Allie Beckstrom 09 - Magic for a Price (32 page)

“I have sacrificed nothing.”

“We have sacrificed our soul. It is the reason we dwell in life and death, parted.” He pointed to his own chest. “It is why there are two of us.”

“That was only temporary. Until I could join dark and light magic again,” Living Dad said. “And join my living and dead selves.”

“Our time is done.”

“No.”

“Then you will remain, however long the Animate can sustain you, among the living with half a soul. I will not join you. Not in life.”

“Why would you deny life? Our life? Our immortality?” He actually seemed puzzled.

“Immortality is not enough reward for our daughter’s life.”

Living Dad looked over at where I stood, all ghosty
and insubstantial, the pink rose in my hand, next to my unbreathing body.

Something changed in his cool marble face.

“I…” He hesitated, unable to look away from me. It was the first time in my life I had seen my father doubt.

“There is no one else who can hold magic together,” Living Dad said. “If I let go now, Leander and Isabelle will rise again. Magic will return to being broken, dark and light. And they will pick it up. They will rule.

“I will not allow that. No one else can survive becoming the Focal long enough to hold magic together, to mend it. I cannot hold it for long, joined without you. Without my whole soul healed.”

“I’ll do it,” Cody said, stepping up on the other side of my prone body.

“Cody,” I said, though I didn’t think he’d hear me. “Don’t. Don’t die for my father’s twisted plan.”

Cody took another step forward, two. Until he was standing next to Dead Dad. “I never thought about light magic and dark magic joining until I met you, Daniel Beckstrom,” he said in a quiet voice. “But you…inspired me. To think about what dark magic could do. What light magic could do if they were together again. Just one magic in the world. They way it used to be. The way it always had been before Leander and Isabelle.

“I think magic might be kinder, or maybe it would heal better, or just…I don’t know. Be less trouble. Or maybe magic will always be like water: gentle on the one hand, destructive on the other.

“Whatever it becomes once it is joined, I think I can hold it long enough for it to do so.”

“It will kill you,” Living Dad said.

“We don’t know that,” Cody said. “We can’t know that yet.”

“I will not hand over all the power in the world to a broken-minded boy,” Living Dad said.

“I’m the child of Soul Complements,” Cody said, “My mother, Sedra, and my father, Mikhale, were very powerful before Isabelle possessed my mother and killed my father. You know that. You made deals with my father in death so that he could save my mother’s soul.”

Dead Dad nodded. “That is true. And Cody is a savant, an artist whose ability with magic is even more rare than Soul Complements. There is no other in the world like him. If any living being could hold light and dark magic together, I believe it would be this broken-minded boy.”

It was getting harder and harder to stand here. I mean, Dad had done something to halt the world, and Zay had moved for a moment, but wasn’t anymore.

I was still moving though. And it felt like the ocean tide was drawing the sand out from under my feet, pulling me with it.

I didn’t know how Cody was moving when no one else was. Not Zay, who was caught, pushing up off his knees and reaching for me. Not Shame, who was unconscious, blood pouring down his face. Not Terric who was bent over, his hands gripping the collar of Shame’s coat as he tried to drag him back away from where Leander and Isabelle screamed.

Not Eleanor, who pressed both hands over Shame’s heart, as if trying to hold his soul to his flesh.

Not Nola, dead. Not me, dead.

And even with everything stopped, with my very life stopped, I had to move, had to go, had to leave this place forever.

Something soft and light was calling me. And I didn’t think I could ignore it this time.

“Can I give this to someone else?” I asked.

Surprisingly, the Dads looked at me. So did Cody.

I held up the rose. “I won’t need it in death. And you said it doesn’t belong there. It’s special to me. Just a small magic, but it always made me feel loved. I think someone else should have it.”

I decided I didn’t have to wait for their permission. My dad had made me bargain it away for Zayvion’s soul once, so I knew it could be given away.

This time I was going to give it to someone I loved.

I walked over to Zayvion. Touched his face, caught in fear, anger, sorrow. Too much blood still on him. Too many cuts and bruises from our fight.

