Magic on the Storm (4 page)

Zay stood on the other side of the car, silent. I knew why. Something was wrong
here.
There was an immense sense of emptiness, as if something huge, solid, and
familiar had been removed.
It took me a second; then I finally placed what was missing: the well. I
couldn’t even catch a scent of the magic I knew roiled beneath the ground.
“Do you not feel that?” I asked.
Zayvion nodded, then walked silently across the gravel to me. He looked calm,
but when I touched his wrist, I could feel the heightened awareness of his
senses. He was calm. He was also ready for a fight.
I took a second to check our surroundings. The parking lot was about half full
and the rush of cars over the bridge and freeway hummed in the distance. The
river on the other side of a thin line of trees gave off that clean, rich green
scent, and far off, I heard either a boat horn or a factory whistle.
It seemed like a normal evening.
And it most certainly was not.
“The well,” I said, somewhat unnecessarily.
He placed one hand on the side of my face, the other on my hip, and pulled me
close. I pressed against him, wrapped one arm around his back, the other up
around his neck.
His mind was obviously not on the well. Neither was mine.
He tipped my face up, and bent to me. His lips were soft, catching at my lower
lip, pressing, then opening, inviting. His tongue dipped sweetly at the corner
of my mouth, then drew into the heat of my mouth. Electric tingles warmed me,
and made my toes curl. I pressed tighter against him and kissed him back,
taking my time, sharing a long, lingering kiss that made me want more.
He finally pulled away, reluctant, then rested his lips against my ear. “Hell
of a job,” he murmured.
I leaned into him, my cheek against his chest, and smiled. I loved a man with
good follow-up.
We pulled apart. Holding hands, we crossed the parking lot and walked up the
steps to the covered porch that wrapped the building. Zay pulled the door open
and we stepped inside.
The delicious sweet, buttery smell of pies baking, and something savory, maybe
sausage, greeted us. Even though I’d just had lunch, my mouth watered, and that
had nothing to do with magic. Maeve knew how to cook.
Light poured down from the high- vaulted ceilings, making the large dining room
feel even bigger than it was. The tables to the left were filled with the early
dinner crowd. I knew the arched doorway beyond them led to private rooms, and
the well-warded study where Maeve tutored me.
Upstairs were bedrooms, and down in the basement, a grand ballroom with the
well pulsing just beneath its marble floors.
Here on the main floor, the girls behind the lunch counter to the right of the
room were brewing coffee and plating pies.
“Coffee?” Zayvion asked.
“Sure.” I didn’t know if we had time, but I wasn’t one to go into any situation
undercaffeinated.
He strolled off toward the lunch counter and I unzipped my hoodie, scanning the
room for Shame or Maeve.
Maeve strode through the arched door to the left. Her red hair was pulled up in
a loose bun, ringlets touched with gray falling around her face. She wore a
dark green blouse, a tan skirt, and a pair of riding boots, all of which gave
her the look of a woman who knew how to use a whip. Which, coincidentally, she
did.
She carried a stack of menus in her arms, and gave me a smile and a nod as she
walked my way.
“Allie. It’s good to see you. Tea?”
“Coffee, thanks. Zay’s getting it. How are you?”
“Busy. Beautiful weather, today. Walk with me a minute?”
“Sure.” I matched her stride and crossed the room to the lunch counter, where
she handed the menus to one of the girls there.
“I have a job you might be interested in,” she said. “Hello, Zayvion.”
“Mrs. Flynn.” He handed me a cup of coffee. No, more than coffee. A latte,
which the girls had poured to leave the image of a four-leaf clover in the
foam.
Very nice.
“Why don’t you come along, Zayvion?”
It wasn’t really a request. We both knew that. Still, to any outsider, it
sounded like chitchat between her son’s best friend and his girlfriend, who
Hounded for a living.
We strolled along and Maeve took the time to say hello to a few people at
tables and ask them if they were enjoying their meals. I knew those people
weren’t a part of the Authority. Despite being involved with supersecret magic
users, Maeve was also a successful restaurateur.
She led us through the arched doorway, down the hallway a bit, and into the
first sitting room. It was decorated in velvets, wood, and brass, love seats
and chairs huddled to make comfortable conversation nooks, heavy curtains on
the windows giving the room a deep sense of privacy.
She held the door open as we walked through, and then locked it behind us. With
one quick wave of her hand, she cast a ward and activated the Mute spell worked
into the wallpaper.
“Thank you both for coming.” She gestured to the seats, and we sat. “Shamus did
talk to you?”
