Agatha’s Monster

“Hung-greee.” Martin growled the word in my ear, drawing out the last syllable. I rolled over and batted at him. He scuttled out of reach and squatted on the other pillow, his tail lashing. “Hung-greee.”

“Mouse?” I asked, not bothering to open my eyes.

“No mouse,” Martin rasped. He whined. “No mouse left. Hung-greee.”

“You can’t be this alert when Mom comes.” I sat up and yawned. The sun was rising, its beginning rays embellishing the shaded spots outside.

Martin crept across the patchwork quilt, hesitant, because I am not a morning person, but determined. He reached out a clawed hand to tap my arm, his four digits splayed, haunches ready to bolt back. When I didn’t snap at him, he wrapped his small fingers around two of mine. I smiled slightly and asked, “What about a cat?”

“Permission?” Martin perked up, the short, fuzzy tufts of black feathers around his ears dancing. His breath, always slightly foul, wafted between us, but I was used to it.

“Sure. Get the one that keeps taking a dump in the front yard.” I grabbed his scaly, clawed hand, and looked him straight in his round, yellow eyes. “Do. Not. Get. Caught.”

“No get caught.” Martin nodded, his large mouth already beginning to drool. He smiled, multiple rows of pointed teeth glinting in the faint light and widened his gaze, an attempt to look serious. “Return to Agatha. No get caught.”

“Hurry.” I opened my window and let him scuttle out into the backyard, his black skin blending into the last of the shadows as he slipped down the side of the house. I stretched, partially yawned again, and blearily watched the light slowly creep across the sky; faint purples and vibrant oranges mixed with the slow reveal of the neighborhood. In the hall, the floor creaked slightly, but other than that, there was just the soft whisper of movement on the hardwood planks when Mom crossed to my room.

“You awake?” Her voice was hushed when she poked her head in. I could barely see her face in the dim light.

“Yes, Mom.”

“Good. Let’s get this day started.” She began to shut my door but reopened it. “Make sure to keep your voice down. Dad and Devon were out late last night.”

“’Kay.” I pretended to get out of bed, but as soon as the latch clicked, I was back at the window, whispering urgently. “Martin? Martin. Come.”

And he did, bounding across the last patches of shadow, his body making liquid leaps from one scrap of darkness to another until finally, he was balanced on the edge of the window, bringing the scent of blood and outside with him. A white and brown cat leg was in his mouth. I felt bad for a moment, but Martin had to eat, and I didn’t have enough magic to only feed him power. I threw an arm out, effectively blocking his path back over the windowsill. “Is that the one?”

“Maybe.” Martin shrugged and grunted; his gravelly voice was hardly recognizable around his full mouth. His belly, which was dark gray against the blackness of the rest of him, was bulging. He was full, thank the gods, and a cat would usually hold him for a few days, sometimes a week. I ran my hand over the flat part of the top of his head, burying my fingers in the short fur for a second before giving him a brief caress down the soft, flexible spikes along his back. He purred, a deep rumble like the creature he was eating.

“Finish it,” I said, motioning to the cat leg.

“Save.” Martin clutched the leg to him, his spindly fingers forming a fist around the paw. He liked to wake in the middle of the day and have a snack. The claws on the limb flexed from the strength of his grip, and I gagged.

“Ugh.” I looked around the room, grabbed a T-shirt off the floor, and handed it to him. “Wrap it up, and don’t get any on my things.”

He awkwardly stuffed the cat leg in the shirt and smiled at me, tiny bits of cat fur and grime stuck between the pointed triangles of his teeth. I rolled my eyes, scooped him and his package up, and tucked him into a drawer, right by his lodestone, a patch of white fabric with smeared, dried blood on it. He curled up in the back, beneath some old clothes, and immediately went to sleep, his long tail coiled around his body, the cat leg pillowing his triangular head. I stroked his scaly skin and closed the drawer. It was time to start the day.

I slipped out of my door, flipped the lock on my room—a simple spell that my little sister could probably break, but she’d be in so much trouble if she did—and headed down the hall.

“And now for the Hunter Report.” In the kitchen, Gary Hedge, the digital announcer, chuckled. “My favorite part of the day.” The anchor began to give a play-by-play of the top-rated monster killers. The Hunters. My dad was somewhere on the list, and I absently listened for his name as I went into the bathroom. I left the door cracked as I stripped and activated the shower. I scrubbed quickly, more to wake up than to wash, and was out before Hedge finished.

“As usual, I saved the top Hunter families for last. Devon Arbriger, who, before his little sister, Ardwin, joined the ranks, was considered the youngest Hunter ever. …” He droned on, expounding on my brother’s exploits and history. I rolled my eyes at the mention of Ardwin.

“Probably doesn’t even know I exist,” I muttered and slipped on the clothes I’d picked out last night; a yellow and black tunic that complemented my brown skin, fitted black pants, and black and yellow boots. I was a bumblebee today. I brushed my teeth and almost missed when Gary started in on Dad.

“His father, Jamaal Arbriger, reigning champion Hunter—I mean, no one has captured more monsters than this guy. …” Gary rambled about Dad’s stats. He sounded like a fan, but his coanchor brought him back to the point. “Ahem. It appears that the largest kill of the night came from both Jamaal and Devon’s efforts. Great job, guys!”

I exited the bathroom and clicked up the hall to the kitchen. The space was wide, with muted gray stone floors and white and gray marbled countertops. It should have been a cold room, but the large, scratched table and chairs, and the decorations Mom had added over the years, gave it a homey feel. Mom, her sleep-mussed, honey curls wild and in every direction, was folded into a chair, one of her long legs tossed over the arm, her bare toes flexing repeatedly as she watched the digital that rested in the corner near the sink. The curved, transparent glass was full of images from a Recording. The news had switched to a video submission of a Hunt.

