Blue Magic (41 page)

Volunteers began pouring through Bramblegate. A few sprinted across the plaza and into the glow, vanishing between the columns. Most stopped to cut free their imprisoned friends. A few Alchemites attacked them, but with Passion stunned and Sahara wounded, most were fleeing the approaching Fyremen.

“Get out!” Will shouted. There were hundreds of men, bodies white-hot, igniting everything they touched as they marched through the plaza. “Run!”

He pushed through the throng to Juanita.

She was staring upward, openmouthed with horror, at Sahara. “What have I done?”

“Stopped a massacre,” he said. “Unfortunately, they seem to be coming in waves.

“Can we bring her down?” Juanita asked.

“Leave her,” Will said.

“Astrid didn’t want her burned.”

“Juanita, listen. That ring won’t protect you forever.”

“You gave me one of your magic batteries.”

“Batteries run out. The ring’ll suck you dry, just as Sahara did Chalice.” He pointed at the oncoming Fyremen. “If they attack you—”

“Attack me?” Juanita laughed bitterly. “I just poisoned Sahara Knax for them.”

Pike appeared at his side. “Will, lad, we have to get you out of here.”

“Too late,” he said. “Now’s when the Fyremen surround us.”

There were more Alchemites and volunteers than Fyremen in the plaza, at least for the moment, but Astrid’s recruits were still bound, and the Fyremen seemed impervious to magical attack. They formed a perimeter around the old train station and the clearing they were burning around it. The roof of forest above them, tons of alchemized vegetation that had protected them for so many months, was ablaze.

A distant hum—choppers—hinted that reinforcements were on the way, just waiting for someone to create a landing zone.

“Search everyone!” Gilead Landon shouted. The Fyremen turned their attention to shaking down the Alchemites, none too gently, confiscating chantments, incinerating each object with their bare, fire-hot hands, and slurping up the smoke.

“Will,” Pike whispered. “What happens if they burn the Bramblegate grenade?”

“I don’t know.” He let vitagua bleed out of the scratches on his palm, forming a shell of iced magic around it, then bringing down its temperature so the model grenade was locked and the gate open. Crouching slowly, he tucked the chantment under the edge of a toppled bench.

“It’ll melt eventually,” Pike said.

“Best I can do for now.”

Sahara was flapping awkwardly for the small break into the trees, trying to flee from the Springs as she had done once before. But Gilead Landon strode to the middle of the plaza. He raised his hand, revealing a glob of bright molten glass. Blowing on his fingers, he formed it into a glassine javelin.

He threw it gracefully, piercing Sahara’s wing.

Shrieking, she crashed to the plaza floor. Fyremen surrounded her, hauling her to her feet.

Juanita bellowed: “You promised me no more pyres, Gilead!”

The Fyreman turned to face her. “Just these two.”

Pike stepped in front of Will, fists raised.

“He means Astrid, Pike,” Will whispered.

Fortunately, Juanita had Gilead’s attention. “I gave you everything I promised. You control the town. You have Sahara. You swore, Gilead—you
swore
you’d stop burning people.”

“Juanita, be reasonable.” The Fyremen were making a pyre of burning logs in the crater where the Octagon had been.

“Are you a homicidal maniac or aren’t you?” Juanita demanded.

For a moment, Landon seemed to waver. At last he shook his head. “This has to happen.”

“Why, because it’s foretold?”

“I’m sorry.” He shoved Sahara into the midst of the blaze, pinning her by her wings, using the glass javelin. Then, bending, Gilead picked up Astrid’s limp body, flinging it so she fell at Sahara’s feet.

“Boss,” Pike whispered.

When she burns, I burn,
a grumble said.

Will batted the voice away.

Astrid lay unmoving as the flames rose around them—a mercy, Will thought, remembering Caro.

Sahara was alive and conscious as her wings burned. Pinned atop the pyre, she became a writhing, bird-shaped torch. Her screams rose over the deafening rush of the flames and the wails of her worshippers.

