The shadow spilled across the room, filaments of darkness reaching out, touching tools as I thought of them, searching the shelves to stroke the solvents as I considered them, twining up the legs of my workbench. Honey squeaked in alarm, and politely excused herself to scuttle up the stairs. Irish remained, arms crossed, watching the shadow writhe with a scowl of distaste.

“Didn’t I say get out?” I made shooing motions with my hands.

“I’ll be quiet.” Judging by the set of his jaw, he wasn’t going anywhere. I wondered if he was curious, or just didn’t trust me unsupervised.

I selected a section of the long workbench situated close to some tools I’d be using, and reached underneath, unfolding an extension that gave me a work surface that extended a few feet. I pulled the copper and brass support strut out to hold it up, and felt it click as it connected to the house’s wiring, bringing a ready supply of juice close to hand. Shadows coagulated by the workbench, drawing themselves up in a puppet shape as I gathered my supplies, firming itself, building itself by layers into a black mirror image of me, hands stroking the scarred countertop. I returned to the bench, taking the opposite side as four more Edison bulbs floated in from the corners of the room, unfurling tiny tinfoil reflectors to concentrate their light on my workspace.

“Suit yourself.” I drew the ring from the pouch at my waist, dropping it in a porcelain dish on the counter top. The shadow reached for it, and I smacked her hand. There was no sound; my fingers passed right through, but she jerked her hand back just the same. Her puppet face made a hissing expression. I heard the sound in my head.

I grabbed the glass flask of cobra-venom-based solvent, pulling the cork out and setting it aside. I hadn’t done any of the usual tests or simulations first, but there wasn’t a lot of time. Nothing for it but to forge ahead and hope I was as good as I always said I was. Using a glass pipette, I drew up some the noxious liquid, and the shadow leaned in – or made a show of it, anyway – watching. Anything she saw, she used my eyes for. The shadow-puppet was her way of… what? Declaring her intention to separate herself? Irish came closer as I plucked the ring up with a set of plastic forceps.

The shadow-copy of me bared ebony teeth at him, but he ignored it. I realized the puppet was her way of telling him her intentions. She was hovering over the ring like a lion demanding first feeding rights.

Yeah, that wasn’t disturbing, was it?

Right. The venom solvent was relatively mild, and it should cause the binding enchantments on the silver to expand somewhat, giving me some wiggle room in there to work them loose without destroying the magic in the ruby. The plastic was just about magically inert, so it shouldn’t interfere with the solvent and would leave me free to work through the forceps if I had to. I took a deep breath and let a drop or two of solvent drip on the ring.

“She seems riled up.” He stepped up to the side of the workbench, and one of the lights fluttered over a foot, out of his way. None of the shadows on the bench moved when it did.

“Thought you were being quiet,” I muttered as I watched the solvent seep into slender crack between the silver and the stone. It hissed and popped.

“That’s what you said before.” He quirked his mouth in a little smile. I just caught it from the corner of my eye.

We first met much like this. Well, we first met in Honey’s bar, but he had an artifact he wanted taken apart, so the first time we were ever alone together was in a dusty old warehouse by the riverfront. I’d had a makeshift bench set up and a box of tools, and he’d stood across from me, almost exactly where the shadow’s puppet shape stood now.

I was scared out of my damn mind then, too. The shadow leaned forward again, licking her lips while in my mind she watched every shimmer and whorl of the magic my thoughts were wrapping themselves around.

“You lured me there to kill me.” I said it in an off-hand tone, but he winced just the same. “That first time, with that monkey’s paw.”

“Aye,” he admitted, with a nod.

In retrospect, it’s probably the fact that artificing doesn’t look like much that saved my life. He’d been expecting a regular Pink Floyd laser light show, and all he’d got was me tearing apart a withered old monkey’s paw with a scalpel, a set of tweezers, and a couple of screwdrivers. Also, lots of cussing. Artificing bears a striking resemblance to fixing the plumbing that way.

I let another tiny drop of solvent drip onto the ring. It hissed and popped some more, like peroxide on a fresh cut, and the layers of enchantment opened a little more. Like a flower just starting to bloom. The shadow dug her fingers into the workbench and I felt her pressing at my will, testing it.

“Easy,” I whispered. “If you fuck this up, neither of us gets anything out of it.”

“She wants it,” Irish said softly, and I could hear the edge of worry creeping into his tone.

“Yeah. Some jackass gave her the bright idea of taking it for herself.” I set the pipette aside and grabbed the swinging arm fastened to the edge of the bench. There was a big magnifying glass screwed to the end of it. I swung it over top of the ring, studying the epoxy as it tarnished the silver around the stone. It made the ruby look like it was nestled in the center of an infection, corrupting the pure lunar silver.

“Oh,” he said. “Shite.”

