Magic on the Line

by Devon Monk

  “The outcome of your treatment is very favorable,” he murmured.

  I gave him a look that said “Back off, creepy” though all I said out loud was, “Good. I like favorable.”

  He seemed to get the message and toned down the creepy stuff, though he smiled like it was all an old joke we had shared for years.

  Had we shared anything for years? I didn’t know. There was no memory of him, not even a niggle of knowing him in the past.

  More likely he was just a slightly crazy magic user looking to push my buttons.

  I so didn’t have time for this.

  I dragged my fingers back through my hair and scrubbed at my scalp, avoiding the bump, then walked over to where Davy was sleeping.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “His condition hasn’t changed much. It hasn’t gotten worse either. But it will take me more time to track down whatever it is he’s afflicted with. And more equipment. Which is why I’m on my way out. I should be back in a few hours. Good eve. Allison. Flynn. Everyone.”

  Shame just held up one hand, and didn’t even watch him leave. He was looking out the window, looking down at Get Mugged.

  I took a drink of the iced tea and studied Davy. He was still pale, still asleep. His breathing was a little lighter, more even. He didn’t look he was struggling for every breath.

  And since I still had the weird magic vision, I could see the black lines of tainted magic spreading out under his skin, curling toward his organs, while the thin, impossibly delicate Syphon spell slowly absorbed the magic and drained it into an electronic device.

  I could also see the other spells Collins had set up on Davy. One for Sleep, one for Ease, and one that I didn’t know the name of, but that seemed to be attached to another little machine propped on the table and tied in to the Syphon spell.

  Poor kid.

  “He been down since last night?” Shame asked around an exhale of smoke.

  “I think so. Bea, do you know if he woke up at all?”

  “Nope. He’s been resting. Dr. Collins hasn’t left his side. Are you staying for a while, Allie?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I was thinking about going home.” Or finding Zayvion. It suddenly hit me that I didn’t know where he was. “Do you need a break?”

  “I think Jamar was supposed to be here an hour ago to take the next shift. He’s a no-show.”

  I nodded. “I can hang for a while. Who’s on next?”

  “Theresa should be coming in around midnight.”

  “That works for me,” I said.

  “Thanks!” she said, all dimples and smiles. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She pulled her stuff together, grabbed her purse and coat.

  “Bea,” I asked before she was out the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know if Davy has family in the area?”

  She shook her head. “He never said so. But we checked. Sid checked. We didn’t find anyone.”

  “Thanks.”

  She walked out and shut the door quietly behind her. That left me, Shame, and a sleeping Davy.

  It was quiet, the only sounds in the room the hush of traffic outside the window, and the flick and exhale of Shame’s smoking. I stared at Davy for a long moment, then decided I wasn’t doing him any good. I paced off to the kitchen to see if there was any food.

  “You seen Zay today?” Shame asked.

  “Not since we were out hunting for Anthony.” I opened the refrigerator. Stared at the contents without really seeing any of it. “Have you?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited, decided I couldn’t handle anything that thrived in that much bright and cold, and shut the refrigerator door. I tried a cupboard instead. Crackers. Caramel corn. I grabbed the caramel corn.

  I opened the box and walked back out into the room. Too restless to sit, too tired to stand, I paced instead, close to the windows, where I could watch night lower its veil on the world.

  “And?” I asked. “Where was he?”

  Shame sucked the last heat off the cigarette and tossed it out the window. He exhaled, then shifted on the sill so both his legs hung over the side. “Did he call you?”

  “No.”

  “So you haven’t spoken to him at all today.”

  “No.” I wanted to tell him to stop stringing me along and just tell me, but at the same time I knew something was wrong. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to add one more bad thing to my day. A hard suspicion was growing like a lump in my stomach and I knew that Shame was about to make it worse.

  “You’ll want to,” he said. “Talk to him soon. He’s probably at home.”

  “Why do I want to talk to him?”

