“A pity,” Bastoke continued, holding the allstone in one hand, “that a misguided old woman should believe she has the ability to wield all the power of British magic without consequence.” Calm as ever. Almost sorrowful. Alan wanted to rip the bastard’s smooth tongue clean out of his head.
“No sudden moves, Robin, Maud. Now, Edwin,” said Jack, low and fast, “can the contract still be transferred to the oak, if we take it from him now?”
“I…” Edwin swallowed, eyes on Bastoke, who was telling the crowd that everything would be fine. He had this magic under control. He would not falter, his heart would not give out under the strain of it. “I don’t think it matters now what symbolises the Last Contract,” Edwin said reluctantly. “It’s been reversed. The magic of the fae is—remaking itself. Rectification. Now the process has begun, it wants to be whole, as the contract pieces are whole.”
“He’s right,” said Violet, looking at her hands. “It feels like that.”
“Then what?” Alan demanded. “Surely we want it out of the bastard’s hands anyway.”
“Yes,” said Maud.
“He stopped Mrs. Vaughn’s heart,” said Robin to Edwin. “Can you stop his?”
Edwin winced. “I’m almost drained. Haven’t enough left to nudge a leaf. Violet?”
Violet shook her head miserably.
Jack exhaled, long and slow, as if he were about to commence lecturing them on their uselessness as troops. But instead he levered himself to his feet and walked forward, with no attempt at either speed or stealth, to the front of the stage two yards from Bastoke.
“Christ,” said Alan. He went to follow Jack, but Robin grabbed his wrist.
“No sudden moves,” said Robin. “Let Hawthorn—let him try. This is his land, and Bastoke is his kinsman. It might still mean something.”
“Cousin,” said Bastoke.
Jack had his hands raised. He was also holding his weight stiffly, as if feeling the lack of something to lounge against. His leg. Just what they fucking needed.
“George,” he said. “You’ve done enough. And you know magic mingled like this—can’t be returned.” He spoke as if avoiding potholes on the street. “Can’t you feel it?”
“I have it under control,” said Bastoke. The allstone—Alan blinked. Was it truly glowing now? Were those yet more white sparks dancing up from it, curling around Bastoke’s hand? The uneven surface made it hard to tell. Alan’s mouth dried up imagining one of those deadly white sparks flying onto Jack. Stopping his heart. Just like that.
Bastoke said, “I was—born to do this,” and this time Alan heard the slightest bump in Bastoke’s voice, too, as if he were fighting harder than usual for his elegantly unruffled tone.
Jack smiled the cruellest and least forgiving of his smiles. He and Bastoke looked like eerie bookends: two sketches of aristocracy done by someone with a keen eye and no interest in flattery.
“Nothing about your blood makes you more able to handle this than anyone else,” said Jack. “If Elsie couldn’t, you certainly—” And he stopped, lips firming with pain.
After everything, still, the bind.
He’d said enough. Bastoke’s mask cracked a fraction with anger, and even as he opened his mouth to reply there was a sudden whiteness that slammed Alan’s eyes shut and seared a glowing line across his eyelids. A stifled yelp from Violet. The beginnings of yells from down on the ice were drowned by something even worse: a deep, ugly, unbelievably loud crack that started in Alan’s shoes and climbed all the bones of his body.
Alan forced his eyes open. That line of brightness still carved itself across his vision, glowing brown and white when he blinked. The crowd was a blur struggling to form in the well-lit night.
“Oh God,” said Robin hoarsely. “The ice.”
Another palpable crack, this time followed horribly by a lingering vibration. The movement of the crowd became fragmented. The ice was splitting, breaking into large pieces set adrift on the lake. To Alan’s horror, one of those pieces was unevenly populated enough that its balance was off: it began, slowly, to tilt. People slid. And screamed.
Bastoke’s mask had fallen further: he stared at the tilting ice in a way that said he hadn’t intended to do that. He had lost control of the magic he’d pulled from the allstone. And was now losing control of his all-important audience, given that he was on the verge of plunging some of them into the water.
Maud cupped her hands to her mouth. “Everyone off the lake!” she screamed. Some of the closer people heard her, but her voice barely carried. She took breath to try again.
“No.”
If the crack of the ice had set hooks in one’s bones, this grabbed them and shook. It was Jack. His arms flew out to either side as if to keep back two walls that were trying to fall in on him, and his voice seemed to grind and grate.
No. That was the ground; the ice. The shake went on and on, and the screams of the crowd grew even more alarmed. Twin bottlenecks of panicked exit had formed at the bridges. Those people not stuck on fragmented islands of ice hadn’t needed Maud to tell them to get the hell back onto solid ground.
And then the shaking stopped.
By now Alan’s vision was mostly clear. He stared. The tilted part of the ice had—frozen, in fact, at its angle. It was tilting no further. Nor were any broken parts of the ice sheet moving against one another.
Finally, it was beginning to feel cold. The chill ached upwards from Alan’s feet.
“I think—he froze the lake,” said Edwin. “Completely froze it.”
“Which he?” said Violet.
Alan stared at Jack’s shaking shoulders and knew the answer.
Bastoke recovered quickly.
“The danger has passed,” he said in his magic-enhanced speech that carried across the lake. “I will not let you come to harm.”
But there was wariness, finally, in his face when he looked at Jack now.
“Well, well, cousin,” said Bastoke. “Where did that little trick of yours come from, I wonder? Do you intend to fight me for this?” He held out the allstone. The white light was stronger, and it flowed and pulsed—now illuminating the silver, now Bastoke’s hand, as if magic were passing back and forth between man and stone.
Jack looked barely less shocked by what had happened. He was putting even more weight on his good leg. His hands still shook as he made a cradle, and waited, and—nothing.
No magic. Whatever the trick was, he couldn’t repeat it.
Relief shadowed Bastoke’s expression.
“It shouldn’t be fought over,” said Jack. He let his hands fall. “It shouldn’t exist, George.”
That endless pulse of pale magic was faster now, brighter. When Bastoke smiled, Alan almost expected to see it come flooding out between his lips.
“Alan,” said Maud, suddenly at his side. Her hand was in her pocket. “I—I’ll need to be closer.”
“You need a diversion,” said Alan.
She bit her lip, bleak and determined. And nodded. Alan thought about animals racing through a ship and Maud Blyth dragging a thieving journalist into her quest. The only part of it he regretted was betraying her, and here he was, setting it right.