Baehrly Alive (14 page)

I didn’t even bother trying to sleep anymore. I napped in the rare moments that my head dropped over my research or I dozed off when I sat down for a moment. Trying to actually lie down and sleep was impossible. Now, not only did I hear the hisses and garbled voices of the vampire venom, fighting to take control of my body—but now I was haunted by Donovan’s face, every time I closed my eyes. And it wasn’t just Donovan dying that haunted me.

No, it was the moments we had stolen together—our few precious hours. Each kiss, each touch, each exquisite moment.

And then I would jerk awake.

And remember that he was gone.

It was better just to keep busy, to hunt never endingly for something that probably didn’t exist.

Who was I trying to kid? I couldn’t save anyone.

I couldn’t even save myself.

I was running in hopeless circles. What was the point in even trying?

Midnight, midmorning—the only difference was dragging myself out to feed the animals. The sunlight scorched my eyes and made my skin hurt a little more each day.

I was losing the battle raging inside my soul.

And I couldn’t bring myself to care.

It was easier just to go numb.

To give up.

“I never would have taken you for a coward.”

The voice startled me to the point where I actually raised my tea mug to hurl it before I registered the shadowy figure in the corner.

“Hypatia?” I asked, peering at her. I knew how difficult it was for her to work the spells that allowed her temporary leave from the Library. “What are you doing here?”

“Apparently watching you sulk,” she answered, reaching out to flip on the lamp next to her chair.

Hypatia had always had a flare for the dramatic.

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “I’m not sulking. I’m trying to figure out how to save my brother—fat lot of good my research is doing me right now.”

“Hiding in your work can be considered sulking,” Hypatia said, her face as expressionless as marble. “I should know. I have done it for centuries.”

“Don’t you mean millennia?”

The corners of her lips lifted briefly. “Well, that sounds more like you. I’ve come to speak to you about something of great importance—and terrible secrecy.”

I glowered down at my tea mug, wondering if the dregs in it were still drinkable. “I don’t have the energy for games right now, Hypatia. Why don’t you just tell me what you need from me and not do the whole hinting evasively thing. We both know you’re a master of that—yay, you. I’m not playing.”

Hypatia shook her head. “Much as I enjoy these insights to your views on life, I don’t consider what I do to be ‘game playing’.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Philosophizing. Is that better?”

“Much.” Hypatia watched patiently as I picked up a different half-full mug of tea and tried to figure out if it was older or more recent than the previous one. I made a face and set it back down.

“I need your total discretion,” Hypatia said bluntly. “I need to speak with you, knowing that you will not betray me or my sources to your Baehr friends or… the Council of Magic.”

I blinked at her. She had my full attention now. “The Council of Magic? I don’t think I can make a promise to not divulge something that might affect Magic in the world as a whole.”

Hypatia raised her eyebrows. “Not even if I can tell you of a way to save your brother?”

I stared at her.

“You can decide, Goldie—tell me that you will not betray me or my sources to the Council of Magic and I will tell you how to save your brother. Tell me that you cannot make that promise and I will leave here and never speak of it again.”

“No,” I said hastily. “Hypatia, please.”

She looked straight at me with those fathomless black eyes. “You weren’t ready to listen to us before. Perhaps you are ready now… in light of the loss of your husband.”

I hissed, not even wanting to know how she had known what Donovan was to me. I pressed my lips together, my sense of honor warring with my sense of family.

Family, of course, won.

“I will swear it,” I told Hypatia. “As long as you swear to tell me how to save my brother.”

She nodded. “Deal.” She rose to her feet, her gown falling around her like rippling moonlight. “Come with me.”

“Now?” I demanded, looking down at my shirt and wondering when the last time was that I had brushed my hair.

Hypatia made an impatient gesture with her hands. “Now. Or do you want to wait until it is too late… again?”

I winced. Hypatia wasn’t playing fair. She knew just how to wound me; and she felt no compunction in using every weapon in her arsenal.

Hypatia reached out one marble-white hand and I took it—it was cool to the touch.

The room around us shivered, wavered… and we were standing in a strange place.

We appeared to be indoors somewhere, surrounded by Grecian ruins, if the art and columns were any indication, but grass was growing lushly where the floor should have been. I could not tell, truly, if we were in a massive room, or if it was the sky that hung over us. The feeling was one of great space… and spacelessness.

It was a place of Magic, to be sure.

We were not alone.

Hypatia walked toward where the others were gathered. Some, like she, wore Roman-esque clothing, while other wore jeans, and one wore an expensive-looking suit and tie.

“Goldie,” Hypatia called for me, her face wearing an expression of complete seriousness. “I want you to meet the leaders of the Resistance.”

I blinked at her. “The Resistance?”

The man in the suit answered my question. “We are those that believe that the separation of Faerie and Earth is morally reprehensible and that free-trade and communication should be open for all.”

I stared at him. “You’re the Black Market?”

“No,” said an oddly familiar younger man. “We’re a group of those who want to set the natural order of things right again.” It was the unusual cadence of his voice that made me recognize him—he was the young man I had literally run into outside of the Library—the one who had said his name was Nat.

I wasn’t so sheltered that I didn’t know that there were those who fought the government. I had always just assumed that every country, every form of government, had those who resisted rules, who broke them. I’d been raised to always support the Council of Magic.

Seeing the faces around me—the leaders of this Resistance—shocked me. Not because they were resisting… but because these were not madmen or fanatics—as I would have expected.

