by Ella M. Lee
They only spoke for two or three minutes before making their way up toward me, Nicolas following Daniel at a decent distance.
Daniel came right to me and brushed strands of my windswept hair out of my eyes as he took a seat next to me. “Your hair is so long!” he said, his eyes roving over me.
I twisted it in my hands. It almost touched my elbows, rivaling Keisha’s thick, shiny tresses. I caught Daniel’s fingers in mine and squeezed, reassuring myself that he was still here. My heart beat aggressively in my chest, seeing him before me, looking so normal.
“Elated” didn’t even begin to cover the jolts of excitement running through me, the shortness of breath, the thrumming of my blood in my veins.
A dream come true.
Because how many times had I wished for Dan back? How many times had I talked to him in moments of solitude? How many times had I woken up and almost believed he was still with us?
And he was.
Nicolas’s eyes met mine, his expression hard and tense and warning. Even if he couldn’t read my mind, he could likely read my face. I’d never been good at hiding my feelings.
“Well, Dan,” Nicolas said, “I think it’s time for me and Fiona to go. This is… all very interesting. Unprecedented.”
Dan’s lips puckered with uneasiness. “You think I’m just… fake.”
“No,” Nicolas said. “Not fake. I’m unsure what to make of any of this right now. I know you can understand that.”
Dan rolled his eyes, relaxing slightly. “I understand that seeing is not believing for you, yeah.”
Nicolas laughed. “Very true. But if anyone can get to a place of believing, it’s me. We’ll be back soon.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Dan shrugged. “I’ll be asleep or whatever.”
“I’ll be back,” I said. “It’s not like I could live out there knowing you are in here.”
Dan smiled weakly. “Yeah, Fi.” He sighed. “Go on, it’s cool. I get it.”
I didn’t think it was cool with him, or that he really got it, but what could we do? My life was out there. Whatever Dan was… his life was in here. I wanted more than anything to bring those realities together again, but I couldn’t do it this second.
Nicolas beckoned to me and held a hand out. I stood and took it reluctantly, with a long backward glance at Daniel. He waved, and I closed my eyes, snapping back to the reality of the temple.
Tears already pricked my eyes when they opened to the cold light of the temple. My god, what if my prayers have been answered? How many times had I wished for Daniel back? This was a miracle. My chest tightened with hope, forcing all the breath out of me. I trembled just thinking about the possibilities.
Quick as a flash, Nicolas reached out to me.
“Fiona,” he said firmly. “Calm down.”
I blinked and focused my eyes on him. He gripped my shoulders tightly, his expression tight and grave.
“I know what you’ve seen is a shock, and that it’s pulling up emotions within you, but you have to be calm and assessing right now. We don’t know anything about what just occurred. I’m not saying it’s fake, but I can’t have you getting lost in hopes and dreams. If you truly want a successful outcome here, you need to school yourself carefully. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, trembling, but I had no idea how to do that. I wasn’t an impartial scientist like Nicolas. I was about as emotional as a person could be.
“What did you see?” Ryan asked. He knelt by the entrance, redoing a couple of wards.
“We saw…” Nicolas trailed off. “We saw something that very much appears to be Daniel.”
My eyes snapped back to Nicolas, surprised by his choked and gravelly voice.
Ryan’s brows drew together. “Well. That’s… unexpected.” He gestured to the walls, lit with shimmering magic. “It turns out that entering the sanctum ups the speed of magical inversion. The wards are set to trigger at too low of a threshold right now. We haven’t had to use the sanctum for much yet, with no new magicians to clan, so we haven’t run into these limits before. We’ll have to design a new system for when someone wants to go inside, so we don’t trigger false alarms.”
Nicolas stood and helped me up. I was still shaking. Nicolas’s palms were cool and clammy, but I barely registered his emotions or Ryan’s words, because all I could focus on was Daniel’s eyes and his hands and his warm smile.
I studied the sanctum with half-focused eyes. If there was a chance that was him, even a chance, I would fight tooth and nail to pull him out of there.
