“I thought you only used red light down here,” I replied.
“I do. That’s an alarm. Flares up if there’s a significant disturbance in the background dark magical field within a fifty-mile radius. Dying down now,” he explained, sinking onto a folding chair, “but something big happened, and we’re still seeing the after-effects. Vivi called me when things went nuts at the game, and I put two and two together.” He glanced about the room, then shrugged. “Sorry, man. I’d offer you a seat, but…”
The only empty chair was a folding steel contraption, and I brushed the matter aside. “How the hell are you tracking dark magic events?”
Slim leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. “You’re asking me to get into theoretical thaumics, and I don’t think you want to sit down here that long.”
“Layman’s terms?” I asked, leaning against a relatively clean section of shelving.
He puffed his cheeks, stared at the ceiling as he thought, then exhaled in a noisy rush. “We’re not so much detecting dark magic as we are its effect on the regular magic around it. Same principle behind the wards down here—the spell revs up in the presence of a strong dark magic event, detected when the regular magical levels vacillate too much. Keeps anything wielding dark magic out of the hole, but lets schmucks like us right through. Good enough?”
“I suppose,” I muttered, wishing Slim had been more generous with the liquor. “So you think the punk who took Olive was using dark magic? How? You people can’t—”
“Bingo.” He sat forward again and leaned over his thighs. “Wizards can’t use dark magic. So, with that in mind, do you want to tell me who you pissed off in the Gray Lands?”
“No one! I’ve had no contact with that realm!”
Slim looked at the others, then at the dimming blue bulb. “Might want to think harder.”
Once the initial shock wore off, Meggy proved surprisingly stoic, and she put up no fuss when I insisted she return to Faerie for her own protection. “Just tell me what we need to do,” she said, pacing across my office while Aiden watched her march from the safety of the couch. “I’m getting her back, Colin—come hell or high water, I’m getting her back. And don’t think you’re going to sideline me, either,” she added, jabbing her finger in the air as she crisscrossed the rug. “I’m not sitting back and waiting for someone else to bring Olive home. I’ve waited too damn long already—”
She broke off her rant as Valerius rapped on the door and quickly let himself in. “Your pardon, but they insist,” he said, holding the door closed. “I told them this was a terrible time, but they won’t be sent away.”
“Who?” I asked, topping up my scotch while Meggy’s back was turned.
Val cocked his head back at the door. “All five of them,” he muttered. “What do you want me to do?”
I glanced at Aiden, who shrugged. “Tonight can’t get much worse, can it?” he offered. “Hey, maybe they’ll go away if I’m here.”
“Or maybe they’ll be impossible,” I countered, but motioned for Val to admit my siblings and knocked back my liquid patience.
They pushed past him in a clump, talking over each other in an incomprehensible jumble of threats, protestations, and vaguely-worded references to past insults. I waited until the door slammed, then banged my fist on the desk until the cacophony dropped to an irritated susurrus. “I’m busy,” I said once I could hear myself think again. “What is it now?”
Ji stepped forward, crossed her bare arms over her tight-laced tunic, and glowered up at me. “This is your fault. If you’d brought Moyna home, this would never have happened.”
“What are you talking—”
“Word travels,” Syral interrupted from the rear of the room, where she had draped herself against Huc’s side. The two of them exchanged knowing gazes, and her burgundy lips barely curled as she looked back at me. “Word always travels. So what are you going to do about her?”
I hesitated briefly, examining their faces—Ji’s anger, Syral’s mocking curiosity, Huc’s apathy, Doran’s undisguised contempt, and Nanine’s unreadable smile—then quietly asked, “Who told you?”
“Does it matter?” Ji spat. “Moyna was Mother’s little pet, and you had no right—”
“Olive.”
Meggy’s voice was low and controlled, but it cut through Ji’s intended tirade like a shout. The others turned as one to locate the source, and she stepped away from the wall, clenching and unclenching her fists. “Olive,” she repeated. “My daughter’s name is Olive. Olive Marie Horn. I carried her, I bore her, I named her. And now I’m going to find her. So unless you idiots have anything useful to add, get out.”
