Postmortem

by SA Magnusson

  “The man who came into the ER. That’s who you went to for help. The archer.”

  “If anyone was going to be able to help with this, I figured it would be an archer.”

  “I never asked—or maybe you never answered—why was he in the city anyway?”

  “Why would an archer ever come?” I asked.

  “There were demons in the city?”

  “From what I can understand, there are always demons in the city. They always try to cross, and it’s the role of the archers to ensure that they aren’t able to stay.”

  Derek didn’t know about the demon king and I wasn’t going to tell him that, not when doing so would raise questions about how I had managed to survive the attack. I had managed to avoid questions from the council about that and I didn’t need to have them from Derek.

  “Until recently,” I went on. “Apparently, since the last attack, demon crossings have been less frequent.”

  “Do you think the Dark Council has anything to do with it?”

  “I did, but I don’t know who’s responsible for what happened to these dark mages. It’s not the council, and if it’s not the Dark Council getting revenge for something, then I don’t know who it is or why they’re doing it. Either way, the Dark Council and the mage council are at war.”

  “War?” Derek breathed. When I looked up, his eyes were wide. “I’ve heard rumblings, but didn’t know what to make of them. With what you’re saying…”

  And if it didn’t end, more mages would be injured. If that happened, I would be caught in the middle, maybe held here while they continued to try to use me, though I didn’t know that my magic was enough to save those who had been attacked.

  “They blame the council for this,” Derek said.

  “I blamed the council at first, too.” Who else would have been responsible for trying to burn off a mage’s magic? It didn’t make sense, but maybe it wasn’t supposed to make sense. “But what happened to Ms. Jones wasn’t the council.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be. My grandparents told me it wasn’t the council, and I believe them.”

  “It’s more than about your grandparents.”

  “Aron didn’t think it was the council, either.”

  “The archer would protect the council.”

  “He would, but I’m not sure he would lie to me about it. If the council was involved, there wouldn’t be any reason for him to hide that from me.”

  “Unless he’s concerned about what they might do to you.”

  I didn’t think that was the case either. Aron might be concerned about what the council would do to me, but it was for a different reason. Neither of us believed I was a dark mage, not anymore. And if the council learned I was half demon or whatever I was, I didn’t know that burning off my magic would be effective. How could they burn off a part of me? No—they’d have to kill me.

  “I don’t think that’s it.”

  Derek wanted to say something, but he bit it back. “What other reason would there be? Attacking dark mages like this—more than what the mage council had done—would only anger them. Why would somebody want a battle between the Dark Council and the mage council?”

  That was it. I had been trying to figure out who might have been responsible for the attack on Tony and his mother—and now this man—but I hadn’t given much thought to why there would be an attack. I had assumed that it was because they were dark mages, and no other reason than that, but what if Derek was right? What if this was someone trying to instigate a war between the Dark Council and the mage council?

  The mage council had already been on edge after the business with the demon king. They had continued to attack the dark mages, but if Gran were to be believed, they hadn’t done this.

  “Who would benefit from that?”

  “No one would. The council doesn’t go after everyone they consider to be a dark mage. They don’t have the resources.”

  I found that hard to believe. Everything I had heard told me that the mage council went after those they believed to be users of dark magic. But then, how would the council know if someone was a dark mage if they didn’t use their abilities? They might not want people to reach for dark magic, but if they weren’t using it in a way that drew the attention of the council, there wouldn’t be any reason to go after them.

  “There’s always been an uneasy position between the Dark Council and the mage council. Because of that, the Dark Council has remained hidden, avoiding the possibility that the mage council might burn off their magic, but they don’t do that with everyone.”

  “How do you know?”

  Derek looked away from me, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter, especially if we’re dealing with the possibility of someone trying to instigate a war among mages.”

  Derek sighed. “I told you that I owed your grandparents.”

  “What do you owe them?”

  “My safety. My life. My mind.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Your grandparents found me when I was fifteen. I was young, newly discovering my magic, and playing with something that I shouldn’t. I knew that I shouldn’t, but the temptation was there, and it felt as if it were natural.”

  “What are you saying, Derek? Are you…?”

  Derek nodded slowly. “I’m saying I can use dark magic.”

  14

  A heaviness hung in the air, but Derek met my gaze, refusing to look away. I didn’t know quite how to react. If he was a dark mage, he was nothing like what I had expected.

  But then, for the longest time, I had believed I was a dark mage.

  My grandparents helping him made a certain sort of sense. It was around the time that I was thirteen or fourteen that my magic had begun to evolve, becoming clear that whatever I had was different than what my grandparents could use. It was at that time they began to suspect I had dark magic.

  I remembered all too well the conversations we had, conversations centered around what exactly dark magic was and why that kind of magic was dark. They didn’t have answers then, and I doubted they had any answers now.

