Magic Shifts

CHAPTER 12

THE MAGIC WAVE jolted me out of my sleep, the crushing headache a familiar agony by now. This one-night stand with my stroke had lasted way too long. The pain was intense but my thoughts were no longer jumbled. The current of the city had pushed me a few inches higher.

I opened my eyes to the morning light and saw Doolittle looking at me. Curran sat on the other bed.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for.” Doolittle rolled his chair close to me.

“Oh boy.”

“Leave, please,” Doolittle said.

Curran rose and took a step to me.

“Remember now,” Doolittle warned him. “We have an agreement. I’ll hold you to it.”

Curran stepped to my bed. His arms closed around me and he squeezed me to him. My bones groaned. His voice was a low growl. “I will wait for you. As long as it takes. Even if you never choose to come back. But it’s your choice.”

He let me go, turned, and marched out. Okay, then.

Doolittle regarded me with his dark eyes. “Your brain is very delicate. Think of your mind as a forest crisscrossed by many paths along which signals travel to your body. Some are clear, some become overgrown over time, but all have formed naturally. Right now these paths are damaged. I can use magic to restore them.”

I sensed a big “but” coming. “But?”

“Think of me as clear-cutting the paths by force instead of allowing the natural development to take place. I will do my absolute best, but my power is limited. The pathways I create won’t match the old pathways precisely. I have done this previously on four different occasions. I’ve restored function and, in one case, memories lost during an amnesia-inducing event; however, one of my patients had a drastic personality change and two others developed severe anxiety and reported episodes of depersonalization, during which they felt unable to control themselves, as if the events they experienced were happening to someone else. They felt disconnected from reality and disconnected from their memories. One of them improved over time. The other left her family and moved out of state. She had four children, a supportive husband, and elderly parents. Nobody has heard from her in over nine years.”

“You are a bucket of cheer, Doc.”

“There is an alternative,” Doolittle said. “You could let the healing take place gradually. There is a possibility that your brain will restore itself.”

“How big a possibility?”

“A significant possibility. The only reason you are alive and have regained some minor motor function is that immediately after the trauma that caused the strokes, the blood vessels in your brain sealed themselves. The process of healing had already started before you were ever brought to me. I believe that over time, with my help, you will recover most of what you lost.”

“How long would that take?”

“I don’t know.” Doolittle’s leaned forward. “But I’ve observed it happen.”

“How long did it take in the cases you observed?”

“Three years to complete recovery for one patient and fourteen months for the other.”

Three years.

“How long if you heal me now?”

“It will be miraculous,” Doolittle said. “You will walk out of here when I’m finished and no doubt run straight into another foolish fight.”

That was a given.

“I want you to know that you have a choice,” Doolittle said. “Curran is . . . Well, there is a reason we all followed him. When he wants something, he can be very persuasive.”

“You don’t say.”

“He will abide by your decision, I promise you that. His feelings, or anyone else’s feelings except your own, do not matter here. Only you can dictate the speed of your recovery. We don’t fully understand how the mind works, but everything within it is connected. There is no guarantee that after I mitigate the damage, you will experience the same emotions you once felt toward people in your life. Curran will wait for you.”

If Doolittle healed me, there was a chance I would no longer want to be me. How hard must it have been for Curran to walk out of this room and take that chance?

“He will take care of you and he won’t abandon you if you choose to take your time. Neither will Julie. I will always be here.”

There was only one thing I could say to that. “Thank you.”

He reached over and gently touched my hand. His stern medmage composure broke. “You shouldn’t have left the Keep. Look what happened.”

It made me want to cry and I didn’t know why. I squeezed his hand. “You really think Curran will wait for me?”

“He gave me his word. Trust me, he isn’t going anywhere. He is all yours, so yes, he will wait.”

“But will my father?”

Doolittle sighed.

“What will happen when my father finds out I can’t hold my sword? Will he wait three years or will he burn the city to the ground because I can’t stop him?”

“It shouldn’t matter,” Doolittle said gently.

“But it does.”

“You’ve made an agreement.”

“And I trust that agreement only because I’m here to enforce it. He knows that his power isn’t infinite. In a fight to the death I will hurt him and that worries him. I need to be capable of fighting him. I can’t protect the city if I am not.”

“It isn’t the time to worry about the city,” Doolittle told me. “This is the time to worry about you.”

The silence stretched between us. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that after everything we had gone through, claiming the city could cost me everyone I loved. It wasn’t fair, but life rarely was. Good people died. Bad people had happy lives. That was why someone had to take a stand, and that someone was me.

“Curran loves me,” I said. “Nobody in my past loved me that much. I see it in his eyes. I want him to stay with me. I want Julie to stay with me. I want my family. I want all of you.” I would do anything to keep my family. Anything, except betray everything I stood for. “But I am alive because the city saved me. It gave me its magic when I was dying.”

