Blue Magic (17 page)

“Up ahead,” Clancy said. Smoke hung in the air ahead, lit from within by red and white flashes: a fire, and firetrucks.

“He burned them out,” Astrid said, quoting one of her grumbles. “Three dead Alchemites, and he’s got their chantments.”

“Who?” Will asked, voice taut. “Who, Astrid?”

They crested a hill, looking down on the fire. Ambulances and police outnumbered the fire trucks; the house was gone, the ruins smoldering. Paramedics were working on three or four limp forms. One was a figure with bird wings.

Pieces of Sahara, bits of you,
the voices murmured.

Will squeezed her hand. “Astrid, focus.”

“He’s not supposed to go out alone,” she said. “Since Lethewood murdered Uncle Lee, they’re supposed to work in teams. Big bro’s busy in Utah, Alchemites on his back doorstep, what’s he gonna do? He can’t handle a bunch of girls?”

Janet had been pouring water on the road using a magic watering pail that made them inconspicuous. Now she switched to the plastic heart, healing the surviving Alchemites from afar.

“What the hell’s she talking about?” she asked.

“I think Astrid’s saying a Fyreman burned these women,” Will said.

Astrid said, “Clancy, turn north. Now’s when we go to his house.”

“You sure?”

“The grumbles say so.”

Igme coughed. “Begging your pardon, but when the voices get helpful, it’s usually so they can screw you over.”

“Lying with the truth,” she agreed. “Turn right up here.”

“She said ‘Uncle Lee,’” Aquino said. “Jacks Glade’s father was named Lee.”

“Clancy, stop here!” The trolley brakes whined; they coasted to a halt in front of a colonial-style bungalow with a stone fence.

“This is it.” She hopped down, touching the mailbox, and found herself remembering her mother at about thirty, in her mail carrier’s uniform. She tried to shake the impression away, but there it was: Ma, female, fluffy hair more blond than gray … carrying mail that originated from this house.

“Uncle Lee
was
Chief Glade,” she said. Someone had asked that, hadn’t they?

“He knew whoever lived here?”

“He sent letters … pictures of Jacks, but only as a baby. The letters stopped in the eighties.”

“They probably got fax machines or something,” Janet said.

Astrid stepped closer to the house, and the grumbles fell silent. She flinched back; the murmurs rose again.

“Magic’s not working.”

“How can we check the place out if our stuff doesn’t work?”

“Go in and look?” Will suggested, sounding amused.

Walking to the corner, farther from neighbors’ prying eyes, Astrid extended her hand again. There was a dead zone of sorts, just outside the perimeter of the fence.

Then I made a hole
. She reached for a shovel propped against the fence. Instead of chanting it, she simply dug.
Remember when this was all you did—turn up soil, plant seeds?

Was that her own thought, or another grumble? The longer this went on, the harder it was to be sure.

We’re starting to sound like you
.

The shovel crunched against something.

“Careful.” Will knelt, brushing loose soil away. He unearthed a length of heavy chain, coal black in color, buried in a line that ran parallel to the fence. Crystals of salt and sea-glass crusted its links, and a twisted nylon cord was wound through. He teased up a loop of the cord with a stick, so Astrid could lay a finger on it.

“Primer cord,” she said.

“Explosives?” He let it fall, pulling her back.

“It’s called … rosarite. It’s gunpowder, glass, and sea salt.” Vitagua died when exposed to salt water—you could contaminate living things, but it wasn’t like when it got into the rivers—and it could not pass through glass. Gunpowder meant fire— “I bet this runs all the way around the house.”

“That’s why the chantments don’t work?” Will said.

“Let’s find out how tough it is,” Astrid said.

Driving the shovel into the soil outside the magical dead zone, she bled vitagua into it. She thought of gardens and weeds, grassroots boring holes through softwood, trees splitting mountains apart, roots insinuating themselves into cracks in the rock and growing, pushing outward …

Willow roots and cottonwood—stubborn, tough, destructive.

Green shoots unfurled from the blade of the chanted shovel. As they met the buried chain, they burned. Smoldering, poisoned by the salt and sliced by the edges of the glass beads, the shoots hesitated, curling.

