Back To The Present...

The creature that materialized from the shadows was not at all what I expected.

The creature that appeared was a cat.

Miniature in size. Diminutive, only four inches tall.

It sat just outside the edge of the shadow and licked at a paw as its blank eyes stared at me. I say they were blank because there were no pupils. The eyes glowed with a soft white light edged in faint yellow. The cat’s fur appeared black at first, but the color shifted to a deep, dark purple, then to a midnight blue, then a forest green, and back to black. Throughout all the color shifts, there was a base of shimmer like the cat had rolled in glitter at some point.

I couldn't tell where the cat’s mouth was, but its ears stuck straight from its head like horns.

There was one other feature, one other thing that made me understand there was no way this was a regular cat: its tail was striped and came to an arrowhead point.

You know those cartoony illustrations of the devil? You know how they have that kind of pointy tail? This cat had a black and white striped tail that ended in one of those triangles.

Is it sharp? Can it hurt me?

“What are—” I started to say, but the cat burst into a writhing puff of smoke and disappeared. The next thing I knew there was a light weight on my left shoulder, and it was whispering into my ear.

“I thought…”

I turned to the left, but the cat proofed into smoke again and whispered into my other ear

“We’d already gone over this. What I am should be fairly obvious by now.”

I turned to the right and the cat proofed into smoke once more. I turned my head back and forth several times as I tried to find where the cat had gone and, with dawning horror, saw something float across my vision. Something twitched from the left to the right in front of my eyes.

The black and white striped tail.

The miniature cat was sitting on my head.

I jerked, my hands flying up to the top of my head, but all I managed to do was cut my hand against my horns.

“You have to be careful with those things.” The cat appeared, on a table not too far away. “They’re dangerous. Do you need an adult? I'm not sure you should be operating heavy machinery with a pair of those.”

“What?” I asked. The voice, the mannerisms, everything had changed from when the cat had been the shadowy figure in the corner. Now everything was different.

What happened? What the hell is going on?

“I see the confusion,” the cat said in a singsong voice. “Someone's confused.” It disappeared again and reappeared on my shoulder, whispering into my ear. “It's you.”

I, once again, ridiculously, turned my head in that direction. The cat, of course, disappeared off my shoulder and reappeared back on the table.

“Stop,” I said.

“Which part?” the cat asked.

“What do you mean which part?”

“You said stop. Which part am I stopping? Being a cat? Being a mostly girl cat?” She showed me a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth in what I could only assume was a smile. “Because I can turn into something else if you'd like. I can turn into something so much worse.”

“No,” I said, not wanting to even see an inkling of what that would look like. “I just mean slow down. This is all coming a little fast.”

“That's what happens when you play stonebreaker with a witchstone you have no business touching. Didn't your mom and dad ever tell you not to do witchstones?”

“Do witchstones?” I chewed on my lip. “Like drugs? Are witchstones drugs?”

“I think you hit your head harder than you realize. You’re not making any sense little horned girl.”

“Okay.” I just wanted the cat to shut up for a second. Just wanted her to be quiet so I could think. “What's your name?” I finally asked.

“Oh. So, we’re doing small talk now? Okay. I can do small talk.” The cat cleared its throat and its fur shifted to a deep, shimmering purple even though its tail stayed striped. No matter what color she changed to, the striped tail seemed permanent. She spoke with an affected British accent. “Well, my dear, you may call me Silvurn.”

“Silvurn? Is that supposed to be a name?”

“Of course, it's my name,” Silvurn said. “What were you expecting it to be? Becky?”

“Becky?”

Silvurn adopted a valley girl accent. “Oh my God. Your name’s Becky too. Wow.”

Silvurn’s fur slowly faded back to iridescent, inky black.

“I just mean that…” I sighed. “I don't know what I meant.”

Silvurn’s accent vanished. “Not a particularly strong way to start off the small talk section of this program. This is where I ask you your name, in keeping with social norms. So?”

“Hexana Covington.”

“Hex. Fantastic. Hi, Hex.”

“Not Hex,” I corrected. “Hexana.”

“Right,” Silvurn said. “Hex. Got it.”

“Sure thing, Silvy,” I snapped back.

“Hold on,” Silvurn said. “That's not my name.”

“Yeah and my name is Hexana, but what are you gonna call me?”

“Hex?” Silvurn said, showing me that mouthful of needle teeth again.

“Then I'm gonna call you Silvy,” I said.

Silvy sucked in a quick breath, considering it. “It's worth the pain, I think. Hex is a killer name. How can you not like that?”

“Growing up,” I said as though it should have explained everything. “Hearing people say they were constantly going to put a hex on me, or that I was a hex put on other people.”

“I'm not seeing the downside here. Come on. Cast a hex? Sounds like some good quality magick fun to me.”

I sighed. “So why is your tail striped?”

Silvy suddenly looked miffed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean why don’t the stripes on your tail change colors when your fur does?”

Silvy grunted. “I don't want to talk about that.”

“Oh, so there is a story,” I said.

“I said I don't want to talk about that!” Silvy turned her head away from me and pouted.