“Maybe you’ll be a Recorder,” Mom said without looking back. Of course, she’d felt me come in.

“Do you ever get tired of being an Auror?” I asked in response. She could feel the auras of almost anything, including monsters and humans. The smaller the creature, the harder it was for her to detect, which was why she hadn’t found Martin. That and she wasn’t expecting a monster to be in her house. This was where her guard was down.

“Of course not. If anything, I get tired of being an Adept. No mage should have this much power,” she replied without missing a beat. “So, what do you think about Recording?”

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “I don’t know if I want to run around chasing after mages on Hunts, Mom. It’s dangerous and boring. Besides, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to see after the procedure I don’t need.”

“Of course you will, and yes you do. You’re an Arbriger. We just have to fix—” Mom flailed her hand into the air. All the magic in the world couldn’t give my mother tact. She stood, turned, and kissed the top of my head. “Make coffee. It’s Friday, and I want to watch the Hunt. They’re chasing an Intermediate.”

“Psh. Dad and Devon could do that alone.”

“Your father and brother could take down two Intermediates and a High Novice alone.”

“At the same time.” I laughed.

“Make my coffee, little girl.” Mom shoved at me and sat back down.

“I’ll be sixteen in two weeks.” I pulled the filter out and began prepping the machine. “Not so little.”

“Shhh.” The Hunt had started. I watched in snatches as I measured the grounds. The Recorder wasn’t bad. He definitely wasn’t the best, so they must not have had anything better for the Hunt of the Week. They had to play something, and new fodder was better than replays.

Recording was the only way regular people could see monsters, and since it was important that the nonmagical saw what the magical did, the news paid really well for Recordings. It was not a bad business, just … boring and dangerous. The Intermediate on the screen couldn’t have been as big as the one Dad and Devon had caught, but we didn’t have a Recorder that we worked with. Our last one, like all the others, had quit.

There were five mages in this Pack, six if you included the Recorder, not that anyone would: two Guards in purple, one Healer in green, and two battle mages—the Hunters—in red. I wouldn’t know for sure where they classed at until they did something, but they were probably fire mages. Most battle mages were. The Pack chased an Intermediate, perhaps ten feet tall. The creature was brown with yellow fur. It wasn’t that big, but it had to feed pretty well to hit that height. The Pack cornered the creature and slammed it with magic, the multihued spells pouring into the monster. Purple bands swooped around it. It was a containment spell from one of the Guards.

“Where’s my coffee? This is getting good.” Mom didn’t look at me but held out her hand. I moved next to the digital and filled the pot with water.

“I can mix some grounds with water if you want?” I snickered. She blew a raspberry at me, and I poured the pot into the machine. “In a sec.”

On the screen, the mages had contained the monster. I missed the battle mages’ talents. The Healer surged forward, drawing out the negative emotions or trauma reaction that made it so big. There was a flashy show of colors when he released the power; no wonder Hedge had chosen this one. As soon as the creature had shrunk to at least half its size, the leader of the group blasted the Intermediate, and I watched as it thinned to a flat sheet that floated across the air to the lead mage. The Hunter held out his arm, and the sheet wrapped around his limb from wrist to elbow; other tattoos on his skin moved to make room for the new one.

“Not a bad haul. I wouldn’t mind that monster to fight with,” I said and turned to grin at Mom.

“Terrance,” Mom muttered under her breath. “That trick gets old, and it’s not like he can use more than one of those damn tattoos at once.”

“You sound jealous.”

She looked over at me and rolled her eyes. Monster tattooing was rare; we both knew it, but Mom had never been able to tame a monster to her will.

“Get the oats started.” She got cream from the icebox and poured some into her cup before setting the carafe on the counter. The fragrance of freshly brewed coffee began to fill the room as we moved around each other, saying little; this was our daily routine. Mom broke the silence, her voice deliberately casual. “You know, as you said, your birthday is in two weeks. I thought we could go ahead and schedule your eye appointment.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes,” I replied.

“Agatha.” Mom looked at me. I stopped and looked at her, holding the pot and the oats.

“I can see monsters.”

“Prove it.”

“I am not killing in a Hunt.”

“Because you can’t see.” Mom smiled brightly and pointed at the digital. “You can be a Recorder.”

“Just because I couldn’t see that one time—”

“It has been multiple times, Agatha.” She was right, but I knew I could see monsters. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to see Martin. I would have brought Martin out to show her, but she would have killed him in less than a heartbeat. Anyone in my family would have.

“I’ll think about it.” I said the words simply, but there was nothing simple about getting your corneas removed and having magical lenses put in, and two out of ten failed, so you had to do it over again.

“On the other hand, your monster could still be out there if you just listen for its Call.” Mom was quiet. Waiting. She didn’t believe that a monster hadn’t manifested when my twin brother, Anthony, died. She was right, but she couldn’t have Martin.

“You know I’ve never heard the Call.” I wasn’t lying. I had never heard the Call to kill a monster. Even though most Hunters could hear it, some couldn’t. It didn’t mean I couldn’t see monsters. I just … couldn’t see all of them.

“Mmm.” She moved past me and turned the digital off with a short spark of angry magic from her hand. “This world, Agatha. This world only cares about money. There is a lot that goes into being a Hunter, but really, the world isn’t much different than it was before the monsters appeared. Society deals with the manifestations just as they deal with everything else: by asking how much it is worth.”

“I said I’ll think about it.” I added butter to the oats and stirred them. She moved closer and wrapped her arms around me, squeezing.

“You know, before the manifestations twenty years ago, your father and I were dirt poor.”

“I do know, Mom.” I glared at the oats. “You and Dad were some of the first Hunters.”

“True, and that gave us an edge that we’ve managed to keep.” She touched my chin lightly, and I turned to look into her hazel eyes. “You need to remember that while Hunters run the world right now, it can always change. The world changed out of nowhere. You must have a skill. Be useful, make connections, save money.” She nudged me and smiled to lighten the blow. “Get your eyes fixed.”

