I should have been surprised, after all, the preternatural had literally just appeared out of nowhere. But he was still running alongside me, just on the edge of my peripheral vision, like he had been there all along. I went straight to business.
“Is Hidebehind here?”
“Nope!” Tagalong said cheerfully. “Just me! Uh, w-why? W-was I supposed to wait for him? But he kept taking his time, retracing his s-s-steps… I just h-h-hitchhiked a ride here…”
Damn it. I should’ve foreseen this. The difference in their characteristics was right in their names: Hidebehind and Tagalong. Hidebehind would be limited by the rules imposed on his very being, the need to simultaneously be behind onlookers, as well as hiding from them. Whereas, Tagalong probably could get to places quicker as long as there were others heading in that same direction. I could see the mishappen creature hitching a ride on the bus, in the empty backseat of a car, or even walking with a crowd for a bit before parting ways.
“I think we’ll have to count Hidebehind out for this one,” I said darkly.
Wol, hanging on for dear life on my shoulder, gave me a sharp nod. “Things are happening too fast. This will be the decisive moment.”
‘All but certain,’ Hwari echoed. ‘Crossroads between life and death.’
I slowed to a walk. I was near the Mother Tree now. It was less than a hundred yards out. The gargantuan tree branches lay in ruins, creating the visage of a junkyard. Or that elephant graveyard scene from that lion movie. The branches covered in days of snow were nothing more than huge mounds, looking blue in the night. The particularly large branches jutted out at weird angles, casting strange shadows on the snowy plains.
Plenty of places for me to hide.
Plenty of places for people to sneak up on me.
I gulped. “Tagalong, tell me, how does your power work?”
“I-I don’t have a p-power. You d-d-didn’t answer me. Should I go back and g-get my brother?”
“No,” I said a little too quickly, just in case the preternatural decided to do just that. “I need you to do something else for me.”
“Oh. What? I can help!”
“If I ask you to tag along with a specific crowd, how would that work?”
“The bigger the group, the better!”
I nodded. Nothing but theories, but it was better than anything else I could come up with. “Then I need you to do that. Find a crowd to tag along with and tell them exactly what I’m telling you.”
“What do I say? Ooh, ooh! What do they look like!” he asked excitedly.
I told him.
“Then I’ll be off!”
Tagalong’s presence abruptly disappeared just as I reached the graveyard of the Mother Tree.
The Hudson Witch and the Geistheilers had done work. The ashes of the Mother Tree had been gathered into neat little piles, which were mixed in with the snow. They had been spaced apart so that, come spring, they would enrich the soil beneath. Walking through the grave, that’s what this place was now, a grave, my Third Eye gave me glimpses into the past that I already knew. My trial with Victor and Mina, the white fire burning up the Mother Tree and the Mushkin, their silent farewell as the flames consumed them all.
“You are tardy, Son of Miru.”
I turned slowly to find Charlotte Valentine standing in front of the largest heap of ash, where the Mother Tree had once couched.
She was facing away from me. In this freezing weather, she wore nothing more than a frilly shawl on top of her formal black dress. She wore plain loafers of the same color. When she turned around to face me, I noticed that rather than sink into the snow, they stayed aloft as if their owner weighed no more than a songbird.
“You know,” I said. “You being here is basically a confession of what you did?”
“Is it?” she said, in the same tone that one might talk about the weather. The fascinator on top of her grayish hair gleamed in the dark, and I got the sense that it wasn’t just a fasion statement. It was a tool of sorts.
Her little girl familiar smiled at me from its mirror dimension. Her teeth had been filed to sharp points.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Wol leaped off my shoulders, his paws barely leaving a mark in the deep snow. He faced off against her familiar, eyes studying its every move. “Careful, practitioner. I do not recognize what that familiar might be.”
Charlotte Valentine hadn’t moved from her spot. She was unarmed. No staff. Her hands were neatly folded in front of her stomach. Nothing in those bony fingers. In fact, except for the fascinator, I couldn’t detect an ounce of magic coming from her.
“So you wouldn’t mind if I’m on my way then?” I lifted the Mother Tree’s branch. Not burnt, not damaged. A branch that had been torn free from the Mother Tree during the attacker’s assault on her. “I have to show this to the Hudson Witch. Tell her I found the killers.”
“I do remember my grandson saying he was ordered to bring the killers to justice.” Charlotte carefully lifted a hand to the light gleaming from the mirror-girl. She studied her nails.
“Where’s Victor?” I asked.
“Ensuring that those responsible answers for their crimes.”
So he wasn’t here. Good. “…He knows about this? What you did?”
“Even if I were somehow responsible in this theory of yours, he is much too young to understand the forces that have necessitated such a machination.”
“That’s a no then,” I said. “Well, as I said, I have places to be.”
She lowered her hand and finally gave me her undivided attention. “I did not yet give leave, young man.”
I ignored the words, briskly turning around to leave. At least, I tried to. My feet wouldn’t move.
I looked down.
The snow had frozen around my feet up to my ankles. I tried moving them. It didn’t budge.
Alarm sent adrenaline coursing through my veins at that fact. I was trapped. More alarmingly, how and when? I hadn’t felt a thing.
