Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
BERKLEY UK
Devon Monk has one husband, two sons and a dog named Mojo. Surrounded by numerous colourful family members, she lives in Oregon. She has sold more than fifty short stories to fantasy, science fiction, horror, humour and young adult magazines and anthologies. She has been published in five countries and included in a year’s best fantasy collection. Visit her website at: www.devonmonk.com.
I had a headache. That headache’s name was Shamus Flynn.
“Allie, my love,” he said, “you’re wrong.” That got him a quick glare from Zayvion, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace. Zay dragged a whetstone along the edge of his katana and caught my gaze.
“Would you like me to make him shut up?” Zay asked with a little more excitement than I liked to hear.
Terric, who was rummaging through a stack of knives on the shelf, just snorted. “Good fucking luck with that.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “It’s just—”
“You’re wrong,” Shame said again, flipping off Terric. “I’m telling you, you’d do best with a projectile weapon. You can’t use magic anymore, so you’ll have to keep a certain distance from the fight. Get in too close and magic will eat you alive. Then it will eat you dead just for good measure.”
Shame was right. I couldn’t use magic. Ever since we’d fought Leander and Isabelle at the Life well and nearly gotten killed, magic had been making me sick. It had only gotten worse the more I used it, and when I’d tried to use a Tracking spell on a Veiled—an undead magic user I’d seen step out of a living person—I’d passed out and hit my head on the concrete.
Now if I so much as breathed an abracadabra, I was on the floor puking. I had no idea why I was the only one suddenly allergic to magic. Maybe because I was the only possessed person I knew? Maybe because I could literally pull magic up through my body, whereas other people just drew it into the air and directed it into spells. Whatever the reason, it was seriously cramping my style.
“I don’t want a gun,” I repeated.
“Come, now,” Shame coaxed. “Look at all the pretty options.”
“Options” was an understatement. When Shame had told us he had a small stash of weapons that the Authority didn’t know about, his only omission was how damn many blades, cudgels, whips, sticks, pointed things, explosive devices, and guns he had squirreled away in the rickety three-story town house bolted into the cliff side.
Seriously. I flinched every time he lit a cigarette.
“Shamus,” his mother, Maeve, said from where she was resting on the couch in what might have been a comfortable modern living room before Shame had covered the walls, bookshelves, and entertainment center with both magical and nonmagical killing devices. “If she doesn’t want a gun, don’t trouble her so about it. What weapon would you rather carry, Allison?” she asked.
I glanced over at Maeve. She was drinking a cup of tea, her bare feet up on an overturned crate that said EXPLOSIVES across the side. She looked a little more rested after her short nap. Victor still had his eyes closed and was resting in the reclining chair by the window.
Shame had had the sense to keep most of the house in working order. There were beds, a surprisingly nice kitchen, and a fairly well-stocked pantry that Hayden was off investigating.
I rubbed my palms down the sides of my jeans, wiping away sweat. Staring at the guns Shame had laid out on the coffee table made my skin crawl. I wasn’t sure I could touch a gun, much less use one.
I didn’t want to kill again. Not like that.
Bartholomew gave you little choice, my dad, who was still dead and still possessing a corner of my brain, said quietly. Whatever advantage we have now, it is because of you. Of what you did to him.
It was strange hearing my father talk about us—me, Zayvion, Shame, Terric, Hayden, Maeve, and Victor—like he was a part of our group, wanting the same things we wanted, fighting for the same things we were fighting for. Or maybe it wasn’t so strange anymore. He’d helped us—helped me—more in the past few days than he had in my entire life.
And now that we had mutinied from the Authority, gone against Authority law—and, oh, yeah, did I mention I shot the man who had assigned himself as head of Portland’s Authority?—we needed all the help we could get.
Even if that meant listening to the dead guy.
“I don’t know,” I said, answering Maeve’s question. “Maybe I’ll stick to a blade.”
Shame made a tsk sound. “Don’t want to shoot a man, nice and clean,” he said, “but you’re more than happy to carve him up? You sure about that? Swords can be messy business.”
“It’s all messy business,” I said. “And the only thing I’m sure about is that I’m not going to decide this right now.”
“Better sooner than later.”
“I’ll do it in the morning.”
Zay stopped running his thumb along the edge of his katana and sheathed it. He gave me a steady look. The same kind of measuring look Victor, who I had thought was half asleep, and Terric, who was finished digging through the things on Shame’s shelf, were giving me.
“What?” I asked.
“It is morning,” Shame said. “Has been for hours now.”
I closed my eyes and tipped my face up to the ceiling. Hells, I was tired. I didn’t remember the last time I’d slept, didn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. I smelled like old magic, death, and blood. And I was not going to pick up a gun, make another decision, or do another damn thing until I got clean and fed.
“Someone make breakfast, okay?” I lowered my gaze from the ceiling. “I’m going to take a shower.”
I strode down the hall, past the open kitchen area—where Hayden was whistling a song from Phantom of the Opera—and past the two guest bedrooms where everyone had slept … except for me. I’d spent my downtime sweating off nightmares and staring at the darkness while listening to make sure whoever was on watch was still awake and watching.
