That would have been a good point if there’d been a reason to stall, but Marci saw none. No matter how much time she bought, nothing would change. Ghost just wasn’t big enough to beat the DFZ, and even with the entire Sea of Magic at her fingertips, she’d burn out before she could give him what he needed to close the gap. She couldn’t help him, couldn’t beat the DFZ on her own, couldn’t stop Myron’s magic from blowing open the door.
The only win she had a chance at was beating Myron himself, but even that was slim, and stalling wouldn’t make it better. Attacking was her only chance. If she didn’t take it, what was the point of coming here at all? She’d left the safety of her death to become Merlin. Given up something precious, even if she couldn’t remember what it was. If Myron won, all that was wasted. He’d already admitted he believed Algonquin’s propaganda. She was the only thing stopping him from going in there and capping the flow of magic back down to what it had been right after the meteor hit.
If she backed down, if she let this happen, then all the Mortal Spirits would fall back asleep, taking humanity’s magical future with them. Ghost, the Champion of the Forgotten Dead, would himself be forgotten. The wholeworldwould be diminished, and it would be her fault. If she didn’t fight, there would be no more Merlins.Shewould never be a Merlin, never know the truth of magic, never keep her promise to Ghost.
Never see Julius again.
That was the last straw. With a scream of pain and fury, Marci clenched her smoking hand tight. But just as she finished folding the roaring magic into a hammer that would bash the superior look off Myron’s stupid face, his own hand flicked, and light blossomed from the ground.
Her eyes flicked down in surprise to see a maze of glowing lines rising from the stone under her feet. They rose faster than she could believe, working their way up, and thenintoher body. She could actually feel them forking like circuitry through her organs, and as they filled her, the nearly done spell in her hand began to unravel. She clutched it tighter, fighting to finish, but the glowing lines got there first, racing down her arm and into her clenched hand. Once there, they began to split, dividing and subdividing into thousands of tiny fractals that wiggled into the magic of the spell itself like tiny wedges, each one prying and twisting and pulling the magic apart until she couldn’t hold on.
The spell exploded with a blinding flash. The backlash hit immediately after, slamming into her like the shockwave from a bomb blast. The only reason she wasn’t blown to pieces was because Myron’s labyrinth held her in place, the glowing, forking lines grounding her to the stone like roots. Dimly, she supposed she should be grateful he’d kept her alive—assuming a sentient ghost counted as alive—but it was hard to feel anything but fury as she blinked the glare out of her eyes to see Myron looking down on her in pity.
“I warned you,” he said, curling his fingers. The glowing maze that ran from the ground into Marci’s body obeyed the gesture, popping her up like a puppet before dropping her to her knees. Another flick of his hand shattered what was left of her bracelets and yanked her arms behind her, leaving Marci bound and kneeling on the ground in front of him.
“I can’t claim this gives me no pleasure,” he said as she struggled. “A lesson in the distance between your skill and mine has been long overdue. But whatever you might think of me right now, if you really have read my books, you know I’m not a murderer. That’s why I’m giving you one more chance to stand down.”
“Before you what?” she snarled. “Murder me?”
“Why can’t you see that this isn’t about you?” he snapped, pointing at the glowing labyrinth that had stitched her to the ground. “I just saved you from blowing yourself to pieces because you’d rather die killing me than lose your shot at being Merlin, but you have the nerve to call me selfish? Did it ever occur to you that I’m not doing this for me? That I might, given my decades as a public servant, be acting in the public good?”
“You’re not the only one,” Marci said desperately. “You’re clearly drinking Algonquin’s Kool-Aid, but did it ever occur toyouthat maybe she’s not telling the truth? That maybe Mortal Spirits aren’t the implacable world-destroying machines she’s made them out to be? For pity’s sake, Myron, you’re chained to one. Did you even try to talk to her before you did that?”
His eyes narrowed. “That is none of your concern.”
