Anomaly (Causal Enchantment #4)(27)
Author: K.A. Tucker

Her fingers curled around her neck to remove her headpiece when Caden said quietly, “You should keep it on.”

Mage paused. “And why is that?”

Lilly—it was impossible to mistake her tiny size, drowning in the suit—maneuvered casually, doing a sweep of our surroundings.

Yes, there was definitely something happening.

“Has Isaac told you something?” So help me God if they were hiding anything from us, I would—

“Viggo is following us,” Evangeline said in a low voice.

The hairs on the back of my neck spiked. “Did you see him?”

“No. But I can feel him. He’s close.”

I felt Mage’s questioning gaze through her mask. No, I couldn’t sense him. Was this real?

Evangeline tilted her head slightly, as if to catch a scent. “He’s watching us right now. He’s … angry. He can’t figure out which one of us is Caden. He’s afraid he’ll lose his chance if he gives too much warning.”

I sighed, but it held no relief. Only a sense of foreboding. I wanted to dismiss Evangeline’s warning as simple paranoia. Everyone was on edge after how quickly things had spiraled out of control with this plan. Again. But after what I’d witnessed with the injured girl, and how Evangeline was able to break the compulsion spell with that soldier, I could not ignore it. If Viggo was in fact lurking in the shadows, that meant our attention was now divided, our safety compromised.

“What do you want to do?” I directed the question to anyone but really, to one.

“I think there’s no way he suspects that we know and we need to keep it that way,” Evangeline said. Slow nods prodded her on. “I think we keep heading toward the subway site and the plan. And when he shows himself …” Her voice suddenly turned hard. “We need to be ready.”

*

Miles of rubble and ash stretched ahead of us, canopied by the remnants of a looming, thick cloud. I imagined that beyond was a sky full of twinkling stars, the likes of nothing New York City had seen in over a hundred years, thanks to its city glow. If any stars existed beyond that cloud, though, they wouldn’t be shining down on us tonight.

In the distance, the edges of the city rose again where the blast’s radius had lost its awesome power. But in between here and there … nothing.

Central Park was gone, not a hint of a tree or statue to identify it.

The tall, luxurious buildings that built the Manhattan skyline, gone.

All evidence of a thriving city, gone.

On the only bright side, there was nowhere for Viggo to hide. But there was also nowhere for us to hide. He could watch us from afar and pounce if we were distracted.

“Where are we exactly?” Julian asked as we stood in a semicircle, taking in the devastation. I could only imagine how much worse it would look in daylight.

I knew that Julian’s question wasn’t so much about where we were as it was about where the broker building from Viggo’s video was. The problem was, I couldn’t answer it.

There wasn’t a single marker left.

I honestly don’t think it mattered. Judging by the fear and the finality in his voice, Julian might have just come to terms with reality.

Amelie could not have survived.

“I don’t see any fledglings,” Lilly murmured, kicking away at a chip of stone.

“They might still be buried deep, if they survived.”

“How will we get to them?” Fiona asked.

Good question. I had planned on using my magic to clear a passage in. Now though, with the witches watching closely, I needed an alternative.

Chapter Twenty-Five – The Fates

“She is getting too close.” Unda’s kaleidoscopic eyes flashed with fear.

“Relax. They are mere mortals. They are not clever enough to comprehend the magnitude of this.” Incendia patted the air soothingly. In truth, he was just as apprehensive, but when Unda became aggravated, waves typically started crashing around the vessel. As the God of Fire, Incendia naturally despised water. He’d prefer not to deal with it right now.

“We should end this game now.” Terra leaned forward to study the image pool.

“Are you saying that you are willing to lose?” Incendia was determined to win. This was his opportunity. If their players were pitted directly against each other, they all knew that Terra’s player would willingly concede. They wouldn’t allow a game to end with that kind of self-sacrifice.

Terra’s eyes shimmered with rage. She hated to lose but she knew there was no other choice. “And if I concede to this and you win? That doesn’t solve our problem.”

“After I win the game,” Incendia eyed the small world sitting atop the pedestal, “we no longer have use for that world or anything in it.”

And so it was agreed.

Chapter Twenty-Six – Evangeline

I didn’t need to look at Julian’s face to feel the despair radiating from him. Even with healing, even with compulsion, I knew that what had truly been driving him all this time was a shred of hope.

That hope was gone.

“We should have stolen one of those trucks,” Mage murmured. “We could have detected the movement underground. I can’t even tell where the station was.”

Listening to Mage’s words, I closed my eyes to block out the unsightly mess before me, trying to picture what Manhattan used to look like. But the innocent memories of months ago had been replaced with images of carnage I’d run through nights ago as I was whisked away into this fantasy, one that quickly morphed into a nightmare.

I wanted to experience that innocent awe again, just one more time.

If I inhaled deeply enough, I could still catch the more unpleasant odors—the exhaust fumes mixed with cold air and whiffs of sewage—coupled with the more pleasant scents—street car vendors, wafts of perfume flowing from hair salons as patrons pushed through the door.

If I squeezed my eyes tight enough, I could see the busy streets stretched out ahead of me, the bustle of people and cars at all hours of the day and night.

If I listened hard enough, I could hear the angry horns and splashes of slush against moving tires, and the pleasant chatter of friends moving along the sidewalk.

All the tiny details that were so easily dismissed and ignored in everyday life.

I didn’t want to open my eyes. I wanted to absorb this feeling—a part of the past now, a time when Amelie was still alive and hope still existed. But I needed to focus on the future, as dismal as it may seem. And so I dared open my eyes.

