The earliest memory Sydney let herself have was of learning magic, and the first spells that she remembered learning were for silence. After that, spells for obfuscation and deflection—things that would counterfeit invisibility, make people look away, not see, ignore, forget. True invisibility came later, but it was a soonish sort of later.
After that, after she had learned the names of nine qualities and thirteen degrees of silence, after she had learned to wrap herself in shadows, or a fold in a wall, or step into a tree and pull its bark closed after her, only then did Sydney learn how to cast other magic. And it was always, always, cast alongside those spells designed to hide her, to render her not just invisible, but utterly disappeared. The Unseen World prided itself on its invisibility; the House of Shadows was the rumor of its secrets. Even after she had left Shadows, Sydney had been a kept secret, a hidden thing, made to wait until the Turning to reveal herself.
Tonight, Sydney planned on being seen.
The Turning always officially opened with a party. An excuse for the Houses and aspirants to mingle in an armed truce. The first duel would be fought there, but tradition held that it would be little more than friendly rivalry. Spectacle rather than spite. A feint to gauge the strength of possible opponents.
Sydney didn’t believe in feints.
She walked through the gates of House Dee in a dress the color of fresh blood, her lips painted to match. It wasn’t that no heads turned to take in her progress across the marble floor, that no eyes followed the bend of her wrist as she plucked a glass of champagne from a passing tray. It was that those eyes paid her no more attention than they would have given any other beautiful woman. For now that was fine. Proof that she had done her job so far. She’d provide a focus for their attention soon enough.
House Dee in its architectural incarnation was old and elaborate, the kind of space meant to remind people that it, and its inhabitants, had been here a while and were likely to remain. Set-dressed to exude power and wealth, it was warm and baroque. Light glinted off crystal glasses and chandeliers. It shone on wallpaper rich in texture and color; it warmed the beeswax polish on the furniture. Establishment and tradition perfumed the air.
Smile on face, glass in hand, Sydney passed through the crowd, pausing at the edge of a conversation to eavesdrop as the crème of the Unseen World, tuxedoed and begowned, arranged their faces in social masks and gossiped about her.
“Some nobody, and representing an upstart House. Could you imagine if he’s hired an outsider? He won’t make it past tonight with magic like that.”
“Beauchamps came from money, didn’t he? And is friends with the Prospero boy. You’d think he could do better.”
“Not the Prospero boy any longer, remember. Miranda kicked him out, erased his name from the family tree. He’s an upstart this Turning, too.”
“Really. What will Miranda do?”
“Kill him, probably. She’s hired Ian Merlin.”
That name an invocation strong enough to send whispers racing even into the corners of the room. Sydney placed her half-full glass on a passing tray. This would complicate things. The former heir of a House now allied with his father’s greatest rival. Ian Merlin had been worth watching even without that because of House Merlin’s connections to Shadows—but also because he was one of the few magicians strong enough that Sydney thought he might be an actual challenge. And now he had just gotten a lot more interesting.
Shara would want to know about this turn of events, and Sydney would need to rethink her own strategies, but those were considerations for later, not for now. Now was for personal considerations.
She continued to make her way through the crowd, looking for Miranda Prospero.
There.
Straight-backed and elegant, dark hair with one thick streak of white in it. Legend was that section of her hair had turned white overnight in the previous Turning, the night her husband had been killed, a sign of her grief. Diamonds dripped from her ears and sparkled like ice on her hands. She radiated power.
Sydney stepped back, out of Miranda’s eyeline. Later would be soon enough for that particular introduction.
Elizabeth Dee strode to the center of the room to officially open the Turning. “Thank you all for joining us tonight as we host the first duel and celebrate the spinning of Fortune’s Wheel.”
Sydney let the speech flow over her, tuning out continuous mentions of Fortune’s Wheel and the saccharine description of the Turning as an event designed to ensure that the Unseen World was led by the strongest, most capable magicians. The Turning might be about many things—individual duels might even be decided by magical strength and ability—but finding the strongest and most capable magicians was certainly not its purpose.
She refocused when Elizabeth spoke the words that officially began the duel: “House Dee accepts the challenge of the candidate House Beauchamps.”
