Dark Light of Day (50 page)

“Peter,” I said, my voice roughened from crying, “help me lift him.” I couldn’t carry Ari by myself. And we had to get Night out too. “How much time do we have?”

“Probably just enough to get them out. If one of them could be healed enough to walk.”

I made some wretched sound and lowered my forehead to Ari’s, letting the tears flow. Then I raised my head. “Run outside,” I said frantically. “There’s a Mederi, Bryony. She was supposed to meet us here. Find her.”

But Peter just stood there.

“Go!” I screamed, rounding on him, snarling in my anguish. He left.

Ari looked up at me, tears of blood weeping from his eyes. His gaze started to turn glassy. “Noon,” he choked, “get out of here.”

“No.” I didn’t want him to know how scared I was, but he must have felt it in my signature. “We’re going to heal you.”

He shook his head. “Take Night and go.” He arched his back in pain. Stuff coming out of my nose dripped onto his shirt. I swiped at it with the back of my hand, fighting more tears.

“I’m not going to leave you.”

“You shouldn’t make promises lightly,” Ari said, trying to laugh. It came out as a bloody half cough.

“I don’t care,” I said, grabbing his hand. “I won’t leave you. I love you.” I heard Peter return and looked up. He stared down at us, a peculiar expression on his face.

“Your Mederi wasn’t out there,” he said. “But I know how we can heal him.”

Mederi magic was the only thing I knew that could heal
after a demon attack, but Peter had been pulling rabbits out of hats all semester so maybe he had another idea. “If you have a spell that can help him, what are you waiting for?”

Peter knelt down next to us. I should have known from the look on his face that his solution wouldn’t be a cheap magic trick. The cost would be dear.

“I can’t save him,” Peter said, “but you can.” Beneath me, Ari was fading in and out of consciousness. I couldn’t tell how aware he was of what was going on around him, but after Peter’s words he began convulsing, violently shaking his head from side to side.

“Shh,” I said, laying my hand against his cheek. “Stop.”

Around me, I felt Lamia and Nergal’s signature heating up. It wouldn’t be long before the stasis spell wore off. I knew what would happen then, but I no longer cared. I didn’t want to live in a world without Ari. Suddenly, Joy’s words came back to me.
There are worse fates than dying for someone you love.
Indeed. But maybe Luck didn’t hate me that much after all. Maybe he’d spare me that fate and Ari and I would both perish in the next few moments. I became calm then, accepting, almost welcoming the inevitable. Until I heard Peter’s next words. “I finished translating the Reversal Spell, Noon. I can cast it. Right now.
You
can heal Ari.”

It was so simple. It was what I’d been waiting for my whole life. I paused for only a moment. Ari had made me realize that waning magic could be used as a force for good. Maegesters had a place and a purpose in Halja’s life. Their role, in fact, was far greater than a Mederi’s. Maegesters kept Halja from returning to the days of war. Far from being destructive, the greatest Maegesters sought to prevent mass destruction by maintaining peace and keeping order. But I paused for only a moment, because none of that mattered. I would have given anything to save Ari.

“No,” Ari said. I had to strain to hear him. “It’s too dangerous. Not worth it…” He panted furiously. “No idea… what might happen.”

Peter scoffed. “Do you want to live?”

“Noon,” Ari said, completely ignoring Peter. “Please don’t. Please. Get out… now. Go. Promise me…”

“No,” I said, my voice soft but firm. Ari’s movements slowed and then stopped altogether. I could sense only the barest trickle of his signature now.

“There’s just one thing,” Peter said. I resisted the impulse to slap him and yell,
Now!

“Promise that you’ll leave Ari. Promise that you’ll give me a chance.”

I looked up at Peter, fighting to keep my magic in check. It was amazing how quickly your feelings for someone could change. But I wasn’t the only one who’d changed. The Peter I’d known would never have forced me to make such a promise. The Peter I’d known had taken over a decade to work up the courage to kiss me. He would never have had the nerve to threaten me. I didn’t want to give Peter a chance. I hated him suddenly for even asking me to. But when I’d said I’d do anything to save Ari, I’d meant it.

