by Devon Monk
“Wait,” I said. “So magic is a ticking time bomb and as soon as someone shakes the nitrogen a little too hard, or mixes in the wrong elements, we get explosions?”
She frowned. “No. It’s a combination of factors. Magic on its own is a part of the natural world. No more destructive than wind, rain, and fire.”
Which was like saying no more destructive than hurricane, flood, and inferno. Spiffy.
“We’ll go over how to handle the storm at the meeting tonight,” she continued. “I want you both there. And Zayvion, if you see Shame, make sure he comes.”
Zay nodded. “I’ll get him there.”
She brushed her hair back again. “Now, what I most needed to talk to you about, Allie, is the well. I want you to look at it. To tell me what you see in the magic there.”
“You want me to Hound the well? Really? For illegal magic use? You people don’t even recognize the law on magic use, so I’m sure you’re not using it illegally.”
She gave me a steely gaze and I wiped the innocent look off my face.
Note to self. Do not be a wiseass when your Blood magic teacher is stressed-out.
“Right. I can Hound the well,” I said. “Not a problem.”
“Zayvion, I’d like you to be there too, please,” she said.
He rubbed his palms across his jeans and stood.
I finished off my coffee and left the empty cup on the table.
Maeve led us down a long hallway to a set of stairs that jagged down and down.
I’d been in the lower level of the inn just once before. When I’d had to stand in front of members of the Authority and fight for my life. I hadn’t expected to get out of it with my memories or magic intact.
I wanted to take Zay’s hand and hold on like a little girl as we descended the stairs, but I refused to. There was nothing down here I couldn’t handle on my own. I’d already proved that.
The last flight of stairs spilled out into a room that looked like it should be the receiving room of a castle, a ballroom, a grand theater for a grand ceremony, instead of the basement of a railroad boardinghouse.
The floor was tiled with marble that washed from the purest white through grays, then sank into the deepest black. The ceiling rose up two stories, huge pillars spreading out at the ceiling into wings that arched up to meet in the center. Glyphs shaped and carved the pillars, the arch of wings, the ceiling, and the walls. Magic drawn in lead, glass, iron—a powerful network of holding spells, warding spells, most I still didn’t know—surrounded the room and the well that pulsed like the earth’s heart beneath the marble floor, deep underground.
There was one thing out of place since I’d last been here. A cage stood in one corner of the room. Built of steel, four-sided, it looked mobile and was placed over the purest white marble tiles.
In that cage was a beast of a man, a nightmare creature caught between life and death. Greyson.
Chills rolled up my spine and I could not take my eyes off the cage, nor the man who was still too much beast within it. Covered by a blanket, he hunched in the corner of the cage, his too-long arms crossed over bent knees, his mouth resting against his forearms so that only his eyes, animal yellow, glowed from within the shadow of the blanket.
I smelled his magic, twisted, dark, burnt-blackberry stench, mixed with the old wax and polish perfume of wood that had been cleaned for centuries. And I smelled blood.
Greyson had a good nose too. He turned his head, just enough to show a flash of fang digging into his arm and leaving a trickle of blood behind.
Something in my head flickered, rattled, and scratched behind my eyes.
I knew the feel of that. Even though I hadn’t felt it for two months. It was my dad. Then my father’s voice, clear as if he were standing next to Greyson’s cage instead of in my head, whispered, Come to me.
Chapter Three
A hand landed on my left shoulder. I yelled, pivoted, and swung.
“Holy shit!” a voice said.
My fist whiffed through empty air. That was because Shamus Flynn was fast. He ducked and skidded down two steps, neatly avoiding a broken nose.
He laughed. “You have got to lay off the coffee, Beckstrom. You’re all twitchy and whatnot.”
“I thought . . .” I was breathing hard. Felt a little sick too. Didn’t know if it was from the overwhelming smells, the half-beast killer guy staring at me, my dad’s voice seeming to come from the half-beast killer guy, or the feeling of my dead dad scraping at the backs of my eyes again.
Why choose? It was all of the above.
