Ghosts, Gears, and Grimoires Read online

  “I get to show you! We assembled it in the boiler room, and they said I was to come tonight and see if it helped you.”

  Bile rising in his throat, Watham swung his legs off the bed. They could leave—right now. Bags could be packed within minutes, and they could catch a train to anywhere. Leave this pulsing Academicia behind.

  He stared down at his hands. Battle scarred under grime that just wouldn’t come off. A glance to the side, and Nico’s small, white hands came into view.

  Closing his eyes, he saw that other pale hand fall out of the bag. Had it been an adult? A child? Did it really matter? People who died of natural causes were not incinerated in a boiler room.

  Standing, he went to the wash basin and splashed water on his face. “Nico, I don’t want you to come to work with me tonight.”

  “But Da! That’s the only way I’ll pass…” Nico’s voice fell to silence, his lip quivering.

  He was still only ten.

  “What exactly did they tell you about tonight?” Watham kept his voice calm with difficulty, raising an eyebrow at the boy.

  “They said it was a great invention and it could save lives… But that doesn’t make sense, does it, Da? How could a mechanized broom save lives?”

  Watham watched as worry and doubt clouded his son’s eyes.

  “It doesn’t make sense, Da.”

  “No. There’s more to the story, as there often is.” Sitting at the small table, he waited until Nico sat beside him.

  Nico had to be safe, that was a given. But whatever was going on up at that school also had to be stopped. He explained, as gently as he could, his worries and fears about what was going on at the Academicia.

  “I want you to leave the city as soon as I go into work, Nico. Take what you can, and leave this place behind. I’ll meet you, if I’m able, in Windmere.”

  Nico shook his head, “No. I need to go with you. I can tweak the mechanicas, make them do things they weren’t meant to do. I can make them into whatever we need. You can’t do that.”

  “I can’t go into battle with my boy present. Don’t ask it of me, son.” Watham slammed his fist onto the table, making Nico jump.

  “You can’t win against them with pistols or swords or even your strength, Da. They expect us to die tonight, don’t they? I can’t… You can’t make me walk away from you!” Nico’s voice rose higher and higher, tears shining in his eyes. “You taught me better than that!” His own small fist pounded the table in turn, causing a shiver to run down Watham’s spine.

  * * *

  Watham stood at the school gates, listening to the hustle and bustle of the city behind him. People walking home from work laughing and making merry, trolley cars and veloceters clanging up and down the street. He adjusted his duster, making sure the sword and pistols were well hidden within its folds. Deep breath.

  Nico’s smaller hand found his own, and he gave it a squeeze. Too brave a boy.

  “I love you, son. I’m proud of you, but I need to know if you want to go to Windmere now.”

  No. The boy wouldn’t let go that easily. Nico held too much of his own code of honor to walk away. “I’m here, Da.” Nico’s little hand tightened around his own. “Let’s do this.”

  “If the worst happens, what do you do?” Watham had to make sure Nico understood the battle plan.

  “If you go down, I leave. If I can, I’ll blow it to the heavens first, though.”

  Cracking his neck, Watham stepped onto Academicia grounds. They were quite pretty, and entirely indefensible. Too many hedges: multiple corners to hide behind.

  It was vaguely possible he’d live through the night. Nico had to make it, though. Nothing else mattered as much, not even stopping the Masters.

  His supervisor was waiting at the entrance to the boiler room. His forehead was beaded with sweat, his Adam’s apple bobbling up and down convulsively. “They don’t want anyone other than you two in there tonight…”

  “Is something wrong?” Watham kept his voice even, calm.

  “I don’t know.” The man looked older than his years. “I do not know.”

  Watham nudged the man out of his way. This wasn’t the time or place for explanations or requests for help. There was nothing the supervisor could do at this point. “They probably want a proper test for his machina.”

  The other man nodded vigorously, latching onto the idea. Blinking back tears, he walked away, shaking his head and muttering.

  Watham pushed the door open and descended to the boiler room. Nico kept pace behind him. Once at the bottom of the stairs, he removed the duster, hanging it on a peg.

