Xavier frowned. “What’s going on? Are you the Chimera?” How could this have happened? His brother had been a pure wizard when Xavier left home, and no creature blood was in his family. Unless it was another magical line his parents had hidden.
Jared waved to a chair. “Have a seat.”
He shuffled over to a cushioned chair and waited for Jared to speak first. Clasping his hands together, he fought the urge to bite his fingernails. He had kicked the habit at eleven when Melcori applied a bitter lotion to them. Still, the urge struck him occasionally, much like a smoker with a nicotine craving.
Jared fidgeted with the pen on his desk, not meeting Xavier’s eyes for several minutes. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Xavier frowned.
“For not contacting you. I didn’t understand what had happened for the longest time. All I knew was that our parents left the house with you and returned without you. When I asked what happened, Father threatened to disown me. Then, Mother tried to use memory charms. They didn’t hold. Unfortunately, they worked on everyone else. No one would help me find you when I asked them what they thought happened to my brother. Mother told everyone you were my imaginary friend, and they were getting me counseling for my delusions. No one would believe a ten-year-old over their parents.
Xavier frowned. “Then I don’t see how it was your fault you didn’t contact me.”
Jared fiddled with a silver pen, avoiding direct eye contact with Xavier. “I had a detective track you down two years ago, but I was too ashamed to call you after all this time. I should’ve tried. Besides, I figured you probably wanted nothing to do with the family that cast you aside since you never contacted me…" He let the sentence hang.
Xavier rushed to fill in the pause. “Father told me never to contact anyone in the family.” He shifted in his seat. “When no one bothered to reach out, I wrote you all off. Father isn’t the only one who hates Blood Mages. We’re not a popular branch.”
“Shame since you’re instrumental in so many branches of magic.”
Xavier shrugged. The fact that Blood Mages were both hated and needed wasn’t news to him, and it didn’t change anyone’s attitude toward his magic.
“What happened to you? How did you become the Chimera?” How had his sweet older brother, who used to smuggle him cookies from the kitchen, become a feared mob boss? People changed as they got older, but not this much.
“So many things happened.” Jared propped his forearms on his desk. “With his usual charm, Father insulted the wrong family, and I was taken hostage. They sold me to some wizards who pumped me full of experimental chemicals and triggered a latent magical heritage.”
“Which one?” Considering Blood Magic had been latent, he was worried about what had awakened in his brother. It couldn’t be the same, or Xavier would’ve heard. As Oliver pointed out, the Blood Magic community was small.
“Time Magic.” Jared grinned.
“That’s not so bad… is it?” Xavier didn’t know much about Time Magic, but he didn’t remember it having a bad reputation. “Did your parents disapprove?” He refused to call them his parents.
“Not over the time magic, but they hated me turning into multiple animals, sometimes all at once. Despite being Father’s fault that I was captured, I was no longer considered a proper wizard. According to him, killing my captors was the wrong way to end their torture, and it put Father in a bad position with his business partners. Not that it mattered to him that a few of those partners had helped kidnap me. He then did what I suspect he did with you. Put some money in my account and found me a Master. Unfortunately for me, my Master wasn’t only a gambler.” Jared shuddered.
“What did he do?”
A cold breeze swirled through the room despite the closed windows.
“It isn’t what he did, but what he intended to do. He was a pedophile. My beasts didn’t take kindly to his plans.”
“What happened?”
Jared paled. “I ate him.”
“What?”
“My snake swallowed him whole. Once he was dead, I threw him back up. It was disgusting and traumatizing. Not as traumatizing as what he planned to do to me, but bad enough.” Jared shifted in his seat and fiddled with his pen, not making eye contact.
“Then what happened?” Xavier was beginning to think his disownment had been the best thing that ever happened to him.
Jared slumped in his seat. “No one believed me. He’d had a spotless reputation, and none of his previous victims were willing to come forward. I was blackballed from the Time Magic Fellowship. They couldn’t bind my magic since my chimera protected me, but they ensured no one would ever train me. As you can see, I found a way to learn independently with varied results.”
“Is that why you look so much older?”
“Yeah, by my reckoning, instead of two years older, I’m at least six years older than you.”
“There was no other damage? Did you see a doctor? Aging rapidly could’ve caused issues.” He didn’t know what kinds of issues, but it couldn’t be healthy to put his body under the strain.
Jared shrugged. “Nothing that my doctors or I have been able to detect.”
