Oh. “You must be hearkening the volcano,” I said. No wonder she looked so anxious. My own nerves were on edge with the sense of impending doom. “Environmental disruptions, especially big ones, always affect the magic in the area. Any strong force can distort the regular rhythms of its energy.”
“That makes sense,” she said. “But it’s been happening for a little while now. Like, since before we came here.”
I frowned. “You said the magic felt a little weird, but not that bad. Was it bothering you like this back in New York? Were you casting without meaning to?”
Amy grimaced. “It was only really bad yesterday, and we didn’t really have time to talk about it then. It wasn’t anything that big. I don’t even know how to explain it. Hearkening the magic just starts to get to me, and then if I start drumming my fingers or anything, I set things off without meaning to.”
A pool of cold formed in the pit of my stomach. That kind of erratic connection was the sort of thing that would get even a novice from an established mage family Dampered. Too big a risk of them accidentally revealing their powers—or causing tangible damage.
But that was when evaluating someone with years and years of practice. Probably it was normal to have trouble adjusting when hearkening was so new to you. With a little more practice, the right exercises…
I just wasn’t completely sure what the right exercises to combat that problem would be.
Amy leaned forward to peer at another crossroad. “Is this where we take that right?”
I glanced at the sign. “Yes, this is it.”
As she followed that road, I watched her. Her knuckles were still white where she clutched the wheel. The set of her mouth showed strain. We’d only gotten a few hours of sleep, and she still looked worn out.
I’d made the right decision coming out here—I was sure of that. But had bringing Amy along been the best idea? In the moment, it had seemed necessary, but… Was the little magic she could contribute really worth putting her through the ringer like this?
Mom’s comment the other day came back to me. Had I thought it was important for Amy to be here to help… or had I mostly wanted her here to show off how heroic I could be?
The cold spot in my gut burrowed deeper. I swallowed hard. She was here now. I’d protect her just like I planned to protect as many other people near the mountain as I could.
The road we’d turned onto rose and fell with the rolling hills. At the peak of one, several cars had clustered on an overlook. People who’d driven out to take an early look at the mountain were leaning out of the windows or sitting on the hoods, chatting with each other.
On the other side of the road, a trailer was parked next to a couple of tents. A tall antenna poked up from the top of the trailer, and the woman sitting outside it was fiddling with a mechanical device on the ground.
“Looks like some kind of scientific post,” Amy said. Her eyes lingered on the camp setup. I raised my hand to the woman, and she returned my acknowledgment with a brisk nod.
No one gave the two of us a second glance, even though the ‘chantment I’d put on Amy to make her look older had long since worn off. I supposed they all had bigger things on their mind than whether we were a little too young to be off in a rental car on our own.
A few minutes later, we reached the blocked road that led up the mountain. A couple of men I took to be some kind of security were standing by the pylons, looking grim and tired. Their expressions turned even grimmer when they saw our car. Otherwise, the road was empty. No one lining up yet.
I motioned for Amy to stop and rolled down my window. “Excuse me,” I said in my most gracious voice. “Would you mind letting us know when the blockade will be opened today?”
The guy nearest us raised his eyebrows. “You’re not going up there. It’s for property owners only.”
Even ignoring our age, the rental car would be a dead giveaway that we weren’t local. “Just out of curiosity,” I said.
My amiable tone and smile had no effect. The man huffed and made a shooing motion. “Find somewhere else to get your kicks, kids.”
Amy grimaced and pressed the gas. “I guess we can’t stick close to there for very long.”
“No.” I could have hidden the car magically, but to sustain that kind of ‘chantment potentially for hours would drain energy I wanted to hold onto for the more important casting. “It is still very early, and a Sunday. How are we doing for gas?”
“Half full.”
“All right.” I opened up the map again. “Why don’t we swing back around and park where those other spectators were? We’ll be close enough to get here fast if we need to, and that’s one of the few roads leading out this way. We should notice when people start heading to the blockade. Maybe one of those spectators will even know when it’s due to open.”
