LIBBY
“SO,” EZRA SAID. “How’s it going?” “Oh, you know,” Libby said. “Fine.”
“…fine?” Ezra gave a little groan; half-charmed, half- doubtful, accompanied by an eye roll she could hear through the phone. “Come on, Libs, I just went on for ten minutes about my supervisor’s affinity for onion bagels. I think you can probably come up with something to tell me about your new job.”
Well, magnificent. She thought she’d escaped any
necessity for confession, given her dutiful half-listening to said story about supervisor and bagels along with the
likelihood that she could slip casually into phone sex, but
evidently not. It was just what she needed, really, to have to tell someone who would want to know everything the
absolutely nothing she was allowed to explain.
“It’s a fellowship,” Libby began, chewing the inside of her cheek. “We do… you know. Fellowship things. Research.”
There. That was one way to put it. A boring one, ideally, inviting no further questions.
“What are you researching?” Alas.
“Oh, um…”
“There has always been an intersect between magic and science,” Atlas had said upon introduction to their first topic of study, leading them inside what he referred to as the
reading room. It was a split level, high-ceilinged open space with a series of tables in the center, most of which were
occupied with nothing aside from one or two chairs and a small reading lamp. Illumination was minimal in the bottom half of the room, so as to not disturb the literature itself,
while the top level glowed faintly with track lighting, looked down from a balcony lined with shelves.
At the moment they entered, a middle-aged man had glanced down from above, observing their entry and
nodding to Atlas.
Atlas, in return, gave the visitor a courteous wave. “Bom dia, Senhor Oliveira,” Atlas offered in greeting, startling
Libby slightly with the reference to someone she was fairly certain was currently the chairman of the medeian offices of Brazil.
“In any case,” Atlas continued, tonally unchanged, “much of what exists in the Society’s archives draws no separation between magic and science; that distinction is more often made in later centuries, particularly pre- Enlightenment and post-Protestant Reformation. The scientific reflections of antiquity, such as the many works of Democritus we have in the archives—”
(Here Reina suddenly came alive from her usual half-
comatose look of wanting to be elsewhere. Unsurprising that she would be interested; Democritus wrote dozens of texts on ancient atomism, nearly all of which would have been classified throughout Reina’s classics education as
‘missing.’)
“—indicate that most studies on nature, and of the nature of life itself, do not suggest any preclusion of magic. Indeed, even some medieval studies of heaven and the cosmos suggest both scientific and magical study; take, for example, Paradiso by Dante, which manages an artistically interpreted—but not inaccurate—understanding of the Earth and its atmosphere. The mystique of Dante’s heaven may
be attributed to both scientific and magical forces.”
Most of their ‘lessons,’ if one could call them that, were Socratic discussions that took place in one of the
outrageously stuffy drawing rooms, various places
redeemed only by the presence of their countless first edition texts. Any additional books—anything referenced during the day’s discussion, for example—were easily
summoned from the archives; in fact, they were so easily available that a handwritten copy of Heisenberg’s notes once appeared beside Libby on the table even before she had spoken her curiosity aloud.
(“Interestingly,” Atlas said, “Heisenberg’s uncertainty
principle is based, in large part, on a major misconception. Perhaps you might have heard that on the evening he first began his calculations, Werner Heisenberg had been
watching a man a little ways before him who seemed to appear beneath a lamp, then disappear into the night, and appear from another pool of light, so on and so forth.
Naturally, Heisenberg’s estimation was that the man was not actually disappearing and reappearing, but simply
becoming visible and invisible due to light sources; thus, if Heisenberg could reconstruct the man’s trajectory by its interaction with other things, the same could be done for electrons, which is a tenet of physics that has been proven time and time again. Unfortunately,” Atlas chuckled, “the
man that poor Werner was watching was actually a medeian called Ambroos Visser, who could very much disappear and reappear at will, and who happened to be having a marvelous time doing so that very evening. Post-death, Ambroos came to lead the poltergeist society at that very park in Copenhagen, and today he is deeply revered for his contribution to our understanding of atomic spectra.”)
“Lib?” Ezra asked, startling Libby back to their phone call. “Still there?”
“Yes, sorry,” she said, blinking. “What was the question?”
He gave a low laugh, the sound of it muffled into the receiver. He must have been in bed, turning onto his side to prop his phone against his ear. “What are you working on at the moment?”
“Oh, um… ecological conservation. In a sense.” That was sort of true, if one considered the process of terraforming
hostile environments to be an ecological study. The previous afternoon, Libby and Nico had spent nearly all their energy
trying to alter the molecular makeup of the painted room, hoping to tweak the nature of its atmosphere to their
preferred specifications. They had been told to stop, though, in a rather snippy tone, when Reina said the fig plant in the corner was suffocating.
“We’re just trying to understand basic principles of science and magic so we can apply them to… bigger projects.”
Like, for example, wormholes. So far, Nico and Libby had managed to successfully create one wormhole, which had taken two weeks of research and an entire day of casting to accomplish. Ultimately, Nico had been forced to test it himself, because no one else was willing to take the chance they might accidentally wind up on Jupiter. (An impossibility, technically, as it would have taken at least ten thousand Nicos and Libbys to power anything even close to that
magnitude of power and precision, but still, Tristan in particular had looked as if he’d rather eat his own foot than test it out.)
In the end, it took Nico from the first floor corridor of the west wing to the kitchen. In typical Nico fashion, he now
used it on a regular basis.
“Well, it’s understandable if it doesn’t feel interesting yet,” said Ezra. “Most of academia can feel fairly pointless while you’re in the early research phase. And probably for quite a while after that, I imagine.”
“That’s… true,” Libby permitted hesitantly, not wanting to admit that the creation of a wormhole was actually not a
pointless thing at all, even if it meant Nico was constantly and inconveniently disappearing and reappearing with snacks.
As far as Libby knew, they were the first ones who had ever managed to do it, even on a micro level. If there were sufficient power sources in the future—if, by chance, some medeian was born somewhere with nuclear energy in their fingertips—then they could easily do the same thing in space, in time… in spacetime! In fact, if any government agencies knew they had done it, they could easily get enough medeians together to bolster a magical space program. She had wanted to call NASA the moment they managed it, only then she remembered it would ultimately be controlled by a politician (any politician, somewhere, or
at least a whole flock of them, some which would inevitably be less competent than others), and as Atlas often said, most forms of knowledge were better reserved until they were certain such revelations wouldn’t be abused. Even if
Libby could manage to successfully terraform Mars, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t bring about a second global Age of Imperialism, which would be disastrous and destructive. Better they kept it in the archives.
“—’s Varona?”
“What?” Libby asked, having been daydreaming about planetary exploration again. “Sorry, I was just—”
“I just wondered how things were going with Varona,”
Ezra said, sounding slightly more tense now than when he’d laughed her inattention off before. She supposed Ezra would
never not sound tense about Nico, and understandably so;
she had a practice of bristling at the sound of his name, too. “Is he being… you know. Himself?”
“Oh, well—”
At that precise moment, Libby heard a burst of nonsensical Nico-sounds from the gallery, which meant he was probably sparring with Reina again. That had begun almost immediately after the installation (‘installation’ being Atlas’ word for all of them nearly dying on their very first night as part of the Society) and now, Nico and Reina had a habit of doing what appeared to be daily martial arts workouts together.
It was strange, obviously. It had all the hallmarks of Nico’s pre-established habits and customs while manifesting in a new and disturbing way. Not that Nico had ever been
particularly devoted to wearing shirts, for example, but
coming across him without one, dripping sweat and colliding with Libby in the hallway only to slime the front of her
blouse with his perspiration, was now all too frequent an occurrence.
Admittedly, the ease of Nico’s comradeship with Reina, or whatever it could be called, had bothered Libby at first. Terrible as it was to acknowledge, Nico was currently the closest thing Libby had to a friend. Reina had made it clear she had no interest in being amicable with Libby, and the others certainly hated her (in the case of Callum, that
feeling was deeply mutual), so the potential loss of Nico was
a blow; something Libby had never thought she’d say about Nico de Varona, or the lack of him.
She was particularly resentful of the fact that Reina and Nico had bonded over their joint foray into violence, both
because it meant Libby might lose Nico’s alliance—thereby chancing her own elimination once the others felt free to confess their collective dislike—and because it was
annoying that Nico had spent four years hating Libby only to befriend a girl who almost never spoke except to scowl.
“Don’t pout, Rhodes,” advised Nico. By then they had all taken to exploring the grounds within the Society’s wards;
the house was surrounded by a lovely manicured lawn, a grove of trees, and some roses, beside which had been the first site of Nico and Reina’s communal venture into recreational pugilism.
It was sometime in the early weeks when Nico had first pulled Libby aside, her shading her eyes from the high summer sun and him chirpily toweling the sheen of sweat from his chest. “I still need you,” he assured her, ever his effervescent, pompous self.
“Oh, good,” Libby said drily, “thank heavens I’m still of some use to you.”
“Actually, I’ve been meaning to tell you something.” Nico wasn’t listening, having grown entirely too used to her sarcasm by then, but he surprised her with a conspiratorial hand on her elbow, tugging her around the collection of rose bushes that she supposed counted as a garden to the English. “I’ve noticed something about Reina.”
