by Jes Battis
“Well, he’s always been full of surprises. But I’m not here to talk about him. How would a necromancer go about using one of these speculum things?”
“The portrait would emit necroid materia at a specific frequency. All the necromancer has to do is match the tone of the power, and that would be enough to activate the speculum. Then they’d just walk through it like a door.”
Maybe that was why Ordeño died underneath the portrait. He was trying to escape to Trinovantum, but something got to him first. That still didn’t explain why he was wearing the armor, though.
“Maybe he wore it to bed every night,” I muttered to myself.
Modred frowned. “What was that?”
“Nothing. Sorry. Just speculating.” I shook my head. “So there’s no way that someone could activate the speculum without having access to necroid energy?”
“No. It’s a necromantic artifact. You’d need a necromancer to take you across the border between worlds.”
“Great. They either attack me or lie to me.”
“Have you recovered fully from your altercation?”
“More or less.” I considered not mentioning Braxton Tel. But Modred had no love for necromancers. Maybe he knew something about Tel that Lucian didn’t. “We have a suspect, but there isn’t enough evidence to prove anything yet.”
That wasn’t entirely true. I had a suspect, but nobody believed me. Still—I didn’t have anything to lose at this point.
“Who are you considering?”
“Braxton Tel.”
His eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t put it past him. Tel is young, but he’s gotten a reputation for being an archconservative. He may very well have attacked you and the magnate in order to silence you.”
“We think that he left a fingerprint on the Vorpal gauntlet. But when we ran it through Trinovantum’s print database, it came up as something called a shadow sector. The information was encrypted.”
Modred smiled slowly. “I may be able to help you with that. Come back downstairs with me, and I’ll introduce you to someone.”
Patrick and I followed him back to the common room. Mia was texting someone on her phone, and didn’t even look up.
“Kit.” Modred waved to a boy who was sitting on one of the couches, glued to his laptop. “Come over here for a second.”
Kit approached us, looking a bit wary. He couldn’t have been older than sixteen. The thought of a boy that young being turned into a vampire made me heartsick. But Patrick hadn’t been much older than him.
“Magnate.” He inclined his head.
“Hey, Kit. What are you working on?”
“Something for Computer Science.” He pushed long black hair out of his eyes. “The teacher wants us to design this supersimple animation using some outdated programming language. So I’m doing something cool instead.”
Modred laid a hand on Kit’s shoulder. “This is Tess Corday. She works for the CORE, and she needs your help. She needs you to argue with a computer.”
“Argue?” I smiled. “Like how my dad yells at the remote?”
“Not quite.” Modred smiled, watching the boy as he began typing something rapidly. “You talk to the earth. Kit talks to—” He frowned. “What do you call them again? Servants?”
“Servers.” Kit rolled his eyes.
I looked at him in surprise. “You’re a forge?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“A forge is someone who can channel materia to manipulate electronics and airborne networks. It’s an incredibly rare proficiency. Only a few people who work for us can do what you do.”
He shrugged. “I just tell computers what they like to hear.”
He kept typing rapidly. The screen went blue, and then the words REMOTE CONNECTION appeared. Kit stared at the screen, but didn’t say anything. A window popped up, and a series of characters typed themselves into the text box. Then the window closed, and the screen went black.
“So what am I looking for?”
I handed him a flash drive. “There’s a fingerprint on this. I need you to run it against the necromancers’ database.”
He smiled. “That’s all?”
Kit plugged the flash drive into the computer and loaded the JPEG of the fingerprint. Then he typed another string of characters. The screen turned blue, and the word SEARCHING appeared.
“Need anyone’s address or phone number?” he asked.
“Just match the print,” Modred said firmly.
Kit sighed. “Boring.”
A few seconds later, the fingerprint appeared on the screen again. Six points of comparison lit up on the dermal surface. MATCH > COMPLIANCE.
“What’s compliance?” Patrick asked.
It was my turn to smile. “Just watch.”
A second window appeared, and with it, a familiar image. Braxton Tel’s face stared out at me from the screen, looking as annoyed as he did in person.
“Who’s this guy?” Kit asked.
“A bad person,” I said simply.
“You can’t show this to anyone but Agrado,” Modred said. “If another Solium discovers that we’ve hacked into their network, it could jeopardize the treaty process even further. I can’t risk that happening.”
“It’s invisible evidence,” I said. “Like something obtained without a proper search warrant. We know it’s there, but we have to proceed as if it isn’t.”
“How will you proceed, then?”
I smiled. “Hard to say, Modred. I never really know until I’m in the middle of it. And by then, it’s too late to get out.”
“Sounds like war.”
I put my arm around Patrick. “Family is war. This is just overtime.”
15
I arrived home to the smell of something amazing. Derrick must have been cooking again, even though it wasn’t his night. God bless him. Mia kicked her shoes off in the entryway, still muttering about the tragedy of missing vampire bingo. Patrick was up the stairs and heading for his room before I could even ask him what his plans for the rest of the night were. Not that he would have told me to begin with.
