Myra’s magic exploded across Silas Addair’s chest, illuminating his stunned face and throwing him backwards from James’ body. Slumped sideways over the room’s low mattress, the doctor did not move. His legs were bent at an odd angle, one arm splayed up and over his head. None seemed broken, but then again, Addair was beyond pain at that moment.
Emboldened, Myra stepped into the room, holding aloft her wand for light as the power to the building quivered and then died. Somewhere, Stephen and Robert had gotten eager hands on whatever controlled the electrical supply to the asylum.
It was in that moment that Doctor Silas Addair stirred.
Lightning glanced through the room, the familiar hiss and sizzle of an electric arc bounding towards Myra across the narrow space. Addair had his weapon in hand, and it was pointed towards her. And towards the door. And towards—
“Aidan!” Turning, Myra slammed shut the door in Aidan and Kady’s astonished faces. The heat of the doctor’s attack crackled over her back and up her arms, stopping to dance menacingly upon the doorway.
Lost to the agony, Myra felt James’ memories melt into her own, flickering through her psyche in kaleidoscopic fashion. Myra forced her way through, holding on to herself, her memories.
The door. The door was locked. No, the door was unlocked. Myra remembered the key, recalled seeing it as she and her companions had approached the room in cautious silence. Something of its dark promise had stuck in her mind as she had listened to Addair’s ramblings to James’ corpse.
“Lock it! For the love of all that is good, lock the door!” she screamed.
Myra felt more than heard the click of the bolt. She saw the truth of it in Aidan’s pale face. She did not need Mind Speech to warn him and Kady back. She simply set her gaze and listened for Addair to take his next shot at her. When he did not, she slowly turned ’round to meet him. Meet the man who she hated above all else. The false mage who’d killed James.
“And who are we? Someone who has power when they oughtn’t. Grit on the lens. A fly in the ointment. Or, if you’re me—” Addair grinned and allowed his features to flicker through a series of different aspects. Race, age, and sex—clay for an expert potter. “If you’re me, you’re a prize. One who elected to be locked in here with me.”
Myra inclined her head, silently standing her ground.
“Don’t they love you enough to want you back? To rescue you from the likes of terrible me? Isn’t that how your team works?”
A shadow of a memory prodded her, and Myra’s eyes flicked to Addair’s hand. “How did you get that scar?”
Surprise colored Addair’s features, and he made a show of covering the thready red scar burned into his wrist. With the motion, it put him at a disadvantage, and Myra leapt forward to disarm the Mien-caster. Like his countenance, the move was a feint. Myra found herself with two unforgiving hands wrapped ’round her neck. They squeezed, prompting the room to flash light then dark to her fear-stricken eyes.
“Who are you?”
“I’m—” Myra croaked and struggled futilely, giving him her weakness.
He released her, pushing Myra away and leveling his weapon at her once more.
“I’m Myra Wetherby. Agent of Magical Intelligence.” Myra stepped to the side, quick as Kady and deft as James. Without looking, she grabbed for the electrified wand and thrust down hard with her elbows, catching Addair across the wrists. Something snapped. She whirled, breaking another of the doctor’s bones with a sideways blow to a knee.
And, as she had hoped and prayed, Kady’s gift was available for Myra’s use.
Materializing into the hallway an instant later, Myra whirled breathless and triumphant upon the prison of Doctor Silas Addair. Turning, she thrust his electrified wand into the handle of the metal door, jamming it so that the power flowed without ceasing.
Aidan and Kady both caught Myra as she stepped backwards, stumbling in her shock and terror. “James.”
She hadn’t thought of James. Of the body and of the honor due M.I.’s fallen agent.
Sparks, blue and white and blinding, glared against the bars of the tiny window and peered through the cracks at the door jamb. Addair’s wand crackled and spit, a most unforgiving jailor. And through it all, the wails of M.I.’s one-time natural philosopher screamed his last breaths.
“Leave him. There’s none of James within that body now.” Aidan gave Myra’s shoulder a gentle pull, turning her away from the horror of Silas’ death sentence.
“We see to the living first,” Kady added in her own hard logic. “We’ve Julius to think of, and you’re the fastest route to him.”
Not wanting to look away, not wanting to seem as though she was running from what she had both started and finished with respect to Silas Addair, Myra simply closed her eyes and tried to find her Empathy so as to locate Griggs. What she saw within herself startled her.
James’ magic, mingled with Myra’s own, was darker than she would have ever thought it when viewed from the outside. There was light. But there was, too, an anti-light. And it was not lesser. Not nearly. It distracted Myra from her own gift, and she opened her eyes, shaking her head. “I cannot feel anything.”
“Come. Let’s away from . . . this.”
