Blue Magic (31 page)

“He’s not here to burn me.” Sahara had regrouped. Her voice was resonant, her Goddess voice.

“I do burn you,” Gilead told her. “It’s foretold.”

“You want the Filthwitch, you need me,” Sahara said.

“What makes you think I need help?”

“Had any luck getting into Indigo Springs?”

“My resource base is expanding, witch; yours is spent.”

“I’m the key to the locked door.” Sahara batted her eyelashes. “I bet that’s foretold too.”

“How?”

“Astrid wants to save me,” Sahara said. “It’s her Achilles’ heel.”

“If you got in, you’d ally with Lethewood against us.”

“And people say I’m paranoid. Astrid won’t work with me.”

“Then you’re gambling you can overthrow her and betray us.”

“Right now we’re both on the outside.” Sahara’s expansive gesture was jerked short by her restraints. “You want a shot at the magical well, you’ll have to risk it.”

“What you’re risking is your last followers in a battle you cannot win.”

Sahara didn’t blink. “Sounds like a good deal for you.”

“Astrid Lethewood has visionaries too.”

“Astrid won’t let foreknowledge or common sense get in the way of her crusade to save everyone. Come on, big guy, teeny-tiny little reprieve? What’s your book of prophecies say?”

“Ruination and Befoulment,” Gilead intoned. He laid a glowing finger on Sahara’s forehead, and she gagged. The chantments Juanita had given her dropped from her mouth—first the stamp, then the amber bead. With a heave, she brought up something else—a rusted, blood-tinged bottle cap.

“Gilead—,” Juanita said.

Sahara trilled as her face shifted, eyes darkening to shoe buttons, mouth stiffening into a beak. The contamination, no longer arrested by the chantment embedded in her chest, was changing her back into a bird-woman.

That could be me,
Juanita thought, dry mouthed.

“No more disguises,” Gilead said. “You’re Befouled; now you look it.”

“My true self restored,” Sahara said. “You burning me now, or not?”

“Not you.” Gilead nodded at one of his minions.

Juanita lunged, but it was too late. The wood ignited and Heaven caught fire, her body going rigid with agony as flames enveloped her.

“You had no right to do that!” she bellowed.

“It’s all right,” Sahara said. “Heaven’s honored to be sacrificed in my place.”

Juanita pulled away from them both, forcing herself to look at the pyre as Heaven fought and wailed.
Please, let her pass out fast.

She watched until Heaven became a still, dark shadow amid the flames.

“Juanita,” Gilead said.

She dashed at her eyes. “Neither of you is anything special. You know that, don’t you? You’re a couple of fucking serial killers.”

Sahara cackled.

Gilead’s voice, when he replied, was gentle. “Get your prisoner onto the chopper, Marshal.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE PADLOCK CHANTMENT WAS
a heavy iron antique, heart shaped and covered in rust. It lay in Will’s palm, ice cold … and securely locked. Whoever’d made it had that in mind when he chanted it: a heart, closed against something it loved. He sensed the dark intention within the thing. The vicious personality of its chanter, long dead, lived on in his works.

The lock had come in with the latest Alchemite refugee, a lanky woman with a Southern accent who was in the final weeks of pregnancy. She lay unconscious on a gurney in the Indigo Springs hospital as her rescuers searched her for chantments and members of Janet’s medical team checked for illnesses or injuries. All the new arrivals got this treatment—volunteers checked them for everything from influenza and cancer to magical contamination.

“She’s okay?” Astrid’s ringer asked.

The medic on duty nodded. “Utterly healthy, no contamination. They set her house on fire, but we got her before she breathed in much smoke—”

“Chantments?” Astrid asked.

“Just the one.”

“Can we move her to the ghost town?” Will asked. “I want to find out about the padlock.”

Astrid frowned. “Is the baby okay?”

“Fine,” the medic said. “She could deliver any time.”

“Are we set up for that?”

“It’s doable.”

“Astrid, you’re procrastinating,” Will said.

“I just … We’re missing something.”

“What do the grumbles say?”

She tilted her head, listening. “Nothing new.”

“I’ll interview her myself, if that helps.”

