by Megan Crewe
Luis put his hand over mine, his eyes wide. “I’m on it. You look after your family.”
As he hurried down the steps, the nearest officer nudged me after him. I whipped around, holding up my hands to show I wasn’t looking to fight. The sight of Granduncle Raymond’s prone form made my gut wrench.
“He’s my granduncle,” I protested, and this once today, that fact seemed to matter. The officer brushed past me, and I crouched by Granduncle Raymond’s feet while the security team cast their first aid ’chantments.
His face looked even more sallow than when I’d threatened to expose the Confed’s greatest secret.
No one knew what to say. We were gathered there in the hospital’s gleaming waiting room—my Grandaunt Phyllis, Dad, Mom, and me—but we stood in a hush, as if our silence would provoke some news out of the room where a team of doctors and magimedics had been working together for the past two hours in a weird sort of harmony, attempting to save Granduncle Raymond’s life.
Hugh was on the other side of the country on business. Margo hadn’t responded to phone calls—she often had her phone off during the government meetings she facilitated. It was just the four of us.
My gaze roamed from the nurse’s desk, where the staff was bustling here and there, to the TV mounted in the corner, to the broad windows that looked over the city. The grand stone structure of the Confed building loomed just a few blocks down the street. Right there—right there we had somehow won and lost at the same time.
I yanked my eyes away just as Rocío slipped through the double doors into the waiting room. The woman who’d appeared to be guarding her before trailed close behind her. My spirits leapt as I turned toward her, but the joy I’d felt in that first glimpse crashed amid the guilt and uncertainty clawing at my innards.
Rocío didn’t appear to need me to say anything anyway. She walked over and wrapped her arms around me, and I bowed my head to her shoulder.
“Any news?” she asked softly.
I shook my head. A lump had clogged my throat. It took me a few moments to dislodge it. “They’re still working away in there.”
“You couldn’t have known it would happen. You were doing what you needed to do. You can’t blame yourself for this, okay?”
“Have you stopped blaming yourself for the people we lost?” I said. In the Exam. The ones who died.
She swallowed hard. “I’m doing my best.”
“I would have been celebrating right now,” I said. “But instead…”
Rocío eased back and took my face in her hands. “The attack on the Circle was horrible. But whatever happens, they agreed to that meeting. They agreed that the policies could change. That’s still a victory. You don’t have to be proud of it right now, but it’ll still be there later.”
My mouth twitched, but I couldn’t quite smile. Rocío raised her hand to my temple. One of the magimedics had sealed the wound from the police officer’s blow, but a mark would have lingered.
“That was hard to watch,” she said.
“That was the point.” Even if, after the way that confrontation had ended, I found it hard to focus on why it had been so important.
Dad cleared his throat. I looked at him, Mom, and my grandaunt in a daze.
Oh. They didn’t know who this person comforting me even was.
“This is Rocío,” I said. “My girlfriend.”
“Hi,” she said meekly. “I didn’t mean to barge in on a family moment. I just—I was worried about Finn—”
“It’s all right,” Mom said. “It was good of you to come.”
I was about to ask what the situation was with Rocío’s new living shadow when a doctor approached our little cluster. The resignation on his face made my back go rigid.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to stabilize Mr. Lockwood,” he said. “The team did everything they could, but there was damage to his heart, and—I’m afraid he has passed on. I’m so sorry.”
My grandaunt made a faint wounded sound. Mom caught her arm as she swayed. Dad’s face tightened, but he stepped forward to confer about something with the doctor. My own balance seemed to have shifted off-kilter. I wobbled on my feet.
Rocío grasped my hand. I hugged her again with a futile wish that I’d never need to let her go.
She was here now. That was what mattered. She was here and not off fighting some wretched war, and—
Rocío stiffened in my arms. She was staring over my shoulder at the waiting room television. The screen was replaying the fracturing of the Confederation building’s archway. I winced and was about to avert my gaze when I noticed the words scrolling along the bottom of the screen.
Terrorist attack confirmed on leading members of the North American Confederation of Magic.
Terrorists? I stalked closer to the TV, Rocío following.
Up close, I could make out the newscaster’s spoken commentary. “Two leading Confederation members are injured and one is in critical condition after a vicious attack following a protest rally at their offices this afternoon. The international mage terrorist group known as the Bonded Worthy has claimed responsibility with a taunting video.”
The broadcast cut to low-res footage of a figure whose face was nearly completely shrouded by scarlet cloth. Three others, two similarly shrouded and one wearing a ghoulish white mask, stood in the background. A translation appeared on the screen as the first figure spoke in a thick staccato voice.
The people of North America have pushed over those in their way for too long. Now you see how it is to fall. This is only—
“Oh, no,” Rocío said in a thread of a voice. She rubbed her arms. “The magic is getting worked up. Something’s happening. The Secretary of Defense—he promised he’d keep the peace, but only as long as no one attacked us—”
“No one did,” I said. “The terrorists are lying, to scare us I suppose. There was someone in the League who’d been talking about striking back at the Confed like this. I saw her at the rally, right after it happened—I know she set it up.”
