The summons must have arrived during the night, having been slipped under the door of his New York apartment by the time Nico awoke—or rather arose, having slept not at all—in the wee hours of the morning. Very orderly, the summons. A distinct aura of tidiness to the white envelope, which was unceremoniously addressed to Nicolás Ferrer de Varona. There had been no weird wax seal, no ostentatious crest of arms, no obvious pretension to speak of. Apparently that sort of pageantry was reserved for the manor house Nico had left the day prior, and all that remained was a vaguely institutional call to arms.
(What exactly had he expected from the Alexandrian Society? Hard to say. It had recruited him in secret, asked him to kill someone, and offered him the answers to some of the greatest mysteries of the universe, all in service to something omniscient, ancient, and arcane. But it had also served a nightly supper via summons by a gong, so overall the aesthetic remained a bit muddled, truest somewhere between ideological purity and trial by fire.)
More curious, however, was the presence of a second summons, in that it was addressed somewhat more worryingly to Gideon no middle name Drake.
“So.” The woman at the desk—forty-ish, Very British—clicked the mouse of her desktop computer and turned expectantly to Nico, who shifted twitchily in the leather office chair to which his thighs were currently adhered. “We have a variety of routine business to discuss, Mr. de Varona, as your Caretaker likely warned you to expect. Though I’m afraid we’ve had to call you in somewhat more … exigently,” she remarked with a glance at Gideon beside him. “Under the circumstances, I assume you understand.”
Below them, the floor rumbled. Luckily it was only Gideon seated beside Nico and not certain other parties who would chastise him for this tiniest of magical indiscretions, and therefore all that happened was a brief shared glance at the desk lamp to Nico’s left.
“Well, you know what they say about assumptions,” replied Nico.
Beside him, Gideon’s head shifted just enough for Nico to become aware that he was being blessed with a rare (but never entirely out of the question) Drakean side-eye.
“Sorry,” Nico said. “Go on.”
“Well, Mr. de Varona, I think I can safely say this is a record,” remarked Sharon, which was ostensibly her name. The nameplate neatly set upon the desk (in the same font that had once brandished the words ATLAS BLAKELY, CARETAKER) read SHARON WARD, LOGISTICS OFFICER, though the logistics officer in question had not bothered to introduce herself formally. She had said, in fact, very little between Nico’s entry to the room and now.
“It’s not the first time we’ve had any sort of legal trouble with an initiate,” Sharon clarified. “It’s just the first time it’s occurred within twenty-four hours of leaving the archives, so—”
“Wait, sorry,” Nico cut in, to which Gideon’s brows knitted together ever so questioningly, in preemptive warning. “Legal trouble?”
Sharon clicked something on her desktop, scanning the screen before transferring a perfunctory glance to Nico. “Did you not destroy several million euros’ worth of government property in full view of the public?”
“I…” Objectively true, but on a spiritual level Nico felt there was an underpinning of inaccuracy. “Well, I mean—”
“Did you not cause the deaths of three medeians,” Sharon pressed, “two of which were CIA?”
“Okay,” Nico obliged, “hypothetically I’ll allow it, but was I the direct cause? Because they came for me first,” he pointed out, “so if you think about it, everything really begins with a matter of personal—”
“Apologies.” Sharon turned with a sense of loftiness to Gideon. “I believe you were responsible for one of those.”
“What?” Nico felt the air in the room turn stale with a concern he hadn’t had five minutes ago, but probably should have. “Gideon wasn’t—”
“Yes,” Gideon gamely confirmed. “One of those was me.”
“You’re Gideon Drake,” said Sharon, the logistics officer whom Nico did not feel nearly so fondly toward now, purely on the basis of her tone. He had been willing to compliment her immaculate sweater set upon what he assumed would be an affable end to the conversation, probably over tea, but now he was reconsidering. “And,” Sharon added, “you are not an Alexandrian initiate.”
“Neither are you,” commented Gideon.
“Yes, well.” Sharon’s lips thinned. “I should think one of those statements is a matter of relevance while the other is quite firmly not.”
“Wait, you’re not an initiate?” asked Nico, turning to Gideon in confusion. “How did you know that? How did he know that?” he posed more firmly to Sharon, seeing as Gideon was doing one of his very Gideon things where he chose silence as a tactical matter. “Of course you’re initiated—these are the offices of the Society, aren’t they?”
There was a moment, absent any acknowledgment of Nico, wherein Sharon appeared to consider a wide variety of nastiness in answer to Gideon’s look of slightly hostile tranquility. Normally Gideon was the height of politeness, which made this all the more bewildering.
“The Alexandrian Society is, of course, very uninterested in the legal complications that may arise from an event of this nature.” Sharon was speaking exclusively to Gideon now, not Nico, which was unusual and vaguely alarming. “Its initiates are protected. Outsiders are not.”
“Whoa, hang on,” said Nico, leaning forward in his chair. Beneath him, the leather squeaked; underused or new, or not real leather. Which wasn’t the point, though it was contributing to something—some sense that all of this was very uncool and fake. “You’re aware that I was attacked, right?” Nico pointed out. “I was targeted and Gideon saved my life, which I would think counts for something—”
“Of course. We’ve noted that, or else he wouldn’t be sitting here,” said Sharon.
“Where else would he be sitting? Never mind, don’t answer that,” Nico amended hastily, as both Sharon and Gideon turned to him with an indication that he ought to be able to sort that out for himself. “I thought you called us in here to help!”
