Chapter 14 #2
Grace stormed inside without waiting for them, and the thread coming from Mik vanished into the blackness inside.
Joan had no idea what was waiting in there, but she couldn’t let her fear, overwhelming as it was, allow her to let Grace go in alone. She could be doing anything in there, and Joan wasn’t going to let any of her friends go in next.
Idly, she wished she’d texted Molly before starting on this journey.
Joan stepped forward, crossing the threshold and feeling her own magic spring to life inside. She braced, like Grace might swing a vase at her head.
The tent was lit by the glow of a light floating above Grace’s palm. The walls were dark blue. There was a bed. Two beds. An empty cage. In fact, the tent looked mostly abandoned, only a few small things left in disarray.
Grace did not attack her.
There was a sharp intake of air behind Joan. Mik had followed her in, one hand rising to their mouth in horror. “This is it,” they said. “This is where I woke up.”
Grace was inspecting every inch of the place, running her hands along the shelves, opening the cage to peer in. Putting on a very good show of acting like she’d never been here before. Joan desperately wanted to believe her.
“Scent’s old,” Abel murmured. “Whoever this was, they left the tent at least a day ago.”
“Probably before they went into Joan’s head,” CZ said, sniffing the air. He stood at Mik’s side, letting them lean on him. “Maybe even when Mik first escaped. Grace, are you going to explain what you’re looking for?”
“I don’t know. Anything,” she said, whipping around to examine the cots. “Something to explain that.” She pointed at Mik’s thread, which was starting to fade but still bright enough that Joan could see it was now disappearing straight into the ground.
“Oh,” Joan said. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know, hence the ransacking,” Grace snapped.
“Okay, before tensions escalate further,” CZ said with a warning note in his tone, “can you explain what you mean for those of us who can’t see magic?”
“Mik’s thread disappears straight into the ground,” Joan said. “So, unless we’re standing over the grave of whoever cast this spell…”
“It’s probably showing us what the magic of the spell is tethered to,” Grace finished.
“The earth?” Abel said. “Is that possible?”
Grace waved her hands. “I don’t know! There’s magic in everything. Everything. The air, the earth, the animals, chaos, order, plants as we’ve established, but it’s always moving. It’s not like there’s a huge stockpile of magic beneath New York; we’d be able to feel that.”
Joan paused in her rifling through the pillows on the cot, thoughts of Grace’s betrayal temporarily abandoned—she was an exceptional actress if this was all a ruse—though Joan was confident that if there was some kind of magical clue here, she wouldn’t be able to recognize it. “Wait, what if it’s a metaphor?”
“The spell has learned language and decided to tackle metaphors?” Grace said incredulously. “My spells are a work of art, but they aren’t poets.”
“That goes so hard,” Mik whispered, still unsteady against CZ. Magic sniffed them more curiously now that they were out of the market’s direct wards, shielded by the tent’s pocket realm. “‘But they aren’t poets’—someone write that down.”
“Please focus on not throwing up on me,” CZ replied. “Once was enough.”
“I’ll do it out of spite,” Mik said, shoving away from him, but they were a bit too wobbly to stand on their own and leaned back against him moments later.
“Earlier today,” Joan said. “Astoria and Wren—”
“You were hanging out with Astoria Wardwell?” Grace cut in.
“Yeah, big day—”
“Are you ill?” CZ added. “How did this happen?”
“I was tricked.” Not that she’d ever forget Astoria in those glasses. “Can I finish my sentence?”
When no one else interrupted her, Joan pressed on.
“They put together a map of New York, and you could see the whole city’s magic.
Like it was alive. It flowed like a bunch of currents coming together to form a singular tide, and when I channeled it, the whole city’s magic, I felt like it was…
I don’t know. One thing. One entity, and I saw—” What had Joan seen, exactly?
Eyes opening. A network of many somethings making one thing.
“CZ,” Mik said very faintly. “Despite my big talk, I think I’m going to throw up after all, and would rather not do it all over you.”
Magic kicked up a fuss, hissing toward Mik as they worked themself up.
“Bin! Is there any sort of bin or bag in here?” CZ asked frantically. Mik hunched over, palms on their knees, and dry-heaved, like a cat at three AM.
“Fuck, I don’t actually know how to stop this on my own,” Grace muttered, raising her hands to cast as Abel scrambled to try to find something, going so far as to pull the thin blanket off one of the cots and hand it to Mik bunched up like a bag.
Grace’s tether spell stuttered and broke as Grace canceled it. Magic in here wasn’t that thick, but there was enough that it was rapidly overloading Mik’s system. It was like watching it shift in Astoria’s map.
It was like Astoria’s map.
And Joan had disrupted that by sucking all the magic in the air into herself.
She threw open the mental floodgates. Come here, she thought, and magic reversed course, passing into Joan instead.
All of it, all of you, come here.
Joan ripped the magic from the room, let it fill her up, and then released it in a thin stream that she looped back into herself, cycling it in three-second increments.
Mik straightened, frowning. “Grace, what did you do?”
“Not me,” Grace said, face slack, looking at Joan. “Her.”
“Mik, let me know once you’ve calmed down and I can let go,” Joan said, her voice a strangled wheeze from trying to hold concentration. It took a shocking amount of brainpower to remember to let magic go again.
“You’re casting?” CZ asked in blatant shock. “And you’re still upright?”
“She is not casting,” Grace said. “She’s cycling the magic into herself so that Mik can’t attract any. It’s… it’s very impressive to watch.”
Joan laughed even as sweat broke out across her forehead, as she closed her fingers into a fist and dug her nails into her palms. It didn’t hurt, but it felt like trying to levitate something with your mind alone, a full-body concentration.
