Magic Rises

would be left without answers. She had to know something at least. In her place, I would want to know.
    “Kate, please . . .”
    “Hush, please.”
    The need to hide had been hammered into me since I could understand words. The number of people knowing my secret had gone up from one to five in the past year, and thinking about it shot me right off the beaten path into an irrational place where I contemplated killing those who knew. I couldn’t kill them—they were my friends and my chosen family—but breaking a lifetime of conditioning was a bitch.
    If I didn’t tell her and I died, she would make mistakes. Roland would find her and use her. She didn’t realize it yet, but she was a weapon. Like me. I had created her, and I had a responsibility to keep her safe and to keep others safe from her.
    “What I’m about to tell you can’t be repeated. Don’t write it in your diary, don’t tell your best friend, don’t react if you hear about it. Do you understand?”
    “Yes.”
    “There are people who would kill you if they knew about you. I’m very serious, Julie. This is a life-and-death conversation.”
    “I understand,” Julie said.
    “You’ve learned in school about the theory of the First Shift?”
    “Sure.” Julie nodded. “Thousands of years ago magic and technology existed in a balance. Then people began working the magic, making it stronger and stronger, until the imbalance became too great and the technology flooded the world in waves, which was the First Shift. The magic civilizations collapsed. Now the same thing is happening, but we get magic waves instead of technological ones. Some people think that it’s a cycle and it just keeps happening over and over.”
    Good. She knew the basics, so this would be easier. “You heard me talk about Voron.”
    “Your dad,” Julie said.
    “Voron wasn’t my biological father. My father, my real father, walked the planet thousands of years ago, when the magic flowed full force. Back then he was a king, a conqueror, and a wizard. He was very powerful and he had some radical ideas about how a society should be structured, so he and some of his siblings built a huge army and rampaged back and forth across what’s now known as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and eastern Egypt. The world was a different place then geologically, and my dad, the wizard-king, had a large fertile area in which to build his kingdom. His magic kept him alive for hundreds of years, and he succeeded in creating an empire as advanced as our civilization. And wherever he went, he built towers.”
    Julie blinked. “But . . .”
    “Wait until I finish, please.” The words stuck in my throat and I had to strain to push them out. “When the First Shift came, the technology began to overwhelm magic. The magical cities crumbled. My father saw the writing on the wall and decided it was time for a long nap. He sealed himself away, how or where nobody knows, and fell asleep. A tiny trickle of magic still remained in the world, and it was enough to keep him alive. He slept until the Shift, our apocalypse, woke him up. He got up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and immediately started to rebuild his empire. He can’t stop, Julie. It’s what gives his existence meaning. This time he started with the undead.”
    “The People,” Julie said, understanding in her eyes.
    “Exactly. My father chose to call himself Roland and started gathering individuals with the ability to navigate vampires. He organized them into the People.”
    The People were a cross between a corporation and a research institute. Professional and brutally efficient, they maintained large stables of vampires and had a chapter in every major city.
    “Nobody ever talks about Roland,” I told her. “Most people don’t know he exists. And almost nobody, not even the navigators, know that shortly after he awoke, Roland fell in love. Her name was Kalina and she also had powerful magic. She could make anyone love her. Kalina wanted a baby, so Roland decided to give her one. I was that baby.”
    Julie opened her mouth. I raised my hand. If she interrupted me, I might not get through this.
    “My father always had issues with his children. They turned out powerful and smart, and as soon as they wised up, they tried to nuke him. Roland changed his mind and decided I’d be better off not being born. My mother knew that to save me she had to run away. She needed a protector, and Roland’s warlord, Voron, seemed like a