Sharon’s green eyes met his blankly. They were nearly colorless, which wasn’t an unflattering thing that Nico was only thinking now because he disliked her. (Probably.) “Mr. de Varona, are you by chance currently in a Parisian jail?”
“I—no, but—”
“Have you received a summons from the Metropolitan Police?”
“No, but still, I was—”
“Does any part of you feel presently endangered or otherwise at risk of either legal prosecution or impending peril?”
“That’s not fair,” Nico retorted, sensing the encounter had taken a turn for the passive-aggressive. “I’m constantly at risk for peril. Ask anyone!”
“So that’s it, then,” Gideon remarked without waiting for Sharon’s answer, folding his arms over his chest. “Nico gets off with a warning, and I get … not arrested, which I suppose I should count as a victory,” Gideon observed. He wasn’t being impolite, Nico realized belatedly. He was just here doing business. He’d known he was walking into a negotiation, whereas Nico had thought this was an offering or at least a sympathetic heads-up.
Balls almighty, no wonder the rest of the world was constantly telling Nico he was a child.
“I’m guessing there will be some kind of memory impairment?” Gideon said.
Before Sharon could open her mouth, Nico swept in. “You’re not fucking with my friend’s brain. I’m sorry, you’re just not.”
Sharon looked taken aback by his language. “Mr. de Varona, I beg your pardon—”
“Look, if you’re not initiated and you know the Society’s business, then surely Gideon can have a pass of some sort.” Nico didn’t have to turn his head to see Gideon’s look of extreme doubt, which Nico was nearly positive was being offered to him now as a means of shutting him up. But it had never worked before, and certainly wouldn’t today. “Fine, not a pass, but … some kind of workaround. How about a job?” suggested Nico, straightening so firmly the base of the desk lamp chattered halfway over the edge of the wood. “In the archives. An archivist. Or something. Let me talk to Atlas,” Nico added. “Or Tristan.” Well, that would be pointless, probably, but maybe Tristan Caine would shock them both half to death and agree. (And speaking of shocking to death, Tristan owed him.) “I’m sure one of them could come up with something useful. Plus Gideon’s got references from NYUMA, if you just reach out to the dean of—”
“Mr. de Varona.” Sharon’s eyes shifted to the desk lamp, which was teetering on the precipice of no longer being a lamp and being instead a pile of glass shards and ruin. “If you wouldn’t mind—”
“Someone tried to kill me,” Nico reminded her, rocketing apprehensively to his feet. “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Sharon” (unintentionally derisive) “but the Society didn’t step in to protect me. I thought that was why we were here!” he growled, the lights above them flickering while the floor below them undulated once, then twice, upending the fastidious arrangement of books on a nearby shelf.
“You promised me wealth,” Nico ranted. “You promised me power—you asked me to give everything up for it” (the titles fell from the shelf one by one, followed by a dangerous swing from the overhead light fixture) “and I do mean everything, and in the end only Gideon actually showed up to save my life, so at this point” (RIP the portrait hanging on the wall) “I think I’ve got a right to make one or two demands!”
The lamp finally fell to the floor with a clatter, the bulb splitting into three large shards amid a fine dusting of particles. One or two aftershocks from the fault lines of Nico’s temper rattled the remaining structure of the desk.
For a moment after the ground settled, there was an eerie, unreadable silence. Then Sharon sucked her teeth with impatience and typed something on her keyboard, waiting.
“Fine,” she said, and flicked a glance at Gideon. “Temporary placement. You’ll be given no archive privileges aside from those the Caretaker requests. Which may very well be none.”
Gideon didn’t speak for a moment. Nico didn’t either, being slightly stunned. He was used to getting his way to some extent, but even he felt this unlikely.
“Well?” prompted Sharon, whose neatly coiffed hair was lightly flecked with precipitating bits of ceiling.
“I assure you, I never expect any privileges,” remarked Gideon with a faint hint of amusement, eyes marking the flurry of white paint.
“You’ll be tracked.” Sharon, unfazed, was staring at him. Glaring, Nico supposed. But in a very bureaucratic way that suggested she was very tired and wanted to go home more than she actually wanted him to suffer. “Every iota of magic you use. Every thought in your head.”
“Oh, stop,” said Nico, turning to Gideon with a scoff. “Nobody’s tracking you. Or if they are, believe me, Atlas doesn’t care.”
“The Caretaker is not your friend,” Sharon said. Or possibly warned. She was still speaking directly to Gideon until she turned with unimaginable glaciality to Nico. “And as for you,” she began.
“Yes?” Nico couldn’t believe how well this had gone. Well, not true. He’d thought he was coming in for a bunch of groveling—their groveling, that is, not his. Some pretty promises about how the Society would help him, how Atlas Blakely had spoken so highly of him, how bright his future was—all sorts of things he was accustomed to hearing and had come, at least partially, to expect. But for a moment there things were pretty touch and go, so after a fair amount of whiplash, Nico was now convinced that things had gone brilliantly. Even better than he’d hoped, which was saying something.
Are you insane, Varona? an insufferable voice in his head serenaded him familiarly. They’re not going to let Gideon move into the fucking Society like it’s a goddamn slumber party. Did you even hear what I just said?
“Try to stay out of trouble for at least the remainder of the week, Mr. de Varona.” Sharon’s eyes flitted to the floor and back up. “And for fuck’s sake, fix my lamp.”
Well, well, well, thought Nico smugly.
