Chapter 21 #2
Leo clapped, scattering Lia’s thoughts. “Come, sit! Just in time, food’s here. But, some introductions again.” He glanced at Kayce and smiled as he and Lia sat in the chairs pulled up next to the couch. Marcus went to sit beside his mom near Mirel.
“Over there we have Veera. She handles our communications between Order chapters both here and internationally.”
The woman with a caramel complexion and lustrous, dark hair smiled warmly. Lia couldn’t help but return it, though she tore at her nails.
Ah, the cursed habit encroached again. Lovely. Lia moved to sit on her hands.
“Mirel is on the city council, plus acts as a liaison for higher officials. She helps manage public relations for us,” Leo continued.
“And the bickering twosome by the fire are Reynaldo and Mikayla. Don’t mind them; they couldn’t get plane tickets, so they’ve been stuck in a car together since Sacramento. ”
“What do you expect when every other ad on public radio is ‘ImaginX’ this or ‘Stock Market Crash’ that?” sneered Mikayla, who softened when she caught Marcus’s wary assessment. “Don’t mind me. Gluten and dairy make me cranky.”
Leo gave Lia an apologetic grin. “They monitor Seeker activity for us. Now, Adrian here!” The man in question jolted at Leo’s heavy-handed pat on his shoulder.
“He’s a bookstore owner downtown and our resident historian.
Worked pretty close with your grandfather, actually.
He has records on our origins, that of the spheres, and the guardians—”
“Guardians?” Marcus interjected, eyes alight with curiosity. “Have you seen one? The way Mom described them was kind of ‘airy’, so I’ve been wondering, do they have wings?”
“They really know nothing,” Mikayla mused, a scathing glare aimed at their mom. “Honestly dear, the boy’s an Ember, not having Sparked yet. That’s understandable. But your eldest?” She scoffed. “From the way Julian went on, we should have inducted her when she was ten.”
Mom showed all her teeth when she smiled at the middle-aged woman. “I’ve missed your unearned bluntness, Mikayla.”
Mikayla huffed, adjusting the pearl necklace about her neck.
Leo smoothed the tension by introducing Lia and Marcus, saving Kayce for last.
“How did he get here?” Veera stepped closer, looking Kayce over as if he were pages and ink and not a flesh-and-blood person. “Doesn’t look like he’s missing anything, either.”
Kayce flexed his hands under her assessment. “Should I be? No missing fingers or toes, though the dragon gave it a shot.”
Lia glanced to the ceiling, wishing lightning would strike. None of them had done well at the ‘seen and not heard’ request. To be fair, she knew from the get-go Kayce wouldn’t.
“Not much has come through from the spheres since the First Rift,” Adrian said meekly. “It’s quite hazardous for creations to do so. Unlike those initial creations, new arrivals—the far and few we come across, mind you—bear an injury as though burned by whatever tear they’d stumbled through—”
“And yet from the sound of it, you lot have been plenty busy,” Kayce interrupted. Lia cleared her throat, but he ignored her. “Do you not believe the repairs to the First Rift are failing?”
Silence.
Leo steepled his fingers together. “It seems in recent weeks, other chapters are struggling more than in years past. And in the past few days, there have been three creations in our own region.”
“Three?” Mirel questioned.
Leo explained Lia’s attack downtown. Glancing over at her mom, Lia didn’t miss the way her face softened, how her eyes flickered down as if in remorse.
Lia felt the urge to stand and hug her, but she remained sitting.
Instead, she studied Mirel, who refused to meet her gaze.
She had been there when the gremlin attacked.
Had she not seen it? Not put two and two together?
Veera spoke. “So this is more than leftover creatures from the First Rift? The chapter in Norway didn’t seem all that concerned. Though, other chapters have whispered about the repairs to the First Rift failing. Some believe it was inevitable. None want to speak it into existence, you see.”
“But this could be an isolated event,” Adrian said. “Julian was a powerful Flameheart. Perhaps his death upset the cosmos, pulled a few things that needn’t be here—”
“After he died? Tell me how that makes sense, Adrian,” Mirel said. “Go on, indulge us.”
The thin man frowned. “It was only a suggestion. A gremlin, a storybook character of his, a dragon. They all fit his studies.”
His studies? He was a mapmaker for the Flamehearts. What could her papa be doing, looking into such dangerous beings like a gremlin and a dragon? Unless they had to do with the proof he was researching. Lia couldn’t make sense of it. But maybe Adrian would know, having worked closest with him.
