I direct the ephemera I’m shaping to a dozen points around the pub, locking it into an exposed beam, a lintel over an interior doorway, an old sconce that no longer has a bulb, a sliver of plaster where the paint has started to flake. I lace the energy between those points into a web of strings throughout the room. A quiver of magic resonates off them to fill in the gaps.
The intent I’m willing into the ephemera won’t activate unless provoked. Otherwise, the effect would be sapped in a matter of days.
But if someone’s temper starts rising—or someone barges into the pub already in a hostile mood—the magic will kick in. It’ll calm riled nerves and defuse the worst of the tension.
Siobhan doesn’t want fights breaking out here, between her own underlings or from outside forces. I’m assuming my first attempt made a significant difference, or she wouldn’t have asked me to replicate it.
This isn’t the way I imagined the technique being used when I first started working it out, but all practice is useful.
By the time I’ve fixed the energy I’m compelling as tightly in place as I can, my shoulders are ready to sag. I sit down on one of the leather-top bar stools to recover.
The tightness in my chest suggests I might have pushed myself a little farther than is totally wise, but I don’t want my employer regretting my fee.
Siobhan comes up on the other side of the bar and raises her eyebrows. “You want something to drink? On the house. A tip for your work.”
I don’t have much of a taste for alcohol at the best of times, and right now I suspect it’d make me feel worse rather than better. I manage a smile. “Just a Coke would be great, thanks.”
She slides a cold can across the bar to me along with a wad of cash. I check my payment quickly—not wanting to look naïve butalso not wanting to imply I don’t trust her at all—before shoving it into my pocket.
One step closer to paying Cole back for everything he’s given up for me. Not that I ever can completely. But when I’m out of this city, making a difference somewhere else in the world, I want him to be able to make his choices about what he does next based on only what he wants. He shouldn’t be held back by a near-empty bank account.
Never mind how he’d react if he found out what kind of people I’ve been practicing my skills with.
My fingers brush the water-smoothed stone I always carry with me. I close my gloved hand around it just for a moment, enjoying the way it fits perfectly in my palm.
When I found it as a little kid, looking at the rosy veins of granite sparkling with scattered mica, I thought it was some kind of magic—beyond the fragments of ephemera every object contains. I’ve grown out of that kind of dreaming, but even if it’s not any luckier than any other rock, it reminds me that I have things worth holding on to.
I drink the Coke in deep gulps, both genuinely thirsty and eager to get out of this place now that my work is done. Siobhan accepts the empty can. “I’ll let you know when I’ve got something else for you. Or if one of my associates does.”
I tip my head to her. “I appreciate it.”
Outside, the sky has clouded over with the pale gray of dust bunnies, like someone’s forgotten to sweep the universe. No rain threatens yet, but the gloom sends a shiver down my spine.
I grab a bus and get off at the most convenient stop, several blocks from my house. As I head toward the sprawling parking lot between the public library and the bank, my steps slow.
A figure is crouched by the walkway along the back of the bank, the purple highlights standing out in her dark hair even in the thinning daylight. Elodie Devine tucks her trim jacket closeraround her torso and sets a bright orange flower by a crack in the pavement.
My brain stalls along with my feet.
What is one of the most prominent Luminary students doing all the way out in my neighborhood? Why would she be hanging around in a parking lot, of all places?
And isn’t it even weirder that the flower she’s set down like she’s starting a memorial is my favorite kind?
Not that I spend much time thinking about flowers, but marigolds wake up a giddy sort of twinge in my chest. The memory of bounding around our old backyard, way back before my parents died. The blossoms bobbing as I ran my fingers over them. Their sharp smell tangling with the breeze.
I shake myself out of the past. Elodie has pulled out a stick of white chalk and is writing something on the pavement by the flower. She’s too far away for me to make out the shapes.
Her lips move. On an impulse, I stretch my will into the ephemera between us and call on the wind to carry her words to my ears.
Her voice reverberates with emotion. “…how sorry I am. I promise I won’t give up.”
She stands. The raw pain in her words tugs at me, and I take a step forward before I think better of it.
Other words from a few days ago echo inside my skull.
“Don’t touch me! Stay away from me.”
Something about me unsettles her. Scares her, even. The frantic gleam in her eyes when she wrenched herself away from me in the hall… I’ve helped enough strays to know what a wounded animal looks like.
