Blue Magic (27 page)

Skagway went back to his workout. With a farewell wave, Juanita jogged to the darkened, soot-walled tomb that had been the courtroom. The arch of thorns was waiting.

She put a hand past its chilly boundary, holding her breath. No wussing out now.

“Beam me up,” she murmured, and stepped through.

She found herself in the ruin of a bus or train station, amid a throng of commuters, many visibly contaminated. Hundreds of people were crossing the terminal, vanishing into a blue glow emanating from the stone columns at its edge.

Step into the light,
she thought.
This is crazy
.

The people were cheerful and chatty, walking in pairs and clusters, calling greetings across the station, occasionally pausing for handshakes or hugs. Many carried egg-shaped rocks, and others bore stranger objects. She saw an old lady with a garish motorcycle helmet, a long-limbed, bearded fellow with a plaster gargoyle strapped to his back, a teen with a faintly glimmering paella pan.

A glassed-in TV on one side of the terminal was tuned to one of the news channels, updating a handful of viewers on the stalled trial and Gilead’s reign of terror. Her own face flashed onscreen, raising goosebumps on her arms.

Alchemized trees rose above her, cathedral tall, a branched roof of blue-tinged light.

“Welcome to Indigo Springs.” She jumped. Astrid Lethewood, the Devil herself, was at her side.

Juanita backed toward the archway, bumping against the flow of the crowd.

“That gate’s the ‘in’ door,” Astrid said. “But I can tell you how to get back to Wendover.”

Embarrassment at having shown fear sharpened her temper. “What the hell do all you people want from me?”

“You came to us.”

Juanita studied her closely. Lethewood wasn’t a tall woman, or a charismatic one, but there was something solid about her, and she seemed …

You’re going to trust her because she seems nice? That can be faked,
the inner voice sneered.

Could it? All these people here, they trusted Lethewood. Could she fool them all?

I’m here for the judge,
Juanita reminded herself, forcing her fists open, but what she said was: “The Alchemites are threatening my family.”

Astrid’s hand came up, and a startled titter broke from her lips. “I’m sorry, I … Wow. I should’ve picked up on that. I’m sorry, I’m not laughing. It’s like shock.”

Sorry. An apology was the last thing she was expecting.

Astrid regrouped. “We can … yes, we can protect them. Since Wendover, I’ve been making chantments for hostage situations.”

Juanita felt a rush of tears. “Too little, too late.”

“I know. But maybe not for you.” Astrid pivoted, moving in the same direction as everyone else, drawing Juanita after her. The crowd parted for them as they crossed the plaza.

“Hold on. What’s your help going to cost me?”

“We’ll call it even for you saving Sahara the other day.”

“She wouldn’t give me a dollar to save you.”

“Well, I don’t want her burnt,” Astrid said.

“That’s very forgiving.”

“Oh, I’m no saint.” Astrid’s words came weighted heavy, like stones from the heart.

“After all the trouble she caused, you don’t—”

“She dies, I die,” Astrid said.

Juanita stopped short. “Do me a favor and can the prophecies. I’m not a believer and I don’t want to hear it.”

If Astrid was offended, it didn’t show. “Okay.”

“I don’t want to be in debt to you.”

“You won’t. I’ve tried to keep Sahara from … I should have realized what she was up to.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“Okay, try this.” Astrid’s cheeks dimpled. “I’m prone to crushes on tough athletic girls.”

A champagne bubble of amusement threatened to crack Juanita’s mask. “Are you flirting with me?”

“Would you mind?”

This time she did smile. “I don’t date magicians.”

“That’s really quite wise.”

They shared a self-conscious smile, and suddenly being here didn’t feel so weird. Then a familiar face behind Astrid on the plaza broke the spell.

“Everything okay?”

“I just saw my Sunday school teacher.”

Astrid scanned the crowd. “Stella? She’s one of our science types—” She paused, wearing that trying-to-remember expression Juanita had seen before. “She’s studying the reproductive cycle of alchemized foxes.”

“How does that help whatever you’re doing here?”
And what are you doing?

Astrid shrugged. “Do alchemized animals breed? What happens to their young? Sooner or later, we’ll need to know.”

“What if it’s later?”

“It’s what Stella wants to do,” Astrid said.

“Yeah? Everyone here’s doing what they want? You included?”

