Blue Magic (4 page)

She let the grumbles in, listening for the children. “I hear Carson. He’s chanted a pair of magic … skates, I think. He’s laughing. You’re arguing with Ellie over homework.…”

As she spoke, she felt the shape of that future; she was cold, for some reason, chilled to the bone. Will was teasing her about being a permissive stepmother.…

Stepmother? Were they together, then? Her emotions surged, tangling: hope, panic, a pang of guilt for Jacks, who had loved her, an upwelling of nameless, unidentifiable grief.

“How soon?” Will’s brittle tone brought her back.

She shivered. “They’re young, Will, still young. It can’t be long.”

Mark shot her a worried glance from behind Will’s back.
Soon
wasn’t good: they were trying to hold off the Small Bang.

Will looked at the glowing columns, the people vanishing into the blue light. “I don’t know how long I can wait.”

“We get them back, Will. They’re young, they’re chanters, and we’re all laughing.”

“Har dee har.” He took a ragged breath, turning to Mark, and began to extend a hand in greeting. Then fighter jets screeched overhead, and he froze.

Astrid covered her ears. Seconds later, explosives whumped a few miles away.

“Off target,” Mark said with a smug grin.

“Mark’s keeping the bombs off us,” Astrid explained.

“All by himself?”

“Not at all. I have minions, underlings, cannon fodder—”

“Mark!” Astrid said. “He’s kidding about the fodder.”

Will smiled.

Mark said, “Speaking of my team, I should be with them. You giving Will the grand tour?”

Astrid nodded.

“Catch you both later, then.” Giving Will a nettled look, Mark headed off into the glow.

“What now?” Will said.

There were so many answers to that question: she wanted his advice on a dozen different things. “I’ll show you what we’re doing here. It’ll give you an idea of how we’ll go after your kids.”

It was the right answer: he brightened.

She led him among the columns of vitagua, saying, “Bigtop,” as they stepped down the concrete steps and came out in front of the hotel.

Will’s jaw dropped.

She realized anew how strange it looked. Even with the overgrown trees and brush cleared away, the forest floor was drenched in vitagua, dangerous and uninhabitable. They’d left it that way, a bright impassable lagoon of magical fluid and mulched forest. Glowing mushrooms formed a carpet over the slime, toxic blue-tinged amanitas in fairy rings, clusters of gold-streaked honey fungus, fluted chanterelles and tall, porous morels all lending an exotic, fairy-tale look to the place.

Working up from the floor, she and her volunteers had created an island of fill by gathering the bones of the destroyed town, forming piles of concrete and steel among the enormous stumps of the dead trees. Abandoned cars, bits of highway, and garbage bridged the clearing; brightly colored silk tents were pitched on its main hub. New fill radiated from the central campground in spokes, raised pathways that expanded outward into the lagoon.

The fill bridged the space between the hotel and one other building they’d managed to salvage whole—the Indigo Springs hospital.

Sunshine globbed onto tree branches like paint, a camp built on rubble, vitagua-filled bottles hung from the trees, magic mushrooms, tinkling musical messages …

Will turned a slow circle. “This is your base of operations?”

Astrid nodded. “Let’s start with the ravine.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Will followed.

“How much do you remember about vitagua?” she asked.

“Let’s see … magic used to be a living cell. It allowed people to bend the rules of nature.”

“Right,” she said.

“Centuries ago, when the Inquisition began burning witches, the cells—”

“Magicules.”

“Magicules, right, were driven into the unreal and they became vitagua.”

“Blue in color, thick as blood, dangerous as hell,” she said, quoting her father. The fluid had been drizzling back into the real world for centuries. Well wizards like Dad had taken it drop by drop, locking it within magic items like Will’s ring.

The physical breach between the real and unreal was in the ravine. It had been concealed in the chimney of Dad’s old house, and an irregular pile of bricks still marked the epicenter of the Spill. Blue fluid oozed through the porous, cracked bricks, pooling in the ravine, forming a boxy lake.

Will peered down. “That’s … a lot of vitagua.”

“Barely a drop in the bucket,” Astrid countered. “Remember the glaciers in the unreal?”

He nodded. “You’re spilling it into the woods?”

