Holy shit. Those weren’t spells on the walls. They were dead magic users, somehow bent in ways magic was never meant to be bent and forced into the lines of glyphs, the warding spells of Life and Death. Frank had used the dead like they were nothing but fodder for his spells. Used them just like he used the girl’s ghost. Used them like he planned to use me.
The room was suddenly full of the Veiled. Only they weren’t nearly as transparent as before. They were so solid, it was hard to think of them as ghosts. Well, except for their empty black eyes and slow, swaying movements.
The dead people closest to the ghost girls turned on the girls.
The three remaining ghost girls screamed as the Veiled pulled at them, ate away bits of their spirits with greedy fingers.
I was so done with this bullshit. Hells, yes, my father could use me. Because I planned to use him right back.
Yes, I said to my father. Do it. Take my magic. Stop Frank. Stop it all.
And like inviting the wind into a room, my father blew open my mind, settled into those parts of me I thought of as mine—private, safe, sacred—and pushed that aside. He pulled magic through my body, my blood, as easily as water runs through fingers.
He chanted. I chanted. His words but my voice, my body. And I understood the words though they weren’t in a language I had ever heard before. They were the words of Closing. Killing. Ending Frank. Ending his dark magic.
I could feel my feet. My legs. The Bindings still held me down, but I could sit.
I sat, twisting so I faced Frank’s back. Frank, who was busy trying to kill Zayvion.
Zayvion stood braced, both hands outward in that tai chi stance again. An amazing sort of Sheild glistened with magic that flowed and changed in breath-taking colors and shapes in front of him, taking forms I had seen only in my dreams. Beautiful. Zay’s magic was beautiful, powerful. And so was the man behind it.
Anthony was on the ground behind Zayvion and his powerful Shield. It didn’t look like he was breathing any more.
Sorry, Pike, I thought. I tried to keep him safe.
Frank extended one hand toward me, weaving a Sleep spell.
My father lifted my right hand. Now that was a weird sensation. He blocked Frank’s spell, and I felt the weight of the impact and leaned forward from my shoulder to physically hold off his spell.
And still the ghost girls screamed.
So here’s the thing. My dad was in the most private parts of my mind. And he was as open to me as I was to him. I sifted through his knowledge, found what I needed. A spell, a different sort of spell.
I drew on magic, traced a glyph with my left hand—the one my dad wasn’t using.
Allie, my dad strained to say. Do not use magic. It will damage us both. Kill us.
And I knew he was right. But I already knew what my father was going to do to me. I’d seen his plan. Once Frank was taken care of, my father would either take over my body as his own, burning away the parts of me that made me who I was, or he would—and I’m a little shaky on the details of this one—use the magic in my blood and the core of my life energy to transfer himself into another body. Frank’s body.
Both options would leave me dead.
So, fine. In the time I had left, I was sure as hell going to save those girls.
The image of the white cross on the building came to me. The image of the words “my baby.” There were families out there waiting for these girls to come home. People who loved them. Maybe I couldn’t fulfill my promise to Pike by looking after his Hounds, but I could at least make sure these girls got home.
And if by doing so I screwed up my father’s plans—then sign me up, baby. If I was going to die, I was going to take my dad down with me.
I threw every ounce of my will into that spell, threw it at the Veiled—all of them in the room, and it sounded like there were hundreds—howled.
“No,” Frank yelled. “Do not destroy them. They are magic—true magic. Do not!”
He lifted his hand from what he’d been about to throw at Zayvion and leveled both hands, both spells, at me.
The room went black at the edges. I think I saw Zayvion bend, scoop up the dagger I’d dropped, and run toward Frank. I think I saw the Veiled let go of the girls. I think I saw the Veiled crack like old plaster, that strange dark light pouring out of them as they came apart like ice hit by a hammer. And I even think I saw my father’s corpse on the table exhale, his last breath a mist that stank of licorice.
I know I smelled blood, fear, sweat, my father’s wintergreen and leather, blood magic’s sweet cherry, Frank’s burnt almond, and Zayvion’s pine.
I think I saw the ropes of magic that floated in the air, connecting the girls to my father’s corpse and to me, turn to ash and scatter as if caught by a strong wind. And I realized, with sorrow, that there were only three ghost girls because the other girls, their spirits, had already been used up by dark magic.
But even though I saw all this, I didn’t know how to get the remaining girls’ spirits back in their bodies.
I trolled my father’s memories, trying to find something I could use. My father was still busy pouring magic into the spell that was wrapping around Frank like a giant octopus and squeezing tight, tighter.
A Containment spell would work. A Containment to hold a soul. All I had to do was leave the smallest amount of magic wrapped around the girls’ souls, and it would hold them in a stasis state.
I was having a really hard time breathing. I clumsily wove the glyph of Containment left-handed, filled it with a small amount of magic, creating an orb in my hand. I had no idea how to put the girls’ souls into it. . . . No, wait, I knew.