  A low whistle from behind them. “That is a serious amount of weaponry for cleaning a boiler room.”

  Watham turned, seeing a line of Masters, cloaked and hooded in black robes tinged in gold. One stood in front. Their spokesperson?

  “I was recalled to service, sir… I leave after tonight’s shift.”

  “You can divest yourself of your weapons. You don’t need them.” Point set.

  “Not here I don’t, sir. But I do need to become used to bearing their weight again.” Match.

  The Master inclined his head. “Nico, I hope your little machina helps your father more than his weaponry.” A flash of light, sickly green, flickered under the hood. “Turns out there’s been an infestation.”

  The Masters shimmered, fading away before Watham realized what was happening.

  Magic? The Masters used Magic? Gears, he understood. Fighting ran in his bones. But how on earth was he to protect anyone against a magical threat?

  Eyes wild, he searched the darkness. A skittering, chittering noise started echoing from the very walls. The tinny clinking of metal turned him around to see Nico calmly tying on his tool belt. The boy plucked a pair of goggles out of a deep pocket, and pulled them over his head. He flipped a lever a few times, nodded his head, and smiled.

  “They’re small mechanimals. Mechanical bugs. My machine can sweep them up, put them into the boiler. But the boiler isn’t running…it needs to be up to temperature, running hot and fast.” Nico’s eyes narrowed behind the goggles. “There’s something wrong with them. Some kind of green smudge on them that I don’t understand.”

  “Magic.” Watham spat the word out.

  “Not just magic, Da. Natural magic runs yellow and brown. This is different. It’s the same color as that man over there.” Nico pointed to the side.

  Watham turned to look and saw nothing. Nothing but swirling dust that was moving quickly towards them. “Mary Jane?” he whispered. A small breezy touch, confirming.

  “Why are they the same color, Da?”

  “He’s a ghost, son. He’s no longer alive.”

  Had the Masters infected the mechs somehow? How? How in the hell were a sword and a pistol supposed to save them from such an atrocity? The damned things were starting to swarm into the main room.

  Nico was handling this situation better than he was. Why was that? Had they infected him somehow?

  No. Nico was standing there, simply figuring things out. A pencil was in one hand, his notebook in the other

  “Da, you’re going to have to power my mech. It’s going to take too much time to get steam running through it, but I set it up to work manually too.”

  The mech looked like a giant pie slicer, with a pole seat straight up the middle, along with some pedals. But the thing would be useless if the boiler wasn’t smoking hot and kept that way.

  “I can’t do both, Nico. I have to stoke the fire and keep it hot too.”

  “Don’t worry, Da. We’ve got this.”

  Shaking his head, Watham balanced on one of the arms of the mechanism, walking quickly to the seat. He’d made more foolish choices than handing control of a battle to a child, but at the moment he couldn’t think what they were. He sat on the seat, finding his balance. There were no handholds, just the seat with pedals. “Ready?”

  “Yes. Start pedaling!” Nico’s voice was right at his ear, vibrating into his
skull. He turned his head minutely, to see Nico hanging on to the seat with one hand and grasping a small box with levers in the other. Gears screeched together, fighting the movement. Watham grabbed the seat in both hands, rising up and forward to give his legs just a little more power.

  Nico scrambled down the arm, spraying something from a small tin can. Oiling the gears.

  Of course, they wouldn’t have allowed him to do it in class. Such a mess. Why give the kid a fighting chance at all?

  The machine started moving more rapidly, the pedals not needing as much power after the lubrication. Nico scrambled back up the armature, getting closer. He fiddled with the levers, and the machine drifted towards the boiler. “When we get next to the boiler, jump off. I can pedal it now.” Watham nodded agreement.

  The armature swung around, knocking over his coal barrow. Didn’t matter. He could scrape it up off the floor.

  Nico tapped his shoulder: once, twice, thrice. Watham leapt. Grabbing a shovel, he started filling the hot box, shoveling coal in from the floor in an arc. He reached for the oil and matches even as the first wave of skittering mechs came towards him.

