Constantine had done it. He had used my magic and the suppression spell to modify their minds.
Bellacia smiled slowly. “Won't you try it? For the good of your lovers?”
“They aren't—” I took a deep breath. “No. I will not. Besides, you'd keep a report of the magic and blackmail all of us later.” And that wasn't even taking into consideration about all the texts and tomes and books like Ori who had living memories and couldn’t be memory wiped with a suppression spell. “I'll find a way—another way—to clear their names.”
“Good luck, lovely. Now what do you have for me?”
I held out the recordings I'd made.
She took them, quickly soaking in the contents. “Damaging, but Enton Stavros appears in none of these.”
“He’s not stupid. He won’t fall for that trick twice. He has a deliberate curse field against me—made of my magic—when I try to record him now. Or when Constantine tries. Everything goes to static. Or worse, it shows me doing something terrible instead, like a reverse perception.”
“Are you doing worse?”
I shifted, and she narrowed in on the motion. “You aren't entirely blameless then,” she mused, sharp eyes working. “And you think you will be ridiculed if you show the footage because you are pushing the lines of what is acceptable.”
“I—”
She held up her hand. “Ren, my dear overpowered magelet, it's called editing.”
“Right,” I deadpanned. “Because you always have my best interests at heart.”
Her laughter tinkled around me. “Come, give the other recordings to me,” she wheedled.
“No. Can you use those?” I pointed to what I had given her.
She tapped them with her fingers. “I can release these in two of our smaller markets. But it's not enough. And dripping small pieces of information to the public is the death of true shock. Give me something big.”
“The Department has secret labs.”
She laughed. “Everyone knows that. Five of my competitors will sanction it as the only way the Department can combat you successfully. You will change no minds with that.”
“Are you going to the event at Crelussa?”
Her eyes narrowed. “No. But one of our reporters will be on scene.”
“The Department is manipulating the crime scenes and magic of the Awakenings—they have been collecting the magic for years, for purposes unknown. The girl they have at Crelussa is going to die precisely so the media can be silenced, and she can be moved.”
“Your proof?”
“Well there are two choices as to who is Awakening them, and I'm not it,” I said darkly.
“You want me to run with your word against theirs?” Dark humor drifted across her features.
“It's the truth.”
Bellacia shrugged daintily. “The truth, it may be, but I can't spin it on just your word, especially now. The public needs safety, and you aren't providing it. You are a terrorist. Sympathy for the devil on the devil's word? I'll lose my credibility. And you need me to be credible—and against you—when the time is right. No one with brains believes you dead. But your disappearance has calmed some of the immediate panic. Try not to do anything stupid, but give me something more.”
“You need me to record them killing magicist babies?” I said tiredly.
She leaned forward. “Get me the truth. Get me evidence of what Stavros is planning, and I'll slit his belly with the claws of the press.”
Chapter Seventeen: That Which is Freed
I allowed the hologram to collapse and carefully made my way back to where the boys had set up our sleeping gear in a sandy, desert area under the stars. After two oaks had crashed and sprouted four tall saplings within an hour, then eight midsize trees, then sixteen sturdy giants—a copse growing at an abnormally accelerated rate—it had been a unanimous decision to avoid fertile ground for sleeping purposes. With the way the dome was evolving, it would be just our luck to be crushed by a palm or to have one sprout then stab right through someone’s rib cage.
“You shouldn't trust her.”
I jumped, hand going to my heart.
Axer was slowly rolling a ball of blue magic under his palm, while watching the Eta Aquarids’ meteors fly in the mirrored sky.
“How long have you been awake?” I tried to slow my pulse as I sat between them.
“You aren’t subtle.” He gave me a look from the side of his eye. “And you weren’t sleeping.”
I looked up at the sky. “I am kept awake by the choices in my future as they stretch before me, dark and dangerous.”
“Night is when all fears come to rest. In the silence of decisions made and choices yet to come,” he said, a smile curling the side of his mouth. “Minor issues.”
I looked down at Constantine splayed out on his front, one hand wrapped around the pillow he’d called into existence. The dark circles under his eyes were telling, but his features relaxed in sleep in a way that they didn’t when he was feigning boredom. A gentle white noise spell was wrapped over him to aid rest, and I noticed that it wasn’t of his own signature.
“I never thought Constantine would be the one fretting.” He’d been wrapped in a barely coherent tension for weeks, really. The kindly placed sleep aid was possibly the only reason I wasn’t in an oubliette right this second.
“He doesn’t do fear well.” Axer tossed the ball into his other hand and began the same hypnotic circles with it on the other side. “And he’s exhausted. He’s been trying to regulate your magic, pulling in dozens of threads and weaving them into yours—being your muse when your real one is far away, while not calling upon me but in the direst of circumstances.”
“I know,” I whispered. “I don’t want—”
“If you think he’s doing it out of a sense of misplaced guilt, you can curb that thinking. Constantine does what Constantine wants. And only that.”
Bitterness coiled under his words.
“What's with you two?”
“Old story,” he said dismissively.
“Funny, he didn't want to talk about it either when I asked.”
He tapped a finger against his thigh. “I'm surprised.”
“What, that Constantine doesn't share his secrets?”
“No. But this one would be a good play for him. I am the decided villain of the piece.”
I watched him. “You were friends.”
“Yes.” The corners of his eyes tightened. “Our mothers were close—his mother was one of the few souls who sought friendship with mine. We spent our childhood attached at the hip. He Awakened within an hour of me. We shared adjoining cells, and magic can sometimes...bleed. Ours did. We were ecstatic. It was like a secret club none of the others on the island could join.”
“We both had powers that needed to be hidden, but they ate at us, wanted to be used. We got into a lot of trouble. Wanted to do and experience everything.” There was an almost wistful look on his face before it was wiped clean. “Simpler times.”
I could see them in his mind’s eye. Eleven-year-olds running around town together and getting into mischief with their newly-Awakened, powerful magic.
And then they spent their late teen years as enemies. I had thought on the cause before, but it seemed even more apparent now.