Magic Without Mercy

  I switched the black out for a pair of thin wire-rimmed oval glasses. “Yes?”

  He tipped his head, finally nodded. “Yes. Mum?”

  She was going through the closet and glanced over her shoulder. “Those will do nicely,” she said. “Now leave us, Shamus. We’re taking your clothes.”

  “The very shirt off my back.” He shook his head. “I’d say that’s worth at least one hundred percent of reliable, wouldn’t you? Far more reliable than Terric.”

  “The clothes aren’t yours, are they?” I asked.

  “Nope. So help yourself.” He left the room and Maeve pulled out pieces for me.

  “Keep your jeans; they’ll be the most comfortable for you. But you’ll need to do something other than that tank top. No hats, no sunglasses, no gloves. No one wears those things day and night unless they’re trying to hide. And that’s what the police, and the Authority, will be looking for. You’ll be best to hide in plain sight. That means departing from your regular style, but not covering up so much that people try to see the person behind the disguise.”

  “But I like sweaters and jeans.”

  She pulled out a man’s button-down shirt that looked like it would fit Zayvion, not Shame, and then a tailored jacket.

  “Kind of masculine,” I noted.

  “Which might be a good idea,” she said. “Try this on.” She handed the ensemble to me—and I took off the gun holster, then pulled the shirt over my tank top and buttoned it up.

  “Not the jacket, unless I’m not wearing a coat, and I want a coat,” I said as I shrugged back into the holster.

  “All right, how about this?” She pulled a long camel-colored wool trench out of the closet. Built for a man, it didn’t look too long for me, which was good. But I spotted something in the closet I liked even more. “How about the other coat?”

  Maeve reached back in the closet. “You mean this?”

  She retrieved a black leather jacket. It was meant to sit on the waist, and when I shrugged into it, it hit me right above my belt line. It was zippered from cuff to elbow, wide at the collar with nickel-colored studs punching a line down one side and around the waistband. I zipped the jacket and ruffed up my hair a little. Maeve handed me a long, bloodred scarf that I wrapped around my neck a couple times.

  A different person stared back at me from the full-length mirror beside the closet. Still tall, but the biker’s jacket made me look heavier and wider-shouldered than I really was. The bulk of the coat squared off any womanly curves I might possess, yet wasn’t so huge that it looked like I was wearing my big brother’s clothes.

  But it was the short, spiky hair and glasses that made the biggest change. I looked a little harder edged, tough, maybe just a bit mannish. Looked like maybe I should take up smoking, get into brawls, and carry a gun.

  Right. I already did two of those things.

  “This is good, I think,” I said. “Thanks. Are you going to change what you’re wearing?”

  “No. If any of the rest of us changes our looks—well, except perhaps Zayvion—we would just tip them off that we’re trying to hide or run. This will help you fade on the streets in case the police are out there. And you’ll need to do something about the marks on your hands.”

  I glanced at my right hand and the whorls of magic that flowed there like multicolored strands of ribbon, and my left, which was ringed at the knuckles and wrist with black. “You said no gloves.”

  “Maybe cover makeup?” Maeve suggested.

  “No,” I said. “The sleeves are long enough to hide most of my hands anyway. This is enough.” I stared at my reflection that did not look like me. “This is more than enough.”

  “Wait,” Maeve said. “Here.” She tugged something out of a shoe box. “Now, this is enough.”

  She handed me a pair of fingerless driving gloves. Black leather to match the coat. Very nice. I smiled and slipped them on.

  “Perfect,” she said.

  And I agreed.

  We walked back out into the living room.

  Roman was still standing in the center of the room. Terric was pacing. I didn’t know what everyone was waiting around for.

  “Are we ready?” I asked.

  They all looked over at me. And just kept staring.

  “I think everyone remembers what they need to do,” I said, heading for the weapons out on the coffee table. I wanted at least a few long knives to go with the bullets in my pockets.

