“I can’t believe you’ve done this, Avery.”
“Listen, I had no other choice.” Hannah recognized the man’s voice without opening her eyes. She felt cozied up somewhere soft, hunched in a little ball on her side.
“You could have offed her on the street and tossed her body in the river! That’s a choice!”
“You act as if I’m taking pride in my decision,” he sounded very peeved at the woman who was barking her retorts at him, her quick footsteps on the floor around Hannah’s head alluding to her anxious habit of pacing. “The instant I brought her here I knew it was a mistake. But now it’s got to be handled this way--Talia, please, stop looking at me as if I’ve lost my head.”
“You have!” The woman hissed coolly. “This is criminal, Avery!”
Hannah’s head hurt. As sleep receded from her senses, she was aware of her face being squished up against a cushion, and that she was lying on what felt like a wide sofa with a blanket tossed over her torso. Her shoes were gone from her feet, and she couldn’t feel the edges of her glasses on the ridge of her nose as she squeezed her eyes tightly together, trying to collect her thoughts. Am I on the train? Did I fall asleep on my commute home?
“Will you two stop bickering?” Another man’s voice, markedly younger than the two speakers, rang through their conversation, cutting them off from ramping up once more and going for one another’s necks. “It’s been nearly two hours.”
“I’d love that,” the man in the peacoat groaned. “I’m starving, I’m tired, and all I’ve done the last two hours is listen to her berate me. Let’s call a truce.”
“A truce?” The woman barked fiercely. “As if you deserve such mercy!”
Hannah opened her eyes a crack, and she found herself to indeed be lying on a long couch upholstered with neat gray velvet. Before her, a stone floor stretched to a large fireplace that beheld a dormant hearth, and running up the length of it to the marble mantel, carved and finely polished wood in the shape of spiraling trees twisted elegantly on either side, framing the unlit logs on their iron stand.
Oh, God, she thought, her pulse quickening in her chest as memories began to flood into her mind of all that had occurred since her shift at the cafe. I’m not on the tube--I’m not in London at all.
When she heard a soft shuffle of feet, she knew that someone was standing nearby, just out of her periphery to the far left of the sofa. There was the sound of people eating somewhere--porcelain plates and metallic forks clattering politely on a table’s surface--and Hannah could smell fresh bread wafting in the air. Her stomach grumbled, irritated at being starved for so long.
“I agree,” another voice--a young girl, maybe in her teens--spoke from behind the sofa a ways off. “George is right--it’s getting stale.”
“Stale?” The first woman who had been berating the man in the peacoat snarled, and Hannah realized that she was standing directly behind the sofa, possibly even with her hands curled over the edge of it, looming above her as she lay still. “This is just about the most reckless thing that’s been done by Guild hands in the last few centuries, and you think I’m being stale by chewing him out for this?”
“Talia, I promise, I’m thoroughly chewed,” the man in the peacoat sounded completely exasperated. “You’ve majorly achieved your goal.”
“Shut it!”
“We’ve all done a fine job in waking up our guest,” an elderly gentleman’s voice softly sent everyone in the room into frozen silence, hands hovering over dishes and pacing feet going stark still. Hannah felt a prick of fear start in her temples and wash all the way down her body to the tips of her toes as she slammed her eyes shut once more, extinguishing the crack she had dared to peek through.
“Of course, we’ve given her no real reason to want to be in our presence since she’s arrived here, seeing as we’ve been lamenting her existence into high heaven for the whole of the morning,” the older man’s voice continued on easily--kindly. Hannah could feel the room bristle at his gentle reprimand. “I wouldn’t blame her if she wanted to remain silently listening for a while instead of dealing with our rude squabbles.”
Hannah felt eyes on her, and she felt a rush of head climb up her neck. How had he known?
“Now you’ve done it,” the younger man of the bunch chided whoever he was pointedly speaking to.
The elderly man chuckled, and Hannah felt a bright stab of emotion that pinned her soul to her stomach--it reminded her so poignantly of Bartrum that it sucked air from her lungs. “Perhaps, however, if we assure her now that she is safe, and that we mean her no harm while she is under our roof, she would consider breaking her vigil.”
Taking a deep breath, Hannah let her eyes open, and she put an elbow under herself to push up a bit off of the lush velvet of the sofa. She immediately glanced around at the blurry shapes of people who were clustered near the sofa that she sat on, and she straightened her shoulders, spying her glasses lying discarded on the heavily ornate coffee table at her knees. Once she had retrieved them, wiped them gently on her tee-shirt, and placed them on her face, she blinked around in wonder at her surroundings.
The room she found herself seated in was an enormously spacious living chamber with a gray flagstone floor and black brick walls. Before her stood the cold fireplace, richly decorated with its oak and marble mantelpiece, and she was seated on one of two large sofas that crowded around it, along with a couple other smaller single-occupancy couches and seats.
There were no windows, and the iron lamps that lined the walls were all aglow with snapping white flames that crackled behind the frosted glass scones. All across the walls spreading out from the fireplace were ancient bookshelves crammed to bursting with texts--leather-bound novels, textbooks, paperbacks, hardcovers--the assortment appeared as regal as if an entire section from the city library had been put together lengthwise and hung around the perimeter of the room. Hanging on the ceiling above were maps of all shapes and sizes; some with holes in them, some bursting with fresh ink, some gleaming with embossings of gold or silver, some as large as area rugs and as detailed as the intricate oil paintings from The National Gallery.