The last door on the right was the guest bathroom. I walked in and flicked on the lights.
I didn’t know why Shamus had decided to buy a house. When we’d asked, he had used an unconvincing innocent-eyes look on his mother and told her he hadn’t bought it—he’d won it in a poker game.
Most likely he’d stolen it.
Whoever had built the thing was either a genius or a madman. It really was bolted into the cliff, the roofline beneath the road above, which snaked the hill in hairpin curves, and the hill around it was covered in sword fern and vine maple among the fir trees. If you weren’t trying really hard to look for it, you wouldn’t see the house at all. Not because of magic. No, nothing other than a perverse sense of architectural humor kept it hidden.
But for all that, it was decorated in a clean, modern style with just enough nice touches to show that whoever had lived here liked luxury and knew which luxuries mattered most.
And one of those luxuries was the shower. The thing took up half of the huge bathroom, and had more sprays, mists, and other watery onslaughts than a November storm front. Dark marble and chrome hinted toward a man’s aesthetic, but didn’t make the room feel cold or uninviting.
I shucked out of every stitch I had on, hoped Dad would do me the favor of not paying attention to me for the next twenty minutes or so, and turned on the shower.
The entire ceiling above the shower sprayed water as if someone had nailed a rain cloud to the rafters. I stepped into that steady stream and closed my eyes, letting the water sluice away my aches.
But when I closed my eyes, all I saw were images of the Veiled—far too strong now, and growing stronger. The Veiled had always wandered the city, not that most people believed in them.
It didn’t used to be a problem to share the city with dead magic users. But something had gone wrong with the Veiled and with magic itself. Somehow magic had been poisoned, and the Veiled had been changed in some way. The Veiled were carriers of the poison now, biting, possessing, and killing people.
Sure, I got sick when I tried to use magic, but other people could use it just fine. However if a Veiled touched or bit them, they came down with a sickness. The Veiled were roaming this city, hurting people like my friend Davy Silvers, or, worse, killing people like Anthony Bell.
The news outlets had reported it as a fast-spreading virus. Nothing magical. But we knew differently. And the one person in a position to stop the sickness and death had been the head of the Authority, Bartholomew Wray.
He hadn’t wanted to stop it. He had wanted the disaster to reach massive proportions. Because he had a grudge against my father and wanted Dad’s technology that made magic accessible for the common magic user deemed not only unsafe but deadly. Once the technology was destroyed and outlawed, magic would once again be under the singular control of the Authority. His control.
Bartholomew Wray had planned to destroy more than just my dad’s technology. He wanted to ruin his business, his wife, and me.
And he didn’t care how many deaths it took for him to get his way. All of Portland could fall and he wouldn’t care.
So I’d shot him. Killed him. In cold blood.
My thoughts skittered away from that—away from his death. The back of my throat tasted sour. I’d stared him straight in the eyes and pulled the trigger.
I wasn’t a killer.
No, that was a lie now.
I’d changed. I had killed. More than once. I didn’t know what I was anymore.
Alive, Dad whispered from the back of my mind. Then, Strong.
Nothing like a dead man talking in my head while I was showering to remind me that I had plenty of current problems that needed taking care of. One thing was for sure: I didn’t want to talk morality with my father. I didn’t agree with Bartholomew, but Dad’s opinions of right and wrong weren’t mine. I didn’t like what I’d done. I wasn’t sure I ever could.
I got busy with the shampoo and soap and used a scrubby cloth over every inch of my skin.
Dad gave me the decency of privacy, or at least the sense of it, since he didn’t say anything more, and pulled far enough away in my mind that I couldn’t feel him.
Problems. I had them. It was time to make a list:
One, I didn’t know what was going to happen to the Authority now that Bartholomew was dead. Two, we had to find a way to cleanse magic of the poison or whatever it was, stop the Veiled from biting and spreading the poison, and find a cure to end the epidemic. Maybe that was really two through four. So, five, I needed to find a way to cure Davy before he got any worse. And six, we were running out of options and allies to do anything.
In short, we were screwed.
I reached over to turn off the shower. Before my hands touched the handles, a flash of light filled the room, bringing with it the stink of hot copper and concrete. I squinted against the glare and pressed my back against the wall, tracing Block before I remembered I couldn’t use magic without barfing.
My left palm stabbed with cold and pain.
Shit.
I shook the spell free, breaking it and waving off the cold and pain, then pushed away from the wall and opened the shower door.
The flash of light was now a concentrated bolt of magic frozen midstrike at a ragged angle from the ceiling to the floor. The air tasted of salt and concrete and hot copper.
In the three seconds it took for that to register, I knew what the spell was.
Gate.
Something, or someone, was about to join me in the bathroom.
And here I was all naked. Again.
Go, me.
The lightning bolt burned black, then split in half, opening a space, or doorway, wide enough I could see the arc of a distant blue sky where the ceiling lamps should be.
A man stepped through the gate.
Tall, rugged, world-worn Roman Grimshaw, the ex-con, ex–Guardian of the gates, strode into the room. With a flick of his hand, the gate slammed shut behind him, leaving gray ashes of the already dying spell to drift down and cling to his long leather jacket. I blinked and the bolt of lightning was a faded afterimage in the steamy room.
