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  A rotund Swede in a parka got out of a lawn chair, raising his hand in greeting. “I tried knocking him out,” he said, breath misting in the chill. “Didn’t work.”

  “He has a protection chantment,” Astrid said. “You’d just be vamping calories off him.”

  “Don’t worry; I stopped.”

  “Mark? You going to let him loose?”

  Mark tsked. “There’s security on Bramblegate for a reason.”

  “Come on, he’s not dangerous.”

  “Yes, infallible one,” Mark sighed, speaking to his security people. “Jupiter, pull the pin on Bramblegate.”

  The thorns entangling Will’s arm curled back. Astrid brought them all into the plaza, into the semiprivate alcove near a bank of lockers.

  Will blinked, adjusting to the changed light. “Mark, hi. Hello, Astrid.”

  Astrid fought an unexpected interior flutter. “What’s the etiquette for this? I feel like we’re friends, but the only time we met was when you were interrogating me for the Roach.”

  “Want to see how a hug feels?”

  Mark grimaced, no doubt biting back a sarcastic comment. Will opened his arms, and Astrid stepped into the embrace. It felt more natural than she would have guessed.

  “I guess you knew Arthur would strike out on finding Carson and Ellie,” Will said.

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

  “Ever since we caught Caro and the children weren’t with her…” He was hollow eyed and thin. “I need you to find them, Astrid.”

  “I can’t do worse than Roche.”

  “More optimism, please. By now I’m probably wanted for treason.”

  “I can do upbeat.” She gave him a smile, tried to seem steady, rock certain. “Remember the grumbles?”

  A nod. “They tell you the future.”

  “They speak of a classroom of children, all learning how to chant. And your kids are there.”

  “A magic school? What if it’s Alchemites teaching them—?”

  “It’s my class, Will. I hear me.”

  “You’re absolutely sure?” He looked hopeful and apprehensive. “The grumbles have lied before.”

  “They withhold things, but they don’t lie.” It was something she understood better now. “And the longer we’re in the Spill, the more I learn.”

  “In the Spill?”

  Careful, she thought, take it slow. “Before, there was almost no magic. People like my dad made chantments and Fyremen hunted them, closing down the wells. I screwed all that up—”

  “—by spilling tons of vitagua into the ravine, I know.”

  “Will, we’re still spilling. The more magic we dribble out, the better it will be when the well pops.”

  “When it pops, not if?” He took that in, evaluating the information without seeming to judge her.

  He had never judged her, Astrid thought, not even when she told him she’d killed Jacks’s dad.

  “When,” she confirmed.

  “I call it Boomsday,” Mark said. “Astrid doesn’t like that, so much—it rhymes with Doomsday.”

  “Which is why you do like it?” Will asked.

  “Astrid prefers the Small Bang.”

  “Because the smaller the better,” Astrid said.

  “Yessir, boss, sir.”

  Will wasn’t tracking their banter. “What does the well opening have to do with Carson and Ellie?”

  “The grumbles say we have good days ahead, Will. They talk of magicians digging wells, feeding the hungry. A floating city in the Pacific, cleaning the water, repopulating fish stocks. The Roused free, the curse broken…”

  “Meanwhile society goes down the toilet?”

  “No! We figure it out. Will, there’s still going to be cars and email and plastic surgery. It’s just there’ll also be magical cures for cancer and, you know, sea monsters.”

  “Happily ever after?”

  “I don’t know about ever after, Will, but it’s going to be good. A long honeymoon. Lifetimes.”

  “Happy After doesn’t have the right ring.”

  She tried a disarming shrug, realized she was aping a move of Sahara’s, and ended up feeling self-conscious. “This is why I leave naming things to Mark.”

  “A good future.” Will chewed this over. “You promised that my children would be fine. That they’d thrive.”

