The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series) Read online

  “Well, what if fate doesn’t control everything?” Alyson, a mousey girl at the front of the classroom, asks. “What if it only controls some things? Like, who we fall in love with—when we die—those sort of things.”

  “Good question,” Mrs. Quince nods, looking around the room. “What if fate only handles a few choice, major events?”

  “It can’t work like that,” I say, brow furrowed. “Fate can’t pick and choose, it has to be all or nothing.”

  The other kids look at me, baffled by the intensity of my statement.

  “It’s the same as I said before: if it’s predetermined it’s predeterminable. If I’m ‘fated’ to die in a car accident when I’m 19 and I find out about that ‘fate,’ I can change it. I can spend the whole year away from cars in some remote village in Africa, or I could even kill myself ahead of time. The point being, either way, the fated event doesn’t happen. Fate loses.” I shrug. “I mean, that’s just my opinion.”

  Mrs. Quince clears her throat. “Morbid, Ana. But thank you.”

  The class laughs again, and this time it is definitely at me.

  I huddle down in my desk as much as I can, but the embarrassment of their laughter only stings for a moment. By the time the period is over, I’m so wrapped up in thoughts about fate, and death, and hooded, shadowy figures watching me in the cemetery, that I almost don’t notice when the bell rings.

  — 4 —

  Fourth period. European History. The snow has turned to rain and it’s beating against the window, the world outside a wash of dusty pink and grey. We’re watching a video about Proto-Indo-European language and tribal cultures, usually something I’d find interesting, but right now I’m staring at the rain, unable to pay attention.

  My body thrums with pent-up energy, and I worry about what this morning means. Was he one of the Sura? Or maybe he was one of my mother’s clan-folk, finally come to discuss all the things my mother never got the chance to tell me?

  Probably not. Her clan—the Ouros—made it clear they had no intention of bringing me into their fold, no matter how much they may have cared for their own daughter. The first night she was laid to rest, I returned to her grave in the middle of the night and saw they had been sitting vigil without me, laying gold coins around the upturned earth and planting gemstones in protective patterns over her final resting place. They were protecting her from the skinwalkers, a race of Sura that sometimes come to ravage fresh graves, to steal human vessels and walk among us, creating chaos. At least, that was the story my mother told me, once.

  But still, the Ouros didn’t come for me. They didn’t want me. Because my father is not one of them, I am an outcast.

  As I stare out the window bitterly reminiscing, something moves outside behind the trees, a few feet beyond the classroom window: dark figures, too defined to be real shadows. I peer at them through the rain and make out three foot-ball-sized, spider-like shapes, and one very tall, very thin, and very pointy man. All of the shapes are shadows and thorns, and unmistakably Sura.

  And then the slender creature turns—it actually looks at me, beaming white eyes settling distinctly on mine, making my blood shiver. Its thin lips stretch around a mouthful of pearly daggers, grinning—grinning at me.

  All the tiny hairs on my body begin to stand up, one by one, before my mind can even process what that means. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a creature like that, though it’s not exactly something you ever get used to. But it’s not their presence outside that bothers me—it’s that it sees me.

  The bell rings, and I can’t take it anymore. The buzzing in my veins has crescendoed, become something else, something stronger: a brimming, writhing fullness. I haul my violin out of my locker and head to the music room; Mr. Cantor lets me commandeer a practice suite during my lunch while he’s in the teacher’s lounge.

  I’m not practicing for anything. I don’t play with the school, and I’m not in a band. I don’t let myself get wrapped up in commitments like that. It was my grandmother’s violin, though, and for a time it was also my mother’s, so I suppose it’s something of a family tradition, a slight and fragile link between myself and my mysterious ancestors. I’ve been playing since I was a child, and on days like today it’s the only thing that keeps me from having a total breakdown.

  Locked away in the suite, I channel my anxiety into the strings with all the clumsy grace of a passionate amateur, drawing out a coarse and frantic melody that burns my fingertips and rings in my blood. An hour passes in a few sharp measures of breath, ears full and eyes closed, soaring on the flight of music singing from the belly of my violin. By the time the period is over, I’m sweating, trembling from exertion, wondering at the warning song screaming in my heart.