These were the faces of friends and family—perhaps not all familiar to me, but some were.

One was even my godfather, Dave. I had grown up with his cubs. I had known him my entire life.

And here he was, plotting against the Council of Magic.

The world no longer made sense to me.

“We don’t have time for formal introduction,” the man in the suit said briskly. “We are here for one reason—and one reason only—to share with Ms. Locke, here the data we have on the plague.”

A wave of murmurs shot through the group—small though it was. They didn’t sound surprised, more as if they approved of our topic.

Another shock to me—considering the only case I had ever heard of was Gwyn… followed by Thomas, of course.

What I heard next wasn’t conspiracy theories or rages against the Councils—small or the great Worldwide Council.

It was numbers.

A staggering amount of numbers that made me reel back.

Magical Creatures all over the globe were dying of the same disease that was affecting Gwyn and Thomas. Animals, people, monsters—all of them were affected—beings that had no connection whatsoever other than the fact that they were innately Magical.

A very slender and nervous young dryad adjusted her glasses as she read off a report of her studies. “Those who are of great Magical blood—such as Magical Creatures—are more vulnerable to ailing in this fashion. We then conducted several experiments. Our unanimous conclusion is that what we are facing is not a pandemic or a disease in the way we had expected. There is no Magical virus or bacteria… Moreover, it appears that what we have is a deficiency.”

I blinked at her in surprise, but she kept speaking, adjusting her glasses again in a nervous way.

“Creatures who do not have access to the elements they need to be healthy, will often show signs of illness. This problem we are facing today is no different. Instead of finding each of these creatures calcium or vitamin-C deficient, what we are seeing is a Magical deficiency.”

I leaned forward; fascinated by this new approach to the problem I had been researching.

“When Faerie and Earth were closed off from each other, Magic ceased to flow freely between the two worlds. As Magic has greatly decreased in concentration on this side of the barrier, we assume that it is increasing greatly on the other side. Both situations have undesirable side effects. It is our prediction that creatures with a high-Magic need on this side of the barrier will become extinct over the next ten years, as Magic levels drop to negligible doses remaining in our atmosphere. Conversely—creatures that are sensitive to Magic on the other side of the barrier face the same fate. Unless…”

“Unless we allow Magic to flow freely between Faerie and Earth again,” I whispered.

Heads around me on all sides nodded in agreement.

“But—“ I stammered. “I understand what you are saying, but—why Gwyn? Why my little brother?”

The little dryad flipped to a new page. “According to my research, the mother is one-quarter Nature Spirit.”

I tried to wrap my brain around everything I had just been told. “But—what can any of us do? It’s against the law to have any form of contact with Faerie. They’re never just going to open the gates so that Magic can become balanced again.”

“That’s why there is such a need for those who are willing to Resist,” Hypatia said. “The Ouroboros society stands behind those who would return things back to the proper order.”

“Which is why, we too, have taken on the emblem as our own,” the suited man said smoothly. “The Ouroboros is a symbol of balance, after all.”

I nodded my understanding.

“Has anyone presented this information to the Council of Magic—as it was presented to me here, this evening?” I asked. “Surely, when faced by the facts the Council of Magic will decide to do what is right for the Magical Community as a whole.”

“Some of the research has been shared, some has not,” the dryad admitted, nearly dropping her glasses altogether in her nerves. “We fear the Council of Magic has too much to lose to be willing to listen.”

I bit my lip. “I find your research fascinating, and it does patch the holes I have found in my own research, but… I believe that if we were to bring this issue and information and bring it to the attention of the Council of Magic through the proper channels, we have a greater chance of making a great change.”

“I would like to think you are right,” Dave rumbled in his deep bass voice. My godfather looked more worried than I had ever seen him. “I would like to have faith in the Council again, but…”

“I’ll do it,” I said firmly. “I’ll gather the information and pass it on as my own. I have nothing to lose. I’ll present it to the Council of Magic and ask for permission to take my brother and stepmother to Faerie to see if returning them to a higher concentration of Magic will heal them.”

The faction leaders murmured among themselves for quite some time before they turned back toward me.

“Good luck,” Hypatia said grimly. “You are going to need it.”

Chapter Eleven

Sorting through raw data and organizing it was something I could handle after all of my years writing dissertations for my various doctorate programs. Having the information at my fingertips, however, made everything come into sharper focus—it was no longer just about Thomas and Gwyn—all Magical Creatures from humans to squirrelfish were in danger. Magic was a necessary part of our makeup—as I had learned before, without my Magic, I would die.

Just as Thomas and Gwyn were dying without theirs.

And I would change into a vampire when the balance of my Magic tipped toward the dark.

There was a great distinction between using up Magic and having it taken away—or destroyed. One was like… well, peeing. At some point, the pee won’t come out anymore, but there’s always more later. The other was like having the entire bladder and kidneys taken away.

Very different things.

I sat by Thomas’s bed and read him the data that healers had been collecting as far away as Argentina and even the tiny population of wood-sprites that inhabited Boulder City, Utah. The data was consistent with what the little Ouroboros dryad had shared with me—Magic was an element essential to Magical beings… and it was fading away on this side of the barrier.

Ten years. I’d been worried about Petunia being alone, about Gerti destroying my house.

Within ten years, if we were lucky, every Magical creature or being on this side of the barrier would be dead. If we weren’t lucky, it could be as soon a three years.