Claire

Claire chewed her lower lip anxiously while Ryu picked up and fiddled around with a shard of broken glass. She almost told him to put it down before he hurt himself. But that was silly; he wasn't a small child. He knew to be cautious around sharp things.

There was a small chance he might hurt himself, but none of his injuries matched any pattern of self-harm she'd ever heard of. Many of them he would have to be a contortionist to do to himself.

"I require permission, though," Ryu said.

“Uh, sure. What are you going to do?” Claire wondered how long it would take to convince him he didn't need someone's permission to act.

“Just watch,” he said with a grin that made him look even younger than normal.

Ryu bounced up from where he'd been crouching and moved to the tarp she had only just reattached to the door, pulling it down with a single sweeping motion.

Was there something inhuman in the grace of his movements? She didn’t think so. She’d seen dancers and gymnasts and such on television who moved kind of like he did. Like their bones were made of liquid or something. It wasn’t supernatural just the result of years upon years of training.

Ryu held out the little piece of glass he'd selected. He turned it one way and then another. Light refracted through the broken edges onto the wall, shifting and wavering hypnotically. Ryu made a soft, pleased sound. And let go of the shard.

Which, impossibly, remained where it was. Floating. In midair. Completely unsupported.

“Is anyone else seeing this?” Dare whispered.

“Seeing,” Josh said.

“Not believing,” Jacob added.

Claire just nodded. Part of her wanted to get closer. To hold her hand over the shard, and prove there wasn’t a fishing line or something. To know for sure. She was a little afraid to break Ryu’s concentration, though. Even if this was a trick, it was beautiful. The way the light played through the glass, and the faintest glimmer of something surrounding the shards still on the ground as they, one by one, began to float as well.

For a few seconds, the shards hung in the air. Then they moved, drifting like dust motes into place around the first shard. Within the space of a few heartbeats, the shards were lined up where they had been before the window broke. It looked a little like what happened when safety glass got hit and only partially shattered.

Ryu hummed to himself and reached his right hand slowly out towards the plane of glass shards. He touched the central shard lightly with one finger. Ripples spread from that point, as though the glass had become liquid. As the ripples met the lines where the glass had broken, the shards smoothed and blended into one another. As the ripples met the edge of the glass pane, they wove around the frame in the door, smoothing over where the wood had splintered.

Ryu pulled his hand back and tilted his head to study his handiwork. He tapped the glass once and nodded.

He turned back to look at them. There was a bright smile on his face, and this smile matched his eyes. They were lighter, almost glittering with humor. Claire forgot she’d been concerned, and that she had questions. She just had to get a closer look. Because what she had just seen was impossible.

Ryu stepped aside slightly so that Claire could get a good look at the now whole window pane. She stretched her hand out towards the glass and paused. She looked to Ryu, who nodded with a soft grin. She reached across that last inch, and her finger grazed warm, smooth glass. Perfectly whole, with not a scratch or scrape to indicate that once it had been shattered and spread across the carpet.

“It’s solid, but how?” she stammered.

“Magic,” Ryu replied.

“Magic is real,” Claire breathed.

“It is,” Ryu confirmed.

She twisted to look at him. “You… you’re really magic?”

“Yes.”

This time her hand reached out towards him. Some tiny, far away part of herself honestly thought he’d vanish if she weren’t able to confirm that he was, in fact, real. Solid. He tilted his head to the side, let her rest her hand against his cheek. He was warm, like the glass. Warmer than she thought he should be.

“Are you feverish?” she asked. “You’re not sick or something?”

He shook his head and she dropped her hand. “Merely an after effect of magic working, Lady. Nothing to worry over.”

“He’s warm?” Jacob asked. “And the glass?”

Claire nodded. “Not a lot, but yeah.”

“That makes sense,” Josh said.

“It does?” Ryu asked.

“Yes. Energy transfer creates heat. Any energy transfer, chemical or mechanical or whatever. So, whatever you’re doing,” Josh said.

“Is a transfer of energy. Just not one we have a name for,” Jacob finished.

Ryu chuckled. “I call it magic.” He smiled as he met Claire’s eyes, and she found herself smiling back.

Magic was real. Really real. Everything she knew about the world was wrong. Except not everything, because apparently heat transfer and Ryu being warmer meant the laws of physics still applied, or something.

Now that the spell of shock was broken, the guys were just as eager to see for themselves as Claire. They came forward, crowding Ryu a little against the door. Oddly, he didn’t seem to mind. He answered their questions calmly, and even agreed to let Josh check his temperature with a thermometer so they had a more accurate measure besides “a little warmer than usual.” His temperature turned out to be just shy of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Which meant a little warmer than usual, but not a dangerous fever. So that was a good thing to know. They couldn’t manage an accurate measurement for the glass, although the twins tried.

“Could you do that again?” Josh asked.

Ryu tilted his head.

“I could,” he said. He glanced at Claire. “We’d have to break something else, though. Something very small. I’ve not the energy for anything large.”

“Energy?” Dare asked.

“Magic.” Ryu laughed at their expressions. “Energy is energy. Chemical, mechanical, magnetic, magic. Just different ways of applying force.”

That little statement sent the twins into paroxysms of scientific joy. In minutes they were planted in the center of the living room with notebooks and portable dry erase boards scattered around. Josh had a calculator in one hand and a pen in the other, using the back end of the pen to punch in numbers and then reading them off to his brother, who furiously wrote and erased and rewrote equations on the dry erase boards before adding the finalized notions into the notebooks.

Ryu perched on the back of the larger couch in a pose that might be more comfortable for a gargoyle. Claire leaned against the couch beside him, while Dare retreated to the smaller couch. Claire watched the twins work and listened to Ryu calmly field their questions. He seemed to enjoy the whole situation, weirdly enough.

“So, what else could you fix, in theory?” Josh asked.