The part Irish didn’t see in that crumbling old warehouse, the part he couldn’t see now, was the incredible expense of willpower and mental effort on my behalf. The magic is built into the artifact at every stage, like a multilayered kaleidoscopic pattern. It’s infused into the metal when it’s melted and poured and hammered into the ring shape. It’s etched into the stone when it’s carved and cut. It’s breathed into the epoxy when the stone is set in. At each step, another ribboning, folding layer of pattern that I could feel, sense. These were the careful paths I was walking in my mind, undoing them like great big tight wads of sailor knots. It didn’t help any that these knots were messy, hurried. Or that the wrong knot would unravel the ruby’s connection to Carl’s power reserves.

I felt a bead of sweat trickle down my forehead, catch in my eyebrow, and freeze in place as the shadow dealt with it. She didn’t want me distracted. She wanted me to unlock that ruby, opening the door to all that power. She leaned against the cage of my willpower, a steady, increasing pressure as she moaned in my mind, already tasting it.

Still holding the ring in the forceps, I nudged the porcelain dish out of the way and grabbed a heavy table vise. I locked the ring into its grip and rinsed the solvent away with a splash of distilled water and lime from a recycled ketchup bottle. Another pipette, and this time the stronger solvent, tetrachloroethylene based, with a dash of an alchemical soup that cost me a fortune to buy but that did wonders for my dry cleaning. The smoke that rose from the ring was dark and metallic-smelling, and I took that to be a good sign. I adjusted the magnifying glass and set the chisel into the corroded outer layer of epoxy, tapping the end of it. My jaw was clenched tight with the effort. A sliver of epoxy chipped away, knocked loose by chisel and hammer, effort and will. With it, a layer of Jacob’s bindings wafted away like an onion skin.

“What happens if she gets it?”

Another careful tap. “This is the tricky bit,” I said to no one in particular, avoiding Irish’s question. “There’s a sliver of warded diamond on the tip of this chisel. If I chip the ruby, too, the whole thing is ruined.”

“Alice?” His tone was a little sterner.

“She feasts.” I tapped again. More epoxy flaked away. The shadow leaned harder.

“And she gets stronger,” he breathed, staring at me, eyes wide. “Too strong for you?”

I’d never had the shadow fight me for something like this before. I felt the beginnings of a little tremble in my fingers, something that could be disastrous. I could ignore her, steady my hands, and let her have the foothold. I could fight her, risk slipping, chip the stone, and ruin the magic. I could set the chisel aside and take a breath, get my shit together.

These kinds of knots have a bad habit of retying themselves when you let up on them. I flicked a look up at the shadow. She grinned.

“Maybe,” I said. Irish drew in a deep breath.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“You could try running.” I tapped the end of the chisel again.

“Would that help?” His tone was wry, an attempt to ease the tension.

“For a few minutes.” The attempt fell flat. I concentrated, tapped again, and a big chunk of epoxy fell away, actually falling to the bench through the metal itself. “Ha! Bitch,” I muttered at the ring, dropping the chisel and hammer for a set of fine-tipped calipers. “Okay. Here we go,” I said, pushing the magnifying glass out of the way and pulling in a breath. This was the brute force portion of the game. I’d breached the bindings, but separating the stone from the silver would be like extracting the contents of an egg without breaking the shell. I had a grip on the yolk, as it were, but this still called for a certain amount of finesse. I set the calipers in place on either side of the stone, careful, so careful. I didn’t want to crack that stone, but I needed to break it loose.

I could feel the tremor in the muscles of my forearms. I squeezed tight. Mentally, I was reinforcing and holding the binding enchantments together to keep them from exploding, but keeping the opening I’d made as wide as possible. The stone’s enchantment I was keeping as loose and pliable as I could, making the most of the distension the cobra solvent had started. It had to warp and flow through the gap in the bindings, but keep its shape afterward.

The shadow reached, straining, readying herself to grab for all that delicious power, her puppet making a growling face, showing her teeth. Irish let out a shaky breath at the sight of her, making the mistake of thinking that she was really there. The decoy was nothing. She was in every corner of the basement, under the desk and on our skin and most of all she was in my mind and watching everything I did and everything I thought.

I leaned into my grip on the calipers, and some of the lights in the room dimmed ever so slightly as the scent of ozone rose off the workbench. I strained elsewhere too, to peel away the last of the ring’s defenses. The conduit that let Carl in, that prevented anyone else from accessing the stone. At the same time, the bits of epoxy that clung to the stone had to have their enchantment rewritten, the lines of control opening to allow anyone access. My shoulders ached, spots blossomed in my vision, and my teeth ground tight as I pitted my magic against Jacob Still’s and my will against my shadow and cast my own magic all at the same time.

There was a loud crack, the stone popped loose, bouncing up from the vice and skittering towards the shadow’s puppet. Her shadow hands clapped down over it as she lunged forward in my mind at me. Irish let out a cry of surprise and I slapped both hands down through the shadow’s, over the stone.

She shrieked in my head, shadow mouth opening wide with it as she surged against my will and I realized she’d been hording more strength than she’d let on. A lot more.

“Alice!”

