Liquid Fire

by Anthony Francis

  “In an explosion felt round the world,” I guessed, and Nyissa and Jewel glanced at each other. That confirmed it, so I continued, “One that darkened the skies for an entire year. The war was fought in 1883—and ended when the entire island of Krakatoa was blown out of the water.”

  Philip scowled, then turned back to the captain’s deck.

  ———

  “Wonderful news, magicians,” he said. “We land on Maui in forty-five minutes.”

  50. The Exposers Exposed

  “OK,” Jewel said. “Philip may have a point—magic is dangerous.”

  The Georgetown’s route had been dictated by the intersection of winds and tourism. The airship had slipped over a lush forest on east edge of Maui just out of sight of the town of Hana, then climbed the cloudy and increasingly cracked slopes of Haleakala volcano.

  As we’d passed, I’d found myself transfixed, staring in fascination at the upper ridge of the crater—the tip of one of the largest mountains in the world, as measured from the seafloor—but from the Georgetown, we could not see the crater floor, as our route carefully avoided too close an approach to the observatory complex called Science City.

  After much careful maneuvering, the enormous ship settled, completely undetected, in a secluded ridge valley that everyone assured me was “near the Kona highway.” There, on a half-hidden airstrip at the edge of forest and desert, the Georgetown had set down for eleven minutes, disgorging me, Jewel, Philip, and two of his agents into waiting black SUVs that spirited us away toward the DEI’s Maui compound. The waiting agents shoved us into the cars so fast that I bumped my head, and before my door was closed, the airship was lifting off.

  Our driver had looked at me strangely, but I ignored him. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Georgetown. Where did they hide the thing? The captain claimed that Maui’s winds limited where it could land, so where was it going? A hangar near the cliffs . . . or over the water?

  “Well,” Jewel said frostily, turning away from me in the back seat, staring out at a fading ocean sunset muted by the black glass of the SUV, “I guess me admitting my long-cherished beliefs were wrong wasn’t as much of a surprise as I thought it would be.”

  “Which beliefs?” I asked, unwilling to risk a guess.

  “I never really put two and two together before,” she said. “I knew that magic could be incredibly dangerous, but I’m used to hearing that from people like Daniel, who have their own agenda. And I knew non-magicians feared us, but I thought it was just prejudice.”

  I grimaced. It wasn’t just prejudice—Nyissa made that clear. The enmity between wizards and vampires? They had been harvesting each other’s mystical blood, at least since Krakatoa. The fear normal people had of wizards? Whispered stories of Krakatoa, and disasters like it.

  “I used to believe the same thing,” I said. “I hated all the secrecy in the magical world. I chafed at all the restrictions. Now . . . after all I’ve learned? I don’t know anymore.” I shook my head. “It’s all fun and games until someone blows up a mountain and blots out the sun.”

  “It’s not that funny, is it?” she asked dryly.

  “Not one bit,” I replied. I stared off into the distance. “I . . . saw a monster earlier this year,” I said. “Huge. Fists bigger than elephants. Veins like fire hoses. Head the size of a hill. Scary thing was, it wasn’t even the real monster. It was just a long-distance projectia—”

  “Jesus,” Jewel said.

  “It was an evil thing a sad and wounded wizard let in to avenge the death of his family,” I said. “I’m not one of those man-was-not-meant-to-know types, but they have a point. Liquid fire creates the same kind of fear. People will break the sky trying to live forever.”

  “Are you suggesting we give it up to you?” Jewel asked, with an edge to her voice.

  “Not at all,” I said. “I’ve got my own source—”

  “Jesus, Dakota,” Jewel said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Do you want the spooks to know that? It’s bad enough you told them why the hatching is important—”

  “Philip’s proved himself, and if we are at war, we need all the help I can get,” I said, though I lowered my voice too—not that I thought it would help; now that the war was on, all of this would come out. “Still, if this is a war over liquid fire . . . I think I could probably replicate it chemically. Other practitioners are learning to synthesize it in other ways. One of those approaches, ultimately, will succeed. Once there’s enough to go around—”

  “You think scarcity is the problem?” Jewel said.

