Vespertine
Chapter XVII: Flux, Bitch

The girl reached for the nearest thing on the ground, which happened to be an empty plastic bottle, and hit Quinn in the side of the head. In retrospect, Caiden mused, it was kind of funny.

Quinn glared, completely unaffected by the blow. “Do not make this worse. Answer my question.”

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” the girl said, not looking particularly threatened.

“Sorry if we don’t believe you,” Quinn snarled. “Someone just tried to kill us.”

The girl sighed, as if this wasn’t surprising. “Yeah, I know.”

“You know?” Caiden asked, in confusion.

“Yeah, because she was my grandma.”

Now they were both staring at her in bewilderment. “Excuse me?” Quinn said, eyes narrowing. “Your grandma?”

She rolled her eyes. “Everybody thinks that just because you’re old, you can’t be dangerous. Yes, my grandma. Her name is Margarette.”

Quinn shifted so that she was straddling the girl more comfortably, but didn’t move off her. “How does that prove to us that you’re not trying to hurt us?”

“Because,” she said, exasperatedly, “first of all, if I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve fought back by now. Besides, what do I gain from telling you she’s my grandmother?”

“You did hit me in the head with a plastic bottle,” Quinn pointed out.

Caiden snickered, and then shut up as Quinn glared at him.

“Sorry,” she said, not sounding at all sorry. “Natural reaction to when somebody tackles you.”

Quinn studied her for a moment, and then climbed off, allowing the girl to sit up and dust herself off. “Thanks,” she said. “The name’s Margarette.”

Caiden groaned. “Oh, no. You can’t be serious. Are you trying to tell us we were talking to the wrong Margarette?”

She smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, sorry. I was named after my grandma. I really prefer to be called Arette, though. My parents only named me Margarette to appease my grandma, since she hated my mom.”

“You’re out here alone?” Caiden asked. “You’re like, fifteen.”

This earned him a scathing look. “I’m twenty, first of all,” said Arette, which caused both Quinn and Caiden to raise their eyebrows. “And I’m usually alone with my grandma, since my dad works in a different city. And my mom’s dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Quinn said, quietly. “If it makes you feel better, my mom’s dead too. And my dad. And my brother.”

“My parents are both dead, too,” Caiden volunteered, and then frowned. “I think this just got really depressing.”

Arette shrugged. “It’s alright. She died a while back, so I’ve had a lot of time to get over it. Anyways, I followed you guys for a while because I wasn’t sure if it was really you, but the resemblance is uncanny.” She was looking at Quinn as she said this, glancing her up and down. “You look just like Salvatore.”

“I get that a lot.”

“You said your brother’s dead, which means…”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, then. But I figured as much, seeing as you showed up here in the first place.”

Quinn tilted her head. “That’s pretty much what Grandma Margarette said. Do you want to tell us what exactly is going on?”

Arette nodded. “I will. Let’s go somewhere a little more comfortable, though. There’s an outdoor cafe next block over. My treat.” She turned and began walking out of the alley, and Quinn and Caiden glanced at each other. Caiden shrugged and began following her, and after a brief pause, so did Quinn.

They got to the shop and sat at a table outside in the garden, secluded among tall hedges filled with roses. It was admittedly beautiful, but they had bigger things to worry about.

“So?” Quinn asked, once their coffee had arrived.

“I met Salvatore for the first time, two years ago,” Arette began. “He told me about his plan, and I agreed to help him.”

“His plan regarding the reversal?”

Arette nodded. “Precisely. I don’t know how much he’s told you, but the basic idea is that once the reversal begins, none of the sorcerers will be able to access their powers, essentially turning them into mortals. Salvatore wanted to freeze the world in that moment—damage the field so much that it doesn’t ever complete its reversal, and so the world will stay in that state, magic inaccessible to all.”

They gaped at her. “That’s possible?”

She shrugged slightly. “We weren’t sure. It’s never been tried, or experimented with, so we don’t have any solid proof. But theoretically, if you hit the weakest point in the flux field with enough power, it disrupts the flux lines enough that they scatter forever, and the field itself becomes corrupted.”

“And you guys planned to do this how, exactly?” Caiden asked, skeptically. “It’d take something huge to disrupt the field like that.”

“Yes,” Arette agreed. “Something like a magical bomb.”

“Something like Quinn,” Caiden realized.

Quinn looked at him confusedly. “What?”

“She’s a powerhouse,” he said, looking at Arette instead of her. Arette nodded knowingly.

“It’s a Vespertine power,” she said. “Passed down through the generations. The ability to house massive amounts of energy, and in some cases, create it. There’s always a lot of stuff blowing up when Vespertines are involved.”

Quinn frowned. “What do you mean? My family was—or at least they seemed to be mortal.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you know? The Vespertines were a prominent, powerful family before the war, known for being powerhouses.”

“They did fade into obscurity during and after the war, though,” Caiden pointed out. “It’s a rare last name, but not completely unheard of. These days, being a Vespertine doesn’t immediately bring to mind a powerful sorcerer family.”

