Magic surrounded Stone. And changed him.
At the distant edge of Zay’s awareness, I knew Shame and Terric had thrown up a Shield to protect us from Leander and Isabelle’s attacks.
A blast rocked the air.
Shame and Terric fell, bloody, unconscious, the Shield they had cast broken.
“Die!” Leander and Isabelle’s word carried our end.
Zay yelled.
My hold on him slipped.
I was pulled, dragged away from Zay and toward my dead body.
Then the world didn’t just slow. It stopped.
Zay didn’t move. I didn’t move. Leander and Isabelle didn’t move. Not even the wind or the river beyond the park moved. The only thing that moved was Stone.
Stone glowed with dark and light magic that pulsed through the glyphs carved into him. Those glyphs moved, as if forming the language of a spell I had never read before. As each glyph found a new place on his body, the spell formed and reshaped him, changed him. His body shifted like blocks being restacked.
Until it was not Stone, not a gargoyle at all standing there. Until it was my father standing there. My father, made of stone and magic and death.
He was taller than I remembered, the stone body offering him no color other than the shadows of magic that slipped over his face, his shoulders, his hands.
Jingo Jingo had asked Dad where the simulacrum was. Dad had said there wasn’t one.
He lied. Stone was the simulacrum. A vessel my father had commissioned Cody to carve for his soul years ago. A plan he had in place for his death. For this.
This is what Cody made Stone for. It was why Stone had so many glyphs on him. Why Stone could hold dark and light magic, why Stone was an Animate, alive.
He was made to become a body for my father’s undead soul.
Dad had always told me he wanted two things: for magic to be in the right hands, and immortality.
By the right hands, he meant his own.
And by immortality, he meant this. A body made of rock and powered by magic would never die. Especially since it wasn’t alive to begin with.
Dad took a step toward Leander and Isabelle, who were frozen still. The earth shook.
“You,” Dad said in a deep voice amplified by magic, “are done now. Magic is not yours. Has never been yours to rule. So the Authority decreed in ancient times. So they paid the price with their lives to break magic so that it would hold you apart and banish you to death. Your refusal of death, your refusal to bow to the sentence given to you for killing so many, will now be your end.
“If death will not stop your hunger to rule, then you will pay the price of bringing magic back together again, just as the ancient Authority members paid the price to break it apart.”
Dad lifted his hands, one to the sky, one to the ground. And called on magic.
Light and dark magic answered his call. For a moment, he stood there, holding the two halves of magic in his hands, light in one, dark in the other.
Then he joined his hands together.
A bolt of magic sliced through the air like a blade, taking off her head.
The Overseer fell, lifeless.
But Leander and Isabelle stood in her place. They weren’t completely solid, just enough to still look human. I could see the color of Leander’s eyes—hazel—and Isabelle’s hair—honey gold. I could see their anger, their fury twisting their features into hatred.
Whatever Dad had cast on the world, this huge stillness, held them frozen. They couldn’t even cry out as he slung a bolt of light magic at them again, this time a hook that dragged them toward him.
“Such foolish, foolish souls,” Dad said. “Did you really think you could cross me and win? Did you really think I would allow you to kill the woman I loved and let you walk free? I am not a man who gives mercy willingly. Not before you tried to destroy me. And certainly not after. There is no price I am not willing to pay to see you destroyed, body and soul.”
He spoke a word and a Proxy spell spun in the air then burned a brand into both Leander and Isabelle. They opened their mouths to scream, but I could hear no sound.
“Pay for your sins against me. Pay for your sins against mankind.”
Dad clapped his hands together again and Leander and Isabelle writhed in agony. Dark and light magic joined in Dad’s hands. Not clashing, not burning, not exploding.
No one could hold dark magic for long. Guardians of the gate trained long years to be able to use dark and light magic together for just the briefest spells.
But Dad pulled on another magic. The soft pink magic of St. Johns, pure, untouched. It poured up out of the earth, and wrapped around the magic he held in his hands, just like the pure magic from the disks had wrapped around the dark and light magic held in Stone.
With the healing magic of St. Johns, dark and light magic meshed together, magnet to steel.
A bell tone, louder than thunder, deep as the roots of reality, rang out. Leander and Isabelle screamed. Dad’s voice rolled heavy, sharp across my mind, burning with power.
The world seemed to turn inside out as dark and light magic joined.
Dad had told me it would take a Focal, a person who could withstand the punishment, and pay the massive price, to join light and dark magic again.
Looked like a dead man in a stone body made just for this reason was a perfect Focal.
And the spirits of two dead Soul Complements were just what he needed to pay the price.
I’m sure that was in his plans too.
Time began again.
We fell, Zay and I.
I don’t remember hitting the ground. One moment I was falling with Zayvion, the next, Zayvion was pushing up onto his knees. I stood beside him, my dead body on the ground behind me.
“Allie,” Zay panted.
“I’m here,” I said, but he couldn’t hear me.
Oh, this wasn’t going to end well. Not at all the way either of us had hoped for.
I turned and looked at Dad. He was…amazing, I suppose. Filled with magic, both light and dark, a Focal for magic to rejoin again. He used magic as easily as breathing while Leander and Isabelle’s souls writhed in pain, paying the price for that magic.
