The Final Days of Magic

by J. D. Horn

  Alice milled around among Nicholas’s new pets, searching for Nathalie. She could sense Nathalie’s presence by using the old trick Luc had taught her, sending out tiny psychic pings that worked a bit like radar, but she’d already made two sweeps without spotting her. Alice had the odd feeling that they were circling each other. Nathalie’s energy seemed off, scattered—almost cloaked—perhaps deflected by the congregants’ zeal or affected by her visit with the Boudreau family. Then again, Alice couldn’t get a signal on her phone either, so perhaps Nicholas had placed a magical shield over the site, like the faltering privacy spell woven long ago over Précieux Sang, back when witchcraft didn’t have to make accommodations for technology.

  She undid the ties of her mask and slipped it off, casting a quick glance down at the ornate cat face. The story of the goddess Artemis’s pursuit of her brother Lucifer bubbling up as she did. Alice made quick work of pushing the troublesome myth back down into her psyche.

  She lifted her eyes and scanned the crowd for the others—Fleur and Lucy, Hugo and Wiley. Nothing. She got a hit on Evangeline on the edge of the gathering, and another on Lincoln. They weren’t together, but she suspected they were nearby, and the same bit of intuition that told her she and Nathalie were circling each other insisted Evangeline and Lincoln were drawing closer to her and each other.

  She was passing by as one of Nicholas’s followers nodded toward the wicker man. “They can’t light that thing up soon enough for me,” he said to the woman at his side. “I could do with a little heat.” Alice sensed the two were strangers to each other. The woman, who was stuffed into an undersized, extra-large blouse and straining skirt, eyed him with suspicion. “Or maybe a coat,” he said, his good-natured grin fading in the face of the woman’s continued silence. He rubbed his upper arms and rocked up to the balls of his feet and back again, trying to generate warmth.

  He stopped as he took note of Alice.

  The woman turned on him, her expression at once irritated and vacuous. “Father didn’t offer us coats,” she said, sounding offended. “If we were supposed to be wearing coats, Father would have seen to it we had them.” She looked earnestly to Alice, seeking a sign of approval for her steadfast faith in “Father.” “Through him we shall do great things,” she added swiftly, shivering. The blanket justification might have cheered her, but it certainly didn’t warm her like a real blanket would.

  “Through him we shall do great things,” her nervous companion said quickly, echoing the hollow jingle.

  Alice shook her head in disgust and moved on, continuing counterclockwise. Without finding any of the people she’d sought, she approached the spot where Art and Polly had positioned themselves to enjoy Nicholas’s spectacle, arriving just as two of the younger witches pushed past, lit torches in hand. Alice turned, walking backward a few steps as she watched them move to the center and set light to the wicker man’s foundation.

  A jubilant roar went up from the crowd as the fire began to lick at the wicker man’s feet. Alice’s eyes followed the flames as they climbed skyward. For a moment, she thought it only a play of shadow and light, but she witnessed a darkness swooping down from above, followed by a spray of blood that shot out from nothingness.

  Applause and cheers shook the site as blood sprayed out from multiple points overhead, invisible clouds bursting open like fireworks. An anguished cry rose up above the din, and a figure writhing in flames broke free of the effigy. It was a man.

  It was Nicholas. He stumbled forward before falling to the ground. Only then did Alice see the army of hungry shadows, dark, grotesque human silhouettes rising up from beneath the cover of the fog, the majority positioning themselves among Nicholas’s followers, but the larger, denser shadows seeming to target the gathered witches.

  Whatever Nicholas’s intentions had been, he’d lost control. This gathering had been appropriated by someone with, it appeared, even more diabolic notions.

  Alice pushed through the oblivious spectators, advancing on Art and Polly. “Get out of here,” she screamed, trying to make her voice heard over the ovations that were quickly changing into cries of terror. She grasped the hands of a pair of the older witches who’d followed her here, shepherding them toward the Twins. “You have to go,” she yelled at the resisting, indignant elders. The Twins, however, had the sense to move first and ask questions later. They were already gathering those near them into a tight knot. “Get them out.”

  She turned back in time to see two of the shadows circling one of the witches who’d lit the effigy. His torch still burned, and he spun around, wielding the torch like a rapier as he advanced and then fell back. His erratic movements told Alice he was attempting to fend off a menace he sensed but couldn’t see.

  The two shadows, for the moment, ignored the boy’s attempted parries, focusing their rage on each other. They circled their intended prey, swiping at each other with their razor nails, disputing the right of the kill. First one, then the other took notice of her arrival. Together they fell back, bowing to her in obeisance.

  They saw her as one of them. They saw her as their leader.

  Alice flashed back to Marceline’s claim. She’d said Alice was to be their general, their Joan of Arc.

  “Run,” she called to the terrified boy. “Run,” she yelled when he didn’t move. He cast a quick glance right and left, and shot off, dropping his torch. She hoped he’d get enough of a head start before he attracted another of the shadows with his flight.

  A movement at the center of the disintegrating effigy caught her attention. The fire was running out of fuel, but the flames rose higher instead of dying, no longer giving off light as much as devouring the light around them. Their once intense heat had turned in a heartbeat to a glacial cold.

