Magic on the Line

by Devon Monk

  “Faint heart never got her hands blown off by bombs in brown paper packages tied up in string.”

  “Cotton,” Collins said. “And a fine cotton at that. But completely inappropriate for a bomb. A bomb I’d wrap in silk.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Silk around a bomb? Irony.”

  “No, why this? Why now?”

  “I made a promise to your father.” He nodded. “Years ago. That if I was in the position to offer you assistance of this sort, I would.”

  Dad? I asked.

  It’s true, he said quietly.

  I took both packages, expecting the string to hurt. It felt like string.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Good hunting to you.” He relocked the bag and Zay and I walked out the door.

  “You going to open it?” Zay asked before we reached the stairs.

  I was holding both packages at arm’s length like I was balancing nitroglycerin. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with something Collins thought my father would think would be helpful to me.

  “I’m not going to carry it around without knowing what it is.” I handed him the smaller package because it was making my hand itch. I tugged on the string on the larger bundle. A stinky snap of magic later and the package fell open.

  “It’s a gun,” I said.

  “So it is,” Zay agreed.

  We both just stared at it. “Bet I can guess what’s in the other package,” I said.

  “Bullets,” Zay said. “Mind?”

  “What’s mine is yours, baby.” I handed him the gun. He picked it up like it wasn’t going to turn into a monster and bite his eyes out. I watched him, watched how he tipped it sideways, inspecting various, uh . . . doodads on it, then turned toward the blank wall and sighted along it.

  He grunted, tipped it again to look at some other thing, and spun part of it with another satisfied grunt.

  He handed me the other package. I opened it. Stinky snap and, ta-da, bullets.

  Correction, incredibly stinky bullets. “Whoa,” I said. “Do these smell like shit to you?”

  I held the box of bullets up to Zay’s face and covered my nose with my left hand.

  He jerked his head back, expecting a wave of stink, then stopped. His nostrils flared as he breathed in. “No. They smell like magic.”

  Right.

  He traded me the gun for the bullets. A sweet deal since the gun didn’t reek.

  Zay plucked a bullet out of the box and turned it between his fingers. “These are forged with glyphs,” he said with something almost like wonder. “Amazing work. I’m not sure.... yes, it’s Impact.” He dropped it back in the box. “Shoot someone with these and they will not be getting back up.”

  “Good to know. How do you shoot a gun?”

  He held his breath and, mostly, his surprise. “Seriously?”

  “Not everyone grew up ghetto,” I said.

  He gave me a warning look.

  “Well, then. Let me run you through the basics, rich girl.” He stepped next to me and named off the parts of the gun, how to hold it, how to aim it, how to fire it. “Chamber, trigger, sight and squeeze” was about all I remembered.

  “Got that?” he asked.

  “Totally.”

  He grinned. “You are such a liar. Since the bullets are magic, I think if you put the shooty end of the gun toward the bad guy”—he tapped on the tip of the barrel just in case I’d forgotten where the bullet exited—“and focus your mind on where you want it to hit, it won’t disappoint.”

  “The shooty end?”

  “That’s ghetto for barrel.”

  I laughed. “Okay, fine. Where did you learn to use a gun?”

  “Training for my job with the Authority.”

  “So, not ghetto.”

  “Not so much, no.”

  We started down the stairs and didn’t say anything more. Hounds had big ears, and the building was full of them.

  Outside, the day was promising to be warm and cloudless. The sort of day that made you want to skip work and drive over to the coast to walk the beaches. But the magic on the streets was still just as bright and distracting as before. I had to get used to it, get used to seeing magic so I could ignore seeing magic. Otherwise I’d be jumping at shadows—well, and lights and colors—that weren’t really there.

  We made it around the building and to Zay’s car in good time. Once we were both in the car and Zayvion had pulled out onto the street, he asked me, “Which cistern?”

  “Um.”

  Suggestions? I asked Dad.

