Chapter 45.4

By some stroke of incredible luck, Miss Bishop had answered the door. Tessa had been desperately trying to hold herself together on the off chance another Coven member answered, however, and seeing Miss Bishop broke the last bit of restraint Tessa had. Running forward, she threw her arms around the older witch, who hugged her close and quickly walked them to her quarters.Miss Bishop’s room was every bit as calm and comforting as the woman herself, not that Tessa noticed much. By the time she’d stopped openly weeping, she found that they’d settled on a decorative chaise. Burying her face in Miss Bishop’s lap, while comforting, also meant that the Coven Head’s dress was now stained with streaks of black eyeliner. Tessa blushed with shame, both at her emotional outburst and for ruining the dress, and tried to stammer out an apology as she wiped tears from her cheeks.

“I-I didn’t mean to… your dress, I—”

“Hush, Tessa,” Miss Bishop whispered. She produced a small handkerchief and raised it to Tessa’s face, gently stroking her face with one hand while cleaning her up with the other. As Tessa sniffled, she saw the black streaks shimmer and vanish entirely. “It’s just a dress. See? Gone already.”

Tessa forced a laugh. “We both know you’re just using illusions to cover it up…”

“Says who?” Miss Bishop said with a smirk. “Maybe I picked up cleaning magic while you were away at college.”

“Yeah, right,” Tessa muttered, rolling her eyes. “You’re just channeling magic from the Plane of Soap.”

“Don’t be silly, child.” A smirk crossed the Coven Head’s face. “We both know the Plane of Soap is a myth for children. No, I have an eldritch patron who bestows his powers upon me. Surely you’ve heard of Mr. Clean?”

This time, against her best wishes, Tessa’s laugh was genuine. She placed a hand over Miss Bishop’s, grabbing the handkerchief to start cleaning herself up. “Thank you, Miss Bishop.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

With a heavy sigh, Tessa nodded and pulled her feet underneath her legs to settle in. “…It’s Chloé. I’ve been trying to hold myself together, to pretend like I’m coping, but I just don’t have the strength anymore. I’m so tired of losing people to this life.”

Miss Bishop placed a hand on Tessa’s shoulder. “You don’t have to shoulder this burden alone, you know. I’m here, and you have friends to help you through this.”

Tessa scoffed. “It doesn’t feel like it. Vee’s been spending all her time with Amara, who’s basically a complete shut-in. On the rare occasions she leaves the house, she just snaps at everyone who so much as looks at her for too long. Did you hear she snapped at Imani?”

“Briefly. I heard that some of the students were taking the events rather poorly.”

“She was trying to convince me that Chloé is still alive!” Tessa said, looking back up at Miss Bishop. “She even insulted my abilities, saying that I don’t care about Chloé.”

“We all know what happens when people learn about magic,” Miss Bishop said softly.

Tessa nodded, then leaned into Miss Bishop with a heavy sigh. She stayed there for several minutes, Amara’s words running through her head, when she finally caved to the question that had been burning in her heart since then. “Is there any chance Chloé is still alive? Any at all?”

Miss Bishop gently stroked Tessa’s hair from her face. “None that I can think of, Tessa. The runes of a properly constructed portal will have built-in protections to prevent the magic from injuring anyone during the closure, but it sounds like Brandon was simply forcing a hole between realities with sheer willpower. I hate to say this, but with how unstable his magic appeared to be… it was likely a blessing that it happened so quickly.”

There was no hidden truth in these words, and Tessa had repeated them to herself thousands of times since their fight on the quad, but somehow they were still laced with bitter finality.

“I just want this to be over,” Tessa said, choking up slightly. “I want this stupid Gate fixed so I can get on with my life. I never imagined I would say this, but I’m glad the Coven is here. How is everything going on your end? Still think we can have everything back to normal by next semester?”

When Miss Bishop spoke, she had an unusual hitch in her voice. “It’s… fine.”

Tessa leaned back, looking at Miss Bishop directly. “What do you mean, fine? Is there a problem?”

“We haven’t started applying anything yet. We’ve been running countless tests in preparation, but not all of our tests are yielding predictable results.”

“Is it something I can help with?” Tessa asked. “I feel like I understand this stuff pretty well, although I’ll be the first to admit that the exact nature of the Gate is still way beyond my knowledge. It’s an incredibly complex piece of magic.”

“That it is. The world has also changed quite a bit since it was initially put into place. Do you remember how you created the portal to and from Purgatory? How you had to carefully align the magic to resonate with the proper planes, then create a way to tell them apart?” Tessa nodded, then Miss Bishop continued. “Well, we’re trying to do something similar, but on a much wider scale. In order to properly block out all the other planes, we need to align the entire configuration with this plane, and that’s where the problems come in. There’s… um, something on campus that’s messing with our readings.”

“As in a planar overlap?”

“N-nothing quite that dramatic, I’m afraid. We’d be able to easily detect something of that scale. No, our current theory is that a creature, possibly multiple, slipped through from another plane.” Miss Bishop paused again, giving Tessa even more time to notice how stilted her words were right now. “Would you… happen to know anything that might be relevant? About any nonhuman creatures on campus?”

Tessa bit her tongue.

“I-I…” Tessa stammered. “If, hypothetically, there were such creatures on campus, what would the Coven do?

Miss Bishop reached down and grabbed Tessa’s hands. “Nothing at all. We simply need to know so that we can calibrate the Circles accordingly. Hypothetically.”

Silence hung thick as Tessa thought about Miss Bishop’s words. She stared at the ground, eyes bouncing from knots in the hardwood floor to the thick blue carpet that sat atop them. This was their one chance to close the Gate for good, to ensure that everything would go back to normal, that no more friends would die from madmen trying to collapse reality for their own benefit. She thought of Chloé, the pit in her stomach pulling her deeper into despair.

Tessa took a deep breath, one that rattled her frame as she released it, then nodded. “…T-there’s two. Amara and Vee.”

Miss Bishop nodded slowly, but stayed quiet to let Tessa continue.

“Vee’s an angel,” Tessa muttered. She couldn’t help but notice that Miss Bishop’s eyes, usually bastions of comfort and reliability, twitched in surprise. “Amara… Amara’s a demon. A succubus, specifically.”

A painful gasp left Tessa’s mouth as she slouched forward, her shoulders shaking. She forced her eyes shut, tears falling down her face as Miss Bishop pulled her into another embrace. “Shh, it’s okay Tessa. You did the right thing. I’m so proud of you.”

They held each other close for the rest of the afternoon.