“Captain, can I move forward for a better shot?” the man with the dart gun asked, and Edden nodded. Immediately he slunk forward, stealthy with urban guerrilla tactics.
Trent rubbed a hand over his face, starting at the feel of his bristles. “Rachel, I don’t know what he’s going to do if that wave hits him.”
“He’s going to kill himself,” Landon said, and I spun, having forgotten the nasty man cuffed to the fallen sprinkler system. “Pray that whoever is pulling mystics from your line catches them before they reach Bancroft, or he’s going to take us with him.”
My gut clenched. If I used magic, I’d kill us faster.
“He tried to rescue them,” Landon said, chin lifting to indicate Bancroft. “He was going to put them back in the line so the Free Vampires couldn’t use them to put the undead asleep. But it went wrong. They won’t leave him, and now he’s insane.”
“Here!” the crazed man shouted. “We’re here! Join us!”
“I told him it wasn’t a good idea,” Landon said, but the thread of satisfaction in him made me think he was lying. “You can’t talk to the divine and survive.”
But I had.
“Trent!” Bancroft shouted, spinning to us. “Bring your goat! It’s your destiny! You must make amends for what your mother refused to do!”
Excuse me?
Eyes on Bancroft, Trent took my elbow. “Don’t even think about using this as a way to get near him,” he muttered.
Cackling, Bancroft spun back to the opening, dancing a weird shuffle with his arms waving over his head as if he could fly. “She’s coming. She’s coming!”
“Rache, look at that!” Jenks exclaimed, and my lips parted. Beyond Bancroft was a sparkling cloud. It drifted below us, just over the tops of Cincy’s buildings. Beneath the distortion were little flares as magic misfired, but the sirens were minimizing the situation. I’d seen that cloud before on the bridge, and my fear tightened to a hard pit. Mystics.
Edden chewed on his lower lip, eyes on Bancroft at the edge and his man inching closer. “Edden, call your man back,” I whispered, face cold. “If Bancroft does any magic under that wave, it will misfire! I can protect us, but not if he’s way over there. Get him back here. Now!”
“Stand down!” Edden shouted, gesturing frantically. “Newman, get back here!”
“Dust!” Bancroft shouted, spinning to the opening as the first of the wave sparkled over him. “Oh God! Make it stop!”
He wants to kill himself, I realized, and as Newman ran for us, I yanked Trent closer. “Go to ground, Jenks!” I shouted, then bubbled everyone I could reach before the wave hit us, feeling my power lick up and around the running officer as I fell to a knee and the circle invoked. A molecule-thin barrier swam up, bisected by a hundred cords, a hundred ways in to those who knew. I prayed that the mystics didn’t.
“Make it sto-o-o-op!” Bancroft howled. And then a sparkling lilt seemed to lift through me with the sound of wings as the wave hit us. My skin prickled, and Trent looked at me in shock. I knew my aura was sparkling with them. The Goddess’s eyes, her mystics, were on us.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, not knowing what for, and then I cowered as Bancroft’s own spell misfired. He screamed, his high-pitched cries cutting off with a gurgle when his lungs melted, and I covered my ears, trying not to hear him.
Wild magic beat at us, crawling over the surface of my circle for the way in. My heart thudded when it found a resonance in my chi, and the first feelings of tendrils sought me out. Please no, I thought, feeling that same something that was digging through my circle quiver awake—already inside me. A thousand eyes spun, rising up in anger as they recognized me.
Stay out, I begged, knowing it was my aura they were following, tricked into believing I was the way back to her. To take them in would draw Bancroft’s spell into my circle, and they lingered, intensifying his charm as they refused to move on. Fire danced over us as the world burned and the air grew warm. Sparkles skated over the layer of ever-after protecting us. Please, please, please, see us not, I thought as the floor burned, and from inside me—the way made open from the resonances between me and my line—I heard a mocking laugh.
For now, the Goddess taunted, her voice clear as water in the chaos of my thoughts.
Trent yanked from me, mouth open and shock in his eyes. Then he jerked his head up as the insane wild magic darted away, drawn by the sensation of something brighter than my aura.