By now, the Fyremen had the plaza surrounded, corralling fleeing volunteers and shattered Alchemites alike. The approaching helicopters were closer, and there were flaming figures atop the forest canopy, ready to catch anyone who tried to use a chantment to fly away.

With every moment they packed in tighter, driving the crowd inward to escape the growing heat.

Find something to chant,
Will thought as he was jostled to the middle of the pack. He scrabbled at his pockets. Empty—no, wait. His fingers closed around a silk elephant he’d been keeping, all these months, for Ellie.

What could he make? Power was low. And the Fyremen had taken potions anyway, Will thought. Magic probably wouldn’t affect them.

We’re past that now,
the grumble said.

A chill. It was Astrid’s voice, but she was …

A grumble, he realized—she’s in the vitagua. Had she been there all along?

Always a card to play,
she said.
I didn’t even tell myself.

“They’re gonna burn everyone,” he whispered.

No, love. Now’s where we stop them.

“How?” An Alchemite bumped him, and he nearly fell. Volunteers bore him up. The Springers were clustered around him—protecting him, as Caro had tried to protect Sahara.

Sahara Knax let out one last howl, a starling shriek that tore the air as she collapsed within the burning logs.

“Our work is unfinished—the well remains open!” Gilead boomed. “Lethewood must have initiated another chanter.”

All these months, we’ve been easing the magic out.
Astrid might have been speaking in his ear.
But Teo is right—we can yank the tooth.

“Do things the hard way, not the easy way?”

Are you kidding?
A laugh—not the sly, teasing laugh of the unreal, just an ordinary Astrid chuckle.
What part of the last six months has been easy?

“What do we do?”

Think about warmth,
Astrid Lethewood said.

“Heat up the vitagua? How much?”

Warmth,
she repeated.
Not heat, not cold. Bathwater, sun on your skin, lying under a comforter in the wintertime. Affection and kindess.

“Warmth,” Will murmured. The knot of volunteers tightened around him.

The Fyreman began to mutter something, a low cantation that spread through the encircling wall of his fellows. One word, repeated over and over.

“Was that
hut
?” Pike asked.

“
Hut
like in football?”

Forget them, Will,
Astrid said.
Think about warmth.

“It’s
huff,
” Katarina gasped. “As in huff and puff and burn your house down.”

Smoke roiled from the witch-burners. Eyes watering, Will met Gilead’s flame-red gaze. Huff, huff, huff.

Okay,
he agreed.
Warmth.

Curling up on the couch with the kids to watch old cartoons, waiting on cooling mugs of cocoa. Ellie dozing with a stuffed elephant tucked under each arm …

That’s it,
Astrid said.
Here comes the Small …

“Huff! Huff! Huff!” The air clogging, unbreathable. Everyone about to suffocate …

“Huff, puff,” Will said. “And boom.”

A world unfurled beneath him.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

ASTRID HAD BEEN IN
a dozen places at once when the Alchemites made their move.

She had been in a hammock behind an abandoned garden cottage in Northern England, waiting for a dying ringer to slip away. She was climbing in the canopy of the forest, watching the Fyremen and chatting with Katarina about vitagua sequestration and contamination levels. The tiny ringer in Africa was roaming the desert, contaminating whatever it touched. She was with Pike in the hotel lobby, with Jupiter and Aquino in the Octagon.

Astrid Prime was in the shelter, making chantments for the Lifeguards and the poor troublesome Alchemites.

“Astrid,” Pike had said, “the Unreal’s claiming their deadline has elapsed.”

Deadline,
she thought.
Such an ugly word.
There was nothing to do but go plead with Teo for a few more hours.

She touched the scarf, her magical disguise.
I decide to go in person,
she thought.
I have a ringer stashed at Pucker Hill, but Teo’s offended by the use of the mice. He’ll kill it, and if I send another copy of myself across the plaza, all those Alchemites will start screaming Filthwitch.…

Mark would have a fit. There was a tinge of unease in the thought; this was risky. “Olive, how’s the body count looking?”

