Magic on the Storm (21 page)

“Did you think she was kidding when she said magic would probably come back to
life? Explosively?”
No, I hadn’t thought she was kidding. But I had thought they’d have some kind
of control over it. The thing that spooked me the most was that the Authority,
or at least Maeve and Shame, didn’t seem very comfortable with how magic was
going to react to this emptying, and to the approaching storm.
“I thought you people had a manual for this kind of thing.”
He laughed. “
We
have a manual. Magic doesn’t.”
He took a sharp left, even though I knew the main room was to the right.
“And you’re going?”
“Out the door that doesn’t have a million people with questions between us and
it.”
Good thinking.
He was right. There was a door down at the end of this hall, maybe something
that had been a staff entrance before. He didn’t do any fancy magic, no magic
at all, actually. Just opened the door and strode out into the rain.
“What about Terric?” I asked as I followed him.
“What about him?”
“You’re leaving him. Maeve said he was sleeping. Is he hurt?”
The memory of him lying on the ground, Greyson chewing on him, flashed in front
of my eyes. The memory of him sitting slouched in pain beside Zay, his hand
cold against the back of mine, came to me.
“He’ll get over it.”
“What?”
“If I’m breathing, he’s breathing. None of us gets out of living the easy way.”
Shame was making good time, his anger steadying his steps. I had to jog to
catch up with him.
We got in the car. I glanced back at the inn. A lone figure stood on the porch,
leaning against the rail. Terric. He waited, watching us.
Shame started the car. Then Terric turned and walked away.

Chapter Sixteen
S
hame pulled out of the parking lot. “Where?” he asked.
“Stotts said on the corner of Southeast Tolman and Twenty-eighth. That’s out by
the golf course, right? Do you know what’s there?”
He thought a minute, turned the car north and toward the bridge. “Isn’t that
where Beckstrom’s labs are?”
“What?”
“Oh, come on. You don’t even know where your dad set up labs for Violet’s
research?”
“Didn’t like him, didn’t know her, didn’t care. Which means no, of course I
don’t know where the labs are.”
“It never came up in board meetings?”
Interesting question. It hadn’t come up in board meetings, but Violet had told
me the subject of the lab, and more specifically the disks that were being
developed there, was causing all sorts of suspicions among the stockholders and
higher-ups of the company. So much so, she’d moved in with Kevin because of
threats.
I felt like I was working a crossword puzzle with no clues. I should be
guessing what was going on, but didn’t even know where to begin. People in the
company were upset with her for something. The only thing I could put my finger
on was that the disks had been used for a lot of bad things. And now Stotts
wanted me out at the lab where the disks were made, to Hound something when
there was very little magic left in the city.
A break-in? Maybe someone on the board got a judge on their side and was
seizing property.
Whatever was going down out there, Stotts had not sounded happy.
“That’s a hell of a long time to think over your answer,” Shame said. “Try a
short word like ‘no.’”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just—I think I’m missing something. That maybe Violet
said something.” I pulled out my notebook and scanned back through the entries.
Nothing that immediately looked like a clue. “And no, the lab hasn’t come up in
any of the Beckstrom Enterprises business I’ve been involved in. But I’m not
the CEO. Violet is.”
“And?”
“She told me there was some contention among the board members. They didn’t
like not knowing what, exactly, she was developing, and why she wouldn’t let
them get their hands on it. Plus, she moved in with Kevin.”
“Cooper? Her bodyguard?”
“She said she received threats. Why don’t you know about this? Kevin’s a part
of the Authority. Doesn’t he report in or something?”
“Not to me. Any field agents—hell, all of us—report in to Sedra. She’s the
mastermind.”
Yes, I knew that. I’d just never needed to report to her myself. Things had
been really quiet the last couple months. All I’d been doing was training and
learning. My teachers reported in for me.
“Do you think they can help Zayvion?” I asked. “Maeve, Jingo Jingo?”
Shame was quiet. “You said he went into a gate.”
“Yes.”
“He might find his way back. If a gate were opened near his body.” Shame took a
breath and wiped his hand down his face, as if trying to mop off exhaustion.
“Complicated by Jones using light and dark magic, all the disciplines. Opening
a gate for him might go bad fast. Or it might help him remember what it’s like
to be alive and bring him back.”
“So why aren’t they trying that? Hells, you and I could open a gate.”
Shame wiggled the fingers of one hand. “No magic, remember? It takes magic, a
lot of it, or a lot of different kinds working together, to open a rift between
life and death. Gates aren’t easy.”
Maybe not, but I’d watched Chase open and close them with a snap of her
fingers. But then, she was Greyson’s Soul Complement. And they could break
magic’s boundaries.
