44 ❤ Kat
Another mana surge hits just as we get to the Central Library. I double over as the wave of energy rushes over us, holding on to Dad for dear life. The earth is quaking desperately, too, like it can’t hold back anymore.
“Come on,” I say, leading Dad through the library.
“What makes you think she’ll be here?” Dad asks.
“She observes every Ritual,” I say. “I’m willing to bet it’s so she can make sure it goes right—well, wrong—every time,” I add darkly.
A storm of anger clouds his eyes. “Now listen, I know you’re upset, and I am, too, but we’re just going to talk to her and figure out what happened. If there was any foul play, then…”
I’ve run as fast as I could with my prom dress and its voluminous petticoats floating around me like a cloud, and I’m not getting there fast enough.
I hike up my dress, gathering my petticoats as I dash forward. “Rotunda’s this way!”
There are no staff, no people quietly browsing shelves, no children running and laughing and playing. The earth has stopped shaking, but it feels foreboding with the books cluttered on the ground, shelves toppled over haphazardly.
The rotunda comes into view, its stately murals and elaborate curved ceiling reaching upward to the sky, bearing witness to decades’ worth of Rituals.
The runic circle has been painstakingly painted on the floor, and the cluster of cornerstone volunteers huddle nervously in the corner, waiting.
Members of the council, folks from the press, and academics from various universities hover expectantly, notebooks and cameras out.
Shannon is standing in the center of the observers’ area like she’s holding court, and I recognize the so-called academic whispering in her ear—Professor Johnson—and the hapless graduate students from the Order.
“Shannon!” I call out like a challenge, my voice echoing through the rotunda.
Shannon catches my gaze and smiles automatically, although her expression flits through a microcosm of understandings as she watches me stride toward the circle. “Kat, duckling, what a lovely surprise,” she says, rushing forward to greet me. “Are you here to observe the Ritual?”
Gravery Kirkpatrick takes a step forward, watching with interest. “Miss Woo, how wonderful to see you. Did you change your mind about being a cornerstone? You can easily take the place of one of our other volunteers.”
I glance at Shannon, whose eyes widen in alarm.
“My dear,” she starts, “you don’t have to listen to this old codger, the Ritual is not your responsibility.” It’s familiar, and under the veneer of support I can see the machinations, the manipulations for her to get what she wants.
“Like it’s yours?” I ask. “Like how you’re observing the Ritual now just to make sure it goes the way it’s always gone, which just keeps the problem going ?
” My voice turns bitter and cold. “I wonder if we cast a memory-walk spell here for the last Ritual whether we could see what you did to Mom. What you cast to prevent her from changing the Ritual.”
Shannon tsks. “Katherine, I know you’re distressed, but really, this unfounded accusation is unbecoming of you.”
She draws three precise movements with her fingers, and then a wall draws up behind her, transparent like a sheet of rushing water. I bet it’s a barrier of some kind—something to protect Shannon and her secrets, to stop me from interfering.
“Admit it,” I say, even though her casting the spell is as much confirmation as anything. I want to hear her say it. “Tell me why you killed her.”
Shannon’s mouth twitches. “I had to,” she says. “I took no joy in it. Your mother was very dear to me, just like you are. I hope one day you’ll understand—”
“NO!” I scream at her. Behind me, I hear Dad catch up to us in the room. “I don’t!”
“You think her little plan was going to help ? It would have just made things worse,” Shannon sniffs disdainfully. “Imagine our two worlds suddenly crashing together—you can see in the past few weeks how it has caused so much chaos and strife.”
“They weren’t meant to be apart,” I say, thinking about Jìngyi desperately calling for Clarabelle to stay with her. “People have been dying to delay the natural restoration of mana.”
Behind the barrier, three figures arrive, and the council bustles over with activity as they talk. They look young, all dressed formally in gowns; they must be last-minute cornerstone volunteers, because their arrival sends all the mages into rapid discussion as runes are rechalked and drawn.
I gesture toward them, another set of promising young mages ready to give up everything. “This isn’t right,” I say.
“My great-grandfather’s creation enabled people all over the world to access the convenience of magic,” Shannon says.
“And incidentally, created a whole world that could be safe from those who would fear magic, abuse it, seek to control it.” She sighs.
“I’m not surprised you figured out about the two worlds on your own, or that you’re angry about your mother.
But her instinct to fulfill the original intention of this spell—the world isn’t ready for it.
Neither one is. We need more time, more precedence—and I’ve been building that. ”
“Your soap factories,” I say.
Shannon scoffs. “It’s not just soap—it’s a lifestyle!
You know people revere me over there; it’s quite delightful.
And when the tide changes, we will be in control because we will introduce magic to them when we’re ready, not otherwise.
