“I like how you think I’m afraid of you, Jones. What are you going to do? Throw magic at me?”
“Yes,” Allie and Zay said at the same time.
I made a tsk-tsk sound. “Listen to you two. Aren’t you just the hard-core Soul Complements now? Not only finishing, but also starting each other’s sentences. Do you still remember who pees standing up?”
Allie pulled her hand away from where she’d draped it through Zayvion’s arm. She took me down a notch with one raised eyebrow. “Don’t be an ass, Shame.”
It was unfair of me to dig at them about how fucking in sync they’d become with each other since the apocalypse. They’d both, separately, told me they were happy. Allie had given up the life of a Hound so she could restore an old house in St. Johns. She had plans of opening it up as a community center for disadvantaged kids or something. Zayvion had given up being Guardian of the gates so he could do whatever Allie was doing.
I didn’t begrudge them their happiness.
Oh, who was I kidding? I hated them for it. Hated that they’d gone through hell and back again for each other and ended up so damn happy. What had I gotten? A round-trip through hell, then a “We’re sorry, Mr. Flynn. Your happiness was lost in route through purgatory. Better luck next time.”
“By the nostrils,” Zay said with enough chill in his words I knew I’d struck a nerve.
It was good to see him rile a bit. To know he’d still threaten to wipe the floor with me—not that he could—if I made Allie frown.
I counted on him standing up and taking me down one of these days. And the way things were going, it would be sooner rather than later.
The first pangs of hunger, of the need to consume life, scraped through my belly. And there was a hell of a lot of life in this room.
I pushed my sunglasses back into place. I usually didn’t regret giving him a hard time, but Allie was right—that had been an ass move. I might hate that they had found happiness, but I didn’t hate them. They were the closest damn thing I had to a brother and sister. I thought very highly of those two crazy kids.
“Duly noted, mate.”
Zay was classy enough to take it as the apology I meant it as.
“Shh.” Allie pointed to the stage.
I tuned the world back in. Roomful of people who thought they were important, magically speaking. Terric up onstage glowing like he’d been dipped in angel shit.
Yes, angel shit glows. Never seen proof it doesn’t.
“...welcome the Overseer of the Authority, Salvatore Moretti.” Terric stepped away from the mic, and even though a normal crowd would clap, we didn’t.
Not so good at the normal, us magic users.
A man stepped up to the stage. He was just under six feet tall, I’d guess, built a little on the thick side with an impressive mop of steel gray hair and mustache to match. I’d guess he was a lady-killer in his day, but was a little heavy in the jowl now. Still, there was a wicked intensity to his dark eyes.
This was the second time I’d ever seen the man. The Overseer position of the Authority used to mean making the hard calls for all members of the Authority in the world, dealing with reports from the regional Watch and Ward, who in turn took reports and complaints from those of us on the street, as it were.
The Overseer position changed hands and countries every four years. He had taken it on right after we’d snipped magic’s nads. It had been a chaotic time, an uncomfortable coming-out between the secret organization of magic users and the rest of the world.
A few people had been thrown in jail, still more were up on trial, but the world hadn’t gone to war or followed through with those witch-hunt rallies that were all the rage for the first couple years.
Well, not officially.
And the Overseer had handled the entire mess pretty well. We’d held up our side of the bargain too, or at least Terric had. And since Portland was one of the only cities in the world that had five wells of magic beneath it, that meant we had more than our share of crazies, cover-ups, and other dangerous meltdowns to handle.
“Thank you all for coming here, especially those of you from other areas of the United States,” he began.
What? Reassess the room, Flynn.
Local faces, local faces. Ah, there. Three sets of couples I hadn’t noticed before because they were sitting at a table and the standing crowd obscured them. I didn’t recognize the twentysomething guy with the cougar fortysomething woman, nor the milk-skinned yuppie man and woman who were both squarely in their thirties. I did, however, recognize the elderly man and woman.
Doug and Nancy Williams. They were legends when I was a kid, and old then. They had to be pushing their nineties. Seeing two old magic users wasn’t all that unusual. The unusual thing was that they were Soul Complements, the oldest known to be living, even though they hadn’t found each other until they were in their sixties.
My mum and all my other teachers in the ways of magic made a point of telling us, constantly, that Soul Complements didn’t last. Soul Complements burned out, were killed, went crazy, or simply croaked from magical ailments.
No happy endings for those of us who can use magic together stronger than anyone else.
Not even a happy middle.
But every breath old Doug and Nancy took was one more whack with the cane to that shack of lies. Happy endings for Soul Complements, which included growing old and gray together without killing each other like me and Terric, or losing yourself in the other person’s mind and personality like Allie and Zay, might just be possible.
Or, you know, Doug and Nancy could be a complete fluke.
I wasn’t the only one staring at the couples at the table. Everyone else in the room realized there were an awful lot of Soul Complements gathered in one place. To be specific, there were five sets. The three couples at the table, lovebirds Allie and Zay, and though it made me barf in my mouth a little, Terric and me.
Which meant I got a few stares too. Mostly followed by disgust.
Ain’t that just special?
“Shame,” Zay said quietly.
I looked over at him. He nodded toward the stage.
“...of quite a serious nature,” the Overseer was saying. “We all know that three years ago, magic was healed: dark and light magic rejoined. We didn’t realize just how mild magic would become due to that rejoining. I believe we, and most of the world, have done an admirable job coping with that loss of magic, and the changes it has brought about.
“Soul Complements are in a unique position. When they work magic together, they are able to briefly break magic into its dark and light states, and cast it once again with the full force and effect it once offered.”
Not news. Not even worth rehashing. There’d been a hustle back in the early-postapocalypse days to try to find more Soul Complements. To seek the poor suckers out and shove this happy screwed-if-you-do, screwed-if-you-don’t life down their craws.
Hadn’t worked. One, the system for judging if when two people use magic together they are so in sync they can break it used to involve several dozen experienced magic users and a fine manipulation of magic for both the testees and the testers. With the dulling of magic, that system was simply not viable anymore.
Two, there are a lot of people in this old world. And since everyone can use magic if they want to, tracking down perfect matches was damn near impossible and turned out to be a waste of time, what with all the magic haters out there.
We’d given up, and done our best to keep the whole Soul Complement situation on the down-low.
“We have recent proof that high-ranking government officials in major countries are now aware of Soul Complements and what they can do with magic. They know there aren’t many Soul Complements in the world, but we believe they have their names and information. They know that Soul Complements can break magic.”