  Oil. Check. Matches… Matches. There were none. Damn it all!

  A spark…

  He could handle this. He unholstered his pistol, aiming for the top edge of the metal plating on the door. Just one spark. All he needed was one little spark.

  His first shot missed by inches. He brought his left hand up to steady his right and fired again. Fire exploded in the box, flames jumping up and out. He scanned the seams, watching as first one and then another gave way. His heart lurched.

  Didn’t matter. They just needed to burn the little buggers and make it out. Watham turned to Nico’s sweeper and stared at the empty seat.

  “Nico!” He roared the name out, frantically searching.

  Goggles on the ground, bugs congregating near them. Grabbing the oil container, Watham flung it towards the creatures, watching as it dumped its contents out. Using his pistol, he shot one of the mechanimals, sparking off of it. Running around the line of the blaze, he scooped up the goggles, stretching the band until he could place them on his own head.

  Holy mother, all of them had the sickly green that had been in the mage’s eyes. Searching, he scanned the area for a clue, anything to tell him where Nico had gone.

  The spectral man was not precisely the same sickly green as the mechanimals, but he was close. One arm rose, pointing a finger in the right direction, and Watham was off and running. “Nico!”

  He ran to the back room, its lock hanging off the door. He’d never seen the door open before. Holstering his pistol, he bent and unsheathed a dagger. Couldn’t shoot in close, stone quarters. A ricochet would be deadly in here.

  Nico lay, bound and gagged, on a small cot. The ghost stood at his side, motioning for Watham to hurry. He dropped hard on his knees next to the cot. He slashed the ties on the boy’s wrists and feet, yanking the gag off. But Nico lay still, not moving. His chest scarcely lifted—he was barely breathing. What had they done to him?

  How could he even begin to help?

  “What do I do?” he moaned.

  The ghost wrote on the wall with his fingers, leaving a trail of shimmering green that faded quickly. Allow me in.

  Watham swallowed. He couldn’t, wouldn’t…but it was for Nico. Nico.

  Even if he died, if it gave Nico a chance it was well worth it. One short, sharp nod.

  Green light coalesced and streamed toward him. Convulsively, Watham swallowed as it entered his mouth. The world turned upside down as he disconnected from his own body.

  Nico still lay, silent and unmoving. Now, though, he could see a yellow tinge to the green that was slowly winding its way through Nico.

  “Mary Jane”—not my name, old son—lay his hand on the aura. As he did, the yellow became stronger, gaining strength even as Nico took a deeper breath, and then another.

  The ghost behind his eyes turned, surveyed the Masters as they came to witness…what exactly? A surge of rage, pure and hard pumped through him.

  Wait a moment, old son. We will not leave them to do this again.

  Again? How many times had this played out? How many lives had been lost to these monsters? Or was the monster inside of him?

  No.

  The spirit had cooled him, kept him from notice. He had to believe it meant no harm.

  The world, though. The world was changed before him. Everything had an aura to it, reds and blues and green and yellow, and so many variations between them. And the sickly green and black of the Masters told him everything he needed to know about the school.

  Watham watched as his hand reached forward, some unseen force pulling—the flames and fires he had started rushing towards them, as his other hand held a blue force in front of him. In a backlash of fire and magic, the building exploded away from them, throwing Watham into a wall.

  Pulling himself up to his knees, Watham shook like a dog. How?

  But...but Nico lay, safe on the cot, eyes open. “Did we win, Da?”

  “We defeated the enemy, son. We defeated them.”

  “You’re wearing my goggles.” His small hand reached up and plucked at them but the strap would not pull away.

  Great. He had a ghost inside him that was suddenly chatty about his name and the fact that it would take an act of insanely difficult magic to separate them, and goggles that wouldn’t come off that showed him the magical underbelly of the world. Too much magic, all the way around.

  “Nico, do you know who Michael John is?”

  “Da, he founded the school for mages. Some say he took a vow to come back.”

  “So, not Mary Jane?”

  If you are to be my hands, old son, you really need to stop calling me that.

