She was naked … but only for a second. Pike pulled letrico through a hat rack she’d chanted for the purpose, spinning the ringer a T-shirt and jeans—generic-looking but lightweight garments that wouldn’t tax her mouse muscles.
Her mouse self in the Octagon was joined by Mark. “Eyes on Janet,” he said. They peered at the bamboo screen, but nothing happened.
“Janet’s Sketch is in the ballroom, in Limbo.” Jupiter said, voice tight.
Astrid said, “I made a blanket that pulls people to it—”
“Will destroyed it grabbing his kids, remember?”
She took a doppelgänger to Will’s workshop, cutting in on his chanting session. “Lucius is loose—we need you.”
“To do what?”
“You’re the expert, you tell me. Talk him down?”
“Maybe we should let him go.” He set down a chanted toy, a plastic teapot, as if it weighed a ton.
“He’s got Janet.”
He turned toward the nearest gate. “Where?”
“Outside town. What do we do, Will?”
“Talk to him. See what he wants.”
“He wants us all dead.”
“It’s time we figured out what to do with him.” His tone was neutral, but Astrid thought she picked up a whisper of accusation. “Is he a patient? A prisoner?”
“We let him go, his big brother will toss him on the nearest bonfire.”
“If that’s truly his choice—” He let his words trail off as he stepped through the gate, joining the ringer already making its way deeper into the forest.
“Over here!” Igme waved from between two overgrown trees. Beyond him stood a long ranch house encircled by a quake-rattled fence, a lawn surrounded by a mesh of tangled tree roots and overgrown forest. The yard within the fence was uncontaminated, its grass dead.
“I don’t understand,” Aquino said. “Why isn’t it enchanted?”
“This was Chief Lee’s house,” Astrid said.
Will sighed. “It’s protected against magic?”
“What do we do, Will?”
“In a hostage situation, we hope the subject wants to live. The threat of getting shot gets him talking.”
“This guy’s pretty much suicidal.”
“That’s more dangerous,” Will agreed. He raised his voice. “Lucius?”
It’s like he’s humoring you, innit? Her mouse selves shivered as the grumble said, You hide things from him, right? Deception’s a two-way street.
“I made that shovel,” she said suddenly. “If they used that ropey glass stuff to protect the house, it’ll break through.”
Aquino startled, and Will went poker faced.
I must have barked, as Olive put it, she thought, but she couldn’t stop: “How did we miss a patch of magic-proofed ground so close to Bigtop?”
“The forest’s practically a hedge,” Aquino said.
“It’s sloppy.” She glowered, feeling like a bully as he wilted.
“Lucius isn’t talking,” Will said.
Igme was sprinting toward them, brandishing the shovel.
“If I do die,” Astrid said, “you’ll just sit around making toys in a funk until the army burns you out.”
Instead of answering, Will plunged the shovel into the dirt at the base of the fence. Letrico shimmered; green shoots spiraled through the dead lawn, working themselves into the protective chains surrounding the house. Vitagua soaked into the parched sod.
“We’ve broken through.”
Astrid shook off a restraining hand—she wasn’t sure whose—and walked toward the house.
“Astrid—”
Straining her squirrel-weak muscles, she pushed open the door … then froze. A line of salt, glass, and gunpowder had been sprinkled over the threshold.
She tried to step over it, failed.
Pulling on the vitagua within the forest, she drew liquid magic over the threshold, thinking to wash the barrier away. Instead, there was a crackle and a burst of smoke. The glass and the vitagua immolated.
Vitagua destroys sea-glass; sea-glass destroys vitagua, she thought. This was what Jacks had been telling her. If she immersed herself in magic, the glass within would be destroyed.…
The linoleum, where the salt and glass had been, was pocked and burned. She rolled another wave of vitagua over the floor, watching the little explosions, imagined that happening to the sea-glass inside her body.
Upstairs, Janet cried out.
Astrid looked back, to Will. “What do I say?”
“What do you want to tell him? Don’t bite my head off. What?”
