Still, it was hard for me to hold eye contact, knowing he’d been damaged because of my plans, my orders.
“What are we going to do about magic?” he asked.
“We need someone to test it. Maybe Collins or Violet or… I don’t know, really.”
Zay gave me an odd look, then put his hand on my thigh. I knew he felt my shame, my guilt, for other people bearing the cost of my fight.
“Anyone in this room regret what we’ve done so far?” Zay asked.
I snapped my head up and looked at him with horror. I couldn’t believe he’d just asked that.
“Why?” Victor asked. He might be blind, but he wasn’t unaware of what was going on around him.
“Allie’s worried she made the wrong choices,” Zay said.
“Zay. Stop—,” I started.
“Worried that we regret our wounds,” he continued. “Worried about you, Hayden, and you, Victor.”
Hayden scoffed. “The hand?” he asked, raising the stump of his arm. “Rather lose it than my life. And I’ve vowed to give up my life if that’s what it takes to keep the innocent, and magic, safe. You told us where the battle was going to be,” he said. “It has always been our choice whether to fight.”
“This isn’t just your fight, Allison,” Victor said. “It’s always been ours too. And it always will be. Until the day we die.”
“Ditto, boss,” Davy said around a mouthful of waffle.
“You suck,” I said quietly to Zayvion.
He smiled. “I’m just tired of you worrying so much,” he said. “Why not just clear the air between us and give you a little peace of mind?” He leaned back, looking satisfied with himself, then grunted at the pain and drank his coffee.
“So who are you going to task with running the magic and poison through its paces to find a cure?” Collins said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think that’s part of what you promised to do.”
“I did,” he said. “And I still could. I might need some things, though. A lab to run tests, for example. Do you think your father would let me use his lab?” he asked.
“Maybe. He said we’d need fail-safes. He said he was thinking about how it might best be done.”
“We may need you to ask him for his help, Allison,” Victor said. “Your father knows Flux magic, and the integration of magic with technology, better than anyone else in the city. Perhaps, the world.”
That didn’t sound good. But then, Dad hadn’t been working against us lately. He’d been helpful—hell, he’d been vital to our cause and done things none of the rest of us could do when the chips were down.
“I think he’ll do it.”
Won’t you? I asked.
I’ll be of any assistance I can be. But give me a few hours to rest. Then I got the distinct feeling he was sleeping, or in a deep meditation—the closest to sleep that I’d ever felt from him.
“He said he’ll be of any assistance he can be,” I said. “But he needs a few hours of rest.”
Paul put down his coffee cup. “You’re telling me your father, Daniel Beckstrom, isn’t dead?” he asked.
Oh, right. He didn’t know that part. Neither did Nola. I looked over at her.
“He’s dead. But he’s a ghost.”
Nola’s eyes went wide.
“So you can talk to him?” Paul asked.
“Yes.”
“Is he here now?” Nola asked.
“Yes, Allie,” Collins prompted. “Is he?”
It was too late trying to keep this information away from Collins, and I didn’t want to keep it from Nola any longer. “He’s in my head. Someone tried to raise him from the grave and he’s kind of been possessing a part of my mind and body for a few months.”
Nola looked like she was about to cry. “Oh, Allie. I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged and managed a smile. “It wasn’t my idea for him to possess me, and it wasn’t his idea either. But in some ways it’s sort of worked out for the better. I think he’ll help us. Help us with Stone.”
“Oh, I’m sure he will at that,” Collins said over the edge of his coffee.
“It’s a good start,” Maeve said, giving Zayvion a wink.
A wink?
But before I could ask, she stood. “Do you think there’s any tea in that kitchen, Nola?”
“Yes, let me help you with that.” Nola looked like she needed a moment to pull herself together. It was sweet of Maeve to help her out. I think if I’d offered to go with her, she and I would just end up sitting on the floor crying. And I couldn’t do that. Yet.