I cast a quick glyph for each girl, a glyph of Healing, and Death, but more healing than death.
Balls of pastel light formed in my hands. I didn’t know if the spell was right. Didn’t know if it was done.
My heart was taking too long to beat. Much too long between beats. Everything was hazy and going black.
Somewhere in the back of my head, I heard my father intone the last piece of the Containment spell for me. He willed the balls of light from my palm. The orbs drifted off toward the side of the room where the girls’ bodies lay. I hoped it worked. I couldn’t see them anymore.
All I saw was Frank, eyes wide with fervor, chanting, his hand lifted in a spell I did not know, a spell filled with the unlight of dark magic.
And just before the spell left his hand, I used my father’s hand—my right hand—to cast a Freeze spell. Zayvion threw himself at Frank. And look at that, Zayvion did have the dagger. On that dagger was my blood, Pike’s blood. Grim satisfaction filled me as Frank held very, very still in my Freeze spell and Zayvion slit his throat with one vicious stroke.
A wave of darkness poured over the room, drowning me, sucking me down. I fell so deeply into it that I knew I’d never reach the bottom.
But the last thing I heard was my father’s disapproving voice. Always set a Disbursement. Always. Every time you use magic. How many times do I have to tell you that?
And I wanted to laugh. He hadn’t set a Disbursement spell either. We were both so completely screwed.
Chapter Eighteen
“Allie,” Zayvion said. “Breathe, baby. Come on. Come back to me.” His words, heated with Influence, would have woken the dead.
I inhaled, not enough, but even that small amount made me want to scream. Breathing was a bad idea. Bad.
“Good,” Zayvion said. His voice was calm, but a little high, like he was trying to hold panic in check. “You can do it again, honey. Breathe.”
And because he was using Influence on me, I did as he said. And this time I couldn’t stop breathing no matter how badly it hurt.
I wheezed and moaned. I had never hurt this much in my entire life.
“Open your eyes,” he said. “Let me see your beautiful eyes.”
Beautiful. Yep, that was just exactly what I felt like. I worked on opening my eyes. Managed to pry them open, but they wer
e so swollen I couldn’t see out of them very well.
Which was probably a good thing. I had no idea where I was. But it smelled a lot—too much—like blood and death.
Memories brushed through my mind. There had been someone, a man doing magic. Right? Frank. My neighbor? That was as far as I could get before the memory slipped away. Holy shit, I hurt.
A soft stroke of mint washed through me, cooling and warming at the same time. I blinked, squinted up at Zayvion.
I was lying down?
“You are injured, Allie. You’ve been hurt by blood magic and dark magic. And you have a few other wounds. But you are going to be fine.” The last he said with that careful emphasis of Influence, as if his words alone could will me to recover. And those nice eyes of his were more gold than brown. His hands were on me, though I couldn’t quite tell where, and mint, strength, and peace flowed from him through me.
“I am Grounding you, because right now magic is raging through you so hard, you’re burning up. Can you let go of the magic, Allie? Can you let it flow back into the earth?”
Oh, sure, why not? And right after that I’d get up and run that marathon I’d been meaning to get around to.
I licked my lips, tasted my own blood.
“Just try for me,” he said. No Influence. Just him asking.
So I tried. Tried to calm my mind, empty myself of magic. I am a river. Magic flows through me but is not me.
“That’s good. Keep doing that.”
So I did.
Even though I heard sirens. Even though I heard footsteps.
“I called 911,” Davy Silvers, the Hound who should not be following me, said.
“Good.” Zayvion’s voice was tight. Grim. “Can you check on the girls? Make sure they’re breathing?”
More footsteps as Davy crossed the room. Sounds of him moving around. Finally, “Only three of them,” he said angrily. “Who did this?”
“Him,” Zayvion said. My eyes were closed, so I couldn’t see which him he was talking about.
“He’s dead, right?” Davy asked with just a little too much hunger in his tone. I was going to have to talk to that kid about how unhealthy revenge was.
“Very,” Zayvion said.
Sirens, lots of sirens, became louder. I heard a mix of voices, of footsteps and other things that sounded like wheels on wood—maybe gurnies?—fill the room.
“Ambulance and police,” Zayvion said so near me, his voice sounded like his lips were at my ear. It was a good sound. Good to know he was still there with me. That I wasn’t lying here, trying not to burn up with magic, alone.
Heavy footsteps came closer.
“Jesus, Tita,” Makani Love said. “What did you get into now?”
“She needs a doctor,” Zayvion said.
“Yah, yah. They’re here. You don’t go anywhere, Mr. Jones. We need to talk to you.”
I heard Love walk away, heard him talking to someone else—Davy, I thought.
“Zayvion Jones,” Detective Paul Stotts said. “You’ve been a difficult man to find. I’d like you to step away from her and let the paramedics take over.”
