Chapter 12: It’s All in the Archetype

I wearily rolled my head to lock eyes with Shellie. From our trek out of the woods, I knew she only possessed a limited understanding, so I spoke slowly. “We are going over there, okay? My room is up there.”

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of pointing to my window on the second story. In a freakish response to my words, Shellie scooped me up, flipped me over her shoulder, and zipped us through the back yard.

Her dash’s swiftness and jerkiness made my body flail like a rag doll. But what came next made me nauseous. I twisted as much as possible to get a good line of vision, but she had a death grip on me. From my awkward angle, I saw that we were speeding dangerously close to the building.

I swore we were going to burst through the wall at our velocity. Suddenly, I felt a shift in her body, then a tugging motion upward. I watched as our distance grew farther and farther away from the ground. Overpowered by queasiness, I hurled my guts out in mid-air.

As we landed, thud, Shellie shifted me like a basketball to pin me against the wall and safely position us on the stone ledge underneath my room’s window.

Panicked and hyperventilating once again, I nervously opened my window and limped to my bed. I don’t even remember falling asleep.

***

As if waking from a daydream, an urgent thought hit me.

If a trail of mud and blood is in my room from the window, did we leave bloody breadcrumbs from the woods right back into my room?

I awkwardly slid down out of bed, upper body first, then lower half, because I wasn’t ready to wake Shellie. My head brushed against Rules of the Black Arts for Advanced Users when I quietly plopped to the floor. It must have fallen there when I crashed.

I cautiously propped myself up and positioned to stand. As I bent upward with my knees, they cracked. I froze and looked down at Shellie. Once I verified she wasn’t disturbed, I crept away from the bed.

Out of habit, I walked to the railing of my loft bedroom and looked down over my living space. Nothing looked out of order, so I quietly moved toward the window.

With each step, my heart rate and adrenaline increased as I followed alongside the trail of footprints made of mud and blood. I imagined the only thing life had left to offer me was a life sentence in prison and a news segment about the Magician Butcher. No! The Butcher Magician.

The trail returned to damning handprints and footprints smeared on the inside of the windowsill. My heart sank, and I was afraid to look outside. I had convinced myself that the police were already out there, marking the crime scene.

After a short minute, I brushed off the unease, briskly glimpsed out the window, and pulled back. Nobody was out there, and it looked and sounded like every other morning.

I moved to the edge of the window, peering out and examining the grounds. If we had left behind a trail, the rain washed it away. I leaned out over the windowsill and double-checked the stone ledge. It was washed clean too.

I couldn’t believe my luck. I smiled to myself. But then I stared into the distance at the woods and was overcome with a foreboding sense of responsibility. There were dead people out there, and I wasn’t going to do anything about it. The guilt weighed heavy, but I pushed it down when my AI alarm sounded.

“Olivia, stop.”

I inhaled and shot a look over at the bed. Thankfully, Shellie was still sleeping. I knew I would have to face the inevitability of her waking, but I needed more time to process things. Alas, as I exhaled, there was a loud banging at the door. In the same manner as a dog rustled out of its sleep, Shellie popped up, responding to the noise. Her head turned in the direction of the door below.

I immediately jumped in front of Shellie and took a goalie’s stance; positioning my legs out, I whipped my arms into the air.

“Shellie, no. Stay on the bed, girl. Shh,” I spouted in a hushed tone. We locked eyes, and I waved my finger no, trying to make her stay put and quiet.

The banging continued, followed by Myles’ voice coming through the intercom, saying, “Hey, Billy. Get up, dude. Remember you told me to give you a wake-up call so you could prepare for your presentation?”

Damn, he’s right. I’ll fail sociology class if I don’t deal with that today.

“I’m up! I’m up!” I shouted through the intercom. I tried to sound annoyed, hoping he would go away, but he didn’t.

“Hey, Billy, we were all worried when you didn’t come home last night. Are you good? Can you open the door?”

I didn’t respond. I crossed my fingers, hoping he would leave, but I knew he wouldn’t.

The banging started again, clearly agitating Shellie. But at least she was following my requests for the moment.

Sadly, I knew no matter what excuse I gave Myles, he wouldn’t be satisfied until he looked into my eyes.

There was no telling what would happen if I didn’t diffuse this situation quickly. Shellie may believe I’m being threatened and morph into the beast-dog again. And this time, my close friends would receive her killing lacerations.

“Okay, Myles. Cut it out. Give me a second.”

Myles stopped knocking.

I hurriedly pitched off the muddy clothes I still had on from the night before and grabbed my robe from the open closet on the right side of my bed.

I quickly acted out every gesture I could think of to get Shellie to lie down. Finally, she understood and settled back down on the bed.

After I felt she was secured, I held up my palm in a stop motion once more to make her stay and backed down the floating stairwell, passing through the living room space to the door.

I cracked open the door, positioning myself to block their view inside.

Myles was about a foot away from the entrance. Gene was next to him, looking pitiful, and closing out the rear, Jammer sipped on coffee.

