Magical intelligence, p.27
Magical Intelligence, page 27
The ache of betrayal hurt so that Myra almost wished Ben and Aidan had hexed her and been done with it. Then she might have been saved this pain. Tears blurred her eyes, and she closed them to their sting.
For there was no mistaking it. Memories laid waste to Myra’s heart: Julius’ attentions to Myra, her being the only member of the team he might not otherwise account for. The doomed reconnaissance of the Flameists’ ceremony and the happy accident that not even Griggs might have predicted. That of Stephen’s and Kady’s indiscriminate massacre, an act that had most likely saved Myra and James and Aidan’s lives. The glaring fact that it had been Griggs who had been their inside man at DMI; his providing of the corpse whose information they had acted on with regards to the Order. Lastly, James’ anger at Julius himself over Griggs’ device ostensibly meant to siphon electricity from the air, but could easily be turned to harness and direct such power against mages.
Distantly, Myra noted that even Aidan and Benjamin had joined the fray. Which was nice, she supposed. But nothing compared to Julius’ squashed face and crooked smile, his kind eyes. His kind, deceitful, infinitely cruel eyes.
Myra found the thread of her anger again and grabbed at it, holding on for dear life. A lifeline, pulling her back out of herself and into the land of the living, she let fury take her from the mire of her broken heart.
Perhaps it was time for M.I. to go to Addair, put his men in danger and force him to make the next move. Myra would relish the confrontation with Griggs. She had words she would like to give him . . . along with a pendant she no longer wanted.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Myra glanced around the library, thinking. Someone ought to get James.
“Does Stephen know this?” Aidan’s piercing eyes tunneled into Myra’s own, forcing her to look away. He might read the truth of things but amends were still to be made.
Someone ought to get James. Myra’s thought repeated itself more urgently. She searched the room for someone who might do just that.
“I doubt they would have spoken so if they thought Steve could overhear them.” Laurel rose to her feet. Robert slipped to her side, shaking his head. She was not to interrupt James and Stephen at this time. It would be someone not tied to their troubles who fetched them.
Benjamin volunteered.
His leaving gave Myra the peace of heart she had not known she needed. Still, she understood. In light of what Aidan had told him, how was he to know she was not an enemy? Julius had played them for fools. Luckily the Department had, apparently, caught on to his deceptions and sent him to Broadmoor like the rest of his sorry ilk.
But he’s not insane. The thought was little comfort to Myra. It was, in many ways, worse. She suppressed a shudder and went to go sit by Kady, who offered her an arm ’round the shoulder.
“Come, dear,” Kady whispered. “We’re all mad here.”
Myra looked up sharply, finding the Kinetic grinning like the Cheshire Cat. And suddenly it made a little bit more sense how they dealt with the path they had chosen. Grief. Danger. Love. All was very much the same to them. There was a fractured wisdom to it, she supposed.
Stephen had returned, bringing James. Benjamin had not come back. The looks on both their faces told Myra that they had been briefed. James spoke, “You lot. Clear out. We need to test a certain theory of Stephen’s and require a space uncluttered by people.”
A discordant shuffle arose. Myra moved to leave along with the rest.
“Not you.” James pointed a quivering finger at her. “You’re the one going to be doing the magic.”
Myra sat, gulping back her trepidation.
A disappointed cry told them Stephen had discovered his precious typewriter had been tampered with. “My article. For the paper.”
He looked wildly about, gaze stopping on the flickering flames of the fireplace.
“ ’S all right, Stephen.” Robert did not own to the destruction, instead opting to pat Stephen on the back. “Story’s not over yet. Gotta keep your chin up and eyes clear.”
“Come on. Out, you.” James tapped Robert as he passed. He then turned his attention back to Myra. “You’re going to find Julius Griggs for us.”
“How?” Her powers didn’t work that way. Her Empathy was drawn towards a wizard’s gift. They all knew that.
Stephen explained, “When you first discovered your powers, how did they work, Myra? You felt only what another mage felt, and only if their emotions were very strong at the time.”