  What’s happening to me? I can’t help but wonder, shaking as I lay my violin back inside its case. What’s going to happen? Because I can no longer deny the feeling that has been building in my bones all year, since I first began to feel this surging in my veins: it feels like I’m standing blindfolded on the precipice of change, unable to tear the veil from my eyes.

  At least for now, exhausted from my music, I no longer feel as if I’m going to explode.

  — 5 —

  Sixth period. Psychology. I meet up with Kyla in the hall where she’s listening with rolling eyes as Andy tries to convince a group of seniors to vote for Kyla for prom queen, even though prom is months away. Andy has had a crush on Kyla since they first started high school—my hellish last year in middle school, when Kyla skipped eighth grade and might as well have been continents away. I dreaded every day that she would find a better version of me to take my place.

  Andy, the lanky, handsome, student council president who is very used to getting whatever he wants, apparently hasn’t gotten, or refuses to believe, the memo: Kyla is very much gay, and very much courting Vanessa March.

  “Anastasia Flynn! Maybe you can weigh in on this.” I don’t like the way Andy says my name, like he has some kind of right to it. He offers me one of his best vote-garnering smiles and a personal-space-invading hand on my shoulder, and guides me to a tight spot between himself and a senior boy named Tom, who’s about a half foot shorter than I am. “Who else would better represent the senior class as prom queen than our friend Kyla Patel?”

  “Kyla? Are you kidding? Even if she won, she’d decline the crown,” I point out, looking across the circle at her.

  “Exactly what I’ve been telling him. Oh gee, what an honor,” Kyla mocks. “A bunch of people decided I was popular.” She sticks out her tongue and does a poor imitation of a curtsey. “A, can you believe this? Can you picture me as prom queen?”

  “You can be anything you want to be when you grow up, Ky,” I reply, trying to mimic the inspirational tripe our guidance counselors have been feeding us since kindergarten. The others standing around her miss the joke, and look at me like I’m some kind of pathetic fan-girl, worshipping Kyla’s every move. Until Kyla laughs, of course—then they laugh, too.

  Somehow, without ever lifting a finger, Kyla became one of the most popular girls at school when she came to high school, despite being a year younger than everyone else, and a two-for-one minority. But the year she skipped happened to be the year we found out my mother was dying, and I can’t help but selfishly wonder if I would have turned out differently if Kyla had stayed behind.

  In a lot of guilty, terrible ways, I had hated Kyla for not being there that messed up year, when I fought with teachers at the drop of a hat, and I spent so much time hiding in the locker room, crying between classes. I resented that I had to endure it all alone. Without Kyla around at school, I was just Ana and her crisis, always alone, always in trouble, acting out in class and on the school bus.

  That year, Kyla and I only saw each other on weekends. We would wander the forest in her backyard, or drown our teen angst in milkshakes at the ice cream shop by the old cider mill. I felt useful when I helped her navigate having her first girlfriend, and her first break-up. I felt lo
ved when she would build a blanket fort around me when I broke down crying in the middle of my living room, and when she’d lay there with me, and tell me the stories her mother used to tell her about the mystics in India. But all those times when I felt so connected to her, it also reminded me of how alone I was the rest of the time.

  I wasn’t always like that. I wasn’t always dependent on Kyla. I’m sure I would have been fine, would have made friends and had a great year, if my mother hadn’t been slowly succumbing to the tumor that had been hiding in her brain for who-knows-how-long. But I guess I’ll never really know.

  In the end, I came to high school with a bad reputation. I was a bit of a legend for leaving math class several times through the window; for spitting on the principal for searching my locker without my consent (and then sending me to the school psychologist for what he found scrawled in the back of my notebooks); for throwing the first punch in a fight with a boy (and winning). And even if some people considered that I’d had a valid excuse for my instability, and even if I did clean up my act by the beginning of freshman year, I lost all the tentative friendships I’d once had. And I haven’t exactly had an easy time making new friends since.

