“You’re late.”
Cedric was out of breath. He’d woken up early that morning to help Myrtle and the kids make repairs to the treehouse on the second lot, so he’d been late to his lecture at the University. And when that too had gone past the hour, he’d made a break for the train, but—
“The ‘1’ was running express,” Cedric explained. “And I didn’t notice until it went by the station. I had to wait at Times Square to get on an uptown—”
“If we’re late, we don’t get seated,” Davian stated coldly. “You know that.”
Cedric felt sweat dampen his button-down as he endured the man’s rebuke. “Well…” he reasoned, trying to offer consolation. “Won’t they do another seating at intermission? They did that for—”
“And miss the Doll Song?” he asked, pitch rising. “Olympia’s aria is the whole damn point of Hoffmann! We might as well not even go!”
Cedric felt shame burn his cheeks.
“You knew we had tickets for this,” Davian reminded him. “And just what were you doing uptown?”
Cedric did not say anything because he knew his mentor knew the answer and he did not want to repeat it.
“You’re not even a student there,” Davian said with dismissal. “You’re asking to bring the wrong kind of attention to yourself. That place attracts the very likes of those who’d undo us. You don’t belong there and I told you to stop going.”
“They don’t even notice me,” Cedric said, trying to look at Davian. “I sit in the back and don’t talk to anyone and no one talks to me either.”
“There are far more useful things you could be studying,” Davian said, punctuating his assertion with something like the strike of a gavel. “None of their rules apply to you, not then, not now. Newton was a quack.”
Cedric did not say anything because he could not change the facts, but he’d sat for introductory mechanics last year, and it was over now. This fall he was sitting in for—
“We’ll go somewhere else, then, and have a drink,” Davian grumbled. “God knows I need a drink.”
The man in the navy cloak and top hat, looking very much like an antique from a bygone era, began to walk away from the opera hall, and Cedric, still hung with guilt, followed him. The worst of the man’s rage had been vented, but his pupil knew it would be some time until he stopped gritting his teeth and returned to normal.
One drink, Cedric thought. Maybe two.
“This was the last matinee of the run, and our seats were fantastic. Grand tier: front row. Front row! We could have had a lovely time. Such a waste.”
When the waiter brought out the steak, it was still sizzling, so he took a second in porcelain and turned it over so that it was face-down on the table. He laid the offering on the plate, but only one corner, so that the butter in which it had been cooked dripped down on one side and collected in a brownish pool at the bottom lip of the plate.
He put a silver spoon into the butter and ladled it over the steak before he used a set of tongs to place four cuttings before the man who’d ordered it.
Cedric was just watching, and he noticed how the meat was seared almost black in some places, but red in the center where it was just warm.
“Waiter!”
Davian called the man back as he, now unencumbered, made to return to his duties in the kitchen.
“I do hope you’ll be bringing something for the young man?”
Cedric looked at the waiter to try to find a reaction, but he seemed to be elsewhere.
“Yes, sir, sorry sir.”
He left then, and Davian lowered his arm and turned his body to face Cedric, whose eyes were watching the man in the apron saunter back toward the back of the restaurant.
Cedric imagined Davian was not impressed by the man’s laconic pace because he was frowning and not looking at the steak.
“You can go ahead if you want,” Cedric said after a while. “You don’t have to wait for me.”
Davian did not really respond to that, because he was looking into the air, but he did take a drink, and when he put it back down his expression was a little less aggrieved than it had been a second before.
“Yes, well.”
Cedric’s hope that Davian was going to relax and recover and forget about the opera that had been pulled from beneath his feet was not going quite as he had wanted. Most of the restaurants around Lincoln Center had closed for lunch and not yet opened for dinner, so when they’d arrived at the last one they’d tried, a restaurant that was fashioned as a windowless speakeasy, Davian was still in his short temper. He grumbled and frowned and entered, almost against his will, and launched into a tirade about the lewd and inappropriate nature of jazz while hanging his velvet cloak on a hook.
