We were walking through the City. And by the ‘City’, I mean New York City. Manhattan, Central Park, the Empire State building, the Oculus, Soho, Times Square —there’s an image that comes to every New Yorker’s mind when the words are mentioned. But today, all I saw were closed stores and piles of snow heaped on the sidewalks to make room for cars.
Also by ‘we’, I meant Wol, Hwari, me and Mina with her own familiar, Seoul.
“So let me get this straight,” Mina said, looking nice and toasty underneath her thick parka logoed with a Canadian goose. “You have a list of places to choose from, and you chose the one place we have to walk?”
“It’s only a five-minute walk,” I said, hefting my backpack up higher on my shoulder. “Besides, they dropped you off. Couldn’t they have dropped us off?”
Mina’s scowl faded. “No. Just having them drop me off without my harabeoji finding out was a favor and a half. They all know what situation I’m in. They’ll squeeze whatever they can out of me. I need to start saving up what favor they owe me.”
“Then maybe we can stop complaining and start walking?” I suggested.
She gave me a sharp look. “I liked you better when you were rolling down a hill.”
“And I liked you better when you… Actually, I never really liked you.”
Wol sighed loudly next to my ear. I wasn’t too sure whether my familiar felt the cold or not, but today he’d chosen to place half his body in my backpack instead of walking. The top half of his body clung to my shoulder from behind, with his face ending up right near my ear. It would have been cute, except he tended to nag now that I was forced to listen. “Practitioner, we should move.”
From my peripheral vision, I saw Wol’s paw gesture towards some of the darker alleys between large buildings. I caught the ending movements of vaguely humanoid things scuttling out of view and into the shadows.
“Fuck, we’re being followed?” I asked.
“We’re not being followed, we’re being watched,” Mina hissed the last word. “There’s a difference.”
“What’s the difference?”
Wol answered for her. “Perhaps they’re sentries, and we’re encroaching on another being’s territory. Or this territory belongs to them. But the girl speaks only half-truth, we could be being followed.”
Mina frowned at Wol. “Really? Who’d follow him?”
“You literally followed me like three different times,” I said.
“With good reason.”
I rolled my eyes. “I had a bounty on my head only a couple of days ago. And… I think there’s a lot of people in this place who don’t take kindly to me.”
“He smells bad,” Seoul chose that moment to speak up, his glare fixed on my face. I could never get used to that rock-rumbling voice of his that swelled up from deep within his chest. “He do bad things last night.”
“Hush, Seoul,” Mina said gently.
I ignored him. The moment Seoul got out of the car, he lunged at me, saying I smelled of rotten fire and smoke. I knew immediately what he was referring to —my summoning of Vine. I just hadn’t realized that the Haetae would pick up on it so soon. I’d read about a lot of creatures over the last two days, but forgot to read up on the Haetae.
Mina definitely had picked up on what Seoul said and why he was acting that way. But she didn’t pry, and that earned a smidge of respect from me. Not a bad start to the partnership, in my opinion.
“Practitioners,” Wol said, his voice tired. “Can we move? Please?”
I opened my mouth to say something, thought better of it, and nodded. I began to limp in the direction of Sana’s cafe. Two teenage practitioners and three familiars —even if one of them was ghost silent— equated to a lot of ADHD energy.
“Hwari, let me know if those things watching us from the alleys start following us? Please?”
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My ghost koi swam near my feet, bobbed in acknowledgement, and sank into the shadows.
Mina whistled, keeping pace with my hobbled self. “Wish I had two familiars to boss around.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked without any hostility. It was a genuine question.
“You really only need one,” Mina answered. “And it’s rare for two familiars to agree to contract with the same practitioner.”
“Hwari and I have known each other for centuries,” Wol said proudly.
I let that sit. “That doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to only have one when you can have two.”
Mina shrugged. “It’s a payoff thing. You took Econ? Diminishing returns? It’s like that. Add in what I said about two familiars having to get along, then you have to make sure their abilities complement each other, then you have to hammer out the contracts…” She shrugged again. “Sometimes, it’s just not worth it. Also, most practitioners receive familiars that are allied with their families. The Haetaes have been matching their young with my family for generations. I knew Seoul since he was an egg. Though I wouldn’t trade Seoul for anything else in the world.”
The Haetae lifted his chest a bit higher, and I stifled a laugh. It was a bit ridiculous imagining the nearly hundred-and-something-pound mythical beast being hatched from an egg. It was equally ridiculous that he behaved so similarly to what I imagined guard dogs to be like. Stern to outsiders, but so dog-like to his practitioner.
“So, how come you didn’t bring a contract for me?” Mina asked. She gave me a side-eye. “I thought we were going to hammer out contracts and everything.”