“Varona,” Libby sighed, “if this is going to be gross—”
“What? No, nothing like that. If anything I’d want to sleep with—well, never mind,” he muttered, “that’s not relevant.
The point is, trust me, you want me to get Reina on our
side,” he assured her, dropping his voice in a manner she supposed he found provocative. “We need her, and I’m not even sure she understands that. Or why.”
“Do you?” prompted Libby doubtfully. It wasn’t as if Nico had ever been notorious for his talents of perception. For example, he had somehow managed to miss that Libby’s best friend at NYUMA, Mira, had been sickeningly in love with him for the entirety of their schooling.
(Before and after he slept with her. Fuckboys, honestly.) “I sorted it out by accident,” Nico admitted, again
dismissing Libby’s loyal efforts to undermine his masculinity on Mira’s behalf, “so your skepticism isn’t entirely the worst, but yes, I do. Reina is—” He broke off, frowning. “She’s like a battery.”
Libby blinked. “What?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it, and what is a naturalist except for a type of energy source, right? I don’t know how she’s doing it or what she’s tapping into, but think about it, Rhodes.” Nico seemed to be imploring her; irritatingly, as if the gears in her head were not already turning precisely as his had turned. “I noticed it when we took on the waves medeian at the installation. When I was touching her, it was like I had an extra power source.”
(The epiphany and its corresponding conversation had occurred pre-wormhole. Truthfully, they wouldn’t have
managed it at all if not for Nico figuring this out about Reina, but Libby certainly hadn’t confessed that to his face. Nor did she plan to.)
“We’ll have to test it,” Libby said, glancing over her shoulder. It was a bit exciting, discovering that their alliance was an alliance indeed; he had clearly waited until they were alone to share his suspicions. “Do you think she’d be on our side?”
“Rhodes, she’s already on our side,” Nico scoffed, which at first Libby attributed to his indefatigable arrogance, but then, thankfully, he went on to support the allegation with actual evidence. “We don’t talk much,” he clarified,
gesturing to his recent bout of physical activity, “but there’s no question she definitely loathes Parisa. And she doesn’t make a secret of not trusting Tristan or Callum.”
“Nor should she,” Libby murmured to herself. This appeared to have sparked some secondary,
tangential epiphany in Nico de Varona’s manic web of thoughts. “You were with Tristan that night,” Nico observed aloud, holding up a water bottle and pouring some of it over his head (splashing Libby, which she did not appreciate) before consuming what remained. “How was he?”
Ah yes, Tristan. A complete enigma, as far as she was concerned.
“He can do something strange,” Libby admitted,
brushing a droplet of water from her brow before it made
her bangs all wonky. She was growing them out, which meant they were inconceivably annoying. “You know how he said he can see through illusions? I didn’t realize that means he doesn’t necessarily see them while they’re being used.”
“What, at all?”
“No. Not at all. He had to ask me what I thought the room looked like.”
“Huh, weird.” Nico paused thoughtfully, chewing on the lip of his water bottle. “Useful, you think?”
“Very. Well,” Libby amended after a moment’s thought, “it’s a useful skill, at least. Though I’m not sure whether it qualifies as enough to keep him from being eliminated.
Much as I hate to admit it,” she sighed, “an empath and a telepath could be much more helpful allies when we move out of the physical sciences.”
“Better a telepath than an empath, don’t you think? If we had to choose,” Nico said.
“You only say that because you like Parisa,” Libby muttered under her breath, and Nico gave her an unforgivably broad smile.
“Can you blame me, Rhodes?”
“Varona, honestly.” No, of course she couldn’t blame him; Parisa was, hands down, the most beautiful girl Libby had ever seen in her life. Luckily, Libby was not a useless boy and did not focus on extraneous details like Parisa’s looks. “Your dick aside, she’s really not a team player. I’d hardly call her an asset when it comes to working as a
group.”
“True,” Nico said, who must have taken a blow to the head to actually consider taking something she said
seriously. “She’s been weird to Callum, hasn’t she?”
Libby gave Nico a glance intended to indicate that they were all weird to Callum, and rightfully.
“True,” Nico repeated.
“What’s the deal with this, anyway?” Libby asked him,
gesturing warily to his relationship with Reina. “Are you two, like—?”
“It’s exercise, Rhodes,” Nico said, flexing his stomach for emphasis. “I told you, we don’t talk much.”
“Okay,” she sighed, “but do you… I mean. Are you two, you know—?”
“What do you care?” He gave her one of those smug, dazzling grins that she loathed to the core of her being. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”
Christ Almighty. “Oh, shove it, Varona,” she said, turning to leave. There was really only so much Nico she could take in one sitting.
He, however, had caught her arm before she left, tugging her back. “You’re not telling Fowler about any of this, right?” Nico asked her. “If I can’t tell Gideon, you certainly can’t tell Fowler.”
“Ah yes, because your roommate and my boyfriend are exactly the same scenario,” Libby said with a roll of her eyes.
“I’m just saying—”
“Relax, Varona, I’m not telling him anything.”
“Not even about the installation, right?”
“Hell no. Are you kidding?” She’d wanted to tell him at first, but a single moment’s consideration had reminded her that Ezra would lose his mind if he knew she’d been in harm’s way. He was one of those old-fashioned types; a
white knight, even though she hardly needed rescuing. “Absolutely not.”
“Where’s Tristan’s head at?” Nico asked, having already discarded the thought of Ezra and moved onto whatever
thing he’d have to conquer next. “Do you think we can get him on our side?”
“Do we want him on our side?” Libby asked doubtfully. “Why, you don’t like him?”
“It’s not that.” Truthfully, she’d been prepared to dislike Tristan much more than she did. “He’s smart, I’ll give him that,” she conceded, thinking of the way he’d helped with their calculations much more than either Callum or Parisa. Tristan’s background as an investor in magical technology made him intensely knowledgeable, even if his practical
inexperience with physicalities precluded him from
contributing much magically. “He’s just also very, um—” “Grumpy,” said Nico.
“Well, I wouldn’t—”
“He’s grumpy,” Nico repeated. “Varona, I’m trying t-”
“He’s grumpy,” Nico said loudly.
“Maybe he’s shy,” countered Libby, unconvincingly.
And then, because that had fooled no one, she sighed, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him, I just… Well, for one thing, he almost certainly doesn’t like me,” she said,
and then stopped, dismayed with herself for sounding so much like a child.
“I don’t like you either, Rhodes, so I hardly think that’s relevant,” said Nico, proving himself reliable, if nothing else.
“And besides, it seems fairly obvious that Tristan doesn’t like anyone, so you can’t take it personally.”
“I don’t.” Not really. “I’m just saying I’m not ready to be in an alliance with him. Or with Reina, for that matter,” she added quickly. “She might be useful and all that, but it’s
only been a few weeks.”
“I didn’t say we should devote ourselves to her body and soul,” Nico said. “I just think she’s, you know.” He smiled broadly, vengeful in his delight. “Moderately epic.”
High praise from someone who considered Libby to be only somewhere in the bottom twenty worst people he’d ever met (or so he told her once during a heated argument
third year at NYUMA). Not that Libby was jealous of Reina; it was clear, at least, that Nico intended to see his alliance through with Libby, and that was really all she needed from him at the end of the day.
Would it have been nice to have an ally who was also a friend? Yes, sure, maybe. She had thought for half a second that maybe Tristan would have warmed to her after their
brush with danger, but he had been deliberately keeping his distance from her since then. She supposed that might have
been in her head; she was the youngest, after all, and Tristan was somewhere around the same age as Callum, so maybe that was why they seemed to be increasingly together. Maybe the fact that Callum clearly didn’t like her (or her emotions, anyway, which in her defense, she didn’t care for, either) was making Tristan less inclined to like her, too.
In that case, Tristan was not only an idiot, but also hardly someone whose instincts she could trust. It hadn’t required much to convince Libby that Callum was bad news, and even Parisa seemed to agree. If Tristan couldn’t see it, then…
“He’s not worth your energy, Lib.”
“I know,” Libby said, before remembering that Ezra was talking about Nico, not Tristan, and that oh, yeah, she was still on the phone talking to Ezra. “I mean—sorry,” she
amended with a blink, “Varona’s fine, I was just—” “Is there someone else?”
“Hm?” Drat, more things she couldn’t talk about, like who was in the program with her. “No, I was just—”
There was a quiet knock at the door.
“Hang on, Ezra—Yes?” Libby called, covering the receiver with one hand.
“It’s Tristan,” came the voice from the other side.
Perfunctorily, and with a sense of wishing the interaction was already over with, as one might expect from all of Tristan’s interactions.
“Oh, um—” That was a surprise. “One second. Ezra?” she said, returning to her phone call. “Can I call you back?”
There was a pause.
“I’m about to head out, Lib, it’s getting late here.
Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” she promised, mildly relieved. “I love you.” “Love you.” Ezra hung up and she rose to her feet,
padding to the door and pulling it open.
For someone who didn’t care much for illusions, Tristan
Caine certainly was one. It was a Saturday, meaning they all had the day off from their usual work—assuming nobody
breached their recently updated security measures, that is— but Tristan was fully dressed (smartly, with a tucked-in shirt and a J. Crew sleeve-roll and everything, like he was heading to a brief but critical lunch meeting), holding a newspaper tucked under his arm. Libby was willing to bet that Tristan
had gone down for both breakfast and lunch already that day, which they had the option of taking in their rooms on the weekends. It was as if the appearance of normalcy was a crucial piece of Tristan Caine’s identity.
