Cast Into Darkness (13 page)

It whispered to Kate from the moment her uncle lifted the lid on the box.

Touch me. Touch me. Touch me one more time. Just once, and then everything will be over.

She tumbled into its vast ebony depths. Its quiet murmurs continued, and she sensed the enormous power slumbering within. She felt pulled toward the awakening magic—magic that had its own, inhuman agenda.

An agenda she wanted to fulfill. She leaned toward the stone—a little, an inch, before images of Brian’s frantic chanting, his panicked face, his voice screaming in agony, rushed into her mind. She jerked back.
No.

“What the hell are you doing with that in here?” Victor took a step toward Grayson.

“I’ve got it under control. It’s safe enough.” Grayson shut its lid.

Kate blinked.
What the hell just happened?

“Are you kidding?” Victor said. “That thing killed Brian. It messed with Kate’s mind and did God knows what to her. You think you can play with it?”

“I’m not playing. And as to whether it killed Brian, that’s a matter of interpretation.”

“Are you tweaked? What the hell is the matter with you?”

“I know what I’m doing, young man. Better than you do. I need the stone here to diagnose what’s going on with Kate.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I’ll need your help. Monitor me while I do the spell. Make sure nothing…interferes,” Grayson said.

“You mean like the ‘safe and under control’ stone?”

“That or anything else.”

“Fine.”

Kate stared down at the ties of her nightgown. Anything to avoid focusing on the box in Grayson’s hand. “It’s not fine with me. I don’t want that thing doing anything else to me.”

“It won’t. I’m only using it as a kind of reference. If I can see the traces of its influence in you while I do a diagnostic spell, then that will tell me what the stone did, and didn’t, do. Just sit back and relax.”

She squirmed as Grayson reopened the silver box. Maybe a quick peek at the stone wouldn’t hurt. Its dark radiance drew her gaze as she looked up, but nothing murmured in her mind.
Good. Maybe I just imagined it all.

Grayson concentrated and murmured a spell, his fingers weaving curves and crosses too fast for Kate to follow. Victor’s eyes narrowed in concentration—monitoring Grayson, she assumed.

She stared at the stone, waiting for it to do something, anything. It remained silent.

After a minute or so her back got warm and tingly. The warmth changed to pinpricks of ice. Grayson’s spell worked its way into her body, molecule by molecule, taking her apart and looking at every particle of her until it understood her better than she knew herself.

“Um…Grayson, this feels pretty weird.”

“Don’t worry, it’s supposed to.” He glanced over at the stone.

The cold receded as quickly as it had come, leaving her stomach churning.

Victor stared at her. “No way. I don’t believe it.” He shot Grayson a glance. “Why didn’t I see that before?”

“The stone’s residual energy blocked her aura. I cleared it out.” Grayson snapped the lid shut on the stone and put the box in his pocket.

“Aura? I have an aura?” She looked down at herself. She couldn’t see anything different.

“Your aura’s changed. It’s a rainbow hue like ours now, not a Null’s blue-green tint. We both see it,” Grayson said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re a not a Null anymore. You’re a—”

“Maybe nothing. Wearing a wizard’s robe doesn’t make you a wizard.” Victor gave Grayson a long look. Then he addressed Kate. “After all, you were supposed to be big shakes before, when you were a kid, and that amounted to a big pile of nada—or so I’m told. Didn’t you fail your aptitude test, back when you were twelve?”

She flushed. She could still remember every minute of the test. The flame glowing in her mother’s hand, her mother pleading with Kate to cast her own spell and duplicate the feat. She’d reached for the symbol in her mind, using the chant that had been drilled into her memory. Sweat had poured from her as she looked at Grayson, her eyes desperate. Her utter failure as the circle stones went out, one by one, beneath her feet.

“Yeah. I’m not likely to forget. Why are you bringing that up? It’s not like it’s news.”

Victor shrugged. “I can’t see that anything’s changed here. So your aura’s pretty. Big whoop. It’s not like you can control what you did upstairs.” He turned around and stalked back to his post by the wall, then stood and watched her. His eyes went blank for a minute, the way they did when he checked the security grid. The shimmering curtain around the circle stones flickered, then turned a lighter shade of amber.

