“Concentrate, Sophie,” Diana chided. “You have limitless power. You just have to find it.”
“I’m trying!” Sophie snapped. “But I’m tired and hungry and distracted and I just want to go home and do nothing!”
“You can,” Diana assured her. “Once you’ve killed this little plastic man.”
Sophie glared at her. “With a knife, it would be the work of a moment.”
“You don’t have a knife,” Diana reminded her. “You’re in a corner. He’s advancing. He isn’t striking yet. You’re feigning injured. What do you do?”
Sophie thrust out her hands and concentrated. Her palms itched and her fingertips prickled but nothing magical happened.
“I can’t do it!” she screamed in frustration, marching over and punching the innocent plastic man in the face. “I just can’t do it!”
Diana sighed in exasperation. Savio, who had been watching quietly in the corner, stood up and walked over.
“You’re not trying hard enough,” he said, coldly.
Savio rarely spoke and Sophie was always startled to hear his voice. Today, though, she was just annoyed.
“I’m trying as hard as I can!”
“That’s not good enough,” Savio growled. “You need to make an effort, Sophie. Stop expecting everyone else to keep saving you. People have better things to do than watch your back.”
Sophie was speechless.
“Besides, you’re meant to be the one to destroy this world. Right now, you’re just a feeble little child. Just a child, Sophie. Perhaps you aren’t the Princess after all. You can’t do anything. You just let other people run around clearing up the mess you’ve made.”
Sophie’s insides curled in a blazing hot furnace of rage. If Savio noticed, he didn’t react.
“You know that the Society will never let you get your parents back, don’t you? You can only get them back if you frighten the Elders and you could never do that. You’re just a little girl running around, trying to be important. You’re nothing. You can’t do anything.”
Sophie screamed in fury and raised her hands. They burned crimson and Savio dived aside so that the wave of black energy didn’t reduce him to dust, as Sophie had intended, but instead incinerated the little plastic man, and the stand he stood on, and a great deal of the wall behind him.
“Well done,” Savio said, picking himself up. “Diana, make a note. I think we’ve successfully determined the trigger to her power. In time, she will learn to harness it.”
Sophie was still seething, but felt curiously released. She looked down at her hands and then at the smoking ashes of the plastic man and the scorched and crumbling wall.
“I did that?”
Savio nodded. “Forgive me if I offended you, but experiments have to take place.”
Sophie stared at him. “You…”
Savio smiled faintly. “Forget it, Sophie. Worse things will happen to you.”
“Anger,” Diana murmured. “Your power is triggered by anger.”
“Yes…” Savio hesitated. “Or, perhaps….”
“What?” Diana frowned. “What are you think, Sav?”
Savio shook his head, retreating to his seat. He said nothing more and Diana didn’t press him. Savio would speak, in his own good time.
“Well,” Diana smiled. “That’s incineration done for today. Shall we try something more ordinary?”
Sophie groaned. “Diana, please! It’s been a long day! I had a vampire attack!”
“Oh, yes,” Diana’s smile turned grim. “The undead. They resist necromancy better than most, seeing as they are practically made of it. You’ll have to be stronger before you can take on a powerful vampire.”
Sophie scowled. “Unbeatable Night Princess, am I? Can’t even fight an arrogant vampire!”
“An arrogant vampire with centuries of experience and knowledge, superior strength and speed, and the aid of a terrifyingly focused mind,” Diana pointed out.
“Fine, fine,” Sophie sighed. “I’m tired, ok? I don’t want to train anymore today.”
“You want to go and mope in your room and wish that time travel didn’t exist and that you could be a magician without the whole destroy-the-world factor.”
“Yes,” Sophie said, irritably. “I do. Is that allowed?”
Diana nodded. “Off you go. Allowing for disaster, same time tomorrow.”
Zephyr Sylph pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders, the hood wrapped around her face. The night was nothing worse than slightly chilled, but Zephyr didn’t want to be recognised. She didn’t want to be seen.
Her footsteps clicked on the road as she hurried along, trying not to look rushed. The dark windows of houses watched her pass, as if waiting to pounce the moment she broke her concentration from the road in front of her.
Strictly speaking, Zephyr wasn’t meant to be here. She was staying with Chrysanthemum Bone at the moment, in a room at the back of the great mansion. But things were tangling themselves up in Zephyr’s head, and she wanted that mess unravelled.