“Okay.” Visibly dissatisfied, Astrid nodded. The medic raised a silver martini shaker, shaking a lone drop of vodka into the woman’s mouth. Sahara had taught her followers the words to the vamping cantation, the one they had used to suck the vital energy from people. The magical shaker jumbled up the memory so they couldn’t do it anymore.

“Let’s go,” Will said.

After new arrivals had been searched and doctored, they were taken, still unconscious, to a silk tent pitched within Tishvale, where the rescued Alchemites were encamped. Ten miles of dense, enchanted forest lay between the ghost town and the Bigtop, barrier enough in its own right, but Mark was taking no chances. He’d had dense, thorny hedges planted around the perimeter of the new town. They were wound through with scavenged barbed wire; like any refugee camp, this one doubled, in essence, as a prison.

Setting it up had sparked the first genuinely acrimonious fights among the volunteers. Clancy and others like him wanted Astrid to stick to the original agreement they had all made; they didn’t want anyone locked up, under any circumstances. Mark had argued, successfully, that Alchemites were the enemy, that they couldn’t be trusted.

A freshwater stream ran through the campground, and Thunder’s engineers had put up a small dam and a waterwheel, a turbine that could produce enough power for the Alchemites to spin food and necessities with the few chantments allowed them.

As Will and the pregnant Alchemite reached the tent, volunteers spun her a set of clothes and allowed her to waken. Now in exchange for protection, she had to tell the Springers everything she knew about the Fyremen, and about Ellie.

The Alchemites’ intelligence about the Fyremen was sparse, but they too had learned the curse was a live thing, that somewhere there was a circle of elder Fyremen reciting a cantation, day and night, to keep it functioning. As long as even one person was reciting this Befoulment, vitagua would damage everything it touched.

Nobody knew where this prayer circle, as they called it, was located.

Will stood as the woman was ushered into the room and lowered herself carefully into a chair.

Caro had moved like that when she was nine months along.… He tucked a magical lie detector, a carved wooden turtle, into one palm, fisting a chunk of letrico in the other. “What’s your name?”

“I was born Mary,” she said.

“Not a typical Alchemite name.”

She shrugged.

He indicated the padlock chantment. “You were carrying this when we rescued you. What can you tell me about it?”

“Caroline gave it to me for safekeeping.”

“Do you know what it does?”

“Our beloved Sahara said it would help Caroline retain custody of the Children of the Well.”

“Carson and Eleanor, in other words: Caroline’s children.”

She nodded.

“Was the padlock part of the Nevada stash?” Sahara and her first followers had found that cache of nasty chantments in Yerington.

“The First Trove,” she affirmed.

Sahara had apparently told her followers she’d set aside the Nevada stash decades earlier, as a contingency. The Alchemites believed Sahara had salted away other caches of magical items, leaving them for her followers after her arrest. They’d told him she was
still
hiding magical items for them, equipping them from prison.

“How do we open the padlock?” he asked.

Mary stretched her neck. “Caroline made a thin braid of your daughter’s hair. By drawing the hair through the lock, she made a key. Look inside.”

Raising it, he saw a fine web of gold wound into the mechanism.

“You need the key to break the lock,” Mary said.

“Who’s got the key?”

A toothy smile. “Passion.”

Will glanced at the wooden turtle in his hand. It had its head and legs pulled into its shell. Mary was telling the truth.

Passion. Most zealous of the Primas. She would never accept Astrid’s aid.

He let his mind drift to the world beyond Indigo Springs. If Passion had been sighted, the newshounds in the Doghouse would know. But no: witnesses had put her at Wendover, coordinating the failed Alchemite rescue of Sahara. Afterwards, there was one possible sighting, in Mexico City; she’d supposedly caused a palm tree to bleed sap that turned, by moonlight, into rubies. Nobody had seen her since.

Gone to ground,
Will thought,
but where?
Her fellow Alchemites were fleeing to Indigo Springs. Those who didn’t were easy prey for the Fyremen. A cell of them must be loose, using magic to hide from Gilead’s people.

Why had he believed this might work? He touched his tuning fork. “Pike, I need someone to take over this interview.”

“Boss thinks there’s something up with that one.”

“Ask the seers.”