The type of spell had been negotiated as part of the offered and accepted challenge. Tonight’s was influence. As the challenged House, Dee had the right to choose whether to cast first or second. Not so critical at this early stage, with everyone expecting things to be simply a warm-up, a collective thrown gauntlet, but as things progressed, it would matter. One could always alter a spell after seeing what the opponent chose, to make it flashier or more beautiful, to fine-tune the response. Sydney had known Dee would choose to cast first, that they would be certain that a hired proxy for a candidate House would be nobody that they would need to concern themselves with.
She wouldn’t need to fine-tune her response. She knew precisely what she was here to do.
House Dee took pride in representing itself from within. Not through its heir, of course—there was no need to be reckless—but her younger brother. Bryce Dee stepped out onto the floor, removed his tuxedo jacket and cuff links, and rolled back his sleeves. The edge of Sydney’s mouth curled. He shouldn’t attempt showmanship if that was the best he could muster.
Bryce raised his hands and squinted, and—as one—all of the waiters raised their silver trays of drinks over their heads. They looked right, left, stomped their feet. Bryce sent them moving through the crowd like a precision dance team.
The challenge had been influence. The spell was adequate. Competent. It looked flashy enough, all of those sharp moves and percussive steps, and Bryce had been smart to use the waitstaff—the matching uniforms made for an arresting visual—but there was nothing beyond the surface. Plus, Bryce’s arms were trembling, and sweat stained the armpits of his shirt. Too much visible effort for such a simple spell.
Sydney could see the other magicians recognizing that as well. Miranda Prospero wasn’t even bothering to hide her contempt.
He really should have kept the jacket on.
The applause, when Bryce finished, was polite.
“The Challenger, representing the candidate House Beauchamps.”
Sydney did not step forward, but curled the last three fingers on her left hand and rotated her wrist a quarter turn.
An invisible violin began to play a waltz.
Sydney moved her right hand, bending her fingers into sharp angles. She stepped twice on the floor with her left heel and spoke the word that unlocked the spell she had prepared.
All of the assembled members of the Unseen World turned to the person next to them, and once partnered, began to dance.
Everyone except Sydney, who smiled to watch the magicians move through her chosen patterns, and the man who walked through the crowd to her side. Dark-haired and sharp-featured, magic coiled beneath his skin. Ian Merlin. Interesting, that he had been unaffected by the spell’s influence. She had tailored it very specifically.
“You seem,” he said, “in need of a partner.”
Sydney looked at him. “I seem to be doing just fine on my own.”
“They’ll hate you less, when the spell is over, if you’re dancing too.”
“And why,” she asked, “would you care if they hate me?”
“Because you seem interesting.” He held out his hands.
“I suppose that’s a good enough reason.” Sydney stepped close and allowed Ian to lead her in the dance, an exact mimic of the enchanted magicians. He was a good dancer, graceful and confident. She could feel the warmth of him through his tuxedo, in his hand on the skin of her bare back.
“They’ll be furious,” Ian said, looking around at the dancing magicians.
“Most of them,” Sydney agreed. “They’ll also realize that I’m no one to be trifled with. They’ll pay attention to me—they’ll see me, and my magic.”
“And why does that matter?” Ian asked. “You look like the sort of woman who gets noticed on a regular basis.”
“Noticed,” she said, “is very different from seen.” The fingers of Sydney’s left hand fluttered against Ian’s back as she ended the spell.
She ignored the fade of the music, the stunned hush of the room that turned into whispers that turned into noise. “Do you want to get out of here?”
Ian took her offered hand. “Your magic was the only thing I came to see.”
“I hope it was worth it.”
“Very much.”
She paused as they got to the street. “Just to be clear, I asked you to leave with me because I want take you to bed. How do you feel about that?”
Ian swallowed hard. “Good. I feel good.”
She smiled, and flagged down a cab.
• • •
Sydney slipped from Ian’s bed and into a bathroom down the hall, closing the door behind her. She pressed her back against the cold tile of the wall. The aftereffects of magic could only be delayed so long, and her spell had been big. The cost must be paid.
Hot and cold flashed through her, shaking her until her joints ached. Blood dripped from her nose and trickled down the back of her throat. She reached over and turned on the faucet so that no sound of weakness might leak from the walls.