So he was a lucky bastard after all.
Yesterday. Was it only yesterday? He’d smelled smoke on the breeze before he saw her, but being out of practice at existing in a world where she also lived, he hadn’t quite allowed himself to predict what might come next. For a year he’d been searching for her, questioning her absence, suffering some yawning internal void at the knowledge that maybe, possibly, if he were very unlucky and not, as she so irritatingly suspected, a person who had never encountered a hardship whose pants he could not charm off, then she might not return, and if she did not, then maybe, possibly, a part of him was gone also; a piece he did not yet know if it was possible to get back.
The would-be assassin—one of three would-be assassins who had attacked him upon emergence from the Society transport ward in Paris—lay freshly dead at his feet. Nico still tasted sweat and blood and the aftershocks of kissing his best friend. His pulse was still racing, blood still pumping to the tune of Gideon, Gideon, Gideon, and then he’d smelled smoke and it all came rushing back. The fear. The hope. The last year of his life like a pendulum swing in the making.
Varona, we need to talk.
It was Gideon who caught her when she fell; Gideon who’d leapt to put himself between Nico and danger once again; Gideon who’d given Nico easily one of the top five lines Nico had ever heard (and the other four were Nico’s own, delivered successfully to other people) after giving him a top-five kiss. The number-one spot, quite possibly, and this assertion from a man who’d kissed Parisa Kamali was no small thing. Gideon had literally tasted like gummy vitamins and a cold sweat of panic and it was still a halcyon daydream, rhapsodic with birdsong, a dumbstruck haze. As far as capacity for meaningful thought went, Nico was absolutely fucking toast.
“Well, she’s breathing,” Gideon had said, ever the pragmatist, followed by, “This is a man’s cardigan.” In Nico’s head things slowed, becoming pudding, becoming something with the viscosity of mud. Gideon’s voice faded to a faint but unmistakable ringing sound as Nico once again cataloged the features of the Worst Person in the World: brown hair, bitten nails, clothes too large, much too large, clearly borrowed, also smelling faintly of sarcasm and daddy problems. And an English manor house.
“Also,” Gideon said, “should we be concerned about … police?”
“Oh, fuckety balls” had been Nico’s response, time warping around them as he blinked to cognizance. The Parisian pedestrian bridge had partially collapsed, cobbles dropping into the waters of the Seine below like cookie crumbs off the chin of a giant monster. “We should leave, right? We should leave.” All the blood for passable sentience was somewhere else. Not very promising as far as impending performance.
“That feels correct,” Gideon agreed, “but the unconscious girl and dead bodies…?”
“Troubling, yes, good point.” Nico was in possession of no more than two working brain cells, one of which was yelling about Libby while the other screamed loudly and pubescently about Gideon’s very talented kiss. “Possibly we just … run?”
“Yes, good, fine by me,” said Gideon with very little hesitation, twin spots of pink blooming in his cheeks when he looked again at Nico. God, when had Nico begun to feel this way? He couldn’t remember, couldn’t remember anything ever changing, couldn’t identify any chronological source for the flood of euphoria in his chest, which was matched only by the head rush of seeing Libby’s wrist dangling from where Gideon had thrown her over his shoulder and begun, carefully but hastily, to walk.
Walk? They weren’t mortals. His transport via the Society house was a one-way ticket, true, but that didn’t mean he had to do something so pedestrian as walk. “Hang on,” Nico muttered, grabbing Gideon by the shoulder and heading sharply left. In retrospect it said a lot about Gideon’s state of mind that he had allowed himself to plummet without warning off the side of a bridge. His judgment was impaired, he had kissed Nico, they were idiots. Nico, having adjusted the gravity beneath them to provide the cleverest escape he could conjure at the time, glanced over at Gideon and—god help him—grinned.
Libby awoke within minutes, just as they were nearing the Parisian public transports. A brief little faint, pure dramatics. Nico told her so the moment she came to, not even waiting for Gideon to set her fully on her feet. Literally, his first words to her—“You know, all of this could have been accomplished with about fifty percent fewer theatrics”—to which she responded with a narrowing of her slate eyes, a moment’s pause, and then, just when she ought to have had a witty (witty-ish) comeback at the ready, an abrupt and thorough retching that resulted in a pool of vomit at Nico’s feet.
“It really feels like you’ve had that coming for a while now,” commented Gideon placidly, earning himself a backhand in the gut as Nico reeled backward into a lamppost.
“Are you okay?” Nico asked Libby, unsure what exactly to say to the woman whose unexpected resurgence in his life struck him like the sudden awakening of a third eye, or an additional singing octave. She was doubled over and clutching Gideon’s left arm for balance. (Top two Gideon arms for sure.)
“Yeah. Yeah, fine.” She looked incredibly not fine, though Nico was at least capable of keeping that sort of phrasing to himself. “We have to talk.”
“So you mentioned. Can it wait, or should we do it now? Talk,” Nico repeated. The immensity of the awkwardness was really something. He had about eight thousand questions and yet, somehow, the first thing that came to mind was “Is that Tristan’s?”
“What?” She looked up at him, bleary-eyed, from where she’d been wiping her mouth on the sleeve of what Gideon had already observed to be a man’s sweater.
“Nothing. You … you came from the Society. From the house.” Yes, clearly she had, okay, excellent deduction by Nico. Slow, but he was tired. A modicum of logic. Brilliant. She gave him an odd look, her glance darting to Gideon and back. “Oh, he knows,” Nico clarified for her, to which she replied with an all-knowing grimace. “What? Come on, Rhodes. Someone did just try to kill me, so I imagine I’m allowed t—”
“Who?” Her eyes became narrow slits of concentration.
