“He didn’t do that,” I said. “That’s on me. My choice. My weakness.”
Some of it, yes, she said. But you have to know this is what Eli wanted. What he counted on when he was torturing Davy, torturing Terric: to make you suffer. So make him suffer back.
I shook my head. Blood magic users. Always looking for a way to turn pain to their advantage.
She was right, though. If there was a price to pay for all of these deaths, I wasn’t the only one who owed dues. Eli had blood on his hands.
“Why are you on my side now?” I asked.
You’re my only way out of this, if there is a way out. Also, fuck Eli.
Death magic curled inside me, tempting, seductive.
I nodded. Revenge made strange bedfellows, but killing Eli was something Sunny and I both wanted. I had my body again, control again. The magic inside me was a tool I could use.
I inhaled, drawing just the thinnest smoke of Death magic into my hands. It slipped through my veins, cold and invigorating and powerful. I spread my fingers wide, sent tendrils of Death out to search for Eli.
Thunder rolled against the predawn sky.
“Come on, you bastard,” I whispered. “Let’s hear your heartbeat.”
Hundreds of heartbeats tapped against my ear, then thousands as Death magic reached out in an ever-growing circle, wider and wider, tens of miles, hundreds of miles. Millions of hearts pumping, living, thriving.
I only wanted one. I only needed one: Eli.
Every pulse of life in the world was different. Fast, slow, old, young, hot, cold. Like a million fragile liquid notes, streaming out, pulsing, tangling, joining, breaking to make one vast, beautiful, chaotic song.
One of those notes had to be Eli’s. One single life.
I held my breath, sorting heartbeats, sorting lives, digging and sifting through the dirt of this world until only one heartbeat remained.
Eli’s.
Got him. He wasn’t far, less than a hundred miles north of here. Close enough I might be able to kill him from where I stood. If I could hold my concentration. If I could control the Death magic long enough to kill him.
Sure, I wanted to be there to see him take his last breath. But I had a clear shot. I intended to take it. “Burn in hell, you son of a bitch,” I snarled.
I cleared my mind, set my feet to bear the weight of throwing magic that far—impossibly far—and aiming it that precisely. Rolled my shoulders, tipped my head down. One strike, clean. That’s all I needed. It would do no good to take down a mile-wide swath of innocent people on accident if I lost hold of the magic. I aimed . . .
... and Eli’s heartbeat disappeared.
“Son of a bitch,” I yelled.
I scrambled to follow him, follow the sound of his life among the snarled sounds and beats of all those other lives. It would be easier to find a single grain of sand in a tsunami. Too many currents washed over me, too many lives coming, going, living, dying, changing.
I lost him in all that living.
Goddamn it.
Ice raked down the side of my face. I opened my eyes, gasped in a breath, started coughing. When had I stopped breathing? When had I fallen flat on my back?
Eleanor knelt in front of me, her hand on my cheek. You are insane, Shame, she said not unkindly. Trying to kill him from here. Not even you can do that.
“We know that now,” I said. “Are you okay?” Throwing that much magic could have hurt her, could have hurt Sunny and the doctor too.
Enough, she said. But we need to deal with Mina, okay?
“Mina?”
The doctor. We know how you can let go of her so she can live again.
“Who we? You and Sunny?”
Me. The doctor floated over to stand next to Eleanor.
I’d like to return to living, she said calmly. It hasn’t been too long for me to recover from this. I’d like you to let go of me, and I think I can help you with that.
“You can’t. No one can.”
Not true. She crossed her arms over her chest. I used to be a Death magic user, back before magic changed. I understand the way spells can be used for supporting life, for holding off death. Let me help you.
This was a bad idea. Using the Death magic inside me seemed to be nothing but bad ideas.
Eleanor’s hand slipped down to my heart. Not digging around in my chest looking for a way to kill me, just a cool, soft pressure there.
This is the right thing to do, she said. You know it is.
Her gaze searched my face. Not judging. Just waiting, patient. Something inside me that might have been my humanity kicked at the walls of grief and anger and darkness that surrounded me.
“All right,” I said. “She goes back to living. How?”
Eleanor smiled. There’s my hero. She moved away while I got myself back up on my feet.
Mina drifted closer to me.
Do you know the Resurrection spell? she asked. It was being experimented with in hospitals several years ago.
“Not a doctor,” I said. “And I don’t raise the dead.”
That’s okay. I know the spell. I can draw it, and then instead of filling it with magic, you can fill it with this—she touched the black rope between us—and me—she touched her chest.
Even the crazy parts of me thought that was crazy.
“What makes you think it will work?” I asked.
Strong theories. She gave me a smile. If it doesn’t work, what’s the worst that can happen?
I didn’t have time to run through all the possible disasters, but the most likely was that she’d be dead and still tied to me just like now. It was, in theory, a low-risk proposition.
“I think this is a terrible idea,” I said. “But if you want to try it, I’ll do it. I owe you that. I owe you more.”
Good, she said. Good. Thank you. Where do you want me to draw the glyph?
“Between us should be fine,” I said.
Eleanor and Sunny moved off a bit to give us room. Mina stood in front of me and then drew the glyph for Resurrection.
She cast with an odd blend of styles: half how I would expect a Life magic user to cast spells, and half how I’d expect a Death magic user to cast. The glyph knotted and looped in such a way that I lost track of the lines between blinks. Mina drew it as if she’d practiced it a million times, confident, clean, smooth, without a pause.
It hovered there in the air between us, the lines of it fading in and out of my vision, as if she had scratched the color off the world to make room for the spell.
That’s it, she said. It’s done.
She took a step away from the glyph. I could see where magic would fit into it. More than that, now that the spell was completed, I could see where a soul fit into it.
A soul like Mina.
“Who the hell came up with this?” I asked. I’d lived in the know of the secret, dangerous magic all my life and I’d never seen a spell like this.
Please hurry, Mina said. Before my concentration fails and the glyph breaks.
“Has this ever worked?” I asked as I untangled the rope that tied Mina to me from the other ropes.
We’ve had good results in the operating room.