Liquid Fire (61 page)

“You’re a fool if you think they will,” Daniel said. “But if they do . . . we want it.”

“You willing to make reparations?” I said. “Give up a slice to pay for Jewel’s crimes? Or are you willing to sue over it? You can’t take on the DEI, it won’t help to take on me . . . but you can petition the Magical Security Council for the release of your supplies.”

“Oh, hell,” he said, turning away. He looked back at me, then at Sidhain. “We are going to need the whole damn thing, aren’t we? Courts and police and rules and treaties—”

“It’s either that, or we go to war,” I said.

“That sounds like fun,” Sidhain said, licking her lollipop, “but I’m told it’s impolite.”

“That it is, Sidhain,” I said evenly. “Especially when there’s a better way.”

“All right,” Daniel said. “All right. We need the whole damn thing.”

“All right,” I said quietly. “Care to take a little walk, then?”

I nodded my head toward the northern end of the bridge, then turned and walked off. Daniel and Sidhain wordlessly followed. Cars rushed past as the giant columns of the bridge rose toward us, then fell away behind us. Then we turned into a corner of the parking lot.

Philip and Carnes waited for us, leaning on the trunk of my rental, talking in low tones. They wore similar, far-too-expensive suits, but Carnes’s had an odd cut to his jacket and subtle alchemical signs woven into the fabric weave. I wondered if the garment was magical.

“I brought no one,” Philip said. “As requested.”

“Ha,” I said. “You’ve probably got an airship hidden in your pants—”

“How did you know?” Philip said, mouth quirking up. “We weren’t dating that long—”

“Oh, I walked into that,” I said. “Special Agent Davidson, Master Wizard Carnes, I believe you already know Sidhain, the Lost Child of the Ford. All of you . . . please meet Fire Prince Daniel Hill. He claims to speak for the Fireweavers . . . and claims their liquid fire.”

“Mr. Hill,” Carnes said, extending his hand. “Pleased to . . .”

Daniel stared at his hand doubtfully, then at all of us.

“Who are you all?” he said. “The Mystical Spook Squad?”

“We all,” I said, indicating him as well, “are the Stewards of the Secret Flame.”

“I can’t just release the liquid fire to you,” Philip said. “To any of you—no offense, Dakota, but liquid fire is more rare and dangerous than plutonium. But it shouldn’t disappear into the MIRChold like the Ark of the Covenant. I’d rather see it in the hands of Edgeworlders—”

“But the question is, who do we give it to?” I said. “Who can we trust with it?”

“Not you,” Daniel said. “And not the government, I can tell you that.”

“Nor the fae,” Sidhain said. “We neither want it . . . nor need it.”

“And not you, Daniel,” Carnes said. “You attacked my city—”

“I know, I know,” Daniel said, raising his hands. He glared at me. “All right, Frost, you were right. I screwed up, and have a lot to answer for. But I can’t just join your creepy club. I’m not some dictator like Jewel. I have to run this by the Fireweaver’s Council.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But a resource of enormous mystical power has been created, and the last thing I want is a war. I—” and I looked off into the air for a moment, then shook my head “—and I just wanted to bring all the . . . stakeholders together. Jesus.”

“Stakeholders,” Philip said, a wry smile on his face.

“God,” Carnes said, putting his face in his palm. “You’ve already done this too long.”

“My job,” Philip said, slipping a hand into his pocket, “isn’t just to keep America safe from the misuse of magic, but to be an ambassador to the Edgeworld. A mystical version of a beat cop, out in the community, building relationships, creating trust.”

He looked at me. “What Dakota’s doing in Atlanta . . . I see as the magical community stepping up to police itself, the way the vampires did with the Consulates. Now we have a chance to take it up a level. I’m willing to go to the mat to support this—if you’re all in.”

“You already have my support,” Carnes said. “As for the rest of the Conclave—”

“The fae are inclined to agree with the wizards,” Sidhain said.