Now a couple of drinks in, the two were in a dim room with few people and a candle between them. Davian was slowly returning to his usual self, and for Cedric, it could not come soon enough.
There was a stage set below them, and the red curtain was illuminated as if it were waiting to be drawn, but it had not so much as rustled since the pair had entered the establishment. Every so often Cedric looked over at it, because the bright color was hard to ignore, but he wasn’t sure what he expected to find.
“Drink was restricted during the war,” Davian said after a while, and it was sent toward Cedric’s ear, so he turned and found the Mage with his fingers around the foot of the chilled glass. “Certain hours you could drink, and certain hours you couldn’t. But we were not so foolish as to think it was something to get rid of entirely.”
“See what we saw in the war,” he said, darkening, “and it would be a real cruelty to begrudge a man his whiskey.”
Davian lifted his fork and knife.
As the muscle was severed in two, blood from between the fiber ran into the butter on the plate, but the two would not mix, and Cedric found it difficult to look at the man who was talking so he just watched the steak instead.
“Even after the worst of it was over, there were those fleeing Volstead who came to England. I’d be remiss to say we didn’t profit.”
Cedric smelled the molten butter, and it hit him and he thought he was hungry but he wasn’t sure, so he looked up and finally found the face of the Mage, and he was chewing the soft steak and smiling a little bit as he looked toward something beyond his pupil.
“The friends you make along the way,” Davian said after clearing his mouth, “make the rest of it worthwhile.”
Though Cedric was looking at him, those eyes were wandering in another world.
“Seemed we were always running into each other,” he said of a shadow. “Always had something interesting to say, a curious way of thinking, a sense for what evaded the rest.”
“When you reach a hundred or so,” Davian said boastfully, “you find it tiresome to hear the same stories retold over and over again so the ones that rarely repeat themselves are a breath of fresh air.”
He laughed, but it was a subtle mourning. “Of course, that’s not to say we agreed on everything. A teetotaler, that one; a fact I often lamented. What I wouldn’t have paid,” he said, musing, “to see a real drink in that hand. He was—”
And then, suddenly, Davian’s smile fell because he remembered something, and he was quiet for a moment and cast his gaze astray.
“Anyway. One cannot legislate desire any more than command the lack of it. Any effort merely drives the truth underground. Can I offer you a piece of steak?”
“Your nova, sir.”
Cedric looked to his left, and the waiter had reappeared and was holding a plate heaping with boneless pink fish, decorated with the little green berries he’d come to recognize as capers.
“What is that?” Davian said as the staff was lowering the plate toward Cedric.
The waiter stopped moving and looked at Davian, who did not permit a response. “He was supposed to have the lobster Newberg.”
Cedric was looking at the food, and remembering the last time he’d had the sour buds, which had been the first time, the only time, and he’d liked the way they’d tasted and—
“I’ll eat it,” Cedric said, looking at the waiter. “It looks—”
“It’s a starter, Cedric,” Davian said as a matter-of-fact. “They brought you a starter.”
Cedric did not really want the lobster and had never wanted the lobster because he knew he would humiliate himself trying to eat it and if he were really honest with himself, he had never really preferred to eat with his hands so he made an attempt to protest while he was still looking at the pickled flowers atop the fish and said, “I know, but…”
“Send it back,” Davian said, raising his glance as poison to the waiter. “I don’t give a damn what you think I asked for. I ordered the lobster; I want the lobster.”
“Have some self-respect, Cedric.”
Davian had turned back to the boy and their eyes caught for a moment before Davian whipped them away and toward the waiter who was returning to the kitchen.
“Two more,” Davian called after the refused. “A White Lady for myself, and another for him. And do get that one right this time?”
Cedric pursed his lips together without thinking, flinching, though he tried to resist it.
“They bring you what you didn’t order,” Davian commanded, “You don’t accept it.”
Cedric was quiet for a moment before he spoke, and when he did speak up, it came out meek. “It… just seems like a waste,” he said. “They’re going to throw it out.”
“That’s not your problem,” Davian asserted. “They make a mistake, they can fix it.”