“Kate . . .” Doolittle said gently. “The technology has been up the whole time.”

“I know. But all of us, everything that is alive, produces and stores magic. We hold on to it even during the strongest tech wave. That’s why shapeshifters can still change their form. Last night, when I was dying, every living thing in the boundaries of the land I claimed surrendered a tiny fraction of that magic and offered it to me. And I took it.” My voice shook. “I took it to survive.”

Doolittle opened his mouth.

“Look into my brain. You will see progress that shouldn’t be there. I’m speaking in complete sentences.” I leaned forward. “I could’ve asked for more. I could’ve taken it all to heal myself. I could’ve drained all of you dry.”

Doolittle’s eyes widened as the meaning of my words sank in. I could’ve unleashed a blight to save myself. He recoiled.

We both knew what happened to living creatures when magic was suddenly ripped away from them. A year ago, the Lighthouse Keepers, a terrorist organization obsessed with banishing magic, unleashed a device that did precisely that at Palmetto, a small town on the outskirts of Atlanta. When we got there, Palmetto had become a mass grave.

Doolittle swallowed. “Roland can’t be allowed to claim this land.”

“He won’t as long as I live. I’ve assumed the responsibility for it. I’m meant to protect it. We are bound now by something I don’t fully understand, but I know that this land didn’t sacrifice its magic so I could lie in bed for three years taking my time. Right now there is a creature out there terrorizing the city and sending hordes of ghouls to do its dirty work. It is immune to my magic, which means its powers and mine have something in common. My father could’ve sent it here. I have to stop it. I can’t turn my back on Atlanta. It would mean turning my back on Curran, and Julie, and you. I care too much about all of you. Heal me now.”

Doolittle shook his head, rubbing his eyes. “Once I start, I will have to finish. It will take a long time, it won’t be pleasant, and you may not recall anything surrounding the moment of your injury. That I cannot heal.”

“Thank you.”

He sighed. “Everyone has a cross to bear.”

“Am I yours?”

He nodded. “I keep trying to decide if it’s a punishment or a blessing.”

“A bit of both.” I smiled. “You might as well bring him back. At least we’ll both know what we’re in for from the start.”

IT FELT LIKE hundreds of spiders crawling through my brain. It made the inside of my nose itch. Occasionally they tugged on something and then nausea gripped me. After I heaved for the first time, Curran brought a big bucket for me. I took it away from him. Having him hold it for me would’ve been going too far. I still had standards. Nauseated and weak, but what are you going to do?

The control over my body came back slowly. It was like pushing against the current of a very powerful fire hydrant or walking underwater, while heavy blocks fell onto my head from above. Sometimes they slid into place effortlessly and sometimes they landed so hard, it felt like they ripped through my brain. Past events exploded in my head as if my memories had somehow gotten stuck in a replay loop.

Julie crying in a restaurant over crab legs and shrimp.

Andrea dragging me out to lunch.

The flood kept coming, relentless. The flare. Fomorians running across the field.

Mishmar.

Greg’s savaged body.

My aunt. Live long . . . child. Live long enough to see everyone you love die. Suffer . . . like me.

Curran. Stay with me, baby.

I will. I promise I will.

Aunt B dying.

Curran.

Swan Palace.

My father.

. . .

Death. So much death. So many people I’d killed. So many people I cared about who had died. So many corpses in my wake.

You truly are my daughter.

We are great and powerful monsters. Love demands sacrifices. When you love something the way you love your people, Blossom, you must pay for it. Old powers are awakening. Those who have slept, those who were dead, or perhaps not quite dead.

I bent forward under the pressure. Something hot slipped out of my eyes and I realized I was crying.

This is my city. These are my people.

I will hunt you. I will succeed. Maybe not now, but I will never give up.

“Done,” Doolittle said, his voice hoarse from the strain.

Curran put his arms around me. It was such a simple gesture, but his touch pulled me out of the tangled chaos of my memories back to now, anchoring me here.

The two of them were looking at me.

“Hey,” Curran said quietly.

I swallowed. My head throbbed.

“Did it work?” Curran asked Doolittle.

“I don’t know.” Doolittle sounded tired.

Curran rose and held up his hand. “Kick my hand.”

I pushed off the bed. They said walking was just controlled rhythmic falling. My falling turned out to be uncontrolled. I landed on my ass.

Curran didn’t move.

I got up to my feet. My body felt like a numb limb coming back to life.

I snapped a crescent kick. I’d whipped it with my hip and it was so fast, it blurred. My foot slapped his hand. He took a step back. His eyes narrowed.

“Tap,” I told him.

“It worked,” Doolittle said.