Greyson, back when he was just a man, had been one of my father’s murderers. I’d seen that memory from sharing my head with my dad. And since Greyson had one of dad’s experimental disks stuck in his throat, it was a pretty easy leap to guess that someone had stuck it in his neck and used it to keep him in his current state of half man, half beast. The disks could hold magic, and somehow the disk in Greyson held both dark and light magic, and whatever spell worked into it made him the half beast.
My guess was that Dr. Frank Gordon had done it to him, probably around the same time he’d dug up my dad’s grave and tried to possess my dad’s spirit to open up a gateway to death and draw dark magic into the world. Things hadn’t gone the way Dr. Frank Gordon had wanted them to go. Namely, instead of doing what Frank wanted, my dad had possessed me.
Then Greyson had hunted me. Well, not me. He wanted my dad’s spirit. I didn’t know why. Maybe revenge—that seemed like the easiest answer. What I did know was that letting Greyson get his hands on my dad’s spirit, and maybe my dad’s knowledge of magic, fell squarely in the middle of my Bad Things list.
And to make it all worse, Greyson used to be Chase’s boyfriend, maybe even her Soul Complement. She had dumped Zayvion to be with Greyson before Greyson had gotten so screwed up.
I closed my eyes, trying to regain my calm. I was okay; everything was okay. The cage would hold Greyson. Why did they have him caged?
Why was Dad talking from way over there? My dad wasn’t in Greyson. He was in me. Maybe not the best thing, but certainly better than the other options.
“Allison,” Maeve said. “Come down the stairs.” She didn’t put Influence behind it, didn’t even make it sound like a command. Just calm, gentle. Motherly.
If I remembered correctly, I wasn’t listening to her motherly commands.
I opened my eyes. Zayvion, Shame, and Maeve all stood on the bottom step, looking up at me like I was about to burst into flames.
“Sorry,” I said. “I just. It’s just.” I took a step. My knees went wet-noodle and I had to hold the rail to keep from falling. What the hell was wrong with me?
I gritted my teeth and pulled my shoulders back. I could do this. I could walk down these stairs without falling. Did it too. Stood in front of Maeve, breathing a little too hard, sweating a little too much.
She put one finger under my chin and looked up into my eyes.
The good thing? One look from her and Dad stopped scraping at the backs of my eyes.
The bad thing? Greyson growled. Not quite a howl. It was more of a low moan-yell. The hairs on my arms pricked up, and goose bumps tightened my skin.
Allison, I heard my father whisper. Yes, from outside my head. Again.
“I don’t think . . .” My breath gave out, so I tried again. “I don’t think you need to look,” I managed. “He’s there. And in Greyson. I think he’s in Greyson too.”
Maeve’s eyes flicked back and forth, probably seeing more inside me than I really wanted her to.
Greyson howled as Maeve looked deeper in my mind for my dad. He wanted the rest of my dad’s spirit in me. The cage shook. I hoped the steel bars could hold him. I hoped the magic in this room could hold him.
“We have been through Greyson’s mind,” Maeve said. “Jingo Jingo has been through his mind and has seen nothing, no trace of your father in him.”
Yeah, well, Jingo Jingo had been through my mind and said my father
wasn’t there either. I’d already told her that a dozen times. She never believed me.
“You know what I think about Jingo Jingo’s ability to sense my father.” It came out calm. Reasonable. Strong.
Go, me.
“I do. Jingo Jingo is an expert at sensing the dead. You are not.”
“Jingo Jingo isn’t the one who’s possessed.”
We stared at each other for a couple seconds.
“He could be wrong,” I pressed.
Maeve was a woman made of stubborn. So was I.
“Can you feel the well?” she asked, suddenly switching subjects.
I held my breath, trying to keep from yelling. The well was the least of our problems. The caged killer Necromorph half-beast dude over there, who had a part of my father in his head that no one else could see, and a desire to drag the rest of dear ol’ dad out of me even if it meant killing me, was something I thought we should all be a little worried about. “Why?” I asked.
