Chương 219: Act 3, Chapter 68: Night(life)/death

Day in the story: 24th January (Saturday), after midnight Elle Erikson"It's difficult for me to understand what the power balance is in this place of yours," I said, turning to the vampire lord who, like me, watched the man who was supposed to be hunting beings like him move away with an elderly mage toward what I assumed was going to be an intercourse, but hoped to be just a dance.

"Please explain?" he asked, and I felt tension rise from Laurent as he squeezed my hand. He wanted to get out of here, but I wanted to stay a moment longer.

"It's usually clear for me to read the room, to understand who has the most power, and yet in here I have no clue. Is that normal at Bohema?"

"You must be very young awakened, my dear. It is normal almost everywhere. No person with actual power will announce exactly how much they hold. The prospect of the unknown is too great an edge to dull by exposing the weapon."

"But it begs to be checked against another, right?"

"And some, indeed, call to check. With varying results. That's why the more reasonable ones assume that anyone can be more powerful than them, and if they want to make a move, they do their due diligence." He watched me with an intensity that bordered on predation in my mind. I felt like at any moment he could call upon his geis to force me into whatever he wanted.

"Only when certain of another's ability can a proper offensive be planned."

"So you're saying that you don't know who would win in a fight between any pair of the three of you?" I asked, carried by my curiosity—despite Laurent's body language telling me not to go that way.

"This was general advice to you, lovely young people. Rushing head-first into the unknown is a foolproof way to get yourself a permanent locale in the cemetery. I know well enough that any of those two people would be a difficult opponent, and a fight between us could result in my own or their deaths."

"Is this why you are working together instead of against one another?"

"Partially," Frederik replied, tapping his chin with a finger.

"We all have the best interest of our city in mind, and that connects us more than anything else."

"I see," I replied, ready to ask another question, but Bastien literally pulled me toward the door, so I decided to follow his lead instead.

"Thank you for your attention, elder one." Laurent bowed toward the vampire, and I joined him with a small curtsy.

"Prepare well, children. You may think that it will be a short trip in and out of that place, but the truth is, we might see each other years from now—if at all." I didn't know what to answer to that, but Laurent took the initiative and pulled us out of the room toward the stairs.

"That was intense," he said after closing the doors behind us.

"Intense? It seemed like a normal conversation, and you have those… decorum laws protecting us in there, right?"

"I know both Frederik and Camille in passing. I've never spoken to either of them before, and decorum is only as strong as the host that enforces it."

"He seemed plenty strong to me."

"It's like he said, Elle—it's all a masquerade. At some point people just don't know anymore and assume." He breathed out. I thought about Resonant Gaze for a while, but this seemed like a short path of literal mess around and find out. Up to this point I assumed that posing as someone weaker was a good way to survive in the magical world—and it surely had its merits—but there was value in going the other direction as well. Especially for someone like me, who existed in multiple distinct bodies.

I should social-engineer one of the Personas to be known as an extremely powerful mage, while others would go in the opposite direction.

"I am sorry for putting you in a tough position, that was not my intention."

"It's all good, what ends well." He said, watching his Jesuit friend dance with Camille in the ballroom below. They took the center and were surrounded by other people either watching or dancing on their own without taking as much space or attention.

"He is a complicated man."

"That's an understatement of the century." He said, leaning against the railing, just to straighten up like a pulled string when the doors behind us opened and Frederik walked out. He paused for a second, smiled, and went down slowly, waving to someone down there.

"Can we stay here?" I asked.

"I think we can, he would say otherwise if we could not." Laurent answered, exhaling audibly.

"You are very stressed, maybe you'd like to go outside?"

"No, not yet. It's good to stay here and pretend to have more power than I have for a while." I laughed in answer. They really loved their pretenses in here.

"I understand that you proposed to take me with you, but if that is not something that you want to actually follow through with, that's fine as well." I told him, joining him in leaning on the balcony that overlooked the ballroom below.

"I really think you would be useful in there, but it is dangerous. Are you afraid of what he said?"

"The time it might take? It's not like I had many plans for the upcoming year," I whispered to him.

"A little, maybe?" I lied.

"But there is no adventure without a solid dose of fear."