She raised her voice. “You don’t have to die, Lucius. You’re contaminated, you’re…”
“Scared,” Will supplied. “Angry.”
“Freaked out and mad at me, at Sahara’s people.…” She stepped over the threshold, passing one of Jacks’s early paintings: trees, a lake, a campfire.
Lucius growled from atop the steps. He was holding a pistol to Janet’s head.
“Let her go,” Astrid said. She saw Sahara in there, in the flash of hatred, the edgy, quicksilver smile. “Killing her won’t get you anything.”
“No?” He shoved his hostage, propelling her over a line of salt. Janet stumbled, tripping over Astrid, who went down too. Her mouse muscles weren’t up to a tackle.
“Third time’s the charm, medic,” Lucius crooned, scooping salt off the floor.
“You okay, Janet?” Astrid asked as they disentangled themselves.
“Don’t fret.” Janet bared bloody teeth. “Been through worse, remember? How ’bout you?”
“Help me up.” They regained their feet, facing … “Lucius? Sahara?”
“What’s your plan, princess? They keep you on life support forever?” Lucius undulated in a dance Sahara had incorporated into her religious ceremonies. “You’re getting weaker.”
“Is Lucius Landon in there?”
“Nobody here but us goddesses. Lucius couldn’t resist my charms.”
“Then why come here, to Lee’s? Why put up barriers?” She kicked at the salt. “You love magic, Sahara. Why lock it out?”
“Darling, don’t be tiresome. We need to talk.”
“You need to talk to the … Who am I? The Filthwitch?”
“That’s just about branding; don’t hold a grudge.”
“I’m not interested in this,” she said wearily.
“No? Truly? You used to find me irresistible.”
I used to believe in Santa Claus, too, she thought. “I thought you were all the things I couldn’t have.”
A long, furious-sounding bird trill. “Lucius saw this future, you know. And he’s seen you dead and burning.”
Down in her cave, Astrid Prime’s flesh crawled. “I don’t die by fire.”
“Says who? The grumbles? They didn’t tell you Jacks was gonna get shot.”
With a jeer, he hit the button on Lee’s dusty, battery-operated answering machine. Lucius’s voice echoed: “Uncle, it’s me. Listen—don’t go to the chanter’s place alone.”
She snapped it off. “He called just before you killed Jacks’s dad. Too late, of course. Remember that feeling? Trying to change what’s meant to be. Lucius felt it too.”
“Sahara, do you remember the chantment you used on Ellie Forest? It’s a padlock.”
“Wouldn’t you rather know about the curse? That Fyreman curse on magic you’re obsessed with? Lucius knows all about it. Twelve old men in a cave, reciting Befoulment. Sowing madness into magic, reducing higher forms of life to low…”
“Quit with the games and tell me about the chantment.”
“You’d really choose Forest and his brats?”
“Their mother died for you, Sahara. Show some respect.”
“If you break the curse, you might yet save me.”
“The kids, Sahara.”
“Will Forest doesn’t want you, darling. Cut him loose.” Sahara’s fist spasmed, pouring a handful of salt on the floor, closing the circle arou
nd her. Her posture straightened, and he raised the revolver.
“Lucius?” Astrid asked.
The contaminated Fyreman nodded.
“I’m sorry this happened to you.”
“Sahara spoke the truth. You’re doomed.” He scratched at the spiral kudu horns in his forehead. “I’ve seen you burn.”
“Help us with the Frog Prince curse, Lucius,” Astrid said. “We could cure you.”
He drew a visibly pained breath. “If you stopped releasing the magic, all this could be over.”
“The magic’s releasing itself.”
“You know your power. Even now, it’s not too late.”
“I won’t sell out the Roused,” she said.
“They’ll never know. Reverse the flow of vitagua and freeze them all.”
“They’re people.”
“The evil must be expunged—”
“You guys weren’t burning witches back in the sixteenth century because you thought magic was evil. You did it so you could have all the power yourselves.”
