Allie Beckstrom 09 - Magic for a Price (26 page)

I was pacing, trying to think this through. “We’ve closed down the wells and the cisterns, and put out a restriction so that no one in the city is using magic. The cisterns are inaccessible. The wells, which only members of the Authority know about, will kick back if anyone tries to use them, so that’s inaccessible too.

“There is one last report of a magic source we are going to investigate and shut down.

“If we can stop Leander and Isabelle by nonmagic means, and not engage in a magical fight, that would be best. Do we have forces on the ground to carry that out?”

Detective Stotts took a couple of steps away from the wall. He looked well rested and sharp, his light jacket unzipped to reveal a nice button-down shirt.

“We have police, fire, and National Guard at our disposal,” he said. “All the roads are covered; all flights in and out are being monitored. We’ll know as soon as they are in the area. Since this is a matter of national security, we will take them into custody immediately, unless lethal force is necessary.”

“Good,” I said. “With magic in Portland blocked and locked, they will not be able to use magic to defend or attack. That gives us an edge. They should be considered armed and dangerous. Treat them as such. Detective Stotts, is there anything else?”

“We have fail-safes in place on all the hospitals and emergency services,” he said. “Businesses have been encouraged to stay closed; the majority of the city is at home; the streets are relatively clear.”

“Excellent,” I said. “Detective Stotts, please continue to coordinate our resources along with Hayden Grimshaw and Dr. Fischer. I volunteered to help us figure out what to do with the magical side of this attack, but you are far better suited to deal with guns and bullets and the people who use them.”

“Maeve and I will also stay to assist and coordinate,” Victor said.

Bless him. Just the sound of his voice calmed a lot of concerned mumbling. These people were used to seeing him as a figure of authority, not me. Which was great. Right now I needed to get myself and Dad to St. Johns to see if there really was some source of magic we hadn’t accounted for.

Maeve and Victor were already surrounded by people asking them questions. So I nodded to Zay.

“Coming?”

“Of course. St. Johns?”

“If there’s magic there, we need to close it.” I headed out of the room.

Shame and Terric were waiting just a short way down the hall, and so were Cody and Nola.

“Hi,” I said to Nola. “I need to go check on that magic source. We’ll catch up when I get back.”

“We’re coming,” Cody said.

I thought about it, made a decision. A part of Cody had been connected to Mama out in St. Johns. Maybe he’d be able to get her to listen to us if things got dicey. And since Mama always had guns on her premises, it might be best to have any bargaining power available.

“I’d rather you stayed here, Nola,” I said.

“You said it yourself: This isn’t a magic fight right now.” She pulled her shotgun and a box of shells out of a hall closet. “I know how to use a gun, and I’m not afraid to.”

“I like her,” Shame said as he and Terric continued down the hall.

“Sweet hells. If you get hurt—”

“I won’t. Let’s go.”

Stone,
Dad said.
We’ll need him. Don’t let him stay behind, Allison.

Crap. “Anyone know where Stone is?”

We crossed the main room and stepped out onto the porch. Stone was sitting on top of the van, his ears perked up, sniffing the wind.

At least it wasn’t raining. The sky was a patchwork of blue and clouds, but promised to be warm and dry.

Cody laughed. “Get down,” he said. “You’ll break the roof.”

Stone burbled and took a step. The thunk of metal denting under his feet popped through the quiet morning air.

“Wings,” Cody said. “You should use them.”

Stone did so, pushing up into the air, and landing down the driveway just a bit. He folded his wings and trotted over to us.

“Why is he still working?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Cody rubbed Stone’s head;
then Stone came over to me and walked a tight circle around my legs.

“When magic was shut down back when the wild magic storm hit, he sort of…wound down.”

“He probably wasn’t fully activated.”

“Is he now? Fully activated?”

Cody had made Stone. I figured he knew a lot about him I didn’t. Cody paused, and held my gaze, his eyes bluer than the sky. “Have you talked to your father about Stone?”

“I think so.”

“Well, then you know Stone is a very complicated construct. We’ve only seen some of what he can do.” Cody stepped up into the van.

