Chapter 6

O n the other end of customs, Seamus O'Connor is waiting for us in well-worn jeans and a loose t-shirt. Combined with his stubbly beard, close-cropped reddish brown hair, and muscled forearms, he has a casually rugged look without even trying.

What you see is what you get with Seamus.

Even if what you get is not necessarily what you want.

It's refreshing. In a way.

No hellos from Seamus; he glares as soon as he sees us. "Who's this, then?" he demands by way of greeting.

"Seamus, meet Nathaniel," I say, switching back to Nariel's incognito name. The fewer people who know he's a fallen angel, the less likely we are to tempt fate. With the cap on, you certainly wouldn't expect it. "Nathaniel, Seamus."

Nariel's eyebrows lift at Seamus' accent. "With all of the UK to choose from, you called an Irish wizard?" he asks me.

"An Irishman is less likely to be concerned with circumventing British security," I explain dryly.

Seamus puts in, "But he is concerned about who he's getting into trouble with. What's your story?"

"He's a spirit who's going to help cloak us," I say.

"Wasn't asking you, Sierra." Seamus stares hard at Nariel.

I open my mouth to snap something on the order of Tough, I'm in charge, because letting him control the conversation is not how I want to start this. But at the last second I think better of it and roll my eyes. "Fine, go ahead and drop your trousers and get the stick-measuring over with then."

Both of them look at me.

After a moment Seamus says, "You have no appreciation for the finer things in life."

I make a show of looking them both up and down. "Don't I?"

He snorts, and Nathaniel's mouth twitches into a smile.

"My sincerest apologies," Nariel says. "I'm not one for exhibitionism, so I'm afraid I'll have to find some other way to satisfy you."

Did he mean that to sound so suggestive? Probably.

Seamus snorts again. "Can you really cloak us?"

"I can."

Seamus looks at me, and I nod. Nariel held that cloak throughout the flight without a twitch. He is really good at stealth magic.

I wonder if there are other kinds he's better at.

Seamus shrugs. "Then we're all right. I've never known Sierra to work with anyone, is all. A spirit, eh?"

I would have, if anyone had been willing.

I don't say this.

Seamus starts walking at a brisk clip, and I skip a couple steps to catch up, frowning.

"Never met any spirits in Ireland?" I ask. Tracking down spirits was never my focus, but Seamus has always been a utilitarian kind of guy—anyone who can get the job done, he'll work with.

That's another reason I asked Letty to contact Seamus. Of the few wizards I've met who live in the UK—barring one immigrant who can't afford to get in trouble with the government—let us say I am unconvinced, given their attitudes, that discrimination against spirits would not be a problem. I don't have time to deal with that variety of bullshit right now.

"Of course I have. None who sold cloaking as a skill though, and this isn't the kind of job I want surprises on. Let's get to the car."

Probably because they weren't powerful enough to cloak at the level of a fallen angel, but if he's taking Nariel's power in stride I'm certainly not going to fight about it.

"How much did Letty tell you, exactly?" I ask.

"You really want to do this before we get in the car?"

Nariel's magic flexes, and just like that we're cloaked. Seamus whirls to stare at him.

"You're not invisible, just unremarkable and muffled," Nariel says. "No one will walk into you."

Seamus stares for another moment and then says, "Speak for yourself."

Nariel flashes an appreciative grin and nods in acknowledgement.

Satisfied, Seamus starts walking again. "Letty said you need a driver to Stonehenge at night for a big spell that'll piss off High Earth."

"That's it?"

"What else did I need to know? You're pissing off mages, you're getting up the king's arse."

I take a breath, somewhere between amused and exasperated and nervous. What if he balks at the rest?

Better to know before the shit hits the fan.

"That may have been enough to get you here, but there are some other details you should know."

"So start talking."

"High Earth's claim that Low Earth can't hold magic safely is a lie."

"Shocked to hear that, Sierra. Greedy gobshites lying to the people they steal from? Tell me something I can't guess."

