by Jamie Davis
“But you can stop them, Winnie. You have to. They’re getting worse than before.” Danny looked at her, his hopeful expression like a knife through her heart.
“How do you heal headaches?” Tris asked. “You’re not a mender.”
“I didn’t think I could do it, either. But he was in so much pain. I had to try something. I found a spell planted deep in his brain. I don’t know what it does, but if I erect a temporary barrier around it, the pain goes away.”
“That’s dangerous, Winnie.” Tris looked at Danny. “You could cause permanent brain damage tinkering around in someone’s brain.”
“But I didn’t and I can fix it for him. It will only take a few minutes.” Winnie took Danny by the hand and sat him down.
She would ordinarily feel self-conscious about doing something like this in front of even close friends like Tris and Cait. The overwhelming urge to cast on Danny was like a taste in her mouth. She didn’t care what they thought once she reached out and put her hands on Danny’s head. The familiar rush of energy, power, and raw vitality surged through her. She closed her eyes to savor the warmth in her mind, placing the barrier around the spell in Danny’s brain.
She drew in a sharp breath as she broke the connection between them. The surge faded and Winnie was left in casting’s afterglow. She tried and failed to look normal when she turned around to face her friends. She wanted to keep planning. She took her time walking back to the table. Danny was still sitting on the chair by the air mattress on the floor, head slumped forward, his pain finally subsided.
“I saw what you did,” Tris whispered when she came back. “That’s forbidden. You used your magic to dive right into his mind. It’s the worst of Sable magic.”
She knew what Tris meant. Winnie had studied under the same chanter teachers as her friends. Sable magic altered or drew directly on the life force of a living thing. That meant anything from microbes to more complex plants, animals, and sometimes people. Sable was forbidden in any case because of a caster’s potential addiction. Spells cast directly on people was considered an atrocity.
Winnie didn’t consider what she was doing for Danny a bad use of her magical skills. It was Sable, but she did it to heal him. Besides, she was handling the “addiction” fine. She hadn’t seen Danny for days and had avoided using her magic on any other living source other than him since she’d seeing him last. She could control herself. No problem.
But there was no hiding the euphoria she was feeling now, and Cait and Tris both noticed. They were watching, faces etched in worry.
“I’m fine. I’ve got it all under control. He needs my help and I give it to him.” She laughed aloud. “It’s the perfect relationship.”
“Uh, no, it’s codependent,” Cait said. “I think we’re finished for the day. You won’t be any good for at least an hour. I’ve seen what this does to people. You need to think long and hard about what you’re doing. You can’t be high on Sable when we do this job. You’ll doom us.”
“She’s right, Winnie. You need to stop, or we have to step away from this deal.” Tris stood and went to get her jacket and scarf. “Come on, Cait. Let’s leave them alone. Winnie needs time to come down and think about what she wants to do.”
Part of Winnie called out for them to stay, but the inner whisper never made it to her mouth. The majority of her being didn’t care what they thought. Not about her or anything else. Sable’s rush was still coursing through her and she didn’t care about anything else.
Once they were gone, she went back to where Danny was dazed in his chair. His headaches had been worse than before so she decided to delve back in, reinforce his barrier a bit.
She closed her eyes and hissed in pleasure.
The connection was made.
Minutes were hours as Winnie faded into infinite pleasure.
CHAPTER 41
Winnie checked her phone for the time in a while, then glanced out the coffee shop’s front window again for signs of Tris or Cait. There were plenty of pedestrians, coats bundled about them, faces covered with scarves or surgical masks against the swirling orange dust. None were her friends. Things were tense among them since their discovery that she was using Sable to heal Danny’s headaches. She hadn’t expected such strong reactions; she had expected her friends to understand that she had it all under control.
Since Winnie had started healing Danny, there had been some sort of deeper connection between them. She could feel his presence whenever he was near, like when they were in the same apartment. But after the intensity of her healing him at the shop a few days before, Winnie could now sense him from a much greater distance. Even now, a mile or more away in his apartment, he was a constant tickle in the back of her mind.
Ordinarily, she might discuss this with her friends. It was a new talent and Winnie valued their input about what it might mean. But right now, she couldn’t even consider it. They’d tell her it wasn’t real and that it was only the Sable talking. Winnie didn’t doubt it was related, but she thought it was a function of her more powerful control. Realizing that the magic was more powerful when directed like the conductor of a symphony rather than forced like stitched fabric had enabled her to do more with Danny’s headache. Now, Winnie was sure she could tease out whatever Kane had done to Danny in that prison.
A hand on her shoulder made Winnie jump. She looked up in alarm and saw Cait, and Tris beside her.
“Sorry, Winnie,” Cait said. “We said ‘hi’ several times, but you didn’t answer. You just kept staring outside like you were looking for something.”
“I was looking for you two.”
“We came in the side,” Tris explained. “It’s closer to the bus stop.”
Winnie looked around, still nervous. Her friends sat. The waitress came to take their drink orders.
Winnie waited for her to leave before speaking. “Were you able to talk to the guard at the armory?”
Cait nodded.
