Allie Beckstrom 09 - Magic for a Price

  “Morning,” Zay said, walking into the living room. “Shamus.”

  “Jones. Done sleeping your life away while the rest of us take care of this damn mess?”

  “No. When did you get a key to the apartment?”

  “Never. Don’t need a key. Got myself an inside man, don’t I, Stone?”

  Stone burbled.

  “Coffee?” Zay said. He leaned down and kissed me softly on the temple.

  “Yes,” I said. “No, wait, Shame said Maeve wants to see us.”

  “Is that why you came by?” Zayvion asked.

  “Mostly. Really are some things we all need to make decisions on. I’ll drive.”

  “Let me get dressed,” I said, taking myself and the box down the hall. “Where’s the meeting?”

  “Kevin’s place.”

  Well, at least there would be coffee. I put the box down on my dresser and got into jeans and a couple of layers of shirts, topping it off with one of Zayvion’s sweaters.

  They were talking in the living room. Low voices, but I could still catch snatches of the conversation. They were glad to see each other alive. And the meeting had something to do with the Authority, with how it would be run.

  Shame didn’t seem to have many details on that, only that Maeve had asked that as many members of the Authority as possible please be in attendance, though the vast majority wouldn’t be there due to the cleanup and reconstruction efforts.

  Shame asked Zay how I was really getting on. Zay said he thought I was still in shock.

  I paused while brushing my hair and glanced in the mirror. Green eyes too pale, even my skin too pale, as if I had faded out, worn thin. Had I changed so much in so short a time that I didn’t even recognize my own eyes?

  Maybe Zay was right.

  I quickly looked away, and put the brush down next to the box. Too many questions hovered just on the edge of my thoughts. Too many fears I didn’t want to face yet, held back by a tenuous thread of denial.

  “What about her da?” Shame asked. “Do you know what he did?”

  “Are we ready?” I asked from halfway down the hall. I didn’t want to think about these things. Didn’t want to let them become a reality to me yet.

  Didn’t want to know how much of myself I had lost.

  How many friends I had lost. I hadn’t even asked about Nola yet. The last I had seen her she was burned, bloody, dead….

  “Are you sure I shouldn’t call the doctor?” Shame asked.

  “Allie.” Zay stood in front of me, putting both of his hands on my arms. Warm. Strong. Real. “Are you still with me?”

  “Of course,” I said, though I think I had missed some time. Had I just been standing here trying not to think about…anything?

  Zay searched my eyes, so I tried to smile. Didn’t manage that, but I nodded. “I’m here. I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  I slid out of his grip and found my coat. As I shrugged it on, the notebook in my pocket slapped against my thigh. I reached in my pocket, pulled out the notebook where I always wrote down everything that happened to me. My life. My way of remembering who I was.

  An awful lot had happened lately. Things I should record before they slipped away, were taken away.

  I drew my fingers across the cover of the notebook. And set it down on the table, leaving it behind.

  Zayvion and Shame followed me out into the hall, without a word. Stone slipped out too, trotting along beside me. His wing slid up across my back, the prehensile tip of it holding the collar of my coat.

  Just like when we’d walked through death together.

  Zay, on the other side of me, took my hand, and squeezed it once, before holding on.

  I knew I was home. Knew I was alive. Well, I mean, I could see that, could logically think that. But I felt like a ghost drifting through my own life.

  Maybe I didn’t belong here. I’d died. Twice. Maybe I shouldn’t be alive now. My dad had tried cheating death. Look at the mess he had made.

  Dad? I thought.

  Nothing. Not even the faintest feeling of him.

  I was alone.

  Very alone.

  I was surprised how much it bothered me.

  Shame’s car was parked behind the building. We walked to it, and Shame unlocked the driver’s side and got in.

  Zay opened the front door for me. I shook my head and got into the back.

  After a pause, Zay got in the back next to me.

