Page 36 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 2

“Sorry,” she said. “The food just smells delicious.”

I inhaled. The kitchen smelled of cooking meat and spices, and even without the ability to eat food, I could appreciate the scent.

“Dinner will be ready any minute,” Vic said proudly.

“Lemme check the pasta,” Xarek said. “Vic, don’t listen to anything Marcus might say about throwing spaghetti. Marcus, can you set the table?”

I glanced around. There didn’t seem to be any sort of dining room, just the kitchen and a casual living room in the open space, but then Marcus rapped his knuckles against the counter in a quick rhythm. The floor shifted and warped, scooting aside some of the living room furniture and making a new patch of hardwood. He rapped a different pattern, and some of the floorboards sprang up, floating at waist height for a moment before sliding together and sprouting claw-foot table legs. On the floor, the remaining boards had widened to fill in the gaps. The mismatched living room chairs and sofa shuffled over, their upholstery billowing away as they reformed into still-mismatched dining chairs. The upholstery settled into seat cushions. A small metal and glass lantern hung from a hook in the ceiling, and as I watched, the hook grew and twisted into an antler-like shape that stretched as long as the table below. More glass lanterns sprouted from it, hanging like surreal fruit. Meanwhile, one of the kitchen cupboards had opened, and a small battalion of plates and glasses settled itself onto a serving tray alongside gleaming cutlery. The tray’s feet matched the table, and as it flew over to it, its claws scuttled in the air, making it look like a small dog that was being held above a bath and had decided to get a head-start on paddling.

I watched the display in amazement. Most of the homes in Eldoria had absorbed bits of stray magic, but I had never seen one as richly imbued as this. Even without a sense for magic, I could tell the place was saturated with power. The dishes hopped into their places, forks and knives arranged exactly parallel.

Next to me, my mother raised an eyebrow. “You forgot the napkins,” she said coolly.

Marcus sighed and grabbed some from a drawer, then put them on the table himself.

We sat, and the old mill opened the fridge and floated packets of synth blood over to us. At a stern glance from my mother, the packets floated back into the kitchen, emptied themselves into wine glasses, and repeated their little parade, joined by a tureen of Bolognese sauce. Xarek followed, carrying a bowl of steaming pasta. When he set the bowl down, I saw small copper scales had sprung up on his palms to protect him from the heat.

Even though I didn’t have much of an appetite, the meal was excellent. After all, there was more to a proper dinner than just the food. I managed to drink half my glass of synth-blood, although it still didn’t taste right to me. Evangeline gave me encouraging looks from across the table every time I took a tentative sip.

“The sauce came out perfectly,” Marcus told Vic approvingly.

Vic gave him a pleased nod of thanks, but then glanced at Xarek for a second opinion. The dragon took a huge bite, considered it, and then gave him a thumbs up. Vic smiled, and Lissa bumped her shoulder against his.

“Good job,” she stage-whispered. “Handsome, and a great chef. I’m a lucky woman!”

Vic’s ears went pink, and Theo made gagging sounds at the display.

It was a good evening. It wasn’t exceptional or particularly remarkable. It wasn’t exciting. It was just one long, golden moment of simple pleasure. I was safe, with the people I loved, and for the moment, I was carefree. Evangeline’s ankle pressed against mine under the table, and we traded small, happy smiles throughout the entire meal. Theo and Vic got into a laughing, rapid-fire bickering session that drifted across several different languages, only broken when Isabella got up to refill her water and Theo sprang up to do it for her instead.

Xarek and Marcus were sitting next to each other, and at some point in Marcus’s gesticulations, he’d wound up leaning closer to use Xarek’s armrest instead of his own. Xarek, now robbed of his armrest, had adapted by throwing his arm over Marcus’s backrest. My mother sipped her synth-blood daintily as she watched the proceedings. She looked a little bemused by my friends, but whenever our eyes met, she gave me a tiny approving look.

I wasn’t particularly following the flow of the conversation around me. Instead, I watched the faces of my loved ones under the light of Marcus’s homegrown chandelier. This was what family was. This, not someone trapping you in a room modeled after their idea of who you might have been. If I grew and changed, these people would see it as a strength and not an act of disobedience.

The time I had spent in my father’s clutches was a clear reminder of what I was fighting against. Now happy and sated, watching the light flickering across Evangeline’s hair when she threw her head back to laugh, I had a reminder of what I was fighting for.

Later, when the dishes were cleared and Marcus had stopped getting the furniture to twist itself into increasingly ornate designs to try to impress my stone-faced mother, people split away in ones and twos. I spotted my mother at the foot of the stairs, and she angled her head ever so slightly, a silent instruction for me to follow.

We climbed the stairs without exchanging a word. My mother was light on her feet, even for a vampire. I could be as quiet as she was when I wanted to, but I made a point of making sound when I walked around humans and other creatures without heightened hearing. The aged timbers didn’t creak beneath our feet as we kept climbing past the third floor.

There was a landing for the fourth floor, but the door had been blocked off with caution tape. I raised an eyebrow, and she shook her head, walking briskly up a narrower, shorter flight of stairs that went up another seven or eight feet into a space that must have once been the foreman’s office; it stretched across the width of the building, but only took up a fraction of its length, and was raised above the rest of the fourth floor. The wide windows allowed for an unobstructed view of the space below, likely to keep an eye on the workers. I could see why my mother had wound up in this room. For one thing, it was much more expansive than the room I was sharing with Evangeline. The space had been transformed into a luxury suite, with black lacquered screens dividing the bedroom from the sitting area. The furniture was made of dark carved wood and icy-blue slubbed silk. A desk overlooked the factory floor, with a low bookcase on one side of it, and a bar cabinet on the other.

My mother moved over to the windows and gazed down at the floor below us. As I followed her gaze, I gasped. Below were dozens of large bird nests with sleeping creatures in each of them. The birds were perhaps slightly larger than a peacock, its plumage the bright buttery white-yellow of candle flames. They had tails like peacocks, too, but the eye of each plume was a bright, pale blue. Each bird glowed gently, like an avian nightlight.

“Firebirds?” I breathed. “I thought they were extinct.”

My mother nodded. “They were hunted to extinction in the old world. Every fool in eastern Europe wanted to snatch the feathers from one to prove his worth. But a long time ago, the people who became the Yupik realized if you caught a firebird instead of killing it, you could raise its young. They barely eat anything, and you can use them as light sources, which is invaluable when one has to contend with the arctic circle.” She sighed and shook her head just once. “When they crossed the land bridge to the Americas, they brought their firebirds with them.”

“That’s incredible.”

“The climate here doesn’t agree with them,” she said. “It’s too warm. This may be the largest colony of them left alive in the entire world.”

“Mother,” I started.

“I’m leaving tonight.” She said it as if I hadn’t even spoken. “You’re safe now, or as safe as you will be while this mess unfolds. I have unfinished business to take care of, and I won’t give your father any more chances to find me. I’ve already stayed in one place for too long.”

That stunned me, and I wasn’t sure why. “But I need you,” I said, feeling impossibly young and foolish. “We need you,” I corrected myself. “We need to stop Morgana. Surely you can help us.”

My mother turned to me with a quiet sigh. “The longer I stay here, the higher the chance of your father finding me. If I thought my help was necessary, I would stay, but my presence only puts you at greater risk.” Her mind was made up, and if I tried to talk her out of it, I’d embarrass both of us.

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