by Paul Duffau
“—while holding the vast majority of the population in a general sense of contempt.”
“Meat,” said Mitch, his voice flat and emotionless.
“A somewhat despicable term that has gained currency among the Families.” This was delivered with a piercing look. “It originated with the Spaniards and is spreading.”
Mitch shifted his feet and avoided Mercury’s eyes by assessing the waning moon. The features weren’t quite right. The Sea of Tranquility was missing.
“It’s a wonder you all put up with us,” Mitch said, joking.
“Some think we ought not.”
Mitch caught movement from the corner of his eye. He swapped gazing at the moon for checking the foliage.
“That’s why Lassiter doesn’t fit. He’s not magical or anything like that. He’s a dude with hired guns who is looking to steal something. I’m guessing he can’t go directly at Kenzie’s mom without getting chopped into hamburger, so he’s trying to backdoor the situation. And while he’s an arrogant jerk, he doesn’t think he’s an evolutionary upgrade on the rest of us.”
An extended sigh met his words. “Mitch, I could help you more if you were a bit more honest with me.”
Mitch’s head snapped around. The old man didn’t flinch away from the confrontational cast of Mitch’s face. Mitch searched for words to deflect Mercury. The wizard beat him to it.
“You’ve had some contact with at least one other person of power, someone not affiliated with the Graham family.”
The accusation lay in the air. A buzzing grew in Mitch’s ears as he locked stares with Mercury. He froze his face but stayed alert to the other man’s hands.
How much does he know? competed with How much do I tell him?
“It’s not like there are that many of you guys out there,” he said, and let derision drip from his voice.
“No, but you do seem to have a knack for encountering them. First McKenzie, then her father, and, somewhere, one of the Spanish Family.”
Crap, crap, crap . . .
Mercury stepped back, and Mitch relaxed a fraction.
“When you first came in here,” said Mercury, “you used a hand gesture for a compulsion spell that Kenzie’s Family hasn’t used in a generation. The Spaniards, as befitting their history, were among the first to use that spell with that motion.” Mercury opened his palms. “Like this, but no magic.”
Mitch tensed. Mercury’s hands flashed through the sequence that Hunter used at school.
“There was no way for you to know that specific cast if you hadn’t been introduced to it somewhere else. You would also need to know that the person using it is one of us, or the significance would have been lost on you. The last piece, though, was implication of a master race.”
Mercury’s eyes gleamed and his voice deepened. “The two remaining Families have a difference of opinion about whether or not wizards are a new species, destined to walk the world as its rulers, or simply human beings with a new skill that someday everyone will possess.”
“So where does Lassiter fit?” Mitch retorted. “He’s not wizard material.”
“But you said that he does have a means to know when we use our magic. That implies the means, at some point, to control it. Mr. Lassiter may not be a wizard, but my instinct suggests that he would like to be. And a man that ruthless will not be thwarted. He will need to be destroyed, root and branch. Your Spanish friends will be more than willing to assist,” said Mercury.
The echo of Hunter’s words, “you have an ally,” rang in Mitch’s head.
“Why?” Mitch asked, despite knowing the answer.
“The Spaniards consider themselves the rightful lords of the planet, and the rest of humanity a plague to be cleansed. The only reason there has been a reprieve is that people, in all their stupidity, still outnumber the Families a million to one.”
Mitch did the math on instinct. Six or seven thousand people total in the Families.
“Is that here, or worldwide?”
“Just the ones known. Wilders appear all the time, but no one knows why,” said Mercury, glittering shards of icy green replacing the normal warmth of his eyes. “Now, enlighten me on how you found them when I couldn’t in a search that took me to four continents and spanned most of two decades.”
Chapter 43
Mercury watched as his brother warmed his hands over the fire that crackled in the corner, well away from the books. After draining Mitch of all the information the boy possessed, he had sent the exhausted youth home with a strong injunction to rest. He’d set the fire in an invisible hearth and turned out the lights, preferring the flickering along the walls, to encourage some deep thinking. That the Rubiera clan had never left Seattle stunned him to his core, and he could only imagine what else he might be missing.
“I find it somewhat amazing that Mitch managed to discover both Families in an act of cosmic accident,” said Harold, “and more surprising that the children of both Families are so careless as to tell him what they really are. As a bonus, he’s still alive afterward.” He stood straight and turned to face Mercury. “Would you like my news, or are you depressed enough already?”
“Lassiter?” said Mercury.
“Related, I think,” said Harold, appearing to glide to the other chair, his legs hidden below his robes. “According to Raymond, Sasha has engineers building an amplifier for magic, and they already have an electronic device that will detect us. Sasha, in her very assertive way, has assured anyone who would listen that her research project presents no threat to the Family. Raymond has a suspicious mind, so doubts her statement.” He sat and crossed his ankles. “Based on young Mitch’s testimony, we know that he is correct to question her security.”
Mercury rolled his neck, generating a crack. “Has Kenzie approached you?”
“Nary a word, though she looks as though she’s tussled with an anaconda. Her power is growing faster than we expected. She created an amulet today.”
Mercury peered at Harold. “Was it wise to teach her how to do that before she gains full control?”