“Yes?” she asked, a little breathless from her jaunt to the door.
He was as inscrutable as always, peering down at her in his hawkish way. “Do you still have the Lucretius?”
“Oh, yes, of course—hang on. Come in.”
She left the door open for him, turning to sort out where she’d left the book. “Working on a Saturday?” she asked him, peering around for it in her pile of things. She hadn’t
planned to touch the manuscript any time soon; she was rather intent on spending the day in her yoga pants,
recovering in advance of whatever massive energy output she’d need to produce on Monday.
“I just want to have another look at it,” he said. “Truthfully, I don’t know if it’ll be much help,” she said,
finally spotting it in the pile beside the nightstand. She wasn’t the neatest person alive, nor was she the best at rising early. All in all, she felt woefully inadequate next to Tristan, who was so pulled together he nearly sparkled. “I can’t say it has much in it that hasn’t been addressed by later works.”
“There’s something about time,” Tristan said, “isn’t there?”
“Sort of. Nothing concrete, but—”
“I’d like to see for myself,” he told her curtly, and she blinked.
“Sorry, I wasn’t trying t-”
“Don’t apologize,” he said impatiently. “I just have a theory I’d like to test.”
“Oh.” She held the book out for him, and he took it.
Before he could leave, though, she cleared her throat. “Any chance you’d like to tell me what theory you’re testing?”
“Why?”
“I… curiosity, I guess.” Incredible how he made it feel like a capital crime just to ask him a simple question. “I do actually care about the research we do, you know.”
He bristled slightly. “I never suggested you didn’t.”
“I know, I’m s-” She broke off before apologizing again. “Never mind. You can hang onto it, by the way,” she said,
gesturing to the book. “I don’t think there’s anything useful. Theoretically, I suppose the idea that time and movement aren’t separate functions is an interesting baseline, but that’s hardly unique to—”
“You and Nico manipulate force, correct?”
She was startled, first by the interruption and secondly, by having her abilities addressed.
“What?”
“Force. Yes?”
“Yes, force.” He seemed to be playing with something in his head, so she added, “We use it to alter the physical makeup of things.”
“Why couldn’t you make a wormhole through time?”
“I—” That wasn’t what she expected his follow-up to be. “Well, I… theoretically I suppose we could, but that would require understanding the nature of time to begin with.”
“What would you need to know in order to understand?”
He didn’t seem to be mocking her; she hazarded an attempt to explain without getting defensive at being asked a moderately obvious question.
“Well, time’s not a physical thing,” Libby said slowly. “Var- Nico and I can manipulate things we can see and feel, but time is… something different.”
“You can’t see or feel it?”
“I—” Again, she stopped, a little taken aback. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you can?”
He regarded her for a moment, mildly troubled.
“I didn’t say that,” he amended. “I just want to be prepared for whatever we do on Monday.”
It didn’t seem worth it to point out that Tristan had done almost nothing the past few weeks as it was. Aside from
posing theoretical arguments to guide their experiments, he hadn’t contributed all that much.
But she supposed it wasn’t his fault he hadn’t. At least he worked hard, didn’t he? He was reading and annotating all the texts, working on his own over the weekend. And
maybe if he could see differently than she could when it
came to illusions, he could see other things differently, too.
The idea that maybe Tristan, like Reina, had some additional talent that Libby could make use of and report back to Nico filled her with a little thrill. Why should Nico de Varona be the only one to sort out what a person was good for?
“There’s a theory that quanta is space,” Libby said, exciting herself with the prospect that she might have stumbled onto something. “That space itself isn’t emptiness, but a fabric of tiny individual particles. So, I
assume that time could be made up of similar particles? The gravitational potential is—”
“Look, I appreciate the book,” Tristan said, “but I don’t really have anything to chat about.”
“Oh.” The word slipped out of her defeatedly. “Right, sorry.”
Tristan’s jaw tightened, annoyed, and she grimaced.
“Not sorry,” she amended, forcing a smile. “I only meant
—”
“You don’t have to be sorry for existing, you know,”
Tristan cut in irritably, and then he turned to leave,
prompting Libby to wish she’d stayed on the phone with Ezra instead of answering the door.
Ezra was so good about being supportive. That was why she liked him, really. He was her number one fan, her tireless champion. He believed in her so much and so
powerfully that it always made her feel there was someone in her corner, and at times like these, she longed for
something to make her feel centered. Secure.
“Rhodes,” Tristan said, startling her into noticing he’d
paused in the threshold before exiting the room. “Thank you for the book.”
She blinked, and then nodded. “Hope it helps,” she said.
He shrugged and closed the door behind him, leaving her to fall back on her bed with a sigh.
CALLUM
PARISA DIDN’T TRUST HIM NOW. It radiated from her, suspicion, her misgivings warping irreparably in the air between them. Considering their respective talents, she must have known he was aware of how she felt; of the corrosion atrophying their potential from one side. That she hadn’t bothered to conceal it could only mean she had no intention to repair it, and if she did not care to repair it, then it appeared she had chosen to draw a line.
Which was too bad, not only for the obvious reasons, but also because it meant Callum had been mistaken. He had taken Parisa for the sort of girl who admired when a man took control of a situation instead of leaving her to do the work herself.
Evidently not.
In terms of allying himself with the others, Libby was out for obvious reasons, and so was Nico. Reina was an island, so that was useless, but Callum would have to befriend someone. Not to keep from being eliminated, of course; he
could persuade them if it really came down to it, or if he even decided to stay.
It was more an issue of entertainment, and since Callum wasn’t entertained by books or research, he would have to find stimulation in a person.
Luckily, one potential source still remained.
“You look distressed,” Callum commented to Tristan, leaning over to speak with him in pseudo-privacy.
“Something bothering you?”
Tristan’s gaze slid to his, and then back to Libby and Nico. “Aren’t you seeing this?”
“I’m seeing it.”
“And you’re not distressed?” Callum smiled thinly.
“I suppose I don’t see much use for having a black hole in my living room,” he said.
It wasn’t as if Callum was unaware that what Libby and Nico (and, he supposed, Reina) were doing was relatively monumental. He could understand, theoretically speaking, why magically modeling a previously unexplained phenomenon was a matter of significance, and for purposes of the Society, he could acknowledge it as the sort of thing belonging somewhere in the archives. There was no question of academic value.
It all just seemed terrifically impractical, and Callum was a practical sort of man.
“Most people are stupid enough that this sort of information is useless,” Callum offered Tristan in
explanation. “Why bother understanding the universe when everything it’s made of exceeds basic human
comprehension?”
“But they just proved a major element of quantum
theory,” Tristan said, frowning. He, Callum noted, couldn’t take his eyes from what they’d done. “Those two twenty- something medeians just created something that all of human history has tried to understand and couldn’t.”
He sounded unreasonably awed, in Callum’s view.
Unsurprising; it was all dreamland all the time in this house. Clearly somebody needed a reality check.
“Those two twenty-something medeians put into practice a theory that has been all of human history in the making,” Callum corrected Tristan, trying to shine a little much-
needed pragmatism on the situation. “Though, again, I don’t know what possible use could come out of dropping
something into a black hole and watching it bounce back out again.”
Tristan finally managed to tear his attention from Nico and Libby’s molecular sleight of hand, glancing sharply at Callum. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Lethally, I’m afraid,” said Callum. “I think it’s a clever parlor trick.”
“Parlor trick,” Tristan echoed, disbelieving. “And what is it
you can do, then?”
Tristan was being facetious, of course, merely proving a point and not genuinely asking, which was a pity, as the answer would have been decently silencing. For starters,
Callum could make the twin cosmologists do anything he wanted. That meant, among other things, that he could take ownership of that black hole quite easily himself. If he were in a particularly enterprising mood, he could go a step further and persuade every person in the room to leap
inside it.
Across from them, Parisa stiffened.
“I dislike physical magics,” Callum said eventually, turning his attention back to Tristan. “Gives me a sort of unidentifiable itch. Like a scratch in my throat.”
It took a moment, but Tristan did catch the undertones of a joke. Good, so he wasn’t totally inept, then.
“At least tell me,” Tristan sighed, “that you can recognize the significance of what’s happening here.”
“Recognize it? Yes, certainly. An enormous magical
event,” Callum confirmed, “which will soon be swallowed up by some other enormous magical event.” That was how all of science worked, anyway. They were all pieces of some other eventual thing. The atom was part of the atomic bomb. Cataclysm, carnage, world wars, subprime mortgage lending, bank bailouts. In Callum’s mind, human history was interesting because of humans, not science. Because humans were idiots who turned the elements of life into a weapon. The only interesting thing Libby and Nico had
accomplished so far was to successfully terraform a miniature model of the moon, because it meant the moon could eventually be conquered. Someone would try to build
Rome anew, or start a new Vatican. It would be madness, and therefore interesting.
More interesting, anyway, than studying the altered carbon levels or whatever it was they’d managed to do.