Myra nodded, unwilling to explain to her friends that Addair’s screams and the crackle of his power would follow her everywhere from then on. Horror like that was not easily set aside or walked away from.
But then, the Empathy came easily after all. In fact, it seemed as though Julius’ own voice could be heard echoing through the quiet, dark corridors of Broadmoor. Myra looked up to see patches of brightness lighting the walls from somewhere around the corner.
Three wands were raised in unison. Myra, Aidan, and Kady skidded to a halt as Stephen and Robert came round the corner, supporting Julius Griggs between them and carrying ord lanterns. With a cry, Myra felt her dead heart leap within her. She ran to the trio, noting with quick eyes both what was wrong and not wrong with M.I.’s informant. A mangled ankle, wrinkled and stained shirt, and a clotting of blood further darkening his mop of hair seemed to be the worst of it.
“They tell me you’re not what you seem to be, Myra.” Julius’ voice worked, if only in breathy bursts. Myra revised her assessment of his health downward, adding in the probability of cracked ribs . . . or worse. He was quick to reassure her. His idiotic smile was no worse for wear, and this he fixed upon Myra with generosity. “I like that in a gal.”
She rolled her eyes. “You do know that it was Benjamin with whom you’ve been corresponding, yes?”
Stephen’s eyes were upon Myra. “Addair?”
“Dead,” Kady volunteered with almost too much eagerness.
Julius looked to the Kinetic. “And his men?”
“Scattered.”
“The ones here,” Aidan was equally quick to remind them.
“Laurel.” Julius’ statement was not even a question. That he likely knew something of Addair’s plans for the Ways-walker was evident in the pain which lanced across his face.
Accordingly, Aidan was pointed in his answer, “Next on our list. We figured her safe enough after she was abducted from Grafford House and proceeded here first.”
Julius nodded. “The rest of you he wanted dead. But her . . . she was key to his plans. A new generation of wizards with immunity to Violectric Dampening. Mages like he was trying—unsuccessfully—to create through his experiments. Mages without madness in them; ones he could control.” He paused, darting nervous eyes around the team. He was clearly fearful of voicing his next question, and this he gave to Myra herself: “James?”
“Silas got what he wanted there.” Myra set her jaw to the tears that threatened and found they retreated at her command.
Stephen still had questions of his own, and these he voiced as they walked back towards the entryway. “Laurel. What was he planning to do with her?”
“Develop another elixir, I believe. One based on the same principles used for his first cure for Violectric Dampening. A new formula to replace that which he had developed from Florence’s—”
“Gift. Using blood magic, yes.” Robert stepped in and forced a redirection of Julius’ explanation. “We don’t need a history lesson.”
Stephen nodded, pressing further, “Were they taking her here?”
“I believe this was not the sole place Addair felt comfortable. He had an estate just southwest of here—a pledge of loyalty from of one of his Children. Close. I believe it was there he was to take her, near but not so much as to raise suspicion. He did, as you gather, presume total victory and did not anticipate Myra being one of your kind.” Again, Julius flashed his quirked smile to Myra, this time adding the benefit of a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, well,” Myra brushed past the uncomfortable compliment, “you’re welcome.”
Taking off at a run, Myra hurried to Benjamin who was still administering to those injured in M.I.’s first incursion into Broadmoor. He smiled at her as she approached, but his heart was out of it. He seemed heavy, more grounded than usual. He turned back to his work, murmuring, “In a minute, Thales. Then we can go. We must undo what we can.”
“Myra, can you seek her with your Empathy?” Robert had caught her up. The rest were close at his heels.
Myra turned to him. She had already considered that difficulty. “Yes and no. It’s as though Laurel is both everywhere and nowhere.”
“She’s in the Ways.”
“I can feel her in here”—Myra lifted a hand to her chest. Laurel was in the Empath’s heart; in her magic—“but she’s not close; I can no longer use her gift.”
“But if we were to get close? Close enough for your Empathy to sense her corporeal self?” Benjamin joined the conversation. White-faced, the hospital orderly to whom he had been tending stared at the group of people standing over him. No one bothered to explain, nor did they bother to hide what it was they were up to. Wands were produced, sparks igniting on tips.
“It’s very likely our only chance for now,” Myra agreed to the wisdom of the plan.
“You’ll have greater spread if you fly upon the Ways that fuel the TurnKey.” Sometime during the exchange, Aidan had found a cleaning cupboard. He held out a broom to Myra. “The rest of us can ride below on Robert’s horses.”
“I’d . . . I’d rather not chance it alone,” Myra admitted weakness at long last. “I can only share my gift with one, spent as I am. Who of you wants to fly with me?”