Chapter 14 #2
Celia felt the tips of her ears go bright, almost as red as the Windmill’s neon sign.
An exact match to Ezra’s, when Vincent had approached the couple’s booth.
She hadn’t thought herself so easily swayed.
Her scarlet ears told a different story.
There was no possible way Biz could see them—thanks to Celia’s shingled hair—but the socialite’s smile widened.
“Perhaps the four of us deserve one another after all. This is going to be a very interesting treasure hunt.”
Celia didn’t doubt it.
Their room’s window looked out onto the garden.
Oasis was really a better word for the green lawns and palm trees that surrounded Mena House, holding the sand at bay.
Most of the white iron tables and chairs set out for the guests were empty at this hour.
All but one. Thanks to the light from the windows below, Celia could see Ezra, staring out into the starless parts of the sky, where the pyramids waited.
A cigarette glowed between his fingers, but he did not look relaxed.
No, the scholar looked as if he might jump up at any moment and go running off into the desert alone.
“I’m going to the gardens for a smoke,” Celia told Biz. “Care to join?”
“No, thanks.” The other woman pulled the covers up to her chin, her next reply muffled. “I need my beauty sleep.”
A fresh wave of exhaustion fell onto Celia’s shoulders as she tossed the trousers aside. She needed sleep too, but she also needed more.
Silent halls flickered with dancing shapes from brass lamps as she moved through them.
The gardens were quiet too. Ezra must have heard her as she traversed the gravel path to the green patch where his table sat, but he did not turn.
He kept staring past a cluster of rosebushes—roses, of all things!
In the Sahara!—into the vast dark. His cigarette could have been a missing piece of constellation.
It lit his face with a hellish sort of glow.
Celia pulled out her own chair. “You really should be sleeping.”
A black eyebrow arched in her direction. “Tried. Can’t.”
“Why? Does Vincent snore?” Her ears were still burning from Biz’s comment and that memory from the Windmill. The last thing she wanted was to fall for someone who could not be there to catch her. “He strikes me as a snorer for some reason.”
This got her a half-smile. “I wanted to come see the stars. They’re different here. I’d forgotten…”
“They’re a lot shinier.”
“Ancient Egyptians believed they were the souls of the deceased.” Ezra glanced back at the beaded headband Celia was still wearing—imaginings wedged between its stars. “Perhaps that’s closer to the truth than we realized.”
“I don’t think my father is a star.” Her voice cracked more than she meant it to. “He wasn’t much of anything, by the end.”
Ezra turned at this, gaze softened. The night suited him far better than anything a Savile Row tailor could sew. “He’s a whisper, at least. That was your father you heard through the Duat necklace, was it not?”
A jackal cackled somewhere beyond the garden’s borders. Celia took a breath—made even deeper with smoke and roses.
“Your mother would be proud of you.”
“Would she?”
“Well, she might not appreciate the excessive brooding—”
“I’m not brooding!”
“What else would you call staring into the wilderness with a cigarette at half past midnight?”
“Contemplating,” he replied.
“You need tea for contemplating. Or coffee, at the very least.”
The scholar took a drag from his cigarette. “You’re impossible.”
“I’m right. And you know it. What happened to Everett in the parlor wasn’t your fault—”
“Stop.” Smoke swirled around Ezra’s face as he straightened in his chair. Anger edged his features. There was fear there too. “You don’t know that, Miss Sinclair. You don’t know the things I’ve done. The men I’ve destroyed—”
“I know about the Germans.” Celia drew her knife from her gown.
The blade was sharp as a double-edged sword.
It could cut both ways, if she wasn’t careful.
“And I know that this weapon is a relic that was forged to shatter its victims from the inside out. Everett intended to break you in that parlor. All your magic did was reverse the knife’s effects. ”
The scholar’s eyes narrowed—as if he was loath to believe her.
“You shielded yourself.” She set the dagger down on the table between them. “Your powers were protecting you.”
Ezra reached out, fingers trembling as they brushed the blade. “I don’t think that’s what happened in France.”
“You don’t have any scars,” Celia found herself saying. “I noticed when you were changing shirts yesterday.”
The scholar paused. Both of his eyebrows arched this time.
Her ears were back to burning. She cleared her throat.
“I mean, it’s odd, isn’t it? All those bullets flying around and you didn’t catch a single one?
Not even a scratch?” He’d changed shirts since being stabbed, but Celia had gotten plenty of glimpses through the knife-torn fabric on their train ride.
