Arc 2

by RoAnna Sylver

  “And what are we, considering that Pixie is part of our lives now?”

  “We’re—I mean, he’s said he’s totally fine with—with us being together, but me also seeing if you and Felix and me—he’s good, he said polyamory is normal for him.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “Yes,” Jude said with a nod. “I can tell when he’s holding something back or saying something's fine when it’s not, even if I don’t know what’s actually bothering him. He’s not doing that here. He really is okay with this.”

  “Well, good. At least some things can be simple.”

  “Sure, but nothing else is!” Jude made a frustrated noise. “Especially considering—okay. This is another wrinkle right here. Do you remember me telling you about the asexual and aromantic things?”

  “I do, yes. Gray and demi, if I remember correctly.”

  “Yeah. I was so glad to figure that out. It helped so much, it’s the word I needed, it made everything fit and make sense. Like how knowing I’m autistic explains so much, I’m not just weird, these aren’t just random things I’m experiencing, it’s real and it has a name. But I don’t know the names for what I feel for you, or for Pixie, or if they’re the same or not!” Jude was speaking faster now, as if his words couldn’t wait to come out now that he’d found them. “I think they’re different, but not in a bad way, just in a different way.”

  “Different in what way?” Jasper asked, voice patient, grounding.

  Jude’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t even know how to express it. Maybe it’s an a-spec thing, or maybe it’s an autistic thing, but I don’t know if I’m feeling the—the right things. I never really have. I don’t know what the things I’m supposed to be feeling even feel like!”

  “Jude, believe me, whatever you’re feeling, it’s not the wrong thing. I don’t think there is such a thing as the wrong way to feel.” He half-turned to look at Jude, expression equal parts thoughtful and wry. “But maybe you really don’t feel the straightforward, sexual-romantic way you’ve been told is the ‘right’ way. So what if you don’t? You love us the way you do, and that’s the only way we want. Nothing else will satisfy.”

  Jude didn’t have an answer for that. At least not one that held up against Jasper’s logic, and faith in Jude that quieted some of the anxiety buzzing in his brain. Most of it.

  “In any case, you’re feeling more at once than most people feel their entire lifetimes. Being asexual, aromantic, autistic, and now navigating polyamory! Any one of those is a lot for one person to deal with, especially when they’re all interrelated and overlap. But they’re not bad things. They come together to make your brain the beautiful thing it is. And none of us have it all figured out. Frankly I’d be shocked if there was a single neurotypical among us. If there were, I suspect they’d be very confused.”

  “Well, it’s really inconvenient to feel all this at once. I just wish my brain would make more sense,” Jude huffed.

  “Dare to dream.” Jasper was quiet for a bit. When he spoke again, his voice was so soft that Jude had to lean in closer to hear him. “Sometimes I don’t know if there should be a ‘we.’”

  “What?” Jude felt a cold little pang of shock and fear. “Why? What did I—why do you say that?”

  Jasper’s eyes flicked away from Jude, then down at his folded hands, and stayed there. “Anything I’m in seems to go to ruin.”

  Jude shook his head firmly. “That’s not true.”

  “Well, I haven’t done much to un-ruin anything, either. I haven’t been able to help Felix at all. Or you, or Pixie, or even Letizia. I wish there was something I could do. For anyone. Anything.”

  “Just you being here helps,” Jude said honestly, desperately hoping he was saying the right thing. He couldn’t remember the last time Jasper had shown him this kind of vulnerability, the kind he’d do anything to protect and comfort. “That’s all I want. That’s all any of us want. Even if you don’t do anything, just having you around is enough.”

  “Well, thank you, but, I mean something real.” Now Jasper was the one to look in the direction of the room where Felix stayed, alone and silent. “I just hate seeing him hurt, and not being able to do anything.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Jude said pointedly. “I hate seeing my most important people hurting.”

  “Well, then it’s a good thing you’re not!” Jasper said with a mirthless laugh.