“More power?” Will held out a fist-sized chunk of letrico.

“Thank you.” New shoots knotted around the chain, smoking as they were burned back. Then two glass crystals sheared off the links, leaving naked iron underneath. A root expanded between them.

Power sizzled through the shovel. One link of chain twisted, stretched, and broke. Roots overwhelmed the small hole she’d dug. The grass around the little bungalow charred in a straight line, burning a scorch mark that followed the perimeter of the fence. A lumpy braid of willow branches churned up from underground.

Will extended the magic turkey baster over the fence, blowing a contaminated soap bubble out onto the lawn. “So much for the magical dead zone.”

“That took a lot of letrico,” Clancy said.

He was right. And the shovel was still drawing power, pushing roots eastward—toward more rosarite elsewhere? Astrid yanked it free, breaking the connection. “Search the house.… Oh, too late.”

A clunking sound—the garage door opening—made them jump.

A car turned the corner, a cream-colored convertible driven by a young black man. He braked sharply, gaping at the Springers with their chantments, the trolley laden with letrico.

“Do I know that guy from TV?” Janet asked.

“Duh. He’s a trial witness,” Igme said. “Lucius something?”

“He’s a Fyreman,” Astrid said, and froze. The last time she fought a Fyreman, she’d smashed his brains in.

Jacks’s dad, dead on the living room floor …

The man scrambled out of the car. There were test tubes in his hand—by the time she recognized them, he’d drunk them: all at once, like shooters. He extended his arms, and flames boiled toward her. The trolley shivered.

Astrid drove a stream of vitagua toward their attacker. It sputtered like grease, emitting the smell of scorched lilacs.

It’s flammable,
she remembered:
It won’t douse anything.

She misted the yards to either side, making the grass and trees grow wild, burying the neighborhood in an explosion of growing plant matter.

Will dragged her aboard the trolley. “Clancy, get us out of here.”

They glided away. The man sprinted after them, his body ablaze, keeping up easily.

“Chill, everyone,” Igme said. “It’s just one guy.”

“I got him.” Janet tossed the hula hoop. It soared out over the street. Then it boomeranged back, contracting around her.

Still running, the man crushed the test tubes in his fist, flinging the debris underhand. Something stung Astrid’s abdomen. She started to burn as the vitagua inside her boiled.

Sea-glass, reacting with liquid magic. She blew the vitagua out of her body, through the piercing in her hand, a fast billow of steam that shot out, contaminating more of the boulevard, more of Atlanta’s Cabbagetown. Oh, the pain was incredible; she had forgotten how much this hurt.…

Aquino was on fire. He was screeching.

Will was yelling: “Don’t use chantments on him, he’s protected!”

Scorching wind blew Janet from the trolley; there was a crunch as she hit the road.

Heat singed Astrid’s hair. The abdominal pain had lessened as the sea-glass found less vitagua to burn.

Jacks had a belly wound too
. Was that a thought, or a grumble?

Their chantments were melting, leaking vitagua down the trolley walls.

“Igme, wait!” Will shouted.

Igme had jumped off the back of the trolley. After bounding down the road, he scooped Janet into his arms. Bramblegate awaited on a nearby storefront; he dragged her through, vanishing.

“Can we go faster?” Will asked.

“We’re running out of power!” Clancy shouted.

“Where’s the healing chantments?”

“Janet had the heart,” Will said. “Stethoscope’s burnt.”

“Bramblegate’s ahead,” Clancy said. “Get this guy off me for a second.…” The Fyreman was catching up, bolting along at inhuman speed.

Will shouted: “Brake, Clancy! Stop now!”

The trolley brakes squealed. Will had thrown an arm around her.

And we escape,
Astrid thought with rising dread.
But …

The Fyreman, running behind the trolley at about sixty miles an hour, ran straight into it. He slammed into their back door, throwing them all forward, crumpling metal. Then he bounced, the impact hurling him back onto the road.

“Did we kill him?” Astrid asked.

Will shook his head. “Go, Clancy!”

“Can you check?” she begged.

