Chapter 21 — A Return to Form

"Do I believe she was a good leader? I cannot say. Certainly whatever goals she held went unfulfilled. At the end of the Omega epoch, Rachel DuValle saved my life. Some may argue she allowed it to occur, by not taking more decisive action. More ignorant voices will say she herself set events in motion. This is foolish. A leader should not be blamed for events they could not have foreseen. His power was beyond our comprehension. The true measure of leadership is in the unexpected. In that, Rachel reacted as best we could hope: by stopping the threat. I do not know what means she employed to accomplish that end, but since that evil man is now a pillar of smoke in the sky, I trust she made the right choice."

~Cinza, The Rallsburg Diaries

Jeremy snapped his phone shut and walked back into the bedroom. "Well, we're fucked."

"I knew this would happen," Rachel sighed, after he explained what he'd just learned from Hailey.

"Really? Is that a magic thing?" asked Maddie.

"No. But it happened last time too. As soon as I feel like we might actually have a chance to prepare, it gets torn to shreds anyway." Rachel sighed. "How much time do we have?"

Jeremy was already scrolling through reports on his phone. He didn't bother with the news, going straight to his email box and news feed from work. "Jesus, even we don't fuckin' know. They're deploying a team to the damn publisher's office right now."

Maddie laughed. "Bunch of clowns."

He shook his head. "Nah, this is everyone in the Bureau. Even the good ones. How the fuck…"

Rachel had a laptop open as well, scrolling through pages of material. "It looks like it was presented as a trashy exploitative fiction novel. They didn't publicize it at all until the last minute." She shook her head. "It's to be released on Tuesday."

"Four days?" Jeremy asked, while Maddie swore violently.

"Yeah." Rachel kept tapping away at the keyboard. "Looks like Hailey made a splash, too. She's front-page news."

"Well, we gotta get in there," said Maddie.

"What?"

"If you want to take control of the story."

Rachel shook her head. "We're not ready yet. We don't have a plan for handling integration, or for new laws to deal with the awakening process, misdemeanors, felonies, anything. The economic impact. There's so much we need to plan for."

"And this motherfucker just threw your whole plan out the window," said Jeremy with a shrug.

"He's banking on the idea that the first person to reveal themselves is gonna have control of the whole story, and he's probably right," Maddie continued. "Everyone's gonna remember the first couple awakened. The more there are, the less notable. Hailey's gonna be immortal at this rate, and whoever did this is gonna be right behind."

"Who is it, anyway?" asked Jeremy. "Any ideas?"

"No need," Rachel answered grimly. "Hailey and I came to the same conclusion. It's Nate Price."

"The rich kid?"

"Formerly rich kid," Maddie corrected. "After that whole business reclaiming his family's estate."

"Oh, I loved watching that."

"What?" asked Rachel.

"Courtney ate a ton of shit for it," Jeremy explained, grinning.

"Our half-sister, the governor," Maddie explained, as Rachel continued to stare blankly.

"You're related to the governor?"

Jeremy shrugged. "You didn't know?" He was used to Rachel knowing seemingly everything already.

"I never made the connection…" She trailed off. "That might be an approach we can use."

"...Fuck no," Jeremy sighed.

"You want to go through our sister?" asked Maddie dubiously.

"Well, I don't really want to be on TV…" Rachel said, frowning. "But if we want to have some kind of influence on where this is heading, we need to connect with the actual people in power."

"Ah, so you want the lobbyists," said Jeremy sagely. Maddie punched him in the arm.

"Offer to work for her," said Will. They all looked over at him, sitting up in the hospital bed. A laptop floated over to him and landed neatly beside him. The keys started tapping away slowly on their own. They waited while he worked up to another sentence. "They'll need a way to find criminal magic users. I can do that."

"...Are you sure?" Rachel asked. "You still can't walk."

"I know." He winced. "It'll still be through you. Same as before."

"Before what?" asked Jeremy.

Rachel took a breath before answering. "He means when I was on the Council. No one else knew about Will's affinity, or even that he was awakened. Whenever someone wanted an affinity reading or help locating magical activity, I'd act as a buffer." Rachel looked at him with a mixture of concern and admiration. "You really want to go through all that again?"

"This is important," he said, clearly holding back a cough. "You need something to offer."

"He's not wrong," said Maddie. "Without a card on the table, you're just a recently dead girl. No real connections or authority to back you up. You gotta bring the big guns."

"I am an awakened," Rachel pointed out. "That's still an extreme rarity in the world—one in seventy-six million, and most of us are in hiding. There's twenty times more billionaires than there are awakened."

