But ghosts were dead and Xhea knew that the dead had no magic.
She could only stare. How was it that she, living and breathing, could not hold magical brightness within herself, while the ghost of dead Shai still shone with it?
The bright magic that was the City’s foundation was the very essence of life, an embodiment of light and growth. Looking upwards at its towering buildings, the City had always glowed in Xhea’s sight, a white beacon even in the darkest nights. But what she felt rising from the depths of her self—the shadow she’d always sensed inside—was just the opposite: a force of stillness and dark, a slow movement that spoke of endings and of death.
Xhea looked around herself, at the concrete walls of her home deep beneath the ground, at the past braided into her hair, at the ghost that hovered in the air before her.
Yes, she thought, the word like a cold breath of fear. Yes.
And still the dark magic flowed from her, pulling towards Shai and the imbalance of a dead girl full of life. The fog seeped towards the ghost that hung before her—but then continued upwards, outwards, in the direction that the broken tether had led.
One slow step at a time, Xhea walked towards the door, following it, trusting her instinct to lead her. But as the tether binding her to the ghost tightened, she stopped. Slowly, she turned back. The ghost looked down at her, that heartbroken look still in her eyes.
“You’ll have to help me,” Xhea said at last, her voice trembling as she spoke. “I’ve never been to the top of the City before.”
She swallowed and extended her hand. It was a long moment before Shai understood her meaning and still longer before she moved. Like a falling petal, her dress fanning out around her, Shai sank until they stood eye-to-eye, then slowly, deliberately, placed her palm against Xhea’s own. Xhea curled her fingers around Shai’s hand and felt a glow of warmth, like a memory of living skin.
Hand in hand, the girls rose towards the City.
It was late, the afternoon all but dying, before they at last came to the right building. The air was cool, damp with the earlier rain that still lingered in puddles. Xhea stared at the elevator touchpad. The only times City workings had ever responded to her touch was right after she’d been paid, renai strong in her system. She’d thought her dark magical signature too weak for the City; now she wondered if was not strength, but the type of her magic that had confused the sensors.
Still hand-in-hand with Shai, Xhea pressed the touchpad and held her breath. The sensor blinked once, twice, detecting the warmth of her skin and the magic sparkling through Shai’s ghostly flesh.
The elevator doors slid open.
Xhea stepped inside, heart hammering, and Shai followed before the doors shut behind her. Shai indicated the floor button with a single finger that trembled as she pointed, and together they pressed it. Xhea watched the numbers move, floor by floor, to keep from panicking; she had never been in an elevator before.
When at last the doors opened Xhea stepped back, unprepared for the inside of a City building. Light, more than could possibly come through the building’s windows, streamed into the hall from every direction. She squinted at its intensity. The walls were a riot of foliage that seemed to come up through the floor and rise through the ceiling, and the carpet beneath her feet felt like moss.
Shai moved towards a door at the end of the hall so quickly that Xhea felt a firm tug on her end of the tether. She didn’t protest, but followed; instinct, embodied in seeping fog, led her in the same direction.
Xhea’s knock was answered by the man from that afternoon. He had changed from his wet clothes, but if anything he looked more haggard than before. He recoiled at the sight of her, and Xhea used his distraction to duck under his arm and into the room.
“You can’t come in here!” he protested.
“I already did.”
To Shai she said, “Is this the place?” But with a cry the ghost curled in upon herself again, doubling over in midair before vanishing. Xhea swore.
She had no choice. Closing her eyes, she released the last of her hold on the rising tide within herself, and let the darkness seep out around her. Like a magnet, one direction pulled. She followed, hurrying down a hall.
Soon, there was no doubting her destination: the light of magic shone blindingly bright around the edge of one door and the small sign tacked to its surface read Shai.
Xhea pushed the door inwards.
