the Relic Spell
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CHAPTER 1
For the third time that month, a stranger recognized Orion on the street.
Orion sat in the passenger seat of Max’s car, his feet propped on the dash and his notebook on his knees, sketching a draft of a new spell. In the driver’s seat, Max gestured animatedly as he recounted a story about a fellow campaign volunteer, but for the past fifteen minutes Orion had only pretended to listen. Half of his attention stayed on his sketch, half on the bus terminal door.
The stranger startled Orion out of glum thoughts of Briar’s imminent arrival by rapping on his window. Max fell silent and casually laid a hand on Orion’s shoulder, the gesture a sign to the stranger that Orion had backup.
“You know him?” Max asked, his deep voice calm.
“Never seen him before,” Orion said.
The stranger had a white beard and rosy cheeks that might have qualified him to work as a mall Santa, but frown lines and shadowed eyes cast doubt on his ability to embody joviality. He rapped on the window again, glaring straight at Orion.
Max had parked in front of the bus station, which was in one of the less savory parts of town. Many of the buildings here had shattered or boarded-up windows; chain-link fences blocked off trash-strewn alleyways, and it seemed a streetlamp was broken on every block. Like everywhere else in the city, maple trees lined every street, but they were much less abundant and grew crooked, their dry branches hanging in different directions. If anyone got mugged in Port Monica, it usually happened a couple of blocks from here.
“Should we move?” Max asked.
“I know who you are,” the stranger barked through the glass.
Orion sighed. “No, I’ll talk to him.” He rolled down the window. The cool northeastern air of an autumn evening drifted in.
“You’re Tamura’s kid,” the stranger said. He smelled like coffee and breath mints. “You look just like him.”
He was right, though Orion’s skin was a couple of shades darker than his father’s. Orion had lost track of how many times someone had noted their resemblance, especially in the past year.
“You’re a sorcerer like he was, aren’t you?” the stranger asked. “He meant trouble.”
“I don’t want trouble, sir,” Orion said. “We’re just here to pick up our friend from the bus station.”
“Hmmph,” said Angry Santa Claus. “I’m watching you, boy.” He walked back to the stoop outside the bus station, sat on a bench, and opened his newspaper.
“Great.” Orion rolled the window back up. “I love being famous.”
Max dropped his hand from Orion’s shoulder. He cut a striking figure, his skin tanned golden brown. With his blue eyes and blond hair, square jaw, and rugged good looks, Max was the perfect picture of the all-American boy. In fact, Orion suspected that soon enough, talent scouts would recruit him to star in a Ford commercial. Acne scars marred his cheeks, but it fit the aesthetic.
In contrast, Orion was scrawny and pinched, fresh off a growth spurt that had left him with too much arm and leg to know what to do with. His thick black hair fell in shaggy, ear-length disarray, overgrown from a relatively neat cut that had happened way too long ago. He had a rounded face, in contrast to the sharp angles of his body, and a rather large mouth—his mother said it was because he had talked non-stop as a kid.
“Guess what day it is, by the way,” Max said. Orion could hear in his voice the things he wasn’t saying. He often chose to act as though Orion’s father didn’t exist, as though every time someone else brought him up, it went over Max’s head. Orion appreciated the reprieve from having to talk about it even more than usual today.
“Sunday?” Orion guessed.
“Six days from the release of Dreamer 086,” Max said. “I have it on pre-order.”
“Is that the dystopian game?” Orion asked.
“Yeah. It’s set like five hundred years in the future,” Max said, eyes alight with excitement. “There are all these hallucinogenic dreams that you have to play through. Scientists use the energy your brain generates by dreaming or something weird like that. The graphics are amazing. Have you seen the trailers?” He pulled out his phone without waiting for an answer.
Orion leaned over to peer at Max’s phone screen, aware of the heat that gathered in the inches of air between them. He wondered if Max had noticed he’d been zoning out during all the politics talk, given how eagerly he switched to a new topic. At least he knew Max wouldn’t hold it against him; it would be an opportunity to repeat his talking points when Orion was paying attention.
“You should come over next weekend,” Max said as the opening credits rolled for the trailer. “There’s a multiplayer mode. I’m trying to get Briar into video games, too.”
The graphics really were fantastic. Orion tried to focus on the video on Max’s phone rather than the prospect of having to spend more time with Briar. At least if they were all playing a game it would be less awkward than when they sat together in the school cafeteria.
