“I know,” the spirit said, darting through the crowd like a rat until she was standing right in front of her. “That’s why I let you in. You’re not a coward like he is.” She smiled at Marci. “You walked with death, but you were not afraid. Now you can walk with me.” Her smile grew sinister. “I’m going to make you mine.”
No,Marci said firmly.I’m flattered, but I already have a spirit.
“But I’m better,” the DFZ argued. “I’m the best city in the world! Everyone wants me, including you. You lived here. That makes you mine, and if you’re mine, you can break this.” She pointed at the silver noose around her neck. “This is good business for both of us. Free me, and I’ll give you what he wants. We’ll tear down the door he’s obsessed with and make you Merlin instead. Thenwewill have power, and he will havenothing.”
Again, the spirit’s anger sliced through Marci like a rusty knife, but far more worrisome than the feeling itself was what it signified. She’d been with Ghost long enough to know what that sort of raw emotion meant. The spirit of the DFZ might be full to bursting, but she was still just as new and lost as Ghost had been when she’d found him. Unlike the Empty Wind, though, the DFZ had had no one to help her work through it, not even cats. She’d been born to Myron and his chains. No wonder she was so unstable. What she needed was a real Merlin, someone who could be her partner through all of this. But while Marci couldn’t be that for her, it didn’t mean she couldn’t help.
I don’t have to be yours to give you freedom, she said, looking the spirit in her glowing orange eyes.I’m sure he didn’t tell you this, but Myron had no right to chain you in the first place. Mortal Spirits are supposed to choose the human who suits them best, not the other way around, and it doesn’t happen through chains. I don’t know what he did to bind you so thoroughly, but if you’ll let me get close, I might be able to break it, and then you’ll be free to do whatever you want. You can go home, go back to your city and find a mage who won’t abuse you, and you don’t have to break anything.
That was more hope than fact. Marci had no idea if she could actually crack whatever insanity Myron had pulled off to subjugate a spirit this enormous. But as he’d put it himself: anything man built, man, or woman in this case, could break. She just had to convince the DFZ to let her get close enough to try. But it looked as though Marci’s play was working even better than she’d intended. She’d barely made the offer before the DFZ lurched forward and grabbed her hands.
“Yes!” the spirit cried, her voice as roaring and chaotic as a rioting crowd. “Do it! Free me, and I will make them bothpay for what they’ve done.”
The hatred in her voice at the end was a new and terrible thing. It wasn’t as sharp as the anger, but it was bigger and stronger. It rose through the city like a haze, dimming the lights and turning the crowd that was still walking around them into a mob. The sudden roar of their angry voices was so terrifying that even Marci—who’d died herself as a direct result of the Lady of the Lake’s actions, and who’d suggested this idea in the first place—hesitated.
“What are you waiting for?” the DFZ demanded, clutching her silver noose with both hands. “Free me!”
I will,Marci promised, though she made no move to get closer. It wasn’t that she begrudged the spirit her anger. So far as she could tell, the poor thing had been bred in blood and chained the moment she woke up. Algonquin and Myron both had treated her like a tool, a crowbar to pry apart the Merlin Gate for the sole purpose of eliminating the DFZ and every other Mortal Spirit like her. She deserved to be angry. Marci was, too, but unlike the city, she hadn’t been born today. She knew that lashing out in fury, no matter how righteous, always came with consequences.
I’m not forgiving Myron or Algonquin anything,she said cautiously.You have every right to want their heads on a platter for what they did, but you’re a very large spirit. If you rage, you could destroy a lot more than just your enemies.
“So what?” she cried. “I am the DFZ! Whatever I destroy, I can rebuild. Everything can always be rebuilt.”
Not people,Marci said.Places and things can be restored, spirits can be reborn, but mortals just die. Look at me.She placed her hands against her chest.I’m dead. The fact that I am here talking to you right now is entirely due to a miracle named the Empty Wind. If Ieverget back to the land of the living, it will be because I’ve had miracles on top of miracles, but not everyone gets so lucky. The rest of your city, your people, they don’t have what I have. If you lash out at Algonquin, it will be well deserved, but there’s nothing in it for you if you destroy your own domain in the process.
“If you won’t help me, you are useless,” the spirit snarled, getting closer. “I don’t have to let you be here, you know. You’re already dead. I can finish the job.”
I’m well aware,Marci said angrily.You think I don’t know what I risked by coming here? My spirit is worried out of his mind. But I did it because I can’t let Myron and Algonquin win. That makes us allies, and I never said I wouldn’t help you. I’m just trying to make sure you understand what’s at stake. Algonquin already flooded Detroit once.
“You think I don’t know?” the DFZ cried. “I was the one who was drowning! But things are different now. You talk like I’m walking into a trap by attacking, but Algonquin’s the one who should be afraid. Of the two of us, I am the larger spirit, which means I’m not her city. She’smylake, and the only thing keeping me from putting her in her place for good is this.” The DFZ yanked the silver rope taut against her neck. “We both want the same thing. Free me from this binding, and I will strike Algonquin down so hard, she will never rise again.”
