The Box Omnibus #1 (The Box, The Journal, The Sword) (37 page)

This is it. The moment I’ve yearned for and dreaded in equal portions for so long. I can feel each beat of my heart as it echoes through my entire body while Al leans down to press his nose against mine. His lips are so close I can practically taste them. But he doesn’t close the final minuscule gap between us.

A moan courses through me at his delay and I can only hope everyone
assumes I make the noise out of actual pain.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers.

And then he’s kissing me. Soft at first, as he battles his desire for my magic, and then he gives in. He pushes my mouth open with his tongue and we both lose ourselves in the moment.

He buries his finger
s into my hair, while his other hand presses against the small of my back. A rough tug forces my body to press against his and it takes all of my willpower not to wrap myself around him in response.

And then the pain comes. It’s slow at first, numbed by the melting feeling my body feels at his touch, but the intensity hits soon enough.

His hands no longer feel like they’re supporting me and instead feel crushing. I want to scream, but I refuse to let the sound out. I can’t let Al know how much he’s hurting me. He needs to do this. And if he knows how much pain he’s causing, he’ll stop before he should.

And right now I need time to be able
to do my part.

I take what little control I have left over my magic and concentrate on the cleansing spell
I’d used to save Rose. When I’ve made my magic as burning bright as I can manage in the state I’m in, I shove the last of my magic into Al and wait for the nothingness to take over my mind.

Al lets go and I crumple to the ground.

As much as I want to be able to see what’s going on as I lie on the floor, I know I’d never be able to fake the blank stare a sorceress gives when their magic has been stolen. So I keep my eyes shut. I have to figure out what’s going on entirely by what I hear, which isn’t nearly as informative as I’d like.

Sin’s shouting more curse words th
an I knew existed. I’m pretty sure some of the words are fake, but I’d need to check online to be sure.

“I hope it was worth it,” Fitzroy says. “It’s going to be next to impossible to get Victor on your side now.”

“Show me how to bring her back,” Al says, “like you did with Loraine.”

I wonder if anyone else hears the difference in Al’s voice. It’s subtle. If I was paying attention to his facia
l expressions, I might not notice it at all. But there’s a difference. He is putting more emotion behind each word. Each syllable is pronounced with a bit more edge than when the corrupted magic had control over him.

Fitzroy doesn’t say anything for a moment. Long enough to turn my insides into a big pile of
painful nerves. He noticed. He must have.

“The spell is complicated,” he says. Maybe he didn’t notice after all. “It takes the better part of a day. Come with me and I’ll show you.”

“What about her?”

There’s no way anyone could have missed the softness in Al’s voice this time. It’s obvious he’s not the same person he’d been when he walked into the room.

“She’s fine,” Fitzroy says. Still no sign he’s noticed anything unusual. “She won’t notice you’re gone.”

Some footsteps followed by a moment’s silence.

“I’m going to kill him.” Sin’s voice raises and cracks. “I swear to god, he’s going to pay for this.”

“It’s not him.” Rose doesn’t sound entirely certain as she says the words. More
like she’s trying to convince herself than Sin. “It’s the magic, like she said. He’d never do this.”

“Magic or not, I
’m going to kill him.” I’ve never heard my sister sound so serious before. I didn’t know she was capable. Everything is always a game for her. It’s kind of sweet. I guess this means she really does care. “I will do whatever it takes to bring her back. And I need your help.”

“Mine?” The word comes out of Rose as a squeak. “What can I do?”

“You need to get me his sword,” Sin says. “He trusts you. He’ll let you get close. Get me the sword and I’ll do the rest.”

If they’re talking so openly about stealing from Al, I’m guessing everyone else must have left, including the
cops. But just to be safe, I remain motionless for a little longer. Not sure how much more time I can do this though. My muscles are already cramping.

“We’re trapped,” Rose says. “Both of us. And with Lou unconscious, even if we could get out of the cells, how far do you expect us to drag her before Fitzroy and the others catch up and kill us?”

“Get Al’s sword and you can wake her up, just like before. Then she’ll be able to get herself out of here. She might be able to help us as well.”

“You have another bag?” Rose asks.

I shoot up into a sitting position and stare at Sin. “Where the hell did you get another bag?” I ask. “And why didn’t you tell me you had it before?”

