Allie Beckstrom 09 - Magic for a Price Read Online Free

he casts.”
    Zay took several steps away from me, putting himself between Terric and Shame, and I strolled over to the other side of the room, closer to Maeve. Magic made me sick. Getting too close to someone using magic made me sick too.
    Zay drew a Disbursement, which he Proxied.
    Huh. I didn’t know the Authority was using Proxies again. I wasn’t sure that I approved of other people bearing the price for the magic we were using. Especially when that magic was poisoned.
    Zayvion set magic into the glyph and the Disbursement formed in front of him, then sifted away, as if tugged apart by a breeze. A pink string of magic circled his wrist.
    The Disbursement glyph should find the person who was holding Proxy and attach to them in some manner.
    In just a moment, a pink string slipped back in through the wall and drifted across the room, tying to the magic band on Zay’s wrist. His Proxy was set.
    Zay cast a nice tight Sight. He held it over his fingertips as if balancing a globe, and looked through it at Terric.
    “The light around him?” Zay asked.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Light?” Terric asked. “Seriously?”
    “Look at Shame,” I said.
    Zay pivoted so he could see Shame through the spell.
    Shame made a kissy face.
    “Shadow,” Zay said. “I see darkness around him.” Zay dropped the Sight spell, which was good because it was starting to stink up the place.
    I liked it better when I couldn’t see magic with my bare eyes and smell it like it was hot garbage.
    “All you saw was light and darkness?” I asked.
    Zay nodded. “None of it particularly sexy.”
    “But then we all know you have no discerning taste, mate,” Shame said. “And why does it matter? Let’s hear the news.”
    “Seattle has been scrambled,” I said.
    Everyone in the room went silent.
    Shame finally whistled quietly. “You ever heard of an entire city being sent to lock down another city, Mum?”
    Maeve, who had been quiet all this time, shifted in the chair at the table. She had braided her hair back in asingle band, and it somehow made her look younger even though she still had to use a cane to get around since Jingo Jingo had tried to kill her. Dark circles stood out like bruises against her pale skin. “No, I haven’t. Do you know when they’ll be here, Allie?”
    “Kevin has the details.”
    “Three or four hours at the most,” he said. “They have orders from the Overseer to lock us down, refuse any magic user entrance or exit and to Close or kill if we don’t like it.”
    “To what ends?” she asked.
    “Buying time,” Zayvion said. “Keeping us under their thumb until Leander and Isabelle can get here.”
    “Swell,” Shame said. “Other than a fight for our lives in a few hours, is there anything else I have to know about? Tired, hungry, and in a foul mood over here.”
    “Which is different than when?” Terric said.
    “Fuck you is when,” Shame said.
    “We need to make a plan,” I said.
    “You need to make a plan,” Shame said. “You’re good at that.”
    “Fine. My plan is this: Kevin, call every member of the Authority you can reach and tell them to get out here in the next half hour. We need to explain this once, to as many people as possible.”
    Kevin pulled out his phone and was already talking to someone by the time he left the room.
    “Shame, Terric,” I said. “I want you to use magic together so we know what you can and can’t do with it.”
    “Like hell,” Shame said.
    “Now?” Terric asked.
    “Yes, now.”
    “So, you want us to waste time messing with magic when there’s an entire city of people coming our way tofight?” Shame asked. “Forget what I said about plans. You suck at them.”
    “We do this now because I don’t want to be on the front line with you and have something unexpected happen.”
    “You’ve fought alongside us before,” Terric said.
    “Magic changed you. Changed both of you when you died for each other on the battlefield.”
    “No,” Shame