nancy werlock's diary s01 - episodes 9 (2 page)

“Well, in that case I’m glad I’m a bloody Traveler.”

“This mean you’re done your exchange program and going home?”

“Bloody Hell it does. I want to see this through. If nothing else, maybe it will keep me here long enough that Gregor changes his mind about that little trip to the Styx. Or long enough for you to teach me some binding rituals to keep him from making the jump.”

“Or maybe the College will just deny his application for the Rank Two trial?”

“We can hope.”

I start going through my reports as Eric goes back to reviewing the security protocols. A few minutes later, Houston opens the office door and pokes his head in, laughing. “I thought you were working in here,” he says.

“I am working!”

“Why are you sending me Star Wars links?”

“Why would I be sending you Star Wars links?”

“I got a ping on my phone and I checked my email. Why are you sending me links to Darth Nihilus?”

“The only Darth I know is named Vader.”

“Houston, she’s been working on reports,” insists Eric. “I’ve been sitting right here.”

Houston shows me his phone. It is open to the email, from my account, to a link to some site called Wookieepedia. Houston shows me the page about some character named Darth Nihilus. “Houston, you’re the geek. Not me. I only know Star Wars from the movies. Why would I send you a link like that? I wouldn’t even know a link like that existed!”

“It’s from your account!”

“Maybe it is some Technomancer you met on WitchNet having some fun with you.”

“I don’t know any Technomancers.” He looks at his phone and scratches his head. “He’s the bad guy in Knights of the Old Republic II.”

“That’s…nice.”

“Check your email.”

“It didn’t come from my account,” I say as I open my email account. There is an email in my account from Houston with the same link. “Now you are playing around!”

“What?” he asks. I show him my monitor. “I didn’t send that!” He checks his phone. “Check your sent box.”

I check my sent box to see an email to Houston, from me. With a link from the site. I immediately run my anti-virus software. “Some damn Technomancer playing around!” I exclaim. “You…you probably pissed one off with your co-op play. Did you kill someone in…what is that stupid game you are always cussing at?...Call of Duty?”

“I don’t think this is a Technomancer, Nancy. Maybe it means something.”

“This Star Wars stuff doesn’t mean anything to me!”

Houston looks at his phone again. “Nihilus.” The chime rings to indicate someone has come into the store. “I’ll look into it,” he says as he leaves the office to go wait on the customer.

I pick up the phone to call Archmage House, head of the Technomancer’s Guild in the area. I pause mid-dial and take a deep breath. I can’t prove it was a technomancer. And even if I could I don’t have a name. And if I call the Archmage over a harmless prank it will make me look petty. So instead I go to their website and fill out the online form to file an inquiry to have someone look into it.

I actually get a call from the Archmage personally an hour later; the benefits of being a Rank Two Demonologist. People fall over themselves to help you either out of respect for your position, or fear you will rain Hellfire down on them. He asks for permission to ghost into my computer to check for arcane residue. Ten minutes later, he creates a secure chat window on my computer and asks if I am alone. I tell Eric to leave the office and tell him yes.

“Are you sure? Check the Veil,” he types. I activate my Third Eye incantation to make sure I don’t have otherworldly visitors. I confirm I am alone.

“I found residue,” he types.

“Can you identify who?” I type back.

“It wasn’t a Technomancer. It was one of the Esteemed.”

“Are you sure?”

“I know the difference between one of my students and an Esteemed.”

“I’m sorry, I just meant, are you sure the residue is from a...recent...visit? I had an Esteemed communicate with me during the Inquest into Houston’s mother. Could it be left over from that?’

“No, the residue normally only lasts for a few hours. I believe the whole mess with the Inquest was months ago, wasn’t it?”

“Seems like only yesterday. No way to know which one?”

“Would it matter? The Esteemed only answer to the Nine and the Lord Advocates.”

