28. Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly #2
But he’d gotten out of those spots. Not through magic—he had about as much magical talent as a brick—but through reading the angles, finding the gaps, waiting for the mark to make a mistake.
Trouble was, the sentinels weren’t marks. They didn’t have egos to exploit or greed to manipulate. But they were constructs, which meant they followed rules, and rules meant patterns, and patterns meant—
The wards pulsed again.
The sentinels flickered.
Just for a moment. Barely a half-second. But unmistakable.
The demonstration. Whatever Vex was doing in Oak Haven? Whatever spells he was casting, whatever magic he was channeling through this network—was pulling power. And that draw created instability. Tiny gaps in Burke’s perfect control.
Shaw had spent most of his life looking for gaps.
His right hand was still caught in the light band, but suddenly he found that his fingers could move. Barely. Numb and clumsy, but functional. He flexed them slowly, testing.
In his vest pocket was a bent nail he’d pocketed from Void debris out of habit. Not useful for much. But Shaw had spent enough time in restraints to know a little bit about getting out of them. The key was patience.
The wards pulsed. Stronger this time. The sentinels flickered longer, a full second of instability.
Come on, Vex. Cast something big. Show off for your investors. You know you want to.
Shaw twisted his right wrist. Slowly. Using his own weight. The light band burned but gave slightly, just an eighth of an inch. But it was enough.
Another pulse caused lights overhead to stutter. Somewhere deeper in the facility, something electronic made a sound like a dying cat.
Shaw twisted again. His wrist slipped another fraction.
The sentinels’ attention never wavered, but their forms loosened every time the wards spiked, edges blurring like smoke.
One more twist, and Shaw’s right hand came free.
He didn’t move. Just let his arm hang there, still suspended by the left binding, body still sagging like he was unconscious. The sentinels didn’t react.
Good. Stay stupid.
Blood was returning to his hand in sharp little needles of pain. Shaw flexed his fingers slowly, forcing circulation back, while his mind raced through the next steps.
He needed to get to the rack he’d marked with his tie. Somehow stop the feedback loop before Luna got hurt.
The wards pulsed again, and the sentinels flickered.
Shaw reached slowly into his vest pocket and found the bent nail. He waited for the next pulse. When it came—when the sentinels lost cohesion for that crucial second—Shaw moved.
He jammed the nail into the left light band, not to break it but to wedge it, to create a gap, and twisted his whole body downward using momentum and desperation equally. The binding released, and Shaw dropped down.
He hit the concrete floor hard, shoulder first, all the grace of a drunk falling down stairs. No time for dignity. He rolled, scrambled to his hands and knees, and dove under the nearest rack just as the sentinels registered his escape.
Shaw kept moving, staying low, using the racks as cover the way he’d once used Chicago’s back alleys. His shoulder screamed, and his hands were still half numb. But he was moving, and moving meant living.
Behind him, the sentinels were converging, making the floor vibrate.
Cage 7B. Find the tie. Don’t die.
* * *
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Vex said expansively, “let me show you something truly remarkable.” He spread his arms, and the air around him began to ripple like heat shimmer off asphalt.
His face blurred, features changing until he became someone else.
Then someone else again. A parade of faces went by like a deck of cards being shuffled.
The chat exploded with fire emojis and exclamation points.
“Glamour work,” Luna murmured. “He’s showing off. Who’s got this?”
Violet raised her hand. She stood slightly apart from the group, black hoodie despite the July heat, eyeliner sharp enough to cut glass. “I practiced this one,” she said flatly.
Polly, standing just behind her daughter, looked less certain. “Violet, honey, maybe—”
“Mom, I can do this.”
Luna made the call. “Go.”
Violet nodded and turned her attention to the gazebo.
Vex was cycling through faces faster now—man, woman, old, young, each one perfectly rendered. Online, the investors were eating it up.
Violet’s hands moved in small, precise gestures. Luna felt the counterspell take shape—delicate work, like pulling a single thread from a tapestry without disturbing the rest.
The glamour flickered. Vex’s face stuttered, caught between two forms.
“Good,” Luna breathed. “Just like that—”
But then, the ward snapped back. The defensive structure Burke had woven through the network recognized Violet’s interference and actively rejected it, sending the magical energy boomeranging back toward the source.
“Violet, hang on—” Luna started.
Too late.
