A familiar familiar walked into view, his stubby legs leading the way.He barked once, nose sniffing the air, then looked up at his contractor.The Haetae said something to the equally familiar figure behind him that I couldn’t quite make out.
“Hey Jain!” Mina waved her hand excitedly, her staff glowing and giving off enough light to shine her way in the other direction. “I know you’re there! Let’s talk!”
I cursed. “Oh shit.”
Wol deigned to look out the window. “The young practitioner from the trial,” he said, a slight frown in his voice. “What’s she doing here?”
“To screw up whatever I’m planning, that’s what,” I grumbled. I was tempted to pull the curtains shut and pretend I wasn’t here. But no doubt that Mina already knew I was inside.
As if she wanted to prove those thoughts right, the girl cried out one more time.“Jain! I know you’re in there!” she said with that long drag that people use when catching children in a lie.
I quickly limped over to the coffee table —stopping in the middle to throw a jacket over the books on my desk— and picked up my knife.
“I do believe she’s here to talk,” Wol said, crossing his paws over another. “She is no longer a participant in the trial.”
“Doesn’t matter. I don’t know what Mina’s capabilities are, and for all I know, she has x-ray vision and can read my books from outside,” I said. I thought about what I said. “Actually, now that she’s not a participant anymore, she’s even more of a threat. She’s not bound by any rules and wouldn’t be punished for attacking me outright. Is there anything that keeps her from just attacking me?”
“That would be barbaric,” Wol said. “And the Lawyer would have thought of that when drafting up the contract. She’d also be hunted by the Valentines if she tried such a thing.”
I paused, then shrugged at the feline. “Better safe than sorry?”
He thought about it then gave me a curt nod.“You’re talking to her?”
“Not sure we can continue our planning with her yelling from our front door,” I answered. I picked up the black hoodie.
“Yes, it might garner some unwanted attention. Will you be inviting her inside?”
I shoved my bandaged arm through the hoodie first, then my head. Pants, shirts, jackets—everything took a little more effort now. “No, outside.”
‘Do you require our presence, Caller?’ Hwari said.
“You stay in the shadows. Wol, can you stay inside? I think she’s wary of you. I don’t want her to be on guard.”
“Understood.”
“JAIN! ARE YOU—”
I hurried over to the front door and slammed it open, making my entrance —exit, rather— out of the RV, and took careful steps down just in case I fell. “Mina,” I said, guarded.
Mina was wearing a thick puffer coat that reached her knees, coupled with a pair of jeans, and long suede boots that came up to her thighs. She waded through the ankle-high snow, looking around.“Nice place you got here. Screams crazy-practitioner out in the woods, summoning demons. Except it’s a trailer park.”
I was acutely aware of the fact that she was holding the staff in one hand, while I had yet to carve one. It was one of those times that proved just how valuable Wol’s advice was. Now that I knew more about them, I could imagine why every other practitioner thought I was the village idiot walking around without one. Staves weren’t just a tool, it was a weapon—with it, practitioners could cast stored workings, rely on it to communicate with their familiars, and more. A practitioner without a staff was the same as a cop without a gun in Brownsville.
I didn’t waste any time in cutting to the matter at hand. “What are you doing here?”
Mina ignored me and continued her tour. She held out her staff towards some of the abandoned RVs, showering the darkness with the glow of her staff. My Third Eye quivered, picking up small footsteps skittering out of the way, and faces that I’d never seen before peeking out from behind cars that ducked out of sight.
She whistled. “Yours?”
I hadn’t caught sight of them until Mina had just pointed them out.“No, they just live here.”
“You should bind them,” Mina said. “Sooner or later, they’ll start trying things.”
My eyes followed the direction of her gaze. Ghosts and not-ghosts, all looking at us but trying not to be looked back at, scattered in a dozen different directions. Holy shit, I hadn’t even known. It explained why I never saw anyone else walking around during the day. I thought it was because of the snow, or just the general way of how people live in trailer parks; everyone keeping to themselves without being seen by others. But it made no sense that there were no paths leading out of the other RVs. This was an issue I would have to look into.