Nico shrugged. “Impossible to tell at this juncture.” Anyway. “The house,” he reminded her. “Should—should we go back there, or…?”
“No. Not yet.” Libby shook her head, swallowing thickly and making a face. “Fuck,” she muttered to the palm of her hand, into which Nico was sure she would once again hurl. “I need coffee.”
Nico threw an arm into Gideon’s chest, shoving him into a narrow side street just before a Metro police vehicle rounded the corner. “Rhodes,” Nico said, gripping her by the elbow and pulling her after them, “I hardly think there’s time for a café—”
“Shut up. Let’s just go. Somewhere safe.” Libby was off and running, or whatever running looked like for someone with severely cramped muscles and three or so decades of time travel under her belt. “New York. Your apartment.”
“Did you pay the rent?” Nico asked Gideon as they charged off in her wake.
“Yes? I live there,” said Gideon.
“You’re a prince among men,” Nico replied as they scuttled off through Paris, an odd little threesome floating along on a cloud of smoke. “Rhodes,” he asked when they arrived, breathless, to camouflage themselves amid the tourists bustling around the transport near the Louvre. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
It was a question he would repeat countless times throughout the process of returning to New York—something odd was happening at Grand Central; their usual exit point had been blocked off due to a security breach that Nico belatedly recalled might have had something to do with Callum, funneling them instead through a police checkpoint requiring minor illusion work and nearly all of Gideon’s prowess at small talk—though it was clear there would be no meaningful reply until they could be sure no one had recognized one or all of them along the way.
In fact, it took them until they’d crossed the threshold into his former apartment (Nico took a deep, invigorating inhale of the aloo bhaja frying from downstairs and felt an overwhelming sense of rightness, as if the world could never again harm him despite the apparent governmental agencies out for his blood) for Libby to actually answer. Or rather, sort of answer.
After she’d asked twice if Max was home (he wasn’t) and glared through the entirety of a hummus plate that Nico insisted she eat, Libby finally began to look interested in discussion. “Are there wards set up in here?”
So many he’d nearly killed himself making them, but neither she nor Gideon needed to hear that. “Yeah.”
“You’re sure they can hold?” There was a meaningful arch to her brow as a police siren wailed from the street, but this was Manhattan. Such things happened.
“Offense taken, Rhodes, but yes.”
“We have a problem,” she finally announced, giving Gideon a small frown before lowering her voice. “With the Society. With … the terms and conditions,” she specified with a shroud of mystery, “that the six of us left unmet.”
“First of all, Gideon can hear you,” said Nico, which Gideon very accommodatingly pretended not to hear, “and second of all, what do you mean? Did Atlas say something to you?”
“Forget Atlas.” She was chewing her thumbnail. “We should never have trusted him.” She glanced again at Gideon, who strode to the kitchen, whistling loudly.
Obliging her sense of subterfuge, Nico leaned closer. “We should never have trusted him … because…?”
“Because he’s trying to end the world, for one thing,” Libby snapped. “Which is apparently why he recruited us. Because he needs us to do something that’s going to destroy everything. But that’s not what I needed to talk to you about.” She picked at her thumb again before giving it a sudden look of repulsion, turning her attention back to Nico. “We have two choices. We can kill one of the others before the archives kill us, which could conceivably happen at any moment, or we can go back to the Society house and stay there. Until, again, the archives decide to kill us. Unless Atlas destroys the world first,” she muttered.
“I—” These were not entirely favorable options. Nico looked at Gideon, who was now humming aggressively to himself. “You’re sure? About killing one of the others, I mean.” He’d indulged himself the bliss of believing they’d gotten away with it until, well, now. As he considered the alternatives Libby had laid out, it did feel increasingly problematic that all six of them were simultaneously alive and existing in one universe. Their previous détente with the archives (one member of their cohort had been eliminated, though purely by circumstance) seemed worryingly nebulous in hindsight.
Acknowledged or not, Nico had definitely felt something draining him over the entirety of his year of independent study. Whether it was the library’s customary treatment of its inhabitants or the result of a promise unfulfilled, exactly how much latitude had he expected to be allowed? He understood, in a purely theoretical way, that nothing the likes of which they had created could be achieved without something—many somethings—being destroyed.
There was a price for everything they’d gained as a result of their Society recruitment, and it did not escape Nico de Varona’s notice that someone would ultimately have to pay it.
“Well, it might not be true,” said Libby, with the air of repeating a bedtime story or an especially flagrant lie. “Atlas told me, and it’s not like he can be trusted.” She looked at Nico squarely. “But at this point, I don’t know that I’m willing to chance it. Are you?”
Nico was lost in thought, his mind drifting to the pointless argument he thought he’d been having with Reina what now seemed like months ago. She must have already suspected this, he decided through a blow to his chest, like the kick of an engine failing. When she’d accused him of not being willing to kill one of the others to keep her—or himself—alive, she must have already known. “I mean, I guess not, but—”
“And speaking of Atlas. You don’t seem all that concerned.” Now Libby was looking at him with palpable exasperation. “You get that he used us, right? You did hear me say that he planned for us to do an experiment that would literally destroy the universe?”
“Yes, Rhodes, I heard you—” (Had she let him finish the sentence, he might have added a note or two about her characteristically dulcet tones.)
