by Ella M. Lee
That explained why the hostess had greeted him in familiar and exuberant French, with a light embrace and a kiss on the cheek.
“I can see why,” I said. “This food is fantastic.”
“Someday, I will take you to Paris, lamb,” he said. “There is no better food on earth.”
“Let’s get through the next few days. And few weeks. And few months. There is too much going on right now.” I paused. “But I didn’t get to see much of the city last time I was there. I would love for you to show me around.”
He shrugged, offering me a sympathetic smile. “We are magicians. We have all the time in the world.”
“Says the person who died last week.”
“We have all had close calls, even you. Do not dwell on that. It is better to learn and move on.”
“I’m trying, yet somehow the past keeps coming back to bite me,” I said, stabbing my veal more aggressively than necessary.
“What can I do to help you?” he asked.
I looked away, my eyes landing on a cluster of candles near the door. I hated that I always crumbled to pieces, while Nicolas had to try so hard to keep me together. I was, by far, the weakest member of his group, constantly needing attention and reassurance. I honestly had no idea how he could sit across the table and study me as lovingly as he did.
He frowned and put his hands out to me. I took them, my elbows resting on the white tablecloth, our arms weaving around our myriad dishes.
“As usual, you underestimate yourself,” he said. “You are not weak.”
“How many of your other group members cry on a regular basis?”
“More than you would guess,” he said, “but that isn’t what I meant. You think your emotions make you weak, and that showing them makes you even weaker. That isn’t the case. Weaknesses, true weaknesses, manifest themselves differently. True weakness is a lack of discipline, a lack of self-awareness, a lack of integrity… qualities that can hurt or kill others. True weakness leads to failure, but not the teaching kind; rather, the kind that keeps you stunted and frozen in place. You have none of that. You succeed. You survive. You have empathy, a keen eye for detail, and the ability to manage yourself in an emergency.”
He smiled at me and shook his head. “Anxiety and lack of self-confidence are much easier to eradicate than true personality flaws. I should know; I fixed several true personality flaws in myself, and it was agonizing. Someday, you will be as confident as Daniel, I swear.”
I laughed a little. “No one is as confident as Daniel. He barged into a house with five Meteors and just started flinging magic around.”
“Believe it or not, he is more cautious now than he used to be. I have managed to teach him little things here and there.”
“You aren’t always the most cautious,” I reminded him.
“I have five times more experience in this world than Daniel does. I have a better sense of when it’s safe enough or important enough to eschew caution.”
“Did you always have those sorts of instincts, or did you have to develop them over time?” I asked.
I let go of Nicolas’s hands, and we picked up our wineglasses. I was still mulling over his words—that I was not weak—and trying to make them settle within me. Nicolas always said things with so much confidence that it immediately put me at ease. I had a feeling he did that with everyone, and that it was part of the reason he was so successful.
He tilted his head back and forth and narrowed his eyes. “I’ve always had decent instincts for getting results, but it used to take me much longer to come to conclusions about situations. I had to work very hard to learn how to make quick decisions. That was not a skill I was born with, but it is a necessary one when working in a clan and when leading others.”
“I like when someone else tells me what to do, honestly,” I said. “I like having a commander. Does that make me pathetic?”
“No. There you are again, misinterpreting a strength as a weakness,” he said.
“It’s strong to want a commander?” I asked.
“It is strong to know what you want. And as a commander, I have a special appreciation for people who need me and want me. It is nice, of course, to raise up subordinates and see them promoted. But you know what is also nice? Having trained, trusted subordinates whom I can rely on to take orders and execute them, who can offer me the strength of their skills and talents. I have that in you, and it makes me very grateful.”
More warm, honest words from Nicolas. I still had no idea how he managed to say the exact right things to me.
“It is easy, lamb,” he said, “because I have no problem seeing your good qualities, and I greatly enjoy reminding you of them.” He paused, setting his wineglass down. “I am truly sorry for these past few days. I am used to stress like this, but I know you aren’t. I know it hurts you. It is not my intent to compound that, but I feel like that is exactly what I’m doing.”
I looked down at my half-eaten food and took another bite to avoid having to say anything. Being out of the clan house always made me feel better. Nicolas had known that this meal would calm me, and he had intentionally maneuvered me out into the city because of that. Indeed, I was having a hard time summoning any of the annoyance or dread or asinine jealousy I’d been feeling earlier.
Nicolas seemed content to let me eat without prodding me to speak, which I appreciated.
His phone buzzed several times. It had been resting face down on the table. He picked it up, checking it for only a moment before putting it back down.
“Work?” I asked. My pulse quickened, worried that something had happened to Daniel or Mark or any of the others.
“No, no,” he said. “It’s Jazz. She’s back from Macau.”
“How long is she staying around?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Nicolas said. “She has many friends and colleagues here, and she and Ryan are quite close. I am practically the least of her concerns.”
I looked down, ashamed. “I didn’t mean anything…”
“Please, lamb, I’d like for you to relax. I’m not offended by your question. You are letting your anxiety leak into all aspects of your life.” He touched my hand gently. “You and I are fine. Better than fine. That should be the absolute last thing you have to worry about.”
