Blue Magic

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “Fine,” the medic said. “She could deliver any time.”

  “Are we set up for that?”

  “It’s doable.”

  “Astrid, you’re procrastinating,” Will said.

  “I just … We’re missing something.”

  “What do the grumbles say?”

  She tilted her head, listening. “Nothing new.”

  “I’ll interview her myself, if that helps.”

  “Okay.” Visibly dissatisfied, Astrid nodded. The medic raised a silver martini shaker, shaking a lone drop of vodka into the woman’s mouth. Sahara had taught her followers the words to the vamping cantation, the one they had used to suck the vital energy from people. The magical shaker jumbled up the memory so they couldn’t do it anymore.

  “Let’s go,” Will said.

  After new arrivals had been searched and doctored, they were taken, still unconscious, to a silk tent pitched within Tishvale, where the rescued Alchemites were encamped. Ten miles of dense, enchanted forest lay between the ghost town and the Bigtop, barrier enough in its own right, but Mark was taking no chances. He’d had dense, thorny hedges planted around the perimeter of the new town. They were wound through with scavenged barbed wire; like any refugee camp, this one doubled, in essence, as a prison.

  Setting it up had sparked the first genuinely acrimonious fights among the volunteers. Clancy and others like him wanted Astrid to stick to the original agreement they had all made; they didn’t want anyone locked up, under any circumstances. Mark had argued, successfully, that Alchemites were the enemy, that they couldn’t be trusted.

  A freshwater stream ran through the campground, and Thunder’s engineers had put up a small dam and a waterwheel, a turbine that could produce enough power for the Alchemites to spin food and necessities with the few chantments allowed them.

  As Will and the pregnant Alchemite reached the tent, volunteers spun her a set of clothes and allowed her to waken. Now in exchange for protection, she had to tell the Springers everything she knew about the Fyremen, and about Ellie.

  The Alchemites’ intelligence about the Fyremen was sparse, but they too had learned the curse was a live thing, that somewhere there was a circle of elder Fyremen reciting a cantation, day and night, to keep it functioning. As long as even one person was reciting this Befoulment, vitagua would damage everything it touched.

  Nobody knew where this prayer circle, as they called it, was located.

  Will stood as the woman was ushered into the room and lowered herself carefully into a chair.

  Caro had moved like that when she was nine months along.… He tucked a magical lie detector, a carved wooden turtle, into one palm, fisting a chunk of letrico in the other. “What’s your name?”

  “I was born Mary,” she said.

  “Not a typical Alchemite name.”

  She shrugged.

  He indicated the padlock chantment. “You were carrying this when we rescued you. What can you tell me about it?”

  “Caroline gave it to me for safekeeping.”

  “Do you know what it does?”

  “Our beloved Sahara said it would help Caroline retain custody of the Children of the Well.”

  “Carson and Eleanor, in other words: Caroline’s children.”

  She nodded.

  “Was the padlock part of the Nevada stash?” Sahara and her first followers had found that cache of nasty chantments in Yerington.

  “The First Trove,” she affirmed.

  Sahara had apparently told her followers she’d set aside the Nevada stash decades earlier, as a contingency. The Alchemites believed Sahara had salted away other caches of magical items, leaving them for her followers after her arrest. They’d told him she was still hiding magical items for them, equipping them from prison.

  “How do we open the padlock?” he asked.

  Mary stretched her neck. “Caroline made a thin braid of your daughter’s hair. By drawing the hair through the lock, she made a key. Look inside.”

  Raising it, he saw a fine web of gold wound into the mechanism.

  “You need the key to break the lock,” Mary said.

  “Who’s got the key?”

  A toothy smile. “Passion.”

  Will glanced at the wooden turtle in his hand. It had its head and legs pulled into its shell. Mary was telling the truth.

  Passion. Most zealous of the Primas. She would never accept Astrid’s aid.

  He let his mind drift to the world beyond Indigo Springs. If Passion had been sighted, the newshounds in the Doghouse would know. But no: witnesses had put her at Wendover, coordinating the failed Alchemite rescue of Sahara. Afterwards, there was one possible sighting, in Mexico City; she’d supposedly caused a palm tree to bleed sap that turned, by moonlight, into rubies. Nobody had seen her since.

