Chapter Twenty-six: Shadowed Plots

 

Raphael was sitting on the sand, staring out at a vast ocean in the twilight. Stars whirled in the heavens of the dreamscape.

“I loved the sea once,” he said, his only acknowledgment of me sitting beside him. “Until all those Kinsky’s with their salt spray. I specifically started targeting the ones with ocean backgrounds after a while.”

“Which ones were successful?”

“Jauvine, Cadmiat. It was easier to narrow options once I had your magic. I nearly had the first, as well, lucky number one, but Stavros moved the painting in Salietrex just in time. But too much time has passed, he's remade one of the two I did get, at the very least.”

Neither Constantine or Axer would call the location lucky.

“We are going to destroy the remaining seals,” I said quietly.

He lifted a handful of sand and let it slip through his fingers. “And by the hand of victory, you shall be delivered into the arms of old,” he murmured.

“You don't think we can do it?”

“I do not doubt you will try. I grow weary, Butterfly. Infected by figments of the past.” I could see a shimmering golden tattoo twine along his skin. “What will be wrought from it, I cannot say.”

“I need your knowledge, but without riddle as we draw near the end. And I need to know how to craft one of your spells.”

He smiled. “You solved my riddles just fine, Butterfly. And it was a game that made me experience an emotion I had thought forever lost. One for which I thank you. No, don't look at me like that.” He looked away. “I can experience no regret, not if you want me of sound mind to help here upon the shore of nevermore.”

I looked at the stars, willing my dream eyes to dry. “You've seen Stavros. Physically. Face-to-face.”

“Yes. He's worse in person, if you can conceive such a thing. The embodiment of all that is soulless.” He looked at me. “Though perhaps you can believe such—he was almost present, inside of you.”

I shuddered, but pressed on. “Did he visit you physically in the Basement?”

“No.” Raphael reached out and swirled the air around me dipping into shared memories. “He didn't even visit in his own form in the painting you entered. You have to go deeper.”

I nodded. “He can embed himself in others remotely—that's how he got me. But the drones, the truly hollowed, and you—initially must be delivered to him in some way.”

Raphael held up his palm and the sky swirled with an unpleasant memory, showing me an image. “There was a spot in the Basement that opened.”

“The painting.”

He smiled. “It never looked like a painting. It was always disguised as a door. Tricks and guises. You'd enter the door and stand in a long, decrepit corridor to hell. A between. Where you are neither here nor there. Where you waited for judgment—to house the devil or be smote forever.” Raphael looked at me. “To enter Hell or be returned from purgatory. That is where he wants us both. For once you enter that passageway, you fall under his dominion until he releases you. Forevermore.”

“How did you escape?”

“Oler wanted to do extended tests, and Enton doesn't like others in his space for long. So I went back to Table One. For months, I awaited an opportunity, sanity dwindling with only a single image to hang onto—a picture from Excelsine that I had managed to tuck away—and a single emotion—revenge—that Enton himself strengthened. He was going to take and turn my revenge against enemies he wanted gone. Make me think they were the ones I needed vengeance upon. Turn me into a weapon with continually fluid targets. He was going to move me back to his domain and rekindle a lost emotion—devotion—but to make himself the focus. Never.” There was a bit of the old insanity in his eyes for a moment, before he got it under control.

He ran his fingers through the sand. “I found an opportunity. Oler would bring outsiders, specialists, in to see his experiments sometimes. I grabbed one of the ones Oler loved best—used the last of my will, flipped the protections on him and slaughtered everything I could in my escape.” He looked to the side. “I never found the Basement again. Stavros was too smart for that. I have long wished I had taken my time to destroy it or mark it, but I was desperate to be gone from that place, and what was left of my mind fractured almost completely in my exit. It is easier to see now.”

There was so much and so little to say.

“I'm sorry,” I murmured.

“Yes.”

We let the waves provide the only sound for a half rotation of the sky. But I could feel dawn emerging and the others waking, and time was not on our side.