  “Basically,” I said. “I’m not saying it’s the only problem. There’s something effed up with all the practitioners I’ve seen who’ve used liquid fire as a longevity treatment, but I have no doubt we’ll be able to make tattoo ink and firespinning fuel—”

  “You’re missing the point,” Jewel snapped.

  I didn’t say anything; I just looked at her and waited for her to let it out.

  “Look . . . I love spinning magic fire,” Jewel said. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not about to give up my supply, but . . . I see that preserving life is more important than spinning fire a little longer. And I don’t begrudge anyone who’s used liquid fire to lengthen their life.

  “But those . . . those aged things aren’t the problem,” she said. “Dragons are the problem. Everyone knows what happened the last time one hatched, and you know why wizards fought over it. But liquid fire isn’t just a byproduct of a hatching. It’s the catalyst for one.”

  My eyes bugged. “Liquid fire can cause a hatching?”

  “Hatchsign is only the half of it,” she said. “It’s the sign of a newborn dragon’s spirit on the move. But this world long ago cooled past the point that would support a true dragon’s life cycle. There’s just not enough fire, or magic. Eons can go by before conditions are right—”

  “Unless some magician,” I said, now feeling the flavor of the word the way Philip used it, “decides to trick the poor bastard into hatching. How does that even work? If the egg is ready to hatch, then it seems like it would hatch, or not—”

  “I don’t think hatching begins with a conventional egg,” Jewel said. “I mean, there’s an egg. That’s where liquid fire is harvested from. Even if the dragon hatches successfully, the yolk tailings themselves are a form of liquid fire. But I think the spirit of the dragon makes the egg.”

  We were pulling up a narrow, bumpy drive to a sprawling compound of linked cottages surrounded by a white stone fence. Fields of dark green shaded into the distance in the dying light, flaring with gold flowers like a frozen field of fireflies. Narrow plots of carnations hugged the road as we pulled into a circular turnaround in front of the compound. I stared up from the cluster of huts to the looming slopes beyond. Far above us, the tip of the dark triangle glowed with fire where the top of mount Haleakala was still touched by the last rays of the sun.

  “Cinnamon read up on volcanoes for class,” I said. “She told me lava forms like rain. Droplets of molten rock, deep within the earth, turning liquid under heat, trickling upward under great pressure, collecting in huge lakes beneath the surface, waiting to explode. Maybe that’s where dragon’s eggs grow. Waiting for humans to fight over them.”

  We got out. A Chinese-American man stepped out of the shadows and spoke to Philip. His eyes seemed to glint in the darkness, like he was a closet werekin, or touched by the fae. Then a new thought occurred to me . . . was he, perhaps, touched by liquid fire?The man turned toward us. “I am Mr. Iloa,” he said. “I—”

  And then his neck practically popped as he turned to stare at me.

  “What?” I asked. I wondered if he could see the new fire in my eyes.

  “I,” Mr. Iloa said, regaining his calm, “am the owner of this compound. My family have been longtime friends of the Department . . . and the Departmen
t has been a longtime friend to us. We provide this space for those the Department needs to shelter. Please respect it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Iloa. We will,” I said—then pulled out my phone, which was off. “But I was told this is a DEI safe house. Does this mean it is safe, or not safe, to place a call? I don’t want to give away our location, but I have a twitchy weretiger daughter back home—”

  “I understand,” Iloa said, a smile creeping onto his face. “I have a daughter too, though not so twitchy—but her children might give your child a run for your money. Please be discreet, but otherwise consider yourselves welcome guests in our home.”

  Nyissa stepped forward, no longer hidden deep within her cloak, but walking openly now, hood thrown back, violet hair flashing over that porcelain skin. “Thank you,” she croaked. “I believe Special Agent Davidson called ahead. May we discuss the arrangements?”

  “Please,” Iloa nodded, gesturing to the rest of us. “Enjoy my hospitality.”

