Chapter 2
I gasped, ducking when two lights slammed into existence, a flood of bright glare pinning me between the cold walls of the alley.
“Hey!” I shouted when Fawn shoved me, knocking me off-balance.
My butt hit the filthy cement, then my back, but the surprise went almost unnoticed when my head followed, stunning me.
Cold hands pushed against my face, followed by a tug and sudden give as Fawn yanked my moldavite amulet from around my neck. Pluck…He needed it. It was his. Hell, I needed it. It was the source of my magic.
“Got it!” she crowed, pushing herself off me. “I got her lodestone!”
I sat up, frightened. She wasn’t alone. I’d made a mistake.
My head hurt, and I could hardly see straight.
But she had Pluck’s amulet, and my breath caught when I saw the glint in her eye.
“No!” I cried out as she flung the glass to the snowy pavement and stomped on it.
Shards flew, glinting in the overhead light, green among the falling snow. I stared, shocked.
Any fear Fawn had once had was gone. Overflowing with confidence, she circled me, blocking my way out.
Okay, she’d busted my lodestone, but why the oppressive light? My gaze flicked to the roof as I put one hand on the cold pavement and stood, angry when I realized the only reason for the light would be to drive Pluck into my lodestone. And then she broke it?
Fawn stood dead center of the alley, coat open and her hands clenched into fists. In her grip was a new lodestone, brilliant in the bright light, but it was her ugly, vindictive smile that scared me. “No stone. No shadow,” she mocked. “It’s almost too easy.”
My lips parted. She broke the lodestone to kill Pluck? It didn’t work like that. Did it? Shadow spit. They had known who we were. Who had been hunting who?
“You’re a separatist,” I whispered, my gut twisting at the voices echoing down from the rooftop. Fawn was part of the very group that had spent centuries ridding the world of shadow and weavers…and I had walked right into her trap.
“Now you get it,” Fawn mocked. “Just in time for the end. Filthy weaver.”
Okay. I was alone. I was drowning in light. Pluck’s amulet was busted and she was between me and any escape. But that didn’t mean Pluck was gone or that I was helpless.
I let my anger flow, yelling as I ran for her. She stupidly did nothing, and my shoulder slammed squarely into her gut, sending her pinwheeling backward into the wall.
She cried out as she hit, and I stiffened as my aura sparked. She was casting a spell.
The golden threads of her magic laced into a hazy field, settling over me as a second lodestone brightened, releasing the stored energy of the sun to fuel her spell. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
I hunched in pain, panicking as my lungs refused to work. Shocked, I froze when her foot slammed into me. The last of my breath escaped me in a pained groan, and I hit the ground hard.
Inches before my eyes was a shard of Pluck’s amulet, the glass a dark green amid the slushy gray of snow.
As Fawn crowed, I reached for it, desperately pulling it closer until a sharp stab of pain when it cut me told me I had it.
A little drop of red squeezed out from between my fingers as I held it tighter, struggling to make a field to break the spell.
Stars spotted my sight. I could sense the dark matter within the shard, twisting like black threads in my mind…But I couldn’t focus. I was slipping. It wasn’t my memory she was going to take. It was my life. I’m so sorry, Pluck. I should have waited, I thought. Benny…
“She’s down!” the woman shouted up to the lights. “Give me a second to finish this. First round is on me.” A toe nudged my ribs. “Kill your shadow, and you’re nothing.”
“You sure the shadow is gone?” a voice called down as my forehead touched the cold pavement.
“Yeah, I got it. It was in the stone when I broke it. They’re nothing but shards now,” Fawn said; then louder, to me, “Bet you didn’t know that, did you, weaver bitch? You break a stone when a shadow is in it, and you kill the shadow.”
No, I hadn’t known that. No wonder Pluck didn’t take refuge in it very often. It was both sanctuary and death. A tiny little church, my oxygen-starved brain said, stringing nonsense together into pseudowisdom.
Except that Pluck hadn’t been in there when she’d broken it.
And then the lights beating down on me exploded with a sodden pop.
Sparkles fell like rain, hitting the cold pavement in a sudden patter. Fawn’s shriek echoed, followed by a masculine grunt and a soft and certain thud.
“Petra!”
Warm hands pulled me from the stones and turned me over. Benedict.
“Pluck! Over here!” he shouted as the last of the sparks faded and were gone.
