One of the characters, though, comprises a homing sigil for my private protector, a Porphyric courier spirit that can be summoned for knowledge or assistance.
Assumed as Hermeneus beings, these beings are yearned by magicians. To request their assistance, you have to date them in an outstanding tradition.
If one of them takes a fondness to you, it might offer up its services— either a one-time deal or a more continual situation, in which they form a connection to your Heka symbol, something as personal to each person as a fingerprint.
Once bound to you, a protector will be your loyal eyes and ears on the Porphyric plane, eligible to glean handfuls of invisible proficiency, warn about Porphyric disruptions, and monitor spirits who are connected to other sorcerers. The sorcerer's equivalent of the witch's familiar.
These Hermeneus souls don't physically cross over from the Porphyr to our aircraft. Rather, they use Heka to convey a sort of non-corporeal hologram of themselves. Because of this, they do not have much intention for earthly tasks.
All they can do here is relay knowledge from one sorcerer to another. Before the phone was discovered, this was possibly beneficial, but now? Not so much.
Unlike the binding triangle I had just powered up in the tavern, my protector's homing sigil did not require to be accused with Heka which had been ignited with electrical energy. It required a more mild, unique energy earned from bodily fluids.
Might sound a bit strange, but sorcerers have used liquids to charge spells for centuries: blood, saliva, sexual fluids, tears. Inside all of these is raw, unignited Heka.
The proportion of raw Heka differs by fluid type—blood has more Heka than saliva, for example—and it also differs from person to person.
Not that there is some lab test accessible to assess this, but I was pretty convinced that my blood had a hell of a lot more Heka than the normal person's. And this gave me a benefit, magically speaking.
Just as anybody can comprehend how to draw, anybody can understand to do magic; still, someone who requires normal artistic mastery might take double as long to grasp the basics.
And let us face it: that individual might finally discover to pull off a reasonable landscape, but they will perhaps never be Michelangelo.
Prepared to call my protector, I fastened my finger in my mouth, took out a small proportion of Heka-rich saliva, and then rubbed it on my guardian's sigil.
"Katie," I mumbled.
"Come to me."
A friendly surge of nausea whirled through my stomach. The air in front of me trembled, and a wispy, gleaming figure pulsed into sentiment.
Like additional Hermeneus souls, Katie
has a birdlike skull and a genderless body, too jagged to be female, too delicate to be male.
Katie shook at me, stooping at the waist. Command me, it announced inside my head.
"My parents are in crisis. They have been detected by governments in Iowa and are no longer invisible. The Oaks Order will soon learn that they are still existing if their districts have not already alerted them. Reach my parents' protectors in the Porphyr and transmit this message. Wait for feedback. I want to understand what they need me to do to assist. Go."
Katie nodded and vanished.
My protector was my single connection to my parents. Only in a catastrophe was I allowed to transmit it out to reach their protectors; I thought this authorized.
When I sent Katie out on these assignments, the return time differed. Sometimes the spirit would appear back to me with the news after a few seconds, sometimes numerous hours later, I could never say.
So I plopped down on Lee Chan's chair and wished it would be a quick trip.
Unlocking one of the desk drawers, I attained toward the back until my fingers brushed a reserve of hand-rolled valrivia cigarettes. Smoothing like nicotine, but with a soft euphoric kick, valrivia does not ruin your lungs the way tobacco perpetrates and is about as addictive as caffeine.
Half the demon community has a valrivia addiction. I picked up mine from Lee Chan at university. I had already smoked twice that day—my self-imposed limit—but under the occurrences, I guessed I merited another. I scoured a lighter out of my jeans pocket and lit up.
It was difficult for me to acknowledge that it had been seven years since the so-called Black Lodge bloodbaths had to nudge my parents into the national limelight, making them scoundrels in the lead story of every news institution, half a dozen authentic crime novels, and God only discerns how many television investigative announcements.
They even got their trading vouchers, part of a collectable set of periodical killer face cards that comprised Charles Manson and John Wayne Gacy. Dashing.
Their extraordinary story was everything that the American public yearned: gory massacres, witchy dignified occultism, and a Bonnie and Clyde flight from the ordinance with their daughter that ceased tragically in their demises.
Only, the three of us were not dead, and my parents were not wicked.
A repetition of an American Killers incident played on the hushed television screen on the desk. It had been only unusual hours since they had been detected, and already the depositories were changing their programming to venture into the news story.
I switched off the television in disdain and grabbed a few drags of my cigarette before my protector reappeared.
May I reveal myself? Katie's voice asked in my head.
"Yes." I mashed the remnant of the cig into a shaved
ashtray shaped like a scoundrel's head.
Katie's pattern took shape again in front of me. Helene's protector ascertains that they are conscious of the problem.
The Oaks Order will struggle to hunt you down. She recommends you ward yourself. She will reach us when they are protected and will grant you a location and time to meet them.
She furthermore said it would be foolish to follow any other communication with them at this time. It is too hazardous.
After years of little to no contact with my family, I was finally going to see them again. My heart fluttered, but I was still puzzled.
"Why did they come into the States without instructing me?"
I do not know. Helene's protector was closemouthed.
I breathed out in frustration. "Was there anything else?"
Your father's guardian declined my request to transmit.
"They are perhaps just being careful. The Oaks Order has been able to thwart transmission between protectors in the past."
Yes, it would be reasonable for your parents to be heavily warded at this period.
I struggled to make sense of everything I saw myself nibbling my fingernails; all of them were down to the abrupt, so not much left to bite.
I gaped if the local district of our supernatural order realized more than my parents were saying; it would not hurt to search with them.
Do you want anything else?
"Just maintain your eyes clear in the Porphyric and let me know if you see anything strange."
Katie nodded and began vanishing. Before the spirit vanished, it augmented, Be cautious.
Right. And now I had to trek back out into the occupied tavern and pretend that I was Dorathi Wells, a tavern owner.
Not the daughter of two plausible periodical killers being hunted down by the FBI. For the first time in years, I was genuinely scared that I could not bear the lie.