My heart was pounding as fast as Card’s, as if I had run a race or just gotten off a roller coaster. The magic echoed that giddy energy, the ink on my body buzzing, ready to launch, to become whatever I needed it to become.
A giant foot to step on Stel? Sure, the magic could do that. A tornado to suck her up like a cow in Kansas? No sweat. A steamer trunk to lock her away so I’d never have to see her or her magic again? Just say the word.
But none of that was what I wanted.
Stel heaved magic at the shields, and the glassy wall bent but did not buckle.
“She’ll tear it down,” Card said. “She’s strong, Ricks. Too strong.”
“She can be the strongest wizard in the universe,” I said. “But I am the Crossroads, and she is not welcome here.”
I turned my back on the wizard and pressed both of my palms against the porch column and spread my bare feet wide.
End this spell, I commanded the ink and magic. Tattoos shuffled and sorted, and I drew them like a magician’s cards without looking. Scissors, candle, a scroll of ancient enlightenment, sending them flying into the house, into the wood and plaster and stone.
It wasn’t something I’d ever tried before. I’d always called magicoutof the Crossroads to do my bidding. I’d never poured my magicintothe Crossroads to save it.
I felt the moment Card caught on to my plan, and his will leaned behind mine. It was like having a wall at my back. I braced against his focus and shoved at the lead weight of Stel’s magic that smothered my home.
This is my magic, I thought.This is my home.“You are not welcome,” I snarled.
Ink flew from my skin, a hundred hundred velvet moths taking wing into the air, landing like fragile silk blossoms that spilled moonlight hues across beam and board.
I pushed magic through each of those symbols. Not one of them large enough, strong enough to break Stel’s magic, but all of them just enough to create a small crack in the power she had wielded.
Those cracks grew, spread. Fast. Faster.
Stel’s spell shattered with a dynamiteboom.
The magic within the Crossroads woke with a roar.
Stel held her ground.
“Cardamom Oak has chosen,” I called out to her, fury and power in my voice. “You have no claim to him, nor to my land. If you return, if you harm him, I will destroy you.”
She glared at me and took a step forward, as if she were going to stomp up to the edge of the porch. But all the grasses, all the weeds, all the—
—green, green, green—
—awoke and twisted, forming ropes, ties, nets, lashed by a sudden hard wind, catching her, trapping her.
Her eyes narrowed with hatred. The ropes squeezed, biting into her soft skin hard enough to draw blood, and still squeezed tighter, binding flesh, binding bone.
Stel snapped her fingers and disappeared in an explosion of light.
The wind dropped, the green became grass again, weeds again, and the glass shield dome around the house sifted down like fine sand, like rain.
I was breathing hard. Card was breathing hard. We were both drenched in sweat.
“Um,” he said, that one word breaking before he swallowed and tried again. “That was....that wasrealright? That happened? You just pushed one of the most powerful wizards off your property?”
I wiped sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. The shield tattoo was still there, as were all of my other tattoos. My skin felt burned, like I’d spent an hour too long out in the sun.
“That happened,” I said. “Because I am a Crossroads, after all.”
Stel was gone. The green was just green again, but the magic of this place had changed.
“You might want to take a look at your arms,” I said.
