Bloodline Clause #3
“The one where your jaw goes like that. The one you made when Remy sold your grandfather's watch.” She pointed. “That one.”
“Evie.”
“Fine.” Both hands up. “Reed and I have met before. A few times. Across a few decades.”
“Decades.”
“A century and a half, technically, but decades is a rounder number.”
“Evangeline Sato—”
“Don't full-name me, you sound like my grandmother.”
“How old are you?”
“Rude.”
“How old?”
She pressed her lips together. “Older than I look.”
“I need a number.”
“You don't. The number's upsetting and it won't help you.”
I put both hands flat on the counter and breathed through my nose. “You told me you were thirty-four.”
“That's the age of this body, yes.”
“Oh my god.”
“I know how it sounds—”
“You told me you had a complicated thing with your parents in Osaka.”
“I did. More than once, technically.”
“You told me your grandmother taught you to make miso from scratch.”
“She did. She does. Different grandmother every time, same recipe, it's honestly one of the nicer parts—”
“Evie.” I cut her off. “You came to my grandmother's funeral.”
The lightness went out of her. She looked at me across the counter and didn't reach for anything to put between us.
“Yes,” she said. “I did.”
“You were crying.”
“I was. She was a good woman, and she knew what you were. She tried to get you ready in the only ways she had.”
That landed somewhere I hadn't braced for. I stepped back from the counter. “What do you mean, she knew?”
“Old blood knows old blood. She carried the threshold gift too, fainter than yours, but there.
She felt the pull in you from the time you were small.
She didn't have a word for it, but she had the instinct.” Evie's voice dropped.
“She asked me once, when you were about eight, whether you were going to be safe. I told her you would be. I meant it.”
I looked up at the water stain in the corner I'd been meaning to deal with for two years.
“You should have told me.”
“I know.”
“Then why didn't you?”
She didn't answer right away, and when she did there was no sidestep in it.
“Because the day I told you was the day your life stopped being yours.
Every morning after it you'd have woken up as somebody's reincarnated lover instead of as Nico, and you're so much more than anyone's reincarnated anything, and I wanted you to have yourself first.” She held my eyes.
“I was wrong. You needed the truth more than you needed the protecting.
I made the call, and it was the wrong one, and I won't dress it up for you.”
“What the fuck, Evie.”
“Phoenix,” she said. “That's the short version.”
“How long?”
“I've been a phoenix for several lifetimes.”
“How long have you known about me? About Cassiel?”
“I knew your soul was old the first week I met you. Phoenixes see the shape of a soul, it's how we find our own way back through our deaths. I looked at you and saw a thing that had walked before and hadn't finished the walk.”
“And you said nothing.”
“What was I going to say?”
“Anything. Any one of eleven years of chances to say literally anything—”
“Morning, Nico, how'd you sleep, also you might be the reincarnated soul of an ancient vampire's dead lover, split a bagel with me?” She didn't blink. “I didn't know how to hand you that and keep you on your feet.”
I didn't have an answer fast enough, which made it worse.
“You could've let me choose.”
“I know. You're right. I should have.”
“Everybody keeps calling it protection. Draco did it. You did it. My whole life people have decided what I can carry, and I am so goddamn tired of it, Ev.”
She took it. All of it, without one word in her own defense.
“I know,” she said, lower. “I'm sorry. Not the sorry that comes with a reason attached so it goes down easier. Just sorry.”
Across the room, Mateo had become deeply absorbed in the George II writing desk. Behind the partition, Remy had stopped making any sound at all.
The anger didn't go anywhere. But eleven years had taught me the difference between wanting her to hurt and wanting the truth, and I had the truth now, late and ugly and fitting too well into the shape of things I'd already half-known.
“I'm still pissed,” I said.
“Good. I'd worry if you weren't.”
She came around the counter and bumped her shoulder into mine, and I let her.
“You found Draco first, then,” I said, after a while.
“He found you. I'd been there for years.” She said it without triumph. “I wasn't going to step aside, so I introduced myself. We came to an understanding.”
“What kind of understanding?”
“The kind where I told him that I was going to cut his vampire balls off if he hurts you.” She paused. “He took it well.”
“He took it well?”
“He said he appreciated directness.”
I pressed my hand over my eyes and breathed.
“Nico,” she said.
“I'm processing.”
“I know. Take your time.”
The shop resumed its familiar sounds around us. Remy carefully restarted his inventory work, one box at a time. Mateo drifted back toward the front window. Drake, from the velvet chair, watched the whole room with the serenity of a creature that had outlasted worse mornings than this.