“Cel, wait. Let’s just think about this for a second—”
“There is no time, Max. Dani is getting worse by the minute. Luce, too.”
He caught my arm. “What if the spell doesn’t work? If we’re right, that it’s raw Magic ripping through Dani’s body … and S’s spell is meant to direct that Magic through something else, another object … If it doesn’t work as planned, what happens to the excess Magic?”
I slowed, turned toward him, even though I had one foot already out the door. I knew what he was getting at. The excess Magic would look for other conduits instead, something else to pass through as an object.
“Us, Cella. It would pass through us. We’re taking an enormous risk here.”
“Do you think that’s what happened to Luce?”
He blew out his cheeks, his eyes dark. “Maybe it’s what his teacher warned of when he said the One would rip a hole through the earth and walk through at will.”
“But if we could fix the excess Magic coming through Dani and put it back in her objects, maybe that would fix Luce, too. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” I said. “I can try the spell on my own.”
He picked up and dusted his hat off the ground, looking me dead in the eye. He stepped close to me, as close as he did the first day we met. Close enough so I could feel the heat radiate off his body, so I could see the sweat trickling down his neck, so I could feel the warmth of his aura. “Easy, there. You’re not getting rid of me now. According to S, we still have until sunset tomorrow, so that’s roughly twenty-four hours from now. That’s enough time to see if this is even possible, right? Let’s use the time to get prepared, make sure we can actually do this without killing ourselves. And then—then we do this thing.”
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t happy about the delay, but it would be harder, if not impossible, to do this without him. “Fine. But if we don’t figure it out by the morning, I’m going in, no matter what.”
The window to my room was cracked, and air from outside drifted in. A whisper of something charred drifted on the wind. If a wildfire broke out now, this whole place would go up in smoke.
He gripped my hand tight, an anchor holding me steady. “If we don’t figure it out by tomorrow morning, then both of us go in. No matter what.”
S’s spell was complicated. It required a large amount of strength to first grab hold of the extra energy siphoned from the target, to hold that thread taut, and then “push” it into the objects. I assumed S’s brothers all completed the spell with him, though the instructions he left were sparse. It consisted of only a few lines.
Travel to that hollow place where your Magia lies, but be wary, do not step inside. For the One will pull you in.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what the results of this spell had done to people. Like Dr. Strauss. I’d seen him on a bench earlier in the day, head in his hands.
“Dr. Strauss? Are you alright?”
He’d looked right through me, like he didn’t see me at all. He pulled out a small metal head the color of unpolished brass.
“It’s your object, isn’t it? The Newton statue you were trying to put back together?”
He nodded, clutching the disembodied head.*
“What happened?” I asked quietly.
He looked past me as if at some unseen horror. “I could see something was happening with Danica. I knew she was getting into dangerous Magic. If I’d known what she had planned …” He crushed bits of gold dust, watching the flakes dribble through his fist and to the ground. “Maya was the only one who did, but by then, it was too late.”
“You tried to help her?”
He wiped his nose. “After I saw what became of her, I contacted colleagues at Britton. I was stupid, desperate to try and help. I performed an experimental spell and nearly got myself killed in the process. I probably would have been killed, if not for my object taking the brunt of the damage. And even then, I didn’t go unscathed.” He pulled down his sleeve, showing the marred skin and unnatural scarring that had crept up to his neck.
So that was why his object had become so badly damaged. Not by a hex, but by doing the very thing it was meant to do: protect him.
“That’s why your skin looks like Dani’s.”
He nodded. “My body took an excess force of Magic. Experimental spells are not really what Seinford and Brown represents, so I was off the council. I lost more of myself than I thought trying to help her. I loved Dani, but not in the way that everyone thinks. She was like a daughter to me. I suppose that’s why Dr. Robetresse said I was too close to it.”
“I promise you, we will do everything we can to try and fix her.”
It struck me in that moment that I’d forgotten how beautiful our connections could be to each other. How much Strauss cared for and looked out for Dani. I felt silly now for ever suspecting he had hurt her. Sometimes, all it took was one person who cared to make all the difference. And I started to think Vern was right. There was something I loved about humanity, about community, about my life here. Maybe I lost that somewhere along the way. All I knew was there was good in them, and good in her, and I was going to do my best to find it again.
But in order to do that, I had to make sure that what had happened to Strauss didn’t happen to me.
I had to study this spell as much as I possibly could.
