Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
Three more people clattered through the gaping hole where the front door had been in a rush, coming to a harried stop in the shell-shocked silence.
On the floor of the Greenwood Mansion, Fiona and Valeria both lay still. Joan’s momentum pushed her up to her feet, dashing to Mik, who was standing on the other side of the room with a hand pressed to their chest, like they felt the same blow that had killed Fiona.
“Are you alright?” Joan asked, shaking them slightly. “Mik? Mik! I can’t believe you.”
Mik’s eyes finally met Joan’s, brimming over with tears. “Can’t believe I started throwing things like a toddler?” they said weakly. Then they dissolved into sobs. Joan pulled them tight to her chest, and she was joined by another set of arms, CZ looking wild on her other side.
“You weren’t at the hotel,” CZ said. “You weren’t at the hotel, you were all gone.”
Grace put a hand on Joan’s back; Joan knew it was her, even without turning. She reached for her, and Grace laced her fingers with Joan’s.
“Fiona…” Grace said dully. “She’s…?”
Joan couldn’t say it. She looked back at Grace, who was unable to look at the body, and Grace’s lip wobbled before she bit down on it. For as much as Joan hated Fiona, she had been Grace’s mentor. Fiona had people who, despite everything, would still mourn her.
“Sorry,” Grace whispered, wiping her eyes with her free hand. “I should be glad.”
An anguished cry made Joan turn.
Ronnie had arrived at the same time as Grace and CZ, her black hair wired through with gray.
She had sunk to her knees over Valeria, and she shoved Merlin and his paltry healing spell aside, her hands lighting up an icy blue.
“She needs a hospital,” Ronnie said. “I can put her soul in stasis to keep the damage from progressing, but we must move her to a team of actual healers.” She smoothed a tender hand across Valeria’s hair. “Oh, my darling, what have you done?”
From the crowd, one or two people rushed over to Valeria, glowing with healing magic.
Merlin hovered nearby. “Come on, Val,” he murmured. “You won, now get up.”
Grace’s brow furrowed as she looked at Ronnie, then Joan, then Ronnie. She blinked, and a gold film fuzzed over her eyes. “She pulls in magic like you, Joan.”
Joan realized she’d never actually seen Ronnie cast. She tried to concentrate, see what Grace was seeing, but though Ronnie was alight with magic, she wasn’t the only one.
Joan swore. “Grace, tell me you see what I see, on Fiona.”
Grace’s breathing went shallow. “She’s still channeling.”
One of Fiona’s fingers twitched.
She was gaining strength every second.
A hand jerked.
“She was dead!” Joan said. “I saw. She stopped channeling for a moment. I felt it.”
“A resurrection spell?” Grace said fearfully. “No one’s ever successfully written one.”
“No one had done what Fiona did to Mik,” CZ said grimly. “Until Fiona.”
Astoria’s sword was out, pointing at Fiona’s body as the other hand spasmed, then the arm. “Is it one and done?” she asked, and Joan knew with a horrifying finality that Astoria would do it, she’d go over there right now and kill Fiona a second time.
Grace was furiously trying to yank some magic to herself to cast. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. She’s hooked to some huge power source, so as long as there’s a link, it might keep regenerating her. Is it New York? Is it the same thing as Joan?”
The flesh on Fiona’s chest began to knit together.
“How do we deplete it, then?” Astoria asked, voice gaining strength, so practical, a good man in a storm.
Grace burst out another desperate “I don’t know!” Then: “I can’t undo whatever spell she cast on herself to increase her channeling ability without seeing it first, and it’s buried under layers of whatever else she has on.”
Fiona’s head twitched.
The moment she came back fully, she’d attack again, and this time, without the bounds of a duel, she’d go after the whole room. She had that ability, whatever she’d done to herself to boost her magic, to imitate Joan—
To be just like Joan…
Joan stepped forward, closer to Fiona. She’d seemed so unsteady during the fight, barely able to control her spells, like they weren’t strong enough containers for her abilities.
Whatever she’d done to herself, she hadn’t had enough time to hone it.
She was like Joan, channeling huge amounts of magic into flimsy spells one wrong move away from going berserk, like the paper ball Joan had made with Mik.
If she was like Joan, then she was channeling New York too, cycling magic so fast that she was sucking it from across the city, moving quantities so vast, it was like touching a live wire.
Shielding herself with manipulated pocket realms to circumvent her body’s inability to process that much magic.
Maybe Fiona didn’t even know about its sentience.
Did it speak to her like it spoke to Joan?
The thought triggered a hot burst of jealousy. How dare Fiona use ancient magic for her own selfish, human desires, paying it no respect, offering it no sacrifice? Joan had nearly given it her life, time and time again. It was Joan’s city. It was hers and it was alive.
New York was alive. It would be nearly impossible to deplete, as Astoria wanted to, which meant Fiona could resurrect again and again and again.
Fiona’s eyes drifted open. Astoria must have noticed at the same time as Joan, because she brought her sword up, slashing down at the woman to kill her again, to gain them more time.
The sword clanged against a blue cube.
Fiona sat up, shaking her head, magic flowing toward her faster now as she sat protected by the spell she’d cast over herself.
Selene’s voice rose. “Run! Out of the room, everyone get out of here!” All the faces were a smear as people began to stampede.
The Greenwoods were still huddled around Valeria, trying to keep her tethered to life with their tiny spells. Joan’s friends remained at her back, but the rest of the room evacuated in a flood of rushing feet, including the two healers who had previously been trying to help Valeria.
Joan had to do something. She looked down at her hands. How? Fiona now had the ability to suck in endless magic, without the limits magic poisoning placed on her. Limits Joan herself faced. If only New York could turn its back on her, use its mind to deny her.
