CALLUM
IT HAD NOT BEEN A PARTICULARLY COMPLEX MATTER deciding to join
the Society at Atlas Blakely’s invitation. If he didn’t care for the experience, Callum reasoned, he would leave. It was how he generally lived his life: he came and went as he wished. People these decisions affected, if they were angry about his mutability, did not typically stay mad.
Preternaturally or otherwise, Callum had a way of ensuring that people came around to see his position on the matter, one way or another. Once he’d made his point, they could always be compelled to act reasonably from there.
Callum had always been aware that word used for his specialty by the Hellenistic University of Magical Arts was
not the right word. The manipulist subcategory of illusionist was more often applied to cases of physical specialties:
people who could warp things, make them into something else. Water could be convinced to be wine, in the right hands, or at least made to look and taste like it. One of the particularities about the study and reality of magic was that it only mattered, in the end, how things looked or tasted;
what they were meant to be, or what were at the start, could be easily dismissed in favor of achieving the
necessary result.
But what the Society appeared to know—what Atlas Blakely seemed to know, which others typically didn’t—was that Callum’s work was more accurately defined as a vigorous type of empath. It was unsurprising, really, that he was magically misdiagnosed; empathy was a far more common magical manifestation in women, and thus, when it appeared, it was usually cultivated in a highly delicate, maternal sort of way. There were a number of female medeians who were able to tap into the emotions of others; more often than not, they became marvelous humanitarians, lauded for the contributions to therapy and healing. It was a very feminine thing, to be both magical
and saintly. Philanthropy could be worn like jewelry or cosmetics, glittering from the effervescence of their pores.
When the same skill set could be found in men, it was
usually too diluted to be classified as magical; more often it was considered an isolated personality trait. In the case of persuasion, a trait with the potential to achieve medeian- level ability—labeled, perhaps, ‘charisma’ by the non- magical—it would often be put aside in favor of the usual method of going about things: attendance at some famous mortal university, like Oxford or Harvard for example, and then a prosperous mortal career from there. Occasionally
these men went on to become CEOs, lawyers, or politicians. Sometimes they became tyrants, megalomaniacs, or
dictators—in which case it was probably best their talents went unrealized. Magic, like most other forms of physical exertion, required proper training to wield properly or for any extended period of time; had any of those men ever realized their natural qualities were something they could
refine, the world would have been far worse off than it was already.
Naturally there is an exception to every rule, which in this case was Callum. He was saved from any sort of global misbehavior (or rather, the world was saved) by his lack of ambition, which, paired with his love of finer things, meant that he never aspired to world domination, nor to anything even close. Always dangerous, the pairing of hunger with
any skill of manipulation; it is an essential law of human behavior that when given the tools to do so, those born at the bottom will always try to claw their way to the top.
Those born at the top, i.e., Callum, were usually less inclined to upend things as they were. When the setting was already gilded and ornate, what would be the point of changing
them?
Thus, nothing had driven Callum to accept Atlas Blake’s offer, but nothing had repelled him, either. He might go through with initiation, he might not; the Society might impress him enough to stay, or it might not. It went without saying, at least, that the building housing the Alexandrian Society was not especially impressive on its own. Callum
came from money, which meant he had already seen wealth in a number of its natural forms: royal, aristocratic,
capitalist, corrupt… The list went on into perpetuity. This form, the Alexandrian variety, was technically academic, though academic wealth was almost always one of the aforementioned forms, if not some combination of all of them.
There was a reason knowledge was reserved for the elite. A self-perpetuating cycle, really, though Callum could not be compelled to criticize it much. After all, he had done nothing but benefit from the inherent classism of higher education. As with most things from which Callum had profited, he questioned very little.
The same could not be said for the others, who had all returned (unsurprisingly) to accept the invitation. The American, Libby Rhodes, was most memorable by how often and irritatingly she spoke, and naturally she had been the first to ask a stupid question.
“We are in Alexandria, aren’t we?” she asked, her brow furrowing beneath a rather unalluring fringe. If it were up to Callum, he’d have given her a different haircut entirely;
something tied up or pulled back, preferably so she’d leave the tips of her hair alone. “I can’t say anything looks
particularly Alexandrian.”
It certainly did not. The interior of wherever they were— distinct from wherever had housed yesterday’s meeting, though presumably some equally untraceable location— looked very much like the inside of a London mansion, surrounded by what was surely an English garden as well.
Despite the Novas’ residency in Cape Town, Callum’s family
had been invited more than once to pay a visit to the British Royal Family (the Novas had once been close with the Greek royals, hence Callum’s very comfortable study at the
Hellenistic University in Athens) and he considered the Society’s decor to be very similar. Portraits of aristocracy lined the walls alongside a variety of Victorian busts, and while the architecture itself was certainly Greco-Roman influenced, it bore obvious markers of the Romantics,
leaning more eighteenth century Neo than genuinely Classical.
Overall, the idea they might have been anywhere other than England was extremely unlikely.
“Well, I suppose there’s no harm in saying we are actually in London,” confirmed Dalton Ellery, the stiff-
looking aide to Atlas Blakely whose energy was immediately guessable; fear, or possibly intimidation. Callum presumed Dalton to harbor a bit of intellectual inferiority, which was
the only thing to possibly explain the man’s ongoing devotion to academics. If the perks of Society membership were wealth and prestige, why stay here and fail to take
advantage?
But, seeing as Callum didn’t care, he didn’t wonder about it for long.
Instead, he watched Tristan and Parisa, the only two interesting people, who exchanged a rather secretive glance between themselves while Libby, the fringed girl whose anxieties were so prickly and unceasing they nearly set Callum’s teeth on edge, frowned with confusion.
“But if this is actually the Library of Alexandria, then how
—”
“The Society has changed its physical location several
times throughout history,” Dalton explained. “It was
originally in Alexandria, of course, but was moved soon after to Rome, and then to Prague until the Napoleonic wars, and ultimately arrived here around the Age of Exploration,
alongside the rest of imperialism’s benefits.”
“That,” muttered Nico, the Cuban young man who, thankfully, was not quite tall enough to be a threat to Callum’s vainer impulses, “is the most British thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Yes, it’s very much akin to the British Museum,” confirmed Dalton dismissively, “in that every relic from every culture is rather forcibly housed under one
monarchical roof. In any case,” he continued, as if that had not been a highly brow-raising statement in itself, “there
have been countless attempts to house it elsewhere, as one might expect. The Americans had a very strong argument for moving it to New York until 1941, and of course we all know what happened then. Anyway, as I was saying, you’ll all be housed here,” he said, turning the corner from the
gallery to a corridor lined with doors. “Your names are
indicated on the placards beside the doors, and your things have been deposited there for you. Once our tour is complete, you will all meet with Atlas and then proceed to dinner. The gong is every evening at half past seven,” he added. “Your attendance each evening is expected.”
Callum noticed that Tristan and Parisa had exchanged yet another conspiratorial glance. Did they know each other before today, as the two American-trained students did? He paused for a moment to determine it, and then deduced no, they had not met any earlier than the others, though they
had certainly met intimately since then.
He felt a flare-up of frustration. He never liked not being among the first to make friends.
“What exactly does a normal day look like?” Libby asked, continuing her tirade of questions. “Will there be classes,
or…?”
“In a sense,” said Dalton. “Though I expect Atlas will advise you further.”
“Do you not know?” asked Reina, the very bored-looking Japanese girl with the nose ring, whose voice was much deeper than Callum expected it to be. She hadn’t spoken before then, nor given much indication of listening, though she’d been staring intently at the contents of every room
they passed.
“Well, each class of candidates is slightly different,” Dalton said. “There are different specialties, making each round of initiates a different composition of skills. Thus, the research you’re assigned varies from year to year.”
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell us what all our specialties are?” prompted Parisa. She, Callum noted, was radiating a certain persuasion herself, though it seemed to be directed at Dalton. Typical; faux-intellectualism would always be appealing to any girl who’d spent too much time
in France. It was about as Parisian as bobs, sartorial minimalism, and cheese.
“That,” Dalton said, “is up to you. Though I doubt it will be long before you discover them.”
“Living in the same house, taking all our meals together?
I can only assume we’ll be sick to death with knowledge about ourselves in no time,” remarked Tristan at a drawl, which prompted Parisa to a smothered laugh that Callum considered supremely false.
“I’m sure you will,” replied Dalton, unfazed. “Now, if you’ll come this way, please.”
Dalton led them through a maze of stately Neoclassicism before arriving in a particularly sun-soaked room of grandeur, the walls of which were lined with books. Reina, who had been glooming disinterestedly through their procession around the house, seemed to have finally woken up a bit, eyes widening.
“This is the painted room,” Dalton said. “It is where you will meet Atlas each morning, following breakfast in the morning room. The easiest path to the reading room and archives is through those doors,” he added, gesturing with a sidelong glance to his left.
“This isn’t the library?” asked Reina, frowning upwards as she eyed the highest shelves. Nearby, a fern seemed to shiver with anticipation.
“No,” said Dalton. “The library is for letter writing. And, should you wish it, cream tea.”
Nico, who was standing beside Libby, silently made a face of revulsion.
“Yes,” Dalton agreed, plucking at a stray thread on his cuff. “Quite.”
“Aren’t there other people who live here?” asked Libby, peering through narrowed eyes down the corridor. “I thought this was a society.”
