“You’re going to know half the city by the time we’re done here, aren’t you?” Simon said.
Shanna gave him a closed-lipped, amused smile in response, redirecting her gaze to the city center street. She still felt awkward from what had happened on the plane. Perhaps even … embarrassed? What a strange feeling. She was rarely embarrassed of herself. There was no reason to be, knowing those witnessing her embarrassment would forget all about it in a few days.
Simon would forget eventually, as well. Like he forgot the night in Las Vegas, he’d forget he once held her in his arms and told her everything would be fine—and somehow, it was. She wondered if he’d felt the same comfort, the same warm protection when he’d hugged her. He’d forget that, too. But she wouldn’t.
The shuttle dropped them at their hotel near the center, where the view of the hills and the ocean was obscured byhigh-rise glass and concrete buildings, with busy shops and restaurants huddling underneath. Shanna exited and wrapped her windbreaker tightly around her. Inside the car, with the sun shining, it was easy to forget it was a cool autumn morning outside.
“You got one room for the two of us?” she asked Simon as he picked up their keys in the hotel lobby.
“The only way to make sure we’re not too far apart,” he said, lifting his wrist to remind her of the bond.
Of course. She kept forgetting about the distance limit, when for most of the time, they didn’t need to be far apart.
“Yours, Chris.” Simon tossed her the key card. “Don’t party too hard.”
“Ah, shit. Let me put away my graffiti sprays, then,” Chris said with a straight face and a monotone voice.
“And don’t worry.” Simon turned back to Shanna. “We have separate beds.”
Yeah. She wasreallystarting to worry about that.
In their room, Shanna began unpacking her stuff, carefully arranging all of her tools on the writing desk. Her wand, her little silver chalice and a cauldron—possibly not needed on the voyage, but one never knew—three pouches of herbs, her rune plates …
“So, how are we finding your mom?” Simon asked from the other side of the room, looking over his shoulder while he changed out of his wrinkled shirt. “Don’t get me wrong, narrowing down the whole of New Zealand to one city is nice, but it’s still a decently sized city.”
The tight white undershirt he wore underneath revealed more than it hid. The smooth-flowing muscles of his shoulders, the slim waist, the biceps Gran had every reason to grope, even if the memory of it still filled Shanna with secondhandembarrassment. And now she was no better herself, covertly staring at him.
Wondering how hard, but warm those muscles would feel under her fingers.
She redirected her attention to the box of crystals she’s brought with her. “There’s always the graveyard.” The crystals, shifting in color from purple to teal, could replace candles in her rituals. She could hardly risk starting a fire in a hotel room. “Although even if she is buried here, it won’t help us much unless the Mercurial Crystal is buried with her.”
“I sure hope not,” Simon said. “I don’t fancy becoming a gravedigger.”
Shanna swallowed. How strange to think that the last remains of a person who once had to mean the world to her, but was now not even a memory, were perhaps within a few miles.
“Anyway.” She shook herself out of her reverie. “I’ll perform a ritual that should help me sense her energy.” First, the grid cloths. She dug for the fabric in her bag, encountering something uncomfortably wet. “Oh, shoot.”
“What is it?”
Shanna unfolded the fabric square, raising it to her eye level. At least one of her oils had spilled on it—must have been the basil one, because everything smelled like pizza—making previously pure white fabric with the painted spell grid look like a five-year-old’s first art project. The once straight, intricate lines of the five-pointed star were now neurotic wiggles, trying to run away from the fabric as if crying in terror.
If using this wouldn’t enact some black magic, she didn’t know what would.
She sighed and crumpled the fabric. “My grid cloth is ruined. There should be a geometric pattern on it to help with the spell. It’s much more efficient than using crystals alone.”
“How could it possibly get—” Simon paused when she gave him a tired look. “Bad luck curse. Taken into account.”
She should have known. But she wasn’t used to being so far from home, and far from a shop where she could restock. She leaned on the desk. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t draw straight onto a desk that belongs to a hotel.”
“You need a different surface. How big?”
Shanna spread out her hands two feet apart.
“Sticky notes aren’t going to do it, then.” Simon looked around the room, his eyes stopping on the smart TV mounted on the wall. “Does it matter if it’s on a screen?”
“No, but I’ll need to put things on it, so it can’t be vertical.”
He flattened his face against the wall, looking behind the TV. “That’s not going to be a problem. Here.” He handed her his phone. “Draw the grid and save it as an image.”
