The Awakening of Ren Crown (29 page)

“What? No.”

“How did he die?”

“He...he was hit with a spell. It overcame him. That night we were pretty far away from help.” Like a whole other dimension away.

He gave me a look that delved right into my soul. “That night? The body isn't fresh?”

“Fresh, like recent? No.”

His face shuttered. “I can't help you. Sorry.”

“What? Can't we just...dig up the body?” I would get gloves and a shovel right now and work out the logistics of getting his remains through a port later.

“Dig up the...how long ago did he die?”

“Seven weeks ago.”

“Seven weeks? Young lady, I reanimate the dead.”

“I know. That's why I'm here.”

“I reanimate them for thirty seconds. Five minutes at most. These things have an expiration date. Seven weeks?” He shook his head.

“What? No, I don't want him to just pop up for five minutes to chat. I want you to bring him back completely.”

“Ten minutes post mortem, or not at all. And even if I
did
try to raise a two month corpse, you wouldn't be pleased with the result.”

“He'd be alive. That would make me very pleased.”

He shook his head. “You could get a zombie wearing your boyfriend's skin.”

“It's my brother,” I said stiffly, hope rapidly dwindling.

He gave me a brief look of sympathy. “Listen. You don't want to pursue this. Where are your parents, anyway? They should have told you all of this. My advice—and it's against my business profits, you hear, because I could sell you all kinds of crap—is to let him go.”

I thought about the books locked in the library cages. I wet my lips. “But what about
The Twelve
—”

He leaned hard against the counter, and so fast, that I took a step back.

“Don't you go learning any of that filth. That's black magic.” He spat into the bucket.

“Er, your sign says—”

“
Real
black magic. Not gray-edged magic tricks for the elderly, the thrill seekers, and the susceptible.”

“But you bring people back to life. Even if it's for five min—”

“Those that haven't been dead a day. A week at most. Two months? No. You are dealing with a whole 'nother level of dead. And at sixteen weeks? It becomes magically impossible.”

“Then at seven—”

“Listen, little lady, you give up a piece of your own soul for the kind of magic
The Twelve
promotes. And it doesn't work out how you think it's going to.”

I watched how he said it. I looked carefully at his face, the brittle cracking look to his skin. “You have done it.”

He didn't confirm my thought verbally, but he didn't have to. I could read clearly in his body language that this establishment was a dead end for me and that our conversation was over. I had no power or money or abject charisma to wheedle further.

But there would be other shops. And even though my disappointment was harsh, I had more knowledge now. Anything that increased that knowledge was time well spent. If I gained one piece of knowledge from each endeavor, from each bloody hour I spent, it would all be time well spent.

“
Ren...I think you need to abandon this plan.”

“
Free me however you can! Please!”

I had lost seven precious weeks, but the remaining nine started ticking a countdown in my head, overlapping whatever time I had until Marsgrove's return.

“Ok.” I nodded, my gaze sweeping the items for sale. There were two books on black magic rites and rituals. “Do I need to give blood or magic to buy those?”

“We are required by law to ask for blood.”

I chewed on my lip, then looked out the window and into the street which surprisingly was almost fully re-formed. A few people were poking their heads out across the street. The sweeper was nowhere to be seen. “Ok, hang on.”

I ran outside, swiped my finger through a puddle of blood on the walk, then dashed back in.

“I'll take both.”

He stared at me for a long moment, and I stared stonily back. Then he put both books on the counter and turned around. I pressed the blood from the street onto the paper and put more munits than the purchase required on the countertop. “Thanks.”

“Don't thank me, kid,” he said harshly, and thumbed toward the door. “And don't come back.”

The bell thudded dully behind me.

I struck reanimation from my primary list and put it in a secondary classification. I might be able to elongate reanimation time through experimentation. Or maybe figure out how to get in a quick session with Christian, while I was experimenting on other things. Get him to say more, so he could help me.

But I needed to reorder my experimentation list based on the need to exhume a body.