“I’m also making chantments.” She pointed at a line of shopping carts filled with junk: small carvings, combs, dishes, lampshades, books, tools, purses, plastic necklaces, jewelry boxes, flowerpots …

“Where’s all that coming from?”

“There are crews out salvaging in the evacuated towns. See that work crew there, going through the stuff?”

“That’s … what, twenty people?”

“It’s a lot of work. They have to sort through everything. Broken stuff has to be mended. Glass and electronics can’t be chanted at all.”

“You must be making hundreds of chantments.”

“Abracadabra.” She’d had a gold barbell pierced through the web between her right thumb and index finger: chanting required a break in the skin. She twisted the barbell before bending to dip her fingers into the flow of vitagua from the ravine.

Liquid magic passed through her body, seeping from the piercing in the web of her hand and, from there, into the rescued objects. She’d shown Will how this worked before; she didn’t need to explain that she was binding raw magic into the scavenged items so people could safely access its power.

Peace and a sense of vitality flooded her.

This was what she was meant to do. The personality juggling, the meetings, the planning and recruiting, the endless defense of the town—those were just by-products of the Spill. Item by item, she made the junk into chantments. Volunteers bustled in to take the carts away.

Will asked: “What’ll you do with them?”

“Mostly, give them away.”

“You’re not hanging on to everything?”

“Only what we need. Being a well wizard is about sharing power.” She pointed at a red silk tent. “Over there, we have a team of volunteers using chantments that make them psychic. They’ve been working on locating your children.”

“What if they say the kids are in Timbuktu, surrounded by heavily armed Alchemites? Got a plan for that?”

“Of course,” she said. “You think I’ve been sitting around all this time?”

A smile—a real one—broke across his face. “You are more of a go-getter than a sitter.”

“What we’re gonna go get is your children, Will.” Astrid found herself wanting to hug him again. Instead, she led him toward the hotel. “Come on, I’ll show you the rest.”

CHAPTER THREE

“
WE THOUGHT IT WAS
a joke. I mean, here’s a bunch of civilians in motorboats and flying carpets and they’re trying to surround a carrier? A few of the women were dressed up like mermaids, and there was a guy with a trident—”

“Did you see any of the defendants?” Special Prosecutor Lee Wallstone brought up the Alchemites’ mug shots on the courtroom media screens.

“Yessir. I saw Sahara Knax, Patricia Finch, and Arlen Roy.”

“Thank you. What happened next?”

The televised trial had gotten off to a dramatic start, with Juanita and the other marshals hauling the defendants out of the courtroom bodily, like so many screeching sacks of laundry. Afterwards, things settled down. Wallstone had gone with a low-key opening; by the time he’d finished explaining the treason statute for the benefit of the jury and American viewing public, it was almost dull.

He’d save the verbal fireworks for his closing, Juanita guessed, working the theory that the last thing the jury heard was what would stick.

Defense counsel came out heavier, preaching the fire and brimstone of ecological disaster, claiming that Knax and her followers were forced to take action to reverse climate change. Necessity defense, it was called. Apparently they hadn’t noticed it was the same tactic that failed to save Timothy McVeigh.

Now the prosecutor was examining a young sailor who had been aboard
Vigilant
when the Alchemites sank it.

As for Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Juanita Corazón, she spent the day with Sahara Knax in her squirrel cage, watching it all on closed-circuit TV.

Deprived of an audience, Sahara slouched in her chair, toying with her restraints and pretending to listen to spirit voices. “You’re a pet of Judge Skagway’s, aren’t you?”

“What makes you say so?” Juanita kept her tone neutral.

“He’s fond, right? Perhaps … a sort of father figure?”

“Pay attention to the trial, Knax.” She feigned boredom, hoping Sahara wouldn’t see she’d struck a nerve: Juanita didn’t want to think about the judge.

She’d run into him yesterday morning, wheeling his way out to the fresh air, his racquetball gear in his lap.

“Big show tomorrow, Corazón,” he’d said. “I want spit and polish. Show these jarheads we civvies understand discipline.”

“Jarheads are marines, Your Honor. These are airmen—”

He waved that off. “You think any more about after this? Law school?”

“The way things are right now—”

“Turmoil, shmurmoil. Life doesn’t stop, Corazón.”