For a moment, there was no sound other than our breathing and water raining against tiles.
Roman held very still, his hands away from his body, not using magic. His frown slowly shifted to surprise as he focused on the slightly damp, exceedingly naked me standing in front of him with my hands on my hips.
“You going to hand me a towel or what?” I asked.
That seemed to snap him out of his shock. He quickly turned and picked up the towel folded on the edge of the sink.
The bathroom door burst open.
Hey, just what I needed. More people in the bathroom with me and my birthday suit.
Roman spun to face Zayvion, who had a fistful of Impact spell that snapped like a ball of red fire. His blood dagger in the other hand was already halfway through a Cleave spell.
“Peace,” Roman said, with the slightest hint of his Scottish accent. He threw his hands out to the sides, dropping my towel on the floor.
Neat. Who knew when that floor had last been swept?
Zay stopped drawing the Cleave and flicked a gaze at me. I gave him what I hoped to be a bored look and he went back to glaring at the ex–Guardian of the gates. He did not, I noted, drop the Impact spell.
While they were sizing up each other and the situation, all the warm copper-tasting steam was cooling on my bare skin. I shivered and turned off the water. Then I bent and got my own damn towel, shaking it once before wrapping it tightly around me.
No one said anything. No one moved.
Until Shame strode up to the door, a mug of coffee in his hand. “For Christsake, Grimshaw, use the frickin’ front door. Is it some kind of requirement that all Guardians of the gates have to do that creepy stalker thing?”
“What are you doing here?” Zayvion asked.
“I have been hunting Leander and Isabelle,” Roman said.
“And?” Zay asked.
“They are no longer in Portland.”
That was a problem. Leander and Isabelle were Soul Complements who had lived hundreds of years ago and found a way to cheat death. They were here among the living, and though they didn’t have physical bodies, they were capable of possessing people, and drawing on incredible amounts of magic together. Soul Complements can make magic break its own rules. If they figured out how to use the tainted magic to their advantage, it might not be just an epidemic we were fighting. It might be an apocalypse.
“Super interesting,” I interrupted. “Really, just. But I’d rather hear it clothed. Take it outside, gentlemen.”
“You’re naked?” Shame said, trying to get a better look around Zayvion and Roman.
Zayvion canceled the Impact spell, and motioned Grimshaw out into the hall with his blood blade.
“She’s naked?” Shame asked again as Zayvion shoved his shoulder to make him turn around. “Aw, give a man a break. What’s a little accidental nakedness between friends?”
“Not happening.” Zay gave Shame a harder shove and closed the door so that only he could see into the room. “Are you all right?” he asked me.
“Peachy. I don’t think Roman expected to show up in a bathroom. It’s hard to predict where Gates will open, right?”
Zay paused. “For normal people. Roman can open a Gate on the head of a pin. I’ll talk to him.” He gave me a not-entirely-tolerant look and then shut the door behind him.
Fantastic. So Roman had intended to show up in the bathroom, alone, with me. Or maybe he just wanted to show up in the bathroom. I wondered how he even knew there would be a room here. He’d been in jail for years before Shame had wheedled his way into home ownership.
More questions that needed answers. And how Roman knew we’d be here, now, was just the beginning. We needed to know everything he had found out about Leander and Isabelle too.
I dressed, then rubbed the towel through my hair so my shoulders wouldn’t get wet. Took me all of a few seconds. Then I walked out into the living room.
Roman had been given the guest interloper seat of honor—a chair in the middle of the room with everyone else standing in a circle around him. No one was casting magic, but everyone had a weapon in one hand and a spell in the other. Well, everyone except Roman.
“Sounds like good news to me,” Hayden said, his shotgun resting casually across his shoulder. “The farther away Leander and Isabelle run, the better. Now tell me how you knew we’d be here, and who sent you to find us.”
Roman looked up at the big man. “I came here of my own accord. My days of serving anyone’s agenda are long gone.”
“You do know you’re a criminal?” Hayden asked. “And I have every right to take you down and take you in.”
Okay, so these two were not friends.
“We’re all criminals,” Zayvion said. “We’ve broken our vows with the Authority. We’ve gone against their direct orders.”
“I haven’t.” Hayden gave Zayvion a hard look. “And neither has Terric.”
Terric had taken his place beside Shame behind Roman’s back.
“Is there some reason we need to go over this again?” Terric asked. “If you want out of this, Hayden,” he said calmly, “then you should leave now. I’m in this to the end.”
Hayden scowled. “I didn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, flat, hard, in the voice that always stops the Hounds from bickering. Everyone looked over at me. Good.
“Roman,” I said, “we’ve broken with the Authority and no longer follow their rule or orders. You should know that before you say anything else.”
“And who’s running the Authority now?” he asked.
“We’re not sure,” I said. “Maybe Jingo Jingo. I killed Bartholomew Wray.”
Roman’s eyebrows shot up, and then he looked me up from foot to face. His expression when his gaze finally met my eyes was one of deep respect and maybe just a little fear.
Good. Respect and fear went a long way when doing business.
“Why?” he asked.
