Chapter Text
Fourteen years ago…
Kinn pressed a hand to the gunshot wound in his side, ducking as another bullet sailed over his head. He raised his own weapon to return fire—trying to suck breath through useless lungs, pain flaring—before running again. The Italians gave pursuit.
He slipped down another alley and dared to glance over his shoulder. They hadn’t seen where he had gone, weren’t yet following him, though they would. The alley was a dead end; the adrenaline rush faded as he realized that he was done. Kinn staggered, going to his knees by a dumpster as the blood soaked through his shirt.
This couldn’t be it—he was only sixteen. He wasn’t supposed to die this way. But he was unable to run any longer; the Italians would find him soon enough. Kinn checked the magazine of his gun to see how many bullets he had left. At least he would take some of them down with him.
One of the doors opened into the alley, and a boy holding a trashbag appeared, heading for the dumpster Kinn was (dying) in front of.
He looked to be a couple years younger than Kinn, too young for any type of job, even taking out the garbage. In this part of town, though, most employers were unscrupulous enough to hire children, pay them—or more likely, their parents—under the table.
The boy stopped when he saw him, the trash falling to the ground as he came forward.
“I need you to call the police,” Kinn gasped at him, shoving his hand harder into his side in hopes it would stem the bleeding.
He’d have to take his chances with the authorities. Hopefully one or two officers would be on his family’s payroll and get him to one of the Theerapanyakul clinics. Kinn didn’t want to think about the alternative—that the responding police officers would belong to the Italians instead. It was a risk he had to take.
But the boy kept coming toward him, a half-smile on his face, his hand—that had just been touching the trash, disgusting—outstretched.
“What are you doing?” Kinn asked, falling backwards, pain twisting its way through his ribs as he tried to get away.
“Don’t worry, I won’t touch you,” the boy replied, kneeling beside him, pulling his shirt up to expose the wound (Kinn looked and then wished he hadn’t). Then the boy winked, the action transforming his thin face. “But it’ll feel better if I do.”
True to his word, his hand hovered barely a finger’s-breadth above the wound. Warmth bloomed, itchy at first, then turning slick under his skin, like sinking into a bath, the surface of the water sliding over him as heat slid over the wound, leaving painlessness in its wake. Startled, Kinn’s eyes found the boy’s face, his own gaze vacant, focused on the hole in his side.
And then it was over.
“What the fuck,” Kinn demanded, pawing at the skin. In the dim light of the streetlamps, the former wound was only a patch of new skin, faintly pink.
Healer.
“Do you want the bullet?” asked the boy, offering it to him. Kinn took it from shockingly cold fingers, wondering at the juxtaposition, the warmth of the twisted piece of metal, the chill of the person who’d caused it.
Shouts ricocheted down the sides of the alley, followed by the tramp of heavy feet. The Italians had found him. Distracted, the boy sprang upright, and Kinn tried to heave himself up, put himself between the healer and the assassins coming after him. He couldn’t be the reason that the healer was found, taken.
The boy spun back around and pushed him down. “Try not to move for a few more minutes,” he ordered, his face cracking into a mischievous smile. “They’re the ones who should be afraid.”
Kinn’s head swam as the Italians came into view. His aim had been good enough to reduce the squad of eight to five, but he didn't like the odds of five against two. Particularly when the healer was standing between him and them.
One of the fighters in the squad took his time, lining up his shot—as Kinn was lining up his, his gun hidden between his hip and the pavement.
“I can’t believe that one of the Theerapanyakul sons is hiding behind a kid,” he said. “You should come out and die like a man.”
Kinn tried to obey, gathering his feet underneath him, reaching out a hand to push the boy out of the way, make one last stand, or at least not die sitting down. The new skin pulled as he moved, though, and he found himself sinking back onto the ground, cursing his weakness.
The boy glanced back at him. “I told you not to move right away,” he said, sounding irritated. “Everything’s still knitting together in there.”
Oh yes, Kinn was about to die of multiple gunshots to various extremities, but what was important was not straining the freshly-healed wound in his side. Seeing the last of the attackers draw their firearms, he made one final attempt to get the boy to save himself.
“They’re going to kill us both, if you don’t leave,” he told the boy.
He looked skeptically at the attackers. “Who, them?” he asked. “They’re not much of a threat. I bet they even drop their guns when I do this—”
Which was when one of the attackers screamed as the metal of his gun turned red, sizzling into his flesh—Kinn flinched—until at last the man managed to shake the weapon free. Then another man groaned, clawing at his face.