As much as Hannah wanted to marvel at the room, and indeed wanted to turn to see what lay behind her, her focus eventually returned back to the people collected around the safe haven of her sofa.
The man in the peacoat caught her eye first, except now he had traded it in for a soft button down and simple trousers. He stood off to her right, his arms crossed over his chest, his blue eyes narrowed harshly down upon her. Hannah noticed that he was shoeless, and that he was donning polka-dotted socks. Beside him, sitting in one of the small single recliners, was a younger man who was looking at her with fascination. He was olive-skinned, with a brush of freckles beneath neatly-cropped brown bangs and thickly-framed wire glasses. His white tee-shirt was rumpled, as if he had picked it up from the floor or out of a hamper before pulling it on.
“Well,” the woman’s voice came from behind Hannah, and she jumped, lurching forward to look over her shoulder. “At least she’s not screaming.”
The woman, the same one that Hannah had seen speaking to the man in the peacoat at the cafe a couple days prior, towered over her from where she stood behind the sofa, her fingers drumming on the back of the cushions where they were clenching the wood. She was still strikingly beautiful, even in what appeared to be her silken pajamas, and her waterfall of curled hair was piled up on top of her head in a perfectly messy bun. She looked as if she herself had also just woken up.
“A Commoner!” The young man exclaimed from his seat, and he leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees. “I didn’t even know such a thing was possible. Doesn’t Brink have wards against these kinds of things?”
“Yes,” the woman groaned, releasing her hands from the couch and crossing her arms high over her chest. “But of course, it would take someone with power like Avery’s who knows how to pull the right strings in order to dance around them.” She leered down at Hannah with narrow, darkened eyes. “Someone as bleating stupid as Avery, too.”
“Will you give it a rest?” The man no-longer-in-the-peacoat snapped, tossing up his hands.
“Friends,” the elderly voice once more cut through the bickering, sending everyone into quiet. “Let’s be good hosts. George, will you get our visitor something to drink, please?”
“Is tap water alright?” The young bespectacled man, George, asked Hannah as he stood from his seat. “I could make tea, but I’m not sure if we’ve got any left in the tin. Unless you’d be fine drinking boiling water with a bit of lemon?”
“Um,” Hannah’s throat felt particularly dry as she tried to speak and it caught in her throat. She cleared it, “water will be perfectly alright. Thank you.”
George grinned and leapt up to his feet, moving behind the sofa. Hannah glanced over her shoulder to where he headed off to, and she saw that the rest of the room beheld a massive oak dining table where three other young people, two men and another woman, sat with the remains of breakfast on the plates set before them, all of them transfixed upon her curiously. More bookshelves crammed the walls, and Hannah spotted a few writing desks amid the stacks, and a large workbench with a dozen or so bottles of various sizes lining its surface. There was an archway to the right that led to what Hannah could meagerly make out to be an entrance to a kitchen, and a closed door that was potentially indicative of a washroom. Past all of that, there was a stately stone archway on the farthest wall in the back that led to a wide set of stone stairs heading upwards and somewhere out of Hannah’s line of sight.
George strode to the table, grasped a pitcher of water that was set at its center, and he used the corner of his shirt to wipe off a drinking glass that looked only slightly drunk from. He filled it, and as he did, the woman who stood behind Hannah crossed out from beside it and came to Hannah’s left, standing squarely parallel to were the other man--she had called him ‘Avery’?--still stood, hands folded up into his armpits.
“You’d better have the explanation of the century,” she said hotly, jabbing a finger in his direction before settling into one of the armchairs beside the sofa and crossing her legs in a huff.
“Talia, dear,” Hannah at last saw the source of the elderly gentleman’s voice. He came into view from behind her where he had been seated at one of the far writing desks on the back wall, moving slowly and deliberately towards the fireplace, carrying a steaming mug clasped between two wrinkled hands. “Let’s allow for a grace period, shall we?”
He was possibly in his seventies, and he was a short, lean man with a slight hunch to his shoulders and very smartly-cropped white hair. He had a cleanly shaven beard, and his pale skin showed his years as he smiled kindly towards her, the leathered creases moving upwards in all directions around pale eyes. He wore all black, and he too was sock-footed, opting for a pair with little blue stripes across gray wool. When he reached the fireplace, he rolled his shoulders back, and he fixed Hannah with a gentle, appraising look. It was only then that Hannah realized he was more rather smiling over her shoulder, his gaze not quite landing upon her face, and she understood after a second’s pause and a moment’s humbling revelation that he was blind.
“Dean,” the elderly man motioned in the direction of the man referred to by the woman as ‘Avery’, and Hannah caught herself clinging onto the name, feeling a tide of something that almost resembled relief crashing over her. “Why don’t you regale us with all that’s happened since your most recent time in The Known?”
Dean. At last, he has a name.
“None of the fluff matters much,” Dean retorted shortly. “I brought her here because I had no choice, Emery. Really; as much as Talia wishes that I would have murdered her, I am not so quick to kill. It was either bring her back, or risk her running off and spreading word of all she’s seen.”
Talia sneered at him, and the elderly gentleman, who must’ve been the aforementioned Emery, merely looked thoughtful. “Perhaps you’d be so kind as to humor an old man and elaborate.”
George returned to Hannah’s side and handed her the smudged water glass, holding out his other hand in greeting. “I’m George,” he beamed down at her with one of the first genuinely nice gestures that Hannah had experienced since her whole pitiful fiasco had sprung into motion. “Need anything else?”