  “Yes I—I told you how important you are to me, that wasn’t—”

  “That’s not what I mean. I’m not the wounded party in any of this. True, I feel helpless, frustrated, ineffectual—but that’s because I can’t help the ones who actually are in pain. I’m not the one who was killed and brought back and imprisoned and tortured. I’m not the one who’s hurting.”

  “Yes you are,” Jude said, and now he glared just a bit. “Don’t do that, yes you are.”

  “Fine, Jude.” Jasper looked back at him now, just as pointedly. “If I am, then it’s just another thing we have in common.”

  “What’s that? Hurting?”

  “In a way. Both of us, very neurodivergent humans, in love with vampires, and not knowing how to help them. And not just because they’re vampires. I can’t begin to imagine the kind of trauma they’ve been through. Can you?”

  Jude looked down at his own hands. “No.”

  “A good thing, I suppose.” Jasper paused, then something else seemed to occur to him. “Circling back a bit—you said ‘gray’ made being asexual and aromantic less confusing, better-defined, better-managed. A succinct, easy term for complicated, sometimes-nebulous feelings that might change in unexpected ways.”

  “Yeah. It does.”

  “Then maybe we’re gray. For now, at least.” The corner of Jasper’s mouth pulled up a bit. “I know, it’s not easy being gray, but it’s not such a bad way to be.”

  “Okay. Gray. Yeah.” Jude nodded, temporarily satisfied, if still troubled.

  For a few seconds, neither of them spoke. The apartment was completely still and quiet around them, so much so that it seemed impossible that there could be anyone else here, in the next room or anywhere else in the world. In a way, it was true; hardly anyone else alive would understand anything about them now, all they’d seen and survived.

  It was a very lonely, isolating feeling, realizing that whether you had changed or the world, you no longer quite belonged to it the way you once had. But at least they could be alone together.

  “It’s not a bad thing that we’re different people now,” Jasper said quietly. “Any of us. We’re all changed, and we’ll keep changing, and maybe that’s good. Recovery doesn’t always mean everything goes back to the way it was before your world was shattered. Sometimes that’s impossible.” He let out a soft sigh. “But damn it all, if it doesn’t feel like moving forward is just as impossible.”

  Jude didn’t answer. But, this time, it wasn’t that he couldn’t find the words. Instead, it wasn’t that he needed to speak at all, but act—and found the thought of it even more insurmountable.

  If they were still the people they’d been before, this is when they would have kissed. If this was a perfect world, where none of the past five years had happened, but Jude knew then what he knew now, that Jasper—fat, safe, happy—loved him solidly and truly, and Felix—alive, well, whole—loved him with ease and without inhibition, and that with all his heart, he loved them, and always had. Any perfect world of his would have Eva in it too, secure and unburdened, and Pixie, another incredible, beautiful fat boy who Jude also sorely wanted to kiss right now—but no. Not if Jude wanted to keep him safe. And he couldn’t kiss Jasper now, either. They weren’t the people they’d been, they’d changed, the world wasn’t perfect, it had changed too, and Jude didn’t know this new grayscale landscape well enough to take a new step in it.

  He couldn’t do anything but lean just a little more against Jasper’s too-thin shoulder, feel the warmth of him, feel him breathe, know they were by some miracle still alive, i
f not well, and that for now at least, gray was enough.

  They sat together a bit longer, neither wanting to be the first one to rise. Finally, Jasper turned to him and spoke in a frank and level tone. “Jude, I don’t know what it’ll take to finally get Felix out of his room, or for Pixie to feel truly safe and sound, or to get us and Felix back to where we were heading—if we were heading anywhere together at all. And—”

  “We were,” Jude said quietly. Unquestioningly. He remembered two kisses, and regretted only that the number had stopped there.

  “Yes, we were. And, as I was going to say, I don’t know what’s coming next for any of us. But if there’s anyone I’d want beside us when we find out… well, you’re a good man for the job.”