The backlash hit Violet like an invisible fist. She flew backward, arms pinwheeling, and slammed into the grass.
“VIOLET!” Polly was already running, dropping to her knees beside her daughter.
Luna ran too, Scarlett and Delilah right behind her.
Violet was conscious—barely. Her eyes were unfocused, her breathing shallow and rapid. A thin line of blood traced from her nose.
“I’m okay,” Violet wheezed. “I’m—Jesus, Mom, stop—”
“You’re bleeding—”
“I’m fine.” Violet tried to sit up, winced, and settled for propping herself on one elbow. “That sucked.”
But she wasn’t fine. None of them were. Luna could feel the other witches behind her, their confidence shaken. They’d practiced countering spells. They’d trained. They’d been ready.
And Burke’s wards had punched through their defenses like they were made of tissue paper.
In the gazebo, Vex had recovered his composure, his face settling back into its original configuration. He was laughing it off, saying something about “the unpredictable nature of live magic,” but Luna could see the tension in his shoulders.
The chat was going insane—some were concerned, others excited, everyone wanted more.
And Chuck?
Chuck waved again.
* * *
The problem with identical metal cabinets was that they were all so goddamn identical.
Shaw pressed himself against a rack in what he hoped was a cold aisle—or was it hot? One blasted the air like a Chicago winter; the other shimmered like August in Death Valley—and he tried to remember the path Danny had taken.
Left at the main corridor. Through the forest of blinking lights. Past the cage labeled 4A. Then 5A. Then—
Or had it been 4B?
Christ.
Footsteps echoed from the next aisle over.
Couldn’t be sentinels, those bastards were too stealthy.
If they were after him, they’d be on him before he had a chance to breathe.
No, these were human footsteps. Workers.
Shaw tried to shrink into the rack while two men in matching shirts walked past arguing about whether the Royals had a shot at the pennant this year.
He waited until they’d passed before moving again.
The magic pulsed. Shaw could feel it even more strongly now. Whatever Vex was doing, he was escalating.
Luna.
He shoved down the spike of fear and kept moving. Stay low. Use the racks as cover. Find cage 7B.
There—a chain-link enclosure. He crept closer, checked the stenciled number.
6A.
Damn it!
He was going the wrong direction.
Another pulse. The lights overhead flickered. Shaw heard something electronic deeper in the facility make a sound like a garbage disposal eating silverware.
He reversed course, moved faster now, heart hammering. The aisles all looked the same. The cages all looked the same. And he could picture the sentinels somewhere behind him. Searching, patient and methodical as death.
There. Another cage.
6B again.
“Ughhh, come on!”
* * *
“We need to regroup,” Mama laid her hand on Luna’s shoulder. “Figure out a different approach—”
“There isn’t time.” Luna’s voice came out harder than she intended. “Every spell he casts, the network gets stronger. We’re out of runway.”
“Then what do we do?” Delilah asked.
Luna didn’t have an answer.
Polly was helping Violet to her feet now, supporting her daughter’s weight, murmuring reassurances that Violet was trying to wave off despite the fact that she was clearly still dizzy.
In the gazebo, Vex was recovering. He turned back to the cameras, that showman smile firmly in place. “Magic is powerful, yes. Sometimes unpredictable. But with the right systems, the right safeguards—” he gestured at his phone “—CastR makes it accessible.”
Luna felt sick. He was spinning Violet’s injury into a selling point.
“He’s good,” Scarlett muttered darkly.
“He’s a snake oil salesman,” Luna said.
But the chat was delighted. The scroll speed had only increased.
Vex tapped something on his phone screen. “Now let me show you something that really demonstrates the power of our network—”
The air beside him shimmered and tore open like a window. Through it, Luna could see what looked like a beach at sunset, waves rolling in, impossibly detailed.
“This portal,” Vex said, gesturing to the shimmering window, “is showing you a live view of Malibu Beach. Right now. In real time. CastR doesn’t just create magic—it connects magic across distances.”
“Holy shit,” one of the Earls breathed from somewhere behind them.
The cameras zoomed in. The chat went absolutely insane.
Then something moved in the periphery of the gazebo.
Not stepped into view. Appeared. A figure that shouldn’t exist—too tall, too thin, edges blurring like smoke. Its face was wrong, features indistinct.
Luna’s breath caught. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t human. Wasn’t even close.
Several of the Oak Haven witches took an instinctive step backwards.