Mage of Shadows (30 page)

The room was dark, quiet, and bare except for two clean beds, two desks, and an empty bookcase with drawers stacked beneath it. Carmen stepped inside after I did and flipped on the light that had been on the wall near the door. The singular bulb in the middle cast the room into sudden clarity with cheerful yellow incandescence.

"It's your room." Carmen informed me as I looked around, "Not everyone lives in the house, but you can if you want. You'll have to pay rent every semester, but it's still a lot cheaper than living on campus, utilities included too."

"Why don't you live here?" I asked curiously.

Carmen shrugged, "Emily and I came to the university together, we liked living at RT… plus it's hard to explain to your parents that you're going to live in a frat house where boys live too."

"Oh, yeah." I understood that for sure, I had no idea how I would explain to my parents that I had joined a fraternity. It would probably be best for me not to mention it at all… but then I would have to explain why they suddenly had to pay so much less for living expenses. I figured I would get to it when it came up.

More future problems for future Nick to enjoy.

Carmen had inched closer to me when I hadn't been paying attention, and I didn't notice until she had gently taken my hands in her own. The girl turned me to face her, dark eyes peering at me almost contemplatively.

"Do I have something on my face?" I joked weakly, wondering where exactly this was going.

She kissed me.

Softly, hesitantly, and only for a moment before pulling away. It had been so quick, I didn't even have time to really comprehend the fact that it was happening until it was already done. That seemed kind of unfair, though I wasn't really in a position to protest. I had been mainly trying to regain the ability to speak. I gaped at the pretty girl stupidly, as she giggled at the dumbfounded expression on my face, shaking her head and moving away.

"Freshman." Carmen said, but unlike the first time she had said it contemptuously all those months ago when I had come to her dorm room, she said it with affection, "You remind me of her, you know? I think it's your eyes, you have the same eyes."

"Who?" I asked, puzzled.

The Hispanic girl moved to stand by the only window in the room, possibly to avoid looking at me. Maybe I wasn't the only one that was embarrassed by the situation.

"Emily." She said quietly, "Maybe it's the whole trust thing with the Magus Touch, or because you make me laugh just like she used to, but I… when I'm with you, I can remember the good times with her. I can forget about… about her death."

"You kissed me because I remind you of her?" I wondered aloud, "That's kind of… hot." I instantly thought maybe that was the wrong thing to say or joke about, but Carmen immediately started laughing.

"Just like that." Carmen giggled, "Stupid little stuff. She would say the same thing. You both have no filter like that. She could always make me laugh."

The girl walked back over to me, "I kissed you, Nick, because life is too short." She then pecked me on the cheek, "And because I wanted to kiss you. Don't turn it into a huge thing, okay?"

With that, she strode out of the room like nothing had happened. After a second or two, I scuttled after her, wondering exactly how I wasn't going to 'turn it into a huge thing.' It seemed like a very huge thing to me.

Did she like me? Did she not like me? Did she want to date, or was this casual? Was it nothing at all? Was I overreacting? Underreacting?

I had no answer to any of those questions.

Sometimes, I felt like God only created women only for the sole purpose of confusing the hell out of men.

Dinner had been a strange affair. I had expected that we would sit at a long dining room table, Vik at the end, toasting us like some Mafioso crime boss, but it was nothing like that.

We ate in the living room where everyone had been introduced, and Vik had ordered pizza. The different mages squabbled over pizza toppings and it reminded me of a very eclectic and dysfunctional family… but a normal one, nonetheless.

Yasmina and Mehdy never seemed to be out of each other's embrace, looking every bit of the cutesy couple that they were. Vik and Adam still squabbled over the controllers even while eating, getting grease from the pizzas all over them, much to Hershel's displeasure, since it was his gaming system. Les and Larry shared quiet conversation and basically ignored everyone else, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Angela glancing at Les every few seconds from her carefully chosen seat just outside his periphery.

