by Lisa Edmonds
“There was another magic shockwave. Did you feel it?”
“Something woke me up just before you jumped home. That must have been the wave.”
I went to my dresser, pulling my tank top off over my head. Malcolm quickly turned away, but I was in too much of a hurry to care about modesty right now. I put on a bra and a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. I grabbed my socks, boots, and phone, and ran downstairs.
“Did you see what happened?” I asked as I sat on the couch and put my boots on.
“I couldn’t get too close, but I saw a woman standing on a rooftop right smack in the center of the fire. She was holding something that looked like a gold ring and it seemed to be focusing the fire.”
A ring was bad news; the most powerful magical objects were circles because they channeled power, like the circles in my basement.
My fumbling fingers pulled up the zipper on the second boot. “What did she look like?”
“Um, dark clothes, red hair? In her forties or fifties, maybe?”
“Catherine,” I breathed.
Malcolm stopped flitting and hovered in front of me. “Do you know who she is?”
Oops. “You remember what Cyro said about John Doe trying to get weapons for Catherine Atwood, Moses Murphy’s daughter? I bet it’s her.”
I finished putting on my boots and went to the front closet for a black hoodie sweatshirt. I grabbed my keys on the way out the door.
“What are you going to do? Alice, wait.” Malcolm followed me down the sidewalk toward my car. “Alice!”
“She’ll burn the whole city down if it means killing Darius Bell,” I said as I got to my car. “Let’s go, Malcolm. We have to stop her.”
“We have to—what? Alice, damn it, she’s a high-level fire mage with some kind of mega-weapon, and we’re one mage and one ghost!”
“Get in the car, Malcolm!” I slammed my door closed, turned my key in the ignition, and hit the gas just as Malcolm appeared in the passenger seat area.
“You remember how I said it sucks when I try to warn you about doing dangerous stuff and you ignore me?” He crossed his arms and glared at me. “This is exactly what I was talking about. This right here.”
I backed onto the street, shifted gears, and floored it in the direction of the fire. “I know. I apologize in advance for what I’m about to do.”
“Oh, God, she apologized,” Malcolm muttered. “Now I know this is going to end badly.”
24
A local radio station reported that the fire was consuming approximately four blocks just west of downtown. Luckily, many of the structures involved were office buildings with few people at work in the middle of the night, but the fire was threatening to spread to nearby apartment buildings. A dozen fire crews were on scene, attempting to contain the blaze, but the fire was far too intense.
As I drove, Malcolm told me Catherine was on the roof of a building that overlooked a luxury condo. There was a good chance she’d tracked Bell to that condo and had used whatever weapon she’d obtained to create a perimeter of fire before torching the condo itself. Or maybe she was waiting for him to try to escape along with everyone else and target him then. Either way, many people were going to die horribly unless I could figure out a way to stop her.
I picked up my cell phone, scrolled through my recent calls, and dialed a number from the list. I left it in the holder and turned on the speaker so I could keep both hands on the wheel.
The phone rang once before an electronic voice answered. “This is Cyro.”
I exhaled. “Cyro, it’s Alice Worth. I’m sorry to bother—”
“You’re heading downtown toward the fire. What do you need?”
I had no idea how he was tracking my movements—maybe my phone? Or was there a tracking device on my car? Damn it, something else I’d have to worry about later. “I’m sure what I’m asking for is out of my price range, but how much would it cost for you to shut down all the surveillance cameras you can around the scene? I’m going to try to do something about the fire and I don’t want to be seen.”
I heard keys clicking rapidly in the background. “This one’s on the house, unless you die trying to save the city, in which case I’ll subtract my fee from your bank account.”
I blinked. “Okay. I guess I can live with that—or not, as the case may be. What’s a good vantage point close to Ground Zero? I need a rooftop with a good view of the fire, preferably somewhere without people around.”