  It wasn’t difficult for me to believe that they would have helped Derek, especially if they saw in him the same things that they saw in me.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened, at least nothing like I’m sure you’re worried about. I didn’t use dark magic in a way that controlled somebody or harmed them, not like the stories of dark magic users I’ve always heard.”

  “How did you know it was dark magic?”

  “It’s different than that of mages. It’s different enough I wouldn’t even consider it the same thing. I remembered my parents trying to instruct me in the way to use magic, and every time they tried, I was able to reproduce their spell, but it didn’t work quite the way they wanted.”

  The way he described his dark magic was the same as my experience with my magic.

  Maybe Derek wasn’t a dark mage at all. Could he be like me?

  It would be hard to believe he would be part demon, but maybe he had another magical half to him and wasn’t a mage at all.

  “Are you sure that both of your parents are mages?”

  Derek looked at me strangely. “I’m pretty sure. I’ve known they were mages since I was young. My sister is a mage, and my younger brother is already progressing through his training. He’s gone off to the Academy and will become a full-fledged mage much like my sister and my parents. I’m the outlier.”

  “Your parents know?”

  “My parents think my magic is not sufficient. When it came time for the testing, I was passed over, but your grandparents identified something else in me, and they asked me to help them.”

  “Wait a minute. My grandparents were part of some testing?”

  “They serve the mage Academy.”

  Why was it that I didn’t know that?

  Why was it that Derek did?

  “You didn’
t know.”

  “Is my face the face of someone who knew?”

  He smiled. “I guess I just assumed that you would have known. I’m not sure why your grandparents would’ve hidden that from you.”

  “They said they worked for the council.”

  “That’s not entirely untrue. The Academy is a part of the council. It’s a funnel, a way to train more mages. When I was growing up, I thought I could join them. It was all I ever wanted. When I failed my testing, I didn’t know what I was going to do. And by then I had begun to worry I might have some other kind of magic, forbidden magic, that I should fear. When your grandparents came and offered me an alternative, I took it.”

  “The alternative was to keep an eye out for me?”

  “The alternative was to be a part of something they were establishing, a way to observe the non-magical world. And when you went into medical school, they asked me to keep an eye on you.”

  I stared at Derek. “Wait. You went into nursing because of me?”

  Derek shrugged. “I did it because of your grandparents, but the more I got to know you, the more I didn’t mind.”

  I didn’t know whether to be thankful or disturbed by the fact that Derek had been a part of my life much longer than I had ever known. “What would you have done were it not for my grandparents?”

  “Since I failed the testing for the Academy, I don’t know. Others like me have turned to their dark magic, and I suspect I would have had it burned out of me, so I probably would have become something else. Not myself.”

  I didn’t know quite how to take what he was telling me, but now wasn’t the time to work through it. There would be time later for questions, and I had plenty of them. Most of them were for my grandparents. They had been keeping things from me, and while I appreciated the fact they tried to protect me, they had done it deceptively.

  “We need to get back to what we have been working on. We either need to escape or we need to help this man.”

  “We can’t help him. If he’s a dark mage—”

  I frowned at Derek. “Didn’t you just tell me that you believed yourself to be a dark mage? Why wouldn’t you want to help someone else who suffers from the same issues? They can’t all be evil. Unless you are too.”

  Derek glared at me. “Kate, we don’t know whether we can even help him. And if we do, we don’t know what he might do to us.”

  “We help him, he’ll owe us. And if we don’t help him, I have a pretty good idea about what they might do to me. Do you have enough control over your magic to help?”

  “I’m not a fully trained mage. It’s why I haven’t been able to help you when you have tried saving people in the ER.”

  “You were able to recover from your injuries.”

  “That’s not something I control. That’s my magic flowing through me on its own. It’s sort of a protective feature. From what I’ve learned, all magic users have it.”

  Would I?

  I’ve never been seriously injured, though I could have been. When I was younger, I’d been in a car accident while riding with a friend of mine and her parents and had come away unscathed. The car had been totaled and Becky’s father had fractured his pelvis and had taken nearly a year to learn to walk again. Her mother had ended up with fractured ribs and a broken arm, and I remember how she had been casted for a long time. Becky had been hurt, too, though her injuries had been different than her parents. A ruptured spleen that required emergency surgery. I was the only one who hadn’t been injured.

  It had hurt. I remembered the pain from the accident and the way I had ached for days following it, but I hadn’t suffered anything more significant than a few scratches, and even those had faded pretty quickly. Could that have been my magic healing me, even though I hadn’t known it at the time?

  “Why don’t you see if you can figure out a way out of the room. If they placed a spell using dark magic, and if you have the same connection, you should be able to figure out a way out of here.”

  “Kate—”

  I shook my head. “Just try, Derek. I’m going to see if there’s anything that I can do to help him. Do you even know his name?”