  But even though I’ve always—always—been Kyla’s best friend, most of her classmates still regard me as just another one of Kyla’s interesting quirks, like the pet snake she had for a while (before it got loose), or her mint green Vespa scooter, or the archery lessons she takes just in case. They think of me as her very tall and often angry ginger friend. Or, worse, they know me as that girl whose mother died.

  And right now, even as they talk amongst themselves, half of them are pointedly looking away from me, while the other half are squinting at me like they’re trying to see the She-Hulk hidden inside.

  But Kyla sidles up to me as the bell rings, telling me about her fake plans for her imaginary acceptance speech, without even saying goodbye to her classmates when we walk into our psychology class together.

  I must be a very sad and bitter person, because it makes me so happy when she snubs them in favor of me.

  “Are you feeling okay, A?” she asks me as we take our seats in the back of the classroom.

  I shake my head, staring at the clock, tapping my fingers against my desk, trying to shake the anxiety from my bones. “Today just needs to be over with already.”

  — 6 —

  At home, there is a present waiting in the mail for me. My father has already opened it.

  “Why do you keep doing this to me?” Abe asks, waving the detention slip in the air like a flag.

  I raise an eyebrow. “To you? Are they asking you to sit in detention now?”

  “Anastasia…” he growls, and closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath. He’s probably counting to ten.

  After mom died, I flirted with the trouble-maker lifestyle again, trying to outrun the demoralizing pity of the world. My father—Abe—let it slide at first, but then one day when I was out all night with Kyla (looking for Sura, but he never has to know that) he really flipped out. We screamed at each other, back and forth for twenty minutes, until words and voices failed us both. He punched the refrigerator door and broke his hand, and I walked out. I camped out for two days in the basement of an abandoned nunnery, next to the apple orchard near Kyla’s house. Eventually Kyla’s mother came and talked to me, and I deigned it appropriate to return.

  After that, Abe put himself in an anger management program for a few weeks, and hasn’t yelled at me since.

  I can’t say I feel good about any of that, but it is what it is.

  “It’s just detention, Dad,” I try to reason with him, unslinging my backpack and kicking off my boots. “It’s not the end of the world.”

  “You can’t keep skipping classes, Ana.” He looks at me with my own bright blue eyes, and sighs. “They’re not going to cut you any slack this year, you know that.”

  I frown, walking into the kitchen where he’s standing, as if the weight of the detention slip holds him there. “I don’t expect them to.”

  “If you fail, you’ll have to repeat, and you won’t graduate on time. Is that what you want?”

  I hold my tongue. Parents have this idea that graduating from high school is the end-all, be-all of adolescence. For me, a girl who is at times so grimly aware that the end of someone’s life could come at any moment, that seems pretty absurd. But you can’t tell that to your father. You can’t explain to him that we’re all dying, in some way, and high school is a massive waste of time.

  “My grades are fine,” I assure him. “Don’t worry about a few detentions. Consider them signs of life.”

  Abe hesitates, then sighs. “Okay, Ana. Just…” He struggles to find the words, and never does. He stares at me for a moment, like he does sometimes, and then smiles like the saddest man on earth. “I love you, kiddo. I just want what’s best for you. But let’s be honest, I don’t necessarily know what that is, do I?”

  I shift my weight and lean against the kitchen counter, uncomfortable with his honesty. “Is that a trick question?” I try to joke.

  He surprises me with a tender—huge—hand on my shoulder, and pulls me into a quick and awkward hug. Abe is a fire chief and, for as long as I can remember, he has always smelled faintly of char. It seems to emanate directly from his skin, under a scant layer of aftershave and soap. To me, it smells strangely like safety—like home.