“Only the archives are housed here. Typically,
Alexandrians will come and go by appointment,” Dalton explained. “Occasionally there will be smaller groups taking meetings in the reading room, in which case you will be asked not to disturb them, and vice versa.”
“Is it really such a simple matter of coming and going?” (Libby again.)
“Certainly not,” said Dalton, “though that, too, will be a matter of your discretion.”
“But how—”
“What Dalton means,” came Atlas Blakely’s buttery baritone, “is that there are a number of security measures in place.”
At his appearance, Callum and Tristan both turned to
face the entrance, the six of them falling reflexively into a line.
“However,” Atlas continued, “part of your job as the new class of initiates is to develop a protocol that suits you as a collective. And before you ask what that means,” he assured Libby with a smile, “I’m happy to explain. As with all the most crucial secrets, there are quite a number of people
who know of the Society’s existence. Several organizations have targeted it over the years for robbery, infiltration, or, in some cases, destruction. Thus, we rely not only on the charms in place, but also on the Society’s resident class of initiates to maintain their own security detail.”
“Wait,” said Libby, who was still caught on the prospect of global secrets being widely known. “So that means—”
“It means the first thing to discuss will be your
proficiency at magical defense,” Atlas confirmed, as a series of chairs materialized behind each of them. “Sit, please,” he beckoned, and warily, all six of them took their requested seats; Reina perhaps most warily of all. “I won’t be long,” Atlas added as a measure of assurance. “Your responsibility this afternoon will be determining your plan as a group. I am mostly here to provide guidance before I leave you to it.”
“Has anyone ever stolen anything successfully?” asked Tristan, who seemed to be the most cynical of the group, or at least the first to voice his cynicism.
“Or actually broken in to any degree of success?” Nico added.
“Yes,” said Atlas. “In which case, I hope your magical offense is equally as refined as your defense, as you will be asked to retrieve anything that is removed without
permission.”
“Asked,” echoed Reina at a murmur, and Atlas turned to her with a smile.
“Asked,” he confirmed, “politely. And from there, dealt with as appropriate.”
That was about as well-mannered a threat as Callum might have expected. This was all exceedingly British, from the dome of the so-called ‘painted room’ to the idea that
they would be summoned to dinner by a gong.
Libby, of course, raised her hand tentatively in the air. “How often, exactly, are we expected to defend the
Society’s…” A pause. “Collection?”
“Well, that depends on the strength of your system.”
Briefly, a red glow manifested in the corner of the room, and then disappeared. “That, for example,” said Atlas, “was a
thwarted attempt to enter the Society’s perimeter. Though, it’s also possible someone simply forgot their keys.”
He was smiling, so this was apparently a joke. Callum had the sense Atlas Blakely wanted very badly for them to
like him; or, at the very least, he was the sort of person who always had an expectation of being liked.
“As to the subject of the… ‘collection,’ as you called it, Miss Rhodes,” Atlas said with a nod in Libby’s direction,
“meaning the contents of the Library, that is a more
complex matter. You will all gain access to the Society’s records in stages; as you earn the Society’s trust, you will be permitted further steps. Each door unlocked will lead to another door, which, once unlocked, will lead to another.
Metaphorically, of course.”
Nico this time: “And these doors…?”
“We’ll start with physicalities. Space,” said Atlas. “The fundamental laws of physics and how to bypass them.”
At that, Libby and Nico exchanged a glance; it was the first time, Callum noted, that Libby did not have one of her spectacularly awkward behaviors on display.
“Once you’ve proven you can be trusted with the most readily available of our findings, you will move on to the next subject. The five initiates will move even further, of course, over the course of their second year. From there, things become much more specialized; Dalton, for
example,” said Atlas, with a reference over his shoulder to where Dalton had all but blended into the wallpaper, “works in such a narrow field of expertise that only he is permitted to access those materials at present.”
Parisa, Callum could see, found this to be a very interesting trinket of information indeed.
“Not even you?” asked Reina, surprising them once again with her voice.
“Not even me,” Atlas confirmed. “We do not, as a society, believe it is necessary for one man to know everything. We don’t consider it particularly possible, either, and certainly not very safe.”
“Why not?” (Libby again.)
“Because the problem with knowledge, Miss Rhodes, is its inexhaustible craving. The more of it you have, the less you feel you know,” said Atlas. “Thus, men often go mad in search of it.”
“And how do the women take it?” prompted Parisa. Atlas gave her a curt half-smile.
“Most know better than to seek it,” he said, which sounded, to Callum, like a warning.
“When you say a system,” Libby began. Callum flinched, irked again as Atlas turned his attention back to her. She was like a mosquito; the effect of her anxiety wasn’t exactly painful, but it did seem to be unrelenting. Callum couldn’t sit comfortably in one spot.
“There are six of you,” Atlas said, gesturing to the group of them. “You each maintain one-sixth responsibility for the Society’s security. How you divide it is up to you. Now, before I leave you to it,” he said, seeming to startle Libby with the prospect she might have to go unsupervised, “I will say that while you do not presently have access to
everything in the Society’s purview, you are very much
responsible for the entirety of its protection. Please bear this in mind as you devise your plan.”
“Seems a bit counterintuitive, doesn’t it?” Tristan remarked. He was, as Callum had predicted, a natural contrarian. “We’re responsible for things we can’t even see.”
“Yes,” Atlas agreed, and nodded briskly. “Any questions?” Libby opened her mouth but, to Callum’s immense relief,
Nico’s hand shot out, pausing her.
“Excellent,” said Atlas, turning to Dalton. “Well, we shall all reconvene at dinner. Welcome to the Alexandrian
Society,” he added, and inclined his head a final time before sauntering through the door, sealing it behind them.
REINA
THERE WAS A MOMENT of guarded curiosity as the remaining six appraised each other in silence.
“You’re very quiet,” observed Tristan, turning to Callum, the blond South African who sat on his left. “No thoughts on any of this?”
“No pressing ones,” said Callum. He had a certain look to him; something very old Hollywood, belonging to the perpetual plague of Westernization that Reina had come to
loathe rather than admire, but his voice was soothing, his mannerisms almost comforting. “And you sound quite
suspicious.”
“My nature, I’m afraid,” said Tristan, rather unapologetically.
Parisa, Reina noted, was looking at her intently. It
prompted her to a bit of a shudder, bristling at the slight sense of invasion, which in turn upset one of the nearby ferns.
“That’s odd,” said Libby, for whom the plant had been within sight. She frowned at it before turning back to Reina.
“You’re… a naturalist, then, I take it?”
Reina strongly disliked being questioned on the subject. “Yes.”
“Most medeian-level naturalists have more of a handle on their skill set,” observed Parisa, immediately revealing herself to be unpleasant. Not that that surprised Reina at all; most women who looked like Parisa had a lifetime of permission to behave however they liked. Normally she didn’t fault them for it, preferring only to stay out of their way, but this sort of shoved-together experience would
obviously render avoidance impossible.
She was starting to wish she’d stayed home.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to imply—” Libby’s cheeks flushed. “I just, I suppose I expected, um—”
“I didn’t study naturalism,” Reina supplied bluntly. “I specialized in ancient magics. Classics.”
“Oh,” said Libby, with faint confusion, and Parisa’s eyes narrowed.
“What, like a historian?”
“Like one,” Reina echoed. Precisely one.
Parisa didn’t seem to care for her tone. “So you didn’t cultivate your own craft at all?”
“What is everyone’s specialty?” Nico interrupted,
jumping in as Reina’s discomfort heightened. Probably best, as a silent request from her would have had Parisa locked in a chokehold by the very fern she unwisely suspected Reina of being unable to control.
Nico’s change in conversation seemed to be more in the interest of sparking conversation with Parisa than it had been defending Reina. “Yours, for example,” he suggested to Parisa, prompting her expression to stiffen.
“What’s yours?”
“Rhodes and I are both physicists. Well, physics of force, molecular structures, that sort of thing,” Nico said. “I’m better, of course—”
“Shut up,” muttered Libby.
“—and we have our respective preferred materials, but we can both manipulate physicalities. Motion, waves,
elements,” he summarized, glancing expectantly at Parisa. “And you?”
“What about me?” Parisa retorted flippantly. Nico faltered. “Well, I just thought—”
“I don’t see why it’s necessary that we share the details of our specialties,” Tristan cut in sourly. “We’re competing against each other, aren’t we?”
“But we still have to work together,” Libby argued,
looking moderately aghast. “Do you really intend to keep your magic a secret for the next year?”
“Why not?” said Parisa, shrugging. “Anyone clever enough to figure it out probably deserves to, and as far as the intricacies—”
“But it’s not like we can perform as a group while
knowing nothing about each other,” Nico attempted, looking as if his intent was to put the others at ease. Reina had a
feeling he considered himself likeable enough to manage it, and it was possible he wasn’t wrong.
“Even if one of us is going to be eliminated eventually,” Nico said, “I don’t see how it helps to cripple all of us as a group.”
“You only say that because you already told us your
specialty,” Callum murmured, half-smirking, which made Reina like him less.
“Well, I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” Nico said,
flaring a little with irritation, which made her like him more. “So unless the rest of you have some sort of insecurity about whatever it is you can do—”
“Insecurity?” Tristan scoffed. “So you’re just assuming you’re the best in the room, then?”
“I didn’t say that,” Nico insisted. “I just—”
“He does think he’s the best in the room,” said Parisa, “but then again, who doesn’t? Except maybe you,” she determined, giving Reina an unfriendly glance.
She, Reina thought, was safely at the bottom of the list of people she intended to be friends with.