“You shouldn’t have put metal fillings in your teeth,” the boy told him, and heat began to rise from the pavement. It was pleasant where Kinn had fallen, just warm enough to chase away the nighttime chill. But as he watched the attackers jump and dance, their shoes melting into the street, he suspected their situation was very different.
At last it was over—the attackers retreated, leaving their weapons behind, the metal in each one melted out of shape, stuck into the bubbling tar of the pavement.
The boy waited a moment to ensure that they wouldn’t come back, then turned to him. “See? Not much of a threat.”
Not a healer. He was a fire-bringer.
Magic was not common, but Kinn had met healers before—been healed before, even. Fabric workers, metal workers, musicians—he knew of them. The Theerapanyakuls didn’t use them, but some of the other mafia families did. There was a thriving black market in new ways to subdue their powers, use them for gain.
The ones who could be used like weapons were the most valuable, of course.
He’d only heard of fire-bringers in fucking legends. Kinn couldn’t imagine how much the boy would be worth on the black market. And whoever owned him had made him take out the garbage behind a seedy bar. A senseless waste of power. They didn’t deserve to have him.
“Come here,” Kinn said, struggling to stand, get a good look at the boy who’d just brought down his enemies. “Who do you belong to?”
The boy pulled the neck of his shirt down—shivering as he did—revealing bare skin, though hardly anyone used collars to subdue them anymore. He flashed his wrists next, bereft of the cuffs magic-users were required to wear, flaunting his freedom. Kinn frowned as he leaned forward, squinting to see—
“Are you imagining your mark here? Don’t you want to own me?” the boy asked, a mocking edge to his voice.
Kinn blinked; the thought of anyone owning the fire-bringer in front of him jarred in its wrongness. He’d been silent too long, though, and the boy nodded as if Kinn had failed his test.
“That’s what I thought,” he said, before he set himself on fire.
The heatwave pressed him back against the bricks of the alley; Kinn gasped as the tower of flame sucked the air from his lungs. He saw a dark figure at the heart of the fire, but then the smoke stung his eyes, the white heat left streaks on his vision—
and then it was over, except the faint smell of soot on the air. The bullet still warmed his hands. The boy was gone.
Kinn rolled the metal in his fingers, aware of a sense of loss, thinking of the fire-bringer who might have been his, if only he’d been faster to set him free.
Present day…
Porsche toed open the bar’s back door, moving slowly enough that the aging metal wouldn’t squeal and announce his presence. He slipped into the stockroom, hid behind a rack of shelving, waiting for the lights to be switched on by…
“Hia!” Chay gasped when he found him.
Porsche snorted. “Let me guess. You didn’t see me coming.”
His brother pressed a hand to his chest, presumably getting over the shock. “I can’t see my own future,” Chay reminded him, voice sing-song from saying it so often. “Or yours. Yours is too close to mine.”
Porsche glanced back at the door, worried about his brother’s safety. As far as their uncle was concerned, though, Chay was dead, killed in a catastrophic bridge collapse a few years ago. Porsche was the one their uncle and his men would be tracking—and he wanted them to find him this time.
When he turned around, Chay’s face was arranged in an expression meant to be reassuring.
“I’m as safe here as I would be at the apartment,” he noted. “Safer, even. At least there’s CCTV here.”
He was right, Porsche knew. He also knew he would continue to worry for the next few weeks, until the time came to fake his own death. Just as he’d done with the bridge collapse, Chay had seen the destruction of the Costa family, one of the mafia players in town. One night soon—Chay couldn’t tell exactly when or how—Porsche Pachara Kittisawat would (apparently) die...and then they’d both be free.
Porsche shrugged, as committed to faux-reassurance as Chay was. “How’s the bar working out for you?” he asked instead.
There weren’t many places in the city willing to hire someone completely under-the-table, no documents, no identification numbers, cash only. There were even fewer employers he’d trust not to feed his brother to the wolves if they ever learned what Chay could do.
“Oh, Yok is great,” Chay replied. “She hasn’t given me any trouble. And in return—” He smiled. “I’ve kept trouble away from here. There was supposed to be a Safety and Health inspection earlier this week, but the inspector deleted the bar’s information from the database instead. By accident, of course.”
Porsche refrained from asking how much power it had taken his brother to manage that. He supposed that in the maze of government bureaucracy, any future was possible.
“It sounds like this place is working out pretty well then,” he said. “Do you need anything from me?”
“You can always help with stocking,” Chay answered, wrinkling his nose as he pointed at one of the boxes on the floor. “Those are too heavy to lift. And the coffee pot is broken.”
