Blue Magic by A.M. Dellamonica Page A

about your kids. Your daughter didn’t look happy to see you.”
    “She was terrified.”
    “It has to be magical,” Astrid said. “Sahara did something to her.”
    “Or Caro did,” Will said. He heard her again: I would cut their throats myself. “If we get our hands on Ellie, can you cure it?”
    “We must, at some point. She’s not scared in the After.”
    Predestination again. “Astrid, I’m not prepared to just rely on your prophecies.”
    “They promise your kids end up here, Will, with us.”
    “That couldn’t be a lie?”
    “They don’t lie outright. Sometimes they withhold things, but every day, I learn a little more.”
    “How? You’re scrambling from the hospital to the Bigtop to here, running like a maniac. You’ve got people filling rocks with vitagua and dumping them. It smacks of desperation.”
    “We save your kids,” she said, irked. “They survive, they learn chanting. I hear ’em laughing in the forest and you, giving me a hard time about being a permissive stepmother—”
    “Excuse me?”
    She snapped her mouth shut, looking sheepish.
    “You believe we’re getting involved? Romantically involved?”
    “The grumbles—”
    “Astrid, as far as I’m concerned, your grumbles are full of it. They hold out on you; they got Jacks killed.”
    “I believe them,” she said. “What else have I got?
    “Do you even like me?”
    They had been speaking in low voices from the start, but now they were scrunched against the wall, as far from the volunteers as they could get, all but whispering.
    “Well, I—,” she said. “You’re a good guy.”
    “High praise. Jacks was a good guy. You didn’t want him.”
    “Could you stop smacking me in the face with Jacks?”
    “You didn’t want him, because of Sahara,” Will said.
    A dismissive huff: “That’s over now.”
    “Is it?”
    “Will, this is ridiculous.”
    “I’m ridiculous? I abandoned the law for this rinky-dink operation, and now it turns out you’re grooming me to be your successor and your concubine.”
    She giggled a little, covering her mouth: it was her usual reaction to shock. “Look, some things are bound to happen. Like the sun burning out one day. Is that destiny? Science says it’s inevitable. Or everyone dies—mortality.”
    “You’re saying it’s not if it happens, it’s when and how.”
    “When and how are a huge deal, Will!”
    “Even if the end result is the same?”
    “Think about the Small Bang. We’re releasing vitagua into the real as fast as we safely can.”
    “So that less of it comes when the well opens?”
    “Less of it? No, Will. This isn’t about another minor spill.”
    “Minor? Are you kidding me? Astrid, nothing about what’s happened so far is minor.”
    “It might look that way when the well pops.”
    “The scale of contamination will be larger, I get that—”
    “No, Will, you clearly don’t,” she said. “All the remaining magic is going to come out, into the real, all at once.”
    “All of it?” His breath caught. “The whole of the unreal?”
    “Every last frozen drop.” A bead of liquid magic welled up from the gold barbell pierced through the web of her thumb, misting into what looked like a mushroom cloud.
    “Boomsday,” he said, remembering Mark’s word. “Small Bang. You said the smaller, the better. I thought that meant limiting the size of the next spill.”
    “Not the size, just the damage,” Astrid said. “Will, I’m stomping the brakes on a runaway truck.”
    Will’s mouth was dry. “Close the well.”
    “The Roused would freak. They might already have enough force of will to bust out.”
    “Because magic is desire,” he said.
    “Exactly. They seriously desire their freedom.”
    He grappled with that. All that magic. The first spill had been a catastrophe. Releasing it all …
    “So we’re back to predestination,” he said at length. “Boomsday comes, I’m getting my kids back, you and I find true love, and I should just …