by Ella M. Lee
“Yeah,” I said. “No big deal. They were idiots.”
Nicolas nodded, glancing behind us. He took out his phone. While he called Mark and had a terse conversation, I dragged the woman over next to the man, double-checking her pulse.
“Mark is on his way,” Nicolas said. “He’ll take care of this for us.”
“Great,” I said bitterly. “I guess our vacation is ruined.”
Nicolas’s eyes softened, his lips turning down. “We should get home.”
I nodded. “I’ll call Keisha.”
It didn’t take Mark more than ten minutes to arrive, but that was long enough for us to get packed, and for Keisha to already be forming up a portal to our coordinates.
“Fiona,” Mark said, striding into the room as though he owned the place. “You look good.”
“Yeah, you too,” I said, suppressing any of my annoyed commentary. My brother looked better than good, in fact. His pale skin had a little color to it, making his blue eyes stand out even more. His dark hair, so close to mine in texture and color, was longer than before. He had an easy smile, and he seemed to be incapable of keeping his eyes off the wedding ring on his left hand—a thick yellow gold band with a ruby set into it.
“Well, this is a neat little mess,” he said. “You do this all yourself, big sis?”
“Who else?” I asked. “You and Nicolas were off being useless. Someone needed to clear out the riffraff around here.”
Magic filled the air behind us, just to the left of the bed. A shimmering, purple, foggy pane appeared in the air, about the size of a door, with rounded corners.
“That’s our ride,” I said.
“Thank you for handling this, Mark,” Nicolas said.
“No problem.” He waved a hand. “Anything to weasel my way back into Fiona’s good graces.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not working,” I said.
But it was, just a little. My jerk of a brother seemed transformed now—by Meteor, by Evie, and by Nicolas’s firm teaching. I wasn’t ready to put the past behind us, but he certainly wasn’t the same little shit who had ruined my life several times over.
Not someone I considered family, but not the worst person in the world, either.
He smiled like he knew what I was thinking as Nicolas and I stepped back through the portal and into the cold Osaka afternoon.
Back to reality, with another chance at relaxation destroyed.
Chapter 5
“Will you sit down?” I said to Keisha. “I’m fine, and you’re wiped out.”
Nicolas and I had been back from our disastrous little excursion to Cancun for almost an hour now, but I was still being hounded by Keisha and Athena, the two of them worried that I’d gotten hurt.
Keisha looked like a ghost, her normal coppery complexion wan and her hands shaking. Although she was a great spatial manipulator, portal creation was difficult, and Lightning magic was new. It took her more effort to create portals than it had in Water, and she didn’t normally have to do it twice within mere hours.
“I’m cool,” Keisha said, flitting out of the common room.
I exchanged a frustrated look with Athena, who sat next to me on the couch, checking my foot.
“Ryan!” I called down the hall. “Can you make Keisha sit down?”
Ryan was Keisha’s teacher, mentor, and commander. She was practically required to listen to him. I heard his heavy steps hurry down the hall and into the kitchen, where his calm, low murmuring interrupted Keisha’s higher tone.
“I don’t think anything is broken,” Athena said, wiggling each of my toes. “You should train more with bare feet so you don’t hurt yourself this way.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like I normally go into operations in sundresses and heels.”
“I’m surprised Sylvio doesn’t make you practice barefooted,” Athena said. She sighed. “He makes me do it.”
“It’s different. You’re an actual fighter. It’s what you do. I’m just a magician who also knows how to fight because I like it.”
Although Athena was a decent magician and gifted with unique precognitive dreams that sometimes supplemented Nicolas’s view of the future, Nicolas had made her, like Sylvio and Chandra, his primary fighters, and they’d all carried that role into Lightning.
Keisha reentered the common room, shoulders slumped, sulking. “Thanks for telling on me,” she said, but she couldn’t hide her small smile. She sank into an armchair, her dark hair spilling over the side as she leaned her head back. “Ryan says to take a nap.”
