Magic on the Line (18 page)

“I don’t care if you believe me, Jack,” I said closing my eyes. “As a matter of fact, I don’t recommend it. For your own good.”

“So ghosts can use magic,” he finally said.

“Some of them.”

Jack just made a
hm
sound, thinking about that.

I didn’t fall asleep during the drive. My head hurt too much for me to rest. But I kept my eyes closed. Seeing all the spells, seeing that much magic covering everything, running like leaves tiptoeing over power lines, snaking up buildings, wrapping like rope around people, plants, cars, made me a little sick to my stomach.

Well, that or the fact that I was very likely concussed.

Pretty soon I heard the hum of the tires over the bridge, and not long after that the access road and gravel of Maeve’s parking lot.

“Allie?”

I opened my eyes.

“Looks like the inn’s still closed,” he said.

“It probably is. But I’m here to see Maeve, not to get a cup of coffee. Thanks, Jack. See you.”

“Not letting you in there alone,” he said.

I dug in my pocket. I had two twenties and a ten on me. “Fifty bucks, and you stay out here instead of following me into my friend’s house and getting in the way of my personal conversation.”

He nodded and took the money. “Done.”

I got out of the car and winced at the pounding in my head. The wind felt a lot colder here by the water. I walked to the front door. It was strange to see the porch light off, and the sign turned to CLOSED. Next to the sign a piece of paper said the restaurant and inn was going through renovations and would be open in a month.

I guess renovations sounded better than saying that the Veiled tried to kill us here and we had to lock the place down so they couldn’t get to the magic well beneath the inn that no one knew about.

I tried the door. It didn’t open. So I rang the doorbell. Nothing for a bit. Jack was still in his car, the engine idling. I folded my arms over my chest, and really wished I’d asked Jack if he had an aspirin, or maybe a few cc’s of morphine stashed in his glove box.

Finally, I heard the muted tread of footsteps approaching the door.

I did not expect to see Hayden looking through the high glass.

The locks clacked, and I got a whiff of the fresh-cut-grass smell of a Ward being canceled. Then he opened the door.

“Allie.”

Hayden was tall, a good six or more inches over my six feet. He was also wide-shouldered and had that Northwestern lumberjack look. Magic flickered black and red around him, in thick bands that crisscrossed his chest, then split to wrap down his arms like bracers, and finally pooled in his hands.

He’d come down from Alaska to help the Authority after my dad died, and had rekindled a relationship with Shame’s mom, Maeve.

“Hey. Is Shame here?”

He looked out past me at Jack’s car.

“The Hounds won’t let me go anywhere alone,” I said. “I paid him to sit out here so I could have some privacy.”

“Anyone else with you?”

“No. Well, you know, my dad.” I lifted my hand and pointed at my head.

His eyes narrowed suddenly. “Come on in,” he said. He stepped aside and I stepped in. It was only when I lowered my hand that I realized my fingers were covered in blood.

“Where are you hurt?” he asked.

“I passed out and hit the back of my head. It’s just a bump and a cut. And a headache and a dizzy.”

“I’ll get Maeve.” He started across the room to the side of the inn that led to her home.

“No, that’s okay. I just came to check on Shame.”

“Not listening,” Hayden said. “Have a seat. Pour yourself a drink.”

And then the door closed behind him and all the polite yelling in the world wouldn’t have done me any good.

I looked around the room. It didn’t appear that we’d had a life-or-death magic battle here. The burnt walls and ceiling were repaired, the tables all solid, each with a folded white tablecloth in the center of it, chairs pulled up tight as if any minute Maeve’s employees would come in and set things up for hungry patrons.

But even though the room looked normal, the smells that I associated with the place were gone. No deep, buttery scents of bread and pastries, no heavy onion and meat and herb aromas, no sweet pies, coffee, wines. The inn felt like a hollow shell of itself, as if it too were a ghost of what it had once been.

“What are you doing here?”

I turned. Shame was standing in the hallway opposite to where Hayden had exited. I knew that behind Shame were meeting rooms, rooms I had trained in when I was first learning the different disciplines of magic, and stairs that led up to lodging where Zayvion had recovered from his coma, and down those same stairs eventually, to the Blood magic well.