“I’m Hannah,” she replied. “Thank you for this, and no, I’ll be fine for a bit,” she nodded her thanks as she gave his warm hand a feeble shake. He moved back to his armchair and settled into it, and Dean moved to the back of it, unfolding his arms and leaning his elbows on the high back of the seat, his hands clasped inches over George’s head. “I’m happy to tell you all that’s happened,” Hannah spoke up, facing the man named Emery. He cocked his head in her direction slightly, and his smile was unwavering as he nodded, taking a sip from his mug, the steam curling around his frosted temples. “But first, would one of you mind enlightening me on where we are? What sort of a building is this?”
“You’re not really in the best position to be asking questions,” Talia brooded from her chair, kicking an ankle over her knee. The three others from the dining table had come to stand in a semi-circle beside the couch, each of them with their hands in their pockets or holding glasses of pale juice from the last drops of breakfast. “In fact, you’d think an intruder would want to stay quiet as all get out when surrounded by strangers who aren’t very pleased at the sight of her.”
“You’re always so deliciously blunt,” George called with a mocking grin from his seat. “It’s a wonder to me that you’re still single.”
Talia shot to her feet and practically bore her teeth at the young man, “I swear to God, George--”
“Enough,” Emery’s interruption wasn’t sharp, but the word held enough weight to stop Talia in her tracks. Hannah watched the older gentleman curiously as he continued to stare straight ahead past Hannah at some far point, but his eyes were suddenly brighter, as if catching some gleam of nearby light off of one of the lamps hung on the wall. “Until I say so, this girl is a guest in our home. We will treat her as such.” Talia sank back into her chair with a growl, and George kicked one leg over the other in prideful glee. “That being said, I would very much like for one of you to tell all of us the events leading up to your arrival here.”
Hannah felt violently vulnerable, suddenly feeling that familiar rush of heat climbing upwards to redden her cheeks--she had underestimated how many sets of watchful eyes it took for her to feel exposed--and with all of their gazes upon her, she felt her tongue tie in her mouth, rendering her stuttering.
“I…I don’t…”
“Oh, let me,” Dean interrupted her with a distinctly annoyed sigh, running a hand through his fringe of dark hair. “It’s my fault, I suppose. I’ve brought this whole mess down upon us, so it’s only fair that I should be the one to explain.” He stared at her with a frown, swiping a dismissive hand in her direction. “This all began when I was walking the streets up in The Known following a faint bit of Syndicate presence. I had been tracing it for a few hours, and it led me--amazingly--straight to the cafe I’ve been hunkering down at in Westminster. When I couldn’t get a seat, I left, and as soon as I stepped over the door’s threshold, the thread vanished.”
“What sort of thread was it that you were following?” Emery asked. Hannah folded her hands around her water glass and took a small sip, trying to steady herself as the combined attention of the others in the room mercifully swung to focus squarely on Dean.
“Something frustratingly subtle; I hadn’t quite worked out what its nature was before it disappeared.” George looked upward at Dean while he spoke, and he tossed an arm lazily behind his head, one of his legs bobbing over his knee. “It had been tugging at me for days, though, and I felt like I was making little progress.” Dean locked eyes with Hannah, and she bit her lip nervously. “So, you can all imagine my surprise when I’m about half a mile downwind from the cafe--cursing my total loss and contemplating a stiff drink--and I stumble upon a shifting mass of shadow coming creeping out from an alleyway and rocketing through the gutters of the streets back in the direction that I came from.”
Talia made a soft grunting noise, and Hannah saw one of the men from the table shift forward on his feet, his ginger brows peaked with interest. “I chased it down, and when I reached where it had stopped, it was all but seconds away from ripping the foundation off of the coffee shop I’d left a little less than an hour prior. It was unlike anything I’d felt from shadow-work before--it was…hungry. Desperate. And it was seemingly hell-bent on forcing its way into the cafe, but something I couldn’t identify was holding it back, almost as if wards had been placed.”
“What was that stuff? All the smoke--it was a living thing?” Hannah asked then, and all eyes turned to her once more. “You said in the Stratum that it was trying to get to me. Was it some sort of creature?”
“I’m…not sure yet,” Dean admitted with another swipe through his hair. Hannah noticed that it consistently fell to the right side of his face, perpetually dangling a bit of bang over his eye. “All I know is that it took an incredible amount of my energy to dissipate it--more than any other bit of shadow I’ve come up against by any Syndicate hand.”
“You got rid of it, though?” Talia asked from her chair.
“Barely. I made a mess of the cafe in doing so.”
“The cafe,” Hannah gasped, bringing a hand to her face. “Oh, God, whatever will the Fullerton’s think when they see what’s happened to the window!”
“Windows can be fixed,” Dean raised a cynical eyebrow at her. “I swear, you Commoners worry about the strangest things sometimes--we were just discussing how there was a particularly potent shadow trying to weasel its way into a shop which you alone were the only inhabitant of. A bit more pressing than a broken bit of glass, wouldn’t you say?”
“Dean, continue, please,” Emery said softly from his place by the hearth, and Dean rolled his eyes, motioning sharply to Hannah.
“After that, I had to go on a manhunt after this one went shrieking into the streets. I barely managed to wall her in before she got out of sight. And then she nearly broke my nose!”
