Devon Monk - Magic in the Shadows

don’t Close anyone.

I

am not a Closer. Death magic, remember?”

“Who?” I demanded. “Who Closed me?”

“Listen, love,” Shamus said with a hard smile. “I don’t know how to break this to you, but I have no fucking idea. You weren’t even on my radar until a couple months ago when Zayvion went head over shit kickers for you. Well, I did harbor a bit of hate for you, seeing that your da killed my da. Other than that though, I didn’t care you were alive, much less who might be Closing you.”

I just sat there and blinked. It was cold water to the face. These people-Shamus, Maeve, Zayvion-did things to people, made choices without the advice of law or courts. They had probably done things to me.

“Scary, ain’t it?” Shamus asked when I was quiet a little too long. “This secret magic shit is crazy stuff. The things we can do to try to keep people and society safe. Most all of it is in good intention too; that’s honest. If it helps any, I can ask around. You’ll be on the files if you’ve been Closed. I can’t access the files on that, but I can talk to Victor about it. See if he’ll release some information.”

“Do they ever tell someone if they’ve been Closed?” I finally asked.

“Tell someone? Darlin’, haven’t you been paying attention? We can do anything. Tell you if you’ve been Closed. When and where and why. Or-this is a possibility-give you back your memories if the person who Closed you is willing. It’s not so easy as clicking your heels and everything snaps back into place, but it happens.

“You won’t believe this, but sometimes people want to leave the Authority, and so their time here is Closed. Then sometimes they wander back, and their memories are Opened. Just like new.” He stuck out one hand and made the so-so motion. “More or less.”

“Is that your pep talk?” I asked.

“Not mine so much, no. Standard-issue. Drag it out whenever the situation calls for it. Did it work?”

I rubbed at my eyes and tried to let go of my anger and fear. If they had Closed me, I’d find out. First, I had to survive the test. I pulled my hands away from my face. “Let’s pretend it did,” I said. “So Chase pushed to get me tested tonight?”

He nodded, his eyes wide. “Woman is chewing glass and spitting sparks over what she thinks you did to Greyson. You remember that part, right?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“No one Closed you,” he said. “By the time I got there, Zayvion and Chase were yelling to bring the roof down. Neither of them got in your head. I made sure of that.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” he said. “It’s a serious thing what went down there. Greyson. You.”

“I didn’t do anything to Greyson.”

“No? Just coincidence he was there? That he used the Hound girl for bait to lure you? Made her open the gates with the other Hound, Davy, and release the Hungers? You did notice Greyson, he isn’t exactly human anymore, right? Oh, and one of your da’s disks is crammed in his craw?”

“Listen,” I said. “He tried to kill me. Three times. Of course this wasn’t a coincidence.”

Shamus was good at hiding his body language, but from the subtle tensing in his shoulders, I knew that Greyson trying to kill me was news to him.

“And I didn’t do anything to him. He killed my father.”

“Is that true?”

I nodded.

“So you think your father implanted the disk and converted him to a Necromorph?”

“No.”

“Come on, now. Don’t be dense. It’s your da’s disk. Who else has access to the disks? And you say he killed your da. Two and two. It adds up.”

I shook my head. “He was still a man when he killed my dad. He didn’t have the disk in his throat.” I dug for the flash of Dad’s memory that I had seen, of Greyson standing in front of him with a knife and a disk in his hand.

“I find myself potently curious as to how you know this,” Shamus said.

“My dad told me.”

We stared at each other for a minute or so.

“In your noggin?” he finally asked.

“Yes.”

“Huh.” That was it, nothing more.

But my head was spinning. I had assumed the stolen disks had been used on Greyson. But Shame brought up a very good point. There were other people who had access to the disks. People like my father. And people who worked for my father. People like Violet and probably even Kevin.

So it could be a stolen disk in his neck, and stolen disks being used to open the gates. Or it could be someone inside Beckstrom Enterprises was supplying them.

Is that why Dad said Greyson would hunt Violet?

Shamus shifted his feet on the bedframe. “We do have Greyson contained. Off the street, thanks quite a bit to you. That’s a problem we’ve been trying to take care of for months. I’m sure someone will figure how to get in his head and pull the truth out of him. Find out who morphed him.”

“I don’t understand why anyone would even want to do that,” I said. “It’s dark magic, right?”

“Very. With technology to bolster it. Bad shit.”

“Why mess someone up like that?”

He took a deep breath and leaned back so he could stare at the ceiling. “I forget you haven’t read the history.” He was quiet a minute.

“Basically,” he looked back down at me, “magic has always been around. It took mankind a long time to discover it, and even longer to learn how to access it. Lots of hints of that show up in the history books if you know what you’re looking for. We, the Authority, have mostly covered up the reality of magic until about thirty years ago, when your da and a few of his cronies went public with the ‘safe’ technology to access magic.

“Magic is a natural part of this world. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Some ways to use magic are still kept secret from the general population. Death magic, for sure. Blood magic to some degree, and lots of ways magic can be used aren’t taught-dark magic especially. Those college classes that teach how to use magic for business, counseling, medicine, construction, the arts?

“Who do you think developed those courses? The Authority. Who do you think teach it in the universities? Mostly members of the Authority. See, once your da let the devil out of the bag, damage control was the best the Authority could do.

“It’s worked okay. Some people who were dead set against magic being used by the general public changed their tune. Making magic available has helped the world more than hurt it. So far, anyway, and so long as the Authority keeps a close eye on what ‘advances’ are being released.” He shrugged.

“And making someone into a beast is an advance?” I asked.

He held up a finger. “Getting to that. So magic is bright, right? It casts a shadow when it’s used. And that shadow contains magic too. That shadow is a twisted version of magic-dark magic.

“Dark magic can do very bad things. That’s why it’s forbidden. But making something forbidden only means it gets used in secret, which is why some people think dark magic should be sanctioned, taught, and regulated. The price for using dark magic is death, so that goes a long way toward deterring users. Still. .”

He shook his head. “People, right? Crazy. Anyway, dark magic is used sometimes. Not often, because, well, it’s sort of hard to access. Like catching a shadow. But just like magic casts a shadow, so does life. Life’s shadow is death. You still with me?”

I nodded.

“So for a long while, dark magic was rarely used. But your da opened the door to experimentation with the rules, changed centuries of tradition. Gave people ideas. Wasn’t long before someone discovered where dark magic was most plentiful: in death. All you had to do was find a way to tap into it, and just like sucking magic out of the ground, dark magic was at your fingertips.