When my eyes finally met Nicolas’s eyes, I found them spilling over with concern and no small amount of understanding. “Come on, lamb. Let’s get the family together. We need to discuss this.”
Chapter 7
“Alive?”
Irina breathed the word, a hopeful and pleading whisper. She leaned forward, her intense eyes darting between me and Nicolas.
The whole clan had gathered at Nicolas’s urgent message, and shock of varying levels adorned their faces as Nicolas and I finished telling our story from earlier. I huddled into my sweatshirt, still shaking as everyone’s gazes landed on me, most of them drenched in concern and sympathy.
Nicolas sighed and held up a hand. “I’m not going to use the word ‘alive’ in this situation yet. Fiona and I both saw something that took the form of Daniel. Whether that is Daniel’s true, living essence or simply a trick of magic is yet to be decided.”
“What if it is him?” Teng asked. His low, clipped tone betrayed his eagerness.
Teng usually didn’t speak at these meetings, except to provide information at Nicolas’s request, but he loved Daniel. The two of them were close in ways that even Nicolas, Ryan, and I hadn’t been close to him. Teng and Daniel were cut from a similar cloth, and they understood one another. It had occurred to me more than once in these last few months to wonder if Teng felt partially responsible for Dan’s death, as one of his teachers and closest friends. If so, he had never mentioned it.
In fact, the two of us had never spoken about Dan’s death. Not that we hadn’t talked about him—we did, frequently and fondly—but we’d never talked about the events that led us all here.
“If Daniel is… trapped… in our sanctum, then…” Nicolas’s hesitant words were pained. “We will need to see if we can get him out. That is our duty to him, and to our magic. I don’t know how that would work, but I’d prefer to focus on one problem at a time. We first need to ascertain that the entity we encountered isn’t something else entirely.”
“You’re going to run tests.” Ryan’s words weren’t a question. That was what Nicolas did with everything in his life. He was a scientist; he ran experiments and came to conclusions based on them.
I shivered, wondering what sort of tests Nicolas might come up with. The last time he’d experimented with magic and life—way back in Smoke—he’d been killing people for his work. He was a changed man now, but there were still deep parts of him I didn’t understand, including his drive to learn and succeed.
Nicolas fixed me with a sharp, serious expression before turning back to Ryan, and I looked away, embarrassed by my errant thoughts.
“I have some things in mind, yes,” Nicolas said slowly. “Magic is very good at mimicking life, but it isn’t perfect. There are differences between true life and magic pretending to be life.”
“Is that something magic does frequently?” I asked. “Pretend to be life?”
Nicolas opened his palms in front of itself. “It’s not sentient. It doesn’t do anything intentionally. But it does seek to replicate itself, and it follows the same survival procedures that biological life does. Some magics do this better than others. Water. Smoke. And, of course, Lightning, which often acts like a temperamental teenager.”
Irina and Teng cracked smiles at this reference to Daniel.
“But,” Nicolas continued, “magic doesn’t adapt the way life does, not on its own. It doesn’t change course in situations, it doesn�
��t have memory, and it doesn’t act against its own nature. I think it should be possible to figure out what, exactly, is inside our sanctum. If it’s Daniel, we can devise further plans from there.”
“You know what we’re all hoping for,” Irina said.
“Of course,” Nicolas conceded.
“Is he… okay?” That was Athena, addressing the question to me.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. He seems okay.”
Athena swallowed. “I don’t like to think of him there alone.”
“None of us do, I’m sure,” Chandra added, placing her hand on Athena’s shoulder.
A quick glance around the room confirmed her words—everyone’s tense expressions were pained and concerned.
Nicolas’s eyes traveled around the room. “We’ll work as quickly as we can. Until I come up with a testing plan, no one goes into the sanctum. When we re-enter, it will be with a strategy. I’ll start some documentation for this. If anyone has ideas, feel free to add them.” Nicolas brought his hands together again. “Otherwise, our task priorities remain the same.”