  Philip led us into the spacious foyer of the house. All the cottages were airy, open—and had not-so-obvious features, like a maze of bushes, well-spaced brick pillars, steel doors and grates, and even retractable steel shutters, that in minutes could turn this place into a fortress.

  Or a prison.

  “Are you Cinnamon’s mother,” Jewel said, as I texted furiously, “or her BFF?”

  “A bit of both,” I said with a smile. “Oh, to have been friends with her in school.”

  “Let me sync up with field command,” Phillip said. “Then let’s plan our next move.”

  Philip disappeared into an inner secure room. Jewel and I set down our bags, Nyissa’s chauffeur set down hers. I stood, but Jewel sat on the edge of a chair, brooding. A federal agent built entirely of muscle stepped up to take our bags—then stopped, staring at me openly.

  “What?” I said. I no longer thought it was the magic in my eyes. “What?”

  “It’s . . .” the man began, eyeing me strangely. “You really don’t know?”

  “Dakota,” Philip said grimly, motioning to me, “could you join me in the security room?”

  “What’s happened?” Jewel said, and Philip was silent. “What’s wrong?”

  “This,” Philip said, again beckoning to me, “is a delicate situation—”

  “Damn it, don’t cut me out!” Jewel said. “This is Molokii’s life—”

  “No, it isn’t,” the other agent said. “This mess . . . is all about Miss Frost.”

  We gathered in front of a giant flat panel, where a third agent typing away did a quick double take looking at me, then, without a word, began digging in his browser history. “The first site’s already taken down, but I’m sure someone snagged it—ah, here we go. Steel yourself.”

  He hit the link—and a promo played for Alex Nicholson’s TV show, The Exposers.

  “You’ve seen him performing illusions—coast to coast,” Alex announced—as a short, swarthy, white-haired wizard appeared: Christopher Valentine, the man who nearly took my life, performing card tricks, escaping a straitjacket, and appearing with his projectia, a magic double.

  “And you’ve seen her performing magic—on the news,” Alex intoned—as a tall, tattooed, Mohawked punk grrl appeared: me, inking Alex’s wristwatch in my studio, uncoiling my vines at Cinnamon’s talk at Berkeley—and releasing my Dragon in Union Square.

  A succession of quick shots of Valentine made that murderous bastard look like a saint. They showed him yukking it up on The Late Shift with Jack Carterson, accepting a key to the city from a mayor, and cheerfully interrogating a woman with a crystal ball.

  Me? They caught me at my most biker, riding my Vespa at an angle that made it look like a Harley. Shots Daniel Ekundayo had done at my dojo were spliced together to make me look like Jackie Chan. Clips of me kicking a punching bag so hard my tattoos glowed.

  They made me look like a savage.

  “Dakota Frost is the only magician ever to beat Christopher Valentine at his Challenge,” Alex said, again over clips of the inking, showing my detailed setup, showing my needle on Alex’s skin—and that faker Valentine watching from a gurney. “And then she killed him.”

  My face flushed. My vision went red. I heard a whine and distant voices.

  “Don’t you want to know why?”

  And then Christopher Valentine was leaning into the camera, candid, and smiling; deep down I knew it was a lie, but for a moment, just for a moment, it wasn’t Mirabilus holding a knife, but the Christopher Valentine I’d admired as a child—the wizard and debunker.

  “Because we’ll get to the truth. Even if it kills us,” Valentine said, winking.

  And then I appeared, angry, flushed and aggressive, barking, “I said, no cameras!”

  Then my vine whipped out, and the screen went black, and the title card faded in:

  THE EXPOSERS EXPOSED:

  VALENTINE VS. FROST

  “Oh my God,” I said, putting my hand over my mouth. Then I left the room.

  Philip, Jewel, Nyissa, and the agents swarmed out after me, as I whipped out my cell phone and began punching numbers into it rapidly. I actually had Alex on speed dial, but I wanted. To punch. Each number. Straight through. The dial. To his face.

  Mr. Iloa stepped in from outside, looking at me dial curiously.