Asshole. She’d show him. Grayson said she wasn’t a Null anymore. Fine. She’d take Victor’s words and shove them down his oh-so-annoying throat.

The symbol for fire sprang to her mind once more. Four points joined by a circle with a sharp twist at the end. The ancient words came back to her—the chant she’d memorized so long ago and so perfectly for the test to no avail. She hadn’t needed it a few hours ago, the power rising in her so hot and so urgent, but maybe she’d need it now.

She focused on the symbol—tracing it out with angry, jerking movements against the cold floor of the Sanctum as she chanted the words she thought she’d never speak again. The words her mother had urged her to say so long ago, the words Grayson had drilled into her. The words he focused on so intently now, standing over the circle, his eyes locked on her.

Power rushed from the center of her being, down her arm, and around her hand. It leaped into the air and burst into flame around her fingers, the tendrils a soft warmth that caressed her skin as they danced back and forth. She stared at her hand. Her flaming hand.

“Huh,” Victor said to Grayson, a half-smile on his face. “I guess you were right.”

She was a caster.
Well, hot damn.

It wasn’t as
if Kate hadn’t suspected she could do magic. Not after what she did to Dad and all that “floating in the bathroom” business. And the soft thrum of the Sanctum humming in her bones. Still… She let out a ragged breath. To say that this changed everything was an understatement.

“I know this is a shock—” Grayson began.

Victor broke in. “How the hell did it happen? It’s impossible.”

“It’s never happened before. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible,” Grayson said.

“Did the stone change me?” Kate asked. “When it killed Brian?”

“Yes. My scan showed that the genetic combination for magic has been altered inside your DNA. When you were tested for magical aptitude, your Null gene was dominant, your caster gene recessive. That’s not supposed to change. But it has. Now your caster gene is expressing.”

It sounded like Grayson was about to say something else, but he stayed silent.

“How could an artifact change me into a caster? I thought they held a few more spells than a talisman, more powerful spells.”

“The stone is different, Kate. Its creator layered spells into it, spells connected to each other. When the right conditions come up, those spells are triggered, almost like a program executing on a computer.”

“Is it…finished?” It didn’t feel finished.

“I’m sure there’s nothing else to worry about. But if anything else bothers you, come to me. Let me know what’s happening. We’ll figure it out together.”

Kate drew her knees up to her chin and glanced sideways at her uncle. “Seems like you’ve figured out quite a bit already. You said that forensic reconstruction spell you cast showed what happened. So you know how Brian died.”

“All the spell lets me do is put together a theory.”

“And?”

He sighed. “Brian tried to interfere with the stone when it was making you a caster. He tried a simple counterspell. It interrupted the stone’s process, and the stone’s energy surged into him.”

Grayson’s explanation made some sense. Brian had tried a spell, she remembered that. And the backlash… Well, she’d never forget the feel of the power that had arced into Brian. But something about Grayson’s explanation—something she couldn’t pin down—bothered her.

“Did the energy backlash kill him?” Kate said.

“Yes, I’m sorry.” Grayson closed his eyes. The lines on his face looked deeper even in the dim light of the Sanctum. “It overwhelmed his protective spell. The stone’s energy proved too powerful once it activated.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Victor said.

“Victor…”

“Stop dancing around the truth. If she’s a caster, she should know what this thing is. After all, it created her.”

Grayson sighed. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then gave Kate a long look.

“Kate, the stone… It’s a work of primal magic.”

“You’re kidding.” Her hands twisted the hem of her nightgown in a little knot. The ancient casters had used primal magic to power their spells—magic in its raw form. Modern casters had lost the ability to use primal magic unless they used the rare artifacts the ancients had left behind. Brian had said the stone was old but…damn. What the hell did it mean that primal magic had made her a caster?

Grayson continued, “I don’t know what Brian was doing with the stone, or if he knew it was a primal magic artifact.”

“Oh, he knew,” Victor said. “Brian was way too sharp to be carrying around a primal magic artifact and not know it.”