George burst out in a laugh, “you got punched by a girl? Oh, that is rich!” He leaned towards Hannah, “how did it feel to get a solid hit in, eh? Did he cry when you knocked him on his ass?”
“Shut up,” Dean grunted, smacking George on the back of the head and sending him forward with a yelp. “Need I remind you that I had just used all my power to handle the shadow, block the entire cafe from Commoner’s senses, and then encase an entire alleyway in order to stop her from escaping, all the while slipping through that blasted torrent of rain? I was a little preoccupied!” Hannah was fighting a chuckle of her own as George continued to howl with laughter, and a few of the others from the table were stifling grins, making Hannah’s nerves wane slightly.
“Why did you chase her, Dean?” Emery’s question was enough to bring the laughter to a halt, and Hannah found the old man to be studying her--or at least the air around her. His pale gaze was unblinking and full of inquisition, but Hannah also sensed something…deeper. Something that she couldn’t name. Emery was watching her with the air of one who was poised to pounce, his eyes creating tension, even if she knew that it was impossible for him to actually see her. But even so, the hairs on the back of her neck rose once more under the pressure of him.
“Something happened,” Dean looked suddenly ruffled, his face flushing. He seemed to be searching for the right words to say as each of the people standing around him eyed him with impatience.
“Care to share?” Talia grumped. “Or shall we make something up?”
“Let’s hear it, Dean,” George encouraged from below the man’s elbows. “Out with it.”
“I couldn’t Eclipse her.” Dean finally muttered, and Hannah swiveled back to look at him, only to flinch at his stare which was locked onto her with an oddly confused anger. Dean’s words sent a ripple through the room--electricity that bit into everyone present--and Talia specifically winced, her mouth opening slightly as she gaped at him. George had gone very still in his armchair, his eyes still gazing upwards in disbelief.
“I tried three times,” Dean continued, clasping his hands together once more, his elbows leaning heavily on the chair’s back. “Every attempt I made was met with total silence.” He glanced at Emery. “My power didn’t even leave me--didn’t even muster--it was like nothing I’ve ever felt before; as if I were hitting up against the side of a mountain.” When he looked back to Hannah, she saw that the anger had shifted into a coldly peculiar bow of his head. “I couldn’t touch her.”
“But…how is that possible?” The man with the ginger brows and shag of fiery curls dropped his arms from where they had been crossed over top of his chest as he listened to the tale. “She’s Common.”
“Indeed,” Dean groaned. “She’s about as Common as they get.”
“Unless she’s lying,” Talia said with a sharp lift of one brow. “Who’s to say she’s not just warded herself to appear as such? Perhaps she's some sort of alchemic Maker who built walls while you were weakened.”
“Do you sense any magic on her?” Dean snapped, turning a vicious eye upon Talia. “Can you feel her power now, when you yourself are at full strength? She’s got nothing. She smells solely of The Known.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Dean’s right,” the woman from the breakfast table, a muscled girl with short auburn hair, spoke, wrenching her hands in her pockets. “We’d be able to tell if she had any ability to wield. Here, she only feels like dead-weight hanging low in the room--typical of Commoners--you’ve all felt the shouldering of the air we have to deal with up there.”
“But how can she resist an Eclipse?” George asked in wonder, looking at Hannah as if she were some resident escapee of a local carnival, perhaps even sitting upside down on her head as he addressed her. “Have you ever heard such a thing, Emery?”
Emery had been noticeably silent since Dean’s omission of his failure to Eclipse her--whatever the bleeding hell that means, Hannah’s thoughts roiled--and now his milky gaze was peering out through half-closed eyes, his face blank, lost in thought as the others’ voices echoed off the brick walls. Hannah wondered for a split second if he was falling asleep--he looked so tranquil where he stood clasping his mug--but after George spoke to him and the others quieted considerably, she realized that he had been softly humming to himself.
“Interesting,” the old man said at last, and he moved slowly towards the sofa where Hannah sat, placing his mug on the mantelpiece before he departed from beside the fire. He bent to brush a hand on the coffee table as he went, his fingertips dragging to the edge, and once he reached the corner that was parallel to Hannah’s legs, he sat down on the table and faced her. Hannah squirmed backwards, not wanting to hit his knees with her own, and also to breach a bit of distance from the man, seeing as he was now so close to her that she could count the long lines of his weathered face.
He sat there, silent, and no one else spoke. Hannah returned his unseeing gaze, her eyes dancing from him, then to Dean, and then back to him once more, thoroughly confused and now becoming a tiny bit uncomfortable. Before she could find the right words to speak--Emery reached forward towards her and his fingers hung in midair, palm facing upwards towards the maps on the ceiling.
There was a moment of pause again, and Hannah felt a cold sweat on her neck. She was acutely aware that all eyes were on her once more.
“Would you find my hand, dear?” Emery asked then, shattering the silence and giving his hand a little toss. “Forgive my reaching--these old eyes miss the fleeting formalites, sometimes.”
Hannah blushed, remembering that he was truly blind, and she reached out to clasp his hand in hers. She saw out of the corner of her vision that George lurched forward in his seat, a hand slapping to his chest, eyes going wide. The others--Dean and Talia, specifically--seemed ambivalently blank, but there was the flash of an imperceptible jerk of Dean’s jaw.
She was hit with a wave of unease. Are they…sensing something?