“We birthed the modern world, Lethewood! Do you think the Internet and the space shuttle and automatic dishwashers would exist if the laws of nature had remained subject to the whims of sorcerers? Order, consistency—that’s what people need.”
Astrid shook her head. “Magic didn’t stop the Romans from building roads and aqueducts. There were clockworks—”
“Magic won’t stop my brethren from burning you.”
Another fanatic. “I stopped the Chief, didn’t I?”
“You slaughtered him.”
“Is Sahara right? Are there Fyremen out there keeping up the curse? Is it just a matter of shutting them up?”
He shrugged, poker faced.
“If they stopped, you’d be a man again?”
“With Sahara within? I prefer to go to the fire.”
That she could almost understand.
“Lethewood, did you ever think maybe it’s you who has the Messiah complex, not Sahara? You’re destroying the world.”
“Sure, I’ve wondered,” she said. “But then your brother sets some poor nurse on fire, or the Alchemites torture you, and the doubt leaks away.”
“My brother is going to kill you,” he said. “He is going to throw you on a pile of wood and burn you like the sinful piece of trash you are.”
Down in the Cave of Wonders, her throat was dry. “What happens to you, Lucius? Do I give you to the unreal?”
“Don’t you know?” He fired Lee’s pistol. The bullet struck her ringer in the hip, exiting in a harmless spray of blue ice.
She washed vitagua up the steps, flooding the salt circle he’d laid, filling the air with the stink of burnt flowers and floor varnish.
Pouring vitagua around him, Astrid forced it into his eyes, ears, nose. His transformation accelerated—the kudu horns spiraled out to their full length, and bird feathers fluffed out from his neck.
“Astrid,” Janet murmured.
“It’s all right. He can’t hurt anyone in this state. Maybe if we break the curse, he’ll recover.”
Lucius had other ideas. He turned the Chief’s answering machine back on. Then, before his hands could change into hooves or talons, he raised the pistol to his head.
“At least I can kill the witch within,” he said.
“Wait!” Astrid said, but it was too late.
The shot was loud, terribly loud, and there was a spray—
Red blood, blue magic, Astrid thought. No, no.
“Don’t look, honey,” Janet said, physically turning Astrid away.
The sound as Lucius collapsed was soft, not quite a thud.
“And that’s it for me, isn’t it?” The answering machine broke the silence with the months-old recording of the dead man. “But, Lethewood, you’re still gonna burn.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
NONE OF THIS WAS going to happen.
Will was in dreams, snatching a few precious minutes with his son while Ellie was elsewhere: he assumed she was with an Alchemite, but couldn’t bear to ask. They had dreamed up the real world. Carson was driving a blue convertible along an empty oceanside roadway.
Carson was happy; he clearly had no idea his mother was dead. If Will could change the past, undo all of this, there was no point in telling him.
“Caarrrr, where are you?” Ellie’s voice cut into the music playing on the stereo. The convertible came to a dead stop and Carson leapt out.
“I’ll try to get away tomorrow, Dad.”
“Maybe we’ll try a fighter plane.”
“That’d be cool.”
Will accelerated away before his daughter could catch them.
Stepping through Bramblegate, he headed to the hotel lobby. “Where’s the globe, Pike?”
“Burned out, lad—overuse.”
“How do I catch up on the news?”
Pike handed him a nickel-sized disk of vitagua-infected hardwood. “We’ve upgraded.”
“What’s this?” It looked like a coin—a tree was carved on one side, a tiny, intricate map of the world on the other. There was a faint hum of life within, a sensation that reminded him of a moth he’d caught in the kids’ room one night, dim electric charge of vitality, clasped safely between his hands.
“Doghouse is up and running in London,” Pike said. “Give it a second, you’ll have everything you need to know.”
“Thanks,” Will said, warming the coin between his fingers.
U.S. news came to him first: At Wendover, the trial was dead in the water. Journalists had moved on to tracking the spate of Fyreman executions of Alchemites, all while debating whether Juanita Corazón had done a good thing or not in preventing Gilead’s attempt to execute Sahara.
