You have all been invited to dine with the Ruling Courts tonight. Will you come now or must you freshen up first?
Despite the exhaustion lining their faces and the wrinkles marring every bit of their clothing, they all agreed to come now except Lil. She spoke up after the babble of agreement had finished.
“I must check on my sibs but I will come as soon as I have seen that they are well.”
Mayer opened his mouth to say something but Killi’ila spoke again, drowning him out.
It is only right to check on your bloodline. We shall send someone to your rooms after Rona rises to escort you.
Lil bowed her head and thanked him for his acceptance before turning to head to Hive Chayyliel. She did not look to Mayer for his approval.
SAN FRANCISCO
DAYIDA
Outside her front door, cars and vans waited, perched like predators. Figures shifted in the tinted windows. They’d been there for the whole weekend, waiting for a glimpse of her son. Robert had tried to turn it into professional publicity. She hadn’t needed to see the act itself to know it would fail.
Though she had watched all of it on the CCTV in the kitchen.
At least he hadn’t seemed to make things worse for Erik. His political career would probably never recover, though. She’d stayed inside. The need to go out and deal with idiots was not one she felt often.
She knew Erik would be home soon because Matthias had called.
“Where is he?”
She sighed before answering, not taking her eyes from the small television. Her fingers had already stained the black kitchen curtains with yellow fingerprint whorls of paint. She tried to angle the camera to see more of the front yard.
“I told you already, he’s somewhere resting. He should be back soon.”
“Damn it, Yida! He should be here now, dealing with this problem.”
“I don’t see where he did anything wrong.” She shrugged, still not turning to face him.
“Are you kidding me?”
She heard him coming closer but only when he put his hand on her shoulder did she whip around to face him, knocking his hand away.
They’d always had a volatile relationship, screaming and jealousy and wild make-up sex, but the last three years had changed it from playful to serious. Robert looked at her and leaned back against the counter, his face flushed. She took in the wide shoulders as he slumped and put his head in his hands. She remembered the way his body had moved with hers when they still slept in the same bed.
Before he’d started to love the idea of fame and power more than her. For her part, she wasn’t sure she’d ever really loved him. He’d been convenient and she’d liked him at one point. Now he had other uses.
“He defended himself. Everyone agrees those two little bastards were bullies who started things. Maybe he took things too far—”
“Maybe? He put them both in the hospital!”
“Well, the men in this family do tend to overreact.”
Robert went silent and narrowed his eyes at her. He stood straight and tried to loom over her, which might have worked if she weren’t a good three inches taller than him in flats. She stood her ground and watched him shrink back into himself.
“I am not overreacting. This is most paparazzi that we’ve had since Erik’s earlier mistakes.”
“Funny, I don’t remember the mistakes being his.” As she parried his words back, some of the tension in her shoulders lessened and channeled through her husband like a grounding wire. The build-up had been killing her and it felt good for some of it to flow out of her.
“If he had just—”
“What? Been what you wanted instead of who he is?”
“I don’t care if he’s a fag!”
The word echoed in the house. She tilted her head.
“I don’t!” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I just don’t know why he had to ruin his career.”
“You did that, Robert, not Erik.”
Robert sat back down and Yida turned back to her window. Her body felt loose and relaxed, ideas for painting crowding her mind, but she wanted to wait until Erik got home before heading back into the studio.
“I was trying to do what was best for us.”
Yida froze. This was not where this conversation usually headed.
“I wanted us to have an easy life. It was so hard when we started out. What with you getting pregnant while we were both undergrads. We couldn’t afford anything for years. Scraping by on stipends from internships and loans. I fucking hated it.”
Yida turned. Robert was back at the table, his body limp as if his bones had been removed. He looked raw and weak.
He continued. “Then Erik’s acting lessons paid off with those indie movies and your paintings were selling and all of a sudden I was the background.”
She approached him slowly and sat in the chair across from him. His face was buried in his hands and she wanted to say something comforting, but she’d too long been in the habit of speaking her mind to lie now.
“You were never in the background, Robert. There was never a background in this family.” She stopped short of saying all their problems had been due to his ridiculous pride.
“It still felt that way, damn it!” He slammed his hands on the table and immediately Yida’s sympathy shrank and her anger flared.
“And who made you feel that way? Certainly not me or our son! But who did you take it out on?”
He stared at her.
“We already loved you and we trusted you with our careers.”
“Not Erik, he was letting that damn kid talk him—”
Yida took his hand.
“You’ve been blaming Daniel a long time but how many times did Erik say he didn’t like the way his career was going? That he had no interest in the Disney-kiddie guest spots or TV series? But what roles did you keep making him take? He was going to leave with or without Daniel.”
“They paid great. I wanted us to be steady. He wanted to take those arty roles that barely paid. I—I just wanted him to have a better childhood and teen years than I did. I didn’t want him growing up wanting and resenting. And what about you?”
