They weren’t finding many potions. The Brigade had—pardon the pun—burned through most of its supply.
“Is that everyone?” Olive Glade shouted over the storm.
Together, the two women scanned the ruins of the plaza. The only remaining combatants were Gilead Landon and the gigantic native guy—Teoquan, someone had called him—who’d been slaughtering Fyremen with his voice. They were brawling, Gilead covered in flames, Teoquan dodging and murmuring.
“Any ideas on how to slow that guy down?” she asked Olive.
“You really want him to notice you?”
It was a good point. “I want to try to rescue Gilead.”
“I’m kinda rooting for the other guy. See that?” Olive pointed at Gilead: “How his lips are moving?”
“He’s praying,” Juanita said. “So?”
“It’s a curse. It makes the contaminated crazy, turns them into creatures.…”
She could feel the smile breaking over her face. “He shuts up, I stop turning into a cat-woman?”
Olive nodded. “If he’s the last one, yeah.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“I think Teoquan’s got it in hand.”
“Really? Teoquan hasn’t hurt him yet.” Whatever potion Gilead had drunk, it must have been decades in the making. He was Superman; he was taking the other guy’s attacks in stride.
“What can you do that Teo can’t?”
“Lie to him,” Juanita said. “Get him to drop his guard.”
From her expression, Olive had doubts.
“If it saves his life in the process…”
A flicker of connection; she’d already figured out that saving lives mattered to this woman. “He’s seen you helping us.”
“Gilead knows I’m a bleeding heart,” Juanita said. “I made him promise he’d stop burning people.”
“He went back on that,” Olive said bitterly. “Astrid, Sahara—”
“Oh, I haven’t forgotten.”
“Do you still have letrico?”
Juanita showed her the diminishing chunk of silvery white power clenched in her hand, just as Teo belted Gilead. He staggered back; then flames whooshed around him and he straightened, apparently unharmed.
Olive frowned. “This isn’t some crazy attempt at self-sacrifice, is it?”
“Not my thing. Really, go. I’ve got this covered.” With that, Juanita set off across the plaza. Please, let this work, she prayed, fighting fear, fighting a cough.
She had to shout to make herself heard above the wind. “Can I call a time-out here?”
Gilead goggled at her from within his wreath of flames. He was still mumbling in Latin.
“Time out? This isn’t soccer, woman,” the other man rumbled. Just the sound of his voice slurped power from her shrinking clutch of letrico. Juanita’s mind crowded with horrors: blades, cutting flesh, mutilations, people thrown from helicopters, kids caught in explosions.
She made herself speak. “You guys have been pounding each other for a while. Nobody’s won yet.”
“His potion will wear off,” Teoquan said. “All I gotta do is wait. Then he and his singsong are gone. Huff. Puff. Snuff. Like a candle.”
“I know the Befoulment too,” Juanita said. “I pass through that gate, I can have ten people reciting it by morning.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re bluffing.”
“Why would I?” She threw up her hands. “This fight’s pretty much over, and I think whatever that is—” She pointed into the gale, at the sky-high blue geyser blasting grit from a widening chasm. “—we need to get out of its way.”
“That,” Teoquan sneered. “Your boy came here to burn that.”
“Then nobody’s getting what they want today, are they?” Juanita turned her back on Teoquan before her nerve went completely. She’d be having nightmares about him for the rest of her life. “Call it a day, Gilead.”
He shook his head.
“It’s over,” she said. “That victory your big book predicted? It ain’t happening today.”
Gilead drew back, staring over her shoulder at Teoquan. Then he slumped. Juanita reached out. The flames on his palm guttered as they clasped hands.
With one last creepy half roar, Teoquan strode off the plaza, vanishing through the crumbling gateway.
“Time to bail,” Juanita said. Gilead drew back from the gate, making a distressed face, still reciting.
“I know, it’s the bad magic. You want to live or die?”
He nodded, surrendering to necessity.
Where to go? She led him to the pillars, thinking hard. Somewhere unfamiliar. Somewhere unpopulated …
Help, she prayed, and an idea came.
“Pripet,” she whispered, walking into the glow.
They stepped out into darkness. The air was astoundingly clean and still: no smoke, no burnt flowers, no windstorm. Her ears rang in the sudden quiet.
Gilead’s face, edged by flame, looked at her meaningfully. His voice was hoarse. She could just make out the Latin.
“Want me to take over?”
He nodded, and she began to say it with him, haltingly at first. Once she had it, the vocal cadences drove themselves. It was catchy, damned catchy. When she had it, a thrum ran through her, a sense of electricity, her organs clenching.
Atlas, holding the world, she thought. Whatever this thing was, she was now the one carrying it.
With a sigh, Gilead bent over, hands on his knees, panting.
“This is a town?” He gestured toward the buildings ahead. Juanita nodded, keeping up the recitation.
“You did well, Juanita. You’ve earned a place among us.”
She gave him a glare, to show she was unimpressed.
They started toward the city. Everything was dark.… Would he wonder why?
