Magic In the Blood

pastel light carved in a mosaic of Life and Death glyphs just like the ones I had seen on the wall outside Get Mugged.

    The light from the glyphs was bright enough that I could make out the rest of the room. To my right, a row of six cots neatly lined up along one wall. There were people on those cots, young women. The girls Pike was talking about. Maybe even the kidnapped girls Stotts was looking for.

    Black lines of magic coiled around their still forms from head to toe like dark silken cocoons. More lines of magic extended from their chests, snaking and pulsing through the air to attach to two surgical tables in the center of the room. One of those tables was empty, and the other had a prone figure across it.

    Next to four of the cots stood a ghostly copy of each girl. Not quite as pale as the Veiled, the transparent girls swayed in time to the pulsing lines of magic extending from their physical bodies, as if rocked by a gentle current. Just like the Veiled, they saw me and opened their mouths in hunger.

    All of them stepped toward me, arms extended. And then the lines of magic holding them to their bodies thickened, tightened, and thrummed with a bass-drum thump, jerking them back a half step, though their hands still wove in the air as if they could almost reach me.

    Six cots, six girls, but only four ghosts. Did that mean the other girls were more dead or more alive?

    Holy shit. I looked back at Anthony. No spirit stood next to him. Strangely, though I’d been holding Reveal for several seconds, there were also no Veiled, no pastel fog. I could only assume it had to be because of the pastel wards painted on the walls.

    I hope they held.

    I walked over to Anthony first. I tried to be quiet, which was near impossible in my boots over the uneven wooden plank floor and with my left leg hurting with every step. Anthony did not move.

    I gently lifted his head. If I didn’t know Anthony’s scent, I might not recognize him. The kid was a mess. Blood poured out his ears. He was bruised and swollen like he’d gone through a meat grinder. And I knew it wasn’t from physical violence. Thick ropes of magic wrapped around his neck and sent tendrils of ebony chains down to sink into his belly and chest, where they then reached upward to press over his face like an iron mask and stab deeply into his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

    An Offload glyph. Someone was using him to bear a hell of a price for using magic. Dark magic.

    I traced the fingers of my left hand over the magic chains, and Anthony twitched with every link my fingertip brushed. I didn’t know how to break a spell this powerful without killing him. Only a doctor who was skilled in Siphon spells and knew how to slowly drain the magic off of him could break something this strong.

    Shit.

    Who would do this to a kid? I could probably answer that if I kept tracing, Hounding the spell around him, but every time I touched the spell, Anthony jerked in pain. I didn’t know how long he’d been tied up like this. Didn’t know how much more pain he could endure.

    Just because I couldn’t break the spell on him didn’t mean I couldn’t untie him from the chair. I’d carry him out of the warehouse, find a phone, and call the police.

    “Allie.” The whisper was close, a cold exhale against my cheek.

    Holy shit. That was my dad. I spun toward the sound, holding the Reveal spell intact. Pain bloomed up from my thigh as my wound reopened and poured more blood. I gritted my teeth against making any sound and peered into the crosshatch of light pouring through the dust and dark webwork of magic that filled the air.

    I didn’t see my father. Didn’t see his ghost. But I realized that all the lines of magic in the room-coming from the girls, coming from the glyphs on the walls-were connected to whoever was lying on that surgical table.

    I took a step closer to the table. The figure was familiar. Two more steps, and I recognized that profile. And I should. It was my father.

    Oh, hell, oh, hell, oh, hell. Reality did a sick little dreamlike swing, and I broke out in a sweat. Suddenly I hurt everywhere: my head, my chest, my bleeding leg, every inch of skin and bone that the dead magic users had stabbed burning fingers into and torn apart.

    This was too much. Too much too fast. I pressed the palm of my left hand over my forehead, trying to steady my breathing, trying not to let the part of me that was screaming and screaming take over.

    Images of Pike’s bloody body, his mutilated face, flashed behind my eyes. Trager’s bloody smile mixed with that, his cold gaze as he shot me, stabbed me, died on me, a heavy stinking heap of flesh that I stabbed until his blood gushed down my legs. Stabbed until he was dead.

    What did I think I was doing? I wasn’t a cop. I wasn’t a soldier. I wasn’t a killer. I was a Hound. Good at tracking spells. Spells. My life wasn’t supposed to be filled with dying, bloody, horrible, hurting, tortured people.

    The part of me that was screaming took up a new chant. What if he’s not dead? What if he’s not dead? What if Dad isn’t dead?

    What if my father was still alive-right there, on that table, in this hell house? What if all those lines of magic leading to his body were keeping him alive?

    A ringing started in my ears and I felt the room rock a little more. Hello, shock. Wondered when you’d get here.

    Get a grip, I told myself. If that was my father, alive or dead, I needed to know. Needed to find a way to save him too. And Anthony. And the girls, if they were still alive.

    All before whoever was throwing this little soiree came back to check on the guests.

    I gripped Zayvion’s dagger tighter and limped over to the tables in the middle of the room. The ghost girls to my left moaned and shifted, stretching to the lengths of their magical chains, hands still clawing the air for me. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if those chains broke.

    I stopped next to the table.

    My dad-my dad’s body-was strapped down to the table, leather bindings across the ankles, hips, and both wrists. Why? My mind raced with images from horror movies. Things people did to torture, to destroy. But none of it matched this. It was as if someone expected his body might get up, leave, go for a walk, escape.

    Which was ridiculous. Because even I could tell he was very, very dead.

    Black lines of magic from the girls draped down to play like wind-stirred mist across a large square lead and glass engraved plate on my dad’s chest. From this angle, I could make out glyphs of Life surrounded by glyphs of Death carved on the plate just like the wall outside Get Mugged-just like the walls in here.

    The acrid stink of chemicals-formaldehyde and something else-the rancid scent of something biological gone bad, like spoiled fat left in the heat, hit me. And the misty black spell rising like steam off of the plate stank of cloying licorice, so strong it made the back of my throat tighten. Magic. Not blood magic. Not any kind of magic I had ever smelled before. Something dark. Something bad.

    “Allison.” The whisper came from the other side of the table.

    I looked up.

    My dead dad stood on the other side of the table, his corpse spread out between us. Ghost Dad was transparent enough that even the dull light from the window poured through him. He cast no shadow next to mine on the floor.

    “The gates between the living world and that of the dead are opening.” His voice was the most alive thing about him, though his pale, pale green eyes still shone with a kind of light-anger, determination. He sounded like himself but as if he spoke from across the room even though he was close enough I could touch him.

    “That’s not my problem.” I wanted it to come out strong, but only a whisper escaped my lips.

    “Yes,” he said. “It is. There are things you don’t know, dark things, dark magics that dwell on the other side. If they are allowed into this world, you, the people you care for, will die.”

    I thought about Pike, already dead. Then I thought about Violet, who was pregnant with my father’s child, my brother or sister. I thought about Davy, and then my mind turned to Zayvion.

    Shit.

    “I’m going to call the police,” I said a little louder than before. “MERC can handle this. Fix this.”

    “Allison, listen to me. This is far more than the police or any of the uninitiated can handle. You must do as I say. Let me touch you. Let me use the magic you hold in your body, your blood to seal the gates. It is what you were born for, what you and I were meant to do. With your magic, I can break these spells. Close the gates that