Both Sin an
d Rose have to muffle their screams as they witness my sudden ‘revival’. While they’re freaking out, I take the time to glance around the room and make sure we are alone. Not sure what I’d do if we weren’t. With my magic as low as it is right now, I couldn’t do the most simple of spells. Sin is probably more powerful than I am right now.

And
she’s a wizard.

And she has one of my bags.

“What else are you not telling me?” I ask. “Let me guess. You’re married and have three kids somewhere. Or maybe you’re wanted for murder in Al’s world. You might as well tell me because nothing will surprise me at this point.”

“Lou?” Sin’s voice comes out an octave higher than usual. “But, how? He… You… What?”

“Oh please.” I roll my eyes before ducking down in front of her cell to get a better look at the lock. “Like Al would actually strip me of my magic. Though I’ve got to say he did take it a little further than I’d hoped. I can’t do anything about these doors.”

Sin continues to stare at me with her mouth gaping open. I hope she’s not gone into shock. It would make things much more difficult if she has. Especially since I don’t think I can quite reach her through the bars to be able to slap some sense into her. Though slapping her does sound like a lot of fun right now.

“A wizard?” I say. “How does that happen? And why the hell would you give the bad guy the location of all of the portals? You may as well have given him a key to Gran’s house and said, ‘drop by any time, the place is always open.’”

“But Fitzroy saw
Aldric take the magic.” Rose sounds like she’s in almost as much shock as Sin. At least she can talk, though not about anything useful. “He would have known if Aldric didn’t take it all.”

“Obviously not.” I snap my fingers at Sin to try and get her moving again. “Any ideas? We don’t have long. Fitzroy might not have noticed anything, but the cameras focused on us right now certainly will.”

She shakes her head to clear it and says, “Right. Yeah. Ideas.” Sin looks around the room and then moves closer to the bars. “Pocket. Dust. You can use it.”

Not the sort of idea I’d hoped for.

“An illusion might be able to buy us more time,” I say. “But I need a way to break you guys out of here. Your dust can’t do that. Unless you’ve been lying to me about what it can do all of this time too.”

“We’re going to use the dust to make you look like a cop.” Sin’s voice is
strained with false patience. “Then you are going to sneak around until you find the keys. Once you find them, you’ll bring them back here and break us out.”

L
eaving them to wander around alone in a place potentially swarming with wizards and definitely full of cops with guns seems like a bad plan to me. The problem is I can’t think of another. If I had more magic, this would all be much easier.

I dig my hand into her pocket until I’m able to pull out a decent amount of dust. The moment I pull my hand out, and before she can back away from me, I grab her arm with my empty hand.

“What about the bag? Where is it?”

Sin’s face flashes red with embarrassment and then quickly shifts to a more recognizable expression of annoyance. “You don’t need it now,” she says. “It’s better for me to keep it in case something goes wrong.”

“Something already has gone wrong.” I can’t believe she’s fighting me over this. No, wait, I can. This is Sin after all. “Give me the bag. I’ll need the magic if we’re going to get out of here.”

Her jaw clenches. I wait for her argument and for more time to be wasted. Instead she sighs to let me know
she doesn’t agree with this decision and then leans her head toward the bars.

“It’s attached to my necklace,” she says. “The chain should fit over my head without unclasping it. Just don’t get it caught in my hair.”

I let go of her arm to take the necklace. At first there seems to be nothing at the end of the chain, but once I lift it from her head, the veil around the bag lifts to reveal the familiar deep blue silk.

If I wasn’t so mad at Sin for keeping it from me, I’d be impressed. The spell used to hide it must have been subtle for the wizards and me not to notice it earlier. Bein
g able to create something so sophisticated seems way beyond her skills. She must spend a lot more time practicing than I realize. Another secret to add to her list.

“Hold the dust up for me,” she says.

I open my palm near Sin’s face so she can blow on the dust to activate the spell. I manage to squeeze my eyes shut just in time to keep the dust out, but I still get the weird feeling of having her breath on my face.

“A stick of gum would do you wonders.”  I crinkle my nose and wave a hand in front of my face.

“You’re welcome,” she says. “Now get moving before someone figures out what’s going on.”

I wrap the chain with the bag full of my old toenails and
the magic Gran separated from me as a kid around my hand. I wonder what sense this bag is linked to. I already have sight and touch. Will I be able to taste magic from now on? And will it be as delicious as Al makes it out to be?

No time to think about
it. I’ll know soon enough anyway. For now I need to find Al. Between his sword and the magic he carries, getting his help is a much smarter plan in my mind than trying to sneak around and steal keys from cops.