I nodded instead of answering. If you asked Mom, we were one bad Hunt from poverty, even though she was the most frugal, financially careful Hunter I had ever met.

I finished setting the table just as Ardwin came in. Her honey ringlets were a wild halo around her pixie face, and drool had dried on her caramel skin. She yawned, her light brown eyes still heavy with sleep. Even at twelve, everyone knew Ardie would grow to be a great beauty, but her looks would just lead people to underestimate her. That would be their downfall. Ardwin was vicious.

“Did I miss the announcements? What’d Daddy catch? Did Devon do good?” Ardwin scrubbed at the crusted drool on her face. She poured a glass of water and drank it down in one go, waiting for one of us to answer.

“Daddy and Devon took down an Intermediate,” Mom answered her mildly. We looked at each other and smirked.

“Ooo.” Ardwin smiled and sat in Mom’s chair. She spun it to face the table and poured a second glass of water. “I wonder what happened for it to manifest.” This was the part Ardwin liked. She got serious pleasure from finding out what happened to make a monster appear. The higher the monster, the happier she was.

I set a bowl in front of Ardie, and she scowled.

“I don’t want oatmeal.” My sister pushed the bowl away and hopped up. Opening the cold box, Ardwin pulled a grapefruit and a lemon from inside and kicked the door shut. She tossed the fruit in the air; a knife slid off the counter and flew up to cut both fruits in half. The surprising part for me was not that she cut them but that she managed to catch all four halves and the knife without cutting herself. Ardwin was a Kinetic. She could draw power out of anything, even the air, and use it to move other things or beings.

“Good morning, sweetie,” Mom said, neatly plucking the knife from Ardwin’s hand and kissing the top of her head. In profile, they were twins, except Mom’s skin was dark brown, and her curls hung to the middle of her back, whereas Ardie was light brown and chose to keep her hair cut at her jawline. Unlike either of them, I didn’t want hair at all, so mine was a buzz cut, perfectly highlighting the crescent scar that trailed from my temple to my jaw.

“Morning, Mommy.” Ardwin dumped her fruit in the bowl on the table and proceeded to scoop the grapefruit out of its rind with a lazy twirl of her finger, her magic precisely setting the skin to the side. The lemon halves rose over the pink chunks and Ardwin hunched her head forward, her eyes wide as she concentrated. The lemons squeezed out juice and pulp, and my sister sat back, satisfied. I watched as she manually doused everything with sugar. She closed her eyes on her first bite and opened them to see me looking at her. “What?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head and returned to stirring the oatmeal. Ardwin was in a class all her own, but that made sense; Ardwin was a Hunter-born, one of those rare children that had the talent to not only see but kill monsters damn near since birth. Supposedly, Anthony and I were like that. I didn’t remember us that way, but Devon said we were.

I took the oatmeal off the stove and poured it into a ceramic pot. This I carried to the table and carefully placed in the center. I went back to the counter for the top, the carafe of cream, and utensils. I balanced them in my arms, all the while feeling Ardwin’s eyes on me. It was my turn to glare. “What?”

“It must suck to not have any real magic,” Ardwin observed, a smirk on her face.

“Whatever, Barfwin.” I sang out the name that caused her first monster to manifest and zapped her spoon, a minor magic, just like everything else I could do. She dropped the utensil, and I grinned when she glared at me.

“Watch it, Agatha,” Mom snapped.

“Yeah, Agony,” Ardwin snickered, and Mom slammed her coffee cup down. Both Ardwin and I startled.

“You don’t know what agony is,” Mom said quietly. She looked at me, and for just a moment, I saw the anguish in her eyes. Anthony. Agony was so close in sound to Anthony. “Eat your breakfast.”

Mom returned to her coffee. Ardwin raised an eyebrow at me, and I looked at her before mouthing my dead twin’s name. I saw the moment when Ardwin made the connection and her face fell. “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

Ardwin barely remembered Anthony, but we were all used to the bouts of melancholy that would spring up out of nowhere when Mom was reminded of him. Not that she ever forgot. She didn’t respond to Ardwin’s apology but got up and poured another cup of coffee. Behind her, while she was pouring sugar, the cover lifted from the oatmeal, adding the aroma of cinnamon to the air, and scooped into one bowl, while another spoon lifted half of Ardwin’s grapefruit into a second one.

“Hey!” Ardwin laughed, snatching at the bowl. Mom smiled slightly and stirred her coffee. She turned and held out her hand, waiting for the bowl of Ardwin’s fruit to float to her. My little sister squinted her eyes and concentrated. They played tug of war in the air, both smiling.

I rolled my eyes, dropped my spoon in the oatmeal, and stood.

“We’re going to be late,” I reminded Ardwin. “You haven’t even gotten dressed.”

“Mom will take me.” Ardwin shrugged. Since I had broken my sister’s concentration, the bowl flew toward Mom fast, and with her Hunter reflexes, she just as quickly caught it. Mom looked up from the dish, her expression just a tiny bit guilty, but not much.

“I’m sure,” I said to Ardwin and headed to walk out of the kitchen.

“Wait, and I’ll take you too.” Mom’s voice was quiet.

“I kind of want to walk.” When I looked up and met her eyes, I saw that she understood, even if she didn’t agree. Anthony was never too far from my mind, either. He was my twin, after all.

I walked slowly, feeling the heaviness that weighed me down. I may not have remembered how Anthony died, but there were times when I felt like I was missing something. There was this haziness in my mind whenever I tried to recall my twin and a sadness that came from the lack of memory. Sometimes, the weight of it all could drop me where I stood if it caught me unaware. Whether it was magical memory loss or a trauma block, neither seemed fixable.

