by Sonya Clark
The comedown was harder than usual, probably due to the downloading. Calla lay on the floor with a cold rag on her aching head as she relayed what she’d found to Nate and Zinnia.
Nate said, “It tracks with what we suspect about the guy you saw behind the arcade.”
“What guy?” Zinnia still hadn’t heard the story about that night, so Calla filled her in. “Neon,” Zinnia said. “Damn, that’s awesome.”
“Can you not do this...electric magic?” Nate left his chair and sat on the floor with Calla, motioning for her to place her head in his lap.
Zinnia wrinkled her nose. “No. I’ve tried but I don’t have an affinity for it.”
Calla settled her head in Nate’s lap. Moving brought a fresh wave of pain, and she closed her eyes against the onslaught. “It’s going to take some doing to work out the spell to open that file. I don’t think I can handle it tonight.”
“Then just rest.” Nate combed his fingers through her hair. “I don’t want you making yourself sick.”
Zinnia stood. “I’m taking off. Calla, let me know what you need from me, okay?”
“I will.”
“Nate, I’ll bring your lunch tomorrow.”
“Can you bring me your serial to read too?”
Zinnia left smiling.
“You trying to flirt with my friend?” Calla teased.
“Vadim brought me borscht for lunch. I’m trying to get something better to eat tomorrow. It’d be nice to have something to read while I’m stuck in here, too.”
“Getting stir crazy already?”
“Think he’d let me jog in the tunnels?”
“No, but I’d love to see his face when you ask.”
Nate reached for the tablet. “Since you’re not going to do any more with this tonight, I think I’ll play some music.” In moments the soft tones of what she thought was twentieth-century jazz filled the room. For a while they listened in companionable silence.
Feeling somewhat better, Calla sat up. “I didn’t know you liked this kind of music, or even knew it existed.”
“My grandfather had a hard drive full of this kind of stuff. My dad never liked it, but he wouldn’t get rid of any of his father’s stuff, so I found it in a box when I was about twelve, I think.”
“Did you not know your grandfather?”
Nate hesitated. “He worked for the Ag Department. He was killed in a bombing at a biofarm when my dad was seven.”
“Magic Born terrorism?” The timing sounded right for the heyday of Magic Born terrorist attacks. There hadn’t been any in years—not since Calla was a kid, and even by then it had become a rare thing. Once again she was amazed Nate could treat her like a person and not a freak to be feared.
“Yeah. I always thought it was weird, but I look more like him than I do my dad.”
Calla didn’t know what to say. He didn’t seem angry, but at the same time she didn’t want to risk taking the conversation into a dark place. They had enough of that without dredging up something from before they were born. “I’m gonna go too.”
“I was hoping you could stay again.”
She wanted to. Goddess did she. “I’m wiped out. The best thing for me right now is sleep, so...”
“So stay with me.” Before she could respond, he lifted her onto the bed, handling her with such care it seemed like he thought she was breakable. No one had ever touched her like that. Should she have been offended? If it hadn’t come from a place of caring, she might have been, but the love shone in his eyes as he looked at her hopefully.
“As long as you’re okay with just sleeping.”
He kissed her gently, hand in her hair. “Of course. You’ll be with me. That’s what I want.”
Calla took a shuddery breath. “You are really making it impossible for me to keep any kind of distance from you.”
One side of his mouth curled up. “Good. My plan is working.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
It took Calla most of the next day to unravel the protective spell. She tried one counterspell after another before finally finding something strong enough to get the file open, only to find its contents magically encrypted. She came out of trance slowly, exhausted and covered in a thin layer of sweat from the hours of work. Swearing, she quit for a while to nurse another headache, taking a nap curled up next to Nate while he read. After an extended meditation session to renew her energy and a hearty meal, she went back into the file.
The data was hidden behind one last layer of magical ciphertext. If she could figure out the decryption key, or come up with a spoofing spell that allowed her to sidestep the encryption, she’d have it.
The text was a series of numbers overlying everything. Seven, nine, one, three, five, repeated over and over. There was nothing to indicate what the numbers might mean. After leaving the tablet and returning to realspace, Calla scrawled the numbers on a notepad. She was still staring at them when Zinnia arrived with more food and a handful of books for Nate.
“Maybe part of an address,” Zinnia said. “Like a house number?”
Nate set his plate down and picked up the tablet. “I’ll run a search.”
Calla said, “I can do that.”
“You need to save yourself for the stuff I can’t do, so let me do this.” He glanced at the notepad and typed the numbers into the search bar. “It’s not an address. Not in this city anyway.”
Zinnia said, “What about a security code for either the clinic or the doctor’s home?”
Nate shook his head. “I know both of those from the investigation, and that’s not either.”
Calla picked up the notepad, as if staring at the numbers hard enough would make an answer fall out of nowhere. “I don’t think it’s related to Forbes. I think it’s personal, something that means something to the witch who did the spell.”
“That would make sense, but we don’t know anything about the guy,” Zinnia said.
