Allie Beckstrom 09 - Magic for a Price (12 page)

“But I will not be in error today,” he said calmly. He
didn’t use Influence, which made sense. Zayvion had told me he was immune to Influence. But there was something about my dad, a kind of charisma that gave his words weight, strength. Most people found themselves nodding along with anything he said.

He’d used that to his advantage for his entire life. Strange that he didn’t do so now.

“Continue,” Zayvion said.

Dad’s irritation swept across the edges of my thoughts. He didn’t like anyone telling him what to do.

“Stone,” Dad said. “Hold still. Do not fear.” Dad actually put just the slightest Influence on that last command, maybe to comfort Stone, but more likely to try to keep Stone subdued.

It had not escaped our attention that our single hope to cleanse the wells was locked inside a stone creature who was powered by magic, and oh, yes, had wings. Stone could fly away if he wanted to and we’d be so far up shit creek, not even a boatload of paddles would float our boat.

We very much did not want Stone to get stubborn about this.

Zayvion reached over and rubbed behind Stone’s ears. Stone huffed and mumbled, sounding pretty put out over the entire thing. But he wasn’t moving away, and wasn’t looking as worried as before.

“Very good,” Dad said. “Let us begin.” He pulled the blood knife I had in my belt—the same knife Zayvion had given me months ago, and pricked my left ring finger.

Distantly, I felt the hot sting of the blade, and then the oily slick of blood flowing from my finger across the knife.

Dad shifted how I was standing and I had to take a
deep mental breath not to reach out and steady myself. He took a wide-legged stance I never used, and then began chanting. I didn’t know the words. If someone asked me to repeat even one of them, I wouldn’t be able to.

But Dad not only knew them, he seemed to understand them. I caught a string of his thoughts, the calculations put into play to create the correct tonal quality of the words, along with the correct spacing between them, the flow, the rhythm. All painstakingly thought through so that this one spell, on this one Animate, would respond in the way he predicted.

This wasn’t a language—these were words my father had created.

Stone tipped his big head up, and opened his mouth as if panting. He was still glowing that soft blue-white, but as Dad raised my hand and knife and carved a spell, or maybe two, into the air, glyphs began to burn across Stone’s skin.

I heard Shame inhale with a kind of caught wonder, or hunger. And Terric whispered something that sounded a lot like a small prayer.

Stone was beautiful, transformed. Magic played over him and through him with an easy, flowing gracefulness. It was like seeing the dance of the northern lights for the first time, a sunset painting the sky with fire, an ocean churning with deep jewel tones and shadow.

Magic, this magic of each discipline combined, joined with both light and dark magic, was a force, a beauty I’d never seen before.

Dad finished the spell, having hooked part of the spell Collins was still drawing up out of the disk with the tip of the blood blade.

And then he pressed my finger on Stone’s head, just below his right ear. Blood bloomed there, spreading out
to trace the form of a rose blossom that reached from the base of his ear, out over his eye where an eyebrow would be, if he had an eyebrow.

Dad pulled my finger away, and liquid red fire followed my hand, arcing through the air to catch the invisible spell he’d drawn with light and flame.

The spell was intricate, complex, a three-dimensional ball of flame that seemed to burn through a series of smaller glyphs, smaller magics. And when it had burned just enough, Dad sent it spinning, wrapped in the threads of magic Collins had unraveled from the disk, before plunging into the well.

The spell zeroed straight for the center of the well, where magic was still untouched by the poison, and sank.

The world shook. A sound louder than thunder rolled with physical force, crushing through the room, as if a bomb had gone off. A shriek of voices like metal twisting and snapping scorched through the room.

I reached out for Zayvion, only Dad was holding my body very, very still so I couldn’t even wiggle a finger.

The world shivered under my feet. Reality, the room, the walls, the arched ceiling, the marble floor, and all of us seemed to shift back into place as if our colors blurred for an instant before coming back into focus even sharper than before.

The soft sound of chimes, distant and high, stirred on an unfelt breeze.

“It is done,” Dad said with a kind of reverence I’d never heard in his voice. And then he stumbled back in my mind, no longer in control of my body.