“The Veiled are on the streets possessing people and killing them. Hundreds are falling ill from the tainted magic they’re carrying. Hundreds are dying. He knew it. He wouldn’t stop it. So I stopped him.”
My voice was even, but I broke out in a sweat saying those words. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the reality of what I’d done.
“I see.” He looked at each of the magic users in turn. Then nodded. “I have only one goal—to see that Leander and Isabelle die. I have no grudge with any of you, and do not care who controls the Authority. I broke with it long ago.”
“See, we’d just love to take you on your word, mate,” Shame said, “but I say we should Truth on it.” He pulled a switchblade out of his belt and grinned as he strolled around in front of Roman. “Worth a little blood to you?”
“It is.” Roman held out his left hand, palm up.
“Shame,” Maeve said.
“Not to worry, Mum.” Shame flicked the blade free. “Sweet and easy.”
He sliced the side of Roman’s hand, then pricked his own finger. With the blood caught and mingled on the blade, he drew the glyph for Truth in the air between them. The room filled with the overpowering smell of sweet, sweet cherries. Blood magic.
“Who are you working for?” Shame asked.
“No one but myself.”
“Why did you come here?”
“To tell you that Leander and Isabelle have left Portland and I don’t know why. To see if you have information I can use to track them.”
“How did you know we’d be here?” Shame asked.
“Allison has a piece of death in her palm. Given to her in death by Mikhail. It’s easy enough to find if you’re looking for it.”
I glanced down at my left hand. The dark circle in the center of my palm was still there, and still cold, though it wasn’t hurting anymore like it had in the shower the moment before the Gate had opened. It hadn’t been much trouble lately, so I’d taken to ignoring it. Pike had said it was something the dead could see like a beacon. Maybe it was something ex–Guardians of the gates could see like a beacon too.
I’d traded away the small flicker of magic that I’d always carried inside me for that black blessing from Mikhail. It was the only way I could get myself and Zayvion back from death. Dad had helped me use the mark to cast magic against the Veiled, but that was about all the good it’d done me.
I lifted my hand in case anyone in the room didn’t have the complete scorecard on all the weird things that had happened to me in the last year.
“Are you here to betray us?” Shame asked.
“No.”
“Is that accent of yours fake?” Shame asked.
“No. Is yours?”
“I don’t have an accent,” Shame said.
“Shamus,” Maeve sighed. “Blood magic isn’t a toy.”
Shame grinned. “Everything’s a toy,” he said, “if you mess with it enough. Anyone else have any questions for our man Roman here?”
“I think it’s enough,” I said.
But Zayvion spoke up. “What are you going to do to Leander and Isabelle if you find them?”
“Kill them. Send them through a gate to death. Remove them from this living world. Anything I have to do to stop them.”
Zayvion nodded.
Shame broke the Truth spell and the scent of sweet cherries was so thick it made my eyes sting.
I pinched at the bridge of my nose, trying to ease the headache hovering behind my skull. Magic and me were not a good mix lately.
Maeve broke whatever spell she’d kept poised on the tips of her fingers. I think it was Hold. “Well, then,” she said. “Roman, we were just going to have something to eat. Would you care to join us?”
The other magic users dropped their spells. It was like watching stained-glass windows shatter into liquid drops of color that turned to mist and were gone.
Magic, sometimes, can be a very beautiful thing.
Roman gazed at Maeve and gave her a smile. I’d never seen him smile and suddenly wished I’d known him in better times. Man was handsome, but that smile carved a decade off his looks and brought to him a humanity that imprisonment and a hard life running hard magic had not afforded.
I noted his smile was not lost on Maeve.
Or Hayden.
Ah, suddenly the tension between Hayden and Roman made some sense.
“Thank you, Maeve,” Roman said as he stood. “I would.”
That settled, we all got busy divvying up the food Hayden had cooked: potato hash, scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast.
None of us sat. We stood around the kitchen island so we could reload our plates more easily. Well, that, and from the feeling of restlessness in the air, we were all a little twitchy, wanting to get moving before we were found out, tracked down, or forced to run.
“How do you know Leander and Isabelle aren’t in Portland?” Zayvion asked after he demolished half a plate of potatoes.
“I saw them open a Gate and step through,” Roman said.
“Were they solid?” I asked. Last time I’d seen Leander and Isabelle, they were ghostly, no more solid than the Veiled. They’d been looking for a body to possess, but needed one that was caught between life and death in some manner. There’s just not enough room in a body for more than one soul for very long, so Leander and Isabelle needed a person who was only part of a soul, or partly dead, if they wanted to be physical.
And yes, it made me wonder how Dad and I both managed to survive in my body. He’d asked me about it briefly when we were in Death, but I hadn’t had much time to contemplate the logistics of it. Zay once said it had something to do with us being blood related. I didn’t know if that was true or not.
“They were not solid,” Roman said. “They possessed two young people for a few hours.” He frowned at his plate, pushing at the eggs with his fork. “Neither of them survived. They were discarded like candy wrappers after Leander and Isabelle opened the Gate. I didn’t see where the gate opened onto.”
“Horizon?” Zayvion asked.
“Trees. Out of doors,” Roman said. “But that was all. No building, no landmark, no body of water.”
“Time zone?”