They walked off and Paul got up to pace, working his knee to move more fluidly. His back looked like it was killing him. Plus, he was probably trying to swallow down the whole ghost-on-the-brain revelation.
“Before we go anywhere or do anything, or decide who’s going to try to cook up the cure,” Zay said, “I want a hot shower.” He plucked at his sweaty, bloody shirt. “And all the rest of you could all use a change of clothes too.”
“I’ll see if there’s anything here,” Davy said. “If not, I’ll hit up a thrift store.”
“I’ll help,” Sunny said.
He smiled, and they left the room, hand in hand.
“You,” Zay said. “Woman. Shower.” He heaved up off the couch, and I could tell it took everything he had to straighten. But he did straighten, and then sniffed, as if dismissing the pain.
“You don’t really think you can boss me around like that, do you?” I asked.
He licked his lips and I could see the sweat on his forehead. “Just wanted to make sure I’d caught your attention. Shower?”
I glanced around the room, my gaze lingering on Shame and Terric. “Do you think they’re going to wake up?”
“Not for a while. And if they do, everyone is here to look after them.” He started across the room. The hitch in his hip was worse. Bad enough he couldn’t cover it with his usual swagger.
I followed after him. I did want a shower and clean clothes.
Zay stepped into the bathroom, except it wasn’t a bathroom. It was a bedroom. A big bowl of popcorn waited on the nightstand with two cups of tea. That would be Maeve’s doing and must have been what all the winking was about. A flat-screen was paused on the opening credits of a movie.
“This isn’t the shower,” I said.
“No, it isn’t. That comes after this.”
“And what’s this?”
He started toward the huge bed, then reached up to pull off his shirt. He groaned and pulled it over his head, swearing under his breath.
And no wonder. He was covered in bruises and several shallow cuts that Dr. Tullis, or maybe one of the nurses, had cleaned and spread some kind of cream over. His right shoulder was noticeably swollen, and his left arm was burned down to his wrist. He wadded up the shirt and dropped it on the floor.
“This is what you and I are going to do for the next two hours.” He crawled across the patchwork quilt, snagging up three pillows on his way.
“Popcorn and a movie?” I asked.
“I believe that was the deal. When this was done, and we were still standing.”
“This isn’t done. We haven’t cured magic. All we’ve done is poured a bunch of magic—both light and dark, which is very dangerous together—in Stone, Unclosed a madman, put Cody’s soul back together, and dragged the rest of my friends into a fight that we almost lost.
“And we killed the head of Portland’s Authority. Again.”
“True,” he said. “We also sent Roman to give the Overseer word about what’s going on here, about Leander and Isabelle, did the world a service by removing Jingo Jingo from it, and possibly, for the first time in months, have a chance for the Authority to be working as it should. We’ll talk to your dad, Collins, and Violet soon. We’ll find a way to stop the sickness. But the world is going to wait for two hours. Two,” he said to my inhalation. “Because we’re still standing, aren’t we?”
He stretched his legs out with a g
runt, positioned the pillows behind his back and head, then gave me a smile. “Well, one of us is anyway.” He patted the side of the bed next to him. “Come here.”
I shook my head, but couldn’t hide my smile. “I can’t believe you.”
“How amazing I am?”
“This. All this. It’s ridiculous you remembered I wanted this.”
“Ridiculous? A man should always remember the important things.”
I strolled to the bed and crawled over the quilt to settle beside him. “I get only two pillows?”
“That was also the deal. Good pillows are mine,” he said. “But you can hold the popcorn.” He handed it to me and picked up the remote.
I settled beside him, leaning on his chest, not even needing a pillow. Zay was right. We all needed showers, fresh clothes, and more than four hours of sleep. Dad wasn’t responding, and Collins was half asleep over his coffee. We couldn’t do anything until we were rested.
In a few hours, by afternoon at the latest, we’d pull our plan of action together. Right now, we needed all the downtime we could get.