“Can Mussolgranz physically travel to Stavros, if he calls him?”

Raphael tilted his head. “Yes. And you have deduced correctly. Helen. Kaine. And a few of the praetorians, before Kaine consumed them. I saw no one else there, though there could be more. Oler’s assistants maybe. Enton doesn't share space with others well. Ironic, really.”

“I just need to find the passageway to Stavros then.”

Raphael looked at me and smiled. “I’ve always loved that about you, Butterfly. But, no, your confidence, though earned, will not help you once you are there. Your magic will not aid you. Stavros has complete control over that entryway. He can tailor the spells for each mage's abilities—and nullify all extra magic he finds. You will never unlock the magic of it, not in time. Sergei Kinsky set it up before he understood he was sealing his own doom, and the seals have been repeatedly refined since.”

Kinsky had done it because he thought he was fighting for something more important than his own freedom—his lost love.

“So, one can only enter under Stavros's complete control?”

“That is why I chose the alternative after my escape—to bury him so deeply that he could never escape.”

But I could see that Raphael felt this a poor alternative, too. It didn’t solve the problem of Omega Genesis if Stavros had a remote switch. If he had options, which he almost assuredly had.

Stavros was an ultra-planner. His alternative plans would not be weak. But his overconfidence in his own planning was our in. That and his reliance on only himself.

Raphael seemed to follow my thoughts and his gaze grew distant. “A man who stands alone is a man consumed by the river, Butterfly.”

~*~

With timers set to remind us of when and where we were, the “new day” inside our hideout provided a full slate of machinations and grim planning.

Like testing the spell from Raphael, which was eagerly and darkly embraced by the more mischief-bent of our number.

Mike, Patrick, and Lifen worked the curse angle with Constantine, Neph, and me, our heads bent together, all morning. With tainted and untainted magic samples from each of their loved ones—pulled through family magic spells—we came up with a test that would identify the caster's magic. Family magic was quite special when used for good purposes, and I could reluctantly see why people argued for life hooks—though I had too many bad examples to be swayed to that side.

Stevens and Greyskull had tasks in real time to take care of, so they had given us the parameters for a draught that combined with Origin Magic, might extend the stasis of the victims to four days. Enough time to find the cure in the real world once we had what we needed.

It had to be.

When we finally emerged from our last grueling session, we had a concoction that only required an appropriate container that could stay near the victim.

“Washcloth. Headband. Hair tie,” Lifen agreed. “Something innocuous and soft to rest against them without someone taking note. Price, where's Peoples?”

I looked around the library. We were missing five.

Olivia waved her hand from a table where she was neck deep in books. “Delia, Kita, Greene, Ramirez, and Straught left for testing. Said they'd be gone for the afternoon. Should be back in”—she checked her timer—“an hour.”

She flipped a page. “Trying to trick their way into other rooms on campus using the enhanced phys-changing spells and the magic of the rooms.” Crelussa had been good, but was not enough for what we needed. There was too much that could be undone.

I looked back at her. “Delia's not terrorizing Anastasia Kaparov again, is she?”

“If her enchantment can get her in Kaparov's room after all the pranks she's pulled on that girl, it can get her in anywhere,” Olivia said with a grimace. “And if she can get into one magicist's room...”

She could get into more.

“Everyone was inspired by Professor Stevens's potion, Verisetti's mastery, and your blobs. Loudon, Asafa, and William are certain they can place the resulting spells into an implant with Greene and whatever duplicitous witchcraft Ramirez is capable of, so they are over there practicing.” She pointed in their direction without looking and they gave a cheerful wave. “If they get past the magicists, we are greenlit.”

Even Bellacia—who was still off campus with her father, writing articles against the Department as if she were the one with an extended timespace—with her eyes and ears everywhere, had lost contact with the increasingly paranoid. And recent articles had put her at increasing odds with some of the most fanatical of magicists. There were even vows that had to be taken to enter certain dorm rooms now.