Max is making an effort to let you guys get to know each other. It’s better than being left out of his life.
But it was hard not to think of how nice the past week had been. Playing games, watching bad movies, getting some extra cash for killing demon pests in an old man’s house—almost like old times. They’d barely mentioned Briar all week.
Three guys a few years older than Orion and Max, early twenties or so, crossed in front of the car. Orion sank further in his seat, hoping none of them recognized him as Daisuke Tamura’s son and scurried away fearfully or came over to give him a piece of their mind. Not everyone reacted as negatively as Angry Santa, of course. A couple of people even told him—softly, as though afraid someone would overhear—that his father had saved someone they loved. But regardless, it was exhausting.
Max lifted the phone higher, blocking Orion’s face from the three guys’ line of sight. It could have been an accident, but knowing Max and the way he showed support—quietly, subtly, never discussing a point of personal contention unless you brought it up first—Orion guessed Max had done it on purpose. He felt a rush of appreciation for his friend.
“Oh, shit,” Max said, looking up from the phone and across the street.
Orion followed Max’s line of sight, thinking he might have spotted some sign of imminent violence. It wouldn’t be a surprise in this neighborhood.
In a way, he had. The three guys who’d crossed in front of Max’s car stood on the opposite sidewalk, facing toward the mouth of a trash-filled alley and yelling. Then they all turned to run away, though one of them tripped—his shoelaces were untied—and fell onto the sidewalk. His friends didn’t stop to help him.
In the alleyway stood a small shape that might have been a child, but a glint of green skin as it stepped into the afternoon light revealed that it didn’t belong in this world.
Relief almost made Orion laugh. This was exactly the distraction he needed.
Orion and Max opened their doors at the same time. Max reached into the back seat to where he kept his broadsword, the pommel conveniently oriented toward the driver’s seat, and stepped out of the car. Orion pulled a handful of chalk and a Sharpie from his pocket as he followed.
The two guys who’d managed to run away disappeared around the corner. The third guy struggled to his feet, but the thing in the alleyway grabbed his pant leg and yanked him back down with surprising strength. Most demons were stronger than they looked.
Max rushed forward and planted his feet beside the guy with the loose shoelaces. He swung for the demon’s neck, his whole body engaged in the movement of the sword, and Orion knew the blow would have enough power to cut through meat and bone. But the demon dove out of the way and scampered away down the alley. Max had to do some quick footwork to keep from falling on his face from the momentum of his sword swing, and it looked like a little ballet move. Orion almost giggled, but he swallowed it; the demon was getting away.
“Lock my car!” Max said and tossed Orion the keys. Then he took off down the alleyway after the demon.
“What?” Orion demanded. He couldn’t believe he’d gotten car-locking duty. Couldn’t Max have had one of those beeper things?
He ran back to Max’s car, stabbed the key into the lock, and clicked all the doors shut. Then he sprinted off behind Max, bypassing the guy with the untied shoelaces who still lay on the sidewalk, stunned.
“Excuse me,” Orion said.
He avoided crushed cans, beer bottles, and shopping bags and squeezed past a couple of dumpsters and an open window that protruded into the alley. A toilet flushed as he ran past. The alley wasn’t long, and soon Orion burst out onto the street parallel to where they’d left Max’s car. Puffing, he glanced around and saw Max disappear around the corner a block to the right. He slowed down. Max must have known Orion couldn’t catch up and wouldn’t be much use to anyone if he did: e was already winded after sprinting for a block. Besides, sorcery required preparation.
It was like the time they’d chased after the demon that liked to hang around Saint Hellena’s, snatching babies from the children’s ward. This quiet side-street would work as well as any other place. Orion crouched on the asphalt, warm from the autumn day, and sketched a circle at his feet. He stood up again and sketched a symbol on his forearm in Sharpie, six slender triangles pointing outward in a circle, and drew a circumference around it.
Then he closed his eyes and hummed a single note from the back of his throat.
The sound vibrated in his stomach and chest and spread, washing away tension and his external senses. Sounds faded—distant traffic, a conversation coming from an open window on a second floor, a dog barking in a backyard. Everything softened and blended together, replaced by the beat of his heart as it slowed, echoing in the darkness all around him. He no longer smelled exhaust or cigarettes or trash from the alley. Orion inhaled again and heard the tidal rush of his breath. Then he opened his eyes.
