The Awakening of Ren Crown (14 page)

I felt a tear slip down my cheek, and I hurriedly wiped it away with my shoulder.

“Good. Now do that to the other one.” He motioned to Will's sketch.

“No.” I wasn't doing it again.

“Yes.”

“
No
.” The paint started dripping from my walls in double time.

Marsgrove's hands formed into fists at his side, his lips pressed tightly together, but there was an odd gleam to his eyes. “Do you remember anything else being removed from the artwork?”

Will seemed to trust Marsgrove, and yet he had not revealed his possession of the sword.

I could hear the steady drip, drip, drip of the dead old paint. “I blacked out.” It was true, and there was no reason for me to tell him about Will's sword.

“
Don't trust him.”
Christian's voice was sharp.

Marsgrove looked at his tablet and gave a grim nod, then his eyes went to the top of my head. “Verisetti put a spell on you.”

Christian? Christian!
But he didn't answer.

Marsgrove's words made me nervous, as did his expression. “Can you remove it?”

“No. The spell is tied to your heart. If I tried to remove it, it would kill you.”

I swallowed and put the scissors down. “Ok, do it.”

His eyes narrowed. “What?”

“Can't you just bring me back?” I could try to latch onto Christian, wherever he was in my mind.

“No.”

I scratched Marsgrove, dean of irritation, off my short list. There was now only one person populating it. Mr. Verisetti.

“Don't ask anyone else to remove it either. For one thing it denies any ordinary human the ability to mention your name to a mage or within one's hearing—it works like the First Layer suppression spell on ordinary humans, except this spell works against mages. I have been searching for you since yesterday. Even knowing
how
Verisetti uses spells, and hearing all about a crazy student at your school, without Mr. Tasky's call, I wouldn't know you were the...feral. Nor would I have remembered the crazy student portion except as a throwaway piece of chatter.”

I stared at him, absorbing that information while sending out call after mental call to my brother, begging him to answer.

“There are...advantages to leaving it on. I have spells that will work with...his.” His eyes were pinched. “Of course, it will make you even more vulnerable to Verisetti. You will either gain a benefit from the curse or be cursed twice over.”

As long as I could still die and be resurrected a thousand times, I didn't care. It gave me more chances to find Christian. He was out there somewhere. He had called for me.

I nodded.

Marsgrove smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. “Let me see your tattooed wrist.”

I automatically looked at the executioner's blade. It seemed to be fading, though, and if I squinted, I could see what looked like a stylized phoenix blooming beneath it. I looked up to see him examining the ax.

“Feeling bloodthirsty? Or did you betray someone?”

I hugged my wrist to my chest and pressed my lips together. “It's an emotional indicator?”

“The images can do anything from display a depiction of a mage's last major magical event to providing an indicator of emotion or special skill. Mages cover them to avoid revealing things they don't wish to disclose.” His non-smile turned into a smirk. “Don't ever show anyone your wrist.”

Betrayal should only bloom when you trusted someone. Marsgrove's actions made me angry.

“Put the cuff over it,” he said.

I stared at the smooth black metal, distrust high. “What is it?” I could feel the energy pulsating within it. The magic.

“Put it on. It does more than hide your design. It will control your intentions until you can do so by yourself. I'll put other necessary magics in it later. Wearing one is mandatory in the Second Layer.”

I didn't want to put some magic bracelet on, especially one given to me by someone I didn't trust—someone obviously repulsed by me.

“Put it on, Miss Crown, and I will give you a shield set that will make you the envy of your peers.”

Did I need shields?

“And you will feel better.” Marsgrove's voice and expression suddenly held pity. “It's not your fault you are different. You can work hard to overcome your origin.”

His voice had turned compelling, urging me to follow his instruction. I pushed against the unnatural feel of the persuasion.

Marsgrove looked surprised for a moment, then thoughtful, his voice turning neutral. “The loss of control downstairs with your parents, the magic now dripping from your walls... Those were and are small events only because I have a magic inhibitor in my pocket. When I leave, there will be no inhibition. You could inadvertently kill your parents with a snap of your thoughts.” He snapped his fingers.

I immediately put the cuff on my left wrist, his words ringing true. The cuff wrapped itself around and sealed together. The raging torrent under my skin muted, slithering around, frustrated, poking to find an opening.

The cuff was solid, but it moved fluidly with the shifting of my skin, staying in contact with my wrist at all times. The feeling it provoked was both terrifying and relieving—different parts of me reacting to different parts of it.

I tried to take consolation in the weight of it replacing Christian's leather band, which was now lost to me.

“Now, hurry up and pack. No furniture, just clothes and essentials. There are nine weeks remaining in the term.” His voice was brisk, and curiously, the revulsion was almost completely absent. “I'll be back in three hours to pick you up. If you have too many items, I'll weed through them and toss things at random.”

I touched the cuff again. I couldn't find the opening.

Chapter Eight: Into the Rabbit Hole

I packed as quickly as possible, with my parents’ help. They kept hugging me and touching my hair as we stuffed clothes into trash bags. I was sure I was going to forget all sorts of important things, like underwear, but I would worry about that later.

Marsgrove arrived back before the three hours were up, looking aggravated, winded, and determined. “Where is the sketch?”

I pointed to the table.

His eyes narrowed as he took out a pair of black tongs and a thin white document box. Using the tongs as if the paper was hazardous waste material, he carefully placed the sketch inside and sealed the box.

