The streets of New York are colder. Even more so when leaving the warmth of a restaurant filled with the scent of hot burgers sizzling on the grill, fries being loaded onto metal baskets, ready to be salted and shaken.
I bunched up my shoulders and started walking home. Hwari forged ahead, invisible to pedestrians. She sank into the sidewalk, reappearing a few moments later like a shark chasing prey.
“Practitioner, we must discuss this,” Wol said. There was no one around us. Not this late at night, especially around the Trailer Park where I live. “This… interview. It may not be as it seems.”
“Nothing is as it seems,” I commented darkly, rubbing my hands together for warmth. I breathed on them, tiny splinters of painful feelings returning to their tips. Before the sensation could fade, I shoved them into my hoodie pocket.
“They say assessment, but we have no idea what they’ll be looking for,” Wol continued. He slunk forward more, less in my backpack and more with weight on my shoulders, wrapping his body around my neck for warmth. “Let’s see if there’s a copy of Society’s Standards back home.”
“Wol,” I said, a little heatedly.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the black cat staring at me, waiting.
“Can we… let’s just… Let’s talk about this tomorrow?”
There was a tense moment. The tension that had been building for weeks. I could feel it. It was at the tipping point. Contracted familiar with countless centuries under his belt, but I wasn’t sure how many of those centuries were spent dealing with moody teenagers.
“Time is pressing, Practitioner,” Wol said softly.
Hwari rose out of the street, then disappeared into the shadows again.
I shook my head, careful not to give too much momentum, or it would upset the cat’s precarious balance. Not that I could throw him off even if I wanted—cats and their reflexes.
“I know. Tomorrow. Bright and early. I heard the man.”
“That’s not the time I’m talking about.”
I stopped in my tracks.
My heart lurched. Confrontation. The tipping point was over the edge, and things were starting to pour out.
“Time moves, Jain,” Wol said, using my name. “With or without us. You know this.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” My voice was flat.
I felt his claws flex, digging into my shoulders without piercing the hoodie, then retracting. “The world does not wait for us.”
“I said—”
He pressed on, his mouth right next to my ear. “Just because you wrap the blankets over your ears and pretend that nothing is happening doesn’t mean that things are not happening. Your mother and father have practically declared war on us. Hostilities will grow. Not to mention, with the Shin inheritance, these Society Practitioners visiting you will be the least of the effects of their attention. We must prepare.”
“Wol, stop talking.” I gritted my teeth.
“But my familiar was on a roll now. “This is the first time we have left the house since your father visited. And why? Because we were dragged out. Next time, the ones who drag us out might not be as friendly, Jain.”
“I’m resting. We… the trial was tough. I need time—”
“Time for what?” Wol hissed in my ear. “You’ve been holed up in your bed doing nothing. Nothing!”
He spat the last word.
I stayed silent.
“You began your staff, then abandoned it. Our contract with the Three Brothers in the Hudson Witch’s domain needs revisiting. Abjurational wards, more spirits to contract with, diving deeper into the Shin and Hallow arts—what have you even done, Jain?”
“We can talk about this at home.” I strode forward.
He leaped off my shoulders and blocked my way.
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I stepped past him.
Then Wol attacked me.
I mean, he’s a small little thing. A house cat. Nothing like those barn cats or wild cats. Yes, he’s a familiar and, as I said, a semi-immortal creature that a mortal like me has no hope of understanding. But still.. He’s a cat.
He knocked me over.
I don’t even know how it happened. One second, I was sidestepping to avoid him, and I felt Wol’s weight slam into the inside of my leg right above my ankle. At the same time, he wrapped himself around the opposite side of the ankle to ensure I couldn’t step out for balance, and I ended up falling to the ground.
Wol didn’t waste a second. His form blurred, climbing up my falling body and placing a paw on my neck and keeping it there.
“We,” he said quietly, warm breath fogging up the air in between us. “Are not done, Practitioner.”
“Get off me,” I said. I could’ve pushed him off, but I didn’t.
“Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just tired. I’m—”
“Tell me.”
“It’s nothing. Let’s just, I’m tired, Wol.”
He slapped my throat. “Tell me, or we will stay here all night, Child.”
“Wol, move.”
“Tell—”
I grabbed him and tried to set him down on the side.
He slashed at my eye.
“OW! YOU—”
Wol started hissing, yowling, and scratching everywhere.
Ever heard a cat scream? Well, that’s what Wol sounded like times a hundred.
And honestly, it got to me.
I started fighting back.
I grabbed him, trying to throw him off of me. But the damned cat was fierce, not to mention cats are built to hang out. The fucking familiar bit me, his claws digging into my hands and hanging on there. Blood dripped down my hands, and the sleeves of my hoodie got shredded to bits. No matter how I tried, he snapped at whatever limb came near him—mostly my hands. I could’ve kicked him, but I didn’t have the heart to do it.
We fought for maybe a minute.
I finally stopped. Wol stopped too, looking none the worse for our little spat. But he was breathing hard.
“Tell me,” he repeated.