Sin can kill me later.

The building is larger than I would have guessed from the outside. And most of the doors I find are locked. I have to do a lot of doubling back and finding a new way to go. I try to move quickly, but a couple of times I run into some officers and am forced to pretend I am calmly and confidently going about my business.

When I come across a chain of unlocked doors, I know I must be getting close to Al.

Then I hear him. He’s close, around the next bend. And he’s not alone.

I stop before I reach the corner and press my back against the wall. Inching forward, I’m able to crane my neck around to get a glimpse of the room before pulling back. There’s Al. But he’s not alone. There are at least three other wizards, plus
Fitzroy.

Fitzroy and his wizards are busy discussing something on the far side of the room with a couple of cops.
Al and Fitzroy occasionally shout across the room to each other. From the sounds of it, they’re talking about spell ingredients. I suppose this is Al’s way of keeping up the illusion I’m down and he’s going to link our magic like Fitzroy has to Loraine.

With the others distracted, I pe
ek my head around the corner again, this time in hopes of grabbing Al’s attention. However, I notice he’s not alone as I’d originally thought. He seems to be trying to have a hushed conversation with Loraine without letting Fitzroy notice.

Before I can try to make a sound or throw something to get Al’s attention, an ear-pounding alarm goes
off.

They’ve noticed I’m gone.

Everyone starts to move at once, rushing to block all possible exits. Breaking Sin and Rose out has just become a whole lot more difficult. Though it’s possible the sudden chaos has given me the chance I need to go to Al without getting noticed by anyone else.

I check to see which direction Al's going to head and I'm glad to see he's staying put for now, a hand on his sister's arm to keep her from moving as well. No one else is paying any attention to either of them. Now is my chance.

Three quick breaths and then I go. No letting my nerves hold me back. No second thoughts. Grab him and run.

One. Two.

I hurry around the corner trying to appear just like the other frazzled cops running around the building. The wizards have luckily all left the room, other than Fitzroy who is ordering the cops around while talking on his phone at the same time. Since he’s the only one remaining who can see through the illusion on me other than Al and Loraine, I feel a little more confident as I stroll over to Al.

"We've got to go." I tug his arm to guide him back the way
I came. I hope I can remember the way back to the others.

He doesn't budge.

When I open my mouth to say more, he waves me off with a hand as though to tell me he needs a minute. Unfortunately, time is not something we have a lot of right now.

"Loraine, this isn't you talking," he says. "You don't owe anything to Fitzroy."

Her eyebrows furrow slightly as she stares past Al at nothing. "I owe everything to Fitzroy. He is my life."

"He took your life." Al looks as though he wants to violently shake her, but he manages to
stop himself. "Don't you see? He stole years from you, and now you're acting like his slave."

"We don't have time for this," I say.

I glance around to make sure everyone's still too busy to notice me. If my magic was any stronger right now, Fitzroy would have long since noticed me. Then again, if my magic was stronger, I might actually be able to protect myself.

This time Al seems to recognize the panic in my voice and he gives a slight
nod in my direction.

"I'm not leaving without you, Loraine." Al's grip on her arm tightens and an uneasy feeling hits me in the gut. "We're going now. We'll discuss Fitzroy later."

"Al, no," I try to say. But it's too late. He's already pulled her a couple of steps in the direction away from Fitzroy.

I don't have enough magic left to be able to see the magic connecting Loraine to Fitzroy, but I
can still sense when it pulses. I know Al can too. Al’s sword is out in an instant, and we fall into position with our backs together.

My back is to Fitzroy, but I know he’s noticed us just as I would if I was staring right at him. Cops and wizards start showing up from every corner to surround us. He must have used his magic to call them back when he realized what was happening.

I’ve come across a problem. My sword is trapped in a bubble of magic, which I can’t reach into without using a bit of magic. And since I’m running on empty right now, I am going to have to deal with the oncoming fight completely empty handed.

Well, there is one way
I could get a bit more power, but it could just as easily backfire on me. Opening a bag of magic next to a bunch of wizards could lead to practically any one of us taking control of the results. But I have no choice. I have to try.

I
shift the chain so the bag is in my palm. Without a word I reach around and slide the silk against Al’s sword. The bag slices open and its less than appealing contents spill out all over my hand. I wait for the snap I felt after Stewart’s death, but nothing seems to happen. There’s no difference.

But if I didn’t get the power, who did?

