Kristen DeCaro, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, spoke at a press conference following the vote. “The United States recognizes that the potential dangers of magic, as well as the potential benefits, are not limited to any one nation. Let this serve as a model of openness and transparency for the world, in the hope that we can come together to regulate the use of magic and protect the lives and freedom of all people.”

A bipartisan group of eighteen U.S. senators immediately published a letter of protest in the New York Times, demanding the removal of DeCaro.

U.N. inspectors are scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

Chapter 17

“How do you keep this kind of power out of the wrong hands?”

“That’s the wrong question, Isaac. I managed to do it by suppressing magic altogether. But you can’t go back to the way things were, even if you wanted to.”

“Fine. How do you share magic with the world without risking—”

“You can’t.”

“There has to be a way to prevent the most dangerous—”

“There’s not.”

“You’re even more annoying dead than you were alive. At least then you were doing things.”

“Would you like to trade places?”

“I helped reveal magic to the world. People are dying because of what I did.”

“Other people will live because of your choice.”

“What am I supposed to do, add up both columns to decide whether or not I made the right choice?”

“There is no right choice. You chose. Your job now is to make the most of that choice.”

BABS AND THE REST would be suspicious as hell. A lone guard accidentally disintegrates their pet libriomancer, while a convenient fire wipes the servers? The death spell should help convince everyone I’d truly gone up in smoke, but no spell was foolproof, and too many folks were walking around with those damn magic-sucking pearls. If they were smart—and dammit, whatever else I might think of these people, they clearly were—they’d be searching for me, just in case.

The entire tower was now on lockdown. It had taken close to an hour just to make it up to my office while evading security. Twice, people had opened my office door and looked around. I’d managed to keep out of sight behind my desk, or by dissolving into mist and flowing into the bottom of the half-full garbage can with the old food wrappers.

I made a mental note to start storing a change of clothes in my office. It wasn’t easy trying to plan an escape wearing nothing but a hospital gown. I had nowhere to carry my books, and the draftiness was distracting as hell.