I
rushed up into my body in a wave of heat, my ears ringing, flashes of light swimming at the edge of my vision. My mouth was dry and tasted of blood. I swallowed, which hurt, licked my lips, which stung, and tried to get a grip on what had just happened.

Everyone in the room looked like they’d survived. Stone was sitting clear across the room on the bottom stair, his wings tucked tightly around him, big round eyes narrowed as he glared at the well.

Zayvion, next to me, was talking. I caught only every third word or so. Something about Close and Terric and spells.

“Are you well?” Collins touched my elbow, his fingers shaking, just like his voice.

“Fine,” I said, even though it came out more air than word.

He pulled his hand away, as if surprised by my voice. What had he been expecting? Dad? Then I realized, yes, that’s exactly what he’d expected.

He still had the disk in his hand. It was dark, the dusty gray-black of dry cast iron.

“Good,” he said a little stiffly. “Very good.”

I glanced at the well. The black sludge was much, much less, just a thin lining at the very edges of the well.
Magic, pure, clear magic shifted in crystal glints and shattered rainbows.

“Did we do it?” I asked.

Collins took off his glasses and wiped them on the edge of his shirt. “Purify the well? I believe we have. At least for now. That remnant of sludge”—he pointed his glasses toward the tar sticking at the edges of the floor—“may be inert.”

“Or it may not?” I asked. “How about a guess?”

“We have bought ourselves some time and rid the well of the bulk of the taint so that pure magic is flowing. But it won’t stay that way forever. We will have to do more testing as time goes on. Purifying the other wells might be enough to clarify all the magic.”

“What about the Veiled? What about all the people hospitalized from using poison magic?”

“I am not sure.” He gave me a smile that seemed sincere. “I am not an expert. Your father would be the one to ask. I have a few questions for him myself, if you wouldn’t mind.”

I felt through my head. Dad was there, but sort of half-conscious. Dull pain radiated from his general direction. Casting that magic in Stone, the mix of dark and light magic, had taken a lot out of him.

I was surprised it hadn’t completely knocked me out.

“He needs some time,” I said.

“Interesting.” Collins slipped his glasses back on.

Zayvion was walking back toward me, and I realized I’d sort of checked out of paying attention to everything else that was happening in the room.

I took a quick look around. Stone was still on the stairs, looking sullen. Shame strolled across the floor, which was now seamless marble, no well to be found.
Terric had positioned himself in the center of the room, a disk in his hand, apparently getting ready to cast the booby trap spells. Zayvion, just a few feet away, was shaking his right hand and sending sparks of black and gold magic crackling down to the floor.

“Closed?” I asked him.

“Locked. Are you all right?”

The flash of gold in his eyes and the taste of blood in my throat told me he already knew the answer to that question.

“Still standing. Terric setting the traps?”

He nodded. “Thought I’d Ground in case anything…slipped.”

I glanced over at Shame and Terric. Shame was still walking our way, slowly. Terric had his eyes closed and was tracing a spell—two different spells—with each hand. The light around Terric was growing stronger, white going yellow and green. He was ramping up into gorgeousness again, magic shifting around him and making me want to be closer to him.

Then he set both spells free, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from making any small, embarrassing noise.

Terric was beautiful, just amazingly alluring when he used magic like that.

Shame exhaled, though I couldn’t tell if it was a curse or wonder. I slid my gaze away from Terric to him.

Shame looked ice pale, pasty, as if working that magic to open the well, or having that magic worked around him had made him ill. He was thin, too damn thin. If he weren’t moving, if those emerald eyes weren’t glittering with caught light from the magic Terric was tossing around, I’d think he was death itself coming my way.

“Probably a good idea,” I said, answering Zayvion. Only Zayvion was already halfway to Terric. I hadn’t even seen him move away.

“Holy hells,” I whispered.

“He is hard to resist,” Collins said mildly, though I noticed he was staring at the ceiling, acting suddenly interested in the architecture instead of Terric. “I tried to explain that to Zayvion, but he did not seem pleased.”