Grateful for something to do, Porsche joined his brother in pulling bottles out of the boxes and stocking them on the shelves. He couldn’t lift the boxes either—the scar tissue and subsequent limited range of motion in his back ensured that.
“What about you?” Chay asked. “How are the Costas spending their final days?”
“They’ll die as they lived,” Porsche replied, thinking of all the lives the mafia family had destroyed. They deserved whatever was about to happen to them. He flashed his brother the leather-and-metal cuff on his wrist. “They’ve been fine to me, though. No one wants to hurt a healer.”
Another smile from Chay. “You’re doing what you like best, then. And the cuff doesn’t work on you, right?”
Because Porsche wasn’t a healer. His power was fire, or perhaps over fire: the ability to direct flame, find avenues for the heat inside him. Healing was the one he preferred; burning out infection, cauterizing the wound, increasing circulation with warmth.
“I’ll be ready, whenever it happens,” he told Chay.
“In that case,” Chay said, with an air of changing the subject. “Do you feel like winning the lottery tonight? We could use the cash.”
They could. Porsche wouldn’t be able to withdraw much cash from the bank—their uncle might get suspicious if the account was empty when he died. So he nodded, and Chay plucked at the air, his gaze going vacant as he saw what no one else could, arranged futures until he found the one he wanted.
“The convenience store, two blocks away from here,” Chay said. “At 9:32 tonight, just after the man in the red shirt checks out, buy the Colossal Cash Scratcher.”
Having a brother who could change the future (or as Chay said, choose one future out of many) was very convenient when they needed to supplement their income with lottery winnings. After this, they’d need to stick to the smaller prizes, only a few thousand baht at a time, the ones that would require no identification, wouldn’t make the news when they won.
Chay’s hands stilled then as he saw something else. He looked troubled. “There are always bullets in the dark, but tonight a man has one of yours,” he told Porsche, promptly raising every hair on the back of his neck. And his arms. And probably his legs.
“Cryptic,” Porsche said, instead of horrifying. “So…is that a no on winning the lottery?”
He petted his arms as his brother’s gaze went vacant again, willing the hair to go back down.
“The lottery will be won by whoever buys the ticket at 9:32 tonight. I don’t know whether it’s you or not,” Chay said eventually, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I didn’t even know you had a gun—how would I know who has one of your bullets?”
Porsche was as perplexed as his brother. Chay emerged from behind his hands, his eyes red-rimmed from effort. He turned away as Porsche reached out, and at last Porsche let his hands drop.
All power had a price. Porsche’s, at least, was simple enough. But for Chay, changing the future required seeing all possible futures, thousands upon thousands of actions and consequences overlapping each other. Winning a scratch-off wasn’t worth the cost.
They needed the money, though.
“You mentioned a coffee pot?” Porsche asked, changing the subject, wiping the sympathy from his face.
“Behind the bar, yes,” Chay said, looking grateful for the distraction, motioning him through the door and into the front room. This early in the day, they were the only employees in the building. “It brews, but the hotplate under the coffee pot doesn’t warm up anymore,” his brother explained.
Porsche touched the ceramic plate beneath the coffee pot, cold under his fingers. There wasn’t a lot he could do here—he was the human equivalent of a match and a container of gasoline—but perhaps he could awaken the memory of heat in the material. If it was a very old coffee pot (and given the state of this bar, it was), the memory of heat might be enough.
Sure enough, warmth flared under his hands, even as the rest of him went cold for a moment—all power had a price, after all.
“I don’t know how long it will last,” he said when he could feel his fingers again. “And you shouldn’t leave it plugged in once it’s brewed.” Magic and electricity didn't always play nicely with each other. Porsche asked, “Why didn’t you just pick a future where the coffee pot actually worked?”
It was Chay’s turn to snort. “I could have. But I wanted to see how you solved the problem.”
The casual observer would have looked at his tousled hair, the lazy smile on his face, the way he sprawled in the booth and concluded that he was just another useless son of a rich family who’d had too much to drink and ended up in a dive bar in the bad part of town.
Rich family, yes.
Too much to drink…debatable.
Useless son, Kim thought not. He owned this sketchy bar, among his other properties. Kim used it when he needed to meet contacts whose faces couldn’t show up on CCTV. The bar’s external cameras were fed an endless loop of minutia; the internal cameras were focused on people’s shoes, not their faces.
