Chapter 13
My stomach was one big knot as I sat on the couch at the records building, scrolling through my feed with a nervous agitation, waiting for Herm to get back to me.
He was the only one who might know how to fix this.
It didn’t help that Pluck wasn’t talking, having taken the unusual stance of holding himself and his thoughts apart from me.
I hadn’t told Ryan what had happened other than we’d reached Cameron and failed to free her, scared it might be permanent, and a heavy foreboding had settled into my thoughts like a cold rot.
Benedict and I had found the records building empty but for Nog, not unusual after sunset.
In the light of knowing Thoth could break a magic user’s ability to make a field, I’d told the old sweeper to go home.
I hadn’t told Nog why. If it got out that shadow could rob a magic user of their abilities, the thin trust that Pluck and I had started would vanish and vanish hard.
How far would mages go to protect their supremacy?
Maybe that was how the whole thing got started.
In hindsight I should have told Ryan what had happened, but he would have put a halt to my plan to trap Thoth.
Word had gone out that the vault here was accepting dross, and for better or worse, good luck or bad, our trap was set.
Until we caught Thoth, I wouldn’t let anyone else stand between me and the shadow. I was here for the duration.
Frustrated, I tossed the phone onto the low table before me, accidentally knocking the bowl with the two unwrapped moldavite stones we had bought at the rock and gem show.
Pluck had tuned them, and the newly priceless stones deserved better than sitting in tomato-stained Tupperware.
I’d laced Pluck’s new amulet on a thin red strand of knotted silk and draped it around my neck, and the shadow’s presence under the couch swirled into a watchful haze at my very thought of it.
But still, he wouldn’t talk to me, and my worry deepened.
Mood bad, I lolled my head back along the top of the couch to stare at the ceiling.
Marty was upstairs seeing if it was worth the trouble to try to make one of the attic bedrooms usable, but that had been ten minutes ago.
I already knew the room was ceiling-to-floor boxes and figured she was talking to Victor.
Lev had volunteered to pick up Herm at the bus station, which left Benedict clattering about in the tiny kitchen.
He cooked when he got nervous, and who was I to interfere with a man who knew what to do with rice, beans, and corn?
There was no place to sit in the tiny space and he had kicked me out after I had knocked over the knife caddy thanks to my triggering some dross.
Short story shorter, I’d become a walking OSHA violation.
Dross had been breaking on me all afternoon, and I slumped deeper into the cushions, fingering the hole in my shirt I’d gotten getting out of Benedict’s car.
The chipped nail was from ransacking the junk drawer for a safety pin, which I had needed because the zipper on my jeans had gotten stuck.
The worst, though, had to be my stubbed toe gained on the raised tile on the walkway. Ow.
And it wasn’t as if there was that much dross around to break on me. Yesterday I would have said the front room of the records building was clean, with no hazy drifts or glowing puddles other than Pluck’s eyes under the couch. But now?
I scowled at the glittering dust in the corners and clinging to the sticks in the rack by the door.
I wasn’t touching Pluck, and yet I was seeing tiny amounts of dross with the clarity of full-bore drifts.
The dross dust likely stemmed from the vault breach last summer, oozing from the main plume to contaminate everything in a malaise of bad luck like microplastics showing up in fish tissue.
The question remained, however—how was I seeing such minuscule amounts, and why was it breaking on me?
Leaning forward, I pulled the two tuned moldavite stones closer, taking the square piece up and holding it to the light to study the tiny bubbles of ancient air trapped within its green imperfections.
As before, the ponderous ringing of the universe in my ears grew worse.
I’d first noticed it in the car. No, in Cameron’s nightmare, I decided, wondering if it was the cause or the result of the damage.
I thought it interesting that the untuned glass around my neck didn’t elicit such a response.
Mood sour, I set it back in the bowl, relieved when the magical tinnitus eased.
“Oh, that will work,” Benedict said from the kitchen.
“You sure I can’t help?” I called, head lifting to look across the hall.
“No!” he blurted, then leaned to see me, a forced smile on him. “I mean, thanks, but no. I want you to rest. It’s got to be like a bruise or something. Herm might know for sure. He knows more about weavers than anyone.”
Which was odd, seeing as Herm was a Spinner.