That was kind of…mysterious.

“You don’t mean stacking blocks, do you?” I asked.

Shame stopped beside me to toss a cigarette on the ground. “Weren’t you in a hurry just a minute ago?”

“I’m still in a hurry,” I said. “Are you and Zay all right?”

Shame tipped his head so he was considering me through his bangs. “We have an understanding that will do for now.”

“If I can help—”

“Bloody hell, Beckstrom,” he said with a smile. “Who told you it was your job to fix every damn thing in the world?”

“Pretty much everyone,” I said.

“Stop listening to them, okay? We’re fine. And, as I understand it, we have a wild goose to chase.”

“You don’t think there’s magic in St. Johns?” I asked.

He hitched one shoulder. “I don’t think your da would tell us about it now, after all this time, unless there was a reason for him to. A big reason.”

That’s exactly what I’d been thinking.

Shame climbed into the van behind Terric and slid the side door closed. I was the last person to get in the van. I stepped up into the passenger’s seat, got in and held on as Zay headed toward St. Johns.

W
hy do we need Stone with us?
I asked Dad as we careened down the noticeably empty streets.

To make sure the magic there is purified. I am…tired, Allison. Let me rest until I am needed.

He pulled away to some corner of my mind and essentially closed the door behind him.

Something about his answer didn’t feel right even though it made perfect sense. Sure, we had used Stone to purify the wells, but the only thing we’d done with the cisterns was shut them down. Dad had been deliberately vague about what the source of magic in St. Johns was, exactly. If we needed Stone, then it must be a well.

Shame leaned forward and tapped my shoulder. “Mum said to give you this.” He handed me a phone.

“Thanks.” It was the one I’d been using before. I must have left it by the bed. I still wasn’t all that used to carrying one around.

“Shame.” I turned in my seat so I could more or less face him. “Thank you. For before. When I…” I swallowed. I was having a hard time saying it. I had died. Didn’t mean I wasn’t in deep, deep denial about the reality of that.

“You know I wasn’t going to let you go that easy,” he said.
“Last time you walked into death, Jones was miserable to be around.”

“I was in a coma,” Zay said.

“Like I said. No fun at all. I have pictures to prove it.” Shame smiled and leaned back in the seat.

I opened my mouth, trying to get him to understand how grateful I was that he had pushed me away from death. That he hadn’t let me take the easy way out.

“You’re welcome, Beckstrom,” he said. “Anytime.”

I nodded. I guess that would have to be enough for now. Maybe later I could make him understand what it meant to me, to know he had my back like that.

We didn’t talk for the rest of the drive, everyone lost in their own thoughts.

“This is it.” Zay slowed the van and parked it across the street from Mama’s place.

It was weird. I almost always felt some kind of immediate relief coming to St. Johns. Today was no different. My shoulders relaxed and the headache I’d been ignoring removed its teeth from my forehead.

We piled out of the van and I strode up the steps to Mama’s diner door.

It was early, but the diner had probably been open for hours now.

One of the Boys, since Mama called all the strays and orphans she took in Boy, stood behind the counter. He didn’t have his hand on the gun I knew was under the shelf. I was flattered.

“Is Mama here?”

He tipped his chin toward the dining room.

I started off that way. The tables were empty except for one elderly couple, who got a look at me and Zay and settled back with their coffee to see what was about to go down.

“Mama?” I called.

She was in the back of the room, wiping off a table. Mama stood barely five feet tall, and had the disposition of a wet cat. She and I were almost friends back when I was barely making rent taking Hounding jobs. That was before I knew about the Authority and all this secret magic stuff. She’d hired me to investigate a hit on one of the kids she’d taken in. A hit that had led to my father’s murder.

I’d helped out her boy, but in doing so, had gotten her son, James, thrown in jail for killing my dad. To say our relationship suffered from that turn of events was an understatement.

She turned toward me and her face darkened. “Why are you here, Allie girl? You want breakfast?”

“No. I want to talk to you. In private.”

She glanced up at Zayvion, who just shrugged, then over at the patrons.