The shop plunged into darkness, swallowing up Irish’s voice as I fought her. All my willpower set itself to the task, and it was almost a pleasure to focus on just one thing after the ordeal I’d just weathered. I groaned through my teeth as she met my redoubled effort with ease, brushing aside my attempts to cage her again. I clawed and scrabbled after the power, snarling as I clung to the table and fought to keep it out of her reach. She studied me, pushing at the boundaries of my will, and realized that she could pop them like soap bubbles. I felt her consider the idea. My knees went all watery and my stomach flipped over.

My chest hurt, my heart was beating so hard. I couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in my ears. I reminded her of all the trouble we were in, showed her Tanner’s face, Randall, Cat, the Eldest, the Knights and the hollowman. Did she think she was going to conquer all that on her own, with no help from me? That gave her a split-second’s pause, and then I felt the vast, unyielding chasm of her hunger. She could feed as she would without me around to hold her back. She would be unstoppable. She didn’t need me. My body, yes, to shelter her from this universe’s corrosive effect. But my mind? That was just holding her back.

I dragged in a ragged breath. It echoed in my ears. It hit me that I was blind, that as she gathered to strike out at me she was shutting me out of her senses. She didn’t want to feel it when my mind died.

I put a shaking hand on the butt of the Baby Eagle hanging from my shoulder holster. The empty blackness writhed with her fury, brushing up against my flesh in burning cold ripples. My skin crawled at her touch and I shuddered at the frigid horror of it. Gods, is that what other people felt when she touched them?

She glared at me in the empty blackness. Not at my mind, as usual, but through the dark itself. I could feel it. I showed her an image of myself, the gun to my head, finger squeezing tighter on the trigger. She froze. I froze. She stared into my mind, doubting that I would draw the gun, doubting I would pull the trigger. My hand trembled with her doubt, a great fiery wash of it. She was certain I wouldn’t dare. I was drowning in her certainty, in her strength, and I teetered on the edge of collapse.

If I let her win, it was all over. Alice would be gone. There would only be shadow, free at last, nothing and no one holding her back. Fuck that. Better to pull the trigger. If I was going down, she was, too. We were one being, I screamed in my thoughts. When I died, how sure was she that she would go on? How sure was she that another host body would accept her? How sure was she that even if it did, that her host wouldn’t go mad from it and drag her with them into insanity?

The shadow and I eyed each other up in a Mexican stand-off, her certainty against my sheer, vindictive bitchery. She considered the amazing wealth of power in our grasp, and the fact that there was another human in the house. She remembered touching Larry earlier, touching his soul. She wondered if she could take Honey’s soul and force-feed it to me. She wondered if she could let me fire, and save me anyway, a mindless shell.

Sweat ran down my face. I had no idea if she could do that, but I sure the hell didn’t want to find out. I doubted it. Human sacrifice was old magic, and magic was a human thing. But she’d had a good teacher, watching me do it a thousand times.

I drew the gun, and felt tendrils of shadow creeping upstairs, finding Honey in the kitchen. She was singing, a soft romantic Spanish melody. My shadow felt she had just about had enough of my excuses and demands, and she was considering trying it even if the odds didn’t look good. While she thought that, I ejected the clip and drew another from my belt, slamming it home and running my fingers over the etched code on the butt of the clip.

Even if a fresh soul harvest could heal the damage from a .40 caliber bullet, it wouldn’t matter. I raised the gun to my chin as she realized I’d loaded the void rounds.

“Try me, bitch. And I’ll send you home.”

My mind came alive with the shadow’s electric fear. I saw, in the darkness all around us, the limitless darkness of the void itself. I felt her remembering the half-tangible touch of her siblings, the teeming, hungry dark. She imagined them touching her, and finding her full of power. She imagined fighting them in their countless millions as they swarmed around her and through her, feeding and eating bits of her a little at a time… they would never stop. They would keep coming, wanting and needing the power she held and unable to comprehend her screams… but there were things in the dark that would. Things that would hear and approach. Points of light in the infinite void, seeking anything with a mind. They would come, and they wouldn’t care about the energy she’d absorbed or the power she’d amassed. They would come for her mind itself, and leave her empty, powerful shell to attract more shadows to the slaughter.

The lights came up, and for just an instant, I thought they were coming. That the dispersing shadows were really these shining predators drawing near, and I nearly pulled the trigger just to escape them. So help me, I really almost did it, right then. My eyes were bugging in terror and my hands were shaking so hard the gun was tapping against my throat and chin and my teeth were chattering.

“Alice!” Irish finally caught sight of me as the darkness lifted. “Jaysis!” Irish grabbed my arm as I sagged, my knees weak with the terror of what had almost just happened, and the vision I’d seen of the shadow’s homeland. “What in God’s name are you thinking?” he said, lifting the gun from my nerveless fingers and clicking the safety back on. “That’s not the way. We’ll stop her, you don’t need to give up, ever,” he said, totally missing the point. He dropped the gun on the workbench and pulled me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me and squeezing me tight.

I let him. The show was over.