He cast a spell over St. Johns and the buildings became just buildings again. The sky was blue, the world looking a lot more like it should.
I could sense him closing the wells again and opening the cisterns. I could feel him making sure the attackers in the city had no access to magic, so that the fight was now over. I was a little surprised by all that. I’d never thought putting all magic, both dark and light, in my father’s hands would mean his first thoughts would be toward helping others.
“Hello, Angel,” Dad said beside me.
Not the dad who was casting magic in his immortal simulacrum body.
My dad’s ghost. Younger Dad, whom I’d only seen in death, was standing right there beside me.
“Hey,” I said, realizing he was here to take me into death with him. “What happens now?”
“Now, you hold this, while I go talk to my living self.” He held something out for me.
A pink rose, glowing softly. I knew that rose. It was the small magic I had always held inside me. The small magic I’d given to Mikhale so that Zayvion’s soul could escape death. So that Zay could live.
“I won’t take it if it means Zay will die.”
“That’s not what it means.” He glanced at Zayvion, who was frozen in place again. Concern darkened Dad’s face.
“Your agreement with Mikhale has been fulfilled. This magic never belonged in death, or to Sedra anyway.”
I didn’t know if I should take it. I had never trusted Dad much, old or young. And the one time I did—this time—well, look at him. He’d gone megalomaniac, taken over all of magic, and killed me and my gargoyle in the process.
Not a great track record for the whole trust thing.
“Here, now,” he said. “I really do need to talk to myself.”
&nb
sp; I took the rose. It was soft and warm, and gave off just the faintest perfume.
Dead Dad walked over to living Dad.
“Daniel,” he said.
Living Dad looked down at him and arched his eyebrows. “Ah, you are here. As it should be. Join with me.” He held his hand out.
Dead Dad shook his head. “If I join with you, we will hold all magic.”
“Yes?”
“It is believed that whoever becomes the Focal of magic, to bring it fully together, darkness and light, will change magic in some way. Leander and Isabelle wanted power and destruction. Even when they were alive, that is what they sought. If they were allowed to join magic and rule over it, it would be a very dark world they created.”
“Yes.”
“We want that too.”
“Not destruction,” Living Dad said. “And ultimately, not a dark world. We would create, build. Of course it would be different. Efficient. Magic would be parceled out, controlled. The world would become a fine-tuned network of magic. A great machine.”
“We would destroy. You know it is true.” He smiled ruefully. “We are an ambitious man. A vengeful man. We do not compromise well.”
“Don’t lecture me on our qualities.”
“Daniel,” Dead Dad said. “We have already made our choice. Years ago. To sacrifice our life for those we love.”
“I have sacrificed nothing.”
“We have sacrificed our soul. It is the reason we dwell in life and death, parted.” He pointed to his own chest. “It is why there are two of us.”
“That was only temporary. Until I could join dark and light magic again,” Living Dad said. “And join my living and dead selves.”
“Our time is done.”
“No.”
“Then you will remain, however long the Animate can sustain you, among the living with half a soul. I will not join you. Not in life.”
“Why would you deny life? Our life? Our immortality?” He actually seemed puzzled.
“Immortality is not enough reward for our daughter’s life.”
Living Dad looked over at where I stood, all ghosty and insubstantial, the pink rose in my hand, next to my unbreathing body.
Something changed in his cool marble face.
“I…” He hesitated, unable to look away from me. It was the first time in my life I had seen my father doubt.
“There is no one else who can hold magic together,” Living Dad said. “If I let go now, Leander and Isabelle will rise again. Magic will return to being broken, dark and light. And they will pick it up. They will rule.
“I will not allow that. No one else can survive becoming the Focal long enough to hold magic together, to mend it. I cannot hold it for long, joined without you. Without my whole soul healed.”
“I’ll do it,” Cody said, stepping up on the other side of my prone body.
“Cody,” I said, though I didn’t think he’d hear me. “Don’t. Don’t die for my father’s twisted plan.”
Cody took another step forward, two. Until he was standing next to Dead Dad. “I never thought about light magic and dark magic joining until I met you, Daniel Beckstrom,” he said in a quiet voice. “But you…inspired me. To think about what dark magic could do. What light magic could do if they were together again. Just one magic in the world. They way it used to be. The way it always had been before Leander and Isabelle.
“I think magic might be kinder, or maybe it would heal better, or just…I don’t know. Be less trouble. Or maybe magic will always be like water: gentle on the one hand, destructive on the other.
“Whatever it becomes once it is joined, I think I can hold it long enough for it to do so.”
“It will kill you,” Living Dad said.
“We don’t know that,” Cody said. “We can’t know that yet.”
“I will not hand over all the power in the world to a broken-minded boy,” Living Dad said.
“I’m the child of Soul Complements,” Cody said, “My mother, Sedra, and my father, Mikhale, were very powerful before Isabelle possessed my mother and killed my father. You know that. You made deals with my father in death so that he could save my mother’s soul.”
