The Red Scrolls of Magic

What made the situation even more harrowing was that the headlights only bought them a few dozen feet of visibility, so all they could see were a narrow stretch of road in front, the sheer face of the mountain, and the cliff edge that led to the open sky. Only one of those options was any good.

Alec managed to downshift correctly on the first few turns, but sweat stung his eyes.

“Are you all right?” Magnus asked.

“I’m great,” Alec said quickly.

He fought demons for a living. This was driving, a thing even mundanes did without any unusual talents or sense-enhancing runes. All he had to do was focus.

He was holding on to the steering wheel too tight, and he jerked the stick every time he had to shift around a hard turn.

Alec mistimed a particularly difficult bend that sent the car veering out of control. He tried to punch the accelerator and even out but ended up hitting the brake, sending them spinning down a steep decline.

The vista before them was not a welcome sight. It meant they were going right off a cliff.

Alec threw an arm up to shield Magnus, and Magnus grabbed his arm. Alec had felt this strange connected feeling once before, on a ship in troubled waters: Magnus reaching out for him, needing his strength. He turned his hand under Magnus’s hand and linked their fingers, feeling nothing but the warm strong impulse to reach back.

The car had just skidded off the road and dipped over the side when it came to a sudden stop, the two spinning front wheels touching nothing but air and soft blue magic. It hovered for a moment and then righted itself and rolled back onto the narrow dirt path next to the road.

“I told you we were going too fast,” said Shinyun mildly from the backseat.

Alec held on fast to Magnus’s hand, his own clasped against Magnus’s chest. A warlock’s heart beat differently from a human’s. Magnus’s heartbeat was a reassurance in the dark. Alec already knew it well.

“It’s just a tiny little cliff,” said Magnus. “Nothing we can’t handle.”

Alec and Magnus got out of the car. Magnus threw his arms out wide as if he was going to embrace the night sky. Alec walked to the cliff’s edge and looked over, whistling at the long, sheer drop down to the ravine. He looked off to the side at a small dirt trail leading to a clearing jutting out from the cliff. He beckoned to Magnus. “It’s pretty dangerous driving at night. Maybe we should stay here.”

Magnus looked around. “Just . . . here?”

“Camping could be fun,” said Alec. “We can toast marshmallows. You’d need to summon supplies from somewhere, of course.”

Shinyun had climbed out of the car and was coming over to join them. “Let me guess,” she said to Magnus in flat tones. “Darling, your idea of camping is when the hotel doesn’t have a minibar.”

Magnus blinked at her.

“I beat you to that joke,” Shinyun informed him.

Magnus lifted his eyes to the night sky. Alec could see the silver curve of a crescent moon reflected in the gold of his eyes. It matched the sudden curve of Magnus’s smile.

“All right,” said Magnus. “Let’s have fun.”

ALEC PUT DOWN HIS COPY of the Red Scrolls of Magic to behold the campsite Magnus had conjured. He’d assumed Magnus would conjure up accommodations that would be spacious enough to sleep two comfortably and tall enough for them to stand without hunching over. At least that was what Shinyun had done when she had summoned her own tent, at her insistence.

What Magnus had erected was not so much a tent as a pavilion, complete with curtains and scalloped edging. The spacious living quarters had two bedrooms, a bathroom, a common area, and a sitting room. Alec made a loop around the massive goatskin structure and discovered the kitchen was set up in the back next to a covered deck area complete with a dining set. An ancient Roman-legion Aquila standard was staked next to the front door as a final touch, in tribute to what Magnus said was his “When in Rome” theme.

Magnus opened the back flap and strolled out, looking satisfied. “What do you think?”

“It’s cool,” said Alec. “But I can’t help wondering . . . where did you get this much goatskin?”

Magnus shrugged. “All you need to know is, I believe in magic, not cruelty.”

There was the sound of suction, and then a monstrous structure appeared out of thin air, blowing a ring of dust outward in every direction. Where Shinyun’s tent had been now stood a two-story treehouse that blotted out a third of the sky. Shinyun walked out of her upgraded living arrangements and glanced in Magnus’s direction.

They had engaged in an increasingly less subtle game of one-upmanship ever since they had tried on clothing at Le Mercerie, supporting Alec’s theory that perhaps all warlocks tested each other’s power, in a magic version of sibling rivalry. Magnus was clearly playing. Alec suspected that Shinyun took the game a little more seriously, but he was loyally of the opinion that Magnus was the superior warlock.

“Love the turrets,” Magnus called over cheerfully. It was hard to defeat Magnus with excess, Alec thought. He would just admire it. “Fancy a midnight snack?”

They congregated at the fire pit on the other end of camp, just a few feet away from the cliff’s edge. Magnus had originally built it, and Shinyun had improved on it, so it was like a pyre for a Viking funeral. The gigantic blaze looked as if they were trying to send a signal up to Valhalla.