Blink. Blink. Blink.
“You’re not as dumb as you look,” I said and patted him on the shoulder. “If you do what I say, I’ll see that your friend gets the help he needs. When you can stand up, drag your busted pal back to whatever hole you crawled out of. Tell your boss how close you came to having your core ripped out of your miserable body. Tell him how I took the two of you apart. Make sure he understands that if he ever sends anyone else here to shake down the school, I’ll be back. And I won’t stop with a couple of goons. I’ll carve my way through his little gang, and that will be the end of that. Do you understand?”
Blink. Blink.
“Excellent. You’ll do what I asked?”
Blink. Blink.
“All right then.” I rolled the man over, dug his wallet out of his jacket’s inside pocket, and plucked out his driver’s license. “Mr. Joe Gravano of 2815 Greenville Avenue, here’s hoping you and I never have another chat, okay?”
I didn’t need to see his blinks to know his answer. I’d seen the fear in his eyes, watched as motes of dread and terror aspects swirled to life in his aura. Like most bullies, these two were super tough right up until somebody pushed back. Then they blew away like dry leaves on the wind. I stood and checked the area for any more threats lurking in the shadows.
There were none of those, though plenty of people had gathered to see what all the ruckus was about. I scooped the handgun off the ground before it could find its way into an even worse situation and held it by the barrel to make sure I didn’t touch anything that would make it go bang. My one and only experience with a firearm had ended with a dead assassin and taught me almost nothing about the weapons.
“Let me have that,” Rachel whispered. “The police will be here soon. They’ll dispose of it.”
Rachel’s lips trembled when she looked at me. I realized she was staring at the darkness in my eyes. She rose onto her tiptoes and pressed one palm flat against my chest. Her aura filled with clashing aspects of passion and fear.
Rachel cycled her breath and purged her aura with a deep sigh.
“You should go,” she said. “You don’t want to get tangled up in filing police reports all night.”
It hurt to hear Rachel sending me away. We’d had such a wonderful time until the goon squad showed up. All that was gone now, burned away by the heat of battle and old memories. I’d almost killed Rachel once, lost in the instinctive violence of the Eclipse core. She was attracted to that danger, but not enough to outweigh her very justifiable fear of what might happen.
“Sure,” I said. “Call me if you need anything.”
She went inside the school, shut the door behind her, and snapped its lock closed with a final, metallic clack.
The Map
IT WAS HARD TO SETTLE down after I left Rachel. I couldn’t shake the look she’d given me as the door closed between us. That violence had bothered her. It always would.
I dragged my irritable self to find the headmistress, only to discover she hadn’t arrived at the School yet and wouldn’t until the next day. That put me in a foul mood that didn’t improve when Hahen appeared for our nightly meditation session.
The rat spirit seemed genuinely interested in my night and interrogated me about everything that happened. My mentor was not pleased when I told him about Grimaldi’s men.
“Humans,” he grumbled. “So driven by greed. I hope when you change things, you weed that out of your people.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” I said. “And even if it were, I wouldn’t do it. Changing all of humanity isn’t what this quest is about.”
“Oh?” The rat spirit sat back and clasped his hands in front of his stomach. “Then what is the quest about?”
He had me there. I knew the Flame wanted me to find its replacement to create a new Design. What that meant, though, was still a bit of a mystery to me.
“I haven’t decided.” I shrugged. “I hope it becomes clearer as I follow the clues.”
“In that case, you must advance to the artist level,” Hahen said. “It will increase your chances of success and might even keep you from dying. Let us continue your meditation exercises.”
While I agreed with the rat spirit that advancement was important, I also regretted every drink of wine I’d had in Dallas. Hahen’s instruction pushed me to the brink of exhaustion, then gave me a swift kick over the edge.
Despite the rough evening, I slept like a baby and woke refreshed the next morning.
After a quick shower, I raced down to the dining hall. My friends were due back at the School, and I was eager to see them. There were few other students on the campus, and I loaded up a plate and took a seat at our usual table to wait for them to arrive.
Eric returned to the School first, bringing a new scar with him. It was an ugly, twisted pink braid that ran from the corner of his eyebrow back to his ear. Eric’s family had enough money they could’ve afforded a jinsei physician with the skill to heal whatever wound he’d suffered without leaving a mark. The fact that they hadn’t told me Eric had kept the gnarly thing as a badge of honor. Or maybe he thought it would help him pick up girls.
“That looks like it must’ve been a nasty paper cut,” I teased him. “Should’ve put some Neosporin on it.”
Eric laughed and circled the table to drag me out of my chair into a hearty hug. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me back a step