“How is Delia getting around the vows?” Lifen asked. “If she's using administrative magic, it won't help outside Excelsine.”

“Patrick gave her something to skirt most vows. Don't ask what,” Olivia said grimly. “We all need some plausible deniability in case any part of this insane plan gets uncovered.”

That led to a spirited discussion (argument) on the insanity involved.

No one wanted to outright say, though, that if at least one of us didn't go to prison for life after this, then all of us were dead.

I wandered over to where Axer was stretched out at a table in the corner, his hooded gaze staring at the tendrils of Kaine's captured shadows—the ones Kaine had been trying to infect Axer with every time they fought. The shadows swarmed in malevolent swirls inside the nullifying jar.

There was a book stalking around the table in a brooding, irritated way. It was just far enough away that I couldn’t read its title.

I sat across from Axer and he gave me a brief smile before his focus was back on the shadows, as if they would do what he wanted from will alone.

“You can't really think planting those back on you is a good idea?” I asked, grimacing. “There's got to be a better alternative.”

“There's an alternative. I just don't know that we want to take it.” He looked at me.

I winced. “Raphael seems better, but what would those even do to his mind? His trustworthiness is still questionable.”

“Quite.”

I frowned at the malevolent shadows and shuddered. Who would want to touch them? It wasn’t like they were… I blinked, looked at Axer, and bit my lip.

“I can’t wait to see what you are about to reveal.” He leaned back with hooded eyes and a smile, like an entertainment was set to unfold.

I sighed and called my cloak over. Looking furtively around, I saw everyone's heads deep in books, projects, and plans. Fishing out the container I'd put there, I brought it into the light. The shadow winced, then when it noticed its surroundings, the edges of the tendrils did what I could only describe as a jump for joy, swirling happily around the glass.

“It's okay,” I whispered. “I didn't leave you there.”

The shadow pressed its tendrils against the glass, like small webbed fingers searching for contact. I touched the glass, and it pressed a smudged tendril against the same part.

“So that's what you took.”

“Hmmm?” I asked, watching the pure joy in the little shadows' movements.

“In the Basement. That's what you took,” Axer said.

I looked over at him and winced again. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“You know, Ren, I long ago decided to trust your instincts.” He uncrossed his legs and removed them from the table, then motioned for the jar. I put it in his hand. The shadow shifted anxiously to the back of the glass as soon as it was placed in his hand, but then slowly crept forward and pressed a tentative shadow toward him. He tapped a finger gently against the glass. The shadow stared at his tapping finger, then did a little backflip swirl and started tapping back eagerly.

He played with it for another minute, then set it down.

Placing the jar next to Kaine's shadows caused an interesting reaction. The shadows in Kaine's jar frantically started leaping at the little shadow like they were compelled to get to it, and the little shadow fled to the other side of its jar in terror.

I snatched the jar with the little shadow and tucked it in my elbow.

“They weren't doing that in the Basement.” I sent Axer the memory. I had excised it from the memory dump to the Bandits...for reasons.

“Maybe those weren't Kaine's.”

A book started creeping down the table. Not unusual in our present circumstances, so I ignored it.

I bit my lip and looked at the jar. “How old are you? What do you eat?” I hesitated. “Not people, right?”

It flew around, forming various shapes.

“What are you two doing?”

I jumped and pulled the jar straight into my midsection, hunching over the top. “What? What do you mean?”

Olivia was standing behind me, hands on her hips. “You were talking to something that you were holding.” Olivia's gaze was flat, not even attempting to play at misdirection. “Are we doing this?”

I sighed and untucked the jar, reluctantly scooting it into view.

Olivia stared silently at it for a full ten seconds, before looking at me flatly. “That's why you didn't include that in your debriefing. What else did you touch in the Basement?”

“Nothing! Just this. It...it ended up in my hands?”

She looked at me, eyes judgmental. “It ended up in your hands?”

I waved them at her, then waved them at the jar.