“I don’t know if I see myself as a lawyer.”

“We get bad press, but it isn’t as bad as all that.”

“I can’t imagine making the world a better place just by sitting on my ass all day.”

It was an established joke between them, but it earned her a glare and a significant glance at the judge’s wheelchair from a passing clerk.

“Spit and polish, Corazón.” With a bass rumble of laughter, the judge rolled on, leaving her aching with guilt.

“I grew up without a father, too,” Sahara said, tone nostalgic. “I was jealous of girls who had dads.…”

“Girls like Astrid Lethewood?” Juanita asked.

A curl of the lip. “She put a chantment in my chest.”

“A bottle cap—I was briefed. Keeps you from running away.”

“It’s litter, Filthwitchery. An attack upon my divinity.”

Can Sahara believe this crap? Does she really think she’s a god?

“Astrid thinks she can contain me.”

On-screen, the impossibly youthful sailor continued his testimony. “The mermaids were singing.”

“In English?” Wallstone asked.

“No, some other language. Knax gave us ten minutes to get to the lifeboats. I remember that one of my buddies laughed.”

Several sailors had recorded the sinking, using their phones and cameras. Wallstone brought up a shot of Sahara, hanging in midair off the bow of the ship, borne on gigantic starling wings. “Did you take action?”

“Yessir—we issued verbal warnings, then fired upon them.”

“And?”

“My weapon malfunctioned. Other guys, their bullets turned to flowers. Patricia Finch was shot, but one of the others put a hand on her and she stopped bleeding.”

“What happened next?”

“Knax, also singing, stabbed the flight deck with a rusty pocketknife. The air got cold, and the ship started falling apart.”

“Falling apart?”

“Deck plates buckling, bolts popping loose, metal rusting. Like it aged a thousand years in five minutes.”

“And you had to abandon ship?”

“Yessir. The
Vigilant
went down in about half an hour.”

“Is that when you were injured?” The Alchemites made a point of rescuing everyone, but this particular fresh-faced boy had been caught by rapidly freezing sea ice that formed around the wreckage of the aircraft carrier.

“I lost a foot to frostbite.”

In the cage, Sahara muttered: “I’d grow back his damn leg if they’d let me.”

The electronic lock beeped, unlatching the door, and Roche poked his head inside. “Talk to you a minute?”

“Uh-oh,” said Sahara. “Something wrong already?”

I haven’t done anything, it’s not too late.…
Juanita quelled a rush of panic, switching places with her backup, Gladys, and followed Roche down the hall.

“Something going on?”

Roche eyed her with distaste. Sahara was right: Skagway had insisted that Federal marshals take charge of prisoner security during the trial. The judge was too important to hate openly, though, so Roche settled for resenting Juanita and her team.

“Will Forest is missing,” Roche said.

“Abducted?”

Roche shrugged. “We’re searching the base for magic items.”

“Pardon my saying, but Forest’s seemed … scattered lately.”

“Yes, yes, his kids are AWOL, I know.”

“When your family’s in danger, General…” Roche gave her a dull stare, so she wrenched herself back on task. “Does this change my routine for tonight?”

“No. Shower Prisoner One, search her, put her in restraints. No black eyes tomorrow, you hear?”

Juanita winced. The previous evening, Sahara’s minions had smashed their faces against their walls and sinks. She’d had them restrained, but they started the trial looking as if they’d been beaten. “Anything else?”

“No—wait, yes. I had a report. Your brother’s MIA?”

“Alchemites attacked the contaminated forest near his station, sir—his squad’s vanished. But my mother’s seen him.”

“In a dream, you mean?”

“Yes.” Most of the missing soldiers who’d clashed with the Alchemites had turned up, apparently unharmed, in the dreams of their loved ones. “Any luck finding a way to rescue them, sir?”

“It’ll happen—we just need to arrest the right Alchemite.”

“What do you mean?”

“They must be using a chantment to turn people into dreams. Presumably there’s a chantment that will bring them back. We just have to catch whoever’s got it.”

“Sounds simple.” Lots of Roche’s plans sounded easy.

He glowered. “Be glad he’s okay.”

Dismissed, in other words. Juanita returned to the squirrel cage.