The shadow was nowhere in sight. Rather, I felt her in my mind meekly and quietly coiled away. She was shaken, too, at the memory my threat had uncovered. She’d been part of that teeming horde, once, before being drawn to this world. Blindly, hungrily, seeking anything of warmth or light… and living in fear of the predators that used that craving as bait to draw the shadows near. Never again. She didn’t ever want to go back there. I’d won. She was cowed, and might remain that way for a while.

Irish held me until I stopped shaking, and released me when I tapped his shoulder. I fell back on the stool behind me, sitting heavily and looking at the gun on the table. Only a few void rounds left. I resolved then and there to keep one on hand at all times, and my shadow noted it in meek silence. I turned my left hand over and opened it, revealing the perfect gleaming ruby and a set of four bloody crescents in my palm. I offered the stone to Irish.

“Put that in your pocket, would you? Probably not wise if I hang on to it.” My voice was shaky. “We can’t test it – using the damn thing might attract Carl, or the hollowman. Maybe both. We just have to hope it works when we need it.”

“Aye,” he whispered, voice shaky as mine. He was white as a ghost. He plucked the ruby out of my palm and tucked it into his jeans pocket. “Are ye all right, Alice?” He put his hands on my shoulders, and looked deeply into my eyes, worry all over his suddenly-pale face. The unspoken question was unmistakable: Are you Alice?

“Yeah,” I managed. For now.

I reached for my cigarettes, leaving smears of blood on the pack as I picked it and pulled a smoke out. It was the last one. I crumbled the pack and tossed it aside. I lit up, pulled in a deep smoky breath, and let it out. “What time is it?” I asked, fumbling for my phone.

“Time for a fuckin’ drink,” Irish muttered, but his color was coming back, now.

“Right,” I agreed absently, glancing at my phone. We had some time yet before we needed to go meet Grace. I blinked as I suddenly processed Irish’s comment, and glanced up at him. I do believe that was the first time I heard him mention wanting a drink… well, since he’d been drunk last night. What was that? Almost a day. As a matter of fact, he’d turned down several drinks since then. “You… don’t actually drink that much, do you?” I said, studying him with a critical eye.

He managed a little smile. “Yer a bit slow on the uptake, aren’t ye?” I glared at him and he shrugged it off, still smirking at me. “If I had a dime for every fight some unholy bastard was fool enough t’ pick with me ’cause he thought I was too drunk t’ win…” he chuckled. “Besides, at the risk of playing to stereotype, people see a drunken Irishman and tend to believe it. Truth is, I have a hell of a tolerance for the stuff. It’d take a bloody lot to get me really plastered.”

“Huh.” I pushed myself off the stool, biting my cigarette filter and grabbing a rag to wrap around my palm. I’d dug myself up pretty good. I had skin under my fingernails.

“I think we earned it, though, eh? You won, and I didn’t have to run for my life. I like not having to run for my life and spend the rest of my days afraid of the dark.”

I rubbed the back of my head, where a headache was just getting started. “Yeah, well, don’t count your chickens just yet. The night is young.”

The door at the top of the stairs opened, and Honey called down “Hey, are you done yet? Dinner’s ready! We made chicken sandwiches so you can eat on the way!”

I headed up to the kitchen. Honey was leaning on the counter, watching as Gene sulked and carved chicken. I patted the zombi on the shoulder and swiped a couple of slices. He grumbled and waved me away from his work space.

“Oh, you’re all right, Gene. I’ll fix it so he can’t do that again, okay?” Gene grunted, and the knife thunked heavily on the wooden cutting board. I shook my head and popped chicken in my mouth. I owed Day a smack in the mouth for pissing off my house zombi. He was going to sulk for days now.

I fetched a fresh pack of cigarettes from the cupboard above the fridge, and noticed Irish leaning in the basement doorway, looking thoughtful. At me. I was starting to hate it when he did that. This look said: You almost lost it, just now. And now you’re acting like everything is normal. Is this what normal means to you?

I gave him a look that said: Fuck off.

“Did you do whatever you were doing?” Honey took a sip from my favorite coffee mug, the one with the brass-knuckle handle. I narrowed my eyes at that, and her eye sparkled back at me.

“Yep, sure did. Eat if you’re going to,” I said to Irish, waving at the food. “I need to take care of the house.” I headed for the door. “If the place bumps around a bit, don’t worry.”

I headed up the stairs and let myself out of the trunk, stepping out into the dank ruins of some cavernous building. I pulled out my Edison bulb as the shadow explored. I tossed the bulb up, and it wavered, flickered weakly, and finally glowed. I pursed my lips. Low magic zone; not my first choice. What was it with Detroit and abandoned buildings? If Carl was behind all this, with his tinkering on the city council, he had a lot to answer for. Still… I turned in a circle, studying the ruins. Old auto plant, was my guess. The place was littered in graffiti, giant cement columns supporting the upper floors. The ceiling had come down in a few spots, but the shadow reported that the immediate area was in decent shape. Now, to find a working door…

I tromped through plaster and rubble and garbage, poking down halls and eying up doorways as the shadow searched. She was quiet about it, but she located a working door before too long. I trotted down an empty, silent hall, finding an old office door that, against all odds, was still attached to its frame. I opened it. It stuck a bit, having been warped by the pervasive damp, but it still worked. Perfect.