“Is that supposed to be some magical jar call?” she asked.

I slumped. “I felt bad for it. It didn't belong. I couldn't leave it there.” And I had known I'd be in trouble for taking it.

“It looks like a shadow. Part of what makes Kaine.”

“But it's not Kaine. It's innocent.”

She stared hard at the jar. “How do you know?”

I waved my hands again, pantomiming that I just did.

She sighed. “Pick up a jar in a basement of horrors. What could go wrong?”

The book that had been stalking the table, then creeping toward us, was suddenly next to us, and I finally got a good look at the title of the book as it bent down to peer into the jar, finally willing to be part of things.

Shadow Magic.

“No, no, absolutely not.” Olivia started swearing as the little shadow cocked its shadowed head and pressed a tendril against the glass to the book. “We aren't releasing that thing in here! Ren.”

And Axer... Axer leaned back, crossed his hands behind his head, and smiled.

~*~

Shadow Magic firmly and malevolently waited for another turn, while Axer was discussing something with Tactics and Trickery in a Slippery Age and Patrick was trying to use trickery to gain access to Planning Your Heist for Maximum Bloodshed.

An actual drop of blood was dripping down its cover.

Waiting for my glass film to set, I meandered over to where Constantine and Olivia had been working together for five hours. Or, working alongside each other. Guard Rock was sitting on the edge of their table, legs slowly rocking back and forth as he watched the room.

A book perked up and fluttered its pages as I drew closer—Universal Motes on its cover.

I blinked at it. “You know everything?”

It flipped its pages and I could see building blocks of stars and planets and comets. Molecular components and compounds. “I...I want to read you. A lot. But I'm not certain you are in the four-day plan. We aren't going to space.”

“We're already in space, darling.” Constantine hefted Guard Rock, who began stabbing his palm immediately. “Every rock is a space rock.”

I smiled, and Guard Rock flipped to the table and scooted over to make room for me.

“Out of your four-day plan, but any and all explanatory, high-level pieces about Corpus Sun and the Western Territories' atrium need to be added to my work folder,” Olivia said, furiously writing something that looked like a section of a speech, 'If I choose to end this world, I can. and you won't be able to st—'

Constantine leaned back. “Life on Io. Might be better than here. You could build a new world somewhere else.”

I frowned. “I think my instincts only know how to work with the life-giving compounds it knows. All life I know runs on current Earth parameters. I wouldn't have the first clue how to make a moon of Jupiter capable of sustaining life when the working components of life there would be completely upside down from Earth.”

“You could learn.”

“We can always learn,” I agreed.

And after having all my people in one spot, I could see the allure of it. The hoarding aspect. I could understand Constantine’s previous desire to hide away.

He raised a brow at me, reading the thought. “I’m always right. I thought you knew that.”

I patted his arm. “I do.”

“Despite the allure, you wouldn’t survive that type of life.” He flipped a page, far more languidly than Olivia's precise economy. “You are too vibrant to hide.”

“Surrounded by friends?” I said wistfully.

“Closeted away without the scientific possibilities you can learn from others. Where’s the next Mbozi? Stevens? Where are the Third Layer engineers that you’ve been trading information with?”

“But for safety's sake—”

“You won’t truly be safe until Stavros is gone.” He looked away. “I recognized that. I just didn’t want to confront it.” He pulled a string through his fingers. “I had thought we could be happy, just the two of us hidden away. But you’d wither. Your connections to the others… And I...well, maybe I can see my way to having others near.”

I squeezed his arm.

A huge tome was opened in front of him, but instead of the way Olivia was hunched in battle mode in the middle of her eagerly chattering books, Constantine was lazily flicking search and copy spells to a paper stack that was growing larger at Olivia's right hand. I read the spine of the book in front of Constantine—Be First and Master the Dialogue.

I frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Price has all of us working on the side on a resolution to your reintroduction to campus, society, and the political landscape,” he said drolly.

