There were also people who made their living free lancing as full-time Proxies. Short, high-paying career if it didn’t kill you. Some people were into that kind of pain and abuse.
Shamus looked like he might be one of those people.
His lips were parted and he held the tip of his tongue between his teeth. I hesitated, wondering if the Proxy had connected. It had been a long time since I’d done this. He nodded slightly, letting me know we were okay so far.
“Good,” Maeve said. “Now access as much magic as you can from the well beneath the room. Cast the strongest Lightning spell that you can.”
Oh, she had to be kidding. “I’ll blow the walls out.”
“I’d like to see you do it.” She really did sound curious.
“No. It would kill him.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Maeve said firmly. “Now cast Lightning.”
She didn’t look worried. I noted she had both hands held at ready to cast-probably Cancel or Hold or some other negating spell. Hells, maybe she had a pocket full of rocks she could throw at the spell if she had to.
Okay, fine.
Back to the jump rope song, back to clearing my mind. I traced a glyph in the air in front of me. A very different glyph this time. Lightning wasn’t as pointed as Proxy. It flowed in a series of broken lines and arches.
Magic rolled in me, painful, sharp. But that was just the magic that I held inside of me. The other magic, the magic in the deep well beneath us, I had been very careful not to touch.
I took a short breath, braced for the torrent, and tapped into the well. Magic stormed through me like heat through a lightning rod, riding my bones, my blood, my flesh. I burned with it, shook with it, tasted the scorched earth of it thick and hot at the back of my throat. I held my focus, directed the magic pouring through the colored whorls down my arm to my fingertips, fingertips that glowed neon blue with an afterimage of soft rose, into the glyph I continued to trace. Magic spun from my fingers.
The corners of the room fell into shadow. Lights dimmed, went out. The spell raged against the room, burning and arching against the Blocks and Wards and glyphs worked into the walls, floor, ceiling. Wild electricity struck and was sucked into Shields and Wards that were deeper and more complex than I’d ever seen.
And still more lightning poured from my hands.
Shamus groaned, swayed, taking the full painful price of my using so much magic. He did not fall. That man was tougher than he looked. Magic exacted an equal pain for power. This strong of a spell should have knocked him unconscious.
Now I understood why there were no windows. Now I understood why Maeve had wanted to teach me here, have me access power here. This room was built like a vault. What came into it stayed in it.
Even my spell.
Magic poured through me, feeding the spell, growing it larger and larger. I think Maeve and I realized at the same time that while the spell was going to stay in the room, if it continued to grow, to feed on itself, there wouldn’t be room for the rest of us in here.
There wouldn’t be any room to breathe.
I was trapped, suffocating. My heart pounded. There was no room to breathe.
Hello, claustrophobia. I wondered when you’d get here.
I met Maeve’s gaze. The walls shook, assailed by a thousand fists. The floorboards creaked, trembled.
We were in trouble.
“Close it,” Maeve said, her voice strong, pitched loud enough to carry over the din of the spell.
“I don’t know how.” And that was true. I had never cast with so much magic behind a spell, had never really cast this spell, as there isn’t that much use for Lightning in Hounding.
And yet I had cast it perfectly. As if I’d done it a thousand times before.
Child’s play.
It was only a whisper, but my dad’s voice was the loudest thing in the room. Although I was pretty sure I was the only one who heard him.
It is easy, Allison
, he breathed.
So easy. Inhale, exhale. Relax.
Sweet hells. Of all the time for my dad to kick up and try to Influence me, he had to do it now. I fought to hold my focus, to not fall beneath his words.
I never had a chance.
He had full control of my mind, of my hands. I was pressed, not unconscious, but simply away from myself, my body. I felt daydreamy and drifty and didn’t even see it as my father used my hand to trace a new spell.
End
, he said. And my daydreams were filled with his memories of using that spell in hand-to-hand combat, canceling spells other magic users threw, canceling his own spells and changing them into new, wicked blades to throw at his enemies.
The air flashed hot, cold. The spell in the room extinguished. Lights crackled to life; the lingering scents of roses and apricot and ash filled the air.
My ears popped from the pressure, and I inhaled greedily as I came back to myself, like someone had been holding my head underwater.
Shamus fell to his knees next to the plant. His fingers spread and sunk in the soil, his head bent, hair hiding his pale face, back heaving with each heavy breath. I was amazed he was still breathing.
He grunted and rocked back the rest of the way onto his heels, one hand still in the plant that now looked shriveled, dried, dead. Drops of sweat, blood, or tears made small
plick
sounds against his jeans.
“Are you okay?” I thought I could get it all out, but my voice was hoarse and I had to take a breath between each word.
“Allie,” Maeve said softly. Or at least I think she was talking quietly. It could also be that my eardrums were blown.
Come to think of it, I wasn’t feeling so great myself.
“Fuck it all,” Shamus muttered, his words nasal and stuffy. He lifted his free hand to his face. I noted his hand was shaking as he wiped at his eyes and nose.
Maeve had not moved. “Allie, I need your attention right now. It is very important.”
I didn’t know why she wasn’t worried about Shamus. He was her kid, after all, and that spell, my spell, had just kicked the holy hell out of him.
I looked up at her.
Maeve was a tower of authority, twice as tall as I’d last seen her, red hair flowing like a river of flame in a wind I could not feel. Her skin glowed so bright it was like she had swallowed the moon. Only her eyes, deep, earth-holding green, showed a speck of her humanity.
I had had this kind of vision before, had seen Zayvion covered in silver whorls and glyphs, his skin burning with blue-tipped black fire.
But if Zayvion had been night and the edge of magic and ebony heat, Maeve was the pale, cruel light of dawn.
“Come to me,” she commanded.
“Hey.” I exhaled, inhaled. “You told me you”-pause for breath again-“wouldn’t do that.” It probably wasn’t Influence she was using right now anyway.
Still, I started toward her. Okay, four feet had never felt so much like four miles. I didn’t so much hurt as feel very, very drained. I was empty and beyond tired.
Maeve reached out one impossibly long arm. Her cool white fingers tucked under the right side of my jaw-the side marked by magic. She tipped my face so she could look into my eyes.
And I mean
look
Just like before. And just like before, my father skittered away somewhere in the back of my head, quiet as a rat.
She drew the index finger of her other hand across my forehead, and I sighed at the cool relief that brought me.
“How did you know End?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “Think Dad knew it, maybe, used it, maybe?”
Okay, I wasn’t thinking too well right now. Right now, all I wanted to do was sit on the floor and take a nap.