“Stay with me.” His eyes were pure gold, the pupil gone bronze. He held me tightly against him, both arms wrapped around me to keep me on my feet. I was so hypersensitive to magic, I could feel the drops of blood, my blood, falling off the knife he still had clenched in his hand against the small of my back where the gun was safely tucked in my pants.

The cut Zayvion had left on my hand echoed sweet discomfort with each pulse of my heart and a deep, primal part of me wanted him to do it again. There was a reason Blood magic was addictive.

“I’m here.” I smiled, or tried to. “Still here. Did we make it?”

He nodded and released me carefully as if expecting I’d fall if he weren’t touching some part of me.

But I was good with pain. I knew how to compartmentalize it, knew how to deal with it. Only after Zay let me go did I realize it wasn’t just me hurting. He was hurting too.

And I knew why. Since he was no longer a part of the Authority, he had to Proxy his own pain when he used magic. Oh, I suppose he could still Proxy the price of using magic, but Bartholomew was smart enough to have some sort of trace that could track that price back to Zay.

And since Zayvion was a deserter who had very much gone against orders, that meant we were all on our own as far as casting magic. As much pain as we each could endure would be as much magic as we could use.

Fair enough. That’s how Hounds used magic every day.

I took stock of our surroundings. We were in a warehouse with hard electric light pouring down from the tall ceiling. It was so well lit, it took me a second to figure out that we were still underground. And in the center of the room was the cistern.

It didn’t look like a tree. It looked like a huge ball, about one story tall and wide, with carvings worked in iron and lead and glass surrounding it to create a truly stunning piece of art. Spinning from the top of it in an almost joyous arc of metal were glyphwork pipes—very similar to the Beckstrom storm rods. These pipes fitted into the walls and ceiling, and the light caught against them in corners and edges, sparking metallic tones like beveled jewels.

It was beautiful.

I felt like I was standing in the middle of a sculptor’s lifetime masterpiece.

Thank you, Dad said quietly in my mind.

So how do we do this? I asked.

Allison, he began as if knowing I would not want to hear what he was going to say. It would be easiest if you let me speak through you. I could give the information once, and it would be done.

“Well, Beckstrom?” Shame asked. “What’s the plan?”

“I’m going to let Dad tell you.”

Dad moved forward and took what felt like the passenger’s side of my brain. Even though he had enough reach to speak, I could still talk if I wanted to. It was strange. But kind of nice compared to most of the other times I’d willingly shared my body with him.

“You will all need to stand a safe distance away. Here.” He nudged me and I pointed to a metal platform that was about ten steps off the ground and to our left. “The pipes run through every inch of this room, and I do not know when they were last tested for weaknesses. The platform is Warded and set as a null. It is the safest place in the room to use magic.”

Everyone walked over to the platform and took the steps up to it.

I followed and stood behind them. There was room for twenty or more people on the platform.

“The filter shouldn’t be difficult to trigger,” he continued. “You can stand a distance from each other, and cast your spell: Unlock, Cleanse, Element, Ground, and Flow. As each of those spells is cast and maintained, the cistern will open and reveal a control panel. Once that happens, Allison will be able to manually trigger the filters.”

“What?” I said. “Wait. It’s me, Allie. So there’s a switch that has to be flipped by hand? That’s it?”

“What did you expect?” he answered through my mouth. “Magic?”

Okay, I was not going to get into an argument with my own mouth.

“Where’s the switch?” Zayvion asked.

“On the cistern,” he answered. “At the base. Allison will be able to see it clearly.”

“No,” Zay said. “I’ll do it. You—she won’t stay conscious with that much magic being used.”

“Yes,” I said. “Hold on, it’s me, Allie, again. I’ll be fine, Zay. If the cistern is working right, the only magic I’ll feel is the spells you each cast, and mostly I’ll just smell them unless you throw them at me. The cistern holds magic, it isn’t made of magic.”

“And how are you going to fight off the Veiled if they come crawling up out of it?” he asked.

Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.

“What do the Veiled have to do with this?” Victor asked.

“The tainted magic drew them up through the other cistern,” Zayvion said. “We trigger the cistern and it’s very likely we’ll have a room full of mutated Veiled who soak up defensive spells.”

“We can do this fast,” I said. “Out at the other cistern you were trying to open it up to look at the magic it contained. All we’re doing here is opening the control panel, not opening the actual cistern.”

“So,” Shame said, “your da didn’t think maybe a key or a code would have been enough to get into this thing? He had to have five different magic users with five different spells to open up a fuse box? Overkill much?”

“The control panel does more than just trigger the filters,” Dad said. “It is how any and all changes to the system are made. Each cistern has such a device, and there is a master. They all take the same five disciplines to open. It is a way of limiting who and how the magic throughout the entire city can be accessed.”

“All right, fine,” Shame said. “Enough with the history lesson. Let’s get this shit done.” He dug a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it.

Dad rankled at that. He very much did not like being told what to do by Shame. I was pretty sure Shame knew that.

“This is Allie,” I said, trying to head off a fight between Dad and Shame. “Everyone know what to do?” They nodded and stepped apart far enough that each of them had room to cast without their spells colliding.

“Then let’s begin,” I said.

There was a moment of silence as they each cleared their mind of distraction. For the first time since I’d been in the Authority, I watched them all draw a Disbursement for pain. All of them except Shame chose a long, slow burn of pain instead of the short, fast, hard pain I always opted for. Slow burn didn’t work for Hounds. You’d forget how many types of pain you were enduring over the months, take pain meds to cut the worst of it, and pretty soon you’d cast one spell too many, take one pill too many and you’d be dead.

And then they cast.

It was beautiful.

Hayden sliced lines through the air with the edge of his hand, sending out a mercury symbol that pulsed with sparks of gold. Maeve drew just a drop of blood from her pinky, and even though her hand trembled, her casting was strong and true, spooling magic and blood.

Victor, who was one of the most precise magic casters I’d ever seen, fumbled with the spell, canceled it, and cast again, his face a mask of concentration, his hands moving as if he expected magic to burn. But his spell was true, and magic flooded the glyph, liquid, strong.

Shame sucked the heat out of his cigarette, drawing the energy from the burning tobacco, and poured that energy into the first knotted ropes of his spell. He exhaled smoke, and drew the smoke in with his fingers toward his heart, toward the crystal embedded in his chest, and withdrew the soft pink-white energy from the crystal outward, binding, wrapping, and cinching the spell tight.

Zayvion burned with silver and black fire as he worked magic, calm, confident. He cut a spell into the air, and magic leaped at his command to fill it.

Lines, ribbons, fire, smoke, light, and ebony darkness formed from the fingertips of each user and twisted into a stunning expression of art and power. Each spell reached out, growing until it wrapped around the cistern. The metal and glass storage and pipes hummed like plucked strings, creating one harmonic chord.

I only wished it smelled as nice as it looked.

Now, Allison, Dad said. The control panel.

I jogged to the cistern. The control panel seemed to appear in front of it. I knew it hadn’t appeared, but the five spells had somehow uncloaked it. Impressive since I hadn’t even seen the cloaking spell.

No buttons, no switches. There were finely wrought glyphs worked in lead, iron, and glass. I’d never seen any of those glyphs in my life.

“Which one?” I asked, probably out loud, though I couldn’t hear my voice over the sustained note that filled the room and seemed to be growing larger and larger as Zay and the others directed more and more magic into their spells. There was no way this was going to go unnoticed.

There are Mute spells in the walls, floor, and ceiling around us, Dad said. But there are also sensors on each cistern that will trigger this event. Quickly.

Dad showed me which three I’d need to press, all at the same time.

I pressed them.

And was blown back off my feet. I hit something solid with my back and screamed, then threw my arms in front of my face to ward off the blast of light.

No, not light. Magic.

