“Your nose,” he said.
“What?” I pulled the towel away from my face, the cloth stained with a bright red bloodstain.
“Do you get nosebleeds a lot?” he asked.
“No.” I pressed the towel against my nose. “Twice in one day has to be a record or something, right?”
“Twice in one day?” he asked sharply.
“Yeah,” I said. “This morning, my best friend came over and—”
—The smell of something foul. The old man leaned over, bony fingers pressing firmly down on her forehead. “Mustn’t remember,” he whispered.
She could see the colors dancing around him, feel the cold as the temperature in the room dropped, prickling her skin—
“Kylie!” Mayfair shouted. “I need you down here! She’s having some kind of seizure!”
I couldn’t speak, could hardly move. Everything went fuzzy …
Chapter Sixteen
“Hello again.”
“Hello,” I said. Splashing the warm water under the pier with my toes, I giggled. I couldn’t remember the last time I had dangled my legs off a pier into such warm, clear water.
My reflection appeared in the water, and I frowned. The only spot cloudy and indistinct in an otherwise crystal clear lake.
“You’re quite strong, more so than I first realized. How are you called?”
“Sam,” I replied with a smile.
I had to hold my hand up to block the sun in order to see her clearly. Pale hair fell off tired shoulders. Lines crinkled the corners of sharp blue eyes radiating intelligence and sadness all at once. She smiled softly in the way some people could, making you feel warm and safe all at the same time. Her dress, elegant and homemade all at once, caught the sun and held it, shimmering like fine silk. A simple gold pattern of interlaced lines ringed her neck and wrists.
“I am Anna,” she said. “Do you know me?”
“No,” I answered, kicking up the water again. “But I feel like I should.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” she said. “It has been a very long time since anyone has been able to do what you’ve done.” Anna scanned the mist hanging above the water some thirty feet out.
Whatever she perceived beyond the fog, I didn’t. The mist lay so heavy on the lake, the far shore didn’t even register as a shadow. Sound, however, did carry. A rustling in the distance bounced around the lake, reminding me of a crowded concert full of people all walking or shuffling along together.
With a long finger, she touched my chin and turned my face to peer into my eyes.
“He will sense it,” she mumbled. “It’s remarkable. Older than is usual.”
“I’m old?” I asked.
She smiled, using the same finger to hook my hair behind my ear. “Not at all.”
I smiled back. “People keep saying I am.”
“Oh? Which people?” she asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, and my mind went blank. The scent of smoke wafted from somewhere. I coughed and shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
Now she cupped my chin in her hands and drew me close. Something cool and refreshing washed over me.
“I see,” she breathed. “This is how he twists my teachings.”
“I don’t understand,” I admitted.
“No,” she sighed. “You wouldn’t, would you? Not even what you have done by coming here.”
“I like it here,” I said with a smile.
“I’m sure you do,” she smiled back. “But you aren’t really here, not wholly. You have projected a piece of yourself here, piercing through the Veil to reach me.”
“Why would I do that? How would I do it? Are you sure? I don’t remember any of that.”
“The why is simpler than the how, and our time is limited because of your lack of understanding,” she said. “I will answer what I can. I am a teacher of magic. For millennia have I taught those such as you how to control their power. More importantly, how to maintain the necessary balance. Your people have forgotten the balance, forgotten that the price paid for using magic can be tempered. The result? They are not as strong as they once were, they die out where once they flourished, and the days to come will be harder than any before.”
“I don’t understand,” I said again. “Who are they?”
“You ask the wrong questions,” she said, shaking her head. “Someone has done something to you, Sam.” She put a finger on my forehead. “Here.” Her hand fell away. “He once walked these very shores. I believe that connection brought you here to me, for I taught him these magics. What he has done is an abomination, and you will likely not remember any of this conversation when you return to your body.”
I frowned. “I don’t want to go back. I like it here. Peaceful.” Everything bothering me melted away here. My body was lighter. Happier.
Anna stroked my hair. “I know. But in this form, there is nothing I can do for you. You are here in Spirit only, and the link could collapse at any moment. There is damage being done to your physical body even as we speak. We have no way of knowing what this damage will ultimately do to you or what you will remember and what you will forget when you return.”
“I think I’ll remember.”
“Oh? And how many times have you visited me now, Sam?”
“I’ve never been here before.”
“My point exactly,” she sighed.
“Anna?”
“Yes, child?”
I pointed to the mist. “What’s out there?” The shuffling of feet grew louder, the muffled clink of metal on metal rising.
“You don’t need to worry about that, Sam. Not yet,” she said. “Not until you are here in the flesh.”
“Will I?” I asked. “Come here for real?”
“I believe so, yes,” she said. “Your connection to this place grows stronger with each visit.”
“I’ve never been here before,” I reminded her.
She smiled. “Of course.” Anna stroked my hair again. “If it will quench your curiosity, I will say this: beyond the mist lies an army of the dead.”
My eyes went wide. “The dead?”
“Their sole purpose is to keep this island forever isolated from the rest of the world.”