The world around him had come alight with branching golden threads, gleaming like streams in the sunlight. They flowed through the air, around buildings, along tree branches, over the asphalt, and across the surface of his skin. Orion glowed with the energy; sorcerers diverted it toward them even when they weren’t using it to fuel their magic. He could feel a power-line hum: the enveloping, steady power of the world around him.
He never felt as right, never as complete or as alive, as when he was casting a spell.
Orion reached for one of the nearby threads and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger. Heat rushed through his body as he became a living conduit for the natural energy. His nerves tingled.
Max appeared around the opposite end of the block, hot on the heels of the little demon. Orion felt a rush of satisfaction and adrenaline. Max had guessed Orion’s plan.
The demon, though covered in green scales, was roughly the size and shape of an eight or nine-year-old child except its arms ended in huge, long-fingered hands that hung below its knees and stubby horns protruded from its forehead. There were too many demon species from too many dimensions to name each one that passed through this world, but many of them fell into types—Orion felt safe in labeling this one a goblin. In Orion’s magically aware state, he could see a red cloud of demon energy clinging to the goblin, like blood billowing in the wake of an injured sea creature.
Orion got out of the way, as though afraid of the goblin, hoping to lure it towards the chalk circle on the ground. Still pounding along at full speed, Max herded the demon straight for the trap. Orion kept the spell ready in his head—the two circles, creation and manifestation. The energy still burned under his skin, straining to leave his body like a breath he’d held too long.
The goblin got within a few feet of the chalk circle when its all-black eyes flicked up to Orion’s face, then down to the asphalt, then up above Orion’s head. Instead of setting foot in the manifestation circle where Orion could unleash his spell, it leapt straight into the air and grabbed onto the broken awning of a run-down shop. Then it sailed over Max’s head and dashed off in the direction it had come from.
“Shit!” Max said, sliding to a stop just outside the circle.
Orion released the gathered energy back into the air around him, where it crackled and sparked like heat lightning. The threads of golden natural energy and the cloud of red demon energy vanished from his sight. He said a silent word of thanks to his mom for insisting he learn how to properly diffuse an unactivated spell—he’d never gathered that much power without using it before, and he dreaded what would have happened if he hadn’t followed his mother’s exact instructions: Release it slowly. Let it flow back into its natural state like water seeping back into the earth.
Max was already charging after the goblin again. Orion sighed and followed, though he found that he was grinning. He couldn’t deny that he loved this—the hunt, the chase, a singular target and a clear objective. It was so simple. And he knew Max loved it, too.
This time, the demon kept a steady lead on them both. Orion struggled to keep up with Max; even though he’d started out a few feet behind, the lead kept expanding. His lungs were on fire and he felt like he might fall on his face at any moment. His too-small shoes, uncomfortable enough during everyday activities, were squeezing the life out of his feet.
He lost track of how many blocks they ran before they reached a busy avenue. The goblin clambered over the hoods of cars, prompting shouts of fear and anger and a few honks. One car screeched to a halt and knocked the goblin off its feet, but it leapt back up and limped on.
Orion and Max weaved through traffic after it, waving apologetically at the drivers they passed. Max probably intimidated people as much as the goblin did, holding his broadsword up high as he ran to keep from stabbing himself. With his football-player physique, few people would peg him as the nerdy high schooler he was.
When Orion and Max reached the other side of the avenue, the landscape changed. Instead of passing boarded-up stores and avoiding giant potholes, they ran down a quiet block bordered by sprawling eighteenth-century houses and landscaped lawns. The goblin limped across the street cobbles, less than half a block ahead of them now.
Max put on a burst of speed and was about to catch up to the goblin when a flash of what looked like dark fur appeared out of thin air and sliced across the goblin’s path. It disappeared in an instant. Max came to a stop and Orion joined him several seconds later, propping his hands on his thighs; every breath sent a knife through his lungs.
The goblin sprawled on the cobbles, its throat sliced neatly open as though with a razor. Its eyes stared sightlessly at the sky.
“What the hell just happened?” Max asked. He looked disappointed, almost outraged that something had stolen their victory from them.
“No idea,” Orion replied between gasps. He would have shared in Max’s disappointment, but he was so winded that the unexpected help came as a relief.