As Cyro searched for an appropriate destination, I thought about what Sean and Malcolm had said about facing danger on my own and how my decisions affected the people who cared about me.
I muted my call with Cyro and glanced over at Malcolm. “We’re doing this together, all right? Team effort. Nobody’s going Lone Ranger.”
“The Lone Ranger had Tonto,” Malcolm pointed out.
“Shut up. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Way to show personal growth.”
I rolled my eyes and unmuted my phone.
“There’s a six-story private parking garage about a block north of the fire,” Cyro said. “It’s at the corner of Twenty-third and Burgess Avenue. I’ll cut the cameras and raise the gate for you.”
“Holy shit,” Malcolm muttered. “Who is this guy?”
I took a deep breath. “Thank you, Cyro. If this goes sideways, I want you to know how much I’ve appreciated your help.”
“Just try not to die,” he said. “I’d like more interesting projects in the future.”
“I’ll certainly do my best to survive.” I hesitated. “Do you have eyes on the cause of the fire?”
“Yes. It’s Catherine Atwood, Moses Murphy’s daughter. She’s on the roof of an office building next door to the parking garage with some kind of magical object. I’m running a search on it, but I don’t have any information yet about what it is or where she got it. Anything else?”
“Yeah, one more thing. If I don’t make it out, will you arrange to get my car out of the garage and back to my house?”
“I can do that. I thought you were going to ask me to clear your browser history.”
That made me laugh, despite the fear and adrenaline coursing through my veins. “Thanks, Cyro. I gotta go.”
“Good luck.” The call ended.
“So, do you have a plan or are we just winging it like usual?” Malcolm asked as I turned onto Twenty-third. Ahead of us, the fire raged against the night sky.
“I’m thinking.” I hit a dip going too fast and the car’s bumper scraped. I winced. “We won’t be able to get close enough to her to take out that weapon, so we need options for containing the fire.”
“Neither of us has fire magic,” Malcolm pointed out. “I have water and you have air and we both have earth magic, but I don’t know how that’s going to help.”
“We’ll come up with something.” I spotted the garage entrance and slowed to turn. Sure enough, the gate was up.
The garage belonged to one of the office buildings and it was almost completely empty in the middle of the night. I parked on the first level, jumped from the car, and ran for the stairs with Malcolm right behind me. My eyes burned from the heavy smoke and the garage echoed with the deafening sound of a dozen sirens.
By the time I made it to the third floor, I had to pull myself up the stairs using the handrail. “I need to do more cardio,” I panted.
Malcolm snorted. “Or maybe the fact that you died a couple of days ago and haven’t fully recovered from that yet has something to do with it.”
“Maybe.” I focused on breathing and making my legs keep climbing the steps.
When I reached the top of the stairs, my legs felt like they were made of rubber and I was gasping for air. I emerged onto the rooftop parking deck and took a moment to bend over and put my hands on my knees, sucking in air and swearing under my breath.
“Alice?”
An unexpected—but very familiar—voice made me jump and look up. I gaped at the
sight of Sean, wearing a dark jacket and jeans, striding toward me across the parking deck. He didn’t look angry or even surprised to see me. My heart skipped a beat and it had nothing to do with physical exertion.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.
“Karen’s brother Patrick lives in that condo with his girlfriend,” he told me, joining me at the top of the stairs. “I came to see if I could help get people out, but there’s no way through the fire. Cyro called me and suggested I come up here to meet you and get a bird’s-eye view.”
I set my worries about where we stood aside to focus on the deadly problem in front of us. “Malcolm’s with me,” I told him, since he couldn’t see the ghost.
Sean and Malcolm exchanged greetings as I half-dragged my leaden legs across the parking deck to the waist-high concrete ledge.
We were upwind and a full block away from the blaze, but even at this distance the heat and smoke were nearly unbearable. I counted eight buildings completely engulfed in flames, forming a perimeter around a twelve-story condo. Emergency vehicles packed the nearby streets, filling the sky with red and blue flashing lights. Fire trucks aimed a dozen jets of water at the burning buildings, but they weren’t making any headway. The magic-enhanced fires were just too massive.
