The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  A slight breeze blew over us, then everything was still.

  Laughter—incongruous and wrong—from the club around the corner registered once more.

  An echo of the disfiguring purple markings stood out on Constantine's skin for a moment, as if they hadn't fully healed, then gold seeped into each divot and scar, filling them and strengthening his skin back to normal.

  Strengthened all of his magical reserves, as well...because he wasn't using container magic. He was using live magic, just like he would in the magical world. Numb thoughts slogged through my brain.

  Using live magic in the non-magical First Layer was an impossible feat for a normal mage because the connection to the magical veins of the Earth that was available in the other Layers was not present in the First Layer. The First Layer had been deliberately freed of magic, designed to protect the non-magical people of the world by giving them a magic-free safe haven. The only way to access magic here was by bringing it in via a container or device, or by breaking through the Layer system and making a connection to the Earth's magic by bypassing the system.

  Bypassing the system compromised everyone's safety. Everyone's. There was a reason mages who could do such things were feared.

  Even if the most upstanding member of society possessed such powers, if used as a conduit for someone else, world-ending disaster could result.

  Constantine drew in a deep breath, then let out a sated smile. “Done.”

  His fingers slid from mine, leaving the button in my palm. My fingers closed over it in a tight fist. My eyes were unable to focus properly and my breath returned harshly, as if it too had been stolen, then suddenly returned.

  “Look at you glow.” I heard him say. “Exactly as you should.”

  I forced myself to look up, but it was hard to think beyond numb, looping thoughts.

  Olivia stood rigid, her gaze focused entirely on Constantine. In contrast to the searing hate in her eyes, her words were calm and precise. “Leandred, I will report you for immediate termination if you ever use that—or one like it—again.”

  His face and body held a compelling sort of tension, as if he were intoxicated, with too much power rolling through him. He was brimming with it, like some sort of dark god. He flexed his fingers to show her his empty palms and my eyes watched the gilded lines of his hands. He waved dismissively at Olivia, leaving tracers of gold in the air. “And put yourself in the line of fire? Self-sacrifice in a Price? I doubt that highly.”

  “You don't know what I'd do,” she said darkly.

  Constantine smiled lazily, deceptively casual once more. “The day a Price sacrifices herself is the day the end of the world begins. You are welcome for the save. It will, of course, never happen again.”

  He turned away from her and touched my free hand, turning it palm up. “That was truly exceptional, Crown. You should always glow like this.” He slid a small envelope along the skin of my palm, gold light trailing in the wake. “Enjoy your birthday present,” he whispered.

  I mechanically gripped the paper.

  He sauntered into the shadows, disappearing moments later. And still I couldn't force myself to move, or tell my fingers to relinquish their choke hold around the button in my other hand.

  Olivia stared long and hard at the space he had occupied before whirling to face me. She looked at my closed fist and expressions vied on her face. Pain, irritation, grim determination. “Don't ever let someone use a leech on you again, unless I'm there. Swear it.”

  I tried to force my mouth to move, my throat to work, air to pass... Nothing emerged.

  She pinned me with the look, the one that made even the Excelsine officials sweat. “Swear it.”

  The smooth edges of the metal dug into my palm; I was gripping the button painfully hard. The thought of letting someone pull thoughts and magic from me was not at the top of my to-do list. “I don't plan,” I said, my voice oddly hoarse, “to allow that to happen again.”

  The lines around her mouth tightened at my wording, and I could see her formulating and discarding arguments in her head, but by mutual unspoken consent, we pivoted and headed back to the car at a quick pace. My limbs shook and I jogged unsteadily. The dome had withheld any magic use inside of it from showing up on the grid—I had gleaned that knowledge from Constantine's thoughts while we had been connected—but there would be evidence of the dome's collapse. The Department would be here any moment.

  As our jog became a run, I gripped the circle of metal tighter. “A button?” A barbed fishhook would have been a better representation of the magic contained within.

  I had been leeched of magical control and thought. Constantine could have taken whatever he wanted from me, just like Raphael had—turning my magic into...containment domes, and horrible boxes, and weapons that stripped magic.

  I pushed the envelope Constantine had given me into my back pocket as our pace increased to a sprint. In light of everything, I didn't want to see what he had given me for my birthday yet.

  “A button looks unexceptional,” Olivia said in between gasped breaths as we rounded the last corner. “Especially here. Never trust anything people wear.”

  I thought of Constantine's belt and the battle cloaks with their multiple fastenings, and nodded spasmodically.

  We practically dove into the car, and buckled in quickly as I shoved the key in. I didn't relinquish my hold on the button, and my grip on the steering wheel pressed it into my left palm. I pressed far too hard on the accelerator, squealing the tires before they bit into the road and jerked us forward.

  “Where is the nearest port?” I only knew the port that was located in the coffee shop in my suburb. Olivia and I had been using it each day to get back and forth between the First and Second Layers. Knowing where other ports were was a critical gap in my knowledge that I hadn't considered. But I knew Olivia had traveled to our house on the first day knowing all of the street names and businesses in our neighborhood. She'd likely mapped out the city as well when she'd found out we were going there.