Harold’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “No, that would not be wise, so I did not teach her. She transformed an ordinary pebble into a perpetual lantern. Quite impressive, and slightly terrifying. She has both range and power.”
“Well . . . ,” said Mercury, considering the ramifications. “I’m beginning to suspect that we’ve lost control of the situation.”
“Indeed,” said Harold, unruffled. He changed the subject. “Lassiter poses a threat to all the Families. We are too few to survive a purge. Raymond is of the opinion that we should join with the Rubieras to expunge him.”
“He should know better,” murmured Mercury. “The Families need to stay hidden as much as possible, not from the designs of Lassiter, but from the hechiceros. They have a long memory, and the last thing we need is another wizard’s war.”
Harold gave his head a slow shake. “So you still propose to sacrifice the boy?”
“It’s not a sacrifice. He is in the matrix of forces for a reason, even if I am too much of a dullard to understand it. You talk of the power of magic gathering like a storm front roiling on the horizon. It’s not happenstance that he is both friends with Hunter Rubiera and is in exactly the correct spot to thwart Lassiter. Those speak to a grander plan for Mitch. He is cast in the role of hero. I suggest we let him fulfill the part.” Light from the flames flickered in Mercury’s eyes. “Of course, that doesn’t mean that we don’t help him along the way.”
Harold cast a disparaging glare at Mercury. “He has no training.”
“So I’ll arrange some training.”
“Assuming the Rubieras, Raymond, or Lassiter don’t murder him first.”
“There is that,” agreed Mercury. He turned serious. “We need to trust the arts, I think. We’ve looked at this as a new occurrence, but what if it’s the culmination of the break between the Families? It’s in the best interests of all wizards to have a united nation in order
to grow to our fullest potential.”
“What of Lassiter? He’s not one of us,” said Harold.
Mercury smiled, feeling the lack of mirth as he did. “He is.”
Harold protested. “He’s mundane.”
“So are we,” said Mercury, and waited.
Harold rocked back at the blasphemy. His lips parted to speak, closed again to a thin white line. Anger glowered from his features. He swallowed, then said in a strained voice, “Is it your intention to be deliberately offensive? The average person not only cannot manage magic, but they act as cattle, dull in their senses, and resist the effort to think as though the attempt would shatter their skulls.”
“You spend too much time within the safe confines of the Glade and not enough among the people,” said Mercury. He purposefully maintained an even tone. “The mass of humanity is a mob, but meeting them as individuals reveals kindnesses and courage that we might do well to emulate. However,” he continued with an unconscious twitch of his pointer finger, as if consigning the previous statement to the settled past, “the point that I am offering is that the wizards, while clearly evolving from the current rendition of humans, are only one step along the journey. Many other people are taking those steps beside us, some of them spontaneously like the Wilders. Some, like Kenzie, seem a step and a half ahead on the path.”
“Lassiter isn’t interested in your path, or even in magic. He’s a grasping conniver, the same kind that sought to enslave our ancestors.”
“Au contraire. I think his sole purpose is to be able to gain access to magic. There is no power on earth that one person possesses that another does not covet. We have been under the impression, mistaken I think, that our abilities are founded within biological imperatives, that we are evolution’s favored children. We conflated the imperative with the magic. We should have recognized that the imperative affects everyone. We sought the biologic and philosophical. Lassiter seeks the same thing in the mechanic and technological.”
“Machines have no soul,” said Harold. His glare radiated his offended dignity.
“Still, the machine world grows, its slithering tentacles intruding into every aspect of life, while we struggle to maintain our numbers.” Mercury gazed out to the moonset beyond his windows. “Nature does not care for souls. She seeks winners.”
The void that separated Mercury and his brother reestablished itself. Harold, considered Mercury, had thrived within the safety and surety of the Glade of Silver Night. Now he was a monk confronting the irreligious world on the outside of the monastery.
“So, we destroy Lassiter,” said Harold. The temperature of a freshly dug grave accompanied the words.
“No,” said Mercury, choosing his words with precision, “we, or rather Mitch, saves Kenzie. His plan is well thought out and relies on simple deceptions. Lassiter is undoubtedly aware of Mitch’s uncertain status. For the boy to reach out for help from Graham privately is risky but the safest route for Kenzie.” He paused to think. “The technocrats and their machines will want to control her or kill her. Killing Lassiter but losing Kenzie will signal the final days of magic, and the opening epoch of the soulless. Saving her leaves our path to the future open. Mitch is the one person who has proven he would sacrifice himself for her. Still, he plays it cautiously regarding her safety.”
Harold nodded. “Then my task is clear. Teach her to control her power and keep her safe in the realm of magic until she can defend herself.” Sorrow filled his next words. “Your path is more difficult.”
Mercury dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “To help Mitch and Kenzie stop Lassiter. Nature has pitted the two champions against each other. Lassiter must not get control of the Arts, or we might as well surrender our humanity now.”
“I can stall Raymond about approaching the Rubieras.”
“Good,” said Mercury.
