A growl vibrated the ground beneath me, and I felt something ripping at my magic. I reeled, dropping my empty travel mug and slapping my hands against the ground for balance.
This was what Iárn had feared, why he warned me that the magic was thinning, that the holes weakened it. This bedrock was not just magic — it was a barrier between this world and other worlds, the barrier, as I had seen in the garages, that Clay had broken holes into in his efforts to bring Tiamat through. Though I had repaired some of those, weak magic meant other things might take advantage and try to walk here on Earth.
I glared at the darkness. Nothing was going to come through here. I would stop it.
More magic poured from me, tapping a reservoir that shouldn’t have been there. Mentally, I thanked Sverth for the trollmiod and pushed against the hole, snaking out tendrils to lasso whatever was out there.
I could feel Haris’s presence, right behind me, as it had been on the roof when facing down Clay, the song channeling love and magic, enough power to take down anything that would stand against us. I wanted to stop, to pull out my phone and call Haris, to say I needed this, to ask permission, to seek reassurance — but instead, I took. I needed the power and it was there, flooding through me, memories of a volcano generating its own lightning storm, whispers of notes on a wind that wasn’t here underground, but was around me, within me, inside and overflowing from me, Haris’s power joined to mine, blended with the strength lent me by the trollmiod, enough, perhaps, to drive back this abomination that wanted to come through, that pushed to do so as Tiamat had pushed. Its entry would not happen on my watch. I remembered laser-hot magic that sliced through coils, cutting and cauterizing, and once again, I seared everything in my path, though I didn’t have Haris to physically draw upon this time.
A different familiar magic approached from behind, but before I could turn to acknowledge Iárn, a screech rang out.
“No! You will fall! The Beast will come.” Next to me, Níal shoved at me, grabbed my travel mug, tried to hit me with it. Had she not learned already that my magic would not allow her to touch me? A flash burst toward her, knocking her against the far wall, where she slumped — unconscious but not dead, because I still drew magic from her to fight against the unknown horror in the dark. I had to save the world. Again.
The searing magic hit the foam and exploded, filling the space before me and knocking me flat on my back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Iárn demanded.
“A thankless task.” I pushed myself up on one elbow and glanced back at him. I still couldn’t make out details like his face, but his shape was a darker gray in the tunnel, outlined in a light chartreuse.
“Not quite thankless, I think.” He moved nearer, and he nudged Níal with one foot. “Though perhaps more treacherous than expected.”
“You didn’t know she was going to try to kill me? That’s something, I suppose, though if you knew she was treacherous—”
“I did not know and could not prove that she was anything but loyal. Her family has a history of worshipping things better not named — the Beast being but one of these — but there was nothing to attach her to these practices. I wondered why she challenged Sverth. Now I think I know.” He reached down with a hand, and without thinking, I grasped it and let him pull me up. His rock solidity flowed into me, as concrete as the bedrock around me, and I wondered again at the relationship between the trolls and this bedrock of magic. This close, I could make out the cast of his features, although his expression was still hidden in shadows. He did not release my hand. “You show unexpected talents.”
He’d forbidden Sverth to come near me. I wasn’t about to tell him I’d been drinking trollmiod. Instead, I jerked my head toward the spot that had until recently been a gaping hole. “I think this is fixed, but I need some rest before I tackle any more.”
“This isn’t what I asked you to repair. I am … surprised you managed.”
“So am I. So am I.” I pulled my hand free and leaned down to pick up my travel mug. Dizziness swept over me, and I almost fell down again — would have, had Iárn not grabbed me. Once I was upright again, I held up my empty hand. “Hang on a minute. I have something to help. I hope.” I fished in my jacket pocket and pulled out one of the tea bags. After opening the top flap, I poured the leaves into my mouth.
Pro tip: dried leaves and flowers aren’t very appetizing. Nor do they crumble in the mouth or chew well. After half a minute of trying, I managed to swallow most of the mixture, although some caught in my throat. I could feel magic trickling into me, exacerbating the feeling of something scratching my throat that made me want to cough. I did my best to suppress the cough, not wanting to spew the precious mixture all over the inside of the tunnel.
“That doesn’t sound very helpful.”
I glared at him as best I could manage. When I could talk, I was going to demand more answers.
“You may work with Sverth to finish the task you have been given. For now, you will leave.” He glanced down at Níal. “There is business here that is no part of yours.”
None of my business? She had tried to kill me!
Before I could say as much, he nudged me in the direction I had come. “You are a long way from home, and unless I miss my guess, you have yet more work ahead of you. Best to begin.”
What did he consider a long way? Not that it mattered — I did need to get back to work, although I thought I’d close early and head home. I could use the rest. I let my feet carry me toward the exit, ignoring how my head spun from the speed. The golden sparkles were still sharp, but now I also felt the black and oily magic I associated with Tiamat. Was her shrine nearby? Or had my battle weakened something to let her through?
“The tear—” I turned to ask Iárn, but he wasn’t with me. I felt his magic far behind, near the diminished thread of Níal’s. Taking care of his business, I supposed.
