“Where did you learn this?” I sat on the bed and watched him work. His palms covered each hex and unraveled them on impact, almost like he was plucking them away. His fingers were elegant and fluid, and utterly mesmerizing to behold. Watching him distracted me from the fact that my best friend was out there somewhere, potentially trapped in some insane doorway that I’d accidentally opened. I had no clue what was on the other side of that door, and the not-knowing frightened me more than anything else. More than banshees, more than Leviathan, more than Victoria. I tried to think of this as a recon mission so I could fill Genie in on some Nathan details when I rescued her, because I would be rescuing her. One way or another.
Nathan set to work on the amber hexes, which fell apart at the touch of his fingertips and a further whisper from his lips. “Separabunt necessitudines. Discoperiet nodum. Quod sit potentiam perdidit. Frange est. Frange vincula. Fiat.” They must have been the weaker ones, judging by how rapidly they unraveled. The amber threads un-looped, as though invisible hands were tugging the strands free, the entire thing disappearing in a puff of golden smoke as it finished undoing itself.
“You’re good at this,” I encouraged.
He smiled and moved on to the rusty red designs. “I’ve had a long time to study.”
“You can find out how to do this in books?” I had to keep asking questions to stop myself from toppling into an abyss of fear for Genie. And I really didn’t want Nathan to see me have a panic attack.
“You can, but not these specific spells.” He continued humoring me while he dispensed with the first few reddish hexes, altering the unraveling spell ever so slightly. “You know what a Grimoire is, yes?”
I laughed coolly. “I might not have magic of my own, but I did grow up in a coven.”
“I’ll take that as a yes, then. Apologies if I insulted you—it always pays to understand the knowledge people have before bombarding them with things they may not know.” Beads of sweat trickled down his face as he delicately untwined the last of the red hexwork, deft and precise. “Well, these anti-hex spells came from my father’s Grimoire.”
“He must’ve been very powerful,” I said. “Or did he just have a penchant for hexes?”
Nathan wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve. “I didn’t know him very well, so I couldn’t say. Maybe both, maybe neither.”
“Oh… I’m sorry. Is he… uh… no longer with us?”
Nathan shrugged and began working on the green hexes. “Again, I couldn’t say. He took off when I was three, leaving nothing but a Grimoire to remember him by. My mom gave it to me when I was twelve or so, but before that she hadn’t said much about him, and I didn’t ask.” His Chaos untied the Celtic knots smoothly, but I could see the strain of it on his brow. “I have vague memories of his face from when I was little, but you can’t trust the human brain with such things. It’s more likely that I’ve put together an impression in my mind of what I think he looks like.”
“Did you ever try to find him?” As a daughter of still-married parents, I found it difficult to put myself in his shoes. If it were me, I would’ve wanted to find them. But I knew that wasn’t the case for everyone, depending on the circumstances of a parent’s departure.
Nathan paused and sucked in a heavy breath, his hands still sparking as he worked on the glittering green hexes. “I thought about it, then realized there wasn’t much point. He wouldn’t have left if he wanted to be found. And I had no need for a father figure. My mum had no trouble filling the gap.”
“You said ‘mum.’ I thought you were American?”
“Canadian, actually, but my mum is born and bred Republic of Ireland. Hence the ‘O’Hara’ part. My parents never married, and I guess he didn’t care if I took his name or not.” He closed his eyes, as if he were thinking of her. “We moved to Canada about a year after he walked out. Mum had family there, and I think she wanted to put distance between us and the place where she’d been with him, you know? I don’t think it ended well, but I didn’t understand that until I was much older. And now I’m back here, in the homeland.” He chuckled and got back to work on the last green hex.
I was intrigued to learn more about the calm and collected researcher. It proved the theory that you couldn’t tell much about a person just from looking at them. “Who was he?”
Nathan’s eyes darkened, as if it was painful to remember. “He wasn’t anyone. He certainly proved that when he left. Just a guy, passing through our lives, who never intended to stay.” His breath caught in his throat, and I knew the Q&A session had come to an end.
I was looking for a distraction, but I didn’t need to dredge up all of Nathan’s bad memories while I was at it. Still, I was glad his dad had left him that Grimoire, or we wouldn’t have gotten out of here anytime soon.
I focused on Nathan’s spellcasting instead of idle babbling as he turned his attention to the sparking purple hexes. They called for a very different spell, Chaos streaming out of his palms in crackling strands that were tangibly more powerful. As he chanted, a sliver of lavender light flowed out of his skin and pooled in his hands. Finger-like fronds of the light slithered out and sank into the frenetic balls of purple hexwork. With every thrum of his Chaos strands, a piece came undone, like he was trying to undo the knots in a huge ball of wool. And I stared, transfixed by his power and skill.