“I just think there’s some way we can compromise, at
least,” said Nico. “Shouldn’t we have some idea who can do what?”
“I agree,” said Reina, mostly because she could see that Parisa and Tristan were resistant. It made no difference to her; everyone already knew her specialty, so she, like Nico and the thankfully now-silent Libby, had no reason not to bolster his argument and pressure the others into
confessing. “Otherwise the physical specialties are going to take on the majority of the work, and if I have to waste all my energy on security—”
“Not everything has to be brute force,” said Tristan,
irritably. “Just because you have physical specialties doesn’t mean you’ll be doing all the magic.”
“Well, you certainly aren’t giving me a reason t-” “Stop,” said Nico, and because it was startling,
conversation halted. “Who’s doing that?”
Reina detested the interruption, but better Nico than Tristan. “Doing what?”
“Rhodes should have spoken by now,” Nico said, sliding Libby a glance. She blinked, surprised, and then Nico turned his attention back to the others, peering suspiciously at Tristan, Parisa, and Callum. “Someone convinced her not to. Who was it?”
Tristan glanced at Parisa.
“Wow, thanks,” she said drily. “That’s not obvious.” “Well, you can hardly blame me for—”
“It’s not me,” Parisa snapped, irritated now, and Reina fought a smile. Not only was the Tristan-Parisa alliance
cracking early, but now it was obvious what Parisa’s
specialty was: she could either read minds or emotions. “One of you can influence behavior,” Nico accused,
adding blisteringly, “Don’t.” There was only one option left.
One by one, they gradually turned their attention to Callum, who sighed.
“Relax,” he said, crossing one leg listlessly over the other. “She was anxious. I turned it down.”
Libby blinked, suddenly furious. “How dare you—”
“Rhodes,” Nico said. “The air’s too dry for this kind of volatility.”
“Shut up, Varona—”
“So you’re an empath,” said Reina, glancing at Callum, “and that means…” A glance at Parisa. “You can read
minds,” she guessed, determining it unlikely that a society claiming to be the most advanced of its kind would invite
two pairs of identical specialties.
“Not anymore,” Parisa said with a glare at Tristan. “They’ve all got shields up now.”
“No one can hold that for long,” Tristan said, looking
suspiciously at Callum. “Especially if we’re going to have to guard our emotions, too.”
“This is ridiculous,” Libby said, having successfully forced out Callum’s influence by then. “Listen, I’m the last person
to ever say Varona’s doing anything reasonable—”
“Who?” said Callum, who was probably being difficult on purpose.
“I… Nico, then, whatever—the point is,” Libby exhaled impatiently, “we’ll never get anything done if we’re all
trying to protect ourselves from each other. I came here to
learn, for fuck’s sake!” she snapped, which Reina was exceedingly relieved to hear. Libby may have been annoying, but at least she wasn’t afraid to insist on
something genuinely important. Her priorities, unlike everyone else’s, were in the right place.
“I absolutely refuse,” Libby huffed, “to exhaust my magic just to keep you lot out of my head!”
“Fine,” said Callum lazily. “I promise not to put any of you at ease, then.”
“Hey,” Nico snapped. “She’s not wrong. I’d like to have some autonomy to my sentience too, thanks.”
Tristan and Parisa seemed to agree, though they weren’t ready to say so.
“Surely we shouldn’t have to explain to an empath why none of us want our emotions toyed with,” Libby insisted.
Callum waved an indolent hand. “Just because I happen to know what your feelings are doesn’t mean I waste time trying to understand them, but fine. I’ll behave if she will,” he added with a sly glance at Parisa, who glared back.
“I don’t influence anyone,” she said, irritated. “Not magically, anyway. Because I’m not an asshole.”
Sure you’re not, thought Reina loudly, prompting Parisa to yet another scowl.
In the absence of any further discussion, the three remaining members had turned to Tristan, whom Reina realized belatedly was the last to reveal his specialty.
“I—” He stiffened, unhappily cornered. “I’m a type of illusionist.”
“Yeah, so am I,” replied Callum, a doubtful drawl. “A bit of a blanket term, isn’t it?”
“Wait a minute,” Parisa said, suddenly recalling something. “Your name is Callum Nova, isn’t it? Of the illusionist Novas?”
The others in the room sat up slightly, expressing interest that even Reina couldn’t prevent. The Nova Corporation was a global media conglomerate who secretly or not-so-secretly specialized in illusions; they were dominant in both the mortal and medeian industries, most adept within the industry of cosmetics and beauty. They were fascinating not only for their products, but for their cutthroat business practices. They had put several smaller companies out of business by repeatedly undermining medeian statutes about how much magic could be used in mortal products.
Not that that was the reason Reina was interested at that particular moment. Rather, she had realized that Parisa was probably piecing together the fact that she’d overlooked the person in the room with the most money, and that brought Reina so much satisfaction the weeping fig in the corner
joyfully sprouted fruit.
“Yes, I’m a Nova,” Callum said, not taking his eyes from Tristan, who had still not confessed to anything. “Though, as you’ve clearly pieced together, illusions aren’t particularly my life’s work.”
“Fine,” growled Tristan. “I can see through illusions.” Immediately, Libby’s hand rose somewhere to her cheek,
and Tristan sighed.
“Yes, I can see it,” he said. “It’s just a zit. Relax.”
Then Tristan’s attention traveled slowly back to Callum, who stiffened in apprehension. Delightful, Reina thought.
The only thing better would be if Tristan informed them that wasn’t Parisa’s real nose.
“I won’t tell them if you won’t,” Tristan said to Callum.
For a moment, the air in the room was so tense that even the plants grew wary.
Then, abruptly, Callum laughed.
“Let’s keep it between us, then,” he agreed, reaching out to clap a hand around Tristan’s shoulder. “Better to let them wonder.”
So there was an us and them now. That was considerably less delightful.
MotherMotherMother, the ivy in the corner whispered with a shudder of consternation, joined by the hissing sound from the nearby fig plant.
Mother is angry, whimpered the philodendron. She is angry, OhnoOhnoOhno—
“—’s no point fighting about this,” Libby was saying, as Reina quietly engaged a deep inhale, hoping not to spur any nearby greenery to mutiny. “Regardless of what we think about each other, we still have to formulate some sort of
security plan, so—”
But before Libby Rhodes could come to any sort of bossy conclusion, there was a low, loud, percussive gong, and the door to the painted room flew open, the house itself
seeming to beckon them down the hall.
“Guess we’ll have to formulate later,” said Callum, rising to his feet and striding forward before waiting to hear what the end of Libby’s sentence would have been.
Behind him, Tristan and Parisa exchanged a glance and followed; Nico rose to his feet, beckoning Libby with a grimace. She, however, hesitated in frustration, then turned her attention to Reina instead.
“So, listen,” Libby began, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I know I must have sounded rude before, what with that thing I said about you being a naturalist, but I was only—”
“We don’t have to be friends,” Reina said bluntly, cutting her off. Obviously Libby was about to extend some sort of
olive branch, but Reina had enough actual branches to
contend with without dragging any metaphorical ones into the picture. She certainly had no interest in making friends; all she wanted from this experience was to gain as much access to the Society’s archives as she could.
Though she didn’t want to close any doors, either.
“We just have to be better than them,” Reina pointed out gruffly, gesturing with her chin to the other three, and that, at least, Libby seemed to grasp.
“Understood,” she said, and then, gratifyingly, she
followed Nico out the door without waiting, leaving Reina to trail behind alone while the painted room’s plants mourned her loss.
NICO
MUCH AS NICO RESENTED every syllable of what was about to come out of his mouth, he doubted there was any alternative.
“Listen,” he said to Libby, dropping his voice. “I need this to work.”
Naturally she was defensive before anything else. “Varona,” she began, “might I remind you that you’re not the only one here who has something to prove—”
“Rhodes, spare me the lecture. I need access,” he told her. “Specific access, though I don’t know what specifically yet. I just need to make sure I can get into as many of the Society’s archives as possible.”
“Why?”
She had such a tireless capacity for suspicion when it came to him. Sure, he could tell her that most research
existing about the offspring of creatures was either ancient and lost or illegal and not particularly in-depth, but he didn’t really want to get into it. Those were Gideon’s secrets, not his.
“I just do,” he said, and before Libby could open her mouth again, he hastily interrupted. “I’m just trying to tell you that I’m willing to do whatever it takes to move on.”
“Nico, if you’re trying to intimidate me—”
“I’m not—” He broke off, frustrated. “Rhodes. For fuck’s sake, I’m trying to work with you.”
“Since when?”
For such a smart girl, she could be really stupid.
“Since I noticed the older three are already picking
teams,” he hissed, gesturing ahead to where Tristan and Parisa had caught up with Callum.
Gradually, understanding began to dawn on Libby’s face. “You want to be some sort of alliance, you mean?”
“You heard what Atlas said. We’re doing physical magics first,” Nico reminded her. “You and I are going to be better at that than everyone else.”
“Except maybe Reina,” Libby said, glancing
apprehensively over her shoulder. “I can’t quite get a read on her, though.”
“Whether she is or she isn’t, it doesn’t matter. Rhodes, we’re already at a disadvantage,” he pointed out. “There’s two of us and one each of them. If anyone’s going to get eliminated, one of us is the natural choice.”