“On the bright side, there haven’t been a thousand questions,” Callum commented at dinner that evening,
gesturing across the table to Libby with his chin after Tristan had taken the vacant chair beside him. The table was
currently occupied with the sound of low chatter between Nico and Libby, who were comparing notes; Parisa had already excused herself for the evening, and Reina was
absently spooning food into her mouth while she pored over the duplicate of some ancient journal.
“I will regret leaving Rhodes’ element,” Callum added at a murmur, “if only because that will no longer be true.”
Tristan gave a reluctant sort of smirk, as if principles of moral superiority had compelled him not to laugh, but only just. “You really don’t like her, do you?”
“Some people are flawed and interesting,” Callum said with a shrug. “Others are just flawed.”
“Remind me not to ask you what you think of me,” Tristan said.
“Actually,” Callum said, “I rather think you should.” Tristan said nothing.
“I know you’re very suspicious of me,” Callum said, before amending, “Of everyone.”
“I find people to be largely disappointing,” Tristan commented.
“Interestingly, so do I.”
“Is that considered interesting?”
“Well, seeing that my specialty requires me to grasp most details of human nature, yes, I think so,” Callum said. “Knowing what I know, I should really find other people fascinating, or at least valuable.”
“And do you?”
“Some. Most, I find, are just replicas of others.”
“Do you prefer good people,” Tristan asked tangentially, “or bad?”
“I like to have a bit of both. Discord,” Callum replied. “You’re a prime example.”
“Am I?”
“You want to be loyal to Parisa, which is interesting,” Callum observed, as Tristan gave a little involuntary twitch of acknowledgement. “For a woman you slept with once, you seem to feel you owe her something. Same with
Rhodes.”
Tristan blanched. “I hardly think they’re the same category.”
“Oh, they’re not,” Callum agreed. “You feel you owe Rhodes your life. Parisa you simply want to owe your life to.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. And you want very badly to mistrust me on her behalf.” Callum gave Tristan another wary smile. “Unfortunately, you also find me appealing.”
“In what way?”
“Nearly all of them,” Callum said, adding with a glance between them, “You’re not alone in that.”
Tristan was silent another moment.
“You seem to have done something to Parisa,” he noted, and Callum sighed.
“Yes, I do seem to, don’t I? Pity. I like her.” “What did you do? Insult her?”
“Not that I know of,” Callum said, though the real answer was no, he had not insulted her. He had scared her, which was the only sensation Parisa Kamali could not abide. “But I think perhaps she’ll come around.” She was the sort of person who would always do what was best for herself, even if it took her some time to puzzle it out.
“You don’t concern yourself much with being liked, do you?” Tristan asked, half-amused.
“No, I don’t.” Doubtful Tristan would be capable of
understanding that, but the sensation of being liked was extraordinarily dull. It was the closest thing to vanilla that Callum could think of, though nothing was truly comparable.
Being feared was a bit like anise, like absinthe. A strange and arousing flavor. Being admired was golden, maple-
sweet. Being despised was a woodsy, sulfuric aroma, smoke in his nostrils; something to choke on, when done properly.
Being envied was tart, a citrusy tang, like green apple.
Being desired was Callum’s favorite. That was smoky, too, in a sense, but more sultry, cloaked and perfumed in precisely what it was. It smelled like tangled bedsheets. It tasted like the flicker of a candle flame. It felt like a sigh, a
quiet one; concessionary and pleading. He could always feel it on his skin, sharp as a blade. Piercing, like the groan of a lover in his ear.
“Being liked is fairly ordinary, I’m afraid,” Callum said. “Intensely commonplace.”
“How unimpressive,” Tristan said drily.
“Oh, it can be helpful at times. But I certainly don’t aim for it.”
“How exactly do you plan to avoid being eliminated, then?”
“Well,” said Callum patiently, “for one thing, you won’t let it happen.”
Tristan raised a hand to release a scoff into his palm, curling his fingers around it. “And how won’t I?”
“Rhodes listens to you. Varona listens to her. And Reina listens to him.”
Tristan arched a brow. “So your presumption about me is…?”
“That you will not want to eliminate me.” Callum smiled again. “It’s really quite simple, don’t you think?”
“I noticed you didn’t include Parisa in your calculations.
Or me, for that matter,” Tristan said in his usual drawl, “though I’m willing to overlook that for the sake of
argument.”
“Well,” Callum said, “a telepath is useful, of course, if your goal is to interfere with someone’s thoughts. But do you know how infrequently people actually think?” he prompted, raising his glass to his lips while Tristan,
inescapably in agreement, offered the echo of a soundless laugh. “With very rare exceptions, emotions are far stronger. And, unlike thought, emotion can be easily manipulated.
Thoughts, on the other hand, must be implanted or incepted or stolen, which means a telepath will always burn more energy than an empath when magic is being used.”
“So you think you are the more useful option, then?” “I think I’m the better option,” Callum clarified. “But
more importantly, I think that, at the end of the day, you understand me more than you care to admit.”
The statement rang with relative clarity. Callum had almost no doubt that whatever reasoning the others had to dislike him, Tristan would find his rationale more persuasive. Tristan’s cynicism, or his disillusionment, or whatever it was that left him so bitterly disenchanted with the world, was useful that way.
“My offer is this,” Callum said. “I am on your side.” “And?”
“And nothing,” Callum said. “Surely you see this is a game of alliances? I am your ally.”
“So then I should be yours?”
At that precise moment, Libby looked up. She had already adopted a habit of skirting Callum’s attention
(probably wise) and so managed to lock eyes with Tristan by accident before quickly looking away, returning to her conversation with Nico.
Tristan tensed; aware, probably, that he had just been caught in discussion with Callum, whom none of the others
were in a rush to befriend.
“Parisa is not an ally,” Callum cautioned Tristan, who cleared his throat. “Neither is Rhodes. As for the others, Varona and Reina are pragmatists; they will side with whoever will take them the furthest.”
“Shouldn’t you do the same, and wait,” Tristan advised, “to see if I have any value before trying to recruit me?”
“You have value,” Callum said. “I hardly need assign it to you.”
Across the table, Nico exclaimed something unintelligible about gravitational waves and heat. Or perhaps time and temperature. Or perhaps it didn’t matter at all, not even remotely, because unless Nico wanted to be some sort of medeian physicist chained to a laboratory for the rest of his life, nothing would come of it. The purpose of the Society was to get in, get access, and then get out. Remaining here, as Dalton Ellery had done, was pointless. The best of them would seek to parlay the influence of the Society, not bind themselves to the annals it contained.
Callum was the sort of person readily built to go far, Society or no Society. Tristan was the same, though in a different way. Callum could smell it on him: the ambition, the hunger, the drive. It was on the others, too, but not
nearly so strong, and certainly not so close to longing. Nico had a hidden agenda (it was tightly sealed, tasting of metal) and perhaps the others had their reasons, but only Tristan
truly wanted it, with his whole being. It was salty, savory, like salivation itself.
The only person who was as starved and desperate as Tristan was Reina, and there was certainly no point trying to win her. Not yet. She’d take whichever side she needed to when the time arose.
Libby was so unthreatening as to be a non-factor. Thus, Callum did not factor her into his personal calculations. If he ever needed another black hole, he’d simply seek her out in whatever mundane government job she accepted after
being eliminated from this group. True, there was an as-yet unidentified link between Libby and Tristan—perhaps as a result of their experience during the installation—but that would be a simple enough matter to resolve. Tristan quietly resented her, or resented her abilities, and that was an
uncomplicated emotion to play with. Callum could twist it easily around his finger, turning it steadily to hate.
As for Parisa, she was a difficulty. Callum had
understated her abilities to Tristan for obvious reasons, and that was only with regard to her technical specialty. She was a better medeian than Callum, who had never been a
particularly devoted student, and she was immensely calculating. Fatally, even. She was the one enemy Callum didn’t want, but she had already drawn the line, so he’d have to knock her pieces off the board quickly.
Callum didn’t want to waste time toying with Parisa’s pawns; he wanted her king.
“I have to admit, I am a little sick of the physicist show,” Tristan murmured to himself, staring with an intensity he didn’t know was envy while Libby and Nico, for unknowable
and unimportant reasons, tried reversing a boiling cup of water.
Ah, inevitable acquiescence. How bountifully sweet. “Let’s have a nightcap,” Callum suggested, rising to his
feet. “Do you take your scotch neat?”
“I’d take it in a barrel at this point,” said Tristan.
“Excellent. Have a good night,” Callum said to the others, rising to his feet and making his way from the dining room to the painted room.
Reina didn’t look up as he went, nor did Nico. Libby did, which was why Callum had said it to begin with. She would
see Tristan following in Callum’s wake and feel more isolated than she already did, and without even a blink of effort.
Poor little magic girl. So much power, so few friends. “Good night,” Libby said quietly, not looking at Tristan. People were such delicate little playthings.
NICO
THE APPEARANCE OF EILIF in the drain of his bathroom sink was not ideal. A diverse sampling of “fuck” fell out of Nico’s mouth in at least three languages, and Eilif, who had
surfaced from somewhere in the plumbing, slurped out from the drain to perch herself on the lip of his sink, rolling her eyes. She said something impatient in rapid Icelandic, or
possibly Norwegian, and Nico, who was exceptionally naked, gave her a glare intended to remind her that being quadrilingual was, while probably a worthy endeavor, not
something he was in the mood for becoming today. “It’s just me,” she said in English. “Calm down.”
