Page 102 of Architecti
Bastien busts out laughing, and Lex nearly chokes on her gulp of tea.
I swear Mortem outright chuckles, though it sounds more like a hacked purr.
He dashes away down the corridor with Midnight chasing after him, leaving the three of us cackling.
32
Lucy
Three weeks later, after countless evenings of training and practice, an inordinate amount of tuna bribes for Mortem and several evenings of completing extra defence classes and perfecting their Veil cuts back to our realm, we’re ready.
It’s ten to twelve, the night is cool and thankfully misty, providing ample cover for us.Though that just makes me worry more.
It’s too easy.
Mortem pads across the Great Library roof towards us, his belly swings left and right.
“Have you put weight on?”
“I was hardly going to say no to the tuna, was I?”He radiates contempt.I tut at him.
“You’re cute with a bit more fluff, but if you don’t fit through the very precise Veil cuts we’ve practiced, I’m going to resurrect you just to murder you myself,” I say.
“Everyone got their kit?”Lex asks.
Bastien holds up two necroflares.Something that will ward off wraiths if it comes to it—and if they’re aimed well, blow them up, sending them right back through the Veil.
“Timer,” I say, holding up the stopwatch I pilfered from Thalia’s desk earlier.
Lex waves a celestial dictionary of runes she found.It’s nearly eighty years old and half the pages are missing, but it’s better than nothing.
“We have two minutes for the shift change of the wraiths, on the strike of twelve.”
“Yeah, easy,” Bastien drawls.“All we have to do in two minutes is reverse abseil up several hundred feet of tower, cut a hole through the Veil,twice, throw a cat through, open a door and hope we’re all inside before the new wraiths return.”His skin is a sickly white colour.
“I resent the phrase ‘throw a cat,’” Mortem hisses.
“This is going to be fun,” Midnight says, bouncing on her feet.
“I think you and I have two very different concepts of fun,” Mortem says.“I’ll see you up there.”He vanishes.
“Call your magic,” I say, and all four of us open our hands and draw ribbons of campus magic towards us.
They carve the night up, eight jet black threads of billowing smoke slicing through the mist.My gut drops, chills settle over me.
I don’t like this.
We’re too open, if anyone were to look up.And it doesn’t matter if the students are meant to be asleep.Someone is always out of bed after lights out.I shouldn’t be asking them to risk their places here for me, but what choice do I have?
“Ready?”I ask, glancing at my watch.All three of them nod at me.
“In three.Two.One.Go.”I whisper the last word and hit the timer.All four of us throw our ribbons up to the turrets, looping them around and tugging them tight.We’ve practiced this so many times, our hands bare the calluses of tired necromancers.
“Locked in,” Lex says.
“Me too,” Bastien follows.
“Locked and ready,” Midnight says.