Well okay then. "I can anchor magic in Low Earth again so we can do magic here."

Seamus' gaze flicks to mine, but that's as much of a reaction as he gives. So I'm guessing Letty did in fact tell him more; he just wants to hear it from my mouth to judge. "Yeah? If you could do that, what took you so long?"

"I hadn't stolen Grand Magus Evram's wand yet."

That makes him stumble. "Get out."

"That's what she said. Me, I mean, when I banished him." I consider. "Hmm. That delivery didn't work, did it?"

"How the feck did you steal that old bastard's wand? Let's see it then."

"Can't, I already broke it so he couldn't track me with it again. But I have my own wand now connected to a pool on Low Earth that I can draw from for a little while, and if we get through this I can pay you in a new wand. Or cash if you'd rather, but—"

"Shut up. What do you mean ‘again'?"

He glares at Nariel, who merely lifts his eyebrows in response.

"It's been a busy couple of days," I say dryly in the understatement of the century. "And when I start working at Stonehenge, the grand magus will show up for sure. So surprises on this job are inevitable. That's why I can't give you the wand until afterward—I'm going to need all the magic I can draw until I have the anchor set up. Once I get the spell active at Stonehenge, it's all yours."

Seamus stops and stares hard at me for a long moment. A glance at Nariel for who knows what, then back to me.

And then Seamus says, "All right. You drop trou then."

Ha.

I draw my wand. It's not like what he'll remember from the intricately carved wands in High Earth, just a rough branch. But it's my rough branch, and if Seamus is sensitive enough to meet spirits he'll be able to feel the magic in it.

But to make it abundantly clear, I cast glowing lights all around us.

Seamus' expression tightens, and his hands clench.

He stares around the magical lights.

He gazes through them, to all the people walking past us with no awareness of them.

Nariel has come up at my side, a silent presence and support.

With my other hand, I slowly reach into my pocket and withdraw another stick, give Seamus a moment to feel the difference between this one and the one I'm using.

Seamus' voice, when he speaks again, is rough. "You crazy fecker. I'm in."

A t night, the car trip to Stonehenge should only take about an hour. At the speed Seamus drives, testing Nariel's cloaking, it is... considerably faster.

I comfort myself with the knowledge that for the first time in years, in an emergency I can cast a spell to cushion just about anything that can happen to a car. So I ignore what it means for the countryside to be passing by at quite this speed—it's dark, I can hardly see it anyway, this is fine—and catch Seamus up on the broad strokes of how we got here, gently skating over the role of Nariel's power in affairs.

Seamus' reaction when I finish is just: "Hm. Always knew you had good nerves."

It's not what I expect, and after a second I sigh, catching on belatedly. "I've traveled faster than this before, Seamus."

"In the last ten years? Only on a plane, sweetheart. Tell me more about your duel. What kind of spells do you fight with, when you can't be flashy?"

It occurs to me he might not totally believe me—my experience of High Earth was wildly different from any other wizard's.

But that's fine. As long as he can focus on the parts he can use—like low-power spells—and will let me do what I need to do—and he hasn't stayed out of jail this long by being stupid about how he fights—that's as much as I can reasonably hope for.

It's not what I want to hope for, though, and I'm struck by the unfair comparison that Nariel was willing to dare to hope for more than that. He didn't believe what I was capable of before either, but he believed enough to watch me try, and now he's seen me work. Seamus has more context about what my life in High Earth was like because I've told him, but he hasn't felt it.

So I bury the hurt once again of even the people who are in theory on my side not being able to share my dreams, and I spend the rest of the ride talking to Seamus about spell theory.

He remembers more than I feared, but it's hard to ignore how much more I learned to begin with. Seamus one-handedly tosses me a beaten-up notebook from his car's console for me to sketch out spells for him that he can use in the short term with what little foundation he has—this actually takes me some thought because let me tell you, I am not the best person to go to for basic spells, I fucking thrive on layers of complication and even my low-powered ones use elaborate diagramming to target specifically, limit magic draw, and all that—until I have all three anchors set up.