  Gone to ground, Will thought, but where? Her fellow Alchemites were fleeing to Indigo Springs. Those who didn’t were easy prey for the Fyremen. A cell of them must be loose, using magic to hide from Gilead’s people.

  Why had he believed this might work? He touched his tuning fork. “Pike, I need someone to take over this interview.”

  “Boss thinks there’s something up with that one.”

  “Ask the seers.”

  “Astrid says—”

  “Is someone free to take this interview or not?”

  “I’ll need a minute—”

  “Never mind. You can go, Mary,” he said. Whatever she was or wasn’t up to, it wouldn’t matter, if he rewrote the past. He gestured at the tent flap, the entrance to the ghost town. The Alchemite heaved herself upright with a whuff and headed outside, to an exultant cry of welcome.

  Will took Bramblegate to the plaza.

  Even with Doghouse up and running, a few die-hard newshounds had the plaza TV on. In Washington, Arthur Roche was spinning what was essentially a demotion into a new partnership between the military and the Fyremen. “The terrorists have fled into the contaminated forest,” he said. “We are seeking Congressional approval for an offensive against Indigo Springs. This battle will be over soon.”

  “Light at the end of the tunnel,” muttered a volunteer, triggering a smattering of nervous laughter. Confidence wasn’t as high as it had been a few months ago. Why should it be?

  Will pushed on. It was time to bring down the curtain, to close this farcical show before anyone else got hurt.

  One of Astrid’s ringers caught up with him. “What did you learn? Is she—?” He brushed her aside, stepping into the glow and coming out in the Bigtop …

  … where another one of her was waiting. “Will—”

  “Passion’s got the key to the padlock,” he said shortly, heading for his workshop. Only an hour ago, he had chanted all the toys the scavengers had been able to find. They’d found more, but it was a small pile, maybe a hundred objects.

  She trotted to match his pace. “This is good. We can—”

  “What? Bring her here?”

  “Why not?”

  “Passion’s not going to cower here with the rank and file.”

  “Sahara returns to the magical well,” Astrid said. “Where she goes, Passion follows.”

  “If Sahara comes to town, you both die. You’re pretty sure of that, right?”

  “Everything comes out all right.”

  “Even you can’t still believe that, Astrid.” He thrust his fist into the Chimney, letting liquid magic saturate him.

  “Will, what are you—?”

  Biting open his lip, he sprayed vitagua into the toys, cars, trains, dolls, the baby lamps, science projects, the stuffed animals, building blocks, rattles, and noisemakers. As he did, he heard the grumbles suggesting uses for each item. He picked and chose among them. He kept his eyes open for a pen, a toy pen perhaps.…

  No luck.

  But today’s the day, today you learn to grant wishes.…

  There were no more toys. Bursting with energy, he drew more vitagua, as much as he could, and returned to the plaza.
/>   “Will—,” a ringer protested.

  “Manhattan,” he said, stepping into the glow. “FAO Schwarz.”

  It was noon on the East Coast.

  Will walked the aisles of the mammoth toy store, avoiding the shoppers, pouring vitagua into everything he saw, making magic toys.

  The rush was incredible. He had thought he’d gotten used to the constant sense of physical well-being, but this was a high. His senses were razor sharp. He smelled baby powder, three different perfumes, the cleanser they used on the floors, a light layer of dust in the air-conditioning system, the distant burnt smell of New York smog. His memories sharpened, carrying back childhood discoveries and disappointments, joys, sorrows, scares and surprises, all the emotional sediment of his past.

  Rounding a corner, Will saw the whole place now sparkled, and it wasn’t just the toys. The customers’ jewelry glimmered with possibility, as did their handbags and neckties.

  He could chant anything. But could he choose what he made?

  There—

  He snatched a heavy silver pen from a customer service desk, lifting it to his blue-tinged lips, kissing it.

  Wishes, he thought, fusing magic to object, and he’d done it, it had worked. He’d made himself a magical time machine.