“First of all, no,” said Nico, finding that a necessary and accurate starting point. “Secondly, how did you get in here?” he demanded, pivoting around for any Society-
related consequences as a result of the mermaid who’d just broken into his bathroom. The usual red light in the corner, signaling a broach of the wards, troublingly did not appear. “This shouldn’t even be possible—”
“Well, it took some time to find you, but eventually I
sorted out where you were. Called in a few favors, that sort of thing. I need you to lift the wards concealing my son
immediately. You look well, Nicolás,” remarked Eilif, all in one liquid train of thought. “Nearly delicious enough to
taste.”
“You,” Nico grunted, “need to stop that. And what do you mean ‘a few favors’?”
“Oh, I know where you are,” she drawled, beginning to toy with her hair. She was slightly blue, as always, and exceptionally vascular, so that Nico could see the indigo
rivers splicing like kintsugi over her bare breasts. “It wasn’t very difficult. Naughty,” she chided as a preening afterthought.
“You still shouldn’t have been able to get in,” Nico said gruffly.
“Nicolás, how is it my fault if your creature wards were left unattended?”
Fair. It had crossed his mind briefly at the time they’d set them up, but he couldn’t very well tell everyone else why he needed to guard against one mermaid in particular.
Well—he could have, but he doubted anyone would take it seriously. Besides, Eilif wasn’t dangerous to him. Just… fishy, and mostly unhinged.
“Now, about my son,” Eilif began.
“No,” said Nico flatly, because despite Eilif presenting little danger to him, Gideon was a separate concern. “Do
you know what it cost me to put up that ward in the first place? Leave Gideon alone.”
“Well.” Her pale lips pursed. “I see you have no understanding of progeny.”
“Neither do you!” Nico snapped. “You use him, Eilif, and he hates it. If Gideon wants you out, you’re staying out.”
In answer, Eilif’s eyes dropped to his hips. And then lower.
And she stared. And stared.
“Stop cursing my dick,” said Nico impatiently. “I’m not going to change my mind.”
Eilif threw her arms up with a sigh. “You know, I’m getting very tired of you,” she informed him shrilly.
“Shouldn’t you die soon? Gideon’s had at least seventy mortal years by now.”
“He’s twenty-two,” Nico said.
“What? Impossible,” Eilif scoffed.
“I threw him a birthday party,” Nico said. “Which, by the way, you missed.”
She waved a hand, uninterested as usual in the traditional customs of motherhood. “Then he’s been a child for centuries, at least!”
“He’s not a child, he’s an adult. He’s at approximately a quarter of a mortal lifespan.”
“That doesn’t sound right—”
“Well, it is!” Nico said indignantly, and Eilif gave a loud, cerulean groan.
“Give me my son,” she barked, unconstrained. “He needs me!”
“No, he doesn’t.” “How will he eat?” “He eats fine.”
Her eyes narrowed, unconvinced.
“You know, we were fine before you,” she accused him, bemoaning it with a sullen howl.
“That’s not even close to true,” Nico said. “You left your infant son in the woods of Nova Scotia and then proceeded to show up every few years just to make him chase you through the dream realms. I wouldn’t call that being ‘fine,’ unless we’re only counting you.”
“Who else would we be counting?” Eilif demanded, and then paused. “Ah yes. Gideon.”
“Yes, Gideon.” How eminently exhausting. “Your son, remember?”
“GIVE ME MY SON,” Eilif said hotly, trembling now with fury. “I don’t like it. I don’t like you. Give him to me. Sweet
Nicolás,” she murmured, with her melodic hell-purr of sirenic persuasion. “My darling, don’t you dream of riches?”
“Stop,” he said. “But—”
“No.”
“But I want—” “You can’t.”
“BUT HE’S MINE,” Eilif wailed, shuddering with temper before resolving to a juvenile sulk. “Fine, have him. I’ll be
back,” she promised in her most simpering tone, and then she threw herself into the sink, swallowed up by the drain again.
“Varona, what the hell is going on in there?” came Libby’s voice from the corridor.
“Hell,” Nico confirmed. “But don’t worry, it’s been wrangled.” Or it would be soon.
“Whatever,” Libby muttered, the sound of her footsteps heading back to her room.
A quick text to Gideon—meet me in the usual spot?
followed by a hasty everything’s fine!—ensured an early night.
“What did you do?” Gideon said the moment Nico sat up, resuming his place inside the jail cell of the Society’s subconscious wards. “Something interesting, I hope.”
“Bored, Sandman?” Nico asked him, stepping close to the bars.
Gideon shrugged.
“I guess,” he said. “There’s only so many books you can fall asleep reading.”
“Well, don’t watch too much television,” Nico said. “You always end up in the dangerous realms when you’ve been exposed to excessive violence and I’m sorry, but you’re just not very good with firearms.”
Gideon gave a theatrical sigh. “Stop scolding me, Nicky,” he said, “you’re not my mother.”
It was a joke, but Nico winced at the reminder. Gideon, catching it, abruptly froze.
“Oh no,” Gideon said, paling at once, and Nico sighed. “It’s fine, Gideon, I have it handled, I prom-”
“What did she say?” “Nothing, I told you, it’s f-”
“Nicolás,” Gideon said fiercely. “What did she say?”
So much for it’s fine, Nico thought. Not that he’d ever been very good at lying to Gideon.
“Nothing much, really,” he said. “She seems to… want you for something.”
“Yes, I know she does,” Gideon said, scrubbing tiredly at his cheek with one hand. “She always does eventually. I thought she had actually left me alone this time, but—”
He broke off, and again, Nico winced.
“You,” Gideon realized aloud, glaring at Nico. “You set up a ward against her without telling me, didn’t you?”
“What? That’s crazy,” said Nico. “Nico, you had no right—”
“That’s ridiculous, of course I did—”
“—you can’t just interfere without telling me—”
“—I was going to tell you; in fact, I’m sure I already did!
It’s not my fault if you didn’t read the minutes closely—” “—for the last time, my mother is my problem, not yours
—”
That, of course, was met with a growl of frustration.
“Haven’t you figured out by now that I want your
problems?” Nico demanded, half-shouting it, and thankfully, Gideon’s mouth snapped shut. “Your pain is my problem, you idiot prince. You little motherfuck.” Nico rubbed his
temple wearily as Gideon’s lips twisted up, half-laughing. “Don’t laugh. Don’t… don’t look at me, stop it. Stop it—”
“What are these pet names, Nicky?” “Shut up. I’m angry.”
“Why are you angry?”
“Because you seem to think for some stupid reason that you should be handling everything on your own—”
“—when really you should be handling it on your own, is that it?”
Touché. The bastard.
“Gideon, for fuck’s sake, I’m rich and extremely
handsome,” Nico growled. “Do you think I have my own
problems? No, I do not, so let me have yours. Put me to use, I beg you.”
Gideon rolled his eyes. “You are,” he said, and exhaled, “unbearable.”
“Yes. And you are safely hidden from your mother right now, so hush. But she is definitely looking for you,” Nico conceded, which had been the primary warning he’d
intended to pass along. “The ward will hold for a while yet, but it’s only a matter of time before she breaks it. Or pays someone else to break it.” Eilif was unfortunately much
worse than the usual finfolk; largely in that she had friends in low places, most of them possessing uncompromised access that many people and governmental organizations wished they didn’t.
“I could stay here,” Gideon said thoughtfully. “In the realms?”
It would work, but not forever. “You still have a body.” “Yes.”
“A mortal body—”
“Well, it looks like a mortal body, anyway.” “It’s aging, isn’t it?”
“It appears to be, possibly, but—”
“We’ll figure it out someday,” Nico assured him. “Your lifespan and all that. Your natural diet,” he enumerated idly, “where to put the litter box, how to give you proper exercise. You know, the usual care and keeping of hybrid creatures—”
“Though I suppose none of it will matter if my mother kills me first,” Gideon remarked.
Nico sighed, stepping back from the bars for a quick count of three, and then stepped back.
“Do not,” he said with a long-suffering scowl, “say things like that.”
But Gideon, who customarily looked amused by everything Nico did, only smiled.
“Don’t worry about me, really,” he said, for probably the millionth useless time. “I don’t think she’ll actually kill me. Or if she does, it’ll be an accident. She’s just very careless.”
“She nearly drowned you twice!”
“I might be misremembering that.”
“I don’t think there’s a way to misremember!”
“In her defense, she didn’t know I couldn’t breathe underwater. The first time, anyway.”
“That,” Nico said, aghast, “is not a defense!”
Gideon, though, was laughing.
“You know, Max is perfectly unbothered by all of this,” he said. “You should consider doing what he does.”
“What, dragging my ass across the carpet?” “No, and he’s stopped doing that,” Gideon said.
“Thankfully.”
“Gideon, I just want you to be okay,” Nico told him pleadingly. “Por favor. Je t’en supplie.”
“I am, Nico. Worrying about me is just your excuse to avoid your own life—which, by the way, I know nothing
about,” Gideon pointedly reminded him. “Are you planning to tell me anything, or am I just always going to be your princess in the tower?”
