did. I said I would be good bait, and I was. I said to let Albie come and fight with us, and he turned out to be the reason we won. And I was the only one who was so convinced the Dark One might not be dead that I fucking scuba-dived in the Chicago River—a deeply unpleasant experience, might I add—and now, yeah, I expect you to believe that my gut isn’t wrong on this one! Is that really so insane?”
Esther stared at Sloane, her eyes full of tears. Sloane thought she might always remember Esther this way, her arms slack at her sides, her eyes shining, the moon glowing behind her, no matter what happened to them after this.
“Sloane,” Matt said, and Sloane tensed in anticipation, though she wasn’t sure why.
“Your gut never led us astray—before,” Matt said. “But now it tells you all kinds of things. That you’re still a captive of the Dark One in the middle of the night when you’re at home in our bed. That you could trust that Mox guy, who probably sold you out to the Resurrectionist. That you needed to go visit Genetrix’s Bert—”
“Fuck you,” Sloane said in a low voice. “Don’t you dare use a fucking night terror against me like that. You’re just pissed because my gut told me to dump you, because of course there must be something wrong with my head if I don’t want to marry the goddamn saintly Chosen—”
“God, Sloane, this is the fucking problem with you, you don’t know how to fight without drawing blood, and you never have!”
“Both of you, stop,” Esther said, and she choked back a sob. “I can’t take it. I need to get home. Okay? I need to. My mom is dying. So why don’t you stop bickering like a bunch of children and tell me the fastest way to do that?”
Matt and Sloane stared at each other. His jaw shifted like he was working on a particularly tough bite of meat. Sloane just felt tired. She looked out over the river. She no longer remembered why she was so convinced that the Dark One was still alive, that he had swum through the barrier between universes instead of dying, only that she was . . . and no one, not even Esther, believed her.
“Fight the Resurrectionist,” Matt said. “We kill him, they send us home. That’s our best bet.”
“Sloane?” Esther said.
Sloane felt the same wrongness she felt around the Needle, like all her innards were in the wrong places, like the world had turned into a nightmare and she didn’t remember falling asleep.
“Fine,” she said. “Sure. Let’s do it.”
But she wasn’t sure if she’d said it because she meant it or if she just wanted Esther to stop crying.
Part
Three
EXCERPT FROM
The Manifestation of Impossible Wants: A New Theory of Magic
by Arthur Solowell
What, then, is a desire? We may begin by stating what it is not. A desire is not a whim. It is not an idle wish concocted on a sunny afternoon. A desire is a profundity of want, a deep and abiding craving that cannot be denied. It is for this reason that it is impossible to force someone to perform an act of magic one does not truly wish to do. The magic requires desire, and a desire cannot be threatened or manipulated into being.
It may become clear to us, as we watch magic develop and change in our world, that certain people are not to be trusted with the wealth of power that magic offers. This is not because they are wicked, but because they are damaged beyond repair. They may proceed through the world as if their desires conform to those of the healthy and functional among us, but that may not be the case; when they do magic, their true selves will be laid bare before them and before us all.
In other words, magic is a mirror. It reflects us back to ourselves, and we may not always like what we see.
TOP SECRET
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
TO: Director, Central Intelligence Agency
FROM: Thomas Wong, Praetor of the Council of Cordus
SUBJECT: Project Delphi Prophecy
As requested, I have included the exact wording of the prophecy of [redacted], code name Sibyl, made on 16 February 1999, verified by the Council of Cordus:
It will be the end of Genetrix, the unmaking of worlds.
Something stands between Genetrix and its twin. The Dark One will excise it, and the worlds will be crushed together, and that will be the end of