It was the lack of closure that hurt Mom the most. She wanted to know. She wanted to enter my mind and experience it. She wanted to make sure that Anthony had died instantly or live with the fact that he died in pain. She wanted to torture herself some more. Sometimes, I was glad I didn’t have my memories, just to save her from herself.

A horn honked behind me. I flinched and turned. Devon.

“Hey, little girl. Get in.” My brother pulled over next to me and opened the door. I slid across his leather seat and bumped him.

“I bet your breath still stinks.”

“Maybe.”

“What are you doing out during the daytime, vampire?” I teased, but Devon’s dark-brown eyes were inscrutable when he peered over at me. I sighed. “She woke you?”

“She worries.” Devon shrugged one large, muscular shoulder, and I buckled up. “Why would you walk? You knew it was going to set her off.”

“I needed some space.” I told him about breakfast, and he nodded. He pulled back onto the street, and we drove. I stared out of the window, breathing in the fresh air, and watched the mix of magical houses, some that floated in the air, others that constantly changed, and normal houses that regular people lived in. I loved our neighborhood. It was the definition of diversity.

“I miss him too, you know,” Devon said into our silence.

“Everyone misses him.”

“I miss you, too.”

“What does that even mean?” I laughed and looked over at my brother. I imagined Anthony would have looked just like Devon, muscular with Mom’s brown skin and Dad’s dark-brown eyes. Anthony would have had locs, though, and I, well, I wasn’t sure. I had hated hair on my head since I woke up. Devon and I had the same haircut.

“It means I miss you. You don’t remember. You were one crazy kid.” Devon smiled. “Both of you were.”

“You were fourteen. You were just a kid, too.”

“I was.” Devon grew quiet. He’d joined the Hunters on his fourteenth birthday. Even though the mandated profession choice is the sixteenth year, most Hunter children join at fourteen. Devon hated monsters. Honestly, I thought he hated them more than Mom did. He was merciless in battle, unnecessarily violent. He was the reason the last few Recorders quit. They couldn’t sell any of the Hunt videos that Devon was in. He literally tore monsters to shreds.

That was the only reason he didn’t know about Martin. Devon knew everything about me, except that.

Everyone had waited for Martin to manifest. Everyone knew that Martin would manifest. Whole families of Hunters combed the woods, trying to find my first manifestation. I didn’t know how Martin hid from them, but he was so tiny when I woke, able to fit in the palm of my nine-year-old hand. He was this small little being who fed on air and was warm, so warm, and comforting, in a way my family hadn’t been. Everyone was grieving a brother I barely remembered, and no one understood how I could forget him.

“All right,” Devon said, pulling into the parking lot. His car growled and purred as we drove up, and I saw a couple students admire the sleek automobile as they headed inside. It was a regular brick-and-mortar building, nothing like the fancy mage school Ardwin went to across town. I was one of the few mage family kids here. I hated it, but I had hated the magic schools even more.

“School.” I stared at the doors, not moving.

“Wanna skip?” Devon asked, and he wasn’t joking. He would totally take off and drive me wherever I wanted to go.

“Nah. Tests.”

He nodded at my response and reached into the backseat. “Forgot your lunch.”

“I didn’t pack one,” I said and caught myself.

He smirked and held the bag out. “Mom.”

I took it and leaned across the seat to hug Devon. For a moment, I felt safe in the warmth of my brother’s arms before he shoved me. “Out, you bald-headed bumblebee. To school with you, peon.”

“Like I said: your breath stinks.” I leapt out of the car and bumped the door shut. He rolled down the window and fake roared at me, his voice loud. I couldn’t help but laugh, even though we were both kind of sad.

I walked into the building with my head held high. In a school full of normies, even though I was basically nonmagical, even though I tried not to be, I was noticed, so I stopped hiding. I saw heads turning to look at me. I stood out in my yellow and black. They whispered, but they didn’t come near me. It had taken one visit from Devon for my bullies to leave me alone. No one forgot that day. I went to class, listened, daydreamed, and thought about surgery and how I could avoid it.

“Are we going to catch her today?” Janice asked, startling me as she jogged up on the way to the cafeteria. We walked beside each other. Janice was in the grade above me, but we talked about our monsters during study hall and at lunch, whispering about what we learned from them. I shrugged.

“I hope so. I’m going to feed her to Martin.”

Janice scrunched her nose up, her owl eyes behind her glasses even larger than usual. “Is that a good idea? Martin is already powerful.”

“No, he’s not, and he won’t be.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. Martin is good.”

“No monster is good, especially not one that looks like a mini-Titan.” Janice hunched into herself. “You know … when monsters decimate towns and kill whole cities, it’s not Novices or Intermediates that do that. It’s the Gods and the Titans.”

“Everyone knows that.” I stopped in the middle of the hall to stare at Janice. She blinked at me.

“Well, I was thinking … with Martin being from the trauma—”

“You don’t know that.” I snapped at her.

“But you said you woke up—”

“I say a lot of things.” I started walking, and she hurried to catch up, huffing at my pace.

“I’m just saying. It’s probably better to keep Martin in a cage like I do with mine.”

“You hate your monsters. Martin is my friend. I would never trap and torture him like you do yours.”

“Whatever.” Janice glared at me. “No monster is ever your friend. You should just tell your family and let them take care of him.”

“You should just tell the mage board rep that you can see monsters and get a new family,” I said, taking a dig at her.

“No.” Janice was firm. “I won’t go live with some mage family that’s gonna treat me like normie trash.”

“It’s gotta suck to live with the monster blind, though.”

“Nah. It’s kind of cool to know something they don’t.”

“I guess.” My voice was doubtful, and Janice rolled her eyes. “Magekind shouldn’t stay with the mageless.”

“Mageless shouldn’t stay with Magekind. Kill Martin and join your family,” Janice said simply, her round cheeks curving into a malicious smile. “Put up or shut up.”