There, in the center of a bed, lay a body. Xhea stepped slowly into the room until she stood at the bedside and looked down at the girl who lay so still. She knew that face, that hair, those eyes, though never had she seen Shai’s ghost look so ill. Her pale hair was plastered to her head, heavy with sweat, and the hands that lay against the blankets seemed but wasted bones. Beneath her closed lids, Shai’s eyes roamed, caught in dreams and visions of ghostly walking.
To Xhea’s sight, Shai burned far too brightly. White-hot, as if at any moment her skin could ignite.
Life raged through Shai’s body, building upon itself, multiplying: life without end. It was magic, yes, but without control. In its wake it left only brightness and disease: cancer.
Looking down at the girl’s wasted flesh, Xhea could see spells whose glimmers she’d seen mirrored in the ghost. There were so many of them: one to stem the growth of the tumor on her liver, another to slow the tumors in her lungs, still another attacking the growths that spread through her bones. There were more spells, spells upon spells, staunching bleeding and energizing her faltering heart, repairing the damage that medicine and magic had left in their wake.
And all of the spells leaked magic, more magic, bright magic that because of its very nature said to her body and tumors alike: live, grow.
From the doorway behind her, a voice spoke. “I cannot save her,” Shai’s father said, and at last Xhea understood his failing power, the heavy weariness that marked his face. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
If he had been able to sense Shai’s ghost around him, Xhea thought, he must have known it was too late; but how could he simply let go?
Perhaps he had gone to her for a simple reprieve from his dying daughter’s ghost; perhaps he had thought that setting the ghost free would let her body finally die. Or perhaps he had sought Xhea not knowing what it was he wanted, what she could possibly do to help, only desperate to try something, anything while he still could.
“I know,” she told him, not daring to look back. “This is why you came to me.”
With her right hand, Xhea brushed back the hair from Shai’s forehead, the skin beneath her fingertips fevered and flushed. Her left she placed on the center of Shai’s chest in the exact point where the ghost’s tether had been attached. Beneath her palm, Xhea could feel Shai’s heartbeat, quick and erratic like the fluttering of a small bird’s wings.
“Shai,” Xhea said gently, softly, calling to the girl as she had the ghost. “Shai.”
Shai opened her eyes. They were glazed with fever, unfocused, black pupils dilated wide within the pale rings of her irises. Looking down, Xhea knew it wasn’t her own sight that made Shai’s blue eyes look so empty or so gray.
“Shai, listen to me,” Xhea said, still stroking her hair, speaking slowly to the dying girl and the bright ghost that she knew lay trapped somewhere inside. “Shai, it’s okay. You’re only dreaming. Relax,” she said. “Breathe. It’ll all be okay soon.”
To Shai, to Shai’s father, to herself, she whispered, “There must be an end to all things.”
Slowly, Xhea leaned down and brushed her lips against Shai’s fevered forehead. The coins braided into her hair chimed, their small, high notes ringing like prayer. Her hands steady, Xhea let her magic flow and watched as the dark fog sank into Shai’s broken body like rain vanishing into soil. One by one, the spells began to flicker, their harsh brightness fading beneath a tide of shadow. One by one they uncoiled, lines of magic releasing their hold on Shai’s dying flesh, the power unraveling and spinning into nothingness.
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br /> When she was finished, Shai’s body lay still. The room was silent, the air as peaceful as the depths of a deep lake and as quiet. To Xhea’s sight Shai was no longer the harsh white of burning magic, nor the black of emptiness, but gray. Merely gray.
“Balance,” Xhea whispered, and with that word she understood her magic and her role in the world. She could have no part of the life of the City or its bright magic; she was its opposite, its balance, its end.
Behind her, Shai’s father crumpled, sliding down the wall to the floor with his face lost in his hands. As she left, Xhea touched him once, stroking back the hair from his forehead as she had his daughter’s, as if by touch alone she could convey all the things that had risen within her, thoughts and feelings for which she knew no words. He did not move or acknowledge her presence, but sat still and unmoving until she had left his side.