“Astrid says—”

“Is someone free to take this interview or not?”

“I’ll need a minute—”

“Never mind. You can go, Mary,” he said. Whatever she was or wasn’t up to, it wouldn’t matter, if he rewrote the past. He gestured at the tent flap, the entrance to the ghost town. The Alchemite heaved herself upright with a
whuff
and headed outside, to an exultant cry of welcome.

Will took Bramblegate to the plaza.

Even with Doghouse up and running, a few die-hard newshounds had the plaza TV on. In Washington, Arthur Roche was spinning what was essentially a demotion into a new partnership between the military and the Fyremen. “The terrorists have fled into the contaminated forest,” he said. “We are seeking Congressional approval for an offensive against Indigo Springs. This battle will be over soon.”

“Light at the end of the tunnel,” muttered a volunteer, triggering a smattering of nervous laughter. Confidence wasn’t as high as it had been a few months ago. Why should it be?

Will pushed on. It was time to bring down the curtain, to close this farcical show before anyone else got hurt.

One of Astrid’s ringers caught up with him. “What did you learn? Is she—?” He brushed her aside, stepping into the glow and coming out in the Bigtop …

… where another one of her was waiting. “Will—”

“Passion’s got the key to the padlock,” he said shortly, heading for his workshop. Only an hour ago, he had chanted all the toys the scavengers had been able to find. They’d found more, but it was a small pile, maybe a hundred objects.

She trotted to match his pace. “This is good. We can—”

“What? Bring her here?”

“Why not?”

“Passion’s not going to cower here with the rank and file.”

“Sahara returns to the magical well,” Astrid said. “Where she goes, Passion follows.”

“If Sahara comes to town, you both die. You’re pretty sure of that, right?”

“Everything comes out all right.”

“Even you can’t still believe that, Astrid.” He thrust his fist into the Chimney, letting liquid magic saturate him.

“Will, what are you—?”

Biting open his lip, he sprayed vitagua into the toys, cars, trains, dolls, the baby lamps, science projects, the stuffed animals, building blocks, rattles, and noisemakers. As he did, he heard the grumbles suggesting uses for each item. He picked and chose among them. He kept his eyes open for a pen, a toy pen perhaps.…

No luck.

But today’s the day, today you learn to grant wishes.…

There were no more toys. Bursting with energy, he drew more vitagua, as much as he could, and returned to the plaza.

“Will—,” a ringer protested.

“Manhattan,” he said, stepping into the glow. “FAO Schwarz.”

It was noon on the East Coast.

Will walked the aisles of the mammoth toy store, avoiding the shoppers, pouring vitagua into everything he saw, making magic toys.

The rush was incredible. He had thought he’d gotten used to the constant sense of physical well-being, but this was a high. His senses were razor sharp. He smelled baby powder, three different perfumes, the cleanser they used on the floors, a light layer of dust in the air-conditioning system, the distant burnt smell of New York smog. His memories sharpened, carrying back childhood discoveries and disappointments, joys, sorrows, scares and surprises, all the emotional sediment of his past.

Rounding a corner, Will saw the whole place now sparkled, and it wasn’t just the toys. The customers’ jewelry glimmered with possibility, as did their handbags and neckties.

He could chant anything. But could he choose what he made?

There—

He snatched a heavy silver pen from a customer service desk, lifting it to his blue-tinged lips, kissing it.

Wishes,
he thought, fusing magic to object, and he’d done it, it had worked. He’d made himself a magical time machine.

“Security!” someone called.

Will dashed outside, fleeing into a hotel lobby, then a bathroom. He whispered a cantation for a power draw, pulling electricity directly from a socket on the wall, filling the room with letrico threads.

Will gathered the power in his hands, pressing them into a crystal.

“Before,” he whispered, and the lights flickered.

CHAPTER THIRTY

THE ROUSED ENDED UP
building a cairn for Eliza’s sad scrap of a raccoon corpse, laying her to rest not far from the spot where she’d died. That hadn’t been the initial plan: villagers had excavated the fallen boulders from atop her remains and then, after she’d been washed, dressed, and endlessly sung over, had attempted to freeze her into a glacier. But vitagua rolled off the body, like water off a waxed car, making it impossible.