Magic Binds (7 page)

“It's worse,” Sienna said.

“How do you know?”

“Because I've looked into your future over fifty times in the last month. I think that sometimes you waver, because you aren't sure if you should marry him. The vision changes then. Do you want to see or do you want me to tell you?”

I braced myself. “Show me.”

She stepped back into the waterfall. The battle splayed out before me again, the blood and smoke, swirling around me. I spun around. Behind me Atlanta burned.

A cry made me turn.

My father stood in the same spot atop the tower. In front of him, on the wall, a creature knelt, swathed in rags. It held a baby up with clawed hands.

I had to get to the tower.

I ran like I'd never run before in my whole life. The air turned to fire in my lungs. Bodies bounced off me. My magic flared behind me, glowing.

My father held out his hand, his face twisted with grief. The older warrior who had knelt before me in the courtyard this morning handed him the blood spear.

No!

I was almost to the tower.

My father gritted his teeth, his face supernaturally clear before me. Tears welled in his eyes. He plunged the spear down. A baby screamed, his cry severing my soul. My father pulled the weapon up, raising it like a flag.

My baby boy jerked, impaled on the spear. His pain cut me like a knife and kept cutting and cutting, carving pieces off my soul. He was crying for me, reaching with his little arms, and I could do nothing.

His little heart beat one last time and stopped.

Heat exploded in me. My heart burst.

Water. Cold soothing water. I dived this time, trying to dilute some of the heat emanating from my skin. I stayed under until all of the air in my lungs was gone. When I surfaced, the cave was silent.

I waded to the rocky shoulder and dragged myself out onto one of the large dark boulders. Sienna stepped out of the waterfall, her hair plastered to her head, her face pale; she made her way to the other side of the cave and collapsed on her back.

“Are you okay?” Roman asked.

“She watched her child die,” Evdokia said. “Let her rest.”

Rest was a luxury I couldn't afford. “Is there are any version of this that doesn't end with Atlanta burning and my son or Curran dying?”

“No,” Sienna said. “I'm so sorry.”

“How long have you been seeing this?”

“Over the past month.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

Sienna sighed. “I hoped I was wrong.”

“Could you be wrong?” Roman asked. “These are only possibilities, not certainties.”

“Predicting the future is like looking into the narrow end of a funnel,” Sienna said. “The further in the future the events are, the more possibilities you see. The closer we get to the event itself, the clearer and more specific the most likely future becomes. These visions are too detailed. They are almost a certainty. As of now, one or the other will come to pass. The son or the father gives his life, Atlanta burns, and the rest of us suffer. I can't see any other possibilities. Believe me, I tried.”

She turned her head and looked at me. “I tried, Kate. If Atlanta burns in that battle, I die.”

“We all die,” Evdokia said. “Everyone in this cave, except Kate.”

“I can't see you in this battle,” Sienna said. “It's hidden from me.”

If she was seeing it in that much detail, these visions had to come from the very near future. “How long do we have?”

“A year at the longest if you don't marry Curran,” Sienna said.

That meant sentencing our son to death. “And if I do?”

“Two weeks.”

Two weeks? What do I do? How do I fix this?

“You're the wild card,” Evdokia said. “She can't see you.”

“It means one of two things,” Sienna said. “Either you are irrelevant to what happens or you are the pin on which this future hinges. If it's the latter, then you have the power to alter it.”

If only I knew how.

“This is just typical.” Roman raised his eyes upward. “The one time I try to do something good, like join two people who are long overdue in holy matrimony. The one time! And it all goes to hell, doomsday prophecies and death. I've served you for ten years. Would it kill you to have my back one damn time?”

“Yes, of course, make it all about you.” Evdokia sighed.

“Wait, you're marrying them?” Sienna asked.

Maria chortled. “He'll anoint them in blood. Should've asked Vasiliy.”

Evdokia turned to her. “There is nothing wrong with my son marrying them. It will be the best wedding and he will be the best priest.”

Maria opened her mouth.

“You better be careful what you say next,” Evdokia said.

I raised my voice. “This isn't helping.”

“You have to defeat him,” Sienna said.

Nice how she avoided the word “kill.”

An odd anxiety claimed me. I didn't want to kill my father.

It made no sense. He was a monster and a tyrant. If it was a choice between my life and his, he would take mine. I'd wanted to hurt him this morning. But he was my father. What the hell was wrong with me?

Thinking about it was too complicated so I shoved it aside. There would be time to puzzle over this later.