  When he pulls back, his brow is furrowed. The last few years have aged him a decade; the fine lines around his eyes have become much less fine; the salt-and-pepper at his temples has dug its fingers deeper into his full head of black hair. “You know you can talk to me—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, I know,” I interrupt him as tenderly as possible, my own eyebrows beetling together. “Every detention doesn’t call for a heart to heart, you know.”

  He frowns a little, but nods, rapping his knuckles on the counter before scooping up his keys. “I’ve gotta head out for my shift at the station. No boys over, okay?” He moves towards the front door, slipping on his jacket.

  “Actually, is it okay if I go to Kyla’s tonight?” I ask, plastering on a saccharin smile.

  He rolls his eyes. “Yes. Just don’t drive, you still don’t have your night license. And try not to get into trouble again, please.”

  “I’ll try,” I promise. Though it really depends on your definition of “trouble.”

  — 7 —

  Later that night, I stretch out on Kyla’s bedroom floor, staring up at the ceiling where a spray of glow-in-the-dark plastic stars cling to the stucco.

  “Four of them?” Kyla asks, sitting on her bed and shuffling my tarot deck. “And they were just hanging around outside the school? Isn’t that unusual?”

  “Yeah. I was under the impression most Sura are nocturnal, but maybe not.” I sit up on my elbow and look at her. “They didn’t do anything though. They just kind of…watched.”

  “But they looked directly at you?” Kyla’s voice is lower this time.

  I think back on the slow-spreading grin of the tall, shadowy demon, and the piercing glow of his pinhole eyes. “Just the tall one.”

  “Shit, that doesn’t sound good. What if they’re watching you?” Kyla’s eyes shine with an internal luminescence, her spirit coming alive at the thought of some kind of intrigue, some kind of adventure, no matter how insane it sounds. Typical Kyla. “What if they’re watching you now?” She climbs down to the floor and places the tarot deck in front of me.

  “They aren’t,” I mutter. “I don’t think. But…” I sit up straight, cut the deck into two piles, and look into her eyes. “I think they might be onto me.”

  Kyla gazes back, considering. She can’t see the Sura on her own. Sometimes when I focus really hard and she’s touching my arm or my hand, she can get a glimpse of a shadow, an approximation of their shape and form, like a hazy memory of what she should be seeing. But for some reason she can’t quite open the door in her mind that lets her see them on her own. For me
, that door has been ripped off its hinges.

  She takes the pile of cards on her right and fans them out on the carpet. “You go this time.”

  I cock my head. “I can’t read for myself, you know that.”

  “I know, that’s okay.” Kyla half smiles, tucking a bleached-blond dreadlock behind her ear. “I’ve been practicing.”

  I oblige her by drawing three cards from the spread, and leaving them face down. Kyla flips the first card—past affecting present—Three of Swords. Three swords pierce a large red heart. The meaning is obvious—pain and loss—but Kyla narrows her eyes at the card, squeezing it for information.

  “Okay so, mega-obvious: you’ve experienced pain in the past. But beyond that—you refused to give in to the pain. You didn’t even wince. You let these swords cut you open and rip you apart. In fact, you’ve been so certain of your own ability to withstand the pain that you’ve left the weapon in the wound.” She swallows, glances up at me. “I mean, I’m not judging or anything. That’s really what the card is saying to me.”

  I nod, and try not to look upset. “I understand. I know how it goes.” The cards speak in suggestions, echoes of arcane wisdom, calling out to the reader with specific feelings, words, ideas. The same card a hundred times can mean two hundred different things. It’s all in the moment, the reader, and the querent—the person for whom the cards are being read.

  She flips the second card—present circumstances—The Hermit. A wizened old man leans on a staff, holding out a lantern to light the way. “You’re going inwards,” Kyla tells me. “Relying on intuition, and thinking things over, and searching for some kind of wisdom you don’t trust to find in others. You may even believe you know something, or feel like you have a secret—something you’re ashamed of? Or maybe something that separates you from the rest of the world?” She shakes her head. “But what you really need is to stop trying to be this lone wise-woman, and find someone who has already walked a similar path. Someone who can give you answers, but also give you the tools to find answers on your own.”