“So what are we watching?” I asked, stuffing popcorn in my mouth.
Zay had already hit play on the remote and was munching on a handful of popcorn. He pointed at the screen, which revealed a close-up of a bookshelf.
Bright yellow letters appeared.
“Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day?” I asked. “You have got to be joking.”
Zay chuckled. “I couldn’t believe Mrs. Stanley had it in her library. I guess she has a grandson who loves it.”
“We’re watching Winnie the Pooh?” I asked again.
“Shh. This is the good part.”
“Your idea of a romantic movie is Winnie the Pooh?”
“She didn’t have RoboCop.” He took another scoop of popcorn, chewed, and then as the music faded, he recited, right along with the narrator: “This could be the room of any small boy.”
I started laughing. “You do not have this movie memorized.”
“Of course I do. It’s a classic.”
We watched the entire thing, and Zayvion proved his attention to storybook detail by pointing out the differences between the book and the movie. The movie was nowhere near two hours long and after it, we were going to raid Mrs. Stanley’s other shows, but instead fell asleep.
I woke to a sudden cold numbing in my left palm.
Zayvion woke up too, and turned my hand, expecting, as I was expecting, to see a knife sticking out of it. But there was no knife there. Only the black mark, the seal of death Mikhail had left in my hand.
“Why is it hurting?” I asked. And then I knew—we knew. Someone was homing in on it to open a Gate.
We were off that bed in a flash, running to the living room.
Light. Sound. An explosion of magic tore through the room, tore through the house, shaking it on its foundation.
Thunder cracked and rolled.
The hot concrete and salt smell of a Gate opening burned my nose, my mouth, my lungs. This wasn’t any Gate. This was something huge, something more powerful than I’d ever seen before.
Ezekiel’s Hands, Dad said.
The Gate that could open across any distance, no matter how far. The Gate even Zayvion couldn’t cast. Opening here, in the center of an old church in St. Johns.
The explosion of light and sound blasted outward, then hammered inward, striking the center of the room with painful precision I could feel ringing down to my core.
Magic cut through the middle of the room, and a golden orb hovered in midair. An orb made of pure magic. Like a lock turning, the orb opened, spiraling wide like a flower blooming, spinning in flashes of magic that burned the air, the space, the reality of the place.
It melted through the distance between here and wherever it had been cast from, creating an archway that flickered, as magic welded the two spaces, the two great distances, together.
And through that doorway staggered a man.
Not just any man. Roman Grimshaw, the ex–Guardian of the gates.
He was bloody, burned, his coat missing. His exposed skin smoked and blistered as if he had bathed in acid. And as soon as he was through the gate, he was on his knees.
“Roman!” I said.
Zayvion and I rushed to him.
“They are coming,” he gasped.
We caught him in our arms. Maeve and Paul brought blankets and made a place for us to lay him down. We did so, propping up his head.
He was bleeding. Badly. From so many places, I couldn’t tell where I should apply pressure.
“Isabelle,” he whispered. “Leander.”
“How?” Zayvion asked.
“They have taken.” Roman inhaled, exhaled with far too little air, and far too much rattling in his lungs.
“Get the doctor!” I yelled.
Davy was already running down the hall to get him.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said. “Just rest.”
“Tell us,” Zayvion said. “How are Leander and Isabelle coming?”
“They possessed the Overseer,” he whispered. “Killed her. Raised her from the dead. And now they are her. And now they are…”
The doctor rushed in, and I got out of the way.
Zayvion didn’t move. “They’re what?” he asked. “What are Leander and Isabelle doing?”
Roman’s eyes unfocused. He had stopped moving. Every breath seemed more shallow than the last.
The doctor pulled his burned shirt aside and revealed a gaping wound. A deadly wound. I could see bone and muscle and veins and organs. And then Roman stopped breathing.
“Roman,” Zayvion said. “No.”
