Devon Monk - Magic on the Storm

Shame watched me with a grin on his face. Nice , he mouthed.

I took a couple breaths, maintaining eye contact with him until I was confident my panic didn’t show. How could he be so calm? Maybe the well emptied out like this all the time. Maybe I was overreacting.

I turned back to Maeve and Zayvion. “Do you really want to talk about this here?”

Maeve frowned. “Why?”

“Greyson.”

“He is contained. Controlled. He cannot hear us. Or see us.”

I glanced over her shoulder. Greyson glared at me from amid the shadows of his cage.

I was pretty sure he saw me.

“Isn’t there a better place to keep him?”

Maeve folded her arms over her chest. “This is the safest place for him exactly because he is near the well.”

I did not believe her. This was a bad idea. A really bad idea. People who use magic to murder should not be anywhere near magic, much less a well of it. How did she not get that?

“What did you feel?” she asked.

Fine. I’d do it her way. But I wasn’t happy about it.

“Something is draining the well.”

I didn’t think Maeve could get any paler. The freckles on her cheeks suddenly seemed darker, and a greenish hue lined her lips.

“The storm?” Zay asked.

“It must be,” she said. “Allie, you hold magic inside your body. Can you sense anything unusual about it within you?”

Other than that it was cold, sticky, and giving me the creeps? “It’s usually warm, or hot. It feels cold. Kind of sticky.”

Shame snorted.

I made a mental note: smack him when his mom wasn’t looking.

“Has it ever felt that way before?” she asked.

“That I can remember? No.”

“Do you feel magic being drained out of you?”

I took a second to concentrate on the magic inside me again. It felt strong right now, just. . wrong. “No. It’s still there.”

“That’s good news.” She didn’t smile. “Shame, come stand with us,” she continued as if this were class. “Allie, I’d like you to Hound the room, to see if there are any unusual spells here.”

She was such a kidder. Every spell, ward, and glyph worked into this room was unusual. Still, I knew what she meant. She wanted me to look for predatory spells, Drains, Siphons, anything else that might be used to screw up the well.

It might help if I knew how the well worked, or how the spells and wards and glyphs normally reacted to being so near it. Nothing like throwing the new girl into the deep end of the magic pool and telling her to dive for pearls.

Good thing my lack of knowledge had never stopped me from doing stupid things before.

I calmed my mind, used my little jingle again, and chose which price I would pay to use magic. My standard pain lately had been muscle aches. Don’t get me wrong: it still hurt to use magic, but since I was working out and hurting anyway, and had the funds to get a massage and soak in the steam room or hot tub every once in a while, I figured muscle aches made the most sense.

I set the Disbursement for muscle aches, then drew the glyphs for Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste.

Spells keyed to life beneath my vision. Pale fire in rainbow metallics crawled up the columns, across the walls. Shadow glyphs, glowing in deeper tones than those on the walls and ceiling, burned like dark ghosts shifting beneath the marble tiles.

Wow. It wasn’t just glyphs worked into the room. The entire room, including the winged arches, was a glyph, carved and constructed to carry magic, to channel it, to hold it, keep it, hide it, tap it.

The art, the vision, the intimate knowledge of architecture and how spells blended, contrasted, strengthened, and weakened, were stunning. I didn’t know who had created this room, but whoever they were, they were brilliant. Genius.

“Allie?”

It was Maeve. I licked my lips and realized I’d been standing there and staring, transfixed by the beauty and power of the room, instead of Hounding.

Embarrassed much?

I paced to the wall opposite the stairway, and made my way along the perimeter of the room. I dragged my fingertips across the wall as I went. The soft, ancient wood, carved and placed here long before this was a train station, long before this was even a building, thrummed beneath my touch. Magic darkened and rippled away from me, like water beneath a soft wind.

The glyphs shifted from one discipline to another as I made my way around the room. Faith, Death, Blood, Life. Nothing seemed strained, strange, or out of place. All magics flowed and merged in harmony I’d never seen before. All magic working together as one.

If something here was draining the well, I didn’t think it was in this room.

I stopped next to Zayvion, in front of Greyson’s cage. I had every intention to Hound that cage. I wanted to know that it could really hold him. The binding, holding, and ward spells were strong, but there was a hint of something, a darkness beneath them, that worried me.

I wondered if the spells were being drained like the well. I reached out to touch the cage. The spells were strong. Whole.

Greyson growled, animal gaze fixed on my face.

He saw me. Or my dad in me. I was sure of it. And I was sure Greyson was not blind to what was going on in the room.

“You are mine.” His voice was little more than shadow scraping skin, but I felt it to my bones.

“Like hell,” I whispered. I pulled my hand away and I released the magic, letting my senses snap back into more normal ranges. I walked away from the cage, away from the murderer in the cage, even though doing so made me want to run. Got three steps before I found Zayvion stood so near me, I almost ran into him.

“Not good,” I said quietly.

He frowned, then brushed his fingertips down my cheek, tracing the whorls of magic and wiping away the sweat.