Tris leaned forward to explain. “He’ll take a cut from our score rather than a single payment up front. I think he’s being greedy. Cait says that just the way he is.”
“It’s his nature. He was always looking for the big score when we were in the service. It made him a lousy card player. He went all-in on nearly every hand. We figured it out and called him every time. Eventually, he stopped playing. We were taking most of his paycheck. Apparently, he’s not learned his lesson.”
Winnie chuckled. “Isn’t that what we’re doing, too? We’re all gambling on the backend of this job. Whether it’s to get Cleaver out of Baltimore or the chance to take all the money for ourselves, it seems the same to me.”
“You’re right, Win,” Cait said. “Still, him seeing this as a sure thing and a big score for him has me questioning what we’re doing, based on his history of bad luck. I’d be more comfortable if he’d taken the flat fee to open up the armory. His bad luck might be our end.”
“Yeah, but even a broken clock is right twice a day,” Tris offered.
The three of them smiled and agreed. The waitress returned with a refill for Winnie, coffee for Tris, and some sort of frozen concoction with a slice of pineapple sticking out of the top for Cait. She had surprisingly frilly tastes for someone who was essentially their muscle. Winnie had always thought it odd that she was the black coffee drinker in their group rather than Cait.
Tris took a sip and cleared her throat. “So, what’s next?”
“I think we’re about ready,” Winnie said. “We need to set up the sale yesterday. The longer we wait, the longer we’ll have to hide the military tech. We have to move immediately once we have our gear together.”
“Agreed.” Cait nodded. “The Red Legs and military police investigators will start turning over rocks looking for this stuff, soon as it’s missed in the regular bi-weekly inventories.”
“It’ll buy us some time if we schedule our break-in right after one of those inventories. That will give us the most time between when we get the gear and when t
he loss is discovered.” Tris was most nervous about procuring the gear. She knew it would all be returned after the authorities caught up with Cleaver, but she hated having this breed of magic on the street.
“Don’t worry, Tris, we’ll time it so we don’t have the heat on us long.” Winnie looked at Cait. “So when do we move?”
“The next inventory is tomorrow morning. That gives us a four-day window before the next one. We could schedule the truck and everything we need by tomorrow night. Our guard said he can swap shifts whenever he wants, and the night shift guard is always asking for people to trade.”
“Alright.” Winnie leaned forward. “We’re in for tomorrow night.”
They all nodded, then conversation turned to their plans for life after the score. Each of them was excited for an escape from the countless problems facing young chanters in a society that didn’t trust them and offered them little legal opportunity to leave a life of drudgery, punching a clock for middling bosses.
None of them noticed the man nearby, his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, hunched over a cup of coffee. His posture hid the directional microphone tucked under one arm, aimed at their table.
———
Victor put the headphones down. He’d heard enough.
His informant had brought the recording directly to him with a promise that no one knew what he’d overheard. Victor had paid him a bonus in exchange for discretion and had waited until he left to plug the recording into his smartphone. Now that he’d listened to the entire conversation twice, Victor was struggling with what to do next.
The plan to connect the city’s chanters with the tremors and vengeful weather had moved forward nicely, even with the video of Winnie fighting the storms. They had been able to spin her footage as proof that the chanters were truly in control of all that was happening. People still called her the savior of the city but there was a strong undercurrent of distrust for the average chanter on the street.
He had their plans in the palm of his hand, but wasn’t sure if he should turn the recordings over to Director Kane.
Victor absently massaged the palm of his right hand with his left. The pins and needles were constant, ever since his visit to the crater. Knowing what Morgan would want him to do made everything harder. Despite her early and vigorous approval of everything he’d done during her early days in the Academy, Morgan had become increasingly jaded about the Red Legs ever since officially joining the force after graduation. The steel mill had been a turning point. She couldn’t justify what Kane was doing under any circumstances. Deep inside, Victor loved her conviction.
How she kept believing in him and his redemption was another matter. Victor didn’t understand her pure faith in him and how she believed that he would always do the right thing. Every night, she looked into his eyes in their shared apartment and told Victor that he was a good man. A just man. How was he supposed to stand up to the conflicting pressures of his job and the system he served, against the expectations of this woman he loved?
The tease of a whispered conversation stopped him mid-thought.
Victor pulled himself back into the present and looked around the room, expecting to see no one. He was still alone. The voices in his head no longer surprised him. He could rarely make out more than the occasional word, but that didn’t matter. He knew what they were. He’d known ever since his visit to the crater. A fascinating encounter, but still, Victor resisted its meaning.
Victor sighed, stood, and paced around his desk several times, desperate to clear his head. He stopped in front of the large safe in the corner of his office, where they kept the worst of the confiscated charms. Crouching down, he dialed in the combination, then pulled the heavy metal door open.
He peered inside at the shelves, each piled high with enchanted baubles. He closed his eyes and concentrated. When he opened them again, he saw a lattice patchwork of glowing threads, superimposed over the items and pulsing in a spectrum he shouldn’t be able to see.