  She let the grumbles in, listening for the children. “I hear Carson. He’s chanted a pair of magic … skates, I think. He’s laughing. You’re arguing with Ellie over homework.…”

  As she spoke, she felt the shape of that future; she was cold, for some reason, chilled to the bone. Will was teasing her about being a permissive stepmother.…

  Stepmother? Were they together, then? Her emotions surged, tangling: hope, panic, a pang of guilt for Jacks, who had loved her, an upwelling of nameless, unidentifiable grief.

  “How soon?” Will’s brittle tone brought her back.

  She shivered. “They’re young, Will, still young. It can’t be long.”

  Mark shot her a worried glance from behind Will’s back. Soon wasn’t good: they were trying to hold off the Small Bang.

  Will looked at the glowing columns, the people vanishing into the blue light. “I don’t know how long I can wait.”

  “We get them back, Will. They’re young, they’re chanters, and we’re all laughing.”

  “Har dee har.” He took a ragged breath, turning to Mark, and began to extend a hand in greeting. Then fighter jets screeched overhead, and he froze.

  Astrid covered her ears. Seconds later, explosives whumped a few miles away.

  “Off target,” Mark said with a smug grin.

  “Mark’s keeping the bombs off us,” Astrid explained.

  “All by himself?”

  “Not at all. I have minions, underlings, cannon fodder—”

  “Mark!” Astrid said. “He’s kidding about the fodder.”

  Will smiled.

  Mark said, “Speaking of my team, I should be with them. You giving Will the grand tour?”

  Astrid nodded.

  “Catch you both later, then.” Giving Will a nettled look, Mark headed off into the glow.

  “What now?” Will said.

  There were so many answers to that question: she wanted his advice on a dozen different things. “I’ll show you what we’re doing here. It’ll give you an idea of how we’ll go after your kids.”

  It was the right answer: he brightened.

  She led him among the columns of vitagua, saying, “Bigtop,” as they stepped down the concrete steps and came out in front of the hotel.

  Will’s jaw dropped.

  She realized anew how strange it looked. Even with the overgrown trees and brush cleared away, the forest floor was drenched in vitagua, dangerous and uninhabitable. They’d left it that way, a bright impassable lagoon of magical fluid and mulched forest. Glowing mushrooms formed a carpet over the slime, toxic blue-tinged amanitas in fairy rings, clusters of gold-streaked honey fungus, fluted chanterelles and tall, porous morels all lending an exotic, fairy-tale look to the place.

  Working up from the floor, she and her volunteers had created an island of fill by gathering the bones of the destroyed town, forming piles of concrete and steel among the enormous stumps of the dead trees. Abandoned cars, bits of highway, and garbage bridged the clearing; brightly colored silk tents were pitched on its main hub. New fill radiated from the central campground in spokes, raised pathways that expanded outward into the lagoon.

  The fill bridged the space between the hotel and one other building they’d managed to salvage whole—the Indigo Springs hospital.

  Sunshine globbed onto tree branches like paint, a camp built on rubble, vitagua-filled bottles hung from the trees, magic mushrooms, tinkling musical messages …

  Will turned a slow circle. “This is your base of operations?”

  Astrid nodded. “Let’s start with the ravine.”

  Shaking his head in disbelief, Will followed.


  “How much do you remember about vitagua?” she asked.

  “Let’s see … magic used to be a living cell. It allowed people to bend the rules of nature.”

  “Right,” she said.

  “Centuries ago, when the Inquisition began burning witches, the cells—”

  “Magicules.”

  “Magicules, right, were driven into the unreal and they became vitagua.”

  “Blue in color, thick as blood, dangerous as hell,” she said, quoting her father. The fluid had been drizzling back into the real world for centuries. Well wizards like Dad had taken it drop by drop, locking it within magic items like Will’s ring.

  The physical breach between the real and unreal was in the ravine. It had been concealed in the chimney of Dad’s old house, and an irregular pile of bricks still marked the epicenter of the Spill. Blue fluid oozed through the porous, cracked bricks, pooling in the ravine, forming a boxy lake.

  Will peered down. “That’s … a lot of vitagua.”