“Visions. Yes,” Myra said.
“You thought yourself mad.”
Myra flinched. Neither of them had been present for the confrontation just then.
Stephen hurried to explain, “That is consistent with the experiences of most wizards when they realize their powers. Ben, he— His was a rough Emergence.”
James said, “But Stephen also has postulated that an Empath could connect with anyone, anyone at all, provided the gifted mage had the details necessary to find them. For it would make little sense that your magic is only applicable to other magic. No gift works that way.”
“What we’re getting at is that you can hone your skills. Just as you’ve learned to control your gift, keeping it from running away on you and pulling you left and right and everywhere, you can learn to do this,” Stephen finished.
“Laurel can see into the dreams of the Queen just as she can feel us through the Ways,” Myra ventured.
“Exactly!” Stephen crowed. “James, she is quick. Yes, Myra, Laurie’s gift of Ways-walking is one of the mental Arcana. All magic taps into emotion, some more than others. Those gifts which utilize the powers of the mind—and subsequently, heart—are technically in kinship to the pure power of traveling the OtherLands. When you use your gift, Laurel can see your spirit wander the higher planes.”
“So to speak,” James chimed in.
“So to speak.” Stephen nodded. “It is infinitely more complex than that. But it’s enough to say that your power should allow you to connect with anyone with whom you have grown close. With time—and we are talking years of practice, patience, and study—you could well unlock a power of the mind that we can only, at present, theorize.”
“But for now, you’ll settle for me seeing if what I heard about Griggs is actually true,” Myra drew it all together with a heavy sigh.
“Yes.” The two men spoke in unison, their eyes alight. And for the first time, Myra could see how two individuals, one so completely different from the other, might have grown so close. She took out her wand in preparation.
“No wands, Myra.” Stephen gently laid his hand over hers. James moved off into the shadows, watchful and himself once more. “As I have no power, we’ll be practicing this on me.”
He closed his eyes. “Look for the picture that I paint. Don’t try to imagine it. Smell, taste, and hear it. See if you can tell me something about it that I haven’t told you. Ready? In the countryside, not all that far from here, is a house. Small, unremarkable really, it sits near the crest of a hilltop.”
Myra closed her eyes and felt nothing from the man.
“The house is old without being ancient. Walls comprised of grey stones prized from the surrounding fields, a slouch roof, and a couple of well-placed windows make up the whole of it. The fence is in need of mending but does not indicate rife disrepair. Altogether, it’s a tidy little place. Comfortable and—”
“Ow!” Myra’s eyes snapped open, and she looked to her hand, at pain so sharp she expected there to be blood.
Nothing. Her fingers, her palm, all were pink and whole.
James was on his feet, breathing hard. “Myra. What have you done?”
A very good question.
It might have worked, then. Whatever it was they were trying to accomplish. But it didn’t feel right. Myra felt weak. And not just from the imagined injury. In addition to her fast-fading pain, she had felt anger—James’—and had, in fact, felt so the whole time. An uncomfortable buzz with which she was well acquainted, it had taken residence in the back of her mind until it had crescendoed to the point where she had thrust it from her.
And lost something of herself in the process.
“Come with me.” James walked past her towards the door, his eyes still wild. Stephen seemed as dumbfounded as Myra.
She stood her ground. “No.”
James paused, anxious. “No?”
“You can say it here.”
This time James’ gaze swept to Stephen, but it was to Myra he spoke. “You weren’t supposed to be able to do that.”
“Do what?” Stephen and Myra spoke their annoyance at once.
At least Steve's on my side. Myra fought to keep her fear in check.
“She pushed her power onto me.” James’ accusation bit.
Myra shrank from it. “I was trying— It was so hard to feel anything, you understand.”
“But your gift. You gave me magic. Atop my own.” James seemed to be struggling to breathe, and for a moment, Myra worried that, somehow, her mislaid magic had done him injury. She stepped back from him, as though that might make any difference.
“Wær spells.” Stephen’s rejoinder blended triumph with strangled dismay. He looked stricken.
