Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
They gathered in a little circle in the kitchen, looking at Grace expectantly.
They’d been on the brink of something when the LaMortes arrived, but Joan felt the fragility of that peace. She didn’t want to push and risk Grace freaking out. She wanted to… extend Grace some trust and hope she did the same for Joan.
Gods, it was like she was six again, trying to make friends on the playground.
Abel held up a finger just as Grace looked like she was about to begin and fished in his pocket. “One second, sorry,” he said, pulling out a battered metal coin on a length of twine. He tossed it to Joan, who fumbled the catch and had to be saved by CZ’s deft reflexes.
Joan examined it in the light. The metal was old, with engravings she didn’t recognize.
“Mind ward,” Abel said. “It’s decent. Thought maybe you should keep it on you for the next while, until we’re sure no one else is going to try to get into that devious head of yours.” His gaze slid to Grace. “I’m sure you can make one but thought this might be less of a drain on your resources.”
“Thank you,” Grace said, her voice cracking slightly. She cleared it. “Both for the faith in my abilities and the thoughtfulness.”
Joan slipped it over her head. “What Grace said. And thanks especially for not picking something ugly. I half expected you to show up with a clown mask that you were going to tell me was a powerful relic I needed to keep on me at all times. What a horror that would be. A cruel and unusual punishment. Dare I say, diabolical even.”
“I played that prank precisely once, Joan, and it was years ago,” Abel groaned.
“It was once too many,” Joan replied, tucking the charm beneath her blouse, because yes, she was still wearing it.
Their jokes were easy and familiar, and it helped crack some of the thick sheet of tension lying over all of them.
Joan wasn’t any use casting, or running across New York, or fighting anyone off, or anything.
But she could put people at ease. Effortlessly, according to local grouch Astoria Wardwell.
Oh! She still hadn’t told CZ about the cycling.
She made meaningful eyes at him, and he looked at her, confused, mouthing, What?
Joan could tell the entire group, they were holding a lot of her secrets, but this felt new and exciting and useful, and she wanted some time to practice it first before she showed off.
Joan sighed. “Go ahead, Grace.”
Grace beckoned Mik closer, pulling them into the center of the semicircle of friends in the small kitchen.
“As discussed, I’m going to try to see if there’s some sort of tether on you, either to the spell’s caster or to whatever source of magic is keeping the power of the spell running.”
Mik saluted. “Godspeed, soldier.”
For a third time, Joan got to watch the beauty that was Grace Collins casting.
This time though, none of the movements were familiar.
Joan had a fairly extensive knowledge of spellcasting, but she couldn’t recognize any of the motions Grace made, and the words she spoke were cobbled together from several languages, only some of which Joan had enough passing fluency in to understand.
Unravel and reveal. Trace and follow. Magic bent in toward Grace, snaking through her arms as she moved them, trailing from the tips of her fingers as they danced through the air.
Thickening into a band around Mik’s waist, a single thread led out from them, toward the door. A few more seconds, and that thread strengthened, weaving into a braid.
Grace opened her eyes, and they glowed golden. Her gaze snapped to the magic leading out the door. “You see it too, Joan?”
Joan hummed a confirmation.
“I’m not sure where it goes,” Grace said distantly. “But I don’t think it’s far. We’ll have to follow it ourselves.”
“I don’t see anything,” Mik said, looking down at themself.
“Neither do I,” CZ added.
“I’ll lead,” Joan said. “Grace, you take up the rear.”
They pulled on their shoes and fell in line out the door.
Their little duckling march took them down the stairs and out onto the street, where the thread took a sharp right.
It stretched a number of feet ahead of them, but only manifested a farther distance when Mik stepped forward.
Joan prayed Astoria and Wren weren’t running their map again, because they were extra exposed right now.
They walked, CZ and Mik making nervous jokes at each other as Joan led them down the sidewalk, across streets, past stoplights, her eyes on that golden rope.
There was something alluring about it, something that faded out the rest of her consciousness.
The gold shimmered. In its sparkle Joan saw the endless twists of eternal magic.
She could reach out her senses, just so, and touch it with the back of her hand, like petting a small bird.
The eyes in the back of her head opened again.
Joan, they whispered.
We see you.
Joan snatched her hand back, shaking, and stumbled to a stop. She found herself on a familiar path in a familiar park. The golden rope disappeared between two shadowed trees, and at her back, CZ narrowly avoided bumping into her.