Across the world, governments were getting jittery. Astrid’s volunteers had been spreading contamination outside North America for long enough now that it was getting noticed. Contaminated crocodiles had been spotted in Africa. The Australian police had arrested a fugitive Alchemite and were extraditing her to Texas, where the attorney general had a capital murder prosecution all warmed up for her.
A burst of tactical information wrapped up the bulletin: Sahara Knax remained in custody. Gilead Landon’s whereabouts were unknown. Alchemites had been sighted in Elko, Nevada. Roche was in Washington, D.C., meeting with the joint chiefs and the president.
The sooner he remade the past, the better, Will thought.
“… ideally, a combat medic.” Janet’s voice pulled him back to the here and now.
“I’ll get our People Peeps on it,” Pike said cheerily.
Will asked: “Hiring a replacement?”
“An assistant, anyway,” Janet said.
“Nobody would blame you if you wanted off the strike team.”
Her smile was a little worn; for the first time, she looked her age. “After Lucius grabbed me, you mean?”
“You got hurt in Atlanta too. And Sahara’s threat—”
“Implied that next time I won’t be so lucky. Boss ask you to trauma-counsel me?” She led him out into Bigtop, past a crew that had gathered up a few thousand plastic water bottles. They were filling them with liquid magic—part of some dispersal plan, presumably, that Will hadn’t heard about yet.
“Astrid didn’t send me, Janet. We’re friends, remember?”
She plopped down on a log bench. “I’m still in Limbo, Will. Yesterday’s excitement didn’t move my portrait to the Big Picture.”
“We still have time to save you.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re saying you don’t care?”
“Of course I care, Will. I’m not looking to die.”
“Sounds to me like there’s a but coming.”
She shrugged. “I had a son and daughter, you know, same as you.”
“Had?”
“Brad hanged himself in ’93. As for Sally … Last I heard, she had a conservative husband and an SUV and four lovely children. We’re not speaking.”
“I’m sorry.”
/>
“Don’t mean nothing,” she said.
“People get out of Limbo, Janet. Ev did. Olive—”
“This isn’t a counseling session, right? We’re just two friends hanging out?”
“Of course.”
“Your youngest thinks you’re Satan, Will Forest. You saw your wife burned to shit. You’re having an on-again off-again romance with the closest thing this earth has to a deity. You feel like talking about that?”
He felt his jaw dropping, tried to pass it off with a chuckle. “You’re telling me to back off.”
“I’m a tough old bird, and I’m committed to this fight. Getting grabbed by a lunatic patient—”
“Watching him commit suicide,” he interrupted.
“It hardly comes up on my radar.”
“Still,” he said. “If you could rewrite the past.”
“I wouldn’t change a thing,” Janet said. She reached into her satchel, pulling out a black cashmere sweater. Bunching it, she pressed it to her face, inhaling—then passed it over.
Cautious, Will sniffed. The sweater smelled of laundry fresh from the dryer, and he flashed on a summer backpacking trip across Greece. He was twenty, standing at the temple of Delphi in the pouring rain, kissing a Danish girl in a cotton dress. The rest of the tour group had fled the storm.
Every sensation was as vivid as it had been that day: the warm rain sluicing over their bodies, caramel-colored mud spurting everywhere—the way it felt to neck with a stranger in the navel of the world.
“Wow,” he said.
“No offense, but I’ll take magic over therapy,” Janet said. Having reclaimed the sweater, she strode away.
Will was about to follow, when Astrid joined him on the bench. She had gotten so good at the mouse magic that he had to lay a finger on her to check … but, yes, her skin was cold.
“If it looks like me, it ain’t,” she reminded him. “I’m only allowed out in disguise.”
“Right.” By disguise she meant a magic scarf that made her look like a nondescript middle-aged guy.
“You’ve been keeping to yourself,” she said.
Guilt intruded on his magically induced bubble of cheer: it was one thing to plan to wipe out this bizarre empire, another to lie to Astrid’s face. “I’ve been making chantments.”
Blue Magic Page 20
