The Box Omnibus #1 (The Box, The Journal, The Sword)

by Gaudet, Christina G.

  "We don't have time for this," I say.

  I glance around to make sure everyone's still too busy to notice me. If my magic was any stronger right now, Fitzroy would have long since noticed me. Then again, if my magic was stronger, I might actually be able to protect myself.

  This time Al seems to recognize the panic in my voice and he gives a slight nod in my direction.

  "I'm not leaving without you, Loraine." Al's grip on her arm tightens and an uneasy feeling hits me in the gut. "We're going now. We'll discuss Fitzroy later."

  "Al, no," I try to say. But it's too late. He's already pulled her a couple of steps in the direction away from Fitzroy.

  I don't have enough magic left to be able to see the magic connecting Loraine to Fitzroy, but I can still sense when it pulses. I know Al can too. Al’s sword is out in an instant, and we fall into position with our backs together.

  My back is to Fitzroy, but I know he’s noticed us just as I would if I was staring right at him. Cops and wizards start showing up from every corner to surround us. He must have used his magic to call them back when he realized what was happening.

  I’ve come across a problem. My sword is trapped in a bubble of magic, which I can’t reach into without using a bit of magic. And since I’m running on empty right now, I am going to have to deal with the oncoming fight completely empty handed.

  Well, there is one way I could get a bit more power, but it could just as easily backfire on me. Opening a bag of magic next to a bunch of wizards could lead to practically any one of us taking control of the results. But I have no choice. I have to try.

  I shift the chain so the bag is in my palm. Without a word I reach around and slide the silk against Al’s sword. The bag slices open and its less than appealing contents spill out all over my hand. I wait for the snap I felt after Stewart’s death, but nothing seems to happen. There’s no difference.

  But if I didn’t get the power, who did?

  Al doesn’t appear to have been affected by the bag opening. Then again, it’s hard to tell what does and doesn’t affect him right now. He’s concentrating so hard on the people surrounding us, he might not have noticed if he did take my magic.

  He raises a hand and the air around us explodes in a screech so loud it makes me wish I was deaf. Another explosion. This time I could swear two cats are fighting to the death right beside my head.

  I drop the bag and Sin’s chain so I can plug my ears. Blocking the sound helps a bit, but I can already feel a headache coming on.

  “What is that noise?” I shout in order to be heard over the unmistakable sound of nails on a chalkboard. “Why won’t it stop?”

  Al twirls around me to block an attack from a wizard who saw my hunched over stance as the perfect opening. But in protecting me, he opened himself up. A gun is fired. The sound blasts away every other noise in the room. And Al drops.

  Everything moves in slow motion. Fitzroy’s mouth opens as though he’s shouting, though I can’t hear anything he says. He forces the gun out of the officer’s hand as six wizards move in to circle us, their swords pointed at me. But I don’t care. Al’s all I care about.

  The blood has already begun to seep through his tunic to drip to the floor.

  I drop to my knees beside him and instinctively try to put pressure on the wound. All I seem to be doing is causing more blood to rush out around my fingers.

  I need magic. No matter how little, there has to be enough to help him. “You’re going to be okay. It’s all going to be all right.”

  His eyelids droop as he begins to lose consciousness. This can’t be happening. How could I let this happen?

  I close my eyes and fall into myself. There has to be some magic left in me. I will give him every last drop of myself if it will help. I don’t care if I end up in the limbo between life and death again. I’ll do anything to save him

  “Stupid.” I barely register Fitzroy’s words. I know they are being spoken, but while I go inside myself like this, everything else feels like it could be happening in another world. “You could have had it all. A place of power within The Sword. The girl you love at your side. But instead you screw it all up by doing this. You shouldn’t have tried to trick me, Aldric. This was bound to happen.”

  A soft humming draws me further within. The sound is familiar and friendly, like a memory of Mom or Gran singing me a lullaby as a kid. It soothes me and cancels the racket still going on around me.

