Chapter Ten

As I approached my building, I remembered the encounter with Callan this morning and my heart sank.

We’d argued, then shared an intense kiss, then I’d run off. The developments between us were muddled and confusing. But I knew I’d hurt him, so I wanted to try to clear the air, even though I felt even more burdened after everything I’d discovered in that cave.

If I was being honest with myself, I knew what I needed now was more support, not less. But it wasn’t easy trying to find the right headspace to let my guard down when everything told me I needed to keep it up not only to protect myself, but those I cared about.

Still, Callan and I needed to talk.

As I endured the compacted elevator ride with Ashe up to our apartment, I looked forward to finally getting the rest I badly needed.

However, as we neared the door, it seemed my night was just getting started.

Gideon and Toji were sitting on the hallway floor, and they did not look happy.

Gideon was sitting up straight with his arms folded across his chest, looking like he was attempting to win the frown Olympics the way his brow furrowed and his mouth tugged down. Toji leaned his head on his shoulder, looking pensive and worried, wringing his hands in his lap. As soon as we came into view, they were on their feet. They took a few moments to gape at Ashe, then fixed their eyes on me.

“Where the hell have you been?” Gideon shrieked.

I cringed and hung my head. I’d been released from jail, then spent the entire day in a series of time pockets. I was lucky they’d decided to camp outside my door and not bust it down outright.

I wished I could have put this off until I’d gotten some food and rest, but there was no time like the present, I guessed.

I unlocked the door and we trudged in. I propped the Gladius against the wall and Ashe went straight to her water bowl and took her time drinking. She was going to let me deal with them on my own. Traitor.

“We’ve been worried, Penn,” Toji said. “Really worried. We saw the interview, but then couldn’t get in touch with you. At the station all they told us was that you were taken home. There were pictures and footage on news outlets of you and Ashe running around, and we saw you go to Kiabi Park, so we spent a few hours looking for you there but couldn’t find you. So we came here and decided to wait. We thought the worst…”

“I’m sorry, and I can explain. I’m especially sorry you had to find out all these bombshells about me from a television interview. It’s something I always wanted to share with you myself, but they wouldn’t release me from jail until I publicly shared my story…” My eyes slid to Gideon, who was holding himself so rigidly there was a fine trembling going through his body. I was so tired I just wanted to black out, but I knew I deserved whatever tirade he wanted to unleash. I sighed.

“Go on, let me have it,” I said. “I was never honest with you and Toji about who I really am for the entirety of our friendship. I didn’t do it to hurt you, I…”

Gideon strode across the room, pulled me into his arms, and hugged me. I stood in shock for a moment, then relaxed and hugged him back. His body was shaking even harder. When he pulled away and looked at me, his anger had receded.

“I came here ready to tell you how it felt to be lied to by someone you thought you knew.” He took a breath and let it out, closing his eyes briefly before looking at me again. “But after sitting here almost all day, not only did I have enough time to unbraid my hair, because last’s night horror did it no favors, I also realized something very important. This isn’t about me.”

Toji came over and hugged me as well. “What you went through during the magic-era, the events that led you here, I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”

I felt like a mountain range had fallen off my shoulders.

I’d always wondered what Gideon and Toji would think if they knew I was from the magic-era. So many times I’d wanted to blurt it out. It was isolating, feeling so far removed from my original timeline, having no one but Ashe to talk to about all we’d been through. I couldn’t confide in a therapist, so my two closest friends were the next best thing. But I’d held myself back, thinking I was too much of an anomaly to ever be fully accepted.

Hearing that acceptance from Gideon and Toji now was a staggering relief. I’d really lucked out in the friend department.

“To wake up almost three hundred years from the life you knew, and have the world be completely different, with everyone you knew gone…” Gideon shook his head. “Of course you would hide your magic, hide your story. If people knew, they’d make a spectacle out of you, like they are now.”

I groaned. “I’m all over social media, aren’t I?”

“You’re everywhere,” Gideon said. “If I started an Instagram page for you, you’d have a million followers before sunrise.”

“Don’t.” I pointed a finger at him.

He grinned, then his face sobered. “I wish you felt like you could trust us with the truth…” He had no idea how much I wished the same thing.

“It’s not that I didn’t trust you,” I said. “I’ve been awake for eight years and you two are the only ones I’ve ever gotten close to. I couldn’t trust myself to be vulnerable, to open up. It hasn’t been easy adjusting to this world and reconciling what I did to get here, what I lost…” Even though I had Kinari back, this modern world could never truly replace the world I’d been born into. And the memories of how she and Ma died still haunted me.