"That's true, but it is not as bad as he thinks it is for us. I have a trump card I could use. I can get us out of there and back in without much of an issue, with just a little preparation. That's why I assume I could continue that relationship that started between us to some extent while still exploring the Nexus."

"You can teleport?"

"Yes. It's not something many people know about me. I try to be secretive with it."

"I think you should not have told me this in here. Walls can have ears." Not to mention that he openly used it before, gaining my attention.

"Right!" He said and covered his mouth.

"I am so bad at this."

"You will do better on next occasion, and we will be gone for some time, so maybe whoever could have listened, they would forget about it." I tried to humor him, both with words and with my hand that I placed on his shoulder. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Thank you. I would have to—" He started, and his eyes, just like mine, wandered to the main entrance where his whole team waltzed in.

"—introduce you to the rest… properly." He finished, then turned to me.

"I had no idea they would be here."

"It's too late to hide now, Laurent," I replied, moving my head to indicate their position.

"They already noticed us up here." Patricia Paulding had her usual puffy ginger hair set neatly into a bun and wore a pretty casual, swift dress that did not hinder her movements. Piotr Milowski was dressed in a flamboyant suit with a vertical white stripe motif. Kito Chuma looked like an African prince in a suit with colorful green, golden, and orange straight lines and floral motifs along its full length. He was the one that noticed us first and pointed with his head while talking to the others.

Lia, his sister—despite following his style and looking like a tall gazelle goddess in her perfectly fitting tight dress, with loose long cloth fragments flowing behind her with every move—did not smile like her brother did. Her expression was stern and reminiscent of disappointment, and yet despite all of that she looked absolutely stunning.

Even from up here I saw golden flakes she used to decorate her skin, and complement the same color of makeup she used for her eyelashes, and as a straight line to split her lips into two distinct visual parts. Those flakes she placed like carefully designed freckles along her cheeks, made her look like a black sky full of stars. When I had enough strength within myself to remove my eyes from her face, I noticed that the same patterns followed everywhere on her exposed skin.

For the first time, I felt that it would be right to choose to indulge myself in falling for someone—and surprisingly for me it was her—not only a woman, but also the one I suspected would give me the most problems. I would have to be wary of some kind of manipulation, as it was always an option, but this felt really genuine.

"Am I going to be a problem?" I asked him.

"If yes, then—""No. I don't think so. Lia might be problematic, but I will straighten everything up. Just let me handle this." He interrupted me, then took my hand and led me downstairs.

"Problematic? Why?" I whispered my question as we stepped down. I felt a strange sensation on my left side all of a sudden. Not as debilitating as what happened to Alexa's original body, but definitely of the same nature.

"We were kind of," he started and put two fingers around the collar of his shirt to set it aside slightly, "kind of a thing."

"What kind of a thing?" I asked, just to be sure what I was dealing with. I didn't really need to be with him intimately now that he'd accepted my presence, and if dropping out of this relationship would prove beneficial, I had nothing against it.

"I was her fiancé, for a while." He whispered.

"You should have told me about this," I played a little outrage.

"Does it change anything between us?" He asked when we reached the main floor, right as his crew was making their way toward us.

"We will see in a moment, won't we?" I replied.

"See what?" Piotr said and measured me from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. That earned him a hit in the side from Kito's elbow.

"Watch yourself," the man said in a stern voice.

"Excuse my friend. He can be a very rude individual. It's a pleasure to meet you." He extended his hand toward me.

"They call me Kito, Kito of the Chuma family." I grabbed it and shook it.

"Elle Erikson."

"We've seen you around in our hotel, but seeing you here caught us by surprise, so please excuse the awkwardness that this meeting has created. I assure you it is nothing personal. We did not know you are a mage."

"You didn't tell me you'd be here." Laurent said, with annoyance in his voice.

"And you did not tell me that it was this serious, when I asked about her," Lia turned to him. Her face, even angry, was so beautiful that my heart stopped just for a beat. If it continued like this, it would be me who would be a problem, and not her.

"I am Piotr, by the way," the Polish guy said, smiling and rubbing the back of his head, completely ignoring the former lovers' quarrel.

"Patricia," their seer said, and I smiled at her. She did not reciprocate. Lia took a deep breath and steadied herself by flattening the folds on her dress with her hands. Then she looked directly at me, not giving Laurent any chance to respond.