When I looked up, the girl in the mirror winked and blew a kiss my way.
“Uh, well. That’s not good,” I said, feeling stupid. Rightly so. My hand
Melting of water, reshaping water, even controlling the density of the ice… that was transmutation.
If it were magical ice, maybe I could—
“Mirium, if he finishes putting his hands in his pocket to grab whatever accursed thing he is reaching for, I permit you to pull him into the mirror.”
The mirror containing the girl floated over, and I got a better look. Pale skin so perfect without so much as a single blemish, a blue-sleeveless blouse that showed off her neckline and shoulders, and a face caught somewhere between teenage girl and young woman. She smiled, her pallid eyes smoothing into thin lines.
“I’ve been so lonely,” Mirium whispered. “Won’t you keep me company, Jain?”
“Back up,” Wol snarled, raising his heckles. But Charlotte’s familiar paid him no mind.
I should’ve run the moment I saw Charlotte waiting for me here. I didn’t know that much about Society yet, but I had read the context clues. Charlotte was a Big Wig. Capital B. She was basically the Society equivalent of a c-suite executive in her family, and there was no way for me to match up against her in a fight. Forget trickery and using my wits, she’d tricked me without so much as lifting a finger.
Charlotte Valentine didn’t give me so much as a shrug. The poker face was sealed on tight, and I had a damned tough time trying to see past it. I was out of my league here in every aspect.
“How’d you know I’d end up here?” I asked, trying to change the topic. “Divination?”
“An elementary exercise. You seem to have a penchant for finding things. You would use this place to stage a tracking spell, using the connection between the branch in your hand and the ashes that the Hudson Witch possesses,” she said. She reached for her fascinator, fiddling with it. “Divination is unreliable at the best of times. You are lucky that you do not possess your mother’s talent for it.”
I had to keep her talking. Stall. “You knew my mother?”
“Yes,” Charlotte said. “Though I was not what you would call fond of her. No one was. Except your father, I suppose.”
“Why?”
Granny Charlotte arched a delicate eyebrow. “Surely you have heard from others by now about her?”
I gritted my molars remembering the conversation with Vine about Khangai. Trying not to show it on my face, I scowled. “Heard what?”
The expression passed through her face in phases. First confusion, then annoyance, and finally amusement. She thought she knew something I didn’t, and that was all it would take to get her talking. That’s the thing about rich people who think they’re smart. They can’t help but want to show off how smart and superior they are, rubbing it in the faces of those who’re not as good.
“In a region called Khangai, your parents caused the loss of Four-hundred-ninety-seven lives. All because your mother deemed it prudent to disturb the slumber of a Great Ghost,” Charlotte said. “They were frequent patrons of the Black Market network, with dealings throughout China, South America, and India. Your father was more than once a cult leader in his teens. A commune, he called it.” She paused for a second. “Speaking of their teen years, you might find this detail illuminating. Your parents led a rather exclusive club. Care to guess the nature of it?”
She didn’t even give me the time to guess. “Petty, small-minded things, so trivial that no one bother escalating. Misplacing the robes of lower-caste Society heirs, who could ill-afford such losses. Borrowing their books without any intention of returning them. Laying a hex, to make their belongings smell.” She smiled. “Does it remind you of something?”
I felt my eyes narrow in response. I didn’t answer that.
“Yes. I imagine in mortal terms, your parents would be equivalent to tormentors of your own,” Charlotte said. She didn’t smile, but it was in her voice. Miriam snickered, using her hands to stifle the laughs. “Why? Surprised that I know of your station at school? I may not know everything there is about your life, young Shin. But had your parents been mortal, be assured that they would have been the kind to consort with your petty tormentors.”
I couldn’t stop myself from asking an honest question. “Why didn’t anyone stop them”
“Because they were highborne practitioners,” Charlotte said, as if that made all the sense in the world.
“Heirs of ancient high blood. Families with history,” Wol supplied to my benefit.
I scoffed in Charlotte’s direction. “What’s the point of being highborne if they’re all just bullies and cheaters?”
She made a frustrated sound. “The practice of a Society family is… it is… You cannot compare it to monetary wealth. It is measured in years, in centuries. It contains the lifetime of ancestral practitioners who dedicated themselves to the craft.” Annoyance, contempt—emotions that I was too used to when people were speaking down to me—began to creep into her words. “Of course, you would not know. Heirs of such families and the power that they could inevitably wield are unfathomable to a mundane such as yourself.”
I felt myself growing angry. “I don’t care how valuable a practice is, if the practitioner is a piece of crap. You know, for a thief who came to take what belongs to someone else, you guys sure like to coat it up in—”
“It is not yours, Young Shin.” Charlotte shook her head.
“The hell it isn’t. I’m my mother’s son. My name is Jain Shin Hallow. I’m the only thing left of the Shin blood—”
“Have you not wondered why your William Hallow, your father, is not here?” Charlotte said with a knowing smile. “Better yet. Not why, son of Miru. But who.”
And my mind stopped. “What are you—”
“Your mother, son of Miru. She’s alive. And your father is with her right now.”