The Fiery Heart

“That’s awful,” she said. I could hear the compassion in her voice. “But there’s not much I can do. That’s their business, no matter how terrible it is. I can’t go make demands of them, any more than one of them could come ask about one of my subjects. Alchemists and Moroi work together, but we don’t have control over each other.”



“Can you please just ask? Please?” I tried to keep my voice level and was glad this wasn’t a video call. I couldn’t even imagine what my face would reveal.



“I’ll ask,” she said reluctantly. “But I can’t promise anything.”



“I know. Thank you.” A flash of inspiration hit. “You met her . . . could you go to her in a spirit dream? I’ve been trying, but with the pills . . .”



“Ah.” She paused. “I’d like to . . . I can try, but I’m not as good as you. I have to know someone really well to visit them. Maybe you can ask Sonya.”



It was a good idea, and I followed up on it, once more clinging at whatever threads I could. Sonya and Sydney had become good friends, but Sonya was also a weak dreamer. When she called me a couple days later, the news wasn’t uplifting. “I tried,” she said. “I couldn’t reach her. Maybe I don’t have the skill after all. You’re the best at this.”



“Maybe she was awake,” I said, not sure I believed it. My hopes plummeted down to endless depths once more, but they didn’t stay down for long because the next morning, I was able to touch spirit.



There it was again, that sense of recovering some intrinsic part of myself. I gasped at the feel of it. The magic burned within me, euphoric and glorious, and I ran outside in boxers and a T-shirt. Not many people were out, but a man walking his dog across the street gave me a surprised look. Without hesitation, I drew on spirit’s power, and the man’s aura flared within my vision, orange and blue.



“My God,” I breathed. I had my magic back. I could do this. I waved at my neighbor and then hurried back inside. Once I was in my bedroom, I settled down on the bed and tried to summon spirit’s dreaming state. It required a fair amount of calmness, and my excitement and agitation made it hard to relax. When I finally managed the trance state, though, I couldn’t reach her.



I shifted back to the waking world and tried to be reasonable. If she was anywhere in the United States, it’d be daytime for her too. And there was also a chance I still had to strengthen my powers a little. But the darkness was temporarily cast aside, and I felt myself carried upward on wings of hope, possibly into the state that Einstein had warned was too up. I couldn’t imagine that, though. For the first time in days, I felt as though all wasn’t lost. I could save Sydney.



The rush of it gave me so much energy that I hardly slept at all for the next four days. I was too wired. That, and I didn’t want to waste any opportunity to seize on when she might be asleep. My control of spirit was back to full strength, and I constantly flipped into dreaming mode, hoping I’d catch her. But it never came. Sometimes I made no connection at all. Sometimes I’d have the sense of darkness or a wall. Whatever it was, the result was always the same: no Sydney.



My mood was starting to fall again when Jackie finally called and said she could attempt her next spells. I dutifully went over, but my high had shattered, swinging me down to the other extreme. It wasn’t so much our failures (though those weighed on me), as it was other things. I’d focused so much on my efforts that I’d had little time to spare for Sydney herself. What was happening to her right now? Marcus hadn’t offered much illumination on what they’d do to her, and my imagination ran wild. That self-hatred returned. Sydney was suffering. She needed me, and I wasn’t there for her.



A strange car was in Jackie’s driveway, and when she let me in, I was surprised to see Jill and Eddie. “What are you doing here?” I asked.



“I wanted to see the spells,” said Jill. She gave me a long, appraising look. “And I wanted to talk to you.”



“How did you know we were—” I stopped. Of course. Along with everything else, the bond had been restored. Jill was in sync with me again, and judging from the haggard look on her face, she was being dragged along with my wild moods.



“Adrian,” she said softly. “You need to sleep.”



“I can’t. And you know why. I can’t risk missing her. She has to sleep, and I have to be awake to catch her.”



“You’ve been trying for days. It’s time to admit something’s wrong. Something’s blocking you.”



She had a point, but I didn’t want to admit to it. I wanted to believe that if I just tried a little harder or caught the right moment, I’d reach Sydney. I’d spoken to Lissa in a dream recently when she’d reported no luck with the Alchemists, so I knew I still possessed the ability.



“It doesn’t matter,” I said obstinately. “Jackie’s going to find her. She’ll pull this off. You’ve got two things you can do, right?”



Jackie nodded. “One can only be done at this time of the moon. The other can be done almost any time . . . it just requires an extensive expenditure of magic and some rare ingredients I was out of. It took time to get them again.”



“Then let’s do this.”



The dark moon one had to be done outdoors. She’d set up an altar covered in incense and other components, and we kept our distance, waiting in tense silence. It was nothing but unintelligible words and gestures to us, and I found myself thinking of the times I’d been with Sydney when Jackie had worked magic. Sydney could sense it, and there’d always be a catch in her breath and wonder in her eyes as she watched her mentor. I felt nothing, only a war of hope and fear within me.



When Jackie finally rose and returned to us, she shook her head sadly. “Nothing. I’m sorry. Let’s try the other.”



She cast the other one inside, a spectacular feat that created a large spinning disc in midair. The power it required nearly made her pass out, and I caught her as she started to collapse. “Still nothing.” It was only then, seeing her on the verge of tears, that I understood just how deeply she cared about Sydney. “I thought one of these would work. But all I get is a dark wall.” We helped her back to the living room, and I dug through her kitchen for food. One thing I’d learned was that depleted magic users needed calories. “I had a similar experience when my sister was in a coma.”



Jill flinched. “Do you think Sydney is? Would they have hurt her?”



