by Rachel Aaron
“This way,” Algonquin said, waving the reflection of Marci’s bracelet-covered arm toward the limo that was parked just down the street.
Marci’s feet stayed firmly planted. “Not until I’m sure my companions leave unharmed.”
The spirit sighed and turned her head, yelling over her shoulder to the human soldiers. “Escort General Jackson and the Master of Labyrinths to the border.”
The order was barely given before the soldiers jumped into action, hustling a surly Sir Myron and a still-murderous-looking Emily back to their car. When they were safely locked inside and on their way down the road, surrounded by a cage of Algonquin’s Security Force, the Lady of the Lakes turned back to Marci. “Satisfied?”
As much as she could be. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Don’t be that way,” Algonquin chided. “I’m on your side now. I wasn’t before, thanks to the company you keep, but all that’s over now. You’re safe here, free from anyone who would manipulate you. All I want is for you to relax and enjoy the benefits of my hospitality.”
Marci didn’t believe that for a second, but there was no point in calling the spirit on her lies now while she and Ghost were so outnumbered. Instead, she walked to the waiting limo, plopping her cold, rain-soaked body into the heated leather seat without a single twinge of guilt. But when she looked to see if Algonquin was going to join her, the spirit was already gone. The Leviathan was, too, leaving only the tanks and remaining soldiers standing under the floodlights in the dreary night rain.
That was the last thing Marci saw before the armored door slammed shut, locking her inside as the car started down the street.
Chapter 15
As soon as she and Ghost were locked inside, Algonquin’s armored—and, as Marci quickly discovered, heavily warded—limo took them straight into Reclamation Land.
In hindsight, it was the obvious destination. Vann Jeger had also taken her here when he’d grabbed her, though if she had to rank her kidnappings, Marci far preferred this one. Frustrating as it was to be locked down and helpless, a limo ride was much more civil than being black-bagged in a parking deck.
They didn’t seem to be headed for a room with a drain this time, either. The moment the limo drove through the gate in the chain-link fence that separated Algonquin’s private land from the rest of the city, the rotting houses and crumbling roads of the DFZ’s abandoned outer edge had given way to the most amazing, mist-shrouded wood Marci had ever seen. It was like driving straight into a nature photographer’s idealized image of the perfect old-growth forest. Given that this land had been clear-cut suburbs only sixty years ago, she knew the giant trees couldn’t actually be as old as they looked, but with the sheer amount of magic in the air here, anything seemed possible.
“Wow, that’s thick,” Marci muttered, grabbing a handful just to feel the heavy magic ooze through her mental fingers. “Forget pulling off reagents. I could cast forever in a place like this.”
Of course it’s rich, Ghost said, standing on the door with his paws up and his nose pressed against the window’s warded glass. This is spirit land.
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Marci said ruefully, stroking his freezing fur, which was glowing like fresh snow in moonlight thanks to the power saturating the air. “I don’t think we’re going to be getting the limo treatment for much longer.”
That statement turned out to be prophetic. Seconds after the words were out of her mouth, the armored limousine pulled to a stop. The locks clicked as soon the car was still, and Marci threw the door open, lunging outside in the hopes of making a break for it. A hope that died when she saw what was waiting for them.
The road they’d been following through the woods ended abruptly at what could only be described as a misplaced Himalayan mountain. There was no lead-up, no transition. The jagged stone peak just rose abruptly from the soft forest floor like someone had dropped it there. Still, the dizzyingly tall mountain—complete with white snow capping its lofty peak—was neither the strangest, nor even the biggest, thing waiting for them. That honor belonged to the Leviathan.