Both he and James.
“I’m sorry, Steve.” James’ compassion rang louder to Myra’s gift than did his grief.
“I knew it too late for me a month ago, Jamie,” Stephen waved it off. He set his troubled eyes on Myra. “Myra, have you heard the term ‘warlock’ before?”
Myra shook her head.
“Ah, well.” Stephen glanced to James.
“Go on. If she can do it, she should at least know what it is she’s doing,” James grumbled. He wanted to leave. But he also wanted to stay. Caught in between, he folded his arms and leaned back against the doorway to the library. When Stephen did not continue the explanation, however, he offered, “The term ‘warlock’ has its root in wær magic. Old spells, such were the everyday ken of a mage. In times long past, power was oft borrowed and given.”
“And more freely taken than otherwise.” Stephen gave a wry smile. “Hence magic’s stellar reputation amongst true gentlemen.”
James winced at the bitter interjection. “We’d have to ask Benjamin to be certain, Myra. But what you were able to accomplish without thought or direction just now, has not been done in at least three hundred years.”
Three hundred years? Myra’s mind boggled at the thought. She could feel the walls of Grafford House closing in on her. Her gift. Secret. Powerful. Unique. Myra looked to Stephen, himself giftless, hoping he could not read her heart.
Stephen was the first to fall but would not be the last. Already Benjamin’s powers were compromised. Could Myra lend even him magic via the wær spells? Kady, Aidan, Laurel. Their gifts would soon fade into nothing lest they did something. Lest Myra do something.
James broke into Myra’s newfound resolve. Or escaped it, more like. She looked up to find the door to the library yawning emptily. M.I.’s leader was gone, presumably to ask Benjamin something on the history of wær magic.
Stephen confirmed it with a hearty, “Well then!”
Myra turned back to him, cross. “So we accomplished the wrong thing.”
“Did we now?” Surprise colored Stephen’s features. He held up a hand, moving on as though nothing had happened. “We’d come back home for a season, and I was helping James out at his family home. There was a plow. My hand slipped on the handle and . . .”
“I felt the cut,” Myra gasped, rubbing her fingers over her own palm at the sharp memory.
“I had assumed as much. I figure that the surprise of your discovery is what freed your gift for James, not your pushing him away. This said as one who has experienced a lifetime of trying to hold that man at bay.” Stephen grinned, breaking the last of the tension between them.
With it, Myra saw a way to make amends and pounced on the idea. “The plow, the memory that I felt . . . Maybe you’re not actually an ord—”
“Myra.”
“—Maybe it’s like with Robert—”
“Myra!”
“And just a shred of power remains,” Myra completed, defiant.
“Myra! No. I’m an ord. I’ve no magic. No shred, no whisper. Addair’s men made sure of it. They knew what they were about and did their job well.” Anger raised each word above the last, leaving Stephen poised on a cliff, wild-eyed and despairing.
Myra feared he would jump, led there by her own forced naiveté. She met his outburst with a silence made uncomfortable by her own sense of being horridly out of her depth. Twice she had hurt him.
At length Stephen spoke.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean— Why else do you think James was so afraid of speaking of the wær magics in front of me?” His eyes cleared of their madness, brightening with hope. “Could you feel that?”
Myra shook her head, coming down hard on the wistful tone of Stephen’s words.
“Not a thing. Well, I cannot be certain. But it didn’t seem like anything specifically magic.” She frowned, trying to make herself clearer, “I think it’s hard with you here because I care as a normally sympathetic person would.”
“I know. And that’s to your credit, love. I—” Stephen’s eyes darkened then brightened, a swiftly passing cloud. “You wait here. I’m going to go talk with Aidan. Stay here. And keep trying. I’m going to . . . going to see if something works.”
Talk with Aidan . . . Myra nodded and did not move from her chair as Stephen jumped to his feet and left the room without further explanation. The minutes slipped past and still Stephen did not return. Nor was there any perceivable tug on Myra’s Empathic powers. She waited still, wondering how long she ought to wait. Maybe Aidan was unavailable. Maybe Stephen’s idea didn’t work at all . . . Maybe . . .