“I don’t even know where to begin with my worrying these days,” I said.
“What is at the top of your mind?” he asked.
“Daniel,” I said. “He drives me insane with how often he overworks himself.”
“Daniel is all right,” Nicolas said. “I checked on him while you were with Claudius. He’s sleeping. He’ll feel fine in the morning.”
“How come he will be fine in twenty-four hours, yet I spent a full week feeling dead after my first transmutation?”
“You were mortal, using unfamiliar magic, and you were already in a pretty sad state, not eating or sleeping regularly,” he said. “A commander who is deeply and intimately familiar with their magic can recover extremely quickly. Daniel knows himself and his magic quite well.” Nicolas took a sip of his wine. “I know Daniel grounds you, and that you feel off balance when he’s unavailable to support you, but everything is all right. You have a whole family to turn to. Although you sometimes feel like you are still on the outside, that is simply untrue.”
I gave him an exasperated, incredulous look. He smiled and offered me a hand. I took it delicately, stroking his thin fingers.
I am not lying, he said silently. Do you know that Teng enjoys working with you? Enjoys. He has given you some high praise to both me and Daniel. Keisha looks up to you. Ryan loves you. Sylvio trusts you and respects you as a lieutenant. Athena is glad she has someone she can talk to other than me—she has always been a bit isolated here, and her disposition has always been fragile. None of us, certainly not me, could possibly choose Mark over you or think ill of you because of what has happened recently.
So what is the deal with Mark? I asked. We just send him on his way?
My long-term goals are to have as many allies as possible, in as high positions as possible, Nicolas said. This is meant to give us breathing room at first. Allies will listen to us, they will allow us to explain, they won’t come after us for no reason. They may not be on our side immediately, but our goodwill with them will be deep enough that we can lean on some amount of mutual trust. I am looking to cultivate that with Mark, along with his leadership abilities.
“You’re going to mentor my brother?” I asked, laughing. “He’s a little piece of shit, you know. Prepare for petulance and laziness and inattentiveness and everything else an annoying teenager can throw at you, because guess what? He hasn’t grown up in eight years. I can see that already.”
“Well, he’ll be in for a real treat, dealing with me,” Nicolas said, smiling wolfishly.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that working with Mark will be impossible.”
“Ah, but…” Nicolas said, “Impossible n’est pas Français.”
“Impossible… isn’t French?” I said, wrinkling my nose.
“Oui. It isn’t very French to use the word ‘impossible.’ Or, as you might say in English… there is no such thing as ‘cannot.’”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not helping you. Do not ask for my advice. I don’t care enough to give any.”
“I will leave you out of it, if that is your wish,” Nicolas said.
“Good,” I said. “It is.”
He squeezed my hand gently. To be completely honest, I will also be glad to have Mark gone. I have every intention of setting him up as best as I can, but we have a bigger problem now—Stephan. I have genuine anxiety regarding him. That he has taken an interest in meeting Daniel. That he called Daniel “talented” and “interesting” to Claudius. Combine that with the news that he knows about Shatterfall, and that is worrisome indeed. Eventually, I will figure out how he gets his knowledge and orchestrates his plans, but for now I am simply trying to keep ahead of him.
Does Claudius trust him? I asked. They were pinnacle members of clans; it was likely they interacted somewhat frequently.
Nicolas’s laughter rang in my mind. Claudius doesn’t trust Stephan or me, but he is unfortunate enough to have to work with us. “Don’t trust a Smoke magician” is almost as strong of an axiom as “Don’t trust a Meteor magician.” I don’t blame him or anyone for that. I’m not trustworthy outside of my family. And I mean my real family—my group—not Stephan. I do not consider him family.
I sighed. “We really do need to get moving, don’t we?”
He pursed his lips and sighed. “I suppose that may be the case. I still have to think about how to approach this. There may be other paths that I’m not seeing yet.”
“Dan and Ryan are excited to start,” I said.
“Yes, I know,” Nicolas said. “I trust their instincts, but I have no intention of making mistakes here if I can help it.”
“Caution,” I said, nodding.
He smiled. “Yes, caution. I love you all too much to offer anything less.”
Chapter 23
I was up early the next morning, eager to check on Daniel. When I arrived at his apartment, he was awake, stretched out on the floor in front of his living room windows, drinking tea and reading Japanese manga, his magic once again shimmery and glorious.
His eyes were hooded and sleepy, but he seemed much better than the previous day. He invited me in with a lazy smile, and I flopped down next to him, touching his shoulder.
“I’m fine,” he said, leaning into me.
“Are you feeling well enough to come get breakfast with me?” I asked. “Wontons?”
He laughed. “Do you mean, am I feeling well enough to come translate because you want wontons, but you are too afraid to go to the wonton place alone?”
“Okay, yes,” I said.
“Repeat after me, Fi. We are going to a cha chaan teng to eat wan tan tong min.”
I had heard all these words before, and I had even tried to say them, but I was terrible at Cantonese. I had nothing against the language. It was even rather pretty when Daniel spoke it smoothly and expressively, but I didn’t think it would ever be for me.