Kim toyed with the whiskey in his glass, the same finger he’d been swirling around for the past thirty minutes, waiting for his contact. Tonight was simple; just a brush pass with one of his people. Then he’d try one of the new bottles he’d ordered for the bar—a 25-year bourbon, just a bit out of his personal price range.
What was the good of being the useless son of a rich family if he couldn’t falsify business expenses?
His music career had been the price he’d paid to take over the Theerapanyakul family’s intelligence networks. His one-hit-wonder persona served as the perfect cover, allowing him to drink too much in too many bars and have his hands all over too many people (to get the information they carried, obviously).
After his brother Tankhun had died in a kidnapping-gone-wrong, Kinn had done his best to shield Kim from the work their family did. Tankhun had been targeted due to his involvement in the family business, Kinn had argued; Kim would be safer if he stayed away. It had worked, for awhile.
Then his uncle had attempted to take over the major family last year. In mafia parlance, takeover meant kill them all. Now there was no minor family to help with their operations, fewer listening ears to trade information for information, make connections, hold their status among the other mafia families in town.
The attempted takeover/assassination had sent a message to those families: the Theerapanyakuls were vulnerable. All eyes were on them now–the families were just waiting to see which one of them would make the first move.
Probably the Costa family.
Kim caught a glimpse of his contact through the people crowding the bar. He scowled into his finger of whiskey (he didn’t drink until after the job had been completed), waiting for the man to approach him, forcing himself not to look up again until he heard—
“Is this seat taken?” his contact asked, dropping into the booth much too close to Kim. He forced himself to relax his fingers before he shattered the glass.
“It is now,” Kim replied, raising his finger of whiskey to his lips, letting the liquid slosh as he set it down again (the casual observer wouldn’t notice that the amount of whiskey in the rocks glass hadn’t changed at all). “Who are you?”
His contact snuggled closer—his fingers clenched on the glass again—and said, “Just someone who wants to buy you a drink.” Kim felt the man slip a drive into his pocket before his contact drew back, looked him over appraisingly, and asked, “Don’t you want me to buy you a drink?”
“Sure,” Kim replied, glad to have the handoff completed (and equally glad to have his personal space returned to him).
The casual observer would have thought that Kim had sent the man to get drinks while he held the table. Instead, his contact would ensure that there were no (less-than-casual) eyes watching before slipping out the back exit.
The easiness of the mission grated on him. Here he was playing the useless, drunken son of the Theerapanyakul family while the Costas mobilized in the alleys, in the boardrooms, at the parties he was no longer invited to—his one-hit-wonder persona might be popular among the D-list celebrity crowd, but nowhere else.
Kim drained his whiskey and headed for the bar to retrieve his much deserved 25-year bourbon.
The work wouldn’t be so bad if only he was getting somewhere. But by the time the information got to him, the opportunities were already wasted, leaving him to apologize (again) to Kinn and his father, resolve to do better—even though he barely knew what he was doing, most of the time—
How long did it take to get a drink around here?
Kim drummed his fingers on the bar in disbelief as the moments ticked by. The bartenders at the bar that he owned were preoccupied with other customers. He couldn’t even complain to management about terrible service since that would mean 1) admitting that people had deemed him inconsequential enough to receive terrible service and 2) that he cared enough about it to complain.
Ah, finally. A bartender was coming his way. Kim knew how to make him stop.
He waved his credit card in front of the bartender’s face, making the man sway backward in surprise, succeeding in drawing his attention.
“May I help you?” the bartender asked, as Kim returned the credit card to his phone case.
“There’s a 25-year bourbon in the manager’s office,” he told the man. “It’s mine.”
The man’s brows came together, and Kim looked at him—really looked at him—for the first time, the bar’s flashing lights turning his hair blue, the contrast between his smooth skin and dark brows, the way the overhead lights cast his eyes into shadow.
Not his lips, though. Kim could see those perfectly fine. They were perfectly fine.
“I’ll have to ask the manager,” the bartender said, and Kim had to relax his hands again before they cracked whatever they were clenched around this time (his phone, in this case).
“Fine,” he told the man. “Do it now.”
The man disappeared into the back of the bar as Kim drummed his fingers on the battered wood (the casual observer would have noticed that the Theerapanyakul’s useless son even received terrible service at a hole-in-the-wall establishment like this one and been reassured that he was, in fact, useless).
But then Yok poked her head out of her office—waved at him—and the bartender came back with his bourbon, sliding the bottle across the bar. Kim gripped the 25-year by the neck, enjoying the heft of very expensive liquor, already thinking about the slide of bourbon over his tongue, the slow warmth that would grow in his chest.