"Yeah, but that doesn't just get you a voice in the government. It's all about who you know, or how much money you've got. Nothing else." Maddie shook her head. "You know me, but that's about it. We can take it the slow way, where I start introducing you and bringing you into the right circles, but if you can bring a card like that to the table—" She nodded at Will. "—you're gonna have real power, real fast."

"Hang on," said Jeremy. "No offense, but he's stuck in that bed, right?"

"Mostly," Will replied, coughing again.

"This doesn't feel right."

"I don't have to be there—" Will said, before getting cut off again by another coughing fit.

"He can use the spell from quite a ways away," explained Rachel, pouring Will a glass of water. "Far further now than he used to, since he doesn't have much else to do stuck in bed all day. He's had a lot of practice."

"So you'll just be sitting up here in Vancouver, totally alone?" Jeremy shook his head. "If they can find two guys in the middle of the fuckin' woods, they'll find you here sooner or later."

"He won't be alone," said Rachel.

"Your parents are real nice folks, Rachel, but I—"

"I didn't mean my parents." She nodded to the doorway.

Three people were standing there — high school ages, perhaps a year or two older. Jeremy couldn't be sure. One short-ish girl, with long blonde dreadlocks and a huge birthmark on her pale face, flanked on either side by identical twin men with short-cropped black hair and equally bored expressions.

"Sorry it took so long," said the girl.

"That's fine. Thanks for coming."

"Who the hell are you?" asked Jeremy, standing up. He was shocked they'd managed to enter the room without him noticing. I'm fucking slipping…

"Are you that FBI guy?" asked Dreadlock-girl.

"Yeah, he is," chimed in the left twin.

"Definitely the guy," agreed the right twin.

"She's Solveig, and the twins are Landon and Logan," explained Rachel, sitting back down in her chair next to Will. "They work for me."

"Whatever she needs," agreed Solveig.

"Yeah, we're Rachel's Rangers," added the left twin.

His brother glanced at him. "Thought we agreed that name was stupid, Landon."

"It's growing on me."

"Are they…" Maddie started.

Solveig grinned. She held up a hand and snapped her fingers. An empty glass on the bedside table shattered.

Jeremy and Maddie both leapt to their feet, started. The dreadlocked girl's smile only got wider, as she snapped her fingers again. The shards on the table gathered back up and reformed, merging back into a single glass again.

"They are," answered Rachel unnecessarily. "I'm helping pay for their college."

"We'd do it anyway," said Solveig. "I'm taking the year off to do magic."

"Online classes," added Logan, and Landon nodded in agreement.

"Your education comes first," said Rachel pointedly.

"Nuh-uh. Your safety, Will's safety, then our education," said Solveig.

"Also her parents, our families," added Logan.

"The city, the country," continued Landon.

"Ourselves."

"We got it, guys," said Maddie testily.

Solveig smiled. "They'll all be totally fine while you're gone. Wherever you're going."

"Seattle," Rachel replied.

"Olympia, actually," corrected Maddie.

"We'll need to stop in Seattle first. I have to meet with someone on the way."

"How long will you be gone?" asked Solveig.

"As long as it takes," Rachel replied, with a touch of melancholy. She leaned down and kissed Will on the forehead. He lifted a hand awkwardly to pat her on the back. "I need to go pack."

Rachel left the room, and her group followed her out. Maddie left too, muttering something about getting a bite to eat before they drove all the way back to Seattle. Jeremy and Will were the only ones left, and Will was already back on his laptop. He didn't ever actually touch it. By all appearances, the keys were pressing themselves, while his eyes flicked around the screen. Still, he could type faster than Jeremy ever could, so he didn't seem to be slowed down in the slightest.

"Hey, Will," Jeremy started, taking a seat by his bed.

"Hmm?"

"I gotta know. Are you really okay with this?"

"What?"

Jeremy shrugged. "With us just usin' you. You're stuck up here solo and we'll just be usin' you whenever we need a readin', right? Sounds like a bad deal to me."

Will frowned. "I can't do much else."

"Yeah, but—"

"I've got a talent nobody has. I've got Knowledge affinity. That's rare. If I can do some good, I will."

Jeremy nodded. "All right. I just wanted to make sure."

"I'm supporting Rachel," he added. "That makes me happy."

"Well lucky you." Jeremy frowned. "Actually, I had another question for you."

"Hm?"

"If you're a Knowledge guy, does that mean you can figure out other magic like that? Other… uhh, spells?"

"Maybe."

"Right." Jeremy dug through his pockets for the stone. He set it in Will's outstretched hand. "Tell me what this thing is doin', then."

