by Ella M. Lee
“We like you, Fi,” he said. His tone didn’t invite a rebuttal. “Even Teng. I swear.”
“Not Irina,” I said.
He shrugged.
He let go of my hands and lowered himself onto his back, his eyes roaming over the shadowy ceiling. The morning light was weak, only barely creeping through the open doors, but the room didn’t feel scary or creepy. It felt welcoming and heartwarming.
I joined Daniel, laying myself carefully beside him, the floor chilling me even through my jacket. I relaxed, letting my eyes close and my body sink into the wood, my limbs extended in a yoga-like pose. Dan was radiating heat beside me, and I inched closer, barely brushing up against him. He didn’t move, his eyes closed, his expression pleased. The room was so still that I could hear his light breathing.
“Do you ever wonder about you and me?” I asked, after a minute of contemplation. I turned my head to look at him.
His eyes were open now, narrowed in thought. “What do you mean?”
“How is it that we get along so well?” I asked. “It’s insane. You’re a decade younger than me and from a completely different world, yet what we have somehow transcends all of that.”
Daniel was quiet for so long that I thought I may have offended him or made him feel bad. Eventually, he spoke.
“Are you worried that there’s something wrong with us?” he asked. That had not been the response I was expecting.
I hesitated. “No. I just don’t want any more surprises. We were lucky enough that Nicolas didn’t flay both of us for what happened last week.”
“Nicolas is practical,” he said. “Think about it this way… we got something good out of it, the chance for me to build a sanctum from scratch. You know why he doesn’t care? Because it produced a result he liked. If he thought you and I having sex could produce the sanctum of a new clan, he would tell us to go for it.”
“Do you really think that’s true?” I asked, aghast.
“I know it’s true,” he said. “I’ve been part of Nicolas’s plans for years. I told you—he never does things without a purpose. He comes from Smoke, after all. You know what he is and how far he’ll go for his goals.”
I looked away and sighed. Nicolas was oddly fine with the weird relationship Dan and I had. I originally thought it was because he could read our minds and knew our intentions, that he would only care if one of us overstepped. But then we had overstepped, and Nicolas had hardly reacted. He placed no restrictions on me, made no ultimatums or demands, acted no differently toward us. He watched daily as I spent most of my time with Daniel, as I turned to him for comfort, as the two of us grew closer.
Nicolas loved me, of that I had zero doubts, and I loved him with all of my heart. But maybe he loved his designs more, and maybe he was fine with Daniel and me as long as it seemed like our closeness could further his own causes.
I didn’t know how to bring this sort of concern up with him, or whether I even should. Perhaps our balancing act was best left untouched.
“You’re really worried about this?” Dan asked.
“A little, yes. When I’m not too busy being worried about everything else. I just want to make sure we’re all okay.”
“We’re fine. Nicolas and I are always, always fine. I don’t think there’s anything in the world that could change that. We worked ourselves out ages ago. As for you? Well…”
He inched himself closer to me. His fingertips gently touched my chin, tipping my face toward his. I was frozen, my heart pounding. His dark, eager gaze sent needles of anxiety through me, filling me with alarm.
“Dan—”
He pressed his fingers to my lips and smiled. “Nah, I’m good. Let’s just stay friends.”
I slapped his hand away. “You jerk!” I said, melting into a grin as the adrenaline drained from me. “Don’t scare me like that!”
He sat up, covering his face with his hands to stymie his laughter. I glared at him, but I couldn’t help laughing as well.
“You should have seen your face,” he said, between gasping breaths. “Amazing.”
“I hate you. You are the worst.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, that was just too fun to pass up,” he said.
“You’re lucky I didn’t punch you in the face.”
“Let me remind you that you still haven’t managed that,” he said.
I snapped my hand out as quickly as I could, but Dan caught my wrist. He was the fastest fighter I’d ever encountered.
“Who trained you?” I asked, sitting up on my knees.
“I’ve had a lot of teachers,” he said, shrugging. “One of them was even famous for training kung fu movie stars, but the best was a friend of Nicolas’s named Sandy.”
“Here in Water?” I asked.
“Yeah, but he moved away a couple of years ago. He does undercover work for some commander in the Morocco clan house. Nicolas has a lot of interesting allies.”
“Why doesn’t Nicolas recruit more people?” I asked. “There are a good number of transmuters and spatial manipulators and all sorts of other fun specialties available in Water. Yet it’s only the twelve of us.”
“I think Nicolas wants to start small. I know he has a list in his head of others he’s interested in, but the fewer people who know what we’re doing, the better. It’s dangerous and risky. If we succeed, we’ll have huge targets on our backs from the other clans. If we fail, we might all die.”
“We won’t fail,” I said, trying to smile.
“I know,” he said, his eyes glinting. “I’ve never failed at anything.”
“Someday, I’m hoping your confidence will rub off on me,” I said. “I don’t know how you keep it up. I feel completely smashed.”
Dan gave me a pained, sympathetic look. “I’m trying to make you happy and keep you safe. I wish I knew how.”