“Did you want a glass?” the bartender asked, tentatively offering one.
Kim made a grab for it—he'd left his previous one back at his table—and their hands touched.
He heard the man gasp as the touch made him look up, the light catching his eyes, throwing into relief the crystalline edges of his features, like the frozen outer rings of a star. The man was frozen too, and Kim was tempted—likely he’d only have to crook a finger to have that beautiful face to himself for the evening, to spend the night making a star fall.
So many people had beautiful faces, though. And likely Yok would eviscerate him for interfering with one of her employees. Nothing scared that woman, certainly not the Theerapanyakul’s useless son.
Kim went back to his table.
Time had stopped.
Just for a moment, as the stranger’s hand had brushed his, all the futures in Chay’s head had fallen away, like the threads had been tugged beyond his grasp. He had breathed in the respite, marveled at whatever power the man had over him.
Chay was in control of himself again the next moment, the crisscrosses of hundreds of fortunes invading his consciousness. He reached out for the man too late, his hand falling back against the bar as he watched him walk away.
If Chay looked closely—not that he wanted to look too closely—he could see the threads of the future twined around every person in the bar. Innocuous drunkenness, for most, creeping liver disease for some (he tried not to serve those people). Most people would go home to an apartment they couldn’t quite afford and worry about money until the alcohol did its job.
The man’s future, though, was as blank as Chay’s own. Chay had to know his name.
He hadn’t been able to see the credit card the man had (somewhat rudely) shoved in Chay’s face earlier. Chay bit the inside of his lip as he found him again in the crowd, moving toward one of the booths in the back of the bar. He had kept his credit card in a holder on the back of his phone, had he not?
He might not be able to change the man’s future, but he could change the futures around the man. The threads beckoned, some more possible than others. It was possible, perhaps, for a thief to grab the man’s phone and then pull out his credit card and then drop his credit card and then run away. But arranging that future wasn’t plausible—it would take too much power, draw too much attention.
Even before Chay had faked his death, he had been cautious about drawing attention.
So Chay found the tiny thread connected to the man’s phone case. It was both possible and plausible that the adhesive on the phone case would give out. From there, it took only a flick of his fingers to send someone stumbling across the floor. The credit card skittered under a table where Chay could pick it up later.
Chay kept an eye on the man as he drank his way through a few fingers of whiskey, filling drink orders absently as he wondered what to make of the man who could stop his power. He’d never heard of such a thing before, outside of the cuffs and collars magic-users were required to wear. When at last the man headed out of the bar, Chay trotted over to the table to collect his prize.
Kim Theerapanyakul.
He could google the name later; for now, Chay followed Kim down the hallway to the back exit, not knowing what would happen when the man touched him again to retrieve his credit card. Perhaps what had happened before was a fluke, perhaps he’d crossed from foresight into full-blown hallucinations at last.
But then a different future intruded.
The two men locked eyes as the bar’s back door opened, waiting for their target to come out. They would back him up against the wall, look for the desperation in his face, the resignation in his voice as his eyes searched for escape. They were so close to finishing the mission.
No. Chay ran down the hallway, but he was too late; Kim had already slipped through the back door, would already be facing the two attackers, his future rapidly turning to dust—and with it, whatever respite he had given Chay.
He got to the door in time to peer through the peephole, see the future playing out (as futures did).
“My family will come after you. You’ll beg for death before they’re done,” Kim threatened, though it didn’t stop one of the attackers from screwing the silencer on his gun.
It couldn’t end like this. Chay extended his hands, but Kim’s future was blank, an obscurity of warp and weft. Chay looked around him, evaluating his options.
“Your family will be even smaller after tonight,” one of Kim’s attackers said. “After we kill you and your brother.”
It was difficult, so close to the present, the threads nearly woven into reality. Chay had to yank to arrange what happened next—
the attacker’s gun jammed.
Which was all the opening Kim needed, leaping forward to wrench the gun out of the attacker’s hands, before two quick shots put an end to the assassination attempt. Breathing hard, Kim looked around him, as if sensing his audience. His eyes met Chay’s through the peephole—
A man staggered against a building, bleeding from a bullet wound in his upper arm, strands of black hair falling across the forehead as he tried to press a hand to the bleeding hole, another to the stitch in his side. He fell to his knees in the alley, but even as his eyes closed, he was satisfied; he had killed the attackers who had pursued him.
But the vision broke apart as Kim slammed the door open, grabbing him by the arm, dragging him out into the alley behind the club. Chay went tamely, the strange stillness once again descending over him, as he reveled in whatever power was in the man’s touch.
