Eliot was sitting in his private corner of the brewpub—the spot where he had his back to two walls and could see the front door, kitchen entrance, and the windows without craning his neck—when his mobile vibrated in his pocket. He marked his place with his finger between the pages, dug the buzzing device out of his pocket, and recognised the number answering him. Sliding his thumb across the screen, he answered gruffly, "Cillian."
"Spencer," Cassandra replied in a mirroring tone, but when she continued, her voice had brightened to a more normal tenor. "Are you busy?"
"Not really, no. Day off."
" Oh? What do criminals do on their day off? I'm curious."
"Ah. Parker's BASE jumping, Hardison is at some geek convention, and Nate and Sophie are off doing...whatever. Don't know and really don't want to, either," he replied to a low, pleasant laugh.
" And you?"
He glanced down at the scuffed paperback in his hand. "Catching up on some light reading. Why do you ask?"
"Do you still have the souvenir I gave you?" Cassandra queried.
"Yes." The phoenix feather had gone in a velvet-lined case on his desk, right next to the small glass vial full of ashes. It hadn't moved from there, and he knew that even Parker hadn't touched it.
" Would you like to see where it came from?"
Eliot blinked a little, his gaze flicking across the brewpub as someone came out of the kitchen. He was still getting used to the idea of magic being real and that his brother was a part of it, although it wasn't that far of a leap. There were things in the world that couldn't be explained away with science and physics. "A phoenix? You...you really have one?" he asked quietly.
"No, I just plucked a feather out of thin air. Yes, we have one. I told you, he's in the Flying Animals room," Cassandra replied. "Now, would you like to come over? Everyone else is busy, including Jenkins, so I've got the place to myself."
"Yeah, sure. Let me grab my jacket, I'll be right over." He shrugged on his jacket and ducked behind the counter to grab his helmet, then walked outside to his motorcycle, parked on the curb. Usually, he got around in his truck, but the weather had been so nice lately, so he'd been taking the bike out to clear the dust out of the engine.
When he pulled up to the Annex, Cassandra was standing outside waiting for him. "You can pull your bike around and park inside," she said, pointing to the No Parking signs that lined both sides of the street.
"Park inside?" he repeated, taking off his helmet and hanging it on the handlebar.
"Yeah. There's a garage in the Library, believe it or not. Cursed or possessed vehicles, stuff like that," she replied. "Just pull around the other side, I'll open the door."
She went back inside the Annex, and he pulled around, hesitant to drive on the grass. But as he watched, the bricks seemed to fold over themselves, pulling back to reveal a garage door, a stretch of pavement appearing between the curb and the Annex like it'd grown up out of the grass. "That is so fucking cool," Eliot murmured under his breath, pushing his motorcycle inside. The inside looked like an underground parking garage, with cars and motorcycles, even a few boats inside, some covered in tarps, others standing bare and gleaming. Cassandra was standing beside the door next to a switch-box, and once he'd stepped in, the door was swallowed up by the wall as if it'd never been there at all. "Colour me impressed, Cillian," he remarked, and she laughed.
"C'mon, biker boy, the phoenix awaits."
He parked his bike between a shiny red-and-white '58 Plymouth Fury and a long black '38 Rolls-Royce while Cassandra waited, looking between the two vehicles warily. "What is it?"
"Nothing. Those two need to be kept separate, that's all. Last time we left them parked together, Baby ended up with scratches on both doors," the redhead answered, jerking her thumb over one shoulder at an oil-slick '67 Chevy on the opposite side of the garage.
Eliot blinked but decided not to ask. Sometimes, the less he knew, the less confusing it was.
He knew better than to ask questions as they walked through the Library, despite the fact that it boggled his fucking mind every time he saw the place. Whatever answer she gave would either give him more questions or just confuse the shit out of him. Or both. If she could even answer him at all, given that he wasn't a Librarian, or a Guardian. The old man with the stick permanently wedged up his ass only just tolerated them being in the Library; he doubted that spilling company secrets would be approved of. Instead, he just made sure to stay close behind Cassandra so he wouldn't get lost in the quite possibly endless Library and kept his mouth shut.
Even though he really, really wanted to know what the fuck was in the Flying Animals section of a Library.
"Here we are," Cassandra announced, gesturing to a door secured with heavy latches. "He doesn't usually stay in here, but we have to move him out of his normal enclosure when it gets close to burning day. Fire hazard," she explained as she slid back the latches.
"Burning day," he repeated under his breath, then grabbed the handle and helped her pull the door back.
The inside of the room looked like a giant concrete pen, like a zoo enclosure that'd been stripped of all its environmental accoutrements. The only things present in the room were a pyre of woven wood and plant fiber atop a concrete platform, a small nest on a high shelf, and a tall metal perch bolted into the floor. Perched atop the padded bar was the phoenix.