“He didn’t tell us much,” I said. “There’s a storm coming, Sedra has called
other people from Seattle, and there’s something wrong with the wells.”
She brushed a tendril of hair back up toward the bun, even though it just fell
back down to her face. “There will be a meeting tonight among the members of
the Authority. To exchange information. To plan for the storm.”
Zay, lounging on a love seat, took a drink of his coffee. I could feel every
muscle in his body ratchet tighter and tighter as Maeve spoke.
She walked over to an empty chair and sat. She looked tired. Worried.
“The storm is still a day or two off. At least we think so.”
I opened my mouth and she held up one finger to tell me to shut up. I didn’t
know what it was with her and her fingers. She had that motherly no-bullshit
way of using her hands as a second communication device and I always fell for
it.
I drank my coffee and made a note to ignore her fingers.
“We can’t track them like weather fronts,” she said. “Wild storms are sorely
underresearched. One theory is that wild-magic storms are a combination of how
the magic in the earth is being accessed and released into the world, and how
magic, all disciplines, dark and light, is being used. When things swing too
far out of neutral, magic can rise and gather into a storm front—and ride upon
a real weather front.
“The other theory is that the magic is wild to begin with, a mix of dark and
light that causes nothing but chaos and destruction when it is used.
“You can imagine it has been difficult to test either theory on a large scale
in secret. In any case, we do believe a wild storm is coming our way.”
“The gate Mikhail opened?” Zay asked quietly.
“That could be it. There are more things happening in the world that could have
accumulated or triggered to set it off.”
“Wait,” I said. “So magic is a ticking time bomb and as soon as someone shakes
the nitrogen a little too hard, or mixes in the wrong elements, we get
explosions?”
She frowned. “No. It’s a combination of factors. Magic on its own is a part of
the natural world. No more destructive than wind, rain, and fire.”
Which was like saying no more destructive than hurricane, flood, and inferno.
Spiffy.
“We’ll go over how to handle the storm at the meeting tonight,” she continued.
“I want you both there. And Zayvion, if you see Shame, make sure he comes.”
Zay nodded. “I’ll get him there.”
She brushed her hair back again. “Now, what I most needed to talk to you about,
Allie, is the well. I want you to look at it. To tell me what you see in the
magic there.”
“You want me to Hound the well? Really? For illegal magic use? You people don’t
even recognize the law on magic use, so I’m sure you’re not using it
illegally.”
She gave me a steely gaze and I wiped the innocent look off my face.
Note to self. Do not be a wiseass when your Blood magic teacher is
stressed-out.
“Right. I can Hound the well,” I said. “Not a problem.”
“Zayvion, I’d like you to be there too, please,” she said.
He rubbed his palms across his jeans and stood.
I finished off my coffee and left the empty cup on the table.
Maeve led us down a long hallway to a set of stairs that jagged down and down.
I’d been in the lower level of the inn just once before. When I’d had to stand
in front of members of the Authority and fight for my life. I hadn’t expected
to get out of it with my memories or magic intact.
I wanted to take Zay’s hand and hold on like a little girl as we descended the
stairs, but I refused to. There was nothing down here I couldn’t handle on my
own. I’d already proved that.
The last flight of stairs spilled out into a room that looked like it should be
the receiving room of a castle, a ballroom, a grand theater for a grand
ceremony, instead of the basement of a railroad boardinghouse.
The floor was tiled with marble that washed from the purest white through
grays, then sank into the deepest black. The ceiling rose up two stories, huge
pillars spreading out at the ceiling into wings that arched up to meet in the
center. Glyphs shaped and carved the pillars, the arch of wings, the ceiling,
and the walls. Magic drawn in lead, glass, iron—a powerful network of holding
spells, warding spells, most I still didn’t know—surrounded the room and the
well that pulsed like the earth’s heart beneath the marble floor, deep
underground.
There was one thing out of place since I’d last been here. A cage stood in one
corner of the room. Built of steel, four-sided, it looked mobile and was placed
over the purest white marble tiles.
In that cage was a beast of a man, a nightmare creature caught between life and
death. Greyson.
Chills rolled up my spine and I could not take my eyes off the cage, nor the
man who was still too much beast within it. Covered by a blanket, he hunched in
the corner of the cage, his too-long arms crossed over bent knees, his mouth
resting against his forearms so that only his eyes, animal yellow, glowed from
within the shadow of the blanket.
I smelled his magic, twisted, dark, burnt-blackberry stench, mixed with the old
wax and polish perfume of wood that had been cleaned for centuries. And I
smelled blood.