Zephyr had had her memories wiped, a long time ago. For too long, she had gone without knowing who she was or how she had come to be. She hadn’t even known her own name. Now, with a bit of adventure and a few coincidences, memories were starting to come back.
Zephyr knew that she had originally been called Eleanor Train. She could remember training in a vast hall, full of other people like her. She could remember being better than most of them. But she couldn’t remember specifics, and she couldn’t remember time-scales.
Zephyr’s memories were returning in a rush, tangling around one another and confusing themselves. She wanted them straightened out. She wanted to understand who she had been, though she doubted she would ever remember everything for certain.
Reading in Chrysanthemum’s library, she had found out a lot about memory magic. She’d started following leads, and they had led her to this town.
“36, Jamaica Close,” she repeated, under her breath. “36, Jamaica Close.”
Precisely what was at 36, Jamaica Close, she wasn’t sure. But there would be something. The phrase kept coming back up in her mind, like something she’d memorised and repeated so many times. 36, Jamaica Close. Like an address. Like a home.
“Well, hello,” a cool voice said, from behind her. “What are you doing out at this time?”
Zephyr froze for a moment, wondering whether to walk on or turn. She chose to turn.
“You shouldn’t be out round here at night,” the man smiled. “There are…”
He stopped talking, staring at her. His face was suddenly terrifying, as a memory wallowed to the surface of Zephyr’s confused mind.
“Eleanor,” the man breathed. “After all this time…”
“My name isn’t Eleanor anymore,” Zephyr said, carefully. “I’m called Zephyr now.”
For a moment, confusion flitted across the man’s features. Then it was replaced with amusement, and slight regret.
“That’s a pity,” he sighed. “I have a nice list of names of people I should kill when they trespass on our territory. And guess who’s at the top of the list?”
Zephyr didn’t hesitate. She turned and ran. The man was after her in a second and, unfortunately, a great deal faster. He hit her from behind, sending her tumbling to the road.
“Not so fast,” he hissed. “Much as I regret it, you’ll make a perfect candidate.”
Zephyr struggled but the man held her firm. She twisted over sharply, bringing her knee up into his stomach, and firing out her hands. A blast of air hit him like a brick wall and the man fell back.
Zephyr was up in a second, running again. She turned her palms backwards as she ran, moving the air to make herself faster. The man was after her again and Zephyr was rooting desperately through the mess of her memories to try and find some clue as to what this man could do.
A net dropped out of the air, onto her head. Zephyr tried to push it away but it tangled round her arms, looping over her neck, twisting her into an impossible position until she was trapped like a fly in a web. The man approached leisurely.
“Let me go,” Zephyr whispered. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
The man shrugged, non-committedly. Zephyr struggled, the rough fibres of the net drawing blood.
“Please,” she begged. “Please!”
The man started to smile. “Begging and pleading? Eleanor Train? I never thought I’d see the day. Well, perhaps we’ll see about letting you go. If you tell me everything.”
Zephyr shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Can’t you?” the man raised an eyebrow. “Tell me. Now. Tell me about the Night Princess. Tell me what the Society plans. Tell me everything, and you can walk away. Or at least crawl.”
“I can’t,” Zephyr repeated. “Blood-bound. The Necromancers did it. Blood-bound to loyalty.”
The man’s expression darkened at once. “That cursed…yes. Of course. Blood-bound to the princess. Well, forgive me my sins, Eleanor. But you’ll do well as the first offering.”
“What are you talking about?” Zephyr asked, her voice rough with terror.
The man drew a knife and held it up so that the moonlight gleamed from it.
“These are hard times, Eleanor. Sacrifices must be made.”
The knife plunged into her stomach. Zephyr screamed. The knife was out again and stabbing into her side, her leg, her chest, her neck. Blood pulsed from wounds, soaking onto the damp road.
“Goodbye,” the man smiled. “And good luck in the Beyond.”
Through a haze of pain and terror, Zephyr was able to see shadowy figures approaching from all corners of the street. There must have been nearly fifty of them, with faces hidden and forms concealed in long coats.
“Do your work,” the man ordered. “Do it now.”
Zephyr’s eyes went dark. Miles away, Sophie woke up screaming.