“Mmm.” Mia inhaled deeply. “Whatever it is, I want it.”
I could hear voices coming from the kitchen. Maybe it was Miles doing the cooking. I hadn’t seen him for a few days, and I still wanted to know more about the possibility of developing a new spectroscopy method using his spatial profiling abilities. It wasn’t strictly dinner conversation, but in this house, you could talk about pretty much anything over the table.
We walked into the kitchen. Derrick was standing at the stove, his hand poised over a frying pan, like a domestic Greek statue.
Lucian was standing behind him.
Great.
“Okay,” he was saying. “Now, the trick is to turn the pancake with your fingers. Do it quickly, but gently, so you don’t break it.”
“But the pan’s really hot.”
“Don’t be scared of it. You won’t get burnt. Just get right in there and rotate the whole thing clockwise.”
“Should I spit on my fingers first?”
“No. That’s gross. Just do it quickly, and you’ll be fine.”
Derrick reached into the pan. “Hey, you’re right. It actually feels neat.”
“Perfect! Now do that for a few more seconds, and it’ll be ready.”
“Hey,” I said, dropping my purse on the kitchen table. “Did you stop by to give some cooking lessons?”
Lucian turned and smiled at me. It was one of those warm, inviting smiles that almost made me forget how little I’d trusted him lately. It’s tough to be mad at someone who looks so happy to see you.
“Hey. I thought you might be a bit bogged down at work, so I decided to solve the food crisis for one night. We’re making panqueques con dulce de leche. They’re going to change your life.”
“Lucian’s making them,” Derrick clarified. “I’m mostly burning them.”
“No, you’re doing great. Now scoop that one onto the plate, and we can put
the filling in. Not too much. You want it to ooze out the pores of the panqueque, but you don’t want the whole thing to explode.”
“Oozing, but not exploding. Got it.”
“We have to talk,” I told Lucian.
“Try one first.” He handed me what looked like a hot, rolled-up crepe. “Seriously. It’s going to change everything.”
“Fine. But you can’t just solve everything with—” My eyes widened as I tasted the panqueque. “Sweet baby Jesus, why haven’t I been eating these every single day of my life? Have you always known how to make them?”
“Of course.”
“Wow. It’s all I can say. It tastes like the universe loves me.”
“You’ve got a bit of dulce de leche on your mouth.”
“Where?”
“Okay, I lied. It’s not a bit. It’s all over.” He wiped my mouth gently with the sleeve of his shirt. “There. Got it. Sorry if you were saving it for later.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Mia was already stuffing two of the panqueques into her mouth. “Tess, can you wash my plaid shirt?”
“You have a plaid shirt?”
“Yeah, the green and red one.”
“I thought that was a Christmas blanket.”
“Ha-ha. Seriously, can you wash it? I have, like, nothing to wear.”
“You have, like, a whole closet full of clothes to wear.”
“Half of them are dirty!”
“You do know how to operate the washing machine. I distinctly remember giving you a tutorial when we moved in here.”
“I have homework to do. And the basement has spiders.”
I sighed. “Fine. Lucian, come with me.”
“Sure. I’m great at folding.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Derrick murmured.
I gave him a look. “What was that?”
“Nothing. Just mixing the batter.”
“Right.”
Lucian followed me down the stairs. The laundry room was cool and slightly cavernous. It was one of the only places where neither Patrick nor Mia usually followed me, so I could actually get some peace here. The bathroom used to be my sanctuary, but lately, Mia seemed incapable of actually knocking before she barged in.
I stared at the laundry in the hamper. One of Patrick’s socks was on the top, and it was filthy. How did boys get their socks so dirty? Were they actually playing in the mud and just not telling anyone about it? Maybe there was some secret game of shoeless rugby that broke out at every workplace, precisely at two p.m.
“Tess?”
For a moment, I’d forgotten that he was in the laundry room with me. He was standing there in his blue jeans and his black collared shirt, and I suddenly pictured him in front of the mirror every morning, flicking his collar to give it that chic-messy look. I felt an irrational cloud of annoyance rising somewhere within me. Asshole. With his perfect clothes and hair and breath that always smells like the same gum. Standing in my laundry room, looking at me like I’m some kind of crazy domestic.
He blinked. “Where did you go? You were just staring at the clothes. I thought it was some kind of divination.”
“It was nothing.” I started shoving clothes into the washer. Jesus, where had Derrick found black socks with an argyle pattern? Who did he think he was? A Harvard professor? I felt the intense desire to make them disappear.
“It obviously wasn’t.”
“Yeah?” I stared at the clothes piling up in the agitator.
“Is that a question?”
“I don’t know; is it?” I closed the door. No sense in slamming it.
Still, a secret part of me hoped that the fight we were about to have would progress to those kinds of epic proportions. Slamming of washer doors, the laundry basket upended, blood on the Downy drier sheets.
Maybe I’d been working as an OSI too long.
“Hey. ¿Qué pasa?”
I turned around and glared at him. I could feel something heating up inside now, slow and red and slightly dangerous, like a wire coil.
