Chapter 12

Seraph sat in her brother's kitchen feeling sorry for herself. A new bandage covered her arm and new stitches covered her back. After sitting in the ER waiting room for three hours she sat through a lecture from a nurse, then later from the doctor. This time she had blamed a stray dog and claimed that she had hurt her back fighting it off and trying to get away. She didn't know if they believed her but they didn't push it so she didn't care. After another half hour spent filling out paper work she was free to go. She was beginning to deeply dislike hospitals.

Three new prescriptions sat on the table in front of her. She ached everywhere and felt overly tired. Still, she considered throwing the pills out. When she was hurt the first time they had been a welcome relief but now she just hated how they seemed to fill her head with cotton, dulling her senses and slowing her thoughts. Even now, coming off of whatever they had given her at the hospital hours ago, she felt foggy. There was enough wrong with her head as it was, she didn't need drugs blurring what little reality she had left.

Seraph played with one of the bottles, absently reading the warning labels. Amoxicillin. On the other hand it was probably a really stupid idea to throw out her antibiotics. She put those aside.

"Look what the cat dragged in."

Gabe wheeled into the room, barely glancing at her. Seraph hadn't heard him come home. He wasn't exactly the master of stealth; she must be slipping. In her mind it was another mark against the pills.

"I thought you were trying to stay home?" Gabe grabbed a soda from the fridge before facing her. He took in her appearance for the first time and promptly forgot about his drink. "What the hell happened to you?"

Seraph stared blankly down at her hands then back up at her brother. "You should see the other guy."

"You went out to get those... things," he accused.

Seraph frowned. "I had to. It was getting worse."

"So you just took off without telling me?"

She flushed with remorse. It had never entered her mind to wake up her brother and tell him. In fact, she had actively not wanted to deal with him right then. But if she had died down there...

"You could have been hurt, or worse! And I wouldn't have known what happened to you!" Gabe shouted, following her thoughts. "How could you-"

"Gabriel, " she said, cutting him off. He glared at her and she waited until she was sure he was going to let her talk. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. It was irresponsible of me not to at least leave a note. I didn't mean to hurt you." She reached over and took his hand. "But Gabe, try to understand. I couldn't take you with me. You couldn't have helped me down there." She gave him a crooked smile. "Not to mention I did survive six years and a war without checking in with you," she gently chided him. "I did learn to take care of myself a little."

Gabe slumped in his chair, his anger draining and taking his strength with it. "I know. I just... I don't know. I feel useless." He thumped the armrest of his chair with his fist. "I can't even help my little sister."

"What? You've helped me! Jeez Gabe, if it wasn't for you I would have drank myself to death, if I hadn't just landed myself in a magic institution by now." She sat up straight in her chair. "Hell, just having someone believe I'm not crazy helps me... stay sane."

"I guess," he said, sharing her half smile.

"I promise to tell you next time."

"You better. Or I'll start charging rent."

Seraph laughed and felt better than she had in days.

"So," Gabe said. Finally opening his abandoned coke. "How does the other guy look?"

"He looks dead." Seraph launched into her encounter with the Rat Lord, glossing over the horse monsters that she first met and stopping before the darkness that chased her from the sewers. It didn't take long and Gabe didn't interrupt her with lots of annoying questions. After she was done, he sat quietly for a moment.

"Wait, he said the place moved?"

If the thing he was running from was what she ran into, yeah, she believed he moved all over the damn place to keep away from that. She would.

"Well, the place disappeared after I left," she said.

"But didn't you find this stuff last week?"

Seraph sat, stumped. Had the Rat Lord lied? Why would he? What would he gain from it?

"I don't know," Seraph shrugged. "Maybe he didn't move a lot. Maybe he only moved once a month, or even a year." It hadn't sounded like that to her, but it could be.

"Maybe," Gabe agreed. There was a brief moment of tired silence between them before Gabe spoke again. "You don't think this is over, do you?"

"I don't see why it would be. If nothing else, there is no reason why anyone would want me to have these damn things, so whoever is doing this to me needs to come get their shit." Seraph tried not to let on how concerned she really was, hiding behind a mask of relative indifference. In fact, try as she might, Seraph could think of no benign reason why someone would do this. At best she was being used to steal for someone who wanted an extra layer of deniability between themselves and their crimes and was someone who would see these items for mere profit once they had them, leaving her alone. At worst, she was helping a cult summon something really nasty and really old and would kill her once they didn't need her anymore.

So it was an all around kind of suck.

"Are you really just going to wait for them to come to you?"

Seraph shrugged. "They have the upper hand." Damn it. "And I can't go to anyone for help. Right now there really is only one thing I can do."

"What?"

"I need to know as much about the Crown and Emblems as I can. Maybe there is a clue somewhere about why someone would want them. If I know that, it's a step closer to knowing who would want them. You researched the Crown before. Do you think you could do this for me too?"

