Chapter 12: It’s All in the Archetype

I wearily rolled my head, too weak to lift, and locked eyes with Shellie. From our trek out of the woods, I knew she had a very limited understanding, so I spoke slowly. “We are going over there, okay? That’s my room up there.”

I pointed to the second-story window. That was a mistake.

In a freakish response to my words, Shellie scooped me up, flipped me over her shoulder like a gym bag, and bolted across the backyard.

My body flailed like a rag doll. But what came next made me nauseous.

I struggled to get a good line of vision. She had a death grip on me. And I had a death grip on Rules of the Black Arts for Advanced Users. From my limited view, I peeped that we were speeding dangerously close to the building.

We were going to burst through the wall at our velocity. Then came a hard jolt, followed by a shift in our weight. A tugging motion took us…

…up.

I watched, wide-eyed, as the ground shrank under us. Then came my offering—I hurled my guts out in mid-air.

We landed with a thud.

With strangely delicate precision, Shellie handled me like a basketball and pinned me against the wall. Safely perched on the stone ledge underneath my room’s window, I nervously beat at the sill until we managed to slip inside.

Panicked and damn near delirious, I limped to my bed. The rest of my memories were lost in sleep.

***

As if waking from a daydream, a chilling thought struck me.

If a trail of mud and blood is in my room from the window, did we leave bloody breadcrumbs from the woods right back into my room?

I awkwardly slid down out of bed, upper body first, then lower half, trying not to wake Shellie. My head brushed against Rules of the Black Arts for Advanced Users when I plopped to the floor. It must have fallen there when I crashed.

Cautiously, I propped myself up and dared to stand. My body sucked—careful couldn’t muffle the very audible crack of my knees.

I froze.

Once I was damn sure Shellie wasn’t disturbed, I crept away from the bed.

Out of habit, I walked to the railing of my loft bedroom and looked over my living space below. Nothing looked out of order, so I moved quietly toward the window.

With each step, my apprehension tightened as I followed the muddy, caked footprints and dry blood. My stomach dropped. I pictured a life sentence in prison and a news segment about the Magician Butcher. No! The Butcher Magician.

The trail led back to damning handprints and footprints smeared on the inside of the windowsill. My heart sank.

I was afraid to look outside.

I had convinced myself that the police were already out there, marking the crime scene.

After a short minute, I brushed off the unease, briskly glimpsed out the window, and pulled back. Nobody was out there. It was like any other morning.

I moved to the edge of the window, peering out and examining the grounds. The rain had scoured everything. Even the ledge was clean.

I couldn’t believe my luck. I smiled to myself.

But a foreboding sense of responsibility washed over me when I caught sight of the woods. People had died. And I wasn’t going to do a thing about it. The guilt weighed heavy, but I swallowed it when my AI alarm blared—very, very loudly.

“Olivia, stop.” It didn’t.

“Olivia, quit.” It continued.

Freaking out, I shot a bewildered look at Shellie.

Still asleep, but not for long if I didn’t stop the noise.

“Olivia, I’m up.” Finally, the sound dropped.

Shellie hadn’t budged. I was stoked. I still needed more time to think.

What the hell was I going to do with her?!

I took a quick second to gather myself. Mid-exhale—bam—a loud banging at the door startled Shellie awake. Like a guard dog jolted from slumber, she intently whipped her head in the direction of the disturbance below, eyes sharp and fixed.

I immediately jumped in front of Shellie and dropped into a goalie’s stance; positioning my legs out, I whipped my arms into the air.

“Shellie, no. Stay on the bed, girl. Shh,” I spouted in a hushed tone.

We locked eyes. I shook my finger and tapped it to my lips, sternly signaling: Stay put. Stay quiet.

The banging continued, followed by Myles’s voice coming through the intercom, saying, “Hey, Billy. Get up, dude. Remember you told me to give you a wake-up call. You’ve got that presentation?”

Damn, he’s right. I’ll fail sociology class if I don’t deal with that today.

“I’m up! I’m up!” I barked through the intercom, hoping he would go away. He didn’t.

“Hey, Billy, we were all worried when you didn’t come home last night. Jana, and the book aside, we didn’t even get to ask about… that little thing at the game table. Are you good? Can you open the door?”

I didn’t respond. I crossed my fingers, hoping he would leave, but I knew he wouldn’t.

The banging started again, clearly agitating Shellie. But at least she was following my requests… for now.

Sadly, I knew no excuse would satisfy Myles until he saw me face-to-face.

If I didn’t defuse this situation quickly, Shellie might believe I was being threatened and monster out. I didn’t want to see that beast-dog again. Worst of all, this time, my close friend would fall into her kill frenzy.

“Okay, Myles. Cut it out. Give me a second.”

The knocking stopped.

I hurriedly peeled off the muddy clothes and grabbed my robe from the open closet on the right side of my bed.

I mimed every gesture I could think of to get Shellie to lie down. Finally, she understood and settled back down on the bed.

To be safe, I held up my palm in a stop position and backed down the stairwell, passing through the living room to the door.

I cracked open the door, positioning myself to block Myles’s view inside.

