Chapter 28 #2
The desire to cluster together was heady, but I gave Benedict’s hand a quick squeeze and moved a few steps away. If she was going to start throwing magic, it would be better to give her three targets, not one.
“Dana!” Herm said with a forced warmth as she came to a halt in the threshold, lingering just inside the tunnel. Her white dress suit was spotless, and with her purse over one shoulder and her sunglasses in her hand, she could have been going out to a five-star restaurant.
Yes, she had put Pluck in a bottle, but if she helped us, I might forgive her for it.
You might feel differently if it was you she trapped in glass, Pluck fizzed.
We need her to admit it was Thoth, I reminded him, and his sizzing became sullen.
Hand extended, Herm paced forward, scuffing to a halt when the woman held up her hand to stop him. “Ah, we were hoping to find you here,” Herm added.
Dana pursed her lips as she eyed the ceiling as if the room might be a trap. “I wish I could say the same.” Her gaze landed on me. “You. I thought you’d take the opportunity to free Pluck.” Her eye twitched. “That wasn’t Pluck in the bottle, was it.”
It really wasn’t a question, and I shook my head.
“Where is he?” Dana’s jaw clenched. “Is he here? I swear, if you broke the vaults—”
“We didn’t break the vaults,” Benedict interrupted. “We haven’t broken any of them. Thoth did.”
“Hear us out.” Herm pushed at the air as if asking for her patience. “We know how to catch Thoth, but we could use your help.”
Still in the hallway, Dana crossed her arms over her chest. Her lodestone ring twinkled in an obvious threat. “Where is Pluck?”
“Staying clear of you,” Benedict accused, his hands clenched in a protective anger.
“He’s behind you, actually,” I said, wanting her to commit to the room. There was only one way in and out of the lung, and she was standing in the threshold.
Stiffening, she moved into the room. “So who is that in the bottle?”
I glanced at Benedict and he shrugged. “Ah, a memorial shadow.”
Her lips parted. “What was a memorial shadow doing in my apartment?” She stiffened. “You were going to addle my mind?”
“No!” I blurted, wincing when my shout seemed to roll a circular path around the edges of the round room until it was gone. “Um…” I glanced at Benedict, and he nodded. “It followed Marty there. She was stealing the stick we needed and…ah…”
Dana thought about that for a second, and then she slumped. “Fuck,” she whispered, and my eyebrows rose. “Another weaver with shadow? I can’t stop this, can I.”
Herm chuckled, his likely concern that I’d played my cards too soon vanishing. “Nope. You’d be better served helping Petra and Pluck than persecuting them.” His brow furrowed when she reached for the wall. “Um, this is a good thing, Dana. You want to sit down?”
“No.” It was a breathy, half-hearted sound, but her lips were pressed when she swung her purse around for her phone. “That whiny little girl attracted a shadow? I thought you had to have a strong will to handle one.”
That’s not how it works, Pluck fizzed from the tunnel, but I was more worried about Dana, her fingers flying as she texted someone.
Benedict took a step forward, halting when she looked up, her clenched jaw and winking lodestone warning him to stay put.
“I am nothing if not open-minded,” she said as she finished and dropped her phone into her purse.
“You have thirty minutes to convince me you have a viable way to catch Thoth. Otherwise, I’m taking you in.
Thoth has agreed that if I can contain you and Pluck, he will leave St. Unoc alone. ”
“You made a deal with Thoth?” I blurted. Gobsmacked, I looked at Benedict. Herm, too, was clearly shocked.
An agreement that will hold until it suits him no more, Pluck fizzed, his bitter disappointment and betrayal twining through my utter disbelief.
“You know he destroyed the vaults,” Benedict whispered, and the woman had the decency to look embarrassed. “You knew, and you made a deal with him? He walks free and Petra takes the blame? Why?”
“It was my best choice,” she said, and Herm pushed his fingers into his temples. “Twenty-nine minutes to give me a better one or this conversation never happened.”
Benedict’s hands clenched and my stomach tightened into a hard knot.
Thoth had been manipulating everything from the moment I’d returned from Chicago.
Probably before. The only thing the shadow hadn’t been able to control was Marty and Aasta.
Perhaps it’s their existence that can break Thoth’s hold…
Herm’s expression was hard in disgust. “I never pegged you for a coward, Dana. Political prostitute, yes, but never a coward.”
“You have a shadow standing in your living room threatening to break your mind, and you tell me you could do better!” she exclaimed, flushed as she looked at me.
