Janet grunted. “You need to learn to delegate.”
“Delegate,” Astrid agreed, her eye following the mouse. Then she shook off whatever thought had grabbed her. She headed for Bramblegate, moving, Will noted, as though her body ached.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“WILL FOREST IS IN the little conference room.” Juanita murmured the message into Roche’s hearing aid.
She had been off duty and trying to meditate, to grab a few minutes when she wasn’t at Sahara’s mercy or Roche’s whims.
It hadn’t worked out so well. She liked the idea of meditation better than the practice: she knew she should take it seriously, but something—early childhood conditioning, maybe?—resisted. She’d relax, start breathing, and right away an inner voice piped up, snarking about how she was grasping at straws if she’d resorted to Prayer Lite.
She’d cracked an eye open to check the clock, and Forest—a spooky, see-through Will Forest made of dust and sunbeams—was standing in front of her.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he’d said, “but I need a favor.”
It was almost a relief. And at least she couldn’t complain she was out of the loop, right?
“Forest is here?” Roche gave her a gimlet-eyed glare, but when Juanita didn’t say anything else, he gestured to Gilead and followed her out of the courtroom and down the hall.
“In here.” Juanita pushed open the door and froze: Forest had been joined by a ghostly Astrid Lethewood.
It was like seeing a movie star, or maybe the Devil. Gilead claimed Lethewood was to blame for everything: the release of magic, the end of the old world. Juanita had imagined someone flamboyant, with more stage presence than Sahara. But she looked profoundly ordinary—almost distracted.
Gilead eyed her like a cougar stalking a rabbit.
Roche broke the uneasy silence. “Your children, Will?”
“They’re in dreams.”
“You betrayed me for nothing, then.”
“They’re safer there,” Will said. “Arthur, I had to try. We were getting nowhere. But I regret … I am sorry—”
“Save your breath.” Roche struggled visibly with his anger while Gilead glowered at Astrid. “Why are you here?”
Will said, “Someone’s dumped an injured man in Indigo Springs. He was a trial witness.”
Oh no, thought Juanita. This was about the guy Sahara’d possessed and tortured.
Gilead’s face was a mask, unreadable. “Is he dead?”
“He’s been contaminated, like Wallstone. He thinks he’s Sahara Knax.”
Roche asked: “Then Alchemites did it?”
If I’d never slipped Sahara any chantments …
“They gave him tainted blood,” Astrid said.
“Sahara’s blood,” Gilead growled.
She nodded. “Can you help him?”
His face was rigid. “There’s nothing to be done.”
“There’s gotta be a treatment.”
“Purity comes from fire, Lethewood. Like you, he’ll burn.”
“Death by fire?” Astrid seemed to be tasting the idea. Her hand rose, tracing her throat. Gooseflesh rose on Juanita’s arms.
Will interrupted: “We didn’t come to exchange threats. Your friend—”
Gilead’s voice was toneless. “He burns.”
“Son—,” Roche said.
Will shook his head. “Turning over your man so you can barbecue him isn’t what we had in mind.”
“Lucius will pray for salvation.”
“This is nuts,” Astrid said. “He’s only cursed because of your spell. Break it. The guy doesn’t have to fry—”
“The guy—my brother—” Gilead’s diction was as precise as that of a Shakespearean actor. “—will welcome death.”
“You’d just write him off?” The words were out before Juanita realized she was angry. The men started, as if the desk or curtains had spoken. Astrid grinned.
Gilead spoke through clenched teeth. “It’s what he wants.”
“You’ve asked him?”
“Juanita, Lucius is—”
“Is this woman telling the truth, Gilead? Your magic’s what’s messed him up, and now you’re going to burn him for it?”
“Sahara Knax has violated him.”
She said: “You can’t punish Lucius for that.”
“Punishment…” He made a sweeping gesture, a hokey illusionist’s move, nothing up my sleeve. Suddenly there were unstoppered glass flasks in his hands. He poured three potions down his throat, hurling the test tubes away.
