“My offer is this,” Callum said. “I am on your side.”
“And?”
“And nothing,” Callum said. “Surely you see this is a game of alliances? I am your ally.”
“So then I should be yours?”
At that precise moment, Libby looked up. She had already adopted a habit of skirting Callum’s attention (probably wise) and so managed to lock eyes with Tristan by accident before quickly looking away, returning to her conversation with Nico.
Tristan tensed; aware, probably, that he had just been caught in discussion with Callum, whom none of the others were in a rush to befriend.
“Parisa is not an ally,” Callum cautioned Tristan, who cleared his throat. “Neither is Rhodes. As for the others, Varona and Reina are pragmatists; they will side with whoever will take them the furthest.”
“Shouldn’t you do the same, and wait,” Tristan advised, “to see if I have any value before trying to recruit me?”
“You have value,” Callum said. “I hardly need assign it to you.”
Across the table, Nico exclaimed something unintelligible about gravitational waves and heat. Or perhaps time and temperature. Or perhaps it didn’t matter at all, not even remotely, because unless Nico wanted to be some sort of medeian physicist chained to a laboratory for the rest of his life, nothing would come of it. The purpose of the Society was to get in, get access, and then get out. Remaining here, as Dalton Ellery had done, was pointless. The best of them would seek to parlay the influence of the Society, not bind themselves to the annals it contained.
Callum was the sort of person readily built to go far, Society or no Society. Tristan was the same, though in a different way. Callum could smell it on him: the ambition, the hunger, the drive. It was on the others, too, but not nearly so strong, and certainly not so close to longing. Nico had a hidden agenda (it was tightly sealed, tasting of metal) and perhaps the others had their reasons, but only Tristan truly wanted it, with his whole being. It was salty, savory, like salivation itself.
The only person who was as starved and desperate as Tristan was Reina, and there was certainly no point trying to win her. Not yet. She’d take whichever side she needed to when the time arose.
Libby was so unthreatening as to be a non-factor. Thus, Callum did not factor her into his personal calculations. If he ever needed another black hole, he’d simply seek her out in whatever mundane government job she accepted after being eliminated from this group. True, there was an as-yet unidentified link between Libby and Tristan—perhaps as a result of their experience during the installation—but that would be a simple enough matter to resolve. Tristan quietly resented her, or resented her abilities, and that was an uncomplicated emotion to play with. Callum could twist it easily around his finger, turning it steadily to hate.
As for Parisa, she was a difficulty. Callum had understated her abilities to Tristan for obvious reasons, and that was only with regard to her technical specialty. She was a better medeian than Callum, who had never been a particularly devoted student, and she was immensely calculating. Fatally, even. She was the one enemy Callum didn’t want, but she had already drawn the line, so he’d have to knock her pieces off the board quickly.
Callum didn’t want to waste time toying with Parisa’s pawns; he wanted her king.
“I have to admit, I am a little sick of the physicist show,” Tristan murmured to himself, staring with an intensity he didn’t know was envy while Libby and Nico, for unknowable and unimportant reasons, tried reversing a boiling cup of water.
Ah, inevitable acquiescence. How bountifully sweet.
“Let’s have a nightcap,” Callum suggested, rising to his feet. “Do you take your scotch neat?”
“I’d take it in a barrel at this point,” said Tristan.
“Excellent. Have a good night,” Callum said to the others, rising to his feet and making his way from the dining room to the painted room.
Reina didn’t look up as he went, nor did Nico. Libby did, which was why Callum had said it to begin with. She would see Tristan following in Callum’s wake and feel more isolated than she already did, and without even a blink of effort.
Poor little magic girl. So much power, so few friends.
“Good night,” Libby said quietly, not looking at Tristan.
People were such delicate little playthings.
NICO
The appearance of Eilif in the drain of his bathroom sink was not ideal. A diverse sampling of “fuck” fell out of Nico’s mouth in at least three languages, and Eilif, who had surfaced from somewhere in the plumbing, slurped out from the drain to perch herself on the lip of his sink, rolling her eyes. She said something impatient in rapid Icelandic, or possibly Norwegian, and Nico, who was exceptionally naked, gave her a glare intended to remind her that being quadrilingual was, while probably a worthy endeavor, not something he was in the mood for becoming today.
“It’s just me,” she said in English. “Calm down.”
“First of all, no,” said Nico, finding that a necessary and accurate starting point. “Secondly, how did you get in here?” he demanded, pivoting around for any Society-related consequences as a result of the mermaid who’d just broken into his bathroom. The usual red light in the corner, signaling a broach of the wards, troublingly did not appear. “This shouldn’t even be possible—”
“Well, it took some time to find you, but eventually I sorted out where you were. Called in a few favors, that sort of thing. I need you to lift the wards concealing my son immediately. You look well, Nicolás,” remarked Eilif, all in one liquid train of thought. “Nearly delicious enough to taste.”
“You,” Nico grunted, “need to stop that. And what do you mean ‘a few favors’?”