  The least-guarded cistern is under Forest Park.

  “Dad thinks under Forest Park,” I said. “Do you know where that cistern is?”

  “Yes. Do you know how to load that gun?”

  I sighed. “I think I can do it, yes.”

  “Try. I’ll talk you through it if you get stuck. Remember, point the shooty end at the floor, but not at your feet.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Have I ever told you how helpful you are?”

  “Never hurts to hear it one more time.”

  I took the unloaded gun out of my coat pocket and stared at it for a minute. “It’s lighter than I expected.”

  “It’s not made of metal,” Zayvion said.

  “Huh.” I turned it to the light, but made sure the damn shooty end was still facing the floor. “You’re right. Plastics of some kind?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it could go through metal detectors, Wards, scanners, stuff like that?”

  “What Mr. Collins gave you is a very wicked weapon, and easily concealed. Not one I’ve seen before. No actual spells on the gun itself, so it won’t set off Wards guarding against magical intrusion. I know of a few people who spell their bullets, but not like that. Those bullets hold a spark of magic in them. A latent spell waiting to be triggered. It’s a lot like your dad’s disks.”

  “Probably a prototype,” I said. “Do you trust him?”

  “Your father?”

  “Collins.”

  Zay drove for a bit, thinking that over. “I think he is doing exactly what you asked him to do—trying to find a way to keep Davy alive.”

  “But otherwise?”

  “No. There was a reason he was Closed.”

  “Did you Close him?”

  He shook his head. “Victor did.”

  I didn’t know why that made me feel better, but it did.

  “Have you talked to Shame?” I loaded the first bullet into the chamber. The bullet stank of rotted meat with a slight gasoline overtone. The magic was so subtle, it just looked like a regular shiny bullet to me.

  “No.”

  “I think you should.”

  Zay’s voice was carefully neutral. “He knows I didn’t want to Close Maeve. He knows I was as careful with her as I could be.”

  “I still think you should talk to him. He’s furious about it.”

  “I know.”

  I finished chambering the bullets. “Is there anything else I should do?”

  “Make sure the safety’s on.”

  “Got it.” Luckily, I remembered where it was. I tucked the gun in my pocket and it was strange to know it was there, strange to know I had something that I could kill someone with. I mean, yes, magic could kill people, but the price to pay for that was your own life, so it sort of cut down on the knee-jerk revenge magics.

  I had killed people with a knife and sword, but that took time and effort and I had plenty of chances to decide to pull back if death wasn’t the outcome I wanted. With the gun, it seemed like one ill-timed twitch of my finger, and people would die.

  I didn’t like the feeling.

  “So, Shame?” I brought up again.

  Zayvion sighed. “Is there an ‘off’ on your stubborn button?”

  “No.”

  “Fine. Shame and I, we’ve talked this over. We knew it could happen, knew it years ago when I first took the job.”

  “And he’s fine with it? Because he looked mad as
hell to me.”

  “I know he’s angry. But there wasn’t anything else I could do. The Guardian of the gates follows orders from the head of the Authority. Even if that’s Sedra, even if that’s Bartholomew.”

  “Duty unto death?” I said quietly.

  “It’s what I’ve vowed. It’s what Victor taught me. It’s what being Guardian of the gates stands for. Upholding the law of the Authority above all others. Friends, family, enemies.”

  “Even if it means you’re doing the wrong thing?”

  He was quiet, the muscle at his jaw tight as he clamped down on his molars. Probably to keep from yelling. I knew he wasn’t happy about what he’d done. I knew it made him furious. What I still didn’t understand was why he didn’t fight it. Why he didn’t stand up against Bartholomew’s orders.

  Maybe he was having a hard time convincing himself it had been the correct thing to do too.

  “Zay . . . ,” I started.

  “Don’t,” Zay said. “Just don’t talk about it.”

