Chapter 20 Sam #2
After a couple weeks of Internet stalking Tamsin Blackwood, I start looking into her father’s current whereabouts. This takes a lot more active digging—simply scrolling through my social media feed and listening to magicians’ podcasts at the gym won’t cut it for this task.
I’ve learned patience over the years, though. After all, I’ve waited almost half a decade to avenge my brother’s murder. If that doesn’t qualify as patient, I don’t know what does.
My willingness to wait and dig does eventually pay off. It takes a lot of targeted searches and pointed questions in some of the shadier corners of the magicians’ Internet, but I find out where Blackwood’s holed up.
As it turns out, my old enemy doesn’t lurk very far from me at all. So I buy a bus ticket.
The club smells like piss.
That’s all I can think about when I finally locate the address I’ve screenshotted on my phone.
As far as my parents are concerned, I’m at a training camp.
It’s not so far off from the truth. The club I’ve tracked down is, technically speaking, a well-known magicians’ hangout. It’s even got a dueling arena.
What I’ve neglected to disclose to my parents is the legitimacy of the club. Which is to say: it doesn’t have any, as far as magic and the law are concerned.
Nervous energy raises the hair on the back of my neck as I wander through the dilapidated, rusty-hinged doors.
There’s no actual ID check at the front, of course, so it’s easy to waltz in despite being under twenty-one.
That doesn’t change the fact, however, that I’ve never actually stepped foot in one of these clubs.
I can’t stop wrinkling my nose at the scent of the place. How anyone can pay attention to magic when it smells this bad in here, I have no idea.
It doesn’t take me long to find what I’m looking for.
All I have to do is follow the sound of heckling and applause.
I push my way through the crowded bar into one of the back rooms. The good news about this is that it smells slightly less like piss in there.
The bad news is that instead, the odor of human sweat intensifies significantly.
I catch the tail end of the current duel.
A brown-skinned female magician with a bright purple pixie cut and a complex tattoo of vines curling down her neck controls the center of the ring.
She squares off against a stout, bearded blond man who wouldn’t be out of place on one of those Viking period shows.
He’s advancing on her territory, throwing vicious, crackling bolts of arcane energy in a furious flurry. He looks strong and fast, and he’s probably hoping to overwhelm the smaller magician with pure volume.
The woman doesn’t look worried, though. She evades most of his spells without bothering to throw any counter-spells, relying on physical agility alone. A few of his blasts manage to clip her, singeing her lightly on her ribs and shoulders, but nothing that gives her pause.
Frustrated, the man draws closer and closer.
This, apparently, is what the woman wants.
Just as he steps within hand-to-hand combat range, she throws a vicious push kick to his torso.
It’s enhanced with a brutal amount of magical strength, the spell so powerful I can feel the shift in energy even here from the back row.
Her opponent flies backward from the force of it.
He lands on his back, dazed. Before he can get his bearings, she’s already pressing her advantage.
She casts her next spell from the distance the push kick earned her.
The flare of her arcane energy sears its way across his face.
He cries out and goes down. When he tries to rise again, another flare of energy—once against cast across the ring—greets him. He goes back down.
“Yield!” he cries, raising his hands. “I yield, I yield the duel!”
His opponent looks as if she’s considering continuing.
My heart climbs into my throat. This was how Jamie died.
The duel should have been stopped when he yielded, but a bloodthirsty, mismatched opponent riding high on adrenaline—combined with the nonexistent efforts of a lazy referee more interested in a hungry crowd’s approval than duelist safety—ensured that my brother left a club just like this in a body bag.
Before the purple-haired woman can consider summoning more magic, however, a burly East Asian man with a pair of sleeve tattoos—apparently, the makeshift referee for this duel—enters the ring and signals a stop to the action.
Gruffly, he raises the woman’s hand, to a combination of cheers and jeers from the crowd.
Another man enters the ring to help the blond Viking type wobble back to safety.
My heart returns to its normal spot in my chest. Both duelists are alive.
Both got luckier tonight, it seems, than Jamie did all those years ago.
“Enjoying yourself?”