“You’d make a terrible princess, first of all,” Nico muttered. “You haven’t the figure for a corset at all, and as for the rest, believe me, I would if I could—”
“But you can’t,” Gideon preemptively supplied, and grimaced. He glanced away before looking back, adding, “You know, I do worry about you, too. Your vanity aside, I do think you have plenty of problems without fixating on
mine.”
“Like what?” Nico scoffed, emphatically gesturing to his full head of hair.
“I… never mind.” Gideon shrugged. “I’m just saying, this is a two-way street.”
“Well, I know that, don’t I? I would never devote myself so magnanimously to someone who failed to notice how interesting I am.”
“And you are very devoted.”
“As devoted as I am interesting,” Nico confirmed, “so you see how we’ve reached a détente.”
Gideon gave him a look like he’d swat him on the nose with a newspaper.
So, the usual.
“Estás bien?” Gideon asked.
Yes, strangely, Nico was doing quite well indeed. He and Libby were very nearly getting on, arguing only about
academic things (“It’s one thing to stop time and another to try to move it around” was his take on the subject of her latest theory, but of course she’d had Arguments) and he
and Reina were doing fine, and in general Nico ate well and didn’t want to murder the people around him. (He could do without Callum and Tristan, but he’d suffered more
distressing opposition before.)
Sure, he missed normal things, like the freedom to go places that weren’t this house and also, sex—but he had a feeling it was best that he didn’t sleep with anyone here.
He’d probably let Parisa do whatever she wanted to him, and that was just not a good look for anyone.
“Je vais bien,” Nico said conclusively.
“Good,” said Gideon. “Then I’ll let you get back to sleep.” “What, already?” Nico said, frowning. “But—”
Gideon snapped his fingers and Nico sat up in bed, gasping. He was back in his body, back in the Society’s manor house. Back in the place he’d never technically left.
Beside him, his phone buzzed.
Go to sleep.
Nico rolled his eyes. Dumbass. See u in my dreams, he joked. His phone buzzed in his hand. Always, Nicolás, always.
REINA
AS FAR AS REINA WAS CONCERNED, she had already received extravagant returns on her investment in joining the Society.
By the close of summer, only a quarter through their
allotted year, she’d already wound up with riches. True, she had left very little behind, so perhaps the upfront sacrifice had been minimal, but the point remained that she was
enjoying herself, in her way. The access she had to the Society’s archives—to the reading room itself—was
everything she had longed for. It was precisely what she had dreamed the Library of Alexandria would contain, and that was only at the surface level; the most elementary access
to ancient scientific and magical thought. Having managed a mere three months’ worth of research on the physics of force and space, Reina had already seen the grimoire by Circe and the lost oeuvre of both Democritus and Anaximander.
Which meant that her continuing motivation was, at an extreme minimum, only to not lose access. These were the ancient works in animism, naturalism, cosmology, but what
would come from the medieval medeians, who could have only contributed in secret? What about the Enlightened?
Would she see the works of both Isaac Newton and Morgan le Fay? Impossible to tell until she got there, which meant, quite inescapably, that she must.
Reina spent more of her free time in the reading room than the others of her initiate class, testing the limits of which texts she could access regardless of the subject at hand, which was why she was slightly more aware of who else came through the Society’s doors on an occasional basis. There was one Society member in particular Reina recognized: Aiya Sato, a woman who sat on the board of directors for a massive tech conglomerate based out of
Tokyo. Aiya was the youngest self-made female billionaire in the mortal economy and a celebrated medeian as well. Her face was a frequent feature, each of her feet securely
settled in both worlds.
“Oh, you must be Miss Mori,” said Aiya. The two of them were both waiting for the results of a summoning from elsewhere in the archives, and Aiya, a consummate networker, had struck up conversation in their native dialect. “Tell me, how was the installation?”
Reina gave few details, never having been one for conversation. Aiya, however, was very chatty.
“I suppose it must be very different with Atlas Blakely at the helm,” she was saying, at which point Reina stopped her.
“Were you initiated long ago?” It seemed impossible.
Aiya looked very young, hardly over thirty.
“No, not very. Only one class before this, in fact.” “You were in Dalton Ellery’s initiation class?” “You know Dalton?”
“He still researches here.” Aiya blinked, surprised.
“I would have thought Dalton would be the first to move on,” she said, looking a bit unsettled. “I can’t imagine what he’d still be doing here.”
“Is it not customary for some members to stay on?” “Oh, it is, but not Dalton,” Aiya said, puzzled. “You know
what his specialty is, don’t you?”
Reina struggled to think of anything he’d said or done that seemed particularly noteworthy.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Dalton’s an animator,” Aiya offered emphatically, as if that should mean something.
“He can bring things to life?”
“Things?” Aiya said, and chuckled to herself. “Yes.” Reina frowned. “Is he—”
“Oh no, not a necromancer,” Aiya corrected quickly. “That is, he can do it, but he prefers the inanimate and metaphysical, or at least he did when I knew him. You know he’s from somewhere in the woods of Denmark? Or perhaps the Netherlands. I can never remember when it comes to
the Nordic countries, and he dropped the ‘Von’ I think—but
the point is, there are legends in his village about a boy who
can spirit entire forests to life, even the wind itself. He’s modern mythology.” She smiled faintly. “I can’t imagine why he’d have agreed to stay behind, though I suppose he’s
quite young still. And he was always Atlas’ favorite.”
“I thought Atlas had been the Caretaker for some time,” Reina said, recalling that Aiya’s comments about Atlas had been the thing to spark her interest in the first place.
Aiya shook her head. “No, it was someone else for quite a while. An American, for nearly half a century. His portrait is here—” She waved a hand disinterestedly. “Somewhere.”
“But you know Atlas?”
“He was essentially what Dalton is now, I believe. To tell you the truth, we didn’t see our Caretaker much; Atlas did most of the work. Do you see him frequently?”
“Atlas?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, almost daily.”
“Hm. Odd.” Aiya smiled. “Though I suppose he was always very enthusiastic.”
“Is it common for researchers to take over the position of Caretaker?” Reina asked. Researcher appealed to her; Caretaker, with all its corresponding logistics and politics,
did not. “Will Dalton be next?”
“Well, to be honest Dalton is precisely the sort of person who would want to be a Caretaker rather than a researcher, but no,” Aiya said. “Atlas was a special case. Caretakers are usually selected by the Society’s board of trustees from well outside its internal functions.”
“Any reason for that?”
“Something about not drawing from a poisoned well, I’m sure. Not in Atlas’ case, of course,” she added as an afterthought. “He would have been a natural choice for it; he’s so well-liked. Dalton, though… a mystery.” A frown. “I would have thought him more likely to pursue something
else.”
Their books arrived side by side. Reina’s was a duplicate of Leucippus’ The Great Cosmology. Aiya’s was untitled.
“Do you come back to the archives often?” Reina asked. “No, not very,” said Aiya. “Still, it is a valuable resource.
There is much more than you can imagine contained within these walls.”
She tucked the book into her bag, turning to Reina with a smile.
“Please do enjoy your time here,” she said. “It’s all worth it, truly. I had my doubts at first, but in the end, you really must believe me. I would do it over, easily.”
“Was it difficult?” Reina asked. “The elimination process.” Briefly Aiya’s smile faltered. “Initiation itself, you mean?” “No, I mean… is it difficult,” Reina attempted to phrase,
“choosing which of your initiation class to eliminate?” “Oh, yes. Unimaginably.” The smile resumed. “But as I
said, it is worth it. Have a wonderful day,” Aiya said, offering Reina a polite, deferential bow and turning quickly away, the sound of her stiletto heels echoing through the reading room.
Reina had the sense that she had just had a very strange interaction, though she couldn’t quite explain why. The sensation stuck with her for most of the following days,
flitting in and out of her thoughts without deriving any solid conclusions.
Between working, sparring with Nico (Reina had felt he was the stronger hand-to-hand combatant and also, she
needed the exercise), and reading for pleasure, there wasn’t much time to concern herself with the irrelevant or the unimportant. She was quite content, really, though she had the vague sense that the others around her weren’t.
MotherMotherMother, one of the ferns whined one day, fawning droopily over a shelf. Mother there is
troubletroubletrouble in the air, Mother pleaseplease do you see it?
At first Reina assumed it was the unholy alliance
burgeoning between Callum and Tristan. They had always been very likely to be found in each other’s presence,
seeing as a line had (intentionally or not) been drawn between the physical specialists and the others, but lately it was becoming less likely to see one without the other. They were frequently in furtive conversation; usually Callum
leaning in while Tristan spoke. Reina had thought it was a
good thing, or at least a perfectly fine thing, as it meant that Parisa would not have Tristan glued to her side. Gradually, though, it became more evident that Parisa was being
punished for something; whether her punishment was
coming from Tristan’s hands or Callum’s was relatively unclear.
The trouble with Tristan, and the reason Reina sometimes preferred Callum, was his meanness, his bite. It was sharp, brittle, and made unavoidably more malicious due to his…
Intelligence was an underwhelming word. Tristan was more than simply witty or clever or knowledgeable; he was quick, and always the first to see when something was wrong. At first Reina thought he was nitpicking, being
contrary just for the sake of contradicting something, but it had become increasingly obvious that unless Tristan knew exactly what to correct, he didn’t bother speaking. He had, for better or worse, a breathtaking apathy to almost everything, which only collided with derision when
something was problematically out of place. Reina could not decide whether that intuitive cruelty was worse with Callum, who couldn’t be bothered with any of their work, or with Parisa, who seemed to find herself above it.