  Another figure, this one undeterred and untouched by the flames, emerged from the conflagration. She understood in a flash of insight that the pyre served as a portal, a doorway between the common world and a place of nightmare.

  Alice caught a glimpse of the creature from behind, a kind of chimera, part human, part beast, but she didn’t have time to process it, let alone consider what it might mean. Shadows were advancing on her, bringing with them tributes. She looked up in horror as they piled the heads of their victims at her feet. There, the woman who’d gloried in being cold. There, the man who’d dared to want a coat. And dozens more.

  In the distance, beyond the fire, she saw Nathalie. Nathalie was trying to stand but could only seem to make it to her knees before tumbling back over. Three of the shadows were advancing on her.

  Leader. General. Joan of Arc. Fire.

  In that moment, Alice saw her purpose with absolute clarity. She was to lead this army—to lead them away from those she loved, to lead them out of the common world to a hell from which they could never return. She, like Joan of Arc, was destined to burn.

  Alice threw back her head and called out to them with all the pain, all the rage, all the fear she held inside her. The shadows stopped. They listened. And then they obeyed, falling into formation and following lockstep behind her as she began to lead them into the dark, icy flames.

  The center of the fire seemed an impossible distance away, but as she gained on it, she saw the common world had folded itself back around the fire. The edges hovered, shimmering like summer heat on asphalt. At last she reached the event horizon where one world ended and the other begun. She held up a hand to signal her army to stop. Then she paused at the edge to take one last breath.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Evangeline was alone on this path. Reverend Bill was gone, but she felt the Dark Man all around her. Her feet were bare, but it didn’t matter. They didn’t actually touch the ground. The earth below her had grown thin enough to be translucent, and beneath the asphalt and soil, below the roots of ghost trees, Evangeline could see a darkness writhing like a snake, wriggling back and forth in precise, straight lines. A new gospel, a revelation waiting to be made manifest.

  A pair of witches touched thei
r torches to the dry brush at the base of the wicker man, and flames began to rise. As above, so below. The fire at the feet of the effigy was at the same time the spark of the Dark Man, burning its way into the common world—no, burning away the illusion of separateness.

  Evangeline now saw the two worlds as one, not layered atop each other but each existing at once, like the two true natures of the necklace. A congregation stood between her and the fire. In the one reality, those gathered were the remnants of the pale souls who’d danced through the heart of the fire in search of oblivion. In the other, they were her former lover’s sad acolytes, who—gathered together by the riverside in their matching, modest dress—resembled her former father’s church group awaiting baptism.

  Hungry shadows, the broken witches of the Dreaming Road, moved in silence among these fanciful, faithful congregants. The shadows’ mirrors, the desperate witches of the common world, basked in the glow of the congregants’ adoration.

  Men, visible to none save themselves and Evangeline, played soldier like little boys among them. They moved with impunity among the others, confident they were the hunters. They failed to consider the hungry shadows’ heightened sense of smell.

  The shadows fell on them first.

  It was an astounding sight to see thin air burst into a shower of blood. A roar rose up from the crowd, cheers and wild applause celebrating the bloody deaths. Some of the witches clearly perceived the bursts of blood as part of Nicholas’s Longest Night pageantry, others perhaps thought it a sacrifice. The acolytes, she intuited, considered it a baptism, and those covered in spatter were treated with the special awe reserved for the lucky chosen.

  Only one toy soldier had the time to cry out before a shadow snatched him up, and like a bird returning to the nest to feed its young, it carried the screaming man to its companions before quartering him with claws and fangs. Evangeline spotted Nathalie rising to her feet, turning a full circle, falling back to her knees.

  A terrified, anguished animal cry came from the man concealed in the center of the pyre. Nicholas had planned to make a triumphant entry, bursting forth unharmed from the inferno, but the Dark Man had a vision of His own. Nicholas stumbled, burning, from the conflagration, falling and rising before he somehow, perhaps on instinct, found the water’s edge. In a final desperate act, he tumbled forward into the flow and disappeared beneath its surface.

  The hungry shadows fell next on Nicholas’s followers, the sheep who’d agreed to sacrifice all for certainty. In the end, the Dark Man had honored the deal these poor fools had struck with Nicholas; they could hope for no purer form of certainty in their lives than having those lives snuffed out, no greater clarity than annihilation.

  On the edge of the gathering Evangeline spotted Alice trying to guide a knot of confused, geriatric witches away from the slaughter. A couple Evangeline didn’t recognize joined her. Alice must have deputized them to take over the rescue, for she stopped and turned back, walking in a straight line directly toward the fire.

  As the last of the sacrifices, his fingers clawing the earth, was jerked upward into oblivion, another creature strode into the common world.

  The head and cloven-footed legs of a goat, the breasts of a woman, the sex of a man. Man joined with beast, female joined with male, the Beast awaited her at the altar, this side of madness.

  Evangeline recognized the essence at the core of the horrifying chimera. It was Luc returned to her in the form of the Beast. Luc had passed through the gates of madness, through the gates of oblivion, to touch the source of all magic—the realm where nothing was, but all was possible. In his kiss he carried the last breath of the old magic, and with that breath in her lungs, Evangeline could determine the fate of magic in the common world—if it would return or fade away forever.