“I should have known it was a setup,” Kim said, his fingers digging into Chay’s arm, the barrel of his gun jabbing into his heart. “Your partners are dead, as you can see. Do you really want to join them?”
Chay’s swallow was loud against the sudden silence in his head, the man’s fingers hot against him, his palm sweaty despite his cool expression. Very slowly, hoping Kim didn’t shoot him before he could explain himself, he reached into his pocket.
“Well?” Kim demanded.
His hand trembled slightly as Chay held up the piece of plastic he’d threaded a few futures to get, the name he’d needed to know. He looked at the man he’d do anything to see once more.
“You left your credit card inside,” he said.
His cousin was screaming again. Tankhun cracked open one eye, glancing at the clock. Before midnight, unusually early for the nightmares to begin. He supposed Vegas hadn’t been able to stay up any longer. They’d both known the nightmares were coming after what Vegas had begun to do.
He waited for a few minutes, plugging his ears—hoping the episode was short-lived. But as the minutes ticked by with no diminution in the noise, Tankhun gave up and padded toward his cousin’s room.
Despite the lack of sleep for the—he grimaced—third night in a row, he couldn’t hold it against him.
They’d played the long game with their last guard, and they’d lost. The man had seemed friendly up until they’d suggested that he help them escape the facility, but he’d chosen to think about selling information about them to another mafia family instead. As though his father would even barter anything for either of their lives. Tankhun supposed the Theerapanyakul patriarch might pay their enemies to dispose of them quietly.
That was the purpose of the facility, actually.
In any case, they couldn’t let the guard get beyond thinking about it, so he had to be...taken care of.
A yell—mostly muffled—echoed down the hallway as Tankhun swung open his cousin’s door. In the dim light from the hallway, he could see his cousin twisted into his blankets.
“Nong,” he said, turning on the lamp by Vegas’s bedside. He couldn’t say that once Vegas was awake (he had no wish to repeat Vegas’s first few months in the facility, where his cousin had lashed out at him because there was no one else to lash out at. He still had nightmares about those nightmares), but Tankhun missed saying nong, missed looking after his brothers.
“Khun,” Vegas said, half-sobbing his name. He dug his knuckles into his eyes—Tankhun winced—and took another shaky breath as he sat up in bed. “I’ve been locked in this fucking hellhole for almost a year,” his cousin said, staring up at the ceiling. “Where is my brain getting this from?”
Tankhun had been locked in this fucking hellhole a lot longer than that, ever since he’d come back from that kidnapping attempt broken past the point his father was willing to repair. He could attest that his brain had never run out of horrors to throw at him.
“How’s it going with the guard?” he asked instead.
“I need a few more nights with him before he’ll be gone from the island of misfit toys,” Vegas said. “I don’t want him to be able to speak again. Or—” and he paused, then said speculatively, “Perhaps I want him to speak but never be listened to.”
Okay, Cassandra, Tankhun forbore from saying. He didn’t want to know the details of what his cousin was doing to the man. The nightmares Vegas had sent him during his first few months at the facility still filled him with dread. If Vegas had wanted to rip apart his mind instead of simply bombarding him with his worst fears, he could have.
The facility was bugged, so they never discussed what Vegas did: dwell in dreams, twist oblivion. The moment Korn learned what Vegas could do (dreamwalk, some of the poems said), his father would take him out of the facility, put him to work manipulating their enemies.
All power had a price, though, and his cousin was paying for both of them. Better to let Korn think that his nephew was slowly recovering from an extended coma following the failed takeover.
Vegas squeezed his arms around his pillow, for a moment looking as young as Kim had the last time Tankhun had seen him. Too many years ago, now. At least Vegas had confirmed that his brothers were still alive.
“We have to start from the beginning again,” Vegas remarked, the bitterness rankling in his voice. “How have you lasted this long, Khun?”
“I have a rich inner life,” Tankhun said drily. “What do you need me to do when the next guard arrives?”
“Let’s not play another long game,” his cousin replied. “Get me a focus. Something that belongs to them. Otherwise it will be too hard to find them later.”
“Ah,” Tankhun noted, instead of high-tailing it back to his room to hide under the bed. Their last guard had worn the black-on-black uniform of the Theerapanyakul family, had kept very few personal items except—
“Theerapanyakul pin,” Tankhun said.
“Fuck that,” was Vegas’s follow-up. “I’m not dealing with someone who actually wants to wear this family’s brand on their chest.”