  “Security!” someone called.

  Will dashed outside, fleeing into a hotel lobby, then a bathroom. He whispered a cantation for a power draw, pulling electricity directly from a socket on the wall, filling the room with letrico threads.

  Will gathered the power in his hands, pressing them into a crystal.

  “Before,” he whispered, and the lights flickered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE ROUSED ENDED UP building a cairn for Eliza’s sad scrap of a raccoon corpse, laying her to rest not far from the spot where she’d died. That hadn’t been the initial plan: villagers had excavated the fallen boulders from atop her remains and then, after she’d been washed, dressed, and endlessly sung over, had attempted to freeze her into a glacier. But vitagua rolled off the body, like water off a waxed car, making it impossible.

  There was no talk of cremation; fire was the enemy.

  In the end, after sky burial and sending her to the real for interment had been rejected as possibilities, they’d laid stones over her in a waist-high pile. They’d watered the white grit around the cairn, and anemic grass sprouted around it. Eliza’s broken granny glasses, resting atop the cairn, were left as a wordless memorial.

  Since her death, the mood of the Roused had been uneasy. Teoquan and his followers were down in the Pit, trying to force a route through to the real. The glaciers were melting fast, freeing more people every day.

  At Pucker Hill, the gendermorphed Roused kept weaving letrico and making food. At the cedar village, the stream continued to bring forth salmon; a careful harvest was under way. The snow fort kept rising on the drylands. The elders were scraping ice from the bodies of the trapped; with Eliza gone, it was a slower process, but the work continued.

  Ev had been keeping to himself, spending his days in consultation with the scientists Astrid and Katarina were sending to the unreal, trying to catch up on everything they were learning about magic. The discovery of the fire hall had led to a flood of information about the magic the old witch-burners had wielded, about the nature of the curse.

  Pike had sent some wooden coins—dogtags, they called them—to the unreal, and the bulletins from the news center caught him up with world news and Astrid’s various projects. Everything was in motion: The population of the Alchemite refugee village in the ghost town, Tishvale, was burgeoning. Gilead Landon had “disenchanted” the White House and Congress with rosarite. The Danish government had confirmed vitagua contamination in two separate lakes. All the grandparents in attendance at a recent Irish wake had been transformed, overnight, into newborn infants. Fyreman and National Guardsmen working together had raided a house in Tulsa but failed to find Passion.…

  “You’re avoiding me, Ev Lethewood.”

  Startled, Ev looked up from a list of Fyreman potions they’d found in the Indigo Springs fire hall.

  Patience had retained control over her shape-shifting since Eliza’s death. She was her true self—a Native woman in her late sixties, in other words—a coiffed and healthy version of the run-down old beauty queen who’d lived on Ev’s first mail route. Even now, even angry, she was heart-stoppingly beautiful.

  “I’ve been…” He waved the bundle of science stuff, but she wasn’t fooled, and he’d resolved to tell her the truth anyway. With a gesture, he invited her to sit.

  “Ev, what is it?”

  Taking her hand, he murmured: “I knew what Eliza was up to.… It was my idea.”

  Her lip curled. However much he might deserve it, the contempt on her face cut right to Ev’s heart.

  “I can’t make up for it, but I’ll admit it to Teoquan.”

  “Don’t be idiotic. He’d kill you. Oh, Ev—what possessed you?”

  “I thought—”

  “Don’t tell me. You were scared for Astrid.” A hint of compassion now. Not forgiveness, but he’d take it.

  “What should I do?”

  “Do you know where Eliza stashed Teo’s … allies? Finding them’s the first step to making it right.”

  “I might work it out,” he said. If the radicals got melted, Teoquan and his buddies would bust into the real that much faster.…

  “Work it out how?”

  “Everett Burke. The hyperobservant mailman.”

  “That was a delusion.”

  “Yes, but it worked.”

  She frowned. “Explain.”

  “I did solve puzzles as Burke, Patience.”

  “Puzzles—you mean mysteries?”