Panting, I let the bubble drop. For a heartbeat there was silence, and then came the hissing shush of the sprinkler system flicking on. I looked up, glad now that the ceiling was a twisted wreck and we were still dry. The scent of wet carpet rose, thickened, and began to purge the reek of burning skin.
“What the devil was that?” someone said, and I fell back, hiding my face as I sat on my butt and held my knees to my chin, rocking almost. The scent of burning plastic was slowly fading, and I could hear the men moving about in the superhot, increasingly moist air. Whether she was divine or simply a force of nature, it was obvious that the Goddess was real. Her mystics had opened a channel. I’d heard her again—in my head as her mystics sought me out. Trent had heard her too.
Trent’s touch shocked through me, and he pulled back as I started. He looked haunted, and ash covered his hands where he had touched something. It was on me now, and I thought the black smear was fitting as it marked me. “Rachel? Did you just . . .”
He couldn’t say it. I didn’t blame him. “I think so,” I said dully.
Dropping down to me, he peered at me in concern. “Are you okay?”
He was tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, and closing my eyes, I tilted my head so I could feel his hand on my cheek. It sang through me, tingling with the last of the wild magic, and I had no right to it. “I don’t know.”
“You are a demon!” Landon shouted, expression vehement and stumbling when his cuffed hand brought him up short. “How dare you speak to the divine!”
Numb, I could do nothing as he struggled to reach me, finally working his cuff around a bend in the piping and running at me. The two officers, finding something they could cope with, tackled him.
“Get off!” he shouted from under them. “Get off me!”
Edden lowered a hand to help me rise. “Great. I think he’s got it now.”
My hand was trembling as I put it in Edden’s and stood. Bancroft was a pile of twisted, blackened bones in the middle of the charred top floor. His rings were still on his cooked fingers, and I wondered about the shackle on his ankle, up to now hidden behind his robe.
“Get him out of here,” Edden said, and I flinched when Jenks’s dust hit me and burned with wild magic. Bancroft had said mystics lived in pixies. Why had I never felt it before now?
“That could have gone better,” Trent said, and Jenks landed on his shoulder instead of mine. Landon’s tirade cut off as the elevator door closed. The sudden silence broken by the hiss of sprinklers was somehow worse.
“At least he didn’t jump.” Fingers fumbling for his phone, Edden looked at Bancroft’s remains and sighed. “Mr. Kalamack, I’d appreciate it if you could give us an hour of your time at your earliest convenience. Rachel, you too. There’s going to be an inquiry. I can feel it already.”
“Sure.” I hate reports. I turned away, shuffling to the edge of the dry spot to watch the cloud of insane mystics sparkling in the sun as they continued on toward the Hollows. Sirens heralded their progress. The arena was right in the way, and my gut clenched at the thought of all those people huddled in fear as it passed over.
I’d like to think that the mystics had moved on because of the Goddess, that she’d driven them off, but the truth of it was they’d left because they’d felt a magnet stronger than my aura, a brighter light. Somewhere down there in the streets, someone had called the mystics away, called them to be collected, and with that, the wave would end. Slowly my numb stupor evolved into a tight anger. We had to stop these people.
The sound of Jenks’s wings was loud, but I felt his dust first, like the soft prickling of wild magic. “That was some freaky shit, Rache. You okay?”
I nodded, watching the cloud go faint in the sun as I took off my hard hat. Dropping it, I grabbed someone’s scarf, glad the file cabinet I’d stashed my gun in was in the dry zone. Using the scarf like a potholder, I opened the drawer. Sure enough, my cherry-red splat gun was coated in busted charms. Depressed, I wrapped the scarf around it and tucked it in my bag. The heat might have destroyed the charms’ potency, but I doubted it.
“David!” Edden said loudly, and I spun to the elevator, but he was on his phone. “I can’t bring the wave any closer to you than that. Did you get a fix on where these bastards are?”
“David,” I whispered, striding back to Trent. “You’re talking to David? Give me that!”
