by Eva Chase
The guy shifted his weight from one foot to the other, considering. From what Rory had told us about her interrogation in California, the joymancers had trouble believing anything a fearmancer said. They hadn’t even trusted that an insight spell couldn’t be warped. But a deal like this, offered voluntarily while the joymancer cast part of the magic, couldn’t be tampered with if spoken right. And my request was perfectly reasonable.
“What exactly would you be asking us to commit to?” he said.
“You’ll need to confirm that your commitment extends to all the people you’ll bring with you, and agree that you won’t inflict lethal or likely-to-become-lethal damage on any person you encounter at the location I’ll tell you, except when your life is directly under threat—and then only enough to fend off that threat. You’ve got to defend yourself. I recognize that. But no one should die unless it’s either you or them. Doesn’t that fit with your joymancer principles?”
I knew it did, even if the joymancers sometimes bent those principles when it came to fighting with us. The man pursed his lips. “And you… will commit to telling us everything you know about this dire new problem you say the fearmancers are creating, including any dangers we’ll face going up against it?”
“I’ll commit to telling you everything I know about what’s happening at this specific location, and any dangers at all you could run into in tackling that.” I didn’t want to risk them digging out information about the university at the same time.
“Hold on.” The man stepped back and raised a phone to his ear. Of course a joymancer would need to hash out a decision with his colleagues even if he was technically in charge.
He’d better not take very long. I didn’t think more than ten minutes had passed since I’d activated the spell, and Oakgrime had probably been conservative in his estimate of how long it’d last, but this gambit wasn’t going to work if I faded away in front of the guy.
I maintained a casual stance as he finished his talk. My gaze skimmed over the trees around us, but if he’d brought company, they were keeping themselves well-hidden. I couldn’t afford to waste my limited magic reserves to check. There wasn’t any reason for them to go poking around as far as the castle.
After a few long minutes, the joymancer came back to me. “All right,” he said. “We’ll proceed, with the wording as already stated. Beyond that, we owe you nothing.”
I didn’t love that turn of phrase, but I wasn’t going to argue with it, not with time slipping away. “And I owe you nothing either. Let’s do this then.”
I watched carefully as the man cast his part of the deal, braced for a jitter of rejection that would tell me he couldn’t make this commitment for all of his colleagues here after all. But it didn’t come. Carefully, I twined my small stash of magic into the words of my promise.
By the time the spell had solidified, the space behind my sternum was aching with emptiness, and my real body had broken out in a sweat. But it was done. Even the joymancer looked satisfied.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “All right. Let’s hear what we’re up against.”
“There’s a town upstate, a small one, where the fearmancers are running a sort of experiment,” I said. A tug of magic encouraged the words from my throat, but I didn’t need that to keep going. “They’ve revealed their magic to the locals and are terrorizing them into submission.”
Just that statement was enough to make the man’s face harden and his shoulders go rigid. “What town?” he demanded. “What sort of defenses do the fearmancers have in place? How long has this been going on?”
Apparently he’d never heard of the concept of “one thing at a time.” I refrained from reminding him of that, telling him the details I was aware of, which honestly weren’t a great deal beyond my own observations. It wasn’t as if I’d consulted with my supposed father for an inside take. I couldn’t even say what exactly the barons had been hoping to gain from the scheme.
“That’s all?” the joymancer prodded when I finished, but the tug of magic had faded. Our deal knew I’d kept my end.
“I’ve told you everything I know about it,” I said. The illusionary nerves in this body were starting to twitch. I didn’t think it was going to hold much longer. “And now I think I’d better get going.”
The man’s tone turned dark. “We didn’t make any agreements about that.”
Clearly on cue, several figures shimmered into view around the trees. I couldn’t help laughing. “And you call us the villains. Nice to see just how much we can trust you when you don’t have any magic compelling you to keep your word.”
The man in front of me didn’t bother to answer. He snapped out a spell no doubt aimed to hold me in place as other voices pealed out around us—and I threw myself free of the illusion. My awareness jolted fully into my real body with a gasp of breath. My vision cleared, taking in the joymancer-free view ahead of me.
I shoved myself to my feet and trotted off toward the road where I could catch another cab, a smirk crossing my lips at the thought of the confusion I must have left behind with my abrupt disappearance. I’d better make sure they didn’t catch me now, because those joymancers were sure to be pissed off.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rory
As lovely as the view from my bedroom window was, with the sprawl of forest on either side and the lake glinting straight ahead, at this particular moment I couldn’t help wishing it pointed in the other direction toward the garage. Jude had texted us about an hour ago to say he’d carried out the deal with the joymancers and gotten away from them unscathed, and then a little while later to report that he was officially on the road back to campus, but I didn’t think I’d feel totally at ease until I saw his red Mercedes coming up the road.
No, I wasn’t going to feel completely better until I could wrap my arms around him and hug him with everything I had in me. The choked sensation that had come over me when I’d talked to him on the phone rose up again.