I moved to the far end of the parking deck and finally spotted Catherine on the roof of an adjacent building. She faced the fire, holding the gold ring Malcolm had described. I couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it looked very much like the ring I’d seen bought at the auction. Somehow it had made its way into Catherine’s hands, presumably after we’d had Kendall’s stash of stolen weapons and artifacts seized by SPEMA.
At the moment, the weapon was not in use; she’d apparently used it to start the blaze by focusing her fire magic at the targeted buildings.
“What do you know about this?” Sean asked me.
“Cyro says that’s Catherine Atwood, Moses Murphy’s daughter. My guess is she found out Darius Bell is holed up in that condo and she’s trying to flush him out.”
“By burning all these buildings down and killing everyone?” His anger prickled on my skin.
“She doesn’t care. Moses probably told her to take Bell out or else.”
Catherine set the ring at her feet and raised her arms. The fire responded by surging in the buildings closest to the condo. Several thundering crashes indicated that floors were collapsing in those buildings. The fires grew and licked at the exterior walls of the condo. I could see people in the windows and more trying to escape through the various street-level doors, only to be driven back by the fire.
A police helicopter approached us. I ducked my head to avoid being photographed as it flew overhead.
“Oh, shit,” Malcolm breathed.
I looked up just in time to see Catherine send a plume of fire toward the helicopter. It avoided the flames and accelerated away, circling at a safe distance as the fire grew and spread.
“Well, that explains why all the news helicopters are keeping their distance,” Malcolm said.
“She’s going to burn everyone in that condo alive,” Sean said grimly.
“No, she’s not,” I stated. “We won’t let her.”
Despite how certain I sounded, I wasn’t sure what we could do. Neither Malcolm nor I could control fire. We both had earth magic, but that wouldn’t help. I had air magic, but even if I tapped a ley line to boost my power I wouldn’t be able to do anything but fan the flames more. Malcolm’s water magic wouldn’t be enough to pull the river this far and we’d flood the city in the attempt. My blood magic could do nothing from this distance without a focus.
Lightning flashed on the horizon. There was a rainstorm north of us, but it was too far away and moving in the wrong direction—not that a storm that small would do much against a fire this size, anyway. But if it were bigger, and it turned south…
“I have an idea,” I said to Malcolm. I pointed.
He frowned at the storm and then at me. “I don’t get it.”
“We need to bring that storm here.”
“What are you suggesting? That we do a rain dance?”
“No. I’ve got air magic. You’ve got water magic. We just need to work together.”
He shook his head. “Water magic can make a storm stronger, but I’m not powerful enough to do it. I know you’re strong, but even you can’t move a storm against the wind.”
“I can if I pull energy from the two ley lines that intersect here.”
“Even if you could do that, that little bit of rain isn’t enough to put this fire out.”
“I can make the storm big and strong enough. All you have to do is share my body and let me use your magic.”
“Are you insane?” He flitted back and forth so quickly that I couldn’t track him with my eyes. “Are you out of your damn mind? You can’t summon a thunderstorm!”
“Yes, I can,” I said calmly. “I’ve done it before. Not for a while, but I’ve done it. I just need your water magic.”
He stopped directly in front of me. “There’s no way in hell I’m going to do this. Just touching me makes your hands turn blue. If I share your body, you’ll freeze to death in minutes.”
“I only need a few minutes. The storm isn’t that far away. It’s the only—”
“I swear to God, Alice, don’t you dare say it’s the only way!” he yelled. “It is not the only way!”
“Then give me another idea,” I begged. “Name anything else we can do to save the people in that condo and in these other buildings.”
Malcolm crossed his arms. “We can’t save everyone every time. Some things are just beyond what anyone can do.”