And I would take care of mine, though I could barely stand. Time enough to recover later, but I had an unprecedented opportunity now — in the tunnels without a troll guiding my steps, able to see where I was going after a fashion, and closer than I’d ever been to Tiamat’s shrine. I walked as slowly as I could, knowing that I was still probably traveling faster than I could run aboveground, but not wanting to miss the spot.
A golden circle caught my attention with a whiff of rotting vegetation and smoke. I tapped the circle and stepped through into the exposed tunnel.
Several turns later, afraid I was going in circles or that I would lose the bits of magic sight I had and wander lost in the dark, I stopped. This was stupid. Alone in the dark no one knew where, hunting the shrine of an evil goddess? Not my brightest moment.
I turned to go back and was hit with the sense of solidity that was Sverth. “Iárn tells me she did not manage to kill you.”
“No, she didn’t.” I breathed a sigh of relief, then realized I wasn’t where I belonged, and he knew it.
“He thought you might have been disoriented and sent me to see you safely back.” The familiar rumble of his laughter was not comforting, echoing like a rockfall in a cave. “I think, rather, that you are searching for something specific. If there is anything from the upper world in our tunnels, it was given to us for safekeeping. I cannot help you.”
“I need to see that it is safe.” I shook my head. “I do not doubt you, but I know those who would use it to try to break the bedrock open and let others through, like that Beast that Níal tried to admit. If I can, I want to add another seal.”
“You can barely stand, and I did not bring trollmiod with me this time. You have no strength to make a seal.”
Grimly, I said, “I’ll manage. I have to.”
Another rumble, lower, softer, the sigh of an underground wind. “Come with me. I will show you this thing, and then we shall go.” He hooked his hand onto my arm, guiding me with the warmth of his touch. As we walked, he spoke again. “I do this to thank you because Iárn trusts me again.”
; “Was the problem really that he didn’t trust you?”
He rumbled. After a moment, he said, “Níal challenged me for my position by Iárn’s side. She had been planning to for a while, and we all knew it was coming. I was sent with you as a test of my loyalty. When the bonds broke, Iárn could not continue to deny her.”
“So when she tried to get me killed, it was obvious that she was betraying him, and everything went back the way it should be?”
“Something like that, though I cannot tell you the details of troll justice.”
That was fair. “We’ll be working together again.”
“From time to time, yes. You have done good work with the ones you have sealed on your own, but I will take you further afield.” He patted my hand with his, filling me with warm stability. “This crisis, at least, is past. Thank you.”
I was a bit disgruntled that they’d used me as a stalking horse to prove whether Níal was a problem, and more so that Iárn had lied to me about it, as well as annoyed that there was still more work to do, running around tidying things up — “Sverth, why can’t you mend these gaps on your own?”
His voice echoed hollowly. “They are like holes within our very nature. If you are missing part of your skin, you might replace it from another spot on your body, but you would still not be whole. We need someone who draws magic from somewhere, something else to donate it to us.”
I was giving them organ transplants of magic. Okay, then. But — “Does that mean I’m going to be creating holes somewhere else?”
“I do not know.” Worry rumbled a deep counterpoint in my bones. “I do not think so because we cannot feel such, but I do not know.”
Something to be concerned about another day, perhaps when I learned where my magic came from, if I ever did. For now, I would be content with the victory that I had. That we had together.
We paused in front of a black wall. Not the deep gray that so much of the tunnels had become, but a black that drank in the effort to notice that it was even there. Sverth let go of me and stretched forth both hands to lay them flat against the wall. After a long minute, the blackness thinned, and there was a chamber on the other side.
In the middle of the chamber stood … something … on a pedestal. I couldn’t see it in the darkness, except as a blot in the deep, but it twisted in my mind, coiling about itself, smoke tendrils that crossed each other and whispered with the susurrus of the ocean. I fell to the ground.
This was no shrine, no mere thing that had been used in worship of a goddess ages past. Nor was it the weak echoes of her reaching across the worlds through ghosts to try to touch those here. It was a piece of Tiamat, a true unholy relic, broken off yet intact, communing with her because it was her. I brought my hands to my mouth. I was right; I could not fight a goddess.
Sverth’s hand on my shoulder brought me out of my dark reverie. “Now you see why I told you I cannot help you. There is nothing you can do except let us hide this.”
Nodding numbly, I slid my hands over my legs, a nervous reaction, wiping off my sweat, getting ready to push myself upright and flee before I was consumed. A bump in my right pocket caught my attention — Lashonda’s bead.
She couldn’t take on a goddess, either, but together, we stood a chance of creating another barrier. I slid the bead out of my pocket and placed it on the ground in front of me with both my hands clasped over it.
I whispered her pet rock’s name. “Spot.”
The tiny warm spot of magic within fed out, trickling through my hands into the bead, twining about Lashonda’s power, then twisting painful inch by painful inch across the rock and dirt of this cavern, the green and growing health of a ward meant to keep the outside world safe from what was within, plied with the red reflective power of my magic, eager to turn evil back on itself and isolate this thing.
I couldn’t have done it without the power Lashonda had bound into the bead, without the binding that she had primed, creating this bead eager to capture another magic. She used her beads for words, power, what some might call spells. I used this one to grab my magic, my ward, and turn it into a cage for the relic.