He’d been best friends with my dad, though, and my dad had been a weaver.
Unsure, I shifted to sit sideways with my feet on the couch so I could see a slice of the kitchen.
“I shouldn’t have left Cameron there.” I dangled one foot down in invitation, but Pluck didn’t twine a tendril around my ankle, didn’t spiral up to sit under my ear like a little snake. My worry deepened.
“Pluck said she’ll be okay, and I believe him.” His back to me, Benedict put a pan on the stove to flash cook the peppers and onions he had found in the fridge. “Once we have Thoth, Cameron is free to escape. Everything will return to normal. You included.”
His voice was cheerful, but we both knew things seldom ever “returned to normal.”
Depressed, I ran my hand over the coffee table to wipe off a haze of energy.
My palm warmed in warning, and I hesitated, not knowing what to do with the dross dust. I was starting to think it had been here all the time, never noticed until Thoth had damaged me, increasing my sensitivity.
Not only did all dross look brighter, but it felt hotter.
The night, too, had gone from a fairyland of glow to a firepit of hell, and Pluck wasn’t even touching me.
If I concentrated, I could actually see the individual dots of micro dross glowing on my fingertips.
It clearly wasn’t enough to organize into anything destructive, so I held it there, glittering like diamond dust in my palm.
Inhaling, I focused on it to try to make a field and snare it.
As before, the background humming in my ears became louder, but the echo of it in my head was gone.
It simply wasn’t there to weave through the weft of the universe and make a net—and I gave up and let the massive knot of threads that I’d conjured dissolve.
Threads, I mused as I tried to shake the dross dust off my hand, failing. “Pluck?”
He didn’t answer, and I tapped my toe on the floor in invitation, waiting until my ankle grew cold.
The humming rise and fall was the reverberation of the big bang, and if I couldn’t marshal my thoughts enough to weave a net with it…
no field. Pluck? Can you hear the universe all the time? Not just when you do magic?
Guarded and depressed, his thoughts slipped into mine. Yes. I can hear creation singing as easy as you can see the sunlight.
Ice cramped my ankle, and I left my foot where it was.
I can hear it now, too. All the time, not just when I try to make a field.
But I’ve lost the echo I used to hear in my mind.
Is it that echo in me that weaves the weft and makes my fields?
Holds it all together? I’m only making tangled threads now.
See? Again I concentrated to make a field, but without the echo within myself to bind it into a cohesive form, it tangled into a useless knot.
Pluck didn’t answer, but the tendril of his presence unwound from my ankle and he withdrew. “It’s not your fault,” I whispered, and I sensed him sink deeper under the couch.
Well, this just sucked dishwater; annoyed, I reached for my phone to see if Herm had texted me. The tingling of dross dust on my fingers burst into a sudden heat as it broke—and my phone slipped from my hand, hitting the table with a dull thwap on the way to the floor.
Shadow spit and dross, I swore as my groping hand failed to find it. It had gone under the couch, and I rolled to the floor, dropping to my hands and knees to shove my arm under the couch to find it by feel.
“Got it,” I muttered, then started at the new, unexpected flash of heat as a patch of hidden dross found me.
I jerked, my shoulder hitting the underside of the table to knock it into a mini quake.
Moldavite rattled in the bowl, and I flushed as I worked my way out to sit on the edge of the couch.
Elbows on my knees, I cradled my head in my hands and sighed.
I had no idea there was so much micro dross.
I’d never even noticed it before, much less had it break on me.
Pluck oozed out from under the couch, coalescing into a dog as he slunk into the hallway.
“You okay?” Benedict said, and I sighed.
“Fine.” I was a friggin’ dross magnet. I wouldn’t want me in the kitchen, either. How in the shadow-spit hell was I supposed to catch Thoth when I couldn’t make a field? I should have told Ryan, even if he would have nixed our little plan to snag him.
Pluck flopped onto the floor in the hall, one eye on me, the other on Benedict as little curls of dark matter drifted from him, evaporating. I have to fix this, fizzed through my mind.
Pluck, it’s not your fault, I thought, and his attention arrowed to me. It could have easily been you that Thoth went after.
But it wasn’t, he thought, and then his wolfy head lifted. You can hear me?
My lips parted, and I sat up even straighter. Uh, yeah. You’re not touching me.