The five of them gawked, momentarily speechless, before Ji recovered her voice. “Who do you think you are?” she demanded, pulling herself to her full, albeit limited, height as her voice shrilled. “Who do you think you are, dog? Who are you to speak to me—”
I saw the bolt leave Ji’s hand and knew I couldn’t stop it in time. Before I could cry out, however, Meggy had thrown up a decent shield, and the energy dissipated into the corners of the room.
“Who am I?” she asked as Ji scowled in confusion. “I’m Olive’s mother. But you,” she said, drawing her hands together as if packing an invisible snowball, “can call me Lady Meghan.”
My sister had three hundred years on Meggy, but Meggy had surprise on her side. She twisted her hands, releasing the force she’d built up between her palms, and threw Ji halfway across the room and into an end table. Ji yelped on impact and stared at the ceiling, dazed with the blow, and Meggy readied another blast. “What was that about your mama’s pets?” she asked, closing the distance between them. “Go on, say it again! Say it, damn you! Say it!”
Before she could reach Ji, Syral smoothly inserted herself into Meggy’s path and held up her open palms. “My dear little one,” she murmured, “stop and think about what you’re doing.”
Meggy stood there, eyes narrowed, teeth bared, breathing in furious gasps, then seemed to realize she was surrounded. Her muscles were still tight, but her hands dropped, releasing her built-up ammunition. “You knew,” she muttered, looking at each of them in turn. “You knew she had my daughter, and you did nothing.”
“And if you would fight someone over that,” Syral replied, “you should in fairness fight everyone who came to court in the last decade. Moyna was known to all.”
“Olive!”
“Very well, Olive,” she soothed. “You’re angry, I can see that. But child, is this the way you want to die?”
“That’s enough,” I interjected, pulling Meggy back to my side before the situation could deteriorate further. “No one’s dying today. And get up, Ji,” I snapped, “you’re not even bleeding.”
Doran sprawled across the empty sofa and smirked at the room. “So, you’ve elevated your whore, Coileán? Feeling generous, or was she being difficult?”
I gripped Meggy’s wrist and felt her trembling with rage. “Meghan is Oberon’s youngest,” I told him, fighting the urge to make him join Ji on the rug. “She is not my whore. And you’ll excuse us for a minute,” I said, ripping open a gate to my chambers, then led Meggy through and closed the way before the others could complain.
When we were alone, I pulled her against me and held her while the worst of her shaking subsided. “It’s all right, it’s over,” I murmured, patting her curls. “Stand down, honey, you can’t win that one.”
She looked up at me and shook her head. “She knew. That bitch knew—”
“They all knew. And you’re not going to get a second cheap shot in, so please don’t try to kill my sister again. I appreciate the effort, but that’s not even close to a fair fight.”
Meggy closed her eyes and held on until her breathing slowed to normal. “Sometimes it’s really bad,” she finally mumbled.
“What is?”
“The rage. I get so angry…everything with Olive, you know, and the first time I ended up here, and then they look at m
e like that…” She tightened her grip around my chest. “You’re not the only one with a temper. It didn’t use to be like this, but lately...”
Her voice drifted off, and I rubbed her back. “Started after Olive came home, didn’t it?”
“Mm-hmm. Teenager in the house. Guess the hormones are contagious,” she joked weakly.
“It’s not hormones. That bind that had been on you—this is only a guess, but I think it might have been dampening more than your talent.”
She pulled away and blew her hair out of her eyes. “You think this is a faerie thing?”
“Seems like it. I mean, you’d have never pulled something like I just witnessed when I first knew you, and there were hormones back then.”
Meggy mulled that over, then sat on the edge of my bed and frowned in thought. “When you lost it with Stuart—”
“Exactly.” I saw the flash of panic cross her face and quickly added, “It doesn’t always happen like that. I don’t get homicidal road rage, right? Just sometimes…someone pushes me too far, and then it’s either hold on as hard as I can or ride it out. It gets easier to control, I promise it does,” I said, sitting beside her. “But while you’re getting yourself sorted, I’m going to have to ask that you refrain from making attempts on my siblings. There are five of them, and I can’t be everywhere at once.”
