Stupid voice. I knew they were coming. It was all I could do not to look up, not to run away.
I traced the lines of the gold Glamour spell with the fingertips of my right hand. The spell’s magic resonated across my skin, mixing with and ever so slightly altering the magic I was using for the Shield and for my senses.
Could this get any harder?
The lines of the Glamour spell were distinctive, cast with the basic north, south, east, and west boundary lines I knew Pike always used.
It had to be his signature.
But the sweetness, the cherry, wasn’t anything I’d ever sensed on Pike. Anthony, yes, but not Pike. Pike had never done blood magic in all the time I knew him. And he was plenty strong enough as a magic user to cast Glamour without using blood. So why would he do so? I followed the lines of the spell, trying to taste the wrongness on the back of my throat.
All I got was the scent of blood. Pike’s blood.
The watercolor people slammed into the Shield.
And I felt it. Pain shivered through me.
Don’t look at them; don’t look at them. I knew I shouldn’t. Knew I shouldn’t look away from the Glamour spell.
But I did.
Holy shit.
People, and there were dozens of them, pressed against the Shield. This close, with magic still enhancing my vision, I could see that they were indeed people-tall, short, heavy, thin, pastel skin tones of varying shades, facial features distinct. They had no eyes, and yet I knew they saw me.
They leaned on the Shield, and I could feel the weight of them like a press of a storm about to break. Their fingers scrabbled across the Shield. Scraped, found purchase, and dug into the magic. They pulled at it like cold taffy, trying to bend it, stretch it, shove it into their mouths.
They hadn’t broken the Shield yet. But they would.
Hound, Allie, I said, forcing myself to look away. Get the damn job done.
I pulled a little more magic from within me and added it to my sense of smell. I hissed as magic leaped up in response.
Magic rushed from the ground and filled me. I used it as fast as I could. I diverted most of it into the Sheild, pouring it out so fast, I was breathing hard with the effort.
And I was losing ground.
No matter how much magic I poured into the Shield, the watercolor people consumed it.
A pastel finger pushed through the Shield; another followed. I could smell death.
A hand broke through, and then another. A finger slid down my spine, thunking over each vertebra, hooking the magic in my bones and pulling it out of me.
Pain rolled over my body.
I gritted my teeth against a scream. I am almost done, damn it. If they’d just leave me alone for a fucking second more.
I reached with all my senses toward the Glamour spell.
And the Shield broke.
I was buried by them, smothered by their rotted stink, suffocating, breathing them into me, tasting them as they scraped through my skin, digging in like worms through my soft flesh, sucking, consuming.
Let go of magic. Let go, let go, let go.
But I couldn’t.
Magic pushed up out of the ground and into me, following the burnt pathways down my arm, pouring out to fall again back to the ground, where it surged back up into me. I was an electric circuit.
I was stuck in a loop, trapped by magic.
I couldn’t let go.
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.”