Nate swapped the tablet for his plate of food. “About all we know is he doesn’t do very good glamour spells, he’s babysat by Beckwith’s head of security, and he tried to talk to Calla twice.”
Zinnia said, “What would someone who can do electric magic use as a code?” She looked at Calla expectantly.
“I have no idea,” Calla said. “I’ve never done anything like that.” She tossed the notepad to the floor and lay on the bed. Frustration wasn’t helping the almost-constant headache from too much minutely focused magic. The answer was right in front of her, she was sure of it, but it felt like she was looking so hard she couldn’t see it.
“Well, there’s always numerology,” Zinnia said, picking up the notepad. “That’s the only thing I can think of that has to do with both magic and numbers, so it’s worth a shot.”
Nate said, “What’s numerology?”
“It’s a divination method using numbers.” Calla covered her eyes with her palms, pressing her fingers into her temple. “But I have no idea what she’s thinking.”
Zinnia started writing on the notepad. “The numbers correspond to letters, so I thought I’d try that first.”
Vadim wanted her to go to the bazaar tomorrow, maybe put in an appearance at Sinsuality that night. Hiding out with Nate wasn’t an option. Sooner or later Grant or someone else would look for her. If she disappeared at the same time as a Normal cop, it could bring too much attention to FreakTown as a whole and maybe even the railway.
Calla agreed with him, but damn she was just so tired. Tired of the headaches, of the stress and the bullshit. Hiding out with Nate was the only thing she wanted to do.
“There we go,” Zinnia said, tapping the notepad with her pen. “Grace.”
“What?” Calla sat up too quickly, a knife of pain stabbing into her head.
“The letters the numbers c
orrespond to.” Zinnia held up the notepad. “They spell the word grace.”
Word or name? It couldn’t be. It could not be. Just a strange coincidence, and hell, even if that word unlocked the encryption it meant nothing. That name had never meant anything.
Calla held out her hand and snapped her fingers. “Give me the tablet.”
Nate said, “Why don’t you rest some more before trying again?”
“Why don’t you keep shoving food in your face instead of trying to tell me what to do.”
“What the hell?” He tossed the nearly empty plate to the table.
Don’t take it out on him. But she couldn’t bring herself to apologize. Making an effort to soften her tone, she said, “Could you just hand me the tablet?” All she got in return was a glare. “Look, I just want to give it a try. It probably won’t even work.”
Zinnia opened her mouth as if to speak, then shut it quickly after a look from Calla.
Nate leaned over and handed her the tablet without speaking. Calla took it, making sure their fingers touched. A slight softening around his eyes told her he’d accepted the gesture but she still made a note to make it up to him later.
Scooting to the corner where the bed met the wall, Calla began the process of shutting everything else out in order to enter a trance state. After how much she’d been overdoing it for the past days, it was harder, taking more out of her. Nonetheless she pushed forward, falling into a liminal state of muted color and blurred edges. The tablet’s circuitry and pathways were familiar to her now. It took only moments to reach the file.
Inside the file the numbers were everywhere. Seven, nine, one, three, five, repeated in an all-encompassing spiral over the hidden data in a multitude of sizes and colors. As soon as she tried to focus on a seven it began to spin, expanding and shrinking to dizzying effect. She tried another with the same result. With an angry punch of will, she forced a seven to be still, then immediately visualized twisting it into the shape of a G.
It worked. Not only did that seven morph, every seven in the file transformed into a G. Instead of triumph, nausea filled Calla. With tremendous effort, she pushed it away before it could yank her out of trance.
Each successive number was harder than the last, draining her strength. She lost all sense of time swimming in a sea of numbers and letters. As the fives flipped to Es, the entire code shimmered, one letter flashing after another, G-R-A-C-E, in a strobe effect. The intense light show nearly knocked her out—cold nothingness beckoned with an offer of relief. She fought it with the most solid thing she could call up: an image of Nate.
The flashing slowed, then came to a stop altogether. The data underneath became visible as the letters melted into nothing. It took several long moments for Calla to process it into something she could read.
The information was staggering, going back years. One test subject after another, labeled Subject A all the way to the last, Subject K, had been used in various magical experiments. Eleven unknown Magic Born used as lab rats by this bastard—not for the first time she was glad Forbes was dead. Subject K was the one used in the nightshade experiments. First he’d been forced to take the stuff so Forbes could make observations about its effects. After that the doctor started looking for a recipe to play with. Either he couldn’t find an accurate one or Subject K couldn’t make the drug. Or perhaps Subject K had practiced a little rebellion and made it wrong on purpose. There was nothing to indicate that was the case, but anything was possible.
Calla was pretty confident she’d met Subject K in the abandoned building behind the arcade. She tried to search for references to electric magic, but there was so much material to wade through it was almost impossible. Making a mental note to consider ways to devise a search engine spell, she moved on to see what else she could find.
