Chapter 12: It’s All in the Archetype

I locked eyes with Shellie.

During our trek out of the woods, I learned she had a very limited understanding of language, 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, and 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 awkwardly angled vantage, I managed to see 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 contribution—I hurled my guts out in mid-air.

We landed with a thud.

With strangely delicate precision, Shellie 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.

There’s a trail of mud and blood in my room! 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 hand 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. Nothing could muffle the crack of my knees.

I froze.

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

With each step, my stomach tightened as I followed the caked mud tracks and smears of dried blood. The trail led to damning handprints and footprints on the inside of the windowsill.

My heart sank.

I pictured a life sentence in prison and a news segment about the Magician Butcher. No! The Butcher Magician.

The story my brain was crafting made me afraid to look outside.

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

But I had to know—were the police out there?

Pushing aside the unease, I peeked out the window and pulled back.

Nobody was out there.

It was like any other morning.

I moved back to the edge of the window, taking my time, soaking in every little detail I could perceive. The rain had scoured everything. Even the outside ledge was clean.

I couldn’t believe my luck.

A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.

But when I caught sight of the woods, a foreboding, nagging sense of responsibility washed over me.

People had died.

And I wasn’t going to do a thing about it.

The guilt weighed heavily, 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.

Before I could exhale, banging at the door jarred Shellie awake. Like a guard dog jolted from slumber, she reflexively 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: “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 go full monster. 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 hung in the silence, stoking an uneasy calm.

At a glance, their expressions shifted—all three were startled by my appearance. But before they could ask, I acted.

“Oh, my face. The bruise…”

I absently poked at the soreness. To my surprise, caked mud broke loose in a flurry.

I must look worse than I thought.

“…I slipped off the sitting stones in the rain—came straight home and… dozed.”

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 antiseptic.”

She curled her lips as soon as she finished 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 at my feet.

Then I felt hair rub against my leg.

My smile dropped.

Shellie was there!

I stood completely still, trying to keep my friends’ attention locked on me.

But they all shifted their gaze down.

Oh, god.

“Who’s that?”

I don’t even recall which one of them asked the question.

My eyes shot wide, not really connecting with anyone.

I instantly felt the blood drain from my face and every muscle stiffened as if cast in stone.

“Shoo, go over there. Wait over there,” I said, pushing Shellie away from the door with my hip.

When I turned back to my friends, they all looked petrified—mouths locked mid-gasp, eyes as big as marbles, and all of them motionless.

“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’ve known me, I haven’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 knew what they were thinking, and it was the furthest from the truth.

After a few minutes, the whispering stopped and they moved on.

I stayed affixed to the door, curiously observing Shellie as she walked through my open-plan living quarters, looking at and sniffing things.

I was amazed at 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 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 Nightshade. She was the best dog I ever had.

That shook loose 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 pristine, 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 a curious 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 classifications, I read through hundreds of archetypes ranging from animals like hawks and leopards to supernatural beings like ghosts and succubi to entities 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.

I’d seen a beast in Rules that resembled Shellie’s beast-dog form. Hell, I’d seen the creature my whole life, marked on my family crest.

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

Flipping pages, flipping more pages, I found it.

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