Suddenly, Myra felt something—a magic something. Bigger and noticeable, like what she was used to with mages but . . . blurrier.
Stephen was hurting. Badly. And it hurt. It really hurt. And with no magic for her to join with, Myra could only feel herself splitting in two, ripped apart by Stephen’s despair. But neither could she leap into him, see the world through his eyes. No visions came. No fits. Just the pain and her gift’s indecision of where to put Myra in all of it.
Myra could not wait any longer. Rising, she ran from the room, desperate to console Stephen. What was Aidan doing to him? What on earth could they be—?
At the far end of the hallway, Aidan stood talking quietly with Stephen. Stephen had tears running down his cheeks and was leaning back against the wall. They stopped as Myra approached.
“Myra,” Stephen breathed, smiling through his pain. “You felt—?”
“What did you do to him?” Myra turned angry eyes to Aidan. And Stephen. They were both in the wrong here so far as she was concerned. Playing with high emotions, triggering her own pain. Didn’t they understand?
Stephen understood.
“Myra, dear. It’s all right.” Stephen forced a smile, wiping a sleeve over his tears. It was clear to her that he felt foolish and self-conscious, having now seen his own pain reflected back to him. “Meet me back in the library?”
The horrid throbbing in Myra’s magic retreated, a fire quickly quenched, but still she didn’t budge. The pain was too fresh, too ill-defined to be put away without explanation. And, besides, there was still Aidan to deal with. Impassive as though made of stone. Talk with Aidan, Stephen? Why would I bother? Aidan’s gift is to be unfeeling, as inaccessible to me as a chair or stick of firewood.
“Really. It’s fine. I wanted it to work and knew what it might take.” Stephen maneuvered himself to stand between Myra and Aidan. She watched as the two men locked gazes, each making his peace with minimal fuss.
“Aidan.”
“Stephen.”
With a hard squeeze on Aidan’s shoulder, Stephen shuffled away. Myra was surprised that he would give her up so easily. James would not have. He would have hauled her back to the library for another bruising of her psyche. A gesture kindly meant, of course. But she was grateful for the reprieve, the chance to confront Aidan who had still not spoken to her, had still not looked at her.
“Aidan, what did he . . . ?” Myra pleaded.
“It is not my place to say.” Aidan remained carefully closed. “Stephen told me what you two were attempting. He came to me aware that, with my art, I’d know the deeper truths of his soul enough to cause the appropriate level of pain. And if your powers did not bring you to knowledge of what went on between he and I just now, that is for Stephen, himself, to tell. I’m sorry, Myra.”
He met her gaze at last, staggering her with the full force of his own emotions, manipulative and goading.
She bit. “But I have to know.”
“No, Myra, you really don’t.”
“Aidan. You have to tell—”
“The truth? Ha. Telling truth does not necessarily mean telling all. I can tell the truth with my mouth closed.” Aidan leaned in, intense. “Be grateful for what Stephen is trying to do for you. What he’s willing to go through to teach you some simple task. Now go, do what you came to do.”
“What I came to . . . ?”
“Console him! Isn’t that what your powers are most useful for?” With a withering look that had her wishing she hadn’t made eye contact after all, Aidan assessed and then dismissed Myra. He turned on his heel and strode away. It left Myra with a healthy dose of her own guilt and the unspoken command that she return to the library to find Stephen. Was that all this lesson was to be about?
Chapter Thirty-Six
My name is James James, and I do not exist . . .
* * *
Myra dreamed that James had again taken up his letter.
The mage sat alone in the library. Once more, the furniture in the room had been re-arranged. The massive oaken desk at which James sat had been drug close to the fireplace, possibly for warmth, possibly for the light it offered. Pen and ink discarded at his elbow, he ruined the silence with the metallic click-clack of a typewriter. The flames on the hearth licked at the pile of logs therein, a quiet observer to the scene.