  Stone hopped in the front seat like he’d just won a ride in an ice cream truck, and Eleanor hovered in the space in front of Stone.

  Shame started the engine. Other than Stone’s mumbling, none of us had said a thing.

  “All right,” Shame said after easing out into traffic. “That’s about all the quiet I can take. Allie, are you all right, love? Are you hurting? Do you need a doctor?”

  I glanced up at Shame’s reflection in the rearview mirror.

  “I don’t need a doctor,” I said. “I’m just…I don’t want to wake up yet. Don’t want to face everything, you know?”

  “Aye.” Shame sighed. “I do. We’ll get you some coffee, or whiskey. Whichever you think will do you the most good. Because there’s an awful lot of messy living left for you to do.”

  “Is…is Nola…?” My throat tightened and I couldn’t even get the words out.

  “She’s going to be okay,” Shame said.

  I felt like the sky had broken open and let the sun pour across the world again. I’d been afraid to ask. Terrified to have lost my best friend, knowing her death would have been my fault.

  “Oh,” I said, not finding words to express my joy, my relief. “Oh.”

  Zayvion put his arm around me and pulled me against his chest.

  I was tempted to close my eyes, to try to ignore everything about the world except Zayvion’s heartbeat. But the longer we drove, the more I realized the scenery going by didn’t seem quite right.

  I sat up, looked out the window. And I mean really looked out at the world around me for the first time.

  Suddenly the cleanup and reconstruction comment Shame had made became clear. Buildings were burned, some missing stories, or with holes in the walls, roofs torn off. It looked like the city had gone through an earthquake during a hurricane and forest fire.

  “Did we do this?”

  “Redecorate Portland in apocalypse chic?” Shame asked. “Pretty much. That’s why wars between magic users are a no-no.”

  “Do people know? Has it been covered up?” I didn’t even know how someone would go about covering up something of this magnitude. “They must have seen the magic. They must have seen the gates, the battles, things, people falling down.”

  “They did,” Shame said. “And they think they saw an earthquake that damaged the networks and cisterns and natural gas lines. A lot of explosions, a lot of mess, and plenty of ways to explain it all. Even the gates.”

  “The entire police force was dispatched, wasn’t it?” I asked. “And the National Guard?”

  “Standard procedure for any disaster,” Zayvion said. “Nothing to be suspicious about.”

  No one on the street looked panicked or particularly worried. They were all going about their business, sidestepping the broken sidewalks, walking around police tape. Workers were out with heavy equipment and dump trucks, moving rubble, or pulling up broken pavement in preparation to lay new.

  It might have been a disaster, but it was not enough to tear this city down.

  Soon we were out of the city, and after another twenty minutes of driving, we were off into the hills at Kevin’s estate.

  Shame parked the car and turned off the engine. “Ready for this?”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. I might not want to face everything, might not want to have to look at what the world had become, but that didn’t mean I could ignore it forever.

  There were still people I cared for here. People I needed to know were okay.

  Messy living to do. Wasn’t that what Shame said?
r />   I was surprised to see Shame still sitting in the car, his hands clenched on the wheel like he didn’t want to get out. Finally, he said, “Fuck it,” opened the door, and strode off to the front porch.

  “Is he okay?”

  “I think Terric will be here,” Zayvion said. “I’m not sure if they’ve been around each other much.”

  I realized I hadn’t really paid a lot of attention to Shame. Hadn’t even asked him if his mother was okay. If Terric was okay.

  Time to pull up my bootstraps and get back in step with the living.

  “Have you heard from anyone? About anyone?” I asked as I opened the door and got out of the car. It was warm, and I was way overdressed. A nice day. We were headed well into summer weather now. When had that happened?

  “Other than Shame, and Maeve? Not really.” He shut the door and Stone got out too, jogging off up the steps ahead of us.

  “I’ve been sleeping almost as much as you have,” he said.

  Shame was already inside. And while there were a lot of cars parked in Kevin’s lot, and probably more around the back, there weren’t any people milling about. Everyone who was here was already inside.

