“In what way?”
Leander stopped cutting lotus root and turned around.“I have no idea, but I know the sifu I had when I came to China as a teenager had to teach outsiders in a separate class because we couldn’t do magic the way the Chinese students could.And they couldn’t perform magic like we did.We had different magic.”
Xi narrowed his eyes.“If the magic were different, one teacher couldn’t have taught both.He would have one type of magic or another, and I refuse to believe that Chinese people are genetically superior when it comes to magic.”
“He knew both.”The oil was hot, and Leander dropped in a handful of nuts, stirring quickly to toast them.He knew Xi and Shanlin would prefer western foods, but they needed to understand this was their life now.And they needed to eat food harvested from the hills.With the addition of another adult to their household, free was the best sort of food.
“Then he had both, so it can’t be that different.Genetically speaking, people are people,” Xi said.
Leander took a deep breath before taking the peanuts out of the oil and adding the sliced lotus root.“And they develop magic differently.”
“Seriously?Isn’t that just propaganda to make outsiders feel weak?”
Leander was frustrated, but he saw Shanlin watching with wide eyes, and he swallowed all the anger that made him want to choke Xi to death with a nearby morning glory vine.“I never said it was genetic.It might be they grew up in more magical areas.It might be something they eat or something that’s taught to them as children.I don’t know.”He kept his attention on the dinner because it kept him from cursing at Xi.
“I might grow up more powerful because we moved here?”Shanlin interrupted.Leander would expect a child to be excited about the prospect, but he sounded horrified.
“We don’t know,” Leander said.He pushed the wok off the burner and sat next to the boy, unsure what else to say.
“I don’t want to be powerful.”His voice had a tremor.
Leander looked at Xi, but he seemed just as lost.They were two fools stumbling in the dark.
“Mother was powerful!”he shouted, and Shanlin stood so fast that the chair fell over.“I don’t want to be powerful.”He bolted, disappearing around the nearest house.Leander lunged for him, but Shanlin escaped, the grass and flowers marking his passage as he ran for the hills.
Xi shot to his feet, but Leander held up a hand.“I can feel where he is.Don’t crowd him.”
“‘Don’t crowd him’?”Xi demanded.“Druwolf is after you, the American government signed a warrant for your arrest, and you want him to run around unprotected?”
Leander wanted to scream that he understood all that, but he forced himself into an artificial calm.“I can feel where he is.I have the magical equivalent of eyes on him, so he’s safe.”
“Safe?”Xi’s voice rose to a near shout.“Safe like Tecca was safe?Like Finn was safe?Do you have any idea what I’ve seen on crime scenes where Druwolf left his mark?”Xi leaned closer, and the shadows grew darker.
“Yes!”Leander shouted back.“Yes, I do!Do you have any idea what I had to do to survive working for that psychopath?Do you know what Tecca did?I do—at least some of it.So don’t lecture me.”Leander swallowed bile that rose as memories assaulted him.He knew his sins.He didn’t need a sanctimonious, dogmatic cur to list them.
Xi jerked back as if he’d been burned.“You work with plants.You wouldn’t have...”He studied Leander with such cold suspicion that Leander wanted to punch him, to make that expression go away.
“Plants have many uses,” Leander hissed, not willing to be more specific than that.He pulled the wok back onto the burner and added green onion and wild garlic to the roots.
He knew how much pressure it took to break a man’s neck with a vine or strangle a woman who had tried to steal a shipment of drugs.He knew how to coax an oleander to yield a more potent poison.He knew how to create a better hallucinogen and a stronger high.But these were truths he couldn’t drag into the light.Not now.Pouring sauce into the wok, he stirred and shook the wok, moving the lotus around in the liquid.The scent rose into the air.He was a monster.
Leander continued, forcing a calm he didn’t feel.“Imagine what use Druwolf would have for someone who could negate the healing magic of a victim, how he could have imprisoned you and cut you off from your shadows.I know why Finn died—he died because he could have challenged Druwolf himself, and now you, who never stood in the same room with that psychopath, want to tell me how dangerous he is.Get over yourself.Finn did what he needed to, the same as me.Neither of our hands are clean because I was there next to him.I was...assisting.”Leander hated that his voice cracked.
Xi had lost most of the color in his face.
Leander let his magic run along the ground where Shanlin sat under a vine-covered arch near the river.“Shit,” he whispered.They were allies, but the days when they’d sat around with popsicles stolen from the corner store were long over.
“I just thought...”Xi cleared his throat.“I know Tecca did things she hated.She told me things...when she was trying to arrange a voluntary surrender.But you...?”
Leander closed his eyes, and his mind summoned the image of Tecca over a huge pot, dripping blood into the concoction to make it more addictive, to make the high last longer and the drop to hit harder.Leander could coax plants to the edge of their natural power, but Tecca could take them past that point.He looked up at Xi who still stared at Leander like he was dirt—as if he was a drug dealer.
Leander scoffed, a familiar sneer settling on his face before he stirred the wok with renewed vigor.“And how many innocent magic users did you turn over to the government?How many people are enslaved right now, some of them in literal chains, because you were an obedient dog for your masters?How many have killed themselves rather than serve, all while you had your comfortable life and comfortable job?What deaths are on your conscience, Hu Xi, younger brother of mine?Maybe you are the one who needs some ethical instruction.”
With every word, Xi shrank away, backing up to the wall that divided their outdoor kitchen from the main room.
The wok smoked as their dinner overheated, and Leander took it off the fire.“Fuck,” he snarled.When he turned around, Xi was gone.And whatever he’d done, he’d avoided plants.Yeah, they were off to a great start.
Right now, Leander hated Xi almost as much as he hated himself.