Will frowned, his eyes locked on the small stone with the rune-like carving in the middle. Jeremy wanted to know what that meant too, but he couldn't think of a way without taking a photo and uploading it to the internet—and fuck that. Lani and Maddie didn't have a clue either.

"I'm not sure," he said finally, but a moment later his eyes widened. "Oh!"

"What?" asked Rachel, who had walked into the room at the same moment.

"It detects magic," said Will, before another cough overtook him. A glass of water hovered into his hand, which he took a drink from awkwardly before continuing. "Not very well, but it works."

"Where did you get that?" she asked Jeremy.

"...Stole it off a guy who was stalking a kid down in Tacoma. One of the ones from the bar standoff." Jeremy shrugged. "We guessed what it could do. They were using it to pick out your people in the bar, so they could execute 'em." He shivered. "Cold as fuck."

"Omega must have given it to them…" Rachel murmured, picking it up from Will and turning it over in her hand. "Those symbols."

"Yeah. What's that mean?"

"Truth. Jinsil," she added. "It's in Korean."

"...Okay?"

"I don't know why. Maybe he was learning Korean. I didn't really know him very well." Rachel sighed. "Specifically, it refers to a sort of general truth of the world. Like physics, or religion in some contexts. Something that does not change and will never change. Universal and rigid."

"So you carve this thing onto a rock and it'll tell if people got magic?"

"No. Symbols like this have nothing to do with magic. He was always a bit theatrical." Rachel handed it back to him. "You can use it, then?"

"Yeah."

"That is what's extraordinary. Something only Omega and one other ever accomplished, magical objects that anyone could use even if they weren't awakened."

"How's that work, then?"

"Well, as it was explained to me, the object is actually imbued with specific instructions. Almost like a program. It can keep operating so long as it can draw enough energy to power its function." Rachel sat back down next to Will, taking his hand and squeezing it. "The problem is, energy can only be drawn from a willing person."

"Doesn't sound like a problem to me," Jeremy muttered.

Rachel smiled. "You're right. That's probably a blessing. Anyway. Since an enchanted object needs energy to keep working, if it's too far away from a willing user for too long, the spell will collapse and fade. There's a few theories about how to get around this, by drawing energy from other sources somehow, but for now all we can do is a willing human being."

"But this spell's still here," Jeremy concluded.

"Exactly. Somehow, Omega was able to imbue it in such a way that the spell is still there, long after anyone was actively using it and long after he died."

She took a breath. A darkness flashed across her face.

I know that look. That girl's seen some shit…

"Not only that," Rachel continued, "this is a Knowledge spell, which has always been one of the hardest for anyone to use outside of their own affinity. The fact that anyone can use this, even those with no magical experience or training whatsoever, is intimidating to say the least."

"And those fuckin' golems," he muttered.

"Exactly," Rachel agreed. "For all his faults, there's no denying that Omega was one of the greatest spellcasters in the world."

"Hey Rachel?" Solveig had poked her thin, sharp-angled face around the doorframe into the room. "Car's all loaded."

"Thank you." Solveig disappeared again. Rachel glanced over at Jeremy. "Could I have a minute alone with Will before we leave?"

Jeremy stood up. "Yeah, 'course. I'll be waiting outside."

He left, and the door swung quietly shut behind him on its own. I'm never fuckin' getting used to that. He wandered back into the main room, where Rachel's trio of followers was standing guard by the front door, clearly taking their roles far too seriously. Her parents were eyeing them with suspicion.

"I'm guessin' she didn't tell you about them either?" he asked Andrea, pouring himself a cup of coffee as he did.

She shook her head. "They're just a bunch of kids," she murmured.

"So's Rachel," Jeremy pointed out.

"My daughter's different."

"Uh huh."

"No, I mean…" Andrea trailed off. "She's different than before."

"She's been through a lot." Way too much.

"She's still trying to do some good though. That's something, right?"

Christ, am I a counselor now or something? "Yeah. She's doin' good."

"You'll look out for her?" asked Eric.

"Both of us will," replied Maddie, who'd been leaning against the refrigerator. "I'll be with her every step of the way."

Jeremy nodded. "If all goes accordin' to plan, she's gonna be the first head of state or some shit."

"We never did pick a name for this new appointee," Maddie explained with a shrug. "Something for the drive, I guess."

Rachel emerged from the bedroom a moment later, a leather bag over her shoulder with a gold buckle on the front and an eight-pointed star embroidered above it. She hugged her mother and father goodbye, and Jeremy lead the way back to Lani's car.

Back to America, back to Seattle, back to normal.

Fuck me, I wish.