How it had beaten them here, Marci had no idea, but when she burst out of the car, Algonquin’s monster was already waiting, his black flesh glistening in the last evening light shining down from the now crystal-clear sky. Marci couldn’t tell if it was just because she was standing closer, or if the tar-thick magic of this place empowered the Leviathan the same way it did Ghost, but the overgrown slug looked even bigger than before. Even standing beside the out-of-place mountain, it dominated the horizon, its smooth, curving, eyeless black surface rising up before them in an arc that seemed to touch the sky. She was still gawking when the monster extended one of the thousands of tentacles it used to propel its bulk silently across the ground. Compared to the rest of the monster, the tentacles had looked tiny as millipede feet, but as it approached Marci, she realized with a start that the wet-looking black length was actually the size of a bus before it tapered at the end, the giant mass shrinking to a bowling-ball-sized blunt point that it hovered right in front of her at chest level, almost as if it was offering to shake her hand.
“Uh…” she said, taking a wary step back. “I don’t—”
Come.
The command vibrated through the ground like an earthquake. A second quake followed a heartbeat later as the Leviathan set its tentacle down on the road behind the car, cracking the asphalt and knocking Marci off her feet in the process.
Come, it commanded again, the giant tentacle twitching impatiently. Now.
Marci got back to her feet with a grimace. Someday, she’d like to go twelve hours at a stretch without some giant creature bossing or threatening or otherwise ordering her around. But today was not that day, so she gathered her glowing spirit into her bag and climbed on, wincing when her fingers touched the Leviathan’s cold black flesh that reeked of old lake water. Ghost winced too, his presence flinching in her mind, though not for the same reason.
He is not like us, he said, sticking his head out of her bag to glare up at the Leviathan’s featureless face with his ears pressed flat. I don’t like it.
“Me neither,” Marci said. “But I think we get a—”
She cut off with a curse as the tentacle lifted off the ground. It rose with frightening speed, lifting Marci and her spirit up, up, up through the misty air until they were less than a hundred feet from the mountain’s snowy peak. There, the tentacle stopped, tilting slightly to roll its passengers off onto a flattened ledge that had been carved into the sheer cliff face. Marci hit on the stone with a grunt, scrambling back to her feet to see where she had landed.
They were right below the snow line, high enough to be bone-chillingly cold, but not so high that the little streams flowing down from the snow cap had frozen. But while the sheer cliff and icy rivulets made it look as if the monster had just shunted them into howling wilderness, the center of the stone ledge had been chiseled back to form a smooth, wide platform nestled under a protective lip. In this room-like nook was a nice carpet, a small end table, and a pair of chic, neutral toned chairs of the sort you’d find in the lobby of a nice hotel. There was even a breakfast tray loaded with pastries, juice, coffee, and fresh-cut fruit that, again, was just like you’d find waiting on the table in a nice hotel conference room. Assuming said conference room was on the side of a mountain with a sheer, multiple-thousand-foot drop on either side.
“Now things are just getting surreal,” Marci muttered, turning back to the Leviathan, who’d retrieved its tentacle and was now just standing there in the mist. “So what happens next?”
Instead of answering, the monster turned away, rolling over the forest without a sound, its huge body passing through the trees like smoke. It vanished with astonishing speed, its black body fading into the night mist right before her eyes. Seconds later, it was gone, leaving Marci staring over the empty sky and the dark, fog-covered trees.
“I guess we’ll just wait here, then,” she muttered.
&
nbsp; At least there’s food, Ghost said, hopping up onto the table. Unless it’s poisoned.
“Algonquin wouldn’t go through all this trouble just to poison me,” Marci said, peering over the cliff’s edge. “I don’t suppose you know any tricks for getting off mountains?”
Not if you want to reach the bottom alive. Ghost thought for a moment. What about a flying spell?
Marci paled. “I’ve tried that, but let’s just say there’s a reason you don’t see mages flying everywhere. Humans aren’t great at 3-D navigation, and the amount of magic you have to control just to keep yourself lifted is staggering.” And abundant as it was, she didn’t actually want to draw that much of the strange Reclamation Land magic into her body. Ghost might be eating it up, but to Marci, the viscous power just felt wrong, like trying to drink out of a pond that was choked with algae.