Dead Dad nodded. “That is true. And Cody is a savant, an artist whose ability with magic is even more rare than Soul Complements. There is no other in the world like him. If any living being could hold light and dark magic together, I believe it would be this broken-minded boy.”
It was getting harder and harder to stand here. I mean, Dad had done something to halt the world, and Zay had moved for a moment, but wasn’t anymore.
I was still moving though. And it felt like the ocean tide was drawing the sand out from under my feet, pulling me with it.
I didn’t know how Cody was moving when no one else was. Not Zay, who was caught, pushing up off his knees and reaching for me. Not Shame, who was unconscious, blood pouring down his face. Not Terric who was bent over, his hands gripping the collar of Shame’s coat as he tried to drag him back away from where Leander and Isabelle screamed.
Not Eleanor, who pressed both hands over Shame’s heart, as if trying to hold his soul to his flesh.
Not Nola, dead. Not me, dead.
And even with everything stopped, with my very life stopped, I had to move, had to go, had to leave this place forever.
Something soft and light was calling me. And I didn’t think I could ignore it this time.
“Can I give this to someone else?” I asked.
Surprisingly, the Dads looked at me. So did Cody.
I held up the rose. “I won’t need it in death. And you said it doesn’t belong there. It’s special to me. Just a small magic, but it always made me feel loved. I think someone else should have it.”
I decided I didn’t have to wait for their permission. My dad had made me bargain it away for Zayvion’s soul once, so I knew it could be given away.
This time I was going to give it to someone I loved.
I walked over to Zayvion. Touched his face, caught in fear, anger, sorrow. Too much blood still on him. Too many cuts and bruises from our fight.
It seemed like since the moment I could remember meeting him, we’d been fighting something, pushing for things to be right again.
Protecting the world, protecting magic for a price.
And now this. The price.
Having to die and leave the world in my father’s hands was never the outcome I wanted. But it was pretty clear I didn’t get a say anymore.
I knelt in front of Zayvion so that we were crouched, eye to eye.
He looked so worried. Afraid that he’d lost me. That I was dead.
I traced my fingers over the arc of his cheek, setting the memory of the shape of him in my mind even though I could no longer feel him.
“This is my small magic,” I said softly. “I’ve had it ever since I was little. It’s the only thing that made me feel special. Until I met you.”
He didn’t move, didn’t say anything. The blood on his face didn’t drip; the pain in his eyes didn’t ease.
I didn’t even know if he heard me.
Still, I placed the rose against his chest. The rose was ghostly. Like me. The rose was magic. But I wasn’t.
The rose pressed into Zayvion as if it belonged there, that small magic his now.
Maybe he would know he had it.
Maybe he would know I gave it to him.
Maybe it would help him remember me in the years he had left to live. Because I knew him. Knew he wouldn’t stop fighting just because I had fallen.
“I’ll be waiting for you, Zayvion Jones,” I said, smiling even though I felt like I was made of tears. “Keep everyone safe for me. And don’t forget me. Don’t forget us.”
I leaned forward and kissed him.
I could not feel the warmth of his skin, could not taste his lips, could not smell the familiar pine scent of him.
“I love you,” I said, I thought, with every ounce of my soul.
“All
ie,” Dead Dad said.
“I know,” I said. There was no more time left for good-byes. I had to leave now. “I’m coming.”
I stood and turned.
It was not Dead Dad standing behind me. It was Living Dad.
And just behind him, with a look of kindness on his face, was Dead Dad.
“That small magic is yours, Allison,” Living Dad said to me in his cool, marble voice. He held up his hand and a rose—no, not just a rose; my rose—glistened softly in his fingers.
“You can’t have that,” I said. For the first time since I’d died, I was angry. Really angry. “I gave it to Zayvion and you have no right to take it from him.”
“He isn’t the one who needs it,” Living Dad said.
Dead Dad smiled. “Allison, we’ve made a choice. For you.”
“You know what?” I said. “I am tired of you making choices for me. This is my life—no, this is my death. And I’m the one who’s going to make the choices. Do you understand me?”
Anger was good. Anger made me feel stronger, pushed my sorrow to the side. Anger even made it feel like my feet were firmly beneath me instead of being swept away by that soft calling light.
“Give me back my goddamn rose.”
Dad’s cool, impenetrable face twitched. The corners of his mouth quirked up in a faint smile. “You have always had your mother’s temper.”
I held out my hand and raised my eyebrows. “My rose.”
But he didn’t give me the rose. Instead, he turned and walked over to my prone body. He stood there a moment, shaking his head. “I never meant it to be this way.”
Cody stood on the other side of my body. “I know,” he said.
Dead Dad walked over to Living Dad and put his hand on his shoulder.
Living Dad nodded to Cody.
I had no idea what they were doing. They must have come to some kind of agreement while I was saying good-bye to Zayvion.
Cody traced a spell in the air. Living Dad traced the same spell at the same time, mirrored movements to the other.
Magic answered that spell like a song waiting to be sung. It leaped up into Dad’s fingers, rolled over his carved stone body, then jumped from him in a joyous chorus that somehow gave voice to my father’s dreams, his desires, his brilliant and wild vision of the world.