That was a very tempting offer. There was no question that unleashing a young, angry, and uncontrolled Mortal Spirit into the world was a very bad idea. At the same time, though, the DFZ was exactly the type of spirit Marci had been fighting for this entire time. She was a Mortal Spirit, human magic. Her rage wasn’t just the madness of a caged animal. It was humanity’s anger at Algonquin, the spirit who’d drowned them by the millions and taken their city for herself.
Unlike the humans who’d created her, though, the DFZ was big enough to push back. If Marci freed her, not only would she keep Myron out of the Merlin Gate, she might get Algonquin out of the DFZ as well. Permanently. Surelythat was worth taking a risk.
Wasn’t it?
She bit her lip, trying desperately to think through everything logically, but it was impossible. Everything was too powerful, too volatile to be certain. In the end, it came down to the spirit in front of her. The spirit of the city whom she’d come to think of as hers, who’d been unfairly abused, bullied, and imprisoned. The spirit who, if Marci didn’t do something, would be used to kill all others, including Ghost. There was also the selfish but still terrifying fact that, if Marci didn’t get the DFZ’s help, she was likely never getting out of this city again.
Next to all that, a spirit’s righteous anger was a risk Marci decided she was willing to take. If the DFZ really was bigger than Algonquin, freeing her could prove to be the first real blow humanity had ever struck back against the lake. Even if it backfired, the fallout couldn’t be worse than leaving her to Myron and letting his fear hand Algonquin her victory. That was logic enough for her, so Marci reached out, touching the spirit for the first time as her fingers closed around the silver noose at her neck.
When Marci touched the metal, several things became immediately apparent, starting with just how big a hornet’s nest she’d shoved her hand into.
Whatever magic had gone into making the bindings that held the DFZ, it was way more than just Myron’s. The silver labyrinth the metal ribbon had been bent into was definitely his work, but the rest of it—the thousands of layers of overlapping spellwork that covered both sides of the thin-hammered metal, the incredibly sophisticated logic controlling the flow of the DFZ’s magic power—contained multiple magical signatures. It was incredibly sophisticated, the work of hundreds of hands, including what felt like a spirit’s touch, and not Algonquin’s. Which spirit, she had no idea, but one thing was certain: this was not Myron’s spell, and that was where Marci found her way in.
Proud as she was of her spellbreaking, the binding on the DFZ was far too complicated for her to crack on her own. The good part of that, though, was that Myron was in the same boat. He’d brilliantly manipulated the spellworked silver ribbon into the labyrinth that bound the city, but no amount of aftermarket tweaking could change the fact that this binding wasn’t the spell’s original purpose. Myron’s commands were all layered on, not baked in, which meant that if Marci could locate the bits he’d changed, she could switch them back and revoke his control.
With that in mind, Marci got to work, hunching over the DFZ as she started meticulously picking her way through Myron’s maze. It was tedious, delicate work, but not nearly as bad as it could have been. Though she hated the man with all her heart, Marci couldn’t deny that Myron’s spellwork was elegant. Even though he’d done some obvious jury-rigging to force the spellwork into a new function, the modifications he’d made were still masterpieces of elegance and simplicity. It was painful to pry such perfection apart, but anger kept her going, and soon enough, Marci found herself at the crux that held it all together.
The silver ribbon wasn’t just looped around the spirit’s neck. Once the trash bags came off, Marci saw the binding covered the DFZ’s entire body like mummy wraps, only they didn’t wrap around her in circles. Instead, the ribbon had been folded into a prison that was half origami box, half Gordian knot, which the spirit had grown into like a gourd growing into a mold.
As brilliant as that structure was, though, it had a clear weak point. A single piece of metal—not a ribbon, but a bar that ran like a horse’s bit across the base of the spirit’s throat. Even here, where nothing was physical, it looked old and battered, but one set of markings was new. Myron’s name, scratched deep into the metal’s scarred surface. The place where everything came together.
The moment she touched the letters, the entire spell unfolded like a flower. For a dizzying moment, she was touching the spirit directly, reaching right into her living magic until Marci could actually see Myron through the DFZ’s eyes. Or at least the orange eyes of the rodent version of her that was still cowering beside him.
Time inside the spirit vessels must have been different just as it had been inside her death. Marci felt like she’d been in here for hours, but when she spotted through the spirit’s eyes, he was still drawing his maze on the Merlin Gate’s wooden door. He must have felt Marci’s hand on his spellwork, though, because the moment she saw him, he stopped, yanking his hands off the almost-finished spellwork.
“No,” he said, turning on his spirit with a horrified look. “It can’t be. Youcan’tbe doing this!”