“It was night when they opened the Gate. Before midnight.” He frowned, sifting through his memories. He nodded slowly. “I saw daylight. I’m sure it was daylight on the other side. Early morning.”
“So the other side of the world,” Zayvion said. “Maybe England? Russia?”
“Nowhere in the Western hemisphere.” He straightened, and ran his finger and thumb down from the corners of his mouth. “Half a world to hunt.”
“What kind of Gate were they using?” Victor asked.
Roman shook his head. “Ezekiel’s Hands.”
Terric whistled in appreciation. “I’ve read about it,” he said. “Never seen it. Zay?”
“No. I attempted it. Once.”
Shame laughed. “I remember that. You couldn’t pronounce your name for a week.”
“Why is that Gate so difficult?” I asked.
“It’s old,” Victor said. “Ancient. And it’s based on both light and dark magic being used together in large quantities. The price to pay for it is … extreme.”
Which meant those young people they had been possessing and discarded like candy wrappers had paid the price to open that Gate.
“Why did they choose that Gate?” I asked.
“Distance,” Roman said. “And precision. The man who can open Ezekiel’s Hands has the world at his beck and call.”
“Can you cast it?” I asked.
Everyone else in the kitchen got a little quieter, pausing with their forks, waiting.
“I’ve done it,” he said. “Years ago. When I was younger. And stronger.” He took a drink of his coffee. “But today? Today it would be my death.”
“So what do you use?” Zayvion asked. “For distance and precision?”
“Trigemina,” he said.
Zayvion’s eyebrows shot up and he smiled. “I never got the hang of that one. Three spells at once?”
“You have to hold them at once,” Roman said, “but you don’t have to cast them simultaneously.”
Zay leaned forward. “Really? Is there a preferred order?”
Like a kid in a candy shop. Zayvion had just found someone he could learn from, a man who had held the same position in the Authority as Zayvion. A man who had stood as the guardian between this world and any other place the gates could open upon.
“I find it easiest to begin with the most inward spell,” Roman said. “That sets your focus, grounds your will, holds magic to your direction. If you can hold it in your mind’s eye, then the companion spells flow easily from hand and voice. If not”—he gave Zay a quick smile—“well, there’s always a plane ticket.”
Zay actually laughed. “I suppose there is.”
It was great to see them talking shop and all that, but we still had an issue at hand. Several issues.
“Are you going to hunt Leander and Isabelle?” I asked.
“I am,” Roman said, the smile gone now. “But it may take me time to find them.”
“They’ll make themselves known,” Zayvion said. “Trip some trigger, open another Gate. You’ll know.”
“With a Gate shift at that distance, they’ll have to rest,” Roman said. “It could be a while before they do anything.”
“Then maybe you could help us,” I said.
He looked at me. Correction, everyone looked at me. “We are limited on manpower,” I said. “And there’s every chance we won’t succeed in what we’re doing. If we fail—”
“As if,” Shame said.
“If,” I continued, “we fail, the information we have needs to fall into the hands of someone who can do something to stop this plague.”
“What plague?” Roman shifted his gaze between me, Victor, and Maeve.
“Bartholomew Wray had Maeve and me Closed.” Victor said. “My memory’s spotty on some of the recent events.”
“As is mine, I’m afraid,” Maeve said. “Allie, would you tell him what you know?”
“We think magic has been poisoned,” I said. “We know the cisterns are tainted, and that the tainted magic is mutating the Veiled, who are in turn spreading the tainted magic by biting and possibly possessing people, which is causing people to become sick.”
“Magic can’t be poisoned,” he said. Even though it was a statement, his eyes questioned each of us.
“So we’ve always assumed,” Zayvion agreed.
“Roman,” I said. “You were there when we fought Leander and Isabelle at the Life well. Shame was possessed by Mikhail, and Sedra was possessed by Leander and Isabelle. Do you remember seeing Leander and Isabelle using a spell, or something else that could have poisoned the magic in the well?”
He shook his head. “They were using a lot of magic. Old spells. Mixed disciplines. Did things with magic that only Soul Complements can do. I can’t be sure of every spell they cast.”
“We have to be sure,” I said. “We have to find out if all magic has been tainted, or if it’s only the magic filtered through the cisterns. We have to find out how magic has been poisoned if we’re going to stop it. If we fail, we will need someone, someone we trust in a position of power, to know what’s going on here. I want someone to have a fighting chance against this if the poison spreads outside Portland and infects the rest of the world.”
That was the big problem we weren’t addressing. That was the long-range worst-case scenario. All magic in the world was connected in some manner. Something that had gone this bad this quickly had every indication of picking up speed as it spread. People dying from tainted magic could become the first magical pandemic we’d have to face.
“Who do we trust?” I asked.
Shame just scoffed. “You’re looking at us. Mostly.”
“What kind of person do you have in mind?” Terric asked, giving Shame a shut-up look.
“Someone in the Authority, high up, who can give orders people will listen to,” I said. “The Ward, maybe?”
“No,” Victor said. “He is only the power over the region. If we want this information in the best hands possible, it should be given to the Overseer.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
Roman raised his eyebrows, stunned. “It’s not a what. It’s a who. You don’t know who the Overseer is?”
