch answered. “Why?”
“Because you didn’t have to answer those questions, and I wanted to see which side of the sand you threw your stick on,” I said without pausing. “Some people want to see me win. Some want to see me lose. Others don’t seem to care.”
“Oh, you precious thing. Me? Take your side?” She narrowed her eyes playfully and wagged her finger at me, a little smile gracing her lips. She took care to enunciate each word. “I will give you this advice for free, mageling. When one of my kind claims to be on your side, care to never let them step in your shadow or trail behind you. Unless you’d care to join me?”
Her voice warped as she said the last word from husky to a multi-layered voice you only hear when watching horror films about demon-possessed little girls. The air in the car immediately shifted, and I felt my muscles tensing. I felt tears well in the back of my eyes, simply from the rawness of it.
I didn’t know if she timed it or not, but the sun finally tipped over the horizon and the finishing rays of sun succumbed to night, and the car was finally drowned in darkness. In the shadow, Rosefinch reached out with a hand and grabbed the driver’s neck. There was nothing sensual about it. It was rough as hell. “The sun has dropped, little mageling.”
The car wasn’t as big as I originally thought. If she wanted to, she could reach right over and just grab me the same way. And there wouldn’t be a damned thing I could do about it.
I felt Wol’s fur bristle near my thighs, and Hwari’s presence starting to arise from the shadows.
The wind howled outside.
I reached over and grabbed the door handle. My voice shook. “I’m going to go now.”
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The vampyr laughed, her voice returning singular again. She raised her head as she did it, a little liquid motion running through her. “Do take care, little mageling.”
I opened the door and stepped out.
“Oh, one more word of advice?”
I stopped, looking back. While I did, the driver got out of the car and held the door so I didn’t have to.
“Invest in mortal ferromancy,” she said. “Close the door, thrall.”
The driver closed the door, returned to the driver’s seat, and drove away, leaving a dust-cloud that rose to my waist. I didn’t turn my back on the car until its headlights disappeared around the corner. I stared in the direction for another five minutes before turning towards the RV.
“Jesus,” I swore, letting out a breath. “I can’t just… nothing’s fucking normal.”
“No, it’s not,” Wol said blithely.
I began walking back to the RV. “She just flipped attitude on me. Did she time that? To coincide with the sunset? Holy hell, are vampyrs just moody by nature?”
“I have not met enough of them to speak confidently on the matter.”
“Maybe it’s a girl thing,” I regretted it as I said it. That was sexist. I mean, growing up in the twenty-first century and being bullied all my life, I was sensitive to those types of things. The least I could do was take care not to offend anyone. “A vampyr girl thing,” I corrected. It didn’t sound much better.
“Have you met enough girls to speak confidently on the matter?” Wol asked.
“Oh, screw you.”
Wol gave me a little tilt of his head as he climbed up the stairs ahead of me. “A simple question, my practitioner.”
I gave him an even look, and he returned it with a blank one. I couldn’t tell whether he was messing with me or not. It was infinitely more difficult than reading human faces, due to the fact that he was a sentient magical cat.
God, how had my life become so complicated?
I leaned against the RV door without opening it. “Six days, Wol. I have six days.”
“Six days to learn. Rest. Recover,” Wol said. “It is not enough time, but it seldom is. One of the nature of practitioners cursed with the gift of knowledge.”
“Don’t get philosophical on me now,” I said. “We need to focus on concrete goals. Like outlining before an exam. Breaking my goals down by how much time each one should take. We can’t just start doing things randomly.”
Wol yawned. “We could discuss this inside.”
‘Agreed,’ Hwari chimed in, bobbing up from my feet.
“No, if I go inside, I’m going to knock out and never wake up again. I have to keep the pressure on, so that I have a reason to wake up,” I said.
Wol pawed the ground, then tilted his head. “My practitioner. You… possess some self-destructive tendencies when it comes to performance.”
“Well, I have no one to push me before, except myself. Unless it’s literally pushing me I guess,” I said, then shook my head. “Ok, goals. What’s most urgent?”
“Basic knowledge of the world, just enough to help us get by. We must focus on your practice of conjuring, a beast that can aid us when we call. Preferably a dozen for different situations. We need an instrument and a staff. We also need to deal with the state that your knife is in. Then we can forge some trinkets,” Wol fired off.
“Holy hell, Wol. I’m not going to war here. I’m just going around to make friends and ask questions.”
“Are you disregarding my advice?”
“…No. Just asking for some compromise. We have six days, but Victor might not take six days.”
Wol padded closer to me, his eyes glowing green in the night. There were no other sources of light, and I was too tired to even reach into my bag and take out the flashlight. “What I ask for would only take a day or two. And I have a feeling that the Valentine Scion will have even less luck than you in this endeavor.”
“Why?”
“Because if these preternaturals aren’t willing to talk to you, who’s an outsider from their perspective, why would they speak with Victor Valentine, who’s even more of an outsider than you?”
The question hit me like a sack of bricks.
Holy shit, Wol was right.
“Rosefinch,” I hissed as I began to understand. “That conniving, wonderful, blood-sucking, kind, and smart bitch.”
“I wouldn’t put it in those exact words,” Wol said. “But yes.”
‘I would.’
Holy shit balls, Rosefinch hadn’t been giving me advice on where to go. She was giving me advice about not being in a rush. If the Table members were so keen on keeping their cards close to their chest, they would certainly do the same with Victor. I mean, maybe the Valentine had some political pull or resources, but maybe that wasn’t an issue here. The focus was on the fact that he was an outsider; even more of one than I was.
Hell, if a majority of the Table had pledged neutrality, they wouldn’t help him out of principle. Then he’d he forced to try and take the same route as I did. Heading over to people unaligned with the table, the nobodies. Oh, sure, he might waggle some supernatural equivalent of a stack of cash in front of their eyes. But coming from a nobody background myself, their first thought would be distrust; that they’d be tricking him. Us bottomfeeders on the social totem pole could be distrusting as hell when it came to the popular kids suddenly popping up and asking us if we could do them a favor.
“The friends thing,” I muttered. “She was giving me advice about that too.”
“We will need things to trade with, my practitioner,” Wol said smugly.
I finally found the energy to push myself off the wall. “One day?”
“Two days. If you are quick.”
“Ok, I have some idea about what we want to summon first,” I said. “What we talked about before. You remember?”
“If the books are there, I could help.”
“Ok, we have a plan then,” I shook my head and dragged myself to the RV door. I took around the keys from my backpack and fiddled with them. “There was another thing Rosefinch said. What the hell is mortal ferromancy?”
“I… for the life of me, I cannot even fathom what that means,” Wol said.
I opened the RV door and we all entered together.