“Yes, Earl Kingston from the Tobacco Sector,” I say.
“Here’s the deal. We’re getting whispers of a city cop asking about one of our own, a guy named Milo Kingston. And the whispers are that the girl whose family runs this teahouse here is the one who’s talking to the cop about Milo.”
Anger slithers in and leaves me cold. The scents of smog and snowball bush petals swirl together and make my stomach clench. Cormac, you fool.
“I never talked to the cop about anyone named Milo Kingston.” I grasp for words and hope they’re believable. “I was on shift at the teahouse when he came in and met up with another guy. I was their server, I overheard the name Milo Kingston.”
“So why are the whispers that you were the one talking to the cop?”
“I don’t know.” My voice shakes. From the knife at my neck, from having to make up another workable lie when I want to be all lied out. “Maybe it came from the other guy. Maybe he got scared that someone would remember him talking to a cop about Milo Kingston.”
“Who’s the other guy?” His voice comes from within the smog. He pushes the knife even harder against my neck. The skin there stings, and I know I’m bleeding.
I almost answer with I don’t know again. But then I realize a name would have the benefit of keeping Earl Kingston and his men busier sniffing around a dead end.
“The cop called the other guy Diego.” It’s the first name that comes to mind, and now his face, his earrings and wild nest of a beard. The full magic caster who stays far away from the Tea Sector because of Saint Willow, a friend to Jihen and someone Earl Kingston and his guys will likely never circle back to because he has no connection to anything at all. “He was doing most of the talking, if that means anything.”
“Maybe, maybe. I’ll pass it on. We’ll ask the cop about it.”
Trepidation dances on my skin. “You guys are going to talk to the cop?”
The knife lifts from my neck. “Girly, we’ve had Cormac for hours. Lucky for you, we’ve doubted every single word out of his mouth. Now we’ll go see what this Diego has to say.”
He disappears into the smog.
I squeeze my way through the snowball bushes and climb into my bedroom window. My pulse skids around in my veins, a loosed animal running scared, even as everything else shuts down, beyond exhausted. I tear off my mask and fall into bed. I’m asleep within a minute.
Faces chase me in dreams. Oliver’s, Finch’s, Kylin’s, Cormac’s.
And a face that stays veiled, like the earth with its smog. I know it’s Saint Willow’s even if I’ve never seen him before. His power over the Tea Sector comes as much from the mystery as it does from the long legacy of his family name.
If you need him, you’re out of luck unless he also needs you.
It’s breakfast and the smog still hasn’t lifted.
On the news they’re calling it the Summer Souper, and it’s the main thing everyone in the city is talking about. While it’s thickest over Lotusland proper, it extends out over the Pacifik in the west, past the High Shore Mountains in the north, over the blighted lands in the east where nothing grows anymore, and spreads south into the last of the pink woods. No trains are running, and not much is open. We’re all supposed to stay inside for as long as the smog lasts. Having so few customers in the teahouse finally feels acceptable.
Environmentalists can’t pinpoint a single reason for it, so they’re saying it’s a whole bunch of things—factories, cars, the combination of years’ worth of buildup of pollutants running into perfectly windless conditions. None come close to the truth.
My father is out on the teahouse floor, doing inventory. My mother casts at the stove to start eggs and toast. I sit at the island in the kitchen with her, now only half watching the news because no one can predict when the smog is going to end, my heart tightening like a turning screw with each passing moment that I can’t go outside.
I need to find Jihen. Only through him can I get close to finding a gatherer of magic. My promise to Oliver to not kill Finch tonight is only that—to not kill him. Anything else, though …
That tiny dark pit deep inside my chest stings and grows.
Around it, the rest of my body continues to hurt. Last night’s fight is still with me. All my bones and muscles are wound up tight, a taut fist of pain. I opened my starter bag this morning only to find that the jar of healing meds wasn’t waterproof. As I fought in the baths with my bag submerged, the healing meds dissolved. I found nothing but a dried white film.