“You already know where I stand,” I said. “Or . . . maybe you don’t. To be clear, living in the Edgeworld means breaking the normal law, but I don’t care about that. I’m restricting the charter of the Magical Security Council to keeping people safe—”

“Then we’d never get our hands on liquid fire,” Daniel said. “It’s too dangerous—”

“It all comes down to what people do with it,” I said. “Spin fire all you want—but before you use it to cast some greater spell . . . run it by the Magical Security Council. Just don’t hoard it. Leave some liquid fire for the rest of us. What do you say, Fire Prince Daniel Hill?”

Daniel considered that a long moment.

“Not like I have a choice,” he muttered. “But I agree. We already had to create our own Fire Safety Squad. We should have stopped this before it got started. We should have been working together from the beginning. And working together . . . sure beats a war.”

———

“All right, Dakota Frost,” he said. “I’ll convince the Fireweavers to do things your way.”

67. Life is Fire

Jewel got seven years in prison . . . and I nearly ended up alongside her.

She was charged with vandalism of a federal park and reckless endangerment of human life . . . all federal crimes, to which she pleaded guilty. And all crimes of which I, technically, was also guilty, when I seized control of the spell and used it to free Pele.

My work securing Haleakala crater didn’t help—even though the Hawaii National Guard did their best to seal the crater, and Philip did his best to lock down the whole incident, there was no way to suppress thousands of videos of Pele flying up to space.

So there was no way to stop the US Attorney from investigating how that happened, and as I worked to make sure that any liquid fire in the crater was safely locked down, I was unwittingly building the District of Hawaii’s case for reckless endangerment.

No good deed goes unpunished.

But, miraculously, no one died. We blew off the top of a mountain, but no one died. Well, some yahoo got himself killed trying to film the tsunami roiling up onto his hotel, but not from the tsunami—he fell off the roof, while the bathers in the pool survived.

A national park was wrecked, but it had been nearly empty. Dozens of houses collapsed, but everyone in them was already outside watching the eruption. A mammoth chunk of rock from the explosion hit a hotel—but an abandoned one, already scheduled for demolition.

No one died. Miraculously. Apparently, my prayer worked.

So the US Attorney ultimately decided—“by a hair,” she told me, “by a hair”—that as a kidnap victim, my actions could be counted as a bizarre form of self-defense, and that even though releasing Pele had enormous repercussions, it was better than another Krakatoa.

Even better, regardless of what I did, I did it in a Federal park, where state authorities had no jurisdiction. The loophole which bit my ass in Atlanta helped me in Hawaii—without a state charge to trigger on, the US Attorney couldn’t prosecute a Misuse of Magic charge.

So I went free . . . and the Internet went wild.

In the thousands of videos which were posted to YouTube over the first few days were two innocent-looking videos shot from suspiciously close up—from the ridge overlooking the crater, Science City, where two construction workers had seen Pele taking off.

Then, on day ten, the bombshell hit—a video filmed by a scientist with a telescope hooked up to his camera phone, which had caught most of the initial part of the spell . . . in close enough detail to show the infinity lens, a climbing figure . . . and the interaction of my Dragons.

Now my magic has been seen round the world. It started with the clock I inked for Alex, continuing with photographs during the graffiti fires, and then with my stunt in Union Square. But the YouTube clip, Haleakala Tattoo Dragon Summoning, blew away them all.

They’re calling me the Caster at Haleakala now.

And so, Alex assures me, the next season of
The Exposers
will be a hit. I was forced to get an agent just to help me turn down all the offers I’ve got for interviews and appearances, but soon the agent started, tentatively, to suggest things that I . . . approved of.

I haven’t taken a one of them, of course. My gut tells me to fulfill my obligations, then quit. But deep down, I know I’ve got too much of an exhibitionist streak for that—the publicity has been great for the shop. I don’t know what to do . . . or what this will do to my life.

That’s not quite true, of course. It’s already started doing things to my life. I have to be a little more careful in public; we have a lot more traffic in the shop. But the money pouring in from my inking is nothing compared to that first paycheck . . . when Alex paid up.

This time, I didn’t rush out and blow it all. No new house, no new car, not even the new Vectrix motorcycle . . . but I did pour that money into Cinnamon’s 529 plan. Hang the gift tax, screw the deductions. Cinnamon now had enough to send her grandchildren to college.