When it was done, the smell, the oil snapped off, cut sharply from my awareness. The relic was not gone, but it would be harder now for the witches to find it and use it to try to free Tiamat.
I sat numb.
I do not know how long I was there motionless, only that at length, I heard a sigh, another rumble that I recognized, and Sverth picked me up and carried me out of the darkness.
Inside the coffee shop, Sverth poured a large cup of the trollmiod and stood over me until I drank it all down. He refilled it and handed it to me. My head started to clear. “You can come inside.”
He frowned. “I already am.”
I shook my head, which was a mistake. Using that much magic had left me very light-headed, and the trollmiod hadn’t replenished me enough yet. “I see that. I mean — I had wondered if you had rules against it.”
His chuckle this time sounded less like a rockfall. “No rules. We just prefer natural rock to artificial.”
“Thank you.”
“It is what friends do.”
“Yes. Friends help each other.” I smiled at him. “Now go. I imagine you and Iárn want to talk.”
“Iárn does not talk much.” But he slipped out the back door.
I left soon after, closing early with a promise to Trish that she still got credit for the time. Both trollmiod and tea served as pick-me-ups, but I could use some rest. Pizza for dinner tonight, I thought, knowing the kids wouldn’t mind.
Chapter 29
The feeling of warmth that signaled Haris crept inside me as I neared home. A smile touched my face, and my steps quickened. To my surprise, she was inside the restaurant, chatting with Jinhong, but she turned and smiled at me before I entered. Heat flooded through me, and a pair of teens passing by yelped at a sudden static shock. The trollmiod had done its work.
Trying to tamp down my enthusiasm, I entered and walked over to them.
Jinhong glanced at me. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Before I could answer, Haris said, “I hope you don’t mind me picking up dinner this time, Pepper. I know you had a long day.”
Guilt hit me — I had drawn on Haris’s power while fighting off the Beast, and I hadn’t even called to say what had been going on. Her slight smile told me she knew what I was thinking.
“You are friends?” Jinhong’s question was polite, but it felt as though distance opened up between us.
Time to face this particular dragon — metaphorical dragon. The real one knew the truth. “Jinhong, you’ve probably heard the twins mention Haris. We’re dating.”
Oh, for a camera to have captured that expression!
“I thought Haris was male.” Her voice was every bit as shocked as her face.
“Sometimes,” Haris said. “It’s complicated.”
If anything, Jinhong’s consternation grew. “… I see.”
I doubted it. Rather than being deliberately antagonistic, I said, “I was dubious when we first met, I’ll admit. But Hsien seemed a reliable character witness, so I took a chance.” Which I’d wanted to do, anyway, despite the fact that I teased Haris about stalker-like behavior. “It’s worked out well.”
Her eyebrows climbed her forehead. “Hsien vouches for … Haris?”
I told myself to ignore her tone of voice. What did I care if she was disdainful? Haris was here, buying dinner, just wanting to spend time with me. And whether Jinhong liked it or not, I was happy.
“Yes. You could ask him why, I suppose.”
Her lips flattened, and her eyes flared. No, she had no interest in questioning her patron about anything. One more reason I was glad I didn’t have one.
“I’ll put your order in.” She started to flip the cover over the order pad, but stopped. “You didn’t get spring rolls for the twins. Should I add some?”
Haris glanced at me. “Will they expect some?”
“They’d love some, but what they’ll expect is dumplings and soup.”
“In that case, I have the basics covered and then some.” She smiled at Jinhong, apparently oblivious to the older woman’s hostility. “But yes, if you think they will appreciate the spring rolls, add those, too. Thank you.”
Jinhong walked away. Would she tell the sous chefs that the order was for us? Or Wei? Where was Wei, come to think of it? Even as the thought crossed my mind, Wei came out of the other side of the swinging doors carrying a tray of food. She gave us a curious look, but simply served the food to one of the booths in back.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
Her shrug was implied. “There hasn’t been a good time for introductions before.”
“Not that. Earlier — I should have called you. I should have asked.”
“I have told you: I am there for you always.” She brushed back the hair that had fallen to cover my face. My skin tingled at her touch, and electricity raced down to my toes and back again. “Even if it doesn’t look like it.”
Wei was finished with the table she was serving, but she still didn’t come over to greet me. I looked away, hurt. At least this awkwardness — being here with Haris — wouldn’t happen too many more times. Whichever way the decision went tomorrow, I’d be moving soon. Then we could move on to the awkwardness of hanging out with Haris’s ex’s family.
She laughed quietly. “We are a pair, aren’t we?”
“Indeed we are.”
Chapter 30
The morning dawned cold and gray. I told myself I didn’t believe in omens, but it wasn’t easy with the crows cawing out on the street like the world itself mocking me. I showered and dressed quickly, hoping I’d feel more human once I was all put together, with a modicum of makeup on my face, just enough not to look tired but still look like a respectable parent in court. Which was itself ridiculous — whether I was a good parent had nothing to do with how much or how little time I put into my personal appearance, but I was going to play the game.
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