Mama shook her head. “Okay, okay. Come this way, we talk.”

She stomped off and opened a door I hadn’t paid much attention to with an
EMPLOYEES ONLY
sign on it.

I had expected a storage room but it was a large, modern office with a desk, shelves, and a computer. There was an old map of St. Johns on the wall, displaying roads that I didn’t recognize.

Mama turned and put her hands on her hips. “What do you both want with me? Is the Boy you took all right?”

“Cody’s fine,” I said, guessing his spirit, who had pretty much haunted this place for a while before he was rejoined with the living Cody, was the “Boy” she was talking about.

“So?”

“First, you need to know something. Two undead spirits are coming to Portland to tear the city apart. They want to rule all magic. And they will kill anyone who gets in their way.”

She opened her mouth, but I held up my hand.

“We don’t have a lot of time. They’ve been moving across the world killing powerful magic users. That’s why we locked down the wells, and turned off the cisterns. We don’t want them to have access to Portland’s magic.”

I rubbed my fingers back through my bangs, wishing they’d stay out of my eyes. “They will make our fight with Jingo Jingo out in Cathedral Park look like child’s play. They’re going to kill people, Mama. A lot of people. If there’s magic here, in St. Johns, they will use it to destroy St. Johns, and then the rest of Portland.”

“Why are you telling me these things?”

“Because my father told me there is another source of magic in the city. He said it’s here in St. Johns. And he told me you and he were the only two people who knew about it.”

“He lied. Your father was a liar.” She started forward as if to leave the room, but Zayvion simply stood in front of the door, his bulk blocking her escape.

“Mama,” I said, “please. Everything is at risk. All of Portland. St. Johns too. If there is some kind of magic here, something that might be tapped into, or could have been tainted—”

She scoffed.

“—we have to know. My dad believed it was important enough for us to know about it that he risked breaking his word to you.”

“Who knows what was in your father’s head? He was
a desperate man, Allie girl. Did such things…” She shook her head. “Terrible things. I want nothing of him.”

“You don’t have to have anything of him. I just need to know if there is magic in St. Johns.”

She looked down for a moment. “You tell me, Allie. Is there magic here?”

“I don’t know.” I ran my fingers through my hair again. My chest ached. Not from where I was still sore from the CPR. Someplace deeper inside me ached.

“You don’t know, I don’t know.”

Allison,
Dad said.
Just tell her yes. Trust me.

I rolled my shoulders. “Give me a sec.” I closed my eyes, ignored Dad, and tried to clear my mind. I refused to lie to her.

Did I feel magic here? Was that possibly why I always felt welcome, more comfortable here? No, that didn’t make sense. Magic made me sick. In one way or another, magic always did some kind of harm to me. There wasn’t any magic that could make you feel good.

Somewhere inside me though, I knew the truth. Not because Dad had said it. Not because it was what I wanted to believe.

There was something magic about St. Johns. There always had been.

My dad moved aside, lifting his hand away from some small point in the center of my chest.

That was where my small magic used to be. Since I had traded that bit of magic to get Zayvion’s soul out of death, I’d had nothing but a hollow coldness there.

But I remembered what it was like to carry that small flame of magic. It felt like being here in St. Johns—warm, safe, home.

Why?
I asked Dad.

None of this made sense to me.

You were hurt,
he said.
I…she, Mama, healed you.

How?

With the magic of St. Johns.

And the truth of his words was undeniable. I knew he was right. I knew there was magic here.

“Yes,” I said. “There’s magic here. I can’t exactly feel it. Not like other magic, but I know it is here.”

She considered me for a moment or two. “Who are the undead who come this way?”

“Leander and Isabelle. They were alive hundreds of years ago. Do you know about them?”

She shook her head. “Why here?”

I could lie. But I didn’t want to ruin what trust might be building between us.

“They want to control magic, and Portland has four wells of magic, plus whatever St. Johns has. And I think they want to destroy my dad.”

“Your dead father?”

“He isn’t dead now. He’s more like a ghost who possessed a corner of my mind.”

Her scowl grew deeper with every word.