Chapter 14
The lonesome, insistent call of a mockingbird was a much-appreciated reminder of the desert amid the sound of traffic one street over as I stood on my balcony and breathed in the night.
Lightning flickered in the distance, and I could smell the rain coming.
Benedict’s car was softly ticking below me as it cooled, and the murmur of Benedict’s and Marty’s voices was a comfortable come-and-go through the open sliding door.
It had to be nearly midnight, and still the quad was bouncing light off the low clouds as if there were a game at the stadium.
It was dross I was seeing, not electrical light, and I stood with my elbows on the balcony railing, the beginnings of a headache threatening.
Large drifts lit the trees as if it were Christmas, and dross dust sparkled like living pollen blowing in from the desert.
I’d always been able to see dross well, but now I realized I’d been half-blind until Thoth had broken me and I could truly see.
Pluck lived in a fairyland of burning hell.
It’s not that bad. Pluck’s thoughts percolated through my mind, hazing my thoughts like a wispy cloud hazes the sun, but I could sense both his wary disgust that mages kept making dross and his appreciation that there was an entire guild devoted to keeping the campus clean.
The shadow dog lay curled up in a folding chair, not much more than a pair of eyes and pricked ears keeping me company as I worried about Lev and Herm.
They knew the risks, but it felt wrong getting a good night’s sleep when they were in potential danger—doing my job.
I was the weaver. Bringing in rogue shadow was my responsibility, not theirs, even if I wasn’t able to make fields. How am I going to do that?
The tickle of a bug traced down my arm, and I pushed from the balcony to brush it away. A heated pain flared at my fingertips, and I jerked, stifling a gasp when I realized it wasn’t a bug but dross dust.
Panicking, I stupidly shook my hand to try to get it off, accidentally triggering the latent energy in a flash of heat. The dross broke and my elbow hit the wall—sending a zing of pain all the way up my arm.
“Oh, that stings,” I said, and Pluck lifted his head. “I didn’t even see it. How do you deal with this all the time? I mean, it’s not as if it’s a drift that you can avoid. It’s everywhere.”
I twisted my arm to look at my elbow, a sigh sinking my shoulders when Pluck’s cold presence sifted through my uppermost thoughts. Dross dust is breaking on me all the time, he admitted. I let it. Turn the released energy into dark matter and dump it into moldavite.
“You can handle dross?” I questioned, and he dissolved back into a puddle.
I can handle dross dust. Anything more intense burns. It’s akin to trying to funnel a gallon of water through a pinhole. Eventually it will all get through, but in the meantime, you drown. If it’s only a trickle to begin with…
I licked my lips and glanced behind me into the brightly lit living room where Marty sat with her head over her phone, texting.
Behind her, Benedict was in the kitchen again, and I winced when his lodestone flared and the three mugs before him began to steam.
Hot tea would be pleasant; dealing with the dross drifting about on the counter would not. You think I can do it?
Pluck’s hesitation sparked through me. I’ve never known the weaver who would have thought to try, but it is breaking on you.
Gather some dust. Encourage it to break.
As the energy peaks, put your thoughts into the tuned glass you want to give to Marty.
Either the energy will fill it via your mind, or it will break on you and the balcony will collapse.
He wasn’t serious about the balcony breaking, and encouraging dross to break on me wasn’t a problem.
I felt in my pocket for the square chunk of moldavite Marty had been drawn to.
Gripping it in one hand, I exhaled to find a light, meditative state.
I ran my other hand across the wall, not surprised when the dross dust clinging to it redoubled its glow like a phosphorescent alga.
Too much! Pluck protested, and I froze, quite sure I didn’t want to try to shake it off again.
A warm haze had begun to itch my palm, and I held my breath as the heat soaked in, becoming painful.
Put your thoughts into the stone. The dross is breaking, but we can minimize the damage. Petra, do something!
I was afraid to breathe, tense as the heat on my palm began to prickle-burn. Put my thoughts into the stone? I could do that, and I dropped my awareness into the moldavite with a sighed “Ommm.”
The ordered, icy lattice of the moldavite blossomed in my mind, dark, scintillating, ever reaching but finite.
