Spark (Fire Within Series Book 4)

by Ella M. Lee

  “Everyone is fine. Nicolas is himself, you know, working all the time,” I said. “I think I’m definitely dreaming. I’m going to wake up on the floor of the temple with the worst headache ever.”

  “This isn’t a dream,” he said. “I’m really here.” He shook his head, frustrated. “Of all the things for you to not believe… Wait! I can prove it! Let me tell you something I’ve never mentioned before.”

  He let go of my hands and sat on the edge of the rock. I joined him, folding my hands in my lap. He remained silent for a long minute, studying the waves.

  “Has anyone ever told you how I got the name Daniel?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Only that Nicolas gave it to you.”

  “He gave it to me on the day I first spoke to him,” Dan said. “We were sparring. I was scared of him and didn’t want to hurt him, so I was going easy. He didn’t like that. He goaded me into hitting him. Yelled at me, taunted me. I don’t know how, but I managed to clip his jaw. I freaked out. I thought he’d kill me. I said ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ in Cantonese, and bowed to him, low on the ground.”

  Dan smiled, his unfocused eyes seeing the details of those moments. “He kneeled in front of me and said my name.” Dan let out a breathy, exasperated laugh. “Well, he called me Ah-Ming, which I hated at the time because that was what my brother used to call me. So I said ‘Please don’t call me that,’ and he asked ‘What would you like me to call you, then?’

  “I was completely stunned. I had no idea. So I said, ‘Anything you want, just not that.’ Well, that surprised him. It took him a minute, but eventually he said, ‘How about Daniel?’ He explained that Daniel was a guy in the Christian Bible, he was wrongly accused of murder, and God saved him from being eaten by lions as punishment. I’ll never forget, because Nico said, ‘I think you’ve faced enough lions. Time for some saving.’” Dan’s dark, intense gaze fell on me. “You can ask him yourself.”

  I had never heard that story, but it sounded like Nicolas and Daniel.

  “Tell him I love him, and that I’m sorry,” Daniel said. “I only wanted to finish what we started. I knew it wasn’t going to work without the last piece: everything I could give it.”

  “He’d trade it to have you back,” I said. “You had to have known none of us wanted magic over you.”

  Daniel’s eyes slid to mine, and he shrugged. “I had one job: Create the new clan. I wasn’t about to fail at that.”

  I shook my head. “You dumbass. You’re allowed to fail. Sometimes failure keeps you alive.”

  He laughed. “You don’t get it, Fi. I did everything I wanted.”

  “You left me,” I said.

  His smile died. “Okay, so, I didn’t want that.”

  “Neither did I,” I said. “It hasn’t—”

  Suddenly, my magic shook. I shivered. It shook again, harder, and dizziness filled my head.

  “Fuck, I think someone is trying to wake me up,” I said.

  “Oh.” Dan closed his eyes briefly.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  He nodded sadly. There was a question in his eyes, one that I answered before he found the words to ask it.

  “But I’ll get to the bottom of this,” I said. “I’ll be back and… and if this is real? We’ll figure something out. I swear. Christ, Dan, if this is real… I’ll get you out.”

  He didn’t look like he believed me. “Love you, Fi,” he said, the words a little less emotional than usual from him.

  My magic shook a third time, the dizziness and blurriness getting worse, the edges of my vision turning black.

  I put my arms around Dan. “I love you,” I whispered in his ear. “Always and forever.”

  I could still feel the ghost of him around me as my eyes opened in the real world and I fell flat on my back against the cold wooden floor.

  “What the fuck! You set off every alarm ward in the building!”

  That was Nicolas, worried and ruffled. He never swore unless he was upset.

  “I did?” I asked dumbly.

  I didn’t know how I could have managed that. I looked around. Nothing on fire, nothing damaged, I wasn’t hurt. But power hung in the air like a static charge, tangy in my nose and on my skin.