“Always a good idea,” I said.
I pulled my leg out of Athena’s grasp, drawing it under me, crossing my arms in annoyance. Nicolas had disappeared after making sure I was all right, off to confer with Sylvio and give Mark a call to make sure things had gone well on his end.
Athena frowned, tossing her dark hair over one shoulder, her greenish eyes concerned. “Want to go shopping in Osaka tomorrow?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Keisha perked up, her eyes brightening. “I want to go shopping tomorrow.”
I pointed a finger at her. “You need to sleep.”
She waved a hand. “I’ll sleep tonight. Tomorrow, let’s shop!”
I looked between them, hesitating.
“We’ll get coffee and go to the bookstore, too. And eat sushi,” Athena promised, knowing those things would make me happier than just a day of shopping. “We can stop by one of the shrines if you want some peace and quiet.”
Keisha nodded enthusiastically. “There’s a new place near Namba Station that sells chocolate cream tarts. We can bring home a bunch for everyone.”
Keisha knew food was one of the ways to my heart.
My throat tightened, grateful tendrils of emotion choking me. These people cared about me. Although I focused a lot of my life on Lightning and Nicolas, I couldn’t forget that I had an entire family of magicians who wanted me to be safe and happy, and they were willing to put in the effort to make it so.
Although we were all having pretty good luck with it, as evidenced by my little scuffle with Meteor, Lightning magic wasn’t easy. It truly was like a living thing. Flame had been like an unintelligent beast, charging its way through everything, wreaking havoc and leaving destruction in its wake. Water had been slick and slippery, with a hint of complex cleverness in every elegant twist. Lightning, though… Lightning was an intelligent, playful thing that wanted attention.
It responded to emotion like Meteor, liked to find its way into structure like Smoke and Sky, and constantly tested control like Wild. Daniel had intentionally made it with a bit of every clan. He’d shaped it to gather all the strengths he could, but he’d drawn in a few weaknesses, too.
No one blamed him for that. It was still a work of art, but it was a work of art that needed careful handling and tending, or it sometimes blew things up, overextended its magicians, or fizzled into nothing when we most needed it.
And these new problems we were encountering weren’t helping us figure it out. Why had our shield collapsed? Why did Lightning sometimes slip out of our grip?
It might be years before we had answers, years of small discoveries that might eventually lead into larger understanding.
I was terrified we weren’t good enough to survive among the other eight clans, to impress them with our abilities. I had told myself I’d work harder at learning magic, and now was my chance.
The next afternoon, after returning from a morning of shopping and eating lunch in Osaka, I visited our clan’s sanctum. I watched it carefully, stalking around it in circles, trying to understand anything from the shimmering power that shifted and pooled under its glass surface. Rain beat against the roof of the temple, drowning out everything except my own thoughts and the gentle whirr and buzz I detected from the sanctum’s constantly active power.
I hope this isn’t a terrible idea. I kneeled before the orb and pressed my hands against it.
I hadn’t done t
his before without Daniel pulling me into it, but I knew how to project myself into the sanctum instinctively. It was a connection of my power and its power, a click, like a switch completing a circuit.
My physical body remained in the temple, just barely aware, but suddenly I also existed inside the sanctum.
I gasped, spinning around. Spread out before me was a beautiful landscape. I stood on a windswept beach, filled with rocky sand, brutal waves pounding behind me over and over. I had seen this place before—there had been a beach and an ocean when I’d first come here with Daniel.
But now there was much more.
Stretched out beyond the beach was a green grassy field, overgrown and wild with blooming flowers. At its far end, there were mountains towering, misty and dark, into the distance.
This was clearly something Dan had built. It held all the best aspects of Hong Kong and Japan and China, with a dose of Hawaii and Borneo and a little of the French countryside.
Sanctums were living, changing things. I had seen it in its raw form when we’d been building the magic together, but now it was complete.
