Will dragged her aboard the trolley. “Clancy, get us out of here.”
They glided away. The man sprinted after them, his body ablaze, keeping up easily.
“Chill, everyone,” Igme said. “It’s just one guy.”
“I got him.” Janet tossed the hula hoop. It soared out over the street. Then it boomeranged back, contracting around her.
Still running, the man crushed the test tubes in his fist, flinging the debris underhand. Something stung Astrid’s abdomen. She started to burn as the vitagua inside her boiled.
Sea-glass, reacting with liquid magic. She blew the vitagua out of her body, through the piercing in her hand, a fast billow of steam that shot out, contaminating more of the boulevard, more of Atlanta’s Cabbagetown. Oh, the pain was incredible; she had forgotten how much this hurt.…
Aquino was on fire. He was screeching.
Will was yelling: “Don’t use chantments on him, he’s protected!”
Scorching wind blew Janet from the trolley; there was a crunch as she hit the road.
Heat singed Astrid’s hair. The abdominal pain had lessened as the sea-glass found less vitagua to burn.
Jacks had a belly wound too. Was that a thought, or a grumble?
Their chantments were melting, leaking vitagua down the trolley walls.
“Igme, wait!” Will shouted.
Igme had jumped off the back of the trolley. After bounding down the road, he scooped Janet into his arms. Bramblegate awaited on a nearby storefront; he dragged her through, vanishing.
“Can we go faster?” Will asked.
“We’re running out of power!” Clancy shouted.
“Where’s the healing chantments?”
“Janet had the heart,” Will said. “Stethoscope’s burnt.”
“Bramblegate’s ahead,” Clancy said. “Get this guy off me for a second.…” The Fyreman was catching up, bolting along at inhuman speed.
Will shouted: “Brake, Clancy! Stop now!”
The trolley brakes squealed. Will had thrown an arm around her.
And we escape, Astrid thought with rising dread. But …
The Fyreman, running behind the trolley at about sixty miles an hour, ran straight into it. He slammed into their back door, throwing them all forward, crumpling metal. Then he bounced, the impact hurling him back onto the road.
“Did we kill him?” Astrid asked.
Will shook his head. “Go, Clancy!”
“Can you check?” she begged.
“We have to get you and Aquino to the hospital,” Will said.
“Just check—”
“We’re going, Astrid,” Will said.
They were rolling. She’d been outvoted.
“Alchemites,” Astrid said, holding her belly.
Through the hole in the back of the trolley, they saw a minivan pull up beside the fallen Fyreman. It disgorged two of the women they’d healed, a woman with the flower tattoos and the one who had Sahara’s corkscrew hair and wings.
“They hurt him,” Astrid said, pleading. “They hurt him and it’s bad. Will—we have to—”
The winged woman looked at her then; their eyes met. It was Sahara—and yet it wasn’t.
Mouse magic, whispered one of the grumbles.
A blast of cold air. They were through Bramblegate, and it was too late to save him. Will lifted her off the trolley.
“You’re not going to die,” he told her.
“Not by poison.”
He squeezed her hand. “You’re not leaving me.”
An unexpected rush of hope glimmered through the pain.
The first thing she’d ever said to Will was, You’re going to fall in love. She’d thought she meant Patience—everybody loved Patience.
“It’s not just prophecy,” she said. “I do like you.”
“Astrid, now’s not the time.”
“I’m bad at this. I’ve never been a flirt.”
“You’re injured.” He walked out into the hospital, into Emergency, and laid her on a gurney.
He wasn’t listening. She caught his collar, pulling herself up—and kissed him on the lips, hard.
For a moment, apprehension wiped out the pain. If he pulled away in that wooden awkward way, if he rejected her, if he coughed and said it could never happen between them …
But with contact came first a little thrum, a nervous jolt, because she’d caught him—caught them both, really—by surprise.
And then, then he was kissing her back. He wasn’t wooden at all, but flesh, alive and responding. We might be, she thought. We might happen.
The voices of the unreal rose in a confusing babble.
“Will,” she said. “You don’t have to cave in.”