  The discordant drone of an ancient flute accompanied the timeless drumming of her father’s heart to create her wedding march. There was no question of love. Had Luc ever loved her, he would not have conspired to bring her to this moment. No, he loved the Queen and had willingly become a monster so he could claim her for himself and through union with her become King. A beast is never reformed. A beast will forever remain a beast.

  Evangeline joined him before the burning wicker man, the collection of twigs and branches and hemp that would act as officiant to the sacred union of the Queen of Heaven with the King of Bones and Ashes. The vows the Dark Man commanded them to repeat echoed the screams of those sacrificed to bring the King into the common world.

  A voice called her name, from another reality, from a few yards away.

  Lincoln called to her once more. He was speaking to her, or trying to. The words held little meaning in themselves but they caused memories from her subconscious to surface, much like the images Sugar used to communicate with her. The day the electricity between the two of them had burned out the lights. The night she’d almost ripped him apart with beak and claw. The comfort they found in each other, and how it had healed them both.

  Flames glinted off the sword in his hand. He’d come to stop her, just as she’d asked of him. Perhaps he believed he’d found the courage to end her, but the look on his face was evidence enough he hadn’t.

  He started a slow approach toward her, not like he was afraid of her, but like he feared she would take flight. I know who you are.

  The Beast snorted and fumed but didn’t move on Lincoln as she’d expected he would. Evangeline felt herself surfacing from beneath the haze that had enveloped her.

  “I choose you.” She heard Lincoln speak these words, rather than merely feeling their impression.

  He held the sword out to her, hilt first, offering it to her. She took it from him, felt its heft, lifting it and listening to the sound its sharp blade made as it cut through the air. She could feel the Beast tensing, growing excited in the anticipation of watching the death of an unworthy rival.

  “You can’t change your parents,” Lincoln said. “And you sure can’t change your past.” He knelt before her. “But you can choose your partner, and you can choose your path.” He lifted his head and looked straight into the heart of the dark fire before him. He didn’t flinch. “Now, choose me or end me, but don’t make me have to watch you give up on yourself.”

  Holding the hilt with both hands, she drew the sword back and swung it slowly forward until the edge of its blade pressed against Lincoln’s neck. She sensed Luc quivering in anticipation, mentally urging her to sever Lincoln’s head from his shoulders. He delighted in imagining the headless corpse falling forward at his cloven feet. It would be Evangeline’s gift to him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, addressing Lincoln. “I truly am.”

  She pulled the sword up and lunged, driving the tip of the blade through the Beast’s heart. Luc stumbled backward, the goat lips opening to cry out, but no sound came, only a tiny puff of air. Evangeline could sense it coming toward her as the fire fell to darkness, forming a suctioning gravity that caught hold of the body of the Beast and pulled it back, wresting it from the common world. She reached down to grasp Lincoln’s hand, to steady him as he rose on his shaking knees. But then the same irresistible force gripped her and tugged her back, too. Lincoln dove to grab her. Evangeline knew he couldn’t save her, that the gravity that had claimed her was too strong. He would end up sacrificing himself for nothing. She bent his fingers back, trying to break his grasp on her.

  “You have to let go of me. You have to let go.” She watched as the reality of the unreal situation dawned on him.

  His jaw stiffened, and he tightened his hold on her. “Get it through your head, girl,” he said. “I choose you.” He rushed forward, wrapping his arms around her as the common world faded away.

  The last glimpse Evangeline had of the common world was of Alice as the final breath of magic claimed her.

  Of course, Evangeline realized. That was how it had always been meant to be.

  She tasted a bittersweet revelation, an epiphany Alice, too, would soon share—one person�
�s strength is another’s madness. Evangeline couldn’t have survived the knowing, but her last wish was that Alice might.

  After all, out of all the witches of New Orleans, Alice had always been the strongest.

  In the final moment before Evangeline returned to the eternal fire where nothing is, but all is possible, two seemingly conflicting thoughts came to her, not as opposing ideas, but as polarities of a single truth:

  There is no such thing as magic. All that there is, is made of magic.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Burning ice. Not a gasp. An invasion.

  Alice’s lungs expanded, though she felt like they might crumble to icy dust on exhale. When the breath escaped her, it came out as the spicy, bitter perfume of myrrh.

  She heard Uncle Vincent’s anxious voice calling her name. “Alice.” The sound of it felt like a punch in the gut. “What are you doing over there?”

  Alice realized she stood at the edge of Nicholas’s yard. A wall of swirling water slid before her eyes, its undulating surface scintillating in the brilliant light of an impossible white sun. This was the day everything had changed. The day she’d first encountered Babau Jean.

  “You know it isn’t safe out here,” Vincent pressed. “Come back inside.”

  She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t take a step. All she could do was turn her head to look back at him over her shoulder.

  Vincent wasn’t there. He’d been too good for this world, she realized, too kind. She sent out a wish he’d found a heaven with cold beer, old dogs, and an endless supply of beat-up cars to refurbish.