“You’re gonna do just fine, Allison,” Jingo Jingo said in his low, smooth liar’s voice. “You were born for this, made for this.” He smiled, but there was a fevered gloss in his eyes. Even in the rain I could tell he was sweating. Even in the rain, I could smell his lie.
Or maybe I was reading too much into this. Panic will do that to a girl. I took a deep breath, and squared my shoulders.
“What do I need to do?”
Jingo Jingo stepped closer to me and ran his hand down my arm, petting my right shoulder and stroking down to my fingers, which he caught up. It was weird, creepy, invasive. I gave him a look that let him know exactly what I thought about that.
“You’re gonna stand here.” He guided me around the pile of disks so I stood facing Sedra.
Sedra looked calm and cool as an ice sculpture. Which is to say she looked like she always looked.
Well, that and wet. Lightning flashed, painting ragged glyphs across the sky, and for a second, less than that, I thought I saw something else in her, something under her skin that was dark, twisted.
Panic shot through me. I looked at the other users gathered. There was something wrong with their body language. Too many sideways glances, meaningful looks. Even Liddy, my teacher in Death magic, looked tense, as if she was waiting for her cue.
Sedra might be the head of this parade, but I was pretty sure some of the band didn’t want to march.
“All you need to do is hold this,” Jingo Jingo continued. He bent, dug through the piles of disks. They were all the same. I didn’t know what he was looking for. He finally selected one and placed it in my palm. “And meditate.”
Meditate? Oh, yeah. That would be no problem in the middle of a wild-magic storm surrounded by a circle of users-all better trained than me, all giving one another hateful looks-with a big pile of free magic at my feet.
Okay, yes, granted, you had to have a clear mind to actually cast magic, and high emotion destroys the concentration it takes to access magic. But meditation takes time to do well. So if my ability to meditate was what was going to save the world, or at least save Portland, then I was pretty sure we should all think about moving to Seattle.
“Meditate,” I said. “Right, then what?”
Jingo Jingo stood in front of me. I could smell his fear, bitter and sharp on the back of my sinuses. And something else-the candy sweet of excitement, anticipation. He licked his lips. He was looking forward to this, anxious, eager. “Then, you are going to do the right thing, Allison Beckstrom. And you won’t need me to tell you what that is.”
He stepped back, putting rain and space between us. Lightning flashed again and thunder broke the sky to pieces. I had zero chance to tell him how incredibly unhelpful he had been.
Some teacher. Going silent on me when I most needed a clear answer. Bastard.
Okay, I had my disk. It was heavy and cool in my hand. And I had my sword. It was heavy and cool on my back. It shouldn’t, but just the presence of Zayvion’s blade made me feel better, like a part of him was with me, telling me, calmly, to stop thinking so hard, and just kick some ass.
And that was exactly what I planned on doing. I was about to meditate like no one had ever meditated before.
Yes, that sounded stupid.
I took a deep breath, spread my feet so I wouldn’t fall over when the winds picked up.
Just as I began to close the outside world away from my senses, the storm tore open the sky, the air. And the magic beneath the earth rushed into me, and burned through me.
Chapter Nineteen
Too hot, too hard, magic rushed up out of the earth and poured down from the sky to stretch and fill my bones, my skin, my body. There wasn’t enough room in my body for me to breathe, wasn’t enough room for me to think.
Meditate, he’d said.
Jingo Jingo was such a joker.
I had to clear my mind. Had to direct-no, channel-no, Ground. I was supposed to Ground, and they were going to direct the magic that ricocheted and fractured, leaping above me, above us, above St. Johns, striking wild, random arcs of lightning and wild glyphs that would tear us all to shreds.
We might be using magic, but it was going to use us right back.
I cleared my mind. Sang my “Miss Mary Mack” song. Lost the line when thunder rolled and rolled, and lightning hit so low I felt it in my molars and thought we’d all go up in a crisp. Picked up at the “silver buttons, buttons, buttons” line and held tight to the disk, which hummed with magic, in my hand over the pile of disks.
The wild magic was not me. The wild magic could not change me. It could pour around me, fill the disk in my hand, and fill the other disks on the ground. It could follow the marks, the paths, the ribbons, magic had painted in my skin, my blood, my bones, and use me as a conduit. Magic could slide through me, soft, gentle, and return to the soil, the stones, the heart of the earth, where it belonged.
The reason St. Johns had been chosen for this suddenly made sense. St. Johns was an empty sieve. Magic would flow through it, and into the channels beyond this neighborhood, and fill all the rest of Portland.
That was, if I could Ground it.
I inhaled, exhaled, tasted the burnt wood and hot ozone of fire. The wind lifted, buffeting, hot in the cold, cold rain.
Grounding wasn’t a difficult glyph to draw, but making magic follow it, and standing there, steady, calm, and completely focused while the magic used me, was what made Grounding hard. I set a Disbursement, hoping to push off some of the pain for later. Maybe I’d catch a flu in a week or so.
If I survived.
I looked up, at the sky roiling with metallic, psychedelic clouds, stirred by the winds like oil on water, pushed into new shapes, into unnamed hues and colors. Lightning struck, and all the colors of magic flashed gold against the black sky. I’d never felt so much magic so concentrated. At least, not that I remembered.
Even the rain tasted of the oily, metallic heat of wild magic, striking sour on the tip of my tongue, and so sweet at the back of my throat.
Lightning struck again. Thunder roared.
Now. I knew I had to cast it now.
I focused, pushed away the awareness of the magic users around me, most of them chanting over the rush of rain and wind, pushed away my awareness of the storm, of the rain, of the wind buffeting my body.
Raised my hand.
This one stroke, this one line, this one curve-I cast each part of the glyph for Grounding with precise, purposeful motion. Nothing wrong, not a tremor, not a pause.
Then I drew upon the magic from the disk in my hand. It hesitated, and for a second, I thought I had screwed up and was going to suck all the magic in the disk into me, into my bones, blood, and flesh. But the magic sprang free of the disk, and I guided it to fill the glyph for Grounding.
Magic poured into the Grounding, and shot ropes of magic over me. Even though I expected that and braced for it, I jerked. The thick, cold cables of the magic clamped over my shoulders and fell like hundred-pound anchors into the soil, where they plunged deep and hooked. I could not move if I wanted to.
I was now officially Beckstrom the storm rod. And I hated it.
Have I mentioned I am claustrophobic? I tried to push my fear out of the way, tried to ignore the clamping restraints of the Grounding holding me down.
This is why I am no good at Grounding. I freak out within the first three seconds or so. Trapped. Too trapped.
I exhaled, focused on the disk in my outstretched hand. I could do this. Not only that, I would do this. Everything depended on me doing this one thing. One thing wasn’t hard. I could do one thing.
Magic leaped into the hands of the users in the circle. I recognized directional glyphs, drawn to attract and guide the magic down out of the sky and into me-or rather into the framework of magic around me, the Grounding I’d just cast.