The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Awakening (10 page)

“Touché,” Marcel gave. “But still, maybe that was the full extent of her powers.”

Bastet sighed and then said, “I’ll be back.”

She came back to the living room with Devdan, who had locked himself in the room that morning as Bastet and MaLeila were coming out of theirs to get ready to meet a returning Tilila and her husband.

“We’re all sitting here speculating what being sealed away does to a person’s magical potential when we could just ask the guy who has been sealed before,” Bastet explained.

Admittedly, the thought had crossed MaLeila’s mind, but she knew how difficult Devdan could be about anything directly related to Claude, so she hadn’t suggested it. Bastet must have blackmailed him some kind of way, because bribery never worked on Devdan.

Tilila turned directly to Devdan, eager for the opportunity to hear what Devdan had to say since no matter how much she begged him, he’d never help her with her research.

“So?” she urged. “What effect does a seal have on someone’s magic?”

“Being sealed is like being asleep. You don’t know it’s happened until the seal wears off or someone breaks it. So I really don’t know what it did,” Devdan replied.

“Well you got out of it eventually, so what did the effects feel like.”

“Like someone had cast a binding spell on my magic, except mush less temporary and much less easy to break. The more you use your magic, the more it loosens. Until finally it breaks and you’re free to use magic and let your powers grow the same way they did before the sealing. But that could take years, and Tsubame didn’t particularly strike me as the extremely patient type.”

Tilila, who was furiously writing down everything Devdan said, continued, “Are there any more effects of the seal? Like confusion?” she asked. “From being sealed in one time period and waking in another?”

“No confusion. It’s like when you sleep sometimes you dream. Sometimes I could see time passing, especially when events that effected the magical world happened. The disturbance in magic could sometimes cause cracks in the seal. But it was like a dream, except when you wake up you realize that your dream was more real than you thought.”

Devdan was making this too easy, which meant that there was something else he wasn’t telling, but no one had asked the right question and it was a question he didn’t want asked. So he latched onto what was being asked and gave all the information his interrogators thought they wanted while hiding something key. MaLeila had played that game enough times with Devdan to be sure of that.

“What’s the other effect then?” MaLeila asked.

Everyone looked at her, but it was only Devdan’s gaze she felt boring into her, his aura that she felt beginning to contract as a warning for her to be quiet. MaLeila continued anyway.

“You said there’s no confusion. So if there’s no confusion, what is there?”

Devdan’s right hand clenched and unclenched, eyes darting to the right. MaLeila wasn’t sure what he looked at, though it must have been something because MaLeila had never known Devdan to shy away from someone’s gaze, not matter how uncomfortable he was.

“You’re consumed by the last thought or emotion you had right before you were sealed. In my case it was revenge,” Devdan admitted.

“Revenge on…” Marcel urged, but MaLeila put her hand on his thigh to silence him. Marcel may be able to easily read Devdan and better understand his psychology than she was able to but longevity counted for something. And MaLeila knew if they wanted Devdan’s help any further, this was a direction they were better off not going in.

Devdan’s eyes darted to the right again, hand clenching and unclenching, and that’s when MaLeila realized that the man’s eyes were going to the general direction of the kitchen table, where Jaffe was sitting appearing to be unaware of their discussion.

“Why don’t you ask Jaffe?” Devdan suggested. “He’s the bastard who helped Claude seal me.”

Everyone went still at Devdan’s question, but none stiller than Jaffe. Not only was he physically still, but he was magically still. As far as magical aura’s went, they lightened, darkened, changed colors sometimes, contracted and flared. They even did those things when suppressed and the more powerful she grew the more MaLeila could sense a suppressed magical aura simply because of the natural shifts of the magical energies of a person in day to day happenings. But Jaffe’s magic was totally still, like a prey that was keenly aware of its predator.

“Jaffe,” Tilila called, forcing Jaffe to acknowledge them.

Jaffe turned in their direction, glasses in his hand as he rubbed his eyes.

“What is he talking about?” Tilila demanded.

Devdan laughed mirthlessly. “Does that shock you? Wonder if he told you how he was also involved in the slave trade. He helped sorcerers who immigrated to the states find little magic nigger slave children to become their guardians and human familiars with all the same submissiveness and loyalty that animal guardians and familiars are created with except human beings lasted much longer. He was one of the wealthiest slave merchants in the south.”

