CoS12

## Chapter 12

**Chapter 12** of **City of Spells** follows **Wesley** as he attempts to escape.

## **About**

### **Characters**

* **Wesley Thornton Walcott**
* **Zekia Akintola**

## **Full Version**

WESLEY LOOKED TO THE WINDOW.

He could hear the sounds of the ocean below and feel the breeze from the oncoming rain clouds that circled above the high-rise mausoleum, giving the stately dead a view of the horizon that the sandy graves below couldn’t dream of.

This was his window of opportunity.

Literally.

Because Wesley was going to jump out of it.

Just as soon as Zekia came back, which would be in exactly three minutes, like a very predictable and slightly psychopathic clock. Wesley would wait until she untied him—as she always did when she climbed inside his mind, so he wasn’t distracted or brought out of the vision by the chafing on his wrists— and once she did that, he’d use his magic to overpower her and leap to freedom.

As far as plans went, it needed fine-tuning, but Wesley would work on that part after he’d jumped out of the window. All that mattered was that he needed to leave, and despite what he wanted, he couldn’t take Zekia with him.

They’d moved him from Creije to the cemetery shores of Tisvgen after Ashwood had made his deal with Simran. Creije was becoming too dangerous of a battleground and so now Wesley had to rethink all the carefully laid exit plans he’d formulated back in his city. These shores were new and strange, but the waters of the Onnela Sea below would prove useful.

Not to mention that Tisvgen was closer to Rishiya, and so closer to Tavia and the others.

Wesley shuffled against the wall.

From the corner, the shadow demon snarled down at him, spit stringing from its ghostly jaws.

“What are you looking at, you giant worm? You’re not allowed to kill me.”

The demon growled, as though it could actually understand a word of what Wesley had said. For all he knew, it could. Zekia spoke to the demon the same way she spoke to Wesley: with her mind. The Intuitcrafter magic inside of her churning into the demon’s brain so her thoughts became its, and there was no way it could dream of disobeying her because she controlled its dreams and everything else.

Wesley knew how that felt.

The demon kept its focus on him and whenever Wesley shuffled, it inched closer or bowed its head to get a better look.

Maybe the mind connection worked both ways and it could see exactly what Wesley was planning to do. Maybe his own Intuitcrafter powers were backfiring and laying his soul bare.

“Too bad you’re a watchdog and not an attack dog now,” Wesley said.

The demon stood on its hind legs.

Wesley didn’t blink.

He knew the beast couldn’t hurt him. Zekia had given her orders and they were circling through the creature’s mind over and over and over, like a melody.

The door to the room—to the cell—creaked open and Wesley didn’t need to look to know it was her. It was always Zekia and never Ashwood, as though the Kingpin could rarely stand to see his prodigy so weak and useless.

“You look less tired today,” Zekia said. “Did you sleep? I couldn’t sleep a wink with all those people out there.”

By people, she meant the dead.

Wesley turned to her. “It’s not like you don’t deserve to be haunted a little bit, kid.”

Zekia laughed, like Wesley was very naïve and she found it very funny.

“They’re not haunting me, silly,” she said. “Just letting me know that they’re there. Clogging up my head with all the futures they could have had and the things they wanted to be before they died. I don’t mind it so much, but the worst of them are the ones who think they should have lived. Like anyone *deserves* to die.”

Wesley thought lots of people deserved to die.

Probably both of them included.

“You’re not a Spiritcrafter, kid. You can’t talk to the dead.”

“I didn’t say I was talking to them. They’re talking to *me*. Or just existing around me and getting their alternative futures all muddled in my brain. Don’t they bother you?”

“No,” Wesley said. “But then again, I’m not crazy.”

Zekia’s smile twitched, but she swallowed whatever emotion she didn’t feel like feeling at that moment and walked toward him. Her dress bounced up and down with her steps.

Zekia always wore a white dress, just as she always dressed Wesley in suits—like he was a doll she’d been given and that she cherished as her favorite toy.

