Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Asher
Siobhan Cosgrave makes a rough gesture toward the front of the pub. “Just boost all the spells you did last time. I can tell the effect is starting to fade.”
“Same payment as last time too?” I check, keeping my tone mild.
If she wants to barter me down, I’ll be flexible—both because it won’t be quite as much effort when I’ve already worked out the best approach and because I’m not sure how many knives she’s carrying for when someone pisses her off. It can’t hurt to aim high, though.
Siobhan considers me for a moment, her face as hard as the gelled light red hair that falls in a stiff line to just above her shoulders. Her eyes have always reminded me unnervingly of pebbles, flat and gray.
But she has enough of her own flexibility to have reached out to me for my first job with the lucent branch of the Irish mob. A younger cousin of hers still at Luminary mentioned my skill with defensive magic to her and then passed on her invite to me.
Since that first job almost a year ago, Siobhan and a few of the other younger Cosgraves who are just getting established in the family business have brought me in at least once a month.
I guess with the lives gangsters lead, they tend to focus mainly on aggressive skills.
I’m able to add a little something that no one in their regular sphere can do quite as well.
So she doesn’t really want to piss me off either.
Siobhan taps her fingers against her hip and then nods with a jerk. “Sure, that’s fair. Don’t take too long about it.”
I restrain my smile of victory. “Shouldn’t be more than an hour.”
I start my work on the outside, concentrating on the condensed ephemera still embedded in the door and windows. The strands I wound together remain, reinforcing the steel, wood, and glass against any kind of assault, but as Siobhan sensed, they’re fraying.
Pulling more ephemera from the sidewalk beneath me and the building within, I rebuild those ties to full strength.
I can bolster the materials down to their molecules.
Create an inner wall of solidified energy to hold them against cracking or shattering.
Weave a more complex casting around the lock to stabilize the mechanics.
The ephemera tickles through my limbs and lungs with each step of the casting. There’s a rhythm to it, constructing a shield piece by piece against whatever threats may come. A satisfaction in recognizing I’m doing my work well.
It’s not a sensation I’m especially familiar with.
I handle most of my assignments competently enough, but my Luminary professors evaluate them with a subtle but unmistakable air of disappointment.
Every criticism they offer is laced with an unspoken question: Why aren’t you as brilliant as your brother?
I don’t think I can say I’m even brilliant at my preferred areas of focus—defense and healing—but I’ve worked hard enough to rank near the top of those classes.
My approach isn’t exactly the same as the by-the-books tactics my classmates prefer.
Probably because none of them expect to be using those tactics on a regular basis.
My techniques might not follow the professors’ specifications perfectly, but it turns out they’re pretty damn good when put into use in the real world.
Once I’m finished with the pub’s face, I duck through the front door.
The place won’t officially open for another hour, but several of Siohban’s colleagues lounge around a few of the scuffed wooden tables.
The amber lights overhead glint off their glasses and the bottles lined behind the broad oak bar.
The tang of alcohol in the air mingles with a trace of smoke from the cigarettes a couple of the guys aren’t supposed to have lit inside. The mobsters eye me for a moment before Siobhan passes by and smacks one on the back of the head. They return to their conversation, more hushed than before.
I don’t know what business they get up to here, and I don’t care. As long as I get paid, I’m good. Maybe these people aren’t the type most would think deserve protection, but I’m ensuring there’ll be a little less damage done in the world, one way or another.
After I reinforce my magic on the inner side of the door and windows, I direct my attention all across the room.
This last strategy is something I’ve been developing completely by myself, drawing on a mix of examples in our textbooks as well as independent research and bits and pieces Jesse’s shared with me.
I direct the ephemera I’m shaping to a dozen points around the pub, locking it into an exposed beam, a lintel over an interior doorway, an old sconce that no longer has a bulb, a sliver of plaster where the paint has started to flake.
I lace the energy between those points into a web of strings throughout the room.
A quiver of magic resonates off them to fill in the gaps.
The intent I’m willing into the ephemera won’t activate unless provoked. Otherwise, the effect would be sapped in a matter of days.
But if someone’s temper starts rising—or someone barges into the pub already in a hostile mood—the magic will kick in. It’ll calm riled nerves and defuse the worst of the tension.
Siobhan doesn’t want fights breaking out here, between her own underlings or from outside forces. I’m assuming my first attempt made a significant difference, or she wouldn’t have asked me to replicate it.
This isn’t the way I imagined the technique being used when I first started working it out, but all practice is useful.
By the time I’ve fixed the energy I’m compelling as tightly in place as I can, my shoulders are ready to sag. I sit down on one of the leather-top bar stools to recover.