  Shame paused, and all the fire, all the anger, all the laughter drained out of him. He suddenly just looked tired, uncomfortable, and very, very human, even though the crystal in his chest spun tendrils of smoke into him.

  “He probably doesn’t want me to tell you—but I will.” He rubbed his palms over the thighs of his jeans, as if wiping away an itch, or pain.

  “Let’s start here—you know Zay loves you, right?”

  “Good lord, how bad can this news be? Of course I know he loves me. Spit it out, Shame.”

  “And I can only assume that you love him too, what with that moony-eyed look you get whenever he walks into the room.”

  I put the caramel corn box down and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “So I want you to think about that,” he said. “You love him. For whatever your reasons are—and some of those reasons probably have something to do with his personality, his morals, who he is. Unless maybe you’re just into him for his fine bod?”

  “Not just,” I said.

  “Zayvion’s a good man,” Shame continued. “He has better morals than I have, that’s for damn sure.”

  “What did he do?” From the way Shame was hedging around the subject, a thousand very bad things were taking root in my imagination.

  “He Closed them.”

  Oh shit. That was one bad thing I’d been afraid to think about.

  “Who?” I needed to sit down; instead I paced.

  “Victor,” Shame said softly, “Mum, Joshua, Nick, Mike. All of them. He’s the Guardian of the gates and one of the strongest Closers, especially since Victor, the head of Faith magic and therefore the head of Closing, was one of the people who got shut down.”

  I just kept pacing, trying to absorb the information, trying to think about it objectively even though my stomach was sick and my face was too hot, and all I could think of was Zayvion, not my lover but the Closer. Cold, blank, a mask of Zen taking memories, taking pieces of their lives away, leaving behind holes and pain.

  I did not want to think of him like that. I did not want to think of him as someone who would coolly destroy the people he cared about because he was ordered to do it. Because he had a duty and a superior to follow.

  But that was exactly what he had done.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Don’t know.”

  I glanced over at Shame. “You let him do this? You knew he was going to Close your mother?”

  Shame rolled one shoulder and glanced down at the floor. “I wasn’t there. They didn’t tell me. He didn’t tell me. Not until after. I don’t think he knew what they were going to make him do. By then it was done. I can’t undo it—only Zayvion can.”

  “And you didn’t tell him to undo it?”

  “If,” he said, his voice a little louder, his elbows locked, arms straight against his thighs, “I told him to undo it, Bartholomew would just have someone else Close her. Someone who might not be my friend. Someone who doesn’t give a damn about my mother and would tear her mind to shreds just for fun.”

  “They can’t do this,” I said. “They can’t do this, Shame.”

  “It’s too late, Al,” he said quietly. “They already did. Welcome to the nightmare.”

  I paced. There had to be a way to change this, to get Bartholomew to see that Victor an
d Maeve and everyone else had been working in the best interest of the Authority and had done everything possible to keep the city, the people, and magic safe. He had to see that they had been under almost constant attack, betrayal, and infighting. That the other people involved—Sedra, Isabelle, Leander, Jingo Jingo—had been working toward the goal of tearing the Authority apart for years.

  It wasn’t their fault they had been fighting a losing battle since day one. It wasn’t their fault Leander and Isabelle had been planning their revenge for hundreds of years.

  But I guess I had to see Bartholomew’s point too. From the outside it looked as though Victor and Maeve had failed in keeping the Authority and magic safe. Closer examination of the facts would show that wasn’t true, but I didn’t think Bartholomew wanted to see the facts. He wanted a clean slate and a new set of shoulders to lay the weight upon, and people to blame if things went wrong.

  It wasn’t the way I would run things. I was pretty sure it wasn’t the way Victor and Maeve would have run things if they were in his position. But it was the way it was.

  And Zayvion had been an instrument, a brutal tool in his hands.

