Zachary Rawlins
The Anathema
Prologue
Emily had just finished tying a bow on the present she’d selected for her father, a tie-pin he probably wouldn’t like that she had bought in an antique store during a visit to Taos, when she pushed the curtain aside to see if it was snowing, and it officially became her worst Christmas ever. This was, in all fairness, saying something when it came to Emily Muir.
Not because her father would not like the tiepin. George Muir, after all, was not high on Emily’s list of favorite people, expressing disappointment in Emily so consistently that she had resigned herself to it. Instead, it was the two people strolling through the quad, holding hands, who were ruining the holiday season for her. She did not recognize either of them at first, but then she saw the hat the taller one was wearing, and that she knew immediately. She had seen it take shape, after all; stuffed in the knitting basket Eerie arrived and left with when she visited Alex at the hospital.
Numb with surprise, Emily let the curtain drop back down, numb and a little queasy. She had been preparing herself to go to Alex’s bedside — normally; Eerie would be leaving right about now, so if Emily timed her arrival right, she could avoid bumping into her in the lobby on the way out. Emily wanted to be happy that Alex had woken up; if anyone had asked her, she would have said that she was very happy, and perhaps a part of her was. Nevertheless, most of her was too busy wishing all sorts of terrible deaths on the blue-haired girl, who had somehow morphed from someone she pitied to her archrival, her nemesis, her adversary for the heart of a boy that she was not completely certain that she actually liked.
Of course, she did not have the luxury of such considerations. Her place in the Raleigh Cartel, her entire future, in a matter of months, had come to rest on the whims of a boy two months her junior. A boy who let his hair grow too long, who always wore headphones and didn’t always take them out when he talked to you, a boy too nervous to even try and kiss her when she’d gone out with him. It was not a happy development, but Emily was used to that. She had braced herself years ago for much worse things.
She pulled the curtain aside again, just a few inches, and peered back out through the frosted windowpane. Two people wandering aimlessly through the snow below the dorm buildings, breathing steam and looking at each other with flushed faces. Emily tried to push the turmoil and panic out of her head long enough to take a good look, trying to see their halos: the smoky, multicolored rings of light that hovered just above their heads. She could barely see his, and then only with a great deal of effort. Eerie’s halo, on the other hand, was entirely absent.
This was the crux of the problem. Emily was an empath, and every empath perceived the emotions around them in a different way — for Emily, it was halos, for others it was an aura, a melody, or even a fragrance. Most empaths swam in a sea of such impressions; many of them were taught to block much of it out, so they could function normally. Emily had the bad luck to be born with only a shred of power, the least one could have and still claim to have any at all, and that meant that on her best day, she could only tell how someone felt. Her power was too weak to make her of use to the cartel as a diplomat, a leader, a negotiator, or a spy, meaning that her most probable future was that of a glorified homemaker, given away in a political marriage. Nevertheless, Emily had just enough power to realize that Alex was already starting to nurture a crush on the girl he was holding hands with; his halo was all soft, optimistic pinks with livid white strands of excitement and streamers of deep red lust interwoven.
Emily hefted the present experimentally, considering tossing it against the wall, but she was too sensible for that, and too angry to cry. Therefore, she settled for putting the present carefully down on the table and then pacing across the room, swearing to herself and cursing whatever fate had made it possible for Alex to wake up when Eerie was at his bedside, and not her.
“That bitch,” Emily muttered, clenching her fists while she walked from one end of the small room to the other, one side too warm from the ancient heater, the other frigid thanks to ventilation problems in the old dormitory buildings. “That selfish… bitch,” she finished lamely, having already exhausted her small store of pejoratives.
The funny thing was that Emily liked Eerie — or rather, she had felt sorry for Eerie, who seemed to be a favorite target for bullying in her class. Eerie was a changeling, meaning that one of her parents was Fey, while the other was human, leaving their daughter an outcast of two worlds, raised at the Academy since she was a child. Emily had a certain sympathy for that, given her own difficult position in her family and in her cartel; anyway, Emily didn’t like to see people mistreated. She had always done her best to look out for Eerie, not that the strange girl had ever shown any appreciation for her efforts. Now, Emily thought, fluffing up with righteous indignation, they were enemies.
The target of her anger fluctuated between Eerie and Alex. Emily cut him more slack — Alex was, after all, just a boy, and therefore helpless in the face of Eerie’s dubious charms. Nevertheless, he had made a promise… well, more of an agreement, to pretend that they were dating, at least in public, for the sake of convincing Emily’s handlers that she was making progress in her assignment to seduce and acquire the boy for the Raleigh Cartel. Emily was, by this point, so well conditioned to accept being pitied that she didn’t even resent the situation that much. Moreover, she had been making progress, real progress. If Eerie hadn’t intervened a few weeks ago, dragging Alex off to San Francisco on some sort of bizarre date that ended up leaving both Alex and Miss Aoki hospitalized, and poor Edward dead, then Emily would almost definitely, she thought, have replaced their agreement with an actual relationship.
Where was the justice in that? Eerie had gotten Alex hurt, and another student killed, playing her little games, and yet there she was, holding hands with the boy as if she had a right to him. Emily paced and stewed inside her dormitory room, dressed up for a hospital visit she was never going to make, her blond hair done in painstaking curls that he wouldn’t see. All this because she had been too nice.
Emily paced, stomping her foot occasionally against the cold stone floor to emphasize her frustration. She wondered if they had kissed already. She wondered if they had slept together when they had gone to San Francisco — she had heard they checked into a hotel together, before Anastasia found them, and she heard all kinds of stories about Eerie. She didn’t think that they had done anything yet, but with that girl, it was impossible to be sure. She wondered, stewed, swore, and got so wrapped up in jealousy that eventually she had to sit back down again, all flustered and dizzy. Emily stole another glance out the window, telling herself that she didn’t really care; but they were gone, and that worried her, too.
She wondered what Eerie was doing with him right now, what she was letting him to do to her, and she hated herself for it. Emily stayed like that for a while, staring out at the falling snow, her mind a blur of vindictiveness and recriminations and self-pity. Then, with an effort, she put a stop to it, gathered herself, and considered her options.
Confronting Alex directly was out. She was afraid she would come off as possessive and controlling — after all, she wasn’t even really his girlfriend. Confronting Eerie was probably equally pointless, though it sounded much more satisfying. Going to the cartel or the Hegemony for help was obviously out of the question. They would probably pull her from the Academy and send some other girl, or girls, in her place. However, that did not mean Emily was going to keep playing nice, either.
Emily thought it over for a while, but she knew right from the start she only had one real option.
She felt a little bit better, having come to a decision. She changed clothes, the blue floral-pattern skirt and soft wool sweater she had worn for her hospital visit put aside for a different time. She dressed in her normal clothes, and then combed the curls from her hair, taking a perverse pleasure in ruining her hard work.
She looked at herself in the mirror, and managed to summon up a smile. She decided it looked brittle and gave up on it. Then Emily went to find the only person in the world who she trusted to help her.