“Shut up, Janice. I’m not mageless.”

“You may as well be.” We went through the double doors into the cafeteria, both of us making a beeline for the corner table by the window that we always sat at. We didn’t say anything as we unwrapped our lunches. Mine was leftovers from last night. I made a point of looking up at Janice as I zapped my food, the tiny spark of kinetic energy sizzling the sauce on my pasta.

“I am not mageless.” We stared at each other until we both burst out laughing.

“Do mine,” Janice said, holding out her sandwich. I snickered and almost burned the bread. It was small magic, but it worked. Janice gazed at me and shook her head, stopping the question I was about to ask. She didn’t want to try. I shrugged and began eating.

If Janice wanted, my family could have helped her become a full mage, maybe even Hunterkind, but she didn’t want that, and in a few months, it would be too late. Her core, the inner part that held her magic, would harden when she reached the age of maturity, usually at some point between sixteen and eighteen. She had to get proper training to fully access her power or kill her first monster by then to reach her full potential.

“You’re running out of time.”

“And I don’t care,” Janice said.

“Right now, but what about when you’re older, and you’re stuck as like … some …”

“Normie?” Janice asked. “A minor hedge witch or untrained parlor mage?”

“Yeah.” I looked down at the table, uncomfortable.

“Like you?”

“You hate your monsters, though.” I answered, avoiding the question.

“And you don’t hate Martin. It doesn’t make sense to me, just like I don’t make sense to you. Leave it alone, Ag.”

“Fine.”

“I caught a new one last night,” Janice mumbled around her sandwich, switching topics. She was hiding her bites behind her glossy brown hair. It did nothing to obscure the roundness of her face as she shoveled food into her mouth, but it made her feel more secure. Janice always ate ravenously but stayed generally fit. I barely ate, and we wore the same size. “I might kill this one.”

“This makes four—all in one fish tank. Is this one even yours?”

“Nah. Probably a neighbor’s. Nothing’s been going on for a while at home.” Janice shrugged.

“What are you going to name it?”

“I don’t know. Something that fits with Ralph and John.”

“And No Name,” I quipped. Janice tilted her head to look me in the eyes and shook her head.

“He has a name.”

“Well, you haven’t shared it,” I finished lamely. “You’ve got enough untrained power to keep three fed, but do you have enough to feed four?”

“Who cares if they eat?” she snapped. We argued about what she fed them a lot. Janice had enough magic to keep her monsters slightly satisfied, but I worried about them. They were tiny things that she barely fed, but even tiny monsters could become a problem with the right stimulus.

“I do. Unfed monsters find something to feed on. You know that.” I tapped her tray. “You gotta feed them something.”

“Crickets it is,” Janice said seriously, but we both laughed. Crickets would do, but monsters fed on magic more than real food. My house was full of errant magic, while Janice’s house had none except whatever well of power Janice naturally had. Martin stayed in a room, so he was cat sized. Janice’s stayed in an aquarium, so they fit in her palm, but the ones that we saw on the screens just grew to the sky; they fed on more than magic. They thrived on fear and pain, the trauma and chaos that they had manifested from, and they grew fast, sometimes within minutes, but only as big as their environment.

“What are you going to name it?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Janice shrugged. She grinned at me, a wicked curve of her mouth with a feral baring of teeth. “I’ve been after it for weeks. I finally caught it with my camera last night.”

I nodded. There were many ways to catch a monster, but Janice and I had found that tape recorders and cameras worked best for us. The tiny ones got trapped in the reel, then you just had to extract them and decide where to keep them. It was different with Martin. I hadn’t trapped him. When I’d woken up, he was just there.

“I should just bring them to your house.” She grinned at me.

“There’s definitely enough errant magic for them to eat, but you’ll be a Hunter and a ward by the end of the night. The fam would figure out you’re Magekind for sure.”

Janice nodded. “No way, then.”

“It wouldn’t be that bad,” I said. “Maybe you’d become a famous Hunter, and I’d be your Recorder.”

“Are you finished?” Janice laughed, grabbing my container of barely touched food. I didn’t bother to answer, knowing she would throw it away, anyway. I was thinking about the monster we had been chasing at school, the one only she and I could see. If I caught it, I could take it home and prove that I could see monsters. It wouldn’t open my core, but it would stop Mom from trying to cut off my corneas.

Janice returned from throwing our trash away. “Let’s go.”

I got up from the table and followed her to the restroom, where Janice had once slammed my head into a wall, right behind that other group of girls who bullied her and hated me because of who my family was. Except, with Janice, we made up; we became friends. Once there, we tossed our backpacks on the ground outside, by the door, and went in. I washed my hands, pulled out my camera, and we waited for the monster to show up. She came out of the largest stall, but this time, I was ready for her.

On the way in, I silenced the new monster with a punch to my book bag. She stopped squealing.

“Mom!” I sang as soon as I closed the door. “I have a surprise for you!”

No one answered, so I slipped down the hall to my bedroom. I liked to check on Martin as soon as I got in, especially today. I didn’t want him to hear them kill this monster. That wouldn’t be fair to him. The window in my room was open, the glass shattered from something going through it. Martin’s drawer was open, and there were scorch marks on my wall. “Martin?”

“Looking for something?” Mom was standing in my doorway, holding Martin’s lodestone, the patch of red smeared across white fabric.

“Where is he?” I snarled at her, my hands curling with violence. I tossed the bag with the other monster onto the bed. Mom’s eyes flicked to the bag, her focus wavering for a split second, but her anger redirected to me.

“We haven’t caught it yet. Come.” She turned away, walking fast, as if she didn’t want me to see her face.

I followed, angry. “What did you do to him?”

