My head throbbed with anvil strikes, a steady jack hammering pain.
But then…oh, but then.
The thread sparkled, like lightning bugs come alight on the string. I held my breath, not wanting to miss a moment of this gentle magic.
In a blink, the sparkles lifted, a wave, a wash, a whirling ember-caught wind of firefly lanterns dancing and weaving in and out of my clumsily threaded tapestry, completing the lines in the negative space, until there was no burned out door, and no charred darkness beyond.
The smoke was gone; the air scented with the sweet warmth of cottonwood leaves in the sun.
The storage unit was whole again. Squat and beige, the brown door hung straight, rolled down into place with the same lock on it as every other unit.
The illusion was seamless, fed by the words of magic Lu had spoken and the flow of magic pouring up through the wool drawn spell.
Abbi had the healing blanket, the fire damage was hidden. We still needed the healer, but had time to take a moment to breathe.
“That,” I said, drawing Lu’s back against my chest, “was a damn fine sight of magic, Mrs. Gauge.”
She melted into me, her body a line of entirely different fire.
“It’s beautiful,” she agreed.
“You make it look easy.”
“So do you.” She turned in my arms and held me briefly, her mouth near my heart. “They were after the book.”
“I know.”
“Why burn out the unit?”
“To hide any traces of their work?”
“To hide what they stole from us?” she countered. “There were so many rare artifacts in that unit, Brogan. So many things they could have taken.”
“I know. Or this could have been a ruse. A…a trap.”
She stilled. “To kill us?”
“Someone ran us off the road. Someone was in the unit when we got here.”
“You saw someone?” She leaned back, her face tipped up, the gray light of the passing storm making her look like carved marble.
“A woman. I saw her eyes, her teeth. Heard her laughter.”
“Who was she?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was she?”
I hesitated. Monster, god, fae, or immortal? “Power. She was power. Chaos. I can’t…I can’t remember her clearly. My head.” I grunted, angry. “It’s all a muddle right now. If she didn’t find what she wanted…”
“We have other units. She’ll target the other units.”
“Unless she did find what she wanted.”
“I can ask some people to check in on our storage units. Make some calls.”
“I told you we should have left a crystal ball in each unit so we could spy on them all at once.”
