Magic at the Gate (3 page)

No, no, no.

I reached for Stone, for my dad, for anyone, anything to hold on to to make this stop. Then Dad was in front of me, his hand over the old bullet scar just below my collarbone.

“Breathe, Allison, breathe.”

I gasped. Got some air down. Tasted something sweet against my tongue, and the cool, rough bricks of the building against my back.

“What. The. Hell,” I said.

“Light and dark magic, through Death magic,” he said evenly, not moving away from me. “Death magic always takes a transference of energy. I took from the Life magic within you, and now I give you back the magic of death.”

So that was the bluish glow coming from his hand.

“Wait. What? You are not putting dead magic in me.” I pushed at his hands, but it didn’t do much good. I was very, very tired and he didn’t seem to have any problem keeping me pinned against the wall.

Why was I so tired?

Could it be because I was in death? And my father had just ripped magic out of my chest? And right before that, back in life, I’d Grounded a wild-magic storm and fought a bunch of crazy magic users, all the while killing nightmarish creatures while trying to save my friends’ lives?

Yes. That was probably it. I’d had a hell of a day and the adrenaline of the battlefield was wearing off, leaving behind the very real horror of what had happened.

Zayvion was in a coma. Shame had almost died on the battlefield, trying to save his mother, Maeve. For all I knew, the crystal I gave to Terric to try to keep Shame from bleeding out had been only a temporary reprieve.

Jingo Jingo, who had been a trusted member of the Authority and a teacher of Death magic, had betrayed everyone, nearly killing Shame’s mother. Jingo Jingo had kidnapped Sedra, the head of the Authority, and used my dad’s disks to disappear with her.

Magic users had turned against magic users in a battle that had left several dead. The Authority wasn’t cracking; it had broken. Sides had been taken. The war was on.

Whoever came out on top would rule how magic was used by the common citizen, and by the Authority. Whoever came out on top would control all the magic that the public knew about, and worse, all the ways magic could be used that they didn’t know about.

The winners would have say over what technology was allowed to be developed to use with magic, how doctors could use magic, how politicians could use magic, how corporations could use magic. They would decide what every person could learn about magic. And they could kill anyone who stood in their way. There was a lot of power at stake here. Plenty enough to kill for.

And I was here, dead. With no one but my gargoyle and my Dad to help me find a soul for my lover, and the way home for me. Where were my ruby slippers when I needed them?

I had to find Zayvion soon. Yes, because I loved him. But also so we would have a fighting chance to stop the war. There was a city full of people who didn’t deserve to die because a few secret magic users had suddenly become power hungry. I might not agree with everything the Authority did, but at least their tenet required that they keep magic safe and people unharmed from using it. That was worth fighting for.

“I’m not putting dead magic inside you.” Dad’s voice was gentle. He shifted so he wasn’t pressing so hard on my collarbone. “I’m giving back the magic I used in a slightly different form. They won’t be able to see you here now—or at least you won’t stand out like a burning torch. It’s the best protection I can give you.”

“Don’t,” I said. But he ignored me like he always ignored me, and didn’t move his hand. I was feeling better, stronger. Like I’d just taken a long crawl through the desert and he was tipping a cup of cool water to my lips.

That sort of kindness did not make sense coming from him. I couldn’t look in his eyes, didn’t want to see the concern there. He was a confusing man. I liked it better when I could just hate him and not have to think he was capable of compassion. So I gazed past him, toward the end of the alley.

The watercolor people walked past the mouth of the alley, smiling, and paying no attention to us.

Weird. They looked like normal men and women. No longer twisted and zombielike, they moved down the street as if they were out shopping, going to work, enjoying the first day of spring after a hard winter.

They looked like they had been healed.

“What did you do?” I whispered. “What did you do to them?”

Dad took a deep breath and finally pulled away. His hand, when he straightened his jacket, trembled a little.

Stone, who had been grumbling like a bag of rocks in a washing machine, stepped up to me and leaned against my leg. That was nice. Since my dad wasn’t touching me, I needed Stone to breathe.

