Magic at the Gate

  “Don’t worry about that right now. Just rest. You did a hell of a thing, Allie.” He stopped, as if searching for words, and finally just shook his head. “An impossible thing. It’s no wonder you’re Zayvion’s Soul Complement. Get some sleep. You’re safe here.”

  I was going to ask him what I was safe from, but by the time I thought to ask, he had shut the door behind him.

  Chapter Six

  I didn’t dream and I didn’t have nightmares. I did wake up in the middle of what may have been night or morning, having thought I heard Zayvion calling my name. But when I whispered his name in return, nothing but his deep breathing in the bed next to mine answered. I thought I felt a hand press on my forehead once and had a foggy recollection of finding my way to the bathroom, but mostly it was just deep, deep sleep.

  The inn was usually such a noisy place I always slept fitfully. Now it was quiet, as if someone had wrapped the room in wool. I reveled in it.

  When I finally woke, I savored the soft, warm blankets, the steady rhythm of Zayvion’s breathing, and tried to imagine I was at home, in my bed, with Zayvion’s arms around me.

  I wasn’t ready to open my eyes. Because I knew as soon as I did, all the things that were going wrong, all the pain and fear and disasters would crowd in, and I’d have to take care of them.

  What I wanted was a cup of coffee, something to eat, because damn, I was hungry, and a quiet place to catch my breath, even if for only a few minutes.

  “Mornin’, darlin’,” Shame said from somewhere on the other side of Zay’s bed. “Want coffee or a shower first?”

  I was sure I was going to say coffee, but the idea, the memory of warm water on my skin got a soft moan out of me.

  “I’d kill for a shower,” I mumbled into my pillow.

  “That sounded like shower.” I heard him shift and walk to the bathroom.

  The squeak of a handle and the rush of water against tile was enough for me to pull my head out from under the covers. I rested there, eyes still closed, wondering if I had the energy to make it all the way across the room.

  “Need a hand?” Shame asked from right next to me. Boy could be a quiet thing when he tried.

  I opened my eyes.

  Shame must have recently taken a shower; his dark hair was still wet, dripping down on the shoulders of his gray T-shirt. I don’t think I’d ever seen him in anything but black. Gray looked good on him, and so did the faded blue jeans. It helped to relieve the sallow green of his skin, and the engulfing blackness of his eyes. Sure, he still looked like the winner of a yearlong insomniac marathon, but Terric was right—stubborn and focused.

  “Hand?” he repeated. “Or do you think you can wander along on your own?”

  Right. Conversation. I might want to try some of that. “Maybe some help.”

  Turned out it took more than some help to get me to the shower. Sitting made me dizzy, but it passed quickly. Still, Shame didn’t take any chances. He tucked his arm around my waist and did most of the heavy lifting as I walked across the floor.

  Once in the bathroom, though, I had gotten the walking thing down. Plus, I really needed to pee, and did not want Shame’s help with that.

  “I’m good,” I said as I sat on the small bench along the wall.

  “Are you sure?”

  I patted the fluffy towel folded on the bench next to me. “I got it from here.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to get in the shower and then pass out or some such. How about if I help you get out of your clothes? I’m an expert in platonic undressings.” He gave me that wicked smile.

  “Give it a rest. I’m not going to strip naked in front of you, and I’d rather pee in private.”

  “Half the injuries in a home happen in the bathroom. What kind of friend would I be to let you face that kind of danger alone? I mean, sure, you walked out of death, but this is a shower.”

  “Shame. Get out of my bathroom.”

  He chuckled.“Oh, so that’s the way you show gratitude—and me the person who’s loaning you a bed, I might add.”

  “It’s your mom’s place. She’s loaning me the bed.”

  “Details,” he said, waving his hand. “I’ll be outside the door if you need anything.”

  “You mean so you can laugh at me if I fall.”

  “That too.”

  He finally left the room, shut the door, and left me to my business. I used the toilet, then got out of my shirt and sweatpants. I wasn’t wearing a bra, and didn’t recognize my panties.

