a deeper breath but couldn’t find the pungent scent I’d come to associate with our rogue. Nor was there any hint of magic, dark or otherwise.
Which didn’t mean it wasn’t here. Not at all.
Jaz padded past a generator, keeping close to the wall and carefully scanning the space between each of the machines before moving on. The cool evening air stirred past my nostrils as we moved under the skylight, and I glanced up again. Even for a werewolf, it was a fair drop down to the ground. My gaze swept the two large machines that sat slightly off to one side of the skylight; a thick crust of grime coated both, but the one to the right held several cleared patches that suggested someone might have slipped down its side. I glanced at the floor; it was concrete, and though it wasn’t exactly pristine, there was no sign of footprints.
I flexed my fingers; the sparks spun through the air again and, from somewhere up ahead, came a flare of responding energy.
She was here.
Fuck.
I touched Jaz’s shoulder. When she stopped and looked around, I quickly pulled out my phone and then typed, she’s here. Thirty or forty feet to our left, near the outside wall, close to where the ladder was.
She nodded and repeated my actions. How do you want to handle this?
In truth, I didn’t. Every instinct screamed we needed to turn around and get the hell out of here. But if we did that, we’d lose her again, and that could lead to yet more deaths. I did not want that on my conscience.
I quickly typed, I’d better go first, just in case she attacks magically. But keep close and be ready to shoot.
She nodded and motioned me forward. I breathed deep, then carefully crept past her, my gaze flickering between the area ahead and the walkways between each of the machines. Tension rode me, and it was all I could do to keep going, to keep breathing normally. To not turn around and run.
A soft sound whispered through the air. Nails against metal, I thought, and quickly looked up. The nearest machine wasn’t much taller than me, and our rogue would have been visible if she’d been creeping along its top. Unless, of course, she was shielding herself with magic.
I pressed a little closer to the wall and moved on, carefully scanning each of the big machines as we drew closer. She wasn’t on top of them, but she remained in the room. Of that, I was certain.
Another scrape, this time accompanied by a surge of magic. It rose and fell—a swift, dark wave that gave me little time to understand the intent of the spell before it was gone. But I doubted she was planning anything good.
I got my phone out again and typed, she’s on the other side of the room from us, about twenty feet ahead. But I don’t think we should leave the protection of the wall, because this is feeling a little too much like a trap.
Agree. Let’s go the long way around.
We’d barely moved a few more feet when another surge of magic washed through the room. Though it didn’t fade quite as quickly, I still had no idea what its intent was. It wasn’t a spell I was familiar with, that was for sure.
It had come from further down the room and made me wonder if she’d decided to run rather than risk confronting us. If so, then there had to be another skylight propped open toward the end of the room.
But even as that thought crossed my mind, I dismissed it. I had no doubt that she’d come to the café in an attempt to either erase or nullify my presence, so why would she run now, when I was not only close but in her territory?
She wouldn’t.
She wasn’t.
The air behind us stirred ever so faintly. We both swung around, Jaz raising her gun. There was nothing there … except there was.
A faint shimmer was all that gave her presence away.
“Jaz, shoot now, one o’clock,” I yelled, and unleashed the inner wild magic—but not at our rogue. I didn’t understand enough about my wild magic and its connection to the reservation’s wellsprings to risk killing the rogue and perhaps forever staining the purity of the magic here. Instead, I raised a protective shield around the two of us.
Jaz fired. The shots echoed loudly in the enclosed space, but the first three missed, pinging off nearby machinery and throwing sparks