“I didn’t—she’s unHoused.”
“An outsider with that kind of power? That ought to make things interesting,” Grey said. “Give us all something to talk about other than how fast this Turning happened. I figured it would be another ten years, at least.”
“It’s the only way either of us become Houses,” Laurent answered. “Better that it happens now.”
“Agreed,” Grey said. “I’m tired of waiting.” He had been, with decreasing patience, every day of the last three years. It was long past time.
“Besides.” Laurent grinned. “An enormous magic fight? This is going to be fun.”
High above the city, they toasted each other, their potential, and the turn of Fortune’s Wheel.
? ? ?
Not for the first time, Harper Douglas wished she had stronger magic. Wished she had any magic really, beyond the ability to light a candle with a word. Which actually took a lot more effort than using a match did, and gave her a splitting headache after.
She had seen the woman with red and black hair, the one that no one else had seemed to notice. Had watched her walk down the sidewalk and into the street. Tracking her progress made Harper dizzy, then made her feel as if she might vomit, but she had kept the woman in view until she had stepped into the intersection, because she had known what that queasy dizziness meant. It meant she was close.
Then Harper had felt the woman’s magic, a dull-bronze electric-fence feeling in her mouth, but she hadn’t been strong enough to see the spell. She’d tried to get closer, but the woman’s power had hit her like a tidal wave.
Overwhelmed, Harper had collapsed outside a bodega. She’d opened her eyes to the awareness that her left elbow had landed in something worryingly squishy. She tried to sit up.
“You look very bad. Stay where you are.” An elderly Russian woman was squatting down next to her. She fished around in a cloth bag, then handed Harper a plastic bottle of orange juice. “Drink this.”
“Did you see her?” Harper asked. She had been so close—her mouth still tasted like electricity.
“See who? Someone did this to you?” The woman looked around sharply.
“No, no. No one did this. I just thought I saw someone. Someone important.” Her rescuer wouldn’t have seen the woman though, not unless she was in the Unseen World, in which case she’d never tell Harper about the woman.
“Did you hit your head? Is that why you see things? Do you need a doctor?” Eyes narrow, mouth pursed.
“No, this is enough. Thank you,” Harper said, in between gulps of the juice. She could feel her blood sugar perking back up, her hands growing steady.
“Are you going to fall down again?” the older woman asked, in a tone that implied that Harper ought to make better choices than keeling over on a sidewalk.
“No, ma’am. I feel much better. Here, let me get you some money for the juice.”
She swatted Harper’s hand. “What kind of manners did you learn? You don’t pay someone for kindness. You say thank you.”
“Thank you. Truly.” Harper picked herself up off of the sidewalk, peeled the remains of someone’s cream-filled doughnut off of her arm with a shudder, and walked in the direction she had last seen the magician, toward the great bronze doors of Trinity Church.
Nothing. Not even a hint of magic remained, not that she had expected otherwise. If a magician didn’t want to be seen by mundane eyes, they wouldn’t be. And for all Harper had brute-forced her way into the tiniest bit of magic use, she was definitely mundane. She turned in a circle once more, looking carefully, just in case, then walked down the steps to Wall Street station, into the rattle and roar of the subway.
Close. She had come close. If she could just get a little bit closer, then she’d be able to find her way into the Unseen World. Then she’d be able to keep her promise.
? ? ?
As Sydney crossed the threshold of her building, the veil of magic she had draped herself in sloughed off, and she was again visible to the world around her. “Any messages, Henry?” she asked the doorman.
“Not today, miss.”
She smiled her thanks and took the elevator up to the seventh floor. Sydney lived in a mundane building on purpose—no one from the Unseen World would think to look for her there. The snobbery was as useful as it was predictable—she had set up a series of wards when she’d first moved in six months ago, and they’d never even been tested, much less crossed.
She closed her door, locked it behind her, and stepped out of her shoes, rolling the aches from her arches. Pulled her phone from her pocket and texted her acceptance to Laurent.
Done.
Barefoot, Sydney walked to her kitchen island and poured a glass of dark red wine. She had set the wheels turning. Not Fortune’s Wheel—she had little enough patience for the trappings of the Unseen World—but her own.
She drank, savoring the curl of the liquid down her throat, enjoying the richness of it. Being able to indulge in pleasures, even ones as small as a glass of wine when she wanted, was still something new. Something she’d worked hard enough for that she still luxuriated in the indulgence of it.
Working with Laurent would be good. She’d wanted a candidate House, hoped for an outsider. Someone unestablished, less likely to have accepted all of the Unseen World’s dirty little secrets as gospel. Someone who might come to see things as she did, might even be an ally.
She planned to drag all those dirty little secrets out of the shadows and into the light, and if necessary, the light would be cast by the flames she had lit as she burned the Unseen World to the ground.
She raised her glass, toasting its destruction.
Tremors racked her. The wine sloshed over the rim of the glass, spilling drops as red as blood. A dull knife of pain took up residence in her wrists and shoulders, and she felt herself hollow out, as if she were caught in the grip of a fever. Sweat beaded up on her skin.
This was the price for today’s magic.
Sydney set her glass down and breathed into the shaking, the ache, the hollowness in her bones. She centered herself in it until she was steady, the pain not gone but acknowledged. She was used to acknowledging pain. It had become, over time and trial, rather a specialty of hers. She raised her glass again, held it steady, her hand unshaking.
She drank.
CHAPTER TWO
At 12:01 a.m., her celebratory toast nothing more than a glass upended on a drying rack, Sydney stood on the southern shore of the Central Park Reservoir. She lit matches with the flick of her thumbnail. One, two, three.
Before the smoke of the last had faded, a wooden boat rose through the dark water. Old and worn, it seemed as if a touch might scuttle it. The boat bumped gently against the shore, waiting.
Sydney stepped on board. It creaked and swayed beneath her feet as it moved across the water.