  That, let me tell you, is a strange feeling. But since Maeve had a knack for attracting wounded magic users—or maybe just me—I had to assume she kept some basic supplies on hand.

  I shivered in pleasure as the water caressed my skin and washed away the sweat, dirt, and stink that clung to me. My thoughts drifted to death, to my time there, which felt like a foggy dream, but clear enough I remembered what had happened and what I had done. With the cold emptiness in my chest, how could I forget?

  I opened my left hand and tipped my palm so the light could catch it, looking for the mark Mikhail had left in me.

  A smudge, like the slightest silver against my palm, formed a circle. The lines of my hand cut a perfect X through it. It didn’t hurt, didn’t impede movement. Without the silver sheen, it might not even have been noticeable.

  But I knew it was dark magic. A part of Mikhail. A guarantee. Maybe more than that. I’d have to ask one of my teachers—Maeve or Victor or Jingo Jingo—what they thought about it.

  Jingo.

  Like a car kicking from neutral to fourth gear, all the events of the last few days, weeks, rushed through me. We had been in the middle of a battle, in the middle of a wild-magic storm, when I stepped through the gate to death. I had a lot of catching up to do.

  I made quick work of washing. I didn’t look for new scars, didn’t care that the black bars on my left elbow, wrist, and knuckles looked sort of silvery-gray. Didn’t take the time to see if the ribbons of color on my hand and arm had changed.

  Getting Zayvion’s soul out of death was the only thing I’d been thinking about. But there was so much more going on. So much more going wrong.

  I turned off the water, toweled, and found a soft white terry-cloth robe on the back of the door to shrug into. I rubbed my head with the towel one more time, then had to sit to catch my breath.

  I wasn’t all well yet, but I was getting better. Food would do me wonders.

  I heard a knock at the main room’s door, and Shame answering it. Then clacking sounds like dishes on a cart.

  Food.

  I brushed my hair, used a toothbrush, and opened the door.

  Shame sat in the chair on the far side of Zay’s bed, near the curtained window. In the shadowy corner, there was a strange pinkish glow on Shame’s shirt—right in the middle of his chest. I’d seen that same glow when he was drawing on magic. I stopped in the doorway to the bathroom, one hand on the doorjamb to keep me steady.

  “Ready to eat something?” he asked.

  “Why are you glowing?”

  “I’m happy?”

  I stopped staring at his chest and met his gaze. “Your chest is glowing.”

  “Did death completely kill your appreciation for sarcasm?” He shoved up onto his feet, pressing both palms against his knees to do so. “Because you used to get my jokes.”

  The glow moved with him. It definitely wasn’t from an outside source. Something was glowing under his shirt.

  He sighed and stared up at the ceiling, his hands slack beside him. “Would you just stop with the deer-in-the-headlights thing and sit already?” He tipped his head down. “I promised my mum I’d see that you ate before she came by to see you.”

  I heard what Shame was saying, but my mind was stuck on what I suspected that glow to be.

  “Lift up your shirt,” I whispered.

  “Here? In front of your boyfriend? Naughty.”

  “I need to see.”

  Shame tucked his fingers under the
edge of his shirt and lifted.

  His skin was pale, freckled, his stomach flat and muscular, with a couple scars, one that looked like he’d had his appendix out, others that were from knives, or broken glass or maybe teeth.

  In the center of his chest dead-square in his sternum was a rose-colored crystal. It was as if someone had implanted a jewel the size of a quarter into his skin. And that jewel was glowing.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  Shame dropped the T-shirt back in place and walked over to me. “That is the crystal Terric used to save my life. The spell he cast clashed with the wild-magic storm. We think.”

  He took my elbow and got me moving, across the room to the bed, where a tray was set with food for me. “The crystal sort of melted until a thumb-sized disk was left and when Terric completed the spell, the crystal grafted itself into me. I fucking sparkle.”

  “You hate that, don’t you?”

  “You have no idea.”