She chewed her lip. “So what are you suggesting?” “That we work together.” Unheard of for them,
considering their mutual enmity, but he hoped she wouldn’t take too firm a hand with that particularly dead horse. “We can do more that way, anyway.” Astounding that it had
taken graduating from NYUMA for them to believe their professors, who had insisted as much for years. “We just can’t give the others a reason to think either of us is expendable, that’s all.”
“If anyone’s going to try and make me look expendable, it’s you,” she pointed out, and Nico sighed.
“Don’t be petulant. I’m trying to be mature.” Or something. “At the very least, I’m being pragmatic.”
She considered it. “But what if an alliance with you isn’t in my best interest? I mean, if you do prove to be useless—”
“I am not and have never been useless,” Nico sniffed, “but fine. We’ll be a team so long as it’s in both our best interests, how’s that?”
“And what will we do when it isn’t?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Libby hummed in thought again, half-sighing.
“I suppose they are a bunch of snobs,” she muttered, and added, “And I do sort of already hate Callum.”
“Try not to,” Nico advised. “Empaths can do a lot with strong emotions.”
“Don’t mansplain empaths to me.” A predictable response, but he could see her starting to concede. “It just seems so ridiculous that we can’t all work together,” Libby muttered, half to herself. “I mean, what is the point of
having so much talent in the room if nobody’s willing to see where that takes us?”
Nico shrugged. “Maybe they’ll get over it.”
“Ah yes, because that so frequently happens,” Libby grumbled, toying in agitation with her bangs.
She was definitely on the edge of agreement. Nico waited, prompting her to get on with her internal calculations, and she rolled her eyes.
“Fine,” she conceded grumpily—which Nico reminded himself was not annoying, because it was what he’d wanted and, furthermore, it proved him right. “We’re allies until we’re not, then. Which I assume will be any moment.”
“Love the enthusiasm, Rhodes,” said Nico, and she
grunted something derogatory in response, the two of them finally arriving in the dining room.
Alliances aside, Nico was feeling quite confident, though he could see Libby was having the opposite reaction. Yes,
she had been targeted outright by Callum (a predictable breed of asshole if Nico had ever seen one) and she was much too fragile to contend with Reina’s lofty disinterest in her, but that was only because it was in Libby’s personal moral code to fret pointlessly about things she couldn’t control.
Once she had the opportunity to prove herself, she wouldn’t be nearly so mouseish; that much Nico knew from experience. Elizabeth Rhodes was a lot of things, most of them unhelpful, but restrained when it came to her abilities was not even remotely one of them. For once, the chip on Libby’s shoulder would probably serve him well.
The sooner she had a chance to be tested, the better, Nico thought grimly, observing over dinner that Callum,
Tristan, and Parisa were obviously deluding themselves into thinking that being secretive and more experienced made them into some sort of exclusive club. He almost regretted finding Parisa so attractive, though it was hardly the first
time he’d taken a liking to a girl whose primary quality was her inability to be impressed.
Thankfully, dinner was brief. Tomorrow, Dalton informed them at the end of their meal, would be their first full day. Tonight, they would merely be taken to their rooms to get some rest.
Dalton led them back to the long corridor past the gallery, where each of their names were carved into small placards beside the doors.
“It’s like boarding school all over again,” murmured Callum to Parisa, though of course none of the others could relate. Nico could, given that he’d been sent to New England from Havana the moment his medeian status had been cemented, but he, at least, was conscious enough of his wealth not to point to it. NYUMA had been populated with
plenty of students like Libby or Gideon who had gone through mortal schooling most of their lives; coming from magical money, as both Nico and Max had done, wasn’t
something to boast about unless one wanted to be
immediately mistrusted and disliked. For someone who could apparently feel the emotions of others, Callum
seemed dreadfully out of touch.
“Speak for yourself,” muttered Parisa back to Callum, proving Nico correct, though Callum merely smirked at her.
“You’re all adults,” Dalton said, catching wind of their muted conversation, “so there are no rules. Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“No rules?” Tristan echoed, glancing at Libby as if he expected her to faint at the news, which was certainly an
accurate assessment of her character. She had always had a bit of a look to her as if she might immediately report any wrongdoing; that she was currently dressed like a page from the spring catalogue for school prefects (square-neck cardigan, pleated skirt, ballet flats) certainly didn’t help.
“You can’t bring anyone else into the house,” said Dalton, as an apparent amendment. “But as it would be near impossible to accomplish anyway, I don’t bother
including it as a caveat.”
“Do you live here as well?” asked Parisa.
“On the grounds,” Dalton confirmed evasively. “If there’s any sort of problem—” Libby chirped.
“This is not a school,” Dalton clarified again, “and as such, there is no headmaster to alert in the event that any of you find yourselves dissatisfied. If there is indeed a problem, it belongs to the six of you collectively. Anything else?”
Nothing.
“Very well, goodnight,” said Dalton, as the six of them wandered off to find their rooms.
Much like the house itself, the bedrooms were incredibly English, each room occupied by identical four-poster beds, reasonably sized desks and wardrobes, and a single vacant
bookshelf. Nico’s room, which was the first door on the left, was beside Callum’s and across from Reina’s. Libby looked uneasy as she made her way to the end of the hall with Tristan, which Nico supposed was unsurprising. She had a great fear of being disliked, and he doubted Tristan had ever truly liked anyone. Thus far, Nico’s decision to ally himself with Libby wasn’t a promising sign for his popularity in the house, but if the situation ever called for changing teams,
he was confident he could manage it. Besides, better to be the most tolerable option of the three physical specialties than to be the hanger-on to the other three.
Nico wasted little time getting to bed. For one thing, Gideon had promised to visit, and for another, his power was reliant almost entirely on his physical state. In general, magic was a physical exertion; there was a certain degree of sweat involved, and recovery between bouts of use was a
necessity. Nico likened it to the mortal Olympics: someone with natural aptitude could manage the fundamentals of their own specialty quite easily, perhaps without even
breaking a sweat, but to win a gold medal required
extensive training. As for other specialties outside one’s own, more of the same. You could certainly attempt to
succeed in every Olympic sport, but you could just as easily kill yourself trying. Only someone very foolish or very
talented would attempt as much as Nico de Varona had attempted.
Luckily, he was both troublingly talented and exceedingly unwise.
“This was extremely difficult,” remarked Gideon, manifesting in Nico’s head somewhere in the midst of
whatever he’d been dreaming before, which he could not now remember. He seemed to be inside some sort of interminable jail cell now, reclining on a narrow cot with Gideon on the other side of the bars.
“Wherever you’ve gone,” Gideon said, “it’s a fortress.” Nico glanced around, frowning. “Is it?”
“I can’t actually get through,” Gideon said, gesturing to the bars. “And I had to leave Max outside.”
“Outside where?”
“Oh, one of the realms.” They had tried mapping them in college, but it was difficult. Realms of thought were hard enough to grasp, and the realms of the subconscious were extensive and labyrinthine, ever-changing. “He’ll be fine. I’m sure he’s sleeping.”
Nico rose to his feet, approaching the bars. “I didn’t
realize it’d be so difficult.” On second thought, though, he probably should have.
“There are a lot of defensive wards up,” Gideon said. “More than I would expect.”
“Even mental ones?”
“Especially mental ones.” Gideon plucked something in
the air like a guitar string. “See that? Someone over there is a telepath.”
Parisa, probably, if what Tristan implied was correct, though Nico doubted that particular ward was her doing. It must have been a thread within a larger shield against
telepathy, which made sense. Not every variety of theft required a corporeal form of entry.
He glanced up, looking for a camera (or the iteration of one), and spotted it in the corner.
“Well,” Nico said, pointing to it. “Try not to say anything too incriminating.”
Gideon looked over his shoulder, shrugging. “I haven’t got much to say, to tell you the truth.” A pause, and then, “Avez-vous des problèmes? Tout va bien?”
“Si, estoy bien, no te preocupes.” Anyone watching could probably translate, but that wasn’t really the point. “I
suppose we shouldn’t do this too often, then.”
Gideon inclined his head in apparent agreement. “You’re not properly sleeping when I’m here,” he pointed out. “And judging by this place’s security, you’re going to need all your energy.”
“Yes,” Nico sighed, “probably.” “Is Libby there?”
“Yes, somewhere.” He grimaced. “Though you’re not supposed to know that.”
“Well, it was more of a lucky guess, really.” Gideon tilted his head. “You’re being nice to her, aren’t you?”
“I’m always nice. And don’t tell me what to do.” Gideon’s smile broadened.
“Tu me manques,” he said. “Max hasn’t noticed you’re gone, of course.”
“Of course not.” A pause. “Y yo también.” “Strange without you around.”
“I know.” Not really. It didn’t feel real yet, but it would soon. “Is it quiet, at least?”
“Yes, and I don’t like quiet,” Gideon said. “Makes me suspect my mother’s going to surface from the garbage disposal.”
“She won’t, we had a talk.” “Did you?”
“Well, she surprised me in the bath,” said Nico. “Still, I’d say she’s fairly well persuaded.” Or something close enough, he thought grimly.
“Nicolás,” Gideon sighed, “déjate.” “I’m only trying to h-”
He broke off as the bars warped, Gideon’s face disappearing. He opened his eyes to jarring darkness, someone shaking him awake.
“There’s someone here,” said a voice he didn’t recognize for a moment, and Nico groggily struggled to sit upright.
“What? It’s just my friend, he’s not—”
“Not in your head.” It was Reina’s voice, he realized,
adjusting to make out the general shape of her face in the dark. “There’s someone in the house.”