And the publicity, or perhaps the disaster, made the Magical Security Council even more real. After some coaxing, Lord Buckhead did visit the fae in San Francisco, in secret, and gave his blessing to the Northern California Practitioner’s Conclave, in a private ceremony.

Apparently, the visit of a small-g god can do more than just smooth fae feathers or unite werekin factions. After Buckhead’s visit, the Conclave created its own Security Council, the Magical Supervisor’s Board, with Carnes as chair—and Lord Kitana as an uneasy advisor.

With the vampires, the fae and the wizards on my side, even Fire Prince Daniel Hill is playing along. He’s agreed to abide by the rules of the San Francisco Magical Supervisor’s Board—and to participate as one of my Stewards of the Liquid Fire.

I have no illusions that Daniel and the Fireweavers or Carnes and the Wizarding Guild are playing along willingly; the only reason they haven’t tried to seize the fire yet is because Philip is holding the cauldron of fire in a secret location even I don’t know.

But we’ve given each of them the tiniest droplet of liquid fire: a milliliter each, enough for Daniel to renew the fireweaver’s supplies, for Devenger to conduct his studies—and for the DEI to assess how dangerous the material is, and whether it should be released at all.

I think it should be, and Philip is backing me up. He’s walking a tightrope: he and my fellow Stewards know he’s holding the fire, deep in the MIRChold vaults, but his superiors in the DEI think I’m holding the fire in some secret location—giving Philip cover.

When last I extended my trust to the DEI, they betrayed me and destroyed the community that Cinnamon had called home. Now Philip was bending over backward to prove that his organization was one that could earn the Edgeworld’s trust.

So far, it’s working. The DEI has been following my playbook on how to handle the Haleakala Caldera. They’ve sealed it off, begun surveying it, begun mining it. It isn’t clear what fractions of liquid fire can be salvaged, but with Professor Devenger’s help, they’re trying.

What Carnes and Devenger and Philip and I—and even Daniel—are worried about, though, is what will happen as this knowledge inevitably leaks out. We’re not worried about the immortals anymore; we probably have enough pure fire for one round of spells.

We’re worried about people like Jewel.

Daniel calls Jewel a crazy dictator. I wouldn’t go that far. She lied to me, but she drew back from the brink. She had some principles at her core—she just really wanted to spin fire. But I think she also wanted to clear off that mountaintop and break Hawaii off the Union.

The Hadean Dragon we now call Pele was the most powerful single organism the human species has ever seen. Her hatching shook the Earth; her launching actually changed its spin, infinitesimally, but measurably—they’re going to have to reset every GPS on the planet.

If Jewel had succeeded . . . an army with Pele at its head would have been unstoppable.

And her reality is inescapable. Few people saw her hatch; not everyone believes the YouTube videos. But when Pele hit the edge of airless space, and unfurled her great dragon wings into vast butterfly membranes ten times their original size to catch the solar winds . . .

You can still see her, with a powerful enough telescope.

We now live in a world where almost everyone has seen a real dragon. We live in a world where children everywhere have her rainbow butterfly wings on their T-shirts. And a world where you can see from space the crater left by a magic spell more powerful than an atomic bomb.

So it’s not just Cinnamon I’m trying to protect anymore.

Now I’m using everything in my arsenal to push the Magical Security Council farther than ever before—using my magic, my contacts, the publicity, and even politics to try to get people on our side. To establish not just rules—but an early warning system.

Because we can’t put liquid fire back in the bottle. Scarcity is only temporary—the Washington Monument has a crown of aluminum because it was so valuable; a few years later, cheap electricity made aluminum so cheap we now use it for disposable food wrapping.

Sooner or later, someone like Devenger will reverse-engineer liquid fire, or figure out how to mass-harvest firecaps, or will invent a completely new source. We don’t know how yet, but we’ve got to figure out how to stop bad spells, rather than banning magic substances.

Because, sooner or later, someone like Jewel will do something terrible.

I know bad people will use magic for their own evil ends, but I’m not going to give up my own magic or let innocents suffer at their hands anymore. I have to get the power, the resources, the will—and the knowledge—that I need to keep us all safe.

———

I’m Dakota Frost, skindancer, and magic is my domain—don’t screw it up.

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