When we reached the kitchen, my father was there, sitting at the table, his face pensive, his eyes staring off into the distance. He was rotating a large Hunter knife in his hands, the magicked blade moving intricately over and between his fingers, dancing faster than the eye could follow.

Devon was leaned against the counter, dressed in his Hunter leathers, his face flushed red and angry, matching his clothes. Outside, in the backyard, I could see Ardie. She had been sent out, but she was standing at the doorway, wearing an angelic white dress, probably from school this morning, glaring at me as she clenched her hands. She hated being left out of conversations.

“Tell me why you would keep a monster in your room.” My mother’s voice was distant. At the table, Dad mirrored Ardwin, his fists clenching and unclenching for just a moment before they began moving again. I could feel his power, angry and oppressive, building up in the room.

“How long have you been able to see them?” Devon asked. “Is it … was it because of Anthony? Have you been able to see them since then?” They all hesitated, the air vibrating as they waited for my answer.

I didn’t speak but nodded, the memory of the Titan that killed Anthony hazy, still elusive, even after all these years. I didn’t remember, didn’t want to remember, but the spray of blood across my face, across my clothes, leapt to the forefront of my thoughts. I smacked the memory down.

They asked more questions, but I kept blinking, remembering. My mother slapped me hard, and the concussion from the power in her hand rocked me back. I hit the floor, but it was Dad’s power that lifted me up, gentle, a buffer that I hadn’t even noticed. I met his eyes, and he looked at me, disappointed, but still Dad.

Mom, on the other hand. “You won’t do this again.” I focused on the spit around her mouth, on flashes of her teeth, how pink her lips looked against her brown skin. “You will not shut down when it is time to answer questions.”

My gaze rose to her eyes, where I met her glare, angry, wounded, wild; my stare slid away from her face, and I looked around the kitchen for Martin. If they hadn’t caught him, then he would be in the house, somewhere. My eyes shot to the lodestone my mother was holding, a piece of fabric soaked with my brother’s blood, the token of my trauma, then to the counter, the table, the ceiling, back to the lodestone, the only piece of Anthony that was left. They had gotten rid of everything else when we moved; everything that was him was boxed up, in storage, somewhere.

I didn’t want to look at it.

“Why does it matter?” I asked Devon. I gazed at the refrigerator. “Yes, I’ve had him since then.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Mom asked. My gaze darted under the table.

“I don’t know if he’s the same monster that manifested,” I murmured, maybe in my head, perhaps out loud. I glanced into the hall. “He’s my friend.”

I kept looking for Martin. I leaned over to see under each of our chairs.

“What are you doing?” Dad finally asked, his first words deadly quiet. His whole body was tense, the veins of his neck straining outward, the muscles of his huge arms flexing as he continued moving the knife. He flicked the blade, embedding it into the wall and snatching it back with his magic. I stared at his fingers, so long, so like Anthony’s.

“Looking for Martin,” I said it simply, openly.

“You named it,” he said, even quieter. I nodded my head and looked up at him, meeting his tortured stare.

“He’s all I have left.”

“That monster is not your brother,” Dad said. I heard Mom gasp, a sharp intake of breath, as if she was just now realizing why I had kept Martin. She looked nauseous. I thought about the monster in my room. Was Martin hiding there? Would he let the new monster out? Would he stay with me?

“I’ll kill him for you. I understand why you didn’t,” Devon said, and I looked at him, the rage a mottled purple beneath his skin, and for a moment, we were all silent.

“Do you?” I asked him, searching his gaze for an answer.

“We loved him too, Agatha.” The rage left his face, and he took a shuddering breath. Strong Devon about to cry. He took his kill kit off the wall by the door and strapped it onto his broad back. “I can’t do this.”

“Devon, wait.” Mom stood up, shifting into his path as he headed to storm out of the kitchen. “You can’t go to battle angry.”

“This won’t be battle.” Devon laughed and looked back at me. “You know, if you didn’t blame her, maybe she would have told us.”

“I don’t blame her,” Mom snapped at him, placing her hands on his shoulders.

“Yes, you do,” I said. I felt a stirring in my chest then; for the first time, that thread of connection Hunters supposedly felt toward the monsters they were fated to kill unfurled inside me. The Call. I felt it even though the minor mages and the mageless supposedly couldn’t. It was a bubbling up of power that I shouldn’t have had, and I recognized the feeling, even though I didn’t know where from; the scrabbling chaos called to me.

“Agatha.” My mother looked at me. She could feel it, too, then. My father stood just as Devon slowly turned, each of their expressions vacant as they listened to the seductive demand to Hunt. I whirled and ran toward my bedroom, fighting the overwhelming siren quality of the Call.

“Martin!” I screamed his name, feeling my family thundering down the hall at my back. I thrust open the door and saw Ardwin on my floor, curled into a fetal position, held down as the new monster and Martin both bit into her, drawing away her power, each one growing as they did. We’d never heard her come in.

For a second, I didn’t see Ardwin. I saw Anthony and the terror in his eyes right before the Titan killed him. I didn’t need my father or my mother to touch the core of magic inside of me. I felt it crack and power I didn’t know I had burst out and exploded across both monsters simultaneously.

Martin reached out to me as his skin split, leaking the magic I had filled him with in a show of light, then he tore apart, and the power returned to me, holding the writhing purple energy that was my best friend inside of it. I fell to the ground, feeling the ripping pain that was my mage talent sizzling through my veins. It was agony, and no one could help me through it. It would be all they could do to contain it.

My mother fell across my sister, screaming and holding her, her power washing over Ardwin’s wounds. She was going to have scars. Dad enveloped them both, his shields surrounding me and the room and Devon—I looked up, and my big brother was watching me, watching my pain.

“You can do this,” he said, but I couldn’t. I felt the surge of magic through my body, and I could see it reforming my bones and flesh, the baby fat that had clung to me all through high school turning into hard muscle. I passed out, then woke seconds later. I was blind now, the pain and power exploding through my vision, remaking my eyes into a Hunter’s. I passed out again. This repeated until the power was finished with me, finished with the changes it had made to my skin, my bones, my blood.