I blinked. “What?”

“We aren’t going to get much of a window,” Olivia said from her pit of jostling books. “After we win, we have to move quickly. Whoever gets there first and controls the political landscape will win the Origin Mage war. We don’t want the dialogue controlled by others.”

“Win?” I echoed.

“After we depose Stavros, then get you back on campus,” she said impatiently. “Keep up, Ren. You aren’t usually this slow.”

“Right.” I cleared my throat. “So...we are working on contingency plans?”

“Actual plans. You don’t think we are going to fail, do you?” She looked down her nose at me, glasses sliding down to unshield her eyes. “We aren’t.” We won't.

“Er, of course. What do you want me to do?”

“You? Finish the Kinsky glasses.” She shooed me away.

“Don’t you want me to resear—”

“No. Your innocence works best in our favor. We will handle this.” She pointed between Constantine, her, and six of the books. “It will be brilliant and decisive, and you will speak it and believe it without having crafted it with deception in mind. You keep to your ‘Aw shucks, anything to help the world’ attitude, and we’ll take care of the rest.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it abruptly. I thumbed to the workspace I had claimed as mine. “I’ll be over there.”

“Excellent.”

I paused and looked back at Constantine, then Olivia. “Are you making plans for Constantine and Axer, too? And all of you?”

“Senator Leandred has this one covered.” Olivia pointed at Constantine. “Not including Dare, the rest of us will be combined under the 'saved the world, free pass' clause I'm drafting. The combat mages are working Dare's angle, which is just as tricky as yours, and needs to include might and bite. He already has an overwhelming plethora of goodwill in the combat community, where those qualities—might and bite—render respect. The victory tour across layers, combined with not seeking anyone's aid in this whole debacle, has shown him not only as resilient and self-sufficient, but strong as a partner. That he doesn't need aid, even when hunted by all, but still offers his own aid when needed, gives him a very strong bargaining position. Military power. If Dare survives intact, he will slide out on top on that wave. Might makes right, and if the young military leaders side with him, the rest will follow. They are just waiting to see if he survives.”

She shook her head, grimly. “In twenty years, the Dares are going to rule this layer and more.”

“Well, thankfully they are on the side of good.”

Olivia looked down her nose at me again. “I love you. Get out.”

“Right. Leaving.” I slowly backed away.

I worked for a few more hours on the glasses and dolls we needed for the first part of the plan. I leaned back to stretch all the knots and kinks out and noticed the combat mages were walking through the room, observing everything—shifting battlescapes and planning boards—in the air as they walked.

“We can use the Crelussa mages,” Ramirez said to Axer. The pieces in the air moved with his question.

I rubbed at my chest. “Will it put them in jeopardy?”

They looked over at me.

“They didn't ask to be involved,” I said.

The Awakening mages had given their power and connections to us—they’d been part of their own rescue. And though the Department tech who I’d left their safety in the hands of had turned over the site ward keys to the countries themselves, there was always a chance the Department would talk their way into having the countries turn over the charge of the mages to them before the end.

Camille shook her head. “There were too many magicist children involved—they can't just make them disappear. They made a large gamble with that play—well, not such a large gamble if they are going to start killing people on a mass scale, but they still need public sentiment to be in their favor for as long as possible. They needed for you to take the blame. They may try and distort the children's memories to make you three the villains—it will feed nicely into the conspiracists' theories, but the children will stay physically safe. Not like what would have happened if you hadn’t intervened. Or what still might.”

She looked at me, and any lingering trace of animosity was gone. “It's in your connections that you will win.”

I rubbed my arms. “Stavros can take them away.”

“And you will get them back,” she said, secured in her own opinion as she always was.

We've got this, Axer said gently, mentally. Finish your glasses and get some sleep.

I nodded and checked the time. It was closing in on the time we had set up for our second night time.

I worked on the glass film and dolls until my eyes started to cross and Neph was leading me to the “nest.”

