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He pulls his sleeve down. Cassandra sees it. She’s almost sure he doesn’t realize she sees it, but Jake has been away for over a month, a month where she’s been struggling to try even using her gift the way it is now, and he doesn’t know how much it shows her.
He pulls his sleeve down and smiles at the rest of them as though he hasn’t started hiding his right forearm.
Cassandra doesn’t think Jake would have injuries he was hiding - she’s never seen any sign he’d do harm to himself. Of course, he’s always been private and he’s always been hard to read, in some ways. Easy in others. But she doesn’t think she’s missed any signs like that.
On the third day after they watch Jenkins say goodbye to the love of his life, she watches Jake pull down his sleeve as Baird enters the room and she finds she’s had quite enough.
His expression as she marches up to him is confusion overlaying concern, and all of it covered with a smile.
“Hey,” he says, the fingers of his left hand tapping on the book he has open in front of him. “You need something, Cass?”
“Yes,” she says. She keeps her voice firm and her gift packed away. She doesn’t want to take anything from him he isn’t willing to give. “I need to talk. You have a minute?”
Jake’s smile falters, just a bit, and he glances away for a moment before looking back and nodding.
“Sure thing. What’s on your mind?”
“Actually, I think…maybe…somewhere quieter?” Cassandra says, and doesn’t have to look around to know that Ezekiel is arguing with Baird about baby Nessie having enough exercise, the pair of them shot through with threads of bright color. Jenkins is around somewhere, quieter than he normally is, even, silver gray and the sensation of ash surrounding him, and refusing to let anyone help him grieve. As for Flynn, he vanished into the depths of the Library over an hour ago, so he could turn up anywhere at any time. She taps at the air near the side of her head. “I think the grape actually muffled sounds somehow.”
It didn’t. Since it’s been gone, she’s realizing it did dampen something, but it didn’t literally make noises less…noisy. It’s more that everything is stronger now when the gift is turned on, everything rushes and pours and cascades. It isn’t such an issue if she leaves it turned off, but she wants Jake away from distractions. Away from the others. There’s no guarantee he’ll open up to her, but she thinks there might be more chance than with anyone else. She likes to think so, anyway.
In any case, he follows her through to the garden she likes, one with sunlight from a star Jenkins assures her never existed in this world and with roses mingled up with plants that look like they’re made from liquid starlight. There’s a stone bench in a clearing that she likes to come to, and Jake sits next to her without having to be told. He’s burnt cinnamon and damp earth, and his body curves towards her a little less than usual.
“You need help with your gift?” he asks. “I think I read something-”
She touches her fingers to his shoulder and tells herself he doesn’t draw back. Read something. He means he researched what he knows of her gift and made note of anything that might help the way he helped her when they first joined the Library. Jake has been solid ground to her for years now.
“No,” she says. “No. I… I’m working it out. I think.”
She doesn’t know how or why she can project solutions into people’s minds now, or how she seems able to fill in gaps with so little conscious data, but she’s been doing her own research. Baird is right: Cassandra will wrestle control of this. It’s not like it’s her first match.
“That’s good, Cassie,” Jake says. He doesn’t say anything else.
Her hand in still on his shoulder, just the pads of her fingers touching the fabric of his shirt, and she feels the warmth seeping through from his body. He seems warmer than usual. She refuses to let herself calculate by how much. Jake isn’t a subject to be studied. He’s her friend. And he’s hurting. She just wishes she knew why.
“Yeah,” she says. “It is.”
It should feel awkward, she thinks, sitting in silence with just that one tiny point of contact. They’ve never really talked about this thing between them, and Jake kept Ezekiel back when she met Estrella. He approved of her dress when she went back to see Estrella and talked at length about her appearance fitting some artistic school. She thought he either must never have seen her as an option, or that he’d decided she wasn’t one anymore. And then he went away for weeks and didn’t contact her once.
So, it should feel awkward, but it doesn’t. It’s Jake.
“Is it…?” he starts up, just as she’s thinking neither one of them is going to say anything. “Is it weird? Having something so big and…and magical being a part of you?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Yes. No. Well, I spent years with a smaller version of it, and it wasn’t strange anymore having it. Was kinda strange having control of it at first. Thanks for that.”
She presses once and moves her hand, shuffling a little to sit with her shoulder pressed against his. This time, he doesn’t move away.
