Chapter 19

Friday was surprisingly mundane when compared to the events of the week leading up to it. Amara had been so busy confronting Mr. Luxnor, cleaning up the Jade Palace, and trying to figure out her dreamwalking, that a simple day of going to classes almost felt like a waste. She noticed that Tessa was nowhere to be seen, but a quick text confirmed she was, once again, skipping classes to run some tests of her own. This meant most of Amara’s day was spent with Nick and Chloé, the latter of whom was preparing for the first official volunteer event for her charity.

Over lunch, Chloé explained the schedule she and the other volunteers had put together. Some of them were in charge of getting materials, some in charge of assigning tasks, and some were simply there to watch for possibly unsafe situations. Amara’s task was to be the event photographer, and she was thankful she wouldn’t need to exert herself.

Ever since she’d snuck over to the Palace, she’d been much more aware of her own enhanced strength. The sheer size of some of the pieces she’d been able to casually fling into the dumpster had surprised her, and that’s what the topic of conversation ended up being while she and Nick made dinner that night.

“How do I know what’s normal?” Amara asked. She was currently maintaining a fire under the frying pan while using her tail to chop vegetables. The irony of the situation was not lost on her.

“Like, if someone challenges you to a push-up contest, how do you know when to quit?” Nick asked.

“I mean, nothing that specific, but yeah basically. What if I accidentally break a door handle when someone’s watching? Or someone asks me to hold a stack of books, and I have no idea how much they weigh?”

“I feel like you’re overestimating how often people might ask you to perform manual labor. You’re not exactly built like a weightlifter.” Nick flipped the chicken on the frying pan as they kept talking. “Plus, guys are the ones that like to challenge their friends to random stuff like that, but all your friends are girls. I think you’re safe.”

“I still think it’s something I should get more practice with. If nothing else, I should know what my upper limits are. Do you still have that key to the gymnastics building?”

“I do! Want to head over after dinner?”

“No, not tonight.” Amara said. “I need to pack all my camera equipment for the cleanup tomorrow. Maybe next week sometime?”

“Just let me know, I’ll make sure we pick a night when it’ll be empty.”

Once all the cooking was done, Amara let Nick put the finishing touches on their dinner. While he worked, Amara found herself staring at the frying pan on the stove, an idea forming in her head. Curiosity got the better of her, and she walked over to it. She grabbed it on opposite sides, took a deep breath, and tried to bend it in half. She’d expected a fair amount of resistance, and was quite surprised when the metal of the pan gave rather quickly.

“Alright, dinner’s ready to—” Nick looked up, locking eyes with Amara, who was now attempting to twist the pan back into its original shape. “Oh, wow. Is that going to be usable anymore?”

“I hope so! I wasn’t trying to ruin it!” she said panicking. After a few minutes, Amara managed to return the pan to a halfway decent shape, and the two started eating.

“Maybe those tests should come sooner rather than later? Until then, I’d recommend playing it safe, and definitely no heavy lifting at the event tomorrow.” Nick playfully scolded her, but Amara had a feeling he’d been caught off guard by her show of strength.

“I’ll be good, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m gonna be covered in camera stuff anyways, so I’m not too worried.”

Dinner was delicious, if slightly overcooked, but Amara was pleased with how much her control had improved in just a few short days. Nick’s idea to practice with cooking had been genius, as loathe as she’d been to admit it at the time. They had almost finished eating when Amara’s phone went off.

Tessa: u home?

Amara: Yeah, I’m here with Nick. What’s up?

Tessa: im coming over, think i figured the circles out

Tessa: so finish up ur fuckin or watever

Rolling her eyes, Amara let Nick know what was happening, and soon enough Tessa was walking in.

“Sorry for the short notice, but I’ve been working on this all day, and I’ve finally cracked it!” Tessa said excitedly. She kicked her shoes off before pulling out her notebooks, laying them on the kitchen counter. “Ooh, this smells delicious, are you done?”

Before Amara could respond, Tessa had already grabbed her fork and was eating the rest of her dinner. “Um, sure, help yourself. What did you figure out?”

“So, something Mr. Luxnor said really stuck with me. This whole time I’ve been trying to figure out why the circles exist, why there are so many of them. Witches always use circles to bring magic over, but he’s implying that these circles are doing the opposite. Why?” Tessa said, in between bites of food. “According to the cult, this campus is inherently magical, which isn’t possible.”