“Death toll’s dropping substantially,” Olive reported. “Sketches are coloring in Faster than we can post them on the Big Picture.”

“Any significant changes?”

Euphemisms,
the grumbles chortled, but Olive understood. “You’re still in Limbo. Sorry.”

“Sahara?”

“Her too.”

When I burn, she burns,
she thought. “Thank you, Olive.”

Have a little faith, kid.

She stepped into the bathing grotto, dipping her hands into the hot pool. She splashed water onto her face, tugged a comb through her curls. She put on a clean, pressed-looking pair of jeans and a new red shirt. She fluffed the pillows on her bed, pulled the blanket straight.

There was nothing left to tidy. She owned nothing else.

She stared into the mirror for a second more before putting on the scarf. Her features changed, and she took Bramblegate up to the plaza.

As she arrived, her head began to ring.

All the Astrids frowned, as one. “Something’s wrong,” she said, to Pike and Jupiter and the plaza and the songbirds in England.

Then she was swooning—that was the only word for it.

And I must be unconscious,
she thought, because she, they, all of her were icing over, leaving her to peer at the world through blue filmy eyes, to listen with the slush-clogged ears of rats and mice.

She strained to take in as much as she could. There was so much going on: Alchemites in the plaza, Fyremen burning a path into town, Igme fleeing with a golden key. Sahara, home at last, mutated and deranged. All of her gone but for that insatiable need for worship. Magic had devoured her friend whole, taken her as it had taken Jacks and Mark and Dad.

And you,
a grumble said.

Yes,
Astrid replied.
It’s almost that time.

She felt a last pang of fear. In its wake came sadness: she hadn’t broken the curse, hadn’t cured Pop, hadn’t released the Roused. So much unfinished …

It’ll be okay.
Was that her own voice, mouthing hollow reassurances from the future?

No, Bun, really, it will.

Daddy?

Happy After’s just up ahead. Believe a little longer.

Could she do that? Maybe. Yes, she thought. A little longer.

A vague stir of consciousness: they’d brought her around. She was hanging by her heels, staring into a once-beloved face. “Hello, Sahara.”

And then we argue, don’t we?

She saw, in a flash, that she had to break Sahara’s grip on the Alchemites. They wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t save anyone, if they stayed with Sahara to the end. They’d be slaughtered.

Get this one last thing done … tease her, undermine her. Plant that seed of doubt.

Juanita was staring at her, incredulous.
Don’t provoke her,
she seemed to be pleading.

Too late,
said the grumbles.

Sahara whirled. Dancing? There was a sticky burst of heat and Astrid realized she was bleeding. She tried to draw vitagua to her throat, close up the wound …

Let it bleed,
Astrid thought, and then … black edges, black hedges, blacking out.
Not by poison, not by fire, not some sacrificial ringer. Sorry, Will, that’s how it goes.

Exanguination,
she told an earlier version of herself.
There’s an ugly word
.

She sank into the cold.

That’s it,
she thought,
I’m trapped in the glacier. All that work, and I’ve ended up with the Roused. If Will lets the well close, we’re here forever.
Was this the end? Was she trapped in the ice, left with the taste of having screwed up?

No. The Happy After will come.

Her confusion lifted. Eleven pairs of eyes opened.

She was with Pike. She was in England, in Africa. All the unreal was wound within her belly, yearning to get loose, to spring forth. All she needed was heat.

Warmth,
she thought.

Nothing.

Heat!

We can’t do it now, Bundle, we’re dead,
the grumbles said, and it was her own voice, and Dad’s, and Eliza’s, and her granny Almore’s too, all the Indigo Springs chanters telling her what she’d always known.

She needed warmth. Needed a well wizard. She needed Will.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE