Chapter 10 #2
She wasn’t running, at least not from us. Still, there was only one easy way in and out of the fairgrounds, and Benedict waiting at the gate was a good idea. Pulse fast, I dodged around the few shoppers between me and the bathrooms, glad there wasn’t a line as I entered the stone-block building.
“Marty?” I called before I even got through the switchback entrance. “You in here?”
A loud sniff pulled my attention to the breastfeeding nook. “Yeah. Sorry.” Marty stood from the hard-back couch, phone in hand. “I should have told you where I was going.”
“No worries. I, ah, just came in here to wash my hands,” I said, thinking fast. She looked miserable.
“Benedict went ahead to the gate,” I added as I faced the sink to give her a moment to collect herself.
Clearly something was wrong, and I watched her through the mirror when she stuffed her phone in a pocket.
Her screen saver, I realized, said it all: two smiling faces in snow hats; one was Marty, one was a young man her age with love in his eyes.
Immediately my shoulders eased. Marty hadn’t just fallen out of the sky. She had a life, and it was trailing her as much as Thoth was. This, though, I could help with, and I dried my hands with a feeling of sympathy and understanding.
“Sorry,” Marty said when our eyes met. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
She was heading for the opening, and I jumped to follow. “Hey, Marty…”
“Benedict has the moldavite?” she said, overly cheerful.
“Ah, yeah.” I squinted in the sudden light even as I appreciated the fresher air. “Marty?”
Her pace was fast and she scanned the light foot traffic. “Gate is this way, right?”
I took a long step to catch up. “Benny thought you might be running away.”
Marty made a sad bark of laughter. “I can’t go anywhere until you get that shadow to stop following me. And then I’m going home.”
Silent, I met her stride for stride, watching her expression crumble.
“I can’t go home, can I,” she whispered, and I reached out, taking her arm and turning her to me.
“I am so sorry,” I said earnestly, feeling awful as her eyes began to swim. “But, Marty, there’s no reason he can’t come here. I mean, the university wants you so badly that they will move heaven and earth to find job options for him. Good ones with opportunity. Not a handout.”
Head shaking, Marty screwed up her face, a hand going to hide her eyes.
“I am so tired of the lies,” she said. “I just want everything to go back to the way it was.” Blinking fast, she looked up at me.
“I told him it was a family emergency when I left. That was three days ago. He’s taking two weeks off to come out here to be with me.
I told him no, and now he thinks I’m lying.
The little lies didn’t matter, but I can’t keep doing this. ”
“You don’t need to,” I said, totally getting why she hadn’t wanted to tell her boyfriend that she was attracting shadow. “What’s his name?”
A fond emotion flickered and vanished. “Victor,” she said softly. “I can’t bring myself to lie to him anymore, but I really need to stay here and figure this out. I think…I think I should break it off.”
Her voice had gone up at the end, and I wasn’t surprised when she began to cry.
“Oh, Marty.” I gave her a quick hug, but it only made things worse.
“Marty, if he’s taking off work to help you through a family crisis, he’s a good man.
He will understand.” I tried to get her to look at me, failing.
“I get that asking the person you love to uproot themselves and move two thousand miles to a new job and friends is hard, but give him the choice.” I smiled when her eyes flicked up to mine. “No more lies.”
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“Marty…”
“I can’t!” she said louder, then leaned closer.
“He’s not a mage or a sweeper.” She blinked fast, brow furrowed as if she was pained.
“He’s a mundane,” she whispered, and I felt my expression go slack.
“Even if he came out here, I’d still have to lie to him.
How am I going to do that if I’m a weaver?
” She gestured helplessly. “I’ve seen you and Pluck.
I can’t ask a sentient being to hide. Forever.
It’s either him or shadow. And I just don’t know… ”
She wiped her eyes again, and I stood there, not knowing what to say, gobsmacked. Her boyfriend was a mundane? No wonder she was upset. It wasn’t unheard-of for mages and sweepers to marry mundanes, but she was right. Unlike a mage or a sweeper, she couldn’t hide her magic from Victor. Ever.
“There you are!”
Benedict’s hail pulled me around, but his cheerful expression faltered as he saw my face. “What happened? Is everything all right?” he asked.
Silent, Marty spun on a heel and headed for the gate.
“No,” I said, relieved when Pluck’s cold presence wrapped around my ankle and the sunlight suddenly became painful. “I found out why all the texts and phone calls. Marty’s boyfriend is a mundane.”
“So?”
I linked my arm in his, stifling a shudder as Pluck settled himself in my pocket.
His presence fizzed through me, his relief at finding Marty shifting to worry as my thoughts melted into his, carrying her situation.
“So you can’t hide a shadow like you can a lodestone. It’s him or us, and she knows it.”
“Oh.” His brow furrowed as he gazed at Marty walking a good eight feet ahead of us, the woman’s shoulders hunched in heartache. “Ah…”
You trust five-year-olds with the silence, Pluck fizzed. Why not a mundane in love?
It was a good question, but my phone was humming, and I reached for it seeing as it was Ryan. Maybe he knew a way. True, we trusted children, but they were a part of our world—mundanes were not.
“Hey, Ryan,” I said as we followed Marty through the turnstiles and into the parking lot. “We got the moldavite. Um, I need to talk to you about Marty. I found out why she isn’t all over your free ride. It might be tricky, but I think we can convince her to stay if we bend a rule.”
“Bend a rule?” Benedict said incredulously, and I frowned at him.
“Where are you?” Ryan said, the tension in his voice almost bringing me to a halt.
“Tucson.” I gripped my phone tighter even as I scanned the parking lot. “It’s kind of a good news, bad news thing about Marty.”
His exhale was long. “And Pluck is with you? Please tell me Pluck is with you.”
“Of course he’s with me,” I said, feeling my cold pocket as the shadow fizzed a dull warning. “Ah, why did you want to know where Pluck is?”
“Marshal Owens is in St. Unoc General. We think it was a shadow attack,” Ryan said, his gravelly voice rumbling.
“Cameron?” My breath caught and I angled the phone so Benedict could hear. “What happened?”
“We’re still piecing that together,” Ryan added as Benedict bent close. “Best guess is she went to talk to you at your apartment and was attacked in the hall.”
Shadow spit…Thoth had come for me and gotten Cameron.
“Is she okay?” Benedict asked, clearly as worried as I was.
“She’s stable, but in a coma. Thank God Lev found her.” Ryan’s voice became hushed. “The courts think Pluck is to blame, but if he is with you, that doesn’t fly.”
It was Thoth, Pluck fizzed, and I touched my pocket, both relieved and frightened. He was waiting for us and she got in the way.
“If Lev hadn’t been there…” Ryan hesitated. “He said he took on the appearance of a man.”
“It was Thoth,” I said, distracted. Dumb, dumb, dumb! I should have warned her. Put a note on the door. I was walking around as if I were impervious—and now someone was hurt.
“Shadows can look like a person?” Ryan’s surprise was obvious, and I winced. I was starting to think Pluck didn’t want to take on a more complex form because he couldn’t.
“Ah, it’s not making the news yet,” Ryan continued. “But the magic community has already put two and two together and gotten shadow attack. I need you here to head off any anti-shadow sentiment. I just thank God that you and Pluck were off campus at the time.”
They will blame us regardless. Pluck’s thought simmered through me, but I’d been thinking it, too, and I quickened Benedict’s and my pace.
“Has anyone warned the memorial shadows?” I said, and Benedict reached for his fob, unlocking his car’s doors as we approached.
“No.” Ryan hesitated. “I’m sorry, Petra. I never even thought of that. I don’t think I could get anyone to go down there now anyway.”
Marty got in the back and slammed the door shut, lost in her own misery. “Good,” I said. “I’ll do it.” I bit my lip, not looking forward to the conversation.
“Meet me at the hospital first,” Ryan said. “Okay? It’s publicly being blamed on a severe allergy.”
“Sounds about right. Ryan, we are on our way.”
I ended the call, exchanging a worried look with Benedict as I went around the car and got in. Allergy? Magic users would know the truth. Somehow they’d find out that a shadow had attacked a mage—in my apartment building—and put her in a coma.
Accident or intentional? I thought, and Pluck fizzed sourly, unable to hide his worry.
Concerned, I settled into the car’s plush seat and tried not to chew on my fingernails. Marty was a knot of misery, but she looked up when Benedict got in, drawn by the chatty man’s unusual silence. It was a good bet that the marshal had found Thoth waiting for us and tried to catch him.
Rule number two…