“Six,” she corrected. “You’re forgetting Aiden.”
“Aiden can’t remotely set you on fire, but yeah, please don’t kill the little guy.”
We sat in unsettled silence for a time, and then Meggy murmured, “I really was going to hurt her.”
“I know.”
“Shit,” she sighed. “What I said about you and me and Stuart—I feel a teensy bit hypocritical right now.”
“Don’t. You’re still adjusting…”
She looked at me incredulously. “Colin, I just tried to kill your sister. You don’t even seem disturbed, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.”
“I love you,” I said, and kissed her forehead. “Ji’s a rock in my shoe, and I wouldn’t exactly mourn her passing. And besides, I didn’t think you’d actually pull it off,” I added, nudging her in the shoulder. “She’s ten times your age, Meggy. But in all honesty, that was impressive. Toula’s not a bad teacher.”
She gave me a half-smile. “I can’t think it and do it yet. Not for the big stuff,” she clarified. “She’s been trying to wean me off the gestures, but they work.”
“Wizards gesture all the time,” I said, shrugging. “It’s about the mindset. If interpretive dance puts you in the proper frame of mind, then dance on.”
“Yeah, but I shouldn’t have to.”
“Cut yourself some slack! Moon and stars, you’ve been at this game, what, eight months? If anyone should be embarrassed here, it’s Ji. Speaking of whom,” I muttered, rising from the bed. “Coming back with me? I need to make sure Aiden’s still in one piece.”
She smirked as she pushed herself to her feet. “I guess I can behave.”
“I’m not asking you to behave, my lady—I just don’t want you to commit suicide by faerie.” I started to open the gate, then paused. “And nice one, Lady Meghan.”
“Sorry,” she muttered.
“For what? It’s your title, do with it what you will. Although,” I said, rubbing my neck, “technically speaking, you know you were born into Oberon’s court, yes? He hasn’t let any of his people return to Faerie since he split. You being here…he might not like it.”
“Well, then, you can both get over yourselves, because as far as I’m concerned, I’m a free agent. Now, are you going to talk politics all night, or are we going to find Olive?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, and opened the gate back to my office. When we were through and the gate closed once more, I looked about the room, saw no corpses, and nodded. “Right. The situation is as follows: Olive is probably in the Gray Lands or in the custody of something out of the Gray Lands. Assuming she’s in that realm, my hands are somewhat tied. Suggestions?”
“You can’t leave her!” Ji protested, pressing a bag of ice to the back of her head. “And muzzle your dog, Coileán,” she added, sparing a glare for Meggy.
I perched on the corner of my desk. “Talk about the mother of my child in that fashion again, and I’ll throw you through the wall and feed what’s left of you to the dragon out back. Is that perfectly clear?”
Ji began to respond, saw that I was in earnest, and quickly shut her mouth.
“She has a point,” said Doran as he examined his fingernails. “If you leave Moyna in the Gray Lands, then you’ve proven yourself weak to the court.” His dark eyes—Aiden’s eyes, but narrower—rose briefly to mine in challenge. “Of course, I don’t know how you propose to fight properly in that hell. Your problem, I suppose, dear brother.”
Aiden looked around the room, puzzled, then lifted his finger. “Sorry, what’s the problem?”
Doran snorted and continued to gaze at me. “Going to send the mongrel in as bait?”
“The mongrel asked a simple question,” Aiden retorted, staring at Doran until he reluctantly glanced in Aiden’s direction. “What, scared to cross your own borders?”
“Allow me,” said Syral, interjecting before another fight could break out. “There’s virtually no magic in the Gray Lands,” she explained, leaning over the back of Aiden’s couch to address him. “Anyone who chose to fight there would have a significant disadvantage. Quite possibly a fatal disadvantage, I would think.”
