Shadow Magic (Darkling Mage 1)

“Dustin? Sorry, I can sense you’re disappointed, but I promise you can take the day off tomorrow. There’s stuff that needs doing. I’ll meet you out front once I’m done with Odessa. What are your thoughts on lunch? Chinese? My treat.”

“Sure,” I thought back, doing my hardest to pretend that I wasn’t bummed. “Why not? What’s the occasion?”

“Well, I’m hungry, for one,” she transmitted. “Also, you’ll need to eat up, get some strength back. Today, you’re going to meet your very first entity.”

Chapter 5

“Eat that up,” Thea said, piling more food on my plate. “It’s good for you.”

She’d been doing that all throughout lunch, transferring slices of meat and delicious hunks of deep-fried this and that with her chopsticks directly onto my ever-growing heap of food.

“You’re too skinny,” she said through a mouthful of rice, not for the first time since we got there. I grinned sheepishly, a little puzzled by why she was so concerned, but admittedly flattered that she cared.

I liked it when she got all maternal like that. I complied, doing my best with my own chopsticks, popping another dumpling into my mouth. The wrapper burst as I bit into it, releasing a hot gush of soup that the geniuses at the Seven Dragons restaurant had somehow managed to smuggle into the dumpling.

“Xiao long bao,” Thea explained earlier, after I had very visibly expressed my elation over this tasty new treat. “Really clever. They chill the broth with gelatin before putting it in the wrapper with the meat. Then when they steam it, it all turns into soup. Delicious.” And delicious was right. I’d eaten six of the suckers already.

Although I still had no idea why we were there at all. The Seven Dragons was a lot fancier than the Chinese places I was used to eating at. I mean there were plenty of options for dining around Valero, but nothing quite like this.

The faint music piping through the restaurant switched readily between Asian pop and what Thea generously described as Chinese opera. The interiors themselves were finished in rich silken red, with golden sculptures and accents here and there. And the dining area itself, of course, smelled delicious. But I knew that this wasn’t just about a guy and his boss eating out.

I swallowed another dumpling, and another mouthful of rice. “This isn’t what I was expecting,” I told her.

“How do you mean? I told you, there’s way more to Chinese cuis

ine than egg rolls. Or orange chicken, which isn’t even truly Chinese. Did you know that Americans came up with that? Kind of dilutes the experience, if you ask me.”

One thing to know about Thea was that she was chockfull of these informational tidbits, little factoids about whatever it was we were currently experiencing. It was never to show off, that much I knew, but I could never shake the feeling that she sometimes did it in an attempt to disarm me, or to distract from the truth of the matter.

“It’s not that,” I said, pushing a grain of rice around on my plate. “I mean I knew we were coming out for lunch, but you did mention that other thing.” I leaned forward over the table, glancing to either side of me before speaking in a softer voice. “You know. Meeting an entity.”

“Ah. That.” Thea leaned back and set down her chopsticks. She patted at her lips with a napkin, then smiled. “Would you believe me if I told you that this was all part of it? We’re gathering reagents.” She raised a hand, beckoning our waitress over.

“Uh. Reagents? From a Chinese restaurant?”

Thea nodded, at me, then at our waitress. She fired off a fluent barrage of phrases in Chinese, the second time she had done it that day. The waitress nodded, grinning, then scuttled off.

I couldn’t help myself. “So you speak Chinese?”

There was a quirk in Thea’s smile, but there was no trace of condescension when she spoke. “Mandarin, actually. And a little, yes. Mostly enough to order in a Chinese restaurant.” She smiled in a way that told me that wasn’t true.

I wondered how much else Thea was hiding, how many other talents this woman had. I couldn’t help feeling a little bit smaller considering how badly I spent my own free time. I mean, she was studying foreign languages and I was on my couch playing video games and grinding out levels. Yikes.

“So we’re done here?” I wiped my mouth roughly with my napkin, a little more excited than I should have been, perhaps, to get moving.

“Not quite,” Thea said, and I watched with quiet dismay as she picked up her chopsticks again. “I just ordered takeout is all. Keep eating, it’d be a shame to let this go to waste. And we can’t take out those dumplings anyway, they aren’t any good when you reheat them.”

I couldn’t hide my confusion, and I sat there for a good few seconds, fiddling with my chopsticks. “Sorry. I’m – I guess I’m baffled, Thea.”

“What’s there to be baffled about?” She leaned one forearm on the table, then flicked her chopsticks out deftly to pick up a slice of ginger beef. “I’m just taking my best boy out on a lunch date is all.”

I must have reddened a little, because hey, it was always nice to hear that my boss thought I was doing a good job. She laughed softly. I opened and closed my mouth, looking for something to say, but mercifully, Thea picked up and filled the silence for me.

“Oh, fine,” she said, chewing thoughtfully on the beef. She swallowed, took a small swig of her tea, then set her utensils down. “What I ordered, that’s part of what we need for setting up our meeting. It’s always going to be something different, depending on the entity. Each one has its own wants and desires, and you have to make an offering lovely enough for it to be lured to our plane, or at least to convince it to open a door to its own.”

“So the offering is orange chicken.”

Thea tutted. “Not in this case. Plus this place doesn’t even do orange chicken. Although it depends on the entity, like I said. There was one that just wanted frozen hotdogs.” She patted at the corner of her mouth with a napkin, eyes distant with remembrance. “No condiments. Didn’t even ask for them to be cooked. Just wanted them frozen.”