“So, what exactly are you?”

Silvy turned back to me and her glowing eyes changed shape. Without having the pupils as a reference, it took me a second to understand what I was looking at, but when I got it, I frowned.

“Did you just roll your eyes at me?” I asked.

“Did you just ask me another ridiculous question?” Silvy asked in response. “Chances are more likely than you think.”

“What are you? Just answer the question.”

“How do you not know this?” Silvy asked. “We're in the Shadow Vaile and you don't know?”

I frowned at Silvy. “What do you mean we’re in the Shadow Vaile?”

Silvy let out a giggle and floated up from the table. In the air, she rolled onto her back and turned her head to look at me, her striped tail swishing back and forth, that point slicing through the air like a knife. Her eyes slowly began to rotate clockwise around her face. “Blackhart exists in the Shadow Vaile. I thought all you Covingtons knew that.”

What is this thing talking about?

“I—” I started to say something but remembered that strange door in the closet that led into the theatre. When I had looked through it, the world outside had looked as though someone had pressed the pause button.

“That can't be the case,” I said. “I thought the Shadow Vaile…”

Silvy floated closer to me, slowly doing a loop-the-loop in the air. As she did so her glowing eyes did their own loop-the-loop on the surface of her face. She flashed her teeth in a smile. “Are you a little lost?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Something like that.”

“Okay, so you don't know anything about your family, you don't know what you've become, and you don't know what I am. Let's start with the easy things first, what I’ve already told you: I am your familiar.”

“My familiar?”

Silvy sighed. “You don’t even have a basic knowledge of the Lumaverse? Really?”

“I just found out about the magick world yesterday. Or maybe the day before. Whatever.”

“Whatever indeed. Very well. I'm your companion until you die. You and me, babe.”

“Babe?”

“You are a child, are you not?”

“I'm twenty-one.”

“I'm 578. So, like I said, you're a child.”

I opened my mouth to correct Silvy, to correct the familiar, but closed it instead. “Fine. I'm a child.”

“Nice. That wasn't difficult at all.”

“What was in that witchstone?”

“Me,” Silvy said. “Well, a different version of me. That stupid protection witchstone that you were wearing did something to my magick as I came through. You shouldn’t be alive right now.”

I looked down at the necklace my father had left me.

It was never a crystal. It was a witchstone. This whole time and I never knew.

It was shattered now though.

“You’re a curse,” I said.

“I consider myself a gift and a curse. I think that's a fine distinction right there, a distinction you should pay attention to.”

“So, the witchstone was cursed. It wasn't the Builder’s Stone?”

Silvy had been spinning in circles but now completely stopped, upside down, and dropped down to the table in front of me. She fell, cackling, on her head and her back.

“No,” she said between laughs, “no, that wasn't the Builder’s Stone. You would have magick if it was. I wouldn't be here if it was.”

It was never the Builder’s Stone. I’m not a wizard and don’t have magick. I activated a cursed witchstone and cursed myself.

“What was that witchstone supposed to do?” I asked sullenly.

“I'd say it was created to kill whoever tried to stonebreak it or use it for that matter.”

I sighed. I had to get back to Geist's. He would know what to do. Someone had given the Austerium a witchstone whose sole purpose was to kill the person who used it. I had to let him know, had to warn him. I took in a breath and realized that my teeth were chattering.

“Cold?” Silvy asked.

“Yeah.” I hadn’t been cold earlier. “Is it cold in here?”

“Honestly, the Shadow Vaile is warmer than any of the plaines or shards,” Silvy said. “Although…”

The corner of her mouth pulled back as though she were embarrassed for me about something.

“Although what?” I asked.

“Although you might want to find something to keep you warm in general. I have a feeling you're going to be cold for a long time.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I asked. Silvy started to answer, but I cut her off. “Not now. I need to go find Geist. I need to figure out what the hell happened. I need to warn him. I need to warn the Austerium. I may have failed, but at least my failure can help them.”

Silvy started laughing again. “That's the silliest, most noble thing I've ever heard a person say. Congratulations. I've lived a long time, but that took the cake.”

“Whatever,” I muttered.

I went back to the closet that held the door into the theatre and pulled out the musty, heavy green canvas parka. The hood was lined with fur. I slipped it on, instantly feeling a tiny bit warmer, but not entirely. I pulled the hood up over my head, wondering if my horns would slice through the material there and hoping it was strong enough to withstand the blades poking out of my head.

Thinking more about it, I decided not to wear the hood. I pulled it back and let it just hang off from the back of my neck. After that, I found a first aid kit and bandaged up both of my hands from where I’d cut them on my horns.

When I glanced back around the lab, Silvy had disappeared.

“I'm in your hood, dork,” her voice came from behind my head. “It's warm in here. Go! Mush!”

“I'm not your—”

“Mush!” Silvy called in her tiny voice. “Mush! Mush!”

I took a deep breath and let it out. Geist would know what to do. Geist would help me. And if he didn't, Lebec would.

The chill grew worse as I left the lab and made my way to the front of Blackhart. There, I opened the door onto the Night Market.