  I climbed into the bed and Shame waited while I pulled the covers back over my feet before swiveling the tray over my lap.

  “Do you remember much about the fight?” He strolled across the room and brought the chair around between the two beds.

  “I think so.” My tray had breakfast on it. Oatmeal, eggs, apple juice, toast, and a cup of coffee.

  “Terric told me you threw him that crystal—the one you found at the labs when you were Hounding for Stotts to find out who stole all the disks.”

  I nodded. I remembered that too. I took a sip of coffee. Rich, black, hot, it burned all the way down to my stomach. I followed that up with a scoop of oatmeal—cut oats sweetened with a little brown sugar and orange marmalade. Best. Oatmeal. Ever. If someone told me it was poisoned, I’d still eat it.

  “Terric,” Shame said, “has apparently been doing a hell of a lot of studying since he and I used to be on talking terms. Took up some of the medical side of spell casting, trying to build his ability to endure Blood magic and Death magic. He’s a Closer, right? So his specialty should be Faith magic, but no, he’s still studying them all. Crazy git.

  “Whatever. The outcome is he bound the crystal to me and got Blood magic mixed up in it too. It’s not supposed to work that way. I mean, I’ve never seen a crystal like this, and I don’t know what your da did to it, but it connected to me. Maybe because I was pulling Death magic like a freakin’ fiend and was starving for a transfer of energy—any energy.” He rubbed his hand over his hair, dragging his ring finger and thumb through his bangs to pull them back from his face.

  “I don’t know. Neither do the doctors. Right now we know it worked—it kept me from dying. And the side effects aren’t more than I can handle, so . . . ” He shrugged.

  It was a lot to take in. I moved on to my toast and eggs and demolished the eggs in short order. “Side effects?”

  “Like the wrist cuffs we use, but stronger.”

  “The crystal tells you where people are?”

  “Just Terric. I know where Terric is. Always where Terric is. And I know what he’s feeling.”

  He watched me, waiting. Shame told me once that he had nearly killed Terric with magic. Most people in the Authority believed Shame had been under the control of a Hunger—one of the creatures from death—when it happened. Shame believed that he alone had nearly killed his friend. And the only reason Terric had survived that attack was that Shame’s and Terric’s magic blended. Like Soul Complements.

  But Shame refused the test to find out if he and Terric were meant to be Soul Complements, meant to use magic together, were meant to spend a lifetime together. He told me he owed Terric that much—the certainty that Shame wouldn’t try to kill him again.

  Now that I knew about Leander and Isabelle, I understood his hesitation better.

  The damage to Terric had been severe enough that he lost the chance of ever becoming a guardian of the gate. He’d moved to Seattle and, if I had the story right, hadn’t been back here to see Shame, or Zay, until a few weeks ago.

  So I understood that being connected to Terric wasn’t Shame’s idea of a good thing.

  “Does Terric feel you too?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Huh.”

  “I tell you I have a magic stone implanted in my chest that ties me to the one man I most want to be untied from and all you give me is a ‘huh’? Where’s the love, Beckstrom?”

  I drank the last of my coffee, then frowned at my empty cup. “Here’s the love: I’m glad you’re alive.”

  “Well, that’s something at least.”

  “Dad told me he grew glyphs into the crystal,” I said, digging back into my memory. “He was pretty proud about that. Maybe whatever spell he grew in it is part of what made the crystal connect to you. I don’t know anything else about it, except he said he found the crystal in St. Johns.”

  “I’m sure the doctor will be happy to hear that. Or a geologist.” He wove his fingers together and propped them against his mouth, elbows resting on his thighs. “So. Want to tell me why your soul magic’s gone?”

  I swallowed the last of the toast. What was it about Shame? When he looked at me like that, like he could see all the way into my soul and find it lacking, which apparently, he just had, all I wanted to do was cry.

  “I had to pay a price,” I said, my voice steady, flat. There were so many emotions crowding my heart that none of them could rise to the surface. “I had to get Zay’s soul back.”

