Chapter 7
Cameron’s car was across the street in the auditorium’s old parking lot. Assuming she was a driver and getting in the car with her had been an honest mistake, but I still felt dumb, and I had to work to keep my disgust from showing.
My long-stick thumped across my back as we wove between the construction equipment and a shuttered food truck.
The major repairs to the building had been completed last month, leaving a considerable amount of dross glinting in the shadowed places.
The typically easy-to-miss heat distortion shone like miniature suns since Pluck was in my pocket, his touch raising my sensitivity to his level.
The area was still fenced off, and I pointed out the gate to Cameron.
The marshal immediately took the lead, bootheels clicking as we went through the chain-link gate and into the block-wide construction zone.
The auditorium was silent in the warming sun, better now that the scaffolding was gone.
It was just four two-story walls buttressed by a few empty classrooms and a pair of remodeled restrooms…
and would likely never be anything more.
Shadows now lingered in the damaged belowground areas where the inert dross lay, and it was doubtful that classes would ever be held here again.
The auditorium would remain an open-air garden memorial to all who had been lost.
You could teach weaver studies here, twined through my thoughts, a hint of optimistic anticipation lacing the frosty pinpricks…and for the first time, Pluck’s words kindled a faint hope. Once we had Thoth in hand, Marty would find a shadow. This was who she was, after all.
“Your shadow is in your pocket? How come?”
Cameron’s voice shocked through me, and I started. “Ah…the sun damages him. Saps his strength. He usually takes refuge in a lodestone, but a separatist mage busted it in Chicago.”
“Like a bad sunburn?”
I eyed her, not sure where the curiosity was coming from…or going to. “Not exactly. He’s basically organized sentient energy. He can form a skin of sorts to block most of the sun’s energy, but it’s easier to shrink down and stay in the shade.”
“Huh.”
Steps in unison, we took the low, wide stairs up to what had once been the main door.
The multiple glass panes were gone, replaced with more chain link and a smaller gate.
It was cooler out of the sun. She was going to want to come down with me.
I knew it. “How much do you know about shadows?” I asked.
Cameron’s questioning face looked too cute with those curls of hers. “As much as anyone, I suppose.”
“So, nothing,” I said, and ire flashed across her. “I mean, nothing current.”
The short woman stopped before the padlocked gate, her gaze roving over the sunlit garden growing warm in the early sun. “I try to be pleasant. I don’t have to be.”
I flipped the lock, then unslung my long-stick to find a drift of dross.
Pluck could turn it to dark matter for me and skip the amulet portion of our magic trick.
“You use your smile to disarm, which I think is worse than letting people see how smart you are. I’ve got two rules before I take you down there. ”
Cameron eyed me, the play utterly gone. “You are not in charge, Ms. Grady.”
“Three rules,” I amended. My dad’s old staff was akin to cool water in my fingers.
The red wood was polished to a shine, and the esoteric glyphs he’d etched into it for show had been rubbed with black.
Silver shod the heels, and the core held enough dross to attract nearly any dross spill.
The drift by the gate did not pose a problem. “One, I do the talking, not you.”
“So you’re dropping the lie that you can’t communicate with them.”
I glanced at the wishing well. At night, shadow-animated rezes were known to gather around it, but now, in the sun, it was empty.
“If they want to talk to me. Two, no trying to catch a shadow. I don’t care what you hear or what you think is going on.
You try to put one in a bottle and I will take you apart before they decide to kill you. ”
Her gaze followed mine to the well, the woman clearly not impressed. “And three?”
Dross clung to the bottom of the chain-link gate like a plastic bag, and I used the butt of the staff to collect it. “You might be in charge up here. I’m definitely in charge down there.” I spun the stick to collect the dross, pulling it free and feeling it burn until it became inert.
Eyebrows high, she smirked. “Here’s my list. One, you will summon a memorial shadow for me to question or I will subpoena you and stuff you in my car and drive you to DC myself.”
I’d like to see her try, fizzed in my thoughts, but I wasn’t sure how much of the sentiment was mine and how much was Pluck’s.
“Two, I will catch and contain any shadow I please.”