  Nicolas’s face hovered over mine. Ryan stood to my left, a concerned look marring his handsome face, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

  It took me a moment to recall what had happened. When I did, I rolled onto my side and put my hands over my face, sobbing. All the hollowness and numbness I’d felt for months was gone, replaced by burning, ravaging fear and confusion, rolling through me like the tide, setting my nerves on fire.

  “Oh god,” I said. “Oh god, oh god, oh god.”

  “Fiona,” Nicolas said. “Lamb.”

  He touched my wrists, then my hands, trying to pull them away from my face. I curled up tighter, flushed and trembling from the pain.

  “Oh my god,” I whispered.

  “Lamb, you’re worrying me,” Nicolas murmured.

  He never sounded worried, but Nicolas was perfect in emergencies, the type of person who streamlined himself and became ten times more effective under stress.

  “I-I-I—” I stuttered. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t even form a complete thought, which probably annoyed my mind-reading boyfriend.

  “Take a few deep breaths, Fiona,” Nicolas said calmly.

  I wanted to bite back that I couldn’t, that I couldn’t possibly breathe after seeing what I’d seen. Instead, I did as he asked, each swell of my lungs tight.

  “I’m going to say something crazy,” I finally choked out.

  I dragged myself to my knees, trying to calm my hyperventilating. Nicolas still watched me warily.

  “I saw Daniel,” I said. “I think… I think… he’s alive. In there. Somewhere.”

  Nicolas and Ryan exchanged a look. Not a very nice one. The kind of look you might offer to a person talking about aliens or government conspiracies before snatching away their tinfoil hat and shoving them into a white padded cell.

  “Fiona…” Nicolas started, the glow in his golden eyes shifting from excitement to pity.

  “I know, I know,” I said quickly, waving my hands almost desperately. “I sound crazy. I know. But I saw him, and we talked, and this all just happened.”

  Nicolas grimaced, his chest heaving with a patient sigh. “No one is doubting that you experienced something in the sanctum,” he said. “But sanctums are strange things. They are powerful magic, with rules unto themselves. This one, in particular, is a great unknown. You are its creator and mother. We don’t know what that means for how it will treat you, or what you can do inside of it.”

  “No, this was different,” I said. “It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t a memory or a ghost or a hallucination. It was life. I could tell the difference.”

  Dan’s touch had been human. His expressions had been human. The doubt and worry and pain I’d noticed in him had been human. I was sure of it now.

  Nicolas and Ryan exchanged another look. “Why don’t you tell us what happened?” Ryan said. “From the beginning. Let’s go inside and have some tea.”

  Ryan definitely didn’t believe me, even if he was being nicer about it than Nicolas, with his gentle, reasonable tone.

  I took Nicolas’s hand, the warmth of his skin highlighting exactly how cold and clammy I was, but it was easier for me to focus my thoughts on him if I did that. I brought up an image of Daniel when he called my name and I saw him in the distance.

  Nicolas flinched, and then his eyes went wide, astounded. I could almost see our sanctum’s mountains and ocean and stormy skies reflected in his gaze.

  “That is what our sanctum looks like?” he asked breathlessly.

  “You haven’t been inside?”

  He shook his head. I looked at Ryan. He also shook his head.

  “It’s beautiful,” I offered. “And Daniel is there.”

  A muscle in Nicolas’s jaw jumped. Frustration.

  �
��Nicolas,” I said. “Nicolas. You’ve faced enough lions. Time for some saving.”

  His eyes widened, his mouth going slack for just a moment. He blinked several times.

  “Is that what you said to Daniel when you named him?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “He just told me that. In there. I’ve never heard the story before. That would be impossible unless it’s him, right?”

  “It doesn’t prove anything,” Nicolas said. “It could be an imprint of its creator, or a memory codified by him or me during the creation process. We were all there. You and Dan created it primarily, but we all had a small hand in it.” He paused. “I want to hear what happened. Let’s get you inside. You’re freezing.”

  He helped me up. I looked back to see them exchanging at least two or three more troubled looks as they followed me to Nicolas’s apartment.