“Come on,” Anthony said, grabbing my hand, and I went running after him, giggling in my brand-new purple dress that matched the cuff links and tie to his new suit. Mommy said we were her adorable chocolate drops. Our locs had been styled; Bantu knots for me and cornrows into a ponytail for him. We looked perfect, which was why we were about to destroy the look. Anthony and I didn’t do perfect. We did chaos.

“These shoes suck,” I said, kicking them off as soon as we made it to the tree, our tree, deep in the forest, away from anyone else. The scent of the woods surrounded us—tree sap, foliage, and earth. Anthony shed his jacket and his shoes, rolled up his sleeves, and tugged off the tie; then, he climbed, light and limber, barely touching his hands to the trunk before finding the next spot to reach for. I scampered up after him, both of us squirrels who could find knots and grooves where others would only see bark. We chose a comfortable branch and grinned at each other.

“Let’s see it,” Anthony said, his brown eyes bright and full of mischief. I pulled the backpack from my back and held it out. He dug past the lunch we stole from the kitchen and brought out the two presents, clumsily wrapped, perfect for us, from us.

“This is yours.” He held out the package gingerly.

“Duh,” I said and shoved him. We were part of the tree, though. He didn’t move, but he laughed, a flash of white teeth, joy infusing his face and making the dimple in his right cheek pop out. I had a matching dimple in my left. I hooked the bag onto a branch.

“That one’s yours.” I motioned to the other gift in his lap.

“Duh,” he snickered and, without ceremony, tore the package open. He gasped at the contents before pulling out a set of monster cards, a full set. Devon and I had worked for months to collect them all. He gave me part of his old collection to start with, but we went online and bugged Mom and Dad, and my older brother shook down some kids at his school, too. “This is all of them, Aggie!”

“Obvious.” I rolled my eyes and carefully untied the intricate knot he had tied around my package. It was about the length of my arm, and I knew what it was before I even opened it. I finished with the knot and tore the brown paper back, revealing the spelled knife I had been coveting for months. I squealed and hugged the Hunting knife and sheath to me.

“That was girly.” Anthony rubbed his ears in fake pain.

“Thank you!” I nearly screamed at him, and he laughed. I marveled over the knife, finally able to touch it. The sheath was covered with famous Hunters and some of the Titans they had killed, each one with their insignia above it. Our family was there, our father and mother, among the famed poses and kills. They were part of the first Hunters, the teenagers who discovered that killing the monsters that formed from their traumas gained them more power, made them faster, stronger, better battle mages than any that had come before.

“Thank you, too.” Anthony waved his cards at me. “I am the only one in third grade with all the cards. I can’t wait for school.”

I pulled the knife from the sheath and tilted the spelled blade so that I could see the soft glow of amber, blue, pink, and other layers of magic across the metal. “How did you get this?”

“Devon.” We said it at the same time and grinned. Devon got us whatever we wanted. At fourteen, Devon was the youngest Hunter ever. We were going to beat his record, and he wanted us to. Everyone expected us to. We already had strong magic and agility individually, but as a team, we were unstoppable on the training grounds. We were the youngest trainees and had been since we were seven.

“Do you hear that?” Anthony cocked his head.

“Hear wh——” Then I did hear it. The monster sirens were going off.

“Titan class,” Anthony said. He handed the cards to me, and I stuffed them in the bag. “We gotta go. Mom’s probably already mad.”

I watched him as he began to make his way down. “If she’s already mad, why go home?”

He looked up at me and grinned. “Because it’s our birthday, and we have other presents to open, Aggie.”

There was a ringing in my ears, a high-pitched whine, and out of the corner of my eyes, I could see Anthony turn his head at the same time, toward the forest edge, toward the houses. It was like an itch in the back of my mind, something ravenous and angry but also seductive. Go, it whispered. That way. You must go that way. And we did. I leapt from the branch, an impossible height, and landed on my feet, not even acknowledging the jarring snap of my ankle fracturing. Then we ran, a tiny pack of wolves, tearing through the forest, following the Call.

The Titan was huge. I could see its legs before we burst out of the trees. Sirens and chaos were everywhere. There was a path of carnage behind it that I couldn’t see clearly. I ran faster than Anthony now, my legs churning as I flew across the meadow toward it. It was black with spikes down its back, curved claws, and a wide, wide mouth. I could see black feathers sprouting around its huge ears, ears that heard me coming. It looked at me. I looked up at it as I put another burst of speed beneath my feet. At the last second, I leapt into the air, pulling the knife out of its sheath to plunge the blade into its leg. One hand went up to grasp the fur on the sides of its calf, and I climbed, stabbing as I did, watching the magic take effect.

Illustration by Zaine Lodhi

The monster roared, each wound I gave it causing its blood to gush, weakening it. I stabbed again and again, dancing away from its arms and hands that reached for me, calling out all the battle spells I knew, whether they worked or not. I screamed at it and stabbed repeatedly, but then I heard him.

“Aggie!” Anthony. Hanging with a handful of fur in one hand and my knife plunged deep into the flesh of its side with the other, both the Titan and I heard him, found him with our eyes. He was standing at the edge of the trees, terrified. He had peed himself, and though the Call still had a deep grip on me, his fear had caused it to leave him. He was just a little boy, a scared little boy, and the monster wanted his fear.

“Run, Ant! Run!” I screamed at my brother, my twin, my other half, stabbing faster and faster, plunging the knife in. Even as the magic worked and the Titan began to shrink, it was not fast enough. The Titan reached Anthony in a few steps, then he was in its hands, and I was running down the scaly arm, holding onto the spikes there, stabbing its hand, stabbing its fingers, grabbing Anthony’s shirt, even as the Titan squeezed and squeezed until—

I was covered with gore.

