by T. S. Snow
I couldn’t see Blair’s face, but she broke character when her response was, “Of course I am.” I was pretty sure it was followed by her rolling her eyes too.
“Shit, big mistake there, Blair,” I murmured, more to myself than to Blaze.
“Why? What did she do wrong?” he asked from beside me, and I grimaced.
“Let’s be real, do you really think that would be my response to being accused of not being me? I’d probably make a joke about how I might’ve been swapped by a flesh-eating alien here to probe the world or something. I’ve got many skills, but calm confidence has never been one of them. I don’t think. Well, maybe when I’m nerding out, but other than that…”
Behind the mirror, Jess’s narrowed eyes became a full-on scowl.
She sat back on her chair and put her cuffed hands on the table in front of her. I knew that if she’d had her arms free, she would’ve crossed them.
Reading Body Language for Dummies had taught me she was definitely not buying into Blair’s trick anymore.
Crapanoodle.
“If you really are Charisma, then prove it,” Jess demanded, and I wondered how things had escalated so fucking quickly.
Christian raised a hand before Blair could say anything, and that attracted Jess’s attention too.
“You’re a Divinator, after all. That certainly explains some things. Here is the situation—you want to see Carter, and we want answers. If you give us enough to get started, I’ll arrange it so Carter will come talk to you. But you aren’t really in a position to make demands right now.” While he spoke, Blair dropped the illusion and went back to looking like herself, badass katana MET and all.
I really had to code that and key it into her magic, and soon. I’d do it after I finished Andres’ MET…as soon as I could get out of here and back into the tech lab. Ugh. So much to do, so little time.
Jess said nothing, so Blair took it upon herself to play bad cop.
“You want Charisma to forgive you for your deception and whatever lies you’ve told her? Then prove it. Give us and her something to help us believe you and your story. Just asking her for forgiveness and saying you’re sorry or that you didn’t know won’t prove shit. She lost her best friend, and she almost died at the hands of your beloved movement. Saying you’re sorry is too damn easy; you’ll have to prove it.”
Damn, Blair was badass.
She was also right—if Jess really was a member of the resistance, if she had just approached me because they wanted someone to keep an eye on me, then…we had never actually been friends or even gym buddies. I’d just been a target.
I was sick and tired of people seeing me as nothing more than a tool.
Jess considered Blair for so long, I thought for sure she wouldn’t agree, but then she sighed and nodded.
“You sure you want to be here for this?” Blaze asked me, no longer looking at the scene taking place in front of us. His sole focus was on me.
Nope. I was most definitely not fucking sure I wanted to hear whatever she had to say, but…I also needed to know.
“Yeah,” I lied instead, my focus fully in front of us.
I didn’t want to miss a thing.
“Okay. Fine. Whatever,” Jess said, turning to Christian. “Yes. I’m from Divination. Visions of the future, tarot readings, the whole shebang.”
Bossman nodded. “Why did you join the resistance?”
Jess raised her hands as if to comb through her hair with them, remembered the handcuffs, and dropped them on the table once more.
“Same reason as everybody else, I guess? My magic was never crazy strong. I didn’t even make it into Arcane Academy. I barely managed to get into Baemorth instead, and even then, my parents had to pull all kinds of favors. It was… I don’t know, it made me feel worthless, I guess. Anyway, I was kind of fed up with the whole Arcane system by then, and the idea of having equal rights, equal opportunities, in spite of our power level was…nice. Really fucking nice.”
I…couldn’t say I blamed her. At least not for wanting equality. Goddess knew I’d seen the ugly in our society from up close, in more ways than one. However, as bad as some of the things I’d had to go through had been, I honestly did not think taking down the heads of the families would solve the problem. In fact, I was pretty positive there were better ways to balance it out while sort of maintaining most of the current structure. Since apparently the battle with the Necromancers wasn’t actually happening, we didn’t need that many Battle Mages. We needed mages who could help our society. Businessmen, nurses, hell, firefighters probably. We could give those with less magic a louder voice, let them explore other things that they might excel at. Like me. I’d never been good enough to be a Battle Mage, but I’d made a name for myself as a Magic Engineer. I’d used my geekiness and my computer skills and enhanced everything I’d learned. I’d researched and experimented until I became really good at what I did, all while having very little magic. And now, because of all the hard work, I was mostly respected by those who had scorned me before.
Except my parents, but there was no hope for them.
Mages with low magic power just needed a chance to prove themselves, to prove that they were more than the strength of their natural-born abilities. The amount of magic someone possessed shouldn’t be everything in our world.
“Anyway. I had no idea that we were being played. Or that our idealism was being used. But that’s a story for later. So I joined the resistance, and I slowly moved through the ranks. My ability to see and predict the future helped us stay under the radar a lot. I met Michael Manteis. I thought…I thought he was a good guy, you know? He was…everything we always wanted to be, I guess. Everything we were told we should be growing up. He was handsome, well-spoken, nice…and he was a member of the resistance. Even though he’d been raised a member of one of the families, even though he had more magic than most of us, he had joined our cause. And he saw me. He saw my worth in spite of my magic level, or lack thereof. He made me feel like I was more than just my power…or so I thought.