As she walked away, Xhea heard the quiet sound of his weeping.
Outside, the sun was setting. Xhea stood atop the building feeling as if she stood atop the City itself, watching the sun set in brilliant tones of ash and rainwater. It was the first sunset she’d ever seen, and she did not need color to know it was beautiful. Around her, in the towers and homes of the City, she could see the glow of life, the minutiae of lives being lived: all nature of magic, bright in her eyes.
“Balance,” she said as the day faded to night.
In the darkness above the City, stars began to come out.
AFTER SCHOOL SPECIALS
Tanya Huff
Her most recent novels are Smoke and Shadows, Smoke and Mirrors, and Smoke and Ashes, which were spun off from her Henry Fitzroy vampire series and feature Henry and his young friend, the streetwise Tony. “After School Special” is set in this world.
“A SHLEY, your freak sister is doing it again.”
The drawl was unmistakable; Sandra Ohi, Ashley’s only serious competition. Having come back from South Carolina for second term after having actually worked on a movie with her mother, a movie where she had lines and got to cry on camera, a movie shown in class during Black History month, Ashley would have ruled the eighth grade girls at The Nellie Parks Academy except for one thing.
Arranging her face in the expression her mother usually saved for her father—somewhere between “Oh, it’s you” and “Drop dead”—Ashley turned to face Sandra and the trio of girls currently in her inner circle. “Why so interested in a grade five, Sandra? Oh that’s right,” she continued too sweetly, “you were told to stop hanging around with the grade threes.”
As Ashley’s posse snickered, Sandra tossed a perfect fall of blue-black hair back over her shoulder. “As much as I would have preferred to avoid her, the little weirdo is standing in the middle of the atrium talking to the ceiling. She’s impossible to avoid. Everyone has noticed her. I’m glad you don’t mind that’s she’s so noticeable.”
“Well, you’d know about having a sister who’s noticeable, wouldn’t you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Last I heard the whole entire senior year of Macken zie College had noticed your sister.”
Sandra’s eyes narrowed and the nostrils of her extremely expensive made-in-America nose flared. “Your father’s show is stupid.”
Her father had taught her to never bother arguing an unarguable position. “Yeah, well, that doesn’t change the fact that your sister is a slut.”
Apparently Sandra’s father had taught her the same thing. “At least my sister is a slut in a different school!”
Embarrassing family members might be the norm but they could be denied as long as they weren’t sharing the same cafeterias and hallways and extracurricular activity rooms. Unfortunately, until she graduated and moved on to high school at the end of the year, Ashley was stuck with Brianna intruding on her space.
Well aware that she’d scored the final point, Sandra sneered and swept past, trailed by her three acolytes—also sneering.
Ashley took a deep breath, and then another because after a certain age screaming wasn’t cool. “I’ll be in the atrium,” she snarled and stalked off.
Her girls were smart. They didn’t follow.
“Ow! You’re hurting me, you big cow!”
Ashley tightened her grip on Brianna’s arm and dragged her out the front door of the school. “Stop being such a baby.”
“I’m telling!”
An extra yank kept the little dweeb off balance and unable to kick. “I’m telling first because you promised to stop the freak show at school!”
“I wasn’t doing nothing.”
“You were staring at the ceiling,” Ashley snapped, pulling her sister close and spitting the words right into her face. “And you were talking to yourself.”
“I was talking to my familiar.”
“It’s not a familiar; it’s a bug in a box!”
“Well it’s smarter than you!” Brianna rubbed her arm and scowled up at the older girl. “And better looking too!”
“There’s the car.” Pushing the brat in front of their father’s Lexus would have consequences. They’d so almost be worth it. “Come on!”
“I don’t have to do what you say.”
“I’ll drag you.”
Brianna glanced down at the pavement and then up at the car, clearly considering it but when Ashley started forward, she hurried to keep up. Once strapped into the back seat she pulled a small gold jewelry box out of the breast pocket of her uniform jacket, opened it a crack and peered inside. Opened it a little wider. “Oh great. My familiar is dead.”
