by SA Magnusson
“Kate?”
I ignored Derek, continuing to focus on drawing magic. There was power pushing against me, and I resisted it. I had to resist it. That power was the reason Tony was here, the reason that he was injured, and if I failed, he wouldn’t recover.
Why was I so certain of that?
It was something I would have to consider later.
For now, I had to focus.
Power poured from me, more and more coming from stores deep within me. It went out through my hands and into the stethoscope, an unfocused sense that roared out from me. As the spell placed on Tony bounced off me, I pushed against it.
Cold tingled along my spine.
Was that from what I was doing, or could someone be using magic nearby?
It didn’t matter.
I continued to push.
“Kate!”
There was more urgency in Derek’s voice this time, and I felt his hands on my shoulders, trying to pull me back, but I didn’t need much more time. Another minute or more and I could fix Tony.
I felt that with a strange certainty.
There was rarely certainty in medicine. That was part of the appeal, though most of the appeal came from my interest in using my mind, trying to solve problems and to help others. For some reason, I felt that what I did now would certainly fix Tony.
The spell on him resisted, and I pushed back.
As I did, I continued to force my way beyond the spell. It took a moment, but I suddenly realized I was unmaking the spell—or separating it from him.
How could I do that? Was that my magic, or was there something else working?
For a second, I worried that maybe someone was using me, but that wasn’t the case at all. I still had control, though it was a distant sort of control. Vague. For the most part, I served as a conduit, letting power flow through me, not trying to manipulate it in any way, but to force it from me, and out out out…
The spell around Tony began to separate.
Hands jerked me back, disrupting my connection to Tony.
Did I finish?
My power exploded into the room, useless. The monitor blipped before going blank. The IV machine started squealing. There was a hissing coming from somewhere. My vision was blurred, and I was tired… far more tired than I should be.
That had to be the effect of the magic I’d just used—or that had used me.
I looked over, realizing that Derek had his hands on my shoulders and was shaking me.
Slowly, my vision began to clear. The ringing in my ears didn’t, and the squealing started to give me a headache. “What happened?”
Derek shook his head, raising a finger to his lips.
“What happened?”
I almost couldn’t hear him. Was he talking too softly, or was it me who was the issue? Probably me, I realized. The ringing in my ears would be a problem, especially if I needed to auscultate something.
“You happened,” he said. His voice was easier to understand. His gaze had gone to the door and I turned to see whether anyone else might be watching us. There had been that pair of nurses out in the hall, but we were far enough along one of the side corridors that there wouldn’t be too many people passing by this part of the ER. Thankfully, the hall was empty. “What were you doing? I could feel the power you were pulling. What was that about?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Kate—”
I looked down at Tony. He was still breathing steadily and his eyes were closed, but I didn’t need any spell on him to know what I had almost done. I’d nearly restored the power the council had burned off him. How could I have done that?
How would I have known how to do that?
But I hadn’t. What I’d done had been accidental, nothing more than me pushing against the power I felt, but there was something to it.
Maybe the council burning off dark mage power wasn’t final.
I took a shaky breath. “I think I need to get something to eat.”
Derek nodded. “I’ll fix things in here until they get him for CT. You… you go rest somewhere. And don’t do anything like that again.”
“I don’t know what I did.”
Derek watched me, and that troubled expression that had been on his face before returned. “If you don’t know what you did, we’re in trouble.”
“We?”
“I’m here to watch out for you, Kate. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
I should be thankful. Had Derek not been with me, I would have restored Tony, and I’m not sure that was something I should be doing. And had I restored Tony, I would have drawn the attention of the council. Doing that would be hard to avoid, to the point where I doubted my grandparents would be able to protect me.
As I backed out of the room, I nearly bumped into Dr. Roberts. He started to snap something at me, but I turned away before he had a chance to get out too much more. I didn’t need to deal with him on top of everything else. As it was, I was scared about what I had almost done. And I should be. But I felt a certain relief, too. If it was possible to reverse the council’s spell burning off dark magic, maybe I didn’t need to fear them quite as much as I had. It wasn’t that I wanted to challenge them, but that process had been what I’d feared for so long. Thinking I might not need to fear it left me with a strange elation.
When I reached the nursing desk, I turned back and saw Derek standing in the hall, looking at me. Behind him, Dr. Roberts did the same.
The similarities to their expressions were enough to quench that elation.
3
As tired as I was, I still had a few hours left in my shift. My entire body ached and I wanted nothing more than to sit, maybe throw my feet up and take a rest, but if I did that, I would have the other residents on my case. The one thing I didn’t want to do was upset the other residents. They were my support. Most of them.
“What happened?” Jen asked when I flopped onto the couch in the lounge. For some reason, she’d dyed her hair a deep blue recently, and it had a glittery quality to it in the fluorescent light.
“Patient issue,” I said. “It left me wiped.”
