Zach was still a little too warm from Ace O’Clubs.
Not all at once. Just in pieces. Cinnamon and chocolate still on his tongue. Heat stuck in his gloves. His face faintly sore from smiling too much, too fast, for a night that had somehow involved a magical snowstorm, a fake Santa, Thor, Starfire… and one very green stranger.
And, apparently, saying I helped save Christmas out loud and not entirely joking.
Metropolis didn’t care.
The farther he got from the bar, the more the cold slipped through his coat, and the faster the adrenaline started wearing off into something sharper.
Still excitement.
Just… not the fun kind anymore.
Zach shoved a hand deeper into his pocket, brushing the Polaroid tucked inside. He slowed under a streetlamp and pulled it out just enough to look.
Thor. Starfire. Green Guy. Him.
Proof.
That the whole insane night had actually happened. The snowstorm. the illusions he’d thrown into a real fight, the fact that no one had told him to go home and leave it to the professionals.
It was Still real. Still kind of impossible. And now, this was apparently, his life now.
He looked at the message on his phone.
Clearly, no one explained the family business to you. We’re fixing that. Finish your drink. We’re meeting tonight. –Z
Zatanna.
Not a fan. Not a troll. Not some random occult weirdo with an unknown number.
Zatanna.
Zach exhaled through his nose and kept walking, his boots clicking against the pavement. The city glittered around him in full holiday overkill. Lights wrapped around every surface, windows packed with gold ribbon and glass ornaments, music drifting out of storefronts like it had something to prove.
Everything looked bright.
Normal.
Expensive.
Meanwhile, he was heading straight into what felt a lot like a magical ambush set up by a relative he’d never actually met, and who apparently already knew enough about him to be disappointed.
“Great,” he muttered, adjusting his scarf. “Love that for me. Save Christmas, almost have my first drink, and now I get summoned to Wizard Family Court.”
The joke helped.
A little.
Not much.
He checked the address again as he turned the corner, and slowed.
Of course.
Of course it was.
A theater.
Old, too. Shut down by the look of it. The marquee was dark, letters missing. The gold trim around the front had dulled with age. But the place still had presence. Like it remembered what it used to be.
Zach tipped his head back, taking it in.
“Okay,” he said under his breath. “That is… annoyingly on-brand.”
The front doors swung open before he touched them.
No one there.
He let out a breath through his nose. Of course.
Then he squared his shoulders and stepped inside.
The lobby smelled like dust, velvet, and something else he couldn’t quite name.
Low amber lights glowed along the walls where they definitely shouldn’t have had power. Gold leaf peeled from the molding in thin strips. Torn red fabric clung to the stair rails like the place had decided to fall apart in style.
Then, from deeper inside
Light.
One spotlight snapped on. Then another. Then a third. Precise. Like someone backstage had just called places.
Zach stopped just inside the doorway.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered.
The stage was lit.
And at the center.
Zatanna.
Not casual. Not toned down. Not “off-duty.”
No.
Full magician.
Top hat, perfectly angled. Tailored jacket sharp enough to cut. White shirt, gloves, fishnets, boots—the whole look. And somehow it didn’t read as a costume.
It just looked right.
Like this was what she was supposed to look like.
A wand rested in her hand like it belonged there. Not decorative. Not optional.
Zach felt something in his chest shift a little.
Because suddenly it clicked.
This… this was what he’d been trying to imitate all this time.
And this?
Was the real thing.
Zatanna tipped her chin slightly.
“Zachary.”
Yeah.
That was worse than “Zach.”
He put a hand to his chest. “Wow. Full government name. Strong opening. I feel judged already.”
“You should.”
That was so immediate it almost made him laugh.
Almost.
He started down the aisle, boots dull against the worn carpet. “You know, most people start with hello.”
“I know.”
“Cool. Great. Good to know this is personal.”
By the time he reached the front, he looked up at her and spread his hands. “So. This is either magical orientation or the most stylish kidnapping I’ve ever seen.”
A playing card flicked into existence between her fingers so smoothly he almost missed it.
“If I were kidnapping you,” she said, “It would already be too late”
Zach blinked.
Then snorted. “Okay. Rude. But fair.”