“Observe your future, Lethewood.” Blue candle flames flickered under his fingernails. They spread down his wrists and arms, moving over the surface of his skin like wildfire. He reached for Forest, raking his fingers through the dust forming Will’s illusory body. Motes danced and wheeled, sparking.
“You’re angry—,” Will began.
“Professional empathy won’t save you,” Gilead said. Smoke roiled between the embers of his teeth.
“The person we’re trying to save is your brother.”
“Tell Lucius,” Gilead said, “tell him the Alchemites felt the heat of my vengeance.”
The defendants.
Juanita lunged to block the doorway, but Roche caught her arm, wrenching her off balance. “Let it play out, Corazón.”
Cold air gusted over her face—the a/c system, kicking in as the room heated. The flames on Gilead’s skin brightened from orange to incandescent white. Juanita yanked free of Roche, but it was too late: Gilead was gone.
Roche slammed the door behind him, trapping her inside.
“Are you insane?” Juanita demanded.
“Think! His brother’s been tortured. Nobody will blame him for going crazy.”
“Arthur!” Will protested.
“Sahara dies, the problem’s half-solved, Will.”
“It’s true,” said Astrid. “Gilead burns Sahara.”
“Arthur, you ass, Caro’s in there.” The grit and dust forming the illusory Will lost coherence, collapsing into haze. Juanita saw a new Will rising from the floor on the other side of the glass door. He was running after Gilead.
“He doesn’t burn her now,” Astrid said. “What?”
Juanita hit her radio. “Gladys, lock down the courtroom. Lock it down now! You—Lethewood. Can you stop him?”
“Maybe,” Astrid said a little dreamily.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Oh.” Astrid clutched at her stomach. “It’s going to be terrible.”
Juanita bulled past Roche, sprinting after Will.
The courthouse doors were already burning, the security barrier ablaze. One of the marshals beat at the flames. Beyond the flaming doorway, Juanita heard screams and gunfire.
She darted inside … into a standoff.
No sign of Judge Skagway, was her first thought: maybe court was out of session. But no—lawyers and journalists were fleeing to the outer walls.
Gilead was facing the bench, his whole body a torch. Fire followed him like a cloak, spreading across the floor as he surveyed the room. Frightened spectators scrambled for cover: crouching behind seats, under tables, pressing themselves against walls. One of her marshals was hammering on the sealed emergency door near the jury box.
Gladys was protecting another exit, one that was still open. A single line of observers filed behind her, escaping as she fired on Gilead. The bullets had no effect.
The Alchemite prisoners were clustered in front of the bench, protecting Sahara.
“Have faith.” Her voice rose from their midst. “I will not die today.”
“Are you certain?” Gilead said, belching smoke.
Sahara tried to push her human shield away—halfheartedly, Juanita thought. “We do not fear you, Burning Man.”
“Do not fear, do not fear,” the Alchemites chanted.
“Funny, you sound scared,” Gilead said.
Will Forest, still a ghost, stepped between Gilead and the defendants. “Landon
, this is my fault. The Alchemites captured Lucius because I knocked him out.”
“Your time will come, Forest.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Believe me, I want to,” Gilead said.
Overhead sprinklers kicked in, spraying Juanita with icy water. She saw Caro Forest’s face as she recognized the dusty simulation of her long-absent husband …
By the exit, Gladys was reloading.
White flame gathered around Gilead’s face, a lion’s mane of fire.
“Stop!” Juanita yelled. “Gilead, stop!”
But he raised his hands, cupping his mouth, and blew. Fire streamed out, engulfing one of the prisoners, Arlen Roy.
Time slowed. Roy shrieked, danced, and fell. The stench of burnt flesh and hair filled the room. The people crouching behind the chairs and benches began to scream and retch.
Gilead drew breath for another attack.
“Praise Sahara!” An Alchemite threw herself into the stream of flame.
The ghostly simulation of Will staggered.
Dear God, that was Caro Forest.
