Dead Man's Deal The Asylum Tales - By Jocelynn Drake Page 0,21
looking as sharp as the day I found it in a potion ingredients shop. “I started remembering things that Simon did, but didn’t necessarily teach me. With a little time and thought, I pieced the spell together. Others, I thought of on my own, so I made note of them. Sometimes, magic comes easy to me. A lot easier than tattooing ever has.”
“Why did you leave?” Sofie shook her head at me. There was a sad note to her question. She lay down on the top book, tucking her paws in at her chest. “Learning magic would have made you so happy. You’ve got such raw, natural talent. You could have been great.”
“And I can’t be great now, as a tattoo artist? I could only achieve greatness as a warlock?” I teased, but Sofie wasn’t amused as her ears flattened a little against her head.
“I don’t know what a tattoo artist can achieve, but I know what you could have done as a warlock.”
“I loved learning magic,” I admitted. “When I held my wand for the first time, it was like all the buzzing around in my soul and along my skin settled and found a direction, or like music notes lining up into a symphony. But I couldn’t be a warlock if it meant being like Simon or any of the others that I knew, and I had to do that if I was going to survive in the Towers.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. If you want to be a warlock, you have to be willing to kill. You have to kill other warlocks and witches to get ahead. You have to kill other creatures to use their organs in potions and spells. You have to kill innocent people or risk them not fearing you. The Towers survive on two things: power and fear. To achieve both of those, you have to be willing to kill.”
Sofie remained silent when I finished talking. She was staring at the far wall, looking at one of the cabinets with the glass-and-wood front. There were locks on each of them. If someone managed to get past the protective spell, I didn’t think the locks would stop them. They let me sleep better at night.
“How did you do it?” I asked softly. “You were there for years, but you were the only one I ever saw who didn’t beat the shit out of an apprentice if they failed to cower before you. You seemed nice.”
The cat sighed heavily, closing her eyes. “At first, I was no different than you described. I killed, constantly and indiscriminately. I think that might be how I stayed a little sane while there. Young and old. Helpless and powerful. I killed them all without blinking an eye, and nearly all were for no reason. I told myself that God didn’t need a reason to kill any of them, so why should I? But when I reached my second century, I started to mellow. I killed less, though when I did, there didn’t need to be a reason. I no longer had anything to prove to anyone. That may be why I seemed nicer than the others when we met.”
I tried to smile at Sofie, but the corners of my mouth weren’t working properly. I didn’t know if she was any saner than the ones who lived in the Towers. She had found a way to deal with the violence that that life required, but her way wasn’t the answer. Gideon was closer to the middle ground, but I felt his underground movement was progressing far too slowly. The Ivory Towers had to stop. Stop being overlords for the world. Stop demanding abject fear and total obedience.
Magic wasn’t about being powerful and controlling the world. Magic was about tapping into something beautiful and about becoming more than a fleshy meat bag if only for a couple seconds.
“Would you go back if you had the chance?” I asked.
Sofie cocked her head to the side as she looked up at me. “What do you mean?”
“If you were human again, would you go back to living in the Towers? You weren’t exactly escorted to the door. You could go back now if you wanted and no one would stop you. If you were human again, rather than a cat, would you go back?”
The cat stood and arched her back, stretching while extending her claws briefly to scratch along the rough surface of the book. “It’s going to be a long time before