i 2d586356cf1586df (11 page)

Maynard was frowning, waiting for her to finish her point.

"Um—" What had she been saying? Oh yes, her areas of expertise. "But I've discovered that I know very little about anything else."

Page 62

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"You're Windwolf's
domi
."

"And this makes me an expert on—what? I don't know you well enough to discuss my sex life and quite frankly, the only place I get to see my husband is in bed."

"Whether you like it or not,
ze domi
, that makes you a player in Pittsburgh. There are sixty thousands humans that need you on their side."

"Fine, I'm on their side. Rah, rah, rah! That still doesn't give me a clue on how to help. Fuck, I tried to help the elves and look at the mess I made. You can't screw up much more than Turtle Creek."

"A lot of elves see this as a win-win situation. If you had permanently returned Pittsburgh back to Earth, it would have been perfect."

"Some of us would have been pissed," Stormsong said.

Maynard gave Stormsong a look that begged her to be quiet.

"Look," Tinker said. "If shit hits the fan, I promise I will move heaven and earth to protect the people of this city, but I am not a political animal. At this point in time, I don't even want to try to tackle anything that can't be solved with basic number crunching."

Maynard was still gazing at Stormsong, but in a more intent fashion now. Stormsong wore an odd stunned look, like someone had hit her with a cattle prod.

"Stormsong?" Tinker scanned the area, looking for danger.

"You will," Stormsong murmured softly in a voice that put chills down Tinker's spine.

"I will
what
?" Tinker shivered off the feeling.

"Move heaven and earth to protect what you love," Stormsong whispered.

"What the hell does that mean?" Tinker asked.

Stormsong blinked and focused on Tinker. "Forgiveness,
ze domi
," she said in High Elvish, disappearing behind her most formal mask. "My ability is erratic and I'm untrained. I—I am not certain . .

Page 63

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

."

"If that's the case, I'm satisfied." Maynard acted as if Stormsong had said something more understandable. "Forgiveness,
ze domi
, I must take my leave.
Nasadae
."

"
Nasadae
," Tinker echoed, mystified. What the fuck just happened? Maynard bowed his parting.

Stormsong had gone into
sekasha
mode. And the conversation had been in English, so asking Pony would be pointless.

Wojo returned with the keys. "I see you've found the cause of all our problems." He indicated the shrine marking the ley line. "As soon as the magic seeped into the area after the first Startup, the whole unit went whacky. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen—including waking up the day before."

"Huh?" She was having trouble switching gears.
That's it, I won't fight any monsters today and will
go to bed early.

Wojo misunderstood her grunt of confusion. "I lived out in West View right on the Rim—almost didn't come with the rest of the city. My place looked down on I-279. Every morning, I'd get up, have coffee, and check traffic out my back window. That first Startup, I looked out, and there was nothing but trees. I thought maybe I was dreaming. I actually went and took a cold shower before going back and looking again."

Tinker added a shower and maybe a nightcap to her "must get sleep" list—if she could find either.

"I never realized how noisy the highway was until afterward," Wojo continued blithely. "When the forest is still, it's absolute quiet, like the world is wrapped in cotton. And the wind through the trees—that green smell—I just love it."

Tinker bet Stormsong would know where to find booze and hot water.

"But between the wargs, the saurus, and the black willows, West View was just too isolated—I was way out past the scientist commune on Observatory Hill. It's all ironwood forest now. I have a nice place up on Mount Washington, beautiful view of the city, and it's much safer up there. And hell, with gas prices what they are, it makes sense to take the incline down the hill and take the light rail over."

"Yeah, yeah," Tinker agreed to shut him up and indicated the door. "Let's see what you have."

Wojo unlocked the padlock, freed it from the bolt, and opened the door.

Page 64

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Before her transformation, ley lines seemed nearly mystical—lines of force running like invisible rivers.

The little shrines erected by the elves on strong ley lines served as the only warning for why the normal laws of physics would suddenly skew off in odd directions, as the chaos of magic was applied to the equation. "I hit a ley" embedded itself into the Pittsburgh language, blaming everything from acts of nature to bad judgment on the unseen presence.

But now, as a
domana
, she could see magic. The door swung open to reveal a room filled with the shimmer of power.

"Sweet gods," she breathed, earning a surprised look from Wojo and making the
sekasha
move closer to her.

The magic flowed at a purple on the far end of the visible spectrum, lighting the floor to such near-invisible intensity that it brought tears to her eyes. The high ceiling absorbed most of that light, so it stayed cloaked in shifting shadows. Heat spilled out of the room, flushing her to fever hot, and seconds later, the sense of lightness seeped up her legs, slowly filling her until she felt like she would float away.

"What?" Wojo asked.

"It's a very strong ley line," Tinker said.

Wojo made a slight surprised
hrumpf
to this.

She considered what she was wearing. An active spell with this much force behind it, snarled by something metal on her, could be deadly. She wasn't sure how dangerous this much latent magic might pose. "You might want to empty your pockets."

She pulled off her boots, emptied her pockets into them, and took off her gun belt. Since the
sekasha
caste couldn't sense magic, she told Pony and Stormsong, "This ley seems almost as strong as the spell stones."

"The shrine indicates a
fiutana
," Pony explained. "Like the one that the spell stones are built on."

"What's that?" Tinker asked.

Pony explained, "A single point where magic is much stronger than normal, welling up, like spring waters."

"If you're coming in," she told the two warriors, "strip off all metal. And I mean all."

Page 65

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

The
sekasha
started paper, scissors, stone to see which was going in, and which would stay behind with the weapons.

There was a light switch by the door; Tinker cautiously flipped it on, but nothing happened.