“How do you—”
“There are plants in every room. They woke me.” She was using a tone that sounded like stop talking. “Someone is trying to get inside, if they aren’t here already.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know,” she said, brows creased. “Something.”
Nico reached over, pressing a hand to the floor to feel the wood pulse beneath his palm.
“Vibrations,” he said. “There’s definitely someone here.” “I know that. I told you.”
Well, better if he could take care of it alone, or close to alone. Reina had probably done him a favor waking him first.
Ah, but he’d said he wouldn’t do things alone.
“Wake Rhodes,” Nico said on second thought, rising to his feet. “She’s in the last—”
“The last room on the right, I know.” Reina was gone quickly, without asking questions. Nico crept out into the house, listening for a moment. Libby was better at listening; she was more attuned to waves of things, usually sound and speed, so he gave up and started feeling instead. He could sense the disruption from somewhere downstairs.
The middle door opened, revealing Parisa in the frame. “You’re thinking very loudly,” she informed him with
palpable distaste, as Libby emerged from her room. “Shouldn’t we wake—”
“What’s going on?” demanded Callum, bursting from his door.
“Someone’s in the house,” said Nico.
“Who?” said Libby and Callum in unison. “Someone,” replied Nico and Reina.
“Many someones,” Parisa corrected. She was holding a hand to the wall. “There are at least three compromised access points.”
“She’s right,” said Reina.
“I know I’m right,” Parisa growled.
“Has anyone woken Tristan?” asked Libby, looking predictably fretful.
“You do it,” said Parisa, disinterestedly.
“No,” Nico said. “Rhodes is coming with me.” “What?” said Libby, Parisa, and Callum.
“You heard me,” said Nico, gesturing for Libby to follow. “Reina, wake Tristan and tell him to follow. Rhodes, stay
close.”
She gave him a glare of don’t boss me around, but he had already started moving.
A good thing he had, too. It was almost immediate from the time they emerged onto the gallery landing.
“Get down,” Nico hissed, tugging Libby to the floor as something shot overhead, aimed from the entry hall up to the vaulted landing of the second floor. It was much larger than a bullet, so probably not deadly. Something for
temporary immobilization, most likely, which most magical weapons tended to be. But they were expensive, and not particularly useful when fired up at an unknown target, which gave Nico pause.
“Probably a test,” said Callum, in something of a low drawl. “Some tactic to scare us into working together.”
Possible, Nico thought, though he didn’t particularly want to agree with Callum aloud.
“Cover me,” he said to Libby.
“Fine,” she said, grimacing. “Keep your head down.”
Every year, NYUMA held a tournament for the physical specialties; something akin to a game of capture the flag, but with fewer rules and more allowances. He and Libby had never been on the same team, almost always facing off in
the final round, but all the games were essentially the same: someone attacked while someone else covered.
Nico rose to his feet while Libby conjured a thin bubble of protection around him, manipulating the molecular structure of the air in their immediate vicinity. The world was mostly entropy and chaos; magic, then, was order, because it was control. Nico and Libby could change the materials around them; they could take the universe’s compulsion to fill a vacuum and bend it, warp it, alter it. The fact that they were natural energy sources, twin storage units for massive electrical charge, meant they could not only harness the energy required for an explosion, but they could clear a path of least resistance for it, too.
Still, even batteries had their limits. Single combat was an excellent way to waste a lot of time and energy, so Nico opted to cast a wider net. He altered the direction of friction in the room, sending the entry room’s occupants into the furthest wall; helpfully, a thin tendril of plants crept out to
twine around them, holding fast.
“Thanks Reina,” said Nico, exhaling as he returned the balance of force in the room.
Libby’s shield bubble dissipated. “Is that all?” she asked.
“No,” said Parisa. “There’s someone in the east wing—”
“And the library,” said Reina, before amending irritably, “the painted room.”
“Which one?” demanded Callum.
“Are you planning to be useful at all?” Reina countered, glaring.
“If I felt there was any need to be concerned, I probably would be,” replied Callum. “As it is, why waste the effort?”
“What’s going on?” asked Tristan, who had apparently managed the decency to join them.
“Blakely’s testing us,” said Callum.
“You don’t know that,” Libby said. Beneath the gallery corridor, the sound of further entry was imminent, and she had her brows knitted in concentration. “It might be real.”
“What do you want me to do with these?” Reina asked, pointing to the men wriggling within the vines of their
captivity.
“Well,” Parisa said, impatient, “seeing as we don’t want them in the house—”
“Varona, do you hear that?”
Before Nico could retort that yes, Rhodes, if she could hear it, he could obviously hear it just as well, there was a strange, disorienting ringing from inside his ears; it filled his mind with a vacant whiteness, blinding him behind closed eyes.
He vaguely felt a sharp sting of some kind, like the entry wound of a needle. Something stung his shoulder and he
wanted to swat it away, only the screech of white that somehow filled his ears and eyes was debilitating;
paralyzing. He felt a pressure inside his head that
threatened to fill the space, like a rapidly expanding tumor.
Then the ringing faded, just enough that he could open his eyes, and he saw that Libby was speaking, or trying to. Varona, her mouth was saying, Varona, it’s a way!
Way? No, not a way.
He blinked, his vision clearing. A wave.
That helped. He tried to raise his right hand and faltered from pain, switching to the left to take hold of the particle of sound and aim it, like a whip, until it cracked. Libby, now
freed the effort of dragging him from the sound wave’s immobilizing effect, extinguished it with a spark.
“—can’t be a test,” she finished, and Nico realized the pain in his shoulder was much more than a sting. The wound was slick with blood, and as far as he could tell, that didn’t
typically happen with magical weapons.
“That,” Libby was saying with horror, “is not a fake injury!”
“It’s a gunshot wound,” observed Parisa. “Whoever they are, they must not be magical.”
Made sense, even if the first shot had been some type of magic; certain forms could be easily provided to a buyer with enough money, and medeians were rare enough that
sending in a group of them would probably be a waste. Guns were cheaper and perfectly effective; case in point. Nico
growled with annoyance, clotting his blood with a wave of his hand.
“But this can’t be the Society’s doing,” Libby protested. “Surely we’re supposed to do something!”
“There’s at least one medeian here,” Nico gritted through his teeth, struggling to rise. He wasn’t going to bother with easing the pain, as that would only require more energy than he could spare at the moment. It wasn’t a lethal wound by any means, and he would heal it later. “We should split up, I think. I can take care of the rest if Rhodes looks for the medeian.”
“The rest?” echoed Callum, doubtful. “That’s a mess you’ve got on your shoulder. It’s not a pistol, it’s an
automatic rifle. You could be dealing with military special ops.”
“Thank you ever so,” replied Nico crassly, as another
round was fired from below. He knew perfectly well what he was dealing with, which was precisely the point. “They wouldn’t bother arming a bunch of medeians with AKs,” he shouted over the sound of weaponry, “just like they wouldn’t send in mortals without magical oversight.” If it was a military task force of some sort, they were probably being commanded by a medeian. “And if he’s good at waves, Rhodes will hear him coming.”
“Then we should split up,” said Parisa, who was at least very coolheaded.
“Yes, good idea. You stay with me,” Nico suggested to her, “Rhodes can take Tristan, and Reina can go with—”
“I’ll stay,” said Reina.
“What?” said Callum and Libby.
Reina seemed undeterred. “Nico’s the one taking on more people. I have combat experience.”
Nico glanced at her. “You do?”
“Well, I trained in hand to hand combat,” she amended, which sounded an awful lot as if she had merely read a lot of books on the subject. “Besides, you lot seem to think I’m useless at my specialty, don’t you?”
“We don’t really have a lot of time to argue,” Libby pointed out, cutting in before anyone else could speak.
“Parisa, take Callum,” she said; anything, Nico guessed, to get out of going with Callum herself, “and Varona’s right, Tristan can come with me.”
“Fine,” said Parisa flatly. “I can find the medeian in the house.”
“Good, and we’ll check the access points—”
That was about as much Nico had the patience to discuss when it came to logistics. By then his arm had gone a little numb, probably because his mind was leaping ahead to the prospect of fending off intruders.
He had been very, very good at the physicist tournament. Voted MVP four years running, in fact, and as good as Libby may or may not have been (fine—she was, but still), she had never once beaten him. Nico had a taste
for adrenaline, and besides, he had to see someone about a bullet wound. In his not-so-humble opinion, he was rather
richly owed.
“Come on,” Nico called to Reina, leaping atop the gallery’s bannister and beckoning her after him into the hail
of gunfire below, shielding himself with a hand outstretched. “Meet you down there.”
“Varona,” Libby sighed, “you do realize there are stairs
—”
He wasn’t listening. Shots were fired, surprise surprise,
but he was ready for them now. He slipped one as easily as he might have ducked a punch, catching the uniform that
suggested he’d been right; this was some sort of military task force. Fun! Exciting. All of them against him; how terribly unfortunate they hadn’t thought to bring a party
twice as large. He curled the floor in slightly, funneling them all into an invisible drain. Better that way, to see how many. He counted six and smiled to himself, returning the floors to how they’d been. The gunmen stumbled, then shot towards him.
It was Reina, to Nico’s surprise, who took aim first,
sending a bolt of something very crude but very fast into
the chest of an oncoming gunman. It knocked the wind out of the gunman, sending the butt of his rifle flying into the
face of his comrade. By the sound of his swearing, Nico guessed American, maybe CIA. That, he thought with a
shiver of anticipation, would be very exciting indeed. He had never been important enough to merit assassination before.