She stepped down from the stage without rushing. Not slow either. Just… deliberate. Every step placed exactly where she meant it.
By the time she reached him, it didn’t even feel like a height thing. She just felt… more put together.
Her gaze moved over him once, and suddenly he was aware of everything at once. His hair probably a mess from the wind, the fact that he was trying very hard to pass all of that off as confidence.
“You’re late,” she said.
“You texted me after I’d already had the weirdest night of my life,” he shot back. “I think I get a little leeway on dramatic timing.”
“You almost drank spiked hot chocolate.”
Zach froze for half a second.
Then, because commitment was doing a lot of heavy lifting tonight, he folded his arms and raised a brow. “What, were you in the ceiling vents? That’s… not comforting.”
“You asked first.”
“Because I’m eighteen.”
“Because you were paying attention.” A slight shift in her tone. Not softer. Just more precise. “Good instinct.”
That caught him off guard enough that he didn’t have a comeback ready.
Which was honestly embarrassing.
He recovered quickly. “So you can say nice things. Good. I was starting to think the hat came with emotional repression.”
There was just a hint of amusement in her expression, and it was gone as quickly as it came. “The livestream,” she said.
Yeah. There it was. Zach rolled one shoulder. “Mm. Yep. Knew we were getting to that.”
“The cards froze because your focus narrowed under stress. They multiplied because you reached for output instead of control. The glow was excess. The levitation was pressure. And your wand responded because, somewhere under all of your performance, you already know it isn’t just a prop.”
He just stared at her.
No jokes. No chat spamming reactions. No “wow, cool effects.” Just… a breakdown.
Like she’d been watching the whole thing with a checklist.
Zach let out a short laugh. “Wow. Okay. So this really is orientation. Just with more judgment than I was hoping for.”
“You want less judgment?” she said. “Cast better.”
That got him.
He laughed. Because honestly? If he was going to get verbally destroyed by his glamorous magician cousin in an abandoned theater, at least she had style about it.
“Noted,” he said. “For the record, I think I handled things pretty well.”
“In the park?” she said. “Yes.”
He blinked.
“…Wait.”
“You had more control in active danger than you did on camera,” she continued. “The snow work was simple, but clean. The decoys were well-timed. The stabilization on Thor was messy, but it worked.”
Something in his chest lit up before he could stop it.
Relief. Pride. A little bit of oh, okay, I didn’t completely screw that up.
Then, “You’re also relying too much on instinct, improvisation, and hoping confidence will carry you through what you don’t understand.”
And there it was.
“Well, in my defense, no one exactly handed me a family grimoire and a welcome basket.”
She didn’t answer right away.
“…No,” she said after a moment. “They didn’t.”
That threw him off more than anything else she’d said so far. That was annoying. He looked away first, eyes drifting over the rows of old seats instead of her. “My parents weren’t really into this side of things,” he said, aiming for casual and missing just a little. “Giovanni the stage legend? Great. Marketable. Easy. Actual magic? Suddenly it’s ‘nonsense.’” A small flick of his fingers, like he could wave that off. Didn’t work. “I spent years building tricks around something I apparently wasn’t supposed to believe was real. Then my room starts floating on livestream and…” He huffed out a laugh. “Yeah. Turns out ‘magic nonsense’ gets a lot less theoretical when your furniture’s in the air.”
She didn’t interrupt. Just watched. Which was somehow worse.
He kept going anyway. “And yeah, before you say it, I know. Maybe they were wrong for the wrong reasons, but I’m guessing this is where you tell me they weren’t completely off for being freaked out.”
“Fear isn’t wisdom,” she said. “They don’t get credit for being afraid of something they refused to understand.”
Zach looked back at her.
She stepped a little closer, wand lowered. “No one taught you what this is,” she said. “No one gave you structure. Or context. That isn’t your fault.”
That landed harder than he wanted it to. Of course it did. He let out a breath and tipped his head back, staring up at the stage lights. “Okay,” he said. “Great. Love that. Hate how much I needed to hear it.”
For a second, something warmer flickered across her face.
“The problem,” she said, “isn’t that you have flair.”
Zach glanced at her. “Good. I’d be concerned if it was.”
