by SA Magnusson
“I wasn’t sure, either,” I said.
“You should never doubt yourself.” Barden managed to crawl to his feet, leaning on Darvish. He nodded to Ariel, who had shifted into human form and stood naked, but no less dangerous and threatening. “You don’t need to know what your other half is, Dr. Michaels. All you need to do is understand the power that’s within you. For all we know, you’re something else. Something new. A kind of magic as a melding of this side of the Veil and the other,” he said while surveying the room.
The mages lying on the cots no longer had the same empty look in their eyes, though they were coming around slowly. Shifters had corralled the familiars, and dark mages worked to contain the vampires. I smiled to myself. It was almost as if they had coordinated, planning so that the shifters wouldn’t violate any sort of peace treaty.
“The council will answer for this,” Darvish said.
“Yes, they will,” I said.
“We will ensure that—”
I turned to Darvish, putting myself in front of him. He was a skilled fighter and a powerful mage, but if he intended to attack the council, I would have to put myself in front of him, so I might as well start now. “You will ensure nothing,” I said.
“They must be held accountable,” Darvish said.
“And they will be. By me.”
Barden arched one brow and Ariel whistled softly. “Are you sure that you want to do that?” Barden asked.
I glanced over at Ariel. “Someone has told me that I need to figure out how to be both the physician and the mage. Maybe this is how I start. I’m going to find a way of healing the magical world.”
“That is a difficult task,” Ariel said.
“It is, but I think it will have to start with me.”
“You know what this means,” Barden said.
“I know what it means.”
And as much as I might hate it, it was time for me to confront the mage council.
It was time for me to reveal myself.
20
Morning came quickly and my time on call was brutal, barely giving me a chance to recover. At least it kept my mind off what I’d gone through. Everything hurt, though not as much as I think it should have after what I’d been through. Perhaps Barden opening that portal between this side and the other had helped strengthen me.
I tried not to think of Aron, or of what his death meant, or even about what I would need to do once everything was done. I pushed away those thoughts, focusing on whatever patient I had in front of me. It wasn’t too difficult, especially with how busy I was.
By morning, I was once again exhausted, and I managed to make it through rounds without falling asleep, stumbling through the ER on my way home in something of a daze.
“You look tired, Dr. Michaels.”
I glanced up to see Dr. Allen. We were in the hall outside the lounge and I wondered where he’d been headed. “Call.”
“Bad one?”
“Last one of trauma,” I said.
“And then back to the ER?”
“For a month. I have another ICU rotation coming up, but the break should be good.”
“We’ll be glad to have you back.” He hesitated. “Have you given much thought to what I asked you?”
In my tired state, I couldn’t remember what he’d asked me.
He must have seen the confusion on my face because he smiled. “Your fellowship.”
I shook my head. “I’ve just been trying to get through this month.”
“You’ll need to begin planning for your future soon. It will be here before you know it.”
I nodded, my mind numb, and he let me leave. I staggered home, too tired to think, and when I reached home, I paused at the door, a strange sensation triggering a warning within me. It was a cold chill, the steady creep of magic sliding along my spine.
There was something familiar within the magic, and it took me a moment to realize why.
Gran.
I pushed the door open, stepping inside. Gran sat on my sofa, leaning forward, her hands pressed together. She was dressed in formal clothes, a jacket and pants, and a necklace with a strange emblem on it hung from her neck.
“Katie,” she sighed as I came in.
I pushed the door closed behind me, looking around. “Is it just you, or is Gramps here, too?”
“He’s not here, but he can be, if you would prefer.”
“I don’t know what I would prefer,” I said. I joined her on the couch, sinking down, and threw my head back, closing my eyes. “I just need to sleep, Gran. That’s really it.”
“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible right now.”
“Why?”
“The council has called you.”
Those words sent my heart hammering, even though it was the very thing I’d known I would need to do. “The council?”
She nodded. “Apparently, you were overheard saying something to your grandfather about using magic of death to try to heal Aron.”
That was why they’d try to call me? Not the vampire attack?
“I need to go, but not right now. I need sleep, Gran.”
“This isn’t something that you can refuse, Katie,” she said.
“Now is not necessarily the best time, Gran. It’s been a pretty shitty couple of days, and I’m just coming off of call, so I’d rather just rest. They can wait until I’m better rested.” I still hadn’t formulated what I would say to the council. Would they admit their role?
“The council doesn’t wait, Katie.”
“I don’t serve the council, Gran. You know that.”
“Anyone with magic is subject to the council.”
“No, they’re not. Mages are subject to the council, but I think we can both agree that I’m not a mage. Whatever else I am, it’s not that.” I needed to tell her about what I’d learned from the vampires, but the idea that I had to submit myself to the council on their whim angered me.
“Katie, please don’t do this.”