It seemed like since the moment I could remember meeting him, we’d been fighting something, pushing for things to be right again.

Protecting the world, protecting magic for a price.

And now this. The price.

Having to die and leave the world in my father’s hands was never the outcome I wanted. But it was pretty clear I didn’t get a say anymore.

I knelt in front of Zayvion so that we were crouched, eye to eye.

He looked so worried. Afraid that he’d lost me. That I was dead.

I traced my fingers over the arc of his cheek, setting the memory of the shape of him in my mind even though I could no longer feel him.

“This is my small magic,” I said softly. “I’ve had it ever since I was little. It’s the only thing that made me feel special. Until I met you.”

He didn’t move, didn’t say anything. The blood on his face didn’t drip; the pain in his eyes didn’t ease.

I didn’t even know if he heard me.

Still, I placed the rose against his chest. The rose was ghostly. Like me. The rose was magic. But I wasn’t.

The rose pressed into Zayvion as if it belonged there, that small magic his now.

Maybe he would know he had it.

Maybe he would know I gave it to him.

Maybe it would help him remember me in the years he had left to live. Because I knew him. Knew he wouldn’t stop fighting just because I had fallen.

“I’ll be waiting for you, Zayvion Jones,” I said, smiling even though I felt like I was made of tears. “Keep everyone safe for me. And don’t forget me. Don’t forget us.”

I leaned forward and kissed him.

I could not feel the warmth of his skin, could not taste his lips, could not smell the familiar pine scent of him.

“I love you,” I said, I thought, with every ounce of my soul.

“Allie,” Dead Dad said.

“I know,” I said. There was no more time left for good-byes. I had to leave now. “I’m coming.”

I stood and turned.

It was not Dead Dad standing behind me. It was Living Dad.

And just behind him, with a look of kindness on his face, was Dead Dad.

“That small magic is yours, Allison,” Living Dad said to me in his cool, marble voice. He held up his hand and a rose—no, not just a rose; my rose—glistened softly in his fingers.

“You can’t have that,” I said. For the first time since I’d died, I was angry. Really angry. “I gave it to Zayvion and you have no right to take it from him.”

“He isn’t the one who needs it,” Living Dad said.

Dead Dad smiled. “Allison, we’ve made a choice. For you.”

“You know what?” I said. “I am tired of you making choices for me. This is my life—no, this is my death. And I’m the one who’s going to make the choices. Do you understand me?”

Anger was good. Anger made me feel stronger, pushed my sorrow to the side. Anger even made it feel like my feet were firmly beneath me instead of being swept away by that soft calling light.

“Give me back my goddamn rose.”

Dad’s cool, impenetrable face twitched. The corners of his mouth quirked up in a faint smile. “You have always had your mother’s temper.”

I held out my hand and raised my eyebrows. “My rose.”

But he didn’t give me the rose. Instead, he turned and walked over to my prone body. He stood there a moment, shaking his head. “I never meant it to be this way.”

Cody stood on the other side of my body. “I know,” he said.

Dead Dad walked over to Living Dad and put his hand on his shoulder.

Living Dad nodded to Cody.

I had no idea what they were doing. They must have come to some kind of agreement while I was saying good-bye to Zayvion.

Cody traced a spell in the air. Living Dad traced the same spell at the same time, mirrored movements to the other.

Magic answered that spell like a song waiting to be sung. It leaped up into Dad’s fingers, rolled over his carved stone body, then jumped from him in a joyous
chorus that somehow gave voice to my father’s dreams, his desires, his brilliant and wild vision of the world.

The magic poured into Cody, who stood, quietly smiling, his eyes searching the sky as if he saw the dance of angels or the order of the universe there. Cody lifted his hands. Magic, light and dark, rolled up his arms, just as it had rolled up mine, carving dark whorls of multicolored ribbons from the tip of his fingertips on one arm, up to the side of his jaw, and light whorls of multicolored ribbons from the tip of his fingertips on his left arm.

Dad shimmered, the glyphs on his body flaring bright, then fading and fading until they were ashen gray.

Leander and Isabelle faded too, taken apart by the price of magic, dissolved, spent, used up, until they were gone, their soul nothing but dust that scattered in the breeze.