I ran back to the car, to find Irish standing next to the open trunk, looking around.

“Where are we?”

“Dunno. Here, watch out.” I grabbed the edge of the trunk. “I’m moving the house, now, Honey!”

“A’ight!” She yelled back. Sounded like her mouth was full. I grinned and slammed the trunk, turning the key in the lock, counting to ten, and opening it again. We looked down into a perfectly ordinary trunk and found a big dollhouse, shaped like an old plantation home about two feet long nestled between the spare tire and a wicker basket full of dried scorpions. Hey, that’s where I put those!

“Jaysis,” Irish said, staring at the dollhouse. “We were in that?”

“Meh. Kinda. It’s complicated.” I lifted it gently, and carried it back to the office we’d found. Irish followed me, stepping carefully to avoid tripping. I tucked the dollhouse just inside the door, making sure it wouldn’t get hit when the door closed. It had to be close, though. “Okay, watch this.” We stepped back and I closed the door, locking it with my skeleton keyring. Grinning at Irish, I slid my house key into the flat wood, and turned it in a lock that didn’t actually exist, activating the entrance. I opened the door again, and we were looking directly into my entrance hall. “Ta-da.” I glanced at Irish, who shook his head in wonder.

“I –” He stopped himself with a wry little grin. “All right, Alice. I’m impressed.”

“Good.” I returned the grin. “You should be. This took me three years to make – and that’s three years where this was my only project. Anyway, this’ll do for now. The house can run off those batteries Day charged up for me until I can fix up something better. Let me grab my gun and jacket, and we’ll get out of here.”

Irish nodded, and I headed in, leaving the door hanging open. Honey was perched on a stool in the kitchen, munching a sandwich made from the roast chicken. Ladies and gentlemen: Gene Frye. The man roasts an entire chicken to make sandwiches.

“This is amazing,” Honey mumbled around a mouthful. “These are fresh-baked rolls! And watercress? Why do you ever eat at my bar? We served shit compared to this!”

“Right?” Gene was putting together more sandwiches while Honey stuffed her face. “We’re in some abandoned auto plant somewhere.”

“Oh, charming.” Honey wrinkled her nose as I headed down into the basement, after my gun and coat. While I was down there, I cut the slagged rubber-band bracelet off my wrist, and looked around the shop, frowning. I needed something for defense.

On one of the storage racks, I found a plastic storage tub with an old black cashmere scarf inside. There were ultrafine copper wires worked into the weave of the fabric, and when they caught the light they bore a resemblance to circuitry designed with a tribal influence. It was an early prototype for my shield belt, and I’d shelved it because it was too unreliable. The wires were too fragile, and it only took one broken wire to short the whole thing. Also, the power feeds were locked open, so it drained my reserves constantly. It had to be activated when you needed it, and turned off immediately thereafter, or I’d be exhausted by it.

Still, it was better than nothing. I put it on, and reloaded my clips. Dragonfire, salamander rounds, concussion and some standard ammo for the Colt enchanted to be silent. I kept the Baby Eagle loaded with my remaining void rounds, much to the shadow’s distress, and loaded the Colt with the concussion shots. I looked around the basement again, wondering why I didn’t have more weapons. Didn’t I know I’d need to throw down someday? What had I been thinking, wasting my time making magic mirrors and wands for the highest bidder?

Oh, right, money. Some of those bidders had been very high indeed.

I double-checked the batteries, decided they’d hold up for a bit, and came back upstairs, running my fingers through my hair.

“Okay, we’re out of here.” Gene handed me a thermos of coffee and a paper bag containing a couple of his award-winning sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. I took them, because I was beginning to suspect I hadn’t actually eaten anything in a couple of days, and passing out from hunger wasn’t going to do anyone any good.

“Try not to get killed,” Honey called after me, her words garbled as she chewed. “If you do, can I have the house?”

I slammed the door behind me, shaking my head. I locked it up, handed a sandwich off to Irish, and headed back towards the car. “Let’s get going. I want to get there early and scout the place out.”

“Aye, good plan.” He eyed the sandwich dubiously, but hunger won out over germophobia. Gene’s homemade chipotle mayo didn’t hurt, either. “D’ye have any idea where we are?”

“Well… I’m guessing it’s the old Packard plant, actually. That’s not far away from where Gianna was at.” Irish nodded as he ate. “And it’s not far from Michigan Central, either. Handy.”

“Ow!” Irish was rubbing at the back of his neck when I turned, and I’d already drawn my Colt and had my other hand in one of my belt pouches. “A bee stung me,” he said, looking at his hand.

“It’s November. What bees?”

“See for yourself.” In his hand, a half-squashed honeybee. “Maybe there’s still a heat vent here that works?” he asked, brushing his hand on his jeans.

I looked around the cavernous room we were walking through. Huge and wide open, with great massive banks of broken windows. It was cold in here. “Sure, that’s probably it,” I said, getting into the car and shrugging off the uneasy feeling that was coming over me. Now was no time to get paranoid. “Come on, before his friends come after you.”