“We started dating. It took a really long time for me to see the signs, but by then, I was too in love with him to do anything. Slowly, bit by bit, he revealed more parts of his true self. He spoke about his sisters with hate, but I thought it was because of what they represented as a whole and not because of the fact they would inherit and not him. I always found reasons to justify the weird shit I heard him say or do or the moments I caught a side of him I didn’t recognize. I was in love, after all, and Michael said he loved me too. It wasn’t until I had the vision of him over his sister’s dead body, a knife glinting in his hand and a smile on his face, that I realized maybe, just maybe, I’d been wrong about him all along.” She looked at the mirror as if she knew I was still there, while I stood with my hand covering my mouth in shock at everything we’d learned. “That was why I texted Charisma. I didn’t really know what to do, but the cards told me she was the only one who might be able to stop him. I…I didn’t want him to hurt anyone. I didn’t want him to get hurt, either. So I texted her and hoped she’d be able to do what I wasn’t strong enough to. The whole time, I prayed to the Goddess that my vision was wrong and that it was all just a misunderstanding.”
Jess was who’d tipped me off and helped me save Danica Manteis’s life? The one whose number had been impossible to trace? She’d probably used a resistance burner phone with some kind of crazy anti-tracing code. It would explain why no matter how much Bast or I had tried, we hadn’t been able to crack it.
No matter how much evil she might’ve done for the rebellion, the fact she’d helped save Danica’s life was irrefutable.
If not for her, Michael might have actually succeeded in his fucked-up plans and become the new heir and eventually, the new head of the Manteis family.
She’d probably saved more lives than we would ever know.
It…it hardly made up for the fact she’d fucked up, but it made it a little easier for me to forgive her. Maybe.
>
“It wasn’t until Michael was arrested that I found out just how warped he’d become. Just how much I’d messed it all up by not listening to the signs.” Jess was full-on crying now as she told her story. I could feel her pain from all the way in here, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.
Love was stupid. I knew that better than anyone.
“What about Charisma and the explosion?” Christian asked.
Jess sniffled and raised her cuffed arms to wipe her eyes in the sleeve of her shirt.
“Right. So Charisma and I already attended the same gym. It wasn’t… I wasn’t planted there. However, they fully intended to use our connection for me to recruit her into the resistance. She was seen as a huge potential member. I mean, she’d just been shunned from her own family, she was into the whole Magical Engineer thing, and she had a lot of hate and dark feelings for the world that had turned its back on her. She was like the dream prospective member. But the more I observed, the more I realized she wasn’t really…interested. Or rather, she wouldn’t be. It was like she’d washed her hands of the whole thing and gone off to become her best independent self. Still, I was ordered to stay in contact, and if there was ever even an inkling that she might be turned, I was supposed to make my move.”
I shouldn’t have been shocked they’d sent someone to scope me out and recruit me. I mean, even I had to admit I was kind of the perfect candidate. But for some reason, I was surprised. Maybe because they’d sent Jess.
“Did you know?” Blaze asked beside me, and I shook my head.
“I had no idea.”
“Would you have joined them?”
Well, wasn’t that the million-dollar question. Would I have? Back when they weren’t going crazy with the killings and the attacks…back when I’d first been shunned…would I have joined them if someone had approached me before Christian had? How much different would my life have been, if I’d gone down that path?
“I honestly don’t know,” I whispered, as if afraid someone might hear and take my words as an act of treason.
“Nobody would’ve blamed you for it, you know? If you had. I mean, you probably would’ve made the rebellion even stronger, maybe even a threat impossible to take down, but they were right on one thing—you were the perfect candidate. It’s honestly amazing that you never did turn.”
I tilted my head to stare into his eyes.
“Maybe. But Christian found me, and he gave me a purpose. He taught me that there was nothing wrong with having weaker magic and that I could be awesome regardless. He believed in me, and he cared for me when nobody else did. He gave me the tools to be the best version of myself I ever could. There’s no way I’d ever betray that trust.”
Blaze smiled and nodded.
“You’re good people, Char. I’m glad they didn’t get their hands on you before the director could.”
I smiled brilliantly at him.
“Yeah. So am I.”
16
Theo
Not even in my wildest nightmares would I have guessed I’d be spending the day with Logan Nightshade, planning on actually working with him. Not because it had been mandated by the heads of the families that we, as heirs, have a meeting to solve one problem or another that had arisen and threatened our society as a whole, but because we actually had the same goal for once.
This wasn’t about the greater good of Arcane society or how best to ensure we kept our magic secret from the humans.
It wasn’t even about taking down the resistance because they were a constant pain in the ass.
No, this was personal.
It was about getting revenge for my sister and my Char.
As for Nightshade…well, he wanted revenge for himself.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Truer words had never been spoken.
