Sloane set her GPS to take her to the monument site in the Loop and drove in silence.
TOP SECRET
AGENCY FOR THE RESEARCH AND INVESTIGATION OF THE SUPRANORMAL
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
TO: DIRECTOR, AGENCY FOR THE RESEARCH AND INVESTIGATION OF THE SUPRANORMAL (ARIS)
FROM: OFFICER [redacted], CODE NAME EDWINA
SUBJECT: REPORT ON PROJECT RINGER ARTIFACT 200
For the purposes of this report, I will be referring to Project Ringer Artifact 200 by its common name, Koschei’s Needle.
The Needle is an object of significance in Slavic folklore, with Koschei (also known as “Koschei the Immortal” and “Koschei the Deathless”) typically taking the form of an antagonist who has a fear of death. He therefore places his soul inside an object that is nested in other objects: for example, he places it in a needle, then buries the needle in an egg, then hides the egg inside various creatures or, in some stories, a trunk. He is unable to die if the needle that contains his soul is intact.
ARIS has been paying attention to so-called mythical objects since the agency’s inception, particularly to those objects to which other governments ascribe value. There has been chatter on and off about the Needle for a few decades, but the Cold War brought it to the fore, according to our field officers in Russia. We managed to trace the Needle to a Soviet spy ship, the Sakhalin, that sank somewhere in the Pacific Ocean in 1972. Surveillance technology revealed the ship’s exact location in 2007, and we deployed a Project Ringer task force, including Subject 2, Sloane Andrews, to retrieve the Needle in 2008. The events of that mission are detailed in the enclosed documents following this report.
ARIS certainly does not subscribe to the belief that the Needle truly contains a person’s soul, that there has ever been an immortal person, or that a man named Koschei ever existed; however, we do not at this time have an explanation for the Needle’s origin. The Needle is not, in fact, made of any metal that we can identify, though it appears metallic. It is only about two inches long, and its somewhat jagged edges suggest it is a fragment of something larger, but we have not located anything else that resembles it. We have been able to match certain microscopic particles to deep ocean material, especially the pelagic sediment particular to the Mariana Trench. More information about pelagic sediment as it relates to analysis of the Needle is attached. Further investigation into the trench will be necessary if we are to understand the Needle’s origins.
Additional examination of the Needle’s properties is ongoing, though it is clear that we can categorize this object as an active channel of supranormal energy. We hope that in the future, we will be able to devote more time to this task; as it stands, the Needle is one of our most powerful weapons in the fight against the Dark One.
TOP SECRET
15
SLOANE WORE SUNGLASSES, though the sky was dark with clouds, and made her way through the crowd.
Lake Shore Drive had been a parking lot. She had given up near the Michigan Avenue exit, pulling her car over to the shoulder and leaving it there. Sweat dotted her hairline, and she was breathless from half walking, half jogging all the way downtown.
But she had made it to the monument site—or at least to the security barrier that the police had set up there.
She walked up to the nearest police officer and took off her sunglasses. The woman gave her an odd look, but nodded and gestured for her to go through.
“Thanks,” Sloane mumbled, and she put her sunglasses back on, stepped around the barrier, and speed-walked away before anyone in the crowd behind her figured out why she had been let through. She spotted Esther ahead, dressed in a long black coat that just brushed the pointed toes of her patent-leather boots. Esther raised a perfectly penciled eyebrow at her.
“Where the hell have you been?” Esther demanded, then she wrapped Sloane in a hug. “Matt said you freaked out.”
“I guess that’s one way of describing it,” Sloane said. “How did word get out?”
“Don’t give me that look,” Esther said. “I haven’t been on social media since yesterday.”
Sloane snorted.
“It was Matt,” Esther said. “He contacted the police to let them know we’d be doing this today, just in case anything weird happened. One of them probably has a big mouth.”
She should have known it was Matt’s fault. He had never understood why she wanted to stay so private. He didn’t mind sliding his name into dinner reservations to get a better table or winking at people who gave him a second look on the sidewalk. We have to pay the price of this life all the time, he had said to her once. Might as well get something good out of it when we can.
She spotted him standing next to the monument. When he saw her, it was like a big knot unraveling. He grabbed at her, as if testing to see that she was real, and then held her for a few seconds, his breath shaking in her ear. He had thought she was dead, Sloane realized, her sunglasses crushed against his shoulder. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to her to reassure him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, but she wasn’t sure what for—for leaving, for the fight they’d had before Albie died, for destroying the Dome, or for what she would have to do next, fleeing ARIS, maybe leaving the country . . .
“Yeah,” he replied, avoiding her eyes. It meant he didn’t forgive her, and that was what she had expected. Even Matt had limits to his mercy. His eyes were red. He had been crying. Maybe awake all night.
Ines stalked over to them and punched Sloane in the arm, hard enough to make her wince.
“God, Sloane!” Ines snapped. “You’re such an asshole.”
“Yeah,” Sloane said, breathless. “Can you—give me just a second? You can yell at me when I get back.”