In my excited mind I had figured magic could solve any problems. That somehow Christian could just be magicked back and voila be normal again.

But he was buried in the First Layer in a graveyard that I was pretty sure was
not
a magical site. That meant that if I didn't figure out how to pull him out of a painting, I really would have to exhume him the manual way. Shovels and dirt and digging. And I would have to do it myself, in the dead of night, if I didn't want to get into a whole host of trouble. I wasn't sure how one hired clandestine grave diggers. It didn't seem like the Better Business Bureau would be involved.

People were dragging bodies toward Black Magicks Unlimited again. I sprinted across the street, watching for flashing lights. But the town air and magic felt sluggish now, and people were starting to walk about again.

I walked quickly, listening carefully for any sirens and rapidly checking out the stores as I passed. One proclaimed itself a purveyor of “chemical potions and magical herbs” and another sold magical weapons. There was an art store and a...I stopped. An art store?

My feet detached from the authority of my brain. The uppity tinkling of three bells sounded as I entered the shop. I stared in wonder for a few long moments. For being located in such a crazy town, the paintings were incredible. Full-featured figures were running and jumping and dancing and flying in their frames. One was even singing a dark haunting melody. It was like watching small, gorgeous videos on the walls.

I wondered if they sold storage box spaces here.

“May I help you?” A middle-aged man with a receding hairline was watching me disapprovingly from behind the counter.

“I am just admiring your lovely shop.”

But he had that displeased look of a shopkeeper who disliked teenagers, so I moved to the side.

I hated being watched like I was going to shoplift, so I wandered over to a wall filled with art supplies. Maybe I could purchase magical paint here. A smile lit my face. Maybe I would be able to
use
paint here.

A sign ran along the top of the display in bright red letters:
SECURIMAGE Anti-Theft Enchantment Activated
. The enchantment or company must stink if I was still being watched by the shopkeeper, though—unless it was one of those “I have a dog/alarm” yard signs where the person really didn't have one.

Wanting desperately to believe that maybe Marsgrove had just cursed paint already on campus, I scanned the tubes hanging on the wall. There were dozens of different kinds. “Fast acting,” “quick release,” “multidimensional,” “chaophonic,” “added texture,” “moving pieces.” Fascinated, I wondered which one my electrified ultramarine would be labeled as. Some uses were obvious, others not as much. Chaophonic? I suppose it was too much to ask for one that read “reanimate the dead!” on it.

The bells tinkled and a lady in high heels and a stiff business suit strode into the store. She smoothed her skirt and perched a pair of tiny glasses on her nose. “I'm looking for something of exceptional quality. A signature piece. I was told that I could find one in your establishment, even located in such a reprehensible town.”

The store owner straightened up. “You have come to the right place, my good lady. The tremors are regrettable, but the magical benefits are keen. We boast the finest collection in the Second Layer. We even have a piece by the last origin mage, Sergei Kinsky. Very rare!”

Sergei Kinsky? That was the Mad Mage guy featured in my reading room grid. I peered over my shoulder trying to see where the owner was pointing. My eyes followed the direction to the edge of a gold frame on the far wall, but I couldn't see the canvas from my position.

The woman looked over her tiny glasses to examine the piece. “Extraordinary. But they should have kept Kinsky in a testing facility permanently. You can't trust people with those kinds of abilities and that type of temperament. Look at what happened to the Third Layer. Such mages must be controlled by others. I carry around a leash device, in case I encounter such mage types, or out-of-control ferals. They tend to go hand-in-hand, more's the pity.”

The owner nodded along with the woman's increasingly alarming opinions, murmuring his agreement as I stood there frozen, with my hand raised to touch a tube of paint, and my chest absent of a heartbeat. Leash device?

“I can't deny the quality of Origin works when created under control. Our layer system is a testament to Origin design and power after all. But that was long ago when people knew their place. It is a relief to all that there is no origin mage in existence presently. Thirty years ago, the best thing Kinsky did was to blow himself up. He had started making things freely...” She shuddered. “It's not one of those works, is it?”