I think I’m mishearing that voice at first. What I want can’t possibly come this easily to me. Nothing has since Jamie died. Surely, I’d have to jump through more hoops to find my mark.
“It’s a good show,” the voice continues. “Nothing like some of the scraps magicians would get into in the old days, but close enough. None of this sanitized, sanctioned bullshit that’s got all the kids so excited. Don’t know any better, I suppose.”
Slowly, I turn around. Sure enough, he’s right there in the flesh: Mateus Blackwood.
He hasn’t shaved in a few days, his beard coming in gray and brown in sparse patches around a once clean-cut face.
He’s got dark circles under his eyes, stinks of beer, and is dressed in rumpled clothes.
But it’s Blackwood all the same. And right now, he’s looking at me like he wants something.
Good. So do I.
“Jesus.” He squints at me. “You’re not Samantha Chan, are you?”
“Good memory.” I offer him a small, flinty smile. “The very same.”
Blackwood chuckles. “I thought so. I rarely ever forget a face, and to your credit, you did offer my Tamsin a good deal to duel your champion, back before…well, before everything that happened.”
I’m careful to keep my face neutral, but I clock the instinctively possessive reference to Tamsin and the wistfulness that lingers behind those black eyes for just a moment.
Mateus Blackwood, it seems, is still Mateus Blackwood, though. He recovers quickly from the emotional slip. “What brings the great Lysander Rook’s second to my humble den of iniquity?”
“Well, to start, I agree with what you were saying.” I lean in a bit closer, ignoring his smell, and lower my voice into an appropriately conspiratorial tone. “These unsanctioned clubs are a lot more…eventful than what’s on the mainstream circuit right now.”
Satisfaction, along with a flicker of hope, light up his weathered features.
If he weren’t such a piece of shit, I might actually feel a little bad for him.
“More kids should think like you,” he tells me.
“You thinking of taking your own shot in the ring?” He jerks his head toward the center of the room, where the poor cleaning staff is mopping up Viking Guy’s blood.
“I can get you on tonight’s card on short notice if you’d like.
I’m in charge of all the matchmaking at this club, so I can make it happen, easy as pie.
I’d be happy to get you some action if you can take the heat. ”
“You’d do that for me?”
“I like your energy.” Blackwood looks down his nose at me, all benevolent magnanimity. “Besides, the crowd here would love to see Lysander Rook’s second perform.”
“Really?” I tap my chin thoughtfully. “What about Jamie Chan’s sister? Would they be as excited to see her?”
A wary sort of confusion unfolds across Blackwood’s haggard face. “I don’t follow.”
“Oh, come on, you’re a smart man. And you said yourself that you rarely ever forget a face.
” I draw still closer to him. I don’t look much like Jamie, but our parents’ friends used to say that we had the same eyes.
Maybe mine will jog Blackwood’s memory. “Jamie Chan was my brother, and he died four years ago in a ring just like that one, in a club that looked and smelled very much like this. He was a late replacement. A kid, the same age I am now, barely old enough to duel, even in a club like this, but he was good at magic, and charismatic, so he could hype up a crowd if you needed him to—and you, Mateus Blackwood, certainly did that night.”
“Look, Miss Chan—”
“He fought a guy named Alexei Adamovich,” I interrupt. “A real close associate of yours—and a real favorite for putting up mean fights.”
Recognition flashes through Blackwood’s expression. “He was the kid Alexei killed.”
“Yes.” I don’t quite succeed at keeping the tremor out of my voice. “So before I agree to perform for you in that ring, I just want to know: Why did you let it happen? The night my brother died, why did you let your man kill him?”
Blackwood stares at me, incredulity slowly making its way across his expression.
“Are you serious? My goodness, you are.” Slowly, he shakes his head.
“You poor, poor thing. Forgive me, I really didn’t see this coming.
You know, Samantha, there are any number of reasons I could think of that Lysander Rook’s old second might have wanted to track me down.
But I didn’t expect any of them to involve wasting my time. ”
I rein in the knee-jerk flare of my temper. I need to retain control of this interaction. Otherwise, all the work I’ve done to get here will be for nothing. Back in New York, I let my feelings cloud my judgment. I’m not making that mistake a second time.