Danae spat out barbs like party favors, but every hurtful thing she said was treated as a joke, and even the ice queen herself was left smiling in the end. Kristen hung on to every word the other girl said, even though Danae treated her as one would treat a annoying younger sibling that they didn't particularly enjoy having around. Still, it was clear that if not well-liked, Danae and Kristen were accepted factors and tolerated thusly. Ruark watched over everyone from his spot in the corner and reminded me of an affectionate great-uncle, just far enough outside the family to be forgotten, but always present, always caring.

If anyone seemed out of place, it was myself and the other new members. Nishi and Jimmy stuck close to each other and seemed distinctly uncomfortable, like they had arrived at the wrong party but were too embarrassed to leave early. Carmen stuck close to me, not really participating with the others, but generally seeming happy.

Libin was a bit shy and perplexed at first, but definitely warmed up fast. One thing I had noticed about the newest freshman User was his inexplicable ability to turn people into his friends very quickly. He had taken to hanging out alongside our Normal friends and turned the freshman mage trio into a quartet.

"So," Libin laughed gleefully, "You found him and pounded his ass, huh?"

Hershel nodded, smirking, "Yeah. Max ain't gonna be cheating on me with no damn cheerleaders no more. Damn lucky I decided to forgive him."

Vik had his arms around both of their necks, "To friendship!" He shouted drunkenly, already finished with his sixth beer, sloshing around a seventh in a toast.

"To beer!" Libin exclaimed, raising his own bottle. They clinked bottles noisily and chugged their respective drinks simultaneously. It was the ultimate form of male bonding, wizard or otherwise.

The rest of us watched, trading bemused glances as the three of them were attempting to drink each other under the table. I was surprised that Libin as a freshman was actually holding his own, and I was tempted to take Adam's bet that he would outlast a shaky looking Hershel. I knew I would never be able to drink that much back at that age.

…It was strange. There was none of the tension I had sensed months earlier between the Archanos initiates. For all intents and purposes, whatever had happened before had seemingly been swept under a rug and forgotten. Once again, I got the feeling that the reason APA Rush had happened so late was because of whatever happened with Emily, the schism, and the aftermath. I wondered to myself if maybe people would be more likely to talk about it now.

Near the end of the night, I saw a final, bizarre moment.

Nishi had cornered Vik and I heard them quietly arguing. It was the first time I had ever seen Nishi actually argue with anyone. Not to mention the usually affable and unshakable Vik looked more than a little angry about what she was saying.

"I know… you… he would never…" I managed to catch her saying in a furious whisper.

Vik's reply was equally low and just as hot, "You don't know… he was… just stay out of it, alright?" And then the frat leader shoved past the diminutive girl, who eyed his back like she was attempting to burn a hole there. Nishi turned for a moment to catch my eye, but instead of coming over, she moved away as if she hadn't seen me at all.

Completely bizarre. If Adam hadn't drunkenly elbowed me at that moment, I probably would have thought more on it, maybe chased after Nishi.

But now the male twin had my attention, and Adam waggled his eyebrows suggestively, "You and Carmen huh?" Without waiting for an answer, he walked off laughing, "Good luck, buddy."

He hadn't been the only one to notice Carmen's sudden closeness to me, I had met Danae's icy stare just once during the night, and it hadn't been a pleasant moment. I got the very distinct notion that she would have killed me then and there if she could. Possibly an overreaction, but a person could never be quite sure where they stood with Danae Lincoln. It was usually along the range of 'disliked' to 'I will murder him soon.'

Although we definitely seemed closer than friends that night, I couldn't really say exactly what it really was, between us. Carmen didn't personally acknowledge me when she went to bed that night, nor did I see her in the next few days before I left. We texted, but she was still busy with finals, and neither of us mentioned the kiss or anything of that nature.

I headed for the airport the next day after work at the SEL. There were still finals appropriated over next week, but mine had all already taken place earlier, so my vacation would be a bit longer than everyone who still had tests to complete.

It was a glum plane ride home, as my teachers had posted my grades with alarming speed. My Classics, English, and Bio lab grades were posted Friday night, and Bio lecture was posted in the afternoon on Saturday. I figured I would have at least until Monday to contemplate optimistically about doing well in the class before I had to show the grades to my parents.