The whole time, Nariel is silent as a shadow in the backseat, and I can't help wondering what he thinks of how I'm handling this.

And then we get to Stonehenge, and everything gets interesting fast.

S eamus stays with the car and Nariel's cap. I'm oddly sad to see it left behind, but it's as clear of a demarcation as any: Now it's time for work, not play.

I expected more argument from Seamus, but I should have known he's too smart for that. Until I can key him to a wand and he's had time to practice with it, he has no business getting closer to the inevitable fight and he knows it. He can watch how mages fight and take notes.

One thing I don't have to spell out for someone like Seamus is that if I manage this, the fight isn't going to be over with just one battle, and he's going to be part of it.

That's another reason I asked Letty for Seamus. He is not a man who knows how to quit fighting, even when it would be easier for him.

Except for when it came to magic. But I'll see if I can't change that for him.

Maybe he won't hate me for it.

So Seamus is out of sight with the car, cloaked by Nariel so even I can't see him. He could be gone for all I know, but I have to trust that he's not and I'll have a way out of here.

If he decides he's willing to take the risk of having a wand, he'll wait. If not... I'll have to figure that out later.

Nariel is also out of sight, but he's cloaked all of Stonehenge in a giant dome, so at least I can be sure he's still here. The evidence of his presence surrounds me like a weighted anxiety blanket. Sort of comforting, but also a weight you can't ignore, and that, if you're me, reminds you why it's there.

Nariel's here so I can bring back magic for both— all of us.

And that's what I'm going to do.

This first anchor is the real test of whether I can actually make what I'm aiming for stick. A declaration of who I am and what I'm capable of. If I mess this up, it almost doesn't matter what I do next; it'll be the beginning of the end.

No pressure.

I cast a cascade of lights like I did in the airport, but this time they spread away from me like tiny fae lanterns, illuminating the site.

It's safe to say I've never seen Stonehenge like this.

As a power spot, Stonehenge always feels a little unreal. You look at the stones, the arrangement and size of them, you think about how long they've been here and how they got here, you see how the sun filters through them. You don't have to be a wizard to feel it.

I cross to the center of the stones, letting the power of this place touch me and touching it in return.

In the darkness, illuminated by magic lights, encased in a flickering shadow-cloak dome, Stonehenge feels like nothing less than magic. Like Stonehenge is its own realm where anything is possible, for people or spirits, and the only limit is your imagination, your will.

Sufficient imagination and will have never been my limitations.

It's time to get to work.

I close my eyes and raise my wand, a pulse of power echoing between me and Stonehenge like a bolt of crackling energy connecting us before I've even begun to cast.

I take that power, and I put it back into the world.

There are plenty of spells you can perform with nothing more than a flex of will, but for a spell of the magnitude I'm working with, that you want to last, you have to anchor it.

I'm like a dancer, my muscle memory burning to life as I use my wand to draw arcane symbols and place them around Stonehenge, glowing glyphs forming in the air in front of me and flying away to stick in place like they're drawn magnetically. The magic burns them into the rock and the earth.

I weave the spell in a light trance state. Artists know that flow state, when it's like your body becomes the conduit for what's passing out of you to be physically manifested in the world, your mind firing, your heart thrilling.

That's what it's like to work magic.

And I get a third of the way through everything I'm setting up before Evram arrives.

This time, it's not just Destien. He's finally deigned to bring a team with him. Dark purple uniforms, which means they're an advanced magical combat unit.

That's a problem, but I still feel a sort of savage satisfaction that at least I have his attention. At last.

The grand magus knows what I'm capable of, after all—or at least he thinks he does.

I've had a lot of time to think since he was a person I trusted to share my spells with.

Evram sees Nariel's magical cloaking field and smiles. "Invisible to Low Earth's many nonmagical, are we? Splendid. Destien, fan out."

Destien doesn't look as excited by that as Evram—oh, but he's pissed. That's... possibly in my favor.