I rubbed at my forehead. The left side of my face still hurt. I’d probably be
half tanned for the next few months. Since I had my notebook out, I made notes
about everything that had happened. City lights, just electric, no magic,
washed the pages in white and yellow. I finished my notes and gazed out the
window at the magicless city.
Cars that were just cars, nothing shiny, nothing magic, drove past. In the low
light of the sky’s exhalation into darkness, people walked the streets.
Mostly they looked the same. Oh, maybe a few older coats, maybe more bad
hairstyles, thicker waistlines, and a limp or two. But mostly, the kinds of
magic people used to enhance themselves were noticeable only close-up—the
perfect noses, teeth, complexion, sparkling wit, dulcet voice, and so on.
We’d gotten so used to taking care of flaws with easy fixes. What’s a little
headache now and then for the illusion of youth? Seeing people with their true
faces on was odd. Fascinating. The big noses, laugh lines, thin lips, frowns, crooked
teeth—the imperfections somehow caught at the soul of humanity, and left it
bare to be seen, the beauty and ugliness. It felt like suddenly we’d become
what we were. For good, and for bad.
That lack of magic gave me a glimpse of something I didn’t know I was missing.
A reality, an honesty, magic could not create. And like seeing a foreign land
for the first time, I was caught by the beauty of it.
Lead and glass lines and conduits still wrapped like steel ivy up the outsides
of the buildings, crawled up and up, and met at building tops where the
gold-tipped spires of Beckstrom Storm Rods stood like beacons to the stars.
But stripped free of Illusion, Glamour, or the comfortable blur magic offered,
crumbling brick, peeling paint, rust, and disrepair showed through. The
sidewalks were not as clean, the plants not as tended, windows dirty, broken,
or boarded. Safety inspections had to be done to assess a building’s health
without magical enhancements—I’d just been through a barrage of them with the
leasing of the warehouse by Get Mugged—so I knew the buildings were stable.
They were also old, showing their history, their lives, in every crack and
slant.
I loved it.
This was not the Portland I knew. Rust-streaked pipes and mechanical units on
rooftops—air conditioners, vents, and the like—sat like squat warts against the
sky, changing the familiar horizon. I wondered if Stone was up there somewhere.
I hadn’t seen him since the fight.
“Have you seen Stone?” I asked Shame.
He licked his bottom lip. Shame still looked like hell, and the anger that had
brought him back to life at the inn seemed to be wearing off, leaving a sickly
sweat behind.
“You know Stone’s an Animate.” He looked at me. Waited. I had no idea what he
was getting at.
“An Animate is an inanimate object infused with magic,” he went on. “Magic puts
the life in them. And when magic is gone, there is nothing. . . .”
“No. Absolutely no. You did not just tell me Stone is dead.”
“Allie . . .”
“Shut up.”
Stone was fine. He was smart enough to track me, he was smart enough to curl up
around a backup spell or something. I refused to believe he was dead.
But the more I looked at the city around me, the more dread sank in. There just
wasn’t that much magic left. Not for generators. Not for illusions. And not for
a gargoyle, no matter how smart.
Shame said quietly, “When magic kicks back up after the storm hits, he’ll come
to.” It was sweet, but I knew he didn’t think that would happen.
Stone was just a statue. A big stupid rock who left dust all over my apartment
and wore my socks on his nose. But he was my big stupid rock. I was going to
miss the hell out of him.
I tried not to think about it. Because I didn’t want to show up in front of
Stotts crying.
Shame drove like he knew right where the lab was. And maybe he did. Maybe the
Authority kept the lab on its watched list. But even if Shame hadn’t been
driving, it wouldn’t have been hard to find the place.
Three police cars blocked the street. Beyond them the big white van of Stott’s
MERC team parked half on the elm-lined sidewalk. A few police officers stood
outside the building, which was more of a house, and two more at the street to
keep people at a safe distance. I didn’t see Stotts’s crew: Julian, Roberts,
and Garnet.
More police tape, a sullen yellow smear in the dying light, roped off the
sidewalk outside the building.
The building really did look like a house out of a storybook. Old hand-placed
stone walls scalloped the edges of the sidewalk. The Tudor-style house was set
up on the small hill and faced the trees and golf course across the street. At
least two stories, the house looked like a home rather than a lab, brick and
stucco on arched doorways beneath steeply gabled roofs. The windows, slender
and multipaned, had little light behind them.
In the driveway was Violet’s Mercedes-Benz.
My heartbeat did double time.
“Stop,” I told Shame. “I need to get out.”
Why would she be here? I thought she was moving in with Kevin. I thought she
was being smart, being safe. Making baby blankets or knitting diapers or
something.
Stress is a weird thing. I got out of the car and heard the door slam shut, but
I didn’t hear the car drive away. I didn’t know what the cop asked me when I
jogged past her. I didn’t feel the police tape skim my back as I ducked under
it and made it to the driveway up the walkway.
