She couldn’t tell how it stayed put. It wasn’t screwed into Mox’s vertebrae, but it was so stable it might as well have been. If magic held it there, then magic had to be able to remove it, but as both Mox and Nero had said, it was only the particular magic of the one who had placed it that could remove it. That meant that every person had a unique magical signature or fingerprint—that each person related to magic differently, irrespective of ability or capacity.
But she couldn’t get away from the idea that it was just a machine. Deprive it of power, interrupt whatever energy it required to run, and theoretically you should be able to disable it. It was possible no one on Genetrix had determined how because they were so focused on magic they had forgotten how to be practical, like Nero with his magically secured workshop door.
“You’re staring,” Mox said. His eyes were open, though he hadn’t moved. He looked at her through the veil of hair hanging over his forehead.
“Just . . . thinking,” she said. “About how to get that thing off you.”
“So, the central question of my life,” he said. “That or how to kill someone who can control you.”
She draped a leg over his back and pulled herself tight to his side so their faces were right next to each other.
“I was just thinking . . . it’s a machine,” she said. “And you can change the purpose of a machine by altering the way it runs.”
“What,” he said, touching his forehead to hers, “do you mean?”
“I mean, right now this thing channels magic,” she said. “Can you turn it into a haven-city siphon? Can you make it channel . . . anti-magic?”
“Then I wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
“Yeah, I know, but I’m not thinking of the spine siphon, actually.” She tweaked his forehead curl. “I’m thinking of that giant siphon in the floor of the Hall of Summons. If we could get it to disable all the magic, we could just kill Nero with our bare hands.”
Mox blinked at her a few times, then crushed his lips against hers, pressing her back into the mattress. She laughed into his mouth, and he moved down to kiss her throat.
“You . . .” he said. “Brilliant.”
“You’re telling me it . . . ah”—he was good at that—“literally never occurred to you that . . . okay, never mind.”
He rolled on top of her. He was heavy, but she liked the full embrace of the weight and the way the top of his feet pressed against the bottom of hers.
“I know siphons,” he said. “I fix mine, I fix Ziva’s. Everyone’s. And they break, you know, make you incapable of doing anything.”
She tucked his hair behind his ears and smiled. “So let’s break one on purpose,” she replied.
It was night when they drove back to the city, one of Sloane’s favorite times to drive through the Illinois prairie. It was just the highway and the twinkle of lights on the horizon: the runways of regional airports, farms in towns so small they didn’t appear on most maps, the glow of a McDonald’s arch next to a fueling station. Some towns had integrated magic into their everyday lives, Mox said, but for the most part, the residents of areas around haven cities were slow to adopt it, with the exception of the younger generation.
“That you could end the world with it doesn’t seem to occur to most people,” he remarked, tapping his fingers on the window.
Sloane smiled. “Most people lack ambition.”
Mox laughed at that and turned down the music. They had discovered a CD that Sloane recognized in the glove compartment: Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. Mox had read through the names of some of the more recent albums, and not a single one was familiar to Sloane. Certainly not the band Unfathomable Cosmic Blackness, which had produced the first album made entirely by magic. If you sang the notes exactly as written in one of the songs, Mox said, you could make multicolored lights dance across your dashboard.
“I think I figured out your siphon problem,” Mox said. He kept flicking magical breaths at her every so often, trying to get her to laugh. She had threatened to take away his tooth whistle more than once, not that it would have made much of a difference.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. They probably talked to you about intent, right?”
Sloane rolled her eyes in answer.
“Right. Well, intent is important, but the essence of a magical act is—”
“Desire.” Sloane smirked. “I read that book.”
Mox raised an eyebrow at her. “You’ve read The Manifestation of Impossible Wants? Do they have that in your dimension?”
“No, it was in my room when I got here,” she said, “and I broke my ankle jumping out of your bedroom window. So I had a lot of free time.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Sorry for trying to kill you,” she said. “I mean, I know you turned my weapon into a very fine powder, but—still.”
“I admired the effort, actually,” he said. “Not everyone would be so gutsy.”
“Anyway,” she said. “Desire, you say?”
“Right. Well—have you considered that maybe when you were trying to create a magical breath, you didn’t want to create a magical breath? That the one thing you actually wanted was a destructive indoor hurricane that broke all the windows?”
Sloane opened her mouth to object—of course she had wanted to do what she was supposed to do with the magical breath. She had spent days so frustrated with the siphon she wanted to hammer it into fragments. But really, hadn’t she found herself wondering why she cared about puffs of air and summoning elevators without touching buttons and flinging open doors when all those things were simple enough to do without magic? Hadn’t she broken that skylight in the Hall of Summons by tapping into whatever it was that gnawed inside her, telling her to take more, more, more while she could get it?
“You may be onto something,” she said.
“You can’t force someone to want something,” he said. “And knowing what you want—not just vaguely but really specifically what you want—is a big part of magic. You don’t pick the act and then force the desire. You know the desire—the exact shade of it—and then choose the act accordingly.”