  Shame hopped down from the windowsill and wandered off into the kitchen. I paced, making sure to look over at Davy every time I passed by his bed. Still sleeping. All the spells still pulsing, all the magic still trying to cleanse him of the taint, the poison, the toxic magic that spread through him.

  I didn’t say anything more. I didn’t know what to say. My emotions were tying up in knots and I didn’t know how to see Zayvion as innocent in this. He could have said no. He could have told Bartholomew he was wrong. Hells, he could have Closed Bartholomew.

  But like Shame said, Bartholomew always had his men around him. Protection. Muscle. Plenty enough to make any kind of objection moot.

  I didn’t know when Shame turned on the TV. I didn’t even know they’d brought a TV up here. But it was droning in the background and the light had drained away from the sky. It was late. Still not midnight, but that was probably only a couple hours off.

  My feet hurt. I think I’d been pacing for hours.

  “What are you watching?”

  Shame jumped a little. “Jesus, Beckstrom. Nice to see you come back to earth. Next time send a warning beacon.”

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “No.” He rubbed his eyes and shifted in the easy chair. “Watching TV.” He pointed the remote at it.

  I decided to make some coffee. “News?”

  “Yes. They’re all fussing about some kind of flu going around the city.”

  “Like that’s news?”

  “They think so.” He turned up the volume. “Pour me a cup, love?”

  “You eat?”

  “I think so.”

  I pulled a sandwich out of the fridge and split it onto two plates, then poured coffee for us. “No milk.”

  “I’ll survive. Sugar?”

  “Yes. Lucky you.” I scooped sugar into his cup, then brought everything out and handed him the plate and cup.

  Shame stood. “Take the chair—it gave me a knot in my back. Plus, I need to take a leak.”

  I didn’t argue. Let him sit on the wooden stool. I dropped down into the chair, still warm from Shame. The remote stabbed at my thigh, so I picked it up and turned the volume down a little.

  The newscaster was indeed talking about a flu. Only she called it an epidemic. She also said that hospitals were feeling the impact, and encouraged people to head down to an emergency room only if they were displaying all of the symptoms, but not if they had just one or two of them.

  I guess it was a good thing we’d kept Davy here.

  Shame came out of the bathroom and picked up his sandwich and coffee. He took the footstool.

  “So how long are you staying here tonight?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Until Theresa shows up.”

  “What about Collins?”

  “Don’t trust him as far as I could shot-put him,” I said.

  “I like how your default mode is cynical and distrustful.”

  “I like to think of it as realistic and self-aware.”

  He chuckled but had to chew and swallow.

  “Same thing,” he mumbled. “You going to go see Zay?”

  Was I? I didn’t even know where he was. I didn’t even know if he wanted to see me. Yes, I hadn’t tried to call him more than once, but he hadn’t called me either. The phone worked two ways.

  “Do you know where he is?” I asked.

  Shame frowned. “Like I said earlier. If I had to guess? His place.”

  “Think anyone is there with him?”

  “Like who? You really are suspicious. What happened to all that ‘we decide what we are together’ trusty stuff? And to answer you—I have no idea. Why don’t you call him?”

  “Later.” I finished my sandwich, paid scant attention to the TV until Shame took the remote and changed the channel to something with a lot of car crashes and explosions.

  The door opened and I glanced back. Collins was walking in, a duffel in one hand, a bag from a Chinese restaurant in the other.

  “Evening,” he said.

  “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” Shame asked.

  “Nowhere else that’s paying me an hourly wage.” He strode over, dropped the duffel on the clear space on the tabletop, and shrugged out of his coat, folding it carefully and draping it on the chair next to Davy’s bed. Then he got busy with the food, pulling a carton and a pair of chopsticks out of the bag.

  “Where are the Hounds?” he asked.

  “Shift change. I’m it.”

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “I’m the Hound on duty until Theresa shows up.”

  He laughed, a short, quiet sound.

  “What’s so funny about that?” I asked.

  “You’re not a Hound.”