“Fine,” I said, my voice cracking. “Do it. Cast the Reversal Spell and I’ll walk out of here with you.”

“Kiss me,” Peter said, “to seal your promise.”

I swallowed, my body suddenly hot and cold. At one time I’d been confused about whether I’d wanted this. No longer. Every part of me revolted. But I leaned over Ari’s body and pressed my lips firmly to Peter’s, wondering when exactly he’d become such a stranger. I felt Peter shiver as our lips touched and I broke off the kiss, refusing to look at him.

Peter wasted no time after that. He started casting the Reversal Spell just as the stasis spell was wearing off. Nergal twitched and Lamia’s gaze shifted in our direction. I hoped I would instinctively know how to heal once Peter completed casting the Reversal Spell. If I could heal Ari enough, he and Peter could keep Lamia and Nergal at bay while I healed Night. Maybe, just maybe, we’d all make it out of here alive.

I laid my hands on Ari’s chest, waiting for the spell to take effect. I felt the ancient magic stir. It was the most powerful
spell I’d ever felt. The air vibrated with its presence; it seemed an entity in and of itself. After thousands of years of silence, it seemed to wake up and fly around the room, as if it were searching for something.
Me,
I thought.
I’m over here.
But it settled instead on the unlikeliest of people—Nergal. And instead of a healer, it turned him into a howling infant.

For a few seconds, I thought my eyes and ears were deceiving me. As if the whole thing was a demon illusion, or Luck’s cruel joke. I shook my head, staring down at the wriggling infant on the floor. It was a little demon child, complete with horns and claws.

Lamia broke free from the final remains of the stasis spell, but instead of blasting us with further death magic, she stood transfixed, staring at the crying child. Peter let out a sound of disgust, momentarily shifting her attention to us. Lamia narrowed her eyes, preparing to throw something horrid, but I blasted first. I poured all of the anger and impotence I felt at this macabre, twisted, bizarre situation into that one blast. It was the most powerfully controlled blast I’d ever thrown. But nothing happened. Instinctively, I’d thrown fire, which had no effect here.

Lamia threw a spray of poison at us then, but her heart wasn’t in it, and I easily shielded it with my magic. Ari’s signature dimmed and I started sobbing uncontrollably.
Why had Luck forsaken me?
Lamia scooped up the infant Nergal and slipped into the mouth of the tomb. I tried to feel something positive, something life affirming, so that I would be able to control the power that was gathering within me. But it was impossible to feel hope or joy when Ari was dying before my eyes. So instead, I allowed every negative emotion I’d ever felt this past semester—pain, horror, hatred, fear, fury, grief, guilt, even recklessness—to gather within me and I melded them all into a great big ball of pure waning magic, undiluted by fire or electricity or any destructive force other than my sheer will. I poured
darkness
into that ball and I threw it toward the tomb, not caring if it was more than I had to give. Not caring now if I lived or died.

The world went black.

A
few weeks later, I received news that I’d passed all of my classes, even Manipulation. Rochester and Seknecus decided (perhaps with some input from my father, whom I’d glimpsed once during finals hurrying toward their offices) that, although I hadn’t completed my assignment, I’d demonstrated enough resilience in the field to overcome my former lack of experience. In fact, after the “altercation” at the tomb (the faculty’s provocatively understated term for what had happened) I was ranked
Primoris
. I could have cared less.

When the semester ended, I returned to Etincelle and spent three whole days staring out of my bedroom window at my mother’s blackened garden. It seemed as good a place as any for mourning. On the fourth day, I shoved my gilded mirror out the window. I watched as it fell, flipping end over end, until it finally crashed to the ground, splintering wood and shattering glass everywhere. The explosive sound of it was as gratifying as was the fact that the damage was irreparable. You didn’t need magic to destroy, I smirked, thinking of my mother’s gasoline can. A thousand jagged pieces of glass
winked up at me, their silvery edges glinting in the afternoon sun. Aurelia came in then and put her arm around me. She stared down at the wreckage looking almost as pleased as I did. For once, I didn’t flinch from her touch.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For everything.”