  “This is a safe house, Miss Frost,” he said. “Don’t make too many—”

  “She just saw the trailer,” Philip said, as I raised my eyes and stared at Iloa.

  Mr. Iloa’s eyebrows went up. He scooted past me, extending his arms.

  “Everyone, if you could please join me in the kitchen—”

  “ALEX!” I roared into my phone.

  “What? Who is this?” Alex said, blurry. “Do you know what time—Jesus. Dakota.”

  “You were supposed to run everything by me first,” I said. “That was the contract. You run the videos by me, and I approve them. Approval not to be unreasonably withheld, but tell me, what’s so unreasonable about not wanting to be portrayed as a murderer?”

  “Dakota, I—” Alex blurted.

  “You walked to the edge of slander!” I yelled. “Trashed my reputation for your show—”

  “I did not,” Alex said. “Lloyd-Presse leaked it. Even I hadn’t approved it yet—”

  “You were the announcer,” I growled, cracking my neck as my Dragon snarled, let me loose, let me at him! And I felt like doing it. “You knew what the video would be like—”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said, despairing, and I knew I had him. “The same reading could—”

  “Alex!” I yelled. “You lying son of a—”

  “Dakota. Dakota! What, what do you want?” Alex said. “I’ll do anything—”

  He babbled, but I wasn’t listening. My rage was subsiding. I’d spun around in my anger, seen Jewel looking in from the kitchen—then remembered where we were, and why we were here. What was my reputation worth, compared to Molokii’s life?

  Come to think of it, what were a few secrets worth, compared to Molokii’s life? I had the Princess of Fire right here in the kitchen, yet getting information out of her still seemed like pulling teeth. Not that I didn’t understand her caution about the elixir of immortality—

  But I had a second initiate, right here on the line. One who was a thoroughly modern magician, who spoke my language, who—if our conversation about the Dragon projectia at Union Square was any indication—was at least as up to date as I was.

  “Enough,” I said, a cold plan forming. I turned away from Jewel, walked away from her, walked straight out of the house, and, for good measure, lowered my voice so only Alex would hear me cut her out and put him in her place. “Damage’s done. You have to make good.”

  The line was silent while I stared up at brilliant stars again
st velvet Maui night.

  “All right, Dakota,” he said, resigned. “How much do you want?”

  “It’s not about money,” I said.

  “Don’t get stupid,” Alex said. “It’s not all about money, but that’s what I can get you—”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “One of my friends has been kidnapped.”

  “Jesus,” Alex said.

  “I can’t play around anymore, Alex. It’s not about me, it’s not about the money, it’s not about my trashed reputation or the T-Rex-sized lawsuit I could slap on you. One of my friends has been kidnapped, and I need all the tools I can to find him, and I need them yesterday—”

  “God,” Alex said. “Of course, Dakota, but what do you want from me—”

  ———

  “Fulfill your promise. Send me everything you have on fireweaving, right the fuck now!”

  51. Summon the Dragon

  “When I learned you were from Hawaii,” I said, “I imagined us coming here.”

  After my confrontation with Alex, I’d stormed off, and Jewel had settled our bags in our cabin. She’d drawn me away from the others, fixed me tea, massaged my shoulders. No longer burning up inside, I leaned on the railing of the porch of our cabin, staring over the hillside.

  Jewel stared out next to me. The safe house had once been a carnation farm, and wild ones grew under our porch. Our cabin was well defended behind a high fence and a twisted knot of volcanic rock that the DEI now used as a guard tower, but the view was still amazing.

  The sky was black as crushed velvet, sparkling with stars as bright as glitter. But the broad slopes of Maui before us were not dark; the moon smiled thinly down on us, its disk still lit with earthshine, its waxing crescent bathing the mountains and ocean in dim green light.

  Cinnamon had railed that the moon was new enough for her to come, that she could have helped, both with the codes and with any “running,” as she put it—but even though she drooped her ears in her best poor-me face, there was no way I was bringing my child into a war zone.