“Sounds like a plan.” She swung the car in a U-turn and gunned the engine.
“Getting a little more confident behind the wheel?” I teased.
A more relaxed smile crossed her lips as we raced back toward the hill at up. “Like I said, with the roads this empty, it’s hard to be—”
The ground lurched beneath the car. My body slammed against my seatbelt. The tires screeched as Amy hit the brakes, the sedan veering to the side, turning us so we faced the mountain. A warbling rumble filled my ears.
The mountain… was falling apart. Half of it was simply crumbling away into a massive landslide. My jaw dropped.
The snowy peak burst with a gush of thick black ash. As we gaped, the massive cloud started to spill up into the air and down over the crumpled slope. Down over the slope and toward the forest between us and the volcano, swift and intent.
My heart leapt to my throat. “Keep going!” I said hoarsely. “The people up at the overlook—we have to at least help them.”
Amy’s hands were shaking, but she grabbed the wheel. The tires screeched against the road. We roared the rest of the way to the crest of the hill.
The spectators were scrambling to get back into their cars. The woman by the trailer and a couple of her colleagues were dashing around, one of them shouting into a handheld radio. But the billowing ash was rushing toward us—rushing far too quickly. None of us were going to be able to outrun it. The volcano had given us no warning at all.
Amy jerked the car to a stop at the edge of the overlook. I was already shoving open the door, my mouth dry. I had to do something. I had to do something or we’d all be dead anyway.
There were at least a couple dozen people up here on this hill. I’d come out here to save someone. Now I’d better damn well do it.
I raised my voice over the rising rumble and crash of falling rocks and trees. “Stay where you are! Stay here and we can all stay safe!”
A couple of the figures turned and stared at us. One of the cars took off down the road. My chest clenched. The wind was already whipping toward us, carrying heat, flecks of ash, and an acrid burning smell. The plume over the volcano was filling the entire sky.
I heaved myself onto the hood of the car and then to the roof. “Amy!”
She scrambled after me, her eyes wide. “What do we—”
“Just sing!” I shouted. “Sing anything! Call the magic to you. I’ll handle the rest.” I wasn’t even sure I could do enough with all the talent I had in me—but I had to try.
Amy’s mouth trembled, but she grasped my hand and started pelting out a melody. The wind was roaring so loudly I could hardly make out the words, but a tingle of gathered magic started to stream from her into me. I gathered it and everything I could reach all around me and threw my voice out to join hers.
“Atque altae moenia Romae…”
I called out the words from the Latin poem slow and measured and building in rhythm like the walls they spoke of had been built. Summoning the magic around us and what Amy was lending to me, dragging it through me as quickly and forcefully as I could. With each lilt of my voice, I conducted it into a solid barrier. My lungs heaved, and
I pushed that impenetrable bubble out and up, stretching to encase the top of the hill and all the people with us.
The barrier wasn’t entirely impenetrable. The torrent of ash collided with the invisible wall, making it and me shudder. A squeak slipped from Amy’s lips.
Most of the black cloud billowed around our pocket of safety as if it had hit a glass jar, churning streaks of darkness streaming across that invisible surface, but gusts of wind and trickles of ash seeped through here and there. Our jar was pricked with pinholes.
The heat rose around us. My throat straining, I added a line about chilly snow to ease the worst of it. My skin prickled as if I’d stepped too close to a fire. I couldn’t let my attention waver of an instant. Couldn’t think of anything but Amy’s hand clutched tight in mine and reinforcing that barrier over and over as the ash cloud assaulted it.
Smoke tickled my throat. The heat seared my mouth, and sweat slid down my back. I repeated the lines for the hundredth time, ignoring the stinging of my vocal chords.