Whatever pain I’m still in when it comes to the final round of the tournament, I’ll also be fighting with.
But … maybe this is the way it should be. Because daring to think about Kylin hurts even more, makes even the worst bruises and aches seem almost easy. There’s a question that keeps circling my brain, too, relentless and awful, and it’s this: If not for my need for revenge, would have I been able to see through Finch’s trick?
Not that it matters, in the end. Because tricked or not, I’m still the one who cast the spell that killed her. So for Kylin as much as anyone, I can’t let Finch win.
My mother brings over breakfast. I’m trying to make room for the food around this new physical agony, around that tiny dark pit of rage nestled within it, when she passes me a slim package.
Inside is a new starter bag.
It’s made out of rich red silk, with a vivid floral print. I recognize all the different blossoms—jasmine, wisteria, rhododendrons, chrysanthemums. I’m transported to all the mornings I spent in the workroom with Shire, building gentle red fires together over the fireplace.
I run my hand over the bag. The softness of the silk is a balm against the skin of my fingers, against the knuckles that now wear scabs from having been dragged across ancient stone of ancient baths last night.
“What’s this for?” I ask as I glance up at my mother. “It’s pretty.” And it is. Not as plain as I might have picked, but not as fancy as Shire would have. Something in between.
“Your sister’s old bag is getting so worn. Your father and I thought you could use a new one.”
I look down at Shire’s bag. I have it close by as always, at my elbow on the island—my connection to her magic.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say to my mother. My throat’s gone tight. My parents do not shop outside of buying things for the teahouse. “I can just start being better about fixing Shire’s bag.”
“You can do that and save this for later, then. I think Shire would say the print suits you.” Her smile says the worry she has carried for me since I was eight and made magic explode is starting to change.
I pick up the bag. Red silk flows. “I think she’d say that, too.”
* * *
The smog finally begins to lift at noon, and I leave the teahouse, telling my parents I’m late for work. Through my mask, the air still tastes too strongly of exhaust, and there’s an odd yellow light to the sky, but otherwise the earth has righted itself once more from us casting banished magic. I finish adjusting my new starter bag over my shoulder and start walking, making sure I’m easily seen.
I’m careful to stay within the sector, and especially within the blocks closest to the teahouse. It’s where Jihen has always found me, and where he most expects me to be. But I have never wanted to be tracked down by him before. And today, he has something I need instead of the other way around. I need him to find me.
I don’t think about Cormac tailing me because he’s gone—unless I find a way to free him from Earl Kingston of the Tobacco Sector, I might never see him again. His higher-ups know what case he’s been working on, so his disappearance will eventually lead them to me.
Jihen finds me in thirty minutes. I glimpse his black suit and white sneakers out of the corner of my eye and pretend I don’t see him. I turn into an alley that cuts a block in half, both of its sides lined with back doorways, knowing he’ll follow. I duck into one of them and wait for him to pass. Nerves turn my pulse fast and my
hands are clenched into fists.
He walks past, his sneakers the whitest things in the world against the damp gray stones of the alley. He’s glancing around as he moves, wondering where I’ve gone.
“Jihen,” I call out.
He turns to face me, and approaches. His expression is annoyed. “I’ve been looking for you. I have another request, a casting one.” His fingers reach out to grab my upper arm.
I cast around the small rock I’m already holding in my palm, the starter that sits in the center of the spell star I drew as he walked by.
A nine-pointed star and a bone spell.
Jihen’s body locks up mid-step. My magic, holding still his legs and arms.
His face contorts. Amazement comes first—Aza, have we not worked together so well until now?—then fury—you’ll be answering to Saint Willow for this!
Good.
“What are you doing?” Jihen’s voice is a slither of a hiss.
“I need you to bring me to a gatherer of magic.”
His surprise is real. Real enough that he forgets to try to hide it. “What are you talking about?”
Pressure that is the headache from casting the bone spell begins to grow behind my eyes. I swallow thickly and force myself to look through it. “Gatherers, the ones who put together old man-made spells. They work for Saint Willow, for your gang.”