“Devdan,” Bastet warned.

“Devdan, that’s in the past,” Jaffe said.

“The fuck it is,” Devdan muttered. “That’s what everyone says when they’re guilty and don’t want to own up to it.”

“Devdan,” Bastet said again.

“Well it is,” Devdan replied.

Tilila stood up then, grabbing her things and saying, “It’s probably best we leave for now. I’ve shared everything I know anyway.”

“Tilila, you don’t have to go. It’s okay,” Bastet said though her tone said otherwise.

“No. It’s not okay,” Tilila said sending a pointed glare at her husband. Then she knelt down and kissed Bastet on both cheeks before saying, “I’ll call you if I find anything else in my research.”

“Thanks,” Bastet muttered.

Tilila then turned to MaLeila, kissed both her cheeks also, and then showed herself and Jaffe out the house.

After a long pause Marcel, who looked a little wide-eye but not uncomfortable, asked, “Should I leave?”

MaLeila could understand why he asked. The tension in the air had risen and both Bastet and Devdan had the same stillness to their aura, except MaLeila wouldn’t liken their stillness to a prey that was keenly away of their predator. More like an impenetrable stone wall that no one would be able to break through except perhaps MaLeila herself. And it was exactly what she intended to do.

“Yeah. Probably,” MaLeila replied.

Marcel nodded and pressed a kiss on her cheek and muttered that he would hopefully see her later before he too saw himself out. MaLeila waited until she sensed his presence long gone before deciding to take the plunge like she always did when it came to touchy subjects with Devdan.

“So when are you two going to stop keeping secrets from me about Claude, because it would have been really nice to know who Jaffe was so I wouldn’t have been so shocked when Devdan pulled a gun on the guy for seemingly no reason at all?” MaLeila unintentionally snapped.

“You’re better off not knowing some things, MaLeila,” Bastet said simply. “Everyone has flaws. Claude had a lot of them, but because he saw you coming, with the potential to not only understand, but also use his magical theories, he left you everything he had and everything he thought you would need. If it weren’t for him, you probably would have never discovered the magical world.”

The roll of Devdan’s eyes told MaLeila that he disagreed with Bastet before he opened his mouth.

“You say that as if the guy’s only flaw was being so consumed in his fucking magical experiments and studying his theories that he unknowingly neglected his children even though he loved them so damn much,” Devdan said as he leaned back against the couch with his arms crossed and his eyes closed. “We were his fucking slaves Bastet. He bound our magic so we would never get powerful enough to rebel against him just like every other sorcerer master, and the only reason he ever decided to teach us any more than silly witchcraft was that our magic got too powerful for any bind to hold.”

“Claude was decent to us, Devdan,” Bastet argued.

“I think we both have a very different definition of decent,” Devdan deadpanned.

There was something unspoken lingering between Bastet and Devdan. MaLeila had sensed it before and because of it, she understood why they referred to each other as brother and sister. Though most of the time Devdan and Bastet acted like they couldn’t care less if the other bothered them, they knew things about each other, kept each other’s secrets and currently, they were keeping something secret from MaLeila.

“Stop doing that,” MaLeila groaned.

“Stop doing what?” Bastet asked.

“That thing where both of you obviously know something I don’t and have somehow mutually decided without saying a word not to tell me about it,” MaLeila snapped.

“I bet it really bothers the shit out you, doesn’t it, master?” Devdan asked.

Bastet narrowed her eyes at Devdan as she said, “Shut up right now. We said we wouldn’t tell her.”

“Why not?”

“Tell me what?” MaLeila interjected before Bastet could try to talk some sense of reason into Devdan.

“You want to know why you’re just like Claude? That when I look at you, I see Claude’s ghost standing over your shoulder?” Devdan asked. “Because you’re our fucking master just like he was. We can’t leave you if we wanted to. We’re bound to you. He bound us to you. By leaving his legacy to you, he left me and Bastet to you and because it’s a magically binding contract, we can’t go anywhere else.”