“I don’t know enough about it or their methods,” said Jackie, gratefully taking a glass of apple juice from me. “I’m still certain she’s alive, but that’s it.”



I sat back on the love seat and shifted into a dream trance. It seemed unlikely I’d reach anything if Jackie hadn’t, but I had to try. As I’d feared, there was just more darkness. It was getting hard to tell where hers ended and mine began.



When I came back, the others were watching me with grim looks. “Go home, Adrian,” said Jill. “Get some rest. You’re of more use to her if you’re at full strength.”



“I’m no use to her,” I said.



When I’d been with Sydney, whether it was in the heat of passion or simply sitting around and talking, I hadn’t thought it was possible for my heart to hold any more love. Now, I didn’t think it was possible for my heart to hold any more despair. No, not just my heart. Every part of me grieved so much. People used to tease me about alcohol poisoning, but this was the real stuff, the toxin that would finally win.



And speaking of alcohol . . . for the first time in a month, I wanted a drink. I wanted a lot of drinks. I wanted to drink until I passed out into my own darkness, until I was beyond feeling because I couldn’t go on for another moment feeling like this. It would numb me from spirit and the ability to dream, but at this point, the dreams I had weren’t helping Sydney anyway.



“Don’t,” said Jill, guessing my thoughts. She came over to sit beside me. “There’s still hope.”



“Is there?” I leaned against her shoulder, wondering how she could still feel that way—especially if she had a direct line into my heart.



Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Hopper lying on an end table. I’d left him here after the night Sydney had been taken, which had been bad form on my part. “What’ll happen to him?” I asked Jackie. “Is there any way you can bring him back?”



Her eyes fell on the glittering dragon. “No. She’s the only one who can summon him. Keeping him around you, even in this form, might help, but if he ever comes out of this state, he’ll be weak and sick. Of course, after the year is up, he’ll fade back to his realm anyway . . . but it’s a miserable, trapped state to be in for that long.”



“I know how he feels,” I muttered. Too bad I couldn’t take Hopper out drinking with me. He could have become Bar Hopper.



Eddie stared at Hopper with contempt, but I suspected it was for himself, not the dragon. “I’m so stupid,” he muttered. It was a refrain I’d heard from him a lot. “I never should have believed it. I shouted that ‘spell’ over and over in that field, and all I did was give them more time to get away with her.”



“She was just protecting you,” said Jill.



“It was my job to protect her,” he growled.



Jackie finished off her juice and turned to a package of cookies. “What spell did she tell you to recite?”



Eddie’s brow furrowed. “Cent . . . centrum permanebit. Is it even a real spell?”



“Not that I know of.” Jackie gave him a sympathetic look he didn’t even really notice. “But if it makes you feel better, it is Latin. A lot of spells use that language.”



“What’s it mean?” asked Jill. I was still leaning into her, but my mind was wandering to an analysis of nearby bars. Downtown’s were nicer, but I might run into people I knew if I went to Carlton. Did I want to be alone or not?



“Well, centrum means center,” said Jackie. “Permanebit is a future tense verb. ‘Remains’ is one translation. Or maybe ‘endures.’ Together it’d be something like, ‘the center will endure.’”



I jerked my head up. “Hold,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “The center will hold.”



Sydney’s last words. Not for Eddie, but for me.



The last of my self-control shattered, and I abruptly stood. Jill reached for me. “Adrian . . .”



“I’ll see you guys later.” I moved toward the door, pausing to scoop up Hopper and put him in my jacket.



The center will hold.



Will it, Sydney? I wondered. Because I’m falling apart.



“Where are you going?” asked Eddie.



“Out,” I said. “Escape plan number eighty-two: Go some-where where I don’t have to feel anything for a while.”



He exchanged a worried look with Jill and asked, “When are you coming back?”



Centrum permanebit.



I shook my head and turned away. “It doesn’t matter.”



Chapter 24



SYDNEY



IT WAS THE COLD THAT FINALLY WOKE ME UP. I’d been going in and out of a dark, dreamless haze for an indefinable amount of time, and I had no idea how long it had been since I was in the van with my family. Judging from my dry mouth and groggy mind, there was still some drug kicking around in my body, but they must have lifted it enough to let me finally grasp at consciousness.



The floor I was lying on was a rough, uneven concrete that held no warmth and was made even more uncomfortable because it was damp. It added to the chill seeping into my bones, and I slowly and awkwardly managed a sitting position, so that I could wrap my arms around myself in a weak attempt to hold in body heat. The damp cell couldn’t be any more than fifty degrees, and the fact that I was naked wasn’t helping matters.



The room was also black. Pitch-black. I’d been in darkness before, but this was impenetrable. There was nothing, not even a whisper of light, that my eyes could adjust to. That blackness was nearly tangible, heavy and smothering. I had to rely on my other senses to get any idea of my setting, and from the ominous silence, my hearing wasn’t going to do me any favors.



My teeth began to chatter, and I drew my knees up to my body, wincing as the harsh floor scraped my skin. I huddled into a ball as best I could, scarcely able to believe I’d just been in a desert. How long ago had that been? I had no clue, nor did I know where I was now. The drug they’d given me had stopped the passage of time. It could’ve been days or minutes since my abduction.



“Hello, Sydney.”



The voice came without warning, seemingly from every part of the cell, echoing off the walls. It was female, but there was a synthesized quality to it, like she was speaking through a filter. I said nothing but lifted my head up and stared straight ahead unflinchingly. If this room was equipped with a fancy sound system, then they probably had some sort of night vision cameras that let them view me. The Alchemists might try to cut off my senses, but they would certainly make sure they had every advantage for themselves.