Joan’s head snapped up.
Fiona was rising to her feet with a groan.
Joan had bargained with the city before.
She’d told it not to kill Astoria, made it funnel into her, split it so Astoria wouldn’t get overloaded.
If it had a mind, maybe it could make a decision.
She breathed in, winced. Fiona’s grip was getting stronger, and Joan’s toehold was closing.
She had to think past the pain, channel harder.
She tried again, tasted blood in her mouth.
“Stop that,” Astoria snapped, grabbing Joan’s shoulder to spin her to face the group. “Why the hell are you trying to channel? You’ll kill yourself; you can’t take in as much magic as Fiona in your current state.”
CZ’s face lit up. “Grace can help! Grace—help?”
“I can!” Grace cried in a burst of inspiration. “We left this morning because I had an idea about magic poisoning, and I needed to go home to—whatever. I think I can help shield you from the effects.”
“Fiona’s using pocket realms,” Joan said. “And cycling.”
“It’s a loophole,” Grace said. “A way to dodge the effects by never letting magic accumulate in her body. It’s half the puzzle.
She was looking at humans for a reason. She looked at Joan for a reason.
Humans naturally protect themselves from magic by possessing a sort of barrier; it’s what makes them sick and keeps them from channeling.
Joan demonstrated how to channel more magic—by having little to no barrier around her.
Or, by having less of the thing that keeps humans from magic, she can draw in more magic.
But it’s true for the poisoning too—curing it isn’t about the symptoms, it’s about removing that which makes us resemble humans.
Making us less human and more magic. And who are the only creatures truly immune to magic, who are essentially just figments of magic themselves, and so spells don’t work on them? ”
“Ghosts!” CZ helpfully supplied. He tilted his head conspiratorially. “She explained all this to me already, with Billy. Repeatedly, because my brain is small and I didn’t totally follow how she arrived at her conclusions.”
“So your intention is…?” Joan asked.
“To kill you, just a little.”
“Absolutely not,” Astoria said.
“If I untether her from life, temporarily, and slowly, controlled, we’ll boost her channeling ability and lessen the friction between her body and magic,” Grace insisted, eyes lit with a feverish light. “She’ll become magic.”
Did Joan want to die? No, not even a little. She remembered what it was like to die. She’d almost died at the Night Market and in Astoria’s arms.
And each time the pain in her body had faded right before she passed out. Each time, she’d channeled even more magic.
She’d assumed it was shock, but what if it wasn’t, what if Grace was right?
“Greenwoods,” Fiona called. She laughed, stumbled sideways. “Greenwoods, your time is up.”
“Do it, then,” Joan said.
“You don’t even know what Joan’s plan is here,” Astoria argued, as Grace started casting. “It’s likely reckless—”
“And stupid,” CZ added.
“And terrible.” Mik sniffled.
“But she’s gotten us this far,” Grace finished, yanking magic to herself hand over fist as she struggled to gather enough to cast. “And it’s controlled, meant to mimic the very specific window between being alive enough to channel and too dead to channel.”
“Here,” Wren said, stepping up, and she started channeling too, drawing in magic and feeding it to Grace. “Astoria, help us.”
Astoria’s face warred between obeying Wren and stopping Joan.
Wren, as always, won.
Astoria channeled, the three witches attracting enough magic to let Grace pull off her new spell.
Astoria coughed and spat a bloody globule on the floor.
Grace’s spell settled on Joan like the closing of a casket. Joan lurched to her knees, gasping as her heart slowed, her vision dimmed.
A shard fractured off Fiona’s cube, whizzed for the Greenwoods, and was only just thwarted by Selene, who nudged it off course.
No time, no time. Grace didn’t quite seem finished, but it was good enough.
Joan was dead enough, and she didn’t want to die more, because, gods, her body was moving slow and sluggish, her thoughts were coming to a stop.
Before she faded too far, Joan let her panic carry her.
She pushed past her fading discomfort and reached for the heart of magic.
“Not yet!” Grace yelled, but Joan channeled, hard.
Grace’s spell stopped, incomplete, as Joan took the magic from it, from the air. Astoria and Wren were forced to leave off as Joan gained strength.
Joan dug her fingernails into the wall of magic swirling around Fiona and ripped off a chunk. Then another. I am alive.
I’m still alive.
Her head split open with a headache; it hurt, still, even with Grace’s spell, it still hurt so badly, but Joan kept enough strength to keep going. Furiously, she waded into the stream of magic Fiona was stealing.
Come to me instead, she thought at it.
It shuddered, this uncertain magic, and began to diverge.
Fiona turned on her, abandoning her attacks on Joan’s family. “What are you doing?!” she yelled, and Joan doubled down, pulling more magic in. She needed enough to talk to New York, just a bit more.
Fiona threw a magical attack at Joan, but Astoria was there to slice it away with her sword.
“I have you,” Astoria said. “Keep going.”
Joan channeled harder, fighting for every inch of purchase, wearing her mental grasp down to bare, stubby finger bones. Every inch she gained over Fiona was a triumph. All the practice she’d had under Fiona’s experiments prepared her for this moment, this fight.
This magic’s mine, she wanted to say. This magic is me. You will never beat me at it.
Fiona’s face transformed with panic as she fought back, trying to gather the magic into her lap, her only defense. “I’m so close,” she said, voice muffled, echoing strangely in the back of Joan’s head.
Magic gave way like the opening of a dam, diverting to Joan in full. Joan sucked it in, and relished the pain, and leaned into the burn, until she felt the city shift.
New York! she called. I’ve come to strike a deal.