This time, I knew the dry chuckle was Pluck’s as cold shivered through me. Only a weaver or sweeper could catch a shadow, and even then, there was a chance the shadow might fight, leaving you comatose.
Cameron flicked the lock with a flippant carelessness. “And three, I am in charge, Petra Grady, whether we are in the sun or not. Do you have a key for this or is this a stall tactic?”
Pluck swirled from my pocket with no warning, coating my fingers in frosty pinpricks and accepting the cooled dross before pooling upon the ground to manifest as a sleek dog.
Ashen, Cameron rocked back, silent as Pluck walked through the bars, thin tail waving when streamers of himself pulled free to evaporate in the warm day.
“Hey! Wait up,” I called as I twined my fingers amid the sparkling vapor of nothing he’d left behind.
Dark matter tingled as I made a field around it.
The coldness of space had once been painful but now only spoke of power.
Quick from practice, I wound my mind through it to find the chiming of the universe within.
A second chime echoed in me. It was everything, it was all, and by bringing my echo in line with the universe’s, it was mine.
Hazed like a ball of heat within the confines of my field, the energy swirled with hidden glints as I organized it and dropped it into the lock. A soft tweak to bring everything out of alignment…and the energy expanded to break the lock with a sharp ping.
“A point to you, Grady.” Cameron drew the chain from the gate with a rattle, leaving it to hang as we went in together. Her boots clicked a steady pace on the newly set pavers…until she unconsciously slowed to take it all in.
The garden was surprisingly dross-free for a public space—but it had been locked.
My shoulders dropped at the sound of insects and the soft chatter of a fountain.
The memorial park had begun as a spontaneous citizen effort when the hastily erected chain-link fence around the sunken stage had become covered in notes, plastic flowers, and a few cacti in pots.
Most of the dross lingering underground was inactive—but enough hidden pockets of bad luck remained to make rebuilding dangerous.
So the university had followed popular sentiment and turned it into a memorial.
The surface debris had been carted away and a false floor had been erected over the pit, now called the grotto, to hide the mix of active and inactive dross under a shell of concrete and stone.
The upper bowl of the auditorium had been kept intact, but it was now landscaped with tiered gardens and benches, most of them having shade structures holding colorful bougainvillea vines.
The new floor was even with the street level, tiled in a mosaic of stone that, if you looked closely, was a sweeper emblem, with its three crossed sticks and five-pointed asterisk in the middle.
It made a bold statement that had the silence censors wringing their hands.
A fountain masked the street noise, but the dry wishing well was the garden’s focal point.
The walled hole set above the hidden stage was an easy way for the memorial shadows to access the enormous inert-dross dump far below.
At noon, the sun dove deep to touch the original stage—a beacon for the dead should they feel the need to rise.
And occasionally they did. Or, rather, their memory did, animated by a shadow drawn to the residual imprint left when death comes fast and unexpected.
The mix of human memory and living shadow was cruelty upon cruelty, for though a rez mindlessly repeated the last thoughts and actions of the dead, when animated by shadow it took on a sense of life that was neither human nor shadow but painfully both.
It was uncomfortable to say the least, but those who had lost people in the collapse often came at dusk hoping to see a memory of their loved ones sitting in a quiet corner. Which is probably why the university put a lock on the gate, I thought.
“Nice park,” the woman said, the hand held to shield her eyes falling when she noticed Pluck sitting next to me in the shade of a cactus. He looked sleek and powerful, wisps of himself drifting about his feet and ears.
We need to go down, he thought as a curl of ice cramped my ankle. The marshal should stay at the well. She can shout her questions from there.
“You don’t want her down there?” I said aloud, and anger creased Cameron’s youthful face.
The icy grip on my ankle tightened. She’s a mage. Our memories are stronger than her need to understand. Her presence will cause unneeded pain.
I glanced at Cameron, the woman clearly working up a protest. Benedict is a mage. Does he pain you?
Pluck’s grip around my ankle eased, but the strength of his thoughts did not. My scars are thick, but the shadows here are raw. Benedict is…tolerable because he cares for you.
It was the nicest thing he could have said about the man, and I turned to face the marshal. “Ah, you need to stay up here. I’ll tell you what they say.”
“Try again,” she said, hands going to her hips.