“Have you made any progress with the ifrit's box?” Evdokia asked. “You've been talking to Bahir and his people. Did you learn anything?”

“I can't figure out how it works. I talked to some very smart, educated people about it. They can't figure out how it works either. We don't have the box itself anymore, so we can't examine it. All we have are the incantations, which are a variant of a typical ward, infused with divine power. I don't know where to go from here.”

“None of us have as much power over the future as you,” Sienna said.

“She means you have to do something,” Maria snapped.

“Do what?” I looked at her. She had been powerful for too long to flinch, but a hint of uncertainty showed in her eyes. “Well? I'm waiting for your wisdom.”

“Do anything,” the crone said. “We gave you this city—”

“No. I took the city. I took it by myself and I protected it from my father's claiming. You didn't help. You weren't there.”

Maria's eyes blazed. “Remember who you're talking to!”

“You should take your own advice.”

The cave fell completely silent. The witches stared at me. Sienna rubbed her throat, as if something was choking off her air.

The storm I'd had to contain this morning simmered under my skin. My father would kill Curran or our son. There was nothing I could do to stop him.

The magic inside me boiled. I had to vent or it would tear me apart. I looked up to the patch of light and sky above me and let it go.

The magic burst from me, surging upward, into the sky. The water of the basin rose in the air, stretching into a thousand glittering strands, revealing the rocky bottom of the pool. Power and fury poured out of me, flowing like a raging river.

The pressure eased. I shut off the current. The water crashed back into the basin.

“Oh, Katenka,” Evdokia whispered.

Maria made a small choking noise. Sienna scrambled over to her. “Roman, help me. She needs some fresh air.”

Together they lifted the old witch off her seat and led her outside.

“I saw my father this morning,” I told Evdokia. The sky above me was so blue. If only I could sprout wings and fly far away from all my problems. “He kidnapped Saiman. He's refusing to release him and I can't ignore it. There will be war. I've signed my husband's and my child's death warrants.”

Evdokia looked at me, her face at once sad and kind. “No. You didn't. We foresaw this days ago. One way or the other, it would've come to pass.”

I came and sat by her. She reached out and stroked my hair. It felt so familiar. She must've done it when I was little, before Voron took me away.

“Help me.” My voice came out quiet and ragged.

“Anything in my power,” she promised. “All my magic is yours. I wish I knew what to do.”

Sienna came back into the cave and sat by me.

“Why haven't the three of you left?” I asked.

“Because this is our city,” Evdokia said. “Our home. We can't all leave, Katenka. The future will find us.”

“Roman is right,” Sienna said. “The future is fluid. But when it's this close and this certain, you have to do something really big to change it. Something that will alter everything. Something nobody would expect.”

“I don't have any Rubicons to cross,” I told her.

“Find one,” Sienna said. “If anybody can do it, you
can.”

CHAPTER

T
HE MAGIC WAVE
ended on our way back to the city and technology once again reasserted itself. When we got back to the office, it was early afternoon and nobody was there. Ascanio must have bailed early. My mammoth donkey was also MIA, probably back at our home, in the stables. I dropped Roman off, went into the office, and pulled a legal pad to me. I always thought better with a pen in hand.

I wrote
Choices
on the piece of paper and stared at it.

1. Fight my father now, before he expects a direct assault.
   
2. Wait until my father attacks.
   
3. Play ball.
   

Choice number one was right out. I still had no idea how to defeat my father. I'd felt his power this morning and while I could hold my own, if he gave it his all, he would crush me. Also, I had no army. I could ask the Pack and the Witches for help, but they would expect some sort of strategy besides “let's all run at Roland's castle and get killed.”

Choice number two wasn't much better. In theory, I was supposed to
be able to protect Atlanta after claiming it. In practice, I had no idea how. When I reached for the magic of the land, it was like a placid ocean. Within its depths, life moved and shimmered. The waters were capable of storms, but I had no idea how to start one.

Choice number three was what my father wanted. That alone should've been enough to stop me. Except when I closed my eyes, I saw two lifeless bodies. If I went to him now, if I left Curran, he would survive. My father couldn't kill my child if the child didn't exist.

I loved them both. I loved my unborn future baby. I loved Curran, his eyes, his laugh, his smile. I woke up next to him, I ate breakfast with him, we went to work together, and we came home together. That was the core of who I was: Curran, Julie, Derek, even Grendel, the family I'd made. It was my life, the one I fought for, the one I built and wanted. We were together. That was how things were.