” She tilts her head. “Every spell has a cost, duckling. Keeping the peace does as well. Everything I do is to keep all you fools safe from your own incompetence, and it’s exhausting how thankless it is. ”
I shake my head. “Peace would have been leaving the earth’s energy alone to begin with.
Peace would have been realizing what Richard Mayfield did was wrong, and to correct it as soon as you could.
Peace would have been not killing the one person who figured out what you were up to, someone who loved you—someone who was loved, and needed. ”
Shannon straightens her shoulders, cocking her head as her gaze hardens.
“Well, then. I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, duckling.
I can’t let you through to the Ritual because, as you know, your presence is foretold to end it all.
And we can’t have that now.” She holds her arms up and takes a classical duelist’s stance.
“And if you’re challenging me, then I must respond in kind. ”
I gulp. I don’t know anything about dueling, and there’s nothing I know that would help me stand a chance against a master like Shannon.
The magical barrier behind Shannon shimmers, imbued with her intention.
She’d cast it once she saw I could damage her reputation with the esteemed council.
Shannon expects everyone to think like her, to scheme, to plot layers of potential actions to find the best solution.
I could never beat her at chess as a child, and engaging with her in a duel is exactly what she wants, to drag out a long archaic tradition of magical showmanship to prove who’s right.
I rush forward.
I run past Shannon and throw myself into the barrier. It’s a shock of cold slime, and then once on the other side, I can hear everything in the rotunda again. I was right; it was only a sound barrier, Shannon would have never expected anyone to try to walk through it when it looked so solid.
The new cornerstones are taking their place in the diagram, and my stomach drops out beneath me when I see who it is. Jenn. Erica.
Brenda.
She is resplendent, her sheath dress shimmering with delicate beads, tight around her lithe figure.
Her hair is curled up, tendrils falling at the nape of her neck, and her face is glowing with a soft loveliness that contrasts with the fierce determination in her eyes, and the sharp wingtips of her eyeliner.
My throat goes dry.
“No, don’t do this!” I shout.
Brenda’s eyes widen in shock. “Kat?”
The earth shakes again.
Kirkpatrick beckons to the mages, a silent command. “We don’t have time. We must begin.”
Everyone gets into position with ruthless efficiency.
I pause outside the circle, a long-honed instinct never to interfere with a working spell of this magnitude.
“It’s not going to work,” I say desperately. I’d wanted time, time to figure out a solution before I interfered, and now it’s too late. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I know, and I would never want you to do anything you didn’t choose for yourself,” Brenda says. “I’m sorry I said all those things. But I’m choosing this, because I can.”
“Cease your crosstalk now,” Gravery Kirkpatrick says, gripping his cane. “Miss Woo, please join the observers to my left. Any vocal disruption now with the cornerstones may impair any effects of this Ritual, which would endanger us all.”
The cornerstone in the center—Selina Alvarez, I recognize with sadness, as she was always the kindest councilmember to Dad during his petitions—begins the incantations.
At the far end of the room, I see Dad and Shannon engaging in the duel she wanted, flashes of magic dancing out of the corner of my eyes. All the anger that carried me here to confront her has settled into a quiet fear. I knew Brenda said she wanted to participate, but it had seemed like a theory.
Each of the cornerstones close their eyes, bracing to channel the mana that is about to surge through them. Jenn nods at Erica, and I wonder what Brenda said to them. Did she tell them about the dangers?
The rising energy, magnified by the frenzy of the earthquake, flows toward the circle.
The painted runes light up, glowing with white-hot intensity with the life force of our worlds, flowing and pulling and straining.
I can feel it, the unnaturalness of how much mana is here, how the two halves are crackling and bending, frantic and wanting to be whole again.
“It’s not going to work ,” I repeat, and this time I point savagely at Shannon.
“Because she is making sure it doesn’t! The Mayfields have been sabotaging the Ritual ever since it started!
It’s not a stabilization! It’s keeping it broken on purpose!
Just look at the matrix!” I gesture at the spell diagram on the floor, but it’s written in the ancient precursor runes that barely anyone can read.
The academics give it a cursory glance, but they’re not about to dive into research now, not when the solution to everyone’s problem is already taking place.
“You may be upset,” Kirkpatrick says solemnly. “But if you continue to be disruptive, I will have to ask you to leave.”
“No,” I say, standing firm.
There has to be a way.
I didn’t think about it before, because I was so focused on being right. That solving the mystery of what happened, that doing this on my own terms was more important than some destiny handed to me by a prophet I’ve never met.
I don’t want to do this because I’m the Chosen One.
The worlds—the world , as it should be—is enough. Dad is enough, Jordan and Timmy and Hannah and everyone living here, people I know and don’t know. It’s all enough.
Brenda is enough.
I step forward and break the circle.