MaLeila opened her mouth to say something and then closed it when no words came to mind for her to say. She did this multiple times before finally she asked, “Why would he do that? You’re not my…”

“Take the blinders off your eyes, MaLeila. You know better than anyone that the magical world isn’t this magical fantasy place where you can be free from racial prejudice and the only prejudice you face is that you didn’t come from a long line of powerful sorcerers. They call you the fucking nigger witch for God’s sake. Do you think that just came out of nowhere?” Devdan asked. “Just because the magical world likes to act like it was a blip in its history that never happened didn’t mean they weren’t just as involved in the slave trade as the rest of the world. We were Claude’s fucking property and like any piece of property he left us to you. Makes me wonder just how clear he saw you in his visions though. I wonder if he knew you weren’t going to be a blue-eyed, blonde haired white girl if he would have left you his legacy.”

MaLeila resisted the urge to touch her neck, wherein something must have been constricting her airway because it was the only reason she could think that suddenly she could barely breathe.

“But you always leave,” MaLeila argued. “I’m not keeping you here. That’s your choice.”

“Yeah, I do leave,” Devdan agreed. “But why do you think I always come back?”

As always, what Devdan didn’t say held much more weight than his actual words. Why did she think he came back? Because he cared about her? Because maybe he saw her as family like he saw Bastet? Because he really was afraid to lose her? Because secretly he didn’t want to live without her? Because even though he rejected her again and again and recently she had rejected him, she thought one day they might have a chance? No. Not at all. It was because he had no choice. And if he did, he’d never come back. MaLeila clenched her jaw together, eyes watering with tears that she would not give Devdan the satisfaction of letting fall because that’s why he was saying all this. He just wanted to hurt her, to push her further away from him because she had gotten too close yet again. If she cried in front of him, he’d win.

Bastet looked between MaLeila and Devdan and then sighed, like she wasn’t sure whose side to be on this time.

“Why don’t we all just chill out for a while?” Bastet suggested. “It’s been a long couple of days. We just… Let’s give each other some space.”

Bastet didn’t need to say it twice.

For once, it was MaLeila fleeing the house.

11

The more powerful MaLeila became the more she could see the world far beyond the realm of what was material. Though it was a much more far reaching sight than her physical sight was, which was limited by walls and barriers, light and darkness, it was still a sight that was mostly limited to a few blocks with the only exception being that she could usually follow the wispy threads of magic that were her familial connections close to her and even glimpse them if she concentrated. She’d never paid much attention in detail to them before, but now she carefully inspected them. There was Nina’s thread, not very strong because Nina possessed no magic, and she caught a brief half of a second glimpse of the girl, not enough to know where she was or what she was doing, but enough to know that she was alive. Then she found two other wispy threads, both representing her familial relationship with Devdan and Bastet, except upon closer inspection of the wisps, she noticed they weren’t threads. Threads could fade and easily be severed. Threads naturally formed the more two people interacted with one another. Devdan and Bastet were connected to her, forced to be connected to her with magically bonding chains.

MaLeila timidly reached out with her magic to touch the chains, Devdan’s a pulsing vibrant red and Bastet’s the normal silver, to get a better feel of how they bound Devdan and Bastet to her, how it was that the magic subjected them to her, but not her to them.

“What are you doing?”

MaLeila’s concentration broke and instead of seeing both the physical world and the ethereal world that transcended it, she only saw the physical. She slowly exhaled, deciding it would take too much work and focus to get back into that particular state of seeing again. She shifted from where she was lying on Marcel’s couch to look at him.

“Remember I told you that Devdan told me him and Bastet are essentially my slaves and I’m their fucking slave master?” MaLeila asked.

“It was only yesterday, so of course.”

“It’s true,” MaLeila said, turning her head to look at the ceiling of the living area in Marcel’s apartment.

MaLeila’s first instinct was to go to Nina’s house and tell the girl everything that had transpired, but while the girl had known about MaLeila’s magic, she had a very shallow understanding of it being that she couldn’t use it. Nina, while she would certainly do her best to comfort MaLeila, wouldn’t understand what the big deal was. So she found her way to Marcel’s house, told him everything they told her, cried over Devdan harsh words, and eventually decided to stay the night. And when she woke up that morning, she immediately set about trying to see how much truth there was to Devdan’s declaration.

Marcel sighed, lifting up her legs to sit on the couch before lying them across his lap.

“You shouldn’t let Devdan make you feel guilty about that. It was magic put in place long before you were born, not to mention you didn’t even know about it until last night.”

“You don’t have to tell me that. I know that’s not my fault.”

“Then what’s really bothering you about this.”

