33. What Remains Is Ours
WHAT REMAINS IS OURS
DRACO
Mages burn their dead.
I did not know this, which was an admission I disliked making after a thousand years of studying supernatural cultures and their rituals. Victor explained it on the morning of the funeral.
“It's called the Passing Circle,” he said. “The body is placed in the centre. Each person who loved the dead walks to the pyre and adds their fire, their magic, whatever they carry. The body burns through the combined gifts of everyone who came. It's a mage's way of saying the dead are not alone.”
“And those without magic?”
“They stand in the circle. They don't need fire. Presence is enough.”
The ceremony took place on the grounds of a property in northern Westchester that belonged, technically, to the New York mage community but had not been used for a Passing in over a decade. The clearing was ringed by old oaks, and the canopy provided the shade I now required.
The sun at the tree line was low and amber and filtered through the leaves. Rowan had positioned the car at the northern edge of the clearing where the shade was deepest while Mateo stood beside me under the canopy.
Mateo had coordinated the defence of lower Manhattan with Greer's pack and two coven units that Sable had sent as reparation for her role in the council's fracture.
Rowan had driven a transport van through three blocks of active demon incursion to evacuate a shelter that sat in the path of the largest breach.
Amara had taken command of the eastern perimeter and held it for four hours with a rotating force of wolves and vampires from the smaller houses who had answered her call because she asked and because the alternative was letting the city burn.
Fourteen people had died in the incursion.
Supernatural casualties, not civilian. The portals had opened above the financial district after midnight, and the fae had moved quickly.
Aldric had deployed his household's memory specialists within the hour.
Every civilian who witnessed the incursion had their memories adjusted before sunrise.
The news cycle attributed the structural damage to a gas main rupture.
The internet attributed it to a government coverup.
Neither version was correct, and both were sufficient.
The supernatural community had taken losses. Greer lost three wolves. Two vampires from House Pryce fell defending a warded school in Tribeca. A coven healer died in the eastern corridor when a demon breached the barrier she was maintaining.
The secret held and the veil between the supernatural and human worlds remained intact. It would need to be repaired and it would be my responsibility.
Elara had told me about Cassiel the evening before the funeral.
She came to the study after dinner, when the house was quiet and Nico was downstairs with Remy and Evie, and she sat in the chair opposite my desk and folded her old hands in her lap and told me the truth about the prophecy that had shaped the last thousand years of my existence.
I listened to every word that came out of her mouth.
“He was protecting me,” I said.
“He was protecting both of you. The binding ensured the soul's return. The secrecy ensured you wouldn't destroy the mechanism out of principle.”
“He was correct. I would have destroyed it.”
“I know. He knew. That's why he didn't tell you.”
“He was infuriating,” I said.
“He was magnificent.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
Elara smiled. It was the first unguarded expression I had seen on her face since the chamber.
She was living in Blackthorne now. Elara moved through the manor with ease. She and the house had reached an understanding within the first week, the details of which I was not privy to and did not inquire about.
Evie arrived with Remy and stood at the western edge of the circle. Helena stood beside her.
After everyone had gathered, Victor lit the pyre.
His hands shook. The light that came off them was weak and uneven. Remy stepped forward and added his own magic.
Marisol's body was wrapped in white cloth on the pyre. I had arranged the procurement of the appropriate materials through Helena's contacts in the mage community, because this was the least I could do.
Nico stood at the edge of the circle with the firelight on his face and his hands at his sides and his new vampire eyes catching the light.
“My mother lied to me for thirty years.” He stopped. Breathed. “I was angry at her for it. I'm still angry. And she's not here for me to finish being angry at, so I'm going to say the other thing instead.”
He looked at the pyre.
“I love you, Mom. I didn't say it enough. I don't think any of us did.” His voice broke. “I'm sorry I spent our last real conversation shouting. You deserved better than that. You deserved more time.”
He wiped his face. Stepped back.
Victor put his arm around his son. Remy stood on Nico's other side and took his hand. The three of them stood at the edge of the circle while the pyre burned, and Evie stepped forward and opened her hands and the phoenix fire joined the mage fire.
The clearing held its silence. And I thought about the woman on the pyre who had spent her life hiding, and the man who had spent his life carrying, and how the two of them had never found the language that lived between fear and love.
The fire burned for two hours. When it died, Victor gathered the ashes into a vessel, and the gathering dispersed into the afternoon. Nico came to the shade where I was standing and pressed his forehead against my shoulder and said nothing for a long time.
“Thank you for being here,” he said.
“There is nowhere else I would be.”
“I know. That's why I'm thanking you.”
The evening after the funeral was mine.