She sighed. They had never talked about the fact that she’d fired him as her manager as well. Maybe it was time.
“It wasn’t just what you did to Daniel and Erik. I found out how you did it.”
Robert went still.
“Why didn’t you tell everyone?”
Why didn’t she? The question had haunted her for the last couple of years. Why not get that poor boy out of jail and send her husband in? She didn’t love him.
Was she accustomed to him?
Was she used to the relief he provided?
Was it just to avoid more shame and attention?
She had picked up the phone so many times, ready to tell all, but never went through it. Whenever Yida thought about that child in prison it made her guilty. So she tried not to think of it often.
“I don’t know.”
“What do we do now?”
“I’m going to wait until our son comes home. You’re welcome to wait with me.”
Robert nodded jerkily and they sat together, in silence, waiting.
ERIK
Erik felt like he had spent most of the last three days either asleep or passed out. It was not a trend he wanted to continue, so when he woke up exhausted the first thing he did was curse, a lot.
He felt as if he hadn’t slept at all. The thought of changing his clothes seemed like too much effort and the smell of food was calling him. He needed protein, maybe then he could shake off the dreams that clung to him. Slowly he rose out of bed and made his way down the hall, back to the cafeteria.
The exact same setup as last night, down to the empty chair where he had been sitting, greeted him. He froze.
“Erik, how are you doing?” Matthias rose from his chair and approached him.
“What?” The fog of sleep was still affecting his thoughts.
> “You’ve been asleep for twenty-four hours.”
“Wha—Why?”
“It’s my fault.” Matthias looked down even as he ran his hands over Erik’s body, checking him for any injury, though Erik couldn’t understand how he could have been hurt in bed. “I should have gone easier on training you to call up and dismiss your power. It’s been so long, I forget how tired you are when you first awaken and your body changes. It exhausted you.” Matthias took a step back. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Erik reached for the chair and sat down in it. “No harm done and at least I know it’s not some weird tapeworm or something. Now if I can just shake that dream.”
“What sort of dream?” Patrah was staring at him. They were all staring at him.
“Nothing really specific,” he said cautiously as a bowl of pasta mixed with veggies and oil appeared in front of him. “I was fighting for my life, I couldn’t see anything. Some—other people were there with me. Then it was over.”
“How did you feel during it?”
“Um . . . like I was fighting for my life?” He shoveled a forkful of pasta in his face. It was true and not as nuanced as he could have been. He didn’t want to share that he’d felt responsible for it all. A weird arrogance or a guilt complex? He didn’t feel like sharing either option with the group. “Why are you guys so anxious about this?”
Patrah looked at the others, but none of them opened their mouths to explain. Casting a sideways glance at Matthias, she started, “Whichever of the dozens of origin stories of our kind that you believe to be true, in most of them all our parents were betrayed by their other children and killed.”
Erik nodded, shoveling more pasta in his face.
“But can beings that powerful really die? Their bodies were destroyed, true, and their minds were broken, stripped of power but still left—in some sense of the word—alive. Or at least not completely dead.”
“What the—?” Erik started to interrupt.
Patrah shot him a look and he clicked his mouth shut on the food in it.
“They may be bodiless, powerless, and at this point quite mad, but we are still their children. They still recognize us. The children who did not betray, the ones who tried to protect them. When we are exhausted and the well of our power is dry, that is when they can reach out to us.”
“How?”
Patrah sighed. “No one knows for sure but . . . where do you think your power comes from?”
“Inside myself.”
“Yes, you feel it there, but where does that come from?”
Erik shook his head and swallowed. The food was slowly bringing him fully into the waking world. “How the hell should I know? I’m new to this. You people are the ones who are supposed to be telling me things, not giving me a damn pop quiz.”
“Well . . . anyway, though they may be dead and powerless, that doesn’t mean they are useless. We believe they are the conduits to the power that fills us, to the power of creation.”
“Oh-kay.” It was a lot; not only was he descended from something he still hesitated to call a god, but despite its being dead he was still connected to it. “So I’m guessing we’re constantly reenergizing a little at a time, all the time, but when we’re exhausted we’re pulling so much that some sort of deeper connection is established?”
They stared at him and he rolled his eyes. Just because his power happened to involve beating down fools did not mean he was stupid.
“Yes,” Tae answered, looking less surprised than anyone else.
“So does it mean anything?”
“Maybe. Sometimes we dream the past where we play their role in some memory they’re reliving, sometimes it is a bit of our own future, sometimes it is simply scenes happening to others of your bloodline. It’s usually impossible to tell.”
“Well, isn’t that just useless.” Nobody contradicted him, so he turned to Matthias. “So it’s Sunday night, right?”
Matthias nodded.
“Is it time to go home yet?”
“Yeah.”