The air smelled like salt and water and cut grass, heavy with the storms I could see in the distance hovering over the impressive mountains, throwing down small strikes of lightning here and there. Wind whipped past me, ruffling my loose hair.
The whole place wrapped me in a deep sense of calm. It felt like I had known it intimately and forever—a childhood home or a beloved vacation destination—although I had never seen it before.
Something about it completed me.
I wandered the beach, following as it curved out of sight, drawing my sweatshirt closer around me against the cool air.
Eventually, I climbed the rough, sloping dunes and scrambled into the field, wading through waist-high grass in some places.
I found things that baffled me. It was maybe a mile to the foot of the nearest mountains, and halfway there, I stumbled upon a weathered but completely serviceable pair of wooden Adirondack chairs hidden in the grass.
I circled them several times. Why were they here? What had created them? Were they integral to this place, to the magic? Had Daniel even known what an Adirondack chair was?
Were they perhaps something I had imparted to the magic?
Beyond the mysterious chairs stood a worn picnic table, the red paint peeling and faded. Another mind-bending discovery.
At the foot of the first mountains—they were more like tall hills—I found a row of red flags leading up a narrow dirt path. I followed them into a tiny valley where there stood a single huge torii gate, tall and wooden and red, in the center of a circular field of flowers.
I returned down the hillside and wandered back to the beach.
This place was fascinating. I didn’t know who had been in here—Nicolas? Ryan? Teng? Anyone?—but I couldn’t wait to talk about it. Nicolas, who was a bastion of both information and curious questions, would probably be happy to listen to me go on for hours.
I also couldn’t wait to explore it further, to see if I could understand our magic more because of it. I wondered how far it extended. Could I sail across the dangerous-looking ocean? What was on the other side of the mountains?
I sat on a large rock that rested on the divide between the beach dunes and the field, drawing my legs up under me.
I closed my eyes, letting my magic bloom around me. I usually held it close, but here it wanted to roam free, and I was happy to let it. It explored, reaching out to touch blades of grass and molecules of air and grains of sand.
I drew useless wards in the air and watched gleefully as they exploded with sparks and streams of light. Magic was heightened here, it seemed.
My chest burst with joy, and I had no idea I could feel this good.
Why hadn’t I come here before now? Why hadn’t anyone told me it would be like this?
The only thing missing was Daniel. This place was his. He should be here; he had created it.
“You would have loved this place, Dan,” I said aloud, my words immediately swallowed up by the roar of the ocean waves.
“You would have loved our home, too,” I continued. “Keisha restored the rest of the temple just like you wanted, and my wisteria grove is coming along. The trees will take a couple of years to bloom, but I’m already planning to throw a party. Sylvio released baby koi into the pond this summer. Teng found a kitten with a hurt leg wandering on the road. He brought her to me, and I took care of her. I named her Miki, after Miki Ando, a famous figure skater. But really, I think she likes Teng more. She sneaks into his office whenever she can. He says he hates it, but I’ve caught him holding her in his lap once or twice. It’s cute.”
I sighed, picking at the rock nervously.
“It’s judgment day, though, with this conclave coming up. I am not excited for that. We’ll have a lot of explaining to do. I wrote a book about our magic. Do you think maybe I can hand that over and they’ll leave me alone…?”
I laughed.
“Lightning is beautiful, Dan. Like, really fucking beautiful. The best thing I’ve ever seen. It’s all the good parts of all the other clans, just like we aimed for. I can say that with authority, because I’ve had a few of those magics now. And it’s a little something else. I don’t even know. It’s got your spark. It’s everything we wanted, everything we needed. It’s also a little bratty too, but we’ll manage. I love it.”
I took a deep breath. The waves had calmed slightly, and I watched them, wistful and pleased. Magic was born of need, and we had needed it enough to create this. Magic was also in many ways born of love, and this place was full of it. I could feel it.