“What would you rather have me do, Gran?” I sat up, feeling more alert from the adrenaline surge flowing through me. “Would you rather have me go meekly in front of the council, stand before them, ask for their permission to use whatever magic it is that I have? Is that what you want? Without my magic, the gorgon would have been unleashed. Without my magic, their Great One would have destroyed the shifters. Without my magic—”
“You don’t have to convince me, but you do have to come before the council.”
“I’m too tired,” I said. In all the times that I had imagined going before the council, I’d never imagined doing so completely exhausted. In my tired state, I didn’t know whether I would be able to manage to stay awake to answer questions. Even if I was, I wasn’t sure that I could work through the answers effectively. The mages on the council were all incredibly skilled and incredibly old, which made them dangerous—especially for a tired mind like mine.
Even worse was what I needed to say when I stood before them. I needed rest in order for me to know how to frame what must be said.
“The council doesn’t care if you’re tired,” Gran said.
“But you’re on the council,” I said.
“Not for this, I’m not.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is that when it comes to you, and really, when it comes to any family members, the person involved must recuse themselves. Which is what I’ve done. And it’s the reason I’m here with you. They heard about what you did in the river and they have questions.”
“Gran, I didn’t have any choice. I was doing everything I could to save Aron, and—”
“I know, but even I don’t understand what you are able to do.”
I leaned back, closing my eyes. “I don’t understand, either. All I know is that I used magic to try to heal him.”
“But that magic came from his dying?”
I hated the mention of Aron dying, but that was what had happened. I was a physician, and I had to
face death. I had faced it often enough during my time in residency that it wasn’t something abstract. I knew enough about death and dying and helping those who succumbed to it that I knew better than to pretend that it didn’t happen, that it couldn’t happen, and knew better than to try and bury my head in the sand. It was better for my grieving to acknowledge what had happened. I could move on from there.
“I’ve told you how I can detect death,” I said.
“You said that you can detect death, but you never told me that you can use a dying person’s magic.”
“Because I didn’t know. The first time I realized what was happening was when I faced the Great One.”
“I thought you used your connection to Solera.”
“At first, but she reestablished control, and it wasn’t until Torn was dying that I had enough strength to defeat him.”
“Oh, Katie.”
“You don’t know what it means. Aron doesn’t know what it means. And Solera probably doesn’t even know what it means.” I cocked open one eye, looking at her. She sat with her hands resting in her lap, studying me. “We know that my mother decided to try to summon power, but we don’t know what that power was, and maybe we never will. Besides, I’m not sure it even matters. Not anymore.”
Speaking of my mother and summoning stirred a memory in me but it faded as soon as Gran spoke.
“I’ve never heard of someone using the power of death,” Gran said. “Hell, I’d never even heard of someone sensing the coming of death. Whatever magic you have is different than anything we have experience with.”
“I know. It’s just my luck.”
Gran chuckled. “It’s not dark magic. And that’s what you need to go in front of the council and tell them.”
“That’s not the only thing I’ll tell them.”
Gran looked at me. “What does that mean?”
“It means that some on the council haven’t been completely forthcoming when it comes to the dark mages.” I told her about the vampire attack, the familiars, and the runes. I said nothing about how I’d stopped them, that Barden had forged a connection across the Veil, only that they were stopped. “So it seems that not everything is as it seems.”
She shook her head. “That can’t be true.”
“It is.”
“But the council—”
“Would do whatever it takes to support the Veil.” That was the only thing I could come up with as a reason. “They had done so as a way of trying to keep the vampires a part of the Veil, but they only created a greater division.”
“Not like that. We have tried to stop the use of that kind of magic.”
“Not all have. They’ve simply allowed others to use it. And I’m not going to go before them and let them threaten me with burning off my magic.”
Gran waved her hand dismissively. “I’m not entirely certain the council could do it even if they tried. Whatever power you possess is different, Katie. You should be comforted by that. Even if they decided that you shouldn’t be allowed to roam freely with your connection to magic, there isn’t anything that they would be able to do to prevent you from using it.”
No, but I had a sense that they would certainly try. And if they did, and with as tired as I was, I wasn’t sure how much I could do to withstand an attack.
I needed to warn Barden.
As I started to stand, Gran took my hand. “What happened that night with Aron?”
“Aron was holding a shield, but the shooter managed to somehow get through it, a rune probably, and… and…”
I swallowed, unable to go on. Now that it was just Gran and me, and now that I was out of the ER, the rune mages defeated, I was able to think about what had happened. Losing Aron hurt just as much now as it did then. All I wanted was some way of bringing him back, for my magic to have worked, but I had given him everything that I could and it had not been enough.
“And this is all tied to runes?” Gran asked. “The vampires shouldn’t know how to even apply runes like you’re describing.”
I pulled out my phone and opened the pictures, handing them over to Gran. She looked through them, growing more and more tense as she did.