“This whole place is a farce, a fantasy,” Davian said. “A veritable masquerade.”
“Prohibition didn’t work, would never have worked, and when the women shed their girdles and shook their bare legs on stage for any man who held up a fist full of dollars, it was all a distraction from where that money was coming from.”
“And then you had men like Capone, a butcher wrapped in brandy, who were more than happy to pick up the slack. Did you ever hear what he did to Fats Waller?”
Cedric was silent.
“He kidnapped the man at gunpoint, brought him to a piano and made him play for three days straight, like an automaton; stuffing his pockets with blood money after every number.”
“A thug,” Davian said. “A thug and a vulgarian who got what was coming to him. Died imprisoned, penniless, mind gone. Better than he deserved.”
The waiter appeared then, and he had nothing to show for his time in the kitchen.
“Regrettably, sir, we seem to be out of the lobster.”
Davian tore money from within his suit jacket and slammed several hundred-dollar bills on the table and he did not even look up when he exclaimed, “Then why’s it on the damn menu?!”
He stood and spoke at Cedric without really looking at him.
“Come Cedric, I’ve had quite enough of this circus for one evening. I knew it was a mistake to come here.”
And he muttered and made for the door, and Cedric hesitated for a moment, looking toward the waiter, but not exactly seeing him, and then following the Mage, who was furiously donning the cloak he’d left on a peg by the entrance.
The waiter did not return to the kitchen, but instead went behind the bar, which, at this early hour, had only one individual seated in the chair closest to the edge.
Cedric had his back turned because Davian was already in the doorway and headed toward a darkening sky.
“Course Reviver,” a customer said to the bartender, hesitating for a moment before adding, “Number two.”
“Excuse me,” replied the barkeep. “What was that you wanted?”
Cedric zipped up the black leather coat and adjusted his collar so that it lay comfortably unfolded beneath. Alone in the entry, he took a breath and looked at the door, which had a large pane of colored glass suspended in a wood frame. He stepped toward it and he was about to be gone when he heard the man behind the bar, shuffling glasses, comment just audibly, “They say the soup kitchens he stocked saved more from starvation than ever died at the other side of his gun.”
And just as Cedric was letting the door close behind him, he heard the other voice, the one who ordered the drink that didn’t exist. And it said something, and it seemed louder and clearer and warmer than it should have and it said, “Yes. I have heard that.”
Davian was inebriated but he was not yet incoherent and he climbed into the driver’s seat of the Wraith without so much as a word. When he went to push the key into the ignition, Cedric was watching out of the corner of his eye and though he thought the man might miss, he did not, and the metal went into the impression and he started the car.
Behind the wheel, Davian started to calm down, and Cedric could feel the tension release amidst the controlled chaos that were the streets of Manhattan. When the lights told him to stop, he slammed his foot on the brakes because that is what every lawful driver should do, and after a while Cedric noticed the forcefulness with which he accelerated afterward seemed a little less severe.
It had become fall again, so the Sun and the clock disagreed about whether the night had yet begun. But the light was low because the source had fallen behind the horizon and some of the streetlamps were getting brighter than they had been.
None dared park in front of Davian’s flat, and at some point, Davian had explained the mechanism. When people drove past, he said, they saw things that weren’t truly there, whether it would be a fire hydrant, orange traffic barrels, or a motorcycle leaning on a kickstand. So when a Mortal came through looking for a place to rest their rusty old jalopy, they kept riding past because they didn’t think they could get what they needed.
Once or twice over the past two years, Cedric recalled, he’d come through and seen a car he didn’t recognize in the spot. Whether they’d seen the hydrant or simply ignored it was beyond his comprehension and he saw nothing to gain from asking too many questions.
Tonight, the spot was empty, and, as always, no longer or shorter than was strictly required to fit the Wraith, which from bumper to bumper was at least a foot longer than most of the vehicles to be found in the West Village.
Davian parked the car, but he was making a strange face as he did so, and his eyes were fixed with attention on the windows of his apartment, somewhat elevated above street level.