“Whatever you’re talking about now…”
She heard Dad: “You’re very brave, Bundle.”
When had that been? Her magical initiation?
Dad was a maker of well wizards, she thought. The sun burns out one day. Will caves. Boomsday comes. Sea-glass doesn’t kill me.
Now she was looking into a pool, and the original Indigo Springs chanter, Elizabeth Walks-in-Shadow, was looking back, peering at Astrid through her granny glasses.
You’re Jacks’s obsession, not mine, she tried to say, but Eliza didn’t go.
“I’m losing my grip on the people here,” Eliza said. “Your mother suggested you might swing things my way.”
“Sure,” Astrid said to the dream or hallucination.
“What we’re considering isn’t ethical.”
It’s not a dream, Astrid thought. I’m hurt, maybe dying. Will kissed me, and Eliza’s decided it’s time to take a meeting.
Maybe dying. She rarely let herself think about the sketch of herself in the ballroom, but the image rose now.
“It’s Teo,” Eliza said. “He means to attack the real.”
“Teo? You mean that hothead pain in the butt.…”
“He’s building a following. If I could selectively thaw certain Roused, moderates, it would buy time.”
Time. Drag this out, the voices kept saying. The more magic they dispersed, the more people they could add to Big Picture.
Including me, Astrid thought, and the grumbles laughed.
“I’ll send a chantment,” she promised, fighting up through smothering blankets of torpor, back to a world of heat and pain.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BACK WHEN THE WORLD still made sense, Juanita had been training for a triathlon. She’d been a competitive swimmer going back as far as high school, and later, when she’d begun work at the court as a newly minted baby marshal, she’d biked to work rain or shine. Swimming and cycling came naturally to her. Running had been a bigger challenge; she found it monotonous.
Growing dissatisfaction kept her going. She was thirty-five, single. Her life felt off-kilter, subtly broken, but she wasn’t sure what to fix, let alone how.
In the meantime, she might be in a rut, but she could run inside it. She’d worked up slowly, completing her first half marathon a week before the magical outbreak changed everything.
Rounding the last corner of that course, seeing the finish line ahead, had given her a deep sense of accomplishment, the first in years. Looking back, she remembered it as the last time she’d had any peace of mind.
Now she was leading a triple life, running an endless track of pretense. By day she was in court, playing the role of faithful guard to Sahara and praying Judge Skagway wouldn’t see through her. She spent her off hours trying to pry Fyreman secrets out of Gilead and her nights caught up in Sahara’s invasions of her dreams, dancing to the Alchemites’ tune.
But it was almost over.
She was outside the courthouse with the judge and Gilead Landon, watching a trio of men lay rosarite into a shallow trench dug into the sandy ground surrounding the building. The operation had been carried out under a pretext: plumbing upgrades, Roche said when Skagway insisted on the experiment.
Speaking of whom … “Where is the general?�
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“On the horn with Washington,” the judge replied. “There’s been a magical spill in Atlanta.”
Juanita had gleaned a few scraps about potion-making from Gilead. She’d told Sahara the core ingredients of their supposedly stable magical formulas were burnt vitagua and prayer. She’d reported the Fyremen were rigidly patriarchal, that Gilead needed permission to induct her into the Brigade. The only thing she’d held back was about rosarite and disenchantment, as Gilead called it.
Finish line: she clung to the memory of that half marathon, the feeling of impending achievement.
Skagway spoke: “So we do this, son, and any chantments they’ve smuggled inside the courtroom stop working?”
“That’s the idea,” said Gilead. “Magical influences won’t affect the protected area.”
I’ll report the Alchemites’ threats to my family, Juanita thought, and begin disentangling this awful situation.
“Once we show it works on the courthouse, we’ll sell Roche on doing the whole base.… Sorry, that’s my phone.” With an apologetic wave, Gilead walked off, speaking Latin.
“Think this’ll do it, Corazón?” the judge asked.
“We have to try something, Your Honor.”
“True that,” he said, like a kid.