Al doesn’t appear to have been affected by the bag opening. Then again, it’s hard to tell what does and doesn’t affect him right now. He’s concentrating so hard on the people surrounding us, he might not have noticed if he did take my magic.

He
raises a hand and the air around us explodes in a screech so loud it makes me wish I was deaf. Another explosion. This time I could swear two cats are fighting to the death right beside my head.

I drop the bag and Sin’s chain so I can plug my ears. Blocking the sound helps a bit, but I can already feel a headache coming on.

“What is that noise?” I shout in order to be heard over the unmistakable sound of nails on a chalkboard. “Why won’t it stop?”

Al twirls around me to block an attack from a wizard who saw my hunched over stance as the perfect opening. But in protecting me, he opened himself up. A gun is fired. The sound blast
s away every other noise in the room. And Al drops.

Everything moves in slow motion. Fitzroy
’s mouth opens as though he’s shouting, though I can’t hear anything he says. He forces the gun out of the officer’s hand as six wizards move in to circle us, their swords pointed at me. But I don’t care. Al’s all I care about.

The blood has already begun to seep through his tunic to drip to the floor.

I drop to my knees beside him and instinctively try to put pressure on the wound. All I seem to be doing is causing more blood to rush out around my fingers.

I
need magic. No matter how little, there has to be enough to help him. “You’re going to be okay. It’s all going to be all right.”

His eyelids droop as he begins to lose consciousness. This can’t be happening. How could I let this happen?

I close my eyes and fall into myself. There has to be some magic left in me. I will give him every last drop of myself if it will help. I don’t care if I end up in the limbo between life and death again. I’ll do anything to save him

“Stupid.” I barely register Fitzroy’s words. I know they are being spoken, but while I go inside myself like this,
everything else feels like it could be happening in another world. “You could have had it all. A place of power within The Sword. The girl you love at your side. But instead you screw it all up by doing this. You shouldn’t have tried to trick me, Aldric. This was bound to happen.”

A soft humming draws me further
within. The sound is familiar and friendly, like a memory of Mom or Gran singing me a lullaby as a kid. It soothes me and cancels the racket still going on around me.

As I move toward the sound, Al’s chuckle, quickly replaced with a groan of
pain, causes me to pause.

His voice is raspy as he struggles with the
unimaginable hurt he’s dealing with. “You don’t know love.” He coughs and I can feel more blood pouring from his wound. I have to be quick. “If you did, you wouldn’t keep Loraine as your slave.”

The sound. Of course. I understand now. Sin’s right, I am slow sometimes.

Since my power to see and feel magic has been all but drained, of course I wouldn’t be able to see or feel the magic inside of me. Right now I’m trying to use the magic from the bag I opened, and it is linked to another one of my senses. Sound. I can hear magic.

That’s what I’d heard before. The obnoxious blare wasn’t an actual sound; it was caused by the tainted magic being used around me
. I’ll have to learn how to turn it down later so I won’t start bleeding from the ears any time I have to fight a wizard. For now I’m just happy I can sense magic in any way.

Normally, it would feel most natural for me to shove the magic at him, force it to do what I want. But this is different. The magic is a song. And the only way to control it is to change the tune.

“You’ll never understand the connection Loraine and I have.” Fitzroy’s voice cracks as though he’s on the verge of tears, but I resist the urge to look at him and keep my focus on Al. “I thought you were finally able to see. To understand why I did what I did. But you must not feel for her how I feel for Loraine. If you did you’d do anything to be connected as we are.”

I hum. The song isn’t one I’ve ever heard before, but I know it all the same.
Each note carries a bit of magic to Al until there’s enough to weave all of the way through his shoulder, covering the wound. A final note and the magic stops the bleeding and the wound begins healing at an accelerated rate. I didn’t use enough magic to close the wound entirely, but it should be enough to keep him going.

“Trust me, I can see clearer now than ever before.” As Al speaks, his hand wraps around my wrist. His grip is strong. Much stronger than I’d expect from someone who’s lost so much blood. “And what I see is a sad little boy who has more power than he can control.”

“That’s right,” Fitzroy says. “Insult me. I’m the only one who could save you. Bring you back into The Sword. I would have given you a proper family again.”

“I already have a family.” Al uses me as a crutch to lift himself off the ground a bit, though I can tell it hurts him. “Loraine, I promise I will fix this.”

Before I realize what’s happening Al wraps us both in his magic and teleports us out of the room.