Magic Shifts Read online

  “Don’t change the subject,” I growled.

  “Blossom, I purchased the land. You can’t really prevent me from building anything I want on it. But if it causes you distress, I will be willing to stipulate it won’t be more than two floors in height.”

  Yes, and each floor would be a hundred feet in height. “No more than fifty-five feet in height for the entire building.”

  Roland smiled. “Very well.”

  A waiter arrived, a stocky dark-haired man in his late twenties, bearing a wide platter with drinks, potato skins, crunchy fried onion rings, mozzarella sticks, and pretzels with beer sauce, and he began setting them on the table. Apparently my father had ordered the entire starter menu.

  “Now that I’ve conceded that point, the wedding. When are you going to stop living in sin?”

  “This is rich, coming from you. I’m sorry, how many wives did you have?”

  “Recently, only one.”

  “Yes, and you murdered her.”

  The waiter valiantly clutched onto his stack of small appetizer plates.

  Roland sighed. “Let’s not talk about that again.”

  “She was my mother.”

  The waiter nearly dropped the onions.

  “Yes, and I loved her deeply.”

  The waiter set the last plate on the table and paused. “May I take your order?”

  “French fries with cheese,” Julie said.

  “I don’t care,” I said.

  “Bring me some meat,” Curran said.

  My father turned to the waiter. “The child’s order stands, with the addition of a Shirley Temple. My daughter prefers Baja tacos, shrimp sautéed not fried, hold the onion and bring her a blackberry iced tea with extra lemon. My future son-in-law enjoys lamb, medium rare, no pepper, baked potato with butter and salt, no sour cream, and a Newcastle Werewolf, although he will settle for a Brown Ale or a Blue Moon. I’ll take a bourbon steak and a glass of red.”

  The waiter almost saluted before taking off.

  My father had us watched. Not just followed, but observed thoroughly enough to know I picked cooked onions out of my food.

  “Now if we could all stop pretending to be lesser versions of ourselves, I believe this conversation will flow much easier.” Roland dipped his pretzel into beer sauce.

  “Okay. How many spies do you have in our territory?”

  “Enough.” Roland smiled. “I can’t help it. It’s the lot of a parent. Even when our children don’t want us in their lives, we can’t help but watch from afar and stand ready to protect and render aid.”

  Watch from afar . . . Interesting.

  “You didn’t answer my question about your wedding.”

  I leaned back. “Why does it matter to you?”

  “Consider me old-fashioned,” he said. “People talk. People ask when or if there will be a formal union.”

  “Who are these people?”

  “D’Ambray,” Curran said.

  “How is the Preceptor?” I asked.

  “I haven’t seen him.” My father shrugged. “He is taking a sort of a sabbatical. A journey to find himself.”

  “Was that his idea or yours?” Curran asked.

  “A bit of both.”

  The waiter appeared with our drinks, cleared the empty plates, and vanished.

  Hugh had been exiled as a punishment for his failure. “And while he’s on this sabbatical, you have complete deniability. You can’t be held responsible for whatever crazy crap he pulls off while he’s in exile. How convenient.”

  “It is rather convenient, isn’t it?” Roland smiled.

  Argh.

  “Your continuous insistence on keeping your options open is causing a stir,” Roland said. “Don’t get me wrong, the elaborate plotting is highly amusing, but this Judeo-Christian age does come with some stricter conventions. It’s evident in the language. ‘Living in sin,’ ‘make an honest woman,’ ‘shacking up’—the implication of that last one, of course, being that you are too poor to get married and so must live in a shack. It isn’t a matter of money, by the way, is it?”

  “Stop,” I growled.

  “I understand you’ve been burning through your reserves,” Roland said.

  Oh no. He didn’t.

  Curran took a swallow of his beer. “Your spies have been falling short. We didn’t burn through our money. We shifted our cash reserve into real estate holdings. Currency falls and becomes devalued, but land will always retain its value. They don’t make any more of it. However, if you find yourself short on cash, let us know. We can liquidate some of our holdings on short notice.”

  Ha! Shots fired.

  “I’ll be sure to keep it in mind. I don’t mean to nag. I simply want to walk you down the aisle, Kate.”

  Be civil, be civil, be civil . . . “No.” There. Good.

  “What if there is a child?” Roland asked.

  “So?” Where was he going with this?

  “You don’t want your children to be bastards, Kate. It never turns out well.”

  I put my head on the table. It was that or physical violence.

  The food arrived. I picked up one of my Baja tacos and ate it out of desperation. I needed fuel to continue this conversation.

  “How’s school?” Roland asked Julie.

  All of my senses went into high alert.

  “Fine,” she said. “Thank you. I just got an A on my essay on Daniel.”

  “Did you use the Apocrypha?” Roland asked, his voice mild.

  “Of course,” Julie said.

  The Apocrypha, a collection of ancient writings that had been edited out of the modern Bible for various reasons, had a whole chapter on Daniel. The ancient Daniel kicked a lot of ass, unlike his modern version that stressed humility and passive resistance. It was entirely possible that I was reading too much into this conversation, but the way they spoke suggested that this wasn’t their first discussion. Julie had some explaining to do. And my father had to stop inserting himself into my life, or he would regret it.

