by L. EE
70
Nia Graves
Nia lay out Connery’s body piece by piece. Head, arms, and legs all in perfect alignment around the empty space in the middle.
“Don’t take all day,” Connery said from his place by Xavier’s truck. “Time’s a-wasting, princess.”
Nia jerked around. “Don’t call me that!”
Connery only smiled at her and she had no choice but to return to her work, her heart battering angrily against her aching ribs. She wanted to kill him. She had never wanted to kill anyone in her life, but she wanted to kill him. But if she killed him now, she would also be killing Xavier.
She could also be killing Gail.
She might already be dead.
But what if she wasn’t?
Though each movement sent a sickening pulse of pain through her battered body, she picked up her chalk and began to prepare the spells that would put Connery back together and restore him to life.
“So you were listening to us the whole time?” she asked in a dull voice as she drew.
“In a manner of speaking,” Connery answered. “For a bit, I was just dead, but the more of me you found, the better I got at absorbing information. It was all piecemeal of course, a conversation here, a dream there.”
Nia shuddered at the thought of Connery’s magic slithering around in her mind while she slept.
“It wasn’t until you brought everything here that things started to arrange themselves up here.” He tapped the side of Xavier’s head with a fingertip. “Then you woke me up.”
“You’re not really him, you know,” she said as she dragged her chalk slowly across the cement. “You’re just a collection of memories, less than a ghost.”
“I know,” Connery replied with an almost dreamy smile. “That’s why I have to get home quickly. I don’t want things to start getting flaky.”
“What do you mean?” Nia asked, startled by his strange tone of voice.
“Like you said, I’m a memory. Even with the support Xavier gives me, I’m not a fully functioning consciousness.” When he caught her watching him wide-eyed, he smiled. “See, my theory was identical to yours. I thought I would eventually consume Mister Rivers’ consciousness and become more or less who I was before, but I see now that won’t happen. I miscalculated the strain of controlling a living consciousness.” He sighed and held up his hands. “No experiment is perfect, I guess.”
“Then what will happen to you?” asked Nia, curious in spite of herself.
“Oh, if I’m returned to my body, these memories will be assimilated back into my former consciousness, but if I’m left here I’ll start to deteriorate, becoming more and more unstable. I don’t know when it would end, but I doubt I would much care about the old me when it was done.”
Nia felt hope sting her and tried to brush it away. There’s a catch or a lie here somewhere. He wouldn’t be telling you if there weren’t. But maybe… maybe he was losing control already. Maybe he was already slipping. “And if I just waited for that to happen?”
“Then I suppose you’d find out exactly what that deterioration would entail.”
“And that would be?”
“Oh, uncontrolled violent psychopathic behavior.” That dreamy smiled hardened into a fiercely present grin.
“Xavier would never –” Nia began.
“He won’t be here anymore. If this mind decays, which do you think will go first, the memories preserved and protected by magic or the one already terrified half to insanity? Oh, and I forgot to mention, while he was sleeping the magic woven into my body got him to inject a good several liters of vernix into his veins. That also gives one of us an advantage. Do you know which?” When Nia didn’t answer, he added, “Do you need a hint?”
“No.” Nia turned away. That tiny spark of hope turned to an icy stone in her chest.
“Anyway, that’s another reason for you to hurry up, because right now I’m fully capable of deciding that you and yours are more valuable to me alive than dead.”
Nia glanced over and felt her stomach clench with fear. Connery had the wrench in his hand.
“That won’t always be the case.” He tapped the wrench lightly against his shoulder. “So you had better get to work.”
Her hands were unsteady as she took up the chalk again, but when she set it back on the concrete, the shaking ceased. She never trembled when she drew, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid.
What would Mother do?
Die. Don’t you remember?
Swallowing hard against the tears that would make her voice quiver, she said, “You won’t get far. The Academy will send someone else.”
“Oh yes, the Academy that failed to catch me for close to ten years. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for them.” He watched her, wearing a shrewd expression that she liked even less than the arrogant grin. “I wouldn’t rely on the Academy, Illuminator Graves. They’ll let you down every time, but then I’m sure you know that. After all, they ruined you.”
Let it pass. He’s just toying with you because he takes pleasure in seeing you upset. Don’t let him. But then she said, “What do you mean?” and hated herself for it.
Connery twirled the wrench thoughtfully in Xavier’s strong hand. “You could have been powerful, really powerful, but you’re just another chalk scraper. And all it took was a lie, one little lie to keep you in line and stop you from really thinking.”
Nia turned away, cursing herself for letting him play with her. “If you’re not going to make sense, then just shut up and let me work.”
But for all his earlier talk of haste, he apparently found needling Nia too amusing to stop. “I honestly expected you to have figured it out by now, given how clever you are, but I guess you’d rather not know.”
Nia slammed her palm on the floor, snapping her chalk in two. “Rather not know what?”
Connery held up one finger – wait – and smiled another infuriating smile. Then he set down the wrench and got on one knee. When he pulled a piece of chalk from inside the cuff of Xavier’s shirt, Nia thought of how often she had used that trick herself.