“I took an educated risk with magic and saved your life. Again.”

Oh, he had not just used that tone of voice. I glared. “You took my magic and used it without my consent.”

“
Your
magic?” He shook his head. “I thought you’d be pleased. The magic you carry healed them, restored them to a balance of light magic and dark magic together. It is how magic is meant to be. One. Whole. Not separated into two forms.”

“You will never again take my magic. For anything or anyone,” I said. “Understand?”

I pushed off the wall and strode past him to the edge of the alley. Stone paced me, a solid, breathable buddy. Not for a minute would I believe my dad was doing me favors. There was a reason he had agreed to let me step into death with him. There was a reason he hadn’t let me get eaten by the Veiled. He wanted immortality. And I was pretty sure he wanted to be the one who came out on top of this war, with magic ending up in his hands and him having final say over how it was used.

Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to let him use me in the process.

Except I had a problem. I had no idea how to find Zayvion. Just because we were Soul Complements didn’t mean I could find him in death. Right now, even the idea of touching the magic inside of me that Dad had messed with made me want to throw up. So Hounding was out.

My dad told me he knew where to find Zay. Which meant I had to cooperate with him.

I stepped up to the mouth of the alley. Watercolor people walked by, stopped to talk to one another, though I could not hear their words. They didn’t seem to notice I was there. At all.

I waved my hand. Nothing. Not even a glance. I was a ghost to them just as they had been ghosts to me in life.

Dad stopped next to me. “You have always underestimated your natural ability,” he said, with a tone I could not place. “Do you see what we have accomplished together? The healing of souls with the magic you carry. We have healed souls in death. With light and dark magic.”

“We? No, you stuck your hands in my chest and stole my magic and threw it at them. If you try that again, you won’t have hands. Where’s Zayvion?”

Okay, maybe I was a little rusty on the whole cooperation thing.

“Where did I go wrong with you?”

“You never listened to me, to what I needed from a . . . from a father. You never once had time for me. Not even when Mom left and I thought my whole damn world was going to end.”

He pulled back, surprised. I didn’t bother to hope he felt something else, like regret or guilt or shame. No, those emotions were beyond my father. He wasn’t built with that kind of heart.

“Allison, I have always cared for you and I have tried—”

“Where’s Zayvion?” I repeated.

He held my gaze a moment, while we both decided if we were going to let my little emotional outburst slide.

“There is a man we must meet,” he said, letting me win the unspoken argument. “He will take us to Zayvion’s soul.”

He started walking. I swallowed my anger until I didn’t feel like yelling. After a few seconds, I followed him.

The street was black and white cobbles; the buildings rose above us like stone red castle walls, turrets at each corner.

No cars. The street wasn’t wide enough for cars. I didn’t see any functioning technology at all. Sure, there were streetlights, gothic iron-worked lanterns that blazed with multicolored flames behind thick glass shades. But no electricity, or motor-powered thing in sight.

We crossed the street, maybe east. I was pretty turned around. A building that resembled a medieval version of the Schnitzer Concert Hall was on our left. The Portland sign hung there, burning with flames of magic instead of electric lights.

I glanced at the sky. No sun. Just a hard white light that melted into brittle candy colors against the black shadows at the horizon. I hadn’t expected death to look like this, to so closely resemble the living world and yet be so foreign. I wondered if the other souls here were happy, if maybe there were nice suburbs with heated pools and country-sides with ghost cows and ghost chickens and ghost people raising ghost crops.

“What man are we meeting? Is he one of the Veiled?”

“There are other beings in death than the Veiled. Souls who exist here.”

“Like you?”

“Very much so.”

Since he was being talkative again, I decided to try to get a little more information out of him.

“Aren’t you a Veiled now?”

“Technically. Most Veiled are only a fraction of a living person—the part of them that paid the price for using magic, played out like a film with just a flicker of the soul to light it. An echo.”

“Echoes don’t attack people.”

That got a tight smile out of him. “The Veiled have not always wandered the world attacking people. When light magic and dark magic were one, the Veiled were more like ghosts, and could be summoned and asked for specific knowledge. Our history is rich because of it.”