“But it is,” she said desperately. “Allof this isourconcern, because this isn’t human versus spirit, it’s mortal working with mortal. I’m not a Merlin yet, but there’s got to be a reason the bond between mage and Mortal Spirit is a job requirement. I won’t know the truth until I step through that gate, but I’d bet my life we weren’t stuck together so we could kill each other. Mortal Spirits aren’t some alien force. They’re us. Our spirits. We’re meant to work together. That’s why we’re here. Not to fight. That’s what Algonquin wants. Shewantsus to be afraid so that we’ll cut the magic back down to the levels where she was the big fish, and she’s keeping us terrified so we won’t notice we’re cutting off our magical inheritance in the process. That’s her game, and you’re playing right into it, which is why I’m trying to stop you.”
He turned away in disgust. “You don’t know anything about what I mean to do.”
“Then tell me!” Marci cried desperately. “If I’m wrong, let me know! We were on the same team once. If we still are, say something, and we can work this out.”
“Bold words from the mage who attacked me first,” he said, leaning over so that he could look her in the eyes. “But I have no intention of wasting more of my very limited time arguing with someone who’s already made up her mind. You can think whatever you like, but the only thing I care about, that I haveevercared about, is doing what is best for all. Next to that, everything else is meaningless, including you. I spared your life once because I am a civil man, but you’ve made it abundantly clear that your mind is set. I know now that you will not stop, and I have no more time for civilities.”
He sighed bitterly, lifting his arm so his free hand was balanced in the air directly above her head. “Farewell, Miss Novalli.”
His hand came down like an ax, and the magic binding Marci went with it. Each glowing line ripped through her like a metal wire, shredding the fragile magic of her naked soul. She was dimly aware of Amelia yelling and a flash of fire, but what she yelled and whom she burned were lost in the all-consuming horror of being torn apart. Even the pain from her burns couldn’t break through the knowledge that she was dissolving, collapsing into a pile of little shreds that were themselves unraveling. But then, just when the consciousness that was Marci Novalli was beginning to disintegrate, a blast of the coldest wind she’d ever felt rose up from the ground. It cut through the swirling magic like a knife, snatching what was left of Marci out of Myron’s glowing lines and into the dark.
***
After the recent turns in her life, Marci was getting pretty used to finding herself suddenly in the void.
Like so many times before, she was floating in the dark. Only this wasn’t the quiet, still blackness she’d seen after her death, or even the churning dark of the Sea of Magic. This void was blowing, the freeing wind sweeping and tossing her like a leaf through an infinitely deep abyss. The uncontrollable movement terrified Marci more than anything else that happened since her death, so much that she began to worry that maybe she hadn’t been snatched away after all. Maybe Myron reallyhadgotten her, and this was what happened to souls who were torn apart. But just as she began to panic that this endless tumbling was her final destination, an icy wind blindsided her from below, stopping her cold.
“Don’t be afraid,” it whispered in Ghost’s voice. “I’ve got you.”
Thank goodness,Marci said, closing her eyes in relief.I thought I was gone there for a—She stopped, confused.Why am I a disembodied voice?
“Because I ate you,” her spirit said, uncharacteristically sheepish.
Youateme?she cried, or thought she cried. It was hard to tell volume when your words were more impressions than sounds.So that means I’m inside you?
“Yes,” Ghost said. “But not for the first time. This is where I brought you the time I saved you from Gregory.”
Marci remembered. He’d snatched her out of the way of Gregory’s fireball by yanking her into a black-and-white world. Her voice had been weird then, too, and again when he’d brought her into what he’d called “his world” of the dead during their attack on Reclamation Land. But weird as both of those times had been, they were definitely not like this.
Why did it change? The other times you brought me in, everything just went black and white. This is nothing but black.Way too much black.
“That’s actuallyyourchange,” the wind explained. “When you were alive, I brought you, body and soul, into my magic. That’s why you could still see the physical world, because we were both inside my magic looking out. Now—”