“So that’s why you learned that . . . lung-collapsing move?” she said with careful nonchalance. She was referring, of course, to the working he did when he killed people. The one that had almost killed Kyros.
“Yes,” he said, sounding a little strained. “That particular method—collapsing lungs—was . . . a good match for me.” He shook his head, not as if he was saying no but as if he was trying to shake the memory out of his mind. “It’s . . . awful. I know, I—”
She reached across the center console and put her hand on his leg. He had started bouncing his knee, but he stilled it at her touch.
“I know my match too,” she said quietly.
And she told him about the Dive.
They reached the city when the moon was high. Mox sent this car into the river just as he had the police car a few days ago. They walked into the safe house when the windshield was still visible above the water.
Austin Chronicle
NEW SPINE SIPHON LAW PASSED IN TEXAS
by Kiersten Reichs
AUSTIN, FEBRUARY 2: Texas governor Colin Hauser (R) announced legislation Wednesday to legalize spine siphons on a limited basis for the purposes of medical treatment.
The federal government outlawed spine siphons three years ago with the Ethical Siphon Use Act (ESUA). The passage of the act was not difficult or contentious at the time, but with the rise of haven cities, the issue has again come into question.
“We don’t want spine siphons used casually—not by anyone. No one is disputing that here,” Hauser said in an interview Wednesday afternoon with the Washington Magical Monitor. “But there are extreme cases in which they might be useful, and we want to allow for that, especially in haven cities like Arlington.”
The “extreme cases” to which Hauser refers involve “uncontrollable, destructive magical power” that doesn’t respon
d to intensive training or other treatments, including relocation to a haven city where a magical dampening siphon is in effect.
Some members of the community expressed relief. “My son went to school with a boy who couldn’t control his magic despite teachers’ best efforts to rein him in,” said Mary Millay of Dallas, Texas, mother of two young children. “I was scared every day my son went to school that I’d get a call telling me he was set on fire or had floated away due to a gravity-reversal working or something. This makes schools safer for everyone.”
But not everyone felt so positive about the new law. “This legislation disproportionately targets the elderly, mentally ill, and children,” says Darcy Atwood, of the Magical Freedom Society. “It will empower bigoted people who hate magic in all its forms to suppress the magical gifts of the vulnerable—which is, of course, illegal. We don’t even completely suppress magical abilities in haven cities because our government decided it fell under the category of ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ so how in God’s name is this okay?”
37
THE SAFE HOUSE was in chaos. Rows of Resurrectionist soldiers lay head to head on the wood floor, and in the space between them were dismembered hands and feet, arms and legs. One soldier was hunched over a fractured wooden beam that protruded from his belly, oozing something dark. At the far end of the room, Ziva was perched on a table holding a large sewing needle between two clumsy fingers as she tried to stitch a man’s leg back on above the knee. As Sloane watched, she dropped the needle and swore.
Mox swore, too, charging down the aisle of body parts to Ziva’s side. Sloane forced her eyes away from a jagged white bone protruding from an undead knee and ran after him.
“What happened?” he said, and she hadn’t realized how controlled he had been during their journey back to Chicago until he was the Resurrectionist again, all chaos and fury. Ziva glared over Mox’s shoulder at Sloane.
“Her.” Ziva abandoned the one-legged soldier and heaved herself to her feet with a grunt. “She happened. Her people came looking for her. He came looking for her.”
“Nero was here?” Sloane said.
“He wasn’t our primary concern, but yes, he fucking did. Skittered in right at the end like an insect after his minions had blown us to pieces,” Ziva said. “He left something for you.”
Her braid swung back and forth as she stomped away. Sloane noticed a gash in one of Ziva’s shoulders and a dark patch of—whatever that undead body fluid was—as the lieutenant bent to pick up a bundle from the corner. She carried it over and dropped it at Sloane’s feet.
Sloane tasted something sour and sharp, like the bite of carbonation. She crouched in front of the bundle. Everything within her screamed at her not to open it, but her fingers were already searching out the edge of the folded fabric and pulling it back.
Nero had brought her a pair of boots. Black and caked with dried mud and grass. One of them had black laces and the other had red, the ends frayed from where a dog had chewed through them. They were Sloane’s boots from years ago.
The Dark One had taken them.
Sloane felt Albie’s weight at her side, the burn in her shoulder from carrying him. His skin was slippery with blood, and he smelled like sweat.
She felt his whimpers against her ear, but the only thing she could hear was her heartbeat, even once they made it through the dew-damp grass to the road.
Something stung her foot, and when she looked to see what she had stepped on, she saw a piece of glass buried in her heel.
“Gotta go,” Albie said, and it was like he was speaking underwater. She could only just make out the words.
Shoes meant the present. Bare feet meant the past. But now the present and the past were folding together. The Dark One was alive.
The Dark One was Nero.
“Sloane.” Something warm against her cheek. “In. Hold. Out.”
She recognized the pattern and followed it instinctively. Breathing in, holding, and releasing. Dr. Thomas had coached her in their sessions to keep her from hyperventilating. Counting breaths, counting holds, counting releases. Sequences of five.
