“Because she’s his cover,” Amelia explained. “Remember, this is still a healthy plane. Normally, a Nameless End couldn’t squeeze more than, say, a pigeon-sized amount of themselves through the barrier. Algonquin cheated the system sixty years ago by letting the Leviathan live inside her water. By using her magic to hide his true nature, he was able to get a lot more of himself inside our plane than he should have. Now that she’s given up, he’s eating her wholesale, but it’s still not triggering the plane’s defenses because, technically, he’s still undercover. He won’t have to hide much longer, though. Once he finishes eating Algonquin—and I meanallof her, as in magic, lakes, rivers, the works—he’ll be so big, the barrier won’t be able to kick him out anymore. Once he doesn’t have to worry about getting the boot, he’ll be able to eat the rest of us at his leisure, and our plane will end.”
That was the grim picture Julius had been worried about since the beginning, but hearing his sister describe the details now gave him a spark of hope. “You’re certain he hasn’t finished eating Algonquin yet?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “If he had, we’d all be dead, which was the entire point of that explanation. Pay attention next time.”
“I have been,” Julius said. “I just wanted to be sure, because I’ve seen how Algonquin moves around between her lakes. She literallyisher water, so if some of that water still exists, then some part of her must still be alive as well!”
Amelia glowered. “I know that tone in your voice. Don’t bring your optimism into this, Julius. Raven knows a lot more about spirits than I do, and he’s convinced Algonquin is gone.”
“But how can she be gone?” Marci asked. “She’s an immortal spirit. You were just bragging to Svena that you could come back from anything now. Why shouldn’t that same standard apply to Algonquin?”
“Because she’s got a Nameless End inside her!” Amelia yelled. “Emphasis on theEnd.”
“But she can’t be ended yet,” Julius said excitedly. “Because if she were, we’d all be dead, as you just said. Since we’renotdead, we have to assume that some part of Algonquin is still alive.”
“Okay, fine,” Amelia said. “Maybe a bit of her is still hanging around being crazy. What does that matter? This whole thing was her idea. We’re in her end game. Even if you could reach her, it’s not like she’s going to change her—hey!”
Julius sprinted away, not even bothering to stick to human speeds as he jumped onto the railing of his broken porch. He jumped onto the collapsing roof next, clambering over the broken shingles until he was right at the edge of the hole Bob’s landing had punched through the second and third stories. He was about to make a leap for what was left of the Skyway overhead when Marci yelled his name.
“What?” Julius yelled back.
“I said, ‘Don’t cross the barrier!’” Marci shouted. “Ghost is the only thing holding back the magic. If you leave his protection, you’ll get squished!”
That was a terrifying thought, but this couldn’t wait, so with a final bracing breath, Julius jumped as high as he could. For a moment, he thought he was going to miss completely and land face-first on the ground three stories down. But then his fingers caught a piece of steel rebar sticking off the edge of the broken concrete. He hung there for a moment, swinging back and forth as he caught his breath, and then he hauled himself up onto the cracked overpass, pushing his body right to the edge of Ghost’s protective bubble.
Ithurt. Julius had been in strong magic before, but nothing like this. The rising power might have looked like multicolored snow, but it felt like molten lead. Even with the barrier, magic pounded over him like a storm surge. Standing under these conditions felt blatantly impossible, but Julius couldn’t see anything from where he was crouching, so he forced his body to move, breathing out puffs of his own fire as he stoked his magic against the hammer that was still crashing into the world. It took forever, but finally, he made it to his knees, which was good enough to see what he’d come up here to see.
The city was absolutely silent around him. Smoke still rose from a few of the buildings that had been on fire last night, but the common sounds of the city—the horns and car alarms, the rumble of trash trucks and buses, all the clatter of people living their lives—had vanished. Even the birds were gone from the sky, leaving nothing except the Leviathan.
The Nameless End hung over everything like a storm front, his black body stretching as far as Julius could see in all directions. Below his floating bulk, huge tentacles hung down like streamers, their tips plowing through the dry riverbed and the empty basin of Lake St. Clair as they searched for every drop of Algonquin’s water. There had to be thousands of them, but apocalyptic as it looked, the news wasn’t all bad. With so many buildings down, Julius could see all the way to the edge of Lake Erie, and while most of the once Great Lake looked depressingly like a drained bathtub filled with dead fish, there was still a pool of water reflecting the Leviathan’s shadow in the far distance, its muddy surface rippling in the breeze.
“Julius!”
He looked over just in time to see someone land beside him, and then the horrible weight of the burning magic lifted as Amelia grabbed his shoulders. “Hey,” she said, looking him over with a worried frown. “Are you all right?” When he nodded, she smacked him. “What were you thinking, running up here without protection? You could have spent your last hour alive knocked out cold!”
“I didn’t know we had portable protection,” he said, looking up in wonder at the radiant shimmer of the magical bubble Amelia was holding over them like an umbrella.
“Neat trick, huh?” his sister said with a grin. “I copied it from Ghost. I can’t make mine as big as his yet, what with the whole I’ve-only-been-a-spirit-for-less-than-twenty-four-hours thing, but I’m still pretty stoked about my progress.” She looked around with a grimace. “So what did you bolt up here for? I hope it wasn’t something stupid.”
“It’s not,” Julius promised, pointing at the puddle of water in the distance. “Take a look at that.”
Amelia winced. “Not much left, is there?”
“Actually, that’s a lot more than I’d hoped,” he said. “If I can still see Lake Erie, we still have a chance.”
“A chance to do what?”
Julius smiled and jumped back down, falling a good fifty feet to land in a crouch beside Marci. She’d barely recovered from the shock when Julius shot up and grabbed her shoulders, his hands shaking with wild hope as he said the magic words.
“I have an idea.”
Chapter 5
Marci had a feeling she knew where this was going, but she asked anyway. “What sort of idea?”
Julius grinned down at her. “I’m going to talk to Algonquin.”
She’d known it.