His cousin had a point. If someone thought the pin belonged to them, then their dreams were likely not a place Vegas would enjoy trampling around in. A fascinating question (albeit for another time), then, whether Vegas enjoyed tramping around in anyone’s dreams.
“Sorry, remind me who followed his father into a doomed takeover attempt and then got thrown in here with the other Theerapanyakul heir?” Tankhun asked, because it was worth reminding his cousin that people could change, that they could sway a guard to their side.
They needed to, if they wanted to escape. Tankhun had an appointment to keep with his father. He wondered again, briefly, what Kinn and Kim had been told when he hadn’t come back from that kidnapping. That he was dead, probably.
Vegas yawned. “You win,” he told Tankhun. “I need to get back to work.”
Oh. He had hoped that three nights would be the end of the price Vegas paid for using his power. His cousin looked like he’d break if Tankhun looked at him the wrong way, and Tankhun couldn’t imagine he looked much better.
“I’ll be fine, Khun,” Vegas grumbled, though he didn’t throw anything as Tankhun settled into a chair. “You don’t have to stay.”
Tankhun hummed, pretending to examine his nails as his cousin buried his head underneath his blankets. Ever practical, he waited until his breathing had evened out before he whispered, “Sleep well, nong.”
Winning the lottery (or getting a minor prize from a scratch-off, same difference) never got old. The 20,000 baht prize was the last big one they’d earn—the bigger prizes required identification to claim. They now had enough cash to squirrel some away for his impending demise.
Their cash flow would drop once neither of them could work legal jobs, but perhaps they wouldn’t need to work. They could move to some sleepy town in the middle of nowhere, one where residents would be so grateful for medical care, they wouldn’t ask too many questions about where it came from.
Only a few weeks to go until they’d both be free.
Porsche turned the corner, still lost in dreams about his post-fake-death activities. Sleepy towns in the middle of nowhere would have fewer futures for Chay to navigate, though without money or identification, Chay would have to find some way of getting them food and a place to live...
...when he saw the blood smeared against the side of one of the buildings, then the dark outline of a body in the alley a few steps away.
Porsche looked determinedly in front of him. He shouldn’t leave the main road. He shouldn’t see if he could help. He should go back to their apartment. He knew the rules, damn it. He was going to have a strong conversation with himself after this, he thought, as he went to check on the unfortunate person in the alley.
The man was unconscious on the ground, though at least he’d had the sense to fall over on his good shoulder, not the one staining his white shirt dark from the wound underneath.
Porsche crouched next to him, snapping once in front of his face to make sure he was out—good, he didn’t need the man waking up before he was done—drawing his pocketknife and cutting through the fabric of the man’s shirt sleeve. Ah, bullet through the shoulder.
His fingers hovered above the wound, seeking out stray bits of metal, then other contaminants: flecks of dust, lint from the shirt, germs that lived on the skin but shouldn’t get into wounds. Porsche burned them all, even as he slid healing through the hole in the man’s shoulder, until the wound was just a memory of what it had been.
He left the man a bloody scratch instead—Porsche guessed he would be confused if he woke up to a bloodstained shirt and unblemished skin beneath. If he were confused, he might start asking questions, might check the CCTV, might come looking for him.
A flash of metal around the man’s throat drew his attention; Porsche followed the length of chain down the (over-exposed, though he wasn’t complaining) expanse of chest. The necklace ended in a bullet, battered out of shape from use.
What had Chay said? That he’d find a bullet in the dark? Porsche touched the piece of metal dangling from the chain, the metal warmer than any human body could sustain. It was his fire, warming his frozen fingers.
Oh.
That night had been so long ago. It hurt, to remember who he’d been, the boy who had his freedom. He only vaguely remembered what he’d done to the man’s attackers—melted their guns, probably, as if that would help. As if they would ever stop coming for him.
“We’re going to have to stop meeting like this,” Porsche muttered, letting the man’s necklace fall through his fingers, slide over the smooth skin.
As the bullet dropped onto the man’s chest, black eyes opened and locked on his. This was why he shouldn’t have left the main road. He could have been at home with his feet up right now. Now he would have to deal with the man’s inevitable questions. Porsche hoped he wouldn’t recognize him—likely; that night had been so long ago.
“You’re awake,” said Porsche. “You fell. How are you feeling?”
“It’s you,” the man replied in an apparent non sequitur, reverent, as though he’d seen something precious. He definitely had a concussion.