* * *

I meet Lee for dinner before heading home. He tells me that his mother started yelling at him when he walked in the door because he forgot to call her last night to tell her he wasn’t coming home. Since the Brennons think Lee is their son, they worry that he might go back to doing drugs. So I can imagine him not coming home last night must have had them worried sick. But apparently when she learned he stayed at my house, she lit up like a Christmas tree and all was forgiven.

It’s nice to know the Brennons like me.

As I walk in the door, Houston is on the sofa playing a video game. “I thought you were going to look into the emails?” I ask.

“I am,” he says. I look at the TV and see his character engaged in light saber combat.

“Your idea of research is playing a video game?”

“Someone sent a message. And it looks silly to you, but whoever sent the message thinks it should mean something to me. Maybe that is the point. They sent the message in a way that only I would be able to figure out. So that’s what I am doing.”

“Okay, well, let me know if…you win. Or whatever.”

Just as I am settling in to go to sleep, Houston knocks on my bedroom door. Before I can even open my mouth to complain, he blurts out, “It’s not Nihilus. It’s Traya!”

“Okay,” I yawn. “If you say so.”

“No, no, no. Listen. Darth Nihilus was a wound in the Force. A…a…Force vampire. The only way for him to overcome his hunger was to drain the Force from others. Kinda like the Haeromancers learned how to do.”

“Houston, if you are about to tell me we’re looking for Sith—”

“I’m not kidding this time, Nancy. Let me finish. Whoever sent the link was sending a message. We need to look deeper at this. We’ve been looking for Necromancers who found the forbidden magic hidden at the Nexus and just started to use it. But we shouldn’t be looking for the students. We should be looking for
the teacher
.”

“It’s almost midnight. I am not awake enough to follow you.”

“Nihilus had a teacher, Darth Traya. She had been a Jedi who was banished from the order for stuff you don’t care about right now. She taught him how to control his hunger and how to feed. Long story short, because I know you don’t care, Traya was betrayed by Nihilus and believed dead. But she had just gone into hiding, bidding her time. She was the Lord of Betrayal, betrayed by both the Jedi and the Sith. And she went into hiding to come back later for revenge.”

“What a minute. Are you thinking that Chana Magus is still alive after all of these centuries? That’s impossible. Someone would have sensed her.”

“Who? The same people who thought my mother had ascended and didn’t know where to look for her?”

Sometime around 1760, Haemomancer Chana Magus discovered the first official case of a psychic vampire, a vampire that fed off of psychic energy instead of blood. She kidnapped and tortured the vampire to perfect her research on how to siphon the life energies of other creatures for sustenance. At first, the results were amazing. Haemonancers were able to “consume” the excess life energy produced by all living things to sustain themselves. But as all miracle cures go, things went south quickly. Over time, it took more and more energy to get the same result. Eventually, the Haermonancers resorting to killing people outright. This resulted in the Fifth authorizing a purging of the entire school.

“If Chana Magus survived the purging and went into hiding, why now?”

“You’re the Rank Two Demonologist. If you were an angry Magus who has spent centuries plotting your revenge, what would bring
you
out now?”

“The Veil. It’s been thinning ever since the 13th Baktun ended.”

“If she’s been hiding in, say, the astral plane all of this time—”

“—Because even if they did destroy her physical body, she would have been strong enough to survive.”

“Particularly if she was maybe feeding off of weaker spirits in the process.”

“And now the Veil is thin enough for her to come through completely.” I go grab my phone and start dialing Steve.

“Wait a minute! Don’t call Steve yet!”

“Why not?”

“We still don’t know who sent the link, or why they sent it to us.”

“Archmage House found Esteemed residue on my computer. It had to be one of the Nine or one of their advocates.”

“The Nine wouldn’t have a reason to use cloak and dagger methods to communicate with us. Though it is kinda cool to think of one of them trolling around on Star Wars fan sites!”

“Nobody else can control the Esteemed.”

“Maybe it was acting on its own?”

“Why would one of the Esteemed do that?”

“Why do they do anything they do? But that is sort of the point. Someone sent that very specific link to us, knowing we would piece it together. But they have a reason for not going to the full Council yet.”

