The Winter Long

“May—”

“Oberon’s balls, Toby, close your eyes and listen to me.” The facade of calm broke on her last words, showing a vein of raw, terrified need beneath it. “She’s not breathing, okay? But she’s not dead. I know dead, and she’s not there yet. You can save her, but only if you listen. Only if you do exactly what I say. Please.”

I gaped at her, and then closed my eyes, too dumbfounded to argue. I felt May pull her hands away as she stopped the chest compressions, and then her fingers closed around mine, pressing them to Jazz’s torso, so tight that they almost hurt.

“What does Simon’s magic look like?”

“It doesn’t look like anything. It’s magic. Magic is invisible. But it smells like smoke and rotten oranges.” Traces of it were still hanging in the kitchen air, turning it foul and horrible.

“That’s just the surface. Look closer. What do you see?”

I frowned, brows knotting together, and tried to concentrate on her question, rather than the deadly stillness of Jazz’s chest beneath my hands. Magic doesn’t look like anything, unless it’s the glitter of pixie dust or the wispy smoke that sometimes follows the Djinn. Magic is intangible, smells and sounds and flavors on the wind. Nothing that lasts. Nothing that makes a mark on the world around it. Simon’s magic was smoke and oranges, and it lingered in the throat like a bruise, but it was still transitory, just like everyone else’s.

“Try harder,” May said sharply.

Right. I screwed my eyes more tightly shut, trying to think. What does magic look like? What would Simon’s magic look like? The smell of it was horrible and rancid; it would have to look a lot like that, all slimy lines and angles—but sharp ones, precise and exact. He might be a bastard, but he was never sloppy. Gray-and-orange lines, twisted together into a tight, complicated net of knots and hidden snares that would catch you if you weren’t careful. The more I considered it, the more it seemed like I could see it, wrapped around the body under my fingers, pulsing with a sluggish, sickly light.

Sounding distant now, May said, “You see it.” It wasn’t a question.

I nodded slowly. The lines of it were getting brighter as I focused on them. “It’s like a web,” I said.

“Where’s the weak spot, Toby? Every web has a weak spot.”

That was easy. “Over the heart.”

“Good.” She shifted my hands to the side, pressing them over Jazz’s heart. “You can see the weak spot, Toby. Now break it.”

“What? May, I can’t—”

“Break it.”

There was no arguing with her tone. Wincing, I hunched down, and focused on the lines. I still wasn’t certain they were real, but they were brighter now, either because I was closer to them, or because I was achieving a state of serious delusion. The smell of my own magic was starting to rise around me, summoned by my tension. Oddly, the copper and cut grass smell of it just brought the lines into even clearer focus, making it harder to dismiss them as a fiction.

“Let go,” I said.

May pulled her hands away.

Moving my fingers with careful deliberation, I slid them under the network of lines, hooking them into two of the knots. My head began to throb, the pain beginning at my temples and then radiating outward. The web lifted up with little resistance, almost clinging to my hands. I tugged until it was a few inches off Jazz’s body, and then pulled as hard as I could, forcing the strands apart until they reached their bearing limit. The throbbing in my head got worse as the smell of smoke, mixed with copper, sizzled in the air around us.