Greyson had a good nose too. He turned his head, just enough to show a flash of
fang digging into his arm and leaving a trickle of blood behind.
Something in my head flickered, rattled, and scratched behind my eyes.
I knew the feel of that. Even though I hadn’t felt it for two months. It was my
dad. Then my father’s voice, clear as if he were standing next to Greyson’s
cage instead of in my head, whispered,
Come to me.

Chapter Three
A
hand landed on my left shoulder. I yelled, pivoted, and swung.
“Holy shit!” a voice said.
My fist whiffed through empty air. That was because Shamus Flynn was fast. He
ducked and skidded down two steps, neatly avoiding a broken nose.
He laughed. “You have got to lay off the coffee, Beckstrom. You’re all twitchy
and whatnot.”
“I thought . . .” I was breathing hard. Felt a little sick too. Didn’t know if
it was from the overwhelming smells, the half-beast killer guy staring at me,
my dad’s voice seeming to come from the half-beast killer guy, or the feeling
of my dead dad scraping at the backs of my eyes again.
Why choose? It was all of the above.
Greyson, back when he was just a man, had been one of my father’s murderers.
I’d seen that memory from sharing my head with my dad. And since Greyson had
one of dad’s experimental disks stuck in his throat, it was a pretty easy leap
to guess that someone had stuck it in his neck and used it to keep him in his
current state of half man, half beast. The disks could hold magic, and somehow
the disk in Greyson held both dark and light magic, and whatever spell worked
into it made him the half beast.
My guess was that Dr. Frank Gordon had done it to him, probably around the same
time he’d dug up my dad’s grave and tried to possess my dad’s spirit to open up
a gateway to death and draw dark magic into the world. Things hadn’t gone the
way Dr. Frank Gordon had wanted them to go. Namely, instead of doing what Frank
wanted, my dad had possessed me.
Then Greyson had hunted me. Well, not me. He wanted my dad’s spirit. I didn’t
know why. Maybe revenge—that seemed like the easiest answer. What I did know
was that letting Greyson get his hands on my dad’s spirit, and maybe my dad’s
knowledge of magic, fell squarely in the middle of my Bad Things list.
And to make it all worse, Greyson used to be Chase’s boyfriend, maybe even her
Soul Complement. She had dumped Zayvion to be with Greyson before Greyson had
gotten so screwed up.
I closed my eyes, trying to regain my calm. I was okay; everything was okay.
The cage would hold Greyson. Why did they have him caged?
Why was Dad talking from way over there? My dad wasn’t in Greyson. He was in
me. Maybe not the best thing, but certainly better than the other options.
“Allison,” Maeve said. “Come down the stairs.” She didn’t put Influence behind
it, didn’t even make it sound like a command. Just calm, gentle. Motherly.
If I remembered correctly, I wasn’t listening to her motherly commands.
I opened my eyes. Zayvion, Shame, and Maeve all stood on the bottom step,
looking up at me like I was about to burst into flames.
“Sorry,” I said. “I just. It’s just.” I took a step. My knees went wet-noodle
and I had to hold the rail to keep from falling. What the hell was wrong with
me?
I gritted my teeth and pulled my shoulders back. I could do this. I could walk
down these stairs without falling. Did it too. Stood in front of Maeve,
breathing a little too hard, sweating a little too much.
She put one finger under my chin and looked up into my eyes.
The good thing? One look from her and Dad stopped scraping at the backs of my
eyes.
The bad thing? Greyson growled. Not quite a howl. It was more of a low
moan-yell. The hairs on my arms pricked up, and goose bumps tightened my skin.
Allison
, I heard my father whisper. Yes, from outside my head. Again.
“I don’t think . . .” My breath gave out, so I tried again. “I don’t think you
need to look,” I managed. “He’s there. And in Greyson. I think he’s in Greyson
too.”
Maeve’s eyes flicked back and forth, probably seeing more inside me than I
really wanted her to.
Greyson howled as Maeve looked deeper in my mind for my dad. He wanted the rest
of my dad’s spirit in me. The cage shook. I hoped the steel bars could hold
him. I hoped the magic in this room could hold him.
“We have been through Greyson’s mind,” Maeve said. “Jingo Jingo has been
through his mind and has seen nothing, no trace of your father in him.”
Yeah, well, Jingo Jingo had been through my mind and said my father wasn’t
there either. I’d already told her that a dozen times. She never believed me.
“You know what I think about Jingo Jingo’s ability to sense my father.” It came
out calm. Reasonable. Strong.