The man shook his head rapidly and uttered a loud, “No, never one of those! This was created while he was at the Zantini Institute, under the direction of Mussolgranz.”

“Ah, excellent. I will indeed look at the provenance. But at the moment, I am in dire need of a piece for my niece's thirteenth birthday.”

The colors around me had started to tessellate, and I was unable to draw enough breath. They didn't know I was feral, they couldn't know. Besides, I was cuffed. That was good enough, right? I repeated the mantra to myself, trying to restart my heart. I needed to get out of here. My eyes pulled in the direction of the Kinsky piece, then toward the door—where I received another shock.

Marsgrove stood outside looking at his device. A mere fifteen feet away from me, separated by a pane of glass.

My breath and heartbeat whooshed back in double time. I ducked my head and pulled my hair forward. Trapped. I looked around for another exit.

“Wonderful, ma'am,” the owner said boisterously. “We have a lovely children's storybook art piece over here. Perfect for a budding mage. A master artist mage and master mage storyteller collaborated on it. Very rare. The figures inside make up new adventures and grow and change whenever the enchantments are activated, and they take direction from the activator, if desired. Your niece will feel that she is in on the adventure too. There is a record spell and a reset spell, so she can experience an adventure again or start completely anew. Unless it is requested, the same story is never repeated. Family friendly fare and adventures are also guaranteed.”

Such a piece of art as he was describing would normally fascinate me, but self-preservation focused my attention elsewhere. I looked back to the window. Marsgrove was slowly stepping along the walk in front of the shop.

As the owner and customer began haggling over the price, I moved around the displays, hiding myself farther from view. My feet moved to the Kinsky piece without my explicit consent. His portrait of a beautiful woman was Mona Lisa-esque. She appeared to be quietly observing me, no matter the angle of my approach.

Drawn to it, I examined the piece carefully as I moved. My own works were stick figures compared to this artist’s Da Vinci scale. The portrait possessed depth and dimension and reality. A little too much reality, perhaps. The woman looked...lifelike. Like Will inside my sketch, but with colored texture and movement. She looked as if she would step from the frame at any moment and emerge in glory. The colors shifted with her movement, catching and reflecting interior light as she moved inside her painted world. Shadows cast behind her, shrinking, growing, and morphing. A living diorama, where this woman was trapped inside. Unnerved, especially after Will's imprisonment, I was unwillingly drawn to the painting.

She put one finger to her lips and urged me forward with her other hand. I drew closer, spellbound, and she smiled. Her hand reached into a fold of her dress and the material moved, rippling the canvas along its path. She withdrew a piece of paper from her dress. The paper grew sharper, and I could almost see the words on it, as she held it out toward me. My heart thumped madly in my chest. The canvas pushed outward as the paper pressed from inside, almost like a finger or object was pressing against the barrier, and I reached forward—

“Stop! Move away from that!”

I flinched at the yell and turned to see both adults watching me. The shop owner was frowning and had taken a step in my direction. “What do you think you are doing? Do not touch that!”

“I'm sorry. She...” No. Everything in me screamed that saying that the woman had something for me would be extremely unwise. I looked back at the painting. The paper was gone and the woman gave a resigned smile, then smoothed her dress and looked off to the left, her face freezing again in profile. I wondered if the First Layer hid safes behind paintings as a reflection of this layer being able to hide things
in
them. “...she is very pretty. Sorry.”

I returned to the supply wall and kept my head down, but my eyes active. Marsgrove was across the street now, thank God, still frowning down at his device.
Keep walking
, I urged him mentally. I could hear the man and woman muttering.

“The intoxicating threat of an Origin work.” The woman tutted. “Do you have anything hidden in there? You said it was a safe painting.”

“Nothing hidden, and yes, it is safe.” His glare hardened—I was damaging a future sale. And I was exposing myself—making myself memorable. I tried to breathe normally as he continued talking. “I only demonstrate the security measures and properties if someone past puberty is keen to buy. It is an empty canvas right now.”