I had A's in everything except English (where my Dayquil-addled brain must have screwed up my final paper) and Biology lecture. An A- in English and a B- in Biology. Dammit.

Frankly, from where I had stood in high school it was a stark improvement in my opinion. But all my parents would see was the unmistakable 3.70 overall GPA. Lower than my father's 3.80 requirement. I wasn't sure how I would get out of this, but all I knew was that I couldn't leave Detroit, not after investing so much effort into finding a workable place there.

"It'll all work out." Ruark had told me assuredly when I brought my stuff over from UT to put in my new room, just a few hours before I left to board my flight, "Your parents can't be that bad, can they?"

"They're worse." I replied grimly.

Ruark had just laughed. Bastard.

My hometown in Virginia was so small that it didn't have an airport to fly into, so I landed in Charleston and fielded a cab to make the several hour drive through the night to reach it. My parents didn't make the drive out to pick me up at the airport. When I had asked over the phone if they would come, my father hadn't been very supportive of the suggestion.

"You wanted independence; you can independently get home by yourself."

"Okay, sir." I replied as steadily as I could. No one held onto a grudge like my father, and even months later he was still angry with me over the argument we had about going to school in Detroit. My own anger had long since dissipated with time and distance, and I only felt regret now. With no fury to shield me, his clipped tone pierced deeply and left me feeling particularly wounded.

"Did you get your grades?" He had pressed in at the last moment of the conversation, "Don't lie to me, what did you get?"

I wondered, as the cab steadily brought me closer to my childhood home, how long I could put off telling them. I wouldn't be able to hold out long. It would probably be better to just tell them and get the argument out of the way. I braced myself for it, trying to amp myself up to facing them with the disappointing news. I had faced Aberrants, jail, and dangerous Users… surely I could find the courage to stand up to my parents.

The checkered taxi rolled up to the curb outside my house, and my riled courage drained out of me the moment I paid the cabbie and stepped out to get my first good look at the place I had grown up in.

A home of fairly new, modern construction, it stood at a height with the Archanos frat house, but smaller by some margin. While not amazingly wealthy, my parents were well off. My father came from money in Greece, even though he wasn't the firstborn son. He and my mother had immigrated to America shortly after I was born, and went back to school almost immediately, finishing in their respective programs and entering the health field straight after. Now, my father was a respected surgeon and my mother was a full time nurse, head of her department.

Really, we could've afforded a bigger house, but my parents never believed in spending money 'needlessly.' I could see their point though, there wasn't any real need for a larger house when it was only the three of us. They were always at work anyways, even when I was little.

Barring the fact that I was alive, they seemed to have little interest in actually having a son. My maternal grandmother had made the trip over about two months after we did to continue taking care of me. My maternal grandfather had died a while before, well before I was born. I was nearly twelve when she passed as well.

I had been wholly inexperienced with death at the time, and I felt for a very long time like my entire world had gone with her. I cried for days, far harder and longer than my father could condone of his son.

"Stop that, Nicholas!" He would order, angrily gripping my shoulders to hold me still, "Your grandmother lived a long and happy life. She is in heaven now, and she is happy even if you are not. Now it is time to be a man and grow up. You disgrace our family by still acting as if you are five years old!"

Whoever my paternal grandfather was, he was apparently a very hard man to please. My father would only make the vaguest references to him, usually as a way to justify his actions and choices in raising me.

"Weakness was not tolerated with your grandfather," He would say sternly, "And I shall not tolerate it in you, either. You are a Stratus; learn how to act like it."

My parents could have afforded to assign someone to watch me after my grandmother passed, but they didn't believe in coddling me, especially since I was all but a teenager. I was tasked with continuing the chores that my grandmother had shared with me, but alone now. My mother kindly took over the cooking whenever she had time, though I didn't mind cooking myself. It reminded me of the time I had spent in the kitchen with my grandma, the smell of traditional Mediterranean cooking bringing back wonderful memories.