“We have to get you and Aquino to the hospital,” Will said.

“Just check—”

“We’re going, Astrid,” Will said.

They were rolling. She’d been outvoted.

“Alchemites,” Astrid said, holding her belly.

Through the hole in the back of the trolley, they saw a minivan pull up beside the fallen Fyreman. It disgorged two of the women they’d healed, a woman with the flower tattoos and the one who had Sahara’s corkscrew hair and wings.

“They hurt him,” Astrid said, pleading. “They hurt him and it’s bad. Will—we have to—”

The winged woman looked at her then; their eyes met. It was Sahara—and yet it wasn’t.

Mouse magic,
whispered one of the grumbles.

A blast of cold air. They were through Bramblegate, and it was too late to save him. Will lifted her off the trolley.

“You’re not going to die,” he told her.

“Not by poison.”

He squeezed her hand. “You’re not leaving me.”

An unexpected rush of hope glimmered through the pain.

The first thing she’d ever said to Will was,
You’re going to fall in love
. She’d thought she meant Patience—everybody loved Patience.

“It’s not just prophecy,” she said. “I do like you.”

“Astrid, now’s not the time.”

“I’m bad at this. I’ve never been a flirt.”

“You’re injured.” He walked out into the hospital, into Emergency, and laid her on a gurney.

He wasn’t listening. She caught his collar, pulling herself up—and kissed him on the lips, hard.

For a moment, apprehension wiped out the pain. If he pulled away in that wooden awkward way, if he rejected her, if he coughed and said it could never happen between them …

But with contact came first a little thrum, a nervous jolt, because she’d caught him—caught them both, really—by surprise.

And then, then he was kissing her back. He wasn’t wooden at all, but flesh, alive and responding.
We might be,
she thought.
We might happen.

The voices of the unreal rose in a confusing babble.

“Will,” she said. “You don’t have to cave in.”

“Whatever you’re talking about now…”

She heard Dad: “You’re very brave, Bundle.”

When had that been? Her magical initiation?

Dad was a maker of
well wizards,
she thought.
The sun burns out one day. Will caves. Boomsday comes. Sea-glass doesn’t kill me.

Now she was looking into a pool, and the original Indigo Springs chanter, Elizabeth Walks-in-Shadow, was looking back, peering at Astrid through her granny glasses.

You’re Jacks’s obsession, not mine,
she tried to say, but Eliza didn’t go.

“I’m losing my grip on the people here,” Eliza said. “Your mother suggested you might swing things my way.”

“Sure,” Astrid said to the dream or hallucination.

“What we’re considering isn’t ethical.”

It’s not a dream,
Astrid thought.
I’m hurt, maybe dying. Will kissed me, and Eliza’s decided it’s time to take a meeting.

Maybe dying.
She rarely let herself think about the sketch of herself in the ballroom, but the image rose now.

“It’s Teo,” Eliza said. “He means to attack the real.”

“Teo? You mean that hothead pain in the butt.…”

“He’s building a following. If I could selectively thaw certain Roused, moderates, it would buy time.”

Time.
Drag this out,
the voices kept saying. The more magic they dispersed, the more people they could add to Big Picture.

Including me,
Astrid thought, and the grumbles laughed.

“I’ll send a chantment,” she promised, fighting up through smothering blankets of torpor, back to a world of heat and pain.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

BACK WHEN THE WORLD
still made sense, Juanita had been training for a triathlon. She’d been a competitive swimmer going back as far as high school, and later, when she’d begun work at the court as a newly minted baby marshal, she’d biked to work rain or shine. Swimming and cycling came naturally to her. Running had been a bigger challenge; she found it monotonous.

Growing dissatisfaction kept her going. She was thirty-five, single. Her life felt off-kilter, subtly broken, but she wasn’t sure what to fix, let alone how.

In the meantime, she might be in a rut, but she could run inside it. She’d worked up slowly, completing her first half marathon a week before the magical outbreak changed everything.

Rounding the last corner of that course, seeing the finish line ahead, had given her a deep sense of accomplishment, the first in years. Looking back, she remembered it as the last time she’d had any peace of mind.