Chapter 22 #2
“How did you get out?” I said blankly. I reached through the bars for him, then realized his hands were bloody. “When did you…” I said, my eyes going to West.
“I made a lodestone,” he said, and then I saw the shard of glass in his hand, glowing with a faint light.
“When you downed the guard, the light was bright enough to use not only to bind a shard but to energize it.” He smirked, gaze going to the outer office and the sound of Aaron frantically calling someone. “Be right back.”
“Benny? Benny!” I rattled my locked cell when he darted out. “Don’t you leave me here!” He must have used his lodestone shard to break the lock. It was Pluck’s goal of balance, where mage, shadow, and weaver work together. It worked!
Except I was still behind bars.
“Hey! How did you—” Aaron exclaimed from the front room, and then I jumped at a thump.
Little whispers of broken thread brushed against me, lifting through my hair like wind…
I was sensing Benedict’s magic, feeling the universe working contrary to its usual laws as the mage wrung power from the raw substance of light and left dross in its wake.
Until Benedict’s magic ran out and he strode back in, a set of keys in his hand.
“I can’t believe that worked,” I said, relieved beyond belief when he fitted a key card into the panel and the cell door buzzed open. And then I was in the hall, my arms wrapping around him in a quick, desperate hug. “Are you okay? How bad is your hand?”
Grinning, Benedict looked at it. “It’s fine. We need to get out of here. I brought him down with a gravity spell, but he called someone.”
Nodding, I glanced at the open door. I had felt his spell as if I had created it myself, but that was nothing compared to the fact that the dross he had left behind was a growing presence, niggling at my thoughts in a weird mix of warning and opportunity.
It was a room away, and I could feel it. What the devil had Thoth done to me?
“If your hand is bleeding, it’s not fine,” I said, my head snapping up when a familiar fizzing bubbled through my thoughts. “Pluck!”
Benedict’s eyebrows rose in question. “He’s here?”
The guard is waking, the shadow warned, and then I saw him in the doorway, a great sleek dog, black ears pricked and green eyes flecked with gold. He was okay. And if he was okay, then Lev and Cameron were probably good, too.
“Pluck!” Benedict pulled from my grip as if embarrassed, and the shadow dog flicked an ear to send dark matter hissing on the cold cement floor.
You mind if I…Pluck dissolved into a haze that skated across the floor to the guard.
Nothing more than a glimmer of sparkles, he sent a tendril around the man’s arm, the shadow’s distortion brightening until the man slumped against the floor again.
Lev, Herm, and Cameron are outside. We came to get you free.
I am the vanguard. Looks as if you didn’t need us.
I grabbed Benedict’s unbloodied hand and headed to the outer offices. “I will always need you, Pluck,” I said; and then to Benedict, “Our ride is out front.”
Benedict stumbled, walking sideways so as to talk to Pluck. “Ah, this isn’t what it looks like. I didn’t mean to get her out by myself. It just kind of happened. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see a shadow in all my life. Thank you, Pluck.”
I jerked to a halt when I spotted the guard Aaron face down beside a desk and unmoving.
Unlike the cellblock, here dross dust and hazy drifts were like cobwebs in the corners, and I began to pick my way through them.
Benedict was oblivious to it, striding forward and kicking up drifts as if they were snow.
Pluck, though, was as careful as I, the living shadow dissolving into a haze of sparkles that coalesced into a black raven-like bird.
I didn’t expect Benedict to be here, fizzed through me as Pluck hopped from desk to desk, wings extended. He left the grotto to talk to Dana. The crow chortled, eyeing me sharply. I made him promise to not try to free you alone.
“He didn’t have a choice,” I said softly. I had to get out before Dana signed your death warrant. I froze as the main door opened—but it was just Lev and Herm.
“Benedict?” Lev exclaimed, clearly pleased as the two men closed the distance and fist-bumped. “What are you doing here? You promised Pluck you wouldn’t.”
“It’s not what it looks like.” Benedict glanced out the dark window. “Give me a sec. I want my ring.”
“Wait.” Lev’s eyebrows rose. “Your ring?” He began to laugh. “Dana put you in jail? With Petra? She won’t make that mistake again.”
Herm scuffed to a halt before me, his wrinkles sliding into each other as he smiled. Beaming, he gave me a sideways hug, the scent of coffee making him as comforting as home. “Everything okay?” the older man said, and I nodded, wincing when my burned hands twinged. “How did you get out?”
“Benedict,” I said, and Pluck fizzed sourly through me, clearly wanting to know as well.
