There was no answer. Not even a faint flutter.
If he was still with me, his presence was very, very small.
No help there.
I jumped at the knock on the door. Stupid.
“Yes?” I stood.
Maeve stepped into the room. “Are you ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
She walked over to me, took both my hands in hers. Her fingers were warm, strong. “You can do this, Allie. Do not doubt yourself.”
“Thanks,” I said. And I meant it.
She released my hands and strolled out of the room. I followed her down a white hall with walnut woodwork and old oak floors. Down to a staircase with wood that arched downward again, to another short hall, then down once again.
I don’t know what I’d expected. Secret society stuff. Maybe a dungeon, torches, cast-iron braziers, pillars, weird statues. Something archaic. Mystical. Magical.
But the huge room—and I mean the room must spread out beneath the entire inn, and then some—looked more like a ballroom. The stone floors, maybe marble or granite, laid out in a glowing and subtle shift from white to gray to black all the way to the far end of the room.
The ceiling was two stories high and supported by columns carved from the walls that arced wings across the ceiling, graceful tips crossed at the center. Adding to the winged effect were thick ribbons of cast iron molded into the columns, and lead-lined glass panels that caught glittering wedges of light falling upward from the fixtures set cleverly along the walls and within the nooks and curves of the winged arches.
Grand. Beautiful. The walls were done in rich reds and browns and forest green, light scattered here and there to the room’s best advantage.
It was difficult to remember this was a basement of an old inn.
The room itself was enough to make me pause on the last stair step. But the people who lined the walls of the room, perhaps a dozen or so, made me want to call a cab and go home.
No ceremonial uniforms, they all looked as if they’d just stepped out of their everyday lives and come here. A few were familiar faces. Kevin, Violet’s bodyguard, stood next to Chase, and tall, stern Victor, whom I’d seen at my dad’s graveside. Shamus slouched next to Jingo Jingo, and mousy Liddy, whom I’d also seen at the funeral.
My dad’s accountant, Mr. Katz, stood next to a dark-eyed woman and man who looked like they could be twins, and another man who must have been a linebacker in collage.
But even in a room of magic users whom I could only assume were incredibly skilled, my attention was pulled toward one woman who stood at exact east, if the room were set on a compass rose.
There was no reason why she should stand out among the crowd. Maybe thirty years my senior, her light brown hair was pulled back into a severe bun, lending her delicate features a razor’s edge. She had a wide mouth that might be pretty if she were smiling, and the kind of flawless grooming that gave her a brittle, premeditated beauty.
She wore a black, or maybe very dark blue, suit with a red shirt beneath—neither colors doing her pale complexion any favors, and both managing to downplay her figure. At her neck, a medallion caught silver and copper light.
She reminded me of someone. I didn’t remember ever meeting her, but there was a frailty beneath that hard exterior that made me think of summer and blue skies. Maybe not her, but someone similar. Someone I had liked.
Weird, since she was currently scowling death at me.
If I had to make a wild guess from the body language of the people around her, she was Sedra, the queen bee of this little buzz fest.
I glanced at the man who stood next to her. Tall, with a square, unmistakable face, the sight of him was a punch to the gut. I remembered him.
Just after my coma, when I had returned to the city to find my life, my home, and Zayvion again, this man had been there. He had opened a taxi door for me and told me there was a war brewing. My heartbeat shot up, instant panic, though I didn’t know why, and my palms slicked with sweat. He stood next to Sedra in the same way Kevin stood next to Violet. Like a guard.
Okay, maybe I didn’t want to be tested. Maybe I didn’t care if they sent a Closer into my head and yanked out my memories of this place, of these people. Maybe I didn’t care if they made it so I could never use magic again.
Yeah. Right.
I was nothing if not a stubborn bitch.
I pulled my shoulders back and forced my feet to move again, to follow Maeve as she walked across the white stone to the very center of the room, where the white tarnished into the color of silver cast iron. It looked like she walked above a stormy sky.
Everyone, the men and women of the Authority, watched me. I worked on not tripping over my own feet.
Shamus, on the far side of the room, wearing black from hair to boot, standing on black stone, next to huge Jingo Jingo, winked, and I took that as a hint to maybe try to breathe.
“Allison Beckstrom,” Maeve said, her voice filling the room. “Are you prepared to be tested as one favored by magic, to be forged in the ancient ways of this Authority?”
Okay, so there actually was some pomp and circumstance in the ceremony.
“I am,” I lied through my teeth. Sounded good, though. And I was pretty sure the other magic users bought it.
“Let us begin,” she said. She didn’t smile, but gave me a grave, encouraging nod before she walked away and took her place on the slightly darker side of the room next to my dad’s accountant and the twins.
I didn’t know the place could become more silent. It was as if every person simultaneously held their breath. But that was not what happened. Not at all. What happened was that every person in the room drew upon magic.
Yes, they drew glyphs. Yes, I heard whispered chanting, humming. The lights dimmed and took on a deeper orange cast, which might just be good special effects, but was probably a Warded reaction to so much magic being summoned at the same time in such a suddenly small space.
Speaking of Wards, there were plenty of them, worked in the walls, worked in the tiling of the floor. Probably worked in the wings across the ceiling and every other square inch of the place. They hummed from the rise of magic in the room.
I held still, black stone to my left, white stone to my right, all my Hound senses geared up for survival. Someone in the crowd was going to fight me, push me to my limits until I broke. But no one had stepped forward yet.