I eased the car out of the decrepit building, down the crumbling road, and out onto East Grand Boulevard. Score one for me: I was right. We were at the old Packard auto plant, abandoned some fifty years ago. Traffic was light for a Saturday, too, so it was only about a twenty minute drive to Michigan Central. It was easy to get at, too. No fences or anything. Honestly, it’s like they want you to break into abandoned buildings, in this town.

I pulled up in front of the giant old ruin, parking between the station and Roosevelt Park. I stood up and craned my neck back to look up at floor after floor of busted windows soaring up to the murky sky. The station had a huge, vaulted ceiling, and the tower reached eighteen stories above that. It had been built in 1913, and designed by the guy who’d done Grand Central in New York. They closed it for good back in 1988, well before I’d moved to Detroit. I’d always wanted to explore around in there, but I’d never got around to it.

Irish got out of the car, too, ignoring the gorgeous building in favor of glancing around to make sure we were alone. I turned a slow circle, studying the surroundings. The street lights on Dalzelle were still lit, but the rest of the area was dark and empty. I closed my eyes, feeling out the magic field in the area. It was low. Really low, even lower than at the Packard plant.

Not good. Also, it didn’t make a lot of sense. This was still an Amtrak station in the eighties… surely they had put in heavy-duty power feeds? The park still had working streetlights, so we were right next to the city grid. Huh.

I turned back to the building. The bottom floor, with its main entrance decorated with crumbling, graffiti-tagged columns and arches and vaulted, two-story windows, loomed over us.

“Ready?” I leaned on the roof of the car as Irish turned to face me.

“Another empty building,” he sighed.

“I know. It’s getting to be a recurring theme of the day, isn’t it? When this is over we should go someplace with people.”

“It’s a date.”

“No, it’s a plan.” Irish smiled at me over his shoulder but he was already climbing the steps to the front door.

I licked my lips, tasting the air, seeking that tingle that said there was magic close to hand. There wasn’t nothing, but there was nothing like there should have been. Grace? Had she done something? Throttled the power feed to this area, maybe? If she had, it’d go a long way toward minimizing any potential carnage here, and give creatures like me… and her, I realized, an advantage. What sort of abilities had come with her new form? She’d mentioned an ovipositor, earlier.

Now if I just knew what that meant. ‘Ovi’ meant ‘egg,’ right?

Irish had already jimmied the door open, using Cat’s trench spike like a short crowbar. I hadn’t realized he still had it. He walked into the station like he owned it, and I decided not to mention that fact that a half-crazy half-woman half-spider might be waiting for us. With half an army, if she was feeling vindictive.

He’d find out soon enough if that were the case, right?

“Can we get a little light?” Irish craned his head back, looking up towards the cathedral ceiling lost in darkness. Gloom lay thick all through the building. My shadow loved it, and commenced spreading out, exploring and mapping as she went.

“Yeah, probably, hang on.” I rustled around in my pouches and pockets and found my Edison bulb. I gave it a toss into the air and lunged to catch it as it fell back down. “Shit!”

“What?” Irish spun to look at me as I cradled the bulb in my hands.

“It’s a dead zone.” I rolled the bulb between my hands, giving it some of my own natural charge. Inside, the fireflies began to flicker and rustle, emitting a feeble, near-useless glow.

“What?” Irish stepped up to my side, frowning down at the bulb in my hands. The dull light underlit our faces, making Irish look grimmer than usual, even for him.

“Dead zone. No magic here. Well, not much, anyway.” The bulb couldn’t even build up enough of a charge to float.

“How does that even happen? Does that mean you can’t do anything?”

“Well…” I put an eyebrow up. “A few of my toys carry their own charge. Like that stink bomb I used on you earlier. Most of them, though, draw on me for the magic to operate. Usually, that’s no problem, since I can draw on the city. But there’s no power here. As in, the DTE doesn’t service this area anymore. This place obviously doesn’t have power, and there’s nothing much else in the area.”

“What does electricity have to do with it?” Even as he asked the question, I could see him turning the thought over in his head, making the connections. “It’s the fuckin’ power grid? The actual power grid?”

I grinned, putting a finger against my lips. “Shhh. Heap big secret, that.”

“Magic is electricity?” he exclaimed, wide-eyed.

“No,” I waved a hand to cut him off. “Not really. Well, sort of. Well…” I scratched my head, frowning. “Think of electricity like a fire. Magic is the light it puts off. Magical energy is… kind of like refined electricity. A magician is someone who can sense the additional output, tap into it, and use it.”

“My God.” Irish ran a hand through his hair. “That explains a lot. I always wondered – in the old texts, witches were more of an annoyance than anything. There’s hardly anything about ‘em. Then, out’ve nowhere, a hundred, hundred and fifty years ago, yer lot was the big threat. Suddenly, everything was about witches. And why yer all packed in the cities, I always wondered about that.”