He wouldn't lie—it was one hell of a bird. It was at least the size of a swan, except that its plumage was the colour of fire. Not just red, but endless shades of yellows and oranges and golds and bronzes and blues, all mingled and overlapping to create new colours. The phoenix's tail was like a peacock's, several feet of long, glorious feathers almost brushing the floor, and on its head was a tall crest of fine golden feathers like spun metal. The longer he looked at it, though, the more it seemed...sick. The feathers, as colourful as they were, were dull and bedraggled, in some places ruffled up as if they were falling out in patches; the bird's head drooped, and its shiny beetle-black eyes were flat and listless.
The phoenix shuffled its talons halfheartedly on the perch and let out a rasping noise that sounded to him like an ungreased spring being stretched.
"Wow. Fascinating," he said dryly.
"Hey, this only happens once every 600 years or so. Consider yourself lucky I invited you over, Spencer," she teased, elbowing him lightly in the ribs.
"Yes, ma'am," he replied, and she rolled her eyes in supreme exasperation.
"Just wait. He's started losing tail feathers. When that happens, it means it's burning day," she insisted, and he noticed that, sure enough, there were a handful of yard-long feathers on the floor underneath the perch.
After another few minutes of complete stillness, the phoenix began to stir on its perch, shuffling back and forth. Abruptly, it spread its wings wide and leapt, flying around its enclosure with great, long sweeps of its wings, scarlet and gold catching in the light. And as it flew, the long trailing ends of its tail feathers began to smolder, silvery smoke and glowing embers trailing after it like the contrails of a jet. As it came back around, the phoenix landed in the middle of its pyre, and the whole thing erupted in fire like it'd been soaking in gasoline.
The heat was unbelievable, and they had to take a few steps back. Even though it made his eyes water, Eliot had to stare at the fire. Every colour danced within the flames, not just red and gold and orange but leaping tongues of shimmering green, blushing pink, royal violet, glittering blue, purest white, endless black, colours which had no name at all swirling and dancing within the conflagration. With an enormous whoosh, the fire flared high and hot, then vanished as if it'd never been at all, leaving only curling spirals of silver smoke and a small heap of ashes that had a peculiar metallic shimmer to them, like stardust, atop the naked platform that'd held the pyre.
Cassandra pulled on a pair of gloves that looked like they were made of snakeskin only...stranger. "Dragonhide," she explained when catching his confused look, wiggling her fingers. "Only thing that's flame-resistant enough." With exceedingly delicate, careful movements of her hands, she began to sweep the ashes into a large glass jar that she held in the other hand. And as she brushed it away, in the centre of the pile, something moved.
Eliot leaned closer, residual heat pressing gently against his skin like a living thing. She gently brushed away more of the powdery soot until the tiny moving mass became visible. It was a tiny bird, no bigger than a newly hatched quail, wrinkled and blind, covered in a fine down of purest gold fluff. He gave a tiny chortle, his breath stirring the ashes as the newborn phoenix peeped and tried to stand on unsteady baby legs, only to fall over again.
Cassandra generously coated the bottom of the nest in ashes from the jar, then leant down to gingerly scoop the hatchling into her gloved hands, standing on her tiptoes to reach up and place the phoenix there. She brushed the rest of the ashes into the jar and screwed the lid on tight. "There. Phoenix ashes are incredible for working healing magics. Always a good idea to have some on hand," she said.
"Will it be okay? On its own, I mean?" Eliot asked.
"Yeah. Phoenixes are entirely self-sufficient. They're only truly helpless right after they burn. In a few minutes, Fawkes will have all his feathers and will start eating—"
"Fawkes? You named it...Fawkes?" Eliot said, arching an eyebrow at her.
Cassandra lifted her chin defiantly. "Yes, I did. I also call the King of Beasts Mufasa from time to time. What are you gonna do about it, Spencer?"
"Nothing at all, Cillian. Guess I shouldn't be surprised that you named an actual phoenix after a Harry Potter bird. You made me watch all eight movies, and I don't even like Harry Potter."
She gave him a faux-innocent wide-eyed look. "What do you mean? You love Harry Potter, you've seen all eight movies."
"God, you sound like Hardison with that Star Wars crap," he mumbled, not really having to fake his shudder. He peered up into the nest again and sure enough, the hatchling no longer looked like a naked rat and was now covered in a fluffy layer of silky golden down. It already looked like it'd grown some, too, standing on its own without wobbling. "What do they even eat?" he asked.
"Incense, amomum. Nothing living," Cassandra answered, peeling off her gloves. "C'mon, let's go. Mr. Jenkins only just tolerates Ezekiel in here, he definitely won't like you here. They'll come put him back in his regular room later."