“Hey!” a voice shouted from beside the car, barely audible over the wind. “Hey, what the hell are you kids doing? You have to—”
A smaller quake rocked the car. Amy and I stumbled together and fell on our bottoms against the windshield. My voice stuttered. The barrier shook with the careening wind, and a bigger swath of ash rushed in.
I braced myself against the glass and hollered out the verses again. Build the wall. Cool the air. Push it away.
The incoming rush of ash cut off, the wave that had broken through dissipating throughout our bubble. My eyes stung, but I caught a glimpse of the man who’d tried to talk to us. His jaw went slack as he looked from us to the invisible barrier just ahead of us that the churning clouds were still rippling past.
They hadn’t realized. They hadn’t realized we were making this happen. But now anyone who was paying any attention at all must know.
It didn’t matter. We couldn’t falter, not as long as I was keeping us alive. Even if the effort almost killed me anyway.
It felt like hours had passed when I let myself close my eyes. My lungs and my throat were aching, a sharp stab of pain now splitting my skull, but I kept singing. On and on, pushing more and more magic to reinforce that barrier.
Amy’s hand gave mine a sudden squeeze. My eyelids popped open. She pointed to the view.
Ash still swirled around our bubble, but it was starting to thin. The gleam of the sun penetrated the clouds above us just slightly. I could see through the haze to the battered trees and blackened grass all around our small pocket of shelter. The heat was easing off. A shiver of triumph raced through me even as I sang on, conjuring another layer and another to ensure the barrier held as long as we needed it to.
It looked like the worst was over. Amy and I had done it. We’d survived. And we’d kept everyone with us who would have been swallowed by the eruption alive too.
Chapter Fourteen
Amy
My head throbbed and my ears rang. I could hardly even feel the rest of my body anymore. My voice had gone ragged, barely carrying words now. The thin stream of magic I’d been calling up and channeling to Jonathan in my clumsy way faltered and fell away completely. But I kept holding his hand, as if just that would support him through the massive casting he was conducting.
Every breath filled my lungs with the stink of scorched wood and ashy smoke. Outside the invisible shell Jonathan had created around our hilltop perch, the rushing clouds that had battered that shell had slowed. They drifted rather than streaked past the sides of the barrier now, dissipating more and more into a grayish haze. The warble of the wind had faded.
The forest down the hill was a ruin of snapped branches and burnt trunks, ash coating the charred bark like toxic snow. Drifts of that ash smeared the grass and the road around our car, but we had a little island of green stillness here in the middle of the wreckage.
Jonathan let his hoarse voice peter out. He rubbed his forehead as he took in the space he’d protected, but his face split with a grin at the same time. He turned to beam at me. I smiled back in spite of all my body’s aches.
Beyond him, the other people who’d been gathered on the hilltop were starting to move around again. A few of the cars had started to make a run for it after the first two I’d seen fleeing, but they’d stopped near the edge of the magical barrier. Realizing they really were safer staying here once they’d seen the destruction passing us by, I guessed.
The passengers had climbed out. They were staring at us. All of the people around us were staring at us, most of them outright gawking.
My pulse hiccupped. Of course they were staring. We’d just conjured a shield against the eruption out of thin air. We’d made a huge display of magic in front of people who’d had no idea magic even existed.
We must seem as alien to them as the warped landscape around the hilltop.
A chill ran down my back, breaking me out of my exhausted daze. They didn’t look just shocked, but also… horrified? Was that only because of the carnage we’d survived or was some part of them afraid of me and Jonathan too? Of what we were capable of. Of what we were.
“Amy?”
My gaze jerked to a figure who’d stepped closer out of the cluster near the trailer. My mouth fell open with a sharper lurch of my heart.
Dad was gaping back at me, his face gone sallow. I should have felt relieved. He was here, at this little science outpost—he was safe. I’d helped keep him safe, in some small way.
But the way he’d said my name, so hesitantly... The way he was looking at me now, blinking hard, his whole body tensed…
Like he wasn’t sure he even knew me. Like I wasn’t his daughter but something totally unknown.