I had planned it without telling Nico, and the plan involved components that I was not entirely comfortable with but that the current circumstances demanded.
The cat was the first complication.
Drake had developed an attachment to Nico that bordered on the pathological.
He followed Nico through the house. He slept on Nico's chest. He sat on Nico's workbench at the shop and supervised the restoration of a Regency writing desk with the critical attention of a creature who believed his opinions about joinery were valid and welcome.
Drake was not going to be left at Blackthorne. I had attempted to separate them once and the cat had appeared in the car through means that neither the house nor Amara could explain. I accepted the reality of the situation and purchased a stroller.
“You bought the cat a stroller,” Nico said.
“I purchased a pet conveyance for the purpose of outdoor mobility. The alternative was carrying him, and he bites when held for longer than four minutes.”
Drake sat in the stroller with his ears forward and his tail hanging over the edge, looking like a furious little king being paraded through his territories.
The sun was at the angle where its strength had diminished enough for me to tolerate it, and the light in Central Park was long-shadowed, and I walked through it with a low persistent burn on my exposed skin that I managed by staying close to the tree line and adjusting my route to follow the shade.
Nico took my hand. “Ice cream?” he asked with his head tilted to the side looking like a lost puppy.
“You no longer derive nutrition from ice cream.”
“I derive joy from ice cream. Joy is a nutrient.”
“Joy is not a nutrient.”
“It is in my new dietary framework. I'm a vampire now. I make the rules.”
“You do not make the rules. There are established protocols—”
“Draco. Buy me ice cream.”
I bought him ice cream. Vanilla with chocolate flakes, from a cart near the Bethesda Fountain. I watched him eat it and did not comment on the fact that his vampire system was going to reject the dairy components within the hour, because the look on his face was worth the subsequent inconvenience.
Drake received a small cup of vanilla.
We walked south along the lake and we noticed that the ducks were out.
This was unremarkable until one of them decided that Drake's stroller represented either a territorial challenge or an interesting food source, and it approached with the aggressive waddle of a bird that had been fed by tourists and had developed an inflated sense of its own authority.
Drake's ears went flat.
The duck got closer.
Drake hissed and the duck honked. Drake launched himself out of the stroller with a velocity that was impressive for an animal of his size and temperament, and the duck made a sound I had not previously associated with waterfowl and took flight across the lake.
The other ducks disagreed with Drake's behaviour.
They came from three directions. A coordinated advance of approximately eleven ducks that moved across the path.
Drake retreated to the stroller and the ducks followed.
Nico grabbed the stroller and we moved, quickly, along the path toward the Bow Bridge, pursued by a flock of waterfowl whose commitment to the conflict exceeded all reasonable expectations.
“This is your fault,” Nico said, pushing the stroller at a pace that was not running but was adjacent to running.
“The cat initiated the encounter.”
“You bought the stroller that put the cat at duck level.”
“I did not anticipate avian hostility.”
“You're a vampire and you didn't anticipate ducks.”
“Ducks were not a significant threat in any century I have lived through.”
“They're a significant threat now.” He dodged a particularly aggressive mallard that had circled ahead of the main group. “This is the most ridiculous thing that has ever happened to me, and I fought demons.”
We made it to the bridge. The ducks lost interest at the water's edge, or decided the bridge represented a tactical boundary they were not prepared to cross. Drake settled back into the stroller and began cleaning himself as if nothing had happened.
I stood on the bridge with my hand on the railing and the sunset burning low over the park and the persistent sting of filtered light on my skin and the most absurd man I had ever loved standing beside me with ice cream on his jacket and a cat in a stroller and the residual panic of a duck encounter fading from his face.
“Hey,” he said.
“Yes.”
“This is good.”
“We were chased by ducks.”
“It's good because you're here.”
I looked at him. “I have something for you.”
“If it's another stroller, I'm going to push you off this bridge.”
I reached into my coat pocket and took out a key.
It was the key to Blackthorne's front door, which had not been given to anyone in decades and which the house had agreed to relinquish after a conversation between us that I would not be sharing with Nico because the negotiation had been undignified.
“The house agreed to give you full access, permanent resident status, and the right to rearrange any furniture in any room except the study.”
“Except the study.”
“The study is non-negotiable.”
“I'm going to rearrange the study.”
“I expected you would say that.”
He took the key and held it in his palm.
“You're giving me a key to your house,” he said.
“I am giving you a key to our house.”
He stepped forward and kissed me, and the kiss tasted like vanilla ice cream and cold air and the beginning of a new life I had not known I was waiting for until the moment it arrived.
Drake meowed from the stroller.
The sun set behind the park. The shadows lengthened and the burn on my skin eased.
“Let's go home,” Nico said.
We went home.