Victor reached out with his right hand and touched one of the glowing patches, picking up a peacock-shaped brooch. Whenever he held something like this, his tingling intensified. The item itself felt sort of sticky, as it he could pull or peel a coating from its body.
For the first time, he placed the item in his left palm and reached out with the fingers of his right, trying to pull at the stickiness. To his surprise, the edge of the glowing patchwork pulled away, clinging to his fingers.
Victor looked at the edge of the glowing fabric, sensing for the first time what each of the interwoven threads imparted to the brooch, and how it all was meant to work.
He tugged at the threads, and with a wisp of glowing green smoke, the patchwork parted from the brooch.
Once free, the threads unraveled until they’d pulled apart in his fingertips, dissipating into individual wisps of fading smoke.
Victor was left holding a cheap piece of costume jewelry, no longer glowing.
“You did it.”
Victor turned toward the voice, but there was no one behind him. He stood, looked around the room, and spoke in a whisper. “Did I do something wrong?”
The voice came from behind him again. “No, silly. You’re practicing, that’s all.”
Victor spun around. “Why can’t I see you?”
A giggle, then, “Because I’m not here.”
Victor was making himself dizzy, searching for the source of that voice, always somewhere right behind him. “Where are you, then?”
“You know where I am.”
Victor sat and pondered the voice. It sounded like a child, though he knew that it wasn’t. The voice was right; Victor knew where it came from.
He finally stood, closed the safe, then grabbed his coat and hat before rushing out from the office.
CHAPTER 42
The parking lot was deserted, and midnight black as Victor pulled into a marked space. He smirked at the care with which he parked his unmarked patrol car in the empty lot. It was unlikely that he’d find anyone here in this desolate spot in the city’s industrial district. As far as Victor knew, he was the only person to return after the Harvester’s destruction. Twice now.
He got out of his car and made his way carefully inside the building’s ruins again, to the crater inside. The voice was right. Victor knew where the whispers were coming from, just as he knew what the tingling in his right hand meant. His actions with the brooch proved his theory, and that proof was now a terror inside him.
Victor Holmes, Baltimore’s chief Red Legs Inspector, favored by Director Kane himself, had long prided himself on knowing his enemy. Magic would be mankind’s downfall. It could only be wielded by chanters. Yet here he was, drawn to a magical crater, by magical beings, and by the magic he now held in his own hand.
He practically trembled with every step.
But fear was never an excuse to do nothing. Victor was a man of convictions, and when those convictions were challenged, he faced his fears and searched for answers. That inner fire that needed the truth drew him back to the crater’s edge.
Walking back to the crumbling precipice, Victor looked down at the glowing tableau. Green grass lined the crater’s floor, grew beneath a clear and starry sky. It was odd how the pervasive dust storms plaguing the city seemed to disappear while standing here.
Victor could see dots of light flitting about below, swooping and swirling along the crater floor, and around the pool of water in the center. He watched as the tiny lights touched the surface, making ripples on the glassy surface. He was drawn to that pool — the heart of the magic. He could feel its pull, drawing him like a quivering needle on a compass, gentle yet certain.
Victor stepped from the crumbling concrete to the soft turf below and slowly descended toward the pool. His feet touched the grassy floor and a heavy weight was suddenly gone from his body. He felt a peace and belonging he hadn’t expected. He would have ordinarily believed that he didn’t deserve such peace, but Victor brushed away those thoughts with
out pause. He might ponder the why later, but for now, he reveled in his existence and belonging.
“You’re back,” said the voice. “I knew you would be.”
Victor turned toward the tiny, child-like voice and saw a winged girl, six inches high and hovering in the air beside him. He craned his neck to follow her perpetual motion, flying dizzying circles around his head, pacing him as he walked.
Victor swallowed. “What is your name? What should I call you?”
The girl giggled. “Everyone here calls me Seelie.”
“Pleased to meet you, Seelie,” Victor said with a nod. “How did you and your friends come to be here in this place?”
The tiny figure shrugged, hands out at her side as she spiraled by his face. “I don’t know. We were different once, I think — more like you. Then something terrible took that away, and for a while we were nowhere, scared and alone. Then the big boom came and we were here, in this wonderful place. I don’t remember much about the before place and this is much better, anyway, don’t you think?”
Victor nodded, contemplating the many lights bobbing all about. If each of those lights was one of these tiny figures like Seelie, there were more than a hundred in easy sight. He wondered if his suspicions could possibly be right as he stole another step toward the pool.
“How come your other friends don’t talk to me, Seelie?”
“They are afraid of you. I think it is the memory of your dress. It scares them, reminds them of their prior lives.”
“Why doesn’t it scare you?”
“I wasn’t like them. I remember being warm, comforted by my mother before the thing took me away. Then I was here. Something about you reminds me of her. Did you know my mother?”
A chill trilled down Victor’s spine. He slowly nodded, then finally answered. “I might know your mother, Seelie. That might be why we’re connected.”
The tiny girl giggled with delight, then spun around before zooming in circles above Victor’s head. He couldn’t help but smile, despite his earlier dread, and the realization of how all these tiny figures had been born. He couldn’t hold onto ill feelings while here. It was as if the location itself was a cure.