“This isn’t beyond what I can do. I’ve done it before. Granted, not by sharing my body with a ghost, but I’ve used a ghost with water magic in a focus to summon a storm.”
“A ghost in a focus?” He hovered right in front of me, his eyes dark with fury. “So you’ve used ghosts trapped in crystals, just like the ghost Kendall was using in that statue?”
“Not by choice,” I snapped. “You know I used to belong to a cabal. Do you think I did it because I wanted to? You know me, Malcolm. You don’t believe for one minute that I did it by choice.”
Sean’s attention was still on the fire, but he glanced at me when I mentioned the cabal. He didn’t look surprised, however. No doubt he’d already surmised that I’d once belonged to one; few high-level mages escaped their clutches, and he’d probably picked up enough clues over the past few months to figure it out. The scars on my back showed I’d been tortured by a blood mage, as was common with cabal mages who refused to obey orders. I’d basically just confirmed what he already knew.
“No, I don’t believe you did it by choice,” Malcolm said grimly. “I know you only did it because you had to. But you don’t have to do this. This isn’t a grenade you have to fall on.”
“This is different. This one is my grenade to fall on. This time it’s not just me trying to balance the scales. It’s personal.”
“In what way is this personal?” Malcolm asked.
I couldn’t very well tell him that was my aunt over there burning the city down. “One of Sean’s pack members is in there, along with probably a hundred other people. Isn’t that enough?”
“If I share your body, it will freeze you from the inside out. I refuse to help you kill yourself.”
“I’m not asking you to kill me. I’m just asking you to let me use your water magic long enough to summon that storm. You can jump out of me before I get to the point where we have to worry about me freezing to death.”
Sean had been watching Catherine and listening to us argue. He turned to me, his expression grim. I thought he was going to side with Malcolm, but instead he said, “Let’s do it. What can I do to help?”
Malcolm gaped at him. “You’re not serious. After everything you said about her falling on grenades, you’re going to ask her to do this?”
“She says sh
e can do it.” Sean met my eyes. I saw worry and anger, but I also saw his confidence in me.
“I can do this,” I told him. “I can save Patrick and the other people in the condo, and I can do it without dying.” Tentatively, I reached out and took his hand.
He lifted it to his lips and pressed a kiss to my knuckles. “Then let’s save them.”
Malcolm swore. “The second you start getting too cold, I’m jumping out, whether it’s done or not,” he warned me.
“Agreed. Hurry.” I squeezed Sean’s hand, then let go and stepped back.
Malcolm muttered something I couldn’t hear, braced himself, and dove straight at me.
I’d never shared my body with a ghost before. It felt like being dunked in a frozen lake. The shock drove me to my knees. I cried out involuntarily as his non-corporeal form moved under my skin. He settled into my body and my temperature began to drop. The chill was uncomfortable, but not yet debilitating or dangerous.
Sean crouched in front of me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I said shakily. “This feels really, really weird.”
You’re telling me, Malcolm said in my head. Let’s do this before you freeze to death.
Sean helped me to my feet just as a gust of wind blew a thick cloud of smoke in our direction. I coughed and blinked away tears. “I’ll be focused on the magic and the storm,” I told him. “Keep us safe.”
“Always.” He squeezed my hands and flinched. “You’re already getting cold.”
“I know. I need to hurry.” I hesitated, then added, “When this is over, I’d like to talk.”
“When this is over, I’d like to listen.” He let go of my hands. “Bring the thunder, Miss Magic.”
I gave him a small smile, turned to face the storm, and closed my eyes.
Malcolm’s magic pulsed though me. The unfamiliar sensation of water tugged at my awareness. I’d always had an affinity to the earth and air because of my own magic, but now I could feel the water the fire crews were using to fight the blaze. The sensation was wonderful, like standing in a cool stream.
With Malcolm’s water magic now part of me, I sensed the far-off thunderstorm. It was too far away for me to summon, however. I needed a power boost.