Shadow‘s Reach (Halloween Noir) - 17. How To Lose A Game And Win

The wooden table groaned under the force of Jacques’ fist, the sharp crack echoing through the dimly lit room. The tarot deck rattled from the impact, a few cards spilling onto the surface—The Hanged Man, The Five of Swords, The Tower. Ominous. Fitting. He couldn’t care less.

Madame Marie, seated across from him, remained entirely unshaken. She simply watched, her dark eyes steady, fingers lightly tapping against the table’s surface as if waiting for the storm to pass.

But the storm inside Jacques refused to settle.

Alex.

The name alone tightened something in his chest, a wound that hadn’t even begun to scab over. He could sense him—faint, but there. A raw ache, not just his own, but Alex’s.

Because Jacques hadn’t just let Marcus mock Alex so viciously and humiliate him. Jacques had let Alex down.

The words had been vile, reducing Alex to nothing more than an object, a joke, something to be laughed at. And Alex had taken it. Shrugged it off like he always did, like he had learned to do his whole life. Because when you grow up being told you’re weak, when you spend years watching your own body betray you, you learn to make yourself small.

But Alex wasn’t that person anymore. He had been fighting to see himself differently, to believe in his own strength. To take up space. And Jacques had seen it, the way Alex had stood a little taller, the way he’d dared a little smile when he caught his own reflection in the mirror instead of looking away.

And then this.

Jacques had watched it all unravel in real time—the moment Alex’s shoulders tensed, the way his fingers twitched like he wanted to pull at his clothes again, his head dipping just slightly, as if he wanted to disappear.

And Jacques had done nothing.

He should have shut Marcus down immediately. Should have grabbed Alex’s hand, show him how much he was worth. Should have told Marcus to go to hell, should have wiped that smug grin off his face. Hell, he should have hit him.

Instead, he had frozen. Let the moment pass. Let Alex pretend he didn’t care, even as Jacques could almost see the hurt curling under his skin like a bruise.

Like a coward.

His fingers curled into a fist again, itching to strike something—someone—but there was nothing here except the steady, suffocating weight of his own inaction.

Across the table, Madame Marie let out a slow, measured sigh. “Violence in hindsight,” she said, her voice smooth as silk, “is the indulgence of cowards.”

Jacques’ head snapped up, his glare sharp enough to cut.

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

Because she was right. And that only made the frustration worse.

Madame Marie watched Jacques with the kind of patience that made his anger burn hotter, like a fire being deliberately stoked. She sat back in her chair, perfectly poised, her fingers steepled in front of her as if she had all the time in the world.

Jacques, still seething, dragged a hand through his hair, forcing himself to breathe. It didn’t help. The frustration sat heavy in his chest, coiling tighter with each passing second.

“Violence in hindsight is the indulgence of cowards,” Madame Marie repeated, her voice measured, calm. “You think striking him now, in your mind, changes anything?”

Jacques clenched his jaw. “No,” he admitted, but the word tasted bitter.

She inclined her head. “Then why waste your energy on it?”

His fingers curled against the tabletop. “Because I should have done something. I should have—”

“—what?” She arched a brow. “Blitzed him like a defensive end? Taken him out at the knees? Slammed him into the ground and called it a win?”

Jacques scowled but said nothing. Because, honestly? Yeah. That was exactly what he had wanted to do right now. Marcus had deserved to be flattened, humiliated, shut up in the most immediate, physical way possible. Jacques had seen guys get laid out on the field a hundred times, had felt the impact when one of his linemen stepped up to protect him from a sack.

And yet…

“That was never your job, was it?” Madame Marie’s voice was softer now, almost thoughtful. “You weren’t a defensive end, Jacques. You weren’t a linebacker.”

Jacques frowned, caught off guard. “No.”

She tapped a finger against the table. “What was your job?”

“…Quarterback,” he said, the word coming out flat.

She nodded. “The one who sees the whole field.”

His stomach twisted.

“The one who reads the defense, who watches the patterns, who makes the right call at the right time,” she continued. “You weren’t the one throwing yourself into tackles—you were the one orchestrating the game.”

Jacques exhaled sharply through his nose.

“And now?” She tilted her head. “That hasn’t changed. You’re not just some reckless fighter, Jacques, that was picked by magic at random or sheer bad luck. Look back at your life… You’re the Mind of this trinity, you always were. Nothing has changed. You aren’t here to throw punches—you’re here to see what’s coming before it hits. You’re here to win this game.”

The words landed deep, settling somewhere in his chest like a lead weight.

Jacques felt Alex’s hurt, the way it lingered like an echo through their connection. He could still recall the brief flicker of shame in Alex’s expression, the way he had withdrawn.