“Whoa, what happened? Did it disappear?” he said, hands coming down on her shoulders as he swerved around her.
Once was maybe a fit of delusion. Twice made her think something was trying to talk to her. Something older than anything she’d ever seen or experienced.
“No, it’s still there,” Grace said, stepping up.
The bush next to Joan unfurled new leaves.
“Is that normal?” Mik asked nervously, pointing at it.
“It’s a Joan thing,” CZ said. “Don’t worry about it. She agitates plants.”
“She agitates the magic in plants,” Grace corrected, peering at the bush. “Probably a side effect of her weird symbiosis with natural magic. Joan? Why did you stop?”
I’m losing my mind.
No.
There’s some magic in New York I’ve never seen or heard of before.
“Abel,” Joan said. “Is New York alive?”
CZ groaned. “What the actual hell are you saying right now?”
“Philosophically?” Abel asked. Joan turned to him, and he looked at her patiently. “Like metaphorically? Or do you mean something else?”
“Magically,” Joan said. “Folklorically—I don’t know.”
Abel gave her a searching look. “Depending on the story, it might be.”
“Sorry to be a hater, but is this directly relevant to the magic at hand?” Mik asked, staring at the trees with wide eyes. “Because isn’t this the way back to the Night Market?”
Joan broke eye contact with Abel. “You okay, Mik?”
Their mouth was too tight and their shoulders too high for the lie to be particularly effective, but they replied in the affirmative anyways.
“Besides,” they said, injecting some bravado into their voice, “if I’m facing my trauma, I’m at least glad I have two witches and two vampires to help me with it. ”
CZ nodded sagely. “Your friends,” he confirmed.
Mik’s shoulders lowered an inch. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”
CZ walked over and wrapped an arm around Mik’s shoulders, guiding them forward. “You’re never escaping me,” he said.
“Ward’s on?” Abel asked Joan. She confirmed, placing a hand on the coin.
CZ plunged them between the trees.
On the other side, the market sprang to life. Despite them entering through the same patch of flora as last time, this section of the market looked new. It was still all multicolored tents, but Joan felt quite turned around.
Grace, Abel, and CZ had no such issues, demonstrating a clear confidence in their knowledge of the area. The line continued to stretch ahead of them, and Grace walked resolutely on.
Joan had to hurry to catch up, darting glances around like the witch who’d attacked her might strike again. “Why is the spell you cast on Mik not fading under the wards?”
“Small-area ward nullification,” Grace said. “I had a hunch, so I baked it into the spell.”
“You thought it would lead back to the market?”
Silence from Grace.
“Grace,” Joan said, with a growing feeling of disquiet, “is there something you’re not telling us? Something we should really know?”
“Let’s see if I’m right first,” Grace said. “Then I’ll explain everything, I promise.” She put on a surge of speed, forcing everyone to pick up the pace as they stepped through the tents.
The swell of wrongness increased.
A promise. Like they were children.
Grace knew her way around the market. She was a prodigious spellmaker. Her apartment was new and empty. She did not like the way power operated in the magic world, and she had been in the market when Joan had been attacked. Nearby.
Grace was thinking of leaving the magic world entirely.
She loved spellmaking like an artist loved their craft.
She’d made pancakes for them that morning.
She had offered to help without a second thought.
She kept looking at CZ when she thought no one was watching, and she could never remember her computer password, so she wrote it down on a sticky note.
The latter version of Grace was the one Joan wanted to believe in and the one she’d trusted in first.
But the former one seemed undeniable.
Grace had a secret.
Joan didn’t know it.
“CZ,” Joan breathed, so low that only the vampires would be able to pick it up. “Something isn’t right about this. I don’t know where Grace is taking us, but be ready.”
CZ’s response was a brush of his fingers against the small of her back.
Grace turned the corner and stopped in front of an entirely ordinary brown tent. “Joan,” she said, a bit out of breath. “What do you see?”
Joan frowned. “A tent.”
“Anything else?”
“Wards on it,” Joan said, tracing a faint magic web. “Intricate ones, strong ones.”
“Wards, in the Night Market?” Abel asked. “Most of us can’t afford a witch who knows how to cast in here to set them up and keep them renewed.”
Grace nodded once, as if proving something to herself. “It’s pocket realmed in plain sight, which means it circumvents the magic rules of this realm.” One slash of her hand, and a hole bloomed.