I shelved the problem into the never-ending to-do list in my head. “Can we stay on topic, please?”
“What topic?” she said.
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Ten seconds into the conversation and I was already exhausted. “Why you’re here.”
Mina looked down at the ground and kicked a piece of ice. It split into pieces, sliding across the top of the snowscape and triggering a chain reaction that sent the gremlin-like preternaturals disappearing into the shadows. “Well, I have some time until I fly back to Korea.”
“Are you looking for suggestions on what to do?” I asked, then started listing off things to do. “You can visit Dumbo, the little island at Pier 55, Joe’s pizza—”
“If I wanted tourist suggestions, I’d ask someone else.”
I made no effort to sound nice.“Ok, then stop dodging the question, please.Why are you here?”
Mina’s stare melted into a glare, but I didn’t budge. There was a bit of tension between us. Ever since I’d met her, she’d kept pushing boundaries—the same way bullies do before escalating into full-blown tactics meant to put you under their thumb. I’d been the target of it often enough to see where it was going. She’d been trying to see where my lines were, and if I had low enough self-esteem, she’d have pushed harder.
But I had started to push back.
Some people might not see it as such. All I did was say a few words that were a minor challenge to her authority. But often, that was enough. You show even the slightest bit of backbone, and bullies tend to back off. After all, there were easier targets that they could get for much less effort. Even at school, the only reason I hadn’t been pushed around harder was that I showed that I wasn’t scared of them. Oh, sure, they did the occasional things that pissed me off. But largely, Kevin Sloan (including his cronies) and I were stuck in this limbo-state, where he was just doing enough to make my life annoying, but not able to commit to making my life a living hell.
I didn’t want to get expelled, so I’d keep quiet. Kevin Sloan kept the balancing act of bothering me without really turning it harsh enough for it to turn into a true confrontation. After all, if the victims start fighting back, the perpetrators have more to lose —socially. Financially and legally, though, it was a whole different game, and that was one where kids like me would lose ten out of ten times.
But Mina wasn’t the daughter of some rich lawyer who had the ins with the board of education in New York City. Well, maybe she was, and if she really pushed, I bet she could make my life a living hell way more than Kevin Sloan could. But there was a different aspect to our relationship: the fact that we were both practitioners.
I knew that she thought I was the worse practitioner between us, and she was probably right. But if she thought that was reason enough that I’d be cowed enough to let her do whatever she wanted to me, she had another thing coming.
“Are you not going to invite me inside?” she said suddenly, rubbing her arms. “It’s cold.”
“You weren’t cold this morning at the top of a mountain,” I pointed out. “Mina, you’re wasting my time. And if you don’t explain why you’re here in the next five seconds, I’m going back inside.”
“Where’s your familiars?” she blurted.
I sighed and began counting. “Five.”
“You’re not serious. You can’t just start—”
“Sure can,” I answered. “Four. Three.”
“Jain Hallow, I’ve come as a guest—”
She was trying to use some archaic language rooted in practitioner tomfoolery that went for manners, and I was having none of it. “Two.”
As the last syllable was about to escape my mouth, Mina blurted out, “I’m here to ask you for a favor.”
I stopped. “What?”
She had the expression of someone who had just found out that there had been maggots in their lunch. “I said I’m here to ask you for a favor.”
“No, I heard you the first time,” I said. “What do you mean, you’re here for a favor?”
She stalled, then looked down at Seoul, her haetae. He gave her a little whine, then a bark.
“Ugh, fine,” she said. “I lost the trial, but I don’t want to go back to my clan empty-handed. I at least want to be able to go back and say that I’ve managed to get some connections in New York. But right now, I’m an outsider. None of the locals wants to even talk to me or deal with me.”
“What about the practitioners who were with you?”