If we hadn’t found his note soon enough, if we hadn’t realized where he’d gone… He could have been dead right now. Or at best locked away in joymancer custody, possibly for the rest of his life. It’d been bad enough seeing him attacked right in front of me, but at least I’d been with him, we’d had doctors right here to help him. Imagining him struck down all those miles away from anyone who cared about him—it brought a teary heat back into my eyes.
Somehow, I had to convince him that he wasn’t a burden. That he made my life brighter. And I wouldn’t get into how much I’d have liked to punch his false father in the face for not only trying to murder the “son” he’d brought into this world but also for making him feel like that was the best future he could have.
It was way too early for Jude to be back even at the speed he liked to drive, but I couldn’t contain my restlessness any longer. I grabbed one of my classroom texts to keep me somewhat occupied while I waited and headed out.
I’d only made it halfway down the first flight of stairs when I caught sight of a head of chocolate-brown curls coming around the landing below.
I froze in place, my arm tensing around my book. Maggie caught sight of me and halted too. We eyed each other for a moment.
“What are you doing here?” I said, at the same time as she said, “Rory, I think we—”
At the clash of voices, she shut her mouth and then started again. “I was hoping we could talk. Properly. I know… when you came to see me before, I didn’t really listen. So this time I came to you. I think I made a mistake, a big one, and I’d like to fix that if I can.”
I studied her expression. Was this a new trick to try to get me to admit something she could use against me? Had she caught on that I had a plan in the works with the other scions? If she realized what we’d arranged—if she told my mother or any of the barons…
I’d better find out where she was going with this, at least.
“All right,” I said. “Maybe not in the stairwell, though?”
The corners of her lips twitched with a hint of a smile. “Not the best conversation spot, I agree. Since I’m the one imposing on you, why don’t you pick wherever you’d feel most comfortable?”
I didn’t like the idea of inviting her into my dorm, and I didn’t want her in the private space of the scion lounge. I debated for a moment and then said, “Let’s go down to the lake.”
With the cooling weather, no one was really hanging around by the water these days. The rough path that led past the Stormhurst Building down to the dock was completely deserted. The wind whipped through my hair, colder right off the water than it was on the green, but the chill would help keep me alert. I tucked my hands into my pockets, my book still wedged under my arm, and turned to face Maggie as we reached the rocky shoreline.
My back tensed instinctively when she spoke a few casting words, my thumb moving to the curve of my new ring, but her gesture and the tickle of energy over my skin suggested she was only making doubly sure we wouldn’t be interrupted or overheard. She tugged her hair back behind her ears to try to keep it out of the wind’s reach. The dock creaked with the rocking of the waves.
“The way you talked to your mother after the incident in town—you really meant all that, didn’t you?” she said, giving me an unusually pensive look. “You don’t actually like the way the barons have been changing things.”
Did she think I could have made up my horror at the deaths of those kids as some kind of strategic move? I made a face at her. “Strangely enough, I’m not really inclined to discuss my opinions on politics with you at the moment. You’ve been accusing me of wanting to screw up my mother’s plans for ages now. I’ve already said everything I can to defend myself.”
“That’s not what I meant. Before—I thought you just wanted to be the one making the calls yourself, not that you had any problem with her decisions.”
I wasn’t sure how me wanting to go against my mother was any better than me wishing I could be making the same decisions in her place. Actually, in most fearmancers’ eyes, it was probably worse.
“I’m still not seeing how this conversation is going to lead anywhere good,” I said.
Maggie let out an exasperated sound. “Well, it doesn’t work if you can’t meet me halfway.”
I had to laugh. “Meet you halfway? You’re pushing me to say something that’ll look like I’m a traitor. How exactly are you sticking your neck out at all? And even if you were, at this point it’d have to be a lot more than halfway. You’ve gone out of your way to try to screw me over more than once, and I’ve never done anything at all to you. If I’m going to trust you, you’d better show a whole lot more trust in me than you have so far.”
Maggie opened her mouth with a flash of her eyes and then closed it again. After a moment, she grimaced. “All right. That’s fair. I wasn’t really— You know what people here are like. I’ve gotten used to keeping my opinions totally private.”
What opinions? I had to admit, she’d gotten me a little curious. Nonetheless… “It’s going to take more than just saying a bunch of things. I’ll need to be sure you’re not lying.”
“Okay.” She hesitated and seemed to brace herself. “What did you have in mind?”
If this could go down any way I wanted? My first instinct was to turn to my specialty, Insight, but for finding out specific information, those spells weren’t totally reliable. Maybe someone as practiced at manipulation as Maggie appeared to be could make sure her mind didn’t reveal the warning signs. In this particular case, I agreed with my mother on the most useful type of spell. Persuasion got straight to the point. It had worked well against the guy Maggie had compelled to speak to me before.
“If you want to have a real conversation, first I’d like to ask a few questions, with a persuasive spell to make sure you answer them honestly,” I said. “I know that’s a big ask, but… I can’t see us getting anywhere without that. If you don’t trust me that much, it’s okay. We can put whatever it is you’re trying to get at on hold until you do.”
