by L. EE
“You’re the one he wants, Nia. If he gets you then this has all been for nothing.”
“I –” But Arthur was already gone, hurrying back to Gail, who had her gun drawn and pointed at the darkness.
And yet for a moment, nothing happened. The roiling river water lashed at Nia, soaking to her skin even under her poncho and coat. The darkness was total, but there was a hint of blueness in the black sky now. Dawn.
And come dawn, there would be no hiding from Connery.
What could she do? Her entire body hurt. Every time she breathed, she swore she was about to crack open. How could she fight Connery like this? And she wasn’t the only one hurt. She had felt Arthur’s muscles shaking as he held her and had seen the contusions on Gail’s neck. Unless they could take him by surprise, Connery would easily overpower them.
As she pressed closer to the bridge, her diamond ring scraped across the stone. She traced the shape of the sharp stone with her finger then peered around the arch of the bridge at a patch of thick wet mud.
It wasn’t glass, but it might be good enough.
73
Gail Lin
Gail didn’t know how he got behind her. The rain must have screwed with her hearing. One second, she heard him walking straight at her and the next, she felt someone coming at her from behind.
She whirled around just in time for Connery’s fist to smash into her cheekbone. She fell hard on her left shoulder and slid several feet back toward the water before managing to roll up on to her knees. She was still holding the gun, but there was no way she’d be able to get it up before –
But Arthur was there. He hit Connery hard with his shoulder, but Xavier was a big man and Connery barely stumbled. Before he could turn, Arthur grabbed his arm tightly in two hands and Connery’s coat began to smoke.
Connery jerked back in surprise then he heaved Arthur away with a contemptuous snort. “Finally got enough spine to break your leash, huh? Too bad I’ve seen better magic from nine-year-old kids.”
Scrambling to his feet, Arthur tried to grab him again, but Connery did something with his hand and Arthur was cast down with his hands clawing at his throat.
With a hard smile, Connery slowly closed his hand into a fist.
“Connery, stop!”
Connery looked Gail’s way and Arthur fell forward on his face, gasping into the mud.
Gail pointed her pistol directly at Connery’s heart. “If you touch him again, I’m going to blow you into so many pieces no one will ever be able to put you back together.”
Connery laughed loudly. “You wouldn’t kill Rivers.”
Slowly, so she wouldn’t slip in the mud, Gail climbed to her feet, never moving the pistol from Connery’s chest. “As far as I can tell, Xavier’s already gone and if he’s not, maybe this will be a mercy.”
At last, a touch of nervousness came into Connery’s face. He took two slow steps back. “You won’t.”
“Try me.”
Just behind Connery’s legs, Gail could just barely make out Nia hunched over in the mud. She hoped to god she was doing what Gail thought she was doing.
Turning her attention back to Connery, Gail took two steps forward, which forced him back a third. “You better get the hell away from us, or you’re going to find out exactly what I’m willing to do.”
Another half-step. “I don’t believe it.”
“What would help you believe better, a bullet in the gut or between your eyes? I’m flexible.” Gail moved forward again.
Connery fell back another step. He was almost there, maybe two steps away from where she needed him.
Keeping her eyes stubbornly away from Nia, Gail opened her mouth to threaten him again.
Then he turned.
He looked down at Nia, who could only stare back at him, hair falling in wet clumps around her face. Then he turned back to Gail with a sickeningly smug smile twisting Xavier’s lips. “Well.”
“I will blow your brains out,” Gail growled through her protesting throat.
But Connery was smiling now, all traces of fear gone. “You know, I don’t think you will. I really don’t.” He took one step forward, then another, any farther Gail really would have to shoot.
I’m really sorry, Xavier.
“Xavier!” It was Arthur’s voice, weak and rasping, just barely audible over the storm. “Xavier, listen to me, please!”
Connery stopped short, his face contorting strangely. Then Connery’s hard scowl slammed back in place. “I do not think so,” he said. “I do not think so.”
“Xavier,” Arthur begged, his voice cracking weakly. “You have to back up. Back up, please.”
Another scornful laugh burst from Connery. “That is not going to happen.”
But his legs were moving. With one lurching step after another he was moving back towards Nia’s spell and he didn’t seem to notice.
“Xavier!” Gail joined in. “Xavier, you can beat the bastard, come on! You’ve tangled with worse!” It was a desperate move and she knew it, but if there was any chance to avoid putting down her friend, she would take it.
Connery was a step away from Nia before he wrenched himself to a stop. He was still grinning, but there was an insane edge to it now, like an animal baring its teeth. “You had better shoot me now, detective, because when I get my body back, I am going to make your life very short and very unpleasant. I –”
Nia grabbed his knees.
With a startled shout, he stumbled backwards and stuck fast in the spell Nia had drawn.
As Nia half-fell away from him, Gail darted over and caught her before she could collapse in the mud. After pulling in a few ragged whimpering breaths, Nia straightened up and said, “Go help Arthur. I can handle him.”
Knowing better than to argue, Gail left her and went to Arthur.
“Come on, doc, you gotta get up.” She let him lean on her shoulder as he got unsteadily to his feet.
