to the dressing rooms, and Kallia was glad her dress had sleeves, otherwise she’d be shivering as well. “It’s a bit drafty in here. You don’t have a fireplace or furnace?”
“No fire,” Ira said darkly. “If even one stray ember catches on my dresses, this shop will go up like a flaming haystack.”
Apparently all of Glorian took arms against fire as well. But Kallia had an alternative in mind. She carried so many memories of sitting by the fireplace, the warmth glowing against her skin. The memory tugged free with the pull of magic, sifting from her fingertips until heat spread across the entire shop.
The warmth slithered around her neck, seeping through her clothes until it drove the chill away. Aaros raised his brows at the change in temperature, unclenching his fingers to test the air.
The scissors thudded to the floor, the needle plinking against it. Ira’s shoulders begrudgingly relaxed out of their hunched posture. “What did you do?”
“You said no fire.” Kallia stepped down from the mirrored stand. “I only gave your shop the memory of it.”
It was a common trick Jack had taught her for her shows, to sweep the room with a sensation. It could heighten the performance, building anticipation. For once it had a practical use, instead of just deception.
Once Kallia emerged from the curtain, back in her comfortable day clothes, she handed the dress to Ira. “Thank you for the alterations,” she said, more than a little satisfied by the old woman’s reaction.
Quietly, Ira took it, her hands no longer shaking. “How long will it last?”
“The heat? Maybe a few days.”
The woman made a hard sound at the back of her throat. “What the hell am I supposed to do when it runs cold again?”
Kallia smiled. “Hope that I come back, it seems.”
15
Daron tapped his foot anxiously underneath the judges’ table. He didn’t usually fall prey to nerves, but it was unavoidable as the Alastor Place ran rife with performance energy—the kind he hadn’t surrounded himself with in a while. It worsened when a magician who’d arrived early to the rehearsal approached him, confessing how honored he was to perform for the Daring Demarco.
The whole exchange twisted Daron’s insides. He didn’t come here for that. He’d traveled to Glorian to learn more—to find Eva—and he was failing miserably.
Still, he nodded along. Smiling, as though the praise were his right.
Playing along seemed to be the only thing he could do right. Nothing in his search uncovered anything of use. No historical records dating before the last fifty or so years, no old photographs or illustrations of what Glorian might’ve looked like before. The only thing Daron managed to procure were the most recent journals detailing plans to rebuild and restore—proof of the fire that had swept through the town long, long ago, taking everything with it. Glorian’s library couldn’t even be properly called one, no more than a few shelves of books and glass-cased documentation in the mayor’s mansion that were about as helpful as the mayor himself.
“We’re not the kind of city that dwells on the past,” Mayor Eilin had explained. “We’ve kept to ourselves for some time, away from the rest of Soltair. But we’re embracing a new history by looking to the future.”
After that, Daron stopped visiting the mayor’s mansion. His research resulted only in dead ends, and he suspected he’d landed on Mayor Eilin’s watch list for asking too many questions. A new history, she’d said. What did that make of the old one? Of the rumors that reached across Soltair?
What if that’s what they want you to think?
His sister was no fool. But the puzzle kept growing the closer he looked at the pieces, searching for the strange power between them.
“What’s the matter, Demarco?” asked Erasmus, observing the jittery rhythm Daron’s foot set against the table. “Excited for tonight?”
The grin oozed from the proprietor’s voice. Since rehearsals started, Erasmus had become all smugness, soaking in the energy of the room. Some of the judges who carried stern frowns actually perked up in their seats, watching the contestants on stage walk through the lay of the land over strewn tools and cans of paint, listening to the stage manager roll through the show’s instructions.
“The repairs aren’t even completed,” Mayor Eilin muttered to no one in particular, taking in the theater with all the tragedy of witnessing a sinking ship before lowering into his seat. His fingers dug hard into the edges of his clipboard. “Would it be the worst thing if we