“The problem,” she continued, ignoring that, “is that you use it to avoid uncertainty. I use it on purpose.”
He grimaced. “Wow. You really came ready to ruin my self-image.”
“No,” she said. “I came to fix it. Try to keep up.”
Then she turned her wrist, and a single playing card appeared between her fingers. Plain. White-backed. Nothing special.
She held it out.
Zach looked at it, then at her. “No glowing runes? No dramatic family branding? I feel a little let down.”
“Take the card, Zach.”
He took it.
“One card,” she said. “One spell. Hold it in the air.”
He blinked at her. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
He let out a short laugh. “You saw what I did tonight. I made illusion copies of actual superheroes.”
“Yes,” she said. “And now you’re going to levitate one card without multiplying it, setting it on fire, distorting the room, or checking if you look impressive while you do it.”
He stared at her. Personally attacked.
“Silence is part of the lesson,” she added.
“Oh, that’s evil.”
“No,” she said, adjusting her hat. “It’s basic.”
He inhaled slowly and looked down at the card.
This should’ve been easy. Seriously. Compared to everything else tonight? This was nothing. No crowd. No chaos. No giant glowing anything.
Just a card.
Which was probably the problem. Because there was no one watching. No chat scrolling. No camera. No adrenaline pushing him forward before he had time to think. Just him. The card. And her, standing there like she already knew how this was going to go.
Zach exhaled and tried to focus. Not on the performance. Not on how it would look.
The feeling he’d started to recognize. The way words stopped being words if he paid attention to them long enough.
He adjusted his grip slightly, eyes narrowing at the card like that was going to help. “Just one,” he muttered under his breath. “We can do one.”
Zatanna didn’t react.
Which somehow made it worse.
He swallowed and tried again. Slower this time. Actually thinking about it instead of just… jumping.
The word formed in his head first. Then, quietly. “Etativel”
The card twitched. Okay, that was good. Then, it lifted. A few inches. Wobbly, but there. Zach’s eyes lit up. “Ha! See? Easy…”
Then, the card shot straight up.
A flash of violet light, and suddenly there were eight of them. Spinning. Orbiting his head like he’d accidentally summoned a low-budget halo. Sparkles drifted down around him like the universe was trying to commit to the bit.
Zach stared up at it. “…You have got to be kidding me.” Then he slowly lowered his gaze back to Zatanna.
“…Okay,” he said. “You have to admit the presentation was solid.”
She closed her eyes. As if she were choosing not to lose patience. Then she opened them again, sighed and flicked her wand.
The cards froze midair. Another small motion, and all but one dissolved into violet smoke. The last one drifted down between them. She caught it cleanly and held it up. “This,” she said, “is why we’re starting now.”
Zach rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “In my defense…”
“You don’t have one.”
“Harsh.”
“Accurate.”
He snorted.
Yeah. Okay. Fair.
She slipped the card away. He didn’t even see where, and looked at him again.
“You’ve got instincts,” she said. “Good ones. You think fast. You adapt. You know how to control attention.”
Zach perked up slightly. “I’m hearing a compliment. This is new.”
“You’re also a hazard.”
“And there it is.”
“You lean on improvisation because it works,” she continued, like he hadn’t said anything. “Until it doesn’t.”
Zach lifted a shoulder. “In my defense, ‘it works’ has been doing a lot for me so far.”
“That won’t last.”
Yeah.
That landed.
He didn’t have a joke ready for that one.
Zatanna turned and started back toward the stage. “Come on.”
He followed without thinking. “That’s it? No speech? No dramatic ‘this is your destiny’ moment?”
“You’re getting a lesson,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t confuse it with a performance.”
Zach huffed out a quiet laugh and climbed up after her. The Polaroid was still tucked in his pocket. Still there. Still real. Everything tonight still real. Just… more complicated. He glanced at her as he stepped onto the stage, then shook his head slightly to himself. Magical family intervention in an abandoned theater. Sure. Why not.
Member
Xaltwind,
Yankee,
RPM,
Deadline,
Dezuel,
Aisede,
KactusPunch,
Birdboy,
Rune_Alchemist,
TruckKun