  Watham nodded sharply. People were calling for the bucket brigade and for survivors, with the siren for the pump wagon clanging in the distance. Flames still crackled too close for comfort, but he wasn’t ready to move just yet.

  “Mary Jane it is.”

  Watch it, old son. I’m the only teacher left…

  Watham swallowed. “No magic.”

  He was not comforted by the laughter echoing in his head as colors arched and danced behind his eyes.

  Engineered Deceit

  Amy Braun

  It was days like these where I wondered if I was cursed. I always assumed that no matter how bad a situation seemed, it couldn’t get worse.

  I really needed to stop thinking that.

  I glanced over my shoulder as I ran. “See ’em?” I called.

  Nash looked over his broad shoulder, searching for our hungry pursuers. “No.”

  Gemma glanced back as well. “Maybe they gave up.”

  I scowled at that. Creatures as bloodthirsty and hungry as the Hellions wouldn’t go to all the effort of chasing us through Smugglers Turf—the black market of Westraven—and suddenly give up on capturing us. We were fresh meat. A game they could truly hunt.

  I dashed around and leaped over fallen and shattered merchant carts, a decade of broken glass and useless wood crunching under my feet. The streets of Smugglers Turf were narrow and treacherous, but I knew them well. I’d gotten into more than a few fistfights around here.

  None of which I started, I swear.

  Never breaking stride, I glanced at the apartments and shops to either side of us. The windows of the collapsed brick buildings were shuttered with boards. Survivors crazy enough to stay above ground worked hard to ensure their homes were protected from the Hellions. They wouldn’t help us.

  Grudgingly, I had to admit I understood that reasoning. If the choices were hide or help, I would hide, too.

  I took a hard left, my boots slamming against the cobblestones, my lungs aching from exertion. Up ahead, I spotted a ramshackle cobbler’s shop with exposed windows. Getting in there and barricading it would buy us time until daybreak, when the Hellions wouldn’t pursue us so actively.

  The only problem was that we
had to cross through an open plaza to get to it. I drew the cutlass looped through my belt, having used all the bullets in my flintlock pistol. It was a modified design with an internal chamber that let me fire more than one bullet, but the cartridge only carried a dozen bullets, which had not been nearly enough to slow down the Hellions chasing us. I’d taken one down, but that hadn’t stopped the other three from screeching and tearing after us.

  “We going in there, Sawyer?” Nash gasped beside me, pointing toward the cobbler’s shop.

  I nodded, shooting glances at the top of the weather-stained apartments lining the square. The rubble from the sheared rooftops lay in heaps along the ground, leaving whole floors exposed to the elements. Crushed wooden tables and torn maroon tarps lay on the street, the remains of merchant stands destroyed by the Hellions in The Storm.

  I tried to look up each of the roads leading into the heart of Smugglers Turf, but my eyes couldn’t be everywhere at once. I didn’t have time to strain them searching the darkness, the second skin of the Hellions.

  “Is someone going to be in there?” asked Gemma.

  “Don’t know,” I replied, “but if they are, then—”

  We were halfway to the cobbler’s shop when an ear-piercing shriek cut through the air.

  I whirled around and saw a pair of bloody eyes glowing from a corpse-pale face like beacons, lean body encased in a black Sky Guard uniform, and tendrils of black hair streaming behind it as it closed distance.

  By the time I saw the monster clearly, it was on me.

  The end of my cutlass went straight through its stomach, probably out its back—and didn’t stop it at all. The Hellion screeched and slashed a set of hooked claws at my face. I leaned away, one of the claws nicking my chin as the arm went by. I kicked the Hellion in the chest and yanked my sword back.

  The Hellion screamed again, more from anger than pain. As far as I knew, they didn’t acknowledge pain. If anything, it was their motivator to press on and rip us to shreds.

  I danced back, hoping that Nash and Gemma were far enough away that I wouldn’t bump into them. The Hellion launched itself at me again, its clawed hands extended toward my throat. I held the cutlass with both hands and swung upward, slicing the blade at the Hellion’s hands.