He nodded, his eyes wide. “Woman is chewing glass and spitting sparks over what she thinks you did to Greyson. You remember that part, right?”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“No one Closed you,” he said. “By the time I got there, Zayvion and Chase were yelling to bring the roof down. Neither of them got in your head. I made sure of that.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem,” he said. “It’s a serious thing what went down there. Greyson. You.”
“I didn’t do anything to Greyson.”
“No? Just coincidence he was there? That he used the Hound girl for bait to lure you? Made her open the gates with the other Hound, Davy, and release the Hungers? You did notice Greyson, he isn’t exactly human anymore, right? Oh, and one of your da’s disks is crammed in his craw?”
“Listen,” I said. “He tried to kill me. Three times. Of course this wasn’t a coincidence.”
Shamus was good at hiding his body language, but from the subtle tensing in his shoulders, I knew that Greyson trying to kill me was news to him.
“And I didn’t do anything to him. He killed my father.”
“Is that true?”
I nodded.
“So you think your father implanted the disk and converted him to a Necromorph?”
“No.”
“Come on, now. Don’t be dense. It’s your da’s disk. Who else has access to the disks? And you say he killed your da. Two and two. It adds up.”
I shook my head. “He was still a man when he killed my dad. He didn’t have the disk in his throat.” I dug for the flash of Dad’s memory that I had seen, of Greyson standing in front of him with a knife and a disk in his hand.
“I find myself potently curious as to how you know this,” Shamus said.
“My dad told me.”
We stared at each other for a minute or so.
“In your noggin?” he finally asked.
“Yes.”
“Huh.” That was it, nothing more.
But my head was spinning. I had assumed the stolen disks had been used on Greyson. But Shame brought up a very good point. There were other people who had access to the disks. People like my father. And people who worked for my father. People like Violet and probably even Kevin.
So it could be a stolen disk in his neck, and stolen disks being used to open the gates. Or it could be someone inside Beckstrom Enterprises was supplying them.
Is that why Dad said Greyson would hunt Violet?
Shamus shifted his feet on the bedframe. “We do have Greyson contained. Off the street, thanks quite a bit to you. That’s a problem we’ve been trying to take care of for months. I’m sure someone will figure how to get in his head and pull the truth out of him. Find out who morphed him.”
“I don’t understand why anyone would even want to do that,” I said. “It’s dark magic, right?”
“Very. With technology to bolster it. Bad shit.”
“Why mess someone up like that?”
He took a deep breath and leaned back so he could stare at the ceiling. “I forget you haven’t read the history.” He was quiet a minute.
“Basically,” he looked back down at me, “magic has always been around. It took mankind a long time to discover it, and even longer to learn how to access it. Lots of hints of that show up in the history books if you know what you’re looking for. We, the Authority, have mostly covered up the reality of magic until about thirty years ago, when your da and a few of his cronies went public with the ‘safe’ technology to access magic.
“Magic is a natural part of this world. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Some ways to use magic are still kept secret from the general population. Death magic, for sure. Blood magic to some degree, and lots of ways magic can be used aren’t taught-dark magic especially. Those college classes that teach how to use magic for business, counseling, medicine, construction, the arts?
“Who do you think developed those courses? The Authority. Who do you think teach it in the universities? Mostly members of the Authority. See, once your da let the devil out of the bag, damage control was the best the Authority could do.
“It’s worked okay. Some people who were dead set against magic being used by the general public changed their tune. Making magic available has helped the world more than hurt it. So far, anyway, and so long as the Authority keeps a close eye on what ‘advances’ are being released.” He shrugged.
“And making someone into a beast is an advance?” I asked.
He held up a finger. “Getting to that. So magic is bright, right? It casts a shadow when it’s used. And that shadow contains magic too. That shadow is a twisted version of magic-dark magic.
“Dark magic can do very bad things. That’s why it’s forbidden. But making something forbidden only means it gets used in secret, which is why some people think dark magic should be sanctioned, taught, and regulated. The price for using dark magic is death, so that goes a long way toward deterring users. Still. .”
He shook his head. “People, right? Crazy. Anyway, dark magic is used sometimes. Not often, because, well, it’s sort of hard to access. Like catching a shadow. But just like magic casts a shadow, so does life. Life’s shadow is death. You still with me?”
I nodded.
“So for a long while, dark magic was rarely used. But your da opened the door to experimentation with the rules, changed centuries of tradition. Gave people ideas. Wasn’t long before someone discovered where dark magic was most plentifuclass="underline" in death. All you had to do was find a way to tap into it, and just like sucking magic out of the ground, dark magic was at your fingertips.
“Frank Gordon gave it a go, and tried to reanimate your dad’s corpse to open the gates between life and death.”
“Why?” I asked. “Don’t we have enough trouble dealing with light magic?”
“I think it’s all about control, who has the most magic at their disposal, and who can keep it that way.
“But legends say that a man who can walk between life and death will be immortal. Maybe that’s what Frank was trying with your dad. Maybe that’s what someone is trying with Greyson, seeing as how he isn’t quite living as a man. Frank’s dead, so we can’t ask him. But now we have Greyson, so maybe we can find out who’s been dipping their fingers in the naughty sauce, and take care of them before this blows into a war.”
Shamus shifted in his seat, crossing one ankle over his knee. He was quiet, letting me absorb it.
That was crazy. Impossible. Half-alive, half-dead magic users. Light magic, dark magic, life and death. Controlling all the magic, all the time. Was I the only one who thought that was a hideous idea? And immortality? Hadn’t that been what my half-alive, half-dead dad had told me he wanted?
Okay, even though it was crazy, it could also be true.
I rubbed at my eyes again, hoping this might be a dream and I might wake up and find out that my world was just a world again, that my city was filled with regular people going about regular lives with simple, regular magic that made their shoes look shiny.
“Holy shit, Shame. Are you joking?”
“Dead serious,” he said, and I knew he was. “Frank was on to something, thinking your da, out of all the powerful magic users of our time, might be able to pull it off-life and death, dark and light. Might have done it too, if you and Zayvion hadn’t stopped him. That was probably the one thing that got you the chance to be a part of the Authority, you and Z shutting Frank down. Well, that and Z saying you’re his Soul Complement.”
I didn’t even know what to say about that. About any of this. Okay. Regroup. Back to the problem at hand.