  “One quarter of a mile to the west. In the basement of another club. Leandred probably used it.”

  “We'll go there.”

  “No. You are too bright.” Olivia’s lips tightened. “Leandred was right. Even I can see your edges are glowing. You can't go back to the Second Layer until you are warded again. You step into the Depot like that, and all hell will break loose.”

  “Okay.” I nodded. I had no idea how to fix such a thing. “I'll drop you off.”

  “No.”

  “Olivia—”

  “Are you going to shove me out of your moving car?” The even tone of her voice indicated that this would be the only way such a result would occur.

  “We'll pick up your things at my house, then I'll drop you off at the coffee shop.”

  Olivia did something on her pad. “I rerouted William and Nephthys to your house. They are on their way and have made appropriate excuses to get Mike and Delia to return to the Second Layer. We will discuss—”

  “No! Tell Will and Neph to go back too.” I reached for the two-way journal Will and I kept, determined to do just that.

  She effortlessly moved the journal out of my reach. “It is far too late to send another note. William just said they are on their way.”

  “Fine. Then they can escort you back.”

  “No.”

  “Those men were after you.” I gripped the steering wheel. “And at the library today...” Anguish gripped me, making it hard to speak. “You almost died twice today.” And I had been entirely unsuccessful so far in fixing death.

  “And yet here I am, alive. In this car, arguing over my welfare with you.” There was something off in her voice, an emotion brimming over that she was unused to and unable to suppress.

  My hands shook on the wheel. My mouth opened to continue the argument, to say anything, but all that emerged were horrible, broken sounds. I swallowed them down and tried to focus on the car lights in front of us.

&nbs
p; The car was tensely silent for long moments.

  “You can't die,” I managed to say as I jerked onto the highway on-ramp.

  “I am staying,” she said, almost savagely, her normally steady and dismissive tone completely gone. “You are cementing my decision.”

  I concentrated on the broken spaces of the lane lines and tried to take deeper breaths. “I don't understand.”

  “No, you wouldn't.” The savagery had leeched from her tone, leaving it distant. But the distance didn't seem to be aimed at me. She was leaning closer to me, if anything.

  After a few moments of silence, I looked over to see her staring through the windshield like it held unpleasant secrets. Her gaze turned to me, steady and dark, then dropped to where my hand was still clenching the leech against the steering wheel. “Leandred wouldn't have given you that unless he had future plans for it to be in your possession. You must avoid him from now on.”

  The round metal bit into my palm. “The magic required my permission. I gave it to him, both times.”

  “Exactly.”

  I felt a little lightheaded. I wanted to press a hand to my head, but neither would relinquish their grip on the wheel. “You think I will give him permission again.”

  “I know you will.” Olivia's voice was dark. “What did he give you in that envelope?”

  “I don't know.” I couldn't think about it right now. My mind was racing with too many questions to properly verbalize. “Why do you think—?”

  “Because you give everything when asked...or when you see that someone you care about has a hangnail.” She sounded a little hysterical, totally unlike my unflappable roommate.

  The sound peeled my right hand away from the wheel, where nothing else had, and I touched her wrist on her lap, trying to soothe her like Christian and I had done for each other a thousand times. Instead of calming her, a higher, crazed sound issued from her mouth at the action. But she didn't peel away. I kept my right hand touching her while I drove with my left, and after a few minutes of silence, she gave a nearly boneless shudder and melted into the seat.

  “Do not discount the timing tonight, Ren,” Olivia said tiredly, after a few more miles had passed. “Leandred arrived. We were attacked.”

  Beneath my palm, the metal leech pressed the steering wheel. “You think he was the main target?” The attackers hadn't known my name, but the leader had clearly identified both Olivia and Constantine. Olivia had once told me her mother and Constantine's father were both allies and enemies, so an attack on both of them likely had roots in whatever bound their parents together. “You think he was followed?”

  “Or he deliberately led them to us.”

  I swallowed. Thinking about how Constantine had been willing to sacrifice Olivia was an exercise in tension. “Why? There was no alliance between them. They were going to kill him there at the end. And he would have killed all of them, if you hadn't intervened.” Connected as we'd been, I had felt their death in the brittle caramel of Constantine's intentions—as if his emotions had transferred to me to become my own.

  “They don't need to be allies to be tools. I know you think of him as a friend,” she said, gripping her black skirt, her whole body radiating tension. “But you cannot underestimate Leandred. You need to stop trusting people.” Her voice was dark.

  My foot pressed harder on the gas pedal as the shadows of the highway thickened around us. “You think he was hoping to gain something by almost dying tonight?”

  She looked out her window. “I think that tonight allowed him to use that leech on you.” Then more softly she said, without turning, “I think that Origin Magic was actively used in the First Layer tonight.”

  Chapter Four: Reconnection

  Forty minutes later, Will leaned against the side of my bed, pushing his glasses up his nose and over his gray eyes every few minutes as he examined the containment, container, and leech devices. “I've never held a leech. Wow. Dad said I wasn't allowed to make one in the basement, even for science. No one outside of the Department is allowed to use them, and even then only by special permission from the Tribunal, and even then––”

  Neph touched his shoulder and Will stopped speaking, dark head bent while he quietly but enthusiastically investigated the devices, twisting and stroking them while he adjusted the hidden dials in his glasses that allowed him to run a more detailed visual analysis.