“I trust Steve.”

“But do you trust the people he would tell?”

I sit on the edge of my bed. “Okay, so an Esteemed, either under orders from someone or on its own volition, sent us the link warning us that Chana Magus may still be alive…or….well…at least still around. It also explains why the entity you encountered the other day seemed ghostly. It wasn’t a Necromancer astrally projecting. It was someone in an astral form. But it doesn’t explain why she didn’t kill you. Assuming this is about more than feeding, but about…revenge, why didn’t she kill you when she had the chance?”

“My exceptional good looks?”

“I was thinking your humility.”

“Could be that,” he smirks. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m too high profile of a target?”

“She’s killed Justicars.
They
are high profile targets! You’re...more the equivalent of a Kardashian.”

“That was just cruel,” says Houston as he folds his arms and leans in the doorway. “But the thing is that nobody knows who the Justicars are. And the Council kept the Justicar deaths secret. So regardless of how powerful they are by reputation, most people don’t know they are gone. People know who I am because of my mom.”

“That’s it! Your mom! If I’m Chana Magus, the last thing I want to do is tangle with Grande Madame Vivika in the astral plane. Your mother’s ability to interact with the physical world is just as limited as most of the dead, but in the astral plane your mother is still a powerhouse. She may have realized who you were and decided to save that fight for another day.”

“And considering it was one of the Nine that killed my mom, maybe she sees my mom as a potential ally. Traya went looking for Nihilus to help her destroy the Jedi, after all.”

“If I was her, I would be looking for powerful allies with a grudge.”

“We need to talk to my mom.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

September 22,

“
I had the biggest crush on Alex Guinness as a girl,”
says Nanna. “
Such a shame you kids these days only know him from Star Wars. A marvelous actor.
”

“
I liked that boy who played Kenobi in the new ones
,” says Mom. “
Honey, what was his name?”

“Ewan McGregor, Mom.”

“
I think he did a good job, considering what he had to work with.”

“
Well, perhaps we should have scheduled a Star Wars movie marathon
,” says Vivika as she shakes her head.

Mom, please?” says Houston. Vivika sighs dramatically. Mom rolls her eyes.

It took most of the day for Houston, Eric, and I to finish the summoning circle and get all three of them in one place. The ritual itself was simple enough. The problem is that with everything that has transpired over the last few months, Mom and Nanna really don’t like Vivika very much, and Vivika doesn’t like them. So while all three of them are more than happy to offer help, they just don’t like being in the same room to do it. Which means most of our time was spent coaxing, cajoling, and whining for them all to cooperate.

By the time we got the three of them to settle in and agree to work together, I was exhausted. And that was before Houston explained his theory involving Chana Magus and fictional Sith Lords.

“
I have not sensed any significant power presences near the boundaries of the Veil since I have been watching over my son,”
says Vivika.
“With, of course, the exceptions of Madame Warlock and Madame Magus.”

“Things have been fairly quiet, considering how thin the Veil is,”
says Nanna.
“But then again, if she has been feeding off of lesser spirits that would explain why things have been quiet. With an alpha predator in the area, the prey would stay away.”

“
Are we sure the Archmage wasn’t detecting residual energies from when the Esteemed contacted you during the Inquest into my…Ascension?”
asks Vivika.

“I asked the same question. He said the residue from an Esteemed only lasts for a few hours. And I did do a full sweep of my computer afterwards and reinstalled the anti-virus software.”

“And it was never on my phone, and we found residue there as well.”

“You ladies are sure you haven’t felt anything unusual?” asks Eric, who immediately makes an apologetic face for chiming in.

“
Sweetie, we’re Warlocks,”
says Mom. “
I had a luncheon yesterday with an archdemon who wants me to accept a position as Overseer. Define unusual.”

“Was it Rudarvathrion?”
asks Nanna.
“I hope you told that fool no.”

“I told him I needed to help my daughter with her problems before making a decision.”

“You didn’t tell him no?”

“Mother, not in front of Nancy. We’ll discuss it later.”