  “And when we get our jobs done,” I continued as I looked through the available blades, “we’ll check back in with the Pooh Bear code.”

  No one said anything. Finally Zayvion spoke. “Allie?”

  I glanced up. The expression on his face wasn’t quite shock. It wasn’t confusion either. More like a startled wonderment.

  “Yes?”

  “You look… different.”

  “That’s the idea,” I said, not sure quite how to take that. “So are you ready, Roman?” I asked.

  “Have been so for many, many years.”

  I finished looking through knives and just took the closest ones I could reach. Truth was, I was so rattled about everything we were about to try, all the things we were about to do, separate from one another, that I didn’t even care which knife I was sticking in my belt.

  I loaded up with blades, then walked back toward the kitchen, putting as much space between me and Roman’s magic casting as I could.

  Roman paced the room in a circle and everyone else took a clue from me and moved back to give him space. He was chanting a string of words over and over, and when he had finished hitting the four compass points, he spread his stance, and began tracing the spell with wide, Tai Chi–type movements for whichever Gate he was going to use.

  Zayvion had strolled over to stand so close his shoulder pressed against mine. “This new look,” he said quietly.

  “Mmm?”

  He shifted so he could run his fingers through the back of my hair and gently brush my bare neck. He slid his thumb over the curve of my jaw and edge of my ear. The warmth of his fingers lingered and sent shivers across my skin.

  “Hot,” he murmured.

  It had been a long time since he and I had been alone together. I suddenly wished I’d spent last night doing something other than sweating through nightmares.

  “You think?” I asked quietly.

  “I think.” His hand slipped down across my back and then rested on my butt, tugging me closer to him.

  I smiled and leaned into him for a moment. But as soon as Roman stopped chanting, Zayvion pulled away so both of his hands were free to cast magic, if needed. He traced a basic Shield spell but didn’t pour any magic into it. I could feel concern roll off him like a wave of heat.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not going to pass out from that.” I nodded toward Roman. Magic was making me sick, but being this far away from the massive spell Roman was casting should be enough for me not to feel the effects.

  “Didn’t think you were,” Zay said. “I just know that Gates open on both ends. Two-way door.”

  It took me a second to think that through. Then I got it. Even if Roman managed to open the Gate exactly where he wanted it to open, there was still a chance something on the other side could use it to step through to this side.

  And if I were the Authority, I’d have my goons ready to jump at any possibly suspicious Gate opening in the world.

  Magic rose to Roman’s call, spears of light that flashed inward from the frame worked in the building’s walls and ceiling. I’d lived in a lot of apartments that were poorly plumbed for magic flow, but this place looked like the walls and ceiling—the entire building—had been designed to channel magic.

  Maybe that was why it was bolted to the side of a cliff.

  It was, Dad said quietly in my mind. For a time, it was de rigueur to have your home as a focal and channel for magic. Then it was outlawed.

  The stench of rot filled the room, but I was the only one who smelled magic li
ke that. I covered my nose and mouth with the sleeve of the jacket and smelled the slightly sagey scent of the soap used to clean it.

  Roman coaxed the spears of light into a single wrapped column that stretched from the ceiling to the floor and sent out runners of silver and white light.

  But he wasn’t done yet. He took the stance that I’d seen Zayvion and Victor use so often, a sort of bent-knee thing, and then painted the glyphs in the air to shape the magic he had called, like a blacksmith bending magic to shape on an anvil.

  It was not the way magic was usually cast. Everyone cast glyph first, magic second, but not, apparently, Roman.

  “Which Gate is it?” I asked Zayvion, who managed to hear me through the muffle of the sleeve.

  He flexed his hands in a quick pattern—Sight, I realized. Oh, right. I was the only one who could see magic with my bare eyes.

  “Salaria,” he said as he dropped the Sight spell.

  Roman finished casting the Gate and a flash of light—this time magic crossing over to the visible spectrum—filled the room. I could see a sandstone wall on the other side, and cobblestones. Wherever he had decided to open the Gate, it appeared to be an alley in shadows.