There are eight people on the strike team, and they're too far away for me to make out any faces. I occasionally worked with strike teams, but not as the person in charge of designing the op. And since strike team members don't participate in the usual High Earth duels, that means they're probably not people who know my style, even if we technically fought together.

Destien is calling out orders that would have the team coming at me from multiple sides at a time, so I won't get a break and won't be able to build momentum as they fall back and recoup while others keep pressing me.

You have to give Destien credit, he's not stupid. It's a great strategy, since even with my current pool of power I'll definitely run out before the mages with their connections to High Earth's power, and I'm out of practice bearing up under a sustained onslaught. He knows I favor improvising creative spells to show off how good I am at magic—the better, I thought, to demonstrate why I should get to stay.

Unfortunately for him, that's not the only way I've changed since my time in High Earth.

As soon as the first two of the strike team activate a spell of more than a little power, they fly back into the stones.

Like magnetism.

I did mention spell layers involving magic draw limits, didn't I? Turns out you can use those in more than one way.

The strike team's second string assumes I've fought back and lose no time activating their spells, to the same effect.

Destien's shout stops the third string just in time, which gives me the opportunity to cast at them directly, pushing them into the stones and in the same moment blowing out my own spell limiting power within the dome. When the pair hit the vaunted rocks, they both drop unconscious to the dirt.

Stones are lava. Anyone who touches Stonehenge will fall.

Oh, the last pair? I took them out gently while the first string was still in the air.

I had the advantage of first arrival, after all. It would have been stupid not to control the ground when I knew they were coming, and I may be mad, and I may be a show-off, but stupid I am not.

While Destien swears, I meet Evram's eyes and smile.

Laying out a situation in advance so your enemy walks right into it—let no one ever say I didn't pay attention in my time with him.

Something like recognition passes through his gaze, there and gone before he says coldly, "Destien. Handle her."

"Don't be mad, Destien, I just wanted you all to myself," I taunt. "Our reunion was cut short last time."

"It'll be even shorter this time around," he promises.

I can't deny that would be optimal, so I don't waste any more time, letting rip the next spell I'd planned.

The two stones closest to Destien move.

He gets a shield up before they smoosh him between them, but it's a near thing. He'd infused his own magic into his last wand for decades, so even with a replacement it's not as powerful, not as comfortable in his hand.

I will take any advantage I can get.

By the time he throws the stones away from him, I'm already gone, and more of Stonehenge has gotten up like the Ents going to war, lurching forward on each stone corner, converging on him.

But Destien isn't a top duelist for nothing, and soon enough he's leading the stones toward me.

I can't touch them without dropping either.

But unlike last time, now I have some power to spend.

So it's a chase, but I like my odds a lot better when I can throw fireballs.

And throw fireballs I do, and god, how I missed that.

On the knife-edge in a life-or-death battle and flinging power like confetti, I want to cackle like a supervillain, it's such a rush.

I content myself with going toe-to-toe with Destien as giant stones whirl and slap around us, as we throw fire and lightning, and anything that hits the barrier sizzles out like it's being eaten by the void.

Until a spell very nearly catches me underfoot, and I sense it only at the last second and manage to change my step into it into a dive over it, cushioning my roll with another spell rather than landing on the ground directly, where another spell lay.

Destien before me.

And I turn to find Evram behind me, finally willing to get his own hands dirty.

This is also satisfying but much less good for me.

The grand magus looks absolutely outraged.

"I took you in and trained you," he spits. "And for this?"

He gestures around us.

I am pretty confident he does not mean the havoc I have wrought on Stonehenge, because a grand magus of High Earth wouldn't care one iota for the sanctity of a power spot on Low Earth.

He has, unfortunately, taken the time while I've been occupied with Destien to look at the spell I didn't quite finish.

That being, the first anchor that would draw magic back to Low Earth.

And Evram, also unfortunately, is one of the few High Earth mages who can absolutely undo it if I give him the opportunity. The only reason he hasn't is because as soon as I get rid of him and Destien, there will be no one to stop me from finishing it.