  “Barely a drop in the bucket,” Astrid countered. “Remember the glaciers in the unreal?”

  He nodded. “You’re spilling it into the woods?”

  “I’m also making chantments.” She pointed at a line of shopping carts filled with junk: small carvings, combs, dishes, lampshades, books, tools, purses, plastic necklaces, jewelry boxes, flowerpots …

  “Where’s all that coming from?”

  “There are crews out salvaging in the evacuated towns. See that work crew there, going through the stuff?”

  “That’s … what, twenty people?”

  “It’s a lot of work. They have to sort through everything. Broken stuff has to be mended. Glass and electronics can’t be chanted at all.”

  “You must be making hundreds of chantments.”

  “Abracadabra.” She’d had a gold barbell pierced through the web between her right thumb and index finger: chanting required a break in the skin. She twisted the barbell before bending to dip her fingers into the flow of vitagua from the ravine.

  Liquid magic passed through her body, seeping from the piercing in the web of her hand and, from there, into the rescued objects. She’d shown Will how this worked before; she didn’t need to explain that she was binding raw magic into the scavenged items so people could safely access its power.

  Peace and a sense of vitality flooded her.

  This was what she was meant to do. The personality juggling, the meetings, the planning and recruiting, the endless defense of the town—those were just by-products of the Spill. Item by item, she made the junk into chantments. Volunteers bustled in to take the carts away.

  Will asked: “What’ll you do with them?”

  “Mostly, give them away.”

  “You’re not hanging on to everything?”

  “Only what we need. Being a well wizard is about sharing power.” She pointed at a red silk tent. “Over there, we have a team of volunteers using chantments that make them psychic. They’ve been working on locating your children.”

  “What if they say the kids are in Timbuktu, surrounded by heavily armed Alchemites? Got a plan for that?”

  “Of course,” she said. “You think I’ve been sitting around all this time?”

  A smile—a real one—broke across his face. “You are more of a go-getter than a sitter.”

  “What we’re gonna go get is your children, Will.” Astrid found herself wanting to hug him again. Instead, she led him toward the hotel. “Come on, I’ll show you the rest.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “WE THOUGHT IT WAS a joke. I mean, here’s a bunch of civilians in motorboats and flying carpets and they’re trying to surround a carrier? A few of the women were dressed up like mermaids, and there was a guy with a trident—”

  “Did you see any of the defendants?” Special Prosecutor Lee Wallstone brought up the Alchemites’ mug shots on the courtroom media screens.

  “Yessir. I saw Sahara Knax, Patricia Finch, and Arlen Roy.”

  “Thank you. What happened next?”

  The televised trial had gotten off to a dramatic start, with Juanita and the other marshals hauling the defendants out of the courtroom bodily, like so many screeching sacks of laundry. Afterwards, things settled down. Wallstone had gone with a low-key opening; by the time he’d finished explaining the treason statute for the benefit of the jury and American viewing public, it was almost dull.

  He’d save the verbal fireworks for his closing, Juanita guessed, working the theory that the last thing the jury heard was what would stick.

  Defense counsel came out heavier, preaching the fire and brimstone of ecological disaster, claiming that Knax and her followers were forced to take action to reverse climate change. Necessity defense, it was called. Apparently they hadn’t noticed it was the same tactic that failed to save Timothy McVeigh.

  Now the prosecutor was examining a young sailor who had been aboard Vigilant when the Alchemites sank it.

  As for Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Juanita Corazón, she spent the day with Sahara Knax in her squirrel cage, watching it all on closed-circuit TV.

  Deprived of an audience, Sahara slouched in her chair, toying with her restraints and pretending to listen to spirit voices. “You’re a pet of Judge Skagway’s, aren’t you?”

  “What makes you say so?” Juanita kept her tone neutral.

  “He’s fond, right? Perhaps … a sort of father figure?”

  “Pay attention to the trial, Knax.” She feigned boredom, hoping Sahara wouldn’t see she’d struck a nerve: Juanita didn’t want to think about the judge.