“Should I?” I looked at Zay.
“The Overseer is the highest head of the Authority,” Zayvion said with the kind of rhythm that made it sound like he’d memorized and recited this years ago. “The final Voice. The end Watch, the last Ward. The Overseer guides the world of magic and all who use it.” He paused, then: “The position rotates between countries every four years. It is the highest rule, the highest position in the Authority. Right now, Margaret Stafford is the Overseer. She will be for three more years.”
“Will she believe us?” I asked.
Victor rubbed at the bridge of his nose, then sighed. He was tired. We were all tired. “I suppose it depends on what we have to tell her. And which of us attempts to reach her.”
“She needs to know that magic may be tainted and that the Veiled are mutating and possessing and killing people,” I said. “That as far as we can tell, the spread of poison here in Portland isn’t caused by a failure in the technology and magic integrations systems—”
Thank you, Dad said.
I ignored him.
“—which is what Bartholomew Wray may have told her, but that it may be the wells that are poisoned,” I said. “Is there any way to reach her?”
Terric shook his head. “Not with Bartholomew’s men still in town.”
“And out for blood,” Shame noted cheerfully.
“If Jingo Jingo is taking over the position of head of the Authority,” Terric said, “he’ll have every member of the Authority gunning for us.”
“And our blood,” Shame noted.
“They’ll monitor gates,” Hayden said. “Hell, they’ll monitor the airports, bus terminals, highways, trains.”
“And they’ll be looking for blood,” Shame said.
“Shamus,” Maeve said. “Please. Shut it.”
Shame rolled his eyes, but had the sense to seal his yap.
“Who will the Overseer listen to?” I asked.
We all looked at Victor.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve been removed from my position and Closed. She won’t listen to me or Maeve. Zayvion has walked away from his vows, Shamus has never been considered one hundred percent reliable—”
“Watch it, mate,” Shame said.
“—and neither have you, Allie. Which leaves either Hayden or Roman. With Roman’s past, I am certain he would be quickly detained. That leaves Hayden.”
“You want me to go to England to tell the Overseer that Bartholomew was killed because he didn’t stop the spread of tainted magic?” Hayden asked. “I hate to break it to you, Victor, but there was a reason I’ve spent the last decade in Alaska. More than a few black eyes on my record. The Overseer wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’ll go,” Roman said. “Though I don’t know if she’ll listen to me. What proof do we have to offer her?”
The box, Dad said.
What box? I asked.
The one I told you to pick up when you were in Bartholomew’s office, Dad said.
I frowned, wondering where I’d put it.
On the bedside table, Dad said.
Which meant he’d been paying close attention to what I’d been doing, so, ew, in the shower department, and that he was interested enough in the box to keep track of where I’d left it.
What’s in the box? I asked as I walked out of the room, leaving everyone else to discuss the situation.
Evidence.
Uh-huh. Want to give me a little more to go on?
“Allie?”
I turned around. I was in the hall in front of the bedroom door. Zayvion was following me.
“What?”
“Are you all right?”
I frowned. “So far. Why?”
“You left right in the middle of the plan you were making.”
“Oh. Right. Plan.” I flicked on the bedroom light and walked in. “This is a part of it. Or might be.” I walked over to the bedside table and picked up the metal box. Heavier than it looked. My dad had told me to take it after I’d shot Bartholomew. Somehow I’d kept ahold of it through our fight with the Veiled, closing the cistern, and then loading into Terric’s van to come here.
Frankly, if he hadn’t mentioned it, I probably would have left it behind.
“This,” I said, hefting the lead box, “is something Dad says might help us.”
“What is it?”
“He says it’s evidence.” How is it evidence?
“How?” Zayvion said at the same time.
It is a recording device. Very subtle magic. It’s been in that office, recording whenever it senses the vibration of speech.
“You’re kidding me,” I said out loud.
“What did he say?” Zayvion, luckily, was getting used to me losing track of who was talking with their outside voice and who was talking with their dead-guy-in-my-brain voice.
“That it is a recording device.” I handed him the box. “Can you make out what any of those spells are?”
Zayvion turned it in his hand and looked at all sides. He shook his head. “If I’d seen this any other time, I’d think it was some kind of decorative sculpture. I don’t see any spells on it.”
I could feel Dad smile in my mind. It was weird.
There are no spells on it, he said. But the magic within it is shaped into spells that record onto a disk. What you see is just a decorative sculpture.
“He said the recording is on a disk inside it.”
How do we open it? I asked.
“Ah,” Zayvion said.
Like that, Dad answered.
I looked over. Zay had slid one of the panels to the side and then pivoted it outward so that it was connected only by one corner.
Inside the box was a stack of a dozen disks suspended by copper, which surprised me, since copper is an inferior material when it comes to magic use.
Zayvion flicked a latch with his thumbnail, and the disks slid forward and then fanned out like, well, a fan. He tipped the box so he could read the spells on the disks. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “They must be pure silver and glass.”
He gently drew the first disk out from the others. It was thin glass with grooves etched into it and a swirling webwork of silver painted through it. It looked more like art, or a very expensive brooch, than a recording device.