“Why hasn’t anyone put light and dark magic back together? It’d get rid of the Veiled, right?”

He shrugged. “Some of us have tried and failed. Some of us haven’t given up trying.”

The walk felt like an uphill chug. Even with my hand on Stone’s head, I wasn’t getting enough air to fill my lungs. “What has to be done to fix it?”

“Someone has to contain it.”

“Come again?”

“There must be a Focal to contain both light and dark magic.”

“And no one wants the job?”

“Anyone who’s tried it has died.”

“Zayvion can wield dark and light magic.”

“For brief amounts of time, without going insane or losing control, yes. The Focal must hold magic, light and dark, together long enough for it to mend.”

“How long does it take to mend?”

“No one’s survived long enough for us to know.”

I could see why people weren’t rushing to volunteer.

“We’re almost there.” He pointed. “Just a little farther, by the river.”

If we stepped through the gate in St. Johns, I wondered if he meant the Willamette River.

“Are we in St. Johns?”

“We’re in death. The two worlds do not directly align. That makes navigation . . . difficult. And there is a perceived misalignment in time.”

“Time? What? How long have we been here?”

“That is not—” He glanced up suddenly.

I didn’t hear anything, even with my good ears. Stone didn’t react either. He just kept walking smooth and steady, growling so softly it was a comforting purr under my palm.

“I believe,” Dad said, “we’ve arrived.”

We were at the corner of the street. Gothic high-rises stacked to our right and left. A few more steps and the city opened up, revealing a river as wide as the Willamette, but filled with fast-flowing black water. Beneath the water flashed ribbons of magic, metallic rainbows and jagged lines, sparking and weaving glyphs that disappeared as soon as they were formed, like fish nipping the surface of the water.

“The Willamette?” I asked, because it didn’t look like the river. “The Columbia?”

“The Rift between life and death, light and dark,” my father said.

“Exactly,” my father said.

Whoa.

I looked away from the river. My dad stood beside me. And standing beside him, was my dad.

That dad, the second version of him, looked younger than the dad who had crossed into death with me. New Dad had jet-black hair without a trace of gray, and instead of wearing a business suit, he wore black casual slacks and a black dress shirt.

“Daniel,” New Dad said. “This is interesting.”

“Daniel.” Old Dad nodded. “Different than I imagined.”

“Isn’t it?” New Dad said.

Then they both smiled the exact same smile. Narcissism times two.

Oh, get a room already.

“It is good to see you, Allison,” New Dad said.

I’d been standing there like an idiot. One dad was more than enough for me. Especially on a stroll through death when he’d already gotten grabby with my magic. Two dads? Worst. Day. Ever. And how the hell did that work anyway?

“Why?” I demanded. Not “how,” because I didn’t care how he had split himself in two. I just wanted to know his reason for doing it.

“It happened a long time ago,” he said dismissively. “You were a little girl. It was a price I had to pay. A part of me died.”

“That’s crazy. What in the world is worth killing yourself for?”

Those green eyes of his caught my gaze. “You tell me, daughter.”

I couldn’t hold his gaze. I knew what I believed was worth walking into death and back again for—love. I didn’t want to know if he felt that way too.

I looked away and saw dark, four-legged beasts, bigger than Stone, slinking along the edges of the street toward us. Silent as a starving wolf pack closing in on prey, they were the Hungers—creatures who crossed through the gates and fed on magic and magic users.

And right now, I was pretty sure we were their prey.

Magic eaters. Killers. I reached for the katana. I didn’t know how I was going to wield the sword against a dozen of the beasts with one hand stuck to Stone, but I wasn’t going to stand there and let the Hungers run us down. Well, run me down.

“Allison?” Old Dad said. “What do you see?”

A chill washed over my skin. There wasn’t a lot of wind here, but the slight breeze dug beneath my clothes and made me feel stretched and cold.

“Hungers.” I didn’t turn, didn’t take my eyes off the beasts.

“Do not provoke them.”

Stone growled like a vacuum cleaner full of nails.