Chapter 47
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“So what do we do?” Max asked. “Confront them? Get them to reverse what they did?”
But I knew what we had to do. I was more sure than I’d ever been about anything in my life. “We do the binding.”
Max rocked back on his heels, mouth already flying open as a barrage of protests came forth. “You crazy? The last person who did this spell got themselves nearly killed in the process.”
“Not exactly. If our theory is accurate, it was the brothers who did the spell.”
Max threw up his hands, his hat flying off his head. “Semantics! It’s dangerous, that’s what we know.”
“Of course it is.” I stopped and looked at him.
Dark half-moons shone under his eyes. The stubble had taken over his face, now coated in prickly black hairs.
He was wearing the same shirt he’d worn yesterday and surrounded by empty paper coffee cups.
Somehow through it all, he was still as handsome as the day we’d first met.
“What choice do we have? We’re dimidiums, Max,” I said more quietly. “It was always going to be us.”
He looked down, rubbing a hand over his temples. He knew it, too. “‘The Magic of both is stronger than any one,’” he said, reciting the old adage.
Even with everything we’d been through, I couldn’t help but take comfort in having him here with me. Having someone here who knew exactly what I meant, exactly how scared I was, without having to explain myself.
“Fine. But we’re not going in there without a plan.”
I pulled the book out of the trunk and put it in a backpack. “There’s no time.”
“Cel, wait. Let’s just think about this for a second—”
“There is no time, Max. Dani is getting worse by the minute. Luce, too.”
He caught my arm. “What if the spell doesn’t work? If we’re right, that it’s raw Magic ripping through Dani’s body … and S’s spell is meant to direct that Magic through something else, another object … If it doesn’t work as planned, what happens to the excess Magic?”
I slowed, turned toward him, even though I had one foot already out the door. I knew what he was getting at. The excess Magic would look for other conduits instead, something else to pass through as an object.
“Us, Cella. It would pass through us. We’re taking an enormous risk here.”
“Do you think that’s what happened to Luce?”
He blew out his cheeks, his eyes dark. “Maybe it’s what his teacher warned of when he said the One would rip a hole through the earth and walk through at will.”
“But if we could fix the excess Magic coming through Dani and put it back in her objects, maybe that would fix Luce, too. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” I said. “I can try the spell on my own.”
He picked up and dusted his hat off the ground, looking me dead in the eye.
He stepped close to me, as close as he did the first day we met.
Close enough so I could feel the heat radiate off his body, so I could see the sweat trickling down his neck, so I could feel the warmth of his aura.
“Easy, there. You’re not getting rid of me now.
According to S, we still have until sunset tomorrow, so that’s roughly twenty-four hours from now.
That’s enough time to see if this is even possible, right?
Let’s use the time to get prepared, make sure we can actually do this without killing ourselves. And then—then we do this thing.”
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t happy about the delay, but it would be harder, if not impossible, to do this without him. “Fine. But if we don’t figure it out by the morning, I’m going in, no matter what.”
The window to my room was cracked, and air from outside drifted in. A whisper of something charred drifted on the wind. If a wildfire broke out now, this whole place would go up in smoke.
He gripped my hand tight, an anchor holding me steady. “If we don’t figure it out by tomorrow morning, then both of us go in. No matter what.”
S’s spell was complicated. It required a large amount of strength to first grab hold of the extra energy siphoned from the target, to hold that thread taut, and then “push” it into the objects.
I assumed S’s brothers all completed the spell with him, though the instructions he left were sparse. It consisted of only a few lines.
Travel to that hollow place where your Magia lies, but be wary, do not step inside. For the One will pull you in.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what the results of this spell had done to people. Like Dr. Strauss. I’d seen him on a bench earlier in the day, head in his hands.
“Dr. Strauss? Are you alright?”
He’d looked right through me, like he didn’t see me at all. He pulled out a small metal head the color of unpolished brass.
“It’s your object, isn’t it? The Newton statue you were trying to put back together?”
He nodded, clutching the disembodied head.*
“What happened?” I asked quietly.
