Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
Joan’s body was very far away from her.
New York’s eyes opened, peering down at her in sets of two, then four, then a million.
In the room around her, Joan knew Fiona was still leeching enough of a thread to both launch attacks at Joan and keep her own defenses up.
Joan didn’t have much time before her concentration was inevitably disrupted and Fiona gained the upper hand.
I need you to cut off Fiona Ganon, Joan pleaded.
Why should we turn from one of you? magic whispered, dancing around Joan’s body.
What right do you have that she does not?
Magic belongs to all of Circe’s children; that was decreed long ago, when we were set free and given many names, and fractured into many pieces with many minds, and over time allowed to come back together as one.
That was a bit hard to reason with. How did you convince magic itself, which was an impartial force, that it should stop working with one witch?
Then dismantle the spell she cast on herself to increase her magic capacity, Joan asked. She isn’t meant to use that much magic, you can see it in her casting. She can barely control her spells.
Again, Green Witch, magic said. We ask, why?
Why, why? Because Joan said so, but who was Joan to decide such a thing? No, no time for self-doubt. She had only her heart and her wants, great enough to encompass the world.
What can I give you in return? Joan asked desperately.
What needs do we have? We are endless, magic replied. Its attention was fading, Joan could see that. We care not if one witch can or cannot maintain control over how much of us she consumes. She should only pray she keeps a tight enough grip.
Joan knew that fight well. All her life she had been unable to cast precisely because her spells would always break, but Fiona had managed to scale her spells to match her power.
Or… had she? Joan didn’t actually know if the spells were more powerful, or if Fiona was merely regulating how much magic she was putting into any given one, toeing the edge of what it could hold without actually bursting it.
So long as she kept a tight enough grip, magic obeyed her.
But what if Joan could overload her enough that Fiona was forced to put more magic than she’d intended into a spell that couldn’t hold it?
Would it go haywire, burst, and backfire?
That would put everyone in the room in danger; magic wouldn’t discriminate if Fiona cast something lethal, it would rip everyone to shreds.
It was a recklessly stupid move, which Joan couldn’t risk.
She had limits. Like Grace said, all spells had limits.
Even the one Fiona must have cast on herself to mimic Joan.
New York, if you won’t turn your back on Fiona, will you channel into me? Joan asked. I will give you anything.
Magic’s laugh was the distant ringing of a thousand church bells.
Your fate is prewritten, Green Witch. We see it. In this half-formed state, your ancestors dream of you. The world waits; if you want it, take it, it sang, and vanished.
Joan could feel it like a massive wave on the horizon, just out of reach. All she had to do was throw out a hand and take it.
A deep breath in.
Joan tunneled deep, deeper into herself than she’d ever gone before, deeper into magic, and when her muscles screamed at her, when her ribs squeezed, she took it gladly, she let it kill her, she let it twist her into something less human and turned the pain into more magic.
She reached, and New York met her.
Magic tore through her system, galloping with the force of ten thousand horses, sailing with the might of a thousand ships, but Joan needed to hold on only long enough to do what she’d once done with Grace.
Grace’s spell on Joan failed under the onslaught.
Her heartbeat resumed a normal speed; her vision cleared.
Magic turned to poison within her, wrapping like a serpent around her organs and squeezing, hard.
But it was all a trick, because whether she died for a second by Grace’s hand or she died under the magic, she was still untethering herself from this mortal realm.
Legs, I have legs. I need them. She searched for her body, plunging back into it.
Magic sparked off her like an electrical fire.
Joan pushed past Astoria and her startled protest. Fiona’s projectiles shattered off the surge of power surrounding Joan.
The woman’s eyes were wide, furious, as Joan lunged for her, and her magic overloaded Fiona’s barrier spell and fried the cube, taking it down, and Joan reached out, grabbing Fiona’s face in her hands.
“I’m really sorry,” Joan breathed, lips trailing magic in a fine green mist. “I’m only righting the scales.”
She poured every ounce of magic she had into Fiona. Far beyond what Fiona had been channeling, far beyond what should have been in that one room. Joan pulled on all of New York, wiping out magic across the city as she drowned and drowned and drowned Fiona.
And Fiona, in all her greed, in all her stupidity, took it in.
“You ignorant girl,” Fiona said, hands coming up to secure Joan’s hands to her own face, sucking it in greedily. “What are you playing at?”
Joan kept going, stretching the limits, until she reached out of the city, her hands claws that raked across the state.