“Because ... the magic has to come from somewhere?” Amara asked, trying to understand where this was going.

“Exactly! It has to come from somewhere! It’s been staring us in the face this whole time; our campus is a giant soft spot!”

“Hold on, soft spot? What do you mean?” Nick asked.

“All the planes are separate entities, but in rare cases, the boundaries between them can grow thin, causing them to overlap. Normally, this only happens with one or two planes at once. Like, a small pond siphons some energy from the Plane of Fire, and turns into a hot spring. This campus? It overlaps with all of them.”

Amara paused, turning over this information in her head before speaking again. “That’s why they need so many circles? Each one is trying to keep a specific plane from overlapping with ours?”

“Yes! They’re all working together to create, like, some kind of massive planar gate!” Tessa pushed the plate away, having now finished Amara’s dinner.

“So, hold on,” Nick said. “If they’re trying to weaken this gate, doesn’t that mean they’re trying to bring something through?”

“Bingo. Unfortunately, we still don’t know what. They might just want the magic for themselves, but worst case scenario? They could be trying to summon a creature to our plane, and that’s almost guaranteed to go poorly.”

“Why would they want to bring something over?” Amara asked.

“Remember what I said when I found out you were a demon? People want power, money, fame, sex, and sometimes they get in touch with creatures that are willing to trade. Based on Mr. Wellington’s suspicious rise to wealth? I’d bet good money he’s made a deal with some kind of demon.”

The three of them went quiet for a moment. Eventually, Amara spoke up again, her words laced with fear. “Demons are a big deal, right?”

Tessa locked eyes with her. “I can’t stress this enough, Amara, but you don’t make any sense. We don’t know why you’re here, or how you’re even a demon in the first place. You’re also a decent person, which flies in the face of everything I’ve ever been taught. We need to assume that you’re one-of-a-kind, for our own safety. If they manage to summon another demon, it could be catastrophic.”

Amara pulled her tail close, holding it in her hands nervously.

Could there be others like me? If there aren’t, what does that mean for my future? I still don’t know what I’m turning into, what I might be capable of when I’ve stopped changing...

Seeing that Amara was growing nervous, Nick intervened. “Okay, well, we already have a plan to infiltrate their meeting. Until then, there’s no use worrying over hypotheticals, right?” Nick cleared his throat. “On a tangential note, I’ve been digging into Mr. Wellington recently.”

“Oh, how’s that going?” Amara asked, eager for a change of topic.

“It’s funny, I feel like I’ve learned a lot, but also nothing at all. Everything I read last time is still there; he was a relative nobody, his parents worked thankless 9-to-5 jobs, and he happened to get lucky playing the stock market. Ever since striking it rich, he’s had very few public appearances, and all of them seem pretty carefully staged.”

“Well, we’re assuming he made a deal with a demon, so chances are he doesn’t actually know shit about the stock market. He probably doesn’t want people to find out.” Tessa said. She was now rummaging through Amara’s cabinets looking for snacks.

“I did learn that he’s a pretty avid collector of old artifacts and relics. He’s had a few interviews focused on his collection, and it’s obvious he’s really into old-timey mysticism stuff.”

“I see what you mean about pointless knowledge.” Amara sighed, “Like, sure, we know more about him, but it’s nothing helpful.”

“I have a few theories, though whether or not they’re of any use I can’t say.” Nick waited to get Tessa’s attention before continuing. “I have a sneaking suspicion that he only had Derek as an excuse to get on the Board of Directors here. It’s small, but he’s always been interested in this school, even though he never went here himself. Plus, anyone with his net worth? It’s weird he never tried to get Derek into Yale or Harvard.”

“Okay? How is that helpful?” Tessa asked.

“Like I said, it might not be. But, if Derek is only a pawn in his father’s schemes, it just means that we can’t try to use him as a bargaining chip down the line. Not that we were planning on it, but ... y’know.”

“Fair point. You said you had other ideas?” Amara grabbed a cookie out of Tessa’s hands, causing the witch to gasp with faux indignation.

“Well, as far as I can tell, he’s been making fewer and fewer public appearances recently. Whenever he does show, he has a pretty impressive collection of personal guards, but they try to keep themselves hidden. I noticed them because I was combing through dozens of articles, and I started seeing a couple of familiar faces in the background.”