I was once again, if a little reluctantly, impressed by my father’s genius.
“How much do you think that can record?” I asked Zayvion.
He shook his head, hard curiosity lighting his features as he tipped the disk to the light. “Hours at least.”
Days, Dad said. Months. Years.
“Holy shit,” I said quietly. “Dad says it can record for years.”
“Looks like it will play on a computer. Am I right about that?” Zay asked.
Dad sort of nodded inside my head—another weird feeling. The Overseer will have the correct equipment to extract the information.
“So this was running while I was in the office with him?” I asked, finally catching on to why this might be a helpful thing.
“Hey, you two,” Shame said from the doorway. “Enough snogging. Let’s get this party on the road.”
Yes, Dad said. It was running while you were there, and when anyone was in the room.
Bartholomew had held a lot of meetings in his office. That was where Melissa Whit had used that painful Truth spell on me. That was where Zayvion, Terric, and Shame had all testified on what had happened when we were fighting Leander and Isabelle out at the Life well. That was where Bartholomew had met with each of the people he had assigned as Voices of the Authority. It stood to reason there were a lot of interesting meetings held in that room. Plenty of information that could be used to clear our names, or at least get other people on our side to try to keep the poison from spreading.
If there was proof that Bartholomew was acting in his own interest instead of in the interest of the Authority, it was on those pretty, shiny disks.
“He said yes, Zay,” I said. “Our evidence of what Bartholomew had been doing is on those disks. Anything that happened in his office is on those disks.”
“Very nice,” Zayvion murmured as he very carefully replaced the disk inside the copper webbing and pressed another lever. The disks retracted back into the box and Zayvion set the locking latch.
“That’s a beaut,” Shame said. “Your da put it together?”
I nodded. “And we’re going to get this to the Overseer. Did that get settled? Is Hayden up for it?”
“Hell no,” Shame said with a grin. “Arguing like it’s buy-one-get-one-free doomsday out there. All I know is I’m not going to be the one who flies off to England to get audience with Stafford. I’d like my internal organs, and my memories, to stay right where they are, thank you very much.”
“Someone needs to go,” I said.
“Not me,” Shame said. “Unreliable, remember? So sad.”
“I’ll go,” Zayvion said.
It felt like a punch to the stomach. “You can’t.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Why not?”
Because I don’t want you to didn’t seem like a very logical thing to say. It wasn’t even a very convincing thing to say. So instead I just held my hand out for the box. “Because you are needed here.”
“Hmm.” Zayvion placed the box in my palm, holding eye contact. I knew what he was thinking. We were close enough, his thoughts would have been easy to read even if we weren’t Soul Complements. He thought I was being overly protective of him. He thought I was going to make decisions with my heart instead of my head.
Wasn’t he going to be surprised?
“We do this right, and we do this smart,” I said. “No one’s going to martyr on my watch. That’s just a dumb way to waste manpower. Understand, Flynn?” I asked.
Shame was leaning in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest. “Glare at some other sucker, Beckstrom,” he said. “I don’t throw myself in front of bullets. That’s your gig.”
“It’s not a gig if you’ve done it only once,” I said.
Shame held up three fingers. “I think you’re a little off on your bullet count.”
“Fine. Three times. But only twice to save someone.”
“You mean Zay,” he said. “Only twice to save Zay. Maybe you ought to get him out of town for a bit. Could make for a bullet-free day or two. Good for the staying-breathing portion of your plan.”
“Not talking about it anymore,” I said. “Going to go figure out who can get this info to England instead.” I pointed down the hall, and Shame turned and walked ahead of me.
“Who do you want to do this, Allie?” Zayvion asked as we followed Shame back to the living room, where everyone was waiting.
Correction—not waiting. More like strapping on weapons and preparing to leave.
“Did someone make a plan?” I asked.
Roman shrugged. He had a sword lying across his back, the hilt rising just above his left shoulder. He was picking up and putting down several long knives spread out across what used to be a dining room sideboard.
“I’ll take the message to the Overseer,” he said.
“Why you?” I asked. “You’re just as guilty as the rest of us for breaking Authority rule.”
“No, I am not.” He turned. “It was Isabelle possessing Sedra who trumped up the charges to lock me away. Isabelle has never been the head of the Authority, though she has possessed Sedra for years. I was wrongly imprisoned. The Overseer will hear my case.”
He sounded pretty certain about that.
“And I can get there in two gates,” he said. “I think even Zayvion would have to use more than five.” He looked at Zayvion.
“I could do it in two,” Zay said.
“Aye, but I’ll be conscious by the end of it.” Roman gave him a hard smile.
Zayvion strode over and Roman squared to meet him.
Zay was wider in the shoulder than Roman but just as tall. Where Roman had the long lean lines that spoke of height and his age and maybe too much imprisonment, it didn’t give him the fuck-you-up bruiser build Zayvion carried so smoothly.
If I had to put money down on a fight between the two of them, I’d side with Zayvion every time.
“How about we do this?” Zayvion said in that low rumble that usually resulted in someone getting his nose broken. “You and me. See who can punch holes through reality and come out smiling on the other side.”
“How about we do?” Roman agreed.