Max turned in a slow circle, squinting at their surroundings, his sword raised and ready to strike. Orion’s skin prickled. He felt watched. No, more than that—he felt observed, studied. With effort, he straightened and glanced around. No sign of the thing that had killed the goblin. Could it have gone under the hedges that bordered the yard on their left?
The ground tilted under Orion, and his peripheral vision fuzzed. He grabbed onto Max’s arm, his balance off-kilter after the mad dash through the streets. His fingers felt Max’s lean-muscled bicep and he worked to keep his reaction off his face, focusing on the dizziness instead.
At their feet, the goblin’s body lost color and substance, like an icicle melting in the sun.
“You okay?” Max asked.
“Yeah,” Orion said tightly. “Just the Veil.”
Once a demon died, there wasn’t enough energy to keep them in this dimension. The universe demanding balance, their corpses would return to whatever world their matter originated from, passing through the Veil. Or, as Orion liked to think of it, the interdimensional privacy curtain. As attuned to the energy landscape as Orion was, any movement in the Veil made him feel odd.
Orion blinked several times. The goblin dissolved into globs of semi-transparent goop that trickled away into nothing.
He closed his eyes. His body was filing all sorts of complaints including a stitch in his side, cramping calves and thighs, aching feet, and lingering dizziness. He hummed and let the low, sustained note fill him, driving away the sensations. His mother often said that a sorcerer was only as good as his ability to focus and ignore distractions. Though he’d resented the lessons at the time, those hours spent staring at candle flames, listening to recordings of gong sounds, and trying to work on his homework while his baby sister Cass socked him on the head with a bean-bag walrus had paid off.
Orion sank into concentration and opened his eyes: the network of golden threads buzzed again in his second sight. The red energy of the goblin had dwindled to nothing but a soft glimmer and the threads of natural energy shone bright, no longer disturbed by their opposing force. Where the Veil had parted to admit the corpse, the cobblestones still wobbled, as if he was looking at them through a heat haze.
There was something else, though.
Orion deepened his concentration, ignoring the physical world around him until the houses blurred, and focused on the energy. A blinding whiteness flickered in and out of sight, circling them. Its luminous shape resembled the darting outline of a cat or maybe a large rat. It couldn’t be more than ten feet away, but he couldn’t see anything physical attached to it.
Orion’s speeding heart yanked him from his meditative state and the energies disappeared from view. Blood pounded in his ears and his eyes went to the spot where he’d last seen the creature’s blinding white energy, the base of a hedge. There was nothing there, but the sensation of being watched became even more definite.
“What is it?” Max asked. He’d gone on full alert, the lines of his body tense. He could always tell when Orion sensed danger.
“I’m not sure,” Orion muttered, just as on edge. “There’s something… It’s definitely an otherworlder of some kind, but it’s not giving off demon energy or natural energy. Are you picking up anything?”
Max wasn’t a sorcerer, but anyone could learn to sense demon energy and intense fluctuations of natural or Veil energy with enough practice. Any of those things would feel wrong and out of place to someone in tune with their surroundings. Max had trained to fight demons since he was in middle school, and experience counted for a lot.
“Yeah…” Max frowned. “But it’s faint. I don’t recognize it.”
Orion took a step to stand closer to Max. He thought he saw a flash of movement over his shoulder, but when he turned the street was as empty as always. Orion strained his hearing and caught the sound of a lawn mower, the call of birds from a nearby power line, but little else.
Then the tension eased from both Orion and Max at the same time. Orion hadn’t realized he felt cold until the warmth of the autumn sun seeped back into his skin. That creature’s energy had been like a breath of winter on his spine, a chilly prickle of his nerves.
“Gone,” Max said. “Whatever it was.”
“I’ll check again.”
Orion focused and did another sweep of the surroundings with his second sight. This time, he realized that the walls and tiled roofs, the wrought iron fences and gates, all glowed with a faint wash of gold. Natural energy—a lot of sorcerous spells had been cast here over many, many years. All diffuse and still, no buzz of active power. The tracks of all but the most powerful spells faded after a few days or weeks, but he supposed all those individual imprints must pile up over time.
He was surprised at the lack of demon energy imprints, other than those left by the goblin, which had left reddish footprints along the road. Did demons avoid this area? Or were they all killed by the same thing that had slaughtered the goblin?
Orion returned to his normal state of awareness. The otherworlder had vanished, that was certain.
“Where are we?” he asked Max. “Is this Greenview Park?”
“Yeah. A lot of the defense attorneys my mom knows live here.”