Magic gushed out of the cistern like a broken fire hydrant, flying in all directions, cutting, burning, burrowing into walls and ceiling with squid-like tendrils.

And inside all that magic were the Veiled. Caught in a trance, drunk on power, the Veiled rose by the dozens, wide mouths open, gulping down magic and becoming more and more solid.

Shit.

I got to my feet, yelling at the pain that shattered through my spine as I did.

“What happened?” I yelled at Dad as I limped over to the platform.

He hesitated just half a second. But in the half second I could see the thousands of possibilities that rolled through his mind. The master control panel, he said. Someone wired it to open the cistern if it were accessed. Someone sabotaged my technology. Dad was raging.

“Who?” I yelled. The Veiled hadn’t noticed me yet. I couldn’t see Zay or anyone else on the platform. They were trapped behind a protection wall of a spell that looked like it’d been built to withstand the apocalypse.

Good thing too.

Dad bit off the name like it was a curse: Bartholomew Wray.

It made sense that the head of the Authority would have access to the master control panels of the cisterns in the city. But Wray couldn’t have approved this. Releasing the Veiled, pouring this much poisoned magic unchecked into the city would kill so many people. This had to be an inside job. Someone angry enough at Bartholomew to want him to fail.

Just a couple hours ago, I was on that list. Might still be, but I’d never do this.

“I have to stop it,” I said. “Can I override the break here? Can I shut this cistern down?”

“Where? Where’s the master?”

Which was a problem. Already the Veiled were turning my way, as if noticing a nice dessert to top off their feast. Other Veiled were starting toward the platform, clawing at walls, heading toward the tunnels. They were very soon to be a shuffling, hungry mass of bitty poison loose on the streets.

Holy shit.

Dad ran through possibilities again, and I was almost drowned in the flood of options he sorted. I didn’t know why he was suddenly so open to me, but I didn’t care. I just hoped he had an idea that would work.

There is a disk, an old prototype, he said in a rush. I set it as a monitor. For fluctuations in the crossover flow and ebb from the wells to the networks. If it hasn’t been tampered with it’s on the north wall. And behind that was his anger and righteous indignation that anyone would massacre his inventions.

Which way is north? I asked.

That way. He nudged the back of my eyes, which felt really weird. Behind the platform, away from the cistern and Veiled.

Good enough.

I ran. Where? I thought. Up, down?I could really use a hot/cold right about now.

I didn’t have to ask. It was hanging at about head level, a beautifully wrought iron, lead, and glass frame plate thing with two double crystals in opposite corners. The crystals were pinkish blue, just like the one I’d found on the shelf in his office back in his labs, the one that was now currently in Shame’s chest.

I tugged it off the wall, distantly registering the ridiculousness of it being hung up by nothing more than a nail and some wire.

Now what? I asked him.

I did so and the bottom crystal fell into my hand.

Return? I thought this was going to close the cistern, I said.

Okay, that didn’t make any damn sense, but I wasn’t going to argue.

I dropped the extra crystal in my pocket and pulled out the gun, taking the safety off. I didn’t know what kind of situation I’d be dropping into at the master control. Better to go shooty end out.

I hugged the framed crystal to my chest.

Let me draw the glyph, Dad said. There’s a better chance that my using magic won’t knock you unconscious. Then, gently, Please.

Yes, I said. Do it.

He pushed forward in my mind and motioned me back. I didn’t like being that far out of control of my body, but I understood he was trying to put distance between me and the magic. I could still see out of my eyes, but I couldn’t feel my body, my arms, or any of the rest of me.

Dad drew the glyph with the point of the gun, and magic rushed into it like water following a streambed.

What did you know? He did draw Light.

A thunderclap shattered the world. I felt something heavy wrap around me like a thick blanket between me and the spell. It was Dad. My dad, protecting me from the backlash of magic.

And then I was standing in an office. An office I recognized, facing a familiar desk with a familiar man behind it.

Bartholomew Wray.

“Hello, Daniel,” he said. “I was wondering when you’d answer my calling card.”