She slipped past Ines and walked toward the edge of the monument site, where the concrete dropped off to the river. She pressed her stomach into the railing. The mildew-and-mud smell of the river overpowered the smoky scent that clung to her hair.
She put her hand in her pocket and felt for the pieces of the Needle. They numbed her fingertips on contact. She put her elbows on the railing, leaning out as if to get a better look at the bridge where she had lured the Dark One to his death. She tipped her hand, and the Needle pieces fell into the water.
She looked down just in time to see the metal glinting as the pieces fell to the river bottom. She didn’t need to see their resting place to know where they were. Even broken, the Needle hummed at the same frequency as she did. She would always be able to find it again.
Sloane returned to the others and found Ines scowling at her.
“Just needed to look again,” she said.
They hadn’t found the Dark One’s body. Ten years later, they had all accepted that it lay buried under the concrete, steel, and glass from the old tower, packed into the river bottom too densely for anything to be retrieved. But initially they had all been afraid that he wasn’t really gone. Sloane had even joined the divers who searched the debris for any trace of him, not satisfied until she found a few things: a gold button that looked like it came from his coat, a rotten shred of fabric that resembled his shirt cuff.
Even after that, she had come back every few weeks to remind herself that the river was his grave, that he was really dead. Ines had gone with her.
Sloane spotted a familiar figure in the doorway of the monument, a girl with crooked features and light brown hair so fine and frizzy, it hovered around her face like spun sugar. Albie’s little sister, Kaitlin. It hurt to look at her.
Sloane took off her sunglasses. Kaitlin gave her a little smile. Albie’s mom—Mrs. Summers was the only name Sloane knew her by—appeared behind her, clutching a floral handkerchief against her chest. She nodded to Sloane and stepped past her daughter, out of the monument.
Mrs. Summers had never liked Sloane, probably for the same reasons that other people didn’t. She was the kind of person who followed celebrity gossip religiously and believed what she read in chain e-mails that warned
of new viruses and internet curses. Every time the Sloane of gossip rags cheated on Matt, Mrs. Summers was on the phone with Albie, asking if it was true.
Today, though, all she said was “Thank you. For taking care of the . . .” Mrs. Summers’s eyes filled with tears. Thinking of the cremation, no doubt.
“Uh . . . sure. I mean, of course. I—” Sloane shook her head. She didn’t know what to say.
Luckily, Esther was there to help. “Hey, Mrs. Summers,” she said. “My mom sent this with me.”
She offered Mrs. Summers an envelope with elegant cursive writing on it. Mrs. Summers turned away from Sloane, looking relieved.
Next to Sloane, Matt was frowning at his phone. “I just got a news alert,” he said. “Something happened at the Dome.” He looked up at Sloane.
She stared back steadily. If he asked her, she decided, she wouldn’t lie. She was done with that. Maybe it was her fault that Matt thought she was better than she was; she had spent so much time pretending, for his sake. Maybe it was time he knew what he was really dealing with. Heat rushed into her face, and she was ready, ready for him to ask, ready to tell him—
“Well,” Ines said. “Shall we?”
She was holding the little can the crematory had given Sloane. A heavy silence fell.
“Um—before the last stand, as it were, we all talked about what we wanted if we died,” Ines said. She sniffed. “Albie said he didn’t want a big thing, just for his ashes to be scattered somewhere the Dark One had hit with the Drain. He felt like—I don’t know, he felt connected to the people who died in the same fight. It was a comfort for him, in a way, knowing that if he died, he wouldn’t be alone.”
Sloane stepped to the side so they were all in a circle: Kaitlin and Mrs. Summers, Matt and Esther, Ines and her. Ines opened the lid of the canister. Inside it were the gray ashes, and on top of them, something yellow and bright. A paper crane.
Mrs. Summers spotted it first. And started to laugh.
They all laughed, then, not because it was funny but because it wasn’t, because laughter was a full-body hiccup, wild and strange, and death was wild and strange, too.
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Sloane said when silence fell again.
Kaitlin took the canister from Ines and turned west, away from Lake Michigan. She tossed the ashes in a wide arc, toward the monument. The yellow crane tumbled to the ground.
A hand in a houndstooth-patterned mitten wrapped around Sloane’s. Esther. And on her other side, a sturdy leather glove. Matt. All four of them were clasped together, with a few of the ashes dancing around their feet. Sloane’s vision went blurry with tears.
And then she heard a gentle voice. It seemed to speak right into her ear, too quiet at first for the words to be intelligible. She felt the tingle and burn that she associated with the Needle and with magic and looked around her. The others had their heads bowed, and they weren’t moving. Esther’s and Matt’s hands still held hers, the pressure steady.
“Sloane,” the voice said, and it was Albie’s. She searched for him, scanning the monument, the river, the crowd beyond the barrier, but she couldn’t see him. She felt something tugging at the back of her hand, where the scar from the Needle was.
“Let’s go,” Albie’s voice said, from in front of her now, a whisper against her cheek.
