Chapter 17
Neck craned, I ran the tip of the long red stick across the ceiling, having only minor success in gathering the last of the glowing dust. Benedict cooked when he was nervous—I cleaned.
And though Ryan hadn’t said anything much when I’d called him, he and Herm were on their way back.
This was going to be hard to explain, and the need to be honest with Ryan about my situation was growing.
Thoth isn’t hard to explain, Pluck fizzed, the shadow hiding under the couch increasingly relaxed as I got the last hint of dross out of the room. Thoth is a force of nature. Don’t stand in the moonlight and call it the sun. Tell him. Ryan is the only person who might believe you.
The metaphor was new to me, but it sounded a lot like don’t make mountains out of molehills, and I studied the room for any hint of dross outside of the last six glass bottles remaining to turn inert.
Nog was in the drive sending everyone and their jars of dross to the old gym, but Benedict wanted to finish this out and was sitting in the sun so as to keep his lodestone charged.
Maybe he cleaned when he got nervous, too.
His head was down as his hands fixed around a glowing bottle, his gently curly hair catching the light when the hazy distortion within it swirled, condensed…
and a spiny black nugget fell to the bottom of the bottle with a musical ting.
Clearly bone-tired, he shook the nugget into a box, set the empty bottle aside, and took up another.
“Just a few left,” Marty said as she set a trap stick with its two mates against the wall.
“Thanks for organizing those.” I shook the haze of burning dross from my stick into the desk trap, my hands still red and aching from the dross burn. “If not for the broken rack, no one would know we had a party.”
The woman smiled at my bad joke, but her expression emptied when she sat down, her fingers touching the pocket where her own lodestone was.
Pluck wisped out from under the couch and wrapped a cold tendril around my ankle.
She correctly sorted them into their balanced groups, he thought, and I nodded, pretending to look for more hidden dross behind the blinds.
Sensing the amount of dross within something was actually a high-skills art, and I began to wonder if Pluck was right.
She was sandbagging. I’d be willing to bet her patchy, low-grade fields were pretense, too.
Can you blame her? I thought, and his fizzing indecision filled me.
The woman wanted her old life, to return home, where her boyfriend waited, and forget this ever happened.
I knew how she felt. I wasn’t that far away from the sentiment myself.
At least Marty hadn’t blown up an entire auditorium and spread ten years’ worth of stored dross over campus.
Not to mention put hundreds in the hospital and several in the ground.
That was me, Pluck bubbled, but I wouldn’t let him take the blame. It had been self-defense. I’d put him there, and I still felt guilty.
It shouldn’t be this hard to talk to her, I thought, shoulders slumping when a familiar black van pulled into the tiny parking lot. “They’re back.” I let the blinds clunk into the window frame and turned.
Benedict shook another dross nugget into the box. “Shadow spit. I wanted to be done before they got here.” His gaze shot to Pluck. “Sorry, Pluck. I have got to stop saying that.”
Like I care? fizzed sourly through me.
Dana’s heels clicked smartly on the pavers, the woman outpacing Ryan and Herm to blow into the house like a summer storm.
“Hey, glad you’re here,” Benedict said with a worried cheerfulness, but the woman hardly acknowledged us, fast as she strode past the large archway, her intent obvious.
“No one leave,” she said tersely, never slowing. “Not until I see the vault.”
I felt like a kid who had broken Mom’s best vase, and I winced, the butt of my staff thumping to the colorful tile when Nog, Ryan, and Herm came in, all three looking oddly mismatched but alike where it counted. I’d effed it up again.
“Petra, are you okay?” Herm pushed past Nog and reached for my reddened hand. “My God. You’re burned! Like burned, burned. Did Thoth do this? Where’s Pluck?”
“It was dross, and it’s not that bad.” My face warmed as I looked at my pink hand cradled in his sun-leathered, knobby-knuckled one. “Pluck is fine,” I added as the shadow coalesced beside me, numbing my entire leg. When Herm saw him, his worry eased.
“Pluck, thank all that is holy,” Herm said with a sigh, and the shadow hazed to almost nothing in surprise. “I would have bet my life that Thoth wouldn’t attack the vault during the day. We never should have left you.”
Pluck’s green eyes blinked, surprise and gratitude bubbling through me at the man’s relief. We handled it, he thought, then dissolved, vanishing under the couch as if embarrassed.
“Ryan,” I started, and the man looked up from where he’d been talking with Benedict, Nog a silent presence behind them as he gathered up the empty bottles. “I am so sorry. I never should have gone down to the vault.”