Sweet hells. Hounding the room hadn’t been as easy as I thought. I was exhausted. I blinked, my eyes staying closed a little too long, and realized if I blinked again, I’d be asleep.

Zay’s hand ran over my right arm, a warmth, a comfort. He drew me farther from the cage, and a little bit of his strength flowed through our connection and into me. I felt more awake.

Still, I wanted to take his hand and tell him we had to leave now. Before the cold, sticky flow of magic inside me got worse. Before Greyson got better at seeing me. Before that cage fell apart. Before the storm hit.

But I did not do that.

He stepped away from me, and I did from him too. We had business to take care of. Maybe even a city to save.

Like superheroes.

Right.

“I don’t see anything out of place,” I told Maeve. “But I’ve never Hounded the room under normal circumstances. If you were bringing me in to see if someone had cast a spell to purposely change the flow of magic in the well, I didn’t see anything that could accomplish that.”

She visibly exhaled. Oh, she had been very, very worried about what I would find. And that worried me. If she thought it was that likely someone would come in here and mess up the well, I was more than a little terrified at their security measures.

“It’s a start. Thank you.” She strode across the room to the staircase, and Zay and I followed.

“Did you think someone broke in?” I asked.

“No, but not all members of the Authority have the same agendas. There is always the chance someone has played their hand.”

Why can’t the secret, powerful magic users all just get along?

“The meeting is at ten o’clock,” she said. “Upstairs. I want all three of you there.”

Shame scoffed.

“Yes, even you, Shamus Flynn. You’ll not shirk your duty this time.”

This time? That sounded interesting.

Still crouched in the center of the room, Shame straightened, then strolled toward the stairs. He wasn’t looking at his mom, or at us. His eyes were on Greyson. And Greyson’s eyes were still on me.

Shame frowned, tipped his head to get a better angle on Greyson’s gaze. Followed it. Right to my eyes. Raised his eyebrows when he found Greyson’s gaze ended at me.

Yeah, I didn’t like it either. And the less time I was in Greyson’s eyesight, the better. I turned and walked up the stairs.

Weird, weird, weird.

Only my tennis shoes and Maeve’s boots made noise. Zay was Zay. Silent. Brooding. When he carried himself like that, he was a force, a darkness, a power.

I was glad he was on our side.

Once at the top, Maeve called down to Shame. “Come up, now. Jingo Jingo will be by soon to look in on Greyson. I don’t want him to find you poking at that cage.”

More stairs, and some doors; then we started down the hall.

I rubbed at my arms, trying to banish the image of Jingo Jingo with Greyson.

“Why is Jingo coming by?” It was none of my business, and I really should learn to shut my big mouth and let the senior members of the Authority deal with the big problems. Like the storm. Like the well. Like Greyson.

“He has been working with Greyson. Trying to diagnose exactly how Frank Gordon implanted the disk.

Trying to see if there is any mercy in breaking the spells worked into him.”

“You mean trying to turn him back into a man?” I asked.

Maeve gave me a look that said more than words ever could. “He is trying to find a merciful answer to the question of him,” she said.

Shame clunked up behind us. For a man who had just been moving silently across the marble floor like it was made of thin glass, he sure could make a lot of noise.

“Chase been by?” he asked.

Maeve frowned. “I haven’t seen her in a few days.”

“Huh,” he said, then, “Anyone else thirsty? All that hard work watching Allie Hound deserves a beer, don’t you think?” He moved past his mom, and exchanged a short glance with Zayvion.

I didn’t think the two of them could actually hear what the other was thinking, but I was positive they had a secret code. Zay had even hinted as much, saying he always knew when Shame was up to trouble.

And that look had been more than just a look.

“Ten o’clock, Shamus,” Maeve called after him.

“I heard you the first time, didn’t I?”

Maeve tapped one fingertip against her lips, and watched him go. “He knows something,” she decided. “Is up to something. Zayvion, you’ll watch that he doesn’t stir too much trouble, won’t you? I do not need any more problems right now.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he said mildly.

“When that son of mine gets a wild idea in his head, it never ends well.”

She sounded angry, but her body language said more. It said she was worried. Worried she was about to lose something precious to her. Maybe her son.

“He’ll be here tonight,” Zay said. “Sober. He knows this isn’t a game.” I wondered how many times he’d told her that over the years.

“Terric will be here,” she added more quietly.

“He knows.”

Maeve brushed her hair back again. “I thought as much.” She shook her head. “Well. What will be will be. I’ll see you both this evening.” She strolled off, her bootheels clacking across the old wooden floors.

The moth-wing flutter scraped at the backs of my eyes, pressing harder, insistent. It made me think of Greyson, of him watching me, wanting me and my dad in me. I swallowed and tasted wintergreen and leather-my dad’s scents. Great.

I suddenly really wanted fresh air, a shower, hells, to be anywhere but here right now.

My creep-out quota for the day was officially maxed.

“I need air.” I strode past Zay, not waiting to see if he followed. It wasn’t exactly tactful, but he’d watched me fight my claustrophobia before. Stayed out of my way. Boy had smarts.