The chill seeped right down to my bones. My fingers clamped hard around Jonathan’s hand. “I—I…” I didn’t know what to say.
Dad shook his head as if trying to clear it. “This isn’t possible,” he muttered. “It can’t… It can’t be.”
More of the people we’d saved were starting to approach us. “What the hell was that?” someone demanded. “What did you even do?”
Jonathan’s head twitched around, taking in the whole hilltop. His shoulders went rigid. “We need to go,” he murmured.
He didn’t need to say anything else. I dove for the car door when he did.
“Hey!” someone hollered,” and someone else shouted, “Wait a minute!” but the panic blaring in my head drowned out the rest. Just get out of here. Just get away, where we didn’t have to answer those questions, face those stares.
Get out of here. Get out of here. Now.
I hadn’t bothered taking the key out of the ignition. I twisted it and slammed on the gas pedal the second I heard the engine’s growl.
We tore down the road into the haze beyond the invisible barrier. It was thin enough for me to see the road ahead now. Debris scattered the asphalt—bits of rock and twigs and here and there an entire branch. The tires bumped over those. I jerked the steering wheel hard to avoid one of the larger branches.
“It’ll be fine,” Jonathan said, sounding like he was talking to himself as well as to me. “They’re mostly just glad they’re still alive. They don’t know who we are. It’ll just be—it’ll just be a story of something fantastic that happened.”
A chunk of splintered boards and ragged shingles that looked like it’d used to be part of someone’s roof lay across the road up ahead. “I don’t know if I can make it all the way back to the city with the road this bad,” I said, my voice coming out shaky.
Jonathan’s attention snapped back to the car. He rubbed his temple again. “That casting took a lot out of me, but I think I can handle this much.”
He muttered a quick rhythmic line. The hunk of roof heaved a few feet over, clearing enough space for us to drive past.
A thicker column of ash still hung in the sky above the volcano. My whole mouth tasted like smoke. That maelstrom we’d fended off—well, mostly Jonathan had fended off—
must have swept across miles all around the mountain.
“How far do you think it went?” I ventured. “There must have been other people…”
“At least it happened before the property owners showed up,” Jonathan said. “We didn’t see anyone else out when we were driving around. The impact had already started to ease off when that cloud hit us—no way could I have stopped it if we’d been right at the base. Anyone who was much farther away was probably okay.”
He sounded as if he knew that wasn’t an entirely comforting thought. “We saved everyone we could,” he added.
“Yeah.” We’d saved my dad. But even that thought didn’t dislodge the awful twist in my gut at the memory of Dad’s stare. The tremble when he’d said my name.
I tried to shake that thought away and nodded to the gush of ash. “How are we going to get home? The planes won’t be flying through that.”
Jonathan let out his breath. “I’m afraid I couldn’t teleport either of us anywhere close to New York even totally fresh. Let’s get back to the airport and see what they can tell us there. We’ll get home, one way or another. As quickly as I can get us there.”
There was a bus and another bus and a plane and finally the train back into Manhattan. It was late in the evening by then, and our exhaustion had taken totally over. Jonathan and I found a pair of seats at the back of one car and cuddled up there together, my head on Jonathan’s shoulder, his arm around me. But I was too wound up to sleep.
“You were great, you know,” he said, tracing his thumb back and forth over the curve of my shoulder. “I couldn’t have asked for anyone better to be standing beside me.”
“You did pretty much everything,” I had to point out.
“You helped more than you realize. In that first moment when I had to get the barrier up quickly—I needed every bit of magic possible at my disposal. If it weren’t for you, I might not have been able to make the shield quite strong enough in time.”
Did he mean that, or did he just think I needed to hear it? My head was too muddy to scrutinize his tone. I snuggled closer to him, wishing he didn’t smell as much like ash as I did. He kissed my forehead.