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I sat in the communications house, chewing on my thumbnail. It was a terrible habit I had since I was a child and one that I only indulged in when I was under stress and alone.
I ordered everyone out of the house under the pretense that I was going to make a call to my sister. That was completely false and not even the first lie I had told in the past twenty-four hours.
The conversation I had with Lou had shaken me to the core. Growing up, I knew what my legacy was. It was to protect people from monsters and if at all possible, to take as many of them down as I could. It was drilled into me since before I could walk, but now I'm not sure I could even raise a gun to Celia Ortega's head if she were standing right in front of me.
The things we had in common seemed to outnumber the things that we didn't.
Dead parents, a family legacy, and siblings that we would die for. Our belief structure was so similar, that one could have been stolen from the other.
The only problem was, I was raised to kill her.
And she was raised to survive me.
It was my instincts fighting against what my heart was telling me and I didn't know which way to turn.
For the first time, I felt truly alone, and there was no one I could talk to about it.
In the background, classic rock blared, my attempt at trying to shut out the world. It didn't work. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. It had been a week since I was able to sleep properly and I could feel it. My head throbbed and my eyes felt gritty.
I knew they wouldn't bring me the ones that the magic had bound itself to. Everything I knew about the Ortegas said that they would rather have their own lives taken than offer up the lives of others. I knew that tomorrow I would have to start the investigations and that my sister would probably be joining me. This was my very first assignment out in the field and I was already having to call in my big sister to come to help me.
I threw down the pen I had in my hand in disgust.
I knew she would be happy to help, and I knew she would even relish the idea of being this close to the Ortegas. In the magic community, there was no bigger fish to fry.
I took a drink of the coffee that was quickly going cold on the desk in front of me. It was terrible but I couldn’t trust a coffee shop in town not to add spit or poison in something I ordered.
I was waking up in the middle of the night more and more, from nightmares that I couldn't remember. There was fire and blood and screaming and I felt the horrifying desperation to leave, but I was paralyzed. Even after I woke up, soaked in sweat in my own bed, I felt like there were eyes following me. When I checked the cameras outside of the house that I was assigned to, there was no one out there. At least no one that the camera could pick up. That didn't mean that there wasn't someone or something out there watching me.
I scrubbed my face. I was starting to sound like one of the paranoid hacks that had been in the Ascendancy too long and was about to be put out to pasture.
Father Timothy had indeed gone to greener pastures. He had been put out very quickly, very quietly, with the rosary still wrapped around his fist and a bullet hole in the back of his head. My sister was the one to do it.
I stood as a witness by her side.
Like I had summoned her, my phone lit up with her name and picture. I stared at the picture for a moment, but I knew it by heart. We were in the south of France, on the beach, somewhere private where it could just be us and our co-workers and we wouldn't have to watch what our conversation was about. We were hugging, pressed cheek to cheek and I don't think we have ever looked happier in our lives. I remember my grandfather took that picture and it was the first time I heard him laugh in years.
I turned around and paused the music before I picked up my phone.
"Bianca," I said.
"What are you doing?" She asked. Her voice was soothing, even over a thousand miles away.
"Strategizing. What are you doing?"
"Packing. I assume that they haven’t brought you whoever the magic chose?" She asked.
"No. You know they haven’t."
She remained silent but I could hear shuffling in the background. When she said she was packing, it was an exaggeration. She had people packing for her, cleaning her guns, sharpening her blades. I knew that she would be on a private jet to us before long.
"The youngest one has to be the first one to go. Once he is gone, there will be no next generation. They will die out like the weaker species that they are. Are we clear?" Bianca said quietly.
Although it was framed as a question, I knew it wasn't. It was an order.
I could tell her that Artie was more powerful than our notes had indicated. Father Timothy seemed to have kept that part to himself. I could also warn her about Azolata, and ask what he could possibly be, and why our notes about him were so wrong. Of all the creatures in this town, he was the one that terrified me the most. He was a wild card and a true unknown.
Aside from whoever the magic had found its way into.
"Of course," I replied.
"Good. I'll see you tomorrow."
She hung up without another word. I looked up at the clock. Another wave of guards would arrive within the hour. I needed to get up and go greet them and give them posts to handle. We still had not found the Ortega house although we knew that they were often at the High Priestess’s residence.
I glanced up at the map on the wall next to me. I had a few places in mind that they might be living, but they were all so deep in the forest that I was worried about sending people to go scout the locations.
Artemio had been right about one thing; the men and women that returned to us after being in the forest were no longer sane. Not by any means.
I laughed out loud at that thought, in the empty room. I wasn’t sure I had any room to talk about anyone else’s sanity.
I could send more guards to the High Priestess’s home, to watch the comings and goings. I knew it was useless though. Even she was gaining more power. She had been able to cloak herself since that first meeting and we could barely catch a glimpse of her.
Same with her son, Lou. The magic didn’t seem like it was as thick around him and he often flickered in and out of vision like a bad TV channel.
I stood up and looked at the clock. It was near five PM. They had seven hours to hand over whoever the magic chose.
I stopped near the front door and looked at myself in the mirror.
If I was so sure, if I had all the confidence in the world of my sister, then why did I feel like we were already dead?