Chapter 5 Tamsin
Tamsin
Agatha’s, my favorite restaurant in the entire world, opens her doors to me like a mother’s embrace.
Which, given my relationship—or lack thereof—with my own mother, maybe isn’t the best metaphor I could use.
Still, it’s the one that comes to mind as I sneak through the familiar, winding alleyways of Arcane New York.
I breathe in deep as I step through the creaky circular doors of the diner. The festive gold-gilded trim over the entrance has begun to peel with age, but that somehow seems right for this place. Agatha’s never pretends to be anything it isn’t.
I love it here.
I make a beeline for my usual booth, and I’m only a little disappointed to see it already occupied. I’ve been usurped by a mystery guest who’s currently engrossed in the giant oversized plastic menu, their face hidden behind its multiple pages.
I sigh. This isn’t the first time someone’s beaten me to my favorite seat in the house—Agatha’s has never exactly been super popular, but for a hole-in-the-wall in Arcane New York, my diner does well enough during the lunchtime rush to have stayed afloat all these years.
It’s not the end of the world for me to take another booth or a stool over at the bar-top counter.
I’m about to do just that when a voice from behind the menu calls, “Oh, dude, don’t pick another table on my account, please.”
I freeze. Nothing locks me more effectively or awkwardly in place than a social interaction with a stranger that I didn’t anticipate or plan for.
The menu lowers to reveal the face of a girl who must be around my age. East Asian features, aggressively practical ponytail, and a black hoodie so nondescript, it’s got to be deliberate. She’s smiling at me, though she looks about as awkward as I feel.
This makes me like her immediately, despite her intrusion on my favorite Agatha’s booth.
“You were going to sit here, right?” The girl sounds sheepish. “It’s a big booth. I don’t mind sharing. Uh, unless you want to eat alone, I guess. Or unless you’re waiting on more people. Don’t want to assume.”
She speaks in a low voice, practically a monotone, but there’s something earnest about the way she almost trips over her words.
“I usually eat alone here,” I admit. “But I don’t mind sharing, either.”
The girl brightens immediately. “Oh, perfect! I haven’t been here in, like, a year, and the menu keeps changing. I could use recommendations.”
I laugh as I slide into the booth across from her. “Definitely whatever the milkshake flavor of the week is. And a Reuben or a cheeseburger, maybe. Something off the sandwiches section of the menu. They’re all really good.”
“Mmm, good to know. You a regular here?”
“Not exactly.” I slide my plastic menu back and forth across the fresh-wiped tabletop, pretending to be absorbed in the soda selections.
“I’m in New York for, um, for a duel, actually.
A magic show. I’m a magician.” God, do I always sound this awkward?
Everyone tells me I’m charming in interviews. Where did that version of Tamsin go?
“No way!” The girl’s eyes go huge. “I love magic.”
“I’m glad you do.” I laugh again, but it’s more uncomfortable now.
I never know how to talk about magic with people who romanticize it.
They’re always my biggest supporters, the reason magicians can get paid at all to do what we do, but the chasm between their idea of a magician and my actual day-to-day life, well.
Let’s just say that it’s a pretty wide gap.
I glance sidelong at the girl. If she’s really such a big magic fan, there’s always the off chance that she’ll put two and two together and recognize Tamsin Blackwood in the flesh.
I’ve got enough social media followers that it’s not an unreasonable possibility.
Do I want her to recognize me? It’s the wannabe celebrity dream, sure, but I don’t come to Agatha’s to feel like a celebrity.
The girl blinks at me and smiles again, looking slightly confused, probably because of the longer-than-normal pause in our conversation.
I breathe a little easier despite the awkwardness of the silence.
So she doesn’t follow me on any of my platforms. Or at least, she’s awful enough with faces not to recognize me in real life.
I can’t blame her, what with all the edits and filters and curation my pictures go through.
Good. It means that I can just be me.
“It’s good to meet someone else who likes magic—magicians are always grateful to have an audience,” I tell her at last. There. Not even a lie.