He stepped back from the nest and followed her out of the enclosure. Cassandra secured the latches on the door and then walked over to a nearby table. After rummaging in the drawer, she came up with a label-maker and fiddled with it a moment. It spat out a label, and she carefully peeled the paper away from the adhesive side, smoothing it onto the jar: Phoenix Ashes, 2017. After setting the jar on a shelf, she held up the label-maker. "Best forty bucks I've ever spent," she informed him.
Eliot nearly scoffed but then stopped considered where he was standing and what all it contained. "I can believe that," he said. "So, where do you want to go now?"
Cassandra folded the gloves back into a drawer and turned back to him, leaning on the edge of the desk. "Wherever you want, Eliot. Anyplace you want, give me a name and country, I'll dial up the Back Door," she replied.
"Why don't you tell me about the places you've been?" Eliot suggested.
She shrugged one shoulder lightly. "Most of the places I go, we don't do a whole lot of sightseeing. Usually playing a game of 'tag, you're it' with whatever magic artifact is on the loose that day. And once we catch it, I'm usually so tired I fall asleep with shoes on."
"Jay and punk-ass don't go with you?"
Cassandra smirked. "It's still weird to hear you call him Jay. He doesn't even like it when we call him Jake. But no. Stone likes working on his own stuff in his down time, and Ezekiel Jones likes going on his own 'awesome' adventures," she answered, making air quotes around the word.
"Don't you ever go on your own?" he prompted.
"Sometimes, yeah, but..." She moved one shoulder again.
Eliot hummed and wagered a guess. "Not as fun alone."
The corner of her mouth curled up, and she touched one fingertip to the side of her nose.
He knew that feeling. He'd been to plenty of incredible places and beautiful cities—sometimes with unpleasant tasks, sometimes just because he could—but there was always a somewhat hollow quality to it without someone to share in the experience. He glanced at the door with its frosted-glass design, wired up to a globe. One spin, and they could be on the other side of the world. "Do you like chocolate?" he asked at last.
"Is that a trick question?"
"Should I be surprised that you know the location of the a homemade chocolate shop in Bucharest?" Cassandra asked as they sat at one of the small two-person tables in the darkened shop.
Eliot had given her a set of exact coordinates—impressive, all things considered—and the Back Door had connected to a small shop where an old woman and an apprentice still made their own chocolates every day by hand. It was just past two in the morning, so the shop was dark and quiet, the streets mostly empty outside. It didn't bother him; he was a thief, why should it? Cassandra found she didn't mind much, either. They weren't hurting anyone by being there, and she'd make sure they put everything back.
As she picked out a selection of chocolates from the cases, Eliot went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. There was a small fridge in the back room, and he carried out a small bowl of strawberries and two apples, setting them on a table in the front next to the plate of chocolates, then went to retrieve the tea.
"Didn't peg you as a tea kind of guy," she remarked, picking up one of the small white chocolate candies and biting it in two. "Oh, that's really good."
"Mm, depends on the day. Green tea, chai tea, that stuff's nasty. And it smells. Catch me in the right mood, though, I'm not against some Earl Grey," he replied, reaching over to take one of the white chocolates for himself. "These are my favourite, I think. I found this place the first time I visited Bucharest because I got lost."
"Lucky you," she remarked.
They ate in silence for a moment, turning to watch a car drive by outside, headlights sweeping the ceiling as it rounded the corner. It was a peaceful sort of quiet, and neither of them felt much of an urge to fill it. After a while, though, the question that'd been coiled in the back of his mind for a while unfurled.
"Why'd you hit him? I mean...you've known him for how many years now? And we met...what, a month ago?" Eliot asked, honestly curious why she was so obviously protective of him. It was odd, to say the very least.
Cassandra frowned a little as she looked down at her drink, fiddling with the string on the tea bag. "Because he deserved it," she said at last. "I'm an only child. And growing up...I didn't realise that I was lonely because I'd never known anything else. My parents wanted me to be perfect. Their prodigy, a flawless legacy of genetics. That meant always being on top of my education. I was homeschooled so they could observe my progress and make sure that I excelled, no matter what. I didn't interact with any other children my age, not really. When I was starting high school, though, they decided that I needed to experience society, and that was the first time I realised that I was not normal. I realised that you're supposed to have sleepovers and birthday parties and imaginary friends and playdates, all the things that I never got when I was growing up. And after that, I would've given anything to have a brother or a sister. Somebody that I could look after and be good to, somebody that I could play with and talk to without feeling like something that'd crawled out of a laboratory." She paused for a moment, her eyes faraway as she toyed with the little thread, twisting it around one fingertip with absentminded fixation. "And then I was diagnosed, told I probably wouldn't see thirty. My parents...well, it might as well have been their lives that were ending. I wasn't a perfect prodigy anymore, I was flawed, I was broken, and it was too late for them to have any more children to try again. They had thought that having only one child would give them the greatest chance to make sure that child was exemplary. And their gamble fell through. I had just been told my life was half over, that there was a clock ticking away in here," she touched her temples, "and they were mourning the loss of their legacy, not their daughter. And then they left me. I was too much of a disappointment for them to handle anymore, couldn't look at me and bear to see their own failure. So I got passed around, relative to relative, like the bad penny nobody wants to hold onto."