“I should have said something,” he muttered, his voice quieter now.

“Yes.” Madame Marie’s gaze sharpened. “And you didn’t. Why?”

That stopped him. The anger, the guilt, the self-loathing—it all twisted together in a tangled mess, but beneath it was something else. Something harder to name.

“…I don’t know,” he admitted.

Madame Marie hummed, neither pleased nor disappointed. “Do you know why your emotions are dangerous, Jacques?”

He gave her a flat look. “Because they make me reckless?”

“No,” she said simply. “Because you let them control you, rather than the other way around.”

Jacques tensed.

“You don’t know why you froze,” she continued. “You don’t understand why you hesitated. Your anger is real, your guilt is real, but they are nothing if you do not understand them. And if you don’t understand them, you cannot control them.”

She gestured toward the tarot cards still scattered across the table, her fingers brushing over The Tower. “Tell me, when you lost a game, did anger ever bring back the win?”

Jacques exhaled sharply through his nose. “No.”

Madame Marie nodded. “And what did?”

He knew the answer before she even finished asking. You watch the tape. You study your mistakes. You learn. You adjust.

She saw the realization settle in him and smiled faintly. “Your emotions are like that lost game, Jacques. Raging over what’s already happened won’t help Alex. But understanding why you failed? That’s how you make sure it doesn’t happen again. You’re in a new situation, you’re not alone anymore. You fail, you will adjust.”

The words hit their mark, and Jacques exhaled sharply, looking away.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Madame Marie reached for a small wooden case beside her and slid it across the table. “Then let us begin,” she said, her voice smooth, decisive. “If you wish to see clearly, you must focus.”

Jacques eyed the case, then her. “What is this?”

She smiled, slow and knowing. “Another lesson.”

***

Jacques exhaled through his nose, rolling his shoulders back, but the tension clung to him, a weight pressing into his bones. The frustration hadn’t faded, but beneath it now sat something else—a gnawing awareness that Madame Marie was right.

Charging into a fight wasn’t his role. It never had been. He wasn’t a linebacker meant to break bodies; he was a quarterback, the one who saw the play unfolding before anyone else, the one who made the call before the hit even came. That was what being the Mind meant. Yes, he got that.

But seeing required focus. And right now, his mind was a fucking hurricane.

He flexed his fingers against the wooden table, grounding himself in the rough texture. “Alright,” he muttered, exhaling sharply. “How does this work?”

Madame Marie watched him, her dark eyes gleaming with something unreadable. “You tell me, darling.”

Jacques scowled. “You’re the one teaching me.”

She tilted her head slightly, a slow smile ghosting over her lips, as if she found something about his irritation amusing. “Am I?”

He opened his mouth to snap back, but the words died before they could leave his tongue.

Because she wasn’t keeping answers from him. He already had them.

Lucien’s knowledge.

A shiver crawled down Jacques’ spine. It still didn’t feel his, not really, but it was there, buried in him like a book he had read long ago but couldn’t quite recall. It had been waiting. And now, for the first time, he was reaching for it.

He closed his eyes. Cleared his mind. Or at least, he tried.

But something lingered.

Alex.

Even as Jacques forced himself into stillness, Alex’s presence tugged at the edges of his consciousness, impossible to ignore. The hurt in his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, the silence that had swallowed him whole. The way he had turned away at Marcus’ dirty laugh, as if willing himself to be small again.

Jacques clenched his jaw. He wanted to push it aside. He needed to focus.

But the thought of Alex’s pain wouldn’t leave him.

And so, when Jacques reached, the vision that met him was the one his heart had already chosen.

The world shifted.

A flicker of something—The interior of a car.

Dim light. Streetlights flashing past the windows, painting streaks across the windshield. The low hum of tires on pavement.

Not the mall. They hadn’t arrived yet.

Alex sat in the passenger seat, arms crossed over his chest, shoulders tight. His jaw was set, his gaze locked on the window, watching the city pass by. But it wasn’t idle. It wasn’t casual.

He looked miserable.

Jacques’ stomach twisted.

Behind him, Marcus slouched in the backseat, looking just as uncomfortable. He shifted, glancing between Alex and Solomon, as if waiting for someone to say something.

Jacques couldn’t hear him, but he saw Marcus’ mouth move—his usual lazy grin trying to appear, forced, desperate. A joke.

Neither Alex nor Solomon reacted.

Alex’s fingers twitched where they rested against his thigh, as if suppressing the urge to adjust his too-tight borrowed clothes. Solomon, at the wheel, kept his expression unreadable, his grip steady on the steering wheel, his knuckles just a bit whiter, gaze locked on the road.

Marcus tried again, another joke.

