The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(62)

“As far as I can tell, magic is magic,” she said, hardly looking up from where she scanned the page in the reading room. She sat with her legs curled under herself on the chair, her entire frame defensively enveloping the book as if she feared someone might suddenly snatch it from her hand. “Most creatures’ genetics are no different from a human’s than an ape’s. Just a matter of evolutionary distinctions, that’s all.”

“Mutations?”

She glanced up, eyes slightly narrowed. “Genetic, you mean?”

Nico bristled at the implication that he might have meant aberrations. “Of course,” he said, perhaps more passionately than necessary.

“No need to be brutish,” she remarked, expressionless. Then she returned her attention to the page. “The difference in magical ability appears to lie in the customary form of usage,” she said, eyes roving over the page with only the slightest break in motion; a sidelong glance to what Nico guessed was a back-talking plant somewhere in the corridor. “That’s true,” she conceded grumpily, presumably to the plant, though she slid her attention upward to fix Nico with a studious look of contemplation.

“It’s smaller,” she said.

He frowned. “What is?”

“The—” She paused, cursing quietly under her breath, or so he assumed. “Output,” she eventually produced from somewhere in her multilingual lexicon. “Usage, power, whatever the word is. Creatures produce less, or rather, waste less.”

“Waste?”

“Ask Tristan,” she said.

“Ask Tristan what?”

Nico spun at the sound of Libby’s voice to find her lingering in the doorway, hesitantly half-in, half-out.

“Nothing,” said Nico, at the same moment Reina said, “How much magic humans produce.”

“Humans,” Libby echoed, flitting inside with a flare of interest. “As opposed to what?”

“Nothing,” Nico repeated, more emphatically this time as Reina returned her attention to the book, muttering an unblinking, “Creatures.”

Libby turned to look at Nico, expectant. “Creatures, Varona, really?”

Her brow was arched beneath her mass of fringe, which he positively loathed. It was one thing for her to be nosy, and another thing entirely for her to regard him with so much palpable doubt.

Just what did she expect him of bollocking up this time?

“I wanted to be certain of something,” he supplied evasively, with the tone of blistering impatience he knew she would find repellant. There was always a chance she’d leave if he pestered her enough.

“Okay, and what does Tristan have to do with it?”

Evidently her curiosity had been all too successfully piqued.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Nico retorted, though much to his dismay, that was enough to make Reina finally remember to explain herself.

“Tristan can see magic being used,” she said from behind her curtain of black hair.

“How do you know that?” asked Libby, which to Nico’s ear sounded unnecessarily accusing, as if she resentfully suspected Reina and Tristan of having some sort of weekly brunch wherein they discussed their private lives and secret wishes.

“Observation,” Reina replied, which Nico could have told Libby was the obvious answer. Reina spoke little and saw much, though what Nico liked most about her was that she considered most of what she viewed to be substantially unimportant, and therefore not worth discussion.

Unlike Libby, who felt precisely the opposite.

“Tristan,” Reina continued, “can see magic in use. As I was explaining,” she said, cutting a demonstrative glance to Nico to indicate a return to her previous subject, “creatures have a more refined use of their own magic. They channel it better, more efficiently. It’s—” Another pause for the lexicon. “Thinner. Narrow. Spun like thread, not like—” Another pause. “Fumes.”

“I suppose Tristan has used the word ‘leak’ to describe magic before,” Libby murmured thoughtfully to herself. “Though we could probably ask him to explain it more fully.”

The idea of asking Tristan Caine for anything that was not a scowl or muttered clip of sarcasm was enough to sever what remained of Nico’s limited patience.

“No,” he snapped, and would certainly have summoned the book from Reina’s grasp and stormed out if not for the way she shielded it with her entire body. “This isn’t about you, Rhodes.”

She bristled. “What’s it about, then?”

“Nothing. Certainly nothing I need you for.”

Libby’s eyes narrowed, and Reina curled more determinedly around the book, tacitly assuring them both that she had no interest in what would follow and would certainly be of no help.

Nico, who had fought often enough with Libby Rhodes to know when a larger explosion was impending, abandoned the matter of the book and spun to take the stairs, irritated. He had done well enough for himself without a library’s help before. He would simply see to the matter of the wards without further discussion.

Or not. Behind him, Libby’s unshakable footsteps were dogged and crisp.

“Varona, if you’re planning to do something stupid—”

“First of all,” Nico said, spinning curtly to address her as she stumbled into his back, “if I were to elect to do something stupid, I would not require your opinion on the matter. Secondly—”