Which means his priorities have abruptly shifted, and he absolutely has to finish me first or risk losing his own access to all the power stolen from Low Earth.

If I'd had any doubt the grand magus knows full well Low Earth can hold its own power, this would resolve it.

Evram hasn't fought his own battles in a long time, but with Destien still in the fight, let's say I do not like my odds.

I really needed to have finished Destien before Evram figured this out. But Destien is too good, and Evram was too quick. Damn.

Nothing for it.

I take a breath, ground my stance, and get ready to dig the fuck in.

I try to reactivate my spell to limit power in the dome first, but Evram anticipates that and unworks it in the same breath. In the next, Destien has sent a wall of magical force like one of the stone slabs—can't fault his inspiration—and I'm on the defense.

Damn, damn, damn.

I have gone from totally in control of the ground to on the defense too fast. It's a testament to how goddamn fast I still am that I hold on for thirty seconds, a minute, two, but unless I have a brilliant idea fast—and I don't have space for that, as fast as I'm fending off attacks—I'm not sure I'll make it to a third minute.

My grand debut on the stage of the universe is going up in smoke before my eyes.

Then something invisible plows into Destien at high speed and I don't even stop to question what the fuck just happened.

With a surge of power, I shoot a beam of magic straight at the grand magus.

The old man isn't used to dueling anymore, and he's not used to his wand, but he manages to get a shield around him just in time.

If he had been my target, that would matter, but my target was his wand.

This wand isn't powerful enough, with generations of careful defenses, to take that. Evram never planned to get his hands dirty, or he'd have prepared for this.

But as it is, the wand snaps, and I banish all the High Earth mages back in the next instant.

Whirling to see what the fuck saved me and whether I need to be concerned, I find Seamus' tiny car with a dented front.

A breath whooshes out of me, and all at once my knees buckle and I sag.

The car door slams, and Seamus runs toward me. "God almighty, what the feck, Sierra!"

I laugh, hysterically. My hands are already starting to shake. "You saved me. Thank you."

Seamus kneels in front of me and takes my face in both hands, forcing me to look at him. He searches my gaze frantically for a second and then mutters, "Jesus wept, you're really all right."

He was worried.

He stepped in.

Even without magic.

I have no idea what else to say. I'm not even sure what emotion I'm feeling right now.

But even if I finish setting this anchor up, I didn't do what I needed here. I didn't beat Evram on my own, and in this game it isn't enough to just be his equal, because he has mages at his disposal and I don't.

I take a deep breath and force myself to my feet. "Well. I'd better finish up here before they gear up again."

"Are you serious?" Seamus demands.

I'm already moving Stonehenge back into its usual position. The anchor spell won't be visible to anyone without magic—a great advantage of magical embedding. Nothing I can do about the evidence of our presence on the ground here though, or the scratches and chips on some of the stones.

No sooner have I thought that than the grass begins to straighten up, the divots in the ground flattening and pebbles returning to their former glories, and Nariel materializes next to me in a swirl of shadows.

I blink at him, and he smiles lazily at me. "Please, allow me to assist. After all that, I'm somewhat flush."

Ah. His cloak didn't just disguise our excess magic—Nariel was eating it. Should have guessed that, him being a spirit and all.

Seamus swears loudly. "And you feckin' lied to me about this one! No way he's your average spirit."

"I didn't say he was average."

"You damn well know that's the impression you let me have, and you did it on purpose."

I don't pause. I can't. I have to get this anchor up and active and shielded before Evram or Destien is recovered enough to try to get back here and destroy my work—or destroy me—before I can get the other two anchors up and running.

So without looking at Seamus, I ask, "Would you have still brought us here had you known?"

Seamus snaps, "So you'll trust a bloody demon over one of your own kind?"

"I'll trust anyone who will actually lift a finger to help instead of giving up as if nothing can be done, even if it's hard. Which I would have thought you would understand."