  Nicolas made tea while Ryan guided me to the couch. I let my eyes wander around the large open space, studying the piano, the dark wooden floors, the banks of windows, the plush linens. Trying to distract myself from the tumult of emotions within me, trying to let the familiarity of this place comfort me.

  Ryan retrieved one of my sweatshirts from where it lay, cast off and forgotten last night, on the floor by the bed. I huddled into it.

  Once Nicolas returned with tea, gently settling a cup in my hands, I took a deep breath. I haltingly told them about my explorations, doing magic, and Daniel appearing.

  They didn’t look any less skeptical or troubled at the end of my tale.

  “That must have been quite a shock,” Ryan offered sympathetically, touching my knee reassuringly.

  “Yes,” I said, still trembling.

  Nicolas remained silent. He blinked slowly, searching for visions. Eventually, he shook his head, confused.

  “Will you show me some details, Fiona?” he asked. “I’d like to get a sense of what you were seeing and feeling.”

  Ryan watched patiently while I walked them through what had happened, allowing Nicolas a better look at my experience inside my head. I tried to hide my pain and shock at seeing Dan, as well as all the confusion and hurt I currently experienced, but Nicolas’s tight expression told me he noticed anyhow.

  “I see,” he murmured when I was finished.

  I was close to breaking down again, unsure of what to feel. I didn’t know how to explain to them what made it seem so real. There weren’t words for what I needed to convey.

  “You think I’m insane,” I said.

  “No,” Nicolas said. “You are most definitely not insane. But your sanity has no bearing on whether your experience was real or not. There is sanctum magic at play here. You can be sane and have seen Daniel without him being real. I’m sorry, Fiona, but it’s true.”

  Tears threatened again, burning and pricking at the corners of my eyes. Hope bubbled up in me despite my best efforts to push it back.

  “But what if he is real?” I whispered. “What if he didn’t die? What if his soul or, or something, whatever, got trapped in there when he overloaded himself to create Lightning?” I put my hands back over my face, hyperventilating.

  Nicolas put his arms around me. “I’m not ruling that out,” Nicolas said carefully, “but it’s not as simple as deciding right now what you saw.” He pressed his cheek into my hair. “Listen, lamb, we’ll run tests. We’ll research. We’ll do all the right things. I’m not dismissing you or what you experienced, not at all. I am a scientist, and I am skeptical by nature. I am especially skeptical of magic, where the rules can be so easily misinterpreted. We will proceed cautiously, and we will figure this out.”

  “Of course,” Ryan added. “None of us want Daniel trapped in the sanctum, if that is truly the case here. And if the magic is otherwise acting up, we need to know that, too. I’ve had more than one strange reaction when using Lightning magic—we all have—so I’d like to get to the bottom of this, too.”

  I nodded into Nicolas.

  “Take some deep breaths, Fiona,” he said gently. “Drink your tea. I need you to calm down, and then I need you to visit the sanctum with me.”

  “Do you really need me?” I asked quietly. “I’m not sure I can go.”

  Nicolas, Ryan, and I were back in the temple, with me hesitating at the entrance, my arms wrapped defensively around myself and my shoulders hunched. I often had mixed feelings about this place. Some days, it filled me with pride and joy to know that we’d made it, to know that we were protected by such a powerful force. Other days, it woke my sadness and grief because of what had happened in this very room.

  Today was no different. The magic comforted me, but I also recalled that it had killed my best friend, that it had once torn through me so viciously that I nearly died from the shock. The dim lights and shadows and air thick with incense felt eerie and haunted rather than serene.

  “I’d prefer if you came in with me,” Nicolas said. The neutral tone of his voice told me he wanted me to agree to what he was asking.

  I swallowed. “Okay.”

  “I’m staying here,” Ryan said. “I want to see if I can figure out why your exploration tripped the alarm wards.”

  Nicolas and I sat side by side in front of the sanctum. For a brief moment, Nicolas took my hand in his, squeezing my fingers. I glanced at him, and he gave me an encouraging smile.

  “All right?” he asked.

