Ari
Once, an heiress touched Ari’s face and offered him her estate if he would marry her. Once, a banking executive tried gifting him a Manhattan apartment in exchange for a date. Over the years, dozens of agents had handed him their cards and begged him to call, said they were scouting for fresh faces and Ari was the best they’d seen in years. If Ari had been the type to say yes to such offers, if he didn’t already work for Lumines, he would have become what high society likes to call an It boy, would without a doubt have turned into a common fixture in magazines and on catwalks.
Instead, Lumines sends him to targeted social functions, to banquets filled with senators and celebrities, to places where he practices the art of negotiation. He learns what to say in front of what kind of person, what expressions please whom, what coaxes them to agree to what he wants, when to withdraw. He is well-known but not famous. He intrigues others by showing no interest in climbing the social ladder. He becomes known for his refined looks and exquisite eyes, for his sweet charm and sharp wit, for being an impeccable listener, for having just the right air of mystery about him, for being unbelievable in bed. And when he is on sand, when everything about him has been enhanced, he is the one that nobody forgets, that people talk about in a breathless rush even weeks later.Remember that guy at the bar, that guy you were talking to, remember his smile? Who was that? Who was that?
He learns to lean into the feeling of attention, let it nourish his soul. In response, the city opens for him, giving way to evenings filled with luxurious hotels and clinking glasses, to women and men in fine clothes, eager to shake his hand.
Like tonight.
From Alexander Reed’s penthouse at the top of the Eastern Columbia Building, the sun is setting, and downtown sparkles beneath it in a sheet oflight. Tonight, every gilded door of his home is thrown open to the rooftop patio, and waiters in white suits glide through a star-studded crowd under the building’s massive, art deco clock tower, delivering cocktails and shots of whiskey and glasses of chilled shrimp.
Among the guests, one particular cluster stands out, a gathering of richly dressed people in a circle of couches, bursting occasionally into uproarious laughter and applause. All of their attention is pointed at a young man sitting in their midst: Ari, looking like a vision in a perfectly tailored suit, a pin of a golden fox gleaming on his collar.
“What about fire?” one of the guests asks him, nodding at the flames flickering before them over black rocks on white concrete.
“Too easy,” Isla calls out.
“Fire!” another chimes in over her, and everyone laughs. “Come on, Ari, show us!”
Ari smiles demurely and notes his audience. As always, Reed has chosen his guests tonight with care, and the crowd is a mix of state and federal congressmen, police captains and lieutenants, local politicians with influence, models, and celebrities hungry for clout. They all readily accepted the invitation for one of Reed’s famous parties, eager for the company and luxurious food and the free vials of high-quality sand, which are now being passed around with abandon, mixed liberally into wine and bourbon and vodka. Everyone is beaming, faces at the peak of their beauty, glowing from the drug’s enhancement.
“I would lean back,” Ari says, which coaxes another peal of laughter from his onlookers. His mind hums with the effects of sand, charming words and smiles coming easily to him. A woman named Charlotte, the daughter of the city’s new police chief, now clings tighter to his arm and grins. Across from them, Dominique St. Clair looks on with amusement as she toys with a diamond ring on her finger, proof of her recent engagement to the heir of a Wall Street tycoon.
Ari reaches toward the flames and recalls the chemistry of fire, of carbon dioxide and water vapor and oxygen and nitrogen. The closer he brings his hand to the fire, the more the flames shy away from his touch, darting away as he transforms the oxygen around his fingers with hydrogen into water, leaving a trail of moisture dotting the black stones in his wake. The familiar pain tightens in his chest as he calls on his soul, stripping away a fragment of it.
The audience coos their delight.How did you do that? Where did you learn that? Can you do that again?To them, it’s all just a magic trick. As Ari cuts straight through the flames, he turns his palm until it faces up. Then he twists his hand, transmuting those elements around the flames into pure oxygen.
The fire, delighted by the sudden fuel, explodes high in a burst of blue and white heat.
The guests shriek. One man, a state senator running for mayor, startles back so suddenly that he spills his whiskey all over his suit. Dominique laughs, a clear, bright sound.
Ari pulls the oxygen out as quickly as he created it, transmuting it back into the other elements, and the fire calms down again, a tame row of flickering flames.
The guests cheer in disbelief at the trick. The girl named Charlotte moves her hand to rest on his shoulder and leans into him, laughing, and he responds by sending a current of dopamine through her, which makes her smile widen.
A waiter comes by, offering the group shot glasses with doses of sand stirred into the shimmering drinks. Isla and Ari both take one. Only Dominique refuses. Most philosophers abstain from taking the drug at all, their already shortened lifespans too valuable to the syndicate to be impacted further.
Isla sips her shot and leans forward. “You always do fire,” she teases, smiling at Ari. She’s a little drunk already, and her eyes shine.
“Not always,” Ari says.
“When are you going to learn a new magic trick for your guests?”
Dominique grins. “You’re just going to let her say that, Ari?” she chimes in.
“Isla’s unimpressed,” Ari says to the crowd, and several onlookers giggle. “Here, then.” And he holds his hand up again, this time focusing solely on the water vapor in the air. When he turns his hand this time, the water molecules rapidly file together, becoming a sheet of water. People jump as the water splashes against the black rocks and sprinkles the nearest people.
“Still easy,” Isla says with a wink. “Good for a show, though. You always deliver on that.”
“And why don’t you do better?” Ari says to her.
“I always do better,” she replies archly. Only Ari catches her innuendo to their occasional trysts, and he rolls his eyes at her. Isla straightens. Hergaze shifts to the gathering. Like Ari, she has her fox crest pinned onto the lapel of her jacket. “Come on. Give me another magic prompt for this little show.”
“Clothes,” a man says.
She shrugs. “If you wanted me to strip you naked, Senator, you could have just asked me out on a date.” The man turns pink and the crowd roars with laughter. “Something else!”
“Water,” another says.