She breathed in. Let the pain expand to fill her skin, let it become one with breath and bone, until it was nothing more than an ache—until the throb of magic was the same as the bruised pain in her feet from her shoes, as the blister coming up on one heel, as the much more pleasant ache in her thighs from the sex. One pain among others. It was nothing more. She wouldn’t let it be.
She thought of Bryce Dee, sweating from the effort of casting, even with a waiting pool of magic to access. Imagined that he slept peacefully, his cost already paid.
She had been one of the ones to pay it, and now she paid her own.
“Sydney?” Ian’s voice, sleepy and warm from the bedroom. She turned off the faucet. There were more pleasant ways to distract herself.
• • •
Later, Sydney walked home, thirty-seven blocks, in her heels. She had refused Ian’s offer of a cab: “I like the night.”
The air was cool on her flushed cheeks, and the distance long enough for her to finally feel grounded again after a spell of that size and its aftershocks. The pain now no more than background noise, but remnants of magic still burned through her blood as she walked past the warmth and light of restaurants and bars, past beautifully decorated store windows. She slowed a bit passing those, looking at their jewel-box designs, color and pattern like a fairy tale on acid, dressed up in this season’s fashion. She craved beauty like that, showy and strange. Like what magic should have been.
Six months and thirteen days. That was how long she had been out of Shadows. Not free, not yet. But out. It was getting easier to believe—last week she had gone an entire day without wondering if that would be the day Shara changed her mind and forced her to return forever, the doors sealed shut behind her. That was impossible, yes—her magic had broken those doors open before and could again. But there was a type of terror that didn’t care about reality, a fear that lived in secret places, and it clawed at her soft insides. It clawed harder at night, which was another thing she hated. But she’d been out long enough to almost sleep through the night now, most nights. There were nightmares still, of course, but things were getting easier.
Easier, but not safe. Not free.
Not yet.
The first night she’d spent outside of Shadows, she hadn’t slept at all. She hadn’t even tried. Instead, she had spent the entire night—her shadow still weeping pieces of darkness from that first deep cut necessary to sign her name on her contract, to indicate the measure of her debt to the House—standing outside, watching the stars and imagining what she would do when she truly earned her freedom.
She had imagined scrawling “fuck you” after her name on that heavy grey paper, imagined breaking the bottle where her shadow was converted to ink, imagined snapping the pen in her hand. Imagined driving that pen through Shara’s heart, or her throat, or some other soft and vulnerable place. She had imagined a thousand ways that freedom would feel. She had begun to plan, then, a way to get to it faster.
Now, at night, when she couldn’t sleep, she didn’t count sheep. She imagined a match and a contract burning. She fell asleep to the image of smoke rising through the air.
A cab slowed next to her, but she waved the driver on.
“Are you sure, lady? Those shoes look like killers.”
“So am I,” she called back. The window shut as the car sped away.
Her heartbeat was close to normal now, her muscles languid and warm. The remaining fizz of magic was only an ache in her hands. She was pleased with the spell, pleased with the night as a whole. Fortune’s Wheel was turning, and she would make certain that the Unseen World changed with it. Tonight had been a good beginning.
Home. Sydney walked across her building’s empty lobby to the elevator. She kept her killer heels on until she was inside her door. No weakness, even here. Once inside, she slipped out of the shoes and dress and into black leggings and an oversize T-shirt. Paused for a moment to ground herself: There were blankets piled at the foot of the bed, topped with a quilt embroidered in stars. There were glasses in every richness of blue in the cupboard, because even glasses could be beautiful, and so why shouldn’t they be? There was a sofa, dark red velvet, and a sculpture of leaves—brass and bronze and copper—on the wall above it. Her own tiny jewel box of beauty, a longing made real.
Settled, she made herself coffee. She had no desire to have nightmares, and there was work still to do.
• • •
The results came to Laurent the following morning, just before they went to the rest of the Unseen World. Winner’s privilege. Sydney thought it might more realistically be called the last moments of calm before she became a walking target, but that took a bit longer to say. Not that she was complaining—it was exactly what she wanted.
The email appeared on his screen, using the same technomagic protocols the notification of the Turning had done. The spell was a masterwork of collective magic. Fully anonymous voting by the magicians in attendance, scores tabulated by the spell itself, a spell also designed to flag anomalies in magic use. It was the same magic that regulated all aspects of the Turning, impossible for any one House to override. The screen shimmered, almost iridescent.
