The sour taste of vomit was enough to push Lindsay into swishing something that tasted like fire through his mouth. Maybe he’d have been better off with the vomit. He forced himself to swallow and passed the flask back to Noah with a muffled cough.
“I don’t want to know what that is. Christ. But your magic must be new if you can’t tell it’s itching to get out. Look at you. You’re burning up, and I don’t know how many cigarettes I’ve seen burst into flames in the past few days.”
“It doesn’t want out,” Noah said flatly. “It wants me.”
Lindsay looked at Noah, charting the scars and burns that marked his face and hands. His eyebrows and eyelashes were intact, but the hair on his head was gone, as though it had refused to return after being burnt away. The way Noah radiated heat, the way his eyes burned, the way his fire seemed to slip out unprovoked, Lindsay...Lindsay believed him.
“Well, I suppose it’s my job to make sure it doesn’t get you.” Lindsay’s job was very different from what Dane’s had been with him. Lindsay wasn’t at all suited to teaching Noah how to use magic—he’d only mastered his own in the last few months, after all—but teaching Noah how to survive his magic was something Lindsay was, when he stopped to think about it, probably very well equipped to handle.
He pointed at a low, sprawling building across the street. “We’re going in there and then we’ll find out if Cyrus really screwed up or not.”
“As you will.” Noah took a drink and put the flask away to light a cigarette. His hands shook, but he lit the cigarette without catastrophe.
Lindsay made sure Noah stayed with him as they crossed the street. He’d been just as reluctant to use his own magic, maybe more so, and he was beginning to understand Dane’s frustration at the time. It hadn’t been safe for him, and it wasn’t safe for Noah, either.
Past the blue double doors, Lindsay stopped to orient himself. The corridors of the school were an inefficient maze of dust and forgotten posters that said things like Reading ROCKS! and Don’t make excuses, make improvements. Lindsay’s grammar school hadn’t looked anything like this—it had more in common with Princeton than with Sesame Street.
“The gym is that way.” He pointed down the corridor to the left. “They took the wood floor out after the school closed, so you should be safe.”
Lindsay knew by now that Noah expected him to lead, and he started walking. Noah would follow. It was strange, being the one to go first.
They found the gymnasium past chained double doors where Noah broke the chains with an overzealous flame that left puddles of steel. Inside, the floor was gone. The wall at the far end was out and the abandoned pool could be seen beyond. The level below the gym floor was exposed, but support beams and flexible subfloor strapping crisscrossed the open space. Plenty of places to walk. The bleachers were still there, held up by braces from below. Plenty of seating.
“What now? You want a show?” Noah went to hang his jacket on a broken bracket away from the door, then slipped off the shirt he wore underneath—probably so he wouldn’t set fire to either. The shirt clung to some healing burns, but he peeled it away without hesitation and hung it up as well. When he brought up a handful of fire, Lindsay could see that he was all muscle and bone, lean but solid, brassy with copper-red gleams. He stepped out onto one of the beams, walking like it was a sidewalk. Like there wasn’t empty space between him and pipes and vents and a distant concrete floor.
“No.” Lindsay was careful, weaving the illusion in layers. This way, he wouldn’t have to bring it down all at once. He built a fire in the center of what was left of the room, large enough and hot enough that Noah would feel the sunshine warmth on his skin like a burn. “I want you to put out the fire.”
Noah needed to learn to get along with his magic, and working backward seemed the safest way to start doing that.
Noah hesitated, wavering as though he knew the fire wasn’t real but was fighting the illusion for the knowledge, and he looked over his shoulder at Lindsay. He didn’t speak, though. He turned back to the fire and, just as a boy might spit on his fingers and pinch out a candle, his will cut off the flame—not smothered or extinguished as by water—the act of burning simply ceased to be.
“Like that?” Noah didn’t look back again.
That wasn’t at all what Lindsay had expected. Maybe he was coming at this from the wrong direction.
Maybe Noah had to push the fire out, rather than pulling it in. But he didn’t like the idea of letting Noah’s magic out without some kind of barrier to keep it from getting out of hand. “Come here.”
Noah stepped across a wide gap to walk a steel I-beam over to where he’d left Lindsay. He stopped only inches away, seeming patient while the twitch of muscles in his chest and belly put a lie to that. No words, but the way that he stood, arms loose at his side with his palms facing forward, was clear enough for Lindsay to read: As you will.
That kind of subservience made Lindsay’s skin crawl. He hoped there was something beneath it beyond more of the same.
Lindsay closed the distance between them with a hand on Noah’s bare chest, careful of where his flesh was still raw. Noah’s skin felt like the fire of his magic, and his heart was pounding under Lindsay’s palm. Fear? Anticipation? Lindsay couldn’t be sure, and he didn’t think Noah would tell him if he asked.
He knew what Noah’s magic was and, after watching him these last few days, had a good idea how it was triggered inside him. Even so, casting the net of his illusion wasn’t an easy task. He had to be certain Noah’s magic would go untouched as Noah drew on it—that the magic answering Noah’s call would be merely an illusion responding exactly as Noah’s own magic would.
Noah’s magic would kill them both if Lindsay wasn’t careful.
Somehow, and Lindsay didn’t know how, Noah let him in. It was as though he opened all the doors and let Lindsay walk in and out of his magic and his mind. This didn’t feel like submission. More like... practice. As though Noah knew someone else who could do mind magic. And Lindsay thought that, maybe, if Noah wanted, he could have tried to keep Lindsay out.
As Lindsay worked, Noah’s heart slowed and grew steady. It was still quick, but not so desperate and roaring and faltering all at once. Lindsay could focus on the magic without distraction.
Finally, his magic was as solid as Lindsay could make it, and he hoped it would be enough. He let his hand fall to his side and stepped back to give Noah some space.
“You can let it out,” Lindsay said. If he had done his magic well, Noah would grasp the illusory magic Lindsay had woven over the real thing. Noah’s mind and body would believe that the magic it wielded was real, not Lindsay’s carefully conjured virtual reality. Better still, Lindsay would be able to watch the process from within.
Noah backed away, walking the narrow beam without looking behind him. Then he stopped and stood there, eyes closed. A glow crept over his skin, a thin shimmering veil of white heat. Fire. Thinner than paper, softer than silk.
Lindsay could feel what Noah felt—pure, destructive power draped over him like a cloak. Tendrils dripped down to splash on the steel beam, sinking into the metal like a hot needle drawing shapes in butter.
Under the cloak lay anger, like the fire trapped it against Noah’s skin. A rage so great it made the fire seem as plain as old cotton sheets.
“Let it go, Noah.”
The force of it knocked Lindsay back a step—the anger, not the illusion of the fire. The anger was real. The fire ripped outward and upward, through the roof of the school. Talons and tentacles of it plunged down into the earth, through concrete and steel.