  “Your grandmother is in poor health,” Roland said to me.

  Who, what? Where? “My grandmother is dead.” And her magic, trapped between life and death, fueled the madhouse of Mishmar, my father’s prison.

  “Your other grandmother,” he said.

  I froze.

  “Your mother’s mother is still alive,” he said. “Barely. She is eighty-nine years old. I visit her sometimes and she is rapidly declining.”

  “Does she know what happened to her daughter?”

  Roland shook his head. “She knows she died.”

  He kept finding ways to avoid saying my mother’s name.

  “She does know about you. She doesn’t have much time. If you wish to know more about your mother, I can arrange for transportation so you can speak before this chance is lost forever.”

  My world turned upside down. I didn’t remember my mother. Not a hint of her face, not a whisper of her voice, not even her scent. He was dangling bait in front of me and I wasn’t sure if I hated him more for using her memory or myself for considering snapping it up.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Seattle,” Roland said.

  There it was. He wanted to get me out of the city and away from the ifrit. He’d picked a hell of a lure. Sure, he would arrange transportation there. He said nothing about arranging it for the trip back.

  “You can be there in three days,” he said.

  In three days Eduardo would be dead. I was sure of it.

  Curran glanced at me and I saw a warning in his eyes. Yes. I know. He is trying to distract me and get me out of town. For some reason, my father really didn’t want me dealing with the djinn, and that was precisely why I had to stay.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to pass.” The words
hurt coming out. “I have things I need to do here.”

  “Kate, you won’t get another chance.”

  “I’m not going to trouble an old woman who has never seen me in her final days. My place is here. I have something to do and I can’t leave until I see it through.”

  “Very well,” Roland said. Not a hint of disappointment. Very nice, Dad.

  I wanted to jab him with my fork. He’d used my mother’s memory to manipulate me. He would regret it.

  “Besides, you knew Kalina best.”

  I watched him closely and the corners of his eyes trembled when I said her name. How does your own bitter medicine taste, Father? Have another spoon on me. “Why don’t you tell me about her? You were there till the end. You saw the light go out of her eyes.”

  Roland took a swallow of his wine.

  “If you wish to know how your mother died, I will tell you, Blossom. Ask me.”

  Walk away. Walk away, because that way lie dragons.

  Screw the dragons. I needed to know. “Tell me how my mother died, Father.”

  He waited.

  We were stabbing each other and pretending that it didn’t hurt.

  I wanted to squeeze the word out through my teeth, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. It took all of my will to make it sound casual. “Please.”

  “There is a small café in the south end of Wolf Trap,” he said. “That’s where I first saw your mother.”

  Wolf Trap, Virginia, northwest of Arlington, was a new town, built from the ground up by the Order. That was where the Knights of the Merciful Aid made their headquarters. My mother had worked with the Order for a while. And my father had visited it, walking its streets in the plain view of dozens of knights, knowing they would fall over themselves trying to kill him if they only knew who he was.

  “She sat at a table by herself reading a book and drinking coffee from a chipped white cup.”

  His voice weaved a spell, filled with longing, love, and grief. I wanted to believe it was false, but it felt so genuine. So real.

  “The sun shone through the window and her hair glowed like the finest gold. I sat at her table and I asked her why she didn’t ask for another cup. She said that there was a unique beauty to the imperfection. No other cup would ever be chipped in quite the same way. It reminded her to pay attention, for every moment could offer an experience that would leave her forever changed. When she decided she was tired of running, I found her there again, in that café, sitting at the exact same table. I took the other chair and told her that I loved her. I told her that she didn’t have to run, and that if she wanted the moon from the sky, I would reach out, pluck it from heaven, and give it to her. She told me that you were a beautiful child. That you were a part of her and a part of me and you were perfect. She took my hand, kissed my fingers, and said, ‘I love you. Don’t look for her.’ Then she stabbed me.”

  The pain in his eyes pierced me, still alive and vibrant after almost thirty years.

  “Your mother knew that your existence challenged my power. She had betrayed me for your sake. It wasn’t a private event. She had subverted my Warlord and turned her back on our union. The core of my power, those closest to me, knew about it and expected action. My pride and my reign demanded it. A betrayal that cut that deep required public punishment. Voron was merely a pawn. You were a babe and bore no responsibility for what had occurred. That left only your mother. When she drove a knife into my eye, I knew she sacrificed her life so you would live. If she was dead, the public demand for revenge would be satisfied. And so I honored her wish and killed the woman I loved for a child I had helped bring into the world.”

  He’d loved her still, after all those years. He must’ve loved her more than anything, and he was both an instrument and a cause of her death. If he hadn’t loved her, he wouldn’t have agreed to my conception. He wouldn’t have imbued me with his power and then he wouldn’t have had to try to destroy what he’d created out of love. I had told him that our family were monsters and he had corrected me. He said we were great and powerful monsters. But none of our power mattered. We were still cursed.