“Must have been some trauma to leave you wiped out.”
I sighed, lying my head back on the couch, staring up at the drop tile ceiling. There seemed to be a pattern to the small holes, though I suspected that was nothing more than my tired mind imagining things. There couldn’t be any pattern there. “Not trauma. A psych patient.”
“Ah, shit. Those are just as bad. I had a schizophrenic this morning trying to convince me I was the Virgin Mary. I haven’t been a virgin since I was fifteen.”
I looked over at her, but her attention was on the TV in the background. “I thought you were thirteen.”
She glanced over at me. “Sometimes I forget what I tell you.”
“You said you and Johnny were playing doctor.”
She smiled. “We were. Sometimes we still do. You never forget your first time, especially when it’s someone like Johnny Sands.”
“One of these days, you’re going to have to let me meet him.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t want me to meet this mystery guy of yours?”
“He’d probably be into you. I don’t want to risk it.”
“I’m not going to steal your boyfriend.”
Her brow furrowed. “Boyfriend? More like friend with frequent benefits. Johnny and I are under a strict no relationship policy, especially since his fiancée would be pissed.”
I snorted and turned back to stare up at the ceiling. “My patient couldn’t walk.”
“Psychosomatic? I’m sure psych on call loved that. More likely, they told you to call medicine.”
I laughed again. Psychosomatic patients were the worst. If you couldn’t fully rule them out medically, they wouldn’t take them. That left few options, especially as the medicine service didn’t want to deal with them either. “I didn’t call yet. I was trying to…”
; I had to stop short before I told her what I had to do. She knew I hid something from her, but not that it was magic. That wasn’t something you could easily tell someone not aware of magic and the Veil. We’d been friends since medical school, and I still hadn’t come close to telling her and doubted I ever would. Not only wouldn’t she believe me, but it was dangerous for her to know about that kind of magic.
“Hey, Kate?”
Jen nudged me and I looked up to see Derek standing in the doorway. He’d managed to get himself back together, no longer wearing an expression of confusion like he had when I’d left him.
“Derek, you know this is the residents lounge, right?”
He glanced at Jen. “Dr. Stone, I am very aware of who this lounge is for.”
She flashed a smile at him and turned her attention back to the TV.
When I got to the door, I frowned at Derek. “What is it?”
“There’s someone outside asking for you.”
“A patient’s family?”
He shook his head, craning his neck to make sure that no one else in the room could hear. It was only Jen and me, but Derek might not have known that. “Not a patient, but it’s related to the last patient we worked on.”
It took me a moment to get what he was saying. I was still tired, and in that state of mind, it was difficult for me to process things.
“Who?”
Derek shook his head. “I don’t know, but they look official.”
I took a deep breath and smoothed my hands over my white coat. Official. After what we had been through with Tony, official likely meant one thing—the council.
Had they detected what I did?
If they had, would they have sent a knight to investigate?
A knight meant they had picked up on my dark magic—even if it wasn’t really dark magic—and if they had, I doubted even my grandparents would be able to save me. They might be tightly connected with the mages, but there were limits to what they could do. Gran wasn’t the only mage on the council, which meant that her reach only extended so far. If others on the council discovered my dark magic, it might not only mean that I would have it burned off—regardless of whether that was permanent or not—but it might also mean that something would happen to them. I didn’t want to be responsible for something happening to Gran and Gramps.
I followed Derek through the halls and out beyond the triage desk. One of the desk clerks, Betty, glanced up from the computer, where she was busy searching for some sort of gadget on eBay again, and nodded at me before flicking her eyes out into the waiting room. I followed her gaze and saw a man in a navy suit, a thin wool coat covering him. His hair was slicked back and he had deeply tanned skin. Everything about him spoke of wealth and an air of authority.
The council.
“I’ll be fine,” I said to Derek as he followed me.
“I’m not leaving you to face them alone,” he said.
I smiled at him. “You don’t have to come with me. You didn’t do anything.”
“Your grandparents would kill me if I didn’t go with you.”
I wanted to argue but having someone with me—even Derek—for emotional support wasn’t a terrible idea. If this was a knight, then I would want my grandparents to know if they intended to burn off my magic. It was the reason they had asked Derek to watch over me in the first place. If it was more than a knight… then I really didn’t want to be alone.
“Ms. Michaels?” the man asked as I approached. He sized me up in an almost clinical way, his gaze sweeping over me from head to toe.
“Dr. Michaels,” I corrected. I would have the council see me as something more than a rogue mage. Not that the title of doctor meant anything to them. They viewed anyone who took an assignment beyond the Veil as lesser than them, even though there were plenty of people with only middling magic who didn’t have a choice. Many, like Derek, were aware of magic, and could even use it to a certain extent, but they weren’t a part of the magical world.