  As I move toward the sound, Al’s chuckle, quickly replaced with a groan of pain, causes me to pause.

  His voice is raspy as he struggles with the unimaginable hurt he’s dealing with. “You don’t know love.” He coughs and I can feel more blood pouring from his wound. I have to be quick. “If you did, you wouldn’t keep Loraine as your slave.”

  The sound. Of course. I understand now. Sin’s right, I am slow sometimes.

  Since my power to see and feel magic has been all but drained, of course I wouldn’t be able to see or feel the magic inside of me. Right now I’m trying to use the magic from the bag I opened, and it is linked to another one of my senses. Sound. I can hear magic.

  That’s what I’d heard before. The obnoxious blare wasn’t an actual sound; it was caused by the tainted magic being used around me. I’ll have to learn how to turn it down later so I won’t start bleeding from the ears any time I have to fight a wizard. For now I’m just happy I can sense magic in any way.

  Normally, it would feel most natural for me to shove the magic at him, force it to do what I want. But this is different. The magic is a song. And the only way to control it is to change the tune.

  “You’ll never understand the connection Loraine and I have.” Fitzroy’s voice cracks as though he’s on the verge of tears, but I resist the urge to look at him and keep my focus on Al. “I thought you were finally able to see. To understand why I did what I did. But you must not feel for her how I feel for Loraine. If you did you’d do anything to be connected as we are.”

  I hum. The song isn’t one I’ve ever heard before, but I know it all the same. Each note carries a bit of magic to Al until there’s enough to weave all of the way through his shoulder, covering the wound. A final note and the magic stops the bleeding and the wound begins healing at an accelerated rate. I didn’t use enough magic to close the wound entirely, but it should be enough to keep him going.

  “Trust me, I can see clearer now than ever before.” As Al speaks, his hand wraps around my wrist. His grip is strong. Much stronger than I’d expect from someone who’s lost so much blood. “And what I see is a sad little boy who has more power than he can control.”

  “That’s right,” Fitzroy says. “Insult me. I’m the only one who could save you. Bring you back into The Sword. I would have given you a proper family again.”

  “I already have a family.” Al uses me as a crutch to lift himself off the ground a bit, though I can tell it hurts him. “Loraine, I promise I will fix this.”

  Before I realize what’s happening Al wraps us both in his magic and teleports us out of the room.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Teleporting is bigger magic than I’ve ever managed to perform. The amount of power required to move a person from one place to another is more than I have on my best days.

  Al managed to move both of us while injured after having spent a bunch of magic protecting us from Fitzroy and his men. I knew he had a lot of power, but this is far beyond anything I could have imagined.

  I focus on our surroundings rather than on him. I don’t want him to see how frightened I am about what he’s accomplished. We’re in an old building of some sort. The paint has faded beyond any recognizable color and the plaster walls are cracked and crumbling. The air is thick with a musty smell combined with something sharper and more assaulting to my nose. Peroxide perhaps.

  An old bed with a thin stained mattress folded over top of a rusted frame with broken wheels sits in the corner of the room. It looks like it might have been a hospital bed at
one time, though now it looks more like garbage. He must have brought us to the closed hospital on Hurt Street. Half way across town.

  But that’s too far. How are we supposed to help Sin and Rose escape if we’re nowhere near them?

  “What about Sin?” I put too much pressure on his still sensitive wound causing him to suck in air through his teeth. “And Rose. We can’t leave them there.”

  He closes his eyes and appears to focus on taking long breaths.

  “Give me a moment,” he says.

  His magic is less loud than it was when we were at the station. There’s more of a tune to it now, though the notes still don’t sound quite right. Maybe they’re sharp or flat. I don’t know enough about music to be able to tell the difference.

  The sound swells and then cuts off suddenly. The silence afterward is deafening.

  “Well,” Sin says. “That was unpleasant.”