Arette nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose you’re right. But anyways, Salvatore’s plan was always for Quinn to blow up the field at the weakest point, during the reversal.”

“But we don’t have our powers during the reversal,” Quinn pointed out. “How would I do that?”

Arette glanced at her bag. “Did you manage to get the box Sal left?”

Quinn nodded and pulled it out of her bag. “Yeah, we grabbed it before your grandma went psycho on us.”

“Why’d she have the box, anyways?” Caiden questioned. “If you’re the Margarette Salvatore was talking about.”

“She found out about our meetings, a while back. My grandma, she’s hellbent on the idea that sorcerers are better than mortals, and at the time, she thought Salvatore was a mortal. She didn’t like that we even spoke, and one day, when I came home, she had torn my room apart and found all of our research, and the box he left me. The rest is history.”

Caiden winced. “Yikes.”

Arette opened the box and pulled out the folded piece of paper, and then unfolded it to reveal the map. Then she pulled another piece of paper out from her pocket, and unfolded it, layering it over the map. Her paper was blue and waxy, and when it was placed over the map, there were certain areas circled. She nodded to one of the circles.

“That’s what this is for. We made a plan, but the plan requires a few items we don’t currently have. So we have to go get them, and then we can be ready for the reversal when it starts.”

“No offense,” said Quinn. “But that still doesn’t seem very plausible to me. The field isn’t something I’d even know how to find, let alone destroy. I barely can control my own magic.”

Arette grinned. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“What can you do? If your power is like your grandma’s, what does polarity have to do with the flux field?”

She didn’t respond. Instead, she raised her fingers and flexed them lightly, concentrating.

All of a sudden, Caiden could feel his magic leaving his body. No, not leaving, exactly. It was just rearranged so that it hovered just out of his reach, and he looked at Arette in wonder.

Quinn was feeling the same effect, and it was even stranger for her to realize how empty she felt without the magic she even knew she had. “What is that?” She asked, sounding slightly alarmed.

Arette grinned and relaxed her fingers. “Flux, bitch.”

“Your power isn’t polarity,” Caiden realized. “You’re a flux user.”

She nodded, and Quinn continued to look fascinated. But then she closed her mouth and frowned again.

“Okay, fine, I understand all that now. Salvatore wants to shut off the field and make everybody mortal, and the three of us are supposed to accomplish that in 10 days.”

“Correct,” Arette said.

“But what I don’t get is why you’re helping him. You’re a sorcerer, aren’t you? Why would you ever want to shut off the field? You’d lose your power.”

She glanced sideways at Caiden. “You too, Caiden. Why are you still here? You know what I’m trying to do. You might just be here until you find someplace safe, but I think we have to be clear about what we want, right now.”

Arette’s eyes refused to meet their gazes. “I have my reasons,” she said. “Forgive if I don’t feel like sharing just yet, considering I just met you guys. But there’s a bigger reason, one you guys haven’t noticed.”

“Which would be?”

“Fate,” she said, and now she was looking up. “Don’t you see how perfect it all is?”

“Not exactly,” Caiden deadpanned. “So far there’s just been a lot of science-y stuff and people trying to kill us.”

She shook her head. “The timing is perfect. A reversal taking place, something that only happens every 100,000 or so years. A revolution, at the same time, and the three people who could possibly make it happen. A flux user to find the weakest point. A powerhouse to disrupt the field. And a healer to keep us alive until it happens.”

She looked at Caiden. “You are a healer, aren’t you? Salvatore told me to expect one when Quinn came.”

“I am,” Caiden answered, surprised. “But there’s no way Salvatore could’ve known that I would be with her.”

Quinn looked at him, suddenly suspicious. “You’re right. That’s kind of…weird.”

Arette shrugged. “I don’t know how Salvatore knew. Maybe he was a seer, who knows?”

Quinn looked back at her. “Wait, you mean Salvatore wasn’t a powerhouse?”

She shook her head. “He never specified what his power was, but I’m assuming that if he was going to use you for this plan, he wasn’t a powerhouse. If he was, why bother going through all this?”

“I suppose,” Quinn said hesitantly. Then she turned to Caiden. “What’s your reason for helping, then?”

“Honestly,” he said awkwardly, “I have nothing better to do. I’m alone now, and as sad as this is, you’re quite literally the only thing I have left.”

“Besides,” he said, quietly, “maybe losing my power isn’t all that bad. It’s never brought me anything other than grief.”

“And saved your life a bunch of times, probably,” Quinn pointed out. “And mine.”

He gave her a sour look. “Are you trying to change my mind?”

She clamped her mouth shut.

Arette laughed. “Well, there you have it. The team that’ll change the world.”

She looked up at the sky. “Fate made sure the right kind of people were born at the right time, in the right place, to make this happen. But the last piece was Salvatore—he brought us all together.”

She raised her coffee cup, as did Quinn and Caiden.

“To Salvatore,” Quinn said, affectionately, albeit a little sadly.

“To Salvatore.”

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