I would come back frequently and tend it. This was a gift, a garden, a legacy. I would take care of it.
I was on my fifth calming breath when I heard a rustling behind me, crisper than wind, like footsteps, and then a voice.
“Hey, Fi.”
Chapter 6
I jumped, spinning and falling backward off the rock.
“Holy shit!” I spat.
A dozen feet away, shin deep in the green grass of the field, stood Daniel.
Whatever this was—a memory, an apparition, an echo?—it was accurate as hell. Here was Dan, with his black-and-blue hair and his dark eyes and his delicate, fox-like features. Here was Dan, lean and dressed in dark jeans and a charcoal-gray T-shirt. Here was Dan, with his endearing smile and his smooth voice and the same curiously amused tilt of his head.
Exactly as he’d been on the evening we created Lightning.
His hand was held out to me, his eyes wide, his stance balanced and elegant.
I scrambled to my feet, immediately tense and alert. I didn’t know what this was. No one had explained to me what could live inside a sanctum—or how dangerous the place could be.
I was a second away from fleeing, from waking myself up in the real world and never, ever coming back here. But I was also pinned in place by the semitruck of emotion that had just hit me.
Dan. Here. Now. How could this be?
I took a hesitant step back, debating.
“Wait, Fi, wait,” Daniel said.
He took a step forward, and I stepped back again, my hands up in front of me.
“What are you?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from shaking.
“Daniel,” he said. “I’m Daniel Shing. You’re Fiona Ember. We are best friends.”
He spread his hands in a gesture obviously meant to reassure me. His tone bordered on “what sort of moron are you?” and I would have smiled if it wasn’t all so alarming.
“That’s, well… that can’t be right,” I said. “You’re dead.”
“I am not dead,” he said indignantly, his brow furrowed. “I’m right here.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what to tell you. I watched you die. This is… this must be some sort of… I don’t know, hallucination?”
“I’m not a hallucination,” he said, his baffled expression slowly shifting into impatience. “I have
feelings, and you are hurting them.”
My lower jaw trembled, fighting to suppress the tears and bile and painful words I wanted to hurl at myself for this stunning misadventure. I needed to get out of here. Whatever my mind or this place was doing to me, I couldn’t handle it. Although I talked to Dan occasionally in my head and thought of him often, my wounds were still too raw for this sort of visceral imagery.
Daniel took another step closer.
“Don’t,” I said, half choking on the word. “Stay away.”
“Come on, Fi,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I don’t really know that,” I said.
“Well, either I’m real and I’m definitely not going to hurt you because I love you, or I’m all in your imagination and I’m not going to hurt you because that wouldn’t make any sense,” he pointed out.
“True,” I allowed, although the logic there was shaky.
He took a few more steps toward me. We were now only a few feet apart. He reached out a slender hand, palm up.
I put my fingers on his. Solid. Warm. Human. He didn’t seem like a hallucination. He inclined his head as if to say See? And I did see, but that didn’t mean I understood.
“How?” I whispered. “If this is real—and I’m not saying it is—then how?”
He shrugged. “As if I would know?” His fingers closed around mine, and his familiar grip made me tremble.
“Do you… do you remember what happened?” I asked.
He smiled sadly. “Yeah. Of course. How long has it been?” he asked. “Since I… died?”
“Ten months,” I said, looking away.
“Feels like longer,” he said.
“You’ve been here?” I asked.
He shrugged again. “I guess. I’m not always, uh, awake. Sometimes I’m just, I don’t know, dreaming. But I felt your magic. It drew me out. It took a while to put the pieces together, to remember everything.”
He took my other hand, holding them both together between his. His eyes wandered up to study my face.
“You look great, Fi,” he said. “This magic suits you. Are you happy? How is Nicolas? Is everyone okay?” Worry crept into his tone at the end, and I got the distinct impression he felt guilty for not asking after them straightaway.