Fiona’s face shifted in increments, from triumph, to confusion, to, finally, fear. Her hands dug into Joan’s now, trying to pry them off, but magic glued them together, and Joan was as endless as the earth. She pushed harder, her vision doubling, tripling.
Not yet, not yet.
Not until—Then she felt it.
Something in Fiona popped.
Whatever spell she’d come up with to channel like Joan disintegrated, and without it, her pocket realm magic, the healing she was doing on herself, flickered and faded out.
Fiona’s tolerance tanked, wounds blooming like roses across her body.
Red clouded her eyes; blood leaked from her nose.
If Grace was right, there would be a small window between death making her more tolerant to magic and the magic killing her. Joan needed to surpass that window.
But right in that moment, Joan’s own window closed. She tipped too far, and her vision blacked out completely. And she felt it; her heart paused on the edge of too long. She let go of magic with a gasp.
Fiona shoved her away, sending her flying in a magical burst that threw Joan into Astoria’s waiting arms.
Fiona let out a wordless scream. “What did you do?”
Joan’s legs were jelly, her breath wheezes. Astoria’s arms were a protective cage around her. She whispered words of healing in her ear, and Joan’s heart began to stabilize. Don’t die, she sternly told herself. Live. Live even though it hurts more than dying.
“I bargained with New York,” Joan said.
Fiona’s face creased in confusion. “New York?”
She was lit up like a firework, staggering as her body overloaded with magic. She needed to let it out, fast, but the moment she did, she’d be back on everyone else’s level, and someone like Astoria could subdue her.
Fiona’s eyes darted around, and magic trailed between her and Joan, disintegrating, but in that connection, Joan could feel the edge of Fiona’s thoughts.
I’m too close to fail. She tripped back, barely staying on her feet as blood sprayed from her nose. They don’t know what’s coming for this city.
I almost had it.
Almost.
Fiona’s trembling body stabilized slightly. No, no no no. The window. She looked up, past Joan.
Grace. I’m sorry.
“Just let it out!” Grace shouted. “Fiona, you don’t have to do this! Please, release the magic!”
But Fiona’s face was defiant. “If I go down,” she said around a mouthful of blood, “the Greenwoods go down with me.”
There was no spell on earth powerful enough to contain that amount of magic; if she released it into a spell, it wouldn’t explode as normal. It would turn Manhattan into a crater.
Did she know that?
Fiona’s eyes were alight. “Grace,” she said, “don’t let them do to you what they did to me.”
She must not know, or she wouldn’t risk Grace like that. Still she thought she had the upper hand here, that she could control the magic.
Fiona released the spell.
It swirled as intended for one second.
Then it broke, magic losing its confines to expand out of control.
For the first time, Joan saw regret on Fiona’s face. She was still staring at Grace; Fiona’s hand came up like she could cancel the spell in time.
Joan knew better. She threw her hands wide, imagining a ring around Fiona. Magic nullification, Grace had said, that was what Joan was good for.
That was something she was willing to die for outright.
Fiona’s spell incinerated the woman, turning her to dust, but where it stretched beyond the mental circle of chalk Joan had drawn, Joan sucked it in, nullifying the spell and releasing it instantaneously back into the air.
But it was so much, and Joan knew this time she wasn’t going to be able to gather it all.
She was going to fail.
Everyone, everyone she loved.
Joan gasped, tears filling her eyes. Please.
The air superheated, her friends crying out and shying away from Fiona.
Green Witch, New York said with some begrudging admiration. You have proven yourself beyond death.
A pause.
This, and this alone, we will aid you with at no cost.
The room shivered with power. The pressure lifted off Joan. Magic swept through her cleanly, dispersing neatly, defanged, into the world.
A hole opened in the Greenwood Mansion’s ceiling. The debris rained down in the circle where Fiona had stood but disintegrated under the force of the magic trapped inside Joan’s barrier.
Joan held on, magic tumbling through her painlessly, until the light began to fade, until the magic turned sluggish, until there was nothing left to channel.
She held on long after all the magic had died out, and the room had settled, and everyone started murmuring to one another to check that they were still alive.
She’d have held on until the end of time, if it meant keeping everyone safe.
Even as her lungs heaved, and her vision faded, and her ears rang with the rush of her own blood.
Joan kept at it until CZ stepped in front of her to fold her shaking fingers into his own fists.
“You can stop,” he said gently. “Joan, we’re all safe.”
She looked into his eyes. He nodded encouragingly.
Only then did she let go.