“Do any of them know how to set a Siphon?” Zayvion asked. “Because she needs one, and so does the boy on the floor over there.”
What boy? A memory floated through my mind. Anthony? Davy? Someone else?
Okay, I was getting tired of not seeing what was going on.
I worked hard to open my eyes again. Looked up. Saw Stotts and Zayvion sizing each other up. Stotts had a coffee cup in one hand, and the smell of dark roast was pure heaven. Both of Zayvion’s hands were on me, one on my torn-up thigh, one on my breastbone. That was also pure heaven.
“I think she was used for a Proxy,” Zayvion lied. Lied, because even though the exact order of recent events were sort of fuzzy to me right now, he had been here for enough of it to know I hadn’t been used as a Proxy. I’d been used. Used by Frank. For something. Dark magic? Something about opening something.
I reached for it, but the memory skittered away, like there was someone on the other end of an invisible string, purposely pulling my memories out of my reach.
That was weird.
“Hey,” I said, my voice quavering and weak.
Both men looked down at me. Even though Zayvion was trying hard to pull off the I’m-just-a-harmless-street-drifter bit, those burning gold eyes were a dead giveaway. That man was more than capable to cast magic. A lot of magic. What had Frank said? The guardian?
I wondered what kind of trouble Zayvion was in with the police.
“You’re going to be okay,” Zayvion said. “The paramedics are here.”
Stotts nodded. “They’ll set a Siphon if you need one. Just rest, Allie. I want to know everything that happened once you’re on your feet again.”
He shifted a little and an EMT, a woman about ten years older than me with a round, concerned face, stepped forward.
“M’okay,” I managed.
“Good to hear that,” the woman said. “My name’s Lori. I’m going to shine this light in your eyes.”
She did. She did that and a lot of other things, like pressing on my cheekbones and the bridge of my nose, both of which hurt like mad, and cleaning off the blood magic cuts I seemed to have everywhere, and pushing my filthy hair out of my eyes and pouring something in my eyes that made everything go blurry but stopped my eyes from scratching so bad. She spent some time doing stuff to my thigh, and then I think she put an IV in my arm, but I wasn’t sure.
What did you know? I could hurt so much that I didn’t feel a needle.
Zayvion didn’t move away until another man, who had a wide, easy smile and was tall enough to be a basketball player, came over.
“So we need a Siphon set? Let’s take a look at you.” Zayvion stepped aside. The tall man placed his hands on my chest, and his fingers were so long they reached from my shoulder to shoulder without a problem. “My name’s Marvin. I’m the medic with the magic, and I’m gonna take care of you.”
He was joking, right? A soothing wash poured over my body, like water over all my stinging wounds.
Marvin the medic with the magic was very much not joking. I’d never had a Siphon set on me before, but I could feel the gentle lessening, ever so slowly, of the pain in my body—different from Zayvion’s touch. Marvin was good. Very good.
“That your boyfriend?” he asked.
And it was such an utterly normal question, the kind of question you asked in an everyday sort of situation, not in a warehouse full of bloody, dead, and dying people situation, that I smiled, even though it made my mouth hurt. “Think so,” I said.
Marvin leaned in a little closer. “Well, just so you know, he looks really worried about you,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “But he doesn’t need to be. I got you covered. What’s your favorite flower?”
“What?”
“I’ll make sure he brings you some when you wake up.”
“Oh,” I said. I was already feeling drowsy, but not in an overwhelming way. Just a soft, comforting, it-was-okay-to-let-go-now-way. “Roses,” I said, even though my favorite flowers were iris. “Pink roses.”
And then sleep—real sleep—found me.
Chapter Nineteen
I didn’t remember getting to the hospital, but when I woke, I was cleaner, wearing a hospital gown and hospital bracelet, and was tucked into a hospital bed. An IV line ran to my arm, and the soft blue lacework of Marvin the magical medic’s Siphon spell hung from a special glass and lead glyph-worked arm of the IV stand. Threads of the Siphon spell ran alongside the IV tube to my arm and then spread out to settle over my chest.
Marvin had done a great job on the spell. It pulsed with my natural heartbeat and made my injuries hurt a whole lot less. Even my head felt clearer.
But apparently Marvin had forgotten to tell Zayvion to bring me flowers.
Or Zayvion hadn’t wanted to. There wasn’t a single pink rose in the room.
From the light coming
in through the small window, I guessed it was morning. Still? I glanced at the clock on the wall. Seven o’clock.
Wow. I’d slept all the way through the day and the night to the day again.
I still ached—inside and out—but the combination of painkillers and Siphon kept it at a distance. I did, however, really need to pee.
I pushed the blankets off, got a glimpse at my legs—still covered in fingerprint burns with some kind of cream that smelled like a diaper rash ointment smeared over them. I pulled my IV stand, IV bag, Siphon, and all, with me as I walked on feet that were still a little swollen into the bathroom.