  “Your mother loved you before you were ever born. Nothing, not even me with all of my power, could diminish it. I wanted her more than I ever wanted anything in all of my years. To think that all that I am was undone by the simplest and most basic of things—a mother’s love for her child.”

  He reached out to me and touched my hand. Too late I realized I had dropped my shields and my magic had filled the room, plain for anyone with a gift to see it.

  “Your magic is beautiful, my daughter,” the Builder of Towers said, his eyes luminescent with power. “You should show it more often, for you are perfect.”

  • • •

  BY THE TIME we were almost done with our plates, Julie announced that she was cold. Curran offered to take her to the car to get a sweatshirt. They got up at the same time and walked out. A moment later our waiter appeared and placed a small plate with a slice of chocolate cake on it in front of me.

  I looked at Roland. He shook his head. “Not me.”

  “The gentleman ordered it on the way out,” the waiter said, then put a coffee in front of Roland and departed.

  Chocolate was really expensive. I sliced a tiny sliver of the cake with my fork and tasted it. It melted on my tongue. I had to eat this very slowly so it would last.

  “Do you think he really loves you?” my father asked.

  “He does.” And I had to change the subject before he started on the second round of the wedding conversation. “Father, why is our magic bouncing from humans possessed by an ifrit? Is it because of the geographical proximity?” Oh yes, that was smooth. Not.

  “What did you try to use?” he asked.

  “A power word.”

  “I remember trying that. Worst pain of my childhood. Let me teach you. There is so much you don’t know, Blossom. Let me help you make sense of it. At the very least, let me keep you from making rudimentary mistakes.”

  “You tried it.” I sliced another bite of the cake.

  “I was eight.”

  Oh.

  “And I did it because I was specifically told not to.” Roland drank his coffee. “I wanted to know what would happen.”

  That sounded very much like something I would do.

  “You are partially correct, the resistance is due to the geographical proximity and a miscalculation on the part of your great-great-great-great . . .” He frowned. “No, that’s right. Great-great-great-great-grandfather. The ifrit were threatening his borders, and he decided that a child of mixed blood would be a great idea, so he married a half-human, half-ifrit woman. She was his fortieth wife. I remember because it was a nice round number. He begat a child, a daughter, and as expected, she had partial immunity to the ifrit magic and was fierce on the battlefield. She was far down in the line of succession, so he hadn’t worried about her, and by the time he decided to worry about it, it was too late. Bararu, the Shining One, the Star of the Valley, had cut her way through his progeny to his heart and took his throne. She was your great-great-great-grandmother.”

  “She killed her brothers and sisters and her father?”

  “Well, in all fairness, he did execute the man she wanted to marry.”

  “Why?”

  “He was trying to check her power. She was becoming too popular with the army.”

  I rested my chin on my fist. “That’s a heartwarming story, Dad.”

  “You called me Dad.” Roland smiled.

  “I wouldn’t read too much into it. Were any of our family members ever famous for doing something nonviolent?”

  “Your great-great-grandfather cured the Plague of the Godless. It was a very virulent strain of influenza and it threatened to wipe out the human population on the entire continent.”

  “That’s good to know.�
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  “Of course, he felt obligated to do it, because your great-great-granduncle had unleashed it in the first place.”

  I just stared at him.

  “History provides us with vital lessons,” Roland said. “For example, I have no plans to murder Curran.”

  He couldn’t murder Curran, not as long as our agreement held. “Why, you’re afraid I might take your throne?”

  “No, I don’t want the heartbreak of having to kill you, Blossom.”

  Mm-hm. “Heartbreak.”

  “You don’t trust me,” he said.

  “No.”

  He smiled, and I realized that was what parental pride looked like. He was proud because I had enough brains to anticipate that he could entrap me. I wished he’d come with some sort of secret manual, so I would know how to deal with him.

  “So how shall we move forward?” he asked.

  “You could teach me here and now. I need to know about the ifrits.”

  He paused for the briefest of moments. It took half a blink, but I was watching him very carefully. For some reason he really didn’t want to tell me about the ifrit.

  “Very well. We might as well make good use of the time my future son-in-law is so kindly providing to us. Answer one of my questions and I will answer one of yours.”

  Nothing was ever simple. “Okay.”

  “When Hugh came to kill Voron, he found no sign of a child living in the house. You had gone into the woods, but where were your belongings?”

  So Hugh and Roland had a long chat before the Preceptor was exiled. “Hugh didn’t look well enough. Voron knew a clairvoyant.” Her name was Anna, she was the ex-wife of my dead guardian, and she no longer returned my calls. “I think he must’ve been told to expect something bad to happen when he sent me out of the house, because whenever I went into the woods, I packed my duffel bag and buried it under the pines on a hill behind the house.”

  “But there had to be other signs of your existence,” Roland said. “A child’s life doesn’t simply fit into one bag.”

  “Mine did. A week’s worth of underwear and socks, two pairs of jeans, five T-shirts, a sweater, and two pairs of boots. My knives, my belt, and sword fit in there as well. Toothbrush, hairbrush, a favorite book, and that was it.” I could pack it all into my bag in ten minutes and it was as if I had never existed.