“Power must be out all over the world,” he said, as if he’d heard her thought. The last flames on his skin were sputtering; better still, he looked exhausted. “Lethewood’s infected everything. Befouled running loose … We’ll have to rebuild the Brigade. Purification will take lifetimes. Open war—”
She smacked his arm—not hard, just to get his attention.
“Yes, I promised,” he said. “But what can I do, leave it all to the witches? Juanita, I’ll make it up to you. We’ll be humane, drug them, something…” He rubbed his face. “It’s not what I wanted either.”
She heard hopelessness in his voice, remembered the feeling. The sense of purpose slipping away … like staring into a bottomless black well. She gave him a guarded but sympathetic shrug. Let him think he could win her over.
As they walked up a block lined by apartments and old black cars, Gilead’s flames went out entirely, leaving them in darkness. “They must’ve evacuated. Place looks like it’s been dead for a hundred years.”
Was he catching on already? The road was crowded by overgrown trees; it was a bit like an alchemized forest, except that everything was stunted. Juanita’s heart leapt as he patted his pockets … but what he came up with was not another potion, but a cigarette.
Sitting heavily on a cement stairway, he lit up. “We’ll break into a house, find some paper and a pen so we can communicate. Someone always refuses to evacuate; we’ll make ’em join the recitation.”
She nodded, making a stay put gesture, and kicked in an apartment door, scavenging up a blanket and a pillow and bringing them outside. She held them out, mimed sleeping.
Gratefully, he stubbed out the smoke. “Sure this is okay?”
Don’t overplay it. She waggled a hand, midair. So-so.
“I only need an hour, maybe two. Then I’ll take over.”
She kept up the recitation, pretending, for the last time. It was beguiling, this singsong. It might be hard to stop.
Gilead’s eyelids were drooping.
Help me, she thought, and the strength came, a feeling that aid had been there all along, for the asking. Certainty, too. She was doing right. She’d been born to do this.
“Wish I knew where we’ve ended up.…” He pulled the blanket up and let his eyes slip shut.
Juanita took a deep breath, fought the song for a second, and then answered. “We’re in Chernobyl, you murderous lunatic.”
Gilead’s eyes snapped open. He struggled to pick up the dropped song.
Juanita punched him in the mouth, as hard as she could.
The Latin slipped away, melting like a dream.
In the ruins of Pripet, all the surviving glass shattered.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
WILL SLIPPED INTO DREAMS and found his children among a queue of soldiers gathered at the stony archway.
He’d never let himself imagine this moment; it hurt too much to envision being a family again after so many months of separation and fear.
“Daddy!” Ellie ran to him, delight on her face. Carson, a step behind, sagged in exhausted relief.
Will wrapped his arms around them both. His chest burned as he fought to breathe; it felt as though some muscle he’d had clenched for months was being forcibly massaged out of stiffness.
He clung until Ellie started squirming. “Sorry, baby.”
Carson jerked free. “Where’s Mom? She hasn’t been to see us in weeks.”
“Son—”
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Primas don’t die,” Ellie said. “Mommy is the Wind.”
Will sighed. Together again, yes, but … “Mom’s gone, son.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Would Carson forgive him? How much Alchemite claptrap had Ellie swallowed? Astrid promised it’d be okay, Will thought, clinging to the idea. It was easier now.
“I’d hoped to save her, Carson. I should have told you.”
“What happened, Daddy?”
“A very bad guy was going to hurt Sahara Knax, Ellie. Your mom—” It was hard to get the words out. “She tried to save her friend, and the bad guy killed her.”
Carson wiped furiously at his face. “Did it work?”
How to answer that? “Yes. She saved Sahara that day.”
“Passion says if you never arrested Sahara, none of this would’ve happened.”
If. If Sahara hadn’t had Lucius Landon tortured. If Albert Lethewood had survived … “Maybe she’s right.”
The line of MIA soldiers and the other prisoners of dreamland was moving fast, almost running, sweeping the three of them to the stone gate. A man in front of them trotted through, murmuring “Home,” as he vanished into the chilly light.
“Home,” Carson echoed before Will could choose.
They ended up on the muddy remains of Pucker Hill.
Ellie did a slow turn, looking in puzzlement at the muck, the wreckage. Her face was grave. “This isn’t our house, Daddy.”
“It’s going to be,” Will said.
“We’re supposed to live here?” Carson asked.
“It’s…” Will paused, hoping for a grumble, and finished weakly, “It’s not going to look like this for long.”
“What about school?”
“I don’t know anything yet,” Will said. School. Grief counseling. Family therapy. Could he make that happen?
Why not? People would return to the unreal. Astrid had recruited all kinds of help.… Why couldn’t he?
“Sahara is going to make us into chanters,” Ellie said.
“Is that what she told you?”
“She said we would be shapers of clay. She’s the well of all magic, and me and Carson get to draw her power.”
“Dream on, bratface,” Carson grunted.
“You could be chanters yet—if you want,” Will said. He was pleased to see curiosity on his son’s face.
“What’s this?” Ellie had found a reddish metal box sunk in the muck. They opened it, finding a cache of chantments and a few hunks of letrico inside. It was the kit Astrid had sent to Pucker Hill for constructing the power plant.
Will put out a hand, finding a slight breeze. Using a plastic gravy boat, he built a small turbine on the hill.