“You recognize them,” I said.
“They shouldn’t be found here,” she said, looking up. “These are runes of power, and they belong to a mage who has been long defeated.”
“Apparently not.”
Gran gripped my phone tightly. “I’ve been trying to figure out who might be responsible for everything that’s happened to the Veil and haven’t been able to come up with anything. Lexy had worked with someone, but she died before we were able to get information from her. And the gorgon was released by someone who had access to a book they should not. And then there was the Great One. Ariel is too proud to tell us what happened to her people and how someone within her pack managed to learn how to free one of the Great Ones, but I know you have made a connection between all of these events.”
“They have to be related. And this person, this rune master, is that person? Who is it?”
“A strange mage. Dangerous. He went by the name of Odian. For so long, I believed he was nothing more than a myth. And it may still be that he’s nothing more than a myth, and that these are all unrelated.”
“You can’t believe that,” I said.
“Unfortunately, I don’t. It would be easier if they were unrelated, but…”
It was like making a diagnosis. A constellation of symptoms came together to equate to a diagnosis, and in this case, all of the symptoms that we had suggested that the diagnosis was some greater influence, some dark disease. If this person was responsible for everything, there had to be a reason.
“There’s something more, isn’t there?” I asked.
She folded her hands in her lap and sighed. “One of Odian’s runes was found near where your mother disappeared.”
All of a sudden, I was awake. “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It didn’t matter. We knew your mother studied power she shouldn’t. Trying to learn from Odian was only one more proof of that.”
I didn’t fit with my memories of my mother. They were happy, filled with laughter and song, and… that was it. The rest of my memories of my mother were faded, those of a child. And that was what I had been. She’d disappeared when I was no more than five.
“But if Odian took her...” Or killed her. It could have been either. I’d long ago realized that I would never know the truth, but that was before I had embraced my connection to magic.
“Katie, I would love to sit and talk to you about all of this, and I promise that we will. I’ll tell you everything about her, even though there is nothing more than what I’ve just shared, but before we do, you need to do this for me.”
Somehow, the runes had been familiar. Could I have seen them when I was younger? Had my mother shown them to me?
Gran was right. There was time for this later. Now that I learned about it, I would learn more. It was time for me to understand who—and what—I was.
The healer and the mage. Medicine and my magic.
“I won’t allow the council to hold me. And I’m not going to stand before them quietly.”
“Katie—”
I took a deep breath, leaning toward her. “No. I lived in fear of the council for so long that I let it consume me. I let it push me out of the magical world, and now that I’ve rejoined the magical world, now that I have a sense of my magic, I’m not going to back down to the council. I’m not a mage. In that way, I’m no different than shifters or vampires or even one of the fae coming before the council. And they have to answer for what they’ve done.”
Gran watched me for a moment. A smile tugged at her lips. “I’m proud of you, Katie.”
“Wait… What?”
“You’re right. You have lived in fear of the council, and Gramps and I are responsible for that to a certain extent. We wanted to protect you, and we believed that hiding you from the council was the way to do so, ra
ther than helping you understand your magic and your unique gifts. We thought to protect you, but instead we have shielded you, and maybe even restricted your growth and development. What could you have become had we allowed you to explore your magic more openly? How might you be able to use it now if you had gone in search of answers earlier?”
“I’m not disappointed that I went into medicine, Gran. I can be both the doctor and whatever I am.”
“There are times that I wish you wouldn’t have had to go into medicine.”
I laughed. “You know, you might be the only parental unit types who would actually be disappointed that their loved one became a doctor.”
“It’s because I know you have so much more potential within you.”
I got to my feet, looking around my condo. “I assume we’re driving?”
“Unless you’d like to walk.”
“No, I’d rather just ride.”
“You need to have the strength you just showed me while you’re in there with them. You need to have your wits about you, and you need to have that spine that I know you do. I might not be able to sit on the council when you face them, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t be there, supporting you, doing everything in my power to ensure that you come back out of this. And if you’re as angry as I sense, I think they’re going to regret summoning you before them.”
“I was going before them one way or another. This is just faster than what I’d intended.” I looked around my condo. “Where is Gramps?”
“He’ll be here soon.”
“Until he is, I’m going to take a little rest,” I said, letting my eyes drift closed. I wouldn’t be able to sleep for long, and it seemed as if barely a heartbeat or two later, Gran was touching my shoulder, jolting me into alertness. As I looked up, Gramps watched me, concern etched in the wrinkles of his eyes. “Are we ready to go?”
“As ready as I’m going to be,” I said, jumping to my feet. I looked around my condo, wishing I had the demon sword one more time. It might be a crutch, like Ariel had said. And if it came down to it, and if there was a need for me to be armed, I would simply summon my magical sword. It would have to be enough.