Nick slid his phone over to the girls, swiping through a couple pictures and pointing out the guards in question before he continued talking. “So, when you’re sneaking into this cult meeting, I want you to keep an eye out for them. Since we’re serious about taking them down, it would be good to know if he’s got armed henchmen ready to pull guns on us.”

After a few seconds of silence, Amara finally spoke up. “Do you think I’m bulletproof?”

“There’s only one way to test that, Amara. Let’s hope you never have to find out.” Nick stared at her sternly, his fear more than obvious.

She thought back to her time cleaning up the Palace, when she’d covered her wings with her exoskeleton to shield against the falling debris, and wondered if it might be worth testing the limits of her chitinous armor at some point.

“Anyways, long story short, hired goons likely means more mundane defenses. If you don’t see them, it’s safe to assume the threat is more magical, and that’s where my expertise ends. Tessa?” Nick asked, looking to the witch. “You say the worst-case scenario is that they summon a creature. What could they be looking to bring over?”

Tessa cleared her throat. “Well, I think a demon is the most likely option, they supposedly love making deals. We also shouldn’t assume he got rich from a deal, maybe something else happened. He could just as easily try to bring through a djinn or some kind of fey creature. The list is practically endless, we really have no way of knowing until Amara spies on this meeting.”

“So ... we wait? It sounds like we can’t do much until the meeting.” Amara asked, standing up from the counter.

“Certainly seems that way. Go to classes, do homework, pretend our campus isn’t hosting an otherworldly demon cult. The usual.” Nick smirked, trying to inject some levity into the situation. With the conversation coming to an end, Tessa was already packing up her stuff to head home.

“Great! Well, I’ve got plans with the polycule, and I was only stopping by for a moment. You two idiots have fun!” Tessa began grabbing all her stuff, which spurred the others to start cleaning up dinner. Soon enough, everyone went their separate ways, with plans to reconvene tomorrow morning for the volunteer event.

Saturday morning proved to be a beautiful day, which had everyone at the cleanup in good spirits. The volunteers running the event had set up a folding table in the shade of the nearby trees, and were currently stocking it with snacks and refreshments to keep everyone in good health. Nearby, a small pile of equipment had been sorted as well; hardhats, safety goggles, and thick gloves in various sizes.

When Amara arrived, she decided to borrow the edge of the refreshment table to set up her camera equipment. Once she finished, and was in the middle of taking some test shots, Chloé ran up excitedly and gave her a hug.

“Thanks again for this Amara! I just know these pictures are going to be great, your original shots of the debris were immaculate.” Chloé said. She was wearing light blue jean shorts and a gray tank top, which implied she wasn’t planning on doing any heavy lifting today.

“I’m more than happy to help, Chloé, you don’t have to keep thanking me. How many people have signed up for today?”

“It’s a pretty impressive list! I haven’t counted recently, but I think we’re going to have a healthy turnout for most of the day. Plus, because of the efforts of our mysterious vigilante, a lot of the really hard stuff has already been taken care of. The amount of manpower we need is somewhat secondary to raising enough money.”

Amara was about to respond when another event organizer called out to Chloé. The girls parted ways, leaving Amara on her own to start taking pictures.

The day passed without incident, much to the relief of everyone involved. Just as Chloé predicted, they had a steady stream of volunteers for the entire time, and Amara quickly noticed some patterns in who was attending. There seemed to be someone from the fraternity present at all times, and many of them had friends in tow. She also saw a fair amount of representation from various school groups; sports teams, music groups, and everything in between. As someone who tended to shy away from larger crowds, Amara couldn’t help but be impressed by the amount of community on display.

She took hundreds of pictures detailing the efforts of the volunteers, and most people were more than happy to be included in her documentation. Every so often she would take breaks to check on the social media side of the charity effort, posting pictures to try and keep engagement up, but as the day passed, she started to grow nervous.

Fundraising events of this type typically made most of their money in the first few weeks. Donations were highest at the start, when excitement was at its peak, and Amara had started running the numbers. Even in the best-case scenario, where donations continued at their current pace, hitting their goal was a long shot. If she assumed a more likely scenario, one where donations began drying up after the first few weeks, Chloé’s goals began to look less and less likely.