I felt myself shiver as the tantalizing thread of energy trickled through my brain and the lattice began to glow, electrons jumping to new shells as the energy filled it.
Pluck’s shock and satisfaction blossomed, buoying me up…
until I realized he was right. There was too much. It was coming too fast.
And just like that, my calm vanished and the flow of energy pinched off. Before I could even think it had been a mistake, the tiny dust of energy rebelled, exploding in a flash of heat.
I gasped, my eyes snapping open as fire pulsed deep in my hand.
I jerked, one hand reaching out to grab the railing to keep myself from going down, the other holding the moldavite crystal to my chest. A haze of dross drifted down like a water balloon in slow motion until it hit the weedy sidewalk and shattered into uncountable tiny drifts, only to re-form like a bead of mercury to make a drop of sun in the gutter.
I might not have turned it all to dark matter, but I had condensed the dust into a drift that a sweeper could see and manage.
The stone itself had become surprisingly dark.
I didn’t think I’d put that much into it. Giving it to Marty seemed harder now.
Leaning over the railing, I stared at the dross. “Pluck, I think I almost had it.”
You do have it, resonated cleanly through my mind, his pride and wonder twining through my own.
It’s a good thing you’re not a shadow, or that drift would have damaged you severely instead of leaving a mild sensory burn.
Next time, don’t take so much. His head coalesced and lifted, green eyes glittering in an almost dragon-like head.
You should go in. You’re vulnerable out here.
I’m not vulnerable, I thought, even as I stifled the horrible memory of my field unraveling and never taking form again.
Okay, I couldn’t do weaver magic, and I couldn’t touch dross or fix it inert.
But I could still manipulate dross with a stick and had just put enough energy into a moldavite stone to leave it almost black.
Energy that I can’t use without a field. But Marty could.
“Petra?” Benedict’s call drifted out. “Tea’s ready!”
Pluck’s good mood tarnished. I went in, dropping the stone into a pocket and leaving the slider open a crack so I wouldn’t lose the sound of the mockingbird.
Marty was sitting by the unlit fireplace.
Her feet were tucked under her and she looked pensive.
Or worried. Or maybe tired. It was hard to know with her.
You need to give her that stone, Pluck thought dryly as he walked through my leg, turning it cold before trotting into the kitchen to flop on the floor in front of the fridge. The fan from it kept the floor dross-free, and he looked so much like his namesake that it hurt.
She can have it, I thought, smiling at Benedict as he threw the tea bag wrappers away.
Dross clung to the flat of his arm, sparkling as if ready to break.
Pluck huffed a warning when it pulled free and drifted down, one side of the shadow dog slowly dissolving to re-form on his other side, effectively giving the dross more space.
More dross glittered brightly on the counter, and Pluck’s disdain merged with my fond acceptance when Benedict studiously wanded the area, utterly missing it.
The better you were as a mage, the less likely you were good at seeing dross, and Benedict was one hell of a mage.
I didn’t see what was wrong with using the teapot, but maybe he was making dross as a Thoth deterrent.
The shadow was understandably afraid of it, seeing as he didn’t have a weaver to protect him if he ever stumbled into it.
And now, neither did Pluck.
Pleased, Benedict flicked his clean wand at the small tripod trap he’d set up on the counter.
Anyone not in the know would think the slim wand he was returning to the cup of utensils on the counter was a pencil, and in fact, the best wands did have a sliver of graphite at the tip.
But expensive wand or not, the dross was now on his elbow, not in the trap, and I sidled into the kitchen wondering if I could get the dross drift without him knowing—or it burning me.
“Thanks for the tea.” I needed that wand to have any chance of getting that dross drift, but Benedict tugged me into him, his body shifting as he sighed, his breath moving my hair.
“You mind if I shut the slider? Thoth could just…come in. He wants you, not the vault.”
Head tilted, I looked up at him, feeling cared for, feeling loved. My arms were around him, and grinning, I stood on my tiptoes, tugging him closer to whisper in his ear, “Pluck was with me. Why are you making dross in my nice, clean kitchen?”
“Because you don’t have a microwave and I couldn’t find a teapot,” he whispered back, voice husky and low. “The sliding door—”