Rocío’s eyes widened. “We have to tell the Dull government that.”
She spun and dashed across the room to where her guard had lingered. “I need to speak to Zacher,” she said. “Right away. Please.”
“Now, wait a second,” the woman said.
Rocío clasped her hands by her chest in a praying gesture. Her hair twitched as if a bit of wind had tugged at it, and her shoulders stiffened. Was that the magic pulling at her—hard enough that I could see it?
“It’s an urgent matter of international security,” she said. “Please. We have information about the attack the Bonded Worthy are claiming.”
The woman’s jaw tightened, but she pulled out a phone. After a few quick remarks and a torturous wait, she handed the phone to Rocío. “He’s listening.”
Rocío paced to the window and back as she spoke to the Secretary of Defense. He must have been the one who’d sent the guard with her. Was the woman Rocío’s protector or her jailor?
Rocío’s hair quaked against her back in a direction that didn’t seem to fit her movements. The hem of her jacket rustled. Fates above, how adamantly was the magic clinging to her, that I could observe its insistence with my own eyes? My stomach knotted.
The conversation didn’t appear to have gone badly, though. When Rocío handed the phone back to her guard, her expression had relaxed. Nevertheless, she hugged herself before she spoke.
“It’s okay. I don’t know why the magic is freaking out, but it’s not what I was worried about. He said he’s sticking to his promise—and they know the video is a lie. Apparently, the Bonded Worthy has a habit of taking credit for any destabilizing events they can to use for their own purposes. There’s—”
An eerie crackling that reminded me of Fourth of July fireworks pierced through the window. Beyond the glass, glints of magical light wriggled across the form of the Confed building down the street. With a lurch, its walls crumbled. Tons of stone and steel collapsed in a cl
oud of debris with a boom that shook the ground all the way to the hospital.
My breath snagged in my throat. Screams rang out on the street below us. The dust cloud rising over the fallen building whirled—and a ghoulish mask-like face glowed in its midst, framed by a circle of blazing red script. It was the same visage as I’d seen in the terrorist’s video.
They really had attacked us now.
Rocío had dropped into a crouch, her head in her hands, her hair whipping around her. “No, no, no,” she cried. Then her voice was lost in a warbling sound that rushed up around us, so loud my ears were ringing in an instant.
It sounded almost like magic used to, but I shouldn’t have been able to hearken magic. I was hearing this noise the same way any Dull person would. It raged as fierce as a rising storm.
A force walloped the windows in front of us so hard a crack opened in the glass. Everyone in the waiting room scrambled backward with gasps and whimpers. My parents tugged my grandaunt down behind one of the rows of chairs for shelter.
The mirrored face of the building across the street splintered. Car alarms blared. Another stream of smoke streaked up into the sky from somewhere farther away. The force smacked the windows again, and the cracks spread.
The mage insurgents had taken advantage of Ary’s gambit in more ways than anyone had anticipated, and now the magic was raging. As I knelt next to Rocío, gripping her shoulder, my memories from the past few months tumbled together into a barbed line.
Mark’s skin seared raw. The Exam’s vines crushing a girl as she screamed. The bloody mess I’d made of Callum’s thigh. My battered face and ribs at Ary’s hands, the bash on my temple from the Dull police. Granduncle Raymond’s chest split open by a marble shard. The terrorists sending the whole Confed building crashing down.
We’d thought we’d won a victory today, but it hadn’t been enough. Not enough to contain all the pain and rage the whole world had been accumulating.
We’d hit out at each other in every direction, over and over, and now we’d broken the glue that had once bound that world together.
The warbling of the magic heightened to a shriek. Rocío trembled and shuddered. I pulled her to me, dipping my head and cupping her cheek so I could catch her gaze. She stared back at me, her face grayed to a sickly shade. Her hand groped for mine and squeezed tight.
“I can’t stop it,” she said, her voice quaking, as if she honestly believed she should have been able to harness the immense, wild, wounded thing that was thrashing at our city.
“So we just get through it,” I said. “Can you—can you cast at all? There might be people down there who need someone to help, to do something.”
Her chin came up, and the determination I’d always loved her for lit up in her eyes.
“Even if I can’t cast, I’ll do whatever I can.”
Her fingers twined with mine. We pushed to our feet together. Hand in hand, we ran for the stairwell to face the chaos below with everything we were capable of giving.
* * *
Will Rocío and Finn find a way to heal the magic’s wounds? Their story continues in Fearless Magic, the third and final book in the Conspiracy of Magic series, coming Summer 2019. Sign up here to get teasers, chances to win an early copy, and more!
Want a glimpse inside the pivotal events that shaped the world of the Conspiracy of Magic series? Step back 40 years in time to when Finn’s father was a teen, eager to merge the magical and nonmagical communities and falling in love for the first time, in Magic Unmasked, the Conspiracy of Magic prequel novella. Click here to get it FREE now!
Next in the Conspiracy of Magic series
Fearless Magic (Conspiracy of Magic #3)
With the magic raging, the world’s mage communities in chaos, and unexpected enemies closing in, Rocío and Finn scramble to heal the damage before it’s too late. Will the secrets they’ve uncovered and the strength of their bond be enough to turn the tide?