"Lightbulbs pop as soon as you carry them into the room," Wojo explained, "so we stopped installing them."

"We need a light source shielded from magic." Tinker flipped the switch back to off. "I don't think even a plastic flashlight would work."

"No, they pop too." Wojo took out two spell lights and held out one to her. "These are safe, but you'll want to watch—they're really bright."

With this much magic around, that wasn't surprising.

She wrapped her hand tight around the cool glass orb before activating it. Her fingers gleamed dull red, her bones lines of darkness inside her skin. Carefully, she uncovered a fraction of the orb, and light shafted out a painfully brilliant white.

Stormsong won paper, scissors, stone and opted for coming inside. She ghosted into the room ahead of Tinker, her shields outlining her in blue brilliance, her wooden sword ready. Tinker waited for Stormsong to flash the "all clear" signal before entering the warehouse.

The cement floor was rough and warm under her stocking feet. She walked into the room, feeling like she should be wading. It lacked the resistance of water, but she could sense a current, a slow circular flow, and a depth.

Wojo followed, oblivious to magic. "This is the space. Is it big enough? If we can get the refrigerator unit to work?"

Tinker considered the loading dock, the wide door, and the large room. They would have to transfer the tree from the flatbed to something wheeled, then shift both back onto the flatbed to get the tree up to the loading dock height and still be able to shift it into the cooler. Given that they'd have to fit a forklift in to help with the transfer, it would be a tight fit, but certainly doable.

"Yeah, this will do." Of course they would have to drain off the massive excess of magic. Strong magic and heavy machinery did not mix well. "You had the cooling unit running for, what, ten years? I'm
Page 66

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

surprised you managed to keep it running that long."

"More like fourteen," Wojo said. "Your grandfather, actually, came over just after Startup and set us up so it worked fine for years. It didn't break down until after he died."

The machine room was off the back of the refrigerated room, through a regular-sized door in the insulated wall. The compressor itself was normal. The cement around it, however, had been inscribed with a spell. A section had overloaded, burning out a part of the spell. She'd never seen anything like it.

"My grandfather did this?" Tinker asked.

"Yes." Wojo nodded. "He heard about the trouble we were having and volunteered to fix it. We were a little skeptical. Back then, no one knew anything about working magic. People are picking magic up, but still, no one had a clue how to fix what he did when it broke."

Tinker's family had the edge that they were descended from an elf who had been trapped on Earth. Her father, Leonardo Dufae, developed his hyperphase gate based off the quantum nature of magic after studying the family's codex. It was the main reason Tinker had been able to build a gate when no one on Earth had yet figured out how to copy her father's work.

"Define
wacky
," Tinker asked.

"What?" Wojo said.

"You said that it went wacky after the first Startup."

"Ah, well, the compressor seemed to work like a pump. The magic was so thick that you could see it. It blew every lightbulb on the block. The forklifts kept burning out but then they'd skitter across the room, just inches off the floor. Loose paper would crawl up your leg like a kitten. It was just weird."

Yes, that fell under wacky. She knew that the electric forklifts had engines that could short to form a crude antigravity spell—it was what had given her the idea for hoverbikes. The loose paper was new.

Perhaps they had something printed on them that had animated them.

"We finally just shut it down and gave all the ice cream to the queen's army." Wojo waved his hand to illustrate emptying out the vast storage area. "Kind of an icebreaker—pardon the pun. A thousand gallons of the cookie batter, chocolate fudge, and peanut butter. Luckily, the Chinese paid for the inventory loss and it hooked the elves on our ice cream."

Page 67

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Tinker sighed, combing her fingers back through her short hair. "Well, first I'll have to drain off the magic; by building a siphon that funnels magic to a storage unit. I have one set up for my electromagnet since a ley line runs through my scrapyard." She used to think of it as a strong ley line, but it was just a meandering stream compared to this torrent. "But that won't handle a flood like you're talking about."

"Whatever your grandfather did worked for years."

The question was—what had her grandfather done? To start from scratch would take time she didn't have, not with the black willow warming in the sun. Luckily, he had kept meticulous records on anything he ever worked on. "I'll go through his things and see if I can find a copy of the spell."

7: THINGS BETTER LEFT

BURIED

The treaty between the elves and humans banned certain humans from Pittsburgh as it traveled back and forth between the worlds: criminals, the mentally insane, and orphans. When her grandfather had died, her cousin Oilcan had been seventeen and Tinker had just turned thirteen. Facing possible deportation, dealing with her grandfather's things had been the last thing on Tinker's mind. Truth be told, she'd run a little mad at the time, resisting Lain and Oilcan's attempts to have her move in with them. She had roamed the city, hiding from her grief, and sleeping wherever night found her. Terrified that she was going to lose the only world she'd ever known, she had drunk it down in huge swallows.

Only when Oilcan had turned eighteen, able to be her legal guardian, had they settled back into a normal life. With money from licensing her hoverbike design, she had set up her scrap yard business, moved into a loft, and laid claim to a sprawling garage between the two. Her grief, however, had been too fresh to deal with her grandfather's things; Oilcan and Nathan Czernowski had packed them up and stored them away in a room at the back of the garage.

Even now—looking at the small mountain of boxes, draped in plastic, smelling of age—it was tempting to just shut the door on the emotional land mines that the boxes might hold.

"
Domi
," Pony said quietly behind her. "What are we looking for here?"

"My grandfather created the spell at the ice cream factory. I need to find his notes on it so I can fix it quickly. I figure it's in one of these boxes."

Page 68

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Pony nodded, looking undaunted by the task. "How can we help?"

Backing out of the whole tree mess wasn't really an option; she already had too many people involved.