  Jude felt warm inside, and this time the good feeling stayed. He knew they were onto something before, something that had been put on hold, like so many other things, by Felix’s death and all of their subsequent coping mechanisms, healthy or not. But it had been something strong, and real, and important—strong enough to last, and to be there when they could finally return to it with all the care and clarity it deserved. And they would. Jude knew that as well as he knew the face and hands of the man beside him, and how they’d be there when he was ready too. Then, and every moment until.

  “Yeah, well…” Jude did smile now, wider and more brightly than before. It felt good. “I was going to be your best man.”

  Jasper smiled back, but it was the kind of tired, wistful smile on a too-gaunt face that made Jude’s heart ache. “You still are.”

  “So I unlocked the door to the caves, that should be good to go. Is there anything else I can do?” Eva asked, trying not to sound too obviously bored. “Grab some eye of newt, find a creepy Latin book to read from, anything?”

  Letizia had started to shuffle her cards again, but hadn’t spread them. She’d been shuffling for several minutes on end, hands never still. It seemed to be more of a nervous habit than anything else, Eva realized. She must find the repetitive motion and feel of the cards calming—which she seemed to need, because her face was drawn with obvious anxiety.

  “No, none of that,” the Witch said, voice sounding weary. “I just… need you to be here. Just be with me.”

  “But what do I do?” Eva asked insistently, frustrated at the lack of direction. “That can’t be it. You want me to just stand there, for what, moral support?”

  “You can call it that,” Letizia said. “All you have to do is be here. The more powerful the magic, the easier it is to get lost in. It’s just safer to have someone there to bring you back.”

  “And you trust me with that?” Eva asked, frustration fading with a little smile. “That’s flattering.”

  “I’d trust you with anything,” Letizia said, looking directly into her eyes. Then she cleared her throat and looked away, setting the cards down at last, folding her hands as if to keep them from shaking. She looked up, and even for a vampire, she looked pale and drawn. “This is going to be a very powerful bit of magic. I might get caught in a riptide, swept out into the deep end. I need you to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “And what does getting lost look like?” Eva asked, eyes searching Letizia’s face, looking for signs of trouble right here and now.

  “If I start to shake, eyes roll back in my head, anything like that, that’s not a good sign,” Letizia said, and now her smile took on some of its usual wryness. Familiar territory, Eva thought, slightly comforted. “Call me back. Squeeze my hands, give me a shake, or a good slap if you have to. Don’t hold back.”

  “I won’t,” Eva assured her. “I’ll be right here the whole time, but I hope it doesn’t come to smacking you out of it. I will, though. With love.” She gave a short, nervous laugh.

  “I appreciate that,” Letizia said. She sat down on the floor then, beside the completed mirror with its ring of bones, and motioned for Eva to do the same, across from her. When she did, Letizia held out her hands and Eva took them.

  The Witch shut her eyes and seemed to slip into a deep trance. Sometimes, Eva forgot that Letizia and several of their friends weren’t actually alive. They didn’t always breathe, they didn’t need to. But usually they weren’t perfectly, unnaturally still like this, so it wasn’t as noticeable. Now, she noticed. A shiver running down her spine, Eva shut her eyes too, and waited for the magic to begin.

  And waited.

  Nothing broke the silence, no smoke or flash or wind. Nothing happened at all, and finally, after what felt like years but had probably only been a few minutes, Eva cracked open her eyes, and peered up at Letizia, who hadn’t moved a single muscle, still holding completely still, in a way no living human could. Eva’s arms were beginning to ache from holding them out across the mirror, and just as she felt them starting to dip with fatigue, Letizia opened her eyes.

  “There,” the Witch said. “Done.”

  “That’s it?” Eva asked in a hushed voice, feeling like they’d just stepped into a library.

  “That’s it.” Letizia smiled. Her own voice sounded much stronger than it had before, and more focused.

  “Huh. I didn’t feel anything—I always expected magic to be more... ceremonial,” Eva said, as Letizia gave her hands a little squeeze and then dropped them. “Particularly yours. You sure that was dramatic enough?”

