“Hey…”
“Although he did turn out to be startlingly diligent for someone who seems like he’d give up almost immediately,” Farrah continued.
“Oh, come on.”
“Frivolous,” she carried on. “Flighty. The constant barrage of inane chatter.”
“This is just getting hurtful.”
“You meet him and think he’d fold like a camp chair,” Farrah said. “We have this friend, Rufus, though. He knew from the beginning that Jason had what it took.”
“Finally,” Jason said.
“Rufus is the sexy one, right?” Ian said, having seen Rufus in the recordings.
“Really, Ian?” Jason asked.
“What?” Ian said. “I’m secure enough in my sexuality to acknowledge a beautiful man.”
“Every damn universe,” Jason muttered.
Sunday morning still found the Evans-Asano family lodging in the houseboat. Erika had talked about going back to their home after Jason’s return but her husband, daughter, and the idea of giving up cloud beds brought her around.
When Asya arrived for their day trip to Sydney, Jason, Ian and Emi were nowhere to be found. She and Erika managed to find Farrah watching Jason’s recordings in the media room, but she didn’t know where the others had gone.
“Shade,” Erika said. “Where are my brother and my suspiciously absent husband and daughter?”
“They’ve gone out.”
“Out?”
“Yes, Mrs Asano.”
“I don’t suppose that you’d like to elaborate?”
“Correct,” Shade said. “I would not like to elaborate.”
“Meaning Jason is doing something dodgy and asked you to cover.”
“I prefer to think of it as maintaining security without compromising privacy.”
“Shade, if you don’t tell me where my daughter is right now, I’m going to have Asya and Farrah here teach me how to use magic and then shake the shadow out of you until you’re a pale, skinny white guy who I will then proceed to beat with a cricket bat.”
“That isn’t a plausible scenario, Mrs Asano.”
“You want to test me, shadow man? I don’t care who your dad is or what you’re made of because I will find something to shove my boot right up into.”
“Mrs Asano, you’re wearing deck sandals. Also, if you go to the rear deck, you will find your errant family members returning.”
The three women made their way to the rear of the houseboat and immediately spotted a trio of figures flying several metres above the water. The water below was being disturbed by the air coming from the heavy devices on their arms and backs. The three figures dropped onto the deck, where the jet suits dissolved into darkness that disappeared into Emi, Ian, and Jason’s shadows.
“What the actual hell is going on?” Erika asked.
“I don’t think there’s an actual…”
Jason was silenced by the death glare that came from his sister, grateful when it was turned on her husband.
“Emi found this video on the internet,” Ian said. “It was these mountain rescue guys in England using jets suits and we wondered if Shade could turn into something like that. It turns out he can.”
“You let our daughter go flying off in one of those things?”
“It was perfectly safe,” Ian said. “Shade took over when we were going to crash into the water or a tree or whatever. If we were going to. That totally didn’t happen.”
“You’re meant to be the responsible adult,” she told him, waving her arm at Jason and Emi. “It’s clearly never going to be these two.”
“Hey,” Jason said. He held up his hands in surrender as Erika turned her gaze back to him. She returned her glare to her husband.
“What were you thinking?” she asked.
“That jet suits are super sweet,” he whimpered honestly.
“And that justifies the danger you put our daughter in?”
“She wasn’t in any danger, Eri,” Jason said.
“You keep out of this,” Eri told him.
“No, Eri, I won’t,” Jason said. She opened her mouth to bite back, but something in his eyes stopped her cold. It wasn’t hostile but it was unflinching.
“In the care of me and Shade,” Jason continued, “Emi is safer in the middle of a gunfight than alone in the playground of her school. I'm done playing by Earth rules, Erika. Magic is real, magic is awesome, and it's the new reality you live in, like it or not. I know it seems strange and alien and dangerous, but it's the thing that will keep our family safe. You will never catch a disease that can't be cured. You’ll never be permanently disabled in an accident. A hundred years from now, your family, your daughter, will be alive and well. When you’re sixty, you’ll look better than you did at thirty. If you want to give Emi a sibling at that point, you still can.”
He glanced at Farrah, who gave him an encouraging nod.
“It’s a time of miracles, big sister. I’ve been focused on the dangers, but I came back to show you wonders. I got distracted and lost track of that somewhere along the way. I want you to trust me, Erika. Life is about to get amazing.”
59
MERCY
“That’s a neat bit of work,” Farrah said, taking in the Network’s Sydney branch with her magical senses. Standing outside the building, she observed the magical array shielding the upper levels. “Whoever put this in place did a great job of working with the low magic area and interweaving low-level magical formations. You’d still need spirit coins to maintain it with the magical density this low, but it must be very efficient.”
“By necessity,” Asya said. “The Sydney branch doesn't have its own source of spirit coins and is reliant on the International Committee. The astral space that the Lyon branch was hiding will be used to set up spirit coin farms, using records left behind centuries ago.”
“I can help you set those up,” Farrah said. “Not for free, mind you.”
“We were rather hoping that one of you would have some insight,” Asya said happily.
For the first time, Jason let himself be taken into the Network’s local headquarters. His sister, Asya, Farrah and he went through a conventional security sweep and were given visitor lanyards.
“This is an uncanny feeling,” Erika said. “The months I spent trying to find out what happened to you. The truth was more absurd than I could have imagined, and now I’m going into the belly of the beast.”
Jason grabbed her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. The elevator rapidly rose through the building, Jason feeling it when they entered the area of the security arrays. Without Farrah's expertise, he would still be hesitant about entering. Annabeth Tilden and Ketevan Arziani met them at the elevator as they reached the upper floors.
“Congratulations on the promotion, Anna,” Jason said after introductions were made.