“¡Estoy super enojado para ti! ¡Quiero tener un choque en tu boca!”
He gave me an odd look. “You just said you’re very angry for me, and you want to have a car accident on my mouth.”
“Fuck.” I rubbed my forehead. “My Spanish sucks.”
“No it doesn’t. You conjugated querer exactly right.” He walked over to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “What is it? Tell me.”
“It doesn’t work that way.” I got out from under his hands. “You can’t just be like, What’s wrong, and then have this eloquent explanation flow out of me like a logic fountain, then everything gets to be okay for you again.”
“What’s a logic fountain?”
“I don’t know!” I really did want to have a car accident on his mouth. Whatever that meant. “I don’t know how to talk to you anymore. First you disappear. Then you show up and act all nonchalant, like we’re not both involved in this case. Then you slip me some vital information in code, telling me to talk to a vampire who isn’t even supposed to know you, but he does—”
“We don’t really know each other, but—”
“You know of each other; yeah, I got that from Modred.” I shook my head. “Why couldn’t you just tell me about the painting?”
“Because I wasn’t sure who was listening. What did Modred say?”
“That it’s a speculum. Both of them are. That Ordeño probably made one for you, since you’re supposed to take his place as Prime Solium.”
Lucian blinked. “Is that what the vampires think?”
“That’s what Modred thinks.”
“I have no intention of taking Luiz’s seat. I don’t want that kind of responsibility. If anyone’s going to get the seat, it’ll be Deonara.”
“I don’t care about Deonara. We’re talking about you.”
“What about me?”
I wasn’t going to let him start with the circular questions again. “Don’t be coy. It’s not cute anymore, and you know it.”
He sighed. “Fine.”
“You’re not present anymore, Lucian. You’re in another world most of the time. You refuse to engage, and you don’t want to answer any questions.”
“Is this about us, or about the Ordeño case?”
“Both. We’re in both of those places. We don’t get to come home each night and pretend that we have regular jobs.”
He shrugged. “I don’t have a job, Tess. I mean, not in the strictest sense. I have certain obligations to different communities, but I’m not going to work from nine to five and collecting a paycheck for it.”
I scowled at him. “I don’t know what sucks worse. The tone you use when you talk about me ‘collecting a paycheck, ’ or the fact that you actually believe I only work eight hours a day.”
“I don’t think either of those—” He shook his head.
“No. I’m not doing this. I’m not getting sucked in.”
“Oh, by all means, don’t get sucked into anything. Don’t bother yourself with it. The smartest choice is to just deflect everything.”
“Did you learn that in therapy?”
I stared at him. “How did you know I was in therapy?”
“I guessed. Now it’s confirmed.”
“You guessed? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Right. You don’t think I’m some lonely crackpot who can’t deal with her stress, so she needs some therapist to tell her everything’s going to be fine.”
“No. I don’t think that at all.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, you don’t know me, then.”
I folded my arms. “No. I don’t know you, Lucian. I met you more than two years ago, and last year we started having sex. But I don’t really know anything about you. And that’s not my fault.”
“So it’s my fault?” He was actually getting angry. I felt weirdly vindicat
ed.
“Kind of. I mean, I’m not exactly the greatest girlfriend. Maybe there’s things I’m supposed to be doing. To be honest, this is the first real relationship I’ve had since I was a teenager, when I stopped believing in relationships.”
“Is that what we’re having? A relationship?”
Really? We were going in this direction now?
“Well, what would you call it, Lucian?” I turned on the washer, and its low, dry hum filled my ears. “Be precise.”
“We’ve got something complicated.”
“Define ‘complicated.’”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
“Of course. You don’t want to do anything. Why would you? It’s so much easier to just sit on the fence and jerk off, watching your future fly by.”
“That’s kind of an upsetting image.”
“Lucian!” My face was red. I wanted to cry or decapitate something. Maybe both. “What do you want? Just tell me. Precisely.”
He gave me a funny look. I remembered that look from a dream I’d had about him two years ago. He was stripped to the waist, and the lily tattoo on his shoulder blade looked like it was made of glass, or transparent fire.
“I’m in love with you.”
I blinked. I didn’t say anything. My tongue was made of cotton.
He took a step toward me. “Tess.”
“You’re bullshitting me.”
He frowned. “Why would you say that?”
“Because it’s ridiculous. Why would you love me?”
Now he looked confused. “I don’t understand the question.”
“Come on, Lucian. You’re you. I’m me.”
“Are we back to grammar?” He smiled and put his hands on my shoulders again. “Yes, you’re you, I’m me. We’re us. And I like us.”
“Don’t be cute.”
“What do you want me to say?” One hand moved up my neck. His touch was always light. “Te amo. I love you, Tessa. You make me happy.”
“But—” I wanted to scream in frustration. But his hand on my neck was also making me excited. No. Focus. You are in control of this conversation. “Where have you been lately? If you love me so much, why do you act like you don’t care?”
“Because caring freaks me out. It’s dangerous. I could lose you, and I don’t want to. Just thinking about it makes me terrified.”