“I know,” I said, leaning my head on her shoulder.

M
y father showed up a few days later. As usual, there was no “Hello” or “How have you been?” I forgave that this time, however, because such inanities would have been entirely inappropriate. Still, there were no words of sympathy regarding Ari’s injuries, which wounded me deeply, no congratulations on landing the
Primoris
position, which I would have shunned anyway, and no mention of my smashed mirror, which still lay in pieces out in my mother’s garden. She seemed as content to leave it there as I did. Unlike before, however, my father and I did talk shop for a few moments. He asked what I would have done if my last dark, emotion-laden, überpowerful, yet completely reckless and out-of-control magic blast had not sealed Nergal forever (or at least for a very long time) within the confines of Lucifer’s Tomb. I ran through a few arguments I might have made on his behalf before the Council. Karanos appeared unimpressed with these, but when I explained some of the things I’d wanted to do to Nergal if he’d have continued to threaten me, my father had smiled.

“Perhaps you are your mother’s daughter after all,” he’d said, his expression as enigmatic as that legendary pre-Apocalyptic sphinx. He then mentioned that I’d be assigned a new client next semester, one that would provide some interesting new challenges.

The next week, mourning turned to healing. My best friend was gone, but my boyfriend was alive and well. Bryony had arrived later that night and had nearly needed a Mederi herself after she’d healed Ari, Night, and me from our various injuries. Night had elected to finish recovering with the Demeter Tribe. Linnaea had come to collect him
herself, fussing over him as if she were Androcles taming another lion. After what had happened at the tomb, I’d told Peter I never wanted to speak to him again. He told me I’d change my mind once he found the real Reversal Spell. True to my word though, I turned my back on him.

Curiosity had me making a few discreet inquiries, however, and I found out that, instead of the Reversal Spell, Peter had accidentally cast the Spell of Second Chances, a spell nearly as old, powerful, and illustrious as the Reversal Spell, and one which was giving Peter a lot of press over at the Joshua School. Apparently the Spell of Second Chances worked like medieval medicine. It bestowed its benefits on only the most sick. But the cure was often worse than the disease.

Lamia had been kidnapping Mederies, erroneously thinking that if they were tortured enough they might be able to create the impossible. Her madness had also given her a cold efficiency. Once they were dead, she’d used pieces of their hair and clothing to make her revolting corn dolls, which she ingested in the hopes that they could somehow make her barren womb fertile.

Nergal was worse though. He couldn’t use madness as an excuse. He was perfectly sane when he’d first filed for the divorce he’d so desperately sought. He’d been motivated by all the things I’d accused him of. He’d fallen out of love with Lamia because she was ugly, old, and insane, but he’d also had a deeper, more pressing, motive—avoiding his own death. I’d nearly forgotten that demon lovers who married were bound by magic. They lived—
and died
—together, unless both agreed to end the marriage. Once Lamia’s madness escalated to the point where she started killing Mederies, Nergal knew she’d eventually be killed for her sins. He hadn’t wanted to die with her. Well, he hadn’t. Instead, he’d gotten a life sentence in the bowels of Lucifer’s Tomb. And Lamia had her longed for child.

I shuddered.
Be careful what you wish for.

For my part I was done wishing for anything other than what I had. My childhood dream no longer appealed; my
childhood friend was no longer a friend. Dropping the gilded mirror from my bedroom window had been cathartic, but I knew there was one more thing I had to do.

E
arly one summer morning, Ari and I took a cab to Sheol. Ari was still using a cane to walk so I wanted to allow sufficient time for what I had in mind. I tipped the cabdriver extra and he grinned at me, promising to come get us the next morning. I shouldered the immense backpack I’d brought, which held all our supplies. On the way over, Ari had argued nonstop about who was going to carry it. I finally got him to shut up by telling him that if he didn’t, I’d reschedule our excursion for a time when Fitz or Mercator could make it because I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him carry it. He’d sulked for a mile or so but let it drop.