“We understand,” Toji said gently.

“And now we want to hear everything, because I know you held some things back in that interview,” Gideon said. “And where the hell were you all day?” He glanced at Ashe. “And will Ashe let me ride her?”

Ashe made an indignant sound.

“Negative on the riding,” I said. “But let me take a quick shower, during which time one of you can order takeout, with extra helpings of meat for Ashe. I’m gonna need dessert as well. And wine. Then I’ll tell you everything.”

“Deal,” Gideon said, pulling his phone out while I headed to my bedroom.

Twenty minutes later I walked back out while I finished tying my hair up, and stopped dead in my tracks. For the second time today, I felt like my jaw might hit the floor.

“Penn, I got Thai, then ordered a ton of things from that bakery we like,” Gideon said, coming over. “The Seamless app says the dessert will get here first, to which I say amen…Hey, Penn?”

I barely heard Gideon as my eyes were all for Toji, who was standing by the coffee table, curiously looking over the Diviner’s card box.

And the box was completely open.

I ran over to Toji and looked at the card box, then up at his face, then back to the box. Toji startled and looked up at me. He was holding one of the cards. “Is this a replica Diviner’s card box? It’s really well made.”

“No,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “It’s a real card box. And only Diviners should be able to open it.”

Silence.

I stared at Toji. Toji stared at me. In my peripheral, Gideon was standing statue still. Then Toji cracked a smile.

“Good one.” He put the card back and picked up another one.

“Toji!” The sharpness in my voice made his attention snap to me again.

I took the card box from him and closed it. Then tried to open it. The lid didn’t budge, so I held it out to Gideon. “You try now.”

Gideon took the box and made a surprised sound when he couldn’t open it.

“Give it back to Toji.”

He did, and Toji once again opened it with ease.

“H…how?” Toji said. “You said this is a real Diviner’s card box? Are you sure? Maybe it’s just some trick to the latch that you two…”

“It’s no trick,” I said, taking the open box from him. I looked down at the cards, an uneasy feeling rippling over me. I sat down on the sofa and balanced the box on my thighs, then reached in and took the deck out.

I had never touched Diviner cards before, and part of me felt like it was wrong to, but as I ran my fingers over the back of the card on top, I felt the same touch of magic I felt from Luce and the Gladius.

“These are Diviner cards,” I said, looking up at Toji. “I can feel Divine magic.”

His eyes widened. “But…”

Something fluttered out from between the cards as I riffled through them, landing back inside the box. I picked up the scrap of aged paper and gasped when I turned it over.

“What?” Gideon said, coming closer. He and Toji sat down on either side of me.

On it, there was only one word.

Rogue.

I put the piece of paper down, then looked over the deck and card box again.

“It seems like that means something to you,” Toji said.

I inhaled slowly and let it out. “Rogue was what the Diviner I frequented used to call me. Mixuné. That means…that means this is her card box.”

“But how could she know that the box would end up with you?” Toji asked.

I shook my head slowly. “Diviners, their power, what they know, what they can see…I don’t know the limits of their magic but this…” I held up the note again. “This doesn’t feel like a coincidence. She must have known the box would make its way to me.”

“To help Toji realize he’s linked to Diviners in some way?” Gideon said.

“Yeah, but…maybe there’s another reason too? I couldn’t tell you what, though. Would have been nice for a detailed letter versus a one-word note.” Why did Mix want me to have her card box? It’d helped us realize something about Toji, but was that it? And what did it even mean that he could open it? Would he be able to use the cards the way Diviners did?

Luce took that moment to fly out from my bedroom and dance circles around Toji, much to his and Gideon’s shock. They’d been to my apartment many times, but Luce had never made herself visible to them before. Now, she was more agitated than I’d seen in a while, even when she’d powered up my sword. She alighted on the lid of the box and chittered rapidly at Toji.

“Can you understand her?” I asked. Her glow lit up the iridescent patterns on the backs of the cards.

“N…no,” Toji said. He looked from Luce to me. “What…what is this? Where did it come from?”

“She’s a Cephi, a creature of Divine magic. We were kept in a time pocket, inside a cave, with dozens of Cephis to protect us. I once asked Mix what Cephis were and all she said was that they were protectors. When we woke up, Luce was the only one left. All the rest had sacrificed their magic to keep us alive. She’s been with me since but never came out when you guys have been over. Until now.”