I watched as Roman stepped out of his own body. The ghost of Roman, the soul of him, the Veiled, since he had been a powerful magic user. A very powerful magic user. He looked like Roman, only unburned and sad-eyed.
“More’s the pity,” he rasped, his voice scratching at my mind, just as Shame’s voice had done.
“What are Leander and Isabelle doing, Roman?” I stood, faced him.
Zay looked up at me. The doctor and everyone else looked over at me too. At the crazy woman who could see magic and hear dead people.
Two pretty handy skills at the moment, thank you.
“They are coming to kill you, Allie. They are coming to kill Zayvion. They will eradicate the Soul Complements in this world. Starting with you. So they can rule magic. So they can rule the world.”
“How?” I said. “Are they using Gates? Are they coming now?”
“The possession of the Overseer has tired them. They cannot use magic yet. But they will, and once that is so, they will come for you. They will bend all the world, and all the minds they need, to destroy you. You, and Zayvion.”
“Just because we’re Soul Complements?” My heart was pounding. Pounding too fast.
“No. Because it is within you both to stop them. Here, on this hallowed ground. They know what you are, Allison Angel Beckstrom. They know what you have been made to be. And they mean to unmake you.”
“Do we have days?” I asked. “Hours?”
“Three days at the most. They will try the gates. If they are locked, they will try to travel by conventional means. I will give you all the time that I can.”
“How?” I asked.
Roman turned and walked into the gate that was still open in the middle of the room. He stood, arms to his side, stance set wide. Even though he was no longer alive, I could see pain wash over his face. He tipped his head down, bearing the pain and holding the Gate open, as if by sheer will alone.
I had ever seen only one other person, one other soul, stand like that in a gate. Cody’s spirit, when he had leaped into the gate, not to open it, but to hold it closed so that nothing could get through. And nothing had; not a single gate had opened until Cody finally stepped out, exhausted, and had been tied to Mama.
“You will know their weakness,” Roman said. “For it is their strength.”
And t
hen he spoke one hard word. The gate closed with a roar.
I stood there, shaking, sweating. Burning with cold. Roman was dead, the kind of dead you didn’t come back from. I could not bear to turn and see his bloody, lifeless body behind me.
But I did.
Zayvion was still on his knees, holding Roman’s hand even though the doctor had already leaned away and was no longer touching him. Zay bowed his head and whispered, “To keep magic safe, and the lives of the innocent. You have upheld your vows with honor. Safe journey, Guardian.” Then he folded Roman’s hands on his chest, and stood, the sorrow all too clear in his eyes.
“Hell of a way to wake a man,” Shame said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“Is it the end of the world already?” Terric whispered.
We all turned to look at them.
Collins, Dr. Tullis, and Maeve all rushed to their side.
I studied Shame’s face from where I stood. Too pale, too gaunt. There was a darkness to him that I had never seen before, as if a deep shadow covered him in a shroud. Then I looked at Terric, who was glossy with sweat and running a hell of a fever. He almost glowed with a silver white edging, as if there were light trapped inside him. They had changed. But they were alive.
“I didn’t expect you gentlemen to be awake,” the doctor said. “Not with the beating you took. And the blood loss, the magic overload, the… well, everything. This is a good sign.” He looked at Maeve, then Zayvion, then me. “A very good sign. Let me wash my hands.” He left to do so.
I glanced at Zayvion. The sorrow was still bare on his face.
“I’ll help you with Roman,” I said. “We can talk to Shame and Terric after the doctor’s checked on them.”
Zay nodded, and Paul came over to help. Then I spent the next few minutes trying not to think too hard about helping them pick up a dead man and take him to one of the back rooms. We lowered him onto a cot, where the nurse who had stayed the night drew a sheet over him, and told us she’d make a phone call.
No more waiting. No more resting. We had a lot to take care of and very little time to do it all. Leander and Isabelle were coming. And we were in no shape to stop them.