Cedric did not say anything at first, and just watched the Mage, who looked something like a dog who was smelling the air because he’d heard the leaves of a bush shake. Cedric waited and he thought and he was about to open his mouth when Davian said, quietly, “Someone’s in there.”
Cedric looked at the apartment, and then back to Davian, and his heart dropped a little because that was not what he had wanted the Mage to say.
But the very corners of Davian’s mouth turned up just slightly, and his eyes were gleaming with satisfaction as he looked toward the emerald door of his house.
“And I do think I know exactly who’s come to pay us a visit.”
When Davian took the keys from his pocket for the second time that night, it was unusual.
It was unusual because the two of them usually pulled up in front of the apartment but rarely walked on the street because the street was dirty and the air sometimes smelled foul and Davian preferred to keep the dust from clinging to the bottom of his fine cloak. So it was far more typical that, with one of the men in the front seat and the other beside, the Mage raised his hand and impressed his will upon the world that the two of them should be in his living room or his study or wherever else in the house he would prefer to be. And because Cedric was following, he was taken along with the gesture and simply appeared in the house without ever having to place a hand on a doorknob.
But what was more unusual was how slowly the Mage removed his keys from his reserve, and though he hadn’t missed the slot in the car, he certainly wasn’t going to miss it here, and he took his time to carefully insert the key into the lock and when he turned it, Cedric thought he had applied a certain kind of quick and immediate pressure that made it click a little louder than it probably should have.
And then, when they were both in the house, Davian took off the blue velvet and draped it on the hatstand. And when Cedric had done the same, Davian had still not said a word, but he turned to Cedric slowly, with the same careful composure he had possessed since returning home, and he held a finger to his mouth to keep the boy from saying a word and then pointed through the ceiling.
He looked very much to be savoring the moment as he leaned forward and whispered to Cedric, “I think our little friend has sprung a trap in the library.”
His brown eyes were reflecting the light in the hallway when he said, “Let’s go see if we can’t make his stay more comfortable, shall we?”
Davian’s library was toward the back of the house and it was spread across several floors so that it could be entered from various places in the home. But Cedric followed Davian wordlessly up the stairs and they entered through what was perhaps the most grand of the entrances, and here there was a corner that could host a reader or two and sometimes Davian sat for many hours and nursed a drink and smoked a pipe that made the whole room smell like tar and burnt cherries.
But they walked right past the chair and the chest because there was a man in the library and when Davian saw him, the Mage seemed to stand up a little straighter and move with energy and he was pleased that his suspicion was confirmed because the man who had come to visit was just the one he’d been expecting.
Cedric hesitated in the doorway while Davian strode forward toward the bound man. He was almost completely wrapped in silk bandages that held him standing yet completely immobile. It was an unnatural pose, one the bindings had likely forced him into, and he was still faced toward one of the library shelves that was completely encased in glass. And yet, though his body spoke of his trespass, his head was hung low in submission and his long blond hair hung over his shoulders and obscured his face.
Davian was a few feet from the intruder when he stopped. And he brought his hand into the air and without so much as a flourish, the man bound was facing Davian. And for a brief moment, he was taller than he who owned the library, and he looked at Davian with burning blue eyes that might have struck fear into a different man.
But Davian was not afraid.
Still on the other side of the carpet, he lowered his hand and so too did the knees of his captive knock against the floor and he was kneeling and sitting on his heels but not once did his gaze fall from Davian.
Cedric could not see Davian’s face because he stood between him and the blond man in the silks, but he knew he was satisfied with himself because he brought his left hand to his hip with a bent elbow and he stood with a swagger as he snapped with his right hand and the binding, in a deep purple, fell away from his mouth. He was thin and his face was gaunt, with cheekbones almost as sharp as the eyebrows that held a quiet rage.
“Welcome back, son.”
For the first time, the blond tore his eyes from Davian, and he only did so because he looked at the ground and spat on the floor.
“I had thought you would return,” Davian said. “So I waited to change the locks.”
The man looked up again, and when his straight blond hair parted around his face, it was unrepentant.