“Yep.” I shook the Edison bulb a bit, and heaved a sigh. “I didn’t bring any batteries. I expected it was going to be a low yield zone out here, but I didn’t think it would be dead. So, yeah. My shadow will be fine, but I’m not going to be able to do a lot.”

“Batteries? As in, Energizer?”

“No, I make my own. A rural artificer can do a nice business in batteries.” I waved a hand around at the area in general. “You can see why. I mean, drop Tyler off in a spot like this? He’s screwed. Smart of Grace to pick this spot. Day won’t be able to track her for shit here, either.”

“I suppose that’s a good thing.”

“Doesn’t hurt.” I put the Edison bulb out and stuffed it back in my pouch. “Got a flashlight?”

“No,” he admitted, his tone amused and annoyed at the same time.

“Me either. Just stick by me.” We advanced into the peeling remains of the great hall, the shadow flowing through the gloom and sharing her topical map with me. The hall was huge, the floor mostly clear, but rubble and plaster and junk had been shoved up against the marble walls. Wide arches arced their way around the walls, reaching up to the ceiling some forty feet above our heads. Halls branched off deeper into the crumbling old building between Doric columns, leading into offices and other depots. Vermin rustled through the darkness, but the shadow didn’t find anything alarming skulking around. I’d heard it was modeled after a Roman bathhouse, and from the feel of it, I could believe it.

“Did she say where at? This place is enormous.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Might as well stay here, then.” Irish stopped, tucking his hands in his coat pockets as he turned a slow circle, peering into the gloom. A faint glow trickled into the hall from outside, just enough light to emphasize the shadows. The rusty-golden glow of the city itself, reflecting down from the overcast cloudy sky.

I pulled my fresh pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and opened them, ducking my head to light a cigarette. I held it cupped in my palm, to hide the cherry, tucking the pack and lighter away. I brushed my phone in my pocket and drew it out to check the time. No calls, either, I noticed. I’d hoped we’d have some leads from Gianna or Larry by now.

“We’re pretty early.”

“Do you hear something?”

“What, now?” I stuffed the phone in my pocket, glancing toward Irish.

“I hear something. Like a buzzing.” Irish turned, frowning as he listened.

“What, like more bees? They’re probably coming to get you because you offed their buddy back at the Packard plant.”

“Alice, seriously. You don’t hear that? She doesn’t hear that?” The shadow stilled as she sensed my interest. Unmoving in the shadows all around us, she spread herself thinner and thinner, feeling in the dark for any sort of sound at all. We felt a dozen different kinds of vibrations, little rat feet pattering through the ruins, skittering roaches, dripping water, a branch scraping the exterior siding in the breeze. But nothing that felt like a buzzing.

I shook my head, slowly, and then realized Irish probably couldn’t see that. “I can’t make anything –”

“Shh. There it is again! Louder.” He dropped into a half-crouch, watching the bank of broken windows high above us.

I ignored the vibrations the shadow could feel, straining with my own ears. He was right. There was a sort of buzzing noise. There was something familiar about it, too. “Yeah, I can hear it now.”

“It’s getting louder.”

“Closer.” I straightened up, doing a quick mental inventory of what I had on me that would actually work. The pickings were pretty slim. The bullets in my guns were about fifty-fifty if they’d work or not. My machete would be fine. I had some explosives that should work. I ground my back teeth. Dammit. I really needed to pay better attention to the dead zone locations. They were turning up more and more often in Detroit.

“What is it?” Irish had dropped his voice to a bare thread of sound, stepping closer to me, turning so we were back to back.

“Well, not to be a smartass, but it sounds like bees to me.” I nudged the shadow and she swelled, filling the darkness. “How’s that sting doing?”

“Fine,” he whispered, but I heard the wariness in his tone.

I felt them coming through the darkness, one here, one there, then two, then a dozen, then a hundred – my heart jumped up in my throat, pounding hard. They piled into the upper reaches of the hall, easily several thousand. To my extreme worry, the shadow couldn’t seem to count them. She could feel them there, piling together into a swarm as the buzzing noise grew and grew, louder, echoing in the Roman-style hall like the thunder of Zeus. Try as she might, she just couldn’t get a fix on them, like they were popping in and out of existence as she brushed them. Her tension doubled mine, riding down my spine in a hard shiver. I stepped back, bumping into Irish’s shoulders.

“Here they come!” I heard Irish jerk in a hard breath and spit it out in a curse, felt him draw his sword, although what use that was going to be against a swarm of bees I have no idea. From my pocket I drew out a few glass marbles, and smashed them on the tile floor at our feet. Thick, black smoke, almost invisible in the darkness, billowed up, but I doubted it would be enough to protect us.

The bees came roaring down in a column ten feet in front of me, a solid buzzing mass, thousands of fuzzy little bodies pressed wing to wing with barely a spare between them and I palmed a handful of explosive marbles. I jerked my arm back to throw them, and the bees –

The bees – I missed it somehow. My hand was a tight fist around the marbles, and somehow, the bees were all but gone, and there was a humanoid shape out there in the darkness. Small, too warm to be human, and neither the shadow or I could quite make out how it got there or where it’d come from. A handful of bees wobbled away, but the rest were just gone, like they’d merged into a human shape, or dispersed in an instant to reveal…

“Alice. I thought I’d find you here.” My smoke bombs rattled on the floor at my feet, whole and unbroken and I hissed between my teeth as I realized that even the smoke had vanished. “And really? I have asked you not to smoke around me.”

