Page 24 of Magic for Nothing

“Because one of those traitors recently declared war upon us. Do you watch much television, Miss Brown?”

“Some,” I said, struggling not to let my discomfort show. “I’ve been a little busy recently, trying to track you down. Was there something I should have seen?”

“A woman, in an indecent mockery of dress, fighting a giant snake.”

“Oh! The Dance or Die thing. That was special effects, wasn’t it?” I allowed my face to fall. “Wasn’t it?”

“I’m afraid not. The giant snake was very real, as was the threat she offered to the Covenant of St. George at the end of her performance. A rogue branch of this organization has been protecting the monsters of North America for decades, complicating our attempts to keep its people safe. The deaths of your family members could have been avoided, had we been allowed to serve the New World as we have served the Old.”

I ducked my chin toward my chest, not saying anything. Let him take my silence for shock and anger, not for the fury that it was. How dare he? How dare this stuffed shirt of a man tell Timpani—whose background would have left her a little sheltered, a little credulous—that it was my family’s fault that hers was dead? That was a lie.

But it was a lie being told to a lie, and it couldn’t be the thing that revealed me.

“Since you’ve been with us, your blood has been tested repeatedly; your identity has been verified by our researchers; your intentions have not wavered. I am thus inclined to believe that you are who you seem to be, one more pilgrim in an unkind world, looking for the chance to avenge what you have lost. We’ll train you, if you truly want that chance. We’ll teach you what’s in the darkness, and how to defend yourself against it. In return, we’ll ask for your loyalty. We’ll ask for your obedience. We’ll ask for your willingness to accept that we have been fighting this fight in the name of St. George for centuries, and we have reasons for the things we do. I know unthinking submission to the law is not something that comes easily for your generation, but it is necessary, Timpani. Trust in the sword. Trust in the shield. Trust in the hand that holds them.”

He’d been moving around the office as he spoke, lingering for a moment in front of each of the portraits. As he finished, he stopped in front of the largest painting, one which showed a man I presumed was meant to be St. George himself, standing atop the body of a slain dragon. It was a heartbreaking portrait of the death of a sapient being, and I was supposed to see it as triumphant and inspiring. Humans are the worst.

“If you stay with us, you’ll be asked to swear to the shield regardless of your training, to keep our secrets and to protect the interests of the Covenant. Depending on where your strengths lie, you may be sworn to the secret and the sword, to go into the world and protect an ignorant humanity from the dangers that lurk in the shadows, unseen and unsuspected. Or you may be sworn to the pen and the page, to stay safely home and research ways of making this a safer place for all of us to live. The choice will not be yours. If all you seek is vengeance—immediate, unfulfilling vengeance—this is not the place for you. But if you would change the world for the better, if you would change yourself for the better, we can help you along that road. We can make you better. We can make you more prepared.”

The opening narration from The Six Million Dollar Man was clawing at my brain, demanding to be recited. I looked gravely at Reginald Cunningham and said, “I would like that.”

“Your training begins in the morning, Miss Brown. I do hope you won’t disappoint me.” He turned to the door, opening it to reveal Leo. “She’s agreed. You may take her to her room now. Don’t dilly-dally.”

“No, sir,” said Leo, stepping nimbly around his grandfather to pick up my suitcase. “Come on, Annie, I’ll show you where you’ll be bunking until we either break or promote you.”

“Thanks, I think,” I said. I still had my backpack. I swung it on, offered Reginald a quick, respectful nod, and followed Leo out of the room before either of them could change their minds.

Being slightly smarter than the average bear, I waited until we had gone up a broad, lushly-carpeted staircase and were halfway down the hallway at the top before I asked, “Was there a point to all that?”

“Yes and no,” he said. “I’m not going to say we’re hurting for recruits, because we’re not, but it’s a bit hard to get new blood when the official party line is ‘none of these things exist, we don’t exist, if you think you saw something, you’re wrong.’ Have you seen that film, Men in Black?”

“Classic,” I said.

“Well, it’s a bit like that. We get a decent number of recruits from the families who’ve been with the Covenant for generations, and sometimes one of them will marry out and bring in their in-laws, but for the most part, we’re a bit of a pyramid scheme gone wrong when it comes to getting new blood. As soon as we were sure you were human and who you said you were, you were going to wind up here, and he was going to give you that speech.”

“So that’s the ‘no’ side, then,” I said carefully.

Leo nodded. “There was a time when even getting this far would have meant three days of trials, riddles, and sword fighting and all that Camelot crap. But that was long ago. People were more willing to believe in dragons when they’d seen them with their own eyes. The danger hasn’t passed; it’s just become more clever and more secretive.”

“So why keep this a secret at all?” I asked. “Why not tell everyone, right from the start, ‘Hey, PS, there are monsters, and we fight them, and if you send your kids over here, we’ll teach them to fight monsters, too.’”

“We did in the beginning, when ‘here be monsters’ was a warning, and not something clever to put on a T-shirt. I mean ‘we’ in the academic sense here, not in an ‘I was there’ sense.” Leo chuckled. “If I were as old as the Covenant, I’d be something in need of hunting.”

“I suppose that’s true,” I agreed. If this hall wasn’t the length of the house, it was close; we were still walking, and the far wall didn’t seem to be any closer.

“But there were always noblemen who didn’t want us scaring people with our talk of monsters, and clergy who didn’t want us associated with the church—we’ve been an officially secular organization since the fifteenth century, when the archbishop declared that all monsters had perished in the Flood, and called us zealots and fools for thinking otherwise. Really, the church just didn’t like that women were allowed to do as they liked within the Covenant, because we couldn’t afford to turn anyone away. We didn’t have land or power or much to offer beyond a sword and a chance to make the world a better place.”

“Huh,” I said, as noncommittally as I could.

Leo didn’t appear to notice my lack of enthusiasm. “As to why that little speech was important . . . this is dangerous work, Annie. Important, but dangerous. Three of the people I went through my training with are dead, victims of powers beyond our ken. The things we hunt, they’re not like lions or tigers or bears. They’re not animals. They’re monsters, capable of turning a man to stone or melting you from the inside out. They can kill with a breath, a glance, the slightest touch. You needed to understand that before you formally decided to join us.”

“Was that also why you drove me here in the back of a van? To make me see how serious this was?”

“That, and it was fun to watch you trying not to yell at me.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Watch it. I’m not handcuffed now.”

“Ah, but now you’re a Covenant trainee, which makes me your superior. Yelling at me would be a breach of protocol.” Leo stopped at an unmarked door, rapping his knuckles against it and waiting for a moment before he pushed it open. “Here we are, then.”