“We’ll save flying for a last resort,” she said, walking over to join Ghost. “Besides, aren’t you curious?” She grabbed a cinnamon raisin bagel from the pile, then picked up the card beside it, which listed all the flavors, calorie content, and allergen information for the tray followed by the Algonquin Corp Hospitality logo and a smiling picture of the middle-aged Native American woman that was Algonquin’s public face. “This is definitely not your usual interrogation cell. If she’s giving us the five-star treatment, that means she wants something bad. We can use that.”
Don’t be so sure, Ghost warned. Algonquin is old and wise.
“Not that old,” Marci said. “The Great Lakes were created during the last big Ice Age only twenty thousand years ago. That makes her a young blood by spirit standards.”
But still older than every dragon and all of recorded human history.
“True,” Marci admitted. “But Vann Jeger was orders of magnitude older than us, too, and we handled him just fine.” With hours of setup and two dragons to help, but even so. “Punching above our weight class is what we’re all about. We got this.”
I’m more concerned that we haven’t seen her yet, Ghost said, peering out at the dark. Night’s already fallen, and we know Algonquin can be in multiple places at once. If she’s making us wait, she’s doing it on purpose.
That was a good observation. “Do you want to go scout?” she asked around a mouthful of bagel. “You’re not stopped by thousand-foot drops, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get a look at the inside of Reclamation Land.”
Actually, I’ve been here several times, Ghost said casually.
Marci stared at him. “This is where you used to go when you went roaming when you went AWOL all those times?” she cried. “And you didn’t tell me about it?”
I went lots of places, the spirit said with a flick of his ears. And I didn’t tell you about it because I didn’t have words to explain. I wasn’t as aware then as I am now, if you’ll recall.
True enough. “Well, did you learn anything good?”
A trick or two, he said smugly. But I could never stay long. This place is menacing to outsiders, which is why I’m not leaving you alone now. He swished his tail. The air is bloody tonight.
She didn’t know what he meant by that, but given her own aversion to touching the Reclamation Land magic, Marci wasn’t about to argue. Her phone didn’t seem work up here either. So, since neither she nor Ghost seemed ready for any crazy escape plans at the moment, Marci plopped into one of the modern chairs to enjoy the complimentary breakfast-for-dinner tray and wait for her enemy to appear.
It didn’t take long. She was barely through her second cup of coffee when one of the little streams of snowmelt running down the cliff began to shimmer, the falling water rising up to form the vague shape of a woman. For a moment, she stood there wobbling like jelly, and then the water firmed up into a perfect reflection of Marci, right down to the wrinkled business-chic black pants and silk blouse she’d borrowed from the Heartstrikers this morning.
“Thank you for waiting,” Algonquin said in her strange, watery voice as she stepped off the cliff into the ledge-turned-waiting-room. “I trust you were comfortable?”
“Comfortable enough,” Marci said, putting down her coffee cup before the liquid could betray how hard she shaking. Back at the cat house, the fear and adrenalin had kept her from focusing on anything that wasn’t immediately required for survival. Now that she’d had time to calm down, though, it was finally sinking in that she was speaking to Algonquin, Lady of the Lakes, de facto dictator of the DFZ, the most famous and deadly spirit in the world.
Algonquin must have known the effect she had, either that or Marci hadn’t been fast enough setting down her cup, because her reflection of Marci’s face wrinkled in concern. “You’re afraid,” she said. “I always forget how unnerving your kind finds talking to yourselves to be. One moment.”
She walked across the cave-turned-sitting-room to the breakfast tray, reaching down to pick up the card beside it, the one with the picture of the corporate face she used for all her public broadcasts, including the one where she’d declared war on all dragons. She stared at the card with Marci’s eyes for a moment, and then, like wind rippling the surface of a pond, she changed. When she set the card down again, the spirit in front of Marci looked like a lovely Native American woman with a long, silver-streaked black braid, a power suit, and a stern, sharp face with wise, dark eyes.
It was the same exact face Marci had seen a thousand times on television and all over the DFZ, but seeing it just appear in front of her removed any feelings of familiarity. If anything, Algonquin looked even more alien like this than she had wearing Marci’s face, and it was all she could do to keep herself from flinching when the spirit smiled at her again.