“Believe what you want. I know—I knew Brian. He would never have delved into primal magic, not without… He just wouldn’t.” Grayson slumped over in his chair, holding his head in his hands.

“Do you know where he got the stone?” Kate asked.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Grayson said.

“Like hell it does,” Victor said. “Whoever was chasing him will still be after it.”

Grayson took his pillbox from his pocket and swallowed a dose of medication. “Brian’s dead. Let any secrets he had die with him. If you want to blame someone for what he did, blame me. Obviously I did something wrong when I trained him.” He tucked his pillbox away again. “He should have come to me, told me about it. But he didn’t. I’m going to be living with this for the rest of my life.”

Grayson sat with his head down, still and quiet, the breath moving out of his lungs at first slowly and then with a sudden exhale, almost like a sob.

Victor’s dark eyes focused on her. Did he see her as a threat? She guessed he would, all things considered.

She straightened up, letting her knees fall down in a cross-legged position. “You can let me out. I can control myself now.”

Victor crossed his arms. “Are you sure? Primal magic made you a caster. How do you control that?”

Grayson sat up. “Right now, I don’t have any reason to believe that Kate is any different than any other new caster. This morning, in her room, she did the same thing a powerful, untrained rogue would do—if that rogue ended up in an emotional situation. You might know something about that, Victor.”

Victor grunted.

Kate wondered what Victor had done to deserve that remark.

“We’re lucky she did it here and not at school,” Grayson added.

“You’re sure that outburst wasn’t due to the stone?” Victor said.

“I’m sure.” Grayson turned to Kate. “You’re going to have to learn how to control your abilities. You need training. Do you understand this?”

“Now? But Brian just… I need time.” How could he make her work on her powers when it took every bit of concentration not to break down crying?

“Our enemies won’t give us time, sweetheart. I’m sorry, but training starts now.”

“I don’t have to stay at home, do I? Brian…” She gulped down tears. “Brian went to school and trained here at the same time. I can, too.” There were things she could give up. Her friends, her favorite classes. Maybe even acting. But not Kris.

“It’s summer. You can train full time. And you’ll need to, in order to catch up.”

Kate groaned.

Grayson got to his feet. “This isn’t an elective at school. This is life or death. If you don’t get trained, you could kill someone. Do you want to do to someone else what you did to your dad today? Some boy you’re going out with—”

“
No.
All right, you’ve made your point. I’ll do what you want.” She’d have to figure out how to see Kris. The sooner she learned to teleport, the better.

“You’ll have to talk to your father about college. I can work around your schedule, the same way I did with Brian. But your major—drama—I don’t know if he’ll accept that. Casters usually major in political science or economics.”

Like acting isn’t all about manipulating people? No point making that argument now. Maybe later, with her dad. Still, she’d always assumed casters got to do what they wanted. “I want to have my own life. Going to Cornell is important to me.”

“I know. But there are more important things for you to learn than acting. Especially now. Politics, economics, psychology… You have to know how people think, how they act, so that you can—”

“So that I can pull their strings? I don’t want to be a part of what Dad does.”

Victor grinned. “Oh, you’ll want to, princess. Eventually, everybody enjoys making the ‘powerful’ people dance to their tune.”

“You make me sick.”

“You’ll get over it.” Victor walked around the circle, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. The crystals surrounding Kate deactivated, their hum fading as their light dimmed.

Kate tested the border with her hand. When nothing zapped her, she stumbled to her feet. Grayson gave her a hand up, and she moved out of the circle.

Her uncle gave her a brief hug. “I’m sorry we had to do that,” he said. “You understand why?”

“Yes,” she murmured. “But I don’t have to like it.”

“No, I don’t suppose so.” He let go of her. “I’ll talk to your father. We’ll set up a training schedule for you.” Grayson led her toward the Sanctum door.

“What are you going to do about the stone?” Kate asked.

“Keep it safe.” Grayson patted his pocket. “Figure out what else it does, if it has a purpose beyond creating casters from Nulls.”

She heard the stone calling to her again, its voice faint through the silver box. She had no idea what its purpose was, but it had one, all right.