The redhead turned her gaze up to him for the first time, and Eliot was surprised by how the depth of loss in their blue depths struck him, twisting in a place he hadn't felt much for a long time. "Stone says family ain't easy. Well, I can promise you that abandonment, feeling like you could scream at the top of your lungs and nobody hear you, being so desolate that you think about taking a running leap off the roof of an office building or swallowing the entire bottle of your aunt's sleeping pills, is worse. I would have given anything to have a brother, Eliot. Somebody that would hug me when I fell off my bike and pull my pigtails to annoy me. And for Stone to just...throw it away so carelessly, just because his feelings are hurt... He's lucky the only thing I did was punch him."
"You're different. Without them around. I've noticed," Eliot said, unfolding his flick knife and peeling an apple in a long spiral.
Cassandra leant back in her chair and stretched out her slender dancer's legs in front of her, encased in dark raspberry tights with a subtle floral pattern stitched in them. "Yeah. Did Jacob tell you about my tumor?" she asked.
Eliot's mouth twisted. "The brain grape?"
"Yeah. Well, that started growing in my head when I was fifteen. I did a lot of research on brain tumors after that, found out a lot of things. I found a case involving a man. Stand-up guy, had a steady job, nice place, the works. And then, over the course of six months, for no apparent reason, he goes from gentleman to degenerate. Drank, smoke, cussed, picked fights with anything that moved. Eventually he got in a fight and ended up concussed. Took him to a hospital for a scan, and they found a tumor in his brain. It was responsible for the change in personality, screwing up the circuitry upstairs. He had it removed, and just like that, he was Mr. Nice Guy again."
Cassandra looked out the window with a little sigh. Eliot began cutting the apple into slices, arranging them on the tea saucer.
"My brain was still developing when I was fifteen. My personality, everything that makes me, me, it was all still forming. All that I am...or was...formed around the tumor. And now that it's gone...I don't know who I am without it. Maybe I'm a royal bitch. Maybe I'm self-centered and vain. Maybe I'm a bad-tempered termagant, I don't know. And that is...quite frankly, terrifying." She looked down at her plate, toying with a delicate strawberry leaflet between the very tips of two fingers. "They don't get it. And I know that if I told them, they wouldn't be able to help, which would only make it worse. So...it's easier to pretend. To act like I'm still who I was then, until I can figure out who I am now."
"And with me?" Eliot prompted, spearing an apple slice on the point of his knife.
"You didn't know me before. I guess I don't feel the need." Leaning forward, she pulled the slice off the blade and nibbled on a corner of it.
"Right. So...what are you going to do?"
She shrugged and nibbled at the apple again. "I'll figure it out." After a moment of quiet, her gaze slid down to his arm, and he glanced down to see what it was she was looking at: one of his many scars. It was from a KA-BAR and ran curved almost halfway around his arm, from just below his elbow to the inside of his forearm. It was one of his oldest scars, though the years hadn't faded it any, and he still couldn't feel everything in that part of his arm.
"Ain't pretty to look at, huh?" he asked.
Much to his surprise, she only shrugged. "Just a scar. 'Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive of characters are seared with scars,'" she recited, and it was his turn to raise eyebrows. The corner of her mouth quirked up. "Stone isn't the only one who knows how to read poetry."
"Well, don't tell him that, he's gotta feel special somehow," Eliot remarked.
Cassandra full-on smiled at that, tilting her head in a quiet laugh, and it sent her hair sliding over one shoulder, ends sparking subtly.
A sudden flexing of lust, lust and other emotions, made him catch his breath sharply. It happened sometimes. Sometimes all it took was the smallest of gestures, the turn of a head or the curve of a smile, and the body reacted on a level that was beyond control, the kind of reaction that snared a person's breathing for a second and made the heart falter just a beat out of rhythm. It hadn't happened to him in a long time, not like that, but he knew that when it happened, either ignore it and pretend it never happened, or acknowledge it head-on and handle the consequences.
He held Cassandra's gaze a moment, and the corner of her mouth inched up a little further, showing flash of even white teeth behind full red lips.
Eliot smiled back.
As they rinsed their dishes and put them all back where they belonged, Cassandra's shoulder brushed his every now and again, standing near enough he felt the warmth of her body. It was closer than he liked to let people get, but he found that he didn't mind at all.