“And you’re not the slightest bit concerned about the trivial issue of world-ending stakes?” She seemed infuriated with him, which, given the timetable on her return, felt noticeably expeditious. A mere handful of hours and already she seemed to wish he were dead.
“What do you want me to say, Rhodes? It’s actively un-ideal.” Nico considered it further, contemplating what exactly she wanted to hear. “Although,” he began, unwisely enough that from the kitchen, Gideon’s humming took a turn for the cautioningly frantic, “I don’t know that it technically counts as using us. He would have had to recruit people to the Society regardless of whether he had a personal agenda, don’t you think?”
“Seriously?” Libby was hissing at him. He felt nostalgic, almost fond.
“Well—” She hadn’t yet listed the terms of destruction—if she even knew what they were, which quite possibly she didn’t; out of anyone, Libby Rhodes seemed the most likely to enact a fully formed evacuation plan over the vague possibility of unspecified cataclysm—but Nico had a feeling he knew precisely what the world-ending stakes in question happened to be. Unless the last year of his life was a supremely unlikely series of coincidences, he was pretty sure he knew exactly what Atlas’s research was about—the multiverse. The possibility of many worlds, which Nico himself had contributed to in private for the entirety of the previous year.
Did the existence of the multiverse, or any proof therein, necessarily mean the end of the world? Nico racked his admittedly altered code of morality and came up empty, suffering the unreasonable desire to spar with Tristan on the matter, or Parisa, or Reina. Even consulting Callum might not be wholly without its charms. “I think I know which experiment you mean. It has to do with many-worlds,” Nico finally explained, watching Libby’s brow knit with something closer to annoyance than confusion. “But Atlas just wants to find out if he can do it, right? It’s an experiment, not a bloodthirsty quest for cosmic dominance.”
For a moment, so fleeting it might have existed purely within his imagination, Nico could tell from Libby’s eyes that she did know the finer details of Atlas’s experiment; that perhaps she even had the same questions Atlas had, and that the same fundamental interest had been piqued. Nico knew her very well—knew her like he knew the fundamental laws of motion—and she was an academic at heart, compulsively curious, determined to have her many questions answered. It was a quality that Nico knew so well because he shared it. Because he, like her, was defined by the many things he wanted so instinctively to understand—a hunger that had come from somewhere ready-built, deep-seated.
In a moment that Nico would never be able to prove had actually existed, he understood one thing with absolute, purposeful certainty: that Libby Rhodes knew exactly what Atlas Blakely was so sinisterly desperate to accomplish, and that she wanted those answers, too.
But then she glared at him, and temporarily his suspicions were put to rest. “It’s obviously more than an experiment if it has something to do with many-worlds, Varona. Nobody just casually opens the multiverse.”
“Are you sure?” he countered. “Because as I recall, we very casually created a wormhole, and a black hole, and I spent the last year casually committing Tristan-related homicide—”
“Manslaughter,” called Gideon from the kitchen.
“No, it was definitely premeditated,” Nico replied before returning his attention to Libby. “Okay, so wait. You came all this way to tell me you think Atlas is the bad guy?”
“I don’t think, Varona, I know,” she hissed. “Because yes, now that you mention it, I did come all this way to tell you that. It’s why I spent the last year of my life nearly killing myself to get back here, and it’s the entire reason I was—” Her mouth tightened, gaze sliding impatiently elsewhere, and Nico saw her consider some darker, more vulnerable truth before backing hastily away from it. “Never mind.”
No, unacceptable. She hadn’t come this far just to back down from a conversation. (That, he thought with an undeniable smugness, was his move.) “That’s the reason you were what?” Nico pressed her. “Is it why Ezra kidnapped you?”
Libby’s eyes snapped back to his. “Who told you that?”
From a distance, Nico could see that Gideon had stopped moving.
“Um, Rhodes? I hate to be informing you of this now, of all times, but I’m not actually stupid,” Nico replied with palpable irritation, firstly because she’d had to ask and secondly because he was now having to answer. “Or have you forgotten that I helped get you back here?”
He still had a lot of questions about that, actually. His questions—none of which had to do with world-ending stakes so much as the nature of her world, and therefore his—were mounting by the minute, especially with the way she so clearly did not want to answer them. She seemed fidgety, a bit feverish, and unquestionably in need of several weeks of fluids and sleep. But his mother had taught him not to interrogate a lady, especially given how battered she seemed by the aftermath of abduction-related time travel, and so he did not indulge the reflex to push her. Even if some internal voice with sandy hair and better judgment strongly suggested he should.
“Rhodes,” Nico attempted instead, since it seemed important to mention whether he’d live it down or not. “I did miss you, you know.”
Only then did she spare him an actual moment’s attention. Their eyes locked, wariness melting gradually to something very nearly warmth, and it was companionable, honest. True.
Amid the reluctant lowering of defenses, Nico expectantly wondered which one of them would back down first. From somewhere across the third-floor landing, Señora Santana’s hellish Chihuahua gave an existential bark.
“I think,” said Libby, the motion of her swallow thick with something. Maybe longing. Maybe fear. “I think we should go with option two. If you’re up for it.”
“Option two?” He hadn’t been paying attention, or maybe he had and then forgot.
“Yes. The one where we keep working for the archives instead of killing one of the others.” She seemed suddenly tired, and a little lost. Nico noticed she no longer mentioned the possibility of her killing him, or of him killing her. Perhaps now, finally, their alliance was secure.