“Owen?” My jaw sagged as I recognized the flat, almost monotone voice.

It really, really bothered me that I couldn’t tell if the bees had dispersed or coalesced. Irish turned to face the familiar voice, his hand warm pressed between my shoulder blades.

“Let’s have a bit of light, shall we?” Owen said, and I heard the distinctive pop-click of a lamp coming on. A bright glow spilled from a Tiffany table lamp sitting on an elegant wooden side table. Neither had been there a second ago. I felt the four comfortable easy chairs pop into existence, felt the air and the thin, gloomy substance of my shadow pushed away from them as they made space for themselves in the hall. It was an unpleasant sensation, like suddenly finding something stuck in your teeth.

“That’s better. Good evening, Alice, Mr. Hayes.” Owen nodded a pleasant greeting, rubbing his hands together as he glanced around. “I’ve always wanted to visit here. I’m so pleased that Grace chose this place.” He smiled, turning as he looked around. “Shame we couldn’t have been here in the daylight. The architecture is lovely.” He waved a hand, and a line of chandeliers blazed into cheery warm light along the length of the room, lighting the graceful and elegant lines of the train station. It looked both majestic and shabby at the same time, the debris and gang tags overlaid on the marble and brass fixtures like mildew growing over a perfect pearl.

My shadow reacted with lightning speed, fleeing the light and gathering into the pools of shadow that remained so fast that one could almost have missed it. I thought my approval at her, even as I stammered intelligently at Owen. “I… but…” I stepped into the circle of chairs, hands held out. “How the fuck are you even here?”

“Sam was kind enough to smash the gates open when he escaped.” Owen sat in the nearest of the chairs, a wing-backed antique that looked overdone but went well with the vast train station. “It destroyed the wards, which were already weakened when you destroyed old Thomas’ clever lock. I decided to stretch my legs a bit while I had the chance. Do sit down. I’ve been looking for you for whole minutes, now.”

“Sam… escaped.” Suddenly, Damian’s laughter earlier made more sense. “Because of Cat, right?”

“Oh, indeed. Young Caitlyn’s acceptance of his terms provided more than enough power for Samuel to break his geas. Rather foolhardy on her part, considering what I’ve discovered since then. But she was terribly distraught and feeling so very alone and abandoned. I imagine she would have welcomed almost any offer at that point.”

“What you’ve discovered?” Irish asked, stepping around me and entering the circle of chairs Owen had conjured. He had sheathed his sword, but the look on his face was still dark and potentially violent. Owen didn’t seem concerned. “What does that mean? What have you discovered?”

“Sit, sit.” Owen relaxed back into his chair. He looked much the same as he had before, with his tailored three-piece suit, red tie, and his neat blond crew-cut. He pushed his glasses up his nose and smiled at us, and I felt uneasy. I couldn’t see anything dramatically different about him, but outside of his library he seemed… bigger, somehow. Like he was constraining himself by choice at the moment, as opposed to before, when he’d been bound against his will. “Let’s discuss that. Perhaps we can come to an arrangement.” He smiled again, and this time the effect was even more unsettling. I paused next to the chair, a slow chill rolling up my spine. It wasn’t a request, and this could go very poorly.

I tucked the marbles back into my pocket, sinking down into a chair as I eyed Owen cautiously. “You found something out?”

“I’ve… collected a great deal of interesting information in the last few hours. The wards limit me somewhat. Without them, I’m able to… take more drastic measures to find what I wish to know.” Owen perched his elbows on the arms of his chair, steepling his fingers as he watched us. “It’s indelicate, I must say, but many of these questions have plagued me as much as they’ve plagued Mr. Hayes. Many of the answers are quite surprising, it turns out.”

“Answers about?” Irish prompted, taking his cue from me and sitting.

“Your Order. Where it comes from and how they became so very powerful. The answers may shock you. I know I was astonished.” His tone, as usual, was a flat, even drone. It hadn’t bothered me before, when he’d been locked in the library. For some reason, though, hearing it now made me uncomfortable in my own skin. It was like he’d learned what words and phrases to use to sound personable, but he didn’t understand how inflection worked. It was a paper mask, and one that could tear.

“Ah. Yes, I’m very interested,” Irish said, settling down in another of the plush, comfy chairs. “But what’s the catch?” Now Irish glanced my way, and his eyes were guarded, but… hungry. Power? It’s addictive shit. People who lose it will do the damnedest things to get it back.

Occasionally literally. Cat had.

I rubbed the back of my skull, feeling my headache getting worse, and wondering how far Cat’s apple had fallen from this particular tree. It looked like I was about to find out.

Table of Contents / Chapter Thirty-Eight >>

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