“That’s just the surface. Look closer. What do you see?”
I frowned, brows knotting together, and tried to concentrate on her question, rather than the deadly stillness of Jazz’s chest beneath my hands. Magic doesn’t look like anything, unless it’s the glitter of pixie dust or the wispy smoke that sometimes follows the Djinn. Magic is intangible, smells and sounds and flavors on the wind. Nothing that lasts. Nothing that makes a mark on the world around it. Simon’s magic was smoke and oranges, and it lingered in the throat like a bruise, but it was still transitory, just like everyone else’s.
“Try harder,” May said sharply.
Right. I screwed my eyes more tightly shut, trying to think. What does magic look like? What would Simon’s magic look like? The smell of it was horrible and rancid; it would have to look a lot like that, all slimy lines and angles—but sharp ones, precise and exact. He might be a bastard, but he was never sloppy. Gray-and-orange lines, twisted together into a tight, complicated net of knots and hidden snares that would catch you if you weren’t careful. The more I considered it, the more it seemed like I could see it, wrapped around the body under my fingers, pulsing with a sluggish, sickly light.
Sounding distant now, May said, “You see it.” It wasn’t a question.
I nodded slowly. The lines of it were getting brighter as I focused on them. “It’s like a web,” I said.
“Where’s the weak spot, Toby? Every web has a weak spot.”
That was easy. “Over the heart.”
“Good.” She shifted my hands to the side, pressing them over Jazz’s heart. “You can see the weak spot, Toby. Now break it.”
“What? May, I can’t—”
“Break it.”
There was no arguing with her tone. Wincing, I hunched down, and focused on the lines. I still wasn’t certain they were real, but they were brighter now, either because I was closer to them, or because I was achieving a state of serious delusion. The smell of my own magic was starting to rise around me, summoned by my tension. Oddly, the copper and cut grass smell of it just brought the lines into even clearer focus, making it harder to dismiss them as a fiction.
“Let go,” I said.
May pulled her hands away.
Moving my fingers with careful deliberation, I slid them under the network of lines, hooking them into two of the knots. My head began to throb, the pain beginning at my temples and then radiating outward. The web lifted up with little resistance, almost clinging to my hands. I tugged until it was a few inches off Jazz’s body, and then pulled as hard as I could, forcing the strands apart until they reached their bearing limit. The throbbing in my head got worse as the smell of smoke, mixed with copper, sizzled in the air around us.
The net snapped with a backlash that was only half physical, but which sent me tumbling backward, smacking my head hard against the kitchen floor. I groaned, as much from surprise as from pain, and lay still for a few seconds before pushing myself upright again, expecting to see May flung sobbing across her girlfriend’s body.
I saw no such thing. May had pulled Jazz’s head into her lap and was stroking the other woman’s hair. She was crying, yes, but they were relieved tears; the smile on her face made that as plain as day.
“Jazz?” I asked. The pain from my head’s introduction to the floor was fading. The pain from breaking Simon’s spell wasn’t. It was almost a relief to have my limits so clearly delineated.
“She’s going to be okay,” said May. She looked up, smiling brilliantly. “If you can move, come over here.”
If I could move? That didn’t sound encouraging. I moved my fingers carefully, and found they still responded to my commands. If anyone noticed that I had a headache—something I tend to telegraph by wincing a lot—I could blame it on my impact with the kitchen floor. Blunt force trauma excuses a lot of things. I got onto my hands and knees and crawled over to them.
Jazz remained supine on the floor, eyes closed . . . but they were normal eyes, set in a normal face. What little I’d seen of her before I ripped the net away told me that this was a great improvement. I glanced downward. Thin red scabs ringed her neck, but the gills were gone. Her chest was moving normally, rising and falling in slow, shallow hitches as she breathed.
“She’s alive?” I whispered.
“She’s going to be fine,” said May, still smiling through her tears. “All you had to do was listen to me.”
“But . . .” I pushed myself into a standing position, reeling a little as my head throbbed in time with the motion. “I don’t even know what I did.”
“You know the trick with the dresses? The one where we’d take something the false Queen had transformed, and then you’d pull on the spell until it turned into something else?”
I nodded. I quickly regretted the motion.
May didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were back on her girlfriend’s face. She was looking at Jazz like she was some sort of miracle. Considering what had just happened, maybe she was. “You finally figured out how to unravel fresh spells the same way you reweave them. That’s what you did. That’s what you did for me.”
“. . . oh,” I said. I didn’t really understand, but I wasn’t sure that mattered. Jazz wasn’t going to die, and she wasn’t going to spend the next fourteen years of her life living in a fishpond. Those were the important things.
“Thank you,” whispered May.
Those words—those forbidden words—were enough to finally shock me out of my shock. I straightened. “I need to go,” I said.
“Go? Go where?”
“Sylvester. He has to be told that Simon is back. He has to . . . I have to go.”
“Wouldn’t it be faster to, you know, call him?”
Yes: yes, it would have been faster. But I needed to see him. When I tried to picture Sylvester’s face, I kept seeing Simon’s instead, with those cold, hooded eyes staring at me, daring me to challenge him. I needed to see my liege. I needed to tell him what had happened, and let him put his arms around me and tell me that he would keep me safe this time. Even if it was a lie, it was a lie I needed.
So I told a lie of my own. “They’re identical twins, May. He may have gotten into Shadowed Hills already; who would stop him?” I shook my head. “I need to go to Shadowed Hills. I can’t know I’m actually speaking to Sylvester unless I can taste his magic.”
“At least take Quentin with you. He’s your squire.”
I started to take a breath to argue, paused, and tried pleading instead. “Jazz can’t be moved yet. You’ll need help if Simon comes back.”
“I’ll call Danny.” May shook her head. “Take him. I get that you don’t want to leave us alone, and I get that you don’t want to put Quentin in danger, but you’re forgetting that I remember what Simon did to you. I remember it like he did it to me. I can’t let you go alone.”
I paused a second time. May and I mostly tried not to talk about our shared memories these days. It was too confusing, for both of us. But she knew better than anyone else in the world what Simon had done. She’d gone through it, too, in her way. “If he’s awake, I’ll consider it,” I said finally. “Now, I’m going to get some clothes, grab my weapons, and ward the crap out of this place. Stay inside. Don’t answer the door for anybody. Do you understand me?”
“I do,” she said. “Toby . . .”
“Don’t tell me to be careful. We both know that’s not going to happen.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you to be careful.” Her eyes narrowed, mouth twisting in a vengeful line. “I was going to tell you to get the bastard who hurt my girlfriend.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “I will.” Maybe it was foolish of me to make promises I couldn’t be sure of keeping, but Simon Torquill had done more than enough to earn whatever he had coming to him. He’d come into my home; he’d hurt my family. He’d gone too far, and this time, finally, he was going to pay for everything he’d done.