Chapter 18 #2
He winced, his hand on my shoulder. “This is kind of tricky,” he admitted. “If you want to jump, that’s fine, but if you hesitate when I say go, the field won’t be around you and you’ll drop like a stone.”
I peered into the darkness. “Fine,” I whispered. “You can push me.”
Staff in hand, I worked my way up onto the well’s edge, feet dangling.
My pulse quickened when Benedict exhaled and a field, presumably, took shape between his hands.
I couldn’t see it, but I could sense it as a threadlike trace of something warm settled about me.
It was the weft and weave of the universe, harnessed by Benedict’s skill to make a space where gravity was less.
“Three, two, one,” Benedict said, and I stifled a gasp at his firm shove.
I fell, losing the light. Darkness was a cool, soothing balm, and I held my breath. It was akin to being on a swing, hesitating at the apex before the plunge.
And then my feet hit the oak boards of the stage with a solid thump.
My legs flexed as my muffled grunt echoed against the unseen walls.
Pulse pounding, I stared up at the bright spot of light.
Benedict’s silhouette was a sharply defined shadow.
“Made it!” I called up, and then I laughed.
Never in my imagination…I thought, and Pluck’s fizzing relief that I was again in the dark found me.
“I’m good,” I said, more softly now as my voice hissed eerily against the far walls. My eyes were adjusting, and I stepped out of the small circle of light, immediately feeling better. It was stuffy and closed, but not hot. At least, not until I put my hand in the beam of light.
Heat burned all the way to my elbow, knots of it tightening like a vise. I pulled back, thinking it more than odd. I hadn’t felt any pain at all when I had been in full sun thirty seconds ago.
“Stand clear. I’m coming down!” Benedict called, and I shifted deeper into the dark.
If it had been strange falling under the influence of Benedict’s spell, it was even odder watching him drop as if in slow motion. The cooler was tucked under his arm, and he squinted into the shadows to find me even before his feet hit the stage.
No one is here, fizzed through my uppermost thoughts, but it was faint, as if Pluck was still ranging about.
“That was way cool,” I said as he yanked me into a relieved hug. “You must have had a fun childhood.”
“Not especially.” He sighed, and my shoulders relaxed. “It wasn’t too fast, was it?”
“Perfect,” I said, and he let me go.
“I still can’t believe they left the chairs.” He set the cooler down and spun in a slow circle. “Right up to the new ceiling.”
“And the ghosts.” I propped my stick against the podium.
Benedict sighed, his gaze on the silent, dusty blue chairs, his thoughts clearly on that day.
“Temp isn’t too bad,” he said, but his expression was tinged in heartache.
It had been awful, not knowing who was hurt and who we’d never see again.
“This is not a safe house,” he grumped. “It’s not even a house. ”
“No dross, though.” I took his hand and gave it a heartfelt squeeze. “Not even any dross dust.”
He turned, me in the shadows, him still in the sun. “Dross dust?”
I tugged his hand until he joined me in the dark. “Don’t worry about it. I’m really glad that you’re with me,” I said, thankful that Pluck was too far for our thoughts to mingle easily.
Smiling, he leaned down, head tilted, until his mouth found mine. Warm and tasting faintly of coffee, his lips moved against mine, sending a jolt of emotion through me. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” he whispered when he broke free.
“Still…” My grip around his waist lingered until it began to feel awkward.
Sighing, he rocked from me. “You want a water?”
He had moved back into the sun, but I stayed where I was, wondering if it was a portent of things to come. “Maybe later.”
Benedict’s motion to open the cooler hesitated, and he sat on it instead, his knees almost to his ears as he stared at the rows of chairs.
His lodestone glittered in the sun, probably gathering energy, and I sat where I was against the podium.
My toe shifted in and out of the sun as I fidgeted. Light. Dark. Light. Dark.
“You think this is an old nugget, or new?” Benedict asked as he flicked a spiny chunk of dross into the orchestra pit.
“Old.” My higher voice hissed in the damp air, and I pulled my knees to my chest. Herm’s burner phone was an uncomfortable bump, and I worked it from my back pocket and set it beside me. “There might be two, maybe three years’ worth of space down here, but it’s a mistake.”
“A second mistake, Petra Grady?” a strong feminine voice called out, and both Benedict and I started, our attention going to the far wall. It was Darrell—or rather, Aasta animating Darrell’s rez—and I scrambled up when Benedict stood, the man clearly uneasy.
Pluck, I called, getting a faint acknowledgment in return. He was on his way back.
Aasta curved Darrell’s lips into a smirk, and her tightly corded hair bedecked with beads clinked as she took step after heavy step down the aisle toward us.