Maybe she’s better at reading between the lines than I assumed, because the girl’s expression softens immediately.
“Sure. But magic probably feels pretty different for you than it does for the fans, though, right? You being a duelist and all. A champion.” She shrugs.
“I assume it’s a different kind of relationship with all things arcane, when it’s like, your whole life and not just entertainment. ”
I scratch the back of my neck. I wish I’d put my hair up this morning.
It’s warmer than I’d expected here, and my curls are starting to frizz.
Right in front of this surprisingly observant stranger.
“I don’t know that magic itself feels different, necessarily,” I say slowly.
“But you’re right that it’s a different kind of relationship.
I owe a lot to the promoters and the people who buy tickets.
” I snort. “I owe a lot to my dad, probably most of all. At least that’s what he’d say if he were here. ”
Hell, why did I have to say the quiet part aloud?
My new friend catches on to my slip immediately, because of course that’s the kind of luck I have. “Your dad?” she repeats softly.
“He’s my second,” I explain. I hesitate, then add, “He was a magician before I was born, a good one. He’s the one who trained me. So it kind of just worked out that way, that he’d end up being my second once I started dueling.”
“Sure, that makes sense,” the girl agrees.
“Is that ever weird, though? Having your dad around so much? I mean, my dad’s a history teacher.
He teaches all the Honors and AP classes at my high school, so like, during my sophomore year, when I signed up for AP Euro, I was always scared that I’d end up in his class instead of the other teacher’s.
” She shudders. “Having to take the horrible exams he invents. Do the homework he assigns. Get caught at home for procrastinating on the homework he assigns.”
“Did you end up in his class?” I ask, curious despite myself.
“No, thank god; I ended up in Mrs. Bakshi’s AP Euro section. She’s a way easier grader. Phew!” My friend feigns relief, wiping imaginary sweat from her brow. “The point is, I feel like being a magician and having your dad be your second is maybe a little like that? But possibly worse?”
“It’s absolutely worse,” I blurt out. I should stop talking, but she just looks at me, soft eyed, silently inviting me to continue.
So the venom emerges, bleeding out of me.
“It’s like my dad’s trying to relive his glory days through me.
He wants me to be this great magician, which sure, great, I want to be a great magician, too, obviously, otherwise what’s the point?
And yeah, I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I have without him.
He retired so he could focus on training me, and it paid off, obviously.
“But it’s exhausting, feeling like I owe him this giant debt I’m never fully going to repay, you know?
And any time I want to go my own way, or disagree with him, or do anything other than exactly what he says, he trots out that debt I owe him.
And, like, the only real collateral I have is myself.
The things I want. The goals I have. The life I want to live. ”
I only pause in my tirade when a smiling waitress arrives to take our orders. We both ask for mango milkshakes and sandwich lunch specials—a BLT for me, a Reuben for my new friend—which offers me a moment to breathe.
“Do you find yourself disagreeing with your dad a lot?” asks my friend, once the waitress departs. There’s no judgment in her voice, only a gentle sort of curiosity.
“More than usual, lately,” I admit. The waitress has taken our menus, so I’ve lost my fidget toy.
Instead, I drum my fingers on the table.
If this bothers my companion, she’s nice enough not to say so.
“There are some lines he wants to cross, or I guess boundaries he wants to push—and I get why, but I don’t know if I can do it. ”
The waitress returns with our food, which saves me from explaining further.
My companion takes an enormous bite out of her Reuben, moaning with delight. “Agatha’s does it again.”
I take a more cautious bite out of my own sandwich. It is, admittedly, delicious. “She’s reliable, all right.” I chew and swallow, then add, a little sheepishly, “Also, um, thanks for listening. I know that was a lot.”
My new friend laughs at me before slurping up an enormous swallow of her milkshake to chase the Reuben. “Not really. I think everyone’s got angst of some kind about their parents at our age. Do you think your dad’s going too far? With the boundaries thing you mentioned.”
I hesitate.