To keep myself busy, I silently recited my Miss Mary Mack song.
The crowd across from me shifted and allowed a new figure to enter the room.
Tall, dark, and oh, so deadly, I immediately recognized my opponent.
Zayvion Jones.
My heart rattled in my chest. No. Oh, hells, no. Fight Zayvion? My mind spun with possibilities. If he cared for me, he’d pull his punches. No, they’d know. Which meant if he cared for me, he would hit me with everything he had. And I would have to do the same, push back just as hard as he pushed me.
Maeve had said I had to do everything in my power to survive.
Survive.
Zayvion Jones, the guardian of the gates, the go-to boy of the Authority, didn’t look like he was going to go easy on me or do me any favors. Those cool brown eyes sized me up as an opponent, not a lover.
Crap. Could my dating life get any weirder?
He wore a white shirt, loose fit and open from the collar to his sternum, and black wide-legged pants, both of which looked vaguely martial arts-ish. No weapons in his hands. Not that the man needed weapons.
I was so going to get my ass kicked. But I was going to make him work for it.
I grinned at him, which made him frown. I set a Disbursement. This time, the pain would be hard and fast, but I made sure that it wouldn’t hit me for a week. Plenty of time to recover from this little song and dance.
Correction: plenty of time to recover if I survived the song and dance.
I had to assume he had set a Disbursement too, and that he wasn’t Offloading his use of magic to a Proxy in the room. But, hells, for all I knew, every member in the room was sharing his cost. That would give him virtually unlimited access to magic at no cost, and make him a very, very difficult person to take down.
Nothing like an impossible challenge to really wake up a girl.
I traced a quick spell for Sight, Smell, and Sound, willing to risk him canceling each of those for the chance to better observe what was going on.
The room burst into color. Magic crackled and flowed up the walls, crawling over the cast-iron ribbons and setting the winged arches afire.
Every person held a spell in their hands, or was wrapped by gossamer shifting magic, ready to cast that magic into a spell. I wanted to take my time and study them, study all the different ways they used magic, study their signatures and what that said about them, about who they were and how they perceived magic, but instead, I concentrated on not dying.
Zayvion traced a spell and threw the world at my head.
Yes. The world.
In response, magic flared in me, flooded my bones and blood, hot on the right, cold on the left. I raised my hands and drew a Block, catching the brunt of his attack. I left lines of the spell open so the impact of the magic could wrap at my right fingers. I pointed at the floor, bleeding the magic into the ground, while drawing Impact with my left hand.
It pays to learn to cast ambidextrously.
I never got the chance to throw it. Zayvion rushed me, a tower of black fire and golden eyes.
No time to duck. I braced my feet, tipped my shoulder down, arms out so he could not pin them and keep me from casting.
Paralyze rattled off my Block, then another spell I could not identify, and another.
Hells, he was fast.
My Block broke, burst into ash in front of me. I inhaled too quickly, felt that ash sting my lungs.
And then Zayvion was there, his arms around me, pulling me hard against him. Pinning me.
Not in a nice way.
I wriggled my right arm free, my left pressed into the center of his chest, palm flat against his skin.
Claustrophobia shot liquid panic through my bones. I had to get out. Break his hold.
Those gold eyes were filling with blackness. Everywhere he touched hurt.
He was draining me, draining the magic out of me. Grounding me.
Not in a nice way.
“Surrender.” His voice was cold.
Yes, I was freaked out. Yes, I hurt. But I was also determined to take him to the mat.
And not in a nice way.
Instead of throwing more magic at him, which he would just Ground anyway, I used my left hand pressed against his heart to draw the magic out of him.
No, I wasn’t any good at Grounding. But Zayvion said we were Soul Complements. I was going on a hunch that whatever he could do to me, I could do right back to him.
The concept of Grounding was to take the price of the other user’s magic and act as a lightning rod for both the magic and the price. That meant you had to release what you were Grounding, let the magic flow back into the earth.
Zayvion’s eyes widened. I drank the magic out of him. Drew it into me. Filled myself with the hot, dark, mint flame of him. Drank his magic down ruthlessly.
No, I didn’t know how to let go of the magic. Have I mentioned I suck at Grounding?
I was full, every inch of me stretched and thrumming with magic, his magic. There was no room in me for more. But that didn’t stop me.
My head swam. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears. I drank and drank and drank. He did the same.
Zayvion’s grip loosened slightly.
I pushed down and away, broke free. I wove a spell for Hold. Cast it blind with all that magic I held inside me.
He froze. Long enough for me to cast Shield, something strong enough to surround me and keep him from touching me physically again.
Zayvion lifted his hand and muttered a word. Hold shattered like cheap glass.
So not fair. I didn’t know the magic words he knew.
He chanted, drawing magic in multicolored ribbons out of the floor, singing it into a jagged ball in his hand, which he then threw at me. It hit my Shield and broke into bits that scrabbled over it like spiders trying to climb ice.
He followed it up with a wave of darkness that clung to my Shield, blinding me.
Fuck.
I’d have to drop the Shield to see. And he’d be waiting for me.
Think, Beckstrom.
What did I have at my advantage? Not my father’s memories or skills. Certainly not Maeve’s training.
No, all I had was the magic inside me and a knack for Hounding. I also had a burning determination not to fail myself, not to lose my memories, my life again. Not even for Zayvion Jones.