We passed Will and Mike, who were engaged in an intense conversation inside a constructed hologram of their room. Will was sharing memories en masse. “I know you are worried. Whenever you need a good memory, take one of mine,” he said. “Full access. If I know it, you know it.”

“Your family—”

“I don't know where they went.” Will smiled sadly. And I heard what he didn't say—It's better that I don't know.

Mike closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “We'll get them all back.”

“I don't want—”

“Stop.”

Will looked down and nodded, swallowing roughly. He deliberately didn't look up as Neph and I passed—deliberately staying walled in the facsimile of their room. When he looked back up at Mike, he was determined.

“Take the memories. Look, I have this one from Ren's birthday party. Olivia karate chopped my arm and Neph, Ren, and I all ended up in a pile in the hall. Oh, and Ren's mom hit me over the head with a broom the time before that. And Ren carried me around in a paper where—”

I could see the memory of it as he displayed it to Mike—with Will's papered view of dropping from the window, going on adventure, and heading back, all while he was strapped to my chest. I could see the street signs and house numbers as we jogged past. 257 Maple Avenue was even in the right spot—not as I had last seen it, flying through a tornado.

I looked over to see Patrick watching it all through narrowed eyes—a book on broken bonds hovering nearby. Saf, who was working memories into a pair of his own augmented reality glasses, clasped his hand on his roommate's shoulder. Patrick allowed it for a moment, then shrugged it off and stalked over to the other side of the room, the book following in his wake.

“You want to know if he's okay?” Saf asked me, as Neph and I drew nearer. Saf's eyes remained on his task. Eight completed game controllers sat on the table next to him.

“No. I know he's not okay.” I knew what it was like to have a brother attacked. “Can we do anything, though?”

“I don't know,” Saf murmured.

“I don't like this.”

Saf looked up and his gaze gentled. He gave me a sympathetic glance. “That's why we are willing participants—above and beyond it being the right thing to do. Thought you knew that, Crown.”

I looked at the memories he was weaving together, along with the echoes of our bonds, just as Neph and Constantine had done for me. “I don't like sacrifice,” I whispered.

He didn't say anything for a moment. “We are all called to moments when we have to choose.” He twisted one memory around another. “When we have to decide between easy and hard. And sacrifice should never be easy, Crown. But sometimes it has to be made.”

~*~

By the next afternoon, Neph and Ramirez were finished with their project and ready to set everything in place with Camille and Delia to one side, Green and Lifen to the other, and Lox and Adrabi helping secure the ends. Suggestion, duplication, illusion, hidden, metal device, righteous belief...

Constantine was finishing the null cuffs and control devices with Will, Asafa, Patrick, Loudon, Dagfinn, and Mike.

Axer had been working with them, but when I was shooed away to paint, he detached himself and came with me.

I removed a canvas. Axer pulled a club chair into existence.

“You got stuck on apocalypse duty? Makes the most sense of anyone.”

“Stuck? Hardly.” He let himself slouch down, his head on the back of the chair, looking up at the domed ceiling. I didn't look up. I knew what I'd see. More imposters wearing Christian’s face, trying to find us. “Watching you paint is a rare treat.”

I twirled the brush in my fingers. “You are going to like the monsters I make.”

“Of course. You'll have made them.”

My cheeks warmed. He was still looking at the ceiling, but I saw him smirk.

I sighed and opened my paints.

I looked at my paints, at my brush, at the canvas, waiting for the overwhelming urge to overtake me.

I'd been shooed over here, but I felt no need to paint. I wanted to paint. But I hadn't needed to paint since...

“It's all of you,” I said softly, looking around. “Of course...”

Axer looked up.

The desperate urges had gotten better with Constantine. Better again with Axer joining us. Better when we'd hooked into everyone, then when Constantine had regenerated every connection, and settling fully when everyone was together.

I shook my head and looked back at the canvas. And let it come.

Let it flow from my brush—the hopes, the dreams, the fears, the plans, the connections, the crippling terror of Stavros. Victory. Defeat.