“You were never my father,” he said. “Never was, never will be.”
Davian took his left hand from where it had perched, and used it to pull at the finger of the glove on his right, and then he removed that one too, and slipped the gloves into the pocket of his coat.
“Good boys don’t go poking their grubby little noses where they don’t belong.”
Then the man opened his mouth and bared his teeth because he was yelling.
“None of this belongs to you!”
Davian let a little air escape his nose and he turned his head at a slight angle so that Cedric could see the side of his face, and his eyes went backward toward the door, and then quickly back to the blond before him.
“No, Adam,” he said with articulation. “That is where you couldn’t be more wrong.”
Davian did not move his body, but he did raise his chin, sort of jutting it or flicking it to one side and he called, “Cedric!”
And Cedric did not say anything for a moment and just stood there in the doorway, and he noticed that he was sweating despite the fact that the air had become cold.
“Won’t you fetch our guest a little something to make himself at home? I do so pride myself on being a gracious host.”
Cedric was a little stupefied and he twitched in the direction of the chest where Davian kept the bottles and the glasses and the booze but he did not want to do it and he just looked at Adam, who for the first time looked at him but did not say anything, and Cedric saw that those eyes were bluer than the sky, but not yet like the deep ocean.
“Since you’ve already proven yourself to have abandoned the manners you’ve been taught, I’ll do the honors. Cedric, please meet my wayward apprentice Adam, who I found on a cold winter’s night clothed in rags, trying to suck the marrow from bones he’d wrestled from a stray dog.”
Adam did not look at Davian, but he was not anymore really looking at Cedric either.
“Adam; Cedric.”
Cedric looked at Adam, who looked back at him, and Davian continued his introduction while their eyes were locked, and what Davian said rose with an ominous shadow, “Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial.”
But Cedric did not really hear it so much as it went over and through him because he was still staring at Adam, who looked back and seemed to plead as his eyes grew and there was more white around the color than there had been.
“This is what he does.”
“Cedric!” Davian said, cutting off Adam’s weary claim. “I do so tire of the pleasantries when we’ve not even had a damn thing to drink! He’s come from so very far and I simply cannot abide—”
And Davian made to turn his body around, so Cedric was hastened to action, but he was still sluggish. He made his way to the stores where he knew he would find the squarish glasses and the sherry that was always filled near to the brim by the next day heedless of how much had been drunk the night before.
Cedric couldn’t really look at Adam now because he was focused on his task, a task he didn’t want to do because he didn’t want to be here in this room between the Mage and his son or adopted son or whoever the fuck this guy was supposed to be, and his hands were shaking but he put a glass on the table and found where the ice was always lingering and always cold and he took the tongs and put a cube in and then another and then Davian, who was watching, said, “I think an even four would be perfect.”
“Some things, they say,” he said while Cedric could not look at him either, “are best served cold.”
And the last cube fell into the glass indelicately because Cedric’s nerves were quaking and he was having trouble keeping his body still. He put the tongs back on the ice and laid the lid on top, but it was tilted because the silver was sticking out to one side.
“Save the thirty for another time,” Davian instructed. “I think the twenty will do just fine.”
And Cedric knew what he meant, but when he lifted the decanter, it was heavy because it was full and his hands were shaking and he could feel Davian’s gaze like lead upon him and when he tried to grip the glass neck, his hands were still shaking and his palms were wet and before any of the sherry could hit the ice, he lost his hold and it fell from his hand.
And when the container hit the table, it shattered.
When the noise of breaking glass ricocheted off the shelved books, Cedric had his eyes closed because the noise was something he did not expect.
It wasn’t until he opened his eyes that he first saw Davian, who was staring at him with a flickering blaze that Cedric did not want to recognize. And because he could not look into those brown eyes, he looked past them, and saw the blue, which were following a shard that had gone through a thick curtain hung over a window, and behind the curtain that was sliced, another glass broke and the barrier that divided the outside air from the inside was broken too.
And Cedric saw that there was a pink cut on Davian’s cheek, and it became darker and began to seep red blood.