Gilead moved on to the next defendant. And Sahara wasn’t playing brave anymore; she had her fingers hooked into the jumpsuit of one of her followers, shielding herself as she backed away.
“Somebody stop him!” she roared.
Gilead burned the remaining defendants down, one after another, advancing until Sahara was exposed.
She had reached the edge of the defense table, and as Gilead drew breath for another blast, she grabbed a lawyer, hauling him up and using him to shield herself.
It’s that same old guy she almost vamped to death before, Juanita thought. She felt a giggle building, even though it wasn’t funny. I’m losing my mind.
Two of the jurors were in motion now. It was the pair Juanita had identified as probable Alchemites. They were each dragging someone, a hostage, attempting to bolster Sahara’s human shield.
“Well?” Sahara demanded. “You gonna fry innocents, too? Show some balls, big guy.”
Her gaze flicked past Gilead to Juanita. Expecting her to grab a hostage too, probably?
Horror at the prospect paralyzed her.
“Club Gilead.” The spectral Astrid Lethewood appeared at Juanita’s side. “Use something solid—big and solid.”
Juanita grabbed up a chair and took a running start, using it as a battering ram. It burst into flame, billowing smoke, adding the reek of burned fabric and foam to the charnel house air—as she slammed it into Gilead’s body.
He pitched to the floor, practically landing at Sahara’s feet. Juanita upended the defense counsel’s table on his head, setting the exhibits afire.
“Get Prisoner One out of here!” she yelled.
Gladys, bless her, reacted fast. She dragged Sahara through the side door as Juanita struck Gilead again. The flames on his skin didn’t go out. Searing heat boiled off him, and she couldn’t get close enough to cuff him. For now, he lay atop the charred bodies, apparently dazed.
Bodies. She was standing among the burned.
What about the judge?
“Clear the room!” she coughed, making for the bench. “Please, please … Madre de Dios, there’s his chair…”
He was behind the bench, sheltering one of the clerks with his body, a letter opener at the ready in his hand. When he saw Juanita, his wide face lit up.
“Everything’s all right, Billie.” He dried the clerk’s tears with the sleeve of his robe, pointing her at the exit behind Gladys. “No, go, don’t look back. It’s all right.”
“Are you okay, Your Honor?”
“Corazón, you’re never ever getting another day off.”
She covered her mouth, fighting a sob. “All those people.”
“Hush, Corazón, I know. Just get my chair, will you—”
A roar made them both jump. Down on the floor, Gilead was burning brighter than ever. There was that whumping gas-stove sound, and he became a ball of flame. Rising up to the ceiling, he burned his way out, up, rising into the sky and vanishing.
The fires were everywhere. Juanita pulled an extinguisher off the wall, spraying down the floor between the bench and the ramp to the exit.
The spooky Will Forest crouched near his wife’s charred remains. He was made of cinders now, of all the bits of fire rising from the floor.
Lethewood tried to speak to him; he brushed her off, vanishing. As her eyes came up, Lethewood focused on Juanita.
Oh, no. Not you too, Juanita thought.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Leave me alone.” How had she become the go-to girl for all these freaks and murderers?
“We can help each other, Juanita.” She gestured at the back wall, and an archway grew there, a doorway of twisted thorns, green shot through with red and purple. Blackberries?
“I told you to go,” Juanita said.
“Think it over.” Lethewood disappeared. The arch stayed.
“Let’s keep it orderly, people,” boomed the judge. He had lifted himself back into his chair, and his voice calmed the remnants of the crowd.
Juanita scanned the room. The civilians had mostly evacced. The sprinklers had stopped the spreading fires, and Gladys had returned and awakened the unconscious marshals. A few MPs had even turned up, too late to do anything but pick up the pieces.
Pieces. All those bodies. She’d been standing … She had ashes on her shoes.
“Corazón?” The judge handed her a folded white handkerchief.
She took it automatically, staring past the crisped defendants to the main exit, where a chalky-faced General Roche was helping people limp out through the gaping, burnt doors. “He ordered me to let it happen, Your Honor.”