  “And your magic was the price, then?”

  I nodded. “How long have you known?”

  “That you had a small magic in you? Since the first day you tested with Mum and me. The thing with you carrying magic in your body is unheard of, but when Mum pushed you past using that, you drew on the small flame inside you. That’s crazy-rare.”

  “And now it’s extinct.”

  I pushed the tray away but held on to my cup. “Could I have more coffee?” I really didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want someone else looking at my wounds, my lack, my deformity.

  “It’s amazing, what you do, what you endure. Have I told you that?”

  I shook my head and my hair swung forward to hide the right side of my face. I didn’t think it was amazing when you had no choice but to endure the consequences of your own stupid decisions. “Is Zay really going to wake up?”

  Shame rocked forward and took my coffee cup and hand.

  I lifted my gaze.

  “Yes. His soul is back. He’s strong. And he has someone to wake up for. You. Z’s a smart man. He isn’t about to give up on what the two of you have. Now”—he pulled the cup out of my hand and strolled over to a carafe I hadn’t noticed on the dresser—“I’m going to fill you in on a few things. Mum wanted to be the one to talk to you, but she’s not here right now, and I’m not the patient sort.”

  “Is she okay?” The memories of the fight flashed behind my eyes again. “I don’t know who was badly hurt, I don’t know how the fight ended.” Memories tumbled faster and faster and my mouth couldn’t keep up.

  Sweet hells, what was wrong with me? I felt so out of step with myself, with everything.

  My hands shook, and tears hovered just behind my eyes again. “I don’t even know what day it is. How long have I been . . . ”

  “Dead?” He turned, the coffee in his hand, a smile on his lips. “Let’s start there. We didn’t think you were going to come out of that, you know. There’s not a single historical footnote indicating survival. People can’t just stroll over into death, easy as you please. Those who do never come strolling home again.

  “You, my dear lass, are either very lucky or very strong. And if you ever try to do that again, I will break your damn legs.”

  He handed me the coffee and sat in the chair.

  “You were in death, Allie. The real deal. You were dead. And now you’re alive. That’s a bloody miracle.”

  “Yay?” I said. It came out kind of small and breathy and Shame just shook his head.

  “The storm
,” he continued, “hit eleven days ago. Detective Stotts brought you here three days ago. You’ve been sleeping most of that time. Despite the fact that there’s no logical reason you should be alive, you are healthy. With enough rest, the doctor thinks you’ll be making a full recovery. Not that any of us know how you did it.”

  I took a sip of coffee, trying to get my head around losing a week of my life. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all that hard. I’d had a lot of practice with such things.

  “My dad,” I said. “He was there, with me. Told me how I could breathe, how I could survive.” I stared at the wall, remembering the mutated Veiled, and the city of death, the pillar and Mikhail.

  “Do you remember it?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Is my notebook around here somewhere?” I asked. “I want to write it down in case I forget.”

  “Don’t know where your book is. But I can get you something to write in.” He walked over to the dresser again, dug in the top drawer, and pulled out a pen and scratch pad. “Good enough?” he asked, holding up both.

  “Yes. Thanks.” The coffee was doing me some good, or maybe it was the food. Whatever it was, I felt a little better.

  I took a solid five minutes writing down everything I could remember in my quick shorthand.

  “What was it like?” Shame finally asked when I stopped writing.

  “It was a city. A broken city that looked a little like Portland. But no angels, no flames. It wasn’t what I thought death would be.” I picked up an orange slice on the tray and ate it.

  “We ended up at a massive treelike structure. Only it wasn’t a tree. Dad said it was the pillar of Death magic. He said it’s like the wells and holds the magic in death. Inside that was where we found Zayvion. The details are sort of fuzzy.”

  “Through the eyes of the living, only death’s mask can be seen.”

  “Poetry?” I asked, going for a second slice of orange.

  “It’s from the old texts. Death magic. Means only the dead can see death for what it really is. The living mind can’t interpret what it’s seeing, so it supplies its own images.”