Deep Fire Rising

you. Just that one time together has spoiled them all for me.”

They were living in Paris with her mother when it happened. Tisa’s father hadn’t protested the end of his second marriage or that she was taking their daughter and his teenage son. He had become obsessed with his work and wouldn’t see his family for months at a time, even though they lived in the same isolated village in the Himalayas. Tisa’s mother had come to the village of Rinpoche-La, Jewel Pass, from France, where she’d been recruited into the Order as a young woman. Though ostracized in Tibet for abandoning her husband, whom many saw as divine, she had enough family and friends in Paris to help support her return. They had settled in an airy apartment above a yoga studio on the Left Bank. The owner knew of Tisa and Luc’s father and refused to accept payment for the apartment.

Tisa had always known of her father’s importance in their village and in the ancient monastery that dominated the head of the isolated valley, but the landlord’s donation had been the first time she knew of his influence so far from home. And it was her first taste of the scope of the organization she had been born to.

Looking back, Tisa realized her older brother had had a better understanding of the Order. He had quickly adjusted to their life in France, enjoying the entree his father’s name gave within certain circles. In just a year he’d learned colloquial French, and begun to avail himself to some of the younger female disciples who’d taken to using the yoga studio as a meeting place. Although Luc had yet to be schooled in the full scope and intent of the Order, he knew enough to impress the naive.

Tisa had been home alone one afternoon following school. Her mother was working as a translator at the time. Her children had inherited their ear for language from her. Tisa spoke three languages by then, Luc five and their mother seven. She’d been in her bedroom. It was summer and there was no breeze. In the sweltering heat, she wore panties and an overly large T-shirt emblazoned with the image of the latest teen pop sensation.

Luc came into the room and silently draped a damp towel across the back of Tisa’s legs as she lay on the bed doing her homework. Startled at first, she allowed him to remain, grateful for the towel’s cooling effect. This had been a week of record heat in the city, the highest temperatures either had ever experienced. His hand rested on her hip.

At first they talked about nothing in particular, but soon they returned to the topic that had fascinated them since her mother had taken them away: their father. They had spent hours speculating about the real nature of his work. They suspected he was some kind of freedom fighter who had come from Vietnam to Tibet to liberate the people from the Chinese. To spice their hypothesis were rumors about mystical powers he controlled. Neither knew where the tales had come from, but there had always been whispers about the things he could do.

So on that boiling afternoon, they talked again, embellishing stories they’d told each other a hundred times before, both secretly thrilled to be part of the legend they’d built around their father. After all, they were part of whatever destiny awaited him. Luc spoke about how they were different from the fringe members of the Order who gathered at the studio, and how everyone could sense it. People who visited often talked about how special they were. He asked if Tisa could sense it too. Ever since arriving in France she had felt people treated her with deference and respect she hadn’t earned but had rather been born to. She and Luc were set apart from the rest, placed higher in a hierarchy no one really understood. His hand moved farther up her hip, almost to her buttocks.

They’d shared so much together, he’d said, recalling the one night they’d sneaked into the huge monastery rising from the cliffs above the ancient Tibetan town. There they’d seen the vault of old books with their embossed wax seals and overheard two monks talking about something they called the Navel of the World. He talked about how they’d swum as kids in the hot springs below the village, enveloped in fragrant steam with snowcapped mountains looming over them like gods. He reminded her how they’d named the mountains for animals. And he reminded her about the time she had come into his bed one night when a freak storm had settled in their secluded valley and thunder echoed so loudly she was sure the mountains were going to explode. He’d held her for hours, he said, drying her tears with the hem of his nightshirt.

He said he’d always been there for her, no matter what. Hadn’t he made their move to France so much easier? His fingers were kneading her flesh by now. Tisa had remained still during the entire talk, aware of his hand, but so lonely for their village that his touch was a reminder of home. He seemed to know what she was thinking. He bent close. “I miss it too,” he whispered in her ear, and allowed his mouth to linger near her neck.

The rest of the memory had been expunged from Tisa’s mind. It had taken years, but she truly didn’t remember how far they had gone that sultry afternoon. That deep and dangerous form of denial was the only way she saw she could get around the shame without telling anyone. And that was something she wouldn’t, couldn’t, do.

“What are you doing here, Luc?” Tisa stepped away from him.

His smile faded. “I should ask you the same question.”

“I’ve got every right to use this apartment. It belongs to the Order.”

“I’m not talking about the apartment. I’m talking about why you’re even in the United States. I thought you were home.”

“I haven’t been there in months.” Tisa moved behind the bathroom screen to slide into a pair of baggy sweatpants. She left the robe around her torso because the only top she had handy was a sports bra.

“In New York the whole time?” Luc asked. It sounded like he’d moved into the kitchen.

“I came through Los Angeles. I met with some of our people there to talk about the San Bernardino earthquake.”

“That quake was months ago. What more could you possibly have to talk about?”

Tisa stepped out of the bathroom. Her body felt sticky with sweat and her muscles protested because she hadn’t had a proper cooldown. “I wanted the revised fault slippage numbers. Our estimates were off by almost a meter, and if you paid attention to our real mission you’d know that the oracle’s time retrogression has grown another eleven minutes across all of North America.”

Luc acted as if he hadn’t heard her. “And you came straight here? Didn’t stop along the way?” He was roaming around the apartment like a caged animal, a sleek predatory cat. He moved lightly, possessing the effortlessness of a dancer.

Tisa tugged at her robe. He knew. “No, I came right here. I’m going to Greece in a couple of days and wanted to wait in New York rather than L.A.”

“Because I was in Las Vegas with some of our people and someone swears they saw you at the wheel of a BMW with Philip Mercer.”

“How could I do that?” she protested too quickly. “I’ve never even met him.”

Luc laughed, all pretense of civility gone. “I think you have met him. I think you followed me to Las Vegas and helped him escape. I think if I could prove it, I’d have you killed for interference.”

“Interference?” Tisa shot back, ignoring his empty threat. “Interference with what? You weren’t authorized to go to Las Vegas in the first place.”

“I don’t need authorization.”

“When you wear the Lama’s blue robe, you can make decisions, Luc. Until then you are under his authority.”

He threw himself onto the futon. “Screw the Lama. I don’t need him anymore. None of us do. Watchers stuck on the sidelines. That’s all he wants us to be. We should help shape the world. That is our true destiny.”

“We are watchers. That is what we’ve been for a hundred and fifty years. Even you must see the consequences if we change our role.”

“And you didn’t try to change your passive role when you contacted Mercer in Las Vegas?”

“What were you doing there?” Tisa dodged.

“Investigating a seismic disturbance,” he said smugly. “Same as you do all the time.”

To confront her brother further, Tisa would be forced to admit her efforts at the Luxor Hotel. “You weren’t supposed to be there,” she said lamely. “We have chroniclers in California that could have gone to the epicenter.”

“The epicenter was in the middle of a secure government facility, dear girl. They wouldn’t have gotten close. This is one I had to do.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. And I’m not your ‘dear girl.’ ”

“You were once.”