Greenview Park was the oldest, most upscale neighborhood in Port Monica, home to all the city’s founding families. Orion had never set foot in it, though he knew a few of the kids at their magnet school lived here. He’d had no idea that it was so close to one of the worst neighborhoods in town, just across an avenue. There wasn’t even a wall around Greenview Park, like he’d seen in TV shows.
Maybe Greenview Park had other means of keeping its streets peaceful.
A loud rumble ripped through the quiet air and a motorcycle careened around the corner, straight toward them. Orion’s heart leapt into his throat, but he didn’t have time to react. Metal screeched and the motorcycle swerved just before it crashed into them and kept going.
“Hey, asshole!” Max shouted. “You almost hit us!”
The biker turned a corner up ahead and vanished. The motorcycle seemed out of place among the centuries-old mansions. Once the sound of its engine had faded, Orion almost wondered if he’d imagined it. But Max’s fuming outrage said otherwise.
“God, I hate these people,” Max groaned. He rested his broadsword tip-down on the cobbles and wiped sweat from his forehead. “My mom made me come to a dinner party here two years ago. She said it would be a good networking opportunity. Everyone spent all evening talking about their summer houses and the stock market, I’m serious.”
Orion didn’t doubt it. The Greenview Park kids had their own tables in the school cafeteria, and they all brought their own gourmet lunches from home. He’d heard that some of the kids had their food prepared by their family’s chef every morning.
“Oh, shit,” Max said, glancing at his watch. “I wonder if Briar’s bus came in.”
“Right,” Orion said. Now they had to walk all the way back. He felt like passing out at the thought. How many blocks was it? He didn’t even want to know.
They took off, walking past side streets with plant-themed names—Chestnut, Sassafras, Poinsettia. Treetops trimmed into circles, diamonds, cones, and other whimsical shapes peeked over the hedges. All the mailboxes were wood, custom-made with gold or silver numbers and letters, tucked into mossy brick pillars or mounted on glossy wooden posts.
The only clues that showed they were still in Port Monica were the flaming maple trees planted along the sidewalks, fanning out their fall colors. Maples were the city tree and they lined nearly every street in town, from downtown to the outskirts. It was a small reassurance that this strange Port Monican tradition was preserved even in this otherwise-alien landscape.
“This is surreal,” Max said. “Look at that fountain. Is that Apollo? Who has an Apollo fountain in their yard?”
Orion focused more on the shadows, the nooks and crannies, wondering if he would spot the dark-furred otherworlder again. The peaceful yards seemed to stare innocently at him as though to say, Demons? Otherworlders? We don’t have those things here. He even smelled a barbeque cooking in one of the yards they passed, something as rare as stores that stayed open after dark in this town.
Port Monica was at a point of energetic convergence, which meant fluctuations in the Veil were more common and frequent than in most other places on the planet. Someone sighted a demon at least once a week—not that anyone outside the Port Monica believed it. A news team had come through a few years ago to film a humorous segment on the strange superstitions of a small Upstate New York city; none of the locals had found it the least bit amusing. The news team ignored warnings and ran into a swarm of demon insects. Their deaths had been ruled as asbestos-related, and no one had wanted to take up their project.
Orion had never imagined that an area of the city might be safe from demons. In other neighborhoods, people knew that cooking fresh meat out in the open could attract all kinds of undesirable attention.
“Have you ever heard about a demon sighting or attack in Greenview Park?” Orion asked Max.
“No,” Max answered. “Do you think that otherworlder could keep them out?”
Warmth grew in Orion’s chest. It was nice to know he and Max still thought alike, even though it seemed like they’d hardly seen each other since the summer. Since Briar. “Maybe.”
They left Greenview Park and crossed the avenue, back into the sketchy part of town. They stopped on the sidewalk across the avenue and Orion glanced over his shoulder at the old mansions.
“It was watching us,” Orion reminded his friend.
“It was probably just trying to figure out if we were a threat.”
“I guess so,” Orion allowed. “Still, you can’t pretend you weren’t creeped out.”
He also didn’t like not knowing what the otherworlder was, though he didn’t want to admit it. He was used to knowing enough in any given situation to at least make an educated guess about what they were dealing with.
Max sighed and rolled his big shoulders. “Yeah, maybe. But it didn’t attack us, so we don’t have to worry about it. Come on, Briar is probably waiting.”
