And then I could see through it. I looked through to the other side, past the shimmer, and into the Beyond . . . where they waited. Thousands of them in long columns, battalions of Paranormals prepared for war. They wore the same gleaming armor as the Paras we’d fought before, and that was enough to send my heart racing.
A woman on a black destrier, her skin lustrously pale, her long black hair tied into a tail wrapped with gold that wound across her shoulders, stood in front of her army. Both woman and horse wore golden armor, and she sat like a queen as the horse moved impatiently beneath her.
She froze, snapped her head to mine like she could tell she was being watched. She snapped the reins, moved the horse forward, one shaggy hoof at a time, toward the Veil, her eyes on mine.
She could see me, too. She grinned horribly, shouted something to her troops that I couldn’t hear, and raised her golden spear into the air.
The thousands of troops behind her did the same, sunlight spearing off their golden weapons and leaving spots in front of my eyes.
And then the barrier passed over me again, releasing me to the ground.
I hit my knees, sucked in air, tried to steady myself in the world. It hadn’t killed me, but it certainly didn’t feel very good. The Veil had coated me in magic, and my body had sucked it up like a tempest on desert sand. My hands were shaking with exhaustion, with magic that boiled beneath my skin. I could feel the anger growing, my skin burning with irritation. I’d have to cast it, bind it, if I had any hope of avoiding the agony Tom had suffered, much less getting the rest of the locks engaged.
Or did I?
Maybe I didn’t have to cast it off. Or not the usual way. Maybe there was a way to use the power . . . like a magical locksmith. If I could do one pin at a time with a little bit of magic, couldn’t I do all the remaining pins with all the remaining magic?
I put a hand on the box. It was hot as an oven, and I yanked my fingers back, stuck my fingertips into my mouth to cool them. But I was hot and parched, too, and it didn’t do much good.
Human bodies were not made for magic.
I pulled my sleeves down to protect my fingertips. It hardly helped, but there wasn’t much else to do. This had to get done. That meant I had to do it.
When I was little, I’d fallen down a staircase, and I’d been horribly afraid to climb one again. But the size of the staircase didn’t matter, my dad had told me once. You took one step at a time either way, so you focused on each step.
That’s why I made plans. Because he’d taught me to take fear and break it into tiny little parts. It was easier to beat back the parts when they were small. So that’s what I did.
Step one: Gather the magic.
I had more spinning magic inside me than I needed. But I still didn’t think it would be enough for this. Fortunately, with so many Paranormals in battle, the air was alive with it, and the Veil was right behind me. Great strands of power hung in the air like party streamers—millions of them, waiting to be plucked. And that’s just what I’d do . . . and I’d hope it didn’t kill me in the process.
I grabbed them by the imaginary handful, pulling one swath of thread after another toward me, braiding them together as I pulled.
Step two: Use the magic.
Slowly, gently, I moved the magic toward the box, let the tendrils slink inside like water, gently searching, gently questing for the pins that would pop the remaining locks back into place. I imagined it was like playing the piano with one hand—each finger had to press a certain key at a certain time, then another key a moment later. Or, perhaps, two or three keys at once. It was the order, the tune, that mattered.
Heat washed against my back as the Veil moved again. Sweat dripped into my eyes, had dampened my shirt as the sun bore down. I’d never been so hot, not even in the bayou, with Phaedra Dupre’s accidental magic running through me. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be cool again. But if that army came through because I hadn’t locked the Veil, it wouldn’t matter.
“Lock,” I said, and felt springs engage, pins move. I pulled them toward me, all five fingers pushing keys with more speed, with more finesse, as the song rose to its ultimate crescendo. The tumblers clicked, and there were soft whispers of metal against stone as the gears popped into place.
One more tumbler, then two, then three.
And then the Veil was locked again.
The tension in my shoulders eased. And since I didn’t need the magic back, and didn’t want it spilling and releasing the locks again, I ordered it to stay. The box seemed to sigh as magic settled in.
But I didn’t have long to relax.
Now locked and reencrypted, the Veil snapped back along its meridian. But all that kinetic magic had to go somewhere. The earth began to shake, to rumble, and then it began to split. The pavers between the wings began to draw apart as a fissure split the earth down the middle, drawing a gap between the wings.