I lifted my hand and dragged fingers through my hair, trying to sort my head, trying to gather my thoughts and put some space between my ache—because being around this much magic was no picnic—and Dad’s pain. My left finger hurt from the cut Dad had given me, and all my muscles were sore as if I’d been running too hard and too long.

Casting that spell hadn’t just worn Dad out. It had exhausted me too.

“That was fun,” Shame said as he came up beside me. “Next time we rattle reality, piss off your gargoyle, and make Zayvion so angry he almost botches a Close spell, can we bring popcorn?”

“Zay almost botched the spell?” I looked over at Zay, who stood facing Terric, steady as a rock, hands at his sides, ready to cast Ground for Terric if anything went wrong.

“Oh, he pulled it off,” Shame said. “This is Z we’re talking about. But it was a sloppy showing. Think he’s losing his touch?”

He glanced at Zayvion; then his gaze slid to Terric. Shame narrowed his eyes. He didn’t seem as affected by the light and allure that surrounded Terric, but a faint smile played on his lips.

“Always so anal about closing off the connections,”
he muttered as he pawed at his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Give it a rest, Ter. We know you’re good. Ain’t no gold stars for perfection.”

Shame dug out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth, then lit it with the lighter he had palmed. He sucked until the cigarette was a bright cherry red, then flicked the lighter closed and exhaled smoke in a thin stream away from Collins and me.

The cigarette burned hot between his fingers. Too hot. In a matter of just a few seconds, the cigarette was half ashes. Shame didn’t seem to notice that the Death magic around him was consuming the cigarette, burning it down to a line of gray ash. He just tapped the ashes onto the floor, then put the cigarette to his mouth again and breathed the last of the life out of it.

He flicked it to the floor and went to rub his foot over it, then paused, one bare foot poised over the smoldering coal.

“Jesus.” He pulled his foot away and looked around for his shoes. Found them on the stairs by Stone and headed that way. “I’m going up for coffee. Call me if something explodes.”

He bent with a groan, grabbed his shoes, and started up the stairs, one hand holding the railing as if he were worried he’d fall. Stone took that as an invitation and clattered up the stairs after him, though trailing at a distance so the Death magic snapping around Shame wouldn’t touch him.

It was strange to see Shame forget he was barefoot, strange to see him wandering away to find coffee before finishing a job. But then, he looked exhausted from unlocking the well. I didn’t know how he was still standing, much less climbing stairs.

Terric was still casting the last part of the spell, the Refresh that would keep Tangle and Rebound working even if they were triggered more than once.

It wasn’t that difficult of a spell to cast, although it took a steady hand to thread it through the other two spells that pulsed in deep blue and red weaves hovering above the floor.

The Refresh spell poured out from his fingers like thin ribbons of green that planted deep into the flooring, then stretched up to catch hold of the red and blue Tangle and Rebound before sinking back into the floor again.

It was literally like watching someone hand stitch a patchwork quilt together. And Terric was indeed taking his time to make sure that every connection held and was tied off.

At this rate, he’d be done in a few seconds. Almost every red and blue line had a green ribbon connected to it.

I rubbed my sore finger with my thumb, wishing Terric would hurry up. We had three more wells to hit and the Seattle people were getting closer with every minute.

It made me itchy. I knew closing down the wells and making sure that no one, not the crew from Seattle, and hopefully, not anyone else Leander and Isabelle sent this way—including Leander and Isabelle—would be able to access magic.

Still, I wondered how the Hounds were doing, if anyone had been hurt, if they were staying one step ahead of the smart and powerful magic users from Seattle coming to Close us, kill us.

And I wondered if everything else was going according to the very hasty plan we’d thrown together. Had the
hospitals been warned in time to switch to electricity only? Was the lack of magic causing fewer people to get sick, or was it making people angry, or vulnerable?

It didn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to think that the city that had been bathed in magic for the last thirty years might be a little restless without it.

There could be riots, looting.

A phone rang. It took me until the second ring to realize it was coming from my pocket. I dug it out, didn’t recognize the number, answered anyway. “This is Allie.”