“How about we do not?” Victor said in the stern teacher tone I hadn’t heard for weeks. “This is not a contest of which of you is a better Guardian of the gates. This is a mission that will save lives. Let us remember our vows, gentlemen.”
“To keep magic safe,” Roman said.
“And the lives of the innocent,” Zayvion said.
“Even if we have broken with the Authority,” Victor said, “we have not broken with our honor.”
Zay paused, then listened to the man who had always been his teacher. “Safe journey, Roman.”
“And to you,” he replied.
Zayvion turned toward me. “Allie, he’ll need the box.” He gave me a quick smile. He liked Roman, liked a man he could compete with, prove himself up to. I was suddenly glad Roman was taking the mission. Otherwise I had a feeling I’d be spending the next several days trying to keep the two of them from daring each other into ever-increasingly stupid contests.
I walked past Zay and handed Roman the box.
“This contains a dozen disks of glass and silver. On them is all the proof the Overseer will need to know that there is a magical plague spreading in the city. It contains our statements about the fight with Isabelle and Leander out at the Life well, and it probably has a lot of other information. It’s been in Bartholomew’s office, recording conversations since Bartholomew came back to town.”
Before then, Dad said.
“And before then,” I added. “The Overseer should have the equipment needed to access the information.”
Roman stashed the box in the innermost pocket of his long coat. “I’ll put it in her hands myself.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Safe journey.”
“Keep tight hold on him, girl,” he said, quietly. “We’re all counting on the two of you in this. Have been for some time now.”
I nodded, not having the faintest clue what he was talking about. Keep tight hold on whom? Zayvion? My dad? And who was this “we” he was talking about?
But he had already walked off to the center of the room. “When I open the Gate, they’ll see the spike in magic for miles around,” he said. “You’ll want to be on your way shortly after.”
“Here, Allie.” Shame straightened from where he’d been kneeling by a shelf and pressed a holster into my hand. “This is a gun. Not the one Collins made, since you’re all cootified about that one. This is metal, and the clip?” He pulled the gun out of the holster and slapped the clip free. “Bullets worked with magic.”
“I don’t—”
“You damn well do.” He shoved the clip back in the gun, the gun in the holster, and put it all in my hand, holding his hand over it so I couldn’t let it go. “I want you to get out of this alive. That means you will use any weapon necessary to see that you survive. Zay won’t force you to do it, but I will. You’ll carry a gun, and you’ll use it to keep yourself and us alive. Got that?”
No joking, no bullshit. This was Shame stripped down to the stark darkness that curled like death and violence in his soul. He knew as soon as we stepped out on those streets, we were walking blind into a war. All of us were going to have to bear the pain for the magic we called upon. And I was going to have to bear the pain for carrying a weapon that made me face what I had become. A killer.
“I hate you,” I said quietly.
“Better to hate than to be dead, love.” He let go of the gun and turned his back on me. “Plenty of blades, bombs, and bludgeons to go around, people,” he said. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”
I hesitated a moment. Didn’t matter what Shame said. This was my life, my choice. I didn’t have to carry a gun just because he told me to.
But he was right. And I’d known it all along. I needed to use any weapon I had at my disposal to get through this. I slipped the holster over my shoulders, my hands steady and sure.
“Roman’s taking the evidence to the Overseer,” I said to keep my mouth busy doing something while Zayvion handed me spare clips that I slid into my pockets.
“Terric, I want you to find out if the Authority and Bartholomew’s men have discovered you’re with us. If they haven’t, I need you to gather information on who’s running the Authority now. If you can find out what resources they’re using to find us, to stop us, and whether they’re guarding the wells, that would be more than useful.
“Also see if they’ve changed their stance on the technology-is-poisoning-magic theory by some damn miracle. If someone running the Authority is suddenly working on a cure for this magical infection, that would be good news.”
“How do you want me to contact you?” he asked. Terric was going with more subtle weaponry. And by subtle I meant two axes he tucked in the belt at his hips, and several throwing knives he was snicking into place on the bolero across his chest. I assumed he also had a gun stashed somewhere on his body.
The trench coat/loose coat look that Terric, Zayvion, and Shamus always seemed to favor suddenly made sense to me. I wondered if there was a coat here I could borrow.
“I tossed my phone. So did Zayvion,” I said. “So we can’t keep in contact that way. Any ideas, people?”
“Did you happen to steal any of the message beads, Shame?” Maeve asked.
“Steal? Please, Mum. Give me some credit.” Shame paused, hands on his hips. He tipped his head as if going through a list of things.
“Might have something in the master bedroom. Just a tick.” He strode off down the hall.
“So,” I said, “we need to get to the wells and see if magic has been tainted at those source points.
“Zayvion and I will go to the Life well. Maeve, do you think you could get to the inn without anyone noticing and check the Blood well?”
“Unless there were cameras at the cistern,” she said, “or someone following Zayvion, no one knows I have been Unclosed. And since I live there, I can’t imagine they would expect me to be anywhere else right now. So, yes. I think I can check. If I run into trouble, I can take care of that too.”
Maeve was a Blood magic user. A very good Blood magic user. She might seem like a gentle soul, but she was fury in a fight.
“I’ll go with you,” Hayden said.