  I studied his profile, the anger radiating from him, the guilt. I didn’t need to point out that he didn’t agree with what he’d done, no matter what Victor had said, no matter how he had been trained.

  The Authority came first. Before friends, family, enemies. And apparently even before self.

  I wondered how long Zayvion would hold that line, wondered if anything could make him change his mind about blindly following what the Authority, what Bartholomew, told him to do.

  I knew me making him more angry wasn’t going to change what he’d done. Nothing I could say would change his vows.

  I turned my head away and watched the city roll past.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I’d lived in the city most of my life and hadn’t been to Forest Park more than maybe once. Okay, make that only once that I remembered.

  Zayvion, however, seemed to know exactly where he was going.

  He parked. “The cistern is up that path. We’ll need to hike.”

  We got out of the car and I was glad I was wearing my coat. There was more shade here, the old fir and pine soaking up the day’s sunlight and warmth and leaving nothing but cool breeze and shadows beneath them.

  I heard a car approaching. Bea drove up, parked, and got out. “Hey, you two.”

  So much for us not seeing her until this was done.

  “You’re not following us up there,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  Huh. Why not indeed? If all we were doing was looking to see if a concentrated storage point of magic was tainted or being messed with by the Veiled, there was no reason she couldn’t come along.

  How many people are guarding this cistern? I asked Dad.

  None, last I knew, Dad said. It’s a very minor storage. If it fails there are other stronger cisterns that will automatically take on the load.

  If it’s so unimportant, why was it built? I asked.

  There was a time when I was going to run the network of magic lines through St Johns. He paused and I could tell he was sorting through how much of that he wanted to talk about. Finally, This was support for that.

  He had plans to run magic through St. Johns? This was the first I’d heard of it.

  Why didn’t you? I pressed. He didn’t answer.

  Why didn’t you run magic through St. Johns, Dad? I asked with a little more force.

  It was a decision that seemed right at the time.

  There was something melancholy in his thoughts. I wondered what he regretted about that decision.

  “Um, Allie? Hello?” Bea said.

  Right, just because I was having a conversation with a dead guy didn’t mean everyone was in on it. What had we been talking about? If Bea could follow us?

  “Sorry,” I said. “Yes, fine. Follow us. All the standard rules apply.”

  She pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll dial 911 if we run into any trouble.”

  “Not with the cell reception up here,” Zayvion said.

  Bea glanced at her phone. “Right. Forgot about that. If we run into any trouble, I’ll drive into cell range and call 911 from there.”

  We headed off up the hill. Zayvion took the lead since he knew where the cistern was located. I walked right behind him and Bea stayed a respectable distance behind us. I’d expected her to chatter all the way there, but she was silent, observant and damned near invisible when I glanced back to see if she was following us.

  The trail led up a ridge with sword ferns and moss-covered rocks scattered between the tall brush and taller trees. Forest Park was one of the largest urban forest reserves, about five thousand acres or so, with seventy miles of trails, just west of Portland. I was glad Zayvion knew where we were going. Easy to get lost out here.

  Birdsong filled the air and little things skittered in and out of the trees and layer of leaves and needles on the ground. I took a nice deep breath and realized I didn’t smell the stink of magic at all.

  Finally Zay stopped. “That’s it.”

  I looked at the more level area we had arrived at, then at the trees, scrub brush, and the path that ambled off into the distance.

  “What’s it?”

  “The cistern.” He pointed.

  “It’s a tree?”

  “It looks like a tree.”

  It really did. The level area was still covered in grass, some wild roses, and a few daisies and ferns. In this area were also trees, just like all around us were trees. And the one Zayvion pointed at looked like an old cedar.

  “I thought they buried all the cisterns,” I said, walking over to it.

  “In the city, yes. Better way to keep vandals from tapping into them. But this was one of the early models. There was an idea, when your dad first came up with this stuff, that the cisterns could also be a sort of public art.”

  “An artist made this? Was it Cody?”