She wasn’t with Albie. Albie was dead. Her head knew it but also didn’t know it. I feel like I’ve got one foot in the past all the time, she had told Matt once, and that was when he had grabbed the toe of her shoe and wiggled it. In the past, you were barefoot, he had said to her. And in the present, look! You’ve got shoes on. So you know both feet are here.
It was Mox’s rough palm against her cheek and his voice, low and clear, that told her how to breathe. But she sat down, hard, and stuck her feet out in front of her anyway so she could stare at the matte suede of her new boots, the ones she had worn to Albie’s funeral. Salt had stained the toes gray in an uneven line.
Bare feet meant the past. Shoes meant the present.
Mox took his hand away when he saw that she was no longer panicking, but he stayed crouched in front of her, his riot of tangled hair pulled back into a knot, so his ears stuck out like a little boy’s.
“I take it those are your boots?” he said.
Sloane nodded. “The Dark One took them,” she said, sounding strangled. Feeling strangled. “I never understood why he took my shoes.”
“Your Dark One?” he said, even though there was only one answer to that question, only one Dark One to speak of.
She nodded.
“And Nero had them,” Mox said.
“But how . . . how could Nero be him?” Sloane said. “They look so different—”
“There are ways to produce that effect by magic,” Ziva said.
“So, then . . . the Dark One survived somehow. He’s Nero.” I would know, she had thought. I would know if I was standing in front of the Dark One. But she had stood in front of Nero half a dozen times. Dragging herself out of the river. Searching for answers in the library. Fumbling with the siphon. She had stood in his workshop with his voice surrounding her. She had—
“Oh my God.” Sloane put her head in her hands and rocked back and forth.
The origami. The paper crane she had found in Nero’s office with scribbles of color on the notebook paper. It hadn’t just resembled Albie’s; it had been Albie’s. The Dark One had kept it, whether as some kind of sick trophy or some kind of foundation for magic, she didn’t know.
She didn’t know a goddamn thing.
He had been standing at her bedside when she woke. She had seized up at the sight of him, freezing somewhere between lying down and sitting up.
Hello, Sloane. Despite the friendly form of address, his voice had been cold and almost robotic. Did you get some sleep?
They had been careless, her and Albie, as they crept toward the enclave of Dark One supporters, just the two of them, off a country road in the night. They had been in Iowa, and the air had smelled sweet, like yellow grass baking in sunlight. For Sloane, the place had felt familiar: roadside gravel, prairie plants scratching her ankles, a big, star-dusted sky. And maybe that was the reason she had let her guard down a little. Or maybe there was nothing she could have done to prevent it. But they had taken her, taken Albie, swarmed them, knocked them out. When she woke, she had such a bad headache she could hardly open her eyes.
The Dark One’s question had seemed ridiculous. What she had gotten hadn’t been sleep. It had been unconsciousness.
He hadn’t needed an answer. I hope so, because you have a big decision to make today. She had forced herself to her feet and noted the exits. Behind her, a window. Simple enough to break with a lamp or a bedpost. And behind the Dark One, a door, simple wood with a pushbutton lock. A hairpin would—
You wouldn’t leave without your friend, would you? the Dark One had said. Could he read thoughts or could he just read her? Either option terrified her.
His face, though, was what terrified her most. It was like the face of a wax figure in that it resembled someone she had seen once in passing on the street or as a placeholder in a picture frame, but it had no identity of its own. His
skin was smooth—too smooth—and his hair was a nondescript shade of brown that could almost have been blond. A face constructed, it seemed, to be forgettable—but by someone who didn’t know what it was to look human.
I would like to know where your cache of magical objects is located, the Dark One had said. In return, I will give you a profound gift. I will show you to yourself, Sloane. Such a rare treasure, to see yourself.
To his credit, she supposed, he had done exactly as he promised.
“He’s kept his identity a secret for a long time,” Ziva croaked. “Why does he want you to know who he is now?”
Sloane stared at the boots, the red laces still knotted at the ends so the fraying wouldn’t spread. She felt frozen even though Mox had led her to the storeroom and made her sip some water. The boots were lined up next to the door as if the warehouse were her grandmother’s place. “I . . . I don’t know,” she said dully.
“Something’s different now,” Mox said. He had pulled the other chair over to sit right in front of her, so her right knee was wedged between his legs. “You left.”
She found herself staring at him, at how he made the chair look child-size, his knees higher than his hips and his big hands hanging limp between them. Hot praying mantis, Esther had called him. “He has my friends,” she said. “He knows I’ll go back and try to help them if I find out he’s dangerous.”
“No.” Mox shook his head. “You can’t do that.”
“Why would he care where you are?” Ziva said. “You can’t do magic. You don’t know anything he doesn’t. What’s so special about you?”
They were such obvious facts, Sloane couldn’t even be offended. She shook her head. She didn’t know. She had never known why the Dark One showed a particular interest in her; she had only known how to manipulate it.
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