Shadow spit, I couldn’t die. I had stuff to do yet.
“You’re going to be okay,” Benedict said, panic furrowing his brow, and my heart broke as I heard the lie. “Petra, you’re going to be okay.” He looked desperately into the new dark. “Pluck!” he called in agony.
A sharp, familiar thought skated through my mind, breaking Fawn’s spell with the shock of a sudden slap.
Gasping, I sucked in the frigid air as Pluck’s horrified presence twined frantically through mine.
His thoughts were too chaotic to realize, but his emotion was clear enough.
It was hard to say who he was more angry with—himself or me.
Benedict yanked me closer, a hand pushing my hair from my eyes as I shook.
“Thank God. Are you okay?” he whispered.
The alley was blissfully dark again, but stray bits of dross lit the night and I could see him.
Pluck fizzed in my uppermost thoughts, the fear behind his anger almost frantic…
until he realized I was sensing everything he felt and he hid his emotions from me with a soul-shaking snap.
“You’re bleeding!” Benedict said, and I looked at my hand in a numb haze.
“It’s from a shard of Pluck’s lodestone.
I’m fine.” I hadn’t meant to worry either of them, and it was heady knowledge that they both cared for me that much.
Almost…I could smile. I opened my hand to show him the ragged shard of glass, black in the low light and shining with my blood.
It was all that was left of Pluck’s very expensive, very old chunk of moldavite.
Ryan is going to be ticked…
Another shout sounded from the roof, followed by the flash of a spell.
Clearly Lev was up there, risking the silence to catch Fawn’s cohorts.
If anyone saw it, he could blame it on a blown transformer.
“It was lucky you got here when you did,” I rasped, my gaze dropping to Pluck.
The shadow was sitting before Fawn, pinning her against a rusted door.
He was the size of a small pony, and drifts of dark matter lifted from him in black curls, hissing when they found the iced pavement.
His massive shoulders and powerful haunches gleamed in the glow of the dross and the streetlight, and the snow, I realized, was falling right through him.
Dross littered the alley, glowing like lava as it dripped from the rooftop.
The big lights on the roof might be busted, but I could see better in the dark and the leftover energy from mage magic burned like little suns.
Both annoyed and relieved, Pluck flicked an ear.
The splat of dark matter hit the pavement inches from Fawn’s foot, hissing evilly until it dissipated.
“Don’t touch me!” Fawn shrieked as she pressed against the door. “Someone help! I’m being mugged!”
But no one ventured down the alley to investigate, and whoever had been manning the lights was gone or in cuffs.
“Careful. She’s too mean to go down easy,” I said as Benedict helped me stand, his hand cupping my elbow.
My hip hurt, and I wrapped my arms around myself and longed for my Arizona sun.
“Thanks, Pluck.” I limped forward to put my hand atop his head, but he was misty and it simply fell through in a wash of cold tingles.
He clearly wasn’t happy he had needed to save me.
Or maybe it was Fawn. Or his busted amulet.
“Ah, we’ll get another lodestone. No need to kill her over that,” I joked.
Why not? iced through me when he twined a ribbon of ice about my ankle. And if the truth be told, I kind of wondered that myself as the back of my head throbbed in tomorrow’s bruise. I’m too fast to be caught in a breaking lodestone, but her aim was to kill both of us.
Too fast? I asked silently, and a flush of his annoyance wove about my confusion.
I know my way through a lodestone’s lattice, he fizzed, soothing my worry. Another shadow would have to hold me there while it broke to be effective. Even so, I don’t like that she knew it was possible.
His amulet wasn’t a death trap. Relieved, I dabbled my fingers in his quasi-solid state, feeling his fear and anger swell my own until his abiding hate trickled through me and I pulled my hand from him. Without his touch, my thoughts and emotions became solely my own again.
“I don’t remember anything after breakfast,” Benedict said, his brow creased with worry. “You were gone, and Pluck’s charades made it very obvious he knew where you were. What happened?”
“We found her. Confronted her. She spelled the entire shop.” But as I took a breath to tell him we’d gotten more than a badly behaving mage, the woman pinned against the door lunged for the pavement.
“Lodestone!” Lev called out from the roof. “She’s going for another lodestone!”
She’s got three? I reached out as Pluck darted to intercept the bauble of glass glittering in the snow. It had to be Fawn’s. If she got it, no telling what she’d do.