“We won!” Laurent said, turning around in his chair to smile at her, his delight so obvious Sydney grinned back.
“Good,” she said. “I would have been astounded if you hadn’t.”
“I wish I had been able to see it in person. I heard you did gorgeous work.”
He hadn’t even been invited to House Dee’s party, where his challenge was fought, House Dee being somewhat particular about those it considered suitable members of the Unseen World. They had been careful to make sure it got back to Laurent that outsiders who hadn’t even been born in the Unseen World and who had the arrogance to think they deserved to found a House were not on their list.
“They’re snobs.” Sydney shrugged, dismissing the entirety of the Unseen World with the movement of her shoulders. “But they’re snobs who recognize power. You’ll be invited to everything from now on, I’m guessing.”
“You’ve strengthened your wards, taken whatever precautions you should?” Laurent asked. “I’ve heard that accidents can happen on purpose during these things—I don’t want you to be one.”
She smiled. “Even you don’t know where I live. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m serious. I don’t mean to sound like a dick, but I have money. A lot of it. If the choice is between paying your rent or making sure you’re safe, know that I consider your safety a business expense. Buy whatever you need and I’ll reimburse you, or let me know what it is, and I’ll make sure you have it.”
“I know what you’re paying me to represent you, Laurent. And we’re sitting in your five-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side. The fact that you have money is not a secret.”
“Sydney.”
Laurent looked concerned enough that Sydney decided he actually meant what he said. “If cost becomes an object to my personal safety, I will let you know. But trust me—I want to get through to the end of this. I have no intention of dying—either in an accident or during a duel. The goal is to make sure that you’re the founder of a House when this is over, and for that to happen, I need to stay alive. I’ve taken precautions, and I’m good at what I do.”
He kept his eyes on hers, then nodded. “All right.”
“So, what’s the next move?” she asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that. And my first thought was there’s something to be said for going after the powerful Houses now,” Laurent said. “Get them out of the way before things shift and all the duels are mortal.”
“And your second thought?” Sydney asked.
“That there’s a more subtle strategy to play—just because a House is powerful doesn’t mean their champion is. A lot of the old Houses are too insular to hire a champion, and their magic suffers for it. So I want to work my way through this differently.”
“I think that’s a smart call,” Sydney said. “House Dee is one of the oldest and most established Houses, but Bryce’s spell was nothing. If you want my advice?”
“You have some time. Watch what happens this round before you decide who to challenge in the next. Watch the results, the type of spells cast, who falls out of contention. Alliances among the Houses will shift, too. All those pings on your phone while we’ve been talking? I’m guessing that a good percentage of them are Heads of Houses, or other candidates, inviting you to drinks, to dinners, to events where they can learn more about who you are and whether your way of thinking about magic lines up with theirs.”
Laurent glanced at the screen of his phone, scrolled, nodded. “And there’s the expected subtlety, sure, but isn’t it a little early for any of them to care what I think about magic?”
“It’s really not. After last night, they aren’t just wondering whether you’ll be made a House. They’re wondering what might happen to magic if you win.”
“Like, what, I’m going to make people pay dues in order to use it or something?” He laughed the idea off.
“The thing is, you could. The winner of the Turning leads the Unseen World. If that’s you, you’ll have a lot of say in how magic is used and who gets to use it. You came from outside—maybe you’d be interested in opening things up. Some Houses will think that’s great. Others will hate that idea so much they’ll wish you were representing yourself so they could kill you when this turns mortal.”
“But if people discover that you think the same way they do, and that you can do the hard work for them during the challenges—removing the people who don’t think the same from contention—then maybe they decide it’s better to support you than to challenge you.” Not every House met in challenges. The Turning wasn’t ever meant to scorch the earth of the Unseen World, only to shake it up a bit. Some alliances needed to remain alliances. From what she’d seen of him so far, Laurent had a head for strategy. And if he was focused on that, that would give her some time to think about what to do with Ian Merlin being at House Prospero and how much of all of that Shara needed to know. She now had plans of her own she needed to rethink.
Laurent leaned against the counter. “Miles Merlin’s been in control for as long as I’ve been here. The way he runs things is all I know about the Unseen World, and magic, any of it. Which, I guess might make some people think I’d be happy to go along with the status quo and, honestly, right now I’m happy to have them think that.”