No blood. No scars. Just flawless skin over a sculpted abdomen.
It was as if Everett’s blade had never been there.
Ezra shrugged. “The officer who recommended me for a medal called me a lucky son of a bitch.”
“I don’t think it’s just luck.” Celia licked her lips. “Can I have your cigarette?”
She held out her hand as if to smoke the roll, but as soon as Ezra passed over the burning embers, she struck.
The tip of the cigarette was orange hot.
It should have burned an angry hole into the top of Ezra’s hand.
Instead, light rippled across the man’s skin—almost like armor—and the cigarette burst into flames.
Celia yelped, dropping the fireball to the lawn.
Ezra yelled too, shoving out of his chair. There was a golden glow to his gaze that had nothing to do with the burning grass. “What the hell?”
“Sorry,” she hissed as she stamped out the brush fire. “I wanted to test a theory, and I figured it was better than stabbing you.”
The scholar took several steps back, staring at his outstretched arms warily. “I—I could have killed you.”
“With a cigarette? I highly doubt that.” Her fingers were smarting, but that was a small price to pay for what they’d discovered.
Ezra was invulnerable.
He was also trembling.
Celia could see as much as the golden light faded from his silhouette. He reminded her of a sputtering candle.
“I could.” His voice matched the sudden darkness. “I can feel your shadow, Miss Sinclair, even in this midnight black. I felt the Germans’ shadows too. I felt the emptiness where George should be. I felt rage. The kind of rage that makes monsters out of men. And after that? I felt nothing.”
Celia couldn’t say the same. Ghost soldiers shrieked in her memory.
Adrenaline whispered up her spine, turning flesh into gooseskin.
Not fear. No. She wasn’t afraid. It didn’t make sense, from a logistical standpoint.
Ezra had just confessed to shadow-stringing.
If he had been anyone else, she would have unsheathed the imagining from her headband and stood en garde.
Instead, she took a step closer.
Good thing, because Ezra’s voice was down to a whisper. “I can’t even remember killing them. If I lose control again… around you or Vincent or Biz…” His voice broke. He shook his head. “I don’t think I could live with myself.”
“So why did you agree to let them come along?” Celia couldn’t help but ask.
“They make me feel human.”
“And I don’t?”
There was one last mote of gold in his eyes when they found hers. She felt another thrill slither between her shoulder blades. “With you, Miss Sinclair, I feel extraordinary.”
A gust of desert wind swirled between them—edged with smoke and flowers.
It wasn’t just Celia’s ears that were blazing.
Her cheeks grew hot. A fire smoldered in her belly too.
It would grow if she took another step forward.
But she’d played with enough fire for one evening…
and for all she trusted Ezra, she knew that his fear of losing control was not unwarranted.
“Your powers are a part of you, Mr. Bright,” she said. “You can’t hide from them. Nor should you.” At this, Celia bent down to snap a twig from a nearby rosebush. It was all thorns. Not a bud in sight. “The more you try to use your magic, the more we’ll understand. Here. Make this bloom.”
“Bloom?”
“Biz said you made the dead branch of your wishing tree sprout. Try to do that again,” she challenged. “Grow me a rose.”
The scholar held up the barren stick, examining it thorn by thorn. Painfully meticulous. He shut his eyes and inhaled sharply. One moment passed. Then another. Somewhere in the distance, the jackal let out a thin howl that went unanswered.
Ezra breathed out, finally, and cracked an eye open. “I can’t.”
“Bullshit.”
His jaw clenched. Combative.
“You’ve done it before—”
“Not on purpose!” he protested. “The branch was an accident. I didn’t mean for it to grow—I was just a child upset that his favorite tree was getting cut down.”
“Then be that child again,” Celia pressed. “Be that fearless boy.”
“I can’t,” he said again.
“Why not?”
“I—” Ezra faltered. More silence swirled between them. “I do have scars. You just can’t see them.”
Celia reached out, gently touching the hand she’d tried to burn.
His skin was warm, but it did not glow. She’d gotten past his mysterious shields.
“I see them,” she whispered. “I know what it’s like, to be on the outside looking in, watching your life get broken to pieces.
I watched Everett’s father walk away with that knife… ”
Aggressively borrowed didn’t cut it. The bastard stole that blade.
Stole it same as Celia’s father had.
She inhaled—feeling the weight of her key charm and locket against her chest. “I think it’s too easy—to call people heroes or monsters. I think those labels can become true, if we believe the lies we tell ourselves. If we don’t fight them.”