“Will that work?” asked Nico, who genuinely did not know the answer.
“Atlas stayed alive this long by sticking close to the archives, so … yes?” Libby shrugged. “It’ll buy us some time, at least. We won’t have to worry about anyone else taking over the world while we’re the ones using the library. And it’ll be safe there, I guess.” Her attention drifted again to the window, to the signs of life and inevitable doom down below. “Safer than trying to make it out here.”
There was something troubling underfoot, and Nico could sense it, whatever it was. There were many things Libby Rhodes was choosing to leave unspoken, and he doubted very much that they were all as mission-focused as her initial summons of him seemed to be.
Nico wondered what Libby’s real plan was, or if it even mattered. He didn’t exactly want to return to a house he already knew was actively killing him, but he also did not know where else to go, what else to do. He’d spent the last year desperate for release from his aristocratic cage, but outside of it he didn’t know what he wanted at all. Maybe this was the trick to it, the reason he could not entirely hate Atlas Blakely; the reason he still felt curiosity instead of fear. Maybe Atlas had always known that Nico was incomplete without a project, without a mission. Absent the next step he had to take or theory he had to prove, Nico had never actually known what he wanted from life, or from work, or from purpose. He had all this power, fine, but for what? In the larger sense, it was Nico who had always been directionless, a little lost.
Well, aside from one thing.
The sun was setting then, finally. It seemed impossible that so much had changed in so little time. It had only been that morning that Nico had packed his things and said goodbye to Atlas Blakely, the mentor Nico had never acknowledged was someone he badly wanted to trust. But now Libby was back, some fundamental piece of Nico had been repaired, and soon he’d be yet another day older. Another day wiser, another day closer to the end.
The sun was setting then, impossibly. From the corner of his eye, Nico caught a glint of it.
Okay, he thought to the universe; to the many other worlds.
Okay, message received.
“Not without Gideon,” he said.
The administrative offices of the Society to which Nico and Gideon had dutifully reported later that morning GMT (absent Libby, who after much coaxing and fussing had finally fallen asleep on their sofa, an ethical quandary over which Nico and Gideon had bickered capably in total silence before Nico’s wilder protestations about the safety of his expert wards inevitably won out) were located in the very same building into which Nico had unsuspectingly walked two years prior at the behest of Atlas Blakely, mere hours after he’d graduated from NYUMA. Only now, upon return, did he recall the polished gleam of marble and its sense of institutional magnanimity, which was different from how the manor house and the archives had always struck him. This, the offices or whatever they were, seemed so clinical by comparison, with the sterility of a waiting room or the lobby of a bank.
Nico had forgotten about that sensation completely—the unidentifiable feeling of being lied to by someone—until now, following his and Gideon’s fateful meeting with almighty logistics officer Sharon, who was not at all what Nico had expected to exist behind the Society’s omniscient mask. True, Sharon had given him the sense that he’d been called a meddling kid and sent off to bed without dessert, much like NYUMA’s Dean Breckenridge had always done, but witnessing the Society’s administrative workings was like watching dystopian sausage get made.
So, this was what awaited him after the untenable had (presumably) been achieved; this was what had driven Gideon once to ask him who exactly paid the bills that footed his murdery lifestyle. To end the meeting, Sharon had asked Nico what he planned to do, like a career counselor for the chronically successful. “Do I have a choice?” Nico had asked exasperatedly, expecting to be told where to go, who to be.
“Yes,” Sharon had replied with an ill-concealed look of contempt. “Yes, Mr. de Varona, that is precisely what comes of being an Alexandrian. That for the rest of your life, you will have this and every choice.”
It was obvious an answer was required—that what came of being a so-called Alexandrian was not simply the freedom to achieve, but the necessity to make everyone else’s time worthwhile. Which meant that Sharon’s reply was … illuminating, to say the least. She did not care if Nico made a new world, destroying this one. She seemed only to care that he and his prodigious magic—the irreplaceable, unrivaled knowledge that he had done the unimaginable to claim—not step off a balcony somewhere in sweet surrender to the welcoming abyss, as it would be a poor return on the Society’s investment. It would mean a great deal of paperwork, and an unforgivable, unprofitable waste.
So the meeting, then, was both a promise kept and an expectation rendered, which now seemed only to set off the creepy way the Society’s fleet of marble vestibules sparkled from on high. Seeing it all through Gideon’s more incisive eyes, Nico wondered if from the start he should have asked more questions. He wondered if he should have guessed that the Society, its archives, and Atlas Blakely might still turn out to be three separate entities, with three completely individual agendas. An institution, a sentient library, and a man, all sharing a wealth of resources with an underpinning of desire for something that was intrinsically Nico’s.
Two years ago, had Nico erred irreparably by not pulling Atlas Blakely aside and saying be honest, tell me the truth—what do you actually want from me?
From us?
With a sigh, Nico jammed an elbow into the button to call the transport back to New York, thinking again about whether it was possible for one man to destroy the world. It didn’t seem very realistic. Frankly, to his knowledge, a lot of men had already tried and failed. (Women, too, maybe. Equality and all that.) As Nico understood it, the world was actually very easy to destroy, at least in the metaphorical sense. With every election it seemed the fate of mankind was newly on the line. He felt certain martial law still existed somewhere, that plenty of people were still getting away with murder or worse. They had only just repaired the ozone, and even then, barely. So wasn’t the world ending every day?