  Delicately poised on my bed with her legs crossed, Neph was a desert oasis, radiating calming comfort. Olivia, on the other hand, sat rigidly at my desk rifling through one book after another.

  A long scratch on Olivia's cheek had been mostly concealed with makeup during the car ride home, but was now red again. Olivia had taken care of non-surface wounds in the car with the small and limited magical first aid kit she had for things that makeup wouldn't cover—enough to pass the inspection of my surprised parents when Olivia and I had breezed in saying that we had changed our minds and gone to an all-ages club in our town for a short while, instead of making the long car ride into the city.

  Mom had been so relieved to have us home that she hadn't questioned it. She hadn't even allowed the presence of Will to scare the bejeezus out of her when he and Neph had knocked on the front door. Mom had hit him with a broom the first time they had met, so an awkward reintroduction was a vast improvement.

  Neph, on the other hand, had a far different effect. Both of my parents had stared at her long brown hair and warm brown eyes for what felt like ages, then mumbled something about finishing up house projects and getting started on that design they’d been putting off.

  Even though the feel of her was muted here, like a veil thrown over the top of her magic, being a muse obviously still held some power in the First Layer.

  Still, just like every mage in the First Layer, Will and Neph were cut off from using the living magic of the Earth here. And like Olivia, they were ignoring my distressed directive to return to the Second Layer.

  “I'm happy that you are both unharmed,” Neph said.

  Olivia looked at her, tight-lipped. “The news feeds are silent, but I know you know something about what happened at the library. Alexandria is part of Ahmed Bau's territory.”

  Will glanced up from his examination and anxiously looked between the two of them.

  Neph hesitated for a second—her gaze on me. “Yes.”

  Will looked even more anxious. Neph touched his shoulder and he relaxed.

  “There were a number of devices stolen from the Origin Magic section there. I don't know about the other institutions, but the community conjecture is that the Origin Magic sections were hit at each.”

  I swallowed.

  “We do know there were dolls involved in the attack,” Neph said. “No bodies and no blood have been found, and there was nothing to resurrect.”

  I nodded slowly. “There wasn't any blood inside the library either. Dolls...that makes more sense. I just figured the library, you know...” I made motions with my hands. “Ate the offenders then took a magical napkin to the halls after.”

  The others stared at me, their grimaces indicating they didn’t appreciate such an image.

  “Yeah, so.” I clapped my hands together to stop the chomping motions of my fingers. “Dolls. Is using them a normal battle tactic?”

  Seemed pretty smart to send in expendable forces.

  “No.” Neph's voice was calm. “Dolls are easily defeated. And golems require extreme magic in their creation and power to control. Constructing unregulated humanoid ones is severely illegal.”

  “Hard prison sentence.” Will piped in unhelpfully. “And soul spells can backfire.”

  I looked hard at the floor. I had dabbled in dollmaking while trying to resurrect Christian. Legality hadn't made much difference to me. I wondered if there had been trapped souls within the vessels that had been crushed today. I quickly shook the thought away and rubbed my eyes.

  “It's not like terrorists are worried about a prison term for illegal doll usage,” Olivia s
aid pointedly.

  “But how did they get them inside?” Will asked. “The library's scanner would have rejected them.”

  A memory hit me. “I saw a group carrying long purple boxes—and one of them was the leader of the men who attacked us tonight. Hang on.” I grabbed a piece of paper and sketched the scene from the library out quickly, keeping everything to scale—the people lugging the boxes and the boxes themselves.

  The boxes weren't human-sized, but they could contain parts. We discussed the mechanics of building the dolls inside the library itself. Of using them as decoys while the terrorists sought their real targets.

  Will's gaze turned inward. “Someone tried to grab Olivia and Constantine on the same day the library was attacked. Connected events? How do we protect ourselves?”

  My friends had been in danger twice today. And I couldn't get back into the library to complete the protection wards for my parents. I couldn't even return to the Second Layer until I “dimmed”—however that was going to occur. In my present state, I couldn't protect anyone.

  Deep breaths, deep breaths! The memory of Christian's voice focused my actions and I breathed deeply, capping my sudden and imminent freak out.

  Everyone was staring at me, and Neph's hand was extended in my direction, as if she was trying to channel magic.

  I rubbed a hand across my brow. Panic attacks were always awkward.

  I managed to speak again after a minute. “Does your mom have any crossover with the library or a connection to it, Olivia?”

  “She is a benefactor, like thousands of others…but otherwise, no. And the events were not connected even if one villain was the same,” Olivia said. “I'd bet my entire trust fund that Leandred was behind what happened to us here.”

  “Liv—”

  “He wanted to use your magic, Ren.”

  Something nonverbal passed between Will, Neph, and Olivia, again. In any other circumstance, I would have been pleased that the three of them were bonding over something. Bonding over shared thoughts on my peculiarities, however, wasn't what I'd had in mind.