“Just answer me.” She was not amused. Not playing games. Not happy.
Yeah, well, that made two of us.
I leaned back on one foot and glanced at Zayvion. He watched me, fists clenched at his sides belying that oh-so-Zen mask. He’d been helping me keep my dad blocked in my mind. Taught me a few spells that seemed to be working to keep Dad quiet. Until now.
I raised one eyebrow, to let him know I could handle it.
Shame, however, was pacing across the room away from us, like a man walks on rice paper. His head was tilted down at an odd angle, as if he were listening to his footsteps. His hands were lifted slightly above his waist, fingers spread. He was trying to hear something, sense something. Something beneath the floor.
He was listening for magic.
I realized I couldn’t feel it like I had before. The deep strumming heat of it beneath the room, beneath the tiles. Outside the inn, the well was usually no more than a faint presence, but down here, the well radiated power.
Or at least it had the day I’d taken my test. And now the well felt—not empty, but certainly less strong, less radiating, less full.
“It’s different,” I said.
Shame paused over tiles that were gray going on black. He knelt, stuck his fingertips against the marble. Took a deep breath, let it out, then rocked back on his heels. “Damn.”
He patted the pocket of his jacket, looking for cigarettes, found them, tapped one out.
“Don’t smoke in here,” Maeve said. Then to me, “How is it different?”
I glanced at Zay. He had moved silently to stand next to Greyson’s cage. Maybe he didn’t want to influence me. Maybe he wanted to pound Greyson.
He wasn’t the only one.
“You want me to Hound the room?”
“First I want you to tell me what you feel. What you sense.”
I’d learned that when Maeve asked me to do something in her teacher voice, she wasn’t really asking. Normally, it bothered me and I gave her lip for it.
But there was something very wrong about the well and the magic here. Something that made me want to go home to my apartment, home to my stone gargoyle, and stay as far away from the Authority and magic as I could.
Like ducking for cover before a storm hit.
Who was I kidding? Even if I went home, I couldn’t get away from magic. It flowed under the entire city, through the conduits and Gothic glyphed cage work that wrapped every building. And it flowed through me.
I tucked my hair behind my ear, my hand trembling. I walked across the room until I stood in the center of it, and stopped just short of where Shame knelt.
The same down-the-throat horror that I usually got from enclosed spaces skittered through my brain and set fire to my nerves. My heart was pounding too hard. I wanted to turn back. I wanted very much not to do this.
Shame watched me from his position on the floor. He placed one hand on the tiles, palm flat. I hoped he wasn’t planning to Proxy or Ground me. I was shaky. I wasn’t sure how magic was going to respond to my cast, or if it would respond at all.
I stopped, spread my feet so I had a chance of staying on them if things got bad. I resisted looking behind me to see what Maeve, Zayvion, and Greyson were doing. Instead, I calmed my mind: Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack . . .
I licked my lips. Instead of tracing a glyph in the air, I tipped my head up to the angel-wing ceiling, dropped my hands at my sides, fingers wide and open, and drew the glyph for Seek at my side. I reached out with my senses, using a little magic from inside me to seek. I sent my mental fingers deep, deep into the earth beneath me.
The well was not there. I frowned, reached deeper, sent my magic farther. Finally felt the well, a glow of magic, a heat, yet so far away. The magic was there, still pooling, still flowing, but it was like an ocean at low tide. Or like someone had punched a hole in the well, and magic was draining away. I didn’t feel it filling any other space, didn’t feel it creating new channels, new rivers. Didn’t feel it pouring out through the iron and glass conduits that channeled the magic that flowed freely beyond the well.
Something, or someone, was draining an enormous amount of magic out of the well.
Holy shit.
Magic inside of me went cold and sticky. I wanted to puke. Okay. That was enough of trying to touch the well. I let go of the small Seek spell and tipped my head back down.
Shame watched me with a grin on his face. Nice, he mouthed.
I took a couple breaths, maintaining eye contact with him until I was confident my panic didn’t show. How could he be so calm? Maybe the well emptied out like this all the time. Maybe I was overreacting.