“But?” Sydney asked.
“They call me an outsider. Like it’s a title, except a bad one. Because I wasn’t born in a House. House Dee wouldn’t even let me in the door last night, and no one said a word against that. I am the only person with skin darker than pale who is competing in the Turning, and I’d bet every dollar in my bank accounts that I’d be the first black man to be named a House.
“I want power. I won’t pretend that I don’t. But the other reason I’m in this is that there are kids like I was, and they belong here, too. Even if I can’t open up the entire Unseen World to them, I can open up my House and give them a place.
“So, sure. I’ll wait and see for now, and once things become clearer, I’ll decide who to challenge next.”
“All right, then,” she said. “One other thing I want to ask you to think about—what to do about Grey.”
“I said—”
She cut him off. “I know what you said. That he’s off-limits. I’m not saying to change that, but you need to keep in mind that at some point the challenges become mortal. You can only duel a House or candidate once.”
“So it might be better to do it early and risk knocking him out than to do it later and risk killing him.” Laurent looked unhappy. “I don’t like it, but I get it. I’ll think about it. I’m not promising anything else, but I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I wanted,” Sydney said, though it wasn’t, not really. She wanted him to consider that his own success meant the challenge might come from Grey, and what he might do about that, but this clearly wasn’t the time to have that conversation. “Send me the next challenge when you decide who it is.”
• • •
There were a number of spells put in place when the House of Shadows was established. One of those spells looked like an angel.
The Angel of the Waters, on top of the Bethesda Fountain, set in the red brick of Central Park’s Bethesda Terrace. Striding forward, her wings open, arms outstretched, a lily in one hand. Sydney stood, facing the cooing pigeons perched in a line atop the statue’s wings.
The statue wasn’t magic in and of itself. It had been there before Shadows was created—made as a celebration of clean water, a symbol of freshness, of purity, a fact that had rendered Sydney incandescent when she learned it. After its appropriation by the spell that created Shadows, that governed the magic that came from that place, it was neither of those things.
If it had been associated with anything other than Shadows, Sydney would have found the statue beautiful. But knowing what it was, even with the setting sun making a watercolor of the sky and clouds behind it, she could barely stand to look at it.
But to break a spell you needed to know how it worked in the first place. That required that she do more than look at the statue.
Sydney walked around the fountain, keeping it in the periphery of her gaze. Shadows clung more deeply to it than they did to the other things in the park. But the effect was a subtle one. A photographer or painter, someone who worked with light, might notice it, but it seemed unlikely that most mundanes would. It was a well-hidden piece of magic.
She spoke a word to draw the air around her like a cloak. Its syllables broke and fell like soft rain. She extended her hands, a mirror reverse of the statue, and she reached into the magic that was anchored in it.
Dark copper and rot, the feel of clotting blood between her fingers, and that was exactly what she expected to find. Shadows’ magic. This, she knew. This, she could unmake.
She breathed in, she breathed out, and sank deeper.
Magic whipped around her like ropes, like barbed wire, holding, pulling, sinking in claws. Hungry. Some other spell, knitted into the magic from Shadows. Some other spell, trying to pull magic out of her. Fingers clutching at her heart, searching.
Sydney gritted a word out through clenched teeth, singeing the air, breaking her connection to the magic running through the Angel. She spat a curse, the aftermath of that second, searching spell lingering in her mouth like bile. An ache, dull and hollow, crouched just behind her ribs.
She narrowed her eyes and resumed her walk around the fountain, this time in the opposite direction. It was possible that Shara knew about this other, second spell. That this was another test: Could Sydney discover it? Would she tell when she did? But none of the instructions Shara had given her, none of Shadows’ plans, involved the statue.
It was also possible Shara didn’t know about this other spell, and that was something worth thinking on.
There were rumors—Sydney had heard them; she had spent her first month out of Shadows learning how to function in the mundane world and her second month learning everything she could about the Unseen World—that there was something wrong with magic. Tiny spells that went awry, or that had to be recast, or that weren’t quite what was expected. Small rumors, but enough of them that she was sure there was truth lurking in the whispers.
Shara had said nothing about any of that.
Which made sense, if the problem was with the spell that was anchored in the Angel. The magic would be fine coming out of Shadows, and then here—Sydney braced and reached into it again, more cautiously this time, stopping just before that hungry, lurking presence. Just close enough to feel the emptiness underneath.