  “Yeah, all right,” I said, with no idea if that was true or not.

  We placed our hands on the surface of the sanctum, and I activated the connection that would take me there. An instant later, I was back on the barren beach, this time with Nicolas.

  He spun in a circle, studying his surroundings, lost in thought. His eyes lingered on the distant mountains as he ran a hand through his hair.

  “Well, this is interesting,” he said. “How much of it is your creation?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “When Dan and I were building it, it didn’t look like this. It was just, um, the water and the beach. He must have finished it after. Or it finished itself.”

  “Can you walk me through what you did earlier?” Nicolas asked.

  “Okay.”

  I took him through the grass, pointing out the weirdly creepy Adirondack chairs and picnic table, guiding us up the marked path to the torii gate. Nicolas walked around it several times and touched the wood with his hands, frowning.

  The two of us walked a little farther along the base of the mountains than I had before. We found a series of small caves set under a rock awning, dark and empty.

  Eventually, we crossed the huge grassy field back to the beach.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said. He had stayed very quiet while we explored. Nicolas didn’t like to speak without consideration.

  “I’m merely taking this all in, seeing what my instincts say.”

  “And?”

  “This is a powerful place,” he said. “A very lovely sanctum.”

  “How does it compare to Water or Smoke?” I asked.

  “I never saw the inside of Smoke’s sanctum,” he said. “But this is easily as nice as Water’s. Nicer, perhaps.”

  “That was the plan,” Daniel’s voice called from behind us.

  We both spun, watching as he walked toward us along the edge of the crashing waves.

  He held up a hand. “Hey, Nico,” he said, his tone wary.

  Nicolas’s eyes were wide. “Dan.”

  Dan came right up to us, smiling. “Can you read my mind?” he asked. “I’ve been wondering if that would be possible.”

  It was so like Daniel to ignore the weirdness of the situation and jump right into his own curious questions.

  Nicolas shook his head. “That ability is tied to my physical body, which isn’t actually here. I could read the minds of Ryan and Fiona back in the temple—if I forced myself to focus on it.”

  “Huh,” Dan said. “I guess that makes sense.”

  We stood awkwardly for a moment. Nicolas seemed deep i
n thought, studying Dan with a mixture of wariness and amazement that I rarely saw from him, standing stiffly and defensively.

  “Fi, how long has it been since you were last here?” Dan asked.

  “How long do you think it has been?” Nicolas asked quickly, before I could answer.

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell,” Dan said. “Not long, I don’t think?”

  “It’s only been about an hour,” Nicolas said.

  Dan shrugged. “Time doesn’t seem to exist here.”

  “What happened after I left?” I asked.

  Dan shrugged again. “I don’t know. It’s sort of like… falling asleep, I guess. Then something disturbs me, and I wake up. But then I fall back asleep. There isn’t a lot in between. What did you do for an hour?”

  I shrugged, heat creeping into my cheeks.

  Nicolas laughed slightly. “You know Fiona,” he said.

  “Ah,” Daniel said. “So she cried, and you needed an hour to calm her down.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I hate both of you.”

  Daniel put an arm around my shoulders, and suddenly everything felt just like old times. Even Nicolas had visibly relaxed. He was still wary, with slightly narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow, but he at least appeared to realize this was something strange and unprecedented.

  “Fi, would you mind giving me and Nico a minute to talk?” Dan asked gently.

  I startled. “Um, sure.” I pointed to the rock I’d been sitting on when I’d first seen Dan. “I’ll be up there.”

  I trudged up the sandy hill, glancing over my shoulder at the two of them. Nicolas’s hands were stuffed in his pockets and his stance was defensive, but he studied Daniel with keen interest. Daniel’s open and relaxed posture made him seem happy and excited.

  I took a seat on the rock, watching them. I couldn’t hear them; the wind and crashing waves were too loud. Daniel spread his hands and said something that seemed a lot like an apology, because Nicolas put a hand up in the way he usually did when someone issued those sorts of statements. He didn’t like apologies and usually attempted to deflect them.