Delusion (36 page)

The flaw’s in me then,
Phil thought bitterly.
Why do I feel the struggle and suffering of life, while she feels only the joy? Why did I slaughter, when she sits there like Buddha under the bo tree?

She felt a seed of jealousy, but it had no time to sprout, for:

“He’s alive! Oh God, Thomas is alive! I can feel him!” Fee’s face flushed with excitement, and she was neither desolate nor enlightened, but just herself again—though with all the power of the Essence. “I can find him, Phil. I can bring him home!”

She handed Phil the other piece of paper. “Maybe I can figure out where he is. Too bad the Essence doesn’t have a homing beacon. Or does it, once you get closer? Read it, Phil, and tell me if you find a clue.”

Dearest, beloved Fee,

I can’t tell you where I am, pet, and if I did, they’d censor it and throw me in the chokey for treason. I volunteered for something special, thinking it would be so easy for me, with the Essence to help me. Only, I didn’t realize...You see, we all knew England held the greatest concentration of the Essence. It’s the heart of the world. But I never dreamed that there’s hardly any Essence at all over here. I left England, and I felt as if part of me had been ripped away. I can sense it here, just barely, and if I exert myself I can draw up a trickle (I healed a razor slice this morning—army razors are so dull, I might as well use my bayonet), but not enough to do any good. So I’m stuck here, a common soldier. A commoner soldier. But I’m still fighting for the same thing. I’m still going to help make this world the peaceful and beautiful place you deserve, darling Fee. It just might take a little longer! I really don’t mind . . .

Seemingly from nowhere, the last assassin slipped to Fee’s side and whipped the saber blade to her throat. Fee, half elsewhere, glanced up at the last instant—and dropped him with a thought almost before anyone else realized he was there.

“If he’s alive, and missing, that means he’s captured, right? He must be in Germany. Do they treat their prisoners well? They better.”

“Fee!” Phil cried, staring aghast at the dead man at their feet, then at her sister, who utterly ignored him. “You feel sorry for worms, Fee. You shed a tear and apologize if you slap a mosquito. How...how . . .”

Fee regarded her sister serenely. In the back of her mind, she could still feel Thomas, somewhere. Could he feel her? She sent pulses of love through the earth’s crust but couldn’t tell if they reached him. “Would you rather I let him kill me?” she asked. “I don’t
like
swatting mosquitoes, but I’d be a fool to let them bite me.” She looked down to the corpse at her feet. “I’m very, very sorry,” she told it, utterly sincere.

Phil took her sister’s slim hand. The Essence had changed her. She was still Fee, but she was something else, too, something vast, with a frozen place that had never before existed in her gentle soul. Or had it? Was it in everyone, waiting to emerge as soon as the power was there? The ancients were right to keep it in a cage. Maybe they were right about keeping magicians imprisoned, too. Phil could feel the power in herself, throbbing just below the surface, begging for release.
Maybe if I train for twenty years, I can be like they were at Stour, swirling the Essence in meaningless currents, doing nothing more wicked than making exotic flowers and gentle tigers. Or I can chain myself like Uncle Walter. Only, how do you chain power like this? How do you beat back the knowledge that you can do anything?

She bent her head to hide her tears, and read the last lines of Thomas’s letter.

I really don’t mind dying, Fee, you must believe it. Everything comes, and everything goes. Of course I’d rather have a hundred years with you, but the important thing is that I had a moment. Our lives are such small parts of everything, really. They seem so big, but the Essence has taught me that a moment, an aeon, an inch, the world, are all the same. A moment’s as good as a century, if it’s the right moment. If I don’t come back, hold on to that, Fee. Hold on to our moment.

Phil looked up at Arden through tear-hazed eyes, gazing at him, loving him like a ceaseless ache, but however she tried to fill her thoughts with that dark, handsome face, however she tried to recall the feel of his fingertips, the smell of his hair, it was all blurred somehow, and the image of dead bodies in a ruined landscape rumbled behind it, a juggernaut threatening to wipe out everything that was good.

He kissed her and turned to consult with the others before he noticed her tears.

“Which moment is mine?” she whispered after him, but he could not hear her.

“We should go,” Arden said, coming back to her, taking her free hand, the one Fee wasn’t holding, a bit possessively. “We need to track down our brothers and tell them the truth. They were heading to London, to disperse from there. It will be hard for them at first, but together, we’ll give them a better life. The Fräulein and Bergen—do you suppose they went back to Germany?”

“With their tails between their legs!” Felton said triumphantly.

“Then England belongs to the good magicians again.”

Except for me,
Phil thought.

She wasn’t sure if she shared Arden’s beliefs anymore—but she believed in Arden, and that was enough. “You’re coming with us, right Fee?”

“For now, until I can figure out how to rescue Thomas. You’ll help me?”

“Always, in everything.”

“To London, then,” Arden said, giving Phil’s hand the slightest tug, freeing her from Fee’s hold.

L
AURA
L. S
ULLIVAN
is a former newspaper editor, biologist, social worker, and deputy sheriff who writes because storytelling is the easiest way to do everything in the world. She lives on the Florida coast, but her heart is in England.