“Now I have a question for you,” Olivia said. “What’s your specialty?”
I blanched. Olivia continued. “I mean, the spells you used today were powerful, but… they seem kind of… directionless.”
Directionless. That was the word. That’s how I’d always felt, even—maybe especially with Mother Morevna. It could be applied to every aspect of my life.
“I don’t know my specialty,” I heard myself say. “All my life I’ve wanted to be special… to be something important and help Elysium. I thought when I saw the rain that maybe that would be the way I would help. But then that went to shit. And when I thought I’d be learning magic from Mother Morevna, I thought maybe that was how I would help Elysium. But everything I learned I had to teach myself. I worked and I studied and I tried, all to help Elysium, to make my mark there, and now… now I’m out here… with nothing.”
Suddenly I realized that there were tears on my face. A lump was working its way up my throat. I turned away, embarrassed, but Olivia came forward and grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Hey,” Olivia said gently. “You’ve got a lot more than nothing. You’re worth way more than anybody back home ever thought, I promise.”
“But I’m not,” I said. “I have to fix things or the world will be destroyed. I came here looking for a way to fix everything, to save the world. But the Dust Soldiers are going to come back and judge Elysium and we’re all gonna—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Olivia said. “Breathe for a second. Think about it. The Dust Soldiers didn’t say anything about the desert beyond Elysium, did they?”
I stopped in my tracks. “What are you getting at?”
“I mean that the Dust Soldiers only threatened Elysium, right? So if they’re the only ones being wiped out, why worry? Elysium’s problems aren’t ours. Let them bring their end down on themselves. Hell, why do you think we’re happy out here instead of scrambling to try to get back behind those walls?”
I’d never thought of that possibility before. What if it was true? What if the end the Dust Soldiers promised was just the end of Elysium? It made sense. The people outside the walls couldn’t rightly be blamed for Elysium’s failures, could they? Maybe Olivia was right. But if she was, what about Mr. Jameson? What about Lucy? My heart gave a strange, painful dishrag twist in my chest.
“But there are people there that I love,” I said.
“Did the people you love keep you from being thrown out here? Did they stand up for you? Because if they didn’t, I say to hell with them too. Stay with us. With me and Susanah and Mowse and Judith and Cassie and Zo. It’s a good place to be. And I promise, I will help you find your specialty. Then, no matter what happens, at the end of ten years, we can walk out of the desert as the powerful brujas we were meant to be.” She sighed. “And if it’s really bothering you this much as we get closer to the ten-year mark, we’ll go and see what we can do.”
Her voice was sincere, her eyes on mine, and if there was a darkness in Olivia, I didn’t see any trace of it then. “You promise?” I asked.
“I promise,” she said. “Now let’s get back out there and make sure nobody’s fighting or blowing anything up.” And, feeling somehow lighter and heavier at the same time, I followed her.
When Olivia and I left her train car, Asa was plainly drunk, and everyone was gathered around, watching him pull his endless rainbow of scarves out of his sleeve.
“Looks like someone’s had enough,” Olivia laughed.
Movements loose with moonshine, Asa reached out and pulled a quarter from behind Mowse’s ear. He went to flip it, but it went over his head, where it turned into a june bug and flew away, much to Asa’s confusion. Everyone laughed and applauded, and as Judith took Asa’s moonshine away, Cassandra said, “Oh, it’s been forever since I’ve seen a magic show that wasn’t designed to hurt anyone!”
“Thhank you!” Asa said. “Thhhank you! I’ll be here till the end of the wwworld!”
Suddenly, there was an odd surge of energy. The girls gasped at him, faces pale and shocked.
“Your face,” I whispered to him, and Asa moved to fix it.
But as he raised his arm to adjust the human part of his face over the exposed daemon part, there