Parisa’s outward demeanor didn’t change; not because she was suffering and trying to hide it, much to Reina’s disappointment, but because she was distracted. She didn’t seem to feel the loss of Tristan at all, and it wasn’t until the drooping fern bemoaned the state of oxygen in the room that Reina identified the cause.
“There is a natural transition from space to time,” said Dalton, who was standing beside Atlas, as he often was. “Most modern physicists, in fact, do not believe there is any distinction at all. Some do not even believe that time exists;
at least, not in our fictionalized conception of it, where it can be traveled in some sort of linear way.”
The reminder of Dalton Ellery’s existence in the world brought Reina back to her conversation with Aiya,
prompting her to think again of Aiya’s confusion over Dalton’s decision to return. In Reina’s opinion, Dalton
seemed a natural academic—the epitome of ‘those who can’t do, teach’—and yet Aiya had looked as though the prospect of such a thing was incomprehensible. The idea that Dalton might be withholding a powerful magical ability that had required more than two years’ time to master was intriguing; even compelling.
And Reina, finally spotting the way Parisa’s eyes fell on Dalton, was clearly not the only one compelled.
She supposed it explained a lot of things; why Parisa was often unaccounted for, for one thing, and why the loss of Tristan, Parisa’s initial paramour of choice (or so it seemed) was not particularly bothersome to her. Immediately,
Reina’s conflict about whether Callum and Tristan were
ganging up on Parisa vanished, leaving her with a sense of disappointment in its place.
Of course Parisa was plotting something. She wasn’t a woman the same way Reina was a woman, or the way Libby was. She was a woman in the weaponized sense, the kind
who would step on others to keep herself at the top, and from the looks of it, she was having no trouble getting what she wanted.
Even to Reina, the glance between Dalton and Parisa was intensely loaded. Whether something had happened between them already or not was unclear, but there was no doubt some version of it would be happening again soon.
“What are you doing?” Reina asked bluntly, cutting off Parisa’s path through the house during one of their afternoons away from research. “What exactly is the point?”
Parisa’s eyes slid to hers, irritated. “What?”
“Read my mind,” Reina suggested facetiously. Parisa’s glance in return was equally annoyed.
“Why should there be a point? He’s attractive. I’m bored.” As Reina suspected, Parisa had clearly read her thoughts already.
“You can’t honestly think I’m that stupid,” Reina said. “Nor do I think you’re that stupid.”
“Thank you, I think,” Parisa said, bristling in her lofty way, “but is there any reason you oppose this, or are you just rejoicing in being obtuse?”
“I don’t give a damn what you choose to do,” Reina said. “But I don’t like it when things don’t make sense. I don’t trust it, and I don’t trust you.”
Parisa sighed loudly. “Shouldn’t you be off playing with one of the other children?”
It never stopped being outrageous how the older three looked down on Libby and Nico, though it was far more ridiculous when people speculated separating them; venturing, as Callum often muttered, that one was more
bearable than the other. In Reina’s mind, they were binary
stars, trapped in each other’s gravitational field and easily
diminished without the other’s opposing force. She wasn’t at all surprised when she discovered one was right-handed
(Nico) and the other left (Libby).
“Deny it all you like, but those two have already proven their value,” Reina said. “What have you contributed so
far?”
“What have you?” Parisa snapped. “You’re an academic.
You can be an academic with or without the Society.”
Whereas Parisa was the oldest type of working woman in the book.
“Oh, very nice,” Parisa said, hearing Reina’s not-so- carefully concealed distaste. “You think that’s what this is?
I’m some sort of gold-digging succubus and now you’re going to drag me before the magistrates?”
“‘Succubus’ is more flattering than the word I had in mind,” said Reina.
Parisa rolled her eyes.
“Look, I can see—even if you can’t—that you think you ought to feel sorry for me. It’s nice of you. And totally
unnecessary.” Parisa’s mouth tightened. “Callum is not
punishing me. He’s trying to beat me, but he won’t. And you might wonder who you should choose between us, but I can tell you right now: if you knew what I know, you’d choose
me over him every time.”
“Then why not tell us what you know?” Reina demanded, only half-believing her. “If you hate him so much.”
“I don’t hate him. I feel nothing toward him. And if you knew what was good for you, so would you,” Parisa warned, as the potted Calathea in the corner shivered prophetically. “Now, are we done here?”
Yes. No. In a way, Reina had gotten exactly what she’d
come for. Parisa was pursuing Dalton; confirmed. Parisa had something against Callum; confirmed. The ‘why’ of it all
remained a bit distressing.
Unfortunately, Parisa could see as much.
“You know why you don’t understand me?” Parisa answered Reina’s thoughts, stepping closer to lower her voice. “Because you think you’ve figured me out. You think you’ve met me before, other versions of women like me, but you have no idea what I am. You think my looks are what make me? My ambitions? You can’t begin to know the sum of my parts, and you can stare all you like, but you won’t
see a damn thing until I show you.”
It would be too easy to argue. It would be precisely what she wanted.
Not that silence was any different; Parisa looked unduly satisfied.
“Don’t envy me, Reina,” she advised softly, turning to say it in Reina’s ear. “Fear me.”
Then she made her way down the corridor, disappearing from sight.
PARISA
SHE COULD ALWAYS TELL where he was in the house. For one thing, there were huge amounts of magic around him; knots of it, tangled, and they seemed to arise in bursts, like flames. For another, his thoughts were less guarded when
he was working, owing to the fact that he typically worked alone. He was very often alone, unless he was walking the grounds with Atlas or instructing the six of them in some way, or if he were working with Society members who came in for special projects.
At night he slept very little; she could hear his thoughts buzzing, localizing around something she couldn’t identify from far away, until she recognized the sound of something unmistakable.
Parisa.
Why sex? Because it was so easily emotionless, uncomplicated, primal. A straightforward return on baser urges. Because thoughts, however malformed or misshapen they might become in the heat of the act, could not be so readily protected during something so chemical, and they
certainly did not disappear. Good sex was never mindless; it merely meant concentration was elsewhere, not gone.
Parisa knew her craft well enough to know that, and thus, she knew she’d succeeded the first time she kissed him, slipping something in the latch of his thoughts so she’d always be invited in.
She’d kept her distance afterwards, but the summer had been long enough for him to wonder. He was thinking
increasingly about her, and she’d already visualized him enough in private to know which places she wanted to touch first; where she planned to put her lips, her hands, her teeth. She had given him the thrill of her presence; leaning over when he gestured to something, filling his atmosphere with her perfume.
He knew the contents of her file, just like he knew the others. He knew her skill set, her history. Which meant that he knew the touch of her hand, brushing his when she
passed him on the stairs or in the hall, was only the surface of an unimaginable depth. Once, she poured herself a glass and sat in his presence across the room, unmoving. Saying nothing. Bringing some champagne to her lips, letting it
settle across the bed of her tongue. She had felt the vibration of his thoughts, the tension between them, which kept him from concentration. He read the same sentence eighteen times.
Tonight, he was alone in the reading room. To his credit, he didn’t look very startled to see her, though he had the presence of mind not to reveal his relief.
“You shouldn’t,” he cautioned, leaning wearily back in his chair. He didn’t specify whether he meant that she shouldn’t be there or that she shouldn’t come closer, but she was, so she did. He didn’t argue, nor did he seem to give any indication he intended to. His mind was, at present, a sealed vault.
In her experience, that was hardly something he could maintain for long.
“You seem tired,” Parisa said. She wandered closer,
running her fingers over the wood of the table. She brushed the corners of his books, placing the tactility of her skin at
the forefront of his mind. He closed his eyes when she slid her hand from his arm to his shoulder, letting it hover in
place for a moment. They had touched countless times by then; innocently, but often enough that memory would do half the work for her. “Something wrong?”
“You shouldn’t be here.” She could see the skin of his forearms pebbling at the brevity of their contact. Not
everything was a matter of telepathy. “I thought there weren’t rules?”
“I wouldn’t call this a rule.”
It was unfortunate that restraint looked so good on him.
He was tense in all the right places, poised for a fight. “What would you call it?”
“Inadvisable.” His eyes were still closed, so she slid the tips of her fingers up to his neck, floating them over the hollow of his throat. “Possibly wrong.”
“Wrong?” Her fingertips danced below his collar, tracing his clavicle. “Don’t tempt me.”
He caught her hand in a sudden motion, circling her wrist with his fingers.
“Are you being careful, Parisa?”
She had the sense he wasn’t talking about the here and now.
“Should I be?” she asked.
“You have enemies. You mustn’t.”
“Why not? I always have enemies. It’s unavoidable.” “No. Not here. Not—” He broke off. “Find someone
somewhere, Parisa. Don’t waste your time on me; find
someone in your initiation class, someone reliable. That or make yourself indispensable somehow.”
“Why,” she said with a laugh, “because you don’t want me to leave?”
“Because I don’t want you to—”
He broke off, eyes snapping open.