All she could sense was the calloused brush of Emery’s skin on her own, and how cool the flesh his fingers were. His face remained aloof and faintly smiling, those lucid eyes not transfixed on any one solid point that she could discern. When she tried to give his hand a formal shake, she found that he held it in a firm but gentle grip, keeping her wrist still in his grasp. Hannah wasn’t sure whether or not this was some sort of special greeting that perhaps was the norm in this world, but then she remembered George offering her a shake, and she figured that this must mean something different. From the way the others were regarding the old man, she imagined that this was something that would go way over her head, and that no one would likely explain it to her should she gain the nerve to ask any more questions.
At last, Emery cocked his head and closed his eyes, his hand still lightly holding her own.
“Interesting,” he murmured, turning Hannah’s hand round in his and cupping the back of it, sending her palm skyward to the maps. He took his other hand and placed it over top, sandwiching hers completely in that cool softness, and he took a deep breath, the hairs of his icy beard waving like reeds caught by a river breeze. “Remarkable, actually.”
“Well?” Dean asked, making Hannah jump. “Are you going to do it?”
“Do what?” Hannah couldn’t hold the question in, and she felt a sudden lightening bolt of fear strike her down the spine at how intensely he was glaring at her. She snagged her hand back from the old man--no more of that, thank you very much!--and she tucked her hands under her thighs, crushing them into the velvet and scooching back on the couch, creating a gap between herself and Emery.
Emery looked not the least bit perturbed at her retraction, and he dropped both his hands to his knees, another smile playing on his thin lips. “No, Dean, I’m not. It would appear that I am having the same trouble as you when it comes to touching her mind.”
Dean gaped, and Hannah snorted with a choke of indignation. “My mind?” She slid out from in front of Emery and to the other side of the couch nearest to Talia, standing to her feet.
“You can’t do it either?” Dean looked at Emery as if he had just sprouted wings. “Are you serious?”
“Oh yes,” Emery responded politely. “It’s as you so-perfectly described it: like hitting up against the side of a mountain. She’s impenetrable”
“How can that be?” Dean demanded, and he, George and Talia all looked appropriately aghast. “What’s stopping our power?”
“I haven’t the slightest,” Emery shrugged. “Something is barring us out.”
Hannah, fed up with all the chatter, at last found her tongue and put it to good use. “Now, see here,” she began, willing her voice not to shake. “There will be no touching of my mind, and I’d be grateful if none of you tried anything of the sort ever again!” She fell upon Dean, who was decidedly watching her as a wolf to a rabbit. “And you! I am now going to demand an explanation, as you gave me a very heartfelt promise at the Stratum--or whatever the hell that was--that you’d see me home safely!”
“Oh boy,” George laughed from his chair. “Now you’ve done it.”
“Resorting to making bargains with a Commoner, Avery?” Talia chided. “God, maybe you are losing your touch.”
“She was trying to draw attention to herself by threatening to vomit on me!” Dean shot upright and threw his hands in the air in total aggravation. “What was I supposed to do, let her turn and run straight onto the Septentrional?”
“Wish you would’ve spewed on him,” George beamed at her. “That would have been hilarious.”
“Alright, let’s settle down,” Emery said, lifting a hand in a peace offering. He had turned his head in the direction that Hannah had fled, but his eyes didn’t quite reach where she stood. “Hannah, Commoners such as yourself are…kept in the dark, so to speak, from magic. I’m certain that you yourself cannot recall any strong memory where you’ve witnessed anything close to the cluster of phenomena that you have been privy to for the last twenty-four hours or so. Would I be correct in that theory?”
“I’ve never seen magic before,” Hannah said, her hands clenched at her sides. “And that’s because it doesn’t exist. Not in London, at any rate.”
These words send a shock of energy through the room, each person around her shifting uncomfortably or gritting their teeth. “Perhaps,” Emery continued, his eyes sparkling. “Or, perhaps, you’ve simply never known how to look for it. Magic--the outright, visible sort-- is forbidden in The Known, and it has been for as far back as time will stretch into oblivion. It’s been securely protected by the Guild--a group of magic Wielders chosen by the Priory throughout the millennia that swear their lives to the laws of The Unseen and to uphold the secrecy of magic from the inhabitants of The Known.”
“Guild?” Hannah’s question caught Dean’s eye.
“That’s us,” Emery said, motioning around with his hand. “Well, this is a very small portion of us here in Brink. But we are a part of that Alliance with the Priory--honoring our duty by containing magic from the Commoners of The Known in order to protect them, and to protect our world, too.”
“And it’s not as if your kind are the only ones in The Known,” Talia snapped from her seat, sinking lower into the cushions. “There’s plenty of Wielders that have taken up lives there--many who opt for the simpler pace of a world not thrumming with energy. In London alone, there’s probably one Wielder to every thousand Commoners or so.” Hannah felt her mouth open wide in surprise, and Talia smirked. “It’s true. Like Emery said, if you don’t search for it, you often will miss it.”
“How is that possible?” Hannah breathed. “If magic exists, how could it possibly be kept hidden from my world since the dawn of time? There’s simply no statistical probability of that!”
“That is what leads me to explain my actions just now,” Emery cleared his throat, and George shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “One way we protect magic should a Commoner witness it is by…Altering things. We can take memories and mold them to fit a more easily explainable narrative. For instance, if you were to witness someone wield a bit of rain over their garden beds on a scorching summer day, and that Wielder sensed your knowledge of it, they could have the Commoner’s mind changed into believing that they instead witnessed the Wielder using a new hose attachment from the Nursery to cause a shower.”