“Big deal,” his son said. “You can use chantments.”
“Ever try spinning power, son?” He began to demonstrate, not waiting for a reply. After a moment, Carson stepped up to the mill, mimicking. Silvery threads of power wafted downward, webbing their hands. Will wound it into his palm, squeezing it into a crystallized lump.
He picked up a muddy, hand-woven welcome mat next, and fed letrico into it. Short, emerald green grass spread down the hillside, and an apple tree sprouted beside the empty banks of the brook. Next he took out an origami rooster, pointing it at the space beside the tree. A sod cottage grew out of the muck. It had a thatched roof and vacant, glassless windows.
“You expect me to live in that?” Carson said, but there was a thread of humor in his words now.
“We’re magicians, we’ll upgrade,” Will said.
“Maybe I don’t want to live in a dirt shack. Maybe I want my old bed and my books. Maybe Ellie wants her toys.…”
“I outgrowed my toys,” his sister informed him.
Will hid a smile. “If I get your things, will you put up with the dirt shack for a while?”
“What about school?” Carson asked suspiciously.
“One thing at a time.” Will reached into his pocket, closing a hand over the silk elephant he’d been carrying all this time. “Keep spinning, son.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHASING THE HORIZON SEEMED a fool’s errand by the time Astrid had crested two hillsides’ worth of the vitagua-slick mud, but for the first time in months, she had nothing better to do. Across the real, she had ringers engaged in rescues, pitching in where they could, reconnecting with her scattered volunteers.
Here, in the unreal, she felt comfortable and centered. There were only a few voices left among the grumbles, the murmur of the well’s various chanters, Dad included. The clearest of the voices was her own. After a year with a chorus in her head, she was alone, mostly, with her thoughts.
She left Will to his kids, left Ev to his camp on Assateague Island, and explored the altered landscape.
Her first discovery was the statue of her father.
Dad and the other chanters had been columns of solid vitagua, but now he seemed to be made of white stone. He stood among a flock of intricately carved sparrows, tall and heroic. Astrid touched the statue, sensing him within. He’d been worried, both Before and during the Spill. That concern was gone now; affection and pride were what remained.
Nearby, a familiar form was melting liquid rills of stone from another block, carving out an image of Lee Glade.
“Jacks?”
He turned, coals banking in his eyes. The belly wound was there, smoking and glowing bright orange. A creature, no less a ghost than she, and Astrid’s resolve weakened.
Then he smiled, and it was Jacks’s old smile.
Astrid took a step, thinking to throw herself at him, but Jacks put out a warning hand. Extending one fingertip, he touched her. The contact sizzled painfully.
“Crap,” she said, jerking back.
Jacks laughed. “So you died too?”
Joy swelled within her. “We all died.”
“I was afraid it might play out that way.”
Together, they stared at the mud flats. “Olive’s on the East Coast with Pop. I’ll bring her. She wants—she misses you.”
He nodded, giving her that penetrating glance she remembered so well.
“I missed you too.”
He beamed, leaning on his marble pillar. “What about Sahara?”
“We all died,” Astrid repeated.
“Died like ordinary people, or half died, like you and me?”
“I didn’t have a chance to save her; Will would’ve said…” She frowned. “You heard about Will?”
“You told me.” He brightened a fingertip to molten heat, melting a rill of rock out of the sculpture. “You and he ‘sort of have a romance going.’”
“It’s complicated.”
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“Because you’re dead?”
“More … I think his ex-wife got his kids to hate me.”
“You, a stepmother.”
“Don’t laugh. I’m sure not having any kids of my own now.”
“You always wanted children.” His expression was clear: nothing hidden, no resentment. “It’s okay, Astrid. With you and me in this state, we can’t pick up where we left off.”
And there’s Katarina, she thought, remembering something she’d said … or would say. Her mouse heart triphammered. “I’m sorry, Jacks, about everything.”
But he didn’t seem angry, just happy to see her, and maybe a little resigned.
Jacks and Katarina … her and Will. But not forever, she thought. Jacks was fire now, she was fluid; the others were flesh and bone, and time would affect them all differently. “I mentioned it was complicated, right?”
Jacks mimed tweaking her nose, coming short of actual contact. “We just blew the world to crap. Do you need to sort out our personal life right this second?”
“Still the voice of reason, are you?”
“Yep.” He reached for a pile of stone chips, melting them to putty, adding them to his statue. “Relax, it’ll be okay.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“It’s already okay, remember?” he said.
And it was. Across the world, at a hundred different rescue sites, Astrid’s ringers stopped working, turning their faces up to the sky.
She had made it, despite everything, to After—and now that she had arrived, she even knew what it was. All After meant, she saw, was the point where things were going to get better instead of worse.
CHAPTER FIFTY
THE NEXT DAY, EV Lethewood buried his daughter’s mortal remains, laying them in a rowboat and sending it out to sea.
Thousands came to see her off: Roused, a couple lapsed Alchemites, volunteers from the Springs, even strangers. The mood was solemn but not funereal, and nobody made any speeches. What did you say, after all, when the guest of honor might ooze out of thin air at any moment to join the ceremony?
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