It was eerie how much she looked, acted, and sounded like my old mentor—but there was a sly darkness in her that the woman I’d known had never possessed.
“One mistake I can forgive,” she said as she halted a mere two rows from the stage. “But two?”
She was staring at Benedict. Cold cramped my ankle as Pluck materialized at my side, his tail stiff and ears pricked, green eyes glaring at the shadow among the chairs. Sorry. She wasn’t here when I checked, fizzed in my thoughts, his worry merging seamlessly with mine.
Benedict was ashen as he stood in the patch of sun. “Darrell…” he whispered, and the shadow animating the rez twitched her woven skirt.
“Not hardly,” she said wryly. “But I like this energy pattern. It comes with an inborn sense to expect obedience.”
Benedict edged closer to me, never leaving the security of the sun. “Sorry,” he said, head bobbing. “You surprised me. I know you’re a shadow.”
Aasta lifted Darrell’s chin to recognize his words, then turned to me. “Why is he here?”
“We’re hiding,” I said, and Aasta’s attention flicked to Pluck as if she was annoyed.
“From the light?” she said, moving with Darrell’s broken grace to the stairs rising to the stage. “No doubt.”
“From everyone.” I brushed the dust from my jeans and inched closer to Benedict. He almost glowed in the focused beam of light, but I couldn’t bring myself to join him in it. “Um, Thoth cracked another vault, and until we can prove it was him, it’s better if I stay out of sight.”
The image of an old woman paused on the lowest stair, staring up at us as if tired. “Is that your first mistake’s idea? Blame you for Thoth’s ills?”
Benedict’s brow furrowed. “First mistake’s idea?” he whispered.
He was almost blinding in that spot of sun, his lodestone winking in a show of strength and surety. “That’s what she calls Cameron,” I said. “My mistake, and no. That isn’t Cameron’s idea,” I added, talking to Aasta.
Benedict grimaced. “I am not a mistake.”
Aasta began to rise up the stairs, moving slow as if pained.
It was an act pulled from the remnants of Darrell’s psyche imprinted upon the rez, and now, the shadow.
“If we can’t catch Thoth, Pluck and I will go down for it,” I said, and Aasta’s attention flicked to me, a wry expression furrowing her brow.
If we were jailed, there’d be no hope of finding a new balance.
Darrell’s hunched form reached the top step, pausing to frown at Benedict hiding in that spot of sun before continuing on to the podium. “Catch Thoth?” Aasta said as she scuffed her slippers. “It would be better if you were here to clean dross.”
Annoyed, Pluck flicked an ear to send a drop of dark matter to hiss against the stage, inches from her not-there foot.
“I am surprised you are alive, weaver Grady,” Aasta said as she reached the podium and leaned heavily against it. “Thoth has either made a mistake or a brilliant, strategic move.”
He has made a mistake, Pluck thought firmly, but his ears had gone misty, and his feet were nothing but hazy drifts. His mind, too, was closed to me, and I dangled my fingers against his skull, ice deadening their tips. And you will capitalize on it. Tell her I said that.
“I can still direct dross,” I said, and Aasta sneered at Pluck, the expression totally wrong on Darrell’s face.
“You let Thoth break your weaver. Fool yeth. You know he is uncatchable. You should have hidden her. Like the rest of us.”
Pluck lifted his lip to show his teeth, but the warning was directed at Aasta, not me. That’s not what happened. Petra, tell her.
Benedict’s grip on me tightened spasmodically. “Petra is not broken,” he said, voice holding a hint of worry. “She’ll learn how to make fields again. Even so, we almost caught him.”
Aasta sank deeper into the shadows, the green of her eyes glittering until it was all I could see. “And that is why you are hiding in the dark. No, if you caught him, it was because he wanted you to,” she intoned. “He must have more blame for you to take if he left you alive.”
Pluck’s frustration fizzed through me. The shadow drew away from me with an uncomfortable raking sensation, his mass swirling and coalescing until, with a shifting of booted feet not really there, he became the dark, slim man I’d seen in Cameron’s coma.
Clearly uncomfortable, he glanced at me before staring at Aasta in obvious defiance.
He could have taken a human shape right from day one. Why hadn’t he?
“You fool yeth,” Aasta muttered as she looked Pluck up and down with a disinterest that said she was familiar with his image. “You, Kahu, of all of us, knew best who Thoth was, what he is capable of, and you allowed your weaver to engage. Her failing is your fault. All of it.”
“Hey!” I snapped when Pluck’s guilt lit through me. “This wasn’t Pluck’s fault.”