More shots were fired, which certainly wouldn’t do; one bullet wound was plenty. After waiting a moment to take the impact through a temporary shield of his making, Nico took hold of the nearest gunman and aimed him in a circle,
prompting the others to launch themselves behind the
aristocratic furniture for cover. A little tug of gravity out from under them sent them floating in slow motion, the rifles
drifting from their hands. Nico summoned their weapons and disassembled them with a single, explosive blow,
sending the components flying like shrapnel as the ordinary forces in the room returned.
There, he thought. Now let’s really have a fight.
Reina seemed to be managing well enough with hand-to- hand combat; Nico caught a glimpse of her from the corner of his eye. She moved like a bull, attack after attack, and
the force of her blows remained unfinished but heavy, unmistakable. He was a bit more finessed, more agile. The first gunman, now armed with a small utility knife, came for him with a blind overhand right hook, which Nico happily ducked, sending the gunman stumbling with a loud slur of profanity.
That, Nico thought, was certainly British English. CIA and
MI6, perhaps?
How flattering.
Reina handled two of the gunmen, landing a hard but
accessible shot to immobilize one thigh while Nico narrowed the remaining four men to three, twisting the gunman’s
knife around for a blow to the kidney. He brought three to
two with some tricky shots to the head, dazzling with a few careless jabs before shooting upwards with an uppercut,
snapping the gunman’s neck back. All it took was a little precision to guide his non-dominant, uninjured hand.
It made sense, really, that whoever was trying to break into the Society would not have sent an entire company of
medeians. Surely they knew what sort of security measures they were trying to breach, and a pack of special operatives could conceivably do just as much damage without
sacrificing a drop of valuable magical blood. Yes, they would have to be accompanied by a medeian to break the security wards, but nobody Nico was facing now was dangerous unless he allowed them to be. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he wasn’t particularly in the mood to be killed.
The two remaining gunmen weren’t stupid. They attacked side by side, making Nico the point of an isosceles triangle; a basic tenet of two-on-one combat, and therefore easy enough to predict. As was Nico’s decision to force them into an Orion’s belt, sprinting towards one while firing a blast of force at the other. For Nico, magic was merely an augmentation of his natural aptitude; he was sure-footed,
well-balanced, compact and quick without any help from his powers, which would need to be preserved as much as possible. He could waste it, ending the fight sooner and
requiring more time to recover, but he knew better than to do something short-sighted. These men may not have been magical, but someone here was, and they would surely
prove it soon enough. Nico intended to be ready when they did.
He used only enough to give his blows the equivalency of electrocution, sending one gunman (now fully disarmed with the help of a summoning charm and the burying of the
gunman’s own knife into the muscle of his quadricep)
stumbling backwards, temporarily immobilized, while the other shot forward, missing Nico by an inch.
Nico, regaining control of the gunman’s knife, slipped just in time to avoid a shot aimed for his wounded shoulder
—which, he supposed, was a bit of a giveaway as a pressure point, seeing as it was currently covered in blood. Luckily, his reflexive counter led his opponent directly to the spot of difficulty he’d hoped for, and his next slip, calculated to intercept the gunman barreling forward from behind him,
caused the second gunman to make contact with the first. Then he felt a little rumble underfoot; a warning, and a reminder that these were not the only intruders left in the
house. Caught between the final two, Nico loosened the pull of gravity again to levitate himself parallel to the ground,
slitting one’s carotid with the knife in his hand while aiming the arch of his foot into the sternum of another. The final gunman took the effect of Nico’s kick like a blow to his heart, halting mid-gasp and collapsing just as Reina drove a blade into the side of her assailant’s head.
Nico was about to turn and whoop—to congratulate her with a hand on her shoulder for having done slightly more than read a book—when he felt the unsettling sound enter his head again; this time, the dial had been turned so high he rose off the ground, floating in full-bodied paralysis.
Was that all this medeian could do? Waves? He supposed there was a reason only six of them had been chosen for the Society; not every medeian had both power and skill. This
one seemed to have only one talent. In the medeian’s defense, though, it was a highly useful talent, and Nico was rendered instantaneously weak, having bled copious amounts during all the moments he wasn’t concentrating on clotting the wound to his shoulder. If he hadn’t already
made such an expenditure of effort, this would have been no trouble at all to resist. He could overpower most medeians on strength alone, but not while he was crucially injured.
Still, it would have to be done. It would hurt, but it would have to be done.
Nico summoned what remained in the reserves of his abilities, half-exhausting himself in the process, and was
surprised by a little spark; a jolt, somewhere in the unfeeling palm of his hand. It was a rush of something, like an electrical current, and Nico felt it leave him in a burst; an expulsion with the force of a gasp and the volume of a scream.
It had to have been Reina, but he couldn’t think about what had caused it just then. He had seconds before the medeian conjured another sound wave, so he shoved a cluster of magic—power, energy, force, whatever anyone wanted to call it—directly into the body of the waiting medeian.
The sound of his shot meeting its target was a woman’s cry of pain, and Nico cleared the fog and dust from the air, waiting until he and Reina could both clearly see her.
“Well,” Nico said to Reina, glancing at the medeian who was struggling to her feet. “Do you want to go first, or
should I?”
He wasn’t particularly surprised when Reina smiled grimly, taking a step forward.
“I’m sure there’s room for both of us,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder as Nico gladly summoned what
sparked from his veins.
TRISTAN
SOMEWHERE, TRISTAN CAUGHT THE SOUND of a deafening
explosion, followed by the unmistakable whoop of Nico de Varona’s laughter.
He was enjoying this, Tristan thought with disgust. When they’d last left Nico behind, gunshot wound and all, his steps had been so careless and at ease he looked like he was dancing, slipping between gunshots; as if gravity itself worked differently for him, which it probably did. Tristan hadn’t known anyone with the broad specialty of ‘physicist’ before, finding that most physical medeians had the narrowest fields of skill. With immense power typically came the ability to influence only certain things: Levitation.
Incandescence. Force. Speed. Tristan hadn’t known it was possible for someone to be capable of all of that, and, by the looks of it, possibly even more. Physical magics were
draining enough that Nico should have been exhausted by now, but he wasn’t.
He was laughing. He was enjoying this, and meanwhile, Tristan was going to be sick.
In Tristan’s mind, he had accepted the easier job; he was only going to ‘secure the perimeter,’ or whatever this sort of activity could be called. If anyone was going to shoot at anything, he reasoned privately, it was going to be all those guns aimed at Nico, whom Tristan hadn’t particularly liked to begin with. He knew the type—loud, showy, full of meritless bravado, like most of his father’s gang of witches. They all
had violent streaks they barely concealed with a slavish devotion to rugby, and Tristan had assumed Nico was one of those. Young, brash, and prone to fights he couldn’t win.
Apparently Tristan was wrong. Nico could not only win, he could also do it with a gunshot wound to the shoulder of his dominant hand.
Even more alarmingly, he wasn’t the only one who could.
It was with immense reluctance that Tristan had initially agreed to split off with Libby, who had been little more than an irritation that Tristan suspected of being too insecure to last a day. Only chivalry (or something akin to it) had kept him from wandering off instead with Callum and Parisa, who had taken a left turn based on something the latter could
read in the house’s mind. Tristan had thought, Well, someone’s going to have to keep an eye on the poor little annoying girl, or how else would she survive having no one to answer her thousand questions?
But then, of course, he’d been blindsided by a pack of what appeared to be spies with guns, and he was now
having to rely on said annoying girl much more heavily than he cared to admit.
“Get down,” Libby snapped as another gun fired, this time from somewhere behind them. It was, at least, a refreshing change of pace from her usual apprehensive
mumbling. If there was one thing to be relieved about given all this, it was that Libby Rhodes was far more capable than she looked.
Tristan was beginning to regret not befriending any of
the three physical specialties. Nico would have been ideal, given that he seemed to be a powerhouse of energy. The
magic radiating from him was more refined than any Tristan had ever seen, and he’d seen quite a lot in his capacity as an investment analyst. He’d met with medeians claiming to power entire plants with the equivalent of nuclear energy
who didn’t have the raw talent Nico had, and who certainly didn’t have his control. It occurred to Tristan, unhappily, that Libby and Nico may have come off as the least threatening for being the youngest and least experienced, but he
suddenly doubted they were as juvenile as they seemed. He wished now that he hadn’t drawn a line between him and
the others, because he doubted it would be easy to un-draw.
It was all an unpleasant reminder that Tristan’s father, a witch capable of moderate levels of physical magic, had always considered Tristan a failure. From the start, Tristan had been slow to show any signs of magic, barely able to qualify for medeian status when he reached his teenage
years. An unsurprising outcome, considering they had spent so many years before that concerned he wasn’t even a witch.
Was that why he’d chosen to do this? Atlas Blakely had told Tristan he was rare and special and therefore he’d thought yes, fine, time to drop everything I spent years tirelessly cultivating in order to prove to my estranged father that I, too, can do something wildly unsafe?
“Do you know any combat spells?” Libby panted, giving Tristan a look that suggested he was the most useless person she’d ever met. At the moment, he suspected he might have been.
“I’m… not good with physicalities,” he managed to say, ducking another shot. These men seemed to be different from the group Nico had taken on in the drawing room, but they were definitely also outfitted with automatic weapons. Tristan didn’t know prodigious amounts about the intersect of magic and tech in warfare, seeing as James Wessex had chosen to handle any matters of weapons technology himself, but he suspected these were mortals using
magically enhanced scopes.