Not like this, Libby said tiredly in his brain. We’re different, you and I, and Atlas knows it. Surely you must know it, too.
There was a rumble of arrogance beneath his feet, belying his actual answer. If we’re what’s different, Rhodes, then maybe we can be different. We still get the right to choose.
“Did it ever occur to you that I might not want to go with you?” Gideon asked him quietly, disrupting Nico’s increasingly grandstanding inner monologue.
Nico blinked from his temporary reverie and glanced at him, wondering whether to be alarmed by the question. “Honestly? No.”
Gideon laughed against his will. “Right. Of course.”
“You’ll be safer this way, too,” Nico pointed out, which was conveniently true. “I did the creature wards at the manor house myself. You won’t have to worry about your mother.”
Gideon shrugged. Unclear what kind of shrug. “And what about Max?”
“True,” Nico joked, “however will he afford the rent?” According to Gideon, Max had been summoned to his parents’ summer estate, which was no dismissible summoning. Nico and Gideon tried not to mention it too often, but all three of them knew there were strings to being that rakish. (It involved massive amounts of institutional wealth.) “Anyway, we won’t be there long.”
“You,” Gideon corrected with a shake of his head. “You won’t be there long. Because contractually speaking, you can still go back and forth if you want to. I’m the one who has to stay under house arrest, per your Society’s terms.”
It occurred to Nico to argue. To mention that, in fact, he might very well die himself if he left the manor house for very long, or at least Libby seemed to think he would, so how was that for employment contracts made under duress? But when the transport doors opened, Nico instead looked hard and searchingly at Gideon. He was looking for resentment or bitterness, which he didn’t see, but he didn’t find much to reassure him, either.
“You’ve got to stop following me into shenanigans,” Nico determined eventually, stepping into the lift.
Gideon glanced down at the card in his hand, which he was still cradling in his palm like a tiny wounded bird. A very familiar thing, that card.
ATLAS BLAKELY, CARETAKER.
“Should I have let them brainwash you instead?” Nico asked casually as he once again hit the button for Grand Central Station, New York, New York. Gideon had been allowed twenty-four hours to collect his things before reporting to the manor house tomorrow, much like the instructions Nico himself had once been given. To be fair, though, what ostensibly awaited Nico as an Alexandrian had always been knowledge, power, and glory. What awaited Gideon now seemed distinctly more like witness protection with archival duties, or being Atlas Blakely’s underpaid TA.
“I’m not sure what you should have done instead,” Gideon said with apparent honesty. “But it does seem like whatever’s happening now, Libby needs you.”
“Us,” Nico corrected.
The doors dinged again with their arrival.
“You,” repeated Gideon, a rush of passengers blurring the entrance to the oyster bar.
Despite the sun setting and rising again on their unexpected change of circumstance, Nico and Gideon still hadn’t spoken about whatever had passed between them the day prior. At first it was because of Libby, but after Libby had fallen asleep, it was because neither of them seemed to feel discussion was required. From an optimistic standpoint there was an afterglow, a tipsy haze of satisfaction, like ordering pizza when you know perfectly well that pizza’s what you want. The unspoken question they hadn’t bothered to bring up was more irrational—something like okay, but do you want to eat pizza every day? which was, of course, impossible to answer.
For a normal person. “Look,” Nico began once they emerged from the station’s exit doors. Yesterday’s security risk had been cleared away, magically forgotten. “Last time, you disappeared on me because I didn’t include you in my antics. So this time I’m including you against your will, because you’re not allowed to disappear. Got it?”
“I’m thinking there ought to be a bit more nuance involved,” remarked Gideon, his attention flicking momentarily to the security cameras overhead before steering Nico along a less conspicuous path. “Like, for example, do you plan to ask my opinion on the matter? Or will you be making decisions about what I do and where I go for the remainder of my uncertain life span?”
“I never said I wasn’t selfish.” Nico hazarded a glance at Gideon as they walked, fingers drumming at his thigh in a mix of assassin-related apprehension and unguarded personal conviction. “And for the record, you’re the one who decided to say it was like that. If I’m failing to properly understand what that means, then honestly, that’s on you.”
It occurred to Nico to wonder if he was pushing it. If maybe he was doing what Libby always accused him of doing and deciding on a reckless course of action without concern for anyone else involved. Well, definitely he was doing that, yes, for sure, he wasn’t totally absent the wherewithal to recognize the flawed and potentially troubling edges of his personality. Perhaps this choice of action—and the reality of its motivation—had been especially cruel, because it revolved around the particularities of his personal desires. When he’d first insisted on Gideon’s inclusion to Libby in their plan for skirting archive-related demise, he’d told her Gideon could be necessary from a magical perspective—which, yes, was partially true. Her return was proof enough to him that Gideon was both exceedingly clever and reliably helpful. But the rest of it, the darker truth, was that for a year Nico had nursed a broken heart and now would rather trap Gideon against his will inside an English country house than repeat the experience.
They were silent until they reached their block.
“Well, it’s my last day of freedom,” Gideon observed. “What should we do?”
“Get darling Elizabeth to tell us what the fuck happened with Fowler,” Nico said. “Maybe play a little Go Fish if we find the time.”
He hoped his joking tone would be accepted as valuable currency. He didn’t know the rules anymore, though, and wasn’t sure. The rearranging of his feelings was probably akin to some kind of severe economic inflation.
“Okay,” said Gideon.