“Cha chaan teng,” I said, repeating the word for a Hong Kong-style diner.
Daniel smacked my wrist. “Pay attention to my tone. Cha chaan teng.”
I repeated it three times before Daniel’s disgusted look melted into something less horrific.
“Wan tan tong min,” I said. This phrase might as well be part of my vocabulary. It meant “wonton noodle soup,” and it was probably my most-eaten meal when outside the clan house.
“See? Easy,” Daniel said, smiling. “I’m going to make you order your own food this morning.”
I grimaced. “Fine, whatever. That’s better than being here, with Nicolas displaying stupidly high amounts of magnanimity toward Mark. If I’m lucky, he’ll leave for Singapore without saying goodbye.”
“Do you mean that?” Daniel asked, standing and offering me a hand.
“Honestly? I don’t know, but I’m still pretty pissed off.”
Dan wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Well, I can fix that, because you can’t possibly be angry when you have wontons.”
I stayed out of the clan house for as long as I possibly could. Daniel and I got breakfast, followed by a second breakfast—shrimp dumplings and pork buns with Hong Kong-style milk tea. Daniel followed me as I wandered through the morning wet market, and he graciously bought the things I asked for, like apples and passion fruits and grapes. We walked all the way down to the large temple south of the clan house, and I watched Dan light incense and pray, as I’d seen him and Nicolas do a dozen times.
The two of us didn’t talk. We didn’t need to. Daniel didn’t like discussing his feelings, and I didn’t like to pry. If he had any opinions about Mark or what had happened the day before, he was keeping silent about them.
By the time we got back to the clan house, it was late morning. Dan and I changed into workout clothes and went to our group’s training room. I was only halfway into my stretches when Nicolas came into the room. Following closely behind him were Sylvio, Keisha, Mark, and Evie.
I was just debating leaving, hesitating because they were all blocking the door, when Nicolas brought Mark through the shield to my side of the room. Nicolas left him there and beckoned to Daniel. Dan offered me a single worried glance before taking a seat with the others at the long meeting table on the other side of the shield.
Mark came to the center of the sparring mat and kneeled beside me. I glanced at him for only a second before parking my gaze on my group members, who were now having an intense conversation.
“Hey,” Mark said.
His tone was conciliatory. I glanced at him again. He looked well. He had showered and changed and was less pale than he’d been the day before. It was still startling to see his bright blue eyes after all these years. People always called our eyes our most similar feature, but they were really quite different. Mark’s eyes were a shade darker and imbued with tiny pinpricks of yellow around the pupils, whereas mine were a clear and even shade.
Right now, he was looking at me with the same puppy-dog look of longing I’d seen a million times when he used to annoy me as a kid.
“Can I just start talking, then?” Mark asked. “Or are you going to get up and leave?”
“Did you kill Dad?” I asked bluntly.
My throat closed as I said the words, and I barely squeaked out the end of the sentence. I had to swallow hard in order to breathe again.
Mark’s eyes closed. “It was… it was an accident. I didn’t mean to.”
“What happened?” I asked, twisting my hands together.
“Meteor lied to me,” he said. He looked away. “My initiation was supposed to involve cutting ties with my past.”
“I know,” I said.
That was Meteor’s standard initiation routine. Lose the mortal coil. Be reborn. A whole fresh start. Meteor w
as a fanatical cult, and they demanded loyalty and dedication from their magicians in ways that all the other clans didn’t.
“Well… they wanted me to burn down our house,” Mark said. “They told me that all the sadness and depression I was feeling came from family. Mom dying, you leaving, Dad being so distant all the time…” He paused. “I figured that wasn’t the worst thing they could have asked. We had insurance and all. My two sponsors came with me that night. I was nervous. I knew Dad was supposed to be going to Chicago for the weekend for a conference, but I couldn’t remember if he was leaving that day or the next. I wanted to go inside and check that he was gone, but my sponsors assured me that they couldn’t sense anyone in the house and that it was empty.
“I wanted to check anyway, but Tom, my first commander in Meteor, grabbed my arm and told me I would fail my initiation if I did that.”
I grimaced. Failing a Meteor initiation meant execution. You were too far in at that point for them to let you go.
Mark’s eyes narrowed. “So I did what they asked. I didn’t have a choice.”
“You did have a choice,” I pointed out.
“Are you seriously going to lecture me? After you attempted to assassinate the Auspex, and then slept with him so he wouldn’t kill you?”
“Okay, first, fuck you,” I said. “Second, that’s completely inaccurate. Third, I never told myself or anyone else that I didn’t have a choice. I had a choice, and I picked this. I very deliberately picked this, and I’m not sorry about it.”
“So we both had to make tough decisions,” he said. “Magic sucks.”
“Yeah, it does,” I said. “It’s awesome, but it sucks.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry every single day. I’m sorry for trusting them. I was stupid, yeah, but they told me the house was empty, and it wasn’t like I wanted to fail and die. Maybe I would have picked that, if I had known, but I didn’t. So I went through with it.”