His words were a dismissal. Everyone got up, whispering uneasily. Way too many glances were cast my way. I watched Teng beckon Ryan over to the other side of the room, and they conferred over Teng’s tablet.
“Lamb,” Nicolas said in an undertone, leaning over the edge of his chair so that he was closer to me. “Are you all right?”
“No,” I said.
He frowned sympathetically. Hesitantly, giving me the chance to pull away, he touched my hand, wrapping my fingers in his. “I love how honest you are with me.”
“You can read my mind. What would be the point of lying?”
“You could lie to me, if you truly wanted. It is very easy to keep things from me. Dan did so before Lightning’s creation. But I like that you don’t.” He tugged me closer, and I laid my head on his shoulder. “Trust me. I will do everything I can to solve this problem.”
“This is your specialty, right?” I asked. “Magic and life and… I don’t know. What happens when they get bound together or unbound?”
He hesitated. “It used to be something I studied, yes. It is actually Stephan’s specialty. I took my lead from him.”
“Should we be asking for his help?” I said, giving Nicolas a wry smile.
Nicolas exhaled sharply. “We don’t need to. I should be able to handle this.”
I kissed his cheek. “I was teasing. You are the smartest person I know by far.”
He shook his head. “You give me too much credit.” Nicolas despised praise of any kind.
“Have you heard anything else from the other clans?” I asked. As much as I would have liked him to be, Daniel was not our only priority.
“No,” he said. “That’s fine. We’re all no doubt planning our entrances carefully. I want to reach out, but not for a little longer. I’d like to give everyone a transparent report of our magic’s properties and abilities before we arrive. Do you think you can write something up? It should be honest and open, but also not overly detailed. You know what I’m aiming for.”
I smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Teng said you added blasting wards to the new shield the other morning. Do you think you could show me? I have an idea you might like, about using reverberation to prevent blasts on impact and also trigger blasts if needed. Defense and offense in one.”
I squeezed his hand. I desperately appreciated his attempts to distract me, but they weren’t working.
“Yeah, sounds good,” I said. “I’m going to go lie down for a while. I’m exhausted.”
I pulled my hand from his and tried not to feel self-conscious as his gaze followed me from the room. I took a deep breath once I was on the stairs, climbing them two at a time to reach my room on the third floor.
I lived up here alone, without Daniel across the hall from me. For weeks, I’d experienced agony walking past his closed door, still warded with his magic. Finally, I’d steeled myself for a heart-wrenching day of packing his possessions into boxes and wiping away his magic. Now Dan’s stuff was all put away except for one thing. The small glass lucky cat statue I’d given him as a Christmas gift now sat on my windowsill because I hadn’t been able to bear locking it away, leaving it all alone.
Like Daniel is right now. I winced.
I changed course outside my own door, heading instead toward the onsen—hot spring baths—at the other end of the hall. Exhaustion racked me, but more than that, I need to relax. Nothing could do that for me quite like hot water.
I shucked off my clothes and passed through the dressing room into the humid, steamy onsen room. I showered quickly before making my way out to the balcony and sinking into the pool that faced the mountains to the east. Cool wind buffeted my skin, and I took a deep breath.
Some days hit me harder than others. This day doused me in a particularly high amount of anxiety. Everything I had thought I’d known for nearly a year was coming undone. Why had it never occurred to me that Daniel might not be dead? There had been no body. We had all just assumed that the magic had destroyed him.
But what if it hadn’t?
What if the part of him that mattered—his life, his soul, his memories, his spark—lived on?
I wanted to be strong like Nicolas and reason this out with logic and cool analysis. I really did. But I couldn’t. Nicolas could take the things he loved most in the world and somehow assess them like he was a third-party appraiser. I’d never been like that.
I shivered even in the scalding water, sinking lower. My chest tightened at the idea that Daniel was all alone, somewhere in that vast expanse of magic. If he were in my place, he’d stop at nothing to get to me, so I would do the same for him.