“I saw what he did to Grady. She can’t even make a field anymore, much less handle dross.
And you have the gall to stand there and tell me you can catch him? With what? Five balanced sticks?!”
A wave of doubt hit me. Behind Dana, Pluck dropped from the ceiling in a ribbon of black sparkles to coalesce into his human shape. Grim and brow low, he shook his hands and dark matter hissed on the floor. His belief in me, though, was as bright as the sun.
“If you think they’re so ineffective, why did you hide the last stick?” Herm asked.
Benedict’s shoulders hunched as he came to stand beside me. “Petra is fine,” he said. “And she can touch dross. She uses it now like a shadow.”
“Ahhh…” Herm warned, but if we couldn’t convince Dana we had a chance to catch Thoth, we’d be back in custody. I doubted she’d been texting for takeout. There would be mages, and there would be a lot of them.
“Lies. All lies,” she said, and Pluck’s frustration fizzed. Or maybe it was mine. “You are helpless, Petra. I saw dross break on you.”
You are not helpless. Pluck stood in the tunnel, little streamers of energy lifting from him like a fog.
Benedict put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s not a lie. I’ve seen her do magic,” he said.
Dana glanced at her phone. “How? I’ve still got her lodestone.”
My chest clenched. Herm looked ill, but Benedict nodded to me in encouragement, his eyes warm in pride and admiration.
I was simply scrambling to survive, but he thought I was amazing, and I took a steadying breath.
“Ah, when Thoth damaged my ability to work a weave in the weft of the universe and create a field, it allowed me to create alternate ways to manipulate dark matter. Like a shadow, sort of.”
“You can work with threads directly?” Dana said, surprising me, and I nodded.
Herm made a confident huff. “Not a shadow, but something between a shadow and a weaver and a mage. Furthermore, she’s learned to passively touch another’s thoughts, but unlike a shadow, she’s not powerful enough to cause any damage.”
Like Thoth? I wondered, and Pluck soothed my flash of panic. I was nothing like Thoth.
“You can do magic?” Dana said, her eyes wide in shock. “Without having to put the spell in a field?”
“Just like a shadow,” Benedict said, and Dana’s astonished gaze returned to me.
“But I’m not one,” I said, seeing fear in her.
“Dana.” Herm took a nervous step to Benedict and me. “What Thoth did to Petra doesn’t matter. Do you believe Thoth is responsible and should be contained, or not?”
“Oh, he’s responsible, I agree,” she said. “But I won’t risk the stability of the university and the continued silence on it. You’re down to twenty minutes.”
“You’re not looking at the long term,” Herm pleaded.
Petra, I sense Thoth is close, fizzed through me.
My attention flicked to the tunnel. Pluck evaporated, dissolving into a hazy blot that darted away. I took a breath. Held it. The ceiling was one big shadowed space. He could be up there, and we’d never know.
Benedict leaned close, gaze fixed on Herm and Dana arguing. “What?”
“Pluck says Thoth is on-site,” I whispered, and the mage made a frustrated groan. “If he cracks the vault while we’re here, everyone will believe we did it.” Shadow spit, Thoth had done it again!
“I’ll check the room.” Benedict touched my arm in support before he sidestepped away. His lodestone ring was winking, and Dana cocked her hip, her suspicion growing.
Senses reaching, I studied the walls, ceiling, floor. Pluck’s thoughts fizzed against mine as he ranged through the facility. Pluck?
Searching…came back, faint and agitated.
“Dr. Strom…” Dana called suspiciously, and Herm cleared his throat to distract her.
“Petra has become exactly what we need to snare Thoth,” Herm said, his words tumbling over themselves.
“We know Thoth can’t be bested by another shadow, or a mage, or any number of sweepers or weavers, but Petra is functioning as something between them, and we think that with your help and the five balanced sticks, we—” He hesitated. “Dana?”
The worry in his voice pulled me around to see she hadn’t moved. Head down, she stared at the floor, her shoulders rounded and arms hanging slack—until her head snapped up and she stiffened.
“My help?” she said as she ran a hand down her front as if smoothing her thoughts as well as her clothes. “Why do you need my help? You have an entire university of mages with which to try to best Thoth.”
Benedict turned from his distant inspection.
Herm, too, sensed a shift, and the old Spinner exchanged a worried look with me.
“True.” Herm scratched his jawline, bristles making an echoing rasp.
“But you’re the most skilled airologist this side of the Mississippi.
You can put him in a sealed bottle while the rest of us distract him, pin him down, and befuddle him. ”