The Awakening of Ren Crown (63 page)

“Christian?” I kept my voice from going high and desperate through will alone.

“Ren.” He took a few harsh breaths. “Use your magic when you think of me? It's so alive inside of you.”

I grabbed his arm, the bark coarse beneath my fingers. “I can't wait for you to experience it
with
me. Think of the magic we can create together.” It was a wild, wonderful thought that spurred a dozen images and feelings of magnificence and contentment.

“Keep your friends close. I like them. I trust them with you. I...”

I could see that he stopped his alter ego just in time from saying something more. “Stop being so serious,” I said lightly. We would get through this. “You are supposed to be telling me that you are going to give me the equivalent of a magical swirly or something.”

He smiled, a cracked smile. “I wish.”

I straightened. “Well, enough of this chatter. Let's get you out.” I picked up the tube.

“No.”

I stared at him. “What? What do you mean, no?”

“I don't have a body, Ren.”

I looked at his treed state. “Will—”

“Had a body when he entered the sketch.”

I opened my mouth, and he quickly shook his head.

“No, you don't understand, Ren.” He released my hand and backed away. “If you tried to remove me like this it would be worse than the bone beast you dreamed of all last night. I would...” He shook his head, as if to rid himself of the thoughts.

“Then I just need to make you a new body.” I straightened up. Raphael had said that an external vessel was required. “I can do that. The golem, sculptures, and dolls are gone, but I can make more.” I'd give Constantine anything he asked for at the moment, and I wouldn't rest until the vessel was complete. Now that I knew Christian was
here
...

“Just like the old myths, yeah?” I gave him a reassuring smile. “I can work you up a body in no time now that I have your soul. I bet I can even transfer you around. Place you in a temporary vessel now, a more permanent one later. You'd be ok with a sweet robot body for a while, right? You could be like Robocop.”

“No. No.” He shook his head, as if denying something inside himself. “I'm cursed to a half-life, Ren.”

“We will make it a full life once more.” I nodded firmly. “I know I can get you out of there.”

“You can, yes.” His bark smile was brittle. “But can you?”

“What's with the riddles? Yes.” I put my hand on his branched wrist and tugged. Nothing happened. I tugged again. “Just give me a day or two. I'll figure it out. Safely.” I quickly tacked on the last.

“I
know
how to get out,” he said darkly.

I blinked. “Oh. Great. Let's do it.”

“I need a fully human body.”

I slashed sculpture dolls and blob matter off my list. “Ok. I can get your—”

“Not the one that has been buried for three months.”

There were morgues. There was further research. Now that I knew where his soul was, my trials would
work
. “I can be trusted to pick you out a good one.”

“There already is one available.”

I blinked again. “Ok. Where?”

“In Dorm Twenty.”

“Ok. Will lives there, I'll bet he can...”

Christian watched me make the connection, his eyes flat.

“Will...Will was the ritual sacrifice.” My voice was barely audible. “The vessel.”

“The first person to touch this paper after it was activated by you would get sucked in to provide the host body. After I melded with and overtook him, you would be able to pull me out. That you got him out alive and intact was nothing short of extraordinary.”

The words strung together in my mind. Agony burned through my veins. I closed my eyes against the knowledge, but everything Raphael had hinted to me in Ganymede...and here...said that the words were accurate. “Are you sure I can’t be used as the sacrifice instead?” My voice was barely audible, my throat needing to force itself to work.

“Never! And it won't work, so don't try it. I did not choose this path—any of it—but I was made...aware...afterward of what was required.”

The grasping root tentacles attacking Will. The paint infused rock guards pointing their spears. Christian's evil voice always wanting to suck out his soul. “I missed you. I miss you, Christian.”

I hoped Raphael Verisetti rotted in hell.

“I miss you too. Please, Ren.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“Give me three days.”

“No. Feel it.” He grasped my hand and pulled my arm further into the sketch, wrapping my fingers around the side of his neck. “Feel it.”

I could feel the pain and turmoil, the...half needing to be whole. Bit by bit clasping more and more of the darkness to it as it strained to be whole again.

“It's going faster now—again—with the touch of the paint. There are no three days.”

The pain made me double over. The paint I had used in the sketch before going to Ganymede... Christian had screamed all night and grown far worse after that. With the amount of paint I had just pushed inside...

I closed my eyes.

Could I have done months ago what I now needed to do? I wasn't sure that I could have. I opened my eyes, and he held my gaze for long moments. It was raining in the sketch again. Fresh, fat, grief-ridden drops.

“Do it, Ren.”

“I can't.”

“Do not leave me in this half-life.”

“I'm so sorry,” I whispered, barely able to choke out the words.

“There are no apologies, Ren.” I could feel the emotions running through him. The firm undying love for me, the twisted darkness of the other, the corruption that had filled his missing half, left wounded and open for too long.

“I love you, Christian.”

“I love you, too, Ren. Don't leave me in here another day.”

I shook my head.

He touched my hand to his cheek. “Yes, and you've already made the choice. You
know
what is right. Don't ever feel bad. You are so strong. You never accepted that I leaned on you, just as you leaned on me. You thought because I was the extrovert, I carried you. But you were always my strength.”

“But I could—”

“No.”

—put his spirit into a vessel. Some sort of thing or animal or—

“Let go, Ren.”

—or hand mirror or lamp. Like a genie. I had a hundred different spells I could try. A hundred objects to use.

Anything
.

“Let me go, Ren.” His voice was gentle. Soothing. Not like the troublemaker or genius he had been. This was the voice in my head that had wanted out at the beginning, but then slowly changed into my constant support, gaining wisdom every day while the splitting voice had become more insane. I could see him holding the darkness back, the evil other shoved in the back of his eyes, clawing, trying to get out.