“Yes, fine,” Libby replied, clearly impatient, “but are you
—”
She broke off before something he suspected to be the
word useful.
Which, as Adrian Caine had always made an effort to point out, Tristan had never been.
“Just come on,” she said in frustration, pulling him after her. “Stay behind me.”
This, Tristan thought, was a mildly infuriating turn of events. For one thing, he didn’t have a lot of experience
being shot at. This was supposed to be an academic fellowship, for fuck’s sake; he hadn’t expected his time in the Alexandrian archives to involve ducking behind the closest piece of gaudy furniture he could find.
He could have stayed at Wessex Corp and never been shot at in his entire life. He could have simply told Atlas Blakely to shove it and gone on holiday with his fiancée; he could be having vigorous, herculean sex right now, waking up to discuss the future of the company with his billionaire father-in-law over an expertly blended Bloody Mary. Did it matter that Eden was a tiresome adulteress or that James was a capitalist tyrant if it meant never having to break a sweat aside from a drunken family game of badminton?
At the moment, it was unclear.
Libby, at least, was starting to take some initiative with her defense, having discarded any further hesitation in favor of survival. Whoever had broken in, they were covered head to toe in black and moving acrobatically around the room, like a small pack of ninjas. That felt like a childish thing to say, but there it was: there were three or four ninja-things
coming after them, and Tristan couldn’t think of the first thing to do. There was so much magic in the room it was difficult to see anything but hazy, translucent leaks.
Libby turned and aimed at something; an expulsion of power that was directed at nothing.
“You missed,” he said, a muttered I-told-you-so moment that he would have decorously avoided if not for how
potentially life-threatening all this was, and she glared at him.
“I didn’t miss!”
“You absolutely did,” he said through his teeth, pointing. “You missed by about five feet.”
“But he’s down, he’s—”
Hell on earth, was she blind? He should have stayed with Nico. “What are you talking about? You might have broken a lamp, fine, but it’s only Edwardian—”
“I didn’t—” Libby broke off, blinking. “You’re saying there’s nothing there?”
“Of course there’s nothing there,” he growled in frustration, “it’s—”
Bloody Christ; was he stupid?
“It’s an illusion,” Tristan realized aloud, scowling at his own failure to see the obvious, and then, without any further wasted time, he took hold of Libby’s shoulders and aimed her, pointing.
“Right there, see it? Straight ahead.”
She fired again, this time setting off a round of bullets by stopping their progression mid-air and instigating mass combustion. The gunman was blown backwards, the air littered with shrapnel, and the force of the explosion set off a momentary fog of smoke. Libby was frightfully incendiary, which Tristan suspected was something to conserve as much as it was a timely relief. It was probably going to cost her the same amount of energy as whatever Nico had been
doing downstairs, so best not to fire incautiously while they didn’t know how many others they would still face.
“What does the room look like to you?” he asked in her ear, trying to concentrate as the smoke cleared. All he could make out were flares, torrents of magic.
“I don’t know… dozens of them, at least,” she said, grimacing. He could see she was battling frustration; for
someone with her obvious control problems, the presence of illusions must have been particularly nightmarish. “The room’s crawling with them.”
“There’s only three left,” Tristan told her, “but don’t waste energy. Let me see if I can find the medeian who’s casting the illusions.”
Libby gritted her teeth. “Hurry up!”
Fair enough. He lifted his head to glance around, trying to determine who, if anyone, was doing the casting. He
couldn’t see any indication of magic being produced, though he did spot a bullet—a real one; Libby must have not been
able to tell it from the illusioned ones—just in time to throw up a fairly primitive shield, which dissolved on impact as
Libby jumped, alarmed.
“The medeian’s not here,” Tristan said, which was possibly the most troubling conclusion he could have reached. “Let’s get rid of these three and move.”
“Aim me,” she said without hesitation. “I can take out three.”
Tristan didn’t doubt it.
He took hold of her left arm, guiding her just as one of the gunmen fired another round of bullets. As with before, Libby’s explosion ricocheted backwards into the assailant, though Tristan didn’t wait to see if he’d achieved his
intended results. The others were moving, and quickly, so he pulled her into his chest, aiming first for the one coming towards them and then, with a little added difficulty, at the one who was slipping from the room.
“They’re headed that way,” he said, pulling Libby up and racing after the escaping gunman. “Must be where the medeian is. Can you—”
A thin bubble of atmospheric change warped around them, sealing itself with a little slurp of vacuumed pressure.
“Thanks,” he said.
“No problem,” she panted, as Tristan caught traces of
magic and followed its trail to land them in one of the sitting rooms.
The illusionist was easy to find, even before they had fully entered from the corridor; the cloaking enchantment was obviously expensive, covering most of the room and reaching into the nearby access points. Tristan held Libby back, watching the medeian first to see if he was working with someone else.
It looked like he was, though it wasn’t clear if whoever the illusionist was working with was a remote partner or someone else in the house; he was typing rapidly into a
laptop that didn’t seem to be magical at all. Probably
programming security cameras to be able to see, if Tristan
had to guess, which meant they had seconds to spare. If not for having to control the illusions at the same time, the illusionist would have known they were there already.
“Go,” Tristan said to Libby, “while he’s not looking.”
She hesitated, which was the one thing he’d hoped she wouldn’t do.
“Do I shoot to kill, or—?”
In that exact moment, the medeian’s eyes snapped up from the laptop screen, meeting Tristan’s.
“NOW,” Tristan said, more desperately than he had
hoped to sound, and Libby, thank bloody fuck, threw up a hand in time to stop whatever was coming towards them. The medeian’s eyes widened, obviously startled at the prospect of being overpowered, while Libby advanced towards him, shoving the force of the medeian’s own expulsion backwards.
The medeian wasn’t going down without a fight; he tried again, and this time Libby’s response was like a bolt of lightning, snapping the medeian’s control with a lash of
something around his wrists. Tristan heard a cry of pain, and then a mutter of something under his breath; some basic obscenity, Tristan suspected, though his Mandarin was rusty.
“Who sent you?” Libby demanded, but the medeian had scrambled to his feet. Tristan, concerned the medeian might conjure more illusions as a defense, leapt forward, taking
hold of Libby’s arm again and raising it. “Which one?” Libby gasped. “He split.” “That one, there, by the window—”
“He’s multiplying!”
“Just hold steady, I have him—”
This time, as Tristan locked Libby’s palm on the
trajectory of the medeian’s escape, he caught a glimpse of something; evidence of magic that hadn’t been clear from afar. It was a little glittering chain, delicate like jewelry, that abruptly snapped.
In that precise moment the medeian turned his head, eyes widening in anguish. It had been a linking charm, but it was gone now.
“He had a partner but he doesn’t anymore,” Tristan translated in Libby’s ear.
She tensed. “Does that mean—”
“It means kill him before he gets away!”
He felt the impact leave her body from where his fingers had curled around her wrists. He could feel the entire force of it pumping through her veins and marveled, silently, at
being so close to what felt like live ammunition. She was a human bomb; she could split the room, the air itself, into tiny, indistinguishable (except to Tristan) atoms. If Adrian Caine had ever met Libby Rhodes, he wouldn’t have
hesitated to buy her somehow; he’d have offered her the biggest cut, given her the highest privilege of his little
witchy cult. He was like that, Tristan’s father; male, female, race, class, it didn’t matter. Optics were nothing. Usefulness was paramount. Destruction was Adrian Caine’s god.
Tristan turned his head away from the explosion, though the heat of the blast was enough to sting his cheek. Libby
faltered, struggling for a moment from the effort, and he locked an arm around her waist, half-dragging, half-carrying her from the room.
He kept moving until he saw Parisa, who emerged from one of the lower floors onto the landing of the stairwell, white-faced. Callum was at her side.
“There you are,” said Parisa dully, sounding like she’d seen a ghost.
“What happened?” Tristan asked them, setting Libby back on her feet. She looked a little woozy, but nodded to him for release, disentangling herself from his grip.
“I’m fine,” she said, though she remained braced for another attack, shoulders still tense.
“Just ran into another medeian downstairs,” Callum said. “Some spy organization from Beijing. A combat specialist.”
Tristan blinked with recognition. “Did the medeian have a partner?”
“Yes, an ill-”
“An illusionist,” Tristan confirmed, exchanging a knowing glance with Libby. “We got him. How did you know they were spies?”
“Aside from the obvious? She told me,” said Callum. “It was just her and the partner who were magical, everyone else was mortal.”
A distraction, probably, while only one of the medeians broke in.
Libby was testing her joints, still glancing around in paranoia. “She told you there was no one else? She could
have easily been lying.”
“She wasn’t,” Callum said.
“How do you know?” Libby pressed, suspicious. “She could’ve just—”
“Because I asked nicely,” Callum said.
Parisa would have known—or could have, assuming the medeian hadn’t been using any mental defensive shields— but she, Tristan noticed, hadn’t said a word on the subject.
“You okay?” Tristan asked her, and she shuddered to cognizance, glancing up at him with a look of temporary displacement.
“Yeah. Fine.” She cleared her throat. “As far as I can tell, the house is empty now.”
“Was it just one group?”
Parisa shook her head. “Whoever Nico and Reina took out, they were a group, then the partners we took out, and someone else who was working alone.”