"I apologize for this. You were caught in a difficult situation that, knowing Laurent, you know nothing about. My name is Liana Chuma. I am this man's fiancée." Oh Reality fucking-damn! I have to get some popcorn. [Can I try some too? It looked delicious.]"I just learned that from him when he saw you down there," I replied, ignoring the comments from Alexa and Anansi. I had a fire to extinguish and they did not help.

"Well, almost that." It was an opportunity to present myself as trustworthy toward a person that is clearly a leader of this group—and certainly not because I was enamored by how she looked tonight.

"He said—""I said that you'd be a great addition to our team." Bastien interrupted me, pulling my arm away slightly.

"No, in that particular moment, you said that you were her fiancé, not that you still are." I said, gaining everyone's attention.

"We are on kind of a break." He tried to save himself.

"We are definitely not on a break as a couple, Bastien," Liana told him.

"Why did you lie about that? Is there something between you two already? You slept with her?" She unloaded her frustration onto him.

"No! Nothing happened. We just met, and we are just friends. Right, Elle?" Oh, what a sleazy guy after all.

"We've met recently, that is true, and Liana," I ignored him and grabbed her attention with the mention of her name. She looked at me with sadness in her eyes, but she held my gaze.

"We did not sleep together, luckily." I added, and there was some slight relief in her, but it was obvious she did not trust me.

"But we kissed and went on dates. This was one of them as well, I think." I added, gesticulating at the ballroom around us.

"Bastien," Kito's voice rumbled.

"Well played, man." Piotr added, earning another elbow from the big guy and a sigh from Patricia.

"Thank you for your honesty, Elle," Lia answered, while her eyes turned to ice daggers directed at Bastien—not literally, luckily. You never know with mages.

"I appreciate honesty, but if there was something that caught your interest in him and you wish to pursue it, you are free to do so. He is no longer someone I'd trust with my heart." Her voice was measured and calm, and it felt like the atmosphere had suddenly become a tone more tense.

"I would never do that," I told her, then turned to Bastien, who looked absolutely stunned by what was happening around him.

"It's not cool how you played me, man. Not to me, not to her. I thought you were a better man."

"I…" he said, but never finished.

"O kurwa." Piotr said something, probably in Polish.

"This is way better than what I assumed a ball would be."

"Piotr!" Patricia scolded him.

"What?" He shrugged his shoulders, then turned his face to me.

"One of you mentioned that you'd be a great addition to the team, and I am fucking inclined to believe that now." He said, laughing.

"I did," Bastien replied, still not sure how to proceed with everything. Lia held her arms around her chest, and I admired how she had the resilience to stay here after what just transpired. I assumed that most people would storm off in a situation like this.

"Care to explain?" She asked him, but instead I chimed in and recounted what happened at the meeting upstairs. They listened closely, even Laurent, who did not interrupt at any point but instead watched Lia like a hawk—which was very fitting imagery due to his crooked nose.

"So… you want to join us?" Patricia asked, as I finished and paused long enough for them to recollect their thoughts.

"After learning that I'd been played by Bastien, I am not that eager, but on the other hand I feel like it can be an opportunity for me, so I'd like to, if you'd have me."

"We don't really know you," Kito spoke.

"Not as a person, and not as a mage. It's one thing to be civilized in conversation and another to put one's life into the hands of another. All four of us—we know ourselves and work well together. We trained for so long I know that if I was to fall, Piotr would be by my side a second later. You do not know that. You'd stay in his way. And what Laurent did to my sister is surprising on a personal level, but I know that it changes nothing in how he would behave in a tense situation when life is on the line."

"I understand that, Kito." I replied.

"So even though he had invited you, I will vote against it." Vote? I was certain that Bastien would try to make amends with me no matter how this went and take me with him, but I was curious how this would go.

"I am against as well." Patricia said.

"I am for," Piotr smiled while raising his hand like a child in the classroom.

"The more of us, the better. It's not a training session, guys. We might meet other mages down there anyway and be forced to join forces. We might as well do it here."

"I'd still like to have you there, Elle, and settle this properly." His vote left Lia as the one who would decide upon the result, which I assumed would work against me, or—"I vote for. But only if you can offer anything worthwhile to our party." She said, surprising the pessimist in me.