I gasped.

“Do you see it?” I whispered as I took in the long stretch of street. To my right, a sign hung overhead, the streetlight illuminating it. “Fifty-Seventh Street,” I read it aloud. Taking steps forward, I pointed to my left. “And Central Park is just over there.” I couldn’t see it past the stretch of tall buildings blocking my view.

All perfectly intact.

The city was no longer in ruins.

“What is she talking about?” Bishop said. “Sofie?”

“Is she hallucinating?” Fiona asked.

Maybe I was.

Their footsteps echoed as they trailed me. The streets were deserted of people and cars but they were clean, free of debris and victims. I moved as I would over smooth terrain, though I knew that it was not.

“Evangeline, what did you just do?” Sofie called out behind me.

I didn’t stop to explain. I couldn’t explain. “I just wished that I could see the city again. And now I can.” Come to think of it, everything I’d discovered about what I could do was based on what I wanted to do.

Sofie muttered in French—if I had to guess, it was a curse—before she said to the others, “Follow her and see where this goes. And keep your senses peeled for him.”

They followed me as I ran along the street, asking Sofie for directions as I came to intersections. The rest of the time, I pondered this strange magic that Sofie swore was not her kind of magic. When I’d wanted Julian—my friend and not the crazed maniac about to attack me—I compelled him and he came back. When I met Dixon, I felt the overwhelming urge to heal his leg and I’m pretty sure I did that. I knew that I’d helped that little boy in the car crash because I saw it with my own eyes. I demanded that Julian never look at a human with intent to harm again. And he hadn’t.

When I took my friends’ pain away after Amelie’s loss, it wasn’t because I was following a set of rules or weaving some elaborate spell, or begging the Fates to grant my prayers. I wanted to do it.

And it was done.

Could it be that simple?

And here, I wanted to see the city for what it was. Now I could.

Was that all it would take? A thought, a desire, a wish? If that was the case, what kind of magic was it? It seemed to have no bounds.

And if it had no bounds …

I could have anything I wanted.

Would it be an endless parade of wishes, though?

When we passed the hauntingly beautiful Fifth Avenue building that had held so many secrets, I slowed. It was wonderful to see it standing again, the wrought iron grates along the lower windows and intricate plaster detail stirring nostalgia. For the horrors that had transpired within these walls, I’d also discovered a new life within it.

If I pushed through the doors, would I find the dreamlike atrium inside?

I moved again, picking up speed until running, everyone tailing me. I didn’t slow again.

Not until the address that Viggo had taunted us with—firmly emblazoned in my head—appeared before my eyes. A sleek, all-glass building of no more than twenty floors stretched into the night sky. “This is it.” Based on what Sofie had mapped out on the kitchen table, we were just one block over from the subway construction site.

“Are you sure? What if you’re wrong?” The hollowness in Julian’s voice told me that the real site—not the one through my eyes—held no promise.

With great reluctance, I willed myself to see reality. My eyes opened to a heap of rubble. My stomach clenched. The eerie silence only seemed to grow as I watched Julian step forward, climbing over brick and concrete and steel.

Ripping his mask off, Julian cast it aside. “Maybe you’re wrong.” He set his jaw in a way that I knew guaranteed only heartbreak.

I took a step forward, shifting hunks of concrete this way and that. A piece of metal pinged against a steel beam. Glancing down, dismay turned my stomach. Holding the metal plaque with the number of the building up in front of me, all I could offer my friend was the truth. “I’m sorry, Julian. I’m not wrong.”

His eyes drifted from the plaque to my face to the plaque, and then to the pile of rubble beneath him. “She’s somewhere in here, isn’t she?” I don’t think it was meant as a question. Reaching down, he began tossing chunks of concrete, each one sailing like children’s building blocks. Several times we had to dive away to avoid their path.

Sofie casually turned to scope out the area around us. Though I couldn’t see her face, I knew her eyes were narrowed. “Do you sense him?”

I could. Like a piece of food stuck in my tooth, I was ever aware of his presence. I also knew he hadn’t kept up once we’d begun running. “He’s about four miles back.” I knew it as well as I knew my own name.

Perhaps because I wanted to know it.

“He could close that distance in under two minutes,” Sofie said as she pulled off her mask, tossing it to the ground next to Mage’s. “But I suppose it’s far enough for now.” Turning to face me, her eyes weighed me down like bricks on my shoulders, a mixture of apprehension and curiosity and awe swirling around her. Could she read me as readily as I could read her? Or was this another bonus ability?

“You are full of surprises lately, Evangeline.”

You’re telling me, Max grumbled in my head, the rumble of his voice igniting a spark of thrill. His silent treatment had been killing me!

“I didn’t know that I could do that,” I said.

Fiona and Bishop, their masks also cast away, climbed on the pile and helped Julian toss the wreckage away.

“I have to help them,” Caden whispered. When I turned to look at him, a sheen coated his eyes. That bit of hope he’d been holding onto, that Amelie had somehow gotten away, that she was still alive …

Gone.

“They will not find what he’s looking for in this rubble,” Mage murmured softly.

No, they wouldn’t.

But what if the rubble were no longer there?

If this magic was delivered by a genie and this was my third wish, I knew in an instant what that wish would be.

Stooping to pick up a small hunk of concrete, I wondered if this was possible. I wondered if it was even sane to try. No matter what, I knew it was worth it.

Closing my eyes, I let my fingers rub against the hard matter. How would one reconstruct this building? Like building a Lego house. One block at a time. I’d seen building constructions before. The concrete blocks and support beams and the cranes. They were built in layers.