Gabe's eyes lit up. "I can sure try."

"Great," Seraph said, reaching across the table to steal his soda. "Would you really charge me rent?"

"Huh?" It took him a moment to follow the conversation shift. "Oh. Yeah. I sure would. A million dollars a month. Plus utilities."

"I'm serious. I'm here, using your stuff." Seraph insisted. "Power, water–"

"My coke."

"–I even kicked you out of your room."

"Can you afford rent?" Gabe asked.

"For a bit, I'm sure." Seraph sighed and rubbed her forehead. "What I really want is to move out."

"Ah. You don't love me anymore?" he joked. Seraph snorted. "I don't know what to tell you. You need a job first."

"Yeah."

"Do you really think that is important right now? With everything that is going on?"

"Life doesn't stop just because I have problems. Weird ass problems for sure, but somehow the rest of the world doesn't care."

"No rest for the wicked." Gabe sat quietly for a moment, thinking. "Okay, well..." He began slowly. "I have an idea. There is a data entry thing at my job. It just opened up, I could bring home the stuff, and you enter it here."

"Data entry? I... can't really type," Seraph said doubtfully.

"If you're working from home, you can take as much time as you need. It's not going to be a lot of work but it would make you a couple bucks at least. I can talk to my boss about it, but yeah."

"I can't turn down a gift like that." Ah, sweet nepotism.

"Great." Gabe smiled for the first time today. "You need to talk to my boss, of course. We should do that tomorrow before anything... new starts to happen."

Seraph sighed to herself. Last time, she had had two days before the visions started, so tomorrow she should be fine. Even so, with gainful employment on one side and indefinite imprisonment on the other, she didn't see the need to toe the line. With this new plan it felt like a weight had been lifted from her chest. She might not be able to fix all, or even some, of her problems, but this was one thing she could do.

In the next heartbeat Seraph stood in a bedroom she did not recognize. Colors were washed out and the room looked insubstantial as if reality was too tired to maintain the vibrance and the substance she was used to. The room felt old and lived in. Blurry pictures hung on the walls and hazy mementos were displayed. She turned– next to her was a bed and next to that was a nightstand. On the nightstand, a jewelry box. It looked real and in this unreal world it stood out as not belonging. Without walking she moved closer. The box opened and everything faded away like so much smoke, leaving Seraph alone with what lay inside.

You will go to this place, the voice came to her softly.

The Ring of Joining.

You must find my ring, the voice whispered in her mind. You must retrieve it for me.

It shone as the only source of light in a nothingness that threatened to swallow Seraph whole. Made of two bands of metal, interwoven in a strange pattern, the ring burned into Seraph's mind, leaving a mark that nothing would erase.

Go now, and find it. The command was stronger than Seraph's ability to resist, and she fell into it.

Seraph blinked and was staring up at the popcorn stucco of the kitchen ceiling. She was laying on her back in her brother's kitchen with one leg still up on her chair. A nice throbbing pain bounced around in her head from where it kissed the linoleum. It was also really cold.

"Seraph!"

Gabe was all but falling out of his chair with a frantic look in his eyes. Seraph opened her mouth to answer him but coughed instead. She rolled onto her side and grabbed Gabe's leg, squeezing it to calm him down until she caught her breath.

"Fuck," she said once she could speak.

"You said these wouldn't start again for a few days!"

"That's what I thought. That's how it worked last time." Seraph said flatly.

Inside Seraph was seething with white-hot anger that burned away her fear and confusion. What right did this whoever was behind this have to take over her life and use her as their personal damn puppet? Deliberately she picked herself up off the floor. She ran her hands through her hair and looked at her brother who was watching her with tension written in every line of his body.

"I'm sorry but I want to be alone right now." Without waiting for him to respond she walked into the master bedroom and shut the door behind her.

She felt like she was going to explode. She wanted to scream until her throat gave out. She wanted to punch and kick until her knuckles bled and her legs wouldn't hold her up. She wanted to destroy something.

In the closet under a spare blanket was everything she had almost killed herself getting. Pulling them out, she knelt on the carpet and arranged them in front of her. Running her fingers over all of them, she finally picked up the arrow and clutched it in her white knuckled fists.

It would be so easy to break.

If she destroyed these she might be able to put an end to all of this, maybe even hurt those who were hurting her. She wanted out and she didn't care if she hurt her puppet master on the way. Her vision was red around the edges and her breath came in sharp pants through clenched teeth. She closed her eyes and set the arrow down.

She hated being controlled. Hated everything about what was happening to her, but lashing out without understanding the consequences, particularly with magic consequences, was stupid at best. The damn thing might just blow up in her face. She needed to be patient, watch and plan. There would be an opportunity, an instance when she could strike. She needed to bide her time until that moment came. So, she would wait.

For now.

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