by Jes Battis
“Mia did.”
“I would like to meet her someday.”
“I don’t think I want her anywhere near you.”
“I hold no malice toward your family. On the contrary. I am proud of what you have created. I am glad that you are not alone. You cannot imagine how lonely it is to be this old.”
“We’re not talking about your golden years. Did you kill Lord Nightingale?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he asked me to.”
“He asked you to cut his throat?”
“You have to understand that when I met Theresa, she was out of her mind. She was destroyed by her own family. Her brother, Alfonso, had routed her in battle. She had lost Portugal, and all she had to look forward to were days of exile with her consort, far from the politics of Lisbon. That was why she turned to necromancy. She wanted the throne back at any cost.”
I frown. “But—she died, became a man, and moved to Trinovantum. What did that have to do with getting back Portugal?”
“Nothing. When we gave her the city to rule, she forgot about her old throne. Her body did not change immediately. But over the centuries, she lost her old self and took on a new one. The city and its power transformed her into a king. But a king should not rule for a thousand years. They lose their stomach and make bad decisions.”
“They make treaties with vampires.”
“Exactly.”
“So this is a conservative thing. Lord Nightingale wanted to bring demons and humans closer together, but it was more profitable for you to keep them apart. I suppose you killed Luis Ordeño for his part in that as well.”
“You are as paranoid as your sister. No. Ordeño died because he was trying to make a deal with the Manticore. Like many others, he thought he could use the old creature’s power, and that was his mistake. I have never been opposed to integration. Theresa was the one who resisted the treaty, as she resisted change of any kind.”
“But I’m supposed to believe that she asked you to kill her.”
“She called for me. I found her in the library, reading a book of jarchas. She said she was too tired. It wasn’t fair that the others had finally died and she was still here. She knew that her people were changing, that her city no longer obeyed her. When I looked into Lord Nightingale’s eyes, I saw the old, mad Theresa staring back at me. I knew what she was asking.”
“You cut her throat and turned her into Pharmakon? She was a thousand. She deserved better.”
“I didn’t cut her throat. I kissed her. That’s what always happens when we touch someone filled with carbon. I could have kissed her with my mask on, but she wanted honesty. She wanted rest.”
“You stole her leukocytes.”
“Tessa, there is no such thing as Pharmakon. What I gave to the ghost was a mixture of phencyclidine and embalming fluid. It makes vampires hallucinate and maximizes their anger response. They are not magical or invulnerable. They are hungry and confused.”
“Modred wouldn’t do that to his people.”
“Modred wants to be Magnate. He used to be a knight. Obviously he is tired of taking orders from an undergraduate.”
“So—” I feel like my brain is going to explode. “This isn’t a takeover. You’re just going to stand by and let the vampires tear each other apart.”
“Ideally, they were supposed to go after the necromancers, but they fled at the first sign of trouble. Now they will have to work things out among themselves, which usually requires a slicker if you happen to be watching.”
“I don’t get it. Why would you create all of this, let it run for a thousand years, and then just watch it burn?”
“You do not get it, as you say, because you are in it. We are outside. We have a bigger picture to consider. By the eleventh century, vampires and death-dealers were annihilating the human population. The animals and the old demons knew that something needed to be done. So an agreement was made. Those who practiced necromancy were given Trinovantum. This allowed humans with other magical aptitudes to safely emerge, and they were encouraged to form a collective. They called it core, after ‘heart,’ but eventually, like all things, it became an acronym.”
“CORE.”
“Regulation enterprise.” I detect a note of dark humor in his voice. “Our first lesson to them was that magic could not be controlled, only seduced. But humans like to form committees, and committees like to regulate. Before contact, the first peoples that we dealt with in this country were respectful of this knowledge. The foreigners from Europe were not. Their committees tended to involve bonfires. But free will is tricky that way, and magic is a louse that hates to discriminate. We had to give them all a chance.”
“And now—what—you’re going to dismantle an ancient culture of workers, artists, and scholars because they made bad decisions? You’re going to judge us for our mistakes when all you did was sit on a faraway star and watch?”
“I was never that far away. But don’t you think a thousand years is a generous stretch of time? The problem is that you spent the first six hundred of those years burning witches, and the remaining centuries pondering your own genes while magic waited for you to do something.”
“You’re telling me that none of the cores in the world have impressed you? Not even the one in Stockholm?”
“It has all been micromanagement. We changed the nature of evolution for you. Vampires were hunting you. Humans were misusing necromancy, disturbing the dead. Magic was killing you, because you were weak and did not respect it. The cores were an experiment. They have all failed, but none so spectacularly as yours, I think.”
“You’re not seeing any of the good things. There are brave materia-wielders and agents, people who make magic look like poetry. I still believe in the oath that I took.”
“Have you never enlisted materia for selfish means? Have you never harmed a normate, never revealed yourself? Have you always been a bulwark against the suffering of others?”
“I’m not perfect.”