“That’s …” I said, and swallowed hard. What would an army of the dead look like? “… sad. Why would anyone want to keep you isolated?”
“Why do men do anything?” she asked. “Pride, lust, fear, and anger. Do not fear for my safety, Sam.”
“Okay,” I said. The mist moved slowly around the island. “Where are we?”
“You have found your way to the edge of my domain, to my island. Above us on the mountain rests Caras Glas Beinn, the Gray Tower, a Wizard’s Keep. My home.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve heard of it before.”
“No, you would not know those names. Perhaps you would know the name your people once used.” She smiled, and the world dimmed.
“Many simply call it Avalon.”
* * *
“…Avalon,” I mumbled.
The image of an army of zombies reaching out to grab me and pull me down into a sea of purified flesh made me sit straight up, which turned out to be a very bad thing. My head swirled; the room spun. Thunder pounded in my head. I clutched my ears and pressed hard to make it stop. Eyes squeezed shut, I silently demanded that the room stop spinning.
“Hey,” said a voice. “Take it slow.”
Through one open eye, I took in the room. Some sort of bedroom. Jack Mayfair sat in a high-backed chair next to the bed, which I currently occupied. Curtains closed tight, the only light in the room came from a tall lamp with a beaded shade next to his chair. The walls had faded wallpaper with a striped pattern.
With an audible snap, he closed the book he held in his hands and placed it on the nightstand atop another book. His eyes were dark, maybe bloodshot, too—difficult to tell in this light. The lines in his face stood out, though—deep crevices cutting through the flesh like irrigat
ion canals through a desert. I’d been trying to place his age since I met him, thinking him maybe in his late forties. Seeing those lines, I upped that to mid-fifties, much older than I’d originally thought. Unless he’d aged a decade in a single day.
“Ow,” I replied. The room still spun, and the headache had probably gotten worse in just the few seconds since I sat up. “Headache.”
Understatement of the year award goes to …
“Take these,” he offered, putting a couple pills in my hand. “Aspirin,” he added when I studied them closely.
How many aspirin had I taken so far the past couple days? Probably too many. The alternative involved scratching my eyes out and poking my brain with a spoon, so I took the pills and the glass of water he followed them up with. A half bottle of whiskey sat next to an empty tumbler on the nightstand. I considered and rejected washing down the aspirin with whiskey, popped the pills into my mouth, and drained the glass of water.
“What happened?” I asked, memory fairly hazy. Rubbing my temples didn’t help. At all.
“I don’t know, really,” he said. “We were training, and your nose started bleeding. Then … I think maybe you were having a seizure. Has that ever happened before?” He moved from the chair to sit on the edge of the bed.
Eyes wide I replied, “No! Never! A nosebleed too?” Something about that was familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. I pushed myself back so I could sit with my back against the headboard.
“Take it easy,” Mayfair ordered. “You’ve been out most of the day. Whatever happened hit you pretty hard.”
“Is this a magic thing?” I asked, rubbing my forehead. Pain bloomed. Rubbing forehead not good. Bad fingers. “Like, maybe magic is messing with me on the inside?” Hadn’t he said something similar to me? No, maybe it was Kylie? Or …
“No, I don’t think so. Not the way you mean, anyway.”
“What other way is there?” I asked.
Mayfair sighed, sounding as tired as I felt. His shoulders slumped. “There is so much we don’t know about the web in your head, Sam. It could be this is some sort of defense mechanism intended to keep you from using magic or to keep someone like me from removing the web altogether. Since I’ve never seen anything like it before, I just don’t know. I’ve been doing some research.” He waved at the book he’d been reading. “But so far, I can’t find anything even remotely resembling what’s in your head.”
“I don’t understand. Don’t roll your eyes! You’re supposed to be magic guy, remember?”
“I know; I’m sorry. I’m doing the best I can.”
“But you don’t know why I’m suddenly having seizures in your basement?”
“I really don’t. But I do know that whatever is in your head, it’s fading. Fast.”
“How fast? What does that even mean?”
He made an underhand motion as if throwing something, and dust and dirt from all over the room shot up and formed the brain image in the air between us. The net looked pale, much more so than yesterday.
“It means,” he said, “I took the liberty of checking it out while you were out, and the damaged sections are larger than yesterday. The web is unraveling.” He pointed to a damaged area of the web. “This bit is new. Happened overnight, I assume. I’m guessing here, but I think it means you’re going to start experiencing more and more aspects of your power much quicker than I’d hoped.”
“Like seeing Vampires in a dark room?”
“And runes glowing in stone, yes.”
“Why is that bad?” I asked. “I thought the whole point of this was for me to learn how to control it.”
“It is, but remember, Wizards have entire lifetimes to master these things, to take control of their power slowly over time. Your power is about to come at you all at once, and when it does …” He paused.
“And when it does?” I asked.
“You’re going to be like a toddler with a shiny new atomic bomb in your hands and no way to stop it from blowing up the world.”