After hugging Melinda and exchanging numbers with her and Tae, he followed Matthias to the elevator next to the cafeteria, another thing he hadn’t noticed. As they descended, they passed a number of floors and he wondered. The whole weekend—well, the parts he was awake—had been spent on that one floor. He had assumed it was the only one.
The doors opened in an underground garage. All the cars were small and compact but in excellent condition. Erik saw two Mini Coopers, both black, two Smart cars in a deep purple and an electric blue, and a number of classic VW Bugs in a string of rainbow colors going around the corner.
Matthias rolled up to one of the Mini Coopers and opened the door, gesturing for Erik to join him. As he walked between the cars, he noticed that they all had the keys just hanging out in the ignitions.
“Are these all just for anyone?”
“Technically they’re for any member of the Organization, but they can be pretty okay about letting independents use their resources.” Matthias climbed into one of the Mini Coopers. When Erik joined him he started the car and drove them out of the garage. “As long as they aren’t actively working against the Organization. They see it as cultivation, you know, show them a little of what they could have if they join us.” The odd industrial parks that filled this part of Brisbane surrounded them, lit by the moon and the occasional streetlight. Erik felt power rise in the car, pressing against his skin but also enveloping them all. He looked at Matthias and his mentor grinned at him. “I see it as a chance to play with a whole bunch of toys I don’t have to replace if I break them.”
The car jerked forward as Matthias pressed down on the gas. They sped through the twisting, empty streets. As he had when driving with his parents, he felt the pressure of the wind on the car and the jolt of the undercarriage. Every time they left the ground for even a second, Erik felt the slow gentle pull of gravity bringing them back down. He closed his eyes as they turned onto the freeway ramp, almost invisible to the naked eye, thanks to Matthias’s power.
MATTHIASS
“You did well this weekend.” They exited the freeway and Matthias let his power fade away, which let the car become visible again as he slowed and entered the more active neighborhoods of San Francisco.
Erik looked at him before he shook his head and smiled. “Thank you.” Then he frowned. “I still have questions.”
Matthias hesitated. “Of course you do. You can ask me any of them, but know that there are some I might not answer yet.”
“Hmm.” The sound was neither agreement or disagreement.
Matthias nodded.
“Where is your family from?”
Matthias paused. He had not expected personal questions. He was tempted not to answer, but Erik had learned a lot of heavy shit this weekend. A distraction could be useful.
“I was born in San Francisco but my father was originally from Thessaloniki, my mother from New York.”
“Do you see them often?”
“No, they died when I was thirteen.”
“Oh.”
He answered the question packed into that one word.
“They were Agents and died on a FUBAR mission. I didn’t blame the Organization at first, not till later.”
“Where do you live now?”
“Not in any one place. I move around a lot, rent an apartment for a few months, see what good I can do in a town, and move on.”
“Why?”
“It’s easier.” He doesn’t think about the answer before it’s out. “How about you, do you want to stay in San Francisco forever?”
“Hell, no.” Erik laughed and lowered the window, putting his face into the wind. He could still feel the forces on the car but they were gentler now, easier to parse and ignore if he wanted. “I want to live everywhere in the world. Shanghai and Paris. Mumbai and Toronto. Kyoto and Addis Ababa. I want to see them all. I might settle down back here, though, after a decade or two. Who knows?”
Matthias pulled onto Erik’s street and noticed his charge stiffen in the passenger seat.
“What is it?”
“Hell.”
Matthias peered through the windshield. The dark street was littered with vehicles along both sides of the street, some of which had large satellite dishes on the top of them. Men and women leaned on the cars and trees, watching them at the end of the street. Paparazzi.
Erik did present unique challenges as an aspirant.
“Should I let you off here?”
Erik shrugged. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Either I have to beat my way through a sea of them or I have to deal with their questions about you.”
Matthias was confused by what Erik meant, as he rarely had a television. But then he remembered the motel he’d stayed at in Akron over a year ago. He’d caught a TMZ marathon and been hypnotized by the aggressive paparazzi, the yelling, the need to know. Somehow it seemed less entertaining and more threatening when it was someone he knew and liked. He pressed on the gas.
He was tempted to use his power to shield them, but he would need to join Erik inside to hide him, at which point the car would suddenly appear.
Or he could let Erik suddenly appear in their midst.
Either way, he didn’t think it would work in terms of keeping a low profile. So he drove steadily and without stopping, despite people standing in the road. Every time it ended in them diving to one side or the other. He pulled up directly in front of Erik’s home and looked up.
Yida met his gaze through the kitchen window on the side of the house and he nodded as he read the worry in her eyes. She smiled and the curtain she was holding back swung shut. He turned to Erik and waited.
ERIK
“This’ll be fun.” Erik frowned as he looked out of the window.
“Should I come with you?”
The offer was sweet but it would only make things more difficult.
“No, that’ll just make it worse.”
The Root Page 16