“Of course not. Prisms are perfect. You have to be flawed, but these flaws are not what disappoint us. The real issue is that people with magic have proven themselves to be just as selfish and destructive as people untouched by it. The cores of the world were designed not only as schools, but as courts. Your task has always been to investigate death by magic. But you seem to cause as many deaths as you solve.”
“Our numbers are a lot better than that.”
“If they were, we would not be having this conversation.”
“Okay. You’re pissing me off now.” I try to look for some person who’s talking, but the room is dark and I’m alone. Ru and Lucian are still out. All I can do is pretend that he’s in front of me. “The last few days have been a case in point. The lab wasted a lot of energy on investigating the death of Lord Nightingale. You couldn’t have just told us that it was a suicide?”
“We don’t have time to report the obvious to you.”
“The whole time, I suppose we were never really investigating anything. We were the ones under investigation. A queen and an old bird died, and in reality, it had nothing at all to do with us.”
“That is what solipsism gets you.”
I raise my athame. It illuminates the room, but I’m still talking to nothing. At least I could see Arcadia.
“Why are you here?” I ask again.
“To gather data. Things are obviously winding down here, and a report will need to be made. This isn’t the only world where materia exists. You’ve seen glimpses of a few, but believe me when I say that they are uncountable. Magic is everywhere, Tessa. People need to learn how to treat it.”
“Does that mean you’ve got bastard daughters across the cosmos?”
This silences my father’s voice for a second. Then the building says:
“No. You are my only child. You were a mistake, but I’m glad that I made you.”
“How does something like you make a mistake like me?”
“Your mother and I struck by accident. Neither of us expected it. When she realized, after, what I was, she tried to find me, but your sister got to her first. Diane was lucky to get away from her that night.”
I realize that what he’s saying is true. She could have sustained those injuries while running from Arcadia. She knew that part of my sister lay inside me, that the column of fire chasing her through the streets would someday be in my blood. Still. She gambled on love.
“I think Arcadia hates you more than me,” I say.
“That is sadly true.”
“Is it because she feels betrayed?”
“No. I believe it is because she wanted a much better life than the one that I offered her. If anything, she envies you.”
“She was going to eat me.”
“In some cultures, that is a sign of great respect.”
“Father.” I close my eyes. I try to imagine what he looks like, beyond what I’ve seen in dreams. I imagine how he might spin. “When I ask you what you’re doing here, what I mean is, what’s going to happen?”
“That will depend on which vampire wins. It will also depend on whether the necromancers come back to roost in this city. Then it will be as if a thousand years had never passed.”
“That’s just Thunderdome.”
“I suppose the people with magic will either rise to the occasion, or be hunted to extinction. Demons will move unchecked through the city. It should be interesting to watch.”
I’ve spent my whole life waiting to stand up to my father. What surprises me now is how much I love him, unexpectedly, old and dangerous thing that he is. Part of what made me, and, in some way, beautiful. His logic is not alien to me at all. I understand the choices that he needs to make. Love has always embarrassed me. But I feel it for this voice without a body.
“You will not stand back and watch,” I say. “You know that we deserve more chances. And I’m not even talking about the whole world. Have you seen this city, with its bridges and its glass and its roots in the ocean? I’ve spent my life protecting it.”
“Perhaps you need a new life.”
“No way. I’m still learning to drive this one.”
“Give me a reason, then. Why shouldn’t I let it all end?”
It’s an honest question. We’ve clearly fucked around with our magic; there’s no arguing that. If we’d been better investigators and more skilled managers, there wouldn’t be coked-out vampires on Granville Street right now. Why shouldn’t it end? That’s precisely the choice that Selena’s offering me, and maybe she’s right. Maybe we all need to retire.
But even as I think this, I don’t believe it. To me, magic has always felt like nothing more than our ability to listen. Tuning in to the stones and having a conversation with fire was possible, on a preconscious level, for everyone, but only people like me could actually convince the elements to do things. People like Lucian, now sweetly asleep next to a horned boy, can argue with death, but more often, they spend most of their time just listening to it. I’m not ready to give up that conversation.
“We can change,” I say. “We can become better listeners.”
My father considers this. “You would change your core?”
“I’ll lead it.”
“What leadership skills do you possess?”
“I’m the head of a family.”
“You wish to depose your supervisor?”
“Not at all. I’ll be the boss, but Selena will still be my boss. I’m sure that can go in a rider somewhere.”
“You are serious.”
“You’re all up in my city’s grille. You think we’re messing around, but I know exactly how hard we work every day, just to connect. I’m not going to step aside and let you stop our pilot light. If change is what it takes, then I’ll be it.”
“Who will listen to you?”
“The real question is, who won’t listen to Selena?”
“I suppose she is like family to you.”
“I think she sees me more as an annoying stepchild. But I do know that she’ll help me. She’ll need more office space, though.”
“What makes you think that you can change anything at all?”