“I’m okay,” Arthur lied pointlessly through heaving breaths. “Where’s Nia? We have to help her.”
“You?” Connery laughed even as he fought desperately to yank himself free of Nia’s spell. “How exactly can you help her?” He twisted around toward Nia with a too-wide smile. “I can help her.”
“I’m going to get rid of you now,” Nia informed him, getting down on one knee to adjust her spell and carefully keeping just out of reach of Connery’s hands.
“So you’re not interested in my work?”
“I’ve seen your work. I want no part of it.”
Connery laughed, the sound echoing against the low-hanging thunderclouds. “Do you think that was all? Oh no, far from it. I’m not just an expert on old and forgotten magic, you know. I’m also an expert on the Academy, specifically the Academy they don’t anyone to know about.”
Nia had gone very still, eyes down.
“Ni,” Arthur tried, but his voice hardly carried past Gail’s ear.
“You want to clear your mother’s name, don’t you? Well, for that, you’ll need proof that she was set up.” His grin widened impossibly. “I can provide that.”
“You’re lying.” But Nia’s voice trembled.
“I’m not. How do you think I stayed out of the Academy’s hands for so long? Because I know them. I know how they work. I know what they do. Alone, you won’t find anything. They won’t let you.” He spread his arms in a wide arc, his hand nearly reaching Nia’s face. “But if you keep me alive, I can give you all the information you need and more.” He leaned toward her as if they were sharing a secret. “We can take them apart from the bottom up, you and I.”
Nia didn’t answer.
Beside her, Gail could feel Arthur trembling with exhaustion and pain, but when he clutched her sleeve, his grip was fiercely tight.
“Please stop her if she –” He broke off to cough. “If she says yes, please stop her. She’s upset and she’s hurt. You can’t let her –”
“Connery.”
Gail’s eyes jerked toward Nia. In
the growing dawn light, she could see that though Nia’s eyes were red and raw, her face was calm and still. When Connery met her gaze, the smile faded from his borrowed face.
“Connery, I will find what I need and I will clear my mother’s name.” She straightened up and took a step toward Connery, stopping just outside the deeply etched mud circle.
“Ni,” whispered Arthur.
“And I will do it without you.”
Connery’s eyes widened, but before he could speak, Nia made a single sharp gesture. His entire body jerked, his mouth open in a silent scream. Then he collapsed facedown in the mud.
Pushing her soaked and tangled hair out of her face, Nia knelt beside him. When she touched his brow, he jerked away from her with a gasp, covering his head with both arms. “Arthur?” she called in a carefully modulated voice. “Can you come take a look at Xavier? Make sure that he’s – that he’s still here?”
Then she slumped down on to her folded arms, body quaking with sobs.
74
Nia Graves
Xavier was still there. Against all odds, he had clung to his body as Connery was ripped away. Somehow, he had managed to remember who he was even as Connery corrupted his mind from within. It was a feat that would impress even the most powerful Academy magician, not that they were ever likely to hear of it. Perhaps the single greatest blow against Connery had been struck by a Gracetown layman with no magical education at all and it was unlikely anyone beyond the four of them would ever know.
But Xavier was still there.
That, if nothing else, allowed Nia to regain some measure of control over herself by the time they made it back to the house. Her heart still felt like it was made of broken glass, but her eyes were dry as she quietly commanded everyone to wash up and put on warm clothes before she saw to their injuries.
“I’ll need your help, Arthur,” she said after running a warm washcloth over her muddy hands.
He stared at her. “I don’t know – I’ve never –”
She forced a smile and squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to do any magic, Arthur. You just have to help me if I don’t have enough energy to do it all myself. We’ll have to do the transfer spell again once the healing is done, but it shouldn’t hurt this time, not now that your binding’s broken.”
Arthur swallowed hard at the reminder. “What –”
“We’ll talk about it later. Please just get poor Xavier cleaned up. I want to see to him first.” When Arthur left her, she waited until she could hear the bath running upstairs, then she slipped into her poncho again and ducked out into the weakening rain.
Her bones ached with every step, but there was something that she had to do. The magical light she had set up in the garage hours ago was still glowing dutifully and with the assistance of the pale morning light, it was easy to see the bloody mess they had made of the place, but that could wait. It was time to finish Connery for good.
The protection spells on the limbs and head had been weakened somewhat by purging Connery’s memory from Xavier’s body, but Nia could still feel magic thrumming through her when she lifted Connery’s head off of the floor – that slight mocking tingle that dared her to do her worst. But not even the most powerful protection spell was invincible.
The incinerator was burning low when Nia opened the metal door, but after she tossed in a few dry newspapers, the fire stirred and began to glow fierce and hot.
Lifting Connery high over the flames, she looked into his empty eyes. As she gazed at him, she felt a nauseating throb of regret for the incredible and terrible brilliance that had burned inside that brain. If only Connery’s genius had found a home with someone like Xavier to begin with. Then he might have done something truly great.
But there was no point dwelling on what ifs. With a final sigh, she opened her hand.
