Chapter 1 #2
“Ah, no,” I said, adding a mental rebuke: Pluck, relax.
I’d known Lev for a few years, but until recently he’d been the neighbor down the hall, fixated on my roommate with a sweet, puppyish attraction.
That he’d actually been surveilling her as a suspected separatist mage had come as a nasty shock.
Now that Ashley was in mage prison, Lev and I occasionally spiraled together to bust our respective boredoms. Benedict had been giving me more space than I needed or wanted.
I think he was worried he would come between Pluck and me, but Pluck was my shadow, and Benny?
Benny was the best thing since smartphones.
I snuck another glance at Benedict over a sip of coffee, grimacing when his hand touched that woman’s shoulder for a telling second when he stood. “He’s moving,” I said softly, and a small noise slipped from Lev. “She’s not. He’s going to the register.”
“Uh-huh.” Lev chuckled. “Don’t look at her. She’s spelling.”
The sensation of Pluck around my wrist grew icy cold. It was all I could do to not turn.
“Nice tidy field,” Lev murmured, head down as he pushed a drop of spilled coffee into a spiral. “Her lodestone is in a ring. Right hand.”
“Right hand. Check.” I stared at my coffee.
If we snagged her lodestone, she couldn’t spell anyone into forgetting anything.
That is, if she only had the one. Ashley had usually carried three, but she was a separatist mage hell-bent on exterminating weavers—which had really put a crimp in our friendship when we realized I was one. Pluck?
Pluck’s thoughts fizzed sourly in mine. I knew he didn’t like Benedict, but I did, and the whole point of us being here was because Pluck said ether magic didn’t affect shadows.
“Curious.” Lev shifted in his chair. “She didn’t throw the spell. She’s left it on his chair.”
“Like, for him to sit on?” Pluck, I tried again, only to get a sensation of obstinate defiance. The shadow snake wasn’t interested in helping Benedict, only in keeping me safe. “Can you tell if it’s ether magic?”
Lev shook his head. “Not by looking.” His frown deepened as his eyes met mine. “She made a shitload of dross, though. Hey, is that shadow dog of yours ready?”
Pluck, if you don’t show your value, they won’t let us leave St. Unoc again.
Immediately his fizzy, icy presence sharpened in mine. It’s a memory charm. It will take a few moments to mature after contact. Once it does, he will not remember the afternoon.
I took a slow breath, nervous. I was used to handling problems no one else could, quietly and with a practiced precision. This covert stuff was not my go-to. “It’s her. Pluck says it will erase Benny’s memory.”
You want to see her without turning your head? Pluck asked, and before I could answer, his cold presence slithered deeper into my mind as if it were his own. I blinked at the table, dizzy with a confusing double vision until I submitted and Pluck’s awareness took precedence.
With a subliminal whoosh, every single haze of dross in the room brightened into a threatening sparkle.
It was how Pluck saw the world, and his fear of the unstable energy drifted about my thoughts as our minds became one.
My entire outlook became crystalline almost, older, sharper, slower, and having a lot more complex feelings.
That said, Pluck moved on emotion, not logic. Most shadows did, or at least the few I’d talked with. It made them unfortunately easy to manipulate by those who knew. ’Course, if you did a shadow wrong, you’d likely end up driven insane by something alien and subversive in your brain.
This, though, was marvelous, and I relaxed as Pluck filled my mind.
It was like training your brain to decipher a stereogram, and suddenly I was seeing both my coffee before me and Fawn Nates halfway across the store.
Such finesse would have been impossible even a few weeks ago, but Pluck was getting better at working with my senses and I was getting better at trusting him.
The scintillating cold carrying the scent of the universe felt almost comfortable.
Lev was right. A huge drift of dross hazed under the table like a heat distortion, and the prim woman pulled her feet in to avoid it. “Bizarre,” I whispered, letting Pluck settle deeper into the folds of my brain.
I saw most spells as a glow or aura-like haze.
Pluck, though, saw the charm waiting on Benedict’s chair as a glittering lacework of potential energy, far more organized than dross.
The latticelike pattern was more complex than I could see with my mundane eyes, and for a moment, I simply stared, fascinated.
This is amazing, Pluck. How do you know what it does?
His flash of pleased amusement raced through me. You can read a menu, can’t you?
“Grady.”