Maggie was silent for a long moment. The wind warbled around us, and the water hissed against the shore. Finally, she said, “Okay. I’ll give you that. Because your mother would never have said it that way.”
I didn’t know what to make of that last comment, but it didn’t matter when I was getting what I’d asked for. I considered my questions carefully. “Ready?”
She nodded.
“You will answer my questions truthfully until I end this spell,” I said, propelled by my magic. I didn’t fling the spell hard, and I didn’t need to, because Maggie had lowered her defenses as agreed. A quiver raced through me as the spell hit its mark and lodged itself in her mind.
“Why did you come to talk to me today?” I asked.
“Because I realized that we might actually have similar goals,” Maggie replied without hesitation. “I thought we wanted opposite outcomes, but if that’s not the case, we should be working together. I had to find out where you really stand.”
“What goals are you talking about? What do you want to see happen with the barons?”
She winced, but she didn’t resist. “I want to see the Bloodstones led by someone who’ll be evenhanded and compassionate, not ruthlessly vicious. And I’d like to see the torturing of the Naries stopped.”
I blinked at her, startled silent. She had to be telling the truth—I’d compelled her to—but it never for an instant would have occurred to me that her interests would line up so much with mine.
“Why were you so sure I was on the ruthlessly vicious side?”
Her gaze dropped to the ground. “I’ve heard a lot of stories about the Bloodstones. Not good ones. And when you came back, from the bits and pieces I overheard of your behavior on campus, it sounded as if you were already trying to bend everyone to your will. I’m guessing those stories were warped by the people telling them—or maybe they didn’t have the full story themselves. After the way you interrupted the spell to find your mother, and how you took Lillian out of the picture when you saw how much she was supporting her… that seemed to confirm what I’d believed. I’m sorry.”
Forcing her answers was making me increasingly uncomfortable. If we were on the same side, I shouldn’t pay her back by treating her like an enemy the way she’d treated me before. I ended the spell with a murmured word and a flick of my fingers. Maggie’s shoulders sank with relief.
“So…” she said, her stance tensing all over again as she waited for my response.
I managed half a smile. “I’d say our goals are pretty much the same, and it’s too bad you didn’t figure that out sooner, because I could have used a hand a heck of a lot of times in the last few months.”
She let out a halting chuckle and swiped her hand over her hair. “Thank God.”
“Just so we’re clear,” I added, “I don’t want to hurt my mother. I don’t want to take the barony away from her. I just want her to stop hurting other people.”
“You realize you might not be able to get that as long as she is still baron.”
“Yeah.” That understanding had been weighing on me more and more since my plea at the edge of town. “But if there’s a way I can get through to her, I’ll take that over forcing the issue any day.”
Maggie smiled too, her expression wry. “Which is exactly the kind of attitude I wish I saw more of here.”
It was still hard to wrap my head around everything she’d told me. I sat down on one of the larger rocks near the empty fire pit.
“I looked up your background after you made all those accusations,” I said, deciding it was better to leave Declan’s involvement unmentioned for now. “I know you didn’t even live here until you came over from Europe to attend Blood U. If you’re so bothered by the way things are here, why haven’t you spoken up? Or gone back to however they are where you’re from? Why is it specifically the Bloodstones you want to see be different? It’s not like most of the barony families are any better.”
“Ah.” M
aggie ducked her head, a renewed reluctance coming over her even after everything I’d just acknowledged. She bit her lip. “How much do you know about your family’s history?”
Oh, dear Lord, had my mother or someone before her managed to clash even with people on the other side of the ocean? What crimes had they committed over there?
“Not a lot,” I admitted. “I’m still finding out things about my mother’s rule. I know her father was baron before her… and that’s about all I’ve got when it comes to anyone in the previous generations.”
“Okay, well… Before I explain, I want to remind you that I meant what I said about us working together. I was compelled to tell the truth when I told you that. I’m not looking to oust you now.”
To oust me? I frowned. “What do you—”
She held up her hand. “Let me get this out. I’ve managed not to let anything slip for a whole decade—it’s not easy switching gears.” She inhaled sharply. “Your grandfather had a brother. He moved to Portugal nearly fifty years ago, when he was in his twenties, and then he quickly fell out of touch with the family here. As far as I can tell, at this point everyone assumes he died not long after that. But he didn’t. He only passed a few months before I came over here.” She met my gaze with an almost defiant expression. “He was my grandfather.”
I stared back at her as the full implications sank in. My jaw went slack. “Then… you’re a Bloodstone.”
“Yeah.” She scuffed her shoe against the ground, sending a pebble rattling away. “But there wasn’t any honor in the name for him. He left here and let himself drop out of touch because it horrified him the way everyone within the family was so busy jockeying for power, the way they treated anyone who disagreed with them. The stories he told me… He changed his last name not long after he came over, and that’s the one he passed on to my father and I. He never wanted any of us to have anything to do with the family here.”