The man’s hand twitched as he touched his fingers to his shoulder, eyebrows coming together as his fingers slid through the blood Porsche had (artfully) left congealing around the scrape. Sighing, Porsche pushed him back down on the pavement. Just because the wound was healed on the outside didn’t mean that his patient could skip away without repercussions.
The man’s now-bloody fingers caught his wrist, turning the cuff there back and forth to catch the dim light. Porsche saw his jaw clench, one nostril curling up.
“Costa,” the man said, voice gone flat. He didn’t let go.
Well, this was a problem.
“Do you mind if I ask you some questions? To see how bad you’re hurt? Let’s start with your name,” Porsche said, wishing he’d just ignored the fucking blood on the building and continued on his merry way home.
The man’s fingers tightened around his wrist, sending a leap of panic through him—Porsche hated feeling trapped. But if he burned the man to make him let go, he would know what Porsche could do. He and Chay would barely be able to make it out of the city before the manhunts started. And word would get back to his uncle.
“You first,” he rasped, glaring up at him.
“Jom,” Porsche answered, giving him the name of one of Chay’s bartender friends. The man didn’t look convinced. “Now you go,” he prompted.
“Kinn,” said the man.
“Just a few more questions, then, Kinn, and then I’ll let you get up,” Porsche said. “Do you remember how old you are?”
Kinn’s grip around his wrist was unwavering. The man tilted his chin mutinously, the gesture reeking of you first.
“All right, I see how this goes,” Porsche said. “I’m twenty-eight. And you?”
“Thirty,” Kinn replied, making an attempt to rise. He fell back against the concrete, but he didn’t let go of Porsche.
Porsche’s eyes fastened on the (mostly healed) hole in his shoulder. Kinn was going to tear that wound open again with all that movement, and Porsche was not going to stay around to help him. Porsche was going to go home and put his feet up and in the morning talk to Chay about pulling some strings and moving the timeline forward on the Costa plan so they could get the hell out of here.
“You healed me,” Kinn said, heaving himself into a sitting position at last.
“Nope, you were like that when I found you,” he said, trying to yank his wrist out of Kinn’s hands. “What did you do to yourself? Stapler accident?” He chuckled weakly.
“Leave the Costas,” Kinn said in another non sequitur. “Work for me instead.”
Maybe he didn’t have a concussion. Maybe he was just...like this.
“No offense, Kinn, but I don’t even know you,” said Porsche. “Why would I quit my job for you? The Costas are...fine.”
He struggled to say anything more about his current employers, given that they wouldn’t be his current employers in a few weeks. It was a job like any other, the threat of discovery hanging over him, keeping what he was a secret from everyone but Chay, staying alert for the day that his uncle’s men would inevitably find them again.
Kinn brought his cuffed wrist closer, the warm points of his fingers digging under the leather and metal as he traced the healer’s sigils with his other hand. Porsche tried not to keep the beginnings of fear off his face, not surprised that this was who the boy he’d rescued had become.
“The Costas sent a team to kill me earlier,” said Kinn in a conversational tone, eyes snapping up to his face to test his reaction. “What do you think they’ll do when they learn you saved me?”
Fuck. Blackmail. “What do you want?” Porsche asked.
“For you to work for me,” Kinn replied immediately. When Porsche shook his head, a smirk emerged on Kinn’s face, the expression of someone about to play pocket aces. “You healed me. Which means you must have found a way around the cuffs.”
His meaning sank in. Powers had to be regulated, could not be used without permission. Once the authorities found out, the manhunt would be nationwide. They’d never be able to escape. The plan shattered in front of him.
“Fortunately for you, I need a spy in the Costa household,” Kinn continued. “Comings and goings of the main family members, idle gossip, spyware on their computers, that sort of thing.”
“I can’t,” Porsche protested, a trifle absently, remembering what had happened to the last spy the Costa family had found—well, he only remembered the man being dragged down the halls screaming, but he could assume what happened afterward. “They’ll find out and come after both of us.”
But he could work with this. He just had to wait a few more weeks until the Costa family was taken out. Porsche would still die in the chaos. His death would even be convenient for Kinn as well—the man wouldn’t even have to silence his mole.
“I think you know something about keeping secrets,” said Kinn, tapping the insignia on the cuff. He flashed Porsche another pocket-ace smirk. “You’re mine. Say it.”
The boy he’d been fourteen years ago would have told him where to shove it. But Porsche had been around long enough to know that the mafia always won. Still, he looked around, as if searching for a way out, before giving up and turning back to Kinn, those black eyes awaiting his surrender.
“I’m yours,” he said.