She was suddenly shy under all the attention.
“Don’t all sound so surprised; it’s not useful for anything besides this. ”
“I’d disagree,” Grace said, slipping into the scientist tone she used when talking about the intricacies of spellmaking.
“You’re essentially your own magic-nullification system—that’s fascinating.
I guess any witch could do it, but absolutely not at this volume.
I mean, the baseline spell on Mik isn’t cutting out; it’s like it’s effortlessly adapting to the new currents of magic to keep fueling itself.
Joan would have to suck the magic out of a huge radius, for quite a while, for the spell on Mik to run out of steam and break… ”
Joan wanted to hear every word of what Grace was saying, but listening ran counter to her concentration.
Joan squeezed her eyes shut, Grace’s voice fading out over the roaring of blood in her ears.
Her theory, that Mik was tied to New York City itself, or something like it, meant that, just maybe, her strange visions today might indicate something other than an acute mental breakdown.
If Abel, in his extensive understanding of magical folklore, indicated there might be stories of New York’s sentience, then perhaps Joan was on to something.
Joan inhaled, sucking in more magic, and felt a weak flicker at the back of her head, that ancient thing rolling over.
What did you mean by “we see you”? she thought at it.
In the long silence that followed, magic danced along her bones, sparking against her marrow. Just a bit longer, just a little while.
Please.
The eyes opened, slowly, and where there would have been a mouth was really a maw, filled with a thousand voices in a thousand languages. They washed over her in a flood, too loud to decipher. If her body hadn’t locked, she’d have fallen to her knees.
The jumble grew and spread, until Joan’s own individual self felt a mile away, then five, ten. She was one of many, she was—
Joan, answer your phone.
Joan was shoved back into her body, and her connection to the magic vanished, like being dunked in the Hudson.
When she opened her eyes, she was covered in sweat, and her friends were arguing in front of her.
Her ears were ringing too badly to filter the information of their words in, and she groped in her pockets.
Joan, answer your phone.
She pulled it out to twenty-five text messages and five calls from Molly. Joan could only catch the top one in her notifications, the rest folded up in an accordion beneath it.
Joan, answer your phone.
Joan hit dial with a complete sense of detachment, body going through the motions, as a profound and overwhelming sense of wrongness settled on her neck like a too-tight scarf. Whatever had happened, it was big.
Molly picked up on the first ring.
“Where the hell have you been!” Molly screeched across the line. “Where are you right now? Did you read my texts?”
“I haven’t gotten a chance to,” Joan said, the tingling in her limbs fading. She looked up to catch the attention of her group, but CZ and Abel were already quiet, holding up hands to silence Mik and Grace as they listened in to her call.
“I tried to stall for as long as I could, like you said, and I don’t know where you are or why you asked me to stall or really what you’ve been up to these last few days, because you haven’t been home, and you haven’t been staying with me, and you’re leaving parties early and showing up to my house in old clothes—”
“Please jump to the point, you’re freaking me out.”
Molly took in a huge shuddering breath. “The market, Joan. Aunt Val gave the order to send a force in to search it thirty minutes ago. She asked Astoria Wardwell to lead it because of her training, that’s what dinner was about.
That’s why Mom and Dad wanted you there so badly.
We don’t know how Moon Creatures might retaliate.
If they’ll come after the family. You need to get to the mansion, now. ”
Abel leaned down to say something to CZ, who replied urgently in a low tone.
“All of you get out of here now,” Abel ordered, and ran out of the tent. Joan’s heart was, approximately, in her ass. This could not be happening. She’d thought… naively, she’d thought she might have more time before her aunt did something this uncharacteristically asinine.
“Tell me where you are, Joan. I’ll come get you,” Molly said.
Joan looked around at the walls of the tent. “You’re going to hate my answer.”
“Don’t be fucking funny right now, where the hell are you?” Molly’s breathing on the line was ragged. “Tell me you’re not in the market.”
Joan hissed into the phone, her grip on it so tight, it pushed the blood from her knuckles. “Tell them to stop it, Molly. I’m serious, get them to stop.”
She hung up, shoving her phone back into her pocket. “We have to go, now. They can’t find Mik or we’re screwed, and we can’t let them attack the market.”
“I’m going to break Valeria’s kneecaps,” CZ snarled, as he grabbed Mik’s arm and ripped the tent flap open. “Take Mik and run. My family’s here, Joan, I can’t—”
“I know,” Joan said, as they stepped outside.
“This is so messed up,” Grace muttered.
“I know,” Joan repeated.
“Stay and help,” Mik said wildly. “I’ll get myself out if I have to.”
“Joan isn’t safe here either,” CZ said angrily, as they strode around a corner. “A Greenwood hostage is about to be priceless.”
“I know,” Joan said grimly, mind clicking through the possibilities and settling on one, just one, a horrible, horrible idea. “In fact, I’m hoping so. Mik and Grace, get back to the apartment. CZ, I have a plan.”
“I assume it’s terrible,” CZ said.
Joan stumbled to a stop as a thunderous noise ripped through the air, the ground vibrating slightly.
A few rows ahead of them, a tent went up in a pillar of flame.
“Fuck,” Joan said, grabbing Mik by the back of the shirt and yanking them in the opposite direction.
Grace stumbled and CZ caught her, setting her on her feet as she clutched his arm. Around them, a wide ring of fire lit up the boundary of the market, bright as the end of the world. Bright like betrayal.
“There go the wards,” Grace said, as magic slammed back into them, rushing to fill the magical void in the area. “I’m not sure we can pass through that fire; they’re probably corralling us in.”
Screams filled the air, mixing with the ash starting to fall.
They were too late.
Around them, the market began to burn.