“Fairies.” Winnie looked at Danny. “You brought me here so he could tell me he’s seeing fairies? That’s it. Come on, we’re leaving.”

  Halfway to the door, Winnie saw Danny shrug at Victor from the corner of her eye. She reeled around, then looking at Danny while pointing at Victor she said, “Don’t you take his side in this, Danny. He says he’s on our side but I’ll never trust him like I trust you.”

  Victor stepped towards her. “I took an oath to follow you. I’m not your enemy.”

  “Stop. You may be helping us and I’ll not turn that away, but never make the mistake of believing that I’ve forgotten you turning Morgan against me, or standing by while all those innocent people were murdered. It was your orders that rounded them all up to begin with.”

  “Those orders were Kane’s, Winnie. Not mine. I didn’t know what he was doing there until that night, and by then it was too late for me to do anything.”

  “So you say. That’s between you and yourself,” Winnie snapped. “You said you took an oath. I remember that. So, follow your oath now. I said I’m never going back to that place, and that’s final. If there’s something that needs investigating, then do it. I don’t want to hear another word. Do you agree, or is your oath no good after all?”

  Victor didn’t answer for a long time.

  Winnie waited, holding his gaze until he finally looked away.

  “I agree. My oath is good.”

  “Fine. Then it’s finished. Come on, Danny,” she said, walking toward the front door. “It’s time to go home.”

  Victor watched Winnie and Danny leave. They killed the front lights, leaving him standing alone in the back office with only the desk lamp. Gloom was a blanket, reminding him of his failure.

  “Don’t worry, Victor. Momma will come around eventually.”

  He turned around to find the voice but saw no one.

  “Are you sure, Seelie? She seemed so final.”

  “She is confused. She doesn’t understand like you do. There’s still time for her to come around. You’ll see. Don’t give up.”

  “I won’t. How can I after all you’ve shown me?”

  Victor walked to the desk lamp and pulled the chain, plunging the room into darkness. Then Victor left the shop, closing the door behind him then turning the key to lock it.

  “Go home, Victor,” Seelie’s voice said, growing fainter. “Morgan is waiting up. She’s worried. Danny’s on our side. He’ll bring Winnie around. She’ll see things your way. He understands that you wouldn’t say all these things without a good reason.”

  “You were pretty harsh back there,” Danny said, his eyes on the wheel.

  Winnie didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure why she’d acted like that. Victor had been loyal since coming to their side and she had no reason to doubt him. But the thought of returning to that place clawed at her soul.

  There were too many ghosts.

  Then finally: “I know, Danny. He made me mad and I lost my temper.”

  “It’s just a visit. He’s a valuable ally. Maybe you need this to put your demons away. We could go in the daytime. It wouldn’t be so ominous then.”

  Winnie considered, then, “Yes. It would be different in the daylight.”

  “Very different.”

  Winnie pulled out her phone, pulled up Victor’s secret burner, tapped two words, then put the phone away.

  Tomorrow morning.

  Chapter 13

  Elaine woke feeling the stiffness of her arthritis more than usual. It had been several days since her argument with Winnie. Again she replayed the conversation, wondering if she could have steered the discussion in a better direction. She could never tell Winnie about her father. It would devastate her, cloud her judgement about Kane at a time when he was becoming more dangerous to chanters than ever before.

  She switched on the television to watch the news while she paced her apartment to loosen her joints. She was putting the kettle on for tea when a familiar voice lit the background.

  It is my fear that the chanter threat has risen to a new level with the recent riots in our city centers.

  Elaine hobbled into the family room and saw Nils Kane on TV. He stood behind a podium covered in microphones, the Department of Magical Containment’s seal gracing the front.

  A reporter off-camera asked a question.

  “Director Kane, what is your department planning to deal with the problem? I understand that numerous Red Leg officers were injured in the rioting and demonstrations.”

  “You’re correct, Debbie,” Kane said. “Throughout the current unrest, our valiant Red Legs have been tireless in their efforts to peacefully resolve the problems at the heart of these unfortunate chanter demands. But the violent nature of both the protests and riots has caused us to rethink our approach. As our cities face an ever-growing danger from the magical failures, we have no one else to blame. Chanters must cease their illegal use of magic so that we can all be safer. Their consistent refusal to acknowledge their responsibility for our current state of affairs makes decisive action imperative, and urgently needed.”

  Another reporter called out:

  “What action is that, Director Kane?”

  “Starting this morning, Red Legs in cooperation with members of the National Guard will collect and transport all nonessential chanter personnel residing in the Enclaves to safety camps. There we may focus our efforts to limit their use of magic.”

  Elaine stood aghast.

  A surge of reporters shouted additional questions.

  One voice brayed above the rest:

  “What do you mean by nonessential, Director Kane?”

  “Nonessential refers to any chanter who is not integral to the operation of our infrastructure. Any business employing chanters in the legal use of magic should apply for approval if they wish for their employees to be released from the camps. Existing registered techs will be given preference, and those we’ve already identified as particularly useful will be pulled out of the transports prior to their leaving. Understand, this is done for everyone’s safety. Once we’ve ensured that the chanters no longer pose a societal threat, they will be allowed a safe return to their homes. But rest assured, we will be rounding up those chanters living outside the law and put an end to their charm running once and for all.”