His muscles work in his neck as he strains to move. “I have no idea—”
“I have a lot more rock starters in my bag, Jihen. I can break every bone in your body right here, one by one.” It’s more a bluff than not—I don’t want to use more magic because I don’t want more pain. And I can’t forget that I no longer have healing meds. “So take me there, now.”
He sneers, but it doesn’t hide the confusion in his eyes. “Now your family’s teahouse will suffer. Now you can be scared for your parents.”
It clicks. He really doesn’t know. Saint Willow has kept this from him. Jihen might be blood, but distant blood, and only good enough to squeeze marks from small family-run businesses. No wonder Jihen keeps Diego and his discovery of the tournament for his own secrets—they are his way of rising up past his current situation.
Family, always complicating things.
“Then bring me to Saint Willow,” I say.
More surprise, and just as real. Casters know to stay out of the gang’s way, and that means following the rules and lying low. “Why would I do that?”
I take another rock from my bag. I don’t want to do it—already there are unsheathed knives clashing around inside my skull, and I have to fight tonight—but I’m too close now.
I draw, cast.
Jihen’s baby finger snaps.
There’s a gurgle of a scream low in his throat.
“Because he’ll be able to tell me how to find it. So will you take me to him, or do we need to keep doing this?” Daggers are swinging around with the knives now, and I feel each and every one of their points.
“Stop,” he says. “I’ll take you. But you’re going to see—whatever you’ve been hearing about these gatherers is wrong. There’s no such thing. And now I’ll be paying a visit to your family’s teahouse.”
“Do that and I’ll tell your boss not just about your secret of Diego but about the entire tournament.” Jihen’s already told me he’s keeping its existence from Saint Willow. And obviously Finch never said what he was using his gathered spell for, or Saint Willow would already know about the tournament through him. “What do you think is going to happen once Saint Willow knows? He’ll take it away from you. It’ll be his, just like the Tea Sector is his.”
Jihen’s lips work. Like he’s reasoning silently to himself and still can’t keep from mouthing the words. How Saint Willow would react learning that Jihen has kept something from him.
“Fine.” Jihen flexes his arms, my bone spell now wearing off, and cradles his broken pinky. His glare is resentful and touched with still-stunned betrayal. “Let’s go.”
We turn out of the alley and walk down the street. Two minutes later, a fire truck blasts by, its sirens wailing. Jihen doesn’t make the connection. But I do. As the sound of the siren fades, I try not to think about what part of the world my magic just broke, killed, destroyed.
Saint Willow’s headquarters are on the south side of the sector, right at the edge of the city. As Jihen drives, I get the occasional glimpse of the pink woods beyond, land cast hundreds of years ago to always grow trees that pretty shade.
The south part of the sector is heavy in supply shops and corporate offices. But just when I think I’m going to have to cast again to make Jihen turn back—which I really don’t want to do with no healing meds—he pulls up to a tiny building and cuts the engine.
The place looks closed, a run-down, thin rectangle of dusty brick and dirty glass. The front window has its blinds pulled, and the door is just solid wood. Only the small sign with faded red block printing that’s nailed above the door tells me what this place is: DIM SUM.
“Don’t talk to anyone in there until I say you can,” Jihen says. “You wouldn’t be the first caster who thinks they’re special enough to approach us only to not walk away again.”
He gets out of the car.
I do the same, pretending that fear hasn’t collected into a lump of ice that’s sitting in my stomach. I follow him to the door, slipping off my mask and tucking it into my back pocket. “You’re telling me a dim sum restaurant is Saint Willow’s headquarters.”
“It is today. Maybe it won’t be this time next year, or maybe it won’t be tomorrow.”
He pulls open the door. Dim amber lighting, the tinkling of an old piano, and fragrant smoke waft out, symbols of a family legacy even older than that of Wu Teas. I step in behind Jihen.