Chapter Seventeen
“This just gets better and better,” I said. The book he’d been reading had a weathered brown cover and no title. I threw the covers off and snatched it from the nightstand. The interior pages were yellow and stiff, and it fell open to a page with a lithograph of a person with their arms and legs spread-eagled, ropes lashing them at the ankles and wrists to thick logs driven into the ground. Squiggly lines came out of the chest and face of the person, whose face was locked in a rictus agony.
“You find answers about me in this?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, taking the book from me and setting it on the bed behind him. “That book is about something else.”
“What?” I asked.
“Not your concern,” he said, reaching for the other books on the nightstand. “This is Studies of Magical Weaves Volume II, and where I did some research on you.”
“Okay,” I said. The book behind him called to me. “What was the picture about?”
Mayfair stood up, took three steps towards the door, and turned around. “No, Sam. You had a seizure, your nose gushed blood, and you’ve been out for hours.” He came back to the bed and picked up the book, waving at me. “This is not for you. Not now.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. Pushing the covers back, I tested my legs by putting a little weight on ’em. They seemed strong enough, so I stood up. The world only spun a little, but I didn’t fall. “You tell me about the picture—”
“No, Sam. No deals. No wheedling your way to get what you want. This is your problem!” He paced back and forth, head shaking, using the book like a pointer, and always directed at me. “I read your file. Your superior officers describe you as tenacious. A kind way of saying relentless, dogged, stubborn! You rush in where fools fear to tread, and you do it without any regard for your safety or the safety of the people around you.”
He shut up and took a breath. “You need to concentrate on you. You are more than enough case for twelve people.” The book came up between us again. “This doesn’t concern you. Let it go. There’s a bathroom through that door. I suggest you clean yourself up and come downstairs to get something to eat, because we have work to do.”
* * *
I’d heard everything Mayfair said before. Sometimes I think people just don’t get me. Doesn’t mean they’re wrong. I want to listen, to follow the rules. I do. This power scares the hell out of me, and learning to control it is massively important. But I can’t ignore someone else in trouble, someone who needs help. That’s not who I am or who I ever want to be. I get that this power is part of me now. Probably. It isn’t who I am. Doesn’t define me. Helping people does. Protect and serve. Whatever else happened, I’d figure out how to handle this Wizard stuff and still help people.
I had to.
Mayfair needed to get on board with that notion.
The seizure thing worried me. I know someone told me the magic in my head damaged me physically. Thinking about it made the pain worse, though. Or maybe that resulted from Mayfair dripping information out in tiny little dollops instead of just coming clean. I needed an info-dump. If he refused to give it to me, maybe I could find an alternative?
The bathroom off the bedroom was an actual bathroom, as opposed to the poor excuse for one I’d visited downstairs. A gorgeous stand-alone tub I would’ve killed to have in my own bathroom sat snugged against the wall. I could do laps in that thing! I washed up, considered and rejected the idea of a long, hot soak in the tub. As good as it would feel, I had other things to do right now. With a last, longing stare at the tub, I opened the curtain in the bedroom. Third floor by the looks of things. Given the layer of dust up here, I doubted anyone had stayed here in a good, long while.
I wondered where Mayfair slept.
Several closed doors up and down the hallway called to me, whispering, “open me … snoop …” and I ignored them. Instead, I took a narrow staircase down to the second floor landing, where I found a set of d
ouble doors. To my left, the wide, sweeping stairs I’d seen yesterday circled down to the first floor. But those double doors piqued my curiosity, and I couldn’t ignore them. Maybe I’d used up all my self-control not snooping around upstairs.
I knew Mayfair was waiting for me, but these doors didn’t make sense. The landing here had a short entry with a single light bulb fixture in the ceiling above. No hallway or corridor like the floor above. Just these polished wood doors stained a bright red with ornate handles of burnished brass. No glowy letters along the trim or signs that read “death to all ye who enter” or anything. I tried the left handle. Unlocked.
I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Row upon row of bookshelves disappeared into the distance. Each stretched from the hardwood floor to the high ceiling. To my left, I counted four shelves facing me, then a fifth, skinnier shelf, maybe a third the size of the others, sat with its back against the far left wall. Another three were backed up against the wall behind the door. Same setup on my right. The endcaps had another skinny shelf, and then the next row began with a similar shelf arrangement. Three people could stand shoulder to shoulder in the center if they didn’t have personal space issues. Row after row stretched on before me.
I’d never seen so many books outside of a proper library. From where I stood, it seemed to go on forever.
A few fixtures set into the ceiling every ten feet or so provided the only light. Each barely cast light into the center row. Deeper in left or right became sketchy, the weak light reaching only the first few steps inside. Taking a deep breath, I caught a combination of old, musty book smell and dust that brought back the hours spent studying in a quiet corner of my college library. There were days when that corner proved the only one where I could clear my head and get any work done.
“Don’t touch anything,” a very British voice echoed through the stacks.
I walked forward and found Nevil in a circle of multicolored light. A small table sat in what I judged to be the center of this room, Nevil in a chair facing me. A brass lamp with a rectangular green shade on the table added extra light above the pile of open books spread out before him, too weak to be the source of the golden light filling the space.
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