I expected cute tables with equally cute chairs. Maybe a poster or two, and the scent of coffee. But Sana’s Cafe was nothing like that. Inside was a lush room full of pillows, bedding, and rugs. I saw hundreds of dreamcatchers hanging on the walls, spiraling up towards the ceiling where long curtains had been draped from. Bells rang softly, and the rustle of clothing softly breezed in the sub-layer of every other sound we made.
“Cute place,” I commented.
“Naturally. Take a seat, all of you,” Sana said. The far side of the wall had been decorated so that it was like a stage. It reminded me of a king’s place in court, where every eye was inevitably drawn there. Sana walked over and began to fiddle with a fancy-looking tea set, the kind you see people sip from with fancy hats. Probably the same kind that caused the American Revolution.
There were cushions on the floor, so we took one for ourselves and lined up against the wall. On the opposite side, the three who followed Sana around mirrored out places. There were long benches stacked lengthwise against the walls, too. Judging by the state of the blankets, they were makeshift beds.
What kind of Cafe had cushions and beds instead of chairs and tables?
An Opium Den. That’s what.
Wol leapt down from my shoulder, settling in next to me. Hwari nestled in between my legs, resting there.
Suddenly, Mina pinched me from the other side, jerking her chin towards the shadowy two individuals next to Sana. She was reminding me not to forget about them. They were taking seats opposite us.
I’d forgotten about the two figures again. This was the third time that I had to purposefully turn my attention towards them. Whatever working they had on them to deflect attention was powerful. Every time I turned to look at them, or subtly tried to take a look at their face, the dreamcatchers hanging from the ceiling turned at just the right angle to hide their features. I also noticed the dreamcatchers were made out of bone and yellow talismans with red paint strokes on them. The small charms exuded a faint air of power, each one vibrating just enough to grate on my nerves.
Crap, I’d gotten distracted again.
Sana spoke up, sending jittery lightning through my mind with each word. “Tea, anyone?”
It didn’t sound like an offer. I nodded.
“Yes, please,” Mina said.
Sana moved painfully slow, walking over to each individual and pouring them a cup, even the familiars. But all I wanted to do was start talking about the reason why we were here. If I were anyone else, I think I would have begun insisting. At the same time, I didn’t want to be rude to Sana. I started fidgeting by the time Sana got to the two invisible guests.
Mina fared much better. She even held up her tea with the pinky raised and everything. Somehow, she made the whole act of drinking tea seem cultured.
God, this is why I didn’t like rich people. They had this whole other subset of small skills just for the sake of making poor people like me seem uneducated. Yeah, well, News Flash. Those things are a social construct. Tea tastes the same regardless of what fancy schmancy things you do with your pinky finger.
At least, that’s what I told myself as I spilled tea on the front of my shirt. Yeah, this was going to stain.
Sana finally took her own place by the elevated platform. It was a strange sight to see: A blonde European goddess drinking tea from a Victorian-era teacup, while sitting in the remnants of an opium den. Akasa, the inugami, took place next to Sana, watching carefully.
“We haven’t been formally introduced, have we? I can start,” Sana began just as the silence began to take weight. “You all know who I am. I am Sana Ravok, and I’ll be mediating this meeting.”
Mediating? Before I could start to chew on the choice of words, Sana gave me a nod to take the introductory baton.
“Jain Shin Hallow,” I said. “This is Wol, and Hwari.”
Mina was next. “Mina Baek.”
“Seoul,” Seoul rumbled.
And naturally, the attention fell on the two veiled individuals.
Maybe it was the order of introductions, the mental aspect of going around, and everyone taking turns. Whatever it was, the expectation of this fact weakened their veil. I found it much easier to focus on them, and observed some additional details I hadn’t noticed before: the dull-gray of their cloaks, and the flash of nervous look they sent towards Sana. Ah-ha. So their veil wasn’t a physical construct, as much as it was a mental one.
“My two guests can answer your questions much better than I can,” Sana said.
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” one of them growled. It was a girl’s voice.
Sana smiled sweetly. “The Baek girl noticed you two and managed to make the attention stick. There is no point in hiding.”
“No, you did that with the introductions,” the blurry girl said angrily.
“Nevertheless, this would solve your particular problems as well. No?”
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There was a bit of hesitation from them before one of them broke something that looked like a stick in half.
Bits of the mental fog cleared away, like puzzle pieces starting to fit together, except in reverse. The girl was brunette, about five-seven if I had to guess. She wore a knee-length plaid skirt and a white button-up. Her build was that of an athlete, honed from years of basketball. Her green eyes were in the act of trying to smear me with disdain from head to toe.
Her partner was a bit of a brute. Even while sitting, he towered over my impressive height of five-seven, which coincidentally was the same height as his girlfriend next to him, with enough muscle to outweigh our combined weights. He shrugged one melon-sized shoulder at me, giving me a nod of acknowledgement even though his traps were actively vertically challenging anatomical movements in the neck. But I did hear that wrestlers are one of the most flexible athletes out there.
“Sup, Jain,” he said with a cool look on his face.
“Isn’t that your school uniform?” Mina asked.
My heart pounded steadily. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“Certainly not,” Sana chimed in.
“What the hell are you two doing here? What is—,” I turned to Sana. “What the fuck?”
“Hallow?” Mina said, her voice growing more confused. “Who are they?”
“They’re my freaking classmates from Charter,” I snapped. “Mina Baek, Ashley Marin. Ashley Marin, Mina Baek.”
Ashley had her arms crossed, looking like she had just swallowed a bug. She looked at Mina up and down, in that way that only girls seem to know how to do. “Hi.”
I pointed to the guy. “This is Greg.”
“We met,” Greg said coolly. “You came by the school.”
