“Maybe I can feel the second trail because the charm was made by a grave witch and I am also a grave witch.” Or maybe it was because I was a planeweaver, and even fully shielded, I was still a convergence point for realities. I would have loved to see if Rianna felt the trail when in touch with the land of the dead, but the trail had disappeared before, and there was no time to waste in tracking it.
“Get me to a vehicle, and I can tell you which way the charm is pulling.”
Easy, right?
Chapter 21
It was not easy. It started difficult and steadily climbed toward nearly impossible. It had been hard enough following the charm when I’d been the driver and trying to look ahead for which roads would head in the direction the charm pulled. Now I had no idea where we were or what surrounded us; all I could say were less than helpful things like “We need to go more to my right. No, we turned too much. A little more in that direction” and point.
Falin, who was driving, was extremely patient with me, at least as far as I could hear. I couldn’t see his expression or body language. By contrast, Briar, who was scrunched into the almost nonexistent back of Falin’s sporty convertible, had a lot to say on everything from my less-than-precise directions and Falin’s attempts to follow them to the seating arrangement. None of it was flattering and most of it involved profanity.
“We’re close,” I said after we’d been driving a little over half an hour. “Where are we?”
“University district,” Falin said as he slowed the car.
That had not been what I was expecting. The trail we’d been following had been growing distinctly stronger for a while now. We were getting very close. I’d assumed we’d be headed to the wilds again, but the university district wasn’t that far from downtown Nekros.
We drove a few more minutes. Navigating was even harder here than it had been in other areas of the city. There were just too many large green spaces or buildings connected by courtyards where vehicles couldn’t travel.
“We should park and go on foot. We’re close.”
“How close?” Briar asked, still sounding petulant after being relegated to the backseat.
I tried to figure out any specifics from what I could feel in the pull of the charm, but “close” was about as accurate as I could get. “Walking distance,” I said with a shrug.
“Are you going to be able to navigate on foot?” Falin asked as he pulled into a faculty and staff parking lot.
I shrugged again. My vision had finally started returning during the drive, but it left a lot to be desired. I had no peripheral vision and limited distance. I wasn’t going to walk into a brick wall, but I might trip over a curb because I couldn’t see the subtle hints of an elevation change. I also couldn’t see color yet, so the world was all very flat gray tones.
I tied the nylon cord attached to the charm around my wrist and climbed out of the car. The lot Falin had parked in stood in the shadow of buildings in every direction. Some were dorms, others clearly contained classrooms or administrative buildings, but all were part of the university. Small brick-paved paths cut around the buildings, and we followed one of these to a green space separating even more buildings. I held my arm in front of me, following the steady tug of the tracking spell.
“Can we pick up the pace a little?” Briar griped as we walked down into a small tunnel that passed under the road.
“As I’m the only one who can feel the trail and I can only kinda see . . . No. No, we can’t,” I hissed between my teeth so that the group of college-aged girls walking the opposite direction in the short tunnel wouldn’t hear.
We passed several more buildings and then had to navigate around a reflecting pool that seemed like it was as long as a football field before I finally hesitated in front of a building that had at least fifty steps to reach the front entrance. I cast a dubious glance at the stairs. From previous times I’d functioned at minimal sight, I knew that steps were funny things. Climbing them was part muscle memory and part depth perception. As I had about zero of the latter currently, climbing several flights of stairs was definitely less than an appealing prospect.
“What’s the holdup, Craft?” Briar asked.
“I’m just trying to decide if he’s inside the building or beyond it.” But the frantic tugging of the charm suggested he was close. If he wasn’t inside it, he had to be in the green space just behind it. That seemed less likely than finding him inside, so I took a cautious step toward the stairs. There were handrails, at least.
Falin’s arm slid around my waist. I opened my mouth to protest, but at the same moment I misjudged the rise of the steps and nearly stumbled. So I took the help for what it was and slowly but carefully climbed the stairs. When we finally reached the top, I was out of breath and had probably scuffed my boots something fierce, but the tug from the charm was so intense, Remy had to be just ahead of us.
“Come on,” I said, shrugging away from Falin’s arm and barging through one of the many glass-fronted doors.
I walked through the metal and spell detectors. A green light acknowledged that I carried active magic but nothing that set off alarms. Briar and Falin stopped before stepping into the detectors. Briar cursed and glanced around. Her look-away charms were top of the line, but with all her militarized magics and weapons, she’d set off both detectors and have every security guard on campus descend on us. There was a small amount of space between the door and the detectors, and she headed toward it. Falin handed her his gun as she moved. He stepped through the detectors without a blip—standard spell-detecting charms never looked for fae magic. Briar rejoined us a moment later, handing Falin back his weapon. No one had even noticed her moving around the scanners. Yeah, those were useful.
Past the detectors, we found ourselves in the university library. While there were books on this level, the front part of the room was dominated by the circulation desk, computer stations, and artfully arranged small sitting areas. We wove through these, following the tug of the charm. It led us deep into the building. Rows and rows of shelves surrounded us, and while there were a decent number of people in the front part of the library, as we got deeper into the stacks, it got very quiet. We passed one girl sitting at a desk set up at the end of one of the long shelves, but after that, there were just books, books, and more books.
The tugging grew stronger and stronger and then suddenly began to lessen. I stopped, turned, and backed up. It grew stronger again. I looked around. We were in the middle of a very long aisle of books. An aisle empty of any other people. I peered through one of the shelves, looking over the books to see if there was anyone in the next aisle over. No one on either side.
“Let me guess,” Briar said, her arms crossed over her chest. “The trail ends here. Where there is no one. So it is a weird fluke and not a real trail.”