Ashley rolled her eyes. “It’s a bug!”
“Probably died from having to be in the same car as you.” She dumped the dead cricket out on her palm and poked it once or twice. “Hey.” Two hard kicks to the back of the driver’s seat. “Hey, Theodore, unlock the window. I gotta open it.”
“Your father says no. Not after what happened the last time.”
“I didn’t actually go anywhere!”
“Still no.”
“Suit yourself.” She flicked the dead cricket at the back of the driver’s head. It bounced off his hair and against all odds dropped into the space between collar and skin.
Rubber shrieked against asphalt as he braked.
“Next time let her open the window, dumb ass,” Ashley sighed.
“CB Productions, may I help you?” Phone tucked under her chin, Amy continued to sort and staple the next day’s sides. “No, the box company is long gone. You’ve reached CB Productions; home of Darkest Night, the highest rated vampire detective show in syndication. What? Well, we’ve never heard of you either. Ah, the glamour of show business,” she muttered as she hung up, slammed in another staple, and added one more set to the finished pile. “There are days . . .” Sort. Staple. Stack. “. . . when I think I should have stuck with NASCAR.” Sort. Staple. “Crap!” More and more, this was one of those days. She hurriedly put the stapler away as the boss’ daughters came through the front door.
They were better than they used to be. Although it was a DEFCON 4 as opposed to a DEFCON 5 kind of better.
“You’re wearing too much black stuff on your eyes,” Ashley sneered. “Are you trying to look like a raccoon?”
“Why, yes I am.” Amy smiled broadly, insincerely, and threateningly. “Thank you for noticing. Your father is waiting for you on the soundstage and . . .”
“Is Mason there?” Ashley interrupted, having taken a careful step back from the desk.
“He is.” And star of the show or not, Mason could be sacrificed for the greater good.
“Then I’m going in to see him.”
“Happy days. And Tony is in your father’s office waiting for you,” she told Brianna as Ashley rolled up her uniform skirt another inch and left for the sound stage.
“She thinks Mason likes her but Mason thinks she’s a creepy little girl,” Brianna snorted.
“Mason’s not usually such a good judge of character.”
“My familiar died.”
> “Again? Girl, you’re hard on crickets.”
“I need something sturdier.”
“Why do you need a familiar at all?”
Brianna stared at her for a long moment, brows draw in to a deep vee over her nose. “Because,” she said at last.
Amy nodded, a little unnerved by how well she was getting along with CB’s younger daughter. “Not a good reason but it’ll do.”
“Come on, Brianna, concentrate. You have to learn to focus before you can learn to do anything else.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the first lesson.”
“You never started at the first lesson.”
“I’m not eight.”
“Nine!”
“Whatever. The point is . . .” Tony cut off his “I’m a grown-up and you’re a little girl” speech as Brianna’s eyes narrowed. That was never a good sign. “Look, it’s important that you learn this right because someday I may need you to fix something I’ve screwed up.”
“That’s what’s in if for you. What’s in it for me?”
“I won’t turn you into a smoking pile of ash and tell your father you did it to yourself by accident.”
“Oh. Okay then.” She sighed and slumped further down in the chair, kicking one foot against the desk. “My familiar died.”
“The bumble bee?”
“That was two familiars ago!”
“Sorry. The uh . . .”
“The cricket!”
“Right.” He sent a silent prayer to whatever gods might be listening—and at this point he was pretty damned sure that there were gods listening—that CB keep refusing to get her a cat. “Bri, maybe you’re not meant to have a familiar.”
“Yes I am. It makes me feel . . .” She closed her lips tightly around what she felt.
Tony didn’t need her to tell him that it made her feel less alone. Because after all, he was the grown-up and she was the little girl. “Come on, Bri, focus your power in one spot.” He sketched a sparkling blue circle in the air. “You can do this.”
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