“Really, this is the place?” Nightshade asked me as we finished the trek through the trees and reached the clearing I’d been leading us into. He looked incredibly out of place here with his expensive suit and shoes. Then again, I’d never seen him wearing anything other than that, or the Academy uniform back when I first attended the Academy and he’d been a senior. But the Academy uniform was almost a suit, anyway, so it really wasn’t that big a change.
The sun was setting, so the sky was completely red and the trees looked almost like they were bleeding because of it. The clearing itself was nothing extraordinary, except for the fact I’d come here many times before and never seen anyone.
Well, not anyone alive that was. Ghosts tended to flock here. Since the veil here was a bit thinner, it meant it was easier to command souls. Both the ones that usually hung around the place and those farther away.
I shrugged. “It’s quiet, it’s private, and it’s silent. What else do we really need?”
Logan looked down his nose at me. The fucker was at least two inches taller than me, and he used the height difference to try to make me feel inferior. Unfortunately for him, he actually needed my help this time around, which meant he had to do what I said. Or at least be where I told him to. For now, anyway.
It was a pity I was taking this seriously and wouldn’t take advantage of the situation to force him to do some ridiculous shit just for the hell of it.
“Never mind. Please, continue.”
Oh, if he hadn’t liked that part, he was about to hate what came next.
“Right, so. You want me to talk to your guy. For that, and because I didn’t know him, I’ll need you to think about him. I assume you’ve had at least one encounter with him before? So you’ll have to have a clear picture of what he looks like, what he sounds like, in your head. Anything else you might have would also help me.”
I could tell by the face he made that he didn’t like these directions.
Logan shifted his weight from one foot to another, and I stopped speaking. It was probably the first time in my life I’d seen him look uncomfortable.
“What is it?” I asked. I had a feeling I would not like what he had to say.
“I…did not pay that close attention to him the one time we met.” He grimaced. “It has never been a concern to me what my staff may or may not look like. So long as they got the job done, I don’t really care about anything else.”
I groaned.
“Fuck. You’re about to make my job a million times harder. Just…think about whatever you can remember. Anything, really. Hell, don’t you have a picture or something on your phone? Maybe he had social media?” I looked around the clearing, seeing the multitude of souls surrounding us. “Because I’ll be honest, with nothing to go on, it might take me a while to sort through them all.”
It wasn’t like it was surprising that someone of Nightshade’s social standing wouldn’t pay attention to the people serving him. My own family had plenty of people who paid little attention to their staff. However, for some reason, I’d expected more of him. More of our generation.
Just how many private investigators and spies did Logan have that he didn’t even know what one of them looked like? It was a wonder he’d figured out the guy might be dead.
Nightshade seemed to consider my question for a second before he took out his phone and started to scroll through it. I rolled my eyes at him and walked to the middle of the clearing so I could at least get started on the preparations, not that there would be many.
A few of the ghosts brushed against me as I passed, but they were friendly and at peace.
It was another reason I liked it here. The souls that tended to be attracted to this place were old and no longer had ties to this earth, meaning while they were curious and even good sources of information, they hardly ever bothered themselves with the problems of the living.
“Will this work?” Nightshade asked after a while, and I turned to see him walking towards me with his phone raised. I took it and saw a pixelated picture of a man in his late thirties with ordinary features—dark eyes, dark hair, average height.
Huh, if he was a good PI, it migh
t be just because he was so incredibly…mundane.
“This will do. Do you have his full name?” Please, Goddess let him at least know the man’s full name. If he said “peasant,” I was going to have to hurt him.
“John Stygian.”
Thank fuck.
“Well, this should be easy enough then. At least his name is different.”
Logan raised an eyebrow. “You thought I wouldn’t know his name, didn’t you?”
I just shrugged. “I mean, yes? You had no idea what he looked like.”
Logan scoffed. “Just because I don’t care what people look like, it doesn’t mean I don’t know the name of every single person under my employment.”
I raised my hands in surrender. “Hey, don’t blame me for my assumption. It’s not like it was that crazy a leap. Anyway, let’s get started. No offense, but I don’t want to spend my whole night with you.”
“Don’t tell me you have better plans.” I could hear the derision in his tone.
Unfortunately, I did have plans I couldn’t get out of.
“I actually do have a meeting with the matriarch later today, so unless you want me to have to tell her why I was late, we should get started.”
Logan’s nod was the only answer I got. Whatever. I didn’t have to like the guy to work with him.
It was all for Char and Annie.
For them, I’d even make a pact with the devil himself.
17
Charisma
It was almost midnight by the time I dragged my exhausted body all the way inside Bast’s building.
After the whole interrogation with Jess and Christian’s promise to her that she’d get to see and talk to me the day after the duel—once I explained the situation to him, that was—I’d swung by the tech lab and stayed there doing coding for Andres’ MET.
I was just grateful I’d already been working on it for a while, especially during my time at the safe house, so I had most of it already set up. Otherwise, there was no way I would’ve managed to finish it all in less than three days.