“Did you see what happened on that bridge a few weeks ago?” George piped up. “All the cracks in the foundation? That took a fair bit of Altering to get all those hundreds of witnesses to think it was just shoddy mortar work. We were combing the streets for days.”
“Magic cracked the Southwark Bridge?”
“And the roadway,” Dean added morosely. “That was a hellish aftermath. Took all of our energies right out of us to work on the seemingly thousands of commuters that witnessed that bit of horse shit from the Syndicate.”
“You said Eclipsed,” Hannah focused on Dean, and he blanched a bit. “Not Altered. Is there a difference?”
“Eclipsing is what happens when Dean takes over a mind,” George exclaimed, and he received another smack on the head from Dean.
“George!”
“What?” George covered his head with his hands sheepishly. “If we’re telling her everything, we might as well tell her about that. What does it matter, anyways? You both said she’s untouchable!”
“You were…going to take over my mind?” Hannah took a step backwards between the couches and towards the empty dining table. “Does that kill a person?”
Dean looked thoroughly guilty, “you had seen too much.”
“Answer me!”
“It can,” he admitted, and Hannah felt her stomach clench within her. “Well…it does.”
“So let me get this straight,” Hannah felt her head spin on her shoulders, her knees feeling weak, and she bitterly tried to cling to her wits. “You all are wiping the minds of people in London in order to keep them from learning about magic--even though your lot are the ones flagrantly using it there and probably being careless with your blasting wielding or what have it--and you were going to try to kill me immediately after something else had already tried its hand at killing me? Is that all correct so far?”
“That’s the brunt of it, at least,” Emery said goodnaturedly from his position on the coffee table. “In a way. But Hannah, I will be blunt when I say that the use of visible wielding in The Known is forbidden, and punishable by the hand of the Priory.” His face went vaguely stern. “It’s not a misstep that Wielders take lightly, or that the law-abiding ones wish to ever be flagrant with.”
“Tell that to the Syndicate,” Talia muttered, and Emery gave her a patient smile.
“I did say law-abiding, did I not?”
“You did, but it changes nothing. They do as they please, with little to no reaction from the Priory, hallowed be Her name,” Talia’s sarcasm was palpable as she spat her last words out--as if she were rejecting a bit of sour milk, “but when we wield there--usually in the name of doing good--we get slapped on the wrist. It’s all so mental.”
“The Priory has ways of dealing with the Syndicate affairs,” Emery continued cooly, turning back to Hannah. “Recent events in your London have been most upsetting to the balance of things. The Syndicate has been hot on the heels of chaos as of late”
“What do you mean?” Hannah inquired. Her hands were sweating, and she wished that she had taken her water glass along with her when she stood, as her throat had gone quite dry once more.
“Alongside our protection of magic, the Guild’s oath lies in identifying shifts in the Unseen,” Emery crossed his legs neatly at the ankle and turned in the near direction of Talia. “Talia, would you be so kind as to retrieve my hot chocolate for me?”
Talia didn’t reply. Instead, she sat forward and stretched out a hand towards the mantel, and Hannah barely caught sight of a spark of purple light between her splayed fingertips. The mug on the mantelpiece rose carefully into the air and floated amiably through the space towards Emery, who held up one hand expectantly. The mug drifted peacefully against his fingers, and he grasped it, taking a sip.
“Lovely, thank you,” he mused affectionately to Talia, and she nodded sharply, settling back into her armchair. “As I was saying, we in the Guild monitor the magical happenings for the Priory. We track down information that would be useful to the crown--whether that be tailing illegal magic and their wielders, or seeking out radicalist movements such as the Syndicate, or simply keeping an ear to the ground when the energy alters in the Vale. Glorified do-gooders in every sense, I’m afraid,” Emery grinned in Hannah’s direction with his last words, and Hannah did not have the strength to return his smile. “In doing so, however, we are bound to meet resistance from those few wielders who would wish to take advantage of magic--and valuable information about it--for their own personal gain.”
“‘Resistance’ is putting it gently,” George commented, and Talia’s face darkened.
“Very,” she agreed, and Hannah sensed that there was skin in the game that she wasn’t able to comprehend as Talia’s teeth gritted together. “Try war crimes, Emery.”
“What does this all have to do with me?” The question burst out of Hannah, and she wrung her hands together in front of her, anxiety rising in her chest. They all turned to face her, and George was the only one that looked remotely sympathetic, his face pinched up in pained understanding. “Be this as insane as it is, what do I do now?” She swiveled on Dean, “you’ve abducted me from my home, and you’ve admitted to trying to kill me on more than one occasion, the most recent one being a mere few minutes ago. Now that we’ve exhausted the fact that you’re unable to brainwash me, what can I do to get out of here and on my way home?”
“Well,” Emery stood, still holding his mug of hot chocolate. “Seeing as our Master Seeker has given you his word that he would return you back to The Known, I expect that we must work towards that goal. Though I hesitate to tell you that it may not be as straightforward as you anticipate it to be.”
“We can’t just let her go!” Dean exclaimed furtively, shooting out from behind George’s armchair in a sudden outburst of rage. “She’s gone The Way Through! She’s seen Brink--hell, she’s witnessed our magic as well as whatever darkness was lurking in London--she can’t be trusted if we just mail her back to The Known with express postage!”