“We’re ants among giants, my dear,” Skagway told her, wiping his own face with the back of one immense hand. “And the giants are in no way wise, but mere children wielding magnifying glasses.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HIS WIFE WAS DEAD.
Will shook off Astrid’s attempt to comfort him, making for his room.
Caro screaming, suffering—it had been quick, but by no means painless. Would the reporters air that? Was the execution already on the Internet?
Throwing herself in front of that wretched woman, tossing her life away, not a thought for Carson and Ellie …
He should tell them. Bramblegate would take him into dreams; he could meet with Carson.
Instead he sat, brooding. It was hours before someone got up the courage to knock on his door.
This is your fault, he was going to say. It was you, you who made Sahara a monster. But when he opened up, he found Olive Glade, looking like she understood and holding a brandy flask.
“Is that whiskey?”
“I got Astrid to make a bottomless barrel of my great-granddad Elmo’s carrot wine.”
“Carrot wine.”
“I know—sounds mild. Don’t worry, it’s pretty much moonshine. Might make you blind, but it’s pleasantly sherry flavored. Elmo would throw any old thing that might ferment into a vat when he was making liquor.”
“I’m not sure I want company,” he said, nevertheless standing aside to let her enter.
“I get it, I really do.” She poured two cups and held one up in a toast. “The fallen?”
“The dead.” He clinked.
Sipping, she sat on the edge of his bed, eyeing the bits and pieces he’d accumulated since his arrival: toy elephants for Ellie, a couple pairs of socks, empty picture frames.
The alcohol was barely sweet and strong enough to burn a hole in a steel wall. They’d drunk two glasses before either of them spoke.
“It was over between us,” Will said finally. “She’d come to hate me. I was working on acceptance.…”
She looked amused. “Really?”
“Okay, I’d meant to work on it. Things have been…”
“Insane. Yeah. I’d been divorced twelve years, remarried too. But when Astrid killed Lee…” She presse
d a hand to her chest.
Lee. Another Fyreman who had failed to kill Sahara. And Olive had lost more than one ex-husband. She was Albert Lethewood’s widow, Astrid got her son shot.…
He laughed harshly. “This is minimizing the body count?”
“Alchemites tortured that man, Will, not us.”
“Lucius. They only got him because I knocked him down.”
“You saved the strike team.”
“I didn’t join this crusade to kill people.”
“Who’ve you killed? That Fyreman murdered Caro.”
“‘That Fyreman’ who is Lucius Landon’s brother?”
“So it’s all your fault?”
He eyed her sourly.
“Or perhaps it’s Astrid’s?”
“Astrid broke the magical well open. Astrid unleashed Sahara, murdered Lee, got Jacks shot—”
“And her father stuck her with the well, and Jacks’s father killed Albert. Will, you didn’t make your wife join Sahara, and you certainly didn’t fry her.”
She said it kindly, but the word fry brought up the memory of Caro in flames. Shuddering, he gulped wine.
“What am I going to do, Olive?” He held out his cup.
She poured. “Believe Astrid when she says it’ll be okay.”
“It’s not even slightly okay.”
“No, it’s not—but what can you do?”
“Turn back time,” he said. “Bring the old world back.”
She toasted him with mock cheer. “Good luck with that.”
He bit back a heated response … and then his skin tingled. Vitagua was powerful.… It made anything imaginable a possibility, and he was a chanter now. Why not turn back time?
What if he changed the past? Say he saved Albert Lethewood—that would delay Astrid’s takeover of the magical well. If Albert lived, if Sahara never returned to Indigo Springs …
His heart raced. He’d tell Albert it was Lee Glade hunting him. Albert had been fifty-four when he died—he might have lived to seventy or eighty if he’d known.
Astrid had told Will all the details of the magical spill. Albert, Jacks, Lee—he could save everyone. Caro might leave him, but she wouldn’t die a fanatic.…
If he changed the past, they’d never brainwash his daughter.
Blue Magic Page 17