He stood a foot from the entrance. To my surprise, Gene was beside him, looking pitiful. At the rear, Jammer sipped herbal tea, its undeniable floral scent casting a strange calm over our silence.

In a quick glance, their expression contorted, aghast by my appearance. But before they could ask, I quickly acted.

“Oh, the bruise and mud caked on my face. I slipped off one of the sitting stones last night after it started raining—came straight home and fell asleep.”

Fawk, I just confirmed to them that I was near the murder scene in the woods.

Jammer took a strong sip and said, “That doesn’t look good. You may want to bathe it in lots of antiseptics.” She immediately curled her lips after speaking.

“Or go to the doctor,” Gene said in a worried but sardonic manner.

“You’re both right. Let me get started on that. See, Myles. I’m good. Okay. Shutting the door, guys. No more knocking. Talk later.”

I forced out the most genuine fake smile I could muster. But as I started to close the door, I heard a thumping sound within earshot.

My smile dropped.

I froze and didn’t turn around to investigate. Then my friends’ glances shifted away into the space below me. Before I realized what they were looking at, I felt hair rub against my leg. My eyes fixated in front of me, flickering with apprehension, not really connecting with anyone.

“Who’s that?”

I don’t even recall which one of them asked the question. I swore I felt the blood drain from my face, and my muscles tensed so hard that I may have looked like a mortified corpse pushing her away from the door with my hip. “Shoo, go over there. Wait over there.”

When I turned back to my friends, they were the ones who looked stone-cold mortified.

“We’ll talk later. Bye.”

I closed the door and pressed my back against the door. I was freaking out. The cat—more like the dog—was out of the bag.

Now what?

Well, it wasn’t entirely out. They only saw Shellie, not her reality-breaking beast-dog form.

I couldn’t make out Myles, Gene, and Jammer’s muffled chatter outside the door, but I could pick up on the astonishment in their voices.

They’d never seen me with a girl, much less one in my room.

Since they’d known me, I hadn’t hidden the fact that I lean asexual. Yes, my friends know about my old crush on Teena Aoki. However, that was purely intellectual. Seeing Shellie, though, I know what they were thinking, and it’s the furthest from the truth.

After a few minutes, they moved on. I stayed affixed to the door, curiously observing Shellie as she walked around my open-plan living quarters, looking at and sniffing things. I was amazed how closely her behavior mirrored a dog’s, even in human form.

From everything I had seen of her so far, she didn’t talk, but she had growled, sniffed, and guarded like a dog. Additionally, she seemed most responsive when I gave her commands.

Don’t get me wrong; she presented some human qualities. Like, at that moment, she walked between the couch and the oriel window on her feet, not on all fours, touching the stained glass as if she remembered it.

Walking through the kitchen area, she opened and shut the cabinets. Along the way, she lifted and examined several candy jars. Her nosiness seemed cute—more human than animal.

I thought of her beastly form and the warmth she had displayed for me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t place the familiarity at the time because of my brain fry. But recalling the beast-dog’s eyes, I’m positive I saw a semblance of my childhood pet, Nightshade.

That jostled a crazy idea. When I was meditating, both Nightshade and Shellie appeared in the Void.

I locked the door, ran upstairs, and grabbed Rules of the Black Arts for Advanced Users. Surprisingly, the book shone pristinely, even after all the rain and other damaging conditions it had endured.

I stood by the railing to watch Shellie. She walked out of the kitchen, past the dining table, and into the computer room below me.

There was nothing she could get into there; I kept that area pretty minimalistic.

I unlatched the book to follow up on my hunch. Then I paused briefly. Exploring my train of thought meant I had to take some profound leaps in logic.

I have always believed in magic and the supernatural. To an ordinary person, instant transmutation of the elements (although in small doses), sensing energies, and controlling probabilities would seem like bullshit, but for me, it was an everyday reality.

If what I had theorized was true, it would shatter my view of magic in this world.

My big theory relied heavily on the book I had balanced on the banister. It had to be much more than I ever imagined. I thumbed to “A Spellcaster’s Steadfast Companion,” specifically the section “Manifesting Your Companion.”

Perusing, I sighed because, as usual, I exercised two of my nastiest habits during my first reading. One, I didn’t finish reading the section’s text, and two, I skipped ahead in the first place—something I had only done because the wind tossed the page to an exciting section.

I picked up the reading where I had stopped, and it laid out some valuable information.

The text explained that the manifestation of companions took on the form and qualities of the Void’s revelation, but the user’s soul and purpose determined its “archetype.”

The asterisk referred to tiny letters at the bottom of the page that read, “See: Companion Archetypes.”

I worked my index finger and speed-reading skills in overdrive, dashing through information. Under groupings called classifications, I read through hundreds of archetypes ranging from animals like hawks and leopards to supernatural beings like ghosts and succubi to entities that I could not fathom.

As badly as I wanted to find a correlation, nothing matched Shellie. Nearing the end of the reference pages, I was ready to dismiss my deductions as delusional.

Then—like a sledgehammer slamming down—it hit me hard. I had seen a beast in Rules that somewhat resembled Shellie’s beast-dog form.

How could I forget? I blamed it on the blow to my head.

Flipping. Flipping. I found it.

And just like that, all my puzzle pieces snapped together.