“Not alone,” came a voice, as the four of them looked up, instantly assuming various positions of defense. “Not to worry,” chuckled Atlas, who had Dalton trailing at his heels. “It’s only me.”
“Is it actually?” Libby whispered to Tristan, who was mildly impressed. Paranoia clearly suited her, or
perfectionism, or whatever this was. She no longer trusted her own two eyes, and long-term, that was probably for the best.
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
She nodded gravely, but didn’t say anything.
“The agent taken out by Miss Kamali was sent by your former employer, Mr. Caine,” Atlas said, glancing at Tristan. “We always expect to see someone from Wessex Corp, mind you, so that was unsurprising.”
Tristan frowned. “You… expect to see them?”
At precisely that moment, Nico bounded euphorically up the stairs, Reina following like the slip of a shadow behind him.
“Hey,” Nico said, gorily disfigured. His thin white t-shirt was caked in blood from his shoulder and his nose was broken, though he appeared not to have noticed. He
thrummed with adrenaline, acknowledging Atlas with an overeager nod. “What’s going on?”
“Well, Mr. de Varona, I was just informing the others about the operatives you faced this evening,” Atlas replied, opting not to comment discourteously on Nico’s appearance. “You and Miss Mori took out a military task force.”
“MI6?” Nico guessed.
“Yes, and CIA,” confirmed Atlas. “Led by a medeian who specialized in—”
“Waves, yeah,” Nico supplied, still buzzing as he glanced at Libby. “How’d you come out, Rhodes?”
Beside Tristan, Libby stiffened.
“Don’t look so thrilled, Varona, it’s monstrous,” she hissed, though Atlas answered for her.
“With Mr. Caine’s help, Miss Rhodes dispatched one of the world’s most wanted illusionists,” said Atlas, giving
Tristan an additional nod of deference. “Her partner, a hand- to-hand combat specialist, was dispatched by Mr. Nova.
They are both favored operatives of the Guǐhún, an
intelligence operation from Beijing. Conveniently, they were both wanted globally for war crimes,” he informed Libby kindly, “which we will be pleased to inform the authorities
they will not have to concern themselves with anymore.” “Did we miss anyone?” asked Libby, who clearly couldn’t
be deterred from her apprehension, but before Atlas could open his mouth, Reina had spoken.
“Yes. Two got away.”
The other five heads swiveled to hers, and she shrugged. “They couldn’t get what they came for,” she said
placidly. “Wards were too complex.”
“Yes,” Atlas confirmed. “Miss Mori is correct. There were, in fact, two medeians from the Forum who attempted
unsuccessfully to penetrate the defensive wards of the library’s archives.”
“The Forum?” asked Callum.
“An academic society not unlike this one,” Atlas confirmed. “It is their belief that knowledge should not be carefully stored, but freely distributed. I confess they greatly misunderstand our work, and frequently target our
archives.”
“Why do you know all this?” asked Tristan, who was growing rather frustrated by the Caretaker’s upsettingly careless tone. “It sounds as if we were all sitting ducks for something you already knew was going to happen.”
“Because it was a test,” Callum cut in.
Atlas gave him an impatient smile. “Not a test,” he said. “Not strictly speaking.”
“Try speaking less strictly, then,” Parisa advised tightly. “After all, we did nearly get killed.”
“You did not nearly get killed,” Atlas corrected her. “Your lives were in danger, yes, but you were selected for the
Society because you already possessed the tools necessary to survive. The chance that any of you might have died was
—”
“Possible.” Libby’s lips were thin. “Statistically, that is,” she added, inclining her head towards Atlas in something Tristan disgustingly guessed to be deference, “it was
possible.”
“Many things are possible,” Atlas agreed. “But then, I never claimed your safety was a guarantee. In fact, I was quite clear that you would be required to have some
knowledge of combat and security.”
Nobody spoke; they were waiting, Tristan expected, to be less annoyed about the fact that while they had never specifically signed anything saying they preferred not to be shot at in the middle of the night, some principles of
preference remained.
“It is the Society’s practice to ‘leak’ the date of the new members’ arrival,” Atlas continued in their silence. “Some attempts at entry are expected, but it was never for us to know who or what those attacks would be.”
“The majority of the attempts were deflected by
preexisting enchantments,” Dalton added, surprising them with his presence. “The installation allows us to see the ways our enemies may have evolved.”
“Installation,” Nico echoed. “What is that, like a game?”
He seemed delighted about having been invited to participate.
“Merely common practice,” said Atlas. “We like to see how well our potential initiates work together.”
“So, in short, a test,” said Callum, sounding none too pleased about it.
“A tradition,” Atlas corrected, with another steady smile. “And you all did quite well, truth be told, though I hope
having seen each other in action allows you to put together a more thorough defense system. Collaboration is very important for the sort of work we do here.” He turned to Dalton, arching a brow. “Don’t you agree, Mr. Ellery?”
“As I said, every class of initiates consists of a unique composite of specialties,” Dalton supplied neutrally,
addressing them as a group. “You were selected for a team as much as you were chosen as individual members. It is
the Society’s hope that, moving forward, you will act accordingly.”
“Yes, quite,” Atlas concluded, returning his attention to the group of them. “There will of course be some relevant
details to see to as far as any structural or magical damage, but seeing as the house has now been emptied and the wards have resumed their usual work, I would invite you to
get some rest and revisit the house’s security in the morning. Good night,” he offered crisply, nodding to them as a group, and then turned on his heel, followed by Dalton.
Parisa, Tristan noted, watched Dalton go with intense and possibly excessive interest, frowning slightly in his wake.
Tristan waited for the others to move—first Reina, who
headed to bed without a word, and then Callum, who rolled his eyes, followed by Nico and Libby, who immediately
started arguing in hushed tones—before he approached Parisa, sidling up to her as she turned away in troubled thought.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Her gaze flicked up to Callum, who was a few strides ahead of them.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing.” “Doesn’t look like nothing.” “Doesn’t it?”
Only in that Callum looked perfectly unchanged. “What happened?” Tristan asked again.
“Nothing,” Parisa repeated. “It was just…” She trailed off, and then cleared her throat. “It was nothing.”
“Ah yes, nothing,” Tristan said drily. “Right.”
They reached their rooms, lingering at the start of the corridor as the others filed off to bed. Nico barked
something disapproving at Libby—something about “Fowler will fucking live for fuck’s sake”—and then only Tristan and Parisa remained in the hall.
He paused beside her door, hesitating as she opened it.
“I was thinking,” he said, clearing his throat. “If you wanted to—”
“I don’t at the moment,” she said. “Last night was fun, but I don’t really think we should make it a regular thing, do you?”
He bristled. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Sure it was,” said Parisa. “You’ve just had a near-death experience and now you want to stick your prick in
something until you feel better.” Tristan, who was much too English for this conversation, rather resented her choice of words, though she cut him off before he could express his demurral aloud. “It’s evolutionary,” she assured him. “When you come close to death, the body’s natural impulse is procreation.”
“I wasn’t that close to death,” Tristan muttered.
“No? Well, lucky you.” Parisa’s expression hardened, her eyes darting to Callum’s bedroom door.
Not that Tristan had doubted it before, but ‘nothing’ had most definitely been ‘something.’
“I thought you liked him,” Tristan commented, and Parisa bristled.
“Who says I don’t?” “I’m just saying—” “I don’t know him.”
Tristan contemplated the value of asking a third time.
“Something clearly happened,” he allowed instead. “You don’t have to tell me what it was, I just—”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” She gave him a defensive glance. “How was little miss sunshine?”
“Libby? Fine. Good,” Tristan corrected himself, as it didn’t seem fair not to give her credit. She may not have been
able to get out easily without him, but he wouldn’t have gotten out at all without her. “She’s good.”
“Needy little thing, isn’t she?” “Is she?”
Parisa scoffed. “You should see the inside of her head.”
Tristan was already quite certain that was a place he had no interest in being. “I doubt we’ll be friends,” he said uncomfortably, “but at least she’s useful.”
There it was again. Useful. The one thing he was not.
“Self-deprecation is such a waste,” said Parisa, sounding bored by the prospect of his interior thoughts. “Either you believe you’re worthy or you don’t, end of story. And if you
don’t,” she added, opening the door to her room, “I certainly don’t want to chance ruining the high opinion of you I may
have mistakenly gotten from last night.”
Tristan rolled his eyes. “So I’m too good, then? Is that the problem?”
“The problem is I don’t want you getting attached,” Parisa said. “You can’t just replace one high-maintenance woman with another, and more importantly, I don’t have time for your daddy problems.”
“By all means, let me down gently,” drawled Tristan.
“Oh, I’m not letting you down at all. I’m sure we’ll have our fun, but certainly not two nights in a row,” Parisa said, shrugging. “That’s sending entirely the wrong message.”
“Which is?”
“That I wouldn’t eliminate you if given the chance,” she said, and slipped inside her bedroom, shutting the door.
Great, Tristan thought. It was such a confounding reality that Parisa was beautiful even when she was being mean; especially then, in fact. She was also much more beautiful
than Eden, which said a lot about beauty, and about cruelty, too.
He had such a talent for finding women who put themselves first. It was like he was some sort of sniffer-dog for emotional fatality, always able to dig it up from the one person in the room who would have no trouble making him feel small. He wished he were less attracted to it, that brazen sense of self, but unfortunately ambition left such a sweet taste in his mouth, and so had Parisa. Maybe she was right; maybe it was daddy problems.
Maybe after a lifetime of being useless, Tristan simply wanted to be used.