“I’ve been mulling this over,” Leo said, his gaze turning to Lia with a soft twinkle in his eyes.
“I believe the tears in the veil are reopening all over the world. But in Seattle’s case, my theory is these creations were drawn like moths to a flame.
A flame that was birthed from grief. Awakened, flaring and wild. ”
The room looked at Lia.
Her throat tightened. Her heart raced. Her hands numbed from sitting on them. She leveled her gaze on the coffee table, counted the number of crumbs on the nearest plate as the silence ticked on. Until a warm hand fell on her knee.
Tearing her gaze from the plate, she looked over at Kayce.
He had pulled half of his hair back, securing it in a knot.
It exposed the planes of his face far more clearly.
He gave her a nod. The entire room faded away as his gaze held her, saw all of her.
Their argument didn’t seem to matter. It loosened something in Lia’s chest, a tension she hadn’t been able to release.
It would always be her and him against the world.
Inhaling through her nose, Lia returned the nod before looking around the room. “After Papa’s funeral, I slept that night in a way I never had. My chest burned, my head ached. As the dream went on, both only got worse.”
“Children born to a Flameheart line experience what we call the Spark,” Reynaldo said, a thick Latin accent rolling in his words.
“Typically in adolescence, they have the symptoms you experienced. The fever and lucid dreams are key signs to the parents that it’s time for them to know the family trade. ”
Mikayla sent another glare to her mom, which the latter ignored.
“Will I go through that?” Marcus pressed.
“Likely, but it varies from child to child. Especially with the rifts coming back into play.” Reynaldo frowned. “Though I hope a boy as young as yourself stays out of the fray for a while yet. It will get worse before it gets better.”
“Fifty-six years ago is the last recorded Transcribing in Seattle, apart from Leonard’s dragon.” Adrian quipped, a notebook in hand. He chewed on the end of a pencil. “And no one has seemed to find Bigfoot yet, despite several sightings in our territory… The Flameheart who does, I don’t envy.”
“What, like the Bigfoot?” Marcus asked.
Adrian nodded with a small smile.
Marcus blinked. “Mind. Blown.”
Lia didn’t even know how to address that little tidbit. Though, she supposed even urban legends would need homes in the Emperium, too. It certainly explained the cryptid articles she’d found pinned in Papa’s secret study.
“But the cities you mentioned earlier,” Kayce interrupted, leaning forward with his forearms braced on his elbows. “They have seen creations. This city has seen three in but a week. You cannot bury your head in the sands and pray the storm passes over you.”
Finally, the words seemed to register for Adrian, as he paled whiter than the pages of his notebook.
Denial would only work for so long, Lia told herself.
Perhaps that was why her papa kept his research into the rifts a secret.
The Order, his partners, seemed more content to let the trouble pass beyond their notice. Until it was on their doorstep.
Leo sighed through his nose, garnering the room’s attention.
“The First Rift is reopening, but nothing with documented rift injuries had come Earth-side.” Leo turned his attention to Lia.
She wanted to shrink into her seat. “Aurelia is not to blame—you all know this. In her grief, she may have pierced what was already thin in search of comfort. Who better than her best friend? And as Veera said earlier, I suspect other chapters of the Order have been quiet about their own investigations. No one wants to stir a panic.”
Lia looked at her mom, who frowned as she studied Leo. He’d seemed surprised in the study with Kayce’s appearance. Well, his words were. His attitude had told a different story. But if he had already gone through some of her papa’s work, what else did Leo know?
“Who—or what—is to blame, then? Surely you have a theory beyond the damage of time,” Kayce demanded, his gaze narrow. It was a challenge: a dare to be explicitly clear. A line in the sand.
The grandfather clock in the foyer chimed the hour.
Her mom straightened. “Marcus, how about you head to the kitchen for some pizza? Veera brought her twin boys, and Mirel has her kids back there, too.”
“You’re kicking me out at the good part?”
“Marcus,” their mom said firmly. “Now, please.”
The boy huffed, shoes hitting the floor as he stormed for the kitchen. Mom followed, stopping to pull the pocket doors shut behind him.
“That won’t stop me from telling him later,” Lia said, freeing her hand to gesture where her brother had disappeared. Her hands pricked as blood rushed and feeling returned. But she was done with being shut out. For both her and Marcus’s sake.
Her mom sighed. “I’m aware. But there are things he doesn’t need to hear right now.”
Not like you’re the expert in that area, Lia thought.
“I’ll cut right to it,” Mikayla said. “After hearing all of this, I believe Seekers are to blame. I’ll assume you at least know about them?”