“A Cephi…” Gideon’s voice was full of wonder.

“I…I just…” Toji shook his head. “I’m not a Diviner, I don’t feel anything remotely magical within me, and my magical DNA test came back with nothing.”

“Nobody has been linked to Diviner ancestry,” I said. “Out of all the Talents, they’re the only ones who seem to have left nothing behind. I’ve never been entirely convinced that Diviners aren’t really Wild magic.” I thought about the Diviner’s writing I’d read at the magic museum, which seemed to indicate that Diviners were in a league of their own.

“Be that as it may,” Toji said. “Me being able to open this box and this…Cephi taking a liking to me, doesn’t mean I’m a Diviner.”

“I don’t sense Divine magic from you, which makes your ability to open the box all the more puzzling, but it means something. It has to. Especially because Divine help is exactly what I need. My sister’s life depends on it.” Hope was rising but I tried not to get carried away because we had a lot of dots to connect before we could get Kinari and the others the Mortalstone help they needed.

“Sister?” they said simultaneously.

The intercom buzzed so I put the card box down and went to let the delivery person in. “Brace yourselves,” I said to Gideon and Toji. “You really need to hear about my day.”

…

I caught Gideon and Toji up on everything while we ate.

We started with dessert, then the Thai food came, then we went back to dessert. With several glasses of wine in between. When I was done, Gideon and Toji spent some time being speechless.

“Your sister was brought back from the dead,” Gideon said. “I mean…wow…” He blew out a breath. “Oh, Penn, who is writing your memoir?”

“Good question.” I looked at Toji. “This is a lot, I know. You surely didn’t come here expecting magical revelations about yourself.”

“But I’m not…I mean…” Toji shook his head again. “Penn, what you explained about your sister and the others and their lack of Mortalstones sounds dire and I wish I could help, but even if I do have some kind of Divine magic, I wouldn’t have the first clue how to use it.”

“There’s no literature that’s been found on Diviners,” Gideon said. “Nothing that explains their magic, how their card reading worked, what the extent of their power was.”

“It would have been great if we could just download the Beginners Guide to Divine Magic, but alas, we’re out of luck,” I said. I felt encouraged at this revelation about Toji, but discouraged because I still didn’t have a solution for my sister and the others.

“Wait,” Gideon said, sitting up straight. “There might be someone who can give us answers.” He looked at Toji. “I was going to surprise you with this soon, but there’s no time like the present. A biological relative of yours contacted us through Magic and Me. I did my due diligence; she really is your relative. Your great aunt. Her name is Chiharu Inoue.”

Toji’s eyes were wide. “A relative? A biological relative?”

Gideon nodded. “Yes, and while that, in and of itself, is exciting, maybe it’s also exciting because she might know more about this Diviner stuff?”

I straightened up from where I sat cross-legged on the other side of the coffee table. Ashe was dozing at my back, having eaten her fill of greasy meat. “You want to get in touch with her either way, right?” I asked Toji.

“Of course,” he said, sounding amazed. “I’ve been trying for so long…”

Gideon pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll email her now and arrange a meeting. She lives in Pennsylvania, but hopefully we can meet sooner rather than later.”

“Set it up for here, whenever it is,” I said.

Gideon nodded, then sent the email. “Ah Penn, I have a lot of messages from Callan about you. We exchanged numbers after you got arrested. I’d been texting him throughout the day but haven’t checked in with him in a while. He said he saw you this morning but lost track of where you went.”

Callan. I dropped my head onto the coffee table and groaned. “Yeah, I kinda blew him off this morning so I could track down the magic community.” I raised my head. “I need to talk to him, but I also need sleep. Tell him I’m okay, and that he can come by in the morning.”

Gideon nodded, then sent that message off as well. Then he flopped back against the cushions and put his arm around Toji, who I could tell was still digesting everything.

I stood up, exhaustion crashing over me. “You two are welcome to stay the night; you know where the guest room is. I’m gonna go crash and pick these problems back up in the morning.”

Ashe roused as well. Luce flew around Toji for a bit before flying off to my bedroom. Gideon watched her go, then eyed Ashe. “You have a fire-breathing Circoux that you named Ashe, and a glowing moonlight creature you named Luce. You really knocked it out of the park with the name choices, didn’t you?”

“Shut up,” I said, laughing. He was lucky I didn’t have the energy to throw something at him.