“Sure,” he says. “Whatever you need.”
“I think I need time,” she says. “This upgrade, it’s…yeah. I guess it is a bit weird. But it’s because it’s new, right?”
“It’s magic,” Jake says. He sounds sour, the tang of something bitter flaring.
“But it’s part of me, too,” Cassandra says. “It’s not something alien. It’s just a part of me that’s…grown. Or been freed. Now the brain grape, that was… Well, I guess that was part of me too, in a way. But not the same way.”
“Not a good way,” Jake says. He sounds sad.
“No,” she agrees. “I suppose it stopped me from coming for an interview here the first time, though, so in a way it still kinda helped.”
She’s almost used to people giving her strange looks when she’s fatalistically cheerful about the tumor. It isn’t normally Jake doing it, though. Besides, the thing’s gone, so she’s allowed to be a little lighthearted about it, even if it does weird some people out.
“But it didn’t feel good, did it?” he asks after a pause. “Before? Knowing you had something on…in your body you didn’t chose. Something dangerous.”
Cassandra opens her mouth to answer and finds she can’t. Even with her gift turned off she can’t pretend she missed that.
“Jake,” she tries, speaking softly and only looking at him out of the corner of her eye, “is something wrong? With you? A…a grape type of something?”
He laughs. It’s one of the most unconvincing things she’s ever heard from him.
“Jake?” she asks again. “Please tell me.”
He stands. It’s a sudden movement, and she’s going to have to get used to how he’s faster now, more precise. She’s sure it isn’t entirely non-magical to become so skilled in martial arts so quickly, but he’s so sensitive when it comes to any suggestion he’s using magic that she hasn’t brought it up.
“There ain’t anything to tell.”
But he’s several feet away now, and his right hand drifts to his left forearm, just for a second, without him even seeming to notice. A frown pinches his face.
“You’re hiding something,” Cassandra says. She keeps her voice free of any accusation, or tries to, but she sees his lip move. He’s so expressive. She’s always felt there’s so much more in Jake than he even lets her see, and she knows she sees more than he lets most of the world see. It hurts to think he’s shutting her out now. “Please don’t do that, Jake. If there’s something wrong, just tell me. Or tell Baird. Someone. We can help-”
“You can’t help!” Jake says. It’s closer to a snarl than she’s heard since they were hiding from those frost trolls and fighting about her being fragile. “You can’t do- No-one can-”
He stops, running his hand over his face and hiding his mouth. He’s half turned away from her, but she’s almost sure his eyes glimmer a bit more than they should do.
“Now I know there’s something,” she says. “Is it your arm?”
He freezes.
“What?”
“You keep pulling your sleeve down,” she says, because Jake respects research. He respects knowledge. And he’s emotional right now, so adding to that could take them straight into an argument. “You keep touching your forearm, or moving it away. Did something happen? Did you get hurt?”
She remembers the crystal embedded in her chest. It hadn’t hurt, not exactly, but she felt it’s presence. In a way, she did. Maybe it was just the knowledge it was there and, later, the realization of what it would mean if it was seen. Still, having something else she didn’t ask for in her body…yeah. She wasn’t really looking for that.
Thinking about the accidental benefits of her tumor isn’t the same as being happy to have gone through life that way. She’s been used for so long to hearing Death’s footsteps behind her that she keeps wanting to check over her shoulder to be sure it’s really gone.
And Jake was away for a while. She wasn’t around when he fought to save the staff, and Flynn will have been focused more on Charlene.
“Charlene said there were a whole load of rare items in that collection. They didn’t use one on you, did they?”
She sees his jaw tense and for a moment he looks nothing like Jacob Stone, seeker of knowledge and her friend. He looks like a man who could take someone apart.
“Jake?” She stays on the bench, holding onto it now with her hands either side of her thighs. “You’re scaring me.”
He blinks and the moment passes. Now, he just looks sad. Regretful. He almost meets her gaze before his focus flits away again.
“Sorry, Cassie,” he says. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I don’t…I don’t want you to be scared of me.”
“Are you scared of yourself?” she asks, because she’s almost got hold of a thread of something here and she needs to follow it. “For yourself?”
He shakes his head.
“I don’t know.”
“Just tell me what it is,” she says. “Or someone. Don’t let whatever’s worrying you eat you up all alone. I tried cutting myself off from people. This is better.”