“I could teach you,” she said.

She knelt down next to him.

“Teach me to be crazy? I’ll pass.”

Wesley kept his eyes on her hands, waiting for her to snap her fingers and let the silver slivers of her magic trickle around his wrists and loosen his restraints.

But she didn’t.

Instead she put her hands on her hips and shook her head admonishingly.

“I could teach you to master your magic like Amja was helping me to do,” she said.”When you learn, you can help me and all the other Crafters we’ve found be safe again and for always. The new realm we’re going to build will be so much stronger with you, Wesley. Two Intuitcrafters to lead them would be the best thing they could hope for.”

Zekia really did think that by telling Wesley *who* and *what* he was, she’d endear him to her and make him think that they were cut from the same cloth. But telling Wesley he was a Crafter had only reminded him that nobody, not a single soul in the realms, was made of the same dark thing that he was. He was uniquely Wesley Thornton Walcott and the fact that he had true magic just made him even more of a force to be reckoned with.

It made him think of new ways to bring Dante Ashwood down.

Zekia sighed when Wesley didn’t answer.

She tucked her hair behind her ears and then snapped her fingers with a loud huff, like just talking to him was exhausting.

Wesley watched as her magic snaked around his wrists, until he felt a small jolt and the string that bound him dropped to the floor. Almost immediately he felt his magic stir inside of him, nervous and also eager.

It had been starved for so long and, finally, it could sense the time to strike was near.

“Remember how I said you were crazy?”

Zekia nodded. “You say that a lot. It’s a little mean.”

“Yeah,” Wesley said. “Well, it turns out I might be crazier.”

And then his hand shot out and Zekia flew backward into the shadow demon. The two of them collided with each other and then the wall, the demon’s smoky limbs tangled into Zekia’s like some kind of an awful jigsaw.

Zekia made to stand, but Wesley kept his hand firm, pinning her to the floor. He pushed every wish and hope he had inside of him toward her in a tunnel of gray magic.

Just like the one she had tried to use on Saxony back on Ashwood’s hidden island.

The one Wesley had jumped in front of that nearly cost him his sanity.

Wesley summoned every single thought he could muster and launched them at her in a tirade. All of his wants and desires. And then futures, things he hadn’t even realized he knew. Possibilities of what he could become and what Zekia could become and what the world could become.

They flowed through him like he was an endless tap for the destinies of the realms.

Wesley’s staves grew white-hot on his skin, glowing like beacons in the darkness of the room. His hands shook with the energy of them, but he kept his arm out, bombarding Zekia with visions.

She screamed and clutched at her head and Wesley could see the blood start to trickle from her nose. From her ears.

“Make it stop!” she yelled.”Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop! This isn’t what becomes of us. He said it wouldn’t be what becomes of us!”

Wesley didn’t know what she meant by that.

He didn’t even know what he was forcing her to see. The visions flowed through him like a speeding train, too fast for him to catch anything but glimpses, before they crashed into the walls of Zekia’s mind.

He couldn’t stop.

Many Gods, even if Wesley wanted to, he just *couldn’t*.

His magic was free and it refused to be shackled again, even by him.

He could feel the shadow demon screeching in his mind and trying desperately to claw Wesley out, but Wesley kept his thoughts firm, throwing dream after dream into the demon’s head until its knees shook and it convulsed to the floor.

Zekia whimpered beside it.

Wesley climbed onto the window ledge.

“Don’t,” she said.

Zekia’s voice was gravelly with desperation.

“Please don’t leave me here. I don’t want to be alone again.”

Wesley swallowed and he couldn’t believe that a part of him was even considering what she said.

“Come with me.”

Zekia shook her head. “We can’t go,” she said. “The future can’t happen and if we leave, everything falls to dust and ash.”

Wesley swore.

He couldn’t take her with him.

He couldn’t save her.

“I’m sorry, kid,” he said.

And then Wesley jumped from the window.

Past the rows of bodies and headstones, into the icy water and down, down, down.