  “His name is Rory.”

  “I take it he’s the son of a man who has me captured?”

  Derek frowned. “That would be Barden.”

  “You say that as if I should recognize his name.”

  “He’s quite well known within the mage community. He’s a high-ranking dark mage and has been believed to be on the Dark Council for years, though no one has been able to prove it. I haven’t heard anything I could attribute to him.”

  I arched a brow at him. “How is it that you know all of that?”

  “That’s part of my assignment. That’s what your grandparents have asked me to do. It’s not only that I watch the non-magical world, but they also wanted me to keep an eye out for dangerous magic users.”

  “Not just dark mages?”

  “They didn’t really specify. They’ve even given me a list of mages they were concerned about, and pictures, and I was to keep track of them if I saw them. In Minneapolis, we’re so close to the ley lines that it brings quite a few magical users into our area.”

  I already knew that, having seen it myself with Lexy and whatever her plan was with the Mississippi River to defeat one of the Carters so she could summon the demon king. “Did you know Kramen?”

  Derek stiffened a moment. “He’s dangerous, Kate. You don’t want to get involved with him. He’s even worse than Barden, and Barden has some sort of underground organization he runs.”

  Was that what I’d seen back near the entrance to the warehouse? “Kramen is dead. He was killed during the last attack.”

  “Oh, Kate. I’m sorry you’ve been through this.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “I never wanted this. None of it. Now that we’re here, I need you to see what you can do. I’m going to see what I can do.”

  I began to focus my magic, pulling on it. There was something freeing about using it around someone else, not worried about what they might think or say. I’d used my magic around Derek before, but when I had, that was still at a time that I believed him to be an underpowered mage and not able to recognize what I was doing. I wondered how much he had been able to determine. He probably wasn’t nearly as weak as I believed, which meant he probably knew exactly what I had been doing.

  Knowing that the spell was on Rory didn’t make it any easier for me to peel it away like I had done with Tony—and had tried with his mother.

  Was there some way that I could burrow beneath the spell?

  I wished I had my sword. It was my sword, regardless of how I had come into ownership of it, and with it, I knew I’d be able to remove the effect of the spell.

  Pressing my hands on either side of Rory’s shoulders, I sent magic flowing into him. I let it run through him, not focusing on the spell it all but choosing instead to focus on just letting the magic flow. It seemed safer that way, and if I could do it, and if there was some way for me to send that magic through him, then maybe it would let me find a way to peel off the effect of the spell.

  I just had to find the edge of it.

  That was what I had done with Tony, but that spell had been simpler than this one. It had seemed focused only on his mind, whereas this one didn’t seem quite so focused.

  I held on to the connection to my magic, and it continued to roll through him.

  As it did, I felt something different. There was something like a ridge, and I reached for it. I wasn’t sure how I did it, only that I was able to reach for that distinction and slipped my magic beneath it. There was no spell for what I did.

  Spells weren’t my forte anyway.

  This was more the way my magic worked. I was able to reach beneath the effect of the spell, and it didn’t require any real finesse or manipulation, not the way spells I had been taught to use would have.

  It was nothing more than brute force.

  I pushed.

 
; The effect of the spell seemed wrapped around the entirety of Rory, and as I held onto the spell with my magic, it pulsed and stretched, trying to slide over me.

  If I held on to this for too long, there was a possibility the spell would attack me, sliding onto me and separating me from my magic.

  If that happened, there wouldn’t be anyone who would be able to save me. Who would try? I wasn’t supposed to have magic, certainly not any magic that mattered.

  I had to push.

  I continued to strain against the spell, slamming magic underneath it. As I did, it rippled, pressing against me.

  Would there be some way I could protect myself?

  The barrier.

  I had created a shield and had used that to protect myself against the dark mages, but could I do the same thing with this spell?

  “Kate?” Derek asked.

  I couldn’t answer. I didn’t dare divert my attention from what I was doing. If I did, I feared that I would lose control and the spell would snap back upon me, trapping both Rory and me within it.

  If I could curve my magic, maybe curling it into a ball, I could trap the spell within it. It required a measure of control, but I had already done something similar.

  That had been different. That had involved trying to protect myself and Aron, while this would be trying to keep something confined within it.

  I continued to force my way beneath the spell, straining against it.

  The magic that had gone into the creation of the spell was incredible. Whoever had been responsible was quite skilled, which left me even more convinced that someone wanted to create conflict between the Dark Council and the mage council.

  With a grunt, I finally tore the spell free from Rory.

  It tried to snap back on me. I could feel it writhing, almost as if the spell itself was something alive, and it worked to snap upon me, but I fought, pushing out and creating a tight ball around it. I sealed the spell within the ball and was able to withdraw, retreating from what I had done.

  I sagged, dropping to my knees.

  Derek was there, and he helped me stand, supporting me.