Jake closes his eyes for a moment, his shoulders slumping. When he opens them, he looks down at his forearm and sighs. Without speaking, he unbuttons his sleeve and moves back to the bench as he rolls up the material, leaving his forearm bare and…
No. Not bare.
“Is that a tattoo?” she asks.
A tattoo doesn’t seem so bad. She can’t see why Jake would be so upset about a tattoo.
“For saving the Monkey King,” Jake says. “For getting the staff back to him and saving his soul.”
“He gave you a tattoo?” she asks, because it sounds like a strange gift and because she hasn’t yet worked out where the exact problem lies.
“The staff did,” Jake grinds out.
A staff gave him a tattoo? A magical staff…
“Oh,” she says, understanding.
Glancing at him to check it’s not going to push him away from her, she leans in and inspects it, lifting a hand to trace the air above the dark ink. If it’s ink. It doesn’t look quite right, now she considers it. Part of her itches to turn on her gift and study it through that lens, but Jake is the main concern here and he still seems skittish.
“It’s magic,” she says, so he doesn’t have to.
“Yeah.”
“What does it do?” she asks.
“Brings light to darkness,” he says, the twist to his lip telling her how he feels about that. “I got no idea what that means. I…” He turns his head again, away from her, but she sees the way he holds himself tense and still as he lets her look at his arm. “I said I didn’t want it. I asked him to take it back.”
“And he didn’t?”
She grimaces. Of course he didn’t, or Jake wouldn’t still have it staining his skin. And he does see it as staining. That much is clear.
Jake has a magical tattoo he didn’t ask for, that he asked not to be made to wear, and he’s been hiding it from them. She wishes this was more surprising than it is.
“Jake, I’m sorry this happened to you,” she says, and means it.
“You are?”
That stings. She moves, finally touching down on his arm, or rather his wrist, her little finger on the meat of his hand at the base of his thumb. He doesn’t pull away.
“Of course I am. I know you. I know you don’t like magic. Did you think I’d, what, say you should be happy about it?”
“You like magic,” he says. “You have your gift, and you’re learning spells, and you think we should use it more.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I want you to be forced into it,” she says. “I just don’t want to be stopped from using what I have.”
He nods, and he lets her hand stay where it is.
“Have you looked into it?” she asks. “Done research?”
She knows it’s a stupid question. This is Jacob Stone, the man who collects doctorates and stays in the Library on his days off so he can read more books. This is the man who filled several notebooks with information on synesthesia and visions and anything else he thought might help so he could casually give her advice. She thinks he still believes she doesn’t know that, that she didn’t find the notebooks in a pile of his papers when she was searching for something else. Talking about what he’s found might help him though. Jake likes to feel connected to the past. She likes to think about being at the start of the future, now that she has one.
“Yeah. There’s nothing useful so far.” He looks at her, and his lips turn up at the corner, but she can’t describe it as a smile. “Looks like I’m stuck with it.”
Cassandra takes a deep breath. This is one of those moments she doesn’t want to get wrong.
“I thought that for years, about my brain grape.” No. It’s gone; she doesn’t need to use language to diminish it anymore. It hasn’t any power over her now. “My tumor. I felt trapped by it, and I was. Until I wasn’t. Jake, we can find out more about this. Okay? Maybe Jenkins knows something.”
His lips twist in a different way, and she admits to herself, not for the first time, that she could watch his many expressions for hours. She has.
“I don’t wanna tell them,” he says.
Cassandra changes her grip on him, taking hold of his hand and raising her other hand to rest her palm against his cheek. He lets her.
“They’re your family,” she says. “You don’t have to hide who you are anymore, not the good things or the bad. They’ll want to help.”
He doesn’t argue, but she can see he’ll take more convincing. That’s okay. She has time. Nowadays, she has plenty of time, and she can spend as much of it on Jake as she needs to.
In the meantime, she feels him lean a little more toward her, and she moves to meet him, slipping her hand from his face and cradling the back of his head. Jake rests his forehead on her shoulder and she feels him take a shuddering breath.
“It’s okay,” she says, and adjusts, because lying never made her feel better. “It’ll be okay. We’ll make it be okay.”
He doesn’t say anything else, but she strokes a soothing circle on his back and feels him squeeze her other hand. They sit like that for a long time, the tattoo between them, and Cassandra thinks about what can become a part of you.