But would Nicolas do the same? Nicolas’s reaction to Daniel had been lukewarm in a way I’d never known him to be toward his protégé, reminding me that I didn’t know Nicolas nearly well enough to know what he’d do in every situation. He hadn’t become Smoke’s top researcher or Water’s top commander by being hasty and emotional, after all. His sweetness and easiness with me was, at best, an anomaly. While it filled me with pride that I was one of the few people who had that sort of access to him, it also scared me.
I had some idea of what Nicolas was truly capable of, and it wasn’t all good.
I yawned. I should talk to Ryan. He would have insight into Nicolas. He would be able to tell me how to approach Nicolas, to make sure he was fully on board with these plans.
I stood, exposing myself to the cool air as I made my way inside, telling myself I’d have the energy to do that after a nap.
I managed a fitful hour of sleep and woke groggy, with my throat feeling like sandpaper. I plodded down to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of water out of our massive fridge. I paused, eyeing the rows of food with disdain. It was ten at night. I should eat something, I thought, but nothing was appealing.
I finished the bottle of water and poked my head out into the hallway. Ryan’s door at the end of the hall was slightly open, and his lights were on. Nicolas wasn’t in the house. He was likely working in the lab at this hour, making it an excellent time to talk about him without him hearing.
I slid the door further open. “Hey, I was wondering—”
Ryan’s head, previously bowed, snapped up in surprise. His tear-filled eyes met mine, and he studied me for a moment as though he’d never seen me before.
“Oh…” I said weakly. “I’m sorry…”
He held up a hand to silence me and then twisted it, waving me into his office. With his other hand, he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed his eyes. I stood frozen. I’d never seen Ryan cry before. He generally displayed a calm that rivaled even Nicolas.
He cleared his throat. “Come in.”
I nervously stepped inside and slid the door shut behind me. “I didn’t mean to intrude…”
He waved his hand again. “You weren’t. I’m fine. Take a seat. Today has been an interesting day to say
the least. Do you notice sometimes how life seems full of small coincidences? I find significant things happen on this date more than others. A quirk of my life.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “Are you thinking about Daniel?” I asked, shifting in my chair.
“Daniel…” he said. “And others.”
I swallowed. Ryan wasn’t a combat magician, but he’d been in clans for a long time. He’d likely seen all sorts of things that had made a lasting impact on him. I had never mentioned it or articulated the idea aloud, but I had a feeling Nicolas protected Ryan from things that would upset him. Ryan had always struck me as sensitive, able to be affected in ways Nicolas wasn’t.
Ryan’s fingers skimmed the glossy surface of a photo resting on his desk before unconsciously curling his hand into a tight fist. I snuck a glance at the photo. It showed the faded portrait of a Chinese man. Not Ryan, but someone with a broader nose, wider shoulders, and wilder hair.
Ryan followed my glance and offered a pained smile. “Learning this new information about Daniel had me wondering what I would do if others in my life reappeared in a similar fashion.” Ryan pushed the photograph toward me. “His name was Yan-Lin.”
“Who was he?” I asked, noting that Ryan’s eyes had once again turned glassy and sad.
“My partner,” Ryan said. “We were in love. I thought I would spend the rest of my life with him. He took his own life thirty-one years ago today.”
His words turned my insides numb and cold. “Ryan, I’m so sorry…” I twisted my hands together in my lap.
“Thank you for saying that. I am usually not so emotional about this anymore.”
“It never goes away,” I said. “When Mark reappeared, I cried over my mom for the first time in years. It was a weird reaction, but I guess seeing Mark brought everything back.”
Ryan gave a single, solemn nod. “Yes, I understand that. I feel the same.”
I took a closer look at the photo. Yan-Lin was seated at an old-style writing desk, a pen in his hand. Behind him was a window, the city buildings blurred in the distance. His expression didn’t quite contain a smile, but his eyes were playful and alight, his other hand pointed at the camera animatedly as though self-consciously gesturing it away.