  Without a backward glance, Roman stepped through, and the Gate closed behind him in a rush of hot air and salt and rot.

  I coughed and tried hard not to gag up breakfast. “Let’s go, people,” I said.

  We gathered our things, and headed down two flights of stairs to the bottom floor of the house. This floor had a separate address, and didn’t look nearly as well furnished as the upper floor. Which was smart since this was the only floor people could possibly look into.

  It was built facing the back side of a small gas station. Which reminded me.

  We had a problem—transportation.

  “How are we going to swing this?” I asked as we walked toward Terric’s van.

  “I’ll loan you my car,” Terric said. “You won’t want to use Shame’s or Zayvion’s right now. Then I’ll take Maeve and Hayden off to the inn. Hayden, your car’s there, right?”

  “It is,” he said.

  “Leave me at the inn,” Victor said. “I’ll take a cab to my house, and get my car there.”

  I thought that over for a minute, wondering if we were doing the smart thing to split up like this. What I really wanted to do was to rent some cars, or steal some cars, but neither of those ideas was good either.

  “Just be careful, okay?”

  “Allie,” Victor said, climbing into the van, “we will.” That was his stop-worrying voice. Since there was no chance I’d stop worrying, I did the next best thing. I closed my mouth and got into the car.

  Chapter Four

  Terric dropped Zayvion, Shame, and me off at his car first, which was conveniently parked and covered by an Illusion on the north side of town. One thing I’d noticed during the drive was the lack of people out on the street. Usually any ray of sunny weather brought everyone outside. But not today. The epidemic had people spooked. They were staying inside, staying home, if they could. But the walls of buildings couldn’t keep the Veiled from finding them, eventually. And I’d seen a lot of Veiled wandering the empty streets.

  “Wait,” I said as Shame got out of the van. “You’re not coming with us, are you?”

  “Of course I am,” he said. “Where did you think I’d go? With Terric?”

  “With your mother maybe?” I said.

  “Hayden’s with her. They know how to stay out of danger. I don’t want to send you two all the way out to Multnomah Falls to the Life well without… firepower.” He shut the van door. Zayvion walked around the vehicle and took a minute to talk to Terric.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “You can’t use magic, Beckstrom. That means it’s Zayvion, and you and your weapons—which you don’t want to use—against whatever the Authority has set up at the Life well to protect their interests.”

  I rubbed my eyes and ran into the glasses there, leaving a nice fat fingerprint smudge in the middle of the lens. I was so not used to the new me.

  The van pulled away, and Zayvion strolled toward Terric’s car.

  “We don’t even know if the Authority has someone calling the shots yet,” I said. “Much less if they are putting protection around the wells.”

  “We don’t know they aren’t,” Zay said.

  He was already opening the car doors. He wasn’t wearing the beanie anymore, and had put on a pair of sunglasses and a very nice leather trench coat that I wish I would have noticed before Maeve gave me the biker jacket.

  Since Zayvion made a point of looking homeless most of the time, this sort of classy urban style was probably the best disguise for him, though I thought all that leather made him look a little too good.

  “Let’s go,” he said, getting into the driver’s seat.

  I took front. Shame slid into the back. “Stinks in here,” he said.

  I took a careful sniff. It didn’t smell like magic, which was fine by me. But it did have the slight scent of Terric’s cologne.

  “Are you sure we should use Terric’s car?” I asked. “Won’t the Authority be looking for it?”

  “We switched the plates,” Shame said.

  “When?”

  “Last night when you were not sleeping.” He stretched out in the backseat and rested the back of his head against the window. “I’m closing my eyes for the drive. Wake me up if we’re going to die.”

  Zayvion drove, keeping to the speed limit, and using his blinkers, which I was happy about. Didn’t want a random traffic infraction to tip us off. This neighborhood was as noticeably unpeopled as the others we’d driven through, but that didn’t mean there weren’t police still on duty.