Glancing up to make sure she was watching, Connery began to draw.
Nia’s body tensed before she remembered that he couldn’t create any new magic. All the magic he could do now were on pieces of paper in his pockets. Curious in spite of herself, she stood to better see what he was drawing.
“I borrowed this from your memories, I hope you don’t mind,” Connery said in the same way he might talking about taking a pencil without asking.
Nia looked at the circle, but it wasn’t even complete. The circle was smudged and skewed, the edges rough and uneven. Why was he showing her this?
Then she remembered.
It was a protection circle. The same kind her mother had used during her catastrophic experiment. Her mother believed it would be strong enough to absorb any magic that got away from her, but she had been wrong. The force of the unbound magic had shattered the protection spell and everyone had – they had –
Then Nia realized her mistake. This wasn’t just the same kind of protection spell her mother had used. It was the spell her mother had used. Connery had drawn it exactly as Nia had seen it when she had been dragged away from her mother’s brutalized body and carried from the room. The angle was strange because she had been practically falling out of the man’s arms in her struggle to get back to her mother and the edges were uneven because most of the circle had already been destroyed by the flood of blood.
This is just another game, Nia thought. He’s just trying to hurt me. But against her will, her eyes were drawn back to the circle, drawn to the tiny symbol at the far left, the one she had remembered so clearly even in her terrified grief-mad state. She had thought the symbol resembled a pretty little tree.
A tree?
Nia hadn’t recognized it then. How could she have? She wouldn’t even draw her first functional spell for another three years, but now – now she knew. Protection spells, e
specially big ones, were made up of straight lines and blocky shapes, almost ugly in their simplicity. This symbol was entirely out of place.
“Of course, it’s not completely accurate to your memories,” Connery said, “because –”
“Because the chalk was lighter,” Nia finished for him. Yes, she had noticed that as well. The chalk in which the little tree symbol had been drawn had been a slightly brighter white than the rest of the spell. That was probably why it had drawn her eye in the first place.
Connery sat back a little, one arm cocked casually on his knee. “Looks like somebody made a mistake.”
This was no mistake. This wasn’t a forgotten line or an unclosed ring. This symbol had been deliberately drawn into the spell where it didn’t belong. And she knew that symbol. Of course she did. She had drawn it herself a hundred – a thousand – times. It was an accelerator. When used properly, it was a safe way to increase the power of spells without any further input from the caster.
But to attach an accelerator to a protective spell was madness. Protective spells were deliberately static, the immovable object meant to meet the unstoppable force. There were ways to make them stronger, but they all involved thickening lines and reinforcing boundaries. An accelerator would put the static spell in motion, destroying it.
However, just because the protective spell was nullified didn’t mean the accelerator was. Its parameters broken, it would latch on to the nearest magic and magnify it a hundred fold. In this case, it would have found her mother’s unbound magic.
Dizzied and overwhelmed, Nia could only sink onto the cold floor.
Connery got to his feet, brushing the chalk from his hands. “Do you see now?”
No, Nia couldn’t see anything but her mother’s blood. Her mother who had been – who had been…
Everything – Connery, the storm, the pain in her ribs– vanished until all that remained was the razor sharp truth.
Her mother hadn’t made a mistake. Her mother had been murdered.
“See,” said Connery from above her. “I told you they couldn’t be relied on.”
Nia lunged at him, grabbing for the wrench with a shriek of rage and pain.
71
Gail Lin
Gail had just managed to get herself and Arthur – who was awake now, but still weak as a half-drowned rat – up to the top of the muddy riverbank when she heard the scream.
“Nia.” Arthur tried to stand, but slid down into the mud again. “That was Nia.”
“Shit.” Gail’s throat was still throbbing and she had a feeling that the chain had done some serious damage that she would feel keenly when the adrenalin wore off, but at least she was conscious and aware. Conscious and aware of how absolutely fucked they were.
“We have to help her.” Arthur tried again to get up, but his legs wobbled beneath him and when Gail tried to catch him they both hit the mud with a filthy splash. “You have to go,” he told her when he had caught his breath. “I’ll be fine here. I just need to rest.”
Gail was already standing. “Are you sure, doc?”
“I’m sure,” Arthur snapped, arms wrapped tightly around his chest. “Go!”
Putting the light in his hand so he wouldn’t be left huddling in the dark, Gail pulled up the hood of her poncho and ran. The ground had turned to treacherous slop beneath her feet, but she didn’t slow her pace. If Nia’s scream had reached them over the river’s roar, she couldn’t be far.
But god, please say we didn’t just hear her die.
She skidded to a stop in front of the garage, the wet gravel scraping under her wet boots. Through the door, she could Nia, slumped over on the concrete. Connery was gripping her arm in his hands, trying to twist something out of her hand.
Gail charged inside. “Nia!”
Nia looked up. Her cheeks were streaked with tears and the soul-deep misery on her face shook Gail to her bones. But when Nia caught sight of her, a little light came back into her eyes. “Gail?”
“How the hell did you –”
Gail didn’t give Connery time to finish. She didn’t dare draw her gun, not while Connery was still inside Xavier’s body, so instead she just decided to beat the shit out of him.
