Zachary Rawlins - The Academy

Evelyn, then. She’d called herself that for almost five years now, which was the longest she’d ever kept a name. She wondered if that meant she was becoming sentimental in her old age.

Still. It beat admitting that she didn’t have a name of her own.

Witches aren’t human — although they look very much the same. But, like humans, Witches need to sleep, and Evelyn hadn’t gotten any in almost two days. Also, she’d had to kill a number of people in that time, and that always left her feeling a bit ill.

The safe house’s popcorn ceiling crawled, shifting with the gentle afternoon light that snuck through the blinds. She could hear a television faintly, from the adjacent room, and the hiss of water running through the pipes. Her sisters, watching TV and showering, respectively. The air conditioner hummed, occasionally breaking into fits of coughing and struggling, only to kick over again and resume its work. Evelyn could not close her eyes without becoming nauseous, and she could not sleep with her eyes open. As a result, she lay on her back and watched the ceiling crawl.

Evelyn was not suffering from pangs of conscience — far from it. Witches maintain their existence with power drawn from human suffering, so in order to survive, Evelyn had spent decades sowing misfortune and grief in the people she encountered, and then harvesting the resulting sorrow and pain. She didn’t feel bad about it — her nature was parasitic, and she had no more choice in the matter than any of the other parasites that preyed on humanity. Her only alternative, after all, was to starve.

Cruelty wasn’t part of her nature, and she took no special pleasure in causing pain. Evelyn preyed on strangers almost exclusively, which had allowed her to enjoy her relationships with the humans around her over the years — she’d had friends, in a fashion, and lovers whom she’d been genuinely fond of. And she’d done her best, as far as it was possible, to do well by them. This, however, was not always possible.

She felt no guilt, and she had shown no mercy. Her species was not capable of either.

Tired of the ceiling, Evelyn rolled onto her side and stared out the window, through a crack in the blinds. She knew the ocean was close, but she couldn’t see it from here. All she could see were tall pines, close to the building, waving in the wind, and beyond that an expanse of green hills.

Her last assignment had been no different from any other — she, and her sisters, had been ordered to Los Angeles, where they worked their way into predetermined social circles, romances, and jobs. All of their lives had a relationship in some way to a specific import-export firm owned by one of the Operator’s cartels, and they’d wormed their way well inside it. They’d taken on the local color, become invisible, part of the herd.

Evelyn genuinely did think of humans as a herd — and why not? She meant nothing unkind by it. Cows were benign by nature, patient and useful. She did not consider the comparison to be unflattering.

She and her sisters had collected information, made reports on the mundane activities of their day-to-day lives, and waited for orders. Evelyn had taken a husband, an executive in the company that she was surveying, and had rapidly charmed and won over his two daughters from a previous marriage. She’d spoiled them; Evelyn was too old for children of her own, and she was surprised to find how much she enjoyed it.

It might have been different had they been younger. Evelyn wasn’t much for holding babies and PTA meetings. But both girls were already teenagers, and while they’d been wary and hostile at first, it hadn’t taken Evelyn long to win them over. She hadn’t even used her powers — Evelyn was pretty, fun, and fond of spending money and stylish clothes. She acted more like a friend and less like a mother, taking them for manicures, spa treatments and shopping expeditions in Beverly Hills, and within a few months, she could sense the adoration and hero-worship from the two girls.

Evelyn didn’t feel bad for them, she wasn’t capable of empathy. But she did feel bad for herself, because she’d enjoyed her time with them, their laughter, their whispered confidences, and their shy adoration. She felt bad for herself because she’d been happy, for a little while.

Orders were orders, and even as she poisoned her family’s dinner, Evelyn was philosophic. She planned on living for a long, long time, after all. There would be many more such opportunities, stretched out over as many years as she could manage. And some Witches grew very old indeed.

Still, she was angry with her sister Yolanda. The poison she’d provided was meant to be quick and painless, but had instead induced cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, and then, finally, death. It had taken hours, and it had been disgusting. The girls had been able to beg her to call for help almost up until the end. She was still feeling ill, so maybe that was why she didn’t notice the shadow until it was almost too late.

Or, it could have been the other way — it could have been that since Evelyn was an old and cunning Witch, because she took precautions and slept fully clothed, that her senses were sharp from the misery she’d consumed earlier. Or maybe the Auditors were simply terrifyingly capable, bypassing both the building’s defenses and her own considerable additions effortlessly, but not quite good enough to overcome her instinctual drive to live.

Evelyn stared blankly at the shadow on the wall, cast by her bed and her prone form on top of it, as it seemed to thicken and writhe. She blinked her eyes to dispel the illusion, holding them closed as long as she could manage the nausea, and then opening them again.

The woman stepped neatly out of the shadow on the wall, one foot on the safe house floor, the other still somewhere in the dark behind her, disappearing at mid-calf. Her black hair hung in braids and was knotted with trinkets and coils of wire, almost like a Witch herself. She was tall, taller than Evelyn, and wore something black and heavy that was probably armor, stretching from her ankles to her neck, and heavy, blunt-toed black boots. She waved cheerfully at Evelyn, an automatic shotgun with a conical silencer and nylon grips held meaningfully in the crook of her other arm.

“Good evening, you miserable cunt,” the woman said with a cheerful smile. “My name is Alice Gallow, and I am here in regards to an open Audit, under the authority of Central. Please do resist, as I am in one hell of a terrible mood.”

Evelyn didn’t respond. She was already too busy with a working, or rather, a series of workings.

First, she threw fire in the direction of the Auditor — it was a minor working, and she had no illusions about its chancing of doing anything other than distracting the Auditor — but the illumination and the smoke gave her the opening to activate a second, major working, one that she’d kept almost complete for years, for exactly such a situation.

Evelyn dove backwards, through the wall, into her sister’s room. An outside observer would have been forgiven for thinking that she found a duplicate of herself watching TV in bed in the adjacent room — both she and her sister shared identical features, blond hair, and ice-blue eyes. Even the loose blue dresses they wore were similar.

“Light,” Evelyn screamed at her sister, the one who sometimes called herself Nadia.

Nadia looked up from the television, clearly shocked at her sister’s sudden arrival.

“What do you mean? What’s happening?”

She reached into a pocket and pulled a small, rose quartz sphere from it.

“A transporter, an Operator. She uses the shadows to port,” Evelyn said hurriedly. She removed a length of braided red silk from her pocket, and began tearing it at intervals. “As much light as you can, right now. No shadows.”