Magic In the Blood

    Come on, Allie. Do something.

    I was being eaten alive.

    I am a river. Magic cannot touch me. Magic cannot change me.

    Burning alive.

    Where the hell is the off switch when I need one?

    Fuck this.

    If I couldn’t let go of magic, then I’d hold on to it with both hands and shove it down their throats.

    I called magic up into me, more, all the magic that flowed beneath the city, all the magic flowing through the network of lead and glass lines, all the magic stored in deep cisterns. I spoke a word, ready to rain all bloody hell and destruction down upon them.

    Something hit the back of my head. Hard.

    Even though I hurt everywhere, that hurt more.

    My vision went dark, and the ringing in my ears followed a rushing throb of blood. I think I landed on my knees.

    And everything went black.

Chapter Thirteen

    My dead dad stood above me. He was less transparent than the last time I’d seen him. I saw through him enough to make out the corner of the building and white wooden cross where his chest should be. He still, however, looked annoyed with me.

    “Always set a Disbursement,” he said, so close that it sounded as if his voice were in my head. “Every time you use magic. Every single time. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

    I opened my mouth to tell him to bite me. He was dead. Dead. And that meant I no longer had to lie here and listen to his lectures.

    He might be dead, but he was also fast. Fast like the watercolor people. Before I so much as inhaled, he bent over me and stuck his hand on my heart.

    Not on my coat.

    Not on my skin.

    He stuck his hand into me. Deep. And touched my heart.

    Magic slipped up his fingers. He squeezed my heart and I arched my back in pain.

    Magic poured out of me. He pumped my heart again and pushed magic out through my veins like bad water coming out of a swimmer’s lungs. A strange wintergreen warmth and the taste of leather at the back of my throat filled me.

    I blinked. And my dad was gone.

    In his place, Paul Stotts bent over me. Sirens screamed in the distance. “Can you hear me?”

    “Yes,” I said, baffled. I was lying on my back, on the ground. Stotts looked worried. That made two of us.

    I sat, using my elbows for leverage, and then pushed Stotts’ hands and protests away and looked around me.

    “Allie, you shouldn’t move. You should wait-”

    “Right.” I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed myself up to my feet. I wobbled a little, but he rose with me. I was confused but also full of energy, like I’d just had a brisk walk around the block.

    Except it looked like I’d fallen on the ground, roughly right beneath the spell I was Hounding. The white cross was still on the building. A crowd of people-real people-were gathering on doorsteps and under roof eves. The watercolor people were gone.

    And so was my dad.

    “Where’s the fire?” I asked Stotts.

    “Ambulance,” he said. “When I called, they already had a unit on the way.”

    I was still scanning the crowd, looking for my dad, looking for Trager’s men, hells, looking for anyone and anything.

    A leggy figure detached from a patch of shadow behind a car and strolled into the glow of a dull yellow streetlight. As soon as he hit the light, he turned and walked backward. He held up his cell phone toward me briefly, pulling it to his forehead and then away in a salute. And then he was part of the shadows again.

    Davy Silvers, the Hound.

    So much for the mystery of who called 911.

    The ambulance rounded the corner and slowed as it neared us. Its siren switched off midwail, and the lights rolled through white, yellow, red, making the whole wet neighborhood look like a greasy disco hell.

    “Why an ambulance?” I asked Stotts. “I feel fine.”

    He gave me the strangest look.

    “What?” I said.

    “Allie,” he said, holding on to one of my arms like he was betting I was about to run or, you know, throw myself into traffic or do some other kind of curse-worthy thing. “Your skin was smoking.”

    Oh. Wow. Weird.

    I met his eyes, gave him my most convincing look. “I feel much better now. I can tell you who cast that spell.”

    A man and a women hopped out of the ambulance and strode over to us.

    “Did you call?” the woman, about my age but half a foot shorter, asked.

    Stotts nodded. “She was out cold. Hounding magic. Says she feels fine now.” The tone of his voice said he obviously didn’t believe me.

    That was the last time I let him talk for me.

    I took a deep breath, surprised when my heart hitched with a twang of pain. Maybe I wasn’t all right. But I was right enough that I wanted to get home, get clean, and sleep off the touch of the watercolor people, the touch of my dead dad, and most especially the fact that I was about to rat out my friend to the police.

    All I had to do was convince the nice emergency medical technicians that I didn’t need their services and was good to go. I’d be home within the hour.

    Influence would be so easy. And so wrong.

    “It was a pretty heavy spell I was Hounding. I got light-headed,” I told them. “But I feel fine now.”

    The EMTs were very nice and helped me over to the back of the ambulance, where I sat down and let them check my vitals.

    They asked some questions, took down all my information, recorded the results of blood pressure, and flashed lights in my eyes.

    Everything checked out within normal ranges.

    I threw Stotts, who had been waiting nearby, a told-you-so look, and he grunted.

    Actually, I was surprised. I felt okay. Not great. I had a headache that could pound a mountain to sand, and the raw spots on my body-spots I did not point out to the EMTs, and spots that were not on my face or arms and therefore not seen by the EMTs-hurt like hell.

    Sunburned and bruised down to the bone, even my heart felt sore. Kind of like someone had squeezed it.

    Everywhere else, I was just stiff. Magic had taken my name and kicked my ass.

    But I had survived it. Was still surviving it. And I had questions.

    Why the hells had my dad showed up? What had he done, touching, squeezing my heart? And what did Pike think he was doing, throwing around blood magic, which he hated?

    The EMTs and Stotts talked while I rested there on the back bumper of the ambulance, thinking. At every soft sound, at every shifting shadow, I felt my breath quicken, my heart hurt. I strained to hear if the watercolor people were out there. Coming to get me. Coming to slide their fingers beneath my skin, to tear the flesh from my bones, to suck the magic from my blood.