Chapter 7 Tamsin
Tamsin
I’m a perfect goddamn fool.
After Sam says her goodbyes—because of course it’s Samantha Chan, second to Lysander goddamn Rook, that I’ve been spilling my guts to this whole time—I sit alone in that booth for a long time.
This was my favorite booth at Agatha’s. Now I don’t know if I’ll ever see it as anything other than the place where I made a complete and total fool of myself. The exact spot where I nearly imploded my own career before Lysander Rook ever had his chance at breaking me, body and soul.
The only thing saving me is, it seems, the pity of Samantha Chan, if you can call it that.
Promise me that you’re going to show me some beautiful, terrifying magic.
Isn’t that exactly what I promised myself I’d do when I accepted her invitation?
I look down at my hands. They’re shaking. Remarkable. My skill with magic is as deft as ever. I’ve never worked harder or felt more dominant in the training arena during practices. So why does the idea of delivering on that promise scare me now?
My phone buzzes. The preview of my father’s perfunctory text slides across my screen, accusatory in its brevity: Where are you?
I breathe out slowly and count to ten. Then I type back, On a walk. Grabbed a bite to eat. Heading back to the hotel now.
I don’t bother sticking around long enough to read his response.
“That was a long walk,” Dad observes.
I sigh into my hamstring stretch and put on a faintly exasperated face. Maybe a performance of nonchalance will disguise the volume of my racing heart. “Didn’t you tell me I was neglecting steady state cardio days? Besides, I told you, I needed to eat.”
“Where?”
“Some hole in the wall in Arcane New York.”
Dad pauses. “You went for a walk through Arcane New York?”
“For cardio. And food. Yes.”
My father sighs. “Tam. Do you know why I plan out your schedule so meticulously?”
“I imagine that whatever my answer is, you’ll have a better one.”
Dad actually chuckles at that one. I breathe a little easier as I stretch out my other leg. Making my father laugh—genuinely laugh—is good. Laughter usually indicates approval. Laughter rarely indicates that his ego has been bruised.
Dad is most dangerous when his ego is bruised.
“Before your mother left, I thought my job as a parent would be simple.” Dad paces the length of the Pilates studio he’s rented out.
“She was supposed to be your primary caretaker. All I had to do was wait for you to grow up, keep you in reasonably good shape, and make sure you weren’t a complete idiot when it came to the technical knowledge of magic. ”
It’s a speech Dad’s given before, but I can’t help but flinch hearing it this time. Condescension always smarts more when you’ve actually done something to merit being talked down to. When you’ve actually been objectively stupid. And Samantha Chan made me stupid today.
No, that’s not fair. I can’t blame Sam. She never agreed to become my personal confessional. I made her into that all on my own. All she did was listen.
It’s been so long since anyone has ever listened to me.
“I know you didn’t plan on having to do the job of two parents,” I tell Dad, which he’s also heard before, but acknowledgment of his labor usually mollifies him. “I can’t imagine how hard it probably was.”
“Parenting is always hard,” agrees Dad. “But it’s harder still to be parent and teacher and second all at once. I don’t mind the work—I relish it, in fact—but I can only do all three well when I know where you are and what you’re doing. You understand, yes?”
I sigh again. “I understand.”
“I don’t want you to overextend yourself.”
“I won’t.” Dad has a point. Today is a rest day—or, excuse me, an active rest day.
Long walks are nominally acceptable, but there will be no work on spell-casting (so that I can outdo my opponent when we face off in the magicians’ dueling arena), or laboring under a barbell to slap more muscle onto my frame (to better withstand my opponent’s attacks in that same dueling arena), or sweating through hill sprints meant to lengthen my endurance (so that I don’t tire before my opponent).
Instead, I’m meant to be quietly working on my mobility and checking in with my body, and probably practicing mindfulness or learning to meditate, or whatever it is that they’ve recommended on the trendiest new magicians’ podcasts for a duelist’s physical recovery.
But naturally, instead of mindfully meditating and learning to unite my spirit with my body, I’m tensing up as I gird myself for another soliloquy from my father.
“You meet anyone for lunch?” My dad’s tone is casual, but I tense up even tighter.
“A lot of our friends live near Arcane New York.” By our friends, he means his friends—or really, his business associates.
I’m not sure that Dad has real friends, so much as he has pleasantly transactional partnerships.
“You’d give my regards if you ran into Master Oliver or Master Theodore, right? ”
“I would. But I didn’t.”
“Lunch all by yourself.”
I shrug. “I find it peaceful.” I’ve gotten good at lying by omission to my father.
Now my dad’s the one sighing. “Next time, see if you can invite Oliver or Theodore along. It would be good to catch up with them. Maintaining the right connections, well, that’s just as important as spell-casting if you want to make it as a magician in the big leagues.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I could come along with you next time, if you feel awkward inviting an old master on your own. I’d make proper introductions. Make sure they see you the right way.”
“I’m sure you would.” I smile at Dad. “And if I invite Masters Oliver or Theodore to lunch the next time I’m in Arcane New York, I’ll be sure to text you so you can join us.”
I will absolutely never invite Masters Oliver or Theodore out to lunch.
The last time Dad made me eat with them, Master Oliver—a man three times my age—spent the whole time staring openly at my boobs, and Master Theodore interrupted me every other sentence to sneak in snide comments about how clever and industrious it was for me to get my duels in “while I can,” before I inevitably develop more of an interest in marriage and babies.
