One Fell Sweep

“Now.” I jerked a wall of dirt up in front of me.

The inn and Mrak fired at the same time.

Something burned my leg. I dropped the dirt in time to see Mrak jerk as if stung.

The Draziri twisted away from Sean and Arland’s attacks, leapt straight up, shooting a dozen feet into the air, landed on the power line, ran across it as if it were solid ground, jumped onto the roof of a house, and disappeared from view.

Marais looked shocked, his face pale, his mouth open.

There was a hole in my robe. My leg was bleeding under the fabric. The bullet had punched through the dirt. I was lucky the soil barrier deflected it, because everything about Mrak said he didn’t miss often.

Arland grabbed the first corpse by its legs and unceremoniously dragged it halfway across the road and threw it in my direction. The lawn gaped, swallowing it.

Sean grasped the second and third corpses by their feet and pulled them over. The lawn swallowed them too.

Sean and Arland walked onto the inn’s grounds. Both bled from half a dozen shallow cuts. Arland looked like he hadn’t gotten enough blood on his hands and was desperate to kill something. Sean looked like he was about to sprout fur any moment.

I reinstated the void field.

Sean stopped by me, inhaled, and his eyes went wild.

“It just grazed me,” I told him.

He spun toward the street and I caught his arm.

“No. Please. I need you inside the house.” Besides, both of them were bleeding more than me.

He snarled and went inside.

Marais finally regained control over his legs, because he was moving toward me and fast. I waited. He ran face-first into the barrier and bounced back.

“Miss Demille,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“No,” I told him. “I have a child and guests to take care of. Those bastards unloaded something into the sewer system and I have no idea if the inn is filling up with some plague or if it’s about to explode. I don’t want your death on my hands. Go and sit in your cruiser. When it’s safe, I’ll come and get you.”

I turned around and marched into the house, Helen and Beast in tow.

* * *

I walked into the inn, sending a probing pulse through the entire building. Nothing. Gertrude Hunt failed to find anything amiss in the pipes.

I pushed. The floor, walls and ceiling moved from me, distorted, as if the solid wood and stone became fluid and I was a stone cast into a placid pond.

Nothing. This would require a deeper probe.

The inn around me turned, like the inside of an enormous clock coming to life. I moved the two Hiru and Wing onto the lawn outside of the inn but still inside their own small rooms. Maud, Helen, Sean and Arland stood in the corner of the front room, next to Caldenia who sat in her chair by the window.

“Do not move,” I said.

Orro emerged from the kitchen. “How can I be expected to cook without water…”

He saw my face and fell silent.

I concentrated. Pulse, another pulse… Whatever they put into the water or sewer, I would find it. It wouldn’t hurt the inn. I stretched, reaching deep into the pipes. Where is it?

“What is she doing?” Arland asked.

“Diagnostics,” my sister said.

“Why is the inn connected to the city water line?” Sean asked quietly.

“Because it would be suspicious if it didn’t draw some water,” Maud said. “The city provides only a small fraction of the inn’s water supply but the meter has to show progress every month. The void field would’ve stopped anything the Draziri threw in there, but she had to drop it to save Marais.”

“Mrak counted on it,” Sean said. “Marais was bait.”

“Yes,” Arland agreed.

I couldn’t find it. Mrak’s smug face popped up in my memory. Oh no. No, you don’t.

My broom split into a thousand glowing blue tendrils. They wrapped around my hand and plunged into the floor, forging a direct link between me and the inn. My hands reached through its roots. My eyes looked through its windows. I became Gertrude Hunt.

Sean was staring at me. I knew my eyes were turning bright turquoise, matching the glow of my broom as I sifted through every liquid-filled square inch inside the pipes. The house creaked and groaned around me. Where is it?

Helen made a small noise and stuck her face into Maud’s clothes.

“Shhh, my flower,” my sister whispered. “Don’t worry. Let your aunt work.”

Where is it?

The entire house twisted, trying to turn itself inside out to open to my inspection. Magic pulsed from me, again and again, rolling to the deepest reaches, to the smallest roots.

It touched something deep underneath within the water line. Something tiny. Something that soaked up my magic. I concentrated on the minuscule spark. It felt so much like the inn itself, it was moving right past all of Gertrude Hunt’s defenses and it was growing, a tiny thread searching for the sun and warmth.

I sealed the section of the pipe, cutting it off at both ends with plastic. The thread slipped through it, as if the solid barrier wasn’t there.

Magic.

If I used the void field to stop it, it would only delay the inevitable. Maybe I could jettison it once I found a way to contain it.

I followed it, tracing it. I could barely sense it. It blended so well into the very fabric of the inn, if I hadn’t sunk everything into looking for it, I would’ve never known it was there.

Kitchen.

I pulled the broom back into its normal shape and moved into the kitchen doorway. Maud followed me.