“Still nervous, I see,” Algonquin said, setting the card down with a musical, watery sigh. “But I’m afraid this is the best you’re going to get. I can only appear in reflections.”
“Really?” Marci said, her fear fading under the eternal push of her curiosity. “Why is that?”
Algonquin shrugged. “Because I am water, and change is water’s nature.”
And spirits always acted according to their nature, Marci remembered. That said, Vann Jeger was a fjord, and even he’d had a body. “So you don’t have a face of your own?”
“I have a visage,” Algonquin said with a smile. “But most humans don’t find it reassuring, and I do not wish to frighten you. Quite the opposite. I’m here to ask for your help, Marci Novalli.”
“If you’d wanted that, you could have just asked me at the beginning and saved us all a lot of trouble,” Marci grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest. “But since you decided to trap me on a mountain instead, you must want something pretty big, so let’s hear it.”
“Very well,” Algonquin said, grabbing the second chair and moving it so that she was sitting across from Marci, speaking face to face. “I want you to work for me.”
Marci sighed. This again. “I figured it was something like that,” she said, petting Ghost, who was crouching in her lap like a little fluffy tiger ready to pounce. “But I’ve got job offers flying fast and furious these days. If you want to win me over, it’s going to take more than a room with a view and a pastry tray.”
“Don’t get cocky, mortal,” the Lady of the Lakes said, her watery voice going choppy. “You want to know what’s in this for you? How does not dying sound?”
Marci shrugged. “Honestly, pretty weak. I’ve been threatened a lot recently, and the effectiveness is starting to wear off. Especially since we both know you’re not going to follow through.”
Algonquin arched an eyebrow. “What makes you think that?”
“Because I’ve got him,” Marci said, patting Ghost on the head. “If I was just another mortal with something you wanted, you’d have had your Thunderbird crash our plane the moment we entered your airspace. You certainly wouldn’t have staged such an expensive and overwhelming trap, but the very fact that you rolled so hard to make sure I had no choice other than to go with you tonight proves that I’m not just another mort
al. I’m not going to go so far as to say irreplaceable, but I think you’ve proven I’m not someone you’re ready to idly kill. So if you want me to cooperate, you’re going to have to try another line. Because I’ve been down the ‘obey me or die’ road before with other gigantically powerful beings who could squash me like a bug, and I’m not buying it anymore.”
Marci ended with a smile smug enough to make a dragon proud. She knew how this game was played. Immortals always thought they could push her around, but for all their power and age, none of these spirits or dragons seemed to grasp that power was fluid, and that it had nothing to do with age or magic or strength. When it came to making others do what you wanted, the only thing that counted was who had the upper hand, and so long as Marci had the potential to become the Merlin, that was her.
Knowing this was how Marci had stayed alive and free as long as she had despite always being horribly outclassed. But rather than growing surly in her defeat as Amelia had, the Lady of the Lakes just gave her a pitying look.
“Poor little mortal,” she said, shaking her head. “Now I see how you’ve lasted so long among the dragons. You play their games very well, but I’m afraid you fail to grasp the reality of your position in my realm. You see, I don’t actually need you or your Mortal Spirit, because I’ve already got one of my own.”
Marci’s eyes went wide. “What?”
Instead of explaining, Algonquin got up and walked to the edge of the cliff. When she reached it, she lifted both hands in front of her with her palms pressed together. When her arms were straight out in front of her, she whipped them apart, and the swirling night mist blanketing the forest parted like the Red Sea.
“Come,” she said, beckoning to Marci. “See for yourself.”
Trembling, Marci obeyed. Clutching Ghost to her chest, she walked to the cliff’s edge and peered down, looking out over what was now a very different landscape. With the mist gone, she could now see that the forest, which she’d assumed covered everything, actually ended less than a hundred feet from where the limo had stopped, giving way to what looked like another world.