into the car next to theirs. There was a woman behind the wheel, a siphon on her left hand, her right hand twisting the radio knob. The glow from the dashboard was orange, analog instead of digital. There was a clock between the air vents, with hands pointing at 10 and 12. It was 10:00 p.m.
“What can you do with that thing?” Esther asked Nero. There was still a smear of mascara on her temple.
“Siphons can be attached to most parts of the body, and their placement affects what they do,” Nero said. “Wrist siphons, like this one, tend to be used for the practical—electrical manipulation, as well as water, air—”
“Fire?” Sloane asked.
Nero nodded.
“So it’s a weapon, then,” she said.
“Anything can be a weapon,” Nero replied. “If you’re trying hard enough.”
“I’m just trying to figure out to what extent we’re being held hostage,” Sloane said. She was surprised that Matt didn’t jump in to chastise her for sounding so harsh, but he kept quiet. Maybe he wanted to know the same thing.
Nero’s mouth twitched into a mild smile. Mild was a good word for him overall, Sloane thought. His voice had a silky quality, not persuasive, but delicate. His movements, from his footsteps to his smallest gestures, were careful, as though he were consciously selecting each one. He turned his hand over and unfastened a clasp on the underside of the siphon glove. A light flickered between the metal plates as he undid it. He slid it off his hand, set it on the floor of the limousine between them, and showed her his palms.
“We do not intend to threaten you,” Nero said.
“And who is we?” Matt said. “You and her?”
“The group that summoned you is the special council of Cordus,” Aelia said. “We were assembled to address . . . a particular problem that I will describe to you in full. I am the leader of that council as well as an elected official in city government. Praetor, as I said.”
Sloane frowned at the device on the floor. She didn’t feel the burning, tingling pull of magic here the way she did at home. She stretched out a hand toward the siphon, waiting for something, anything, but she felt nothing. Maybe here, magic suffused the world so completely that she couldn’t feel it, the way a person stops hearing white noise after a few minutes. She brushed her fingers over the siphon, and it felt warm from skin contact but otherwise inert.
“It requires intent,” Nero said to her.
That was what she was afraid of.
The car stopped. Aelia opened the door and gestured for them to follow her.
On their side of the street were old-fashioned gas lamps with elegant black bases and glass spotted brown from the flames. On the other side of the street was rubble. Broken chunks of concrete piled up against cracked wood beams, which were fraying where they had split right down the middle. Twisted girders reached upward. Broken glass shone in the moonlight.
Sloane heard Esther’s footsteps behind her, then felt her cool, dry hand. Sloane grabbed it, held it tight, and both women stood shoulder to shoulder, staring. One building’s remains tumbled into another’s, and on and on, as far as Sloane could discern in moonlight alone. Where a street had been was carnage and destruction—a curl of yellow-white, the spine of a squirrel; a woman’s blouse, patterned with flowers, trapped under a rock; a bit of stuffing from a plush toy in the mouth of a scurrying rat.
“The Drain,” Esther said.
Sloane felt like time had run backward, and she was at the edge of the site where the Dome would later stand, surrounded on all sides by worshippers of the Dark One and seekers of magic. The Drain was like a fingerprint, distinct from all other forms of magic she had witnessed. And only one person could leave that particular mark.
If this was a Drain site, then the Dark One had been here.
Nero moved away from them to set up the same barriers Sloane had seen on Wacker Drive, intended to keep pedestrians away. But Aelia stayed beside them. “In your world,” Aelia said, spreading the fingers encased in her siphon wide so her hand looked like a metal claw, “there was a force of evil at work—one that you defeated?”
“The Dark One,” Matt replied quietly. “Yes. I—we, actually; all of us—killed him.”
“Wonderful.” Aelia smiled, and it looked almost sinister in the dim light of the gas lamps; shadows pooled beneath her prominent cheekbones.