  “How important is this meeting?” I asked.

  “We’re about to find out.” Zay pushed the door open and we walked in together. There were a few unfamiliar faces in the lobby, but it was clear from the low murmur in the distance that most of the people were in the main ballroom.

  I had a sudden, crushing need to check on Nola, to see how badly she was hurt. That whole “living” thing came back with a vengeance.

  How could I have slept and ignored everything when my best friend might have been dying?

  It wasn’t only Nola I wanted to see. Were Terric and Violet and my little brother okay? Had Victor lived? Was Hayden still all right? Were any of my Hounds still alive?

  Davy. Oh, God. I’d sent him into danger with Sunny and Collins. Had he made it home?

  A million thoughts and worries and fears and questions flooded through my mind, making my heart pound.

  It didn’t take long to reach the ballroom. The door was open.

  The room was filled with people, all of whom had glasses of wine or beer or champagne in their hands. This looked more like a celebration than a meeting.

  So many people crowded the room—at least as many as when I’d first had to stand up on the stage and decide how we were going to fight Leander and Isabelle. A fight that had not gone according to plan. At all. But a fight I think we had won.

  Still, I didn’t want to walk in there. So many people in such a crowded place made my heart leap up and clog my throat. I was already having a hard time breathing and I wasn’t even over the threshold yet.

  Zayvion took my hand and we stepped into the room.

  I don’t know who saw us first, maybe someone Zayvion brushed past while trying to find a clear space on the other side of the room.

  That person moved aside for us, and then another, and another, each person turning to look at us, to murmur and point, so that the person next to them turned, and looked at us, murmuring, pointing, as they moved to one side.

  It was a little strange. A little uncomfortable to be noticed like that.

  In a remarkably short stretch of time, the entire room full of people opened up in front of us, the crowd pulling away so that there was a huge space around Zayvion and me, a space that opened a pathway all the way up to the stage.

  Zay and I stopped. We stood, hand in hand, looking at the crowd.

  Someone clapped. And then another pair of hands, and another. The entire room filled with thunderous applause, everyone looking at us, smiling, cheering.

  Cheering for us.

  For our fight.

  For our victory.

  I smiled, a little embarrassed at all the attention. But more than that, grateful.

  “Speech!” someone yelled. I shook my head, looked at Zay. He was smiling. Turned toward me as the crowd picked up the “speech, speech, speech” chant.

  “This is all you, love,” he said. “You’re the one who got us through this.”

  “This is not just me,” I said, squeezing his hand. “I never would have made it without you.”

  “Louder!” someone else shouted.

  Zayvion took a moment to clear his mind, then very carefully cast an Amplify spell. It hovered in the air like the strokes of a painting, glowing from a deep turquoise at the first of the glyph to a soft gold at the final line.

  A few people caught their breath. That’s when I realized everyone could see the spell, that magic was no longer so fast it was invisible to the naked eye.

  Different indeed.

  The Amplify hovered like a Celtic charm in front of Zayvion and me. As soon as he finished the cast, it faded from sight, even though I knew it was working.

  Expectant eyes waited, expectant faces with expectant smiles.

  “We,” I started, the spell carrying my voice across the big hall. I suddenly didn’t know what to say. My dad had been good at these kinds of speeches. When he wanted to, he knew how to show his gratitude and tell the people working with him how much he appreciated their efforts.

  What would my father have said?

  “Thank you,” I said. “I want to say thank you so much. We could not have survived this without all of you, all of the people of Portland joining together to meet this threat as a unified force. We are strong, stronger with each other than alone. And we’ve proven that by fighting for not just our city, but…but our world.

  “We risked so much, lost so much, and used magic for a price. Fought for what we knew was right. But we have gained so much in return. It wasn’t just a handful of people who secured this victory. It wasn’t just the Authority, or the Hounds, or Zay and me. It was all of Portland’s people: magic users, nonmagic users, the living, and even the dead, who stood side by side against overwhelming numbers.