“This is a good start,” I offered. “This place feels right. I want to be here with everyone. I wish emergencies would stop popping up in the middle of my life so that we could focus on our goals. I need a moment to rest and recover, but there are no moments to be had.”
Dan took my hands in his, sitting across from me. “Just say the word, and I will give you whatever you want to feel better. Time. Space. Food. The blood of your enemies.”
I rolled my eyes at him, and he laughed softly, all of his deep seriousness melting into a brilliant smile. Despite being able to feel his ridiculous amounts of power in my bones, I still often thought of him as a kid, and very few things made me happier than seeing Dan happy.
He leaned into me, pressing his head against mine for a mere moment. “Let’s walk into town,” he said. “I promised you breakfast.”
He offered me a hand up, and I followed his soft steps back out into the bright light of morning.
Dan and I ate at a bakery in town. I stared out the window, watching commuters make their way into the bustling train station. The center of town was adorable, just small enough to be quaint, but still large enough to house a small market, a post office, a pharmacy, two convenience stores, and a few tiny restaurants. Large enough that several new people buying up an abandoned property and moving in would be only mildly remarkable.
But after living in Hong Kong for months, it was definitely downtown Osaka that felt more comfortable to me—a busy, gritty, proud city. I was glad it would be so near to our new home, and I was happy to be visiting it once again.
The realtor, a no-nonsense Japanese woman, assured Dan that our generous offer would be accepted. She would, she said, have news the following day, and that it was possible we could close on the property in as little as a couple of weeks.
Daniel thanked her profusely again and again—that was the only part of the conversation I understood—and directed her to Irina to settle the details.
After the meeting, Dan and I walked through Osaka until storm clouds rolled in. We were happy enough to be forced by the rain into a coffee shop for an afternoon snack, and later into a tiny teppanyaki restauran
t for a very late lunch.
By the time we arrived back at the property to catch our portal home, it was dusk. As if by magic, all the tension had drained from my body, and my headache was gone. I knew I wouldn’t remain like that for long, but I would settle for merely an afternoon of reprieve for now.
“Does this place have a name?” I asked as we stared around in the dying light.
Temples in Japan usually had names, sometimes several of them, which were used to tell you about their location and history and purpose.
“When it was active, it was called Joushin-ji,” he said. “The pure heart temple.”
Chapter 7
The next morning found me racing from my workout routine back up to our group’s meeting room on the thirty-sixth floor. Sylvio and Nicolas had beaten me there, both looking calm and collected. Sylvio handed me a foam cup of yun yeong—coffee mixed with milk tea.
“You are amazing,” I told him.
He smiled. He and I had been softening toward one another over the past few weeks.
We were several bites into breakfast when Daniel arrived. He looked well rested for once, his usual graceful self with all his magic layered around him. He joined me on the loveseat and barely said two words of greeting before digging into breakfast himself.
He was in a dangerous mood this morning. His magic was poised like he was expecting an argument, a state it was rarely in around me and the rest of the group. His eyes were dark and serious, and I could tell nothing I said would have an impact on him. It would need to be Nicolas who centered him again, so I waited for him to speak. One look at Sylvio, and I knew he was doing the same.
Nicolas sat forward, folding his hands on his knees in front of him. “Daniel, calm down.”
Daniel didn’t speak. He seemed to be sending his thoughts to Nicolas instead.
“You’re not worrying me.” Nicolas shrugged. “You’re worrying Fiona.”
Daniel turned his gaze on me, and I drew back. His eyes were fierce and glowing; I could almost see the city of lights that was his sanctum behind them.
“Hear me out, Dan?” I asked quietly.
He leaned back and swept his hand in front of himself, palm up. Proceed. The elegant gesture was so reminiscent of Nicolas that I glanced between them warily as I collected my thoughts.
“I’ll tell you why I don’t think this is a trap,” I said. “It requires explanation, because there are things you don’t know about me or my past.”
They were all watching me, although Dan looked skeptical at best. But they were ready to hear me out, and I was grateful I had at least that much trust from them.
“There are two clues hidden in Mark’s message that aren’t obvious to anyone except me,” I said. “The first one is the phrase ‘allegiances aside.’ To you, that could pretty simply mean setting Water and Meteor aside. It’s more than that to me. None of you know this, but I write. A lot. When I was in college, I wrote several novels. They remain unpublished, but my brother read them all.
“One of them was called Allegiances Aside. It’s about a woman who is torn between her family and the husband they disapprove of. She ends up choosing her husband in a dispute, forsaking the family she doesn’t seem to fit in with anymore.”
“Are you the woman in this metaphor?” Daniel asked.
“No, I think Mark is the woman, and I’m the husband, and Meteor is the family,” I said. “I think he wants to reach out to me, to pick me over Meteor.”
“Shaky theory, Fi,” Dan said, his voice laced with disapproval.
“But there’s one more piece of the puzzle,” I said. “He mentioned our old drinking spot. Dan, what comes to mind when you hear that?”
He shrugged. “A bar? A café?”
“You’d think, right?” I said. “No, he’s talking about way back, when he and I used to sneak out with our dad’s bourbon in high school. We had a secret spot, a hardly used tack room in the barn behind the chicken coop. We would sneak out at ten thirty at night, after both our parents were in bed. It was practically a weekly ritual for almost a year. No one knew, not even friends. Siblings only. This was back when we were inseparable.”