  “Minor crimes, anyway. It wasn’t just knowing what was in letters. I found a couple stolen dogs, caught Len Stiger cheating on his wife, talked one of the local girls out of suicide when nobody could’ve guessed she was thinking it.”

  “Becoming Burke again … it’d be dangerous?”

  “If I don’t, I owe some kind of blood debt to the unreal. Isn’t that how it works?”

  “Teo would say so.”

  “See, that sounds dangerous too.”

  She scowled. “Ev, your gift for understatement was never one of the things that attracted me to you.”

  “I love you too,” he managed, and she kissed him. “Still mad?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “But it’ll pass.”

  “Can you get me into Eliza’s place?”

  “You get your own self in. You’re not persona non grata, you stupid man.”

  “You’re sexy when you speak Latin.”

  “I’m always sexy. So … it’s only me who knows this?”

  “I think Teo has a pretty good idea.”

  “Be glad what he knows and what he can prove are two different things. How’ll you do it, become Burke?”

  He flexed his hand. “The dime that lets me gendermorph people—”

  “The one keeping you sane?”

  “It’s embedded here.”

  “You’re not going to cut that hand off?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Then how?”

  “It’ll be easier to show you.” He pulled his tool kit off a salvaged shelf and led her toward the bone bridge. He felt electrified, nervy—and more than a little relieved. She’d forgive him. Not today, maybe, but she would.

  Eliza’s chambers were at the base of the honeycomb, close to the Pit and the rescue effort there. Her beeswax walls glowed with vitagua; she had carved animal masks around the perimeter. Their stylized eyes seemed to stare at Ev in accusation.

  “Now what?” Patience asked.

  Ev opened his kit, revealing a brittle glassine rope—rosarite.

  “What the hell?”

  “According to the Fyreman notes, it negates magic—chantment magic, anyway,” Ev said, pulling on a pair of work gloves. “Katrina’s had her brainy types investigating how it
interacts with magic and the Roused.”

  “You filched it?”

  “I asked for some,” he said, irritated.

  “Pardon me for impugning your honor.”

  He laid the beads on his forearm, wrapping the rope around until there were three coils on his wrist. “They put this around buildings they want to protect from magic—they call it disenchanting. If my hand’s encircled, it might affect the magic dime in my hand, stop it from working.”

  “Sounds like you’re playing lab rat.”

  “Someone has to.” He gestured at a spool of copper wire in the kit. “Tie it off?”

  “Okay.” She wound the wire, cinching the improvised bracelet shut. “Does it hurt?”

  “Tingles,” he said. “Like my arm’s asleep.”

  He felt a rush of feverish heat, a stretching sensation in his forehead. For an instant he was afraid he was reverting to a female body, but then his beard tickled, the way it had the first time it broke through the skin.

  That’s right, Ev thought, I was turning into a goat.

  Mumbles assailed him: She’s dead, baby girl’s toast.

  And another … It’ll work out, Ev, I promise.

  “Jacks? Tha-at you?”

  Patience rubbed the sore spots on his head. “You’re growing horns. Happy now?”

  He met her angry gaze. “Ma’am, if you are happy—”

  “Cut that out and get to looking for the hotheads.”

  “Right. Things to do, mysteries to solve.” Everett turned to the mess that was the murdered woman’s lair, taking it in. Answers … the answer would be here. He started poking through things. Paper was his forte, but Eliza wouldn’t have written anything down. He sorted through her possessions.

  A twinge of paranoia. His—or Eliza’s? She’d wanted the hotheads sunk deep, to be the last to escape when the unreal, as Astrid so frequently put it—

  Popped. And … was that Astrid’s voice? Was she one of the grumbles? Did that mean she was already gone?

  Ghost me’s been here all along, Pop. In the future, looking back, in the past, looking forward.

  Whatever that meant.

  Time’s funny here.

  Fingering a thumb-sized chunk of rebar, of all things, that Eliza had hung on a rusty scrap of chain like a pendant, he thought of building foundations, building blocks, and then the blocks of ice forming the snow tower above the elders’ village. The spires were meant to be solid ice, silos of vitagua, a means of maximizing the number of people rescued at the Pit. They were huge. They were meant to melt last.