All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [121]
She hoped so . . . but had a nasty feeling the answer was no.
Before she could figure it all out, everyone pressed closer, asking how she’d cut like that—what kind of magic it was—where her family came from—they’d never heard of the Post family before.
Eliot pushed closer to rescue her from all these impossible-to-answer questions.
Jezebel cleared her throat and said, “You’ve never heard of her family before?”
Everyone turned to her.
“Oh, you are all such idiots!” Jezebel continued, a sneaky grin creeping across her face. “Don’t you know? She’s a goddess.”
The students stood stunned and looked back at Fiona, examining her, some nodding, others mouths open.
Fiona couldn’t believe she had said that.
Jezebel knew? Of course, if she was working with the Infernals—they knew. And no League rules prevented her from just blurting out the very thing that would have landed Fiona or Eliot into serious trouble.
“Fiona Post,” Jezebel said with theatrical flair. “The daughter of Atropos, the Eldest Fate, the Cutter of All Things.”
Fiona started to protest, but everyone began talking at once, suddenly fascinated with her.
Jezebel, with those three words, “She’s a goddess,” had forever changed Fiona’s life.
And, having gotten over the initial shock of this deepest secret uncovered, feeling the admiration and instant popularity from all the students . . . Fiona thought that maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing, after all.
Until she saw Eliot.
Fiona tried to move toward him—but Tamara Pritchard and group of her girlfriends cut her off.
Completely ignored by the other students, he skulked away. The expression on his face was one of wounded pride . . . and something else . . . something dark.
32. There are four orders of necromantic power. The lowest allows communication with the dead. The next level enables the transfer of life essence (not to be confused with the Life/Death duality magics of the Dreaming Families). The third tier of mastery preserves life past injury, disease, and extreme age. The last order is the ability to raise and possibly command the dead. Other powers exist, but are secrets known only to practitioners—notably the Van Wyck family. The Van Wycks are also known for their pharmaceutical conglomerate. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 14, The Mortal Magical Families. Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.
34
OUTSIDER
Eliot left campus but didn’t walk home. He picked a direction at random—crossing two busy streets, down an alley between houses, and then angled north until he smelled the ocean.
He took this route so Fiona wouldn’t be able to catch him. Not that she was trying. She had been swamped by students—all asking questions and looking at her as if they’d just seen her for the first time, enamored by her presence.
Eliot hadn’t been able to stand it.
He tromped down a staircase and onto a smaller street, where the houses had tiny co-op gardens for front lawns. It was November and the squash and peas had long been harvested. A vine-strangled scarecrow with button eyes stared at him.
This afternoon had been nothing but one disaster after another. It started when Van Wyck had called Jezebel Team Scarab’s “succubus.”
Eliot had studied enough in Miss Westin’s class, and read the “Tale of the Amber Vixen” in Mythica Improbiba, to understand the reference. Succubi were demons that used love and sex to steal souls and make people do terrible things (although the succubus in the “Amber Vixen” had turned to ash rather than betray the human she’d fallen in love with).33
He’d let Van Wyck’s casual, non–vocabulary insult get to him.
Eliot paused to admire an antique white car parked a half block away. It was one of those long-nosed things from the 1930s. It was sleek and the silver trim gleamed like liquid mercury.
He shuddered, dismissing the sudden chill from the encroaching fog, and he moved on.
Eliot should likewise have ignored Van Wyck’s rude comment, but he’d seen himself as a knight riding to the defense