Go, me.
“I do. Jingo Jingo is an expert at sensing the dead. You are not.”
“Jingo Jingo isn’t the one who’s possessed.”
We stared at each other for a couple seconds.
“He could be wrong,” I pressed.
Maeve was a woman made of stubborn. So was I.
“Can you feel the well?” she asked, suddenly switching subjects.
I held my breath, trying to keep from yelling. The well was the least of our
problems. The caged killer Necromorph half-beast dude over there, who had a
part of my father in his head that no one else could see, and a desire to drag
the rest of dear ol’ dad out of me even if it meant killing me, was something I
thought we should all be a little worried about. “Why?” I asked.
“Just answer me.” She was not amused. Not playing games. Not happy.
Yeah, well, that made two of us.
I leaned back on one foot and glanced at Zayvion. He watched me, fists clenched
at his sides belying that oh-so-Zen mask. He’d been helping me keep my dad
blocked in my mind. Taught me a few spells that seemed to be working to keep
Dad quiet. Until now.
I raised one eyebrow, to let him know I could handle it.
Shame, however, was pacing across the room away from us, like a man walks on
rice paper. His head was tilted down at an odd angle, as if he were listening
to his footsteps. His hands were lifted slightly above his waist, fingers
spread. He was trying to hear something, sense something. Something beneath the
floor.
He was listening for magic.
I realized I couldn’t feel it like I had before. The deep strumming heat of it
beneath the room, beneath the tiles. Outside the inn, the well was usually no
more than a faint presence, but down here, the well radiated power.
Or at least it had the day I’d taken my test. And now the well felt—not empty,
but certainly less strong, less radiating, less full.
“It’s different,” I said.
Shame paused over tiles that were gray going on black. He knelt, stuck his
fingertips against the marble. Took a deep breath, let it out, then rocked back
on his heels. “Damn.”
He patted the pocket of his jacket, looking for cigarettes, found them, tapped
one out.
“Don’t smoke in here,” Maeve said. Then to me, “How is it different?”
I glanced at Zay. He had moved silently to stand next to Greyson’s cage. Maybe
he didn’t want to influence me. Maybe he wanted to pound Greyson.
He wasn’t the only one.
“You want me to Hound the room?”
“First I want you to tell me what you feel. What you sense.”
I’d learned that when Maeve asked me to do something in her teacher voice, she
wasn’t really asking. Normally, it bothered me and I gave her lip for it.
But there was something very wrong about the well and the magic here. Something
that made me want to go home to my apartment, home to my stone gargoyle, and
stay as far away from the Authority and magic as I could.
Like ducking for cover before a storm hit.
Who was I kidding? Even if I went home, I couldn’t get away from magic. It
flowed under the entire city, through the conduits and Gothic glyphed cage work
that wrapped every building. And it flowed through me.
I tucked my hair behind my ear, my hand trembling. I walked across the room
until I stood in the center of it, and stopped just short of where Shame knelt.
The same down-the-throat horror that I usually got from enclosed spaces
skittered through my brain and set fire to my nerves. My heart was pounding too
hard. I wanted to turn back. I wanted very much not to do this.
Shame watched me from his position on the floor. He placed one hand on the
tiles, palm flat. I hoped he wasn’t planning to Proxy or Ground me. I was
shaky. I wasn’t sure how magic was going to respond to my cast, or if it would
respond at all.
I stopped, spread my feet so I had a chance of staying on them if things got
bad. I resisted looking behind me to see what Maeve, Zayvion, and Greyson were
doing. Instead, I calmed my mind:
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack . . .
I licked my lips. Instead of tracing a glyph in the air, I tipped my head up to
the angel-wing ceiling, dropped my hands at my sides, fingers wide and open,
and drew the glyph for Seek at my side. I reached out with my senses, using a
little magic from inside me to seek. I sent my mental fingers deep, deep into
the earth beneath me.
The well was not there. I frowned, reached deeper, sent my magic farther.
Finally felt the well, a glow of magic, a heat, yet so far away. The magic was
there, still pooling, still flowing, but it was like an ocean at low tide. Or
like someone had punched a hole in the well, and magic was draining away. I
didn’t feel it filling any other space, didn’t feel it creating new channels,
new rivers. Didn’t feel it pouring out through the iron and glass conduits that
channeled the magic that flowed freely beyond the well.
Something, or someone, was draining an enormous amount of magic out of the
well.
Holy shit.
Magic inside of me went cold and sticky. I wanted to puke. Okay. That was
enough of trying to touch the well. I let go of the small Seek spell and tipped
my head back down.