MaLeila stared at the ceiling in contemplation, trying to carefully form her words so she wouldn’t give away anything that she didn’t want Marcel to know. Finally she said, “Me, Bastet, Devdan. I thought we were more. When Bastet found and gave me that staff and that book and decided to stay, I thought it was because she wanted to or it was destiny or something. And even though Devdan tried to kill me first, I thought he’d finally come around. Even though he always left, he always came back. I thought it was because they wanted to. Now I know it’s because they have no fucking choice.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Exactly. That’s what makes it so damn frustrating.”

“Then break the binding, undo whatever it was Claude did so that you all are on an even playing ground. Then you’ll know.”

“I don’t even know what Claude did. The guy revolutionized magic, especially if he could bind two people to me before I was even born, let alone that it’s lasted nearly two centuries.”

“And you’re his heir. So he must have left what he did somewhere. You have his book. He left you the way to undo and redo this universe if you saw fit. So this bind must be somewhere in it,” Marcel reminded.

“That’s true,” MaLeila said, not wanting Marcel to suspect the real reason she was reluctant. There was no doubt in MaLeila’s mind that she could undo the magic that bound Devdan and Bastet to her if she put her mind to it. It might take a few months, maybe years, but she could certainly unwind it eventually. What had her worried was what would happen if she did undo the magic? With nothing keeping them with her, would Bastet and Devdan decide to stay? Would there be a wispy thread connecting them together once the magic chains were gone?

But why do you think I always come back?

Maybe Devdan had just been talking out of his anger, but truthfully MaLeila would never know unless she broke the chains. The idea make her heart constrict and her breathing become shallow. She wondered how terrible of a person it made her for entertaining the idea of leaving the chains as they were. It’s not as though she had formed them anyway. MaLeila dismissed the idea. If she did that, Devdan might be right in comparing her to Claude.

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?” MaLeila asked.

“Abusing your mind over this. I can see it on your face.”

“How can I? How can I when Devdan told me I was his slave master and the only reason he stays is that I’ve been unwittingly forcing him too?”

Marcel laughed. “You’ve really go to stop letting him get to you like this. He knows just what to say to hurt your feelings and get to you. I’d almost call it borderline abuse if it weren’t for the fact that you’ve never complained about him demeaning you.”

MaLeila started to argue that Marcel couldn’t even begin to call Devdan’s purposeful harshness towards her abuse when she was essentially his fucking master and he was subjugated to her. If anything, it evened the power imbalance.

Instead she said, “I know that. But it’s hard not to let him get to me when I live in the same damn house as him.”

“Then don’t.”

“That would be very helpful if I had somewhere else to permanently stay.”

Marcel didn’t miss a beat. “Stay here.”

MaLeila paused, eyebrows furrowed as she made sure she heard what he said. The she propped herself up on her elbows and asked bluntly, “Are you asking me to move in with you?”

“Yeah,” Marcel said with a nonchalant shrug.

MaLeila fell back down on the sofa. “Right. You don’t have to let me move in because you feel sorry for me.”

“It’s not because I feel sorry for you. I was going to ask you anyway. You’re eighteen and about to graduate high school in a month and a half. You don’t know your plans for after school, so I was thinking maybe you’d like living in Europe for a while. Of course, with this binding, that makes things trickier, but I think I could get used to living in the U.S. for a while until you could undo it,” Marcel suggested.

“Thanks for asking what I think about that,” MaLeila said sarcastically.

“It was supposed to be a lot more planned out and inquiring than what I just said, but since it came up, I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. But I am asking,” Marcel assured. “I want to live together. Do you?”

MaLeila muttered that she’d think about it. No matter how hurtful Devdan had been, she was going to run the idea by him and Bastet anyway because their opinion mattered even more than her brother’s. But when she made her way back home the next day, only Bastet was home. She was sitting at the kitchen table, leg propped up underneath her opposite thigh.

“Merrick called yesterday. Told me to let you know he’ll be out of town a little longer. Len and Ari won’t let him leave.”

Merrick, Len, and Ari had been thick as thieves as children. Wherever one had been, the other usually wasn’t too far behind, even as adults. And it had been because they were that close that they had become privy to learning about MaLeila’s magical exploits. Regardless, MaLeila didn’t need to be told where Merrick was, nor did she care. MaLeila did care where Devdan was and Bastet continued to avoid saying anything about her own brother by continuing to relay her conversation with Merrick.