The other girl probably sees it in my face because she adds, a little awkwardly but kindly, “Obviously, you don’t have to tell me more if you don’t want to. I just thought, you seem like you need to get some stuff off your chest, and—”
“My dad wants me to throw my next duel,” I interrupt. I feel remarkably calm when I say it, but the world tilts around me as soon as the words leave my mouth. “The one I’m here in New York for.”
The Reuben pauses on the way to my friend’s mouth. Delicately, she puts it back down, expressionless, save a little lift in her eyebrows. “Oh. That’s…oh.”
I bury my face in my hands. My sandwich and milkshake sit forgotten on the table. “I’m sorry. I know we literally just met. You didn’t ask to hear about all my family drama, and you shouldn’t have to. I just…”
I just what, exactly? I just have no real friends of my own to talk to? I just feel more comfortable confiding in a kind-eyed stranger than I do talking to my own father about the way he treats me?
“He’s just worried that I’m going to lose, I think,” I finally say.
“He’s worried about me. So he wants me to go out on my own terms, I guess.
” I laugh bitterly. “At least, that’s the way he spun it for me.
Never mind that it’s technically against the rules.
Never mind the scandal it would cause if someone got wind of it. ”
My companion is silent for so long, I actually have time to consider what I’ve just done.
It’s one thing to tell a friendly, sympathetic stranger at my favorite diner about my day-to-day family troubles and the normal stressors of a magician’s life.
It’s entirely another thing to admit to her that my own father just asked me to risk my career and reputation.
When I finally peel my fingers away from my face, the other girl is still watching me with that unreadable expression. She seemed so free of judgment earlier, but now I’m not so sure.
My heart rate picks up as I clear my throat.
I don’t remember the last time I felt so tense, every muscle in my body strung painfully tight.
Part of me desperately wants to walk back everything I just said.
But the other part of me—the same part of me apparently so starved for catharsis that I just dumped all my problems on a total stranger in less than thirty minutes—lets my words hang stubbornly in the air.
“I’m not actually going to do it,” I continue.
I don’t realize until I say so aloud that I mean it—really mean it.
“Maybe Dad doesn’t think I can win. But I still do.
So I’m going to deliver a good duel. A real duel.
Not some half-staged charlatan’s magic show.
” I swallow. “I wouldn’t be here, I think, if I didn’t really believe I could win. ”
A small smile curves my friend’s lips up at the corners. “And that’s what’s important.”
“Thanks.” I go warm inside as my body relaxes, just a little. “Also, um, I’m Tamsin, by the way.” I shake my head, laughing, as I cover my face with my hands again. “God, I can’t believe I told you all that without introducing myself. I’m so sorry.”
The other girl’s mouth forms a little O of surprise. “Wait. You’re not Tamsin Blackwood, are you?”
“The one and only.” I laugh ruefully. “Let me guess. You’ve heard of my dad.” I try to keep the bitterness out of my voice. I’m not sure I succeed.
My new friend looks mortified, which doesn’t help. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you in person,” she groans. “I’ve definitely seen you on social media and stuff, but I’m awful at connecting people’s real-life faces with their photos.”
“Hey, no worries. I’ve totally been there.” I smile encouragingly at her. “Also, a million apologies, but I don’t think I ever caught your name.”
“Oh.” The girl smiles again, looking more sheepish than ever.
“I was trying to think of a good moment to slide this smoothly into the conversation, but uh, I couldn’t really find a decent segue that didn’t seem incredibly awkward.
” She shakes her head with a groan, closing her eyes.
“And now it’s, well, probably more awkward than ever. I’m sorry.”
I frown. “Don’t be sorry.” What on earth does she have to be sorry for? I’m the one who just ran my mouth at her for half an hour. “Better late than never.”
“I guess.” She ducks her head, sucking in a breath.
“I’m Samantha Chan.” Peering up at me through the fringe falling loose from her ponytail, she sticks a hand out across the table, between our long ignored milkshakes.
“It’s nice to finally meet you in the flesh.
I’m the second to Lysander Rook. Your opponent. ”