“Dr. Michaels,” the man said, a hint of a sneer to his tone. At least I knew what kind of man I dealt with. Sometimes it was difficult to know. “I would have a word with you, if you don’t mind?”
His gaze darted to Derek, and he seemed to dismiss him.
“He’ll stay,” I said.
“You don’t get to—”
I stepped closer, lowering my voice. “No. You don’t get to decide, not here. He will stay.”
I suppressed the fear clenching my belly. First, I corrected a representative of the council and now I’m dictating the terms of our conversation? What kind of fool am I?
The kind who had just used her power—and far more openly than I ever had before. The kind who now was in trouble with the council. The kind who was in danger of losing herself to a powerful spell that I didn’t yet have the experience to defend against.
Cold surged along my spine.
Everything seemed to stop.
The man looked over at me, a deep frown on his face.
I looked around, seeing how everyone in the waiting room seemed to be frozen in place, whatever magic he used keeping them from moving.
What kind of spell was this?
One that was as powerful as any I’d ever seen. I needed to tread very carefully here. If he was this powerful, it wouldn’t take much for him to freeze me and then burn off my magic. I might not even have a chance to counter before he did.
The mage turned to me, a casual sort of arrogance on his face. “Dr. Michaels. Do you know why I’ve come here?”
My mind started racing, trying to come up with a dozen different reasons that he could be here that would play up my ignorance, but every thought I had kept bringing me back to Tony and the magic I’d used with him. As much as I might want to hide that from him, it was likely that he could tell.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Considering the power you’re using, I would imagine a member of the council.”
The mage smiled. “Good. At least we don’t have to work through the basics. I am a member of the council. And I’m here because we have detected a great deal of power used.”
A different sort of chill worked through me, this time having nothing to do with magic or a spell used around me. This had everything to do with fear of exposure.
And now that I had seen how powerful this mage was, I doubted there was anything I could do to prevent him from ripping my magic away from me, burning it off and leaving me like Tony. What would become of me then? Would I be able to function? Not as a doctor, and not as I wanted.
What would that make me?
Considering how little Tony could argue, I suspected that once the magic was burned out of me, I wouldn’t care anymore.
“Is that right?” I asked.
The mage nodded. “We, of course, keep track of such things. Magic like that used openly around others can be dangerous to those protected by the Veil. You can imagine how we would want to maintain the power and integrity of the Veil.”
“I have chosen to live apart from the magical world,” I started carefully. “I don’t know that much about the power and the Veil.”
The mage studied me. Magic flashed and seemed to flow through me.
My entire body fought. Power welled up inside me, trying to fight against him, ready to attack, that deep part of my dark magic ready to strike on my behalf. It had only done that a few times before, but now that the magic sensed a threat, it was ready.
I resisted the urge to fight back. If I did, the only thing it would accomplish would be giving the mage what he wanted—evidence that I had the kind of power he believed I possessed. In order to make it through this, I had to ignore him, and I had to let his spell—whatever it was that he did to me—wash over me.
It took every ounce of effort not to strike back.
The mage frowned, and I worried that he knew just how much I’d been fighting him. Could he tell, or did I manage to keep that much hidden fr
om him?
The spell faded.
When he was gone—if he left me—I would need to determine if he had done anything permanent, not that I would really be able to know. The kind of magic he would have used on me would have been far more complex than anything I could manage.
“You are related to Cyn and Veran Michaels?”
I stared at him, the sudden change in topic jarring. Derek stood slightly behind me, and I was vaguely aware he pressed up behind me, but he hadn’t said anything. “They’re my grandparents.”
His brow furrowed. “If they are your grandparents, I would have thought that you would have more of an education.”
“I have had an education. It’s called medical school. It’s actually pretty competitive, and I did graduate near the top of my class, so…”
I knew I shouldn’t push him, but my annoyance at the way they perceived those who didn’t embrace magic overwhelmed me. At least Gran and Gramps understood—or at least, pretended they understood.
“There was power used at this location. If you would have me believe it wasn’t you—”
“It was me,” Derek said.
The councilor looked over at Derek, his frown deepening. “You? I doubt you have enough skill.”
Another blast of cold washed over me as the spell struck Derek. Nothing about his expression changed, so I had to wonder if he was even aware of what the councilor did. Some sort of spell that would let him detect how powerful a mage might be. If that were the case, it seemed as if my dark magic had thwarted him, but Derek wouldn’t have such an advantage. The councilor would know that Derek wasn’t nearly powerful enough to do what he claimed, which would lead him back to me.
Derek stared defiantly at the councilor. I had to hand it to him: He was stronger than I had expected. Not that Derek was weak. It was just that when it came to magic, I had the sense that he followed the rules.
That was something I should do. If I did follow the rules, then I wouldn’t be running afoul of the council, standing within some magical bubble that froze everyone around us while he tested to determine which of us would be strong enough to do what he had detected.