  I got up and took my plate into the kitchen. “Yes, I am.”

  “But you’re Daniel Beckstrom’s daughter. He’d never stand for that.”

  “I don’t care what my dad stands for. I’m a Hound. Have been for years.”

  “Stood for,” he corrected me.

  “What?”

  “Your father. What he stood for, not what he stands for.”

  Oh, right. He didn’t know my dad was still alive-ish. In my head. “Whatever. You get the things you needed for Davy?”

  “I think so. Have you heard about the flu that’s going around?”

  “It’s on the news,” I said.

  “And it is clogging up the medical community, slowing down prescriptions, and generally being a complete annoyance. Also, I don’t think it’s a flu.”

  “Really?” I asked. “How many patients have you examined to make that diagnosis, Doctor?”

  He pointed the chopsticks at me. “None. But I don’t have to. Do I, Shamus?”

  “Don’t drag me into your neurosis,” Shame said. “I have enough of my own.”

  Collins grinned, then dug in the carton for a piece of meat. “I think it’s a cover-up.”

  That got Shame’s attention.

  “You working for Bartholomew?” Shame asked.

  “No, but I’ve seen the Authority from the outside for more years than I’ve seen it from the inside. This flu epidemic looks like someone’s trying very hard to cover their tracks.”

  “How about we follow up on that with a Truth spell?” Shame said.

  Collins laughed. “How about we don’t?”

  Shame stood up. “Not joking around. Now.”

  Collins raised his eyebrows and gave Shame a long look. Then he sucked in a short breath and went back to eating. “That’s not going to work for me, Flynn. I don’t want a Blood spell between us. I’ve sworn off that kind of magic. And I refuse to use it again.”

  “You don’t have to use it,” Shame said, advancing on him. “I will.”

  Collins sighed and put his food down, then brushed his hands together. “No Truth spells. Just look into my e
yes, Flynn. I am not working for Bartholomew. I do not like Bartholomew. I wouldn’t care if he jumped off a cliff, or died in a back alley somewhere. We do not have good history. I took my case to him, back in the day. He didn’t lift a finger to help me.”

  Shame tipped his head a little. “Rather have a Truth spell.”

  “Not going to happen. And in the scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. I’m here to help Allison with her friend and to collect a paycheck. Once Mr. Silvers is on his feet again, I will bother you no longer.”

  “I can only hope.”

  “And that hope will not be in vain.” He went back to eating, but then walked over to look down at Davy. “Allison, are you still seeing magic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you come here and tell me what you see?”

  Might as well. I walked over, gave him the rundown. The spells he’d cast on him, the branching black tendrils digging into him, and the various streams and lines and webs of magic around the room.

  He nodded and threw the empty carton into the wastebasket. “I’m going to see how accurate your vision is.” He calmed his mind fast, like a rock falling to the bottom of a pool, set a Disbursement with a flick of his wrist that looked like it was going to add to a headache he’d been nursing for several days, then traced the glyph for Sight.

  Collins cast in a sort of blocky, learned-by-rote manner, the wires of magic around his wrists, thumbs, and throat restricting his movement, which surprised me. It was like he’d been trying to learn how to hold a pencil all his life, but his handwriting was still so bad no one but he could read it. I wasn’t sure magic would follow the lines he’d drawn. I wasn’t even sure I could follow what he’d drawn.

  But when he called on magic it was like listening to someone with an unexpected, amazing voice sing. He must have been very, very good back before he’d been Closed. Magic pulled easy and strong out of the networks that surrounded the building and snaked out like a liquid ribbon at about waist height, to fill the glyph he held and to catch it on white fire with stark black edges.

  It smelled weird. Hot and rotten. I covered my nose.

  “Problem?” Collins asked as he brought his hand, and the spell along with it, up to his eyes so he could peer through it. The smell did not seem to affect him.

  I breathed through my mouth. That didn’t help. I could taste the stink. “Smells.”