An hour later, the three of us have anesthetized the cat and are preparing the abscess for lancing. Heloise is monitoring the anesthetic, and Conall is shaving the hair and cleaning the cat’s skin, while I scrub my hands and snap on a pair of gloves.
“Do you think the problem’s getting worse?” Conall says, dragging a disinfectant-soaked swab in outwardly spiraling circles. When he reaches the perimeter, he discards the swab and then picks up another. “Gary died from that surge, and though I can’t prove it now, I—I think he had magiphilia, too.”
Heloise and I shoot each other a look. “I think so,” I say. So far, I’ve only discussed the actual magiphilia epidemic with Harrisford and Heloise. And Harrisford and I are the only two Seamere students who know about the qílín. Everyone else has seemed to swallow Professor Pickering’s assurances that the common room surge was a one-off.
I haven’t wanted to talk to anyone else about how widespread the problem seems, because in a world where there’s so much misinformation, it’s hard to know who to trust. But Conall lost Gary and I like Conall, so I decide now’s a good time to let him in on what we know.
Lowering my voice so that it’s drowned out by all the beeping equipment—I don’t want any passing staff to overhear what we’re saying—I explain. “The media’s not reporting on it, but there’s been a definite spike in magiphilia cases all over the UK. In animalsandpeople. Related to random power surges.”
Heloise taps the cat’s eyelids and checks his jaw tone to make sure he’s properly asleep. “Yeah, my mum’s been looking into cases. The incidence is definitely on the rise.” The cat’s not quite deep enough, so Heli channels some magic from her familiar, Lightning, and uses it to top up the anesthesia machine.
I slide the scalpel blade onto its handle and wait for Conall tofinish prepping the skin. “We think that maybe someone is trying to sabotage Magecorp—and maybe Linksphere. And those tethers that Magecorp use to hold open the portals…”
Conall gives the cat’s skin a final swipe. “You said they’re not what we thought, right?
I lower my voice further. “We think that whoever is causing the surges is opening extra portals…usingpeopleas tethers.”
Conall, still holding the final swab, gapes at me. “Usingpeople?” He claps his hand over his mouth and darts a glance at the closest door. Fortunately, we’re still alone.
“There have been a few deaths,” Heloise murmurs, marking the cat’s heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure down on the chart.
Conall takes a spray bottle and spritzes the cat liberally with metho. “Do…we think it’s the MLO? It’s what they want, right? The surges would mean more magic flows to us from the Void.”
“I guess so, but…” I let out a long sigh. “We don’t know if the MLO’s involved just yet.”
Of course, if you asked any random granny on the street, they’d swear up and down that itabsolutely,definitelyis the Magical Liberation Organization. From the outset, the media has already acted judge and jury, blaming the MLO for both the gala explosion and the one at Magecorp. I feel a slight twang of guilt at the latter, since that explosion was caused by me, but at the same time…I’m not about to turn myself in. Clearly, the MLO can look after itself.
But despite an extensive investigation by the police, no links between the MLO and the explosions have been found—yet.
I start incising the cat’s skin. The capsule of the abscess is thickened, and it comes apart in layers, so it’s as though I’m slicing slowly through an onion. Conall is wearing a distinct look of disgust on hisface, and I don’t think it’s because I’m about to cut into a semisolid mass of pus.
“I started looking more into the tethers, and what they could possibly be,” Conall says, after a short period of silence, his nose still wrinkled. “Just…scientific curiosity, you know?”
I do know what that’s like, so I remain quiet, encouraging him to continue.
“And I discovered something interesting.” Now no longer preoccupied with prepping the cat for the procedure, Conall starts tapping away on his strap. “There are mentions throughout history of a recurrent object—in our language, it’s called the Source. But in other cultures it’s known as various things: the Coming, the Salvation, the Hand of the Gods…It was said to have crashed into our world sometime back in the Dark Ages.”
“Oh?” Heloise and I dart glances at each other again, and I return my focus to the abscess. The skin is extraordinarily thickened, more so than a run-of-the-mill cat fight wound, and even with all this cutting I’mstillnot through the capsule.
Conall does that fancy projecting thing, from his strap into midair, and I really should ask him how to do it now that I can channel enough extra magic to try. But now’s not the time; he’s already flipping through various websites that depict photos of all sorts: leaves taken from dusty, crumbling books; pictures of ancient rock paintings; sculptures displayed in museums around the world. And they’re all of a roughly circular structure, with a honeycomb appearance to its surface, much like—
“The circular room!” I gasp out. The pictures are all depicting something that looks precisely like what I’d caught glimpses of in the center of the Magecorp vault. Before Darghan Briggs chased me and stunned me unconscious, of course. Then, because Heli andConall are both staring at me, confused, I elaborate: “Magecorp were keeping one of these…Source things, did you call it? In the locked vault at the top of the tower.”
Conall takes a while to close his gaping mouth, and when he does, he slowly turns his attention back to the projected pictures in the air. “Well, according to some very old scriptures, a rock just like this came crashing down to Earth some thousand or so years ago. There are old myths and legends from all around the world, referencing an object that sounds like a meteor…and it’s known in every culture as being something that once, long ago, brought magic to the people of Earth.”
“Like a sign from the gods?” asks Heloise.
Conall frowns. “Yeah, something like that. But what if it wasn’t from the gods? What if it was—”
“—from the Void!” I finish Conall’s sentence for him, excitement unfurling in my chest. “Someone must have figured out that they could use it to tether open the portals and harvest magic that humans could use.” I chew on my lip, thinking. It still doesn’t explain how the saboteurs are using people instead of the Source. But at least we have a lead, now. “Magecorp must have somehow got hold of it—or part of it, if Linksphere also uses the same.”
“Maybe whoever’s opening the illegal portals somehow managed to steal some of this Source,” Heli adds as she casually feeds more magic into the anesthesia machine. “Do we need to look into who has access? Find out if there have been any breaches of Magecorp security?”
I ponder this for a moment. Percy had said Nathaniel Price’s mansion had been broken into, too. If some of the rock was stolen, it might not have even been from Magecorp HQ; besides, I really don’t want the authorities to start poking around Magecorp’s security records. That might implicate me, and I definitely don’t want toget done for it. “Maybe we should start by profiling the victims. We could see if any of them have anything special about them…Like suspected ties to the MLO, or something.”
Figuring that I’ll dissect this information later, when I don’t have an anesthetized cat in front of me and can therefore properly concentrate, I turn my attention back to my task. “Conall, you’re brilliant, by the way. How did you find all this?”
Looking sheepish, he turns bright red. “I’ve spent the whole week trawling through the library archives. It’s in none of the modern textbooks. I had to search right back to old editions, and look up some really obscure references.”