It swirled in a mass from my brush onto the canvas in glittering silvers and golds, exploding everywhere on the surface until I was gasping with the effort.

And then Axer was next to me, pulling his finger through a line of silver that signified him.

“What, I, how did you—?”

He gently turned my chin, forcing my eyes to follow the direction of my head. The contents of the entire room were swirling in a funnel around us. Guard Rock's limbs were splayed out as he swooped around and around. Books were fiercely flying through the currents like big wave surfers who had finally caught the swell they'd been waiting for.

Every single mage inside was staring, mouth agape, eyes lit by the flashing gold and silver lights. Except Constantine, who was smiling and Axer, who looked triumphant.

“So connected you didn't even realize,” Axer's voice was strangely soft, as opposed to the harsh tornadic wind forming the background beat of the room. “Look at this. Effortless.”

The magic streamed from me in patterns that all hooked together. Everything made sense in the swirl, and the beauty of it vied with what it had taken to create it. What had been needed to bring me to this point. The swirl caught more speed with my emotion. “Did you see what I painted? Did you see what I might do?”

“Yes. And I can see you right now—lit up from the inside, creating world-ending magic like it was an easy broom sweeping enchantment.”

I thought of my earlier paintings, of the death and despair. The swirl turned darker. I thought of Kinsky's painting. Of the longing and loneliness.

“What the hell is going on?” Olivia demanded, picking herself up from where she'd just been ejected by Temporal Physics and Interdimensional Travel in the Physical Age. She'd been discussing last minute “things” with Marsgrove.

I jolted. Axer didn't move. But then, the number of times I had seen him surprised could be counted on one hand with fingers to spare.

“Ren is painting.”

“Ren is painting? What, the air?” She plucked Guard Rock from the tornado, tossing him safely onto the table. He landed on his feet and took two steps across the papers strewn on top, as if he was going to dive back in, but Olivia shot him a stern glare and he slumped his rock and sat. “What is going on?”

I called a marble to my left hand and abruptly pulled the tornado into my palm, collapsing the magic inside the glass and forcing everything floating in the room to land softly.

Axer eyed the marble as I tried to calm my racing heart. “Not even winded this time,” he mused. He looked at me. “You are getting better.”

“Yes,” I said, and for the first time, I meant it. I felt better. Even after Stavros tried to rip out all the parts that made me, I had been stitched back together. I looked around me. I could always be stitched together if I had them.

I looked at the canvas.

A world was forming, blooming into different worlds of possibility, both creation and destruction—but for the first time, I controlled what the product would be.

“Stavros will know. All of our plan. He'll be able to read my mind. Our expressions. We need to get rid of his powers.”

“How?” Olivia demanded.

Axer dipped the same painted finger in the line that was Constantine on the canvas. He lifted it and watched as the paint glittered, changing the properties of the magic always around him—properties he'd have to change back—but for now he just watched the changes. Like Constantine, he, too, had been touched by Origin Magic. Died repeatedly from it and worked up a resistance.

He looked at me in question. I shook my head. “It didn't help me last time,” I said. “Stavros has to have an immunity.”

Constantine prowled closer, as if called. “Not to everything.”

“Not to something temporary,” Axer agreed.

Constantine looked at the paint on Axer's finger, then turned his head to look at his roommate. “Tears of the Fallen?”

Axer nodded. “Tears of the Fallen.”

“I love that one.”

“I know.” He smiled and wiped the paint on the back of Constantine's hand.

Constantine immediately turned and strode to his makeshift lab.

“Wow. Great. So happy I left for fifteen minutes.” Olivia tossed the test glasses onto the table, hands going to her hips. “Phillip said the sight lasts five minutes, then the magic ends. He wished us good luck.”

Satisfaction swelled, as did hope, and I began duplicating the finishing touches in the other pairs of glasses and on the storage papers with the paint. “Five minutes is all we need.”