Blue Magic by A.M. Dellamonica

Author:A.M. Dellamonica
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9781429987196
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2012-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

NONE OF THIS WAS going to happen.

Will was in dreams, snatching a few precious minutes with his son while Ellie was elsewhere: he assumed she was with an Alchemite, but couldn’t bear to ask. They had dreamed up the real world. Carson was driving a blue convertible along an empty oceanside roadway.

Carson was happy; he clearly had no idea his mother was dead. If Will could change the past, undo all of this, there was no point in telling him.

“Caarrrr, where are you?” Ellie’s voice cut into the music playing on the stereo. The convertible came to a dead stop and Carson leapt out.

“I’ll try to get away tomorrow, Dad.”

“Maybe we’ll try a fighter plane.”

“That’d be cool.”

Will accelerated away before his daughter could catch them.

Stepping through Bramblegate, he headed to the hotel lobby. “Where’s the globe, Pike?”

“Burned out, lad—overuse.”

“How do I catch up on the news?”

Pike handed him a nickel-sized disk of vitagua-infected hardwood. “We’ve upgraded.”

“What’s this?” It looked like a coin—a tree was carved on one side, a tiny, intricate map of the world on the other. There was a faint hum of life within, a sensation that reminded him of a moth he’d caught in the kids’ room one night, dim electric charge of vitality, clasped safely between his hands.

“Doghouse is up and running in London,” Pike said. “Give it a second, you’ll have everything you need to know.”

“Thanks,” Will said, warming the coin between his fingers.

U.S. news came to him first: At Wendover, the trial was dead in the water. Journalists had moved on to tracking the spate of Fyreman executions of Alchemites, all while debating whether Juanita Corazón had done a good thing or not in preventing Gilead’s attempt to execute Sahara.

Across the world, governments were getting jittery. Astrid’s volunteers had been spreading contamination outside North America for long enough now that it was getting noticed. Contaminated crocodiles had been spotted in Africa. The Australian police had arrested a fugitive Alchemite and were extraditing her to Texas, where the attorney general had a capital murder prosecution all warmed up for her.

A burst of tactical information wrapped up the bulletin: Sahara Knax remained in custody. Gilead Landon’s whereabouts were unknown. Alchemites had been sighted in Elko, Nevada. Roche was in Washington, D.C., meeting with the joint chiefs and the president.

The sooner he remade the past, the better, Will thought.

“… ideally, a combat medic.” Janet’s voice pulled him back to the here and now.

“I’ll get our People Peeps on it,” Pike said cheerily.

Will asked: “Hiring a replacement?”

“An assistant, anyway,” Janet said.

“Nobody would blame you if you wanted off the strike team.”

Her smile was a little worn; for the first time, she looked her age. “After Lucius grabbed me, you mean?”

“You got hurt in Atlanta too. And Sahara’s threat—”

“Implied that next time I won’t be so lucky. Boss ask you to trauma-counsel me?” She led him out into Bigtop, past a crew that had gathered up a few thousand plastic water bottles. They were filling them with liquid magic—part of some dispersal plan, presumably, that Will hadn’t heard about yet.

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