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Mara stumbled downstairs, following the knocking on her shop door. A Taiwanese man was standing on the other side with a takeout bag and a confused expression on his face.
"Hi, can I help?"
"Are you Mara?" he asked.
"Yeah? But I didn't—" she began, but he pushed the bag into her hands. He gave the storefront another confused look and shook his head before driving away on his scooter as fast as he could.
Mara took the bag into her kitchen and found a container of clear broth chicken laksa, a green juice, and a note that read,'Dear Saint of brawling, I thought you might need this when you woke up tonight. Thanks again for the rescue and whatever cure you gave me before bed, Augustus. P.S. this is my phone number…'
Mara stared at the mobile number and the soup, remembering the way he'd brushed his cheek up the side of her neck, lips against her ear. She blushed from her toes to the roots of her hair.
Did he remember doing that?
"What's the matter with you?" Athanasius asked. He leaped up on the counter and smelled the soup. "I didn't think we could order in because the shop kept moving."
"We can't. Augustus can track the shop, so he sent it," she said, rubbing her neck and trying to forget the phantom touch.
"Well. He better have ordered extra chicken for me," Athanasius sniffed.
Mara found her mobile phone in her still damp handbag and turned it on. She kept it to read books on and occasionally contact the family branch still located in Europe. Mostly, she ignored it.
She typed in Augustus's number and stared at it while she sipped her green juice.
"This was rather nice of him, even though I don't know what was in the cure I gave him," Mara admitted. She opened the laksa bowl and fished out some chicken pieces for the cat at her elbow.
"I can grudgingly admit he's less of a prick than other sorcerers I've met. That doesn't mean I like or trust him, and neither should you."
"I know you have a bad history with his kind, but he hasn't done anything to deserve animosity from me. I think…he's my friend."
Admitting it out loud and sober, Mara knew it was true. She couldn't help but like him, and fighting against it seemed like a twisted kind of self-harm.
"You always were the strangest saint I've seen. Ever since the lightning turned your hair white, I knew you were going to be…something else. Protect that heart of yours, Mara. It's all I ask," Athanasius said before turning his attention to the cooled chicken pieces.
"I thought the lightning story was just Sophia being dramatic," Mara said, picking up her spoon.
"No. It scared her. Scared everyone. This little black-haired baby screaming at the sky, and then her hair turning white before our eyes. Why do you think Sophia was always so overprotective of you?"
"Because she was a bitter woman who thought she could make more money off me if we were on our own." Mara shocked herself more than Athanasius. She'd never spoken of her mother in such a way, even though she'd thought it nearly every day since they moved to Australia.
"Your mother was a complicated woman, little crow, but she loved you. She knew that you had more power and potential than the rest. She didn't know how to protect you. She didn't know what to do with you. She wanted you far away from the family's eyes in case you became stronger. She was scared of what they would do. She was scared ofyou."
Mara didn't want to contemplate that. She wanted to eat her food and go back to bed, not worry about Sophia. She was dead, and her rules and opinions and hunches weren't worth anything anymore.
To prove that, she sent Augustus a text:Tks for the soup. Am dying. Cat says extra chicken next time. Saint of brawling = good fighter name. Mara :)
She had managed to eat two mouthfuls of soup before her phone buzzed.
You're welcome. I thought my hangover cure might help you, seeing how yours helped me (we need to talk about that one). What are you doing tomorrow? I have a magic-related errand to run. Do you want to come?
"Trust Augustus to use full grammar and spelling in his texts," Mara said, shaking her head. She told him to come and find her when he wanted to go.
Ten
"Eatwith rival magic users to keep the peace, but always check for the hidden blade aimed between your ribs." — Sorcery in the Age of Reason.
It felt strange to be going to see Mara outside the teashop. While Augustus couldn't remember precisely what had occurred between them, he knew something had shifted.
It wasn't just that his lips were still positive they had tasted her and that his body remembered strange heat burning through it or that he lacked his scars. It was that he was genuinely interested in someone else for the first time in years.