  Elaine thought about how far Kane had gone from the man she once knew to the monster he was today. She remembered how they first met. He was a refugee off one of the boats, only a boy at the time. She remembered a family across the hall from hers, fostering him after he arrived. He was quiet, rarely talking to anyone. Artos Merrilyn was head of the relief organization that saw to the care and disposition of refugees at the time. He looked in on young Ricky, as he was known then, quite often. Elaine remembered her parents wondering at the man’s interest in the boy. He seemed nothing special at the time, although of course that would change.

  As they grew up, Elaine and Ricky became close — inseparable by their seventeenth birthdays. She remembered the way he would take her down to a hidden basement he’d found beneath their building.

  He’d created a sort of hideaway. That was where he showed her his ability to craft magic in ways she’d never seen, or even imagined. He moved his hands as if conducting a symphony. He tried to show her, but she could never exhibit such artistry.

  He was everything.

  And then he changed.

  Ricky grew darker, his mood shifting from one day to the next, and always without warning. She became concerned when he’d disappear into his hideaway for days without light. Elaine remembered when she followed him once, banged on the door to his hideout, begging him to come out. He refused and Elaine used a trick he’d shown her to get inside.

  She worked the flows, patiently directing them into the keyhole until she eventually opened the lock. Walking down the long passageway to the room at the end, Elaine found Ricky in a stupor, a rat curled in the rictus of death at his feet.

  She shifted her vision to see the flows and saw the darkness reaching from Ricky to the corpse. It was the first time she realized he was abusing Sable magic. She turned and left him, running back up the passage and shutting the door behind her.

  They stayed together for a few more months. Elaine tried everything to make him quit. But no matter what she did, Ricky continued to use. He never hurt people, always using his power on random animals, mostly mice and rats, draining their life in secret. Eventually, she ran out of options and she confronted Ricky about his addiction.

  “Ricky, you have to stop using. Can’t you see how it’s causing you to pull away from the world? It’s not as if you can stop on your own. You need help from a professional who understands Sable addiction.”

  “I can stop any time I want, Ellie. Besides, I’m almost there.”

  “Almost where?” she asked.

  “Almost to where I can reach past death to pull someone back.”

  “From death? Don’t be crazy. That’s impossible. Even if you could steal the life force from every chanter in the world, you could never do that.”

  “You don’t know what I’ve seen, Ellie. I think I could harness the world’s magic if I wanted to.”

  “But why would you want to?”

  “Think of all we could have. With all of the magic, nothing could stand in our way.”

  Elaine laughed. He had to be kidding.

  “I know of a way, Ellie. A way to take all the magic.”

  She still didn’t believe him, and didn’t like the game. But clearly, he was going to make her play it.

  “How can you think I’d even consider doing what you’re doing, Ricky? It’s already tearing you apart. You can’t keep doing this. If you do, I’ll—I’ll have to turn you in.”

  “You’d do that? Turn me in after all we’ve shared together?”

  Elaine met Ricky’s stare. His eyes were sunken and dark, like they’d been for months. She knew what she had to do.

  Elaine turned around and walked back down the passage, leaving him in his secret place, alone.

  Elaine didn’t call the police. She went back once more to try and talk sense to him. But Ricky was gone. Years later she heard a familiar voice on TV. The face was different and the name had changed, but she knew who it was. Her Ricky. He’d somehow risen to power in the middling government to become the Agency Director, charged with policing all magic.

  Now, in the present, Elaine watched the man she once knew order the destruction of all she held dear. And now, finally, she knew what he was doing. She saw him for who and what he was.

  Elaine had appealed to his humanity, begging him to leave their daughter alone. Now, as she listened to his press conference, Elaine knew he had no humanity to appeal to. She realized what it was he was trying to do, much like he’d done with the rats.

  She felt an Arctic chill.

  She might have stopped all of this years before if she’d only followed through and called the authorities. Now with Kane’s last statement, Elaine knew she had to warn Winnie.

  She hobbled back to her kitchen table and picked up her phone. She dialed then put the phone to her ear.

  Winnie didn’t pick up, so Elaine redialed.

  Then she kept redialing until the first Red Leg banged on her door.

  Chapter 14

  Winnie watched buildings pass as Danny drove them to the steel mill. The knot in her stomach was getting worse. They had approached from underground the last time, in the dead of night, through sewer and steam tunnels. It was different in the hazy orange daylight in a world plagued by constant storms. She looked up at the swirling dust and thought again about how she could find someone — anyone — who could manipulate magic like her.

  Winnie sat up straighter in her seat, noting a change in the light pouring into the car. The hazy orange glow was now a clear blue sky. An impossibly bright sun blazed in an instant. A line had been drawn across the sky, creating a barrier to keep the swirling dust at bay.

  They were moments from their destination.

  Victor was right. Something strange was happening.