If I went to serve my father, I would save them, at least for a little while. But I was only good at one thing: killing. Sooner or later my father would use me in that capacity and then I would be taking someone else's Curran or Kate away from them. Because people would oppose my father, the kind of people who were bothered by crosses with human beings dying on them, and I would have to kill them.

I couldn't do it. I'd been Voron's attack dog for the first fifteen years of my life. I wouldn't be one again.

I crossed the list out and started over.

New Plan

1. Get Awesome Cosmic Powers.
   
2. Nuke my dad.
   
3. Retire from the land-claiming business.
   

I was so down with this plan. If only I had some way to implement it.

Maybe someone would bring me a magic scroll, an incantation that would magically imprison my father in some cave. I would totally be
willing to help old ladies carry wood, spin straw into gold, or go on a quest for that kind of scroll.

I stared at the door.
Come on, magic scroll.

Come on.

Nope.

I needed to get out of the office and go home. I would feel better at home.

I would get home, work out, cook a big dinner because I felt like it, and figure out what I had to do about Saiman and my father.

•   •   •

W
HEN
I
PULLED
up to the house, Christopher was sitting in the driveway on the grass. That's right. The meditation.

Living under Barabas's care agreed with Christopher. Left to his own devices in the Keep, he often forgot about food and after a couple of weeks of self-imposed starvation, he'd look like a stiff wind would make him keel over, until Barabas or I would notice and make him eat. Now that he was staying in the house next to us, Barabas had assumed responsibility for Christopher's health, and the weremongoose could be extremely single-minded.

I did my best to help. Between the two of us, Christopher ate on time, bathed every day, went with Barabas to the Guild, where he got regular exercise, and wore clean clothes. He was still thin, but his skin had a good color to it, and despite his pale, nearly colorless hair, he no longer looked like a ghost.

The only thing we couldn't heal was his mind. All the outside pressures were gone now. Christopher was safe, sheltered, fed, and among friends, but his mental health hadn't improved. We had taken him to Emory University School of Medicine, to Duke University, and even to Johns Hopkins, which was a trip I was doing my best to forget. We almost died, and while we were away, a local family we knew was murdered. Julie and Derek had handled it, but thinking about it still turned my stomach.

The doctors were in consensus: physically Christopher was fine. Psychologically he didn't match any specific disorder. Christopher always
claimed that my father had shattered his mind. The people at Emory and Duke had agreed that someone had magically destroyed his psyche. The psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins was an exceptional empath, with the power to feel what others felt. After he spoke to Christopher, he said the trauma to his psyche was self-inflicted. Something bad had happened to Christopher. He refused to confront it, he didn't want to remember it, and so he deliberately remained as he was. Christopher offered no feedback. He sat quietly and smiled sadly through it all. He held the key to his own healing and there wasn't much any of us could do to get him to turn it.

I got out of the car. Christopher looked at me from his spot in the grass among the yellow dandelions and wild daisies. Since most of our annoying neighbors had moved away and taken the budding homeowners' association with them, Curran mowed the grass when he felt like it, and he didn't feel like killing the dandelions.

“Meditation?” Christopher asked.

“Not today,” I told him. The last place I wanted to be was in my own head. “I'm sorry.”

“That's okay.”

To ask about the book or not to ask? If I asked him and he freaked out, I'd kick myself. Better talk to Barabas first.

“Where is Maggie?”

Christopher pulled out a canvas bag from behind him. A black furry head poked out and looked at me with the saddest brown eyes ever to belong to a dog. Maggie was an eight-pound creature that was probably part long-haired Chihuahua and part something very different. She was small and odd, and her black fur stuck out in wispy strands in strange places. She walked gingerly, always slightly awkward, and if she thought she was in trouble, she'd lift one of her paws and limp, pretending to be injured. Her greatest ambition in life was to lie on someone's lap, preferably under a blanket.

After Johns Hopkins, Barabas told me he wasn't giving up. I told him I wasn't either. I came up with daily meditation. Barabas came up with Maggie.

The little dog looked at me, turned, and crawled back into the bag. Right.

“Have you seen Curran or Julie?”

Christopher shook his head.

A Pack Jeep turned onto our street and slid to a stop in front of our house. The window rolled down and Andrea stuck her blond head out. “I'm free! Free!”

Oh boy. “Aren't you supposed to be in the Keep?” I could've sworn Raphael told me during the Conclave that Doolittle had confined her to the medward.

“Screw that. We're going to lunch.”

“It's almost dinnertime.”