“Let’s just say that, however complicated my childhood was, I came out of it with confidence. If I can raise vampires, I can raise a new core. If it catches on, maybe it’ll spread to Alberta. Who knows? The point is that I can do it.”
My father is silent. Then he asks: “Do you think you have learned magic’s lessons?”
“How many are there?”
“Six.”
“Oh. Well, it’s possible.”
“I will give you a choice, then. You can say good-bye to the experiment and return to your family. The core will fall, but you and those you love will be safe. I can promise you that, at least.”
“What’s the other option?”
“Dance with me.”
“You’re not even here.”
“I will undress. But you must also. You must be Ferid, and for that, you need to spin until you achieve grace. If you have learned magic’s lessons, you should be able to do this and survive. If not, you will detonate and consume the building, in which case, nothing changes.”
“That seems like a bit of an asshole move on your part. Couldn’t my test involve levitating a feather?”
“Spin or fail,” he says.
“Okay. I choose to spin.”
The light of my athame goes out.
I hear a mighty wind. In the dark of the room, my father is a storm. I feel myself becoming clouds. It hurts, but I let myself unravel, as cloth must. As I start to spin, I think about magic’s lessons.
Death, you taught me that our ghosts forgive us, that entropy sleeps next to us all, that everything will one day be trace.
Thought, you taught me that sleep is precious, that telepaths are people who put up with a lot, that memory dies if you don’t palpate it.
Earth, you taught me about centers and rifts, that stones worry about us, that our passions leave a record.
Water, you taught me silence, that our beautiful mothers are always fishing for us, that love is damp.
Fire, who I was once so scared of, you taught me that all our carbon has been through more than we could possibly imagine, that so many warm things are hard to let go of, that a determined spark can get a lot done.
And air, which I give myself to now, you taught me that birds see everything and still pardon us, that we’re all barely here, that I can be anything because I have been a storm.
I may not have learned magic’s lessons by heart, but I can read the sheet music. I can get by. I can dance, because my father is leading.
I peel off my rind and turn faster in his hands. The air sings to me as I come apart. I see Lorenzo. He’s screaming something at me, but I can’t hear. I turn and I turn and then I explode.
Remainder
We’re nearly done packing. I say “we,” but Mia’s the one who’s actually leaving, and she’s done the least amount of packing possible. She sees herself in more of a supervisory position. Patrick and Lucian get to do most of the heavy lifting, which includes her library (not going to fit in the car), DVD collection, and Hefty cinch sacks full of clothes. It’s still warm outside. Kevin Johansen plays on the radio. Si no tiene logo / falta poco / saravarava. Don’t worry if you don’t have a label. Good vibes. Saravarava indeed.
“How many hardcovers do you own?” Patrick exhales as he lifts a nearby box, which has been madly taped. “Please, promise me that when you get to Toronto, you’ll buy a Kindle.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” she says. “I like the smell of books, and that’s that. Plus, you have vampire strength, so use it.”
“I’m about to use it to knock you through a wall, sassy.”
My mother steps into the living room. “No fighting. This is Mia’s last day with us.”
“That’s right.” Mia kisses Patrick on the cheek, which almost makes him drop the box. “You’re gonna
miss me. Because you loooove me.”
“Shut up, sprat.”
My mother gives me a look. Something like, Aren’t they interesting? It’s a covert attempt to set off my biological clock, but I ignore it. Lucian and I aren’t ready for a baby. We’ve already got a vampire, a house god (who loves polishing everything in the house), and a dog whose person spends most of his time here. Even with Mia gone, the house will never be silent. Which I suppose is how I like it. Not loud, per se. Just full.
I don’t know what made her choose the University of Toronto over Berkeley, Brown, and all the other schools that she applied to. It’s still far away, but at least she’s still on my side of the border. Most likely, she used a calculation to determine who had the best courses in Everything Studies, and U of T won out, but I’d still like to think that a part of her wanted to remain close.
When I stopped spinning, everything was different. Lucian and Ru woke up, rubbing their eyes, like Miranda on her island suddenly realizing how vast the ocean was, how everything could be new. The lights returned. I finally realized what Lorenzo, barely corporeal, had been screaming: Don’t forget who you are. I guess I didn’t.
Hand in hand in shadow, we walked up to street level, and couldn’t believe the scene. It was the Stanley Cup riots with vampires everywhere, tweaked out, turning on one another. Patrick and his crew were trying to corral them. Modred, I guess, had fled. Patrick told me later that they’d faced each other in single combat, but Modred hesitated. Perhaps he didn’t have it in him to strike down his student. Now he would always be an apostate, banished from the vampire nation for treason.
Water arced in the air. A bus was turned over on its side, like an angry turtle, throwing off sparks. Selena was directing traffic, her athame blazing as she used it to draw arrows of light. When she saw me, one eyebrow raised in a question. What happened to you? It would take the next few weeks to properly answer her. But I did know that I’d won the argument with my father. The vampire coup would not inspire epic Anglo-Saxon poetry. When the sun set, Patrick was still in charge, and everyone knew it.