midair around Matt’s body flew toward him and coalesced into a sphere of water. He ushered the ball of water forward so it hovered over the street, then dropped it into the gutter with a gesture. Once it hit the ground, it collapsed, becoming shapeless liquid again.
Sloane had seen magic before: a force like a hurricane that tore people apart from every direction; an unstable leap of flames in Albie’s hands; even the strange light that had emanated from Matt’s Golden Bough. But she had never seen it manipulated with such delicacy, such magnificent precision.
Matt was dry now, his shirt crisp. Nero turned to Esther and Sloane.
“Who’s next?”
Matt, Esther, and Sloane crammed into the back seat of the limousine. Sloane pinched the burgundy velour between her thumb and index finger and looked out the window. They were driving around the bend of Upper Wacker toward Lake Shore Drive. Moonlight rippled on the lake. The jagged skyline was mostly unfamiliar but with some touchstones Sloane recognized: the vertical white lines of the Aon Center; the glass slant of the Crain Communications building, like a carrot cut on the bias; the Ionic columns of the Field Museum.
“What are those things?” Matt said, pointing at the apparatus on Nero’s hand and then Aelia’s. Aelia’s hand rested on her kneecap, so Sloane could see in better detail the thick cuff wrapped around her wrist, with delicate chains attached to it that followed the lines of her fingers, finishing in a thimble-like cap at the end of each fingertip. Red beads were scattered along each chain, and a red jewel was set into the middle of the cuff.
Aelia held up her hand. “These are called siphons,” Aelia replied. “They channel magical energy.”
“Magic,” Matt repeated. “But they look like tech.”
“Actually,” Esther pointed out, “they kind of look like jewelry.”
“They are all three,” Aelia said, looking puzzled. “Magic, technology, and adornment. Are these things at odds where you are from?”
“Our technology doesn’t use magic,” Matt said. “We’re some of the only people who have ever wielded it, and even we were only just beginning to understand how to manipulate it.”
And it had killed Albie, Sloane thought bitterly.
Aelia turned to Nero and arched an eyebrow at him. Nero ducked his head.
“Fascinating,” Aelia said. “Our integration of both elements is not seamless. There are some who insist that technology should advance without magic in case magic proves to be a finite resource. And there are even some who view the use of magic as the work of the devil. But this is a siphon, a triumph of technology and magic both.” She turned her hand over, made a fist, then unfurled her fingers. She whistled, and sparks danced in her palm.
“Originally invented by Liu Huiyin in Xiamen, China, in 1980,” Nero chimed in. “Magic was not widespread on Genetrix until 1969.”
Sloane stared at Aelia’s hand. The sparks were already gone, but they had left her with a crooked afterimage.
“What happened in 1969?” Matt asked.
“The Tenebris Incident,” Nero replied.
“We’ll have time for history lessons later, I’m sure,” Aelia said.
“You call your planet Genetrix?” Esther asked. Her hands were in fists on her knees, her knuckles white.
Sloane looked out the window again. She knew enough about architecture to understand that some of these buildings didn’t fit the usual categories. The modernist structures that had become so ubiquitous as to be unremarkable to her were gone. In their place were strange shapes lit in an array of colors. Before she could comprehend any of them, the limo had already driven past. They exited Lake Shore Drive and plunged into the South Loop.
“When magic became common, we began using two names for places, one for the mundane and another to refer to the magical aspects of those locations,” Aelia said. “We use the names Earth and Genetrix both, just as we refer to this city as both Chicago and Cordus, which means ‘second.’ ”
“Right—the Second City,” Matt said. “Rebuilt after the fire.”
“I feel like I’m dreaming,” Esther said in a low voice to Sloane. “Like the first time I saw footage of the Drain.”
Sloane nodded. They drove past the yellow arches of a McDonald’s, unchanged from the ones Sloane knew.
“You weren’t holding hands with Ines when we . . . came here?” Sloane said.
Esther shook her head. “I had just let go. I don’t remember her being in the water with us.”
“She’s probably back on Earth, then,” Sloane said. “Maybe there’s a way to contact her.”
They stopped at a traffic light, and Sloane peered