Whatever it was, this was where things were going wrong.
• • •
Laurent met Grey three times a week, early in the morning, to run around the Central Park Reservoir. Grey had gone on a fitness kick about three years back—he’d said being in better physical condition would help make their magic stronger, a healthy mind in a healthy body and all that. Grey was always getting ideas about what he could do to improve his magic, make it stronger, some of which were a little out there, but running was pretty benign, even if early mornings weren’t, so Laurent showed up and he ran.
They set a pace that was comfortable enough to let them talk. “How’d your first challenge go?” Laurent asked.
“Fine. Another candidate, some second cousin or stepchild from the Morgan family looking to establish their own House. Pissed at Miranda about something and looking to take it out on me. This whole thing will be much less of a pain in my ass once people realize that she won’t care if I lose, by the way. But I had choice of magic, and I chose locations and did an unfolding map spell, so I won.”
“Nice. What will you do next?”
“Trying to steal my strategy?” Grey laughed. “I’m going after one of the big Houses. Make a point. Beating them will show I can’t be fucked with. You?”
“Strategy first. Meetings. Drinks. All the background shuffling before I decide. You know how it is.”
“Not really,” Grey said. The remnants of yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the wind as they ran by. “No one’s asked me for any of that.”
Laurent tried to minimize his mistake. Grey was always happiest when he felt connected. “Well, people probably think they already know you well enough to be direct. You were born here—I’m an outsider, remember?”
“Right,” Grey said, looking over his shoulder to the dark gap in the trees. “I’m sure that’s it.”
“What happened over there?” Laurent asked, nodding back at the dark space in the trees.
“I can’t see enough to tell,” Grey said, turning and running backward for a few steps to better see the crime scene. But all that was visible was the bedraggled police tape.
“Did you hear about that woman who was murdered and had all her finger bones removed? Maybe that was where she was found.”
“Huh,” Grey said. “Maybe.”
“So creepy, right? Like, who steals someone’s finger bones? That is, like, Brothers Grimm shit.”
“Seems like,” Grey said, turning back around.
“Anyway, back to strategy, do you have any advice?” Laurent asked. “Who I should trust, that sort of thing?” He could tell from Grey’s face that had been the right question to ask.
“Hard to go wrong following a winner,” Grey said.
“Merlin, you mean?”
“It’s the oldest House. That kind of history, that’s power and standing. Plus, Miles knows all the secrets, everything that goes on.”
“I thought your family hated him.”
“Miranda hates him. Point in his favor, as far as I’m concerned.”
Laurent laughed.
They finished the loop and slowed to a walk. “One other thing,” Laurent said. “I’ve been thinking it might be smart to challenge each other now, while things are still low-key.”
Grey coughed, spitting water on the ground. “What the fuck! Low-key? If you have too many losses, you don’t advance. One of us could knock the other out. Forget it.”
“It’s forgotten.” Laurent drank from his own water bottle. “This whole thing is so weird.”
“Weird or not, you better figure it out fast, and stop coming up with crazy shit like that.” Grey slapped his friend on the back and headed for his subway stop. “Fortune’s Wheel keeps turning!”
Laurent stood in the cooling air, the wind drying his sweat against his skin. Fortune’s Wheel did turn, and it didn’t always leave people on top. Sometimes it rolled right over them. Shaking the stiffness from his limbs, he started for home.
• • •
“Anything for me today, Henry?” Sydney asked as she crossed the lobby of her apartment building.
“Yes, miss.”
She stopped, raised a brow. She didn’t generally order things for delivery. The pool of people who knew her actual address was two, and she didn’t think Shara would ever use the postal system, so the question was more a habit than something she expected an affirmative answer to.
“Well, not a thing, miss, so much a person. She said you weren’t expecting her, and so she’d just sit right down and wait.”
Sydney shifted her weight back on her heels. She was definitely not expecting a visitor. Nothing had triggered her wards, but not every unpleasantry had to be caused by magic. It would be easier to protect Henry if she was closer to him. “She?”
“That’s right, miss. Right over there.”
The white-haired woman wore all black, perfectly tailored for her straight-backed frame. Her lipstick was as red as Sydney’s, and while the passage of time had marked itself on her skin, power and beauty went bone-deep beneath it. She rose from the chair, as poised as a queen. “Hello, Sydney. I’m Verenice Tenebrae.”