“I’m granting wishes,” Astrid said. “Today, that means protecting hostages.”

Juanita bit the inside of her cheek. “I should probably mention that I have a lot of relatives.”

“No problem.” They dodged around a gaggle of Japanese women dressed as stewardesses. Then Astrid led her between the cold blue columns … and out into a golden haze.

Juanita blinked against a curl of sun setting over a sea, trying to figure out which one it was. The Mediterranean? They were behind a farmhouse that looked like it had been plucked straight out of a chick flick. As her eyes adjusted, she did a slow circle, taking in a grape arbor that ran the length of one stone wall. Ripening oranges and lemons hung from trees planted up the hillside.

Interspersed between the trees were steel sculptures, figures of welded-together metal. Juanita recognized their constituent parts—clockworks, a lawn mower blade, spark plugs. They were the sort of abstract sculpture you saw in public parks in bad neighborhoods. Largely incomprehensible, they were both inoffensive and hard to vandalize.

One piece was vaguely representational—a two-meter-high figure, male, made of steel staves. Its fists were raised in a fighting pose, and it wore silk shorts and mismatched boxing gloves. In the salad bowl that stood in for its head, a jumble of dried beans somehow evoked green eyes, blood, and brains.

A woman sat next to the statue in a rocking chair, flicking thin jolts of electricity into the statue’s navel from a crystal in her lap.

“Juanita, this is Tonia. Her son makes the sculptures.”

“Buonasera,”
the woman said.

“Hi,” Juanita said. “What is this?”

“He’s a bodyguard chantment.” Astrid patted the boxer. “We tell him about people who need protection, Tonia feeds him magical power—” She pointed at the luminous chunk of stone. “If anyone attacks them, they get bopped on the nose.”

“That’s insane.”

“It works.” Astrid was gazing at the orchard with a professional eye. “Whisper a name in his ear—whoever you’re most worried about.”

Juanita stepped close to the thing. “Mamá,” she breathed.

It came out a sigh, a chorus of names, all in her own voice: Ramón, her sisters and nieces, Judge Skagway, her school friends, her last two girlfriends. Everyone she loved, caught in a single exhalation, a tremble of air that seemed to hang suspended in the boxer’s rib cage of steak knives, making this cobbled-together collection of parts the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

The statue suddenly meant as much to her as anyone she’d ever known. She wanted to enfold it in her arms, like a baby.

“Abracadabra,” Astrid said. “Your loved ones are off the Alchemite menu.”

Juanita stared at the sculpture, mesmerized. “They’re safe? You’re serious? Just like that?”

“Granting wishes, remember?” Astrid said. “That’s what genies do.”

“If you’re screwing with me…”

“Cross my heart, hope to die, stick some sea-glass in my eye.” Astrid ran a finger over a ripening lemon. “We have someone here day in, day out. Twenty-four/seven, as they say. It’ll stop ’em, don’t worry.”

She looked at the thing. “Chantments burn out, don’t they?”

“We use this one sparingly.”

“What about my brother? He’s caught in dreamland.”

“Alchemites can’t hurt him there. Sorry—is something funny?”

I didn’t expect to like you,
Juanita thought. “I thought you’d be more like…”

“It’s okay, you can say her name. More like Sahara? Like her how?”

“Scheming, pretending to be some kind of martyr.”

Astrid wrapped her fingers around the lemon, tugging, but seemed unable to budge it. “Till the other day, I’d hoped the craziness—some of it, anyway—might be an act.”

People burning, Sahara cowering behind
. “It’s no act.”

“No.”

“The Wendover shrinks throw around the word
narcissist.
Sometimes—
malignant narcissist.
”

Astrid fingered the lemon. “I lie awake, wondering when she lost her mind. If there was any point where I could’ve cured her. Mark says it started before the vitagua, years ago.…”

“If anyone would know, it’s Mark Clumber.”

“He cheated on her; I told myself he was making excuses.”

“Both things could be true,” Juanita said.

“What does it say about me that I never noticed?”

“That you cared for her. That you didn’t judge?”

Astrid’s eyes dulled; her attention was suddenly far away. “Alchemites are attacking Wendover.”

“Didn’t I ask you to can the prophecies?”

“It’s no prophecy,” Astrid said. “We’re watching the base.”

The judge. “How do I get back?”