“And share? Bad enough I’m out of the trial, if it turns out I asked for help from a branch member, I’d be a laughing stock. No, I need to do this on my own.”
“So… you came to me?”
“Yeah. You,” Mina said. “I don’t have any interest in the Shin shaman arts. You don’t really care if I get leverage over my family. Also, it was either you or Valentine. We can both guess who needs my help more.”
“I like how you said I’m the one doing you a favor, but you’re saying I need your help now,” I said.
Mina beamed at me. “Did I?” She let the smile drop. “I am asking you for a favor, Hallow. But I’m not blind to the fact that you’re still new to this. I’d be helping you just as much as you’re helping me.”
“I’m just not sure what you’re getting out of all this,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “Actually, what are you even planning to do?”
“Follow you around, get to mix words with the table, get my name ingrained in a few of them, and maybe become friendly enough to reach out to them later on,” Mina said. “Same thing you’d be doing. I said it before Hallow, this trial was a win-win for me either way.”
I shook my head. “I… I need a moment to wrap my head around this.”
The Haetae growled, looking like he wanted to say something, but Mina whisked her staff down in front of his nose, silencing her familiar. “Go ahead.”
I took two steps away, near the window where Wol would be perched. It was too dark to see if he was there, but the bond between us said that he was aware of everything. Of course, Hwari would have been relaying everything. The fact that Hwari hadn’t reached out with a mental message from Wol said everything I needed to know: he wasn’t about to give input on this matter.
Which meant the choice was up to me.
Shit. Honestly, having Mina on my side would be helpful. Wol knew a lot, but he didn’t know everything, and that’s everything that I lacked: knowledge. Mina didn’t seem just smart, she seemed street smart—a little brash, but that was ok. Not only that, she knew how to fight. She’d gotten out of the school without even so much as a cough from the smoke. Also, she’d been chosen precisely because her practice countered mine and Victor’s to an extent.
The question was, was she telling the truth?
My gut told me yes. Logically, yes.
Another question: would she betray me? Lie to me?
This time, my gut said no. She was a lot of things, but she didn’t strike me as a liar. Her actions at the school had been a little too earnest for that. Mina helped because she wanted to get the students out, while Victor had been feeding his little pet lizard. No, Mina didn’t seem like a…
Oh god, I didn’t think she was an evil person. Shitty, yes. Evil? No.
Holy shit, how the hell did my brain come around to that conclusion?
Which made it infinitely hard to say no to her.
And she was right. I could use the help, not just from a practitioner’s standpoint but from a practical one.
I groaned as I pivoted on my good foot. “Ok.”
“Ok, what?” she said warily.
“Ok, I’m open to it,” I said, then held up my hand before she could say anything else. “It’s not a yes. It’s a tentative maybe.”
“What are you, a college admissions counselor?”
“How old are you?”
“A senior in high school, same as you. Already got into college, though,” she said. “You?”
I skipped the question. “But first, I need you to get something for me.”
“What?”
I told her. “Can you get them to me tonight? And just leave them in on the stairs?”
“I hope your idea of a partnership isn’t using me as a glorified delivery service,” she said, narrowing her eyes.
I motioned down at my leg. “I’d be up to it, but a certain someone—”
“Fine, you got it.”
“And we’ll need to set some ground rules,” I said, and met her eyes. When my voice came out, it was colder than I had meant it to sound. “I call the shots, you’re just in it for the ride. I say bark, we bark. I decide to go left, we go left. And the moment you start pushing boundaries, you’re out. Understand me?”
She met my gaze for a long time. “Yeah, I got it, Hallow.”
“And I’m going to write up a contract, and we’re both going to sign it. If you’re uncomfortable with that, we can split ways right now.”
It took her longer to answer this time. “Understood… Diabolist.”
I smiled. “Glad we understand each other. Now, could you go and get me the things I asked for? It’s getting rather cold.”Without waiting for an answer, I walked inside.