He had bought us matching welding helmets. One was chili-pepper red, the other lime green, both with black and white scroll detail that flung out like spider webs across the back before dissolving into curling vines that snaked over the front. The name of the manufacturer had been stamped beneath all that in neat rows in an easy-to-read font. A sticker glued to the visor boasted automatic lens adjustment.
“This was all they had in full helmets. I figured we might as well invest in case your magic holds more surprises we’ve yet to discover.” He dropped buttery-soft leather gloves in my lap as well. Their thinness reminded me of driving gloves. “These are cut and puncture proof. I bought them from a local law enforcement supply store. They’re strong enough to protect your hands from debris, but flexible enough not to impede your work.” One final item pooled across my knees after falling from his hand. “The jacket is reinforced with precurved sleeves and water-repellent zippers. It’s fully lined, and there are several interior pockets. There are also armor plates in the shoulders, elbows and back.”
“This is a motorcycle jacket.” I couldn’t bring myself to touch what must be hundreds of dollars’ worth of leather and flash. “I can’t accept this.” My treacherous fingers slid over the supple black leather without permission, and I might have whimpered. “Okay, I can accept this.” I brought it to my nose and inhaled that new-leather scent like a dork. “But I’m paying you back.”
“I’ll forward you the bill if that means you’ll use it.” His lips twitched as I rubbed the jacket on my face like I was one of the kittens from the garage. “You needed a new one. This way it can do double duty.”
“You’re using logic against me.” I caved to temptation and shrugged into the new love of my life. “It fits.”
“You have your friend Neely to thank for that. He was happy to select the cut and provide measurements.”
Since Cruz worked for the Society, and I had confided in Linus about Neely, there was no mystery about how he had known where to go, but it still shook me how he mentioned my friend so casually.
“Why am I not surprised he would use my measurements for evil?” I zipped up and flexed my arms, which probably looked like a chicken trying to take flight. “He knows I’m allergic to spending money.”
“I told him we’re family, that it was a gift.”
Dread ballooned in my chest at his kindness. I didn’t fool myself that I knew Linus, but I couldn’t picture him murdering vampires without Ambrose as a monkey on his back. Before I thought better of it, I hooked an arm around one of his thighs in half of a hug. “Thank you.”
The tips of his cool fingers skated over my hair. “You’re welcome.”
After disentangling himself from me, he sat at my elbow to observe the final stretch. That’s when I noticed he wore a jacket similar to mine, insurance against any protest I might make against such a lavish gift, proving yet again how well he knew me. He removed a pair of gloves from his pocket and put them on then settled the helmet in place.
Following his example, I pulled on my gloves and practiced sigils inside the grimoire for a few minutes. Certain that Linus was right, that my penmanship wouldn’t be affected, I set back to work applying the warding. When I finished the second side of the foundation, I popped on my helmet, and we braced ourselves as I swiped on the grounding sigil.
Chunks of concrete pinged off our helmets and hit the ground as the design sank into the foundation.
“Woohoo!” I crowed after double-checking that neither of us was bleeding on our arms or torsos. His precautions had paid off in spades. We removed our helmets and clanked them in a toast before strapping them back in place. “Success.”
Settling into a rhythm, I finished up the pattern on the third side then painted on the grounding sigil. Cocky after that success, I completed the fourth then added the mélange with a twist of my wrist.
An explosion rocked Woolly that sent us flying across the garden to land in a miniature rosebush with delicate apricot-colored blossoms. Thanks to the protective gear, their fragile thorns failed to pierce my leather-clad skin, but they tangled the ends of my hair and scratched at my ankles.
“That was…unexpected.” I rolled my head toward Linus. “You okay?”
“Yes.” He extracted himself from the pointy limbs with care not to damage it more than we already had then offered me a hand. We stripped out of our gear and dropped it in the grass. “We need to check on Woolly.”
The sound of her name set off a chain reaction of panicked impulses that set my pulse sprinting. I got my feet under me, thorns be damned, and ran to the back porch. The planks hummed under my feet, electrified. I tapped into the wards, and a lush symphony filled my head. Each note swelled into the next, allegro, allegro, allegro, and then—crescendo.
Tears wobbled in my vision as I swung my head toward Linus, our gazes clashing as magic sang through me.
Woolly was flush with power, the combination a strange mixture of Maud and me, a blending that felt right, that said home.
The back door flung open as Woolly trumpeted her glee via smoke alarm.
I stuck out my hand for Linus, inviting him up to join us, and I pulled him into a silly dance that made the tips of his ears flush red as he jangled in my arms like an anatomical skeleton on a faulty stand. I spun and whooped until I was dizzy. Linus, not willing to get near another of Woolly’s doors, guided me to the steps and helped me plop down without face-planting.
“She’s so…” I waved my arms. “So…” I grabbed him and shook him. “Alive.”
He let me rattle his marbles without complaint. “I’m glad.”
“I forgot how good this feels.” The wood beneath me thrummed with potent magic, and I felt more alive than I had in years too. “We used to be so connected. She could ping me when she needed me, and I could sense her when I was in town. This feels like that.” I took his hand and placed it on the plank under my feet. “Can you feel it?”
“I do.” His fingers spanned the wood. “I can’t imagine what it’s like for you.”
“Drinking liquid sunshine,” I told him with a smile. “That’s how it feels.” I collapsed back across the porch and let the magic flow over and through me. “All of it, everything, was worth this. Having her back.”
Linus relaxed his perfect posture, twisting around to watch as I made a fool of myself by creating paint-chip angels on the peeling back porch. “This, all of it, was worth it for me too.”
The urge to ask what, specifically, he meant pursed my lips, but I feared how it might come out sounding. Did he mean leaving Atlanta, his job, his life, for this chance to observe me? Or did he mean the things Ambrose had done, the energies he had consumed, the power he had given them both?
“What are you doing tonight?” The question popped out before I made the conscious decision to save him from himself. “Are you up for taking a fieldtrip?”
“Nothing I can’t postpone.” He considered my face, and I wondered what he saw there. “Is everything all right?”
“Remember how we talked about the ghost boy aboard the Cora Ann?” I laid my trap with such care, I might have walked into it myself. “He’s exhibiting odd symptoms.”
“Oh?” Curiosity replaced his wariness. “How so?”
“He spoke to me. Not at me, to me.” I wet my lips and sat upright. “He mentioned the night eternal coming for him.”
“Loops can be convincing.” Linus shook his head. “He might have drowned in the dark. The river may be the eternal night that claimed him.”
“He also mentioned the devourer was hunting him.” I placed no emphasis on the title. “He claimed that’s why he attacked Marit and me. He thought I was one too.” Ghosts were drawn to necromancers like bees to flowers, so it made sense I would read as other to him. “That doesn’t sound like a fear a six-year-old boy would have, not even one who drowned.”
Linus hesitated a beat too long. “Did he say anything else?”
“Only ‘He comes,’ followed by tears and a vanishing trick.” I couldn’t look at him anymore. “I’m not sure if there’s anything we can do, but I’ve never encountered a ghost that self-aware.”