He looked, but the red disappeared from his vision because Davian whipped his head around toward the broken window because there was a third sound, and the third sound was even more surprising because now there was someone else in the room.
A black bird flew in and let forth with a triumphant “CAW!” and the sound, like the broken glass, echoed off the walls and shook the hearts of the three between the walls of books.
For one, that shaking was reunion, because the bird with a wingspan smaller than any of the three men clipped her claws into Adam’s silk bindings and tore his hands free, and when he was free, he rubbed at his naked skin where the cloth had left marks and when he stood, the silk fell off his legs too, and he raised his arm above his head, where the bird perched, and he brought his forearm down until it was just level with his shoulder.
“Having stood the test,” Adam said, resuming from where Davian had left off, “shall the loyal receive—”
“Nothing!” Davian screamed, and he lunged forward and sent a stream of fire erupting from his hands, aimed straight for Adam. “They receive nothing!”
Adam sent a cloud of dust out of his hands and it stopped the flame with a hiss and Davian was soon standing where Adam had been, but Adam was not there.
He appeared upstairs, on the third floor, and looked down upon the other two. Cedric did not know where the bird had gone.
“I just want to return one thing to She from who you stole,” Adam said, and he looked at Cedric. “I can’t do much about the rest.”
Davian flew then, and as he rose, another stream of orange-red fire poured from his hand, aimed at Adam, and he bit at his former apprentice with a furious yell, “I never should have told you anything!”
They were both on the third floor, and Cedric was still on the second, and he could hear them throwing things at each other, and something that was probably a spike of ice from the Mage went thump into a bookshelf and Cedric could hear the wood splinter and break and tomes fluttered as they fell from their shelves.
“Just like you to keep secrets, Davian; stick to what you’re good at.”
Cedric could hear objects disturbed by their feud, tables and chairs overturned, but he had his eyes on the banister that was feeding fire that had caught when Davian’s evocation had missed its target.
He could not fly, nor could he shoot water or wind from his fingertips, so instead he ran over to the curtain that had been cut by the flying glass and with a single strong yank, he pulled the thing from the rod and left a brass rod and several broken rings. And he went back so that he was beneath where the third floor could be seen above and he threw the inky black curtain upward. He pushed it with his thought so that it went up and open and further than it would have without him, and when it was spread out all the way, he pulled it back, but just a little, so that it landed on the fire and smothered the licking flames.
“You were jealous!” Davian called out. “You were jealous of what she was and what she was to become!”
More glass shattered, and Cedric thought it was likely one of the locked bookshelves.
“I loved her!” Adam said forcefully. “More than I could say for you!”
Cedric heard a screech from the bird, and then a jostling of feather and wing. And he was not sure if he had any place in this fight, but when he heard Davian call out in pain, he dashed for the hallway outside the library and climbed the stair to the third floor where he sometimes slept when it was too late to go back to Astoria.
He practically threw himself upward to get there as fast as he could because he heard the bird’s talons ripping at clothing and the Mage was screaming in fury.
When Cedric reached the top of the stairs and entered the library from the top floor, Davian was on the floor and his pantleg on one side was torn and his leg was bloodied.
Adam had a wicked smile on his face as he stood over Davian, and he reached a hand up, and when he did so, the bookshelf on the wall made like it was going to topple over and crush Davian.
Cedric stepped forward and reached out with both hands, and when he did this, the bookshelf slowed its fall, and the books would have come out if Cedric had not stopped those too. And he stood there, staring at it, because he knew if he stopped even to blink or think or doubt, then the whole thing would come crashing down.
Time was flowing like syrup, and Adam’s satisfied grin was weakening, but not yet completely gone. Davian, spared the worst of the thickened clock, turned toward Cedric slowly, and when he saw him, he looked back with darkness covering his face, and he said, carefully, but with precise bile toward his student, “Do you think I’m an invalid?”
A wave of force came from the Mage then, and a gale pushed the bookshelf back, flung Adam through a window, and Cedric back through the entrance and into the hallway from whence he’d come.
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