“I understand.” My magic filled the circle like a dense vapor. The surface of the “liquid” was placid under me. Somehow the two had to interact.
“We’re wasting time,” Augustine said.
“Do you feel the circle?” Mad Rogan asked, walking behind me.
“Yes.”
Slowly, he circled the chalk line and stopped on the left of me. “Do you feel your magic filling it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what Pierce plans to do?”
“He wants to burn the city down.” Where was he going with this?
“The artifact made Emmens into a Prime.” Mad Rogan’s voice was cold. “It will make Adam Pierce a god of fire. He can melt steel now. It melts at 2,750 degrees Fahrenheit. The artifact will double that. A house fire never burns higher than 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. Adam Pierce will burn at five times that, maybe hotter. At 2,192 degrees, concrete will lose its structural integrity and turn into calcium oxide, a white powder. At 2,750 degrees, stainless steel within the buildings will melt. The downtown will be a nightmare of molten metal, crumbling concrete, flames, and noxious, poisonous gasses. It will become hell on earth. Thousands of people will die.”
I swallowed. Anxiety rose inside me.
“Pierce just crossed Dreyfus Street,” one of the people at the terminal announced. “The cameras have gone out. We lost him again.”
He was staying off the main roads to avoid Lenora’s roadblocks. Even with traffic, it would take him only twenty minutes to get downtown.
“The problem with ‘thousands’ of people,” Mad Rogan said, “is that it’s not personal.”
He took Augustine’s tablet and tapped it. The big flat-screen on the wall flared into life. A silver van was parked in front of an elaborate, ultramodern building—2 Houston Center, corner of MacKinnley and Fanin streets. It was a really distinctive building, all black glass, right in the middle of downtown.
Mad Rogan handed the tablet back to Augustine and raised his phone. “Bernard?”
“Yes?” my cousin’s voice answered through the phone.
“I need you to step out of the car and face the building.”
No. My body went ice cold.
The passenger door of the van opened. Bern exited the van and turned to the building. The camera zoomed up on his face.
Everything else disappeared. All I saw were Bern’s serious blue eyes, wide open on the screen.
Adam was less than twenty minutes away. Bern would die. And Mad Rogan knew it. He knew it, and he’d parked him there.
I heard my own voice. “Get out of there. Get out of there!”
“He can’t hear you.” Mad Rogan put away the phone.
“You bastard!”
My magic punched into the circle, smashing it. A cloud of chalk dust shot up from the circle’s boundary. Augustine dropped his tablet. The circle bounced back, and power flooded me.
“There it is,” Mad Rogan murmured. “It’s not fear or anger. It’s the protective impulse.”
“He’s nineteen years old!” My magic raged and my voice matched it.
“Then you better do something to save him.”
My magic snapped to him.
“Not me.” Rogan pointed at Mr. Emmens. “Him.”
I pivoted. My magic grasped the old man into its vise. He paled. The circle fed me more power. I stared into his eyes. “Is your name Mark Emmens?”
“Yes.”
True.
My magic locked on him. He was enclosed in a barrier, like a nut in a shell. It was old, thick, and strong. I felt his life, shivering inside, both protected and bound by the shell. The two were connected. If I broke the barrier, the light of his life would perish with it.
“Do you know where the third piece of amulet is hidden?”
He tried to resist. I punched the circle with my magic. Power bounced into me. I grasped the invisible barrier with my magic and strained to wrench it apart. I didn’t need much. Just a gap. A small opening.
The shell resisted.
I didn’t have time for this. Bern would die.
I pulled the power from the circle. It kept coming and coming, as if I pulled on a rope, expecting only a foot or two, but it kept going, and now I was pulling it with both hands as fast as I could. The influx of power slowed. I punched the circle again and the flow sped up. I focused it all on the shell.
It shuddered.
More power.
I felt light-headed.
Another tremor.
The shell cracked. In my mind, I saw light spilling from inside it. I thrust my magic into it like a wedge and kept it open.
“Yes,” Mr. Emmens said.
He had answered my question. I made my mouth move. “Is the third piece in your possession?”
“No.”
“Is it hidden on the property you own?”
“No.”
“She’s going to die,” Augustine warned. “She’s pulling too much power.”
“She’s fine,” Mad Rogan said.
It hurt now. It hurt as if something had stabbed me in the stomach and I was trying to pull the knife out inch by inch. But my magic wedge held.
Think, think, think . . .
Bern’s face looked at me from the camera. I had to save him. He was just a boy. He had his whole life ahead of him.
Adam Pierce was going downtown. The piece had to be here. In the center of the city. It wouldn’t be in a bank or in a building, because the Emmens family wouldn’t want to repeat themselves.
“Is it on the property you used to own?”
“No.”
The pain was clawing at me now, hot and sharp.
“Is it on the property your relative owns?”
“No.”
“Is it on a property your relative used to own?”
“Yes.”
That yes nearly rocked me.
“Search the records,” Augustine barked.
The five people at the computer terminals typed furiously.
“Was that property sold?”
“No.”
If his relative no longer owned it but it hadn’t been sold, what the heck could’ve happened to it?
The world swayed. I was about to pass out. I clung onto consciousness, desperately struggling to stay upright.
“Frederick Rome,” one of the computer techs reported. “His daughter’s ex-husband, from her first marriage, used to own a building on Caroline Street. It was lost in a divorce settlement and awarded to his second ex-wife.”
Augustine spun to me. “Ask if it was lost in a legal action.”
“Was the property lost as a result of a legal action or awarded as a settlement?”
“No.”
Tiny red circles swam in my eyes. My magic was ebbing. I was barely holding on. I forced my brain to work through the haze of pain and fatigue. It was downtown. There was nothing downtown but big businesses owned by Houses, government buildings, and . . .
Government buildings.
“Is it on municipal land?”
“Yes.” Mr. Emmens came to life.
“Was the property donated to the city?”
“Yes.” Mr. Emmens nodded.
The techs typed so fast that the clicking of their keys blended into a hum.
“Patricia Bridges,” the middle technician called. “Married to William Bridges, maiden name Emmens.”
Mr. Emmens smiled.
“William and Patricia Bridges jointly donated a parcel of land to the city of Houston, provided that the land may never be sold or built upon but used instead as a place for the free people of Texas to gather as they see fit.”
The Bridge Park. Directly across from the justice center. My magic was quaking under pressure. I had just enough time left for one last question.
“Is it in a monument that includes a horse?”
“Yes,” Mr. Emmens said.
The shell snapped closed, crushing my magic.
Mad Rogan grabbed me and pulled me out of the circle. The pressure and pain vanished. I felt light-headed again.
His gaze searched my eyes. “Speak to me.”
“I hate you.”
“Okay.” Mad Rogan let go of me. “You’re fine.”