“I told him you were spending a few days with Nina, but he didn’t believe me. By the way, Ari told me to tell you don’t do half the things she’d do with your magical boyfriend that she would, but totally do the other half,” Bastet added.

MaLeila nodded in response sensing the tension in the air despite Bastet’s attempts to ignore it. So MaLeila just cut to the chase.

“Marcel wants me to move in with him.”

Bastet, who had been idly scrolling through something on her tablet looked up at MaLeila, eyes slightly widened but otherwise looking bored by MaLeila’s declaration.

“That’s sudden. How long have you been dating again?”

“Four months.”

“And he already wants you to move in?”

“Why not?”

Bastet sighed. “I’m just… Moving in together is not something sorcerers of his status do. They court. They date. They have affairs. They get involved. But they don’t move in together. Not before getting married.”

“The magical world is so fucking outdated,” MaLeila said rolling her eyes.

“For good damn reason in some cases, MaLeila. Not in all. In a lot of cases, it’s backwards and their mindset in terms of social and class hierarchy is the same way it was a thousand years ago, but in this case it actually has a good reason.”

“Well could you stop telling me it has a good reason and tell me what the good reason is?” MaLeila asked shortly.

Bastet raised an eyebrow at her tone but said nothing about it and explained, “Dating and marriage is tricky and complex enough in the non-magical world. Emotions get involved and things can get messy even before the papers are signed and that’s without living together where everything you own belongs to both of you. In the magical world marriage isn’t just a piece of paper. You don’t even need a piece of paper. When a sorcerer and a sorceress get married, the marriage vow becomes a binding spell that link them to each other.”

“Can it be broken?”

“Eventually. If the desire to break the bond because of irreconcilable differences is mutual and I don’t mean in the heat of the moment anger. But not only is the vow binding, it’s also an exchange of magical power. Each spouse gains access to some of the power of the other spouse, and it’s the reason no matter how close you are to a member of a magic family, you’re not allied with or don’t have a connection to them unless you’re married. There’s no exception to that anywhere. When magic families are connected or allied with each other, a marriage happened at some point in their histories.”

“Get to the point, Bastet,” MaLeila grumbled in impatience and frustration. “What does any of this have to do with me moving in with Marcel?”

“Because living together is a type of commitment, and it gives him—well not just him but both of you potential access to all the perks of a magical marriage without making the magical binding because when you’re that involved with someone, you could unwitting make a bond that might not be as powerful as a marriage one, but still gives someone the ability to leech off your power,” Bastet explained as though the connection should have been obvious to MaLeila. “That’s why the powerful families are so finicky about it. There have been wars, families fallen all because some idiot unwittingly made that kind of bond with someone.”

“Still not getting the big deal. I’m not part of a magic family. I’m one lone sorceress who not even the most powerful families have been able to destroy yet,” MaLeila pointed out. It wasn’t something they talked about, but they always suspected that not every sole magic user that came seeking a way to get their hands on Claude’s legacy came of their own accord. Every now and then there were clues. A sorcerer or sorceress who used to have a tie with a powerful family in Russia or one who was loosely linked to one in Spain. It wasn’t until recently, when Irvin seemed to randomly make an impromptu trip from London that coincided with MaLeila’s conflict with a rogue British wizard that MaLeila learned that the ties weren’t a coincidence.  Irvin admitted that his family, likely one of the elders, sent the rogue wizard to test kill her.

“Exactly. So they do the next best thing. To them you may be the nigger witch, but you’re still powerful. They can’t beat you so they send over male suitors, like the Long family did when they sent Irvin over here,” Bastet said, impatience beginning to seep into the woman’s tone.

“Irvin? You think they sent him over here to woo me?” MaLeila huffed.

“Ask him. He’ll tell you. Lucky for you, he liked you enough as a friend not to go through with that plan and when you did try to date, it was because he actually liked you. Not because it was a plan. The Longs were smart enough in the beginning, but now everyone else is about to catch up to it. They’re going to seemingly turn the tides on you. They’re going to want to befriend you, pretend to be interested, pretend to think that they think the rules and laws of the magical world are just as outdated, sexist, and racist as you do and use your Americanized, non-magic upbringing against you and take advantage of your ignorance and get you into a marriage where you have no clue what you’re getting into or get you to unwittingly make a few weak magical bonds every time you think you’ve fallen in love that allow families to leech off your magic and that’s without talking about the risk of you having children,” Bastet finished.