Doran’s expression had shifted into an enigmatic quasi-smile, and I contemplated how lovely it would feel to throttle him. “Even if I punched a gate open from here,” I told Aiden, “there’s too much dark magic in that realm. Whatever flowed out of Faerie would meet a reverse flow out of the Gray Lands—ten feet inside the border, I doubt you’d be able to draw on enough magic to work a glamour, let alone anything defensive.”
Aiden’s brows knit. “So why not carry it over with you? Pipe it in and up the flow rate rather than rely on whatever’s passively coming through the gate?”
The rest of our siblings chuckled, and I shook my head. “The last person who knew how to store and transport magic was Simon Magus, and he’s been gone a long time, kid.”
He looked at me quizzically, then stood and glanced around the room until he settled on a carved wooden box on a side table, an old tea chest I’d liked and never had the heart to discard. With a little grunt, he carried it to the coffee table, lifted the lid, and took a deep breath.
“Aiden?” I asked, but he shook his head.
“Don’t. Let me concentrate. I’ve never done this with an audience,” he mumbled, closing his eyes. His hands spread apart, and then, ever so slowly, they came toward each other again, twitching as if straining against a great weight. Nanine gasped softly, and the others pushed closer, watching as Aiden turned his palms down over the box, then snapped the lid closed. When he opened his eyes again, he was flushed and sweating, but he grinned. “See? That’s the only thing I’ve ever been able to do. I can’t use magic, but I can push it around.”
“What did you—”
“Are you blind?” Ji snarled.
Beside me, Meggy snapped her fingers, then hefted the box off the table. “Actually, he is,” she told Ji, and pressed the chest into my arms. “Go on, take a whiff.”
Puzzled, I cracked the lid, then coughed at the overwhelming stench of concentrated magic, a sensation greatly akin to pouring citronella straight up my nose. “How?” I managed to hack once I could breathe again.
My brother fidgeted under the room’s incredulous eyes. “I don’t know, you push it where you want it to go. Like cupping your hands in the pool…” He paused, waiting for the recognition that didn’t come. “You…can’t do that?”
“No one can do that,” said Huc as I fell into another coughing fit and slammed the chest closed. “Magic isn’t portable—you can’t pack a little backup supply and carry it about with you.”<
br />
“Except that’s what the Arcanum did,” I said, putting the odiferous box on my desk for safekeeping. “And that’s how we opened the gate again last spring—we used relics from the Great War.” The younger of the bunch frowned, and I explained, “Inter-arcana conflict about a thousand years back. A wizard called Simon Magus figured out how to store and transport magic, but they’ve never been able to replicate his results.” I peered down at Aiden, who had taken his seat and seemed to be attempting to shrink into himself. “Does Greg know you can do that?”
He shook his head. “I’m not doing anything. I push it back and forth, make the colors move around, when I’m trying to think. It’s like doodling, I guess.”
“Doodling?”
“Clears my head,” he mumbled. “Something to do with my hands. I didn’t know—”
“Aiden,” I interrupted, sliding onto the coffee table in front of him, “that’s like getting bored with transcription and drawing the Mona Lisa in the margin.”
He hadn’t been so miserably uncomfortable since our first meeting. “I thought everyone can do that. I mean, you know, people do things with magic—I poke at it.”
I gripped his arms and waited until he met my eyes. “If Greg had the first inkling that you were capable of what you just did,” I said quietly, “he’d have never let you out of his sight. Your ‘doodling’ borders on the miraculous. Honestly,” I said, releasing him, “I’ve never known a wizard who could do that.”
“Simon Magus—”
“Could have had someone like you working behind the scenes. He comes off as insufferable in his writings—I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d taken the credit for a witch-blood’s work.”
Behind me, Doran’s robes rustled as he shifted on the couch. “Well, then, I suppose your troubles are over. Let the mongrel pack a bag for you, and go find Moyna.”
“Whoa, wait a minute, don’t put this on me,” Aiden hurriedly interjected. “I just mess around with this—if you want a reliable backup source of magic, I’m going to need specs and time. How much does it take to power one of those fireballs, anyway?”
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