After a brief recognition period, their facial expressions dropped into concern. But before they could ask, I quickly acted to resolve their worry.

“Oh, the bruise and mud caked on my face. I slipped off one of the sitting stones last night after it started raining—came straight home and fell asleep.”

Fawk, I just confirmed to them that I was near the murder scene in the woods.

Jammer sipped her coffee and said, “That doesn’t look good. You may want to bathe it in lots of antiseptics.” She immediately curled up her lips after she spoke.

“Or go to the doctor,” Gene said in a worried but sardonic manner.

“You’re both right. Let me get started on that. See, Myles. I’m good. Okay. Shutting the door, guys. No more knocking. Talk later.” I forced out the most genuine fake smile I could muster. But as I started to close the door, I heard a thumping sound within earshot.

My smile dropped.

I froze and didn’t turn around to investigate. Then my friends’ glances shifted away into the space above me, then below me. Before I realized what they were looking at, I felt hair rub against my leg. My eyes fixated in front of me, flickering with apprehension, not really connecting with anyone.

“Who’s that?”

I don’t even recall which one of them asked the question.  I felt the blood drain from my face and my muscles tensed so hard that I may have looked like a mortified corpse pushing her away from the door with my hip. “Shoo, go over there. Wait over there.”

When I turned back to my friends, they were the ones who looked stone-cold mortified.

“We’ll talk later. Bye.”

I closed the door and pressed my back against the door. I was freaking out. The cat—more like the dog—was out of the bag.

Now what?

Well, it wasn’t entirely out. They only saw Shellie, not her reality-breaking beast-dog form.

I couldn’t make out Myles, Gene, and Jammer’s muffled chatter outside the door, but I could pick up on the astonishment in their voices.

They’d never seen me with a girl, much less one in my room.

Since they’d known me, I hadn’t hidden the fact that I lean asexual. Yes, my friends know about my old crush on Teena Aoki. However, that was purely intellectual. Seeing Shellie, though, I know what they were thinking, and it’s the furthest from the truth.

After a few minutes, they moved on. I stayed affixed to the door, curiously observing Shellie as she walked around my open-plan living quarters, looking at and sniffing things. I was amazed how closely her behavior matched a dog’s even in human form.

From everything I had seen of her so far, she didn’t talk, but she had growled, sniffed, and guarded like a dog. Additionally, she seemed most responsive when I gave her commands.

Don’t get me wrong; she presented some human qualities. Like, at that moment, she walked between the couch and the oriel window on her feet, not on all fours, touching the stained glass as if she remembered it.

Walking through the kitchen area, she opened and shut the cabinets. Along the way, she lifted and examined several candy jars. Her nosiness seemed cute—more human than animal.

I thought of her beastly form and the warmth she had displayed for me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t place the familiarity at the time because of my brain fry. But recalling the beast-dog’s eyes, I’m positive I saw a semblance to my previous pet, Nightshade.

Thinking of him jostled a crazy idea. When I was meditating, both Nightshade and Shellie appeared in the Void.

I locked the door, ran upstairs, and grabbed Rules of the Black Arts for Advanced Users. Surprisingly, the book shone pristinely, even after all the rain and other damaging conditions it had endured.

I stood by the railing to watch Shellie. She walked out of the kitchen, past the dining table, and into the computer room below me.

There was nothing she could get into there; I kept that area pretty minimalistic.

I unlatched the book to follow up on my hunch. Then I paused briefly. Exploring my train of thought meant I had to take some profound leaps in logic.

I have always believed in magic and the supernatural. To an ordinary person, instant transmutation of the elements (although in small doses), sensing energies, and controlling probabilities would seem like bullshit, but for me, it was an everyday reality.

If what I had theorized was true, it would shatter my view of magic in this world.

My big theory relied heavily on the book I had balanced on the banister. It had to be much more than I ever imagined. I thumbed to “A Spellcaster’s Steadfast Companion,” specifically the section “Manifesting Your Companion.”

Perusing, I sighed because, as usual, I exercised two of my nastiest habits during my first reading. One, I didn’t finish reading the section’s text, and two, I skipped ahead in the first place—something I had only done because the wind tossed the page to an exciting section.

I picked up the reading where I had stopped, and it laid out some valuable information.

The text explained that the manifestation of companions took on the form and qualities of the Void’s revelation, but the user’s soul and purpose determined its “archetype.”

The asterisk referred to tiny letters at the bottom of the page that read, “see: Companion Archetypes.”

I worked my index finger and speed-reading skills in overdrive, dashing through information. Under groupings called classifications, I read through hundreds of archetypes ranging from animals like hawks and leopards to supernatural beings like ghosts and succubi to entities that I could not fathom.

As badly as I wanted to find a correlation, nothing matched Shellie. Nearing the end of the reference pages, I was ready to dismiss my deductions as delusional. Then I saw the answer that snapped my puzzle pieces together.