The man unloading rosarite had taken advantage of a lull in his crewmates’ rhythm, bending to tie his shoe. Now, as Gilead disappeared around the corner of the building, a shimmer of greenish fog rose around him. Winking at Juanita, he unzipped his pants.
“Roche thinks this is risky,” Skagway said, reacting not at all as the worker urinated onto the rosarite, as the metal hissed and smoked. “He says Sahara’s stayed where she is because of the chantment Lethewood put in her chest. It keeps her from running off. I told him that was your job.… Something wrong?”
“I—,” she said. The stink of burning metal and steamed piss was overpowering. “Gilead should be supervising this.”
“Relax, Corazón. Guy’s entitled to a five-minute phone call.”
The workman zipped up, gave her the finger, then flourished his arms in a ritual gesture—Praise Sahara, it meant. He handed over the length of dripping, corroded rosarite, and his coworkers bundled it into the pipe without a second glance.
“Tell me the truth,” Skagway said.
“Pardon?” Juanita said.
“You falling for that guy?”
“Gilead?” She laughed a little hysterically. “He’s more dangerous than Sahara.”
The smile lines around his eyes deepened.
“I’m not looking for a relationship, Judge.”
“You should be. You’re lonely, kid.”
To fight off the rush of tears, Juanita forced a smirk. “If you want me to put the moves on Gilead—”
“The moves?”
“He’s not my type, but if it’d make you happy…”
“Oh, find yourself a nice woman,” he said, playfully stern.
She saluted, pleased. She’d assumed he knew she was a lesbian, but Skagway’s position as a judge charged their mutual affection with a certain formality. Outing herself fell well outside Juanita’s comfort zone.
Gilead returned from his phone break.
“Everything okay?” the judge asked.
“Trouble at home,” he said in a tight voice.
“Sorry to hear it,” Judge Skagway said.
“Thanks. We’re done here—the courthouse is encircled.”
Except the Alchemites had gotten to it. “Can we test it?”
Gilead produced a chantment they’d seen before—the plastic ghost. “Want to do the honors, Your—”
On impulse, Juanita reached to intercept it, catching his hand before he could touch the judge. She caught a fading glow on Gilead’s fingertips—embers, like cigarette cherries.
“Your Honor?” she asked, holding out the ghost.
“You go ahead,” he said.
Dropping Gilead’s hand, she held the ghost up, remembering the instructions Wallstone had given the jury: Imagine turning out a light. She looked across the compound, and a few of the safety lights vanished, creating a pool of pitch darkness.
She dropped the chantment before it could exhaust her. “Is there a time delay?”
Gilead was befuddled. “No. It should have worked.”
“Maybe it isn’t installed right,” Juanita said. “Is it something we can … check? Debug?”
“Debug?” His voice was incredulous.
The judge snorted. “I’d call that strike two, son.” Shaking his head, he wheeled away.
Gilead paced the trench. “It always works. The Alchemites, they must have…”
Still screwed, Juanita thought, and Sahara knows I was in on it. Tears threatened. “What were you going to do to the judge?”
“He wouldn’t have been hurt.”
“That’s all you got to say?”
He was staring at the trench. “You’re not in the club yet, Juanita—I can’t tell you everything.”
“To hell with your club. Go near him again, I’ll break every bone in your hand.” With that, she strode back to her quarters and sat up until late, fighting sleep.
When she finally drifted off, Sahara was waiting. “Disappointed, darling?”
“Sahara, I—”
“You didn’t think I’d put anyone else close to our Burning Man? Darling, you told me he wouldn’t share his secrets with a mere girl.”
A dream coalesced around her: They stood in a basement that hadn’t been renovated since the days of disco, a dusty hole with mildewy windows. Underfoot was a shag carpet; the walls were gold-flecked mirror. Birds—starlings—perched everywhere. A pretty young man sat, legs dangling, on a vinyl barstool, petting a moth-eaten fur coat and sipping a milk shake. Next to him was Passion, the tattooed Alchemite who’d sent Ramón to dreamland. She was toying with the boy’s hair.
“She’s here,” the young man reported.