Sydney knew the name. And that was why her wards—keyed to magicians who used the magic that came from Shadows—hadn’t gone off.
“Thanks, Henry. It’s fine.” He nodded his acknowledgment, and Sydney walked closer to the waiting woman. She shaped a minor silence with her left hand as she did, making sure no one would be able to overhear their conversation. “Tenebrae. You’re the other Shadow who got out.”
“Indeed.” She inclined her head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I was hoping we could talk.”
Now that she was closer, the signs of Verenice’s origins were unmistakable. Sydney saw them herself in every mirror: the way Verenice held herself, the lines of her spine and the awareness in her eyes. The magic that ran closer to the surface than it did in those who’d never had to be a channel for others. The ragged edges of her shadow. “There’s a very good bakery, about a block and a half away, if you don’t mind the walk.”
“I do love pain au chocolat. And you don’t want me in your apartment and you’re too diplomatic to say. I quite understand.”
Sydney said nothing because it was true. She didn’t want Verenice in her apartment. Shara had told her, when she left, to look for Verenice, had mentioned that the other woman could help her navigate the Unseen World. Sydney trusted few people to begin with, and trusted anyone Shara recommended even less. So she had not gone looking for Verenice, and while she wasn’t surprised to have been sought out, she wasn’t pleased, either.
She watched Verenice as they walked, but the older woman gave away nothing. It would have been a shock if she had. Shadows was nothing if not thorough in its training.
After they were seated, Verenice with hot chocolate to accompany her pastry and Sydney with rose and violet macarons, Verenice said, “My debt is paid. Fully. Shadows has no hold on me, and I have no loyalty to that place.” The last word bitter as salt. “I’m here for myself, because I was curious about you, not because Shara asked me to spy.”
“I’m hardly anyone worth being curious about,” Sydney said.
“Forty years,” Verenice said, stirring her hot chocolate.
“I’m sorry?”
“I left Shadows forty years ago. Before you were born, even. No one before me and no one in between walked out of those doors. You and I both know to a nicety what the other endured to be here. False modesty does not become us.” She looked up then, directly at Sydney.
“Fine. Then tell me how I can satisfy your curiosity.”
Verenice smiled. “I do like you. So precise. So careful. So much like I was. Though you want more, I think. No, don’t interrupt. I know it makes you uncomfortable that I know what you are, and you’d really rather not be here. You want to deny, to deflect, to try to draw one more layer of ‘don’t see me’ around yourself. I’d be willing to bet that the only reason you haven’t warded this conversation is that you don’t want it to be important.
“But I have practice in seeing, and I’ll tell you what I think. I think that you’re out of Shadows and working with that handsome young man because Shadows has told you to—to be contracted to someone, if not him specifically—and because Shara and the House will cut little pieces of you away, slowly if you do what you’re told and much faster if you don’t.
“I also think that you’re doing something else, and not just because you’d be a lot less careful in what you said to me if you had nothing to hide from Shara. Who probably told you to seek me out because she knew it would be the last thing you would do if she did, and she wanted to deny you an ally.”
A brow raised as question. Sydney kept her face clear of an answer, but it was precisely the sort of thing Shara would do.
Verenice continued. “I’ll tell you again that I’m not here on her behalf, that I haven’t spoken to her since I paid off my contract, but I don’t expect you to believe me—I wouldn’t, in your position. But I know how you filtered your influence spell during the first challenge—you set it up so that it would affect only the magicians who use the magic from Shadows to pay their cost. I think, perhaps, you were looking for allies.”
And that was close, very close. Sydney had set up the spell that way, though with the intent of counting enemies rather than of finding allies. She had wanted to see how deep Shadows’ influence was, to have some idea what the size of the fire would be when she lit the match. Apparently, a conflagration was in order. “Any other speculations?”
“I think you’re using the Turning as a way to move against Shadows, and I want to help you.” Verenice’s hands were flat on the table where Sydney could see them. Not that a magician had to use her hands to cast, but keeping them so obviously visible and unmoving was a sign that no magic was being done.
And then Sydney did ward the conversation, dipping a finger in her tea and drawing a quick symbol on the surface of the table.