I turned back to Maeve and Zayvion. “Do you really want to talk about this here?”
Maeve frowned. “Why?”
“Greyson.”
“He is contained. Controlled. He cannot hear us. Or see us.”
I glanced over her shoulder. Greyson glared at me from amid the shadows of his cage.
I was pretty sure he saw me.
“Isn’t there a better place to keep him?”
Maeve folded her arms over her chest. “This is the safest place for him exactly because he is near the well.”
I did not believe her. This was a bad idea. A really bad idea. People who use magic to murder should not be anywhere near magic, much less a well of it. How did she not get that?
“What did you feel?” she asked.
Fine. I’d do it her way. But I wasn’t happy about it.
“Something is draining the well.”
I didn’t think Maeve could get any paler. The freckles on her cheeks suddenly seemed darker, and a greenish hue lined her lips.
“The storm?” Zay asked.
“It must be,” she said. “Allie, you hold magic inside your body. Can you sense anything unusual about it within you?”
Other than that it was cold, sticky, and giving me the creeps? “It’s usually warm, or hot. It feels cold. Kind of sticky.”
Shame snorted.
I made a mental note: smack him when his mom wasn’t looking.
“Has it ever felt that way before?” she asked.
“That I can remember? No.”
“Do you feel magic being drained out of you?”
I took a second to concentrate on the magic inside me again. It felt strong right now, just . . . wrong. “No. It’s still there.”
“That’s good news.” She didn’t smile. “Shame, come stand with us,” she continued as if this were class. “Allie, I’d like you to Hound the room, to see if there are any unusual spells here.”
She was such a kidder. Every spell, ward, and glyph worked into this room was unusual. Still, I knew what she meant. She wanted me to look for predatory spells, Drains, Siphons, anything else that might be used to screw up the well.
It might help if I knew how the well worked, or how the spells and wards and glyphs normally reacted to being so near it. Nothing like throwing the new girl into the deep end of the magic pool and telling her to dive for pe
arls.
Good thing my lack of knowledge had never stopped me from doing stupid things before.
I calmed my mind, used my little jingle again, and chose which price I would pay to use magic. My standard pain lately had been muscle aches. Don’t get me wrong: it still hurt to use magic, but since I was working out and hurting anyway, and had the funds to get a massage and soak in the steam room or hot tub every once in a while, I figured muscle aches made the most sense.
I set the Disbursement for muscle aches, then drew the glyphs for Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste.
Spells keyed to life beneath my vision. Pale fire in rainbow metallics crawled up the columns, across the walls. Shadow glyphs, glowing in deeper tones than those on the walls and ceiling, burned like dark ghosts shifting beneath the marble tiles.
Wow. It wasn’t just glyphs worked into the room. The entire room, including the winged arches, was a glyph, carved and constructed to carry magic, to channel it, to hold it, keep it, hide it, tap it.
The art, the vision, the intimate knowledge of architecture and how spells blended, contrasted, strengthened, and weakened, were stunning. I didn’t know who had created this room, but whoever they were, they were brilliant. Genius.
“Allie?”
It was Maeve. I licked my lips and realized I’d been standing there and staring, transfixed by the beauty and power of the room, instead of Hounding.
Embarrassed much?
I paced to the wall opposite the stairway, and made my way along the perimeter of the room. I dragged my fingertips across the wall as I went. The soft, ancient wood, carved and placed here long before this was a train station, long before this was even a building, thrummed beneath my touch. Magic darkened and rippled away from me, like water beneath a soft wind.
The glyphs shifted from one discipline to another as I made my way around the room. Faith, Death, Blood, Life. Nothing seemed strained, strange, or out of place. All magics flowed and merged in harmony I’d never seen before. All magic working together as one.
If something here was draining the well, I didn’t think it was in this room.
I stopped next to Zayvion, in front of Greyson’s cage. I had every intention to Hound that cage. I wanted to know that it could really hold him. The binding, holding, and ward spells were strong, but there was a hint of something, a darkness beneath them, that worried me.