  “Those who fought beside me, Zayvion, Shamus Flynn, Terric Conely, Nola Robbins, Cody Miller, and…and my father, Daniel Beckstrom, never once faltered. I know that is true of everyone here as well.

  “We have made a stand for what we know magic should be. What magic should have been all these hundreds of years before it was broken: dark and light together, whole. And even though magic has changed, I don’t think this is an ending of what magic can be. I think it’s the beginning of what it can become. And I am so grateful to be here among such strong, brave, caring people. Thank you.”

  Zay swept his hand through the air once, ending the spell.

  Everyone was silent for a moment. Then the applause started again. Long and loud.

  I scanned the crowd, saw Maeve up on the stage across the room. Hayden stood beside her looking a lot stronger than the last time I’d seen him. It was good to see them both. I couldn’t see Nola, but Terric and Shame leaned against one wall of the room—where Zay and I had been originally headed, and were both applauding.

  The Hounds were over there too, Jack and Bea and Sid. Jack raised a glass toward me and Sid and Bea did the same. A toast. To us.

  I suddenly wished I had a glass of champagne in my hands too.

  I smiled one last time for the crowd, then tugged on Zayvion’s hand, walking toward Shame and Terric and the Hounds.

  The applause quieted and people went back to talking and laughing.

  We secured a spot next to Shame and Terric. There was a little more breathing room here. Probably because Shame was sort of radiating that dark-and-death thing he’d picked up, and people avoided it like a cold wind.

  He leaned on the wall and was smoking, even though I was pretty sure Kevin had said he didn’t want anyone smoking in his house.

  Terric had on a white T-shirt and black jeans. A fist-sized stone hung from a leather cord around his neck and a string of beads belted his waist. He brushed his white bangs away from his eyes and I noted the collection of bracelets on his wrist all studded with beads.

  Not beads—Void stones. Just like th
e Void stones Shame was wearing beneath his black hoodie.

  Terric was a good-looking guy under any circumstance, but without those Void stones to dampen the magic he carried around, he was mesmerizing. Even with the Void stones on, it was easy to want to smile when he talked, to want to watch him and not look away.

  He smiled as we came near. “Very nice speech,” he said. “And so good to see the two of you.”

  “And you,” Zay said. “Are we late? Looks like people have been here a while.”

  “Just in time, I think.” Terric nodded toward the stage where Maeve was approaching the microphone.

  Already walking out onto the stage were a dozen men and women, a few whom I knew—like my father’s accountant, Ethan Katz, and Dr. Fischer—most of whom I didn’t. They all seemed to be here in some kind of official capacity, dressed in business suits and looking stoic.

  “Good afternoon,” Maeve said. “Thank you, Allie, for that wonderful speech, and thank you all for coming.” She paused, giving the crowd time to quiet down. No one was sitting. The huge room was standing room only.

  A woman threaded through the crowd with a serving platter of wine, beer, and champagne glasses. She stopped next to us. I took the champagne, Zay and Terric took a beer. Shame just waved her off.

  “When there’s whiskey, then I’ll be drinking.”

  Maeve was talking again.

  “I know we’ve had several meetings since the event, and I want to thank all of you who have attended each session. Some of this information will be old news to you, but to those who haven’t been able to join us before, I want to touch briefly on a few points.

  “Magic has changed. Quite a bit, really. Dark and light magic are once again joined as one. You’ll notice spells, no matter which discipline you use, may react differently, are seen more easily, and many are much more subdued than what they were. Please be prepared and careful when casting.

  “We should have the majority of roads reopened in the next two weeks, and reconstruction is going well.

  “It is not my place as acting Voice of the Authority to assume the direction of the organization, but I can say that we have been in close contact with the new Overseer in Rome, and he is giving us his full support in reestablishing our city, and in our choice of those who will stand as Portland’s Voices.