“I know, but—” I started.
“The eye wouldn’t notice it, no,” Callie trundled over me. “But the mind, eventually, would catalog it. The mind isn’t so easily fooled as the eyes. It’ll put up with a difference in data for a while, but eventually, it’ll catch on. Then it’ll start forcing the eyes to see. You have to switch the spell, or switch the setup, or switch…something to change things up. Spells wear off, and that isn’t just because the magic escapes. It’s also because human perception gets more intelligent.”
“That. Yes.” I made a circle with my finger, like a coach running out of time. “But now’s not the time to walk the newbie through spells. I think we’re looking for something more secluded. On your map, is there anywhere for a disguised building to go? Or even an electrical station or something? Anything with four walls and a roof?”
Callie brought the phone closer, squinting. “Granted, this probably isn’t to scale. And though it has been accurate so far, that doesn’t mean—”
“Answer, please,” I said.
“It doesn’t look good, but it isn’t improbable.”
“Isn’t improbable. Double negatives don’t save lives, Callie.” I frowned and shook my head, hating how slowly we were going. Feeling the urgency deep in my gut.
As if hearing my thoughts again (he was starting to make me nervous), Darius said, “I can carry you through the park.” He grabbed my arm. “You should be able to detect magic at accelerated speeds.”
His insistence made me pause. No doubt he was feeling bad about not pressing at the start of this whole mess.
He’d been right before.
“We all go together,” I said in a split-second decision. “We’ll move fast. If it’s not here, Darius, you run, get the car, and pick us up.”
“How are we going to get across?” Penny asked, staring at the void that was the tracks.
As if on cue, a speck of light came from around the bend. The train became visible shortly thereafter. It slowed as it rumbled into the rail yard.
Callie rolled her eyes. “You’re telling me that a marathon runner can’t dodge a slow-moving train?”
“No, I meant, how are we going to get around all the trains parked in our way? Going through the places where they join together will be tough. And probably greasy. You don’t want to get that velvet suit all mucked up.”
“Hopefully then she’d throw it away,” I muttered. “Come on, we’ll go around the end. It’s not that far.”
Like a bunch of teenagers, we waited until the train passed—one engine and only a few cars—and then hurried across. The lights of the checkpoint blared not far away, since we’d had to cross in a somewhat public place. To save us time, and sneakiness, Darius took the lead.
The guard lay in his booth by the time we walked through, passed out with a serene smile on his face.
That horrible hot feeling rose in my chest again, my reaction to Darius biting someone else. I was losing my mind.
“Let’s hurry.” I started to jog, not caring if I left the others behind. More cargo containers rose up around me, the same as the ones we’d seen before. Already having lost hope, I just wanted to get through here as quickly as possible and move on to the next thing.
A couple of tracks split off, leading off to the side and down the middle of the cargo areas, and both tracks were currently occupied by train cars in different stages of being loaded.
“No magic,” I said, nearing the end. Dread pierced my gut. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Just up here there is an emergency…thing. I can’t make out what kind, though.” Callie pointed ahead.
“Darius, go get the—” A faint feeling of magic tingled my skin as I neared the end of the cargo area. “Wait.”
“I feel magic,” Penny said, just a little behind me. “Evil magic.”
I glanced back at her, surprised.
“There is no evil magic. Or good magic. Just magic,” Callie said in a hush. “It is the caster’s purpose that defines the spell.”
“The caster makes this magic evil,” Penny amended. “It is dark and clingy and…sticky.” She wiped at her arms.
I peeked around the corner. A large space existed beyond the cargo lots before the land became industrialized again. To the naked eye, it was empty but for a small building that sat near the edge of the graveled area. A small, out-of-the-way shack that didn’t seem maintained. Next to it, however, was a moderately sized area cloaked in a heavy invisibility spell, shot through with spider webs of different kinds of eye distractions.
“Holy crap.” Relief and fear washed over me in turns. This had to be it. This had to be the site we were looking for.
And that meant I was about to confront a really powerful demon for the second time.
“Someone put a lot of time and effort into this collection of spells,” I said in a hush.
“What kind of spell?” Callie whispered.
“Invisibility and multiple types and power levels of distraction spells. It has all the bells and whistles. What I don’t understand is how come no one missed the loss of a structure this large?”
“How large?” Dizzy asked. “Does it fill the whole space?”
“About three-quarters of it. You can see where people have been walking around it.” I pointed at the lines of foot traffic in the gravel. I doubted the humans even knew why they didn’t make a beeline to their destination, instead arcing around what they thought was absolutely nothing.
“The moonlight isn’t bright enough to see whatever you’re pointing at,” Callie said. “But a distraction spell would make the fact that something used to be there, and now isn’t, slip by the brain for a while. Something of this magnitude wouldn’t fool people for long. The mages have probably taken down and put up the spells several times, which explains the need for a few mages, even if the summoning didn’t.”
“Whatever the reason, there it is, and we need to get going.” I patted my various weapons. “Where to start?”
“Rip that spell off like a Band-Aid,” Callie said, pulling out items from her satchel. “Then we’ll take the mages and you work on the demon.”
It would take too long to slice through each of the components with the sword. No, this required my fire.
“But it’ll take time to get the various parts of that spell unraveled. Otherwise it’ll blow up in our faces,” Penny said, picking at a button on her shirt while studying the spell that she could clearly see. She was one in a million as far as mages went, which worked out for me. She wouldn’t think I was horribly unique. Not for a while, anyway. And hopefully by then I’d be out of the public eye again.
“First I have to kill that demon, though,” I said to myself.
“What?” Callie asked.
I shook my head. “Give me a screen, Callie. We don’t want anyone to see this.”