Shame watched me with a grin on his face.
Nice
, he mouthed.
I took a couple breaths, maintaining eye contact with him until I was confident
my panic didn’t show. How could he be so calm? Maybe the well emptied out like
this all the time. Maybe I was overreacting.
I turned back to Maeve and Zayvion. “Do you really want to talk about this
here?”
Maeve frowned. “Why?”
“Greyson.”
“He is contained. Controlled. He cannot hear us. Or see us.”
I glanced over her shoulder. Greyson glared at me from amid the shadows of his
cage.
I was pretty sure he saw me.
“Isn’t there a better place to keep him?”
Maeve folded her arms over her chest. “This is the safest place for him exactly
because he is near the well.”
I did not believe her. This was a bad idea. A really bad idea. People who use
magic to murder should not be anywhere near magic, much less a well of it. How
did she not get that?
“What did you feel?” she asked.
Fine. I’d do it her way. But I wasn’t happy about it.
“Something is draining the well.”
I didn’t think Maeve could get any paler. The freckles on her cheeks suddenly
seemed darker, and a greenish hue lined her lips.
“The storm?” Zay asked.
“It must be,” she said. “Allie, you hold magic inside your body. Can you sense
anything unusual about it within you?”
Other than that it was cold, sticky, and giving me the creeps? “It’s usually
warm, or hot. It feels cold. Kind of sticky.”
Shame snorted.
I made a mental note: smack him when his mom wasn’t looking.
“Has it ever felt that way before?” she asked.
“That I can remember? No.”
“Do you feel magic being drained out of you?”
I took a second to concentrate on the magic inside me again. It felt strong
right now, just . . . wrong. “No. It’s still there.”
“That’s good news.” She didn’t smile. “Shame, come stand with us,” she
continued as if this were class. “Allie, I’d like you to Hound the room, to see
if there are any unusual spells here.”
She was such a kidder. Every spell, ward, and glyph worked into this room was
unusual. Still, I knew what she meant. She wanted me to look for predatory
spells, Drains, Siphons, anything else that might be used to screw up the well.
It might help if I knew how the well worked, or how the spells and wards and
glyphs normally reacted to being so near it. Nothing like throwing the new girl
into the deep end of the magic pool and telling her to dive for pearls.
Good thing my lack of knowledge had never stopped me from doing stupid things
before.
I calmed my mind, used my little jingle again, and chose which price I would
pay to use magic. My standard pain lately had been muscle aches. Don’t get me
wrong: it still hurt to use magic, but since I was working out and hurting
anyway, and had the funds to get a massage and soak in the steam room or hot
tub every once in a while, I figured muscle aches made the most sense.
I set the Disbursement for muscle aches, then drew the glyphs for Sight,
Hearing, Smell, Taste.
Spells keyed to life beneath my vision. Pale fire in rainbow metallics crawled
up the columns, across the walls. Shadow glyphs, glowing in deeper tones than
those on the walls and ceiling, burned like dark ghosts shifting beneath the
marble tiles.
Wow. It wasn’t just glyphs worked into the room. The entire room, including the
winged arches, was a glyph, carved and constructed to carry magic, to channel
it, to hold it, keep it, hide it, tap it.
The art, the vision, the intimate knowledge of architecture and how spells
blended, contrasted, strengthened, and weakened, were stunning. I didn’t know
who had created this room, but whoever they were, they were brilliant. Genius.
“Allie?”
It was Maeve. I licked my lips and realized I’d been standing there and
staring, transfixed by the beauty and power of the room, instead of Hounding.
Embarrassed much?
I paced to the wall opposite the stairway, and made my way along the perimeter
of the room. I dragged my fingertips across the wall as I went. The soft,
ancient wood, carved and placed here long before this was a train station, long
before this was even a building, thrummed beneath my touch. Magic darkened and
rippled away from me, like water beneath a soft wind.
The glyphs shifted from one discipline to another as I made my way around the
room. Faith, Death, Blood, Life. Nothing seemed strained, strange, or out of
place. All magics flowed and merged in harmony I’d never seen before. All magic
working together as one.
If something here was draining the well, I didn’t think it was in this room.
I stopped next to Zayvion, in front of Greyson’s cage. I had every intention to
Hound that cage. I wanted to know that it could really hold him. The binding,
holding, and ward spells were strong, but there was a hint of something, a
darkness beneath them, that worried me.
I wondered if the spells were being drained like the well. I reached out to
touch the cage. The spells were strong. Whole.