And that was it. The tipping point was well over the half-way point, and the waterfall cascaded down the dam I’d worked so hard to build.
“Tell you what?” I laughed heartlessly. “That I’ve been rejected from the only college that I had the potential of going to? I don’t have money, Wol. I’m fucking poor. Look at me, Wol. I can’t even buy food. I just ate those Society Practitioner’s leftovers, because I couldn’t pay.”
He said nothing, and it only egged me on.
“I thought being the Shin Shaman would fix things. But what does it do? It fucking breaks everything to SHIT!” I screamed and threw my backpack at the wall, where it fell to the ground lifelessly.
“My life is fucking ruined, Wol. It’s fucking nothing. I’m nothing. I’m worth nothing, and I’m going to continue to be worth nothing, and there ain’t a damned fucking thing any fucking title or Practitioner last name can do about it.”
“It’s not ruined,” Wol said quietly.
“It fucking is,” I argued back. Hot things fell down my tears. “I’m… I can’t go to college. While everyone else is off in their summer houses, I’m in a fucking trailer. And in the dark, reading books that don’t mean shit. For what? They’re here to take it all away anyways, Wol.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true!” I screamed in the air, slamming my injured fist on the ground just to hurt myself, to feel something, to make someone feel pain and hurt, because I wanted them to, but the only person I could do it to was me. “It’ll never fucking end. It never will. This whole Hallow shit, it’s bullshit. It fucked me up. I lost the only family I had, and the fucking—the only other person in the world who might care about me doesn’t give a shit about me. I fucking fight and fight and fight, and for what? Just to keep the inheritance? Why? No one gives a shit about me.”
“That’s not true either,” he said.
I was breathing hard.
My voice broke again. “…My mom wants me dead, Wol.”
“Oh, Child.”
I started to sob. “No one’s on my side.”
“My fucking dad, that useless fucking piece of shit, he just—he just fucking left me. And he—he just moved all our stuff out of the apartment, and boxed up all my stuff and sent it to me through the fucking post office.” The tears wouldn’t stop coming. “A-a-a-a-and, my mom. That… that—” Don’t call her that, a small voice whispered. “She never came to see me. She didn’t even ask about me, Wol.”
“…My parents don’t want me, guys.”
I shoved my palms into my face and sat there, crying.
I felt Wol’s weight settle into my lap. A moment later, Hwari’s coldness joined him.
“Not true, Practitioner,” Wol said.
“It’s true. You were there. You were both there.”
‘Not that, Jain Shin Hallow,’ Hwari murmured.
I looked up.
Wol and Hwari were staring at me.
“We care about you,” Wol said, his amber-green eyes granite-steady.
My heart did a little turn.
“We are on your side. Yes, you will continue to fight. Yes, perhaps your parents have turned their back on you. Yes, perhaps you will never go to this college you speak of. But alone? No one caring about you?” Wol’s voice grew fierce. “You are not alone. And no one is allowed to treat you like you don’t matter, even you, especially you, because that’s simply not true, Practitioner. You are cared for, and to us two at least, you are the most important human in the entire world.”
Oh god.
‘Come death, or cold waters, neither the three reapers nor the drowned men may separate us,’ Hwari said. ‘Your body may be ground to dust, and your soul returned hence, but I will never forget you, Caller.’
“Practitioner,” Wol said gently. “You speak as if you are alone. You are not. Have I not been there for you? Have Hwari not been there with you? We did not leave. We stayed.” He placed a paw on my cheek. “So stop hurting yourself and walking the path of ruin, hoping that someone looks. Because I assure you, Practitioner. We see it.”
Had that been what I had been doing? Moping around, hoping for the inevitable, that someone would step up and care? Some false pseudo-depression-esque tantrum to see who would reach out?
Deep down, I knew this conversation was just making me feel better. The sick film with which I saw the world through—turning it all grey and blue—would be back tomorrow. Maybe even before that. I’d be back to being paralyzed in bed, feeling the weight of every little task crushing me, inch by inch. Suffocating me until I drowned.
But for now, none of that mattered.
“That doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to fight anymore,” I whispered. “There’s no winning, Wol. And it’s just us three. No one else is in our corner.”
“You are a Shin. A Hallow. And one of the most talented, if not the most talented, Practitioner I have had the pleasure of contracting with,” Wol urged. “Things will get worse, but Jain, if I thought it impossible, I would not push you. I push you, because I believe you have what it takes. As a familiar, have I ever advised you towards death? I advise you to fight, because I’ve seen what you have, and you have what it takes to win.”
No sooner had he said the words than did the air shift.
The winter wind took on something more—becoming more—harmonious notes, injecting sinister undertones that sent creepy-crawlies skittering down my spine. I shuddered from head to toe and turned in the direction of the alley where the sensation had come from. The shadows grew longer, stretching past the street lamps that cast them. One of the welcome flags attached to the poles flapped violently, sounding like shots had been fired.
And I realized, a little too late, that we weren’t alone.
The ghost came through the walls and ran up to me.
“Holy shit!”