Astrid gestured at the arch of thorns. “Across the plaza, into the glow. Think about where you need to be.”

“Thanks.”

“Anytime, gorgeous.” The lemon broke free, falling into Astrid’s hand. She dropped it immediately, body jerking as if it weighed a thousand pounds.

Juanita sprinted through the gate, cutting through the throng in the plaza, running to the weird light. No hesitation this time; she came out in the courthouse foyer. The smell of scorched upholstery, stronger after the clean Mediterranean air, assailed her.

She’d traveled around the world in less than a second.

Tense voices echoed in the corridor.

“Knax doesn’t give a damn about her followers.” It was Skagway. “She let them burn.”

Roche, replying: “She knows right from wrong, so what?”

Keeping an ear tuned to the conversation, Juanita peered out at the airfield. A jet touched down, leaving rippling waves of heat in its wake. Business as usual.

“Arthur, the attorney general promised me you’d follow the letter of the law on this.”

“What can I do, George? The president’s assurances to the public have been useless. We look like idiots.”

“Assassinating Knax won’t restore your credibility.”

Juanita tensed. Two milky-blue scorpions, each the size of a truck, were emerging from the pilot’s lounge.

“I tried it your way and failed,” Roche said. “I lost Will Forest, the defendants, I may have to work with Gilead Landon—”

“How you must miss the murderous pyromaniac.”

“Don’t be sarcastic. I need to start posting some wins.”

“This isn’t soccer, General, and you’re not committing homicide—”

The scorpions were drawing gunfire. Bolting the door, Juanita sprinted toward Roche and Skagway.

“—I may have no choice but to work with the Fyremen—” Roche stopped in midsentence. “What do you want, Corazón?”

“Alchemites are attacking the base, sir.”

“A rescue attempt? They’re getting desperate. Here.” Roche slapped a jade pendant—a carved fish—into the judge’s palm and drew his sidearm. Juanita saw a small black tassel dangling from its trigger guard.

“Why don’t you give that one to Corazón?”

Roche flicked the judge an irritated glance.

“We don’t want our prisoner getting accidentally shot.”

“It’s legal to shoot her if she’s trying to escape,” Roche said.

“She can’t run, remember?” Skagway said.

Was that why Astrid put the bottle cap in her, Juanita wondered, to keep Sahara from getting shot escaping custody?

“Fine.” Roche slapped the gun with the tassel into Juanita’s hand and took out a laminated baseball card.

“I have a weapon,” Juanita said.

“This one’s a chantment,” Roche said.

“What’s it do?”

Roche flicked the tassel with a finger. “Trick shots. Call yourself Annie Oakley. You won’t miss.”

“Until I pass out from exhaustion?”

“Doesn’t take that much juice—you already know how to shoot. You’ll run out of bullets first.”

“Unless they kill us.”

“Pah,” Roche said. “Every time they try this, we end up with new prisoners and more of their toys.”

And a bunch of MIAs to show for it,
Juanita thought.

They edged toward the cells as concussions shivered the walls. The doors banged open, but what came through wasn’t mutant scorpions: it was Heaven and a pilot.

“Help!” Heaven’s leg was bloodied; she was leaning on the airman, limping.

Roche made a disgusted noise, buying it, and lowered the baseball card.

“Annie Oakley, huh?” Juanita raised the pistol. Angles and trajectories filled her mind. She spotted a hoop of plastic in Heaven’s hand, a mandala pendant that might be a chantment.

She squeezed off a shot, watching as the bullet seemed to bounce in slow motion off a light fixture, shattering the pendant before passing harmlessly through Heaven’s sleeve. There was a spurt of blue.

Gotta admit it,
she thought,
that was cool
.

Heaven’s partner in crime dropped the pretense of supporting her weight, throwing out an arm. A hailstone the size of a bowling ball shot toward them.

Juanita turned, shielding the judge, but the ice ball stopped short. Roche had the baseball card up again.

“Arthur!” Skagway had reached the door to the cells. Roche tossed him the keycard, deflecting another hailstone. Juanita fired at a third, shattering it into snow.

Skagway got the door open, wrenching his sports chair through. They followed him, locking the door again.

Sahara was out of her cell, patting down a semiconscious Gladys, who lay on the floor, thrashing weakly, her face blue-white, apparently suffocating. Sahara was murmuring quietly.