The financial records looked interesting. There were large deposits to what might have been a shell account from various people. Some of the last names, which she recognized as belonging to wealthy families, were especially intriguing. Without knowing what the payments, if that’s what they were, were for she couldn’t make much sense of it. The name Beckwith did jump out though. It was the oldest transaction recorded, a quarter of a million dollars deposited twenty-one years ago. The latest transaction, from another name two years previously, had been nearly a million.
What had John Beckwith wanted so badly from the doctor that it was worth that much money to him?
Calla made another mental note, this one to talk to Vadim about figuring out how to get their hands on a printer and downloading some documents to it. That might take some pretty heavy lifting, magically speaking, but it would be worth it in order to spend more time going over documents.
A small sub-folder labeled K caught her attention. She opened it immediately, hoping for clues to the unknown Magic Born’s identity. The first document was her original birth certificate, with the name Grace Beckwith and the DNA test confirming her as Magic Born attached. The second contained her zone in-processing documents.
In some dim part of her brain, she realized her pulse had sped up—not good for maintaining both the trance and the level of concentration needed for this work. But she was powerless to do anything about it.
The next document was the birth certificate of Jason Beckwith, the younger brother she’d never met and never would. A pang of melancholy hit, surprising her.
The last document in the sub-folder was also a birth certificate for Jason. She looked it over carefully, not quite believing what she was seeing. Flipping back and forth between the two documents, she must have read the DNA tests a dozen times.
Normal.
Magic Born.
Normal.
Magic Born.
Twenty-one years ago John Beckwith had paid Dr. Alan Forbes a quarter of a million dollars to produce a fake DNA test for his son.
A sickening fury erupted through Calla, ripping her out of trance with a shocking violence. A howling scream registered in her ears long before she realized it was coming from her. Steel hands gripped her arms and a heavy weight held down the lower half of her body.
“Turn her over! She could choke on the blood!”
“Calla! Calla, honey, please.”
The weight lifted but the hands remained. A smaller pair of hands held something soft to her face. The world went sideways, then black.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The soft sound of old jazz filtered into Calla’s consciousness. Music from Nate’s tablet, she thought groggily. He liked that old stuff that nobody else listened to anymore. Must have been, what, over a hundred years old? Something like that.
normal/magic born
What was the name of the musician? Nate had told her, but it slipped away, no one she’d ever heard of. They tried to teach the kids about classical music in the zone school, but she’d never cared for it.
quarter million dollars
Miles Davis. That was the name. A trumpet player, maybe? The stuff was too slow and melancholy for her taste. Somehow it seemed to suit Nate, even though he wasn’t really the melancholy type. Why, then, did it suit him? That was a mystery.
jasonjasonjason
So much she couldn’t make sense of. He said he loved her but that made no sense. How could he do that? Didn’t he know she was
thrown away like trash
Magic Born and they couldn’t have any kind of real life together? They didn’t make sense together. Nothing made any sense. Sooner or later he would figure it out. He’d realize she had nothing to offer him and he’d leave. Of course he would. How could he love her? How could he think she was worth anything?
They wanted their son but not their daughter. They threw me away and bought him a safe life.
She had the same blue-gray eyes as her brother. The same blond hair. The same blood. The same magic-bearing
DNA. Did that mean anything? Did any of it? Subject K knew who she was—did Jason Beckwith? Or had their parents excised every trace of her existence from their lives, not even acknowledging that she’d been born?
And if Jason Beckwith was Subject K, what then?
Calla swung her legs off the bed, hands curled tight on the edge of the mattress. A wave of dizziness assailed her. Bile climbed up her throat. She choked it back down and looked up to see Nate slumped at the table asleep. Zinnia was nowhere to be seen.
Quiet as she could, Calla got to her feet and took a hesitant step. She figured it was a good sign when she didn’t wind up on her ass.
The front of her shirt was splotched with blood though. It must have been from a nosebleed. She hadn’t had one of those in years, since she was a teenager and first working seriously on learning electric magic. She found her shoes and left before Nate could wake, not wanting to give him a chance to stop her.
Before leaving the tunnels, she covered herself in a glamour, wanting to disappear. There was nothing she had to say to anyone in FreakTown right then, and she didn’t want to be stopped. Once home she changed clothes and washed the remaining blood from her face. Overdoing it used to bring the nosebleeds on all the time back when she was still learning. She knew she should rest, keep the magic to a minimum for a day or two until her strength returned.
Like that was going to happen.
Crouching on the kitchen floor, she opened up one of her hiding spaces behind a lower cabinet. Inside was a notebook with various spells and techniques she’d developed over the years, most pertaining to electric magic but some to other magic as well. That wasn’t what she was after. Flipping through to a page with the corner turned down, she found the Central City address of the Beckwith family penthouse scrawled in a shaking hand. She stared at it for nearly a full minute before shaking her head and tossing the notebook back into the hiding place.
The next thing she pulled out was a stun gun. It was so illegal for a Magic Born to have a weapon that she could be shot on sight if found with it. She shoved it in the lower pocket of her cargos, made sure she had her wand, ID and cash for the transit, and left.