  “No drama this time,” Letizia answered, and now she sounded a bit more at ease, smiling in a satisfied way. “Not for the really important things. Showy gets you killed; practical may actually work. If things do start to get dramatic, it means something’s gone wrong.”

  “Makes sense,” Eva said, though her puzzled look hadn’t gone anywhere. “I just thought there’d be more to it than that. I mean, besides doing the counter-spell itself. I thought there’d be more for me to do, is all.”

  “You’ve already helped,” Letizia said plainly, quickly. The words, which to Eva seemed like almost an admission of vulnerability, had the feeling of ripping off a band-aid. “When I said I didn’t need you to bring anything, that wasn’t quite the truth. I needed an anchor.”

  “An anchor?” Eva tried to smile, unable to resist a gentle tease. “Afraid I’m fresh out of those.”

  “Not an actual anchor. I meant—I meant you, Eva.” Letizia stammered now, and if vampires could blush, Eva was sure her face would be turning red. “You’ve been the best friend to me I could imagine. This spell is dangerous, I don’t know how it’s going to go, but knowing it won’t touch you will give me courage. Knowing you’re safe will free me up to be daring and brave. I don’t want to know you’re safe, I…”

  She stopped, leaving Eva waiting, eyebrows raised in surprised anticipation. She hadn’t expected the beginning to that sentence, and badly wanted to hear its ending, but just as she’d left her question about the bones unfinished, Letizia couldn’t seem to bring herself to complete this particular phrase. There were a lot of possible reasons for that, some much better than others. All of them pretty life-changing. None of them she knew how to put into words.

  “I heard you. So that’s really it?” Eva asked eagerly instead. They still had a job to do, and there would be time to explore implications, emotions, and possibilities later. Hopefully. “The spell is ready?”

  “It’s ready,” Letizia said, letting out her breath in a little rush, as if she’d just sprinted a short but challenging distance. “All that’s left is to get the mirror to the right place, and wait for the right time. Which in this case is midnight, and… what are you doing?”

  “Texting Jude,” Eva said, not looking up from her phone. “Letting him know the where and when. This is happening!”

  “No, stop,” Letizia said sharply and Eva looked up—but not before her thumb slipped down to hit send.

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell—you just sent the message, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Eva said, giving Letizia a raised-brow stare. “Was that bad?”

  The Witch shut her eyes and turned her face upwards, a
ppealing to the ceiling or heavens beyond for help. “I wish you hadn’t done that. Now they’ll come and want to help.”

  “Well yeah, of course they will?” Eva said with a confusion-furrowed brow. “Are they not supposed to?”

  “I’d rather them not, no.”

  “Why would—wait a minute.” Eva slipped her phone back into her pocket and folded her arms. “You’re the one who said you needed our help to get the spell done, and wanted me here while you did—whatever you just did. Why are you mad they’re coming now?”

  “I’m not mad,” Letizia said in a carefully calm voice that did nothing to convince Eva this was true. “But your part of the spell is over. Now it’s my turn to take over, and finish it myself. Everyone trying to come along will make everything…more difficult than it needs to be.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Eva asked, incredulous voice rising a bit in both volume and pitch. “What do you mean, ‘our part is over?’ You’re gonna do this whole ritual thing alone?”

  “That was the idea, yes.”

  “This very dangerous counter-spell to a very dangerous ritual, you’re flying this one solo?”

  “Yes.” Letizia nodded. “The last steps, I have to take alone.”

  “So what were we, your—your kitchen staff?” Eva’s eyes hardened. “You need us to make the meal, but now you’re gonna serve the whole feast yourself, is that right?”

  “I feel like the metaphor is getting away from you a bit,” Letizia said, still in that carefully level tone. “But yes. And as long as we’re using it, let’s say that tonight is a feast, and the dinner guests are all ravenous sharks. I’d just as soon keep my helper chefs away from their tank.”

  “Yeah? Well, sorry to burst your—your soufflé, or whatever, but it would’ve been nice to know earlier, before I—before we got all invested in this! Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  Letizia picked up her cards and began to shuffle them. “Because you and the others have no business being in a dangerous—”