“Control your temper, Avery,” Emery said sharply, and Dean faltered slightly, but his fists were glowing orange at his sides, just as they had back in London in the alleyway when he had crafted that otherworldly leash for Hannah’s wrists. “She has indeed seen too much of us to go back right now. We need to seek out answers as to why she’s able to resist Eclipsing, and unless one of you is willing to commit Commoner murder in cold blood and answer to the Priory, I must insist that we keep her here until we know more about this situation we have all found ourselves in.”
“Keep her?” Talia shrieked, bolting to her feet as well. “No, I absolutely will not stand for that, Emery! She is a danger to our entire Guild--if we were caught harboring a Commoner in the Vale--God, we’d all be dismembered bit by bit! This is downright illegal!”
“While you are under my leadership, Talia, you will follow my orders,” Emery’s voice had left behind his quiet kindness and was now growing into something that sent a chill all through Hannah’s limbs. “If you’d like to disagree, you can take it up with me personally on your own time, and leave our guest out of it.”
Talia paled for the first time that day, and Hannah knew that she was seconds away from erupting with rage. Dean, however, rapidly staunched the volcano before it began to boil, because he took this moment of pause to cross over to Emery and to stand nearby him.
“Tell me where to start looking for information on this,” Dean said, his voice low. “I’ll begin at once. The sooner she’s out of our hair, the better.”
“Unfortunately, Avery, this may require the aid of more refined connections than you possess.” Emery placed his mug down on the coffee table beside him and brushed his hands along the length of his trousers. “I need to write a few letters. I imagine the answers we will be searching for are going to be found off of the beaten path, so to speak. I have some friends in the Tomes that will take some convincing to let us peruse, but perhaps if I pull some strings, I can get in their good graces.”
“The Tomes,” George breathed in wonder. “That’s bloody awesome.”
I don’t want to stay,” Hannah whispered, her knees shaking, and her pulse quickened in her ears. This can’t be happening. I can’t let this happen.
“I’m afraid there’s no other option at present,” Emery sighed pityingly. “Unless you’d prefer a quick death. But as Dean has said repeatedly, you’ve seen too much of our world to be set free of it.”
“This isn’t right! You can’t hold me hostage!”
“Oh no, nothing like that. You’re our guest here at the Atrium. We will do our best to make you comfortable as we search for a solution.” Hannah felt like the walls were pressing in around her as she looked from stranger to stranger, her breaths catching in her throat.
“Let me start digging on my own,” Dean snapped to Emery, interrupting. “I don’t want to waste any time on righting this.”
“I understand that you’d like to correct your massive faux pas as soon as possible,” Emery sighed, and Dean stiffened at the jab. “But alas, patience is a virtue. And I have work for you and your brother here in Brink later this afternoon.”
“Nice!” George crowed, standing to join Dean and slapping him merrily on the shoulder. “We never get assignments together!”
“Where will she stay?” The girl from the breakfast table asked. “We don’t have much room here as it is.”
“I believe Talia’s room has an available bunk,” Emery said casually, and Talia froze, her face turning to stone, her brown eyes wide and gleaming with shock. “That should do fine for the time being. Talia, you’ll show her the way, won’t you?”
“Like hell I will,” Talia snarled, and she turned on her heel, making such a rude gesture at Emery that Hannah’s jaw dropped. “You may be my leader, but I’ll not let you command that I be compliant with whatever bull shit Avery’s gone and gotten us in!”
She stormed from the room, exiting through the elaborate archway on the far wall and climbing the ascending stone steps two at a time. When Hannah turned back to face the others, she saw that Dean had gone white with furious shame, his palms still glowing between the creases of his balled fists.
“That settles it, then,” Emery stated, moving away from the coffee table in his slow, fluid fashion, careful to reach a hand out to each piece of furniture as he passed by it. “Let’s clean up from breakfast and get to work for the day. We’ll begin in an hour. My, it’s nearly eleven o’clock! Where has the morning gone?”
The others that had been standing nearby, the ones who Hannah had yet to learn the names of, stared warily at her as they moved to the table and began to shuffle dishes into their hands. The second man that had been present, the one with long chestnut hair that was pulled back into a knot at the back of his neck, waved a hand overhead, and a green glow omitted from his palm. A rag appeared from thin air, as well as a spray bottle of cleaner, and they danced adamantly to the surface of the table and began to scrub on their own volition, wiping off the remnants of crumbs and drops of spilled juice from the oak.
George sauntered over beside Hannah and he inclined his head a little, clearly taking a hint that she was feeling overwhelmed. “Talia will come around, don’t you worry. She’s a bit of a cactus at first meeting, but once you get to know her, she’s a real peach.”
“That may be wishful thinking,” Hannah whispered, fighting the panic that was swelling up in her throat. “She doesn’t want me here as much as I do.”
“In any case, let me show you around the Atrium,” George knocked her hip with one of his, and he grinned. “It’s not every day that we get visitors--especially ones that make things as interesting as you have. We can walk and talk,” he motioned to the far wall in the direction of the archway that Talia had stomped through in her fury. “It’ll be fun!”
“Don’t humor her, George,” Dean barked, turning an awful glare upon Hannah. “This whole fiasco started with her.” He narrowed his eyes, “she’s not going to be here long.”
“Actually, I think it began with you, old chum,” George laughed lightly, although Hannah felt heat rush up her neck at the harshness of Dean’s accusation. She stared back at him with brittle defiance, trying to vie for a scrap of a foothold. George jabbed his brother with an elbow, “seems as if you’ve finally come up against a challenge that your magic can’t deal with for you, and it’s got you downright flustered.”
