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I laugh and enter the passenger seat by means of propelling myself over the edge.
“Seriously, love, you need to use magic more,” she says, then floors the car.
“Where are we even going?” I ask, after a few moments of silence.
“You’re the one who’s having some sort of revelatory moment slash nervous breakdown. You get to choose. Cosy country pub, flashy cocktail bar, or somewhere in between?”
“I’m a little overdressed for it, but it’d be good to get out of town.”
“Perfect. I’ll head back out into the countryside. Though not too close to Thornber Manor. I’m not sure Gabe could physically restrain himself from crashing the party if you get within sensing distance. Good call not to attempt to deal with him tonight.”
I laugh. “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you say anything bad about him before.”
“Even if I rarely bear the brunt of them, I know Gabe’s faults better than almost anyone.”
We drive out of town as the sun sets. Some of my tension and upset fades with the heat.
“So, are we classing this as a date?” Nikki asks.
I glance at her, then look at the floor. “Are you serious?”
“Don’t look so embarrassed. ‘No’ is a perfectly acceptable answer. But I thought all Born Practitioners, were, well… flexible.”
“I’m not exactly the biggest proponent of the Old Ways anymore, as you may have noticed. Besides, don’t you have a girlfriend?”
She shrugs. “You mean Rachel, from fight night? She’s a sweetheart. But I tend to keep things casual. Various women, a handful of men. Taught Practitioners can follow the Old Ways, too.”
The pub we pull up outside dates back to 1300, according to the plaque on the wall. It’s beautiful in the fading light. We walk through the indoors, where the dark wood and huge fireplace make me long to return in winter, then we exit into a garden on the back, tucked into the shadow of a hill. We sit down at a wooden picnic table, both throwing our legs out along the bench in opposite directions.
“Gin?” Nikki asks.
“Not somewhere like this. Get me the real-est ale you can find.”
Nikki returns in record time. Presumably some form of magic and mesmerism was involved. I take an aggressive swig of my beer. It tastes like my late teens. I’m not sure when gin became the default.
“I’m perfectly happy to sit and drink an IPA with you in beautiful surroundings on a hot evening,” Nikki says. “But there’s obviously something you wanted to say.”
I down a quarter of the beer in one go. The benefit of giving in and doing this with Gabriel would have been the way he’d have dragged my thoughts out of me through a mixture of charisma and magic. Nikki has plenty of both, but it’s not quite the same.
“My family kill to consolidate their power and to protect the town. I’ve always known there was blood involved, but I never realised it went this far. I can never decide if the Dome’s a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, people pay for it with their lives.”
Nikki shrugs and sips her own drink with surprising delicacy. “The original Dome’s a good thing, on balance. You only have to spend a few hours outside Mannith to see that.”
“I guess that’s fair.”
“Expanding it, on the other hand, is dangerous. Gabe’s grandfather fought your grandfather over this. You know the basic story, right?”
“Just that my family used to control everything within the Dome, entirely unchallenged, and the Thornbers worked for them. There was clearly a disagreement or a power struggle a few generations back, but it’s not something my parents ever really talked about.”
Nikki nods. “By some quirk of birth or programme of study, Gabe’s grandfather’s power matched or exceeded your grandfather’s. And so he rebelled. Used his worries about the Dome as an excuse, though maybe he just wanted power. They reached a stalemate. Or so Gabe tells me. Neither I nor my family were around when all that was going on.”
“How did your family end up in Mannith? People from other parts of Yorkshire barely ever move here, never mind people from the other side of the world.”
She shrugs. “Most of the rest of the family went to Sheffield. My parents wanted something different, and they found this place. File it under fate.”
“And you’ve never had any trouble?”
She draws fire into her palms. “I’ve been able to do this sort of thing since I was tiny. Plus, I’ve always been under Gabe’s protection. Let’s just say that the only person ever to make a racist remark to my face provided a salutary lesson in tolerance to anyone else who might have considered doing so.”