Seamus' anger practically radiates off him as he points deliberately at his damaged car. "I did lift a finger, if you'll recall."

"And I'm grateful. But are you going to stand there and tell me you'd have done the same if you hadn't seen me take them on first? If I hadn't proved to you already that I could make a wand work? Because don't think I don't remember you telling me to give up on magic for my own good, Seamus. I never forgot."

"Then why in God's name did you call me, if you thought so little of me?"

I do finally look at him then. "Because I hoped you didn't actually believe it. Are you going to take the wand now, or not?"

"You'd better feckin' give me a wand after all this shite," Seamus growls at me. "Then you'll leave me to my business and get your arse and the problems that will follow you out of here."

"Then it's yours."

I look away and get back to work.

After a moment, Seamus stomps away.

Not only do I not have mages, I can't count on Seamus to help me again, and the only other person maybe on my side is a demon prince.

I can't rely on them. But I also may not be able to win without them, and that is a huge problem.

Nariel steps up next to me. "Will you still give him the wand?"

"Of course I will," I snap.

"Even though he'd as soon as spit on you right now?"

I flick an irritated glance his way. "I keep my promises, even if no one else does. He's done his part. He did more than his part, and you know it. I don't need him to be grateful."

"I do," Nariel says softly. "And he is grateful, or he will be. He's had a shock and needs time to process. Don't give up on him."

"I told you I'm still giving him the fucking wand."

Nariel still doesn't go away. "And I'm delighted you're not going to hoard your power at the first sign of adversity. But I also just listened to you try very hard to push him away. Please accept a little advice from someone who has been, if not where you are, then as close as anyone. You need allies, Sierra, which means you need to give them a chance to be allies."

The centuries-old fallen angel sounds casual, so, so casual, that I'm absolutely sure he does not mean this casually.

I take a breath, thinking that through.

I need allies. I can't actually do this on my own. I desperately don't want to accept that.

Goddammit.

I breathe deeply a few more times before I nod tightly.

My issues are not Seamus' problem. They're mine.

"If I may ask," Nariel says casually, "why didn't you kill them when you had the chance?"

This demon is also my problem.

Maybe my ally, too.

"Because I couldn't count on catching Evram off-guard a second time."

"You could have killed him after you broke his wand."

That's true.

Probably I should have. It would save me a lot of trouble.

I can make an argument that the next person to come after me won't be someone I know as well, won't be someone I can predict.

But that's an excuse and I know it.

Squeamishness about killing people who were absolutely prepared to kill me isn't likely to impress Nariel either, even if it were true, and honestly it isn't.

I killed people in High Earth, working for the grand magus. I'm sure Letty would suggest therapy if she knew, but the prospect of having to explain, or not, and deal with all the fallout of that just seems like a lot. A battle mage counselor in High Earth did talk to me about it the first time, but it's hard to be precisely open about your feelings when you know the slightest sign of weakness could be the justification to deny you everything you always wanted, you know? And while I wouldn't say I'm unbothered by having killed people, it's not something that keeps me up at night.

Doing it at the behest of a man I now consider detestable, that would hypothetically be a bigger problem for me, except that I still agree with how I handled all the situations where I ended up needing to kill someone. Even if, as a child, I absolutely shouldn't have been the one Evram sent. Like, when you're faced with a psychotic murderer on a killing spree who's too powerful for even a cohort to contain safely, you only have so many options to prevent more people from dying.

All of which is to say, I may not have a precisely bog-standard moral compass for a Low Earther. My background and the choices I had to make—that were available to me—at a young age preclude that.

I finish the spell, activating Low Earth's first anchor.

Magic flares all around me as Stonehenge takes in a flood of power all at once, like it should have held for centuries.

I hear Seamus swear, and even my own vision goes white for a minute, standing as I am in the epicenter.

I finally turn to Nariel and say, "I'm not them. And I won't let myself be."

He dissolves into shadows before my eyes.

But then I hear—or feel—the whisper of them at my ear.

Good.