Nico paused when they reached the door to their building, sidestepping the usual coven of youths outside the bodega and staring accusingly at Gideon.
“Do you hate me?” he demanded.
“No,” said Gideon.
“You must have some feelings of negativity.”
“One or two,” Gideon agreed. “Here and there.”
“So? Say it. Te odio tanto. Je te déteste tellement.” Unexpectedly, Nico swallowed hard. “Just say it.”
Gideon looked at him with amusement.
“Say it, Gideon, I know you want to—”
“It’s okay, you know,” Gideon commented. “You can tell me. I don’t mind.”
Nico’s chest strained. “Mind what?”
Gideon looked at him squarely, the insufferable mind-reader who was not and had never been a telepath, which meant it came from a place that Nico couldn’t see but Gideon obviously did. “You actually want to go back there,” Gideon pointed out, “to a place you’ve told me a thousand times that you hate.”
“Did I say that, technically? I wouldn’t say I hate it—”
“And it’s not just the house.” A quick, studious glance. “I know you want to do it, Nico. The experiment that neither of you want to say out loud. I know you’ve already started working on it in your mind—I can tell by the way you talk about it, and I know you don’t just do things casually. You do them with your whole self or not at all.”
There was a tiny siren going off in Nico’s head, a blaring sense of caution that he ignored like all the warning signs and red flags he made it a custom to proceed through. He blinked away neon lights, forthcoming disaster, like sailing blindly into a storm on the basis of something he selfishly knew to be faith.
“Are you—” Nico cleared his throat. “Do you think I’m wrong to want to try?”
Gideon was silent for another several seconds as Nico ran the projections in his head. The many innumerable ways this could go poorly. Infinite, endless calculations that he simplified for purposes of statistical clarity. Ninety-eight out of a hundred, maybe even ninety-nine, they all ended badly.
For a normal person. “No, of course not,” said Gideon. “And even if I did, if you want me, Nicolás—” A shrug. “Je suis à toi. Me and my ticking clock.”
You and your ticking clock, Gideon, that’s mine—“You’re sure?”
“I know who you are. I know how you love. Manor houses, ideas. People. It doesn’t matter.” Another shrug. “Whatever you have for me is enough.”
Nico’s throat strained with the indecency of it. “But it’s not like that. It’s not like it’s … it’s not small. It’s not some leftover piece, do you know what I mean? It’s … it’s more than that, deeper, like for you I’m—”
“I know, I told you, I know.” Gideon laughed. “You think I could spend this long with you and not understand?”
“I don’t know,” protested Nico, “but it’s not—with anyone else, it’s not like—” He felt flustered, and aggressively perceived. “Gideon, you’re—you’re my reason,” he tried to explain, and almost immediately gave up. “You’re my … my talisman, I don’t kn—”
Nico felt it then, the presence of another person’s magic. The threat of Gideon living his life without knowing, without either of them saying the words had temporarily overruled the latest constancy of mortal peril, and Nico had spent too long not watching his back. He broke off with a growl to take hold of the sudden force around him, dragging a nearly unseen motion to a halt. Upon further inspection he identified the faintest flicker of it—of yet another assassin’s finger on yet another trigger, this one an apparent sentry posted up outside his building. The latest threat to Nico’s life, courtesy of the Forum or whoever else philanthropically wanted him dead, was costumed traitorously as a worker, loading and unloading crates of ramen noodles and hot chips into the cherished bodega downstairs.
Nico bit back a snarl of fury, mentally disarming the gun before it went off. (In theory, that is. In practice he merely turned it into an ice-cream cone before waving a hand to transport himself and Gideon up the stairs, into the apartment, on the safe side of the expertly warded door.)
So this is what life would be, Nico thought grimly, if he ignored Libby’s warnings and chose to stay here, or tried to. Whether the archives came for him or not, it would still almost certainly be this. Jumping at his own shadow, looking over his shoulder to see what else might follow in his wake. What choice was that? It would be like living life as Gideon, as life had always been with Gideon’s mother—which reminded Nico that the threat of Eilif was never to be discounted among all this, and she knew where to find them. If he couldn’t trust the bodega guy downstairs, what point was there in doing anything at all?
Nico turned to say as much to Gideon, having lost track of what he’d been in the middle of explaining before. “What?”
Gideon’s smile was radiant with fondness. “Hm? Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Nico hazily recalled that he had been in the midst of a confession and decided this was Gideon’s way of slipping reciprocation. Truly, a worse person had never lived.
Nor a better one.
“Idiot,” said Nico desperately, taking hold of Gideon’s jaw with one hand and punishing him with something. A kiss or whatever. Whatever. “You little motherfuck.”
Gideon exhaled, a sigh that Nico coveted for the magnificence it was, and when Nico’s eyes finally opened he felt elation so gruesome he nearly threw up.
Which reminded him. He turned away from the door, looking for the idiot princess herself. “Rhodes, as some of us aptly predicted, I’ve once again returned a hero,” Nico announced, poking his head into the living room. “And you said it couldn’t be—”
There was a vacancy on the sofa where Libby had been, a note left in her place.
“—done,” Nico finished, storming over to the neatly folded blanket with a grumble and snatching up the scrawl she’d left in her absence.
I’ve already told you exactly what’s going on. Come or don’t come, I don’t care.
“Fuckety balls,” said Nico, whirling around to find Gideon shaking his head idly. “Well? Pack a bag, Sandman. I’ll be so pissed if we miss the fucking gong.”