“So they ruled it a death, and you stopped performing,” she murmured. “And you think she’s still out there?”
“I’m her brother, I’d know if she was truly gone.” Demarco bristled, arms crossed. “The question is: where? I’ve been searching for years, and never had a clear lead until this show was announced.”
“Glorian? What does Glorian have to do with anything?”
“Eva was eternally curious, and I thought there was something to that. The city lost in the woods, she called it, always dreaming about it. Collecting rumors wherever she could—the more ridiculous, the better.” His small chuckle was a hollow sound. “She thought something existed here that didn’t want to be found. She had her own theories, convinced there was magic here. Spectaculore was my only chance in, so I took it to explore.”
“But … there is magic here.” Kallia treaded cautiously. “There’s magic everywhere.”
“No, a different kind. Something worth hiding. The kind that could cross time and defy all reason. Power that could”—his jaw clenched—“bring someone back from anything—death or elsewhere.”
Fighting back a shiver, Kallia shook her head. Jack never said it wasn’t possible, but he’d always dissuaded her from asking. There were some problems too unsolvable for magic. Or maybe that’s what they wanted everyone to think, to keep them from asking such questions in the first place.
“Well, it can certainly explain how a city with a way in suddenly has no way out.”
His gaze flickered to her face in disbelief. “You … you don’t think it’s complete nonsense?”
“I’m the last person to judge what is and isn’t nonsense.” Kallia shrugged, considering him. “Question is, have you found anything that makes you feel like it’s not?”
He looked down at the table, at his life laid out before him. So badly, she wanted to wipe the darkness from his face, to take the hurt away from the memory.
She wondered if that’s why Jack did it, if he’d cared too much to let loss swallow her whole. Not that it justified the act, but Kallia could understand why she might do it. If she could rip the grief away, the ropes that bound him to this hurt, she would do it in a heartbeat. Even if he hated her afterward.
“Yes, and it has to do with something else,” he said. “Something I haven’t told you.”
Nothing shook Kallia inside more than his tone. All the times Demarco said nothing, never answered her, stretched raw across his face. “I’m not who you think I am. I haven’t been, in years.”
The world shrank. “What do you mean?”
He was all edges. He ran a hand down his face, his knuckles curling into a fist. “After Eva disappeared, so did my magic.”
The silence was stifling. Kallia lost hold of her breath, her heart racing in her ears. Somewhere in it, she heard Jack. Laughing.
“What?”
No denial. Only pain.
“That’s impossible.” It didn’t make sense. She didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t. “You’re … you’re a born magician.”
“I know.”
“Wait a second, you—” She pressed at her temple, the sudden throbbing. “You performed magic, I’ve seen it. Felt it.”
The night of the second performance. That day at the Ranza Estate. Those hadn’t been imagined. Her bones still vibrated with that power from Demarco. The light between them, that force, had been real.
“No, I-I don’t know … it comes and goes in bursts, but nothing I can control or take credit for. Not really.” Demarco’s voice grew hoarse, heavy. “My magic has been gone since that last act, until I came to Glorian. Until I met you.”
She shut her eyes. Looking at him was suddenly too difficult. “So you’ve been lying to everyone, this entire time?”
The pieces fell and fit before her in ways that hadn’t made sense before. The questions he avoided, the answers he withheld. His method of abstaining that others mocked. The way he’d agreed to mentor her, before cutting ties entirely.
Weak, Jack had always called him.
This was why.
This.
“How could you not tell me?” Tears simmered beneath her eyelids. She feared if she opened them, they would fall. “Me. Your partner. How could you lie to me?”
“I’m sorry,” he said roughly, and all she heard was his pain. Raw, and truthful. “I-I wanted to … I was selfish. I didn’t know what I was doing. What I was thinking. I thought if I told you, you would see that I have nothing. I am nothing.”
Her heart twisted. “What?”
“I’m not powerful.” He looked away, his breath hitching. “I’m not the magician I used to be. My name means nothing.”