“Yeah, that will be hard to explain,” the man said, his brow furrowed. “But everyone is okay. That’s the important part.”
“If there is one thing I’ve learned,” Herm said, his gaze lingering on my burned fingers, “it’s if a shadow wants to break something, it will.” His lips quirked in a smile as he glanced under the couch. “Ryan is right. Everyone is conscious. I say you did good.”
“Thanks to Pluck,” Nog said brightly, empty bottles tucked under his arm as he made his way to the hall.
Ryan started, his conversation with Marty hesitating. “Really?”
Nog edged sideways into the hall, dodging the last bottles of dross. “Yep. He kept Thoth off me until Petra could get upstairs. Did the same for Benedict. Like an effing black tornado.”
“Mmmm.” Ryan patted Marty on the shoulder, completely missing the woman’s terrified expression. “Thank you, Pluck. We can make another vault. We can’t make another Nog.”
The old sweeper snorted as he headed out the door. “Got that right. I’m a non-GMO-certified limited edition.”
“I’m just glad you are all okay.” Ryan sat beside Marty, his cheerful demeanor wearing thin. “I’m the one who should be apologizing for leaving you so vulnerable.”
But the vault was broken because I had opened it, and my gut hurt.
Benedict dropped a spiky nugget into the box and set another empty bottle aside. “No one thought Thoth could get here in the full sun,” he said with a sigh. “Now we know.”
Pluck’s form sparked from under the couch, his eyes glowing an evil green. “It wasn’t a complete failure,” I said as I sat on the arm of the couch beside Benedict. “I think we would have had him if the sticks had been balanced.”
It’s not the sticks, fizzed through me, and I started, surprised when Herm took my hand in his again, studying it. I think it was the people holding them. The varying way they use magic.
“Petra, you should get that looked at,” the Spinner mused, and I pulled my hand away at the sound of heels on the stairs, embarrassed. I was a weaver, damn it, not a shadow.
“She’s right. We had him until he busted a stick.” Benedict fixed the last bottle of dross into a spiny nugget. But his hopeful smile fell when Dana came in, clearly frustrated.
“Well, how is it?” Ryan said.
Dana grimaced as she brushed a drift of new dross off her. Clearly she’d done some magic down there. “It would be easier to make a new one than repair it,” she said, her gaze sliding to me. “If we could without interference.”
“Don’t blame Petra. I asked to see the vault,” Marty blurted, clearly nervous as she perched on the edge of the couch beside Ryan. “I wanted to know what one looked like.”
“I thought maybe you were storing the empty bottles down there,” I said, and Dana huffed.
“That’s why you opened the door?” Dana accused.
“Dana, relax,” Ryan said before turning to Marty. “No one is blaming you or Petra.”
Benedict stretched where he sat, clearly uncomfortable. “I’m still trying to figure out how Thoth got here.”
Herm frowned at the haze Dana had discarded, his gaze going to the clean corners before he made a field to catch it. “Thoth had a lot of structure,” he said. “I’ve noticed that Pluck has a stronger resistance to the sun when he’s in a solid form.”
Tell them it’s not hard to move in the sun, the shadow bubbled from under the couch, and my ankle grew cold as he wrapped a tendril of presence around it. There are always shadows.
“Pluck says it’s not as hard to get around as you might think,” I said as Nog came in, but my thoughts blanked when Herm intentionally dropped the collected dross on Dana’s back like a Kick Me sign.
“Um, it might have taken something out of him to travel shadow to shadow, but all he’d have to do is sulk in the dark for a while to replenish himself. ”
“Not hard when there’s so much inert dross lying about,” Dana muttered, her voice heavy with accusation. “Good to know.”
Benedict straightened from taping the last box closed. “Dana, if you have something to say, say it.”
Nog scooped up the box, the older man’s feet shifting nervously. “Hey, ah, Marty, you want to help me get the van organized?”
Marty took her gaze from the dross slowly oozing down Dana’s back.
“Sure.” Springing up from the couch, she hesitated, stymied by the crowded front room until Benedict pushed deeper into the couch, arms over his chest, to let her slide past. No one said anything until the door clicked shut.
That dross clinging to Dana was going to break on her. I could feel it.
“Say your piece, so we can tell you to eat shit and move on with our lives,” Herm grumbled.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Ryan protested, but it was obvious he, too, didn’t put much store in her opinion.