“Then we're going to dinch. Or lunner. Or whatever the hell early-dinner-late-lunch stupid combo we can come up with.”

“Now isn't . . .”

Andrea's eyes blazed. “Kate, I'm nine months pregnant and I'm hungry. Get in the damn car.”

I got in the Jeep, and Andrea peeled out like a bat out of hell.

“We're going to Parthenon. We're going to have gyros.” Her stomach was out so far, she must've moved the seat back, because she had to stretch to reach the wheel.

“The look of grim determination on your face is scary,” I told her.

“I've been cooped up in the Keep's infirmary for the past two weeks,” Andrea said.

“Why?”

She waved her hand. “Because Doolittle is a worrywart.”

Crap. “Andrea, does Doolittle know where you are?”

“Yes.”

“You sure about that?”

“Absolutely. I've let him know. Anyway, we are going to lunch!”

“Andr—”

“To lunch!” She flashed her teeth at me.

I shut up and let her drive.

Twenty minutes later she parked in front of Parthenon, and then I watched her try to get out of the Jeep. She scooted back into her seat as far as she could, then slowly edged out one leg, then half of her butt, then half
her stomach. Andrea was short and the Jeep sat really high. Her foot was dangling down. I would offer to help, but she was armed at all times and could shoot the dots out of dominoes, and I didn't want to get murdered.

“Are you going to help me or not?” she growled.

I grabbed her arm and steadied her as she stepped out. “I thought you might shoot me.”

“Ha-ha. Hilarious.” She opened her eyes really wide. A ruby sheen rolled over her irises. “I smell food.”

Uh-oh. “We are going to get food. Right now.”

We burst through the doors of Parthenon like Greeks through the open gates of Troy. Five minutes later we were seated at our usual table in the garden section despite two flights of stairs, which Andrea insisted on climbing, and the heat of late afternoon. The owners had finally gotten rid of the chairs that were bolted to the floor, and I sat so I could watch the door and the two women on the right, who were the only other diners willing to brave the garden section in the heat. We ordered a heaping platter of meat, a pint of tzatziki sauce, and a bucket of fried okra, because Andrea really wanted it, and waited for our food.

She drank her iced tea and sighed.

“How's it going?”

She looked at me. “Is this a serious question? Are you really asking or just making conversation?”

“When have I ever just made conversation?”

“Okay.” Andrea sipped some tea. “Well, I'm mean, too harsh, and I rule the clan like an iron-fisted bitch.”

“Aha.” I had no idea how anyone could lead the bouda clan. They were all nuts.

“Last Tuesday Lora, Karen, Thomas, and the new kid, Kyle, were coming home from a bar where they tried to get drunk.”

Getting drunk for a shapeshifter was a losing proposition. Their metabolism treated alcohol as poison, which it was, and purged it as fast as it entered the bloodstream. Curran had to guzzle an entire bottle of vodka to get a buzz for fifteen minutes, and since he hated the taste, he stuck to beer instead.

“So the way back took these four geniuses by the College of Mages.”

Oh boy.

“The College of Mages happens to own a polar bear.”

Better and better. “How did they get a polar bear?”

“Apparently it wandered out of the woods near Macon and it was glowing at the time, and some mages happened to be on a field trip, so they apprehended the polar bear and brought him back to the college to figure out what his deal is. They built him a very nice enclosure.”

“Okay.” Typical post-Shift thing.

“The ladies wanted to see the polar bear and the two guys didn't have the balls to say no, so they broke into the climate-controlled enclosure and then Lora decided to pet the bear, because it ‘liked her.'”

Our gyros arrived. She picked up her first one, bit off a small piece, and chewed with obvious pleasure. “Where was I?”

“Adventurous bear petting.”

“Yeah, well, the bear petted her back.”

I laughed in spite of myself.

“I can't blame the bear.” Andrea opened her eyes wide. “If some whiskey-soaked hyena-smelling human came toward me while I was trying to nap in my nice house, I'd pet it too. With my claws.”

“Did the bear survive?”

“He survived. He was roughed up, the four of them bled all over the place trying to get the bear off Lora without hurting him, and of course, they got busted. They all got three weeks of Keep labor and that was too harsh and too mean. Never mind that I've got the College of Mages breathing down my neck about their bear being emotionally compromised and the Atlanta PAD wanting to file trespassing charges, but oh no, I was too harsh.” She stopped eating for a second. “Do you know what one of them told me? He said that Aunt B would've never been that hard on them. Aunt B! Can you believe that shit?”