It was at that exact moment that Hannah’s stomach gave a noxious growl, and both Dean and George looked at her with riotous surprise. Hannah blushed, clapping a hand to her abdomen, and George exploded into hysterics, tossing his head back as Dean, naturally, scowled. “Poor girl is hungry! Figures you didn’t think to offer her any food.” George took Hannah by the arm and turned her in the direction of the table. “Let’s get you a plate. We had fruit and yogurt this morning--is that alright?”
“I’m not hungry,” Hannah stammered trying to appear unbothered, but George could smell the lie from a mile away.
“Right, and I’m the king of Manhurst,” he sighed sarcastically. “Hey, Taryn! Can you bring some of the leftovers from brekkie out for Hannah?”
The auburn-haired girl from the counsel of the sofa semi-circle poked her head out from the smaller archway off to the left, the one that Hannah thought to be a kitchen, and she looked inquisitively at George. “You can come get it yourself,” she replied with a wave of her hand.
“Oh, but Taryn, you’re so good at whipping up a mean parfait,” George argued joyfully.
“I’m not your scullery maid,” Taryn tossed her short hair behind one of her ears. “You’ve got legs, last I checked.”
“I’ll get it myself,” Hannah insisted, moving towards the archway. “Please, I don’t want to be any more of a nuisance than I apparently have already become.”
Dean flinched at her words, and she felt as if it was deserved. Of all the things he could have said to her by now, an apology seemed to be the last on his list.
When she reached the archway that Taryn stood in, she peered in to see the expanse of a massive kitchen, with marble countertops, gleaming ice boxes, multiple refrigerators, and a walk-in pantry that was teeming with dry goods. It was as if it belonged to a celebrity chef, or at least, that was what Hannah imagined she could compare it to. Taryn stood in the archway and sized Hannah up before she stepped to the side and allowed her to pass.
“I’m Taryn,” she said curiously. “The yogurt is in the closest refrigerator, as well as the strawberries. Help yourself.”
“Thank you,” Hannah said to her with a nod. “I’m Hannah. Pleased to meet you.”
The two men who were washing dishes waved at her as she passed, and Hannah raised a hand in greeting as well. “I’m Will,” the one with long hair stated, soap suds running down his forearms. “This is Henry,” he motioned to the ginger-haired man, who gave Hannah a quirk of a smile. “Sorry you’re here.”
Hannah didn’t answer, but she nodded to them as well, crossing to the refrigerator to retrieve the yogurt and the berries. She carried them in her arms over to one of the tall cupboards, where she found bowls, and she snagged two of them, as well as two silver spoons. Departing from the kitchen, she strode back to the table and plopped everything down, taking the lid off of the container of yogurt and spooning equal portions into the two bowls. George watched her with sharp interest, and Dean stood off to the side, his arms crossed, his brow knit, and his mouth twisted in a frown.
Once Hannah had filled both bowls and had topped them each with a few ruby-red berries, she collapsed into one of the chairs and snatched up a spoon, sliding the second bowl down the table a bit in the direction of Dean and George. Both of the men stared at it blankly, and George looked at Dean, asking some unsaid question with his brows up at his hairline.
“Dean,” she said his name for the first time, and she saw that he flickered at the sound of it, his eyes shooting up to meet hers. She gave him what she knew was an ardently exhausted inclination of her head towards the second bowl of yogurt she chartered as she spooned some from her own portion into her mouth. “You said you were starving.”
She didn’t care if he looked at her as if she had caught fire right there at the dining table. She didn’t care if George snickered under his breath and elbowed Dean with a devious grin. She especially didn’t care if Dean paled with that brutal, shamed expression that he had taken on a few moments ago when Talia had run from the room.
No, Hannah did not care one bit about any of it. All she cared about was the yogurt before her, and the beating of her heart, indicating to her that she was still alive, regardless of how much of a royal conundrum she had found herself in as she hunched over at the oak dining table in the strange, potentially lethal place known to the others around her as the Atrium. As she ate, she focused on the cracks of the wood surface, memorizing them, letting them aid in the slowing of her pulse and the steadying of her hand as it moved in a line from sopping yogurt to mouth.
George and Dean let her eat in peace, even if Dean snatched up the bowl she slid to him with a grunt of indignation and stomped over to the sofa, plopping himself among the cushions and eating in his conjured cloud of sullen anger. George went to one of the desks along the walls and busied himself with some task of writing, and Hannah was so unbelievably grateful for a moment alone without anyone shouting at her that it could have brought tears to her eyes.
It could have. But it didn’t. Because as she emptied her bowl and stared down at the traces of pale curdled milk stained blood-red with juice, she understood that whatever lay beyond this first trial of eating breakfast in a strange new world would be one where she would undoubtedly need her wits about her as closely as she could keep them.
Magic. Wielding. Brink. Tomes. Words that undid her in the weakness of hunger and the absolute mire of the last hour and all that she had learned. She clung to reality--or what little of it that she had left in such a pickle as the one she was occupied within--and the small grace of a normal breakfast was where she would start. Something familiar. Something she did not need to cry over, as it would neither help nor hinder.
She blinked away the sting of tears and straightened her shoulders. George looked up from his shuffling of papers, and he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he fixed her with an excited grin.
“Shall we?”