And then Dad stepped out of Stone. Stone very quickly folded back into the shape of a gargoyle, my gargoyle. He shook his big head and sneezed.

He was alive! That was good. So good.

“Allison Angel,” Dad said.

I looked over at him. There was just one Dad standing there. And for the first time in my life, I saw my father. All of him. His whole soul and mind.

The stern furrow was still there in his brow, and the lines at his eyes that seemed made from sorrow rather than joy. But there was a spark to his eyes, a glint that made me wonder what secrets he still held, what joys he had experienced. He had a kindness, a humanness to him I had never seen.

But now that I did, I understood why someone would be drawn to him. Why someone might love him.

I suddenly wished I had known him. Wished this could have been the man who raised me.

“Dad?” I said.

“I gave you this flower a long time ago,” he said. He was still holding the pink rose. “I want you to promise me you won’t let go of it so easily again.”

I nodded. Held out my hand.

“I have done…regretful things. So many…” His voice was filled with sorrow. “I cannot change the choices I have made. But this last choice is for you. For your life. For your world. For your love. Do not waste them, never let go, never stop fighting, daughter. Time is taken from us all too quickly. Even those of us with the best of plans. And my plans were always the best.

“I love you, Allison. My beautiful daughter. I am proud of you.” He smiled and there were tears in his eyes.

And then he threw the rose. Not toward me, but toward my body.

I turned, stretching out to try to catch it.

Cody said a word. Dad said a word, and suddenly the world was fading away, washed in watercolor hues. I was caught in that, like a leaf carried by a soft wind. Watched as the world turned sideways, watched as I was rested gently into my body. Watched as Dad knelt beside me, his hand over my heart, as the pink light of the rose, my small magic, was placed once again in my body.

I wanted to ask him what he was doing, why I was lying here, but all he said was, “Good-bye, Allison Angel.”

I tried to open my mouth. Couldn’t find a way to do so.

Dad stood, glanced once at the world around him, then, with a satisfied nod, faded away.

The world started up again like someone had just slammed on a switch.

I inhaled, air in my lungs hot as fire as I screamed through the pain that wrapped around every inch of me.

And then Zayvion was there, his voice whispering ragged, soft words to me, the most comforting sound in the world. I wanted to tell him I loved him. I wanted to kiss him one last time with my lips, hold him with the arms of my very recently unbreathing body.

A body that was still burned and broken from magic.

My eyes were working though. And I opened them to see that beautiful, bloody man of mine. His eyes were brown, empty of all magic, filled with pain and sorrow. I wanted to tell him I was okay. It was okay. That at least Dad had stopped Leander and Isabelle.

And that he had given up Stone, given up immortality, given up holding all magic in his hands.

Which meant we won.

We had really, finally won.

Go, us.

“I love you,” Zay said, over and over again. “Don’t leave me, Allie. God, please don’t leave me.” He was crying.

I couldn’t say anything. Couldn’t move.

Cody came into the range of my vision, standing so I saw him over Zayvion’s shoulder.

He wore magic, beautiful soft hues in every color of the rainbow, around him like a cloak. He looked ageless, both a young boy and a wise man, his blue eyes filled with joy and peace.

“It’s all right, Allie,” he said. “Everything’s going to be okay now.”

And then he began singing. A very soft lullaby. It wasn’t a song I had ever heard before, but I knew it carried magic. And I knew what that magic, light and dark
joined together with the pure untouched magic of St. Johns, would do. He used his fingertips to paint very specific spells in the air.

Healing.

Not just for me.

To heal the world. Dark and light magic were woven together again as they were always meant to be and cast for the first time by a child of Soul Complements, a savant. Cody was a rarity in this world. A brilliant artist with magic.

I wanted to stay awake, to see the world Cody was about to bring into life, but that song took away my pain, my worries, and rocked me gently to sleep.

I
woke up in a bed, the smell of roses all around me. I opened my eyes.

It was my bed, my room. And I was not alone. Zayvion lay on his side next to me, his hand resting on my stomach, his breathing easy and deep. He was asleep.