I started as Lev gripped my arm, but the man let go when Pluck flattened his snakelike head into a cobra hood and hissed at him.
“Sorry,” I said, absently soothing the shadow. “Should we warn him?” If I pushed my knitted stocking hat off the table, Benedict would leave.
Lev fingered his hip, clearly missing his usual sidearm.
“No. We need more proof than Pluck’s say-so or she walks.
We have to let it invoke.” Exhaling, he slouched over his coffee, his almost-hidden tension prickling through me.
His lodestone earring glinted as he inhaled to make a tiny field between his hands.
A spell hazed within it, powered by his glass earring.
It was something I’d never been able to do and never would.
A weaver’s magic came from a darker source, and I touched my moldavite lodestone through my shirt.
“Grady, could you…” Lev prompted, and a flash of Pluck’s ire flickered through both of us when Lev nodded at the small drift of dross he’d created along with his spell.
Yeah, I was all for keeping our working area clean.
And sure, I was the logical choice for taking care of the waste, seeing as out of the ten or so people in the shop I was the only one the dross wouldn’t break on.
True, Pluck could use the dross to make himself stronger once I cooled it off.
But the ability to handle dross had been perverted over the years into a menial task designed to separate magic users into a have, have-not society.
It rankled that Lev assumed I’d take care of it. Like the maid.
And yet…I dutifully flicked a small wand with an attracting core from my pocket to twirl the glittering, hard-to-see ribbon of dross up like cotton candy.
The latent energy sizzed, threatening to break and give me bad luck.
Any mundane watching would assume I was fidgeting with a pencil, which was the entire point of the exercise.
Exhaling, I settled a field of thought over it, feeling the shock of connection before the dross cooled in a tingling wash. Inert.
You want it? I asked, but Pluck had already thrown a wispy tendril of essence out to take the now-safe energy.
Tickling pinpricks eased through us both as it became a part of him, but his satisfaction quickly tarnished when Benedict returned to the table with two cookies.
Yes, Benedict had agreed to help, but I wasn’t happy with him losing his memory.
Pluck, as soon as you can, I want you to break the spell on Benny, I thought, and a wash of irritation flowed up like an acidic barb.
I’m not here for him. I’m here for you.
Yeah? I touched my lodestone and my fingers became numb with cold. Then do it for me.
Fawn smiled at Benedict, the pleasant expression vanishing when Benedict sat down and burst the spell. With an almost unseen flash, the energy she’d left in it ran straight to his neural system. My gut hurt when Benedict’s focus went distant. He’d been spelled.
“Wait for it.” Lev put a hand on my wrist and Pluck fizzed darkly. “She needs to…Yep, she’s going for his phone.” His grip on me tightened. “Don’t look. This will be when she’s at her most attentive, most wary.”
Gut hurting, I stared at the table and watched through Pluck’s eyes as the woman took Benedict’s phone from his pocket, unlocked it with his face, and began scrolling through his apps.
Benedict’s expression looked as empty as a keg after a fraternity party. An ache throbbed in my hands, and I unclenched my fists. “Do we have enough evidence now?”
My breath caught when Lev let go of my wrist and stood. “Yep. Stay clear until I get her ring.” His gaze was fixed on Fawn as the woman emptied Benedict’s electronic wallet. “She won’t do anything here. She can’t risk breaking the silence of our existence.”
I wasn’t so sure. She’d been working this corner of the universe for weeks.
Go, I directed Pluck, and a wave of disorientation made my stomach flip-flop as he lifted from my thoughts and the bright dross under the table dulled to its usual heat-distortion haze.
Worried, I watched through a window reflection as Lev approached the table.
Fawn looked up from Benedict’s phone as Lev sat down on her other side, his hand falling to pin her palm to the table.
Lodestone ring glinting, she jerked out of his grip.
“Hey, handsome,” she said to him, an ugly smile on her face as she glanced directly at me. “Why don’t you have your friend join us. I’m all for doing this quietly. She and her shadow need to die. No need to make a news story out of it.”
Petra…A winding shadow of gray tightened about my ankle with the icy cold of winter. She knows you’re a weaver.
Which wasn’t anywhere near as troubling as her wanting both Pluck and me dead.
Until with a sudden implosion of thought, I realized why. She was a separatist mage. She wasn’t kidding. She wanted me dead.