He breathed an audible sigh of relief, then started shoving my clothing bags into a
piece of paper
. I stared at him, suddenly wondering why my sketches repulsed him, since he had a similar object himself. I reached toward the storage paper, but he yanked it away as if my leprosy would spread. “It's priceless. Don't touch it.”

I curled my fingers into my palm.

He brusquely handed me a turquoise. “Put this in your pocket and leave it there.”

I slowly stuck the rock in the small pocket of my jeans.

Marsgrove gave my parents a two-way journal that connected to one he gave to me and said that maybe I could visit at the end of term.

I took off to check last minute items and spaces in my room as they discussed school fees. He was trying to convince them that magical education was free in the Second Layer for everyone under age twenty-two. I was all for this seemingly magical way of bypassing fifty reams of scholarship and admittance forms.

And then it was time. They hugged me as if they didn't think they'd ever see me again. It was all too fast. I took one last glance at my parents, who were clutching each other, and said a soft, “Goodbye.”

I'd be back, I mentally promised. With Christian in tow.

~*~

Thirteen minutes later, we entered the twenty-four hour coffeehouse near my high school. I scratched the skin near my new wrist cuff.

The ladies at the counter were helping customers. Mages living in the First Layer, Marsgrove had said, on the quick walk here. They looked like normal humans, just as they had every time I had come. But now I knew they were
other,
and I could see the cuffs I had dismissed previously. It made me nervous, where I had never been nervous here before.

“Go sit.”

Marsgrove's quick glances around us and at his tablet were starting to freak me out. Following his instruction, I hunched over a table at the far end of the shop. Few customers were sitting. Just a guy with a Stetson, a girl with a thousand orange bangles, and a couple smooching in the corner. None of them looked magical. Though, who knew? The Stetson could be a cloaking device, the bangles might jam someone's hearing, and the lovers might turn into frogs at any moment.

Marsgrove ordered two double layer mochas. His cuffed arm rested on the counter. One of the women glanced at the cuff, but the other was clearly flirting as if she knew or recognized him.

As soon as he had the cups, his eyes met mine and he jerked his head toward the bathroom hall. He handed me a cup as soon as we were alone and out of view. I looked nervously around the hall. There were three doors—two with standard restroom stick figures and one stating authorized personnel only. I shifted on my feet and the shimmer of a fourth door slid into view. Then it abruptly disappeared. I leaned back just a measure, and again, like a mirage, or a perspective anamorphosis where I could only view the desired image from one particular angle and location, it came into view once more. The image looked like water steadily flowing between two panes of glass.

That had to be the entrance. I opened my mouth to ask Marsgrove, but he waved me off.

“Hurry. Drink up. You have to absorb magic in order to see the door and to get out of the First Layer,” Marsgrove said in a low voice. “Only registered establishments have permits.”

I shifted position again, and the waterfall door slid into view, like sidewalk art presenting another world in a single perspective. I could see it already, or at least the thin edge of it, but I followed his lead and drank from my cup.

Seconds later the waterfall doorway pulled into full glorious view.

“Lucky to have a shop with a permit so close,” I said nervously, as we moved toward it.

He snorted. “Shops are everywhere. And they don't all sell coffee.”

Without pausing he walked right through the cascade. I took a deep breath and followed—butterflies battering against my stomach, knees slightly knocking.

A light mist swept over me.

A closed, industrial-styled hall with twelve doors and a large trash can was on the other side. There was some form of writing above each door, three of them were written in glyphs I had never before encountered.

Marsgrove threw his cup in the trash can, so I followed suit and parted with mine as well. I tried to remember what Will had said about traveling. Pinch or absorb into another layer; port or ride
within
the layer. Which meant I was in the Second Layer—another dimension of the world—
right now
.

As Marsgrove approached a nondescript door, I looked above it and the text shimmered into readable words—Main Depot.

He opened the door and I carefully stepped through after him...and right into something straight out of one of my black-and-white patterned three-dimensional designs. I now knew what Will had meant when he'd asked me if I'd ever traveled to the Second Layer Depot. I stepped forward, entranced, and the door shut behind me. It opened again, admitting a man who had not been in the coffeehouse or hall. Which meant he had come from somewhere other than the coffeehouse, but had entered here using the same door that I had. No wonder Will was such a travel maniac—how cool were the possibilities?

Tubes crazily looped in the cavernous sky. Colors and objects whooshed through the clear pipes that overlapped and curled around each other like the rats nest of wires at the back of our old stereo system. One of the largest tubes was whooshing things through faster than the others. I could barely make out tones as each shape flew past.

A woman flew by on the back of a stork. A man passed riding what looked like a mechanical spider. Two kids shouted from atop a flying carpet. It was madness. Wonderful, chaotic, magical madness.

I turned to ask Christian how we were going to snag one of those carpets, the first word already curving my lips.

But the space next to me was empty.

Of course it was. I pressed a hand to my ribcage, trying to stop the pain from spreading. Would I ever stop doing that?

Christian?
I tried reaching out again to the voice that had spoken in my mind, but no voice answered.

I clenched my eyes closed, then opened them and strained to focus on the sights in front of me. Dozens of arches peppered the landscape and led into domed rooms labeled with descriptors like gates, threads, pools, shimmer pinches, steps, archways, doorways, sheets, and planes. Signs pointed to long, dark hallways with other words—glimmer travel, vertical transport, plate transfer.

The letters on the signs shimmered as my eyes passed over them, then cleared into readable text.

A long line of people were queued up in front of a large dais where people were throwing down portal pads, then disappearing into their depths.

“Thinking of what you gave him?”