Nothing.

He leaned back, rubbing a hand over his face. He was trying. But for once, his humor wasn’t landing. He knew it. Frustrated, he took out his phone and checked his messages.

Jacques’ attention flicked past them, to the backseat’s shadows.

Something shifted.

Not Marcus. No movement from the car itself. Something else. A depth that shouldn’t be there, darker than the interior should allow, clinging at the edges of the seats like ink bleeding through fabric.

Jacques’ pulse spiked. His focus shattered. His breath hitched as his eyes snapped open, his body jerking slightly, heart hammering in his chest.

The vision had been too blurry, too fleeting, but the feeling remained—a wrongness creeping under his skin. His hands curled into fists.

“Dammit,” he growled. “It’s not clear enough.”

***

Jacques sat back, exhaling sharply through his nose. His pulse was uneven, his mind caught between frustration and unease. The vision had come so easily—too easily—and yet it had been useless. Blurry, incomplete, cut off before he could focus on anything that mattered.

“I couldn’t see it clearly,” he muttered, running a hand down his face. “Dammit, I should have—”

“Nonsense.” Madame Marie’s voice cut through his self-recrimination, smooth as silk, firm as steel. “You saw more than most could ever hope for on a first attempt.”

She reached for her teacup, lifting it with a slow, deliberate grace. For a moment, she said nothing, letting the quiet settle. Moments later, without looking up, she asked, “Tell me, Jacques. What did you see?”

Jacques clenched his jaw. The images still hovered in his mind, sharp and unyielding, like a film reel paused in his head. He dragged his fingers through his hair and exhaled.

“Alex,” he said, the word heavier than it should have been. “In the car with Solomon and Marcus. He looked… bad. Miserable.”

Marie hummed softly. “And?”

“Marcus was talking. Trying to joke, I think, but—” Jacques shook his head. “It wasn’t landing. No one laughed. No one even reacted. Alex wouldn’t look at him. Solomon just kept driving.”

Marie’s gaze flicked up, sharp and assessing. “And the rest?”

Jacques hesitated. His fingers curled against the tabletop.

“The shadows,” he admitted. “Something was there, creeping in. In the backseat. Not normal.”

Silence stretched between them, heavy and expectant. Marie’s fingers rested lightly on the rim of her cup, unmoving. Her expression was carefully neutral, but something in the air had shifted.

It was only for a fraction of a second, barely there—but Jacques had played enough games, studied enough faces, to know when someone was thrown off balance.

It was gone before he could name it. Marie set her teacup down with a soft clink and inclined her head, watching him as though seeing something new.

“Interesting,” she murmured.

Jacques narrowed his eyes. “What?”

She didn’t answer directly. Instead, she steepled her fingers, tapping one against the other in a slow, measured rhythm. “Clairvoyance is rarely so… direct. Most seers catch glimpses—fractured images, symbols, blurry moments of what’s coming.”

She tilted her head, studying him. “But you? You didn’t see the future. You saw the present. Clearly. With just some content overlay.”

Jacques shifted in his seat. “Yeah. But it wasn’t like… being there. No emotions. No sensations. Just—” He exhaled sharply, rubbing the back of his neck. “A perfect picture. Like looking through a window.”

Marie’s lips curled into something like a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Most would kill for that kind of clarity.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She held his gaze for a beat longer, before she spoke again.

“You’ve always had an affinity for borrowing, haven’t you?”

Jacques frowned. “I don’t think—”

“This kind of vision doesn’t just come from clairvoyance.” She tapped the table once, deliberate and slow. “You weren’t only looking. That’s why it was so clear.”

Jacques’ stomach twisted. “You think I… borrowed in that moment? But what?”

“I don’t understand it. Not fully. Not yet.” Marie studied him, her gaze sharp as a scalpel. “But you aren’t just seeing visions, Jacques. You’re stepping into them. Even if you don’t sense it yet, something else is happening beneath the surface.”

Jacques’ hands tightened into fists. He didn’t like the sound of that.

Marie gave him a small, unreadable smile. “But that’s a conversation for later. For now—” she tapped the table once more, changing tactics as easily as flipping a switch.

“Let’s see if you can hold on to magic a bit better with Lucien’s knowledge. Steer the internal flow of power away from your… leak?”

Jacques blinked. “What?”

Marie reached forward and tapped on the small wooden case she had slid across the table earlier. She flipped it open with a single elegant motion. Inside lay a wand—sleek blackwood, polished smooth, simple in its craftsmanship. Nothing ornamental. Nothing grand. But the moment Jacques reached for it, his fingers barely brushing the surface, a faint hum of energy curled through his skin.

It was warm. Familiar. Like something half-forgotten but never truly lost.