I pursed my lip. After summoning Vine, I’d been rather busy preparing for today. Sigils, names, circles, reading up on lore… I hadn’t forgotten it. I just pushed the contract to the bottom of my to-do list, where everything else that was a little less important resided.
“I decided to see how this excursion goes first,” I said, trying to sound mysterious.
“You forgot.”
It was my turn to shrug. “If that’s what floats your boat.”
“Uh-huh, and those sigils you put on your pink backpack and your cast aren’t the reason why you’re not limping around with a crutch today?”
Shit. Nothing really went past her. But I guess not having the crutch was a dead giveaway.
I looked down at my cast. Near the toe area was a small incribed sigils for ‘good health’ and ‘protection’. They were good luck symbols, primarily used in people’s homes. But I’d bastardized it and put it on my cast. Wol and I had been skeptical, but it worked. As I keep saying, this magic thing, it’s as much about the mindset as it is about the art itself. My latest experiments only kept proving me right.
“What do they mean?” she asked. “Wait, don’t tell me. Pain? Protection? Protection from pain?”
“You can’t tell?”
“No. Looks like you messed with it,” she said. “And every country has its own sigilcraft. I wouldn’t know your American ones.”
I nodded in agreement. The book I read about sigils had said the same thing. In fact, some cultures had multiple different systems of sigilcraft. Some practitioners dedicated their lives to uncovering lost sigilcraft from forgotten civilizations. “It’s just to help me walk. I don’t want to have to run from something and end up tripping over my crutches.”
Mina gave me an even look. “You know that’s really dangerous, right?”
“I have already told him,” Wol said.
“I know,” I said. “Pain exists for a reason, it’s the body’s warning system, blah blah blah. I took biology too. It’s just…” I thought of my run-in with the daemon. “We just don’t know what’s waiting for us.”
“It’s not just that,” she said and asked Wol, “You told him everything?”
“Yes.”
She held the look for a moment longer, then turned her attention back to the snowy sidewalk. “Your body. Your choice.”
“Damn right,” I echoed without humor.
Sigils were part of a practitioner’s arsenal, but they were still part of the world. Everything in this world was built around exacting a price. Using sigils on my body like this would require payment, which I was willing to pay. The issue was that I wasn’t dealing with a specific individual. I was bartering with the world on a larger scale, universal karma, or the larger system of laws that magic was built upon. Wol had gone on and on about it, which was why we’d compromised on a bastardized sigil in the first place. I wanted to cover myself in them and get rid of the injuries completely. Even with this, we wouldn’t know what would happen to my ankle later. Probably not permanent damage, but one never knew.
But I was desperate.
Contrary to the casual, almost light-hearted conversation, I was starting to really feel the weight of this trial.
After my talk with Vine yesterday, I realized I really didn’t have any idea just what receiving my mom’s inheritance meant. The thing he told me last night, plus the fact that my familiars were keeping secrets, didn’t sit right with me. There was still an unspoken tension between Wol and me, and neither of us was willing to bring it up. But besides all that…
My mom’s inheritance. Just what was it? What kind of knowledge did it contain?
And why did my mom go to such lengths to prepare me like this? And why was my dad out of the picture?
…Just what did they want?
Who were my real opponents here?
The answer to that last one was easy.
Everyone. That’s what it felt like. That I was up against everyone except myself and my familiars.
“It’s here,” Mina said, breaking me out of my thoughts.
I looked at the Sana’s cafe.
A white building with glass walls, with the red closed sign flipped on the front door. I saw wooden tables and chairs, but no occupants. One of the glass walls had the words ‘Sana’s Cafe’ painted in red sticker paint. The lights were turned off inside. Yet, the sidewalk in front of the store had definitely been shoveled by someone, and it wasn’t the building owner. New York landlords didn’t give a shit about pedestrians —most commercial buildings like this are owned by billionaires. Why do you think people urge employees to come back to the office to work when real estate prices start falling? Because those same CEOs own real estate, that’s why, and they can’t stand losing a dime.
No. Whoever shoveled the snow had to have cared about the people who walked out in front of this store. Most likely someone who owned Sana’s Cafe or worked here.
“Hwari?” I called, and my familiar came up from the shadows. “Can you sense anything inside?” At the same time, I reached out with my own senses, trying to feel something from the building.
Mina did the same.
I did feel something, but it was subtle.If I had to describe it, it was a twisting sensation.It felt like I was watching a smoothie being blended, and they were all swirling into the middle, being sucked in and churned.
“What is that?” I muttered.
Mina answered me. “It’s a Door, Hallow.”
‘Caller, this is what is called a Lost Space.’