He raised the wrench he’d taken from Nia, but when she drove her elbow into his stomach and slammed her knee into his groin, he grunted and dropped it. Gail might have dove for it, but she knew the wrench wasn’t the real danger.
Grabbing him around the waist with both arms, she shoved her hands into his pocket. Her hands closed on piles of paper. He realized what she was doing a second too late and before he could wrench away, she had two huge fistfuls of paper in her hands. She didn’t dare tear up the spells, not knowing what that would do, so she just shoved one handful into her own pocket and threw the other aside, scattering paper across the garage.
Without sparing her another look, Connery threw himself down on the floor, snatching up the papers, just she hoped he would.
Spinning on her heel, Gail rain to Nia who was still sitting stunned on the floor. “Come on, princess,” she said, yanking Nia to her feet and wrapping a supportive arm around her waist. “We have to get out here.”
Nia didn’t say anything in response, but she looped an arm around Gail’s neck and together they hobbled out into the storm as fast as Nia’s bruised ribs would allow. As they stumbled over the slick ground on their way back to the river, she whispered, “Where are we going?” But Gail just shook her head. If they were lucky, Connery would check the house first before coming after them. That would give them time to prepare.
But Gail hadn’t taken Nia’s injuries into account. They made it about three hundred yards before she had to stop and rest. She hunched over gasping, both hands clutching her chest.
“Are you all right?” Gail whispered against her cheek, hoping with all the hope she had left that Connery had gone the other way. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” Nia managed, but the sobbing hitch in her voice gave lie to the word. “He didn’t, but oh, Gail, he – he –” She suddenly lifted her hand to Gail’s face and found her soaking hair under her poncho. “You’re all wet.”
“Yeah, it rained,” Gail answered stupidly.
“Are you okay?”
And despite every single shitty thing that had happened that day, Gail couldn’t help laughing. Catching Nia’s face between her hands, she pressed a quick closed-mouthed kiss to her lips. “Yeah, I’m okay. Are you ready to go?”
Nia nodded and they continued limping to the riverside. Nia’s shoes weren’t made for mud and Gail had to hold her tight to stop her from slipping. When Arthur caught sight of them, he held up the light and they managed to stumble to his side. As soon as they reached him, Nia collapsed into her brother’s arms, choking on barely suppressed sobs.
Shooting a quick glance over her shoulder for any sign of pursuit, Gail hid the light in her coat pocket.
“Ni, are all right?” Arthur was saying. “I swear if he hurt you, I’ll –”
“No, Arthur, it wasn’t – he showed me something.”
“Whatever it was, it was a lie.”
“But that’s the worst part. It wasn’t. I should have realized before, but I never thought – how could they? How could they?” There was anger in Nia’s voice now. No, more than anger, rage.
“How could they what, Ni?”
Gail stared nervously over the lip of the riverbank. She didn’t like this spot. Not only were they still getting rained on, but with the river to their backs, they were as good as cornered. Nia and Arthur were both hurt and if she were honest, she wasn’t feeling too great herself. What they needed was a place to hide until they could regroup, but where could they go where Connery wouldn’t find them?
“They lied to me. They lied to everyone about everything.”
“Who –”
“The Academy! They said it was Mother’s fault. They said that no one could control unbound magic. They said she should have known better. They said it was h
er fault they all died, but it wasn’t.” As if she knew she wasn’t expressing herself clearly, she broke off and took a breath. “They framed her, Arthur.”
“What?”
The explanation that fell out of Nia was tearful and confused, but everything she said made a terrible kind of sense. Would the Academy really do that? Would they kill one of their own just to maintain the status quo? And if they would do that, what else would they do?
“They murdered her and then they framed her, so she wouldn’t succeed in proving her theory. They couldn’t risk her being right. You have to believe me, Arthur. I know Connery lies, but not about this. It’s the truth. I know it is.”
Gail felt like she was waiting on the edge of a coin, one side left the world as it had always been and the other would alter her perspective on her city and her home forever. And what Arthur said next would determine on which side things landed.
“I believe you.”
And there it was. The world had changed slightly but irrevocably from the one Gail had known.
Then Nia pulled in a sharp breath. “Oh, Arthur, your binding –”
“Yeah,” Arthur answered. “It broke. I was trying to help Gail. I had to do something, Nia, if it hadn’t broken, I think –”
“I would have been as dead as Connery,” Gail finished for him.
She knew that Nia was full of questions, but she wouldn’t get a chance to ask them just yet. Over the edge of the riverbank, Gail could see a light coming at them quickly out of the darkness She reached for her gun.
Connery was on his way.
72
Nia Graves
Arthur’s hands closed painfully on Nia’s arm. She winced as the recently knitted bones protested as he pulled her roughly to her feet and said, “You have to hide.”
“What? Arthur, no –”
But he was already dragging her to the shelter of the bridge. The water was closer here, practically grabbing the hem of her dress. She had to press her back against the damp stone to keep from soaking her shoes. “Arthur, I can’t stay –”