He looked past me as if at some unseen horror.
“I could see something was happening with Danica. I knew she was getting into dangerous Magic. If I’d known what she had planned …
” He crushed bits of gold dust, watching the flakes dribble through his fist and to the ground.
“Maya was the only one who did, but by then, it was too late.”
“You tried to help her?”
He wiped his nose. “After I saw what became of her, I contacted colleagues at Britton. I was stupid, desperate to try and help. I performed an experimental spell and nearly got myself killed in the process. I probably would have been killed, if not for my object taking the brunt of the damage. And even then, I didn’t go unscathed.
” He pulled down his sleeve, showing the marred skin and unnatural scarring that had crept up to his neck.
So that was why his object had become so badly damaged. Not by a hex, but by doing the very thing it was meant to do: protect him.
“That’s why your skin looks like Dani’s.”
He nodded. “My body took an excess force of Magic. Experimental spells are not really what Seinford and Brown represents, so I was off the council. I lost more of myself than I thought trying to help her. I loved Dani, but not in the way that everyone thinks. She was like a daughter to me. I suppose that’s why Dr. Robetresse said I was too close to it. ”
“I promise you, we will do everything we can to try and fix her.”
It struck me in that moment that I’d forgotten how beautiful our connections could be to each other.
How much Strauss cared for and looked out for Dani.
I felt silly now for ever suspecting he had hurt her.
Sometimes, all it took was one person who cared to make all the difference.
And I started to think Vern was right. There was something I loved about humanity, about community, about my life here.
Maybe I lost that somewhere along the way.
All I knew was there was good in them, and good in her, and I was going to do my best to find it again.
But in order to do that, I had to make sure that what had happened to Strauss didn’t happen to me.
I had to study this spell as much as I possibly could.
The spell at least told me that S also “traveled” somewhere, like Max and I did, when he did his Magic. I wonder where he ended up. Somewhere like his home, maybe, with olive trees and steep crests of rock.
Pronounce loudly and clearly, “I bind thee to three,” and direct the excess Magia into the talismans.
First, we needed to practice the basics. Get accustomed to each other’s Magic again and become familiar with Danica’s telescope. We needed to see if it was even able to accept Magic.
Max and I sat across from each other in a field, overlooking the apple orchards and with a red mesa at our backs.
Dark gray storm clouds gathered overhead, moving in from the east. Clusters of yellow grasses swayed, and I tried to not think about all the times we had lain in grass just like this, looking at the stars and making each other promises we could never keep.
He looked out at the storm clouds over the hills. “You know, lightning and thunder mean danger in cattle country. Those clouds would’ve had the cattle on edge, restless.”
“We should have an hour or two before the storm hits.”
Dani’s telescope was on the ground between us. I set my objects in front of me. First, the jar of water, then the leather cord, then the mug. Max did the same with his.
I closed my eyes, breathing in slowly through my mouth, and touched the glass jar.
I was submerged like an anchor dropped in water. For a moment, my heart seized in my chest. The water was pitch-black and freezing, and I watched myself hurtle toward the bottom. My throat choked on garbled words.
I was drowning.
I should’ve known better, should’ve practiced my Magic more before now, should’ve—
But then Max’s voice sounded in my ear. Kick.
My feet kicked out, shins and thighs pumping furiously. My arms scrabbled for the surface, eyes focused on the circle of light at the crest of the salty water. I reached the surface, and my lungs heaved a gulp of air. The waves crashed against me, but I was holding.
I could do this.
“Good,” he whispered.
The sea was stormy, but I treaded water, bobbing along with the current, letting the water sweep me away. Letting the Magic flow over me. Outside of this, my hand languidly touched my second object.
The leather was warm in my palm, and in the distance—the familiar sound of horses.
“I’m coming.”
Max’s horses were running. I could smell the heat on the back of their necks, the pant of the horses’ breath. They were coming fast. I heard the whip and tap of rope at Max’s side, as if readying to wrangle a runaway colt.
I was treading water in an ocean with no land in sight, but he was coming. He was running to me.