Shame was a slice of darkness against the shadows behind him, only his pale, pale face catching any light. Magic surrounded him, just like it surrounded the door, and, now I noticed, faintly strung across the doorway he stood within.

The magic around Shame wasn’t a charcoal outline like it was around Jack or black and red bands like around Hayden. It was moving, a constantly drifting stream, like sunset-colored smoke lifting up off things—off living things: the plant in the corner, and farther away, off the plants outside the windows, streaming a faded fire into him, into the crystal embedded in his chest.

But that crystal wasn’t just sucking in life energy. It was also consuming Shame. I could see it radiating outward, a soft pink glow, chewing away at the hard, clean blackness of him, leaving behind nothing but his bones.

Holy shit. The crystal was eating him alive. No wonder he’d been so frail since Mikhail had possessed him. Whatever Mikhail had cast on that crystal to allow him to use Shame’s body must have changed it.

I suddenly realized Shame was dying.

“I’m . . . Shame . . . God. I really need to talk to you.” It came out stilted, breathy. I felt like someone had just knocked all the air out of my lungs. I didn’t want Shame to die. I was losing everyone. Everyone I loved. But all I could do was stand there, frozen, as everyone died around me.

Shame tipped his head down, his bangs falling to cover his eyes. “What?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to lose you.”

Shame held his breath and was very, very still. “Who sent you?”

“No one. Nobody. Well, Terric . . .”

“Fuck him. Did he tell you to take me back to him? Like a dog to beg for Bartholomew’s favor?”

“What? No. He was worried—”

“Turn around and leave, Allie. And when you and Terric and Bartholomew all get together to decide just how to put me down, tell them I will be more than happy to show them just how good of a Death magic user I really am.”

Okay, something about this conversation had gone terribly wrong. Between the head wound and the emotional shock of knowing Maeve had been Closed, Victor had been Closed, Violet was in danger, and Davy and Shame might both be dying, I just could not track why Shame was so angry at me.

He thinks you’re working for Bartholomew,
Dad said, being helpful again.
He thinks you’re here to haul him in to Bartholomew. Which probably means he is not on speaking terms with Bartholomew, or that he is not doing what Bartholomew wants him to be doing.

“Shame, listen. I don’t give a damn what Bartholomew wants. I don’t think I like him and I’m damn sure I don’t like how he’s running the Authority right now. I came here to see if you’re okay, to see if your mom’s okay. And to get a bandage for my head.”

I walked over to the nearest chair and sat down because my legs were starting to shake. Yes, my back was toward the door, but right now I wasn’t going to be much good in a fight if a fight came through that door. Right now I needed an aspirin. Or maybe just a nice skip down Unconsciousness Lane.

Shame walked out of the shadows and into the room.

Boy was too damn thin. The black peacoat Terric had loaned him looked too big on him, and his cheekbones cut a hard line, his cheeks hollowed into shadows. His eyes were green, rimmed by black.

He moved like he wasn’t in pain—I couldn’t tell whether that was true—but even that small acknowledgment of health made me feel better.

“What did you do to your head?” he asked.

“I was Hounding a Veiled and I passed out and hit my head on the sidewalk.” I felt like I’d said that story so many times that the reality of that statement didn’t even bother me anymore.

“That’s not like you.” He had stopped across the table, and rested his hands, in black fingerless gloves, on top of the chair back. He wasn’t coming closer to me. He wasn’t sitting down. Shame was being cautious. Distrustful.

Well, he was always those things. He was just being more so than usual.

“Magic isn’t working right for me, Shame,” I said. “Every time I use it, I get sick. Or pass out.”

He studied me a second. “Have you seen Bartholomew?”

“Just that once when he had Melissa work those Truth spells. Well, and today in the meeting where he reassigned the Authority Voice positions.”

“Did he now? How efficient of him.” Shame smiled. I’d never see so much hatred.

I suddenly wondered if maybe I should be doing a little judicious mistrusting myself. Shame was not acting like Shame.

“Do tell,” he said sweetly.

“Sit down,” I said. “I’m tired of looking up at you. The lights are killing me.”

“Did you really hit your head?”

I held up my bloody hand. “Yes.”