“Assuming any of what you said is true, why would you want to get involved? Going up against Shadows would be risky. Dangerous even. If you’re out, you’re safe,” Sydney said, stepping hard on the last word. She might not trust Verenice, but she wouldn’t send anyone back into Shara’s clutches.
The lines of Verenice’s face changed then, and Sydney could see all the time, all the pain that had made them. “I opened the doors of the House when I was thirty-three. It held me under contract for ten years after. And for those ten years, and the thirty beyond them, I have lived in the Unseen World and known what went on in Shadows. Known I couldn’t stop or change it. Not on my own. That’s why.”
Sydney looked around the elegant patisserie, at the cream-and-gilt walls, the staff in the black-and-white uniforms, aprons edged with lace. She breathed in the scents of sugar and butter, cinnamon and chocolate, and thought how very far away they both were from where they had started.
She looked at Verenice’s shadow again. The rips, the torn places, the ragged edges. So much worse than her own, and the pain of her own, when she allowed herself to acknowledge it, was the constant shriek of skin flayed away, of open wounds. The balm to the pain, to the rage that lay underneath it, was the idea that she could change things. Could end them. Could make sure that no one else was broken and cut into pieces for the ease of other people’s magic.
She could almost have understood the existence of Shadows if it had been more than that. If using the magic that came out of it had been somehow a boost—if it let people be more powerful magicians. People were greedy and for power in particular. But the magic that came from Shadows didn’t give extra power. It made no one stronger. All it did was make things easier, because the pool of magic was always there, and ensure that those who used it faced no consequences for their magic use because someone else had paid them already.
Sydney had been one of those someone elses, for the first twenty-five years of her life, and Verenice had, too, for eight years of her life beyond that. She felt herself shake inside. She owed Verenice this choice, even if it made the other woman less safe. There were times when safety didn’t matter. And she didn’t have to trust Verenice to be able to use her.
“Okay,” Sydney said. “Okay.”
Verenice nodded. “You let me know when you’ve decided how I can be of use.”
“There is one thing,” Sydney said. She could start by asking the question Shara had wanted her to. That way there’d be nothing lost if it turned out Verenice wasn’t trustworthy after all. “Who do I most need to worry about?”
“Miles Merlin.” Verenice didn’t even have to consider her answer. “He’s furious already, because his son won’t use Shadows magic. He hates me because I’m the one who taught Ian that he didn’t have to. And once he learns what you are, where you’re from, he’ll come at you. He’ll be subtle, at the beginning, but don’t mistake that for him being anything less than dangerous. He’ll see any threat to Shadows as a threat to his power, and he won’t like it.”
“You’re the one who taught Ian?” Sydney said. A flicker of surprise before the realization that it made sense. Someone had to, and the choices were extremely limited. “Is he good?”
“Very.”
“One more thing, then,” Sydney said. “Have you heard about any failures of magic?”
“A little,” Verenice said. “Nothing concrete.”
“Please let me know if you do. It would, possibly, be a helpful thing to know, if I were actually planning any of the things you wondered about.” Her phrasing was vague enough that she could explain her way out of things if the request did get back to Shara.
Verenice collected her things, then paused. “Sydney. Thank you.”
“You may not want to thank me by the end of this,” Sydney said.
“If the end of this means an end to Shadows, I will.”
The next day, Sydney sent Verenice flowers. A kind gesture, nothing more.
Except for what it signaled, something she knew Verenice would understand: that Verenice, too, was findable. And there was the small matter of the spell, woven into the flowers, that would have wilted them on the instant had there been traces of any magic that came from Shadows in Verenice’s house, had she actually been in communication with Shara. And the secondary spell, set so if that magic wasn’t found, they opened exuberantly, in bright profusion, offering unmistakable signs of suspicion.
Verenice smiled and sent flowers in return. The card read, May our friendship, like these flowers, never wilt. Woven into the writing, a spell of her own. A binding to loyalty, making her unable to cast direct magic against Sydney.
Sydney held the card in her hand. There were ways—there were always ways—to get around such a binding. Verenice could very easily move against Sydney indirectly, or hurt someone else for leverage. But this, unasked for, was a strong sign that she had meant what she said—that she wasn’t bound to Shara or to Shadows any longer, and that she would work to help Sydney if that help was needed.
It was a good start.