  They’re both still cuffed and their clothes and hair look ruffled beyond anything I could imagine occurring naturally by being in jail without access to their hands. The teleport must have been rougher on them than it was on Al and me.

  “Aldric.” Rose runs the few feet to drop to Al’s side. Her hands are still cuffed behind her back or else I’m sure she’d start stroking his chest and shoulder around his wound. “You’re injured. What happened? Are you all right? What can I do?”

  “I’m fine, Rose.” His lips curl up a little, but his eyes remain closed. “I just need some rest.”

  Rose turns to me with a question posed on her open lips. I know what’s going on inside her head because it’s going on in mine as well. How badly hurt is he really? Is there anything more to be done to help him, or at least make him comfortable? And most importantly, did my magic have the effect it seems? Is he back to being his old self?

  “Way to follow my plan,” Sin says.

  I shrug. “Things got complicated.”

  When I work up the nerve to look at her, I realize she’s giving me an expression she almost never shows. She actually appears to be proud of me. I never thought her opinion mattered much, but with her grinning at me like a fool, I feel good. Like I’ve finally done something right. What, I’m not sure. But it doesn’t matter, because my big sister’s proud of me.

  I make a face at her.

  “The teleporting must have cost Al most of his magic,” I say in order to avoid an awkward moment with my sister. “And even with the new bag open I’m close to drained myself.”

  I sit back on my heels and feel Al’s hand tighten around mine, making sure I don’t go far. Warmth spreads up my arm to cause my entire body to heat to an embarrassing level. And then I notice Rose’s gaze fixed on our locked hands.

  I regret my kneejerk reaction to pull my hand free the second I do it. He doesn’t try to stop me. I can only hope he understands to some degree I’m just trying to save Rose from being hurt, even though I’m sure she would never do the same for me.

  Knowing him, it’s more likely he assumes I don’t want to be near him because I don’t trust him.

  “Any chance of getting these handcuffs off?” Sin twists around and stuffs her hands in my face. “My shoulders are starting to ache from having them like this.”

  When I raise my hand to touch the cuffs and attempt to use whatever’s left of my magic to help, I remember everything I found out earlier and stop.

  “Is it true you’re a wizard?” I ask.

  She sighs. “Crap. I’d hoped you’d forgotten.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I move to the far side of the room in order to put some space between myself and the others. “You’ve been keeping everything from me. Why?”

  “It was better if you didn’t know.” Sin almost sounds ashamed. Almost. “Safer.”

  “I could have helped.” I look from one person to another. None of them will meet my eye. “Do none of you think I could have handled knowing what was going on? I’m not a kid anymore. And I have the ability to do things none of you can do. Even you, Al.”

  Silence.

  “I’m your sister.” My eyes burn and I know I’m on the edge of crying. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I screwed up.” Sin looks like she’s as close to tears as me. “I shouldn’t have gone to the other world, but I thought I was helping.” He laugh is loaded with self-loathing. “And that’s not even true. I went because I wanted to go on an adventure. And then everything went wrong, and the only people I ended up helping were Rilla and Victor. Though I guess Rilla didn’t exactly get the best deal either what with being controlled by Victor now.”

  “You could have told me,” I say.

  “And let you know I’m as big a screw up as you’ve always thought? Yeah, great.” She rolls her eyes. “I thought if I didn’t give you the bag or let you know about Al and Rose or the portals or any of it, I’d be able to forget it happened and move on.”

  I stare at her, not able to think of anything to say. There’s only one response to what she’s told me. I walk over and punch her in the arm, hard enough I’m sure it will leave a bruise.

  Her face twists in fury and pain. “What the hell?”

  “You are an idiot.” I punch her again, lighter this time, though in the same spot so I know it hurts almost as bad. “I don’t think you’re a screw up. Why do you think I came to visit for the summer? I’ve been trying so hard to be more like you. To act first and not let my worries about what might happen slow me down. No matter what trouble you’ve gotten into for being so compulsive, part of me has always been jealous. You’re Sin. You can do anything. While I’m left at home with Mom wishing I could have half the adventures and experiences you have.”