“Alone?” Edden said loudly, holding me off and grinning all the wider. Jenks, eavesdropping at his shoulder, gave me a thumbs-up. “Rachel and Mr. Kalamack are with me, and I do believe they can get there faster than that.”
“David?” I exclaimed, knowing he’d hear me. “You found them?”
“Will you be quiet?” Edden said, hand over the speaker. “I’m trying to talk to David.”
Frustrated, I dropped back to my heels. “You know where they are?” I asked when Edden ended the call with a terse “We’re on our way.” But I knew the answer already by his smile, both satisfied and predatory.
“That little coffee shop a few blocks down,” he said, gesturing for us to head for the elevators. “He’s got them pinned down but he’s alone. I don’t know if we can get there before their reinforcements arrive.”
Junior’s, I thought, my mood sobering as we passed the last covered corpse, still uncharred under my protection bubble. Of course.
Seventeen
I pulled up short as I strode out of the quiet FIB lobby and into the bright sun. It wasn’t the sudden wind that stopped me, but the cry of recognition and the surge from the newspeople. They’d seen the explosion at the top of the tower, and they knew Trent’s face, even stubbled as it was.
“Whoa! How we going to get through that?” Jenks said in disgust, his dust like needles, holding an unexpected energy as the bright sparkles slid through my aura.
Sighing, I rocked to a stop, unwilling to push through the crowd. “I can’t take you anywhere,” I muttered, and Trent looked up from his phone conversation with a frustrated acceptance. The call had started in the elevator, and I was amazed at how he was able to keep his cool when everything was falling apart. But that’s what made Trent, Trent.
“I am so sorry,” he said to me, then “Make it work” to Quen before ending the call.
Edden was craning to see over the heads to the car he’d called for, but the reporters had converged, ducking under the plastic ribbon and overwhelming the few officers out front. Backup was at least half an hour out. It would be over by then. Hell, it would be over in ten minutes! We didn’t have time for this, and I caught Jenks’s eye.
“Go tell David we’re on our way,” I whispered, lips barely moving. “Do what you can.”
“You got it,” he said, and I watched enviously as he lifted off, unnoticed as he flew over the tops of everyone.
Trent was watching too, a touch of melancholy in him. “I am so tired of this,” he said softly. Knowing it was a bad idea, I sent my fingers to find his, and he started at the tiny squeeze, returning it full force. But he didn’t let go, and I froze at the memory of that last kiss.
“I’ll go first,” Edden said, eyes narrowed. “Stick to no comment. I don’t know what kind of a spin I have to put on this yet.”
I took a deep breath as the somewhat squat man began waving his arms, dropping down the last few steps to the sidewalk to force a path. My hand slipped from Trent’s, and he touched the small of my back, making me go next. I stifled a shiver, something in me rebelling, another part enjoying the sensation I knew I had no right to call mine. Head up against the shouted questions, I fell into place behind Edden. We got about three steps.
“Captain Edden.” Shoved and harried, a woman with her hair pulled back into an unusually informal ponytail fell into the squat man, forcing him to recognize her. “Sorry about that,” she said as she found her feet and gave him a winning smile. “Can you comment upon the most recent explosion and destruction of the top floor of the FIB building?”
Ignoring the mic shoved at his face, Edden kept moving forward. “Not at this time.”
“Captain Edden!” a man at the back shouted, his mic held up over the heads of everyone. “Cincinnati has been closed as well as the Hollows. Give us something, or we’re going to start making things up!” There was a light titter, but it wasn’t much of a joke.
“Mr. Kalamack! Can you comment on what you and Ms. Morgan were doing at the FIB today? Was that demon or elven magic?”
“We can make stuff up about that, too!” someone else said, getting a more certain laugh.
The cameras were snapping; I wasn’t the only one who liked Trent’s new look. He took a breath to speak, only to be cut off by Edden. “Another wave is passing through Cincinnati,” the captain said tersely as he tried to get us moving again. “The alarm system is working. I’ll make a statement at the arena as soon as we’ve been over the data.”
“Or like never,” someone muttered. The crush of people was oppressive, and I stifled a surge of panic. Trent’s hand landed on me, steadying me with his calm as if I were one of his horses.