Dad doesn’t quite smile back. “I do all of this for you, Tamsin. A father may be a mentor—a guide, even—for a young magician, but to be a second? That’s something more.
A second is an extension of the magician themselves.
That’s why so many of us are our magicians’ primary sparring partners in the training arena.
We know our champions’ magic most intimately, inside and out, from receiving every attack without complaint.
Absorbing the suffering to better the skill of the champion. ”
Dad stands behind me, gazing at our joint reflection in the giant studio mirror.
There are a million stories you could tell about us, each more cliché than the last, based on the look of us, side by side.
The older yet meticulously well-kept white man with his dark hair and eyes, his expressive brows and dimpled smirk.
His young ingenue, not necessarily a classic beauty, but appropriately striking, as suits her role in these stories: the long dark eyes and high cheekbones of her Asian mother, the curl and reddish tint to her hair courtesy of an Irish grandmother alongside a splash of freckles across her winter-pale skin.
Both of us well-formed, our bodies corded through with muscle, pared down by hours sweating in the arena.
Dress us up the right way, set up some good lighting, and we look precisely the way modern-day magicians ought to look: hungry and athletic but tempered with a certain stereotypically witchy vibe.
The romance of magic wielders past rebooted for contemporary eyes.
All packaged in a heartwarming father-daughter story.
“A second shares in their champion’s triumphs and despairs in their losses,” Dad continues.
He stares unblinking at our shared reflection.
“Your victories are mine, but so are your failures. So is your pain. And so is your power. A second is the champion’s true confidante.
It’s a relationship imbued by trust that cannot be replicated by any mere garden-variety parent.
We are one force, one mind, sharing two bodies. ”
Never let it be said that Dad doesn’t have a creative take on pep talks.
I twist my head to look at him directly. “That’s a lot, Dad. A lot of expectation. A lot of pressure.”
My father tips two fingers under my chin.
A smile flashes across his features as he tilts my face this way and that.
No doubt assessing my marketing value for sponsors.
“Don’t let the pressure get under your skin, Tamsin.
Remember, you’re a Blackwood. And I’ve already given you all the tools you need to make this duel a success. ”
A success. Not a win. Because for all his flowery, put-upon speeches about doing everything he does for my sake, and my sake alone, Dad doesn’t actually believe I can beat Lysander Rook.
And even if I can, why would he want that? If I win, I set myself up for independent success, financially and reputationally.
If I lose, I remain dependent on Dad. And he takes home the payday that should be mine.
“Maybe we should practice.” I straighten abruptly, struck by reckless inspiration.
My heart pounds. Fear or excitement? Maybe both.
I always tell myself it’s both, when my nerves start buzzing before a duel.
And talking to my father gets my nerves going better than any duel I’ve ever fought.
“It’s been a while since we’ve sparred. And, as you’ve pointed out, you’re not just my dad—you’re my second. ”
Dad blinks at me. “It’s your rest day.”
“Active rest day.”
“Active rest days are for mobility and walks. They are not for hard sparring.”
“Tomorrow, then.” I stare my father down. “Don’t you want my duel to be a success?”
Dad shakes his head. “You don’t need hard sparring for that.”
“Right, I just need to practice conceding the duel I’m favored to win, right?
” My heart rate picks up as I speak, but I press forward anyway.
“What’s your brilliant strategy for that, Dad?
I mean, yielding voluntarily isn’t exactly something we’ve spent a ton of time practicing in the training arena. ”
Immediately, my father’s features harden. “Careful, Tamsin.”
“No, I mean it.” I rise to my feet and face my father head-on.
“You’re my second. This is the strategy you’ve advised me to use.
So advise me: How do I implement it? How do I set it up?
” I spread my hands. “How should I go about practicing my planned surrender to the opponent I’d give anything to beat?
What’s the optimal timing mid-duel for that? ”
Dad narrows his eyes. A muscle jumps in his jaw.
The tension strung between us right now would rival that between most duelists on some of the biggest stages in the world.
His hand flexes. If it curls just the right way, and he focuses his energy, with a flick of those fingers, he’ll summon magic that will blast an opponent back ten paces.
I see the temptation in him, clear as day.
Some part of him wants to teach me a real lesson the old-fashioned way, magician to magician.
Some part of him misses the arena and wants to show his upstart little girl that her old man can still hang.
Master Mateus Blackwood, the one-time terror of the magical world.
“Before Lysander Rook tears my daughter limb from limb,” says Dad at last. His voice is blunt, thick with an emotion I can’t quite identify. “That’s the optimal timing, you hear? You yield before you allow that…that monster of a boy to do something to you that can’t be undone.”
There have been moments in my life when time itself seems to hit its own pause button. This is one of them. Dad’s breathing hard, nostrils flared. Usually, that’s a sign of mounting anger, but anger is nothing new to me, coming from my father.
This emotion, on the other hand, is new.
I don’t answer Dad’s outburst. I don’t make any promises.
I don’t, in fact, say anything at all for a while.
Instead, I just stare back at my father.
And sure enough, the longer I stare, the more certain I am that I’m seeing something I’ve never truly before witnessed behind the cold black eyes of Master Mateus Blackwood.
Fear.