Coming Summer 2019
Sign up for teasers and chances to win an early copy!
The Way We Fall excerpt
If you love stories with strong heroines fighting through desperate situations, you might enjoy my YA post-apocalyptic series, The Fallen World. When a deadly new virus sweeps through Kaelyn’s small island community, she must defend herself and her loved ones from an enemy that’s too small to see…
THE WAY WE FALL
(The Fallen World #1)
Sept 2
Leo,
It’s about six hours since you left the island. The way things have been, I know you wouldn’t have expected me to come to see you off, but I keep thinking about how you waved and waved from the dock five years ago, when I was leaving for Toronto.
While the ferry was carrying you to the mainland, I was on West Beach with Mackenzie and Rachel. Mackenzie had decided we should have one last summer swim before school starts tomorrow, but the breeze was so chilly, none of us ended up wanting to go in the water. So we just walked on the sand, talking and speculating about how junior year will go.
The summer vacationers have all left, so no one was on the beach except for us and a few families having a barbecue by the rocks. I could see the white shape of the ferry getting smaller as it crossed the strait, and the knot in my stomach got tighter and tighter.
Mackenzie started gushing about her “awesome” summer in L.A. and the hot nightspots she’d gotten into, and Rachel and I mostly just nodded in the right places, like usual. Not that I mind. At one point Mackenzie turned to me and said, “Because the big city clubs are the best, aren’t they, Kaelyn?” and all I could say was “Um, I guess,” because I never actually went clubbing in Toronto.
If she knew I spent most of my time there at the zoo or the vet clinic near our house, not shopping and partying, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have glommed on to me the second I moved back last spring. But I haven’t gone out of my way to correct her. It’s nice having people to hang out with like this, even if it’s sort of under false pretenses. I was so focused on getting by on my own in the city, I didn’t realize how much I missed being with friends.
And it was only today I realized how much I’ve missed you.
By the time the ferry was out of view, the spray from the waves was making us shiver. We went up to the grassy stretch by the road, and Mackenzie almost stepped on a dead bird. She yelped and hopped around, shaking her foot like germs might have leaped up onto it. Rachel couldn’t stop laughing.
The bird was a black-backed gull, and it looked healthy—other than being dead, of course. Its feathers were shiny and I couldn’t see any injuries. Really weird, the way it was lying there, like it’d just dropped out of the sky. I wanted to get a stick and move the body around to take a closer look, except Mackenzie would have completely freaked out.
You wouldn’t have minded, Leo. If I’d been walking on the beach with you, the way we used to, you’d have watched while I checked out the gull, and asked, “Can you tell why it died?” And you would really have wanted to know.
Standing there, looking at the gull while Mackenzie wiggled her foot and Rachel laughed, it hit me harder than ever before. How stupid I’ve been to let one little argument screw things up so much. You were my best friend for as long as I can remember, and it’s been almost two years since I last talked to you.
After a bit, Rachel stopped laughing and said she had to get going. Her mom’s been bugging her to be home more since her dad broke his leg working the trawlers last week. We agreed to meet in the caf tomorrow to compare schedules, and then we headed back into town.
I didn’t go straight home. After Mackenzie and Rachel took off, I wandered past the fisheries and up the path that leads through the pine trees to the cliff where the cormorants nest. It’s so peaceful up there. Standing by the rocky edge, looking at the ocean with the cool wind gusting over me and the gulls coasting overhead, I can imagine what it’s like to fly.
At least, I usually can. Right then I felt as if I had a weight stra
pped around my waist, holding me down, made up of all the things I should have said to you before you left.
The most important thing is the hardest to admit. You were right. When we moved, I was overwhelmed the moment the taxi drove us away from the airport into the city. The second I walked up to that huge middle school, swarming with kids who’d spent their whole lives around skyscrapers and subways, I was sure I didn’t fit in. So I went off and watched the chimps play in the zoo and fed the kittens in the vet clinic instead of trying to make friends. I probably could have if I’d put in the effort—Drew was at the same school, just a grade higher, and by the end of the first month he was so busy exploring the streets with his classmates, we hardly saw him at home. But sticking to myself was easier. And by the time I got to the even bigger high school, the thought of doing anything else was scary.
You listened to me moan about the city and the kids at school so many times before you finally pointed out that half of the problem was me. I shouldn’t have gotten so angry. But at the time, I felt like you were turning on me. I couldn’t see how right you were until we moved back here.
I figured I’d just fall in with the same people I’d known growing up, but everyone looked at me like I was a stranger. And I was still scared. I didn’t know what to do or what to say, even to you. I’m so out of practice. It’s ridiculous.
But that’s going to change. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to be someone who talks to people in class even if they haven’t talked to me first, and who hangs out in town instead of on cliff tops watching birds. I’m going to keep on being that person until I’m not scared anymore. And I’m going to use this notebook as a journal, to keep me on track and to practice saying everything I need to say to you, so the first time you come back to see your parents, for Thanksgiving or Christmas, I’ll be able to apologize to your face and see if we can still be friends.