No blood on the concrete. No blood anywhere that I could see. That was
something. Maybe Violet had arrived after the break-in. That made the most
sense. Stotts must have called her. Like he called me. To look at the damage
inside. To fill out an insurance form or something.
I turned to go into the building.
Stotts’s hand landed on my wrist, warm and callused, and brought the world
suddenly back to me.
“Stay out of the way.” He pulled me to one side, near a line of bushes. Didn’t
let me get close to the door.
There wasn’t any room for me to go anywhere. Men filled that door and came
through it with stretchers.
One stretcher carried an unconscious and pale Kevin Cooper. Blood had been
wiped off his bruised face, but still leaked in his light brown hair, turning
it dark on one side. An oxygen mask fit snug against his face. They moved him
past me so quickly, I couldn’t see where else he might be injured. But I could
smell magic on him. A lot of it, a lot of spent magic.
“Who?” I said. “Who did this?” I was trying to ask who could do this. There
just wasn’t that much available magic to be able to do this much damage. “How
long? When? When did that happen to him?”
Stotts hadn’t let go of my wrist. Smart. I’d probably go in there and ruin
evidence in this state of mind.
“You’re here for that,” he said. “To Hound the scene. Tell me what you see.
There’s more.”
And he was right. There was more.
More EMTs, men and women, and another stretcher. This one with tubes and
monitors. I knew who it was from the shape of the prone figure even before I
could see her face.
Violet.
Dad scratched at the backs of my eyes, no longer a moth-wing flutter, but
something made out of sharp edges and teeth.
I exhaled to stay calm and pushed at Dad, needing him in a corner, away from my
conscious thoughts, away from seeing Violet on a stretcher. I must have tried
to pull away from Stotts too.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t get in the way. Let them do their job.”
Violet
, my dad said.
No. Please, no.
I pressed my lips together to keep his words from forming in my mouth. He was
in my head, but he had no right to use my body. Even if Violet was hurt.
She was in better hands than mine right now. I was not a doctor, and neither
was my father. Getting her to the hospital as quickly as possible was the smart
thing to do.
As they passed, she opened her eyes.
My dad struggled, shoved at my control.
Violet
, he thought.
“Daniel?” she whispered.
No. Hell no. I didn’t care how much they loved each other—I was not going to
let my father talk to her, was not going to let him use me or my mouth or
thoughts that way, and was not going to stop the EMTs from getting her medical
attention.
The EMTs moved swiftly past me. With Stotts’s hand still clamped to my wrist, I
held my ground while Dad battered the edges of my control. Then the EMTs were
gone. Violet was gone, placed very carefully into the back of an ambulance that
drove away, lights flashing and sirens blaring. I pulled my hand away from
Stotts.
Dad went dead silent. Angry.
Too bad.
Okay. Regroup. First the job. Hounding. Hounding the crime. Without magic. Then
checking on Violet.
“Anything you’d like to tell me about this before I go in there?” I asked.
He looked at my expression, puzzled. Then glanced over my shoulder at the
ambulance. Maybe at something beyond that. “Violet and Kevin were here when it
happened. Violet was semiconscious when I arrived. She can’t remember
anything.”
“Head wound?”
“She’s been hurt,” he conceded.
Yeah, well, I figured that out all on my own. “Is she going to be okay? Is the
baby in danger?”
He looked down at his shoe, then back at me. “They don’t know yet.”
Fuck.
And the cool wash of my dread and my father’s anger melded into something else.
Resolve. Whoever had done this, whoever had attacked my wife—I mean my
friend—and my unborn sibling, was going to suddenly have a very bad, very short
life.
I strode into the building, past the fallen door that looked like it had been
blown off its hinges, and into the main room.
Stotts followed.
The first room was a reception area, though there was no desk. Just a couple
small clean couches, a TV mounted on the wall, and a computer and a phone on a
table.
I didn’t have magic at my disposal. None of us did. I glanced over at Stotts to
see if he was uncomfortable with that. He looked calm, composed. Didn’t look
like having magic or not having magic made any difference to him. Sort of an
“If I don’t have my gun, I can kill you with my hands” kind of look.
Very cop of him. And it meant he wasn’t all that surprised that magic had
suddenly died out.
“Do you know why magic’s gone?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m thinking it might have something to do with that gut
feeling of yours. The storm. We’ve had magic black out on us before. But never
this long.”
“Okay, so you know I can’t Hound without magic.”
“I’d just like your eyes on the place.”
There were already police officers and other specialists working the scene.
Stotts’s MERC crew was inside, using a few gadgets that looked like they were
low-magic but useful, like the glyphed witching rods, and nonmagical things
like cameras and fingerprinting tools. Very old-school police procedural.