“What do you want from me?” he asked her quietly, and before she could open her mouth, he said, “I’ll give it to you if it means you’ll work harder at playing this game.”
There it was again; the acrid sense of fear.
“Is it answers?” he pressed her. “Information? What is it?
Why me?”
She slid out of his grip, stroking his hair from his temples. “What makes you so sure I want something? Dalton.”
She had wanted to say his name, to test it out
experimentally, so she did. She could see on his face how viscerally he suffered for it.
“You do. I know you do.” He inhaled sharply. “Tell me what it is.”
“What if I tell you I don’t know?” she murmured, maneuvering from behind his chair to position herself
against the table, leaning back on her palms. His hands
seemed to levitate in a trance, moving of their own accord to find her hips. “Maybe you intrigue me. Maybe I like a
puzzle.”
“Play a game with someone else, then. Nico. Callum.”
The mention of Callum’s name gave her an involuntary bristle, and Dalton looked up, brows furrowed.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” The room was lit from above, but down here there was only the single desk lamp to cast illumination over Dalton’s features. “I have no interest in Callum.”
Dalton lips brushed the fabric of her dress; above her sternum, below the hollow of her throat. His eyes closed, then opened.
“I saw what he did, you know. I watched.” Dalton gestured evasively around. “There are surveillance enchantments, wards everywhere, and I was watching the two of you at the time. I saw it.”
“So you saw him kill her, then.” The reminder nearly gave Parisa a shiver; or would have, if she were less
responsible with her own control. “No, Parisa.”
Dalton reached up, touching her cheek; a single brush of his thumb, right over the bone.
“I saw her kill herself,” he said softly, and though it was the worst time, surely the wrong one, Parisa instinctively
pulled him closer. Impulsively, she wanted him in her grasp. She had nursed his affinity for her, making him crave her like an addict. One drop and he would go too far. He gave in
easily, readily; perilously, like madness. His hands clutched her hips and he set her roughly at the edge of the table,
inciting a burst of heat.
“People can do unnatural things. Dark things,
sometimes.” He sounded hungry, ravenous, desperate. His lips brushed her neck and she sighed; something she’d done countless times before and would do countless times again. Still, it was different even when it was the same, and with him it was unprofessionally persuasive.
This was the magic of sex, the animation. Something coming alive inside her at his touch.
“Can’t you strike a deal with the devil if it means getting what you want?” he whispered.
Her eyes fluttered shut and she thought of Callum.
Aren’t you tired? All this work, all this running, none of it you can ever escape; I can feel it in you, around you. You feel nothing anymore, do you? Only erosion, fatigue, depletion. Your exhaustion is all you are.
Parisa shuddered and pulled Dalton closer, so that his
pulse aligned with hers. Both were arrhythmic and unsteady.
What are you fighting for? Do you even know anymore? You can’t leave this behind you. They will chase you, hunt you, follow you to the ends of the earth. You already know this, you know everything. How they will kill you a thousand different ways, bit by bit. Piece by piece. How they will destroy you, little by little, by robbing your life from you.
Her hands traveled over Dalton’s spine, nails biting into the blades of his shoulders.
Your death will have to be at their hands, on their terms, not yours. They will have to kill you to keep themselves alive.
She felt him come closer to breaking, teetering on the edge.
You have a choice, you know. You have only one true
choice in this life: live or die. It is your decision. It is the only thing no one else can take from you.
Dalton’s lips, when they met hers, were spiced with something; brandy and abandon. She slid her fingers through his hair, reveling in his shiver that tugged her closer, like a reflex from a fall. She reached behind her, shoving the books aside; Dalton slid his hands under her dress, wrapping his hands around her thighs.
That gun you’re pointing at us… Do you even know who we are? Do you know why you’re here?
“Promise me,” Dalton said. “Promise me you’ll do something.”
Turn the gun around.
“Dalton, I—”
Pull the trigger.
Parisa gasped, blood and madness coursing through her when he shoved the dress up her legs, drawing her closer. In her mind, she watched the assassin’s death again, over and over. Turn the gun around. The smell of fire, a woman’s
blood spraying at her feet. Pull the trigger. Callum hadn’t
even lifted a finger. He’d barely drawn breath. Turn the gun around. He had looked that woman in the eye and
convinced her to die. Pull the trigger. Her death had cost him nothing; not even a second thought.
Was that the kind of devil Dalton meant?
“I am not good,” Dalton told her, rasping it into her mouth. “No one here is good. Knowledge is carnage. You can’t have it without sacrifice.”
She kissed him hard; he fumbled with her dress and
dropped to his knees, tugging her hips towards him. She felt the hard edge of a book stabbing into the base of her spine, then the indelible sweetness of Dalton’s mouth; his kiss, his tongue and his lips. Her back arched off the wood,
accommodating her quiet sigh. Somewhere in Dalton’s mind things were coming loose; a door was opening. She slid
inside and sealed it shut behind her, tugging at the roots of his hair.
What was in here? Nothing much. Even now, even in his head, he was careful. She could only find fragments, remnants of things. Fear, still. Traces of guilt. He needed to come untied, come undone. She could pull a few strings and glimpse his insides, find the source of it, if she could set him
on a path bound for destruction. She tugged him to his feet, hastily flaying open the zipper of his trousers. There wasn’t a man alive who couldn’t sink into her with the blankness,
the blindness of ecstasy. Satisfaction was obstructive that way. She yanked at his hips, clawed into his spine, bit into the muscle of his shoulder. If they were caught like this, so be it. They’d be caught.
He had imagined this before; she could watch the
evidence of it like a flipbook in his mind. He had already had her a hundred different times, a thousand ways, and that
she could see them now was promising. There was a weakness in his defenses, and it was her. Poor thing, poor little academic, trying to study his books and keep his
distance when really, he was fucking her on her hands and knees in the abscesses of his tired mind. Even this—taking her here, on the table covered with his notes—he had seen before: prophecy. It was like he had spirited this very vision to life.
They both gasped. He wanted the two of them close, her securely fastened in his arms, and so did she. From here she could taste the burning edges of his thoughts. He wasn’t just afraid of something; he was afraid of everything. He
hated this house, the memories in it. The memories themselves were knives, glinting in the light. They pricked her fingers, warning her away. Turn the gun around. Pull the trigger. There were demons in here; devils. Can’t you strike a deal with the devil if it means getting what you want?
There was boyhood in here too, juvenile and furious and
small. Once, he had brought a dead sapling back to life, only to watch it wither away and die regardless.
The taste of him on her tongue, real and imagined, was burnt sugar, wild adoration, tender rage. Poor thing, poor desperate thing. Parisa recalled the thoughts in Reina’s head, which the naturalist couldn’t quite control; Dalton is
something, he’s something important, he knows something
we don’t.
I know that, you stupid girl, thought Parisa, and I never miss my mark.
“Dalton,” she whispered, and this would have to be the first of many times, because as much as she would have liked to lose herself in him, that was the one thing she couldn’t do right now. He wanted to tell her something;
something he felt was desperately important, something he couldn’t say aloud, and if she didn’t take it now, he might lock it further inside him. He might seal it away. She said his name again, twisting it around her tongue, fitting it to the
shape of her indelicate longings: “Dalton.”
“Promise me,” he said again, and he was ragged this time, wretched and weak, and she was struggling to maintain her thoughts. What did he want her to know? It was something powerful, almost explosive, but it warped
and waned. He wanted her to know, but couldn’t tell her. He wanted something, something he couldn’t confess aloud;
something that could devastate them both.
What was it? He was close now, closer, and she had her legs snaked around his waist, her arms locked around his
neck. What did Callum have to do with it? Turn the gun around. Pull the trigger. The knot inside her tightened,
swelling up and pulsing in her veins. Her heart was quick,
too quick, her muscles straining. Dalton, Dalton, Dalton. He was as good as she wanted him to be; traumatically so. This was a torment she would seek again and again. The trauma of him was exquisite, the vice of his intimacy combative and honeyed. Oh, he was full of lies and secrets, only some of which he wanted to keep. What had he done, what did he know, what did he want?
She only saw it in the moment she let go, soundlessly crying out between his lips. So it was her intimacy he wanted, then; only when she was vulnerable, taking pleasure at his hands, could he forget what she was long enough to let her see. She came and his mind went with her, eruptive in relief.
It was a fragment of an idea; the fractured sliver of a larger truth. So small and so sharp she almost missed it, like a thorn on a root underfoot. She stumbled on it: he wanted her not to die. Parisa. The small voice she’d heard, it was part of that same thought, the same fear. Parisa, don’t go.
Parisa, please, be safe.
It slid into her mind like a splinter, a sliver. It was such a tiny thought, so innocuous, buried indiscreetly in a shallow grave of apprehension. He had countless worries, jagged
little aches of thought, but this one was so easy to find she could trip over it, and she had.
She reached up, clawing a hand around his jaw.
“Who’s going to kill me?”
She had asked quickly enough that there would be no
time to prevent his answer. Already he was exposed for her
—enraptured, undone. Remorse would set in later, maybe resentment, maybe regret. For now, though, he would never be more hers.
The words had left her lips for him to swallow; aptly, he gulped them down his throat.
“Everyone,” he choked aloud, and then she understood
it.
They will have to kill you to keep themselves alive.