  She’d run into him yesterday morning, wheeling his way out to the fresh air, his racquetball gear in his lap.

  “Big show tomorrow, Corazón,” he’d said. “I want spit and polish. Show these jarheads we civvies understand discipline.”

  “Jarheads are marines, Your Honor. These are airmen—”

  He waved that off. “You think any more about after this? Law school?”

  “The way things are right now—”

  “Turmoil, shmurmoil. Life doesn’t stop, Corazón.”

  “I don’t know if I see myself as a lawyer.”

  “We get bad press, but it isn’t as bad as all that.”

  “I can’t imagine making the world a better place just by sitting on my ass all day.”

  It was an established joke between them, but it earned her a glare and a significant glance at the judge’s wheelchair from a passing clerk.

  “Spit and polish, Corazón.” With a bass rumble of laughter, the judge rolled on, leaving her aching with guilt.

  “I grew up without a father, too,” Sahara said, tone nostalgic. “I was jealous of girls who had dads.…”

  “Girls like Astrid Lethewood?” Juanita asked.

  A curl of the lip. “She put a chantment in my chest.”

  “A bottle cap—I was briefed. Keeps you from running away.”

  “It’s litter, Filthwitchery. An attack upon my divinity.”

  Can Sahara believe this crap? Does she really think she’s a god?

  “Astrid thinks she can contain me.”

  On-screen, the impossibly youthful sailor continued his testimony. “The mermaids were singing.”

  “In English?” Wallstone asked.

  “No, some other language. Knax gave us ten minutes to get to the lifeboats. I remember that one of my buddies laughed.”

  Several sailors had recorded the sinking, using their phones and cameras. Wallstone brought up a shot of Sahara, hanging in midair off the bow of the ship, borne on gigantic starling wings. “Did you take action?”

  “Yessir—we issued verbal warnings, then fired upon them.”

  “And?”

  “My weapon malfunctioned. Other guys, their bullets turned to flowers. Patricia Finch was shot, but one of the others put a hand on her and she stopped bleeding.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Knax, also singing, stabbed the flight deck with a rusty pock
etknife. The air got cold, and the ship started falling apart.”

  “Falling apart?”

  “Deck plates buckling, bolts popping loose, metal rusting. Like it aged a thousand years in five minutes.”

  “And you had to abandon ship?”

  “Yessir. The Vigilant went down in about half an hour.”

  “Is that when you were injured?” The Alchemites made a point of rescuing everyone, but this particular fresh-faced boy had been caught by rapidly freezing sea ice that formed around the wreckage of the aircraft carrier.

  “I lost a foot to frostbite.”

  In the cage, Sahara muttered: “I’d grow back his damn leg if they’d let me.”

  The electronic lock beeped, unlatching the door, and Roche poked his head inside. “Talk to you a minute?”

  “Uh-oh,” said Sahara. “Something wrong already?”

  I haven’t done anything, it’s not too late.… Juanita quelled a rush of panic, switching places with her backup, Gladys, and followed Roche down the hall.

  “Something going on?”

  Roche eyed her with distaste. Sahara was right: Skagway had insisted that Federal marshals take charge of prisoner security during the trial. The judge was too important to hate openly, though, so Roche settled for resenting Juanita and her team.

  “Will Forest is missing,” Roche said.

  “Abducted?”

  Roche shrugged. “We’re searching the base for magic items.”

  “Pardon my saying, but Forest’s seemed … scattered lately.”

  “Yes, yes, his kids are AWOL, I know.”

  “When your family’s in danger, General…” Roche gave her a dull stare, so she wrenched herself back on task. “Does this change my routine for tonight?”

  “No. Shower Prisoner One, search her, put her in restraints. No black eyes tomorrow, you hear?”

  Juanita winced. The previous evening, Sahara’s minions had smashed their faces against their walls and sinks. She’d had them restrained, but they started the trial looking as if they’d been beaten. “Anything else?”