The tightness in my chest suggests I might have pushed myself a little farther than is totally wise, but I don’t want my employer regretting my fee.
Siobhan comes up on the other side of the bar and raises her eyebrows. “You want something to drink? On the house. A tip for your work.”
I don’t have much of a taste for alcohol at the best of times, and right now I suspect it’d make me feel worse rather than better. I manage a smile. “Just a Coke would be great, thanks.”
She slides a cold can across the bar to me along with a wad of cash. I check my payment quickly—not wanting to look na?ve but also not wanting to imply I don’t trust her at all—before shoving it into my pocket.
One step closer to paying Cole back for everything he’s given up for me.
Not that I ever can completely. But when I’m out of this city, making a difference somewhere else in the world, I want him to be able to make his choices about what he does next based on only what he wants.
He shouldn’t be held back by a near-empty bank account.
Never mind how he’d react if he found out what kind of people I’ve been practicing my skills with.
My fingers brush the water-smoothed stone I always carry with me. I close my gloved hand around it just for a moment, enjoying the way it fits perfectly in my palm.
When I found it as a little kid, looking at the rosy veins of granite sparkling with scattered mica, I thought it was some kind of magic—beyond the fragments of ephemera every object contains.
I’ve grown out of that kind of dreaming, but even if it’s not any luckier than any other rock, it reminds me that I have things worth holding on to.
I drink the Coke in deep gulps, both genuinely thirsty and eager to get out of this place now that my work is done. Siobhan accepts the empty can. “I’ll let you know when I’ve got something else for you. Or if one of my associates does.”
I tip my head to her. “I appreciate it.”
Outside, the sky has clouded over with the pale gray of dust bunnies, like someone’s forgotten to sweep the universe. No rain threatens yet, but the gloom sends a shiver down my spine.
I grab a bus and get off at the most convenient stop, several blocks from my house. As I head toward the sprawling parking lot between the public library and the bank, my steps slow.
A figure is crouched by the walkway along the back of the bank, the purple highlights standing out in her dark hair even in the thinning daylight. Elodie Devine tucks her trim jacket closer around her torso and sets a bright orange flower by a crack in the pavement.
My brain stalls along with my feet.
What is one of the most prominent Luminary students doing all the way out in my neighborhood? Why would she be hanging around in a parking lot, of all places?
And isn’t it even weirder that the flower she’s set down like she’s starting a memorial is my favorite kind?
Not that I spend much time thinking about flowers, but marigolds wake up a giddy sort of twinge in my chest. The memory of bounding around our old backyard, way back before my parents died. The blossoms bobbing as I ran my fingers over them. Their sharp smell tangling with the breeze.
I shake myself out of the past. Elodie has pulled out a stick of white chalk and is writing something on the pavement by the flower. She’s too far away for me to make out the shapes.
Her lips move. On an impulse, I stretch my will into the ephemera between us and call on the wind to carry her words to my ears.
Her voice reverberates with emotion. “…how sorry I am. I promise I won’t give up.”
She stands. The raw pain in her words tugs at me, and I take a step forward before I think better of it.
Other words from a few days ago echo inside my skull.
“Don’t touch me! Stay away from me.”
Something about me unsettles her. Scares her, even. The frantic gleam in her eyes when she wrenched herself away from me in the hall… I’ve helped enough strays to know what a wounded animal looks like.
I don’t think I’ve done anything to justify her panic, but someone hurt her. Maybe that prick I yanked off her.
Even if I’m not going to blame her for a reaction in the heat of the moment, I’m not going to push my luck either. She wouldn’t want my comfort.
I draw back into the shade of the library’s scrawny maple, but Elodie doesn’t head my way. She strides off past the bank without looking back.
Both buildings are closed for the evening, so the lot is empty. I lope across to check what she wrote.
Seeing it up close doesn’t enlighten me. The chalk scrawl isn’t any letters I recognize but several rough symbols in a ring around the flower.
I guess they mean something to Elodie. I don’t have a clue what.
Lifting my head, I gaze off in the direction she went. The pain I heard ripples through me again.
She doesn’t want me in her face, but that doesn’t mean I have to completely ignore her. I could make this one of my little missions.
What would be the right offering?
As I set off for home, I sort through my memories of the past few years at Luminary. I don’t let myself get too focused on what the other students are doing, but I’ve trained myself to take note of the small pleasures people take for themselves. The unguarded moments are usually the truest.
Ah. There’s something.
With a pleased smile lifting my lips, I veer toward the nearest corner store.