Alan unfastened the black skirt and removed the cap. He ran a hand through his hair, getting at the itch of his scalp. If he looked at Jack, he didn’t know what his face would do.
So he didn’t. He walked right up between Lord Hawthorn and his cousin Bastoke, and raised his best East End insolence in Bastoke’s direction.
“Oi. Remember me, you pox-ridden donkey’s prick?”
Shock was followed quickly by contempt. Oh, yes. Bastoke remembered. Alan kept on before Bastoke could gather his wits: “And if you’re wondering where your pal Morris is in all this, I’ll tell you: I cut his throat. He’s dead. He won’t be torturing people on your behalf anymore.” Alan’s heart sang wildly. He grinned. “Guess you’ll have to get your precious hands dirty and do it yourself.”
Bastoke’s face creased into deep and thwarted annoyance. His gaze bored into Alan’s and the glow around his hand had sparks of red in it now, within the white. Whatever was coming, it was not going to be as quiet and small as stopping Alan’s heart.
Alan inhaled as if before a dive into water, and braced himself.
A metal sound clapped short and sharp in his ears.
Bastoke jerked back, suddenly slumped over and stumbling. His hand fell. The allstone tumbled from it and hit the icy ground, then slid. Bastoke made as if to fumble after it, but instead stopped and pressed his hand to the wound in his shoulder, grimacing in silent agony. The glow had winked out. Blood seeped through his fingers.
Maud lowered her pearl-handled pistol.
“Maudie,” said Robin, behind them.
Bastoke seethed in a new breath and tried again to bend for the allstone—Alan, closest, darted in and delivered two kicks. The first was to the allstone itself, and carefully aimed. The stone skittered across the stage to Jack, who trapped it beneath his own shoe like a schoolmaster ending a game of football.
The second kick was to the back of Bastoke’s knee, collapsing one of the man’s legs beneath him. Alan wasn’t fool enough to stick around in hitting range, even with a man who’d been shot. He scurried back a few steps, giving Maud a clear line where she’d moved to Jack’s side.
“Maud, cover him.”
“Stay right where you are,” said Maud, levelling the pistol at Bastoke.
Bastoke raised his head. He was on one knee, still clutching his shoulder, and all semblance of composure had gone from his face. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and—
“Oh Jesus Christ,” said Alan.
A dragon’s breath of white magic misted from Bastoke’s mouth. More of it seeped from the wound on his shoulder, as if it had replaced his blood. It gathered between his hands when he brought them together. Fingers moving. A cradle. The magic was the hideous, cloudy purple of breath-starved lips.
Whatever power he’d pulled from the allstone before dropping it, he still had it.
“You—will not ruin this for me, Hawthorn,” Bastoke ground out. “Not after so long.”
His hands lifted towards Jack and Maud.
So, Alan thought. And then didn’t think—only moved, once again placing himself directly in Bastoke’s line of sight, just as the spell erupted forth.
A paper loop. O Madonna santa, let this work.
The magic hit Alan like a boiling wave of pain.
31
Seventeen years between acts of magic. Jack wondered if it was a record.
In fact, he was still wondering if what he’d done was magic at all. There had been no clauses, no careful construction of what he wished to do, no expression of it in the language of cradles. Anger and fear had opened their eyes within him and yelled, as one yells frustration in an empty room, expecting no reply.
Something had replied.
The Hall had replied.
If it was magic, then it was the sort performed by child magicians in the days before their lock ceremonies, when magic showed itself like a flash of light in the dark. Standing there with his hands thrown out, Jack had felt briefly, excruciatingly young. Aware of the ley line beneath his feet and even more aware of the Hall’s distress: their guests, to whom they owed protection, had been endangered. Jack’s awareness was dragged to that fact like soft skin across sandpaper.
And so he had filled up. That was the only way to put it. A creek bed, empty so long it had forgotten its purpose, suddenly found itself in full flood. The magic had gone down him and through him and did what he wanted before he could properly form the thought of wanting it. He’d saved lives, or at least altered the world so that they were no longer in danger.
And now Alanzo Rossi was saving his.
A noise punched from Jack’s throat when the magic hit Alan, who bent double with a grunt. A bolt of humid purple erupted back in George’s direction as if Alan had been a mirror and struck George right in the chest.
George crumpled to the ground. Jack did not particularly care if he was dead, though he supposed that someone should check. Later. Alan, the perturbator, had directed magic back at the caster.
“Alan?”
No response. The next moment, Alan, too, collapsed to the ground and didn’t move.
Jack’s heart tried to slam itself in three different directions. He took in the battlefield at a glance. The lake was frozen safe, and the crowd of magicians was neither silent nor yelling. George was down and no Coopers were coming out of the woodwork to display disastrous initiative. Walter and Mrs. Vaughn were dead. Maud had a gun and Edwin was still on his feet.
Jack lifted his shoe from the allstone. “Nobody touches this,” he snarled to Maud, as the most likely to try picking it up out of helpfulness, and moved to kneel at Alan’s side.
Jack should have revoked George’s fucking guest-right as soon as they had the allstone away from him. But he’d had the fool thought that it would hurt more, be a more satisfying vengeance, to make George stand there bleeding and account for what he’d done, in front of the audience whose magic he’d stolen and whose admiration he craved.
So he hadn’t spoken. And George had acted, and Alan had paid for it.
“Don’t!” said Violet.
Jack’s hand jerked back unwillingly before it could make contact. Alan’s body had the tight curl of painful unconsciousness. His grimacing face glistened with sickly sweat, his hands were fists, and the occasional terrible breath rattled through his nose.
“Violet,” Jack gritted out.
“This happened in Spinet,” said Violet. She sank to her knees on Alan’s other side. “When he couldn’t perturb all of the magic from a warding, he—absorbed it, somehow. It tried to escape into me and Edwin when we touched him. Like we were sponges and he was a pool of spilled milk.”
“So what did you do?”
“Nothing.” She frowned down at Alan. Light caught on tear tracks, dried on her cheeks. “It settled down. Eventually. I think it went back into the house.”
“I’m not touching him with the allstone,” snapped Jack. “Even if it is where that magic came from. For all we know, it’ll make it worse.”