“Neither have I,” Amelia said. “But there’s definitely a dragon involved. A big one.” She leaned out over the moving image, peering curiously down through the scrying circle into the destruction. “I wonder who it is?”
“The dragon’s the least of our worries,” Ghost said, pointing at the city’s northern edge. “Look.”
Marci swore under her breath. Below the Leviathan’s shadow, Lake St. Clair was dropping at an alarming rate. So was the Detroit River, the muddy water retreating, like something upriver was sucking it in. The riverbed south of Fighting Island dried up as she watched, leaving a flat swath of barren mud and gasping fish all the way to Lake Erie, which was also drying up. All the water was, and the longer Marci watched, the more afraid she became.
“I think we’re out of time.”
“Not yet,” Amelia said. “Bob will come through.”
“I’m sure he will,” Marci said. “Foryou. But we’ve got to do somethingnow. Look at this!” She pointed at the city, where buildings were collapsing and helicopters were falling out of the sky like dead bugs. “This has gone way past ‘wait and see.’ Whatever that dragon’s doing, it’s kicked off a full-blown disaster, and if we don’t do something to stop it,Algonquin will.”
As though it’d been waiting for its cue, the retreating water chose that moment to break, surging back down the riverbed in a wave as tall as the Skyways. It crashed through the city, tearing telephone poles out of the ground and picking up trucks like dead leaves. The water hit the crowded bridges next, knocking buses sideways against the guardrails and ripping people unlucky enough to have their windows down out of their cars and into the churning river below.
“That’s it,” Marci growled.
“Marci,no,” Amelia pleaded, digging her claws into her arm. “Trust me!”
“I do,” she said, staring down at her friend. “I absolutely believe you when you say Bob’s got a plan. I just can’t wait for it anymore. There’s more at stake here than buildings and people’s lives. Our plan relies on getting the DFZ on our side. That was always a long shot, but it’ll belegitimatelyimpossibleif we let her domain be destroyed.”
“She has a point,” Raven said.
“I never said she didn’t,” Amelia snapped, looking back at Marci. “You’re absolutely right, but that doesn’t change the fact that if we move too early, we’re not going to win.” She clasped her claws together. “Please,Marci, I’m begging you. Give Bob more time, and I swear on what’s left of my fire, he will come through.”
Marci clenched her jaw, glaring down at the collapsing city as Algonquin’s wave finished washing through it. She was still trying to make a decision when Shiro’s voice spoke behind her. “I don’t know if we have the luxury of more time.”
She looked up in surprise. The last she’d seen him, the shikigami had been to her left, controlling the scrying circle. He must have walked away while they’d been watching the destruction, though, because he was now back at the center of the circular mountain top, standing over the seal with a pale, worried look.
“Merlin.”
Marci was at his side in an instant. Myron joined her a split second later, his eyes widening in alarm as he reached down to touch the crack in its surface. The damage that had once been a hairline fracture, but was now big enough to slide his fingernail into.
“How did this happen?”
“I already told you,” Shiro said. “It’s the volatility.” He looked pointedly out at the Sea of Magic, which now looked like footage of the Florida coast during a hurricane. “Algonquin and the DFZ are twoverylarge spirits. When they fight, the whole sea churns. If we don’t calm it down,quickly, it’ll no longer be a question of how to fix the seal. The whole thing is going to break.”
And send a thousand years of magic flooding back into the world all at once. “So how do we stop it?” she asked, turning to Myron.
“I don’t know if we can,” he said nervously, leaning over the stone to study the marks split by the crack. “Patching the Merlins’ seal was always going to be the spellwork equivalent of putting duct tape over a crack in the Hoover Dam. Now we’ve got Algonquin and the DFZ taking a hammer to the other side as well.” He shook his head. “Frankly, I’m amazed the crack’s only widened this much.”
“You have to calm them down,” Shiro said desperately. “Even before it was damaged, the seal was not made to withstand this sort of abuse. If your plan to return the magic slowly is to survive, this war between gods cannot continue.”
“It can’t continue ifanyof us wish to survive,” Raven croaked from where he was still perched on the edge of the scrying circle. “The DFZ’s domain is getting hammered. If she goes down, our best chance to trick Algonquin into getting rid of her Nameless End goes with her.”
“And if she breaks out, the Sea of Magic will grow even more violent,” Myron said, turning back to Marci. “We can’t wait anymore. The seal is at its structural limit. Also, with all the water Algonquin’s throwing around, my physical body, which I left in the Pit, is probably in serious danger. I’m not tied to a death spirit like you. If I drown, I just die, and Raven’s plan comes to nothing. The longer we wait, the smaller our chance of success becomes. Seer or not, you have to gonow.”
“If she does that, it won’t work!” Amelia said angrily. “This isn’t a question of chance. Bob’s already seen the future. He knows what’s going to happen, and the only way we land the future we want is by following his instructions and waiting for the signal.” She put a claw on Marci’s hand. “He’ll come through,” she whispered. “Wait.”
Marci let out a long breath. She knew Amelia was right. Going against a seer’s advice was monumentally stupid, and yet…
She turned and walked back the scrying circle, looking down at what was left of her city. The wave that had washed through the Underground was receding now, but the damage it had caused was immense, and that was her fault. She was the one who’d cut Myron’s leash and sent the DFZ back, the one who’d decided not to stop the magic again. Those wereherdecisions, and while she still believed she’d done the right thing, the costs were greater than she could have imagined. Everywhere she looked there was chaos and destruction, and the longer they waited, the worse it would get.
The logical choice was to do as Amelia said and wait for Bob’s cue, but when the stakes were this high, did she have the right to make it? To stand here and wait for the right moment while others suffered for her decisions?
No.
Marci closed her eyes. The voice in her head was cold comfort, literally. But while Ghost’s opinions could be sharp, they were usually spot on, so she sucked it up and asked, “Why?”
No one has the right to make others pay for their choices, her spirit said, stepping up beside her.But that’s the price of making decisions that matter.