I was covered with Anthony.

A monster, probably a Titan—because what else could the graphic death of the other half of your soul create?—began to form in the air beside me. I saw the coalescence of my pain, mottled black and purple and blue, and I screamed at it, slashing out with the same pain that formed it, bisecting the creature with the knife before it could finish forming.

I felt the emptiness in my core, the vessel waiting for magic to fill it, and my spirit was open to the power, but the Titan, the one I had been stabbing and screaming at, was still shrinking. Its fist was coming for me, and I deflected the core magic, redirected it back into the creature that had killed my brother. I pushed the power into it, everything that I originally had and all that was coming to me, shrieking my pain and rage as I did, watching the darkness fill the creature up until it exploded. I fell, far and fast, still holding Anthony’s shirt, and when I hit the ground, I lay on my back and wailed at the sky as tufts of fur and magic rained down beside me.

I was still screaming but otherwise catatonic when they found me. I was magicless, clutching my brother’s shirt, covered in his and the Titan’s blood. They couldn’t get me to give the shirt up, to give Martin up, to let them have the creature I had diminished to a handful. They only saw a wad of fabric, barely recognizable as a shirt and the cut, a perfect crescent moon, riding from my temple down to my jawline. It was my only wound, just as Martin was my only souvenir, my prisoner, though I would forget that in the days to come.

When I woke, I was alone in my room. I’d been moved to my bed, but I was covered in bits of Martin and the other monster. The memory stayed with me, reverberating with knowledge of the past.

I coughed and got up, sweaty, my clothes plastered to my body. If you couldn’t Hunt, there were other things for you to do; most mage families could barely see, so their eyes were modified, and they were relegated to monster skinning or crafting or experimenting, though a few did go on to be great Hunters. Some mages never entered the business and did other things. I could have done anything; now, I would only be allowed to do one thing.

I heard them talking as I stalked down the hall. Dad stood when I entered the room.

“Okay?” he asked, looking me over. Mom didn’t look at me, her gaze on the table.

“Is Ardwin okay?” My voice was hoarse from the screaming, but Dad nodded at my question.

“She is sleeping. There wasn’t as much damage done as it looked.” Dad shook his head, the anger and disappointment warring for control on his face. “This could have been so much worse. For you to have been hiding that thing for this long—”

He broke off and shook his head again. I looked at Mom, my mouth glued shut. I didn’t know what to say to either of them. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s … we all deal with trauma differently,” Dad said quietly. He was looking at Mom, as well, but his gaze shifted to me. “We all do.”

“Mom?” I asked, waiting for her to look up. When she didn’t, I said into the silence, “I remember.” I saw the eagerness, the need on my mother’s face when her head snapped up. She reached for me and hesitated, not sure if I would share.

I held out my hand to her. “Go ahead, Mom.”

“Devon,” she almost shrieked my brother’s name. We would only live this memory together once. Devon came into the kitchen, alert, ready to battle, but it was only Dad’s hand there, reaching for him. Their hands gripped together, and my parents reached for me, each grabbing a hand as I closed my eyes and pulled up the memory of how Anthony had died.

When we came away from the recall, Mom heaved and barely made it to the trash receptacle. Then, she was vomiting and crying. Dad picked her up, his voice a murmur as he carried her to their bedroom. Devon looked at me but said nothing before walking out of the room. I stood in the kitchen alone, feeling lost.

“Take a shower,” Devon said behind me, and I turned. He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. He surged down the hall to his room, and I meekly followed him, stopping halfway to enter the bathroom. I stripped out of my clothes, peeling the fabric away in places, and cut on the shower. The water was hot, and after a moment, I allowed myself to break down. I cried for Martin, for Anthony, for the lost parts of me that had never come off that field.

I heard the bathroom door open, and a soft thump of clothes being set on the counter. When I got out, I saw that it was Hunting garb, fresh, new, exactly my size. I dried slowly, startled when something stretched on my hip. I twisted to look down, and there was Martin, a flat, living tattoo against my skin. Very few Hunters could trap monsters this way, and I had done it without knowing.

“Hi, Martin,” I whispered.

I dressed. It was purple, deep purple, a shade that brought out the dark hue of my skin. Hunters could wear any color. I looked in the mirror, at the buzz cut I had worn since Anthony died, at the scar that even magical enhancement couldn’t remove. I stared at myself. I was a Hunter.

When I opened the door, Devon was leaning against the wall. He had changed clothes, the golden hue of his leather garb accenting the dark-brown color of his eyes, eyes that were just like Anthony’s. He held my knife out to me, and I took it, pulled it from its sheath. I looked at the nicks along the edge, the marks from my first battle.

“I wondered what those were from,” Devon said. He hesitated. “We always assumed you and Ant used it to kill the Titan.”

“I remember when you tried to give it to me.”

“You screamed.”

“Sorry,” I said.

He shook his head. We were silent. I slid the knife back into its sheath and ran my fingers along the engraving.

“You back?” Devon asked.

I took a moment to answer, considering the return of my memories and the kid I had been seven years ago.

“Sorry I was gone so long.” I smiled slightly.

He shrugged.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you about Martin.”

He grunted. “Wanna Hunt?”

“Yes.” I strapped the knife onto my hip, right above the tattoo. I felt Martin purr against my skin, and I shivered with anticipation.

“Don’t think just because you took down a Titan at nine that you’re going to beat my record.”

“I already did.”

He shoved me. I didn’t know what the future held, but I knew my family would have my back, even when I made mistakes, even when I was foolish. This was my Pack, and I would never keep another secret from them. I looked at Devon and asked, “So, can I talk to you about this new tattoo on my hip?”

“Mom’s gonna be so mad,” Devon laughed. And I agreed.