The walls are papered over in gold, and the carpet is deep red with yellow lotus flowers. Five round black wooden tables with matching chairs are crowded into the room. Someone’s playing the piano at the far end of the restaurant, their shoulders arched over the keys as notes are plunked into existence. The air is thick enough with smoke that I think of last night’s smog, and a thin gray haze turns the already low lighting even lower. Different scents come: perfume, cigarettes, tea, smoked meat.
A woman and two men are seated at the table in the middle.
Jihen heads over and I stay near. My heart is pumping too close to the surface of my chest, wanting to leap out. I stare at the two guys and try to guess which one is Saint Willow. The one with the sleeves of his white business shirt casually rolled up as he drinks tea around the cigarette hanging from his mouth? Or the one still in his jacket and tie, tea and a bowl of rice at his elbow as he lays down a card on the pile on the table. They’re playing War. The woman sits between them, dressed in green silk and reading a book, tea also in front of her.
All three glance up to watch as we approach.
It’s the woman Jihen speaks to.
“Saint, this is Aza Wu. Her family runs Wu Teas. They’re one of the families I’ve been collecting honor marks from on your behalf.”
This is Saint Willow. A woman. My mind spins back to past conversations, trying to see how I missed this, why I assumed the leader of a gang would have to be a man. Jihen himself contributed to it, never correcting me. I guess even Jihen knows about mystery adding power.
Saint Willow slowly sets her book down on the table and her eyes lock on mine. They are darker than mine, and even harder to read than Embry’s. Reflex makes me want to look away, but I sense that would be a mistake, so I just stare back.
“And why is she here?” Her voice is as soft as the silk of her blouse, hiding how she’s made of steel. Her glossy black hair tumbles down to her waist.
“She … needs to know how to find a gatherer of magic.”
I watch her eyes as Jihen says this—they don’t change at all. Her gaze still on mine, she says, “Luna and Seb, mind going to the kitchen and seeing if they need any help?”
The two guys get up and walk away.
“Sit down, Jihen,” she says as soon as they are gone from the room. Her tone is light but Jihen being in trouble is obvious. I slowly exhale as he pulls out a chair and Saint Willow turns her eyes on her cousin. “Why again have you brought her here?”
“She needs a gatherer,” Jihen says. “I told her there’s no such thing.”
“So she just asked nicely?”
His mouth flaps. He doesn’t want to admit I gave him no choice. More, he doesn’t want to reveal I’m a caster of full magic. It would mean the loss of a toy.
“I cast full magic on him and made him bring me,” I say to Saint Willow. In the background, piano notes rise into the air, heavy and somber.
Jihen glares at me, and I remember I wasn’t supposed to talk until he said it was okay.
“It doesn’t matter anyway because there’s no such person,” he says. “Or I would have known about them.”
But Saint Willow isn’t listening. Her eyes have come back to me. Now I can read them, and I shiver at the gleam of hunger there for my magic. It reminds me of the hunger Finch has for the Guild, something stoked by his hate of magic.
She gestures to a chair. Sit.
I do.
“Aza Wu,” she says, “of the Wu Teas, your family’s name once recognized by royals. Did you know at one point, more people in the world drank Wu Teas than every other brand combined? Incredible.”
I can’t tell if she meant for me to feel the barbs in that. “That was a long time ago.”
“My ancestors once helped your ancestors settle here, hundreds of years ago. And now here we are, meeting each other, descendants of those ancestors. I’m the one who’s had to assign a squeezer to get your family to pay what is owed mine, yet you’re the one who’s a caster of full magic.”
“I’m here to make a deal with you,” I say before she can get another dig in. “Bring me to a gatherer, wipe my family’s debt, and I’ll work for you as a caster.”
Jihen sits up. He shoots me an indignant look and his mouth flaps open again. But then he snaps it shut. He can’t reveal I already promised to be his caster because that would be admitting he’s kept me a secret. And he’s probably heard the story about Milo Kingston and the Sturgeon River, about how it was family who put him in there.
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