  Danny pulled into the parking lot and parked next to Victor’s unmarked cruiser. Tufts of rich green grass and wildflowers pushed up through cracks in the pavement. Winnie jumped out of the car and looked around. Outside, the boundary was even clearer. Swirling orange dust stopped as if striking a glass dome.

  How could none of the news agencies be reporting this?

  “It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” Victor asked, surprising Winnie from nowhere.

  “I don’t know what to say. The last time I saw the clear blue sky was when I used my magic to push it all away.”

  “I know. I still don’t understand all that’s happening here, but I can tell you for sure that it’s expanding. There was only a small spot directly over the mill building before. Now it circles the block. This is one of the reasons why you needed to come. If there’s a way to replicate this in other cities on a larger scale, I thought you might be able to figure it out.”

  Winnie nodded and tuned her vision to the magical spectrum.

  Wisps came from the building’s center, like frayed strings pulled from a piece of fabric. They were random — she couldn’t connect them to any spell she knew. It was raw magic, without form or order.

  She looked at Danny and Victor. “How do we get inside?”

  “This way,” Victor said, then took them to a door in the side of the building leading to a long hallway.

  Winnie and Danny followed him inside. She reached out to grip Danny’s hand as a wave of trepidation swept her. She’d lost so much in this place, knots of tension tightened her gut as she trembled at the memories.

  Victor led them to a doorway that opened into the old steel mill’s central room. It was significantly different than she remembered. The air was fresh and clean. Bright sunlight filtered down from above. The scent of fresh wildflowers filled Winnie’s nose.

  She took a deep breath, looked down from the edge of the metal catwalk and saw green everywhere, claiming metal and concrete as it yawned outward from the crater. She glanced at Victor and Danny — both men appeared equally awestruck.

  Had she done this? And if so, how could she do it again?

  This was what the world was supposed to look like. Nature in evidence like she’d never seen. The city had a few parks and plenty of trees. But nothing like this. Those frail plants were missing the vibrant life so present in this place.

  “Come on,” Victor urged. “I’ll show you how to get down.”

  Danny and Winnie followed the inspector to a stairway. Amazingly, halfway to the floor, it turned into a gentle green, grass-covered slope leading to the broad meadow below. Insects buzzed from place to place as she started downward. They all had a sort of glow, and in the magical spectrum Winnie could see the fine tendrils of magic emanating from each one. It was moments before she realized that they weren’t insects. They were tiny human-like figures — an incredible sight that she had to take in.

  Victor turned from the sloping hill below and looked back at Winnie, smiling. “I told you. There’s something special here, something you needed to see.”

  “Yes, but this is—” Winnie stopped, searching for the words to describe not only what she saw but the feeling it evoked. The sudden shift in her emotions as she stepped downward, going from doubt and fear to a sense of calm and peace, was jarring.

  “Hello,” said a tiny voice from beside her as she stepped onto the grass.

  Winnie looked to the side, startled by a tiny winged girl hovering in the air beside her. “Uh, hello … I’m Winnie.”

  “I know who you are. Everyone here knows who you are.”

  Victor laughed. “I see you’ve met Seelie. She’s a brave one. Seelie was the first one to talk to me, too.”

  Winnie looked at the tiny face and saw something familiar. “I feel like I know you, like we’re connected somehow.”

  “We are, Momma.”

  Winnie stopped. They’d reached the floor of the mill, now covered in swards of grass and flowers. Winnie stood amid the lush growth, staring at the tiny figure bobbing beside her. She didn’t have the words to express what she wanted to say and in the end uttered a single questioning word.

  “How?”

  Seelie shrugged and laughed. “I don’t know. One minute I was with you and then I was here in this place. It’s a very nice place, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, yes it is,” Winnie replied.

  “I met Victor and felt his connection to you. I helped him understand what he saw. Then I watched as he helped you. He’s very nice.”

  Winnie glanced at a now-embarrassed Victor then turned back to Seelie. “What about the others here? Are they all lost children like you?”

  “No, they are the others who were lost here before the change. The Lady brought us back so we could tend this place and help it grow.”

  “The Lady?”

  “You’ve met her before, Momma. She told you to call her Brigid. That’s one of her names. She has many, for all of the people in all of their places. We call her the Lady.”

  “Are there many places like this?” Winnie asked, wondering if this was how she could find other chanters like herself. “Where are they?”

  “I think there used to be many like this, all over the world,” Seelie answered. “Now there is but one. When you broke the machine, you opened a place in the world for this all to exist again. It is so beautiful here. Thank you.”

  Winnie looked around at the terror turned to majesty and smiled at Seelie. “Yes, Seelie, yes it is.”

  Winnie walked towards the center of the large room, heading for the crater’s edge. Danny and Victor fell in behind as she strolled through the ankle-high grass. Morning dew kissed her legs. Fairies flitted by, waving at Seelie while giving wary looks to Winnie and her friends.

  “Why do they look at us that way, Seelie?” Winnie asked.

  “They remember more of what happened here than I do,” Seelie replied. “It makes it hard to trust humans.”