It was stupid to think he might be there, even in some small way, just because his ashes were here, just because this was a place where they had done powerful magic. But she had seen and felt and done impossible things, ripped doors free of their hinges and sent them sailing toward the clouds, watched trees hover over the ocean, burst a skyscraper like a grape. She had opened herself to wanting things that could never be hers, and she had gotten them. What was so different about this?
The Dark One had died here. Maybe Albie could be alive somewhere else.
She took one step toward the voice—
—and then regretted it, tried to step back, to go back, but it was too late. Everything had gone dark.
Part
Two
EXCERPT FROM
It’s a Magical World Out There! An Elementary-Schooler’s Guide to Magic, 7th Edition
by Agnes Dewey and Sebastian Bartlett
Did you know that the world used to be a whole lot less magical? Well, it’s true! Up until 1969, most people didn’t think magic really existed. It was just fairy-tale stuff. But in 1969, something called the Tenebris Incident (more on that in chapter 3!) happened, and magic spread all over Genetrix. People all across our planet saw some amazing—but scary!—things, like certain parts of the ocean boiling for no reason [fig. 2], glowing balls of light floating around neighborhoods [fig. 3], and whole buildings turning upside down [fig. 4]. One person even took a picture of a whale floating in the clouds [fig. 5]!
After magic spread, a lot of people also got really sick. Their bodies weren’t used to the magical energy in the air! And since there was no cure for the magical plague, those people all died, which was really sad. But if you’re here, that means that you’re immune to the magical plague! So you don’t need to worry about it. All you need to know is that magic is part of our world now, and it’s time for you to learn how to use it! You won’t be able to do very much until you’re older, but even what you can do now is pretty cool. First, though, you have to learn how magic works.
The truth is, we don’t even really know how magic works! We’re only just starting to understand it. Isn’t that exciting? Maybe one day, you’ll be the person who discovers all of magic’s secrets!
EXCERPT FROM
The Manifestation of Impossible Wants: A New Theory of Magic
by Arthur Solowell
In the burgeoning field of magical theory, we often speak of intent being a central component of the magical arts. A siphon, for example, cannot function without a person to wield it and direct its power; it is fundamentally inert, no more than a blunt instrument without the living form to fill it. And certainly intent is important—how else would a person be able to control the results of a siphon’s work? How else would someone be able to, say, reliably freeze an object rather than set it on fire? Certain types of siphons are indeed attuned to particular tasks—an eye siphon is most often used for visual workings, an ear siphon for auditory ones, etcetera—but each offers a great deal of flexibility even within those categories. Intent then ensures that flexibility does not mean unreliability.
However, I would argue that while intent is a component of a magical act, and certainly a significant one, it is not the essence of what distinguishes a magical act from a mundane one. Any man with a hammer can intend to hit a nail—that itself is not magic, and a siphon is no hammer. Instead, it is the argument of this text that the essence of a magical act is what a person wants. Or, to be more specific, what a person wants that is not easily achieved within the realm of the mundane. Desiring that a nail sink into a board is a want, but it is not magic. Wanting the boards to hold together with no nail at all—that is magic.
In other words, for something to be magic, it must be an impossible want.
EXCERPT FROM
Senator Amos Redding’s speech in support of the Haven Act
September 17, 1985
I take the Senate floor today to share my thoughts on a most contentious issue, that of the proposed Haven Act, which, if passed, would enable the citizens of a city to vote to prohibit the use of magic as well as the establishment of businesses that sell devices that make use of magic or otherwise facilitate its use. I intend today to vote yes on the Haven Act, and I will tell you why.
Ladies and gentlemen, magic is a shortcut. It is the easy path. And we do not know where it leads or what may come of it. It is one thing to be excited by its possibilities, but it is another to allow it to spread uncontrollably through our nation, rendering our young people unable to perform the slightest practical task, leaving no space clear of its influence. We must maintain the skills we have fought so hard—over so many years of human hist
ory—to learn. We must honor the past as we look toward the future.
I ask you, colleagues and friends, to consider the future you would like to have and the future you would like this country to have. Magic has long been regarded with suspicion, going all the way back to our earliest myths and legends. This distrust and even loathing for the practice of magic is not merely due to ignorance; it speaks to something at the very core of us, something that says we should be working the land we live in, that great accomplishments should be hard won by the labor of our hands . . .
16
SHE REMEMBERED, right after the building blew apart, right after the Needle had sent light into the sky, right before the Dark One disappeared, the taste of river water and the pale glint of his cheek in the moonlight.
Sloane tried to scream and choked on water instead. Esther’s hand slackened in hers, then slipped free; Matt’s soon followed. Sloane waved her arms wildly, trying to find either of them again, but her movements were slow, and the darkness around her was absolute.
She coughed silent bubbles. Water—she was surrounded by water. Her lungs burned. She kicked. She was moving, but she didn’t know where she was going; for all she knew, she was swimming deeper.
She put a finger up to her lips and blew a bubble. It tickled the underside of her fingertip, which meant she was upright—bubbles always moved up, toward the surface. She kicked harder. Her coat, soaked through, dragged behind her, and she wriggled free of it, then pulled the strap of her bag over her head, so it crossed her chest.
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