  About five minutes into the drive, before we’d even managed to head east toward the falls, Shame was softly snoring.

  So much for firepower. He still hadn’t recovered from the last few days. None of us had. But Shame had been forcibly possessed by Mikhail and nearly killed. If we weren’t running for our lives, I’d suggest he get about a month of bed rest.

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?” I asked softly so as not to wake Shame.

  Zayvion drove for a bit, not answering me.

  “Zay?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know, Allie. He’s stubborn. But he can be stupid about… everything, really. The odds of all of us surviving aren’t good. His odds?” He drove for a bit, the muscle at the edge of his jaw tight.

  “We’ll find a way,” I said. “We’ll fix this, make magic right again, make Portland safe again. It’s not too late to turn this mess around.”

  He glanced at me, and even through the dark tint of his sunglasses I could see the burn of gold in his eyes. “Who are you trying to convince? Me or you?”

  “Me,” I said honestly. “I want things right again. I want Shame to get well. I want to watch my baby brother grow up. Hell, I want to have enough damn time to eat popcorn and watch a movie with you on the couch, or cook a dinner together, or argue over who gets to use the best pillow in bed.” I stopped, worried I’d say more. Worried I’d tell how much I really wanted, needed, to think he and I might have a life—a normal life—together.

  “We’ll find a way to make things right,” he said. “But we won’t argue over the best pillow. That bad boy’s mine.”

  I leaned my head on the headrest and looked over at him. That bittersweet longing filled me and I wondered how I just kept falling deeper in love with the man.

  “Pillow hog,” I said.

  “A man has needs.”

  “Do you think they’ll have guards on the well?” I asked.

  “I would.”

  “What if we don’t make it to the well?” I asked quietly. “What if we can’t tell whether it’s poisoned—what if we don’t know how to clean the magic in the cisterns and the network? What if the Veiled take over the city and kill everyone? Davy, Violet, my baby brother? What if we fail, Zay?”

  “Roman will get word
to the Overseer. And hands, better hands than ours, will take up weapons and take up the fight. We’ll win this, Allie. Whether or not we’re standing by the end of it.”

  I reached over, put my hand on his thigh. “I’d like to be standing by the end of this.”

  “You will be,” he said. “Popcorn and a movie, remember?”

  “Are you saying that for me or for you?”

  A very small smile ghosted his lips. “Both. But I get to pick the movie. Also, I promised I’d keep this city safe. And that’s exactly what I intend to do. Starting with you, starting right now.”

  “What? Safe driving and me whining is going to save the city?”

  “No. You’re going to get some sleep. We have about a half hour before we get there.”

  “I can’t sleep,” I said. But a yawn broke my oh-so-convincing lie.

  “You’d sleep if I cast a Sleep spell on you.”

  “Yes, and then I’d be barfing in your car.”

  “It’s not mine; it’s Terric’s.”

  “All right. Barfing in Terric’s car.”

  “Not going to sing you a lullaby,” he said.

  “No? Not even a Winnie-the-Pooh song?”

  “Look at you with the funny,” he said. “Wonder what movie I’m going to pick now. Rollerball? RoboCop? Platoon?”

  “Okay, fine, fine.” I shifted in my seat and leaned against the car door, tucking up one of my legs, and pillowing my head with the scarf. “I liked RoboCop.” Then, a minute or so later, “Does my hair look stupid?”

  “No. It looks like I should strip you naked and ravage your body until you beg me for mercy.”

  “You always say the sweetest things,” I murmured. “Zay?”

  “Mmm?”

  “In case this all goes to hell… I love you.”

  “Even if things don’t go to hell, I love you too.”

  “Allie?” Zayvion said. “We’re almost there.”

  I took a deeper breath and realized I’d been asleep. The dreamless kind of sleep, which was my favorite. I sat up and rubbed at the kink in my neck, trying to get my bearings. “Everything quiet?”

  “You mean Shame?”