“You think he’s… emphasizing the secretive nature of this meeting?” Dan guessed.
I smiled. “Exactly.”
“Or he’s luring you into a false sense of security,” Dan countered. “It’s easy to betray people who trust you.”
“That’s what we’re here to decide,” Nicolas interjected. “The three of us have no such attachments to this individual. Me less than anyone.”
“He’s offered Nicolas an apology gift,” I said. “Incentive for us to show up?”
“Who knows. We have so little information,” Daniel said. “That’s why this is a bad idea. Tell me this, Fi: What do we have to gain by meeting him?”
I hesitated.
“That man is not your brother anymore.” Dan’s tone was steely. “There will be no touching family reunion. If you can tell me honestly that you can gain an advantage for our group by meeting Mark, then I will support you. But if you’re just curious, if this is personal, I am not risking you or any of us for that. He can email you his heartfelt apology.”
I looked at Nicolas. He was staring into the distance, his hands pressed against his nose, blinking slowly. This was one of his usual states for hunting down visions of the future.
“Dan’s right,” he said, his eyes still unfocused. “We need to consider ourselves. Can we gain anything useful by showing up to this meeting? Do we think this gift is something we want or need?”
“I think yes,” I said. “Mark had eight years to contact me, to tell me he was alive. Up until coming here, I kept the same phone number and the same email address. If all he wanted was to get back in touch, he didn’t need to wait until now. The timing is too perfect. He’s planning something, or he needs something. We just need to figure out what it is, and whether it’s good for us or bad for us.”
Nicolas was back to scanning for visions. We all watched him silently. I didn’t know why I was so confident about my assessment of this situation. Was Dan right? Was I thinking about this too personally? Was I ignoring the red flags?
“Fi,” Dan said, casting his gaze back on me, “you know the time and place he wants to meet. Tell me about it.”
“Well… you don’t know this either, but I own the property I grew up on,” I said. “It was left to me in my father’s will. Right around the time I joined Flame, my aunt and uncle took over maintaining the property. They rebuilt the burned-down house and restored the barn. They live there now. I used to visit more, but I haven’t seen them in about a year.” Guilt wormed its way into my stomach. “I wonder what they think, not hearing from me for more than six months…”
Nicolas’s eyes focused on me. “Fiona, why haven’t you checked in on them?”
My brows drew together. “I didn’t think you wanted me to. I ditched everything when I came to Water. I was afraid to touch any part of my old life.”
Nicolas looked troubled. “We’ll talk about this later, but I didn’t mean for you to abandon all of your past relationships. That was my oversight, I’m sorry.”
I shrugged, looking at Dan bewilderedly. He offered no additional commentary or opinion, although his look had softened a little.
“So…” I went on, “Mark’s chosen meeting spot is still there, on my property. It’s a smallish room, probably no more than twelve-by-twelve feet. It’s set on the back side of the barn, out of view of both the house and the road. I don’t know what’s in it these days, but it’s private and secluded.”
“Nico?” Dan asked. “Can you see anything?”
Nicolas took his hands from his face, sitting back. “Nothing too specific. It seems like if we decide to go, I’m going, which nullifies my ability. But I do see the group here together in the days after the meeting time. I don’t think anyone gets hurt or dies. As for Mark—nothing is coming up. I don’t know why, but that’s not uncommon. The less
affinity I have for someone, the harder they are to see.”
“So maybe a trap, but not a dangerous trap. Maybe a helpful meeting, but we can’t know how helpful,” Daniel murmured. “This is annoying.”
“So, in the world in which we attend this meeting, how does it go down? What precautions do we take?” I asked.
“Well, you obviously have to be there,” Nicolas said, “and so do I.”
“Do we bring more people? Do we think he will?” Daniel asked.
Nicolas looked to Sylvio, which seemed to bewilder Dan, but I understood. Of all of us, Sylvio would know the habits of a Meteor commander best.
Sylvio put his hands together. “He’ll certainly bring his lieutenant. A Meteor commander is never without their lieutenant.”
I nodded in agreement. It was a pretty strict norm in that clan. “I want Dan as well,” I said.
Dan looked surprised and flustered. “I wasn’t invited.”
“You were, via a loophole. Mark asked for my commander. That’s you. If he wanted Nicolas, he should have been more specific,” I said, shrugging.
“Two commanders and a lieutenant? Nicolas out doing risky field work?” Sylvio said. “This breaks all of our group’s normal protocols. What happens if you are captured?”
“Then you rescue us?” I said.
He closed his eyes and sighed, running a hand through his flaxen hair.
“We have an advantage: Keisha,” I said. “There’s no way Mark has a spatial manipulator. Within Meteor, there’s nothing rarer. None of them are loyal to any one commander. At best, he might be able to buy one for the night, but they would bail if they saw that he was running a risky operation. They can make bank without risk.”
“True,” Sylvio confirmed. “We are likely to have the advantage of portals and speed.”
All three men were looking at me. They wanted my own decision.