  “This was made almost thirty years ago,” Zay said.

  Cody wasn’t even born then.

  I sniffed, trying to catch a whiff of the rotten smell. Nothing.

  “It doesn’t look magical. At all.”

  “It’s not magical. It just contains magic. And it doesn’t let magic leak.” He strode right up to it and walked around the base, running his hand over the rough bark.

  I followed him, noting that the grass hadn’t been worn down. “Does anyone know this is here?”

  “It’s not a secret, but I don’t think very many people come up this way. Even if they did, they might look right past it.”

  True. It was realistic. Moss was even growing on it and the branches above looked alive. “So how do we tap into it and see if the magic is okay?”

  “There should be a manual trip. Hold on.” He circled the tree again, this time more slowly, his hands running up and down the bark, his fingers following cracks and ridges like he was reading braille.

  He stopped on the other side of the tree from me, completely hidden. “This is it. You might want to take a couple steps back, Allie.”

  I did so.

  Lines of magic shot up through the bark of the tree, looking like water flowing upward. For a second, it was just a white-gold light, and then the light darkened, a push of gray, green, and finally black, spreading up the tree like a bruise.

  I put my hand over my nose. It stank like rotten flesh.

  “Can you see that?” I asked Zay.

  “Yes,” Zay said. “You?”

  The black flow of magic pulsed, and a Veiled stepped out of the cistern, pulling itself up out of the ground at the base of the tree like a man climbing out of a swamp.

  “Veiled,” I said calmly, “coming out of the ground.”

  Zayvion came around the tree to where I was standing. He held a very clear Sight in his hand that made me want to barf.

  I went through the motions of drawing a glyph for Shield, but stopped halfway when pain stabbed my brain. I could not draw on magic and did not want to pass out. I pulled the gun out of my pocket instead.

  “Will this w
ork?” I asked.

  “Might,” he said.

  The Veiled finally pulled all of itself out of the ground. It took a step away from the cistern. The darkness drained away from it, and then it was just a pale watercolor pastel reflection of a man, which is what the Veiled usually looked like. It walked straight toward Zayvion and me, shuffling slowly, not moving like I’d seen Veiled move, not running. Yet.

  “Shield?” I suggested.

  Zayvion had already dropped Sight and was casting something that made my eyes water from the stench.

  Shield.

  The Veiled continued shuffling our way. Once he reached the Shield, he ran his fingertips, then palms, over it. He pressed, as if expecting the Shield to let him in. When it didn’t, he opened his mouth, revealing a set of serrated teeth I’d never seen on a Veiled before, and bit down into the Shield. Black lines, just like the black lines on Anthony’s body, just like the black lines on Davy, snaked out from that bite, twisting and squirming over the spell like leeches.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “Can you can see that?”

  “Yes.” Zayvion began chanting, something soft and low, then raised his left hand. Magic wrapped around his fist like a silver gauntlet of fire. He broke the Shield, and threw the silver fire at the Veiled.

  The Veiled writhed and screamed. It shriveled up like a piece of plastic catching on fire.

  Just as the Veiled reduced down to nothing but a burnt smudge on the grass, another Veiled pulled up out of the cistern.

  “I think,” I said, pointing at the other Veiled, who was almost on her feet, “we can conclude that yes, something is wrong with magic. And something is horribly wrong with the Veiled.”

  Zayvion didn’t screw around with Shield this time. He just did the chant and threw flaming silver magic at the thing. She caught fire, screamed. Zay strode over to the cistern, ignoring her as she melted, and made his way around to the back of it where he could undo whatever kind of opening he had just done.

  “There’s more coming up,” I said.

  He did something on the other side of the tree and all the black magic that was pulsing up through the trunk of the tree, up into the limbs, and stretching out into the tips and fan of needles, stopped pulsing.

  About six Veiled stopped coming up through the ground, caught half in and half out and opening and closing their black hole mouths like fish biting air.