Devon Monk - Magic in the Shadows

“We have time?”

“How fast can you drink?”

“Let’s do it,” I said.

Lucky for us, there wasn’t anyone in line. I ordered a cup of house brew, black. Shamus ordered half a cup of house brew. Then he proceeded to fill the cup up the rest of the way with milk and sugar. Lots of sugar.

“Sure you got enough milk in your sugar?” I asked as we strolled out of the shop and headed south.

He flipped me off. “You drink your coffee your way, and I’ll drink my coffee the right way.”

And we did. Quickly. My cup was almost empty and my throat almost burnt by the time we reached the end of the next block. We threw our cups in the garbage, and kept walking downhill toward the river and Cathedral Park, the St. Johns Bridge to our right.

“What do we do when we find the nest?” I asked.

“Kill them. As many as we can. You know how to set a Drain, right?”

“Let’s pretend I do.”

“Okay, in that case, you stand back like Zayvion said. I’ll set the Drains. Too bad you and I haven’t cast together before. If we were Complements or Contrasts, you could pour magic into the spells I throw.”

“We could try now,” I said. My dad, behind my eyes, fluttered and scratched. I don’t know what he was all worked up about.

“Why not?” Shamus ducked into the mouth of an alley and leaned against the wall. “I’m going to weave a simple Light spell, right?” He did so, quickly. Watching him made me feel like I was all thumbs. “A little magic.” He exhaled, and the Light spell glowed soft white in an orb the size of a golf ball.

Even though I was watching, I was pretty impressed with his reach. Magic did not pool naturally beneath St. Johns. He had to access it about five miles out, over on the other side of the train tracks where the city had stopped laying the networks and lines.

“Now you,” he said, “make it bright.”

The spell was tiny. Even if my way of casting and his completely clashed, the worst we’d probably get would be a flash and then nothing. Like fragile wire, the glyph he cast wouldn’t hold very much magic before it self-destructed.

I cleared my mind, set a Disbursement, and thought about how I could best feed magic into his spell.

Like this

, my father said. And I knew the way to cast the magic, almost with a flick of my wrist, so that the magic would catch and wrap naturally, matching the pulse of Shamus’s spell.

And sure, I could have ignored my dad. Could have decided he was just trying to screw me up. And sure, I thought about it.

Stubborn

, my father sighed.

I have not always tried to make your life miserable, Allison. Far from it.

I ignored his comment. If I were ever going to listen to him, this seemed like a fairly harmless time to do so. The light would either get brighter, or it would go out. No lives on the line with this spell.

So I cast magic the way he had shown me, pulling just the barest amount of it out of my flesh and bone and into Shamus’ spell.

The orb glowed brighter, doubling in intensity, but did not burn out.

“Sweet,” Shamus said. “Might be Complements, you and I.”

“I thought I was Complements with Zayvion.”

“Soul Complements, maybe, that whole rarest-of-the-rare, only-one-for-the-other thing. There are other degrees of magic use that complement one another. That aren’t as powerful and are still fairly rare. Mostly, there’s Contrasts or nothing. Course, you and I might be that too.”

“Contrasts?”

“Means our magic blends, sometimes perfectly, sometimes not so much. Do the same thing twice and get different results. Never know when it will work and when it won’t.”

He unwove the spell, then traced a new orb of Light into the air in front of him.

“Here’s the same thing I just cast. You do your part again. Exactly the same. Let’s see what happens.”

I cleared my mind, set a Disbursement, then drew magic through me just as my father had showed me, just as I had done the last time, and added it to Shamus’ spell.

Instead of growing brighter, the orb sizzled, filled with black specks, then went completely black. It snapped like a firecracker and was gone.

It happened so quickly, neither Shamus nor I had time to flinch away from it. I felt the failure of the spell like a quick headache behind my eyes that was gone almost as soon as it registered.

I dug my left thumb into my temple.

Shamus nodded. “Give you a pain?”

“Yes.”

He rubbed his hands over the thighs of his jeans, as if trying to wipe away sweat or pain. “Thought as much. We’re Contrasts. That means you keep your magic to yourself, missy.”

I gave him a sour look. “Like I’d want my magic mixing with yours anyway.”

He chuckled. “Ooh. Spunky. I like. No time, unfortunately. Z and Chase should be done digging at the gate. Ought to have it closed anytime. Which should flush the Hungers from their nest.”

“And how, again, do we find them?”

“We don’t. They find us. Me,” he amended. “They find me. You stay quiet and don’t call attention to yourself.”

He headed down the sidewalk. “We need a side street, alleyway, abandoned building. Best would be a spot out of sight-especially since it’s still light out-but open enough we have room to maneuver.” He tipped his chin toward the left, where a broken-down metal shed that might have once been a workshop or warehouse huddled behind half of a rusted chain-link fence. Next to the shed was a patch of dirt and weeds.

Here, huddled between the rise of the bridge to our left and the untended bushes and scrub of the empty lot, we had everything Shamus had said he was looking for. Enough area to move in, and privacy from prying eyes.

He strolled through the gap in the fence and then over to stand beneath a sickly hemlock. I followed him.

“You’ll want to be over there.” He pointed at the rusted shed.

“Couldn’t you have said that before I walked all the way over here with you?” I kicked my way through the wet weeds that slapped at my shins. I put my back against the shed.

“And?” I asked.

“And don’t use magic. At all. Period. Not even Sight. Nothing. Got it?”

“The first time.”

He flashed me a grin, then shook out his hands and held them up, chest high, palms facing outward. He pulled on magic. Not just a small amount to fill a spell; Shamus accessed enough magic that I could taste it, feel it on the back of my throat like hot peppers when I swallowed.

He chanted, or at least I think he chanted. His lips moved and he was half whispering, half humming words I could not understand. A glow, something that didn’t look like anything more than weak sunlight through the storm clouds, surrounded him. That was not sunlight. It was magic.

The heartbeats against my wrist changed. The one I knew belonged to Shamus slowed and pumped harder, like he was falling into his stride in a marathon. But the other two rhythms, Zayvion and Chase’s hearts, suddenly quickened. I turned my thoughts toward Zayvion’s heartbeat and could feel his strain as he drew magic toward him, from the stores out past the rail line, from the stores on the other side of the river, and then could feel him focus all of that magic into one place.

A rush of heat flooded my body-it felt like I was blushing from head to toe. I swayed and took a step to right myself. Hells, he was pulling on so much magic, I could feel the drain in my bones. I bit the inside of my cheek and recited my Miss Mary Mack jingle to keep my head clear.

The heat rushed out of me. Zayvion’s heartbeat skipped, paused, long enough that I wondered whether his heart would beat again.

Chase’s heartbeat continued on, strong, heavy, almost as if she were trying to make up for the lack of his. I felt Shamus’ heart and I felt Chase’s heart. But not Zayvion’s.