Mina frowned, and I felt the sprinkling of her magic as she reached out towards them “They’re… mortals. What are they doing here?”
“Same as everyone else, Mina Baek,” Sana answered. “Seeking refuge.”
I was still reeling from the shock at the identity of the two mysterious guests for Sana’s words to really register. Seeking refuge? That was just a backdrop to the machinations of fate that brought the three students of Charter Academy to a place so supernatural it didn’t even register on most maps of New York City. In fact, it didn’t even exist on the material plane of New York. Hell, I was willing to bet that most of the supernatural crowd had no idea this place was even here, or if they did, could gain entry.
It felt like I just got hit over the head with a hammer.
“You two are still wearing your uniforms,” I said, trying to make sense of the information before me.
“Great observation,” Ashley replied with all the attitude a teenage girl could muster. She even added in the eye-rolling.
Mina’s frown turned into a scowl. “She’s kind of a bitch.”
Ashley looked at Mina in shock, not knowing how to respond to that.
Oh, the irony.
I turned to Sana. She was smiling.
“You didn’t need to introduce them to us,” I said. “But you did.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You did that because they’re related to this whole thing,” I said and felt my eyes widen. “Holy shit, you two are involved with the Mother Tree?”
Ashley quickly adopted her poker face. I’d seen it often enough to see right through her. It was the same neutral face she adopted when the teachers caught Kevin doing something nasty to me, and she needed to look uninvolved. Greg was easy. He refused to meet my eyes. He was always a little soft when bullying me.
“They’re kids,” Mina said. “Teenagers. They can’t possibly have murdered a High Dryad who was on the brink of ascension. The world doesn’t work like that.”
“We’re teenagers too. Besides, you’re the one who said they’re all suspicious,” I argued back.
“I…” Mina stalled, looking lost. She was just as confused as I was.
“Practitioner?” Wol asked.
Sana kept that damned infuriating smile on her face. Ashley and Greg had clammed up. Wol and Hwari looked like they had no idea what was going on. I mean, my familiars were smart —at least Wol was— but he’d been less than excited about the prospect of me attending calculus. I doubted he even cared that these guys were my classmates; he only cared that they were here and what they could offer us. But see, in my opinion, that was the wrong way to go about it.
There was a connection here.
Then they all began to talk at once, each of them sounding unsure in their own unique way.
“If they’re your classmates—”
“Sana, you promised us that—”
“Ashley, maybe we should—”
“Alright, everyone, stop.” My voice cut through the uncertainty with a level of confidence that I didn’t know I had.
And to my surprise, I was confident. That I could find a connection here, piece together all the strings that made up this SNAFU ball of yarn that no one else could. That while Mina was only concerned about the fact that they weren’t practitioners, and Wol overlooked them being my classmates, I was the only one with enough perspective into this whole situation to figure it out.
“Who made you boss?” Ashley snapped.
I ignored her. “Occam’s Razor.”
Hwari glanced up at me. ‘Caller, what is Occam’s Razor?’
“Walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, probably is a duck,” I answered.
Hwari doesn’t have expressions, but if she did, I think she would’ve frowned. ‘They are not ducks. They are human.’
“It’s a problem-solving tool. A mental method. We take a razor and shave away everything unnecessary. We take the minimum number of assumptions and go off of that.”
“You mean the simple answer is the most correct?” Wol asked.
I nodded.
“…You could’ve just said that, no?” Mina asked.
“Again, everyone, stop talking so I can think,” I said. “You two—” I said, pointing at Ashley and Greg. “—are here. So it’s safe to assume you know about magic. Or a very basic understanding of it. You also have a promise with Sana. You’re seeking refuge. You’re also involved with the Mother Tree’s murder.”
Ashley glared daggers at me. Greg just looked uncomfortable.
“Whatever,” I said. “You had a hand in killing the Mother Tree; now you’re on the run. Bam, voila, you’re here at Sana’s Cafe seeking refuge. You probably cut a deal so you don’t have to stay out there,” I jerked my head towards the exit where the slums were. “The question is, how? How?”
“How did they kill the Mother Tree?” Wol offered.
“Not kill. Involvement.” I reframed Wol’s question, presenting it to the two in front of me. “How are you two involved?”
For a second, Ashley’s lips quivered. Then she saw my face, and maybe there was something about my expression she didn’t like. She clammed up, turning away with a tilt of the chin that told me she wasn’t going to talk.
Greg remained stone silent.
Shit. I wasn’t getting anywhere with this. I had to try a different angle.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t know how you got here, and I’m sure there’s a story in there somehow. But the fact that you’re here must mean you two know some things that matter.” I lowered my voice. “And you two probably saw things too. The fact that you two are still wearing your uniforms means that you ran here in a hurry. No time to pack, no time to get ready. Something happened, didn’t it? Something you didn’t expect? And you ended up here?”
Ashley’s huge eyes became watery while still refusing to look at me. She swallowed, then gave a nod.
“You two don’t belong here with—” I eyed Sana, “—the other guys outside. You two also have parents who are probably looking for you. Families. Friends.”
At the word ‘parents’, Greg gave me a troubled look. I don’t think he was a bad guy, i.e., a natural-born bully like Kevin Sloan. More of a bystander who got roped into being bad because all his friends were bad. Most of the time, he left me alone. He was one of those big, quiet guys; solid, liked by everyone, and just sort of down-to-earth. On the other hand, I was scrawny, high-strung, and short-tempered on the best of days. We couldn’t be any more different.
His beady little eyes began to water.
Jesus, they were kids.
I nudged a little more. “I don’t know if anyone else offered you guys help. Real help, not just hiding out here without a plan. Well, let me do it. Let me help you guys return home.”
Greg broke.
“Ashley, I’m going to tell him,” Greg said. Then, without waiting for an answer, he said, “What do you need to know?”