He swallowed hard.

“Your knowledge — Lucien’s, really—is rooted in the old ideas, Jacques. In the mechanical view of magic. We’ve been over this. You think power flows along strict channels, guided by potentials, that it must be harnessed and directed with precision—through movement, incantation, repetition, until mastery is achieved. That was how Lucien learned, how they all learned. It worked well then, it works well today. But magic is not mechanical. It never was.”

”It is not the spell that shapes reality, but the will behind it. All those years of practice, of perfecting gestures and words, did not create magic—they created certainty. The belief that the spell would work is what made it work for people with magic.”

”Now, we understand: The observer does not simply witness magic. The observer defines it. And so, the question is not whether you can wield a spell, but whether you can hold enough power and believe in it enough to let reality bend to your will.”

Marie folded her hands under her chin. “We have it in our blood, Jacques. Try something simple again. Light the candle.”

Jacques exhaled, rolling his shoulders. Alright. This should be easy. He had seen people cast fire spells before… No, wait. He hadn’t. But he had Lucien’s knowledge inside him, buried deep, waiting.

He could do this.

He curled his fingers around the wand, let the words form in his mind—something old, structured, Latin-inflected, something that seemed right.

He moved his wrist, spoke the incantation, willed the flame to spark to life.

Nothing happened.

Jacques frowned, tried again. Nothing.

His grip tightened. He felt like an idiot.

Marie sighed, resting her chin against her hand. “You’re doing it wrong.”

Jacques shot her a glare. “You just said I have magic in my blood. What’s the problem?”

“The problem,” she said patiently, “is that you’re still treating magic like an equation. Like something that must be solved, rather than something that must be willed.”

Jacques scowled. “Lucien—”

“Was brilliant,” Marie interrupted smoothly. “But he was also a man of his time. Magic isn’t rigid, Jacques. It isn’t some perfect structure you can memorize and regurgitate.”

She gestured toward the candle. “It’s like quantum mechanics—observation, intent, probability. Magic is not a script you follow. It is chaos you collapse into being.”

Jacques exhaled hard through his nose. “Great. Don’t try to out-science me. What does that mean in plain English?”

Marie smirked. “It means stop thinking and just do it.”

Jacques let out a slow breath, trying to shake the frustration loose. He was too tense. Too caught up in what he was supposed to do rather than just doing it.

He rolled his shoulders. Focused. Let the Latin, the structure, the old ways fall away.

Instead, he thought of fire.

Not words, not gestures, not technique—just the thing itself.

The wick. The heat. The spark.

He didn’t need much, he only needed to concentrate a meager trickle of power on a small enough point…

The wick started smoking. The candle flickered. A weak, fragile flame sparked to life, unsteady, barely holding. Jacques stared at it, his breath catching.

It had worked.

Barely.

Marie studied the flame, her expression unreadable. Slowly, she nodded. “Good.”

Jacques swallowed, still staring at the tiny, trembling fire. He had done that. But it had taken everything in him just to keep the power from slipping away.

“Before you wield magic,” Marie murmured, “you must first learn how to hold on to it.”

Something in her tone made his chest tighten.

Marie watched him for a moment longer, then leaned back, her gaze half-lidded.

“The way you moved just now,” she said lightly, “the way you held the wand…” She trailed off, lips curling into something secretive.

Jacques frowned. “What?”

Marie only smiled, slow and knowing. “Nothing, darling. Just that… you remind me so much of him.”

A shiver crawled down Jacques’ spine. “What—?”

***

Marie held up a hand, then tapped the table.

She didn’t say a word, but watched him with the same unreadable expression she always wore when she knew something she wasn’t going to share. Then, without breaking eye contact, she reached for her tarot deck.

Jacques frowned, straightening slightly.

“You weren’t planning to do a reading, were you?”

Marie didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she shuffled, her fingers gliding over the worn edges of the cards, her rings clicking softly with each movement. The slow, methodical pace of it set something uneasy in his gut.

Finally, she murmured, almost to herself, “I’ve stalled long enough… I’m confused. Magic is observation of your immediate surroundings. Will. Focus. You can do that.” She tapped the deck against the table, a quiet, deliberate sound. “Clairvoyance is different. You can’t change anything. But you, before, you didn’t just see that car, Jacques. You saw it as if you were there.”

Jacques stiffened. “Yeah, so?”

Marie lifted her gaze, dark and piercing, a quiet weight behind her stare.

“So, what if you weren’t just looking?” she asked softly.

The words sat between them, heavy and unspoken for a beat too long.

Jacques swallowed, the back of his neck prickling. “You think I… changed something?”

Marie just shrugged her shoulders.