Sydney cracked her eyes open and lifted her head from the floor. Her apartment. Her hallway. A humming beneath her skin. Power, new and green in her blood.
The light, she thought, was different than it had been when she had come home. The magic, its aftereffects, could have changed her sight. No. Not that. It was only that it was day now. Time had passed. Her head spun as she pushed herself into an upright position, her bones protesting the action. Everything ached—the inside of her skin, the roots of her hair, her blood. Whatever new magic she had, she had paid dearly to acquire it.
Her nose wrinkled at the stench. A lot of time had passed. She was fouled in her own waste. She pulled her phone from her purse. Three days. Forty-seven increasingly concerned texts from Laurent. She answered the last: Am fine. Will explain later. She whispered two lines of code as she pressed send, activating the spell that would prove that she was the one sending the message and that she was sending it voluntarily.
She ignored the immediate and frantic signaling of her phone in response. Ignored too the message alerts from Ian, from Verenice.
Three days. She was not, precisely, fine.
She could still taste the green of the magic she had absorbed at the back of her throat, underneath the bile and staleness. It tasted like running sap and fresh grass.
It tasted like freedom.
The new magic ran through her like a current. She was aware of it in a way she had never been aware of her magic before. Everything was sharper, brighter, electric.
She peeled off her ruined dress, used it to scrub the worst of the accumulated filth from her body. Then cast a variety of spells at the mess on the floor, tension falling from her shoulders as she moved her hands through the patterns. The other magic was here beneath hers, yes, but it was controlled.
Hers.
All that power, and she controlled it. She closed her eyes and stood, letting the spark of it run just beneath her skin, feeling it in her veins and sinews. She stretched, rising to her toes and rolling back through her heels, settling into her skin. The magic stretched too, moving through her body like a tide.
Glorious.
For the first time since she’d conceived the beginning pieces of this plan, thirteen years ago, in the cold darkness of her room at Shadows, Sydney believed she would survive to see the end of it. On her way to the shower, she grabbed a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator. She drank it as the water poured over her, washing her clean.
CHAPTER TEN
Miles Merlin walked into a room that was harsh and sterile as a laboratory and locked the door behind him. While not the traditionalist that Miranda was in matters of decorating, he did hold close one tradition of the Unseen World: his firm belief that a magician should have a place, isolated and private, in which to do his magic.
This room—white and chrome and starkly fluorescent—was his version of a wizard’s tower.
The first thing he did after making sure no one else could come in was to check—as he always checked now—his supply of stored magic. He rested his hand on a pad that recognized his fingerprints and released a lock with a mechanical hiss. There was no magic there; there were no wards to protect access. Using magic carried the risk that one day he wouldn’t be able to open the cabinet.
With the door open, he could taste the magic he had gathered, burnt metallic at the back of his throat, could feel it hum in his teeth. He counted jars, checked seals. It was all there—glass-contained and silver-bound.
Here, alone, he allowed his shoulders to relax forward in relief, and then he closed the door, locked it. Enough, for now, now while he still mostly trusted his own power, to have it. There would—he was certain now—come a day when having it wouldn’t be enough. When he would need to use what was there, parcel it out bit by bit. But until that day—he had his supply.
And he could increase it.
He cracked all of his knuckles and stretched out his hands, then reached toward a small statue—a miniature version of the Angel of the Waters.
He’d made the statue after he’d made his most recent bargain with Shadows. He’d wanted a proxy for the larger version. He needed regular access to the spells that had been anchored in the Angel, and it had been easier for him to stand here and guide the flow of magic than to go outside and interact with the actual statue. New York City ignored a lot, but ignoring a man regularly doing magic in Central Park might be a stretch. Plus, he hated being interrupted while he worked.
He held out his hands, reaching for the magic that flowed through the spells connected to the statue. Reached farther, wiggling his fingers like some fraud of a stage magician. But something—something felt wrong. Merlin broke off the spell, refocused, and started again.
Then he swore and broke the spell a second time. Something was wrong. The magic that should have been there, just at the ends of his fingertips, wasn’t. There were trickles, yes, but less than half—perhaps even less than a third—of what normally flowed through the statue’s hands. This wasn’t his magic misfiring. There was something wrong with the spell that was anchored in the Angel.
There was something wrong with magic. Not his, specifically. All magic.
Miles squashed the beginnings of panic that threatened and ran through every spell he could think of that might be useful—for strength, for detection, to discover the works of his enemies, to reveal hidden things. He cast again and again until his temples were damp with sweat and his hands were shaking. Until he could feel the magic running out from his hands and knew if he didn’t pause, recover, he’d have nothing left.
He grabbed the tiny statue and flung it against the wall, shattering it. The magic wasn’t there, and he had no idea where it had gone.
He stood, staring at the shattered pieces, forcing himself back to calmness, drawing in slow, deep breaths until he felt the pounding of his heart lessen. Something wet, heavier than sweat, trickled down his face, dripped. Red against the sterile white.
A knock at the door. “Dad, is everything okay?” Lara.
He touched his hand to his forehead, where a piece of the statue had cut him open, and muttered the words to close the wound. Huffed out a relieved breath when it healed.
Opened the door and stepped through it, pulling it half-closed behind him so that Lara couldn’t see the mess. “Fine. I dropped something.”
“I’m happy to help, if you need anything.” Her eyes, searching over his shoulder.
“No, I think I’m going to take a break.” He stepped the rest of the way into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him.
“If you’re sure?” Her whole face a question.
“I am, yes.”
He needed to think. If the magic was gone, it had to go somewhere.
Perhaps the statue itself was malfunctioning. He would go see. Get outside, clear his head. After that, he’d decide what needed to be done.