For several minutes, the magic resisted, pushing the flames away, but eventually the natural order of things prevailed and Connery began to burn. Nia watched until the flesh began to melt from his bones then went back for one of the legs. It burned easier and the next easier still. By the time she was lowering the first arm into the incinerator, the skin was popping and bubbling before it had even touched the flames.
As an afterthought, she used a hatchet she found among Arthur’s tools to hack off the hand of the second arm before tossing the rest of it into the fire. She wrapped the hand in several handkerchiefs and put it back into the hatbox. A plan was forming slowly in her exhausted mind. Connery might prove useful to her after all.
After shoving the box back into the car’s trunk and closing it tight, she turned around and jumped when she saw Xavier standing in the garage entrance, watching the red gold flames leaping from the still-open incinerator.
“Mister Rivers – Xavier,” she corrected. “You should be resting. You’ve – you’ve been through an ordeal.”
Xavier nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again, as if he wasn’t sure what the right answer was. He never looked away from the fire. “I’m fine, I think. Is he –?”
“Yes, he’s gone.”
He finally looked at her, his eyes as bleak as the morning sky. He lifted one hand to his still mud-stained coat. “Not entirely.”
Nia leaned back heavily against the bumper of the car. “Would you sit down with me for a minute? I think we should talk.”
He seemed reluctant, perhaps believing no words could possibly suffice, but eventually he nodded and joined her by the car. He stood beside her, his arms held at a careful distance from his body. “Gail told me you were supposed to bring him back.”
Nia nodded.
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
Xavier looked down at the filthy floor. “Thank you.”
Don’t thank me for not murdering you, she thought, but what she said was, “The world is better off without him.”
“Last night…” Xavier stared down at the floor. “It was like I didn’t know who I was anymore. My thoughts and my memories kept getting tangled up with his. Even now sometimes I’m not sure –”
“It will pass,” Nia assured him. And it would. Mostly.
Xavier didn’t look comforted. “Was that why that man attacked me? Because he knew what I was?”
Very likely, Nia thought. Perhaps it was a final act of mad revenge against Connery.
“Maybe it would have been better if –”
“No.” When he looked at her in surprise, she said it again. “No. He wanted you to die. That was the only way he could be brought back as himself. By staying alive, you stopped me from making a terrible mistake. Thank you.”
“What mistake?”
Nia’s tongue felt dry and stiff at the very thought of explaining the truth Connery had shown her. Even thinking about it made her chest clench and her eyes blur. She didn’t know if anything she said would help, but… After taking a long, steadying breath, Nia began to speak. The explanation she gave Xavier was a poor wandering thing, burdened with guilt and weariness, but when she had finished his face had filled a little. It shamed her to see so much sympathy on the face of a man who had been through so much – at least a part of which was her fault – but anything was better than that miserable emptiness he had been wearing before.
“That’s a terrible thing they did.”
The words were so simple, but their simple truth brought another rush of tears to her eyes. She turned her face away, but Xavier must have seen because he placed his hand lightly on her shoulder. She wiped her face, ashamed to be making so much of her own troubles after what Xavier had been through – was still going through – but he only said, “I’m sorry,” and offered her a handkerchief.
After wiping her face, she forced herself to meet his eyes. “What do you want to do?”
Xavier studied her for a moment then turned to the rectangle of light beyond the garage doors. “I can’t ever get rid of him, can I? Not entirely.”
“No. I’m sorry.” Nia looked down at the handkerchief, twisted t
ightly between her hands. “His magic and his mind is gone and I can do magic that will disguise his flesh again, but… no, he can’t ever be removed completely, not without killing you.”
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to take it one day at a time then.”
One day at a time, Nia repeated silently. In her mind, the words had the cadence of a prayer.
They sat in silence for a while longer, watching the sun do the best rising it could behind the heavy clouds.
75
Gail Lin
Morning had well and truly come by the time Nia finished healing herself and Gail and then undoing the damage that the healing had done.
“You really don’t have to,” Gail had tried to insist, though her throat had caught squeakily on each word. “I’ll mend on my own.”
But Nia had only shaken her head and done the magic, which had not only fixed up her throat but had also done away with the itching water burns on her skin and even repaired some of the damage done to her hair. She was shallowly grateful for that last bit. After so much time soaking in bad water, it’d probably come out in clumps if she tried to brush it.
She tried a weak joke about how she didn’t think bald would suit her, but Nia’s answering smile was perfunctory and she was silent throughout the operation except for asking if Arthur’s broken binding hurt at all after the transfer spell was complete.
“No,” he said. “It feels fine. Weird, but fine.”
“Good.” Nia got to her feet, arms folded tightly around her middle. “I’m going to lie down for a bit. If anyone needs me, feel free to wake me.”
Arthur was watching her worriedly. “Do you want me –”
Nia shook her head. “Will you stay with Xavier, Arthur? He says he’s not hurt, but I am unaware of any precedent for his condition. I want to keep a close eye on him until we know there won’t be any side-effects. I will check his magic levels regularly, but I’m relying on you to take care of him from a medical perspective.”
“I –” Arthur sighed and nodded. “All right, Nia, I’ll stay with him.”