The brothers sat in the quiet of the library, each lost to his own thoughts and calculations. Mercury’s mind drifted to the problem of the Spanish wizards, the hechiceros. One battle at a time, he thought. Submitting to their authority would rob them of their humanity as much as losing to Lassiter, just differently. Instead of becoming cyborgs plugged into the electronic universe, they’d be slaves and chattel.
It was easy to talk about trusting the grandeur of the magic to guide him, but relying on a sixteen-year-old boy to play the part of hero made his nerves tingle with apprehension, and his knees wanted to buckle.
For Kenzie’s sake, he hoped that Mitch could be trusted to answer the call.
Chapter 44
Kenzie woke to fog outside the curtains, but felt clear-headed for what felt like the first time in a year. She extended her arms above her head in a languorous stretch that finished with her rolling the kinks out of her shoulders. She came fully awake with a stark realization that time was her enemy, and her arms snapped down.
It was Sunday. Unless her parents went shopping, they’d be home all day.
She propped herself up against her pillows and pulled her knees up. A yawn forced its way out, and she took a deep breath following it. The reticence she had felt yesterday was gone, replaced by curiosity to see what her parents were hiding. Still, searching for the combination with them in the way struck her as a rotten idea.
She reached over to her nightstand. A fast check on her phone showed no calls, no messages, no nothing from Mitch since yesterday. Her cheeks warmed as she recalled his hot temper after she had slapped him, but the picture of taut and defined muscles and hard jaw stood out more. She waffled, then her thumbs darted across the screen. Good Morning glowed briefly as the message launched to the ether.
A second later, she second-guessed herself. She knew that he didn’t trust the phones and had told her not to use them, but it seemed silly to stop altogether, since that would send up an alarm, too. She parsed Mitch’s instructions, reasoning that he had meant not to trust the phones.
Reassured, she checked the screen. No reply.
Kenzie flipped the covers back and slipped on her bathrobe, cinching it tight at the waist. She tucked her phone into the capacious pocket.
Downstairs, her parents sat in relative inactivity, her father reading the Sunday paper, her mother checking messages on her tablet. Both glanced at her as she went to the coffee machine. Her father met her with a tired face. Her mother’s face held a noncommittal expression, but Kenzie read her mood from the angry flicking motion that dismissed message after message.
Great. They’re fighting.
Odds were that it was about her. She faced away from them and let her lips compress to a pained line. She poured milk into her mug and added two teaspoons of sugar before adding the hot coffee. The clink of her spoon against the side of the cup seemed disproportionately loud in the early-morning gloom.
Her father folded the paper down onto the table next to his half-full cup of black coffee when she turned. “I have to go out later this morning,” he said. “I have some things I need to chase down at work. While I’m gone, practice setting wards.”
Kenzie took her directions in with a silent and perplexed nod of confirmation.
Her mother spoke next, residual anger showing in the set of her jaw. “I have to head into the office. Your father feels that there exists the barest possibility of a breach in our security, so I need to access the logs and video.” Her fingernails clicked on the glass surface of the tablet as three more e-mails were kicked to oblivion.
Yes! They both were leaving.
“It’s not very fair to call Jackson out again,” she ventured in a timid voice. She felt guilty about taking the bodyguard away from his family the day before.
Her parents exchanged glances that set her to worrying.
“We discussed that, along with the way you violated our judgment by dismissing him yesterday before one of us arrived,” answered her father. His eyes twitched to the side as if looking for support, or at least, no vocal opposition to his speech. “Our thinking is that the threat is . . . perhaps overblown on
the personal injury side—”
Wrong, she thought, but kept the disagreement from her face.
“—while the other existent threats pose a greater risk specific to you,” he finished. “My feeling is that as long as you are inside the house, you enjoy a relative degree of safety. This assumes that you will agree to abide by our decision and not leave while we are gone.”
Kenzie started as she realized that he was asking more than telling. It felt weird, and she looked at him with her head tilted over like she was trying to recognize something both familiar and brand-new at the same time. Puzzled, she said with a shrug, “Yeah . . . okay.”
Her phone vibrated in silent mode against her hip, tickling. Bad timing. The thickness of the robe absorbed the telltale buzz. It took all her willpower not to reach for it.
“So you’ll stay inside?” her father pushed.
“Can the wards be set on a wall without a roof?” she temporized. “I mean, can I set it on the wall outside so I can at least go in the backyard?” She set her gaze on him, striving for an earnest look. “Please?”
Indecision appeared on his face.
Her mother shook her head and answered into the breach of the negotiation, “Absolutely not.”
“They can,” said her father. “The wards have their limitations, and I think that is what concerns your mother.”
“What concerns me,” said Sasha, her head shifting side to side while her face contorted into a sneer, “is the presumption that Kenzie will govern herself in a responsible manner when she’s been openly hostile to the point of insulting a wizard to his face when he was a guest.”
Kenzie spoke before she had chance to restrain her own anger. “You mean Aric, the loser that was banging Belinda in the bushes at the Gathering last night? I was right about him, and you should have seen it, too. He’s a jerk.” Her voice went shrill with mockery. “Here, have my daughter. We must make sure the magic survives, after all. Too bad he’s busy having someone else.”
Her mother’s mouth opened once, twice, but no words came out, though bright blossoms lit on pale cheekbones.