  “But it’s because of me The Sword has the map to the portals.” She seems baffled by my rant. “They took Gran’s house because of me.”

  “And we’ll get it back. Together,” I say. “Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Work together to fix each other’s screw ups. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not perfect either.”

  “You really aren’t.” As soon as the words are out she makes an apologetic face.

  I grin. “Oh, shut up.” And I punch her arm one last time for good measure. “I should have told you about Al after Stewart died. How he’d absorbed the magic and become a full wizard.”

  Her eyes light up. “Hey, yeah. You lied to me too. You’re no better than me, so there.”

  “This is where you’re supposed to say ‘I’m sorry, too,’” I say. “Not be a jerk.”

  “Force of habit,” she says. “Sorry.”

  I’m not sure if the sorry is meant for her latest comment or a more general apology for everything she’s done. I’m going to take it as the latter. I have a feeling she’s not going to say anything more either way.

  “So sweet,” Rose says, quiet enough I wonder if she means for us to hear her. “A family full of liars. What a wonderful thing to bring people together.”

  “We both have been keeping secrets,” I say to my sister. “How about we agree to start telling the truth from now on? No more lies. No more hiding the truth. Because if there’s any chance we can fix things, we’re going to have to work together.”

  Sin is silent for a moment and her nose begins to crinkle as though she’s smelled something disgusting.

  “We aren’t going to have to hug this out, are we?” she asks.

  I move toward her and she makes a point of pulling a face and cringing away from me. But I don’t go for the hug. I think that would be too much for either of us right now. Instead, I touch the handcuffs and call up my power to break the lock. Her handcuffs seem fairly normal with no magic dampening spell I can sense. I hum a couple of notes and the lock easily snaps and they fall to the floor with a clatter.

  By the time I break the lock on Rose’s cuffs, I feel about ready to pass out. Not even noon yet and I’m ready to go back to bed. Or to bed for the first time, since I didn’t actually sleep much last night.

  Before I can rest, there’s one m
ore thing I need to be sure of.

  I slump on the floor next to Al and poke his ribs with a finger. It takes him a second, but he eventually opens his eyes. When he sees me cautiously leaning over him, his face lights up in a smile and his eyes begin to dance.

  “Hi,” he says.

  I try to not let my inner giddiness show at seeing him be less crazy, and remain guarded, at least on the outside.

  “Is it you?” I ask.

  His eyes close, but his smile doesn’t fade. “Mostly,” he says. “I still have a hole in my shoulder, and the darkness is inside me, waiting for a chance to grab control again, but mostly I’m me. Whatever you did was effective.”

  “You did something?” Rose asks.

  I wish she wasn’t here. I’d feel much less conflicted with what I’m about to do if she wasn’t watching.

  “When I took her magic, it somehow cleared away most the darkness in my mind,” Al says. “It feels like I’ve been trapped inside my own head for ages.” His eyes open again and this time when he looks at me, he’s more serious than I’ve ever seen him. Though the twinkle’s there to let me know the darkness, as he called it, hasn’t taken over again. “Thank you.”

  His hand is inches from mine, as though he wants to touch me but is too afraid I’ll pull away again. I wrap my fingers around it and concentrate on the way his skin feels. I’d rather be touching his face or better yet, chest, but I can feel Sin and Rose both watching me. Besides, I’m not entirely sure Al and I are there yet. We’ve only kissed once, and it was more out of necessity than romance. Though I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt something between us during the kiss.

  “Any time,” I say.

  He sucks in a breath as though to say something more and then stops. I watch as his expression shifts into an understanding of what I’m saying. What I’m really saying. And then he smiles and my stomach turns into a knot of nerves and excitement.

  When I lean down to brush my nose against his, my hair falls over both of our faces. He raises his free hand to brush it away.