The room was silent—and the water wasn’t even a little bit icy.
The tension in the room was awful. It wasn’t exactly fun to watch another Adept completely unable to work her magic, especially knowing we were all in the same boat.
“Try again,” Daniel said softly. “Just one more time.”
Jill nodded, then repeated her magic prep again. Fists open and closed, rolling shoulders, the pushing of the hands.
But the bottle didn’t waver.
Jill let out a soft sob. She turned around, tears brimming in her lashes, and went to her sister. They hugged.
“This is going to last forever, isn’t it?” Paul asked, panic in his voice. “That machine doesn’t work, and we don’t have any other ideas, and we’re screwed. Our magic is gone.”
“It’s my fault,” Detroit said, her voice softer this time and not nearly as confident. “The machine doesn’t work. I’d hoped—” she began but she shook her head, then wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “I’d hoped I could still do it. Anyone can make a machine. You don’t need magic for that. But I make machines that interact with magic. They recognize it. Test it. Use it. That’s my power. That’s my talent.”
She quieted and looked away, and this time didn’t bother to stop the tear that slid down her cheek. “My magic is gone,” she said. “Now I’m just a two-bit hobbyist. I might as well start building battle bots.”
“I like battle bots,” Michael said, a quirky smile on his face. Detroit looked at him and smiled, but you could see the hurt ran pretty deep.
“Our magic isn’t gone,” Daniel said. “This is Chicago—not some fairy tale city. Magic doesn’t just disappear without a reason. Someone is behind this—someone has turned off our magic, which means we focus on figuring out who that is and making things right again.”
This might have been hard for all of us, and it might have been hard for Daniel, but you couldn’t see it to look at him. He was a good motivator—a “never let ’em see you sweat” kind of guy. It was just the kind of thing we needed right now.
Unfortunately, it didn’t give us our magic back.
“Don’t lose your heads over a temporary circumstance,” he said. “And that’s what this is—a temporary circumstance.”
“Or it’s practice,” Paul said. “Like losing our magic before we even get good at it. That sucks.”
“See? It’s an opportunity,” Daniel chuckled. “You guys are seriously making me feel like Pollyanna today.” That got a laugh in the Enclave. “Look, this is hard. This situation sucks, and I know that for sure, because I’m a lot closer to giving it all up than you are. It’s hard to face a lifetime without it. But it’s not impossible. It’s a gift, a really particular kind of gift, but life goes on. And now you know that.”
Jason’s phone rang, breaking the silence. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen, then frowned. Without another word, he walked to the Enclave door, pulled it open, and walked outside. It shut with a heavy thud that sent a little frizzle of panic through my chest. Was this the call? The one that pulled him home again, never to return?
Michael walked over. “What was that about?”
“I don’t know,” I said, eyes still on the door. “Family stuff, I guess.”
“He’s been quiet about that lately. I don’t think he wants to go home.”
I looked back at Michael, wanting to believe him. “Why do you say that?”
Michael shrugged. “He doesn’t talk about it a lot. I think he has a lot of frustration about them, about their ways. He came up here to get away from it, but it seems to follow him. He wants to have his own life, you know? A separate life.”
“Separate from their rules?”
“Yeah. He told you it was a curse?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“It weighs on him. He joined up with the Enclave to help make a difference, because he wanted something good to come of it. He thinks you’re something good to come from it, too.”
I felt my cheeks warm, and I appreciated the admission. “Thanks, Michael. I know he’s glad you’re friends.”
“He should be. I kick butt.” He did a fake karate chop that most definitely did not kick butt.
“And speaking of kicking butt,” Scout said, loud enough for the rest of the Enclave to hear, “we can’t just sit around and wait for something to happen. I have to stay busy.”
“You will,” Daniel said. “There’s one more thing on the agenda tonight.”
We all looked at him.
“The Reapers kept their magic longer than we did,” he said. “That suggests the blackout is part of an organized plan. Probably not by Reapers, unless something backfired and rebounded on them. But they’re even keener to keep their magic than we are. So there’s no doubt they’re looking into it. And if they’re looking into it, they’re probably talking about it.”
“That’s just because half the Reapers are teenage girls,” Paul said with a grin. Jamie punched him in the arm, which Scout and I applauded.
“Whatever the reason,” Daniel said, “that means it’s time to visit the sanctuary and see what we can see. That’s why Detroit is here—she’ll plant a camera so we have good eyes on the place. The Council was very pleased about the last time the Enclaves worked together. Well, except for the part about imploding the other sanctuary. That wasn’t exactly a Council-approved action.”
Scout blushed a little, but still looked pretty pleased with herself. We had helped Detroit and Naya, another Adept from Enclave Two who could call and communicate with ghosts, investigate a sanctuary where Reapers had been looking for the solution to magical immortality. Scout destroyed it by sucking everything out of it like a magical vacuum cleaner. It had been pretty sweet, but I could understand why the Council was concerned. A magic spell beneath Chicago sucking out the building’s insides? Yeah, I could see how that would worry people.
“Jill, Jamie, Paul, make a patrol of the tunnels. Make sure the Reapers aren’t reacting badly to losing their magic by wreaking even more havoc. Detroit, Michael, Jason, Lily, and Scout, visit the sanctuary,” Daniel said. “Get eyes on the interior and find out what you can. And if you could, come back with an answer about why we have no magic . . . and a solution for getting it back.”