“For Christ’s sake, Allie, why didn’t you say you were bleeding?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I hit my head?”

That got a tight smile out of him. “You take any meds?”

“No. Jack gave me this.” I put the bloody cloth on the table. “I swear, if this room doesn’t stop spinning, I’m going to puke.”

I pressed my right hand—then thought better of it since it was hot and painful and pressed my left hand against my forehead. At least my left hand was cool. I shifted so that my fingers were over my eyes. And just sat there for a minute, eyes closed, no magic to see, no spinning room to see, no dying angry Shame to see.

“Here, love,” Shame said from right next to me. “A drink will do you good.”

“Can’t.”

“It’s water.”

I opened my eyes, squinted against the light. Shame sat in the chair next to me. I hadn’t even heard him move. Had I fallen asleep? “I don’t remember you moving,” I said.

“You hit your head. Mum’s on the way. I was being a dick. Now you’re all caught up. Here’s the water. Here’s the pain pills. Shut up and take both.”

I took the water, sipped. Cool, clean. I felt like I hadn’t drunk anything in days. Shame dropped the pain pills, two, in my hand. I did what I always did when I was hurting and someone gave me medicine. I took a good hard look at it.

“Codeine,” Shame said. “I thought about giving you the ones Dr. Fisher usually prescribes for magical injuries, but you hit your head—even the most unmag-ical idiot can do that—and you told me magic was making you sick.” He leaned back in his chair. “Those are straight up chemicals with no magical contamination.”

I hadn’t even thought about that. If magic was making me sick and I took a pill laced with magic, I wasn’t going to be doing myself much good. “At least one of us is still thinking,” I mumbled.

Shame just gave me a catlike stare through half-lidded eyes.

I took the pills and drank the rest of the water.

“Room still spinning?” he asked.

“Not so much.”

“That’s good. So Terric told you to come get me?”

“Find you. He was worried. Angry. And he couldn’t get away.”

Shame’s hands clenched into fists. It was the only outward indication that what I said bothered him. Still was looking at me with catlike boredom.

“Why couldn’t Terric get away?” he asked.

“Because everyone was congratulating him.” I gave Shame a steady gaze. “Bartholomew named him the Voice of Faith magic, Shame. He took Victor’s position.”

The wave of anger that rolled off Shame was palpable. And with my screwed-up vision, it was also visible. A white-hot wave, like the shock ahead of a blast. The crystal, the magic coming into him, all snuffed out under the force of his anger.

“He didn’t want it,” I said. “You know that.”

“Do I?”

I glared at him. “Yes. You do. Be angry at him for something else, Shame. Terric didn’t tell Bartholomew to give him Victor’s job. He was just as mad about it as you are.”

He blinked, slowly, and the anger went down a notch, that white-hot wave thinning, though it was not gone. “So he’s celebrating now.”

“No. He’s pretty much trapped by a crowd of well-wishers, and then he and the other Voices have to go to a meeting with Bartholomew. They’re probably there now.”

“Who are the other Voices? Who did Wray set up in our places?” he asked.

The door across the room opened, and I heard the three-step rhythm of Maeve walking in with her cane. She still hadn’t recovered from the magical battle in St. Johns during the wild magic storm. Hells, none of us had recovered since then. And some of us had gotten worse.

“Allie,” Maeve said. “It’s good to see you. Hayden says you hit your head?”

“Fell,” I said.

Magic made Maeve look taller and filled her with a silver-green light that reminded me of frost on spring blooms. It certainly made her look stronger than her current physical condition.

I wasn’t sure what to say to her now that I knew she’d been Closed. I was usually the person in the room with missing memories. It was odd to wonder how much of me she remembered, how much of the things we had done together, been through together she would know.

“Mum,” Shame mumbled. “Want a seat?”

“I’ve got it.” She tugged on one of the empty chairs and dragged it over next to mine. “So, I hear you’ve had a hard time of it lately,” she said.

Hayden set a first-aid kit down on the table and just gave me a steady look.

“It’s been interesting,” I said. “How are you doing?”

“Well, I can’t remember much of what happened.” She opened the first-aid kit and pulled out packages of clean gauze, scissors, and wipes.

“Since the wild magic storm,” Hayden said.