“I will see you soon,” I whispered.

“Not soon. But when we meet again, it will be like no time has passed.”

“Yes.”

“Like no time has passed at all,” he said gently.

I couldn't see through the film. I blinked to clear my eyes and slowly picked up the lavender-enhanced pencil and touched it to my brother's trunk. He fell to his knees, bark cracking, branches breaking. I concentrated everything I had in making the sketch a happy place, a wondrous world. One in which
every
breath taken within it was a happy, joyous one.

Christian fell sideways, bark breaking off in pieces all around him, life-sustaining darkness falling away. Flowers bloomed beneath him, spreading everywhere. The winning moment of the game. The feel of a perfect second extended forever.

He smiled. A glorious, lovely smile.

And I sobbed.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: A New Beginning

When I finally looked up, I realized Olivia had witnessed the whole thing.

She said nothing, just tipped her head to the side and levitated a box of tissues to my bed.

“Thank you,” I said softly.

She arranged her pens on her desk, lining them up just so.

“
Thank you
,” I said more firmly. “You supported me with Christian. You helped quiet the backlash along with Neph and Will. Please, let me know what I can do in return. If there is anything I can do to show my gratitude.”

She hadn't shown disgust of me yet, nor fear, but I would repay my debts by turning myself in, if she asked it of me.

Olivia didn't say anything for a few long moments, then she walked over and placed a key on my desk. “Room with me next term.” It was said quietly and stiffly, awaiting rejection.

I automatically rose and touched her arm. She froze.

“I would love to,” I said quietly. “Without exchange.”

She nodded stiffly. “Good. Come with me.”

I blinked, but scooped the key into the small pocket of my jeans and followed her to her desk. “Sure. Lunch?”

“You have food on the brain far too frequently,” she said, and gathered up a few rather thin, but diabolically barbed rods from her desk and inserted them strategically in pockets in her clothing. Huh. So that was what all those slim, tailored pockets were for. I had thought them an odd fashion for magical businesswomen.

“When it's good, yup.” I watched her put a few marbles into the smallest pockets. The marbles were the kind Mr. Verisetti had carried in Ganymede Circus. “Er, may I ask where we are going?”

I had said that I would do anything. And maybe helping her take over the world would be a diversion to take my mind away from the devastating loss that was still drowning it.

She tucked an invisible strand of untamed hair into her perfect up-do. “We are going to clean up a bit of business.”

Maybe those barbed rods trapped dirt really, really well. Or maybe we were going to do some mining. Gather up some gold nuggets or some such.

I trailed her down the hall, then froze at the top of the stairs as Will's Marsgrove alert system went off, drumming against my skin in triple time.

Olivia turned to me. “What are you doing? Come on. I want to get this done.”

I forced my body to move again and stepped after her. It would be too late to port to Marsgrove's anyway. Everything was coming to roost.

Olivia. I had just promised to room with her, but I was soon going to be carted off to a cell somewhere. I could at least do this for her, whatever it was.

Four arches later and we entered the Administration Building. Olivia immediately headed for the long ramp that spiraled upward along the rectangular edges of the walls of the gorgeous modern atrium. The giant compass surrounded by five concentric silver rings was still hanging in the middle of the atrium, each ring rotating in asynchronous, nonuniform directions around the ones inside it. The inmost circle still lay mostly flat, provoked only by a ripple here and there when the ring around it bumped or bulged against it. The second ring repeatedly bumped the ring outside of
it
as well—the middle ring, which looked to be at turns violent and utterly lethargic. The fourth ring was dark and whirling—its shadows and darkness suggesting a mysterious void. The fifth ring was a riot of instability.

The layers.

The sudden comprehensive thought jarred me. The rings represented the five layers of the world. It was entirely within the scope of the magical that they were presenting real time fluctuations.

I let Olivia lead me up the ramp as I watched them expand, whirl, ripple, and contract.

The office we entered was white and brown, mixing modern and traditional elements.

The man behind the desk who turned around...was Marsgrove.

Magic crackled.

The door slammed shut and locked. My shields snapped together. I didn't run. Instinct screamed at me not to turn my back on Marsgrove. Three escape routes took shape in my mind, the building layout shifting into a mental construct as I populated it with all of the people, obstacles, and assets I had seen on our way up.

I could see Marsgrove's magic pulsing, his core shields nearly mirror images of mine.

“I wondered if you two had previously met.” A queen pushing her pawns around, Olivia took a seat. “I see that you have.”

The snare I had made for Marsgrove was in our room. Options flipped through my mind like my Grandma Florence's old rolodex, and I pulled out or discarded each card.

“Ren, sit.” Olivia folded her hands together. “Time to iron things out.”

Betrayal stirred, but I took in Olivia's expression and felt the lines of the key in my pocket. I nodded slowly and sat beside her, my actions indicating my trust. The look on her face was fierce. I had a feeling if Olivia was the hugging type, I would be in the middle of an embrace.

“A door won't hold her,” Marsgrove said.

“No.” The fierce expression was still in place. “Friendship will.” Olivia cocked her head at Marsgrove. “Such a strange thing. I think I could like it.” She nodded.

Marsgrove was far from slow, and he could add two and two together quickly. His expression was dark as he watched me. “So this is where you've been. You took my papers and finagled a way inside.”

“You knew I wasn't at the house?” I asked tightly. He was an enemy, and I needed to gather as much information as I could, while I could.

The lines around his eyes clenched. “The house didn't feel right, but I had no time to investigate and all the spells were in place. Even my papers were. But the pile of stash money I remembered leaving on the desk wasn't a figment of my imagination after all.”