Eyes alight, Benedict handed me my staff. “Sorry, I think the university has your lodestone.”
“Go! Go!” Herm gestured for the door. “Truck is out and to the left.”
We went. It was loud, messy, slow, and awkward—nothing like the slick precision actions I was sure Lev was used to—but I’d never been happier in my life.
“Seriously.” Lev waited for us to go first. “How did you get out without a lodestone?” He glanced over his shoulder to Pluck. “At night?”
Benedict yanked open the door and the desert night sounds slipped in. “Grady made a light to lure the guards in.”
Pluck’s thoughts in mine seemed to choke. You did what?
Suddenly he was tangling about my feet, making them ache with cold as I went out into the parking lot. A single security light buzzed overhead, and I gripped my dad’s staff tighter and headed for the shadows. “I pulled one string of dark energy taut,” I said softly.
A single string? Pluck fizzed in agitation. You isolated it? How?
I shook it free from the rest, and when I stressed it, its latent energy shifted and it gave off light. And cold, I added silently, and Pluck vanished into a puddle of sparkles.
“One got too close to the bars,” Benedict continued as we hustled forward in a muddled knot.
“I got his lodestone. Untuned it by breaking it. It might have ended right there, but Grady brought down a guard with his own dross. The light that gave off was strong enough for me to bind the stone,” he said, as proud as if he’d done it himself. “From there, I broke the lock.”
“You tuned dross?” Herm pointed at his truck, lights off and about a block down the alley. “Like a shadow? No lodestone intermediary? How did you do that?”
I was glad it was dark and they couldn’t see my face. Pluck, though, could feel my worry. Tuning dross felt really close to a mage using dross to do magic, a “dross-eater.” They were reviled and shunned. “Um, Pluck taught me how to tune dross dust. It’s the same thing.”
It is, and it’s not. Pluck fizzed, little rills of energy curling off him like fog.
But the fact remained that I’d used dross to do magic, and the light from that had charged Benedict’s lodestone.
We had made Pluck’s balance real. It was happening, and I think he was annoyed he hadn’t been there to see it.
“Great. You did shadow magic.” Lev put a hand on Benedict’s shoulder to push him into a faster pace. “Tell us all about it in the truck,” he said, pointing to where Cameron stood in the driver’s open door, waving for our attention. Relief spilled through me. We were free.
“That was fast!” Cameron said, then ducked back inside. “Load up!”
“Shotgun!” Lev dove for the front seat. “They didn’t need us. They were out already.”
“Slide over, missy,” Herm demanded. “My truck, I’m driving.”
“I am not an invalid,” Cameron protested when Lev pulled her to the middle.
The engine sputtered to life. Benedict vaulted into the truck bed, hand extended to help me in. “Like hell we didn’t need you,” he said as he half lifted me in, my stick clattering.
The truck lurched into motion. Smirking, I wedged myself in the front corner behind Herm. Benedict sat close to help even out the coming bumps, and Pluck, once again a dog, wedged in on my other side, numbing my thigh as stray, spiky thoughts of pride and worry fizzed through me.
“Wow, you’re still cold,” Benedict said as the truck bounced onto the dark street. “At least you aren’t blue anymore.”
Blue? Pluck questioned, and I tried to wall off my thoughts. We were moving, and that was all that mattered. Petra, why were you blue?
“From the cold,” I said to Pluck as I pressed closer to Benedict. “I’ll be fine.” And for the first time all night, I thought I would be. It was almost three in the morning, the skies dark and cool, and the wind in my hair felt wonderful.
The little window at the back of the cab slid open with a bang, and Benedict jumped. “Everyone okay?” Cameron asked, the small woman sitting almost sideways so she could see us.
Benedict looked up from trying to get a sliver of glass out of his palm in the glow of the sporadic streetlights. “I could use a Band-Aid. Herm, you got a piece of untuned glass in here?”
“Check the glove box,” he said, and Cameron spun to do just that.
Dana had taken my lodestone. Unless I wanted to risk getting the one I gave to Ryan, there was no easy replacement apart from perhaps the rock and gem show. But I had one stick out of five, and my friends. It was a start.
“Got ’em!” Cameron sang out, and Benedict sighed in relief when she stuffed her hand through the window to drop three marbles, two Band-Aids, and an antiseptic wipe into his palm.
“You want to bind to them?” I asked as he stuffed the marbles in a pocket.
“It can wait,” he said quickly, and from up front Herm called out a loud “Yes!”
I’d like to see you make a light as well, Pluck fizzed through my thoughts, and I winced.