Passion crowed softly in exultation. “Beloved Goddess, we welcome you.”
A groan, and Juanita saw Sahara lying on a couch and surrounded by Alchemite fugitives. Her heart raced into panic—had she escaped? But this wasn’t Sahara—it was the nerdy black guy, Lucius Landon, who’d given evidence at her trial. Nude and bloodied, he lay on the frayed cushions, tied tightly, breath rasping in and out. Red and blue scratches marked the dark skin of his cheek. Starling-patterned hair coiled out of his scalp.
It was the same thing they’d done to the prosecutor, Wallstone. Sahara had effectively possessed him, contaminating him with a mixture of vitagua and her own blood.
Gilead and his “Brigade” can’t stop Sahara. Could anyone? Juanita had a fleeting memory of Gilead saying that Astrid Lethewood was the real power.
“Juanita,” the dream-Sahara purred. “Be honest, darling—when did you know they were going to disenchant the courthouse?”
“Too late to say anything. Gilead told me this afternoon.”
“Lies,” Passion sneered. “‘Darling’ Juanita doesn’t understand her position, beloved Goddess.”
“Why don’t you spell it out for her?”
“You do as we tell you, Juanita, when we tell you. You don’t withhold information. No playing mind games with poor little Heaven. You think we’re stupid?”
“If you hit my family again so soon after vanishing Ramón to dreamland, someone will notice.”
“Lots of soldiers get vanished.” As Sahara spoke, the prisoner on the couch also mouthed her words. “Passion?”
The tattooed Alchemite smiled, moving languorously as she lay her hands on Juanita’s shoulders, turning her to face an open doorway. “Dream your heart,” she whispered, and the hallway morphed into the courtroom at Wendover. Skagway was behind the bench. In the gallery sat Juanita’s family: Mamá, dressed for church, her brothers and sisters, her nieces, two aunts …
“Know what magic has taught me, Juanita?” Sahara—both of them—asked.
… but not Tía Corina, Juanita
thought even as she lifted her hands in supplication, ready to give up, to beg.
… not Corina, the inner voice repeated. She’d seemed sympathetic to the Alchemite cause. If Corina’s not here because she’s an Alchemite …
“Please don’t hurt them, Sahara.”
“The soul exists, Juanita,” Sahara said. “How can it not? I’ve taken root within the bosom of my foe. I’m in jail, I’m in a government hospital looking through the eyes of Lee Wallstone, I’m here in this Fyreman. Will you deny the Age of Miracles?”
“No.” Juanita scanned the gathered, beloved faces … then looked beyond them. Most of the Wendover staff was here. General Roche, clerks and lawyers, the other marshals, the jury … “The soul exists, Sahara. I do believe that.”
“My soul, being divine, can be spread infinitely,” Sahara said. From her tone, she was nearing a point.
Heaven wasn’t here. And two jurors were missing from the dream court.
“I’ll do whatever you say, Sahara,” she begged, thinking hard. Who else was missing?
Sahara smiled. “Tell me about tonight.”
Juanita swallowed. “If Gilead had disenchanted the courthouse, the whole base would have been next. I could have reported you for blackmail.”
“I am profoundly hurt by that, darling.”
“He tried to do something to the judge,” Juanita added. She described Gilead’s attempt to touch Skagway, the lit embers at the tips of his fingers.
“Ruination,” Lucius Landon whispered from the couch. “The Ruined seek their own destruction. Their strength becomes weakness.”
“Another Fyreman curse,” Sahara sighed.
Landon bared his teeth. “You are thrice-Ruined, Sahara. Lee Glade laid hands upon you, then my brother, then me—”
“If anyone’s ruined me, it’s the Filthwitch.” Laughing, Sahara kissed his forehead. “Why the judge?”
“The unfinished work of the Brigade,” Lucius gritted. “Wipe out the open wells, break the people of Raven.”
“You went after him because he’s Native?”
“It’s them or us.”
“How very binary of you,” Sahara said. “Got anything else to share, Juanita?”
Juanita racked her brains. “Tonight, Gilead said … he had trouble at home.”
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