Page 102 of No Charm Done
The Fourth.
The cookout. The ribs. July Fourth.
Shaw’s eyes snapped open.
The server room looked the same: rows of metal cabinets stretched into darkness, lights blinking in no pattern, air so cold his breath fogged. The noise still crushed him, made his bones feel like they vibrated. But now there was activity. Not just the two workers he’d heard. More voices came from deeper in the facility. The clang of metal. The electronic beep of something being scanned. Or logged. Or whatever these modern people did with machines.
Overtime on the Fourth. Which means the demo’s today. Which means—
Luna.
She was standing in Oak Haven right now, probably. Vex was performing like a trained monkey while investors watched, and who knows what magical punishments were about to rain down on her? All because Shaw had fucked up and Delilah had hung up, and now Luna had no idea what was coming.
Shaw’s jaw tightened.
The sentinels stood around him in a loose circle. Four of them, maybe five—hard to count when they kept flickering at the edges like bad film. Hollow-eyed bastards. Burke’s dogs. They hadn’t moved since Shaw woke up, just watched him. Blank attention. Things that had never been alive couldn’t fake that.
The wards pulsed. Shaw felt magic channel through the facility and Burke’s arcane CastR machinery. It connected this place to Oak Haven like a noose. Every pulse meant Luna was in danger.
* * *
Vex’s voice carried across the green with the kind of studied enthusiasm that made Luna’s teeth ache.
“—revolutionary hour in human history. Magic, which has been the province of the few, the elite, the lucky—” he spread his arms wide “—becomes accessible to everyone.”
“He’s really selling it,” Scarlett murmured.
Vex’s grimy little assistants tracked him with their cameras. The laptop screen showed the chat exploding—emojis, questions, excitement. Burke stood motionless, hands clasped, watching.
Vex lifted one hand. “Let me show you.”
The air above his palm shimmered.
Her sisters shifted into position beside her. The others readied themselves. This was it. A butterfly appeared: delicate, blue, impossibly detailed. It fluttered up, wings catching the morning light.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Vex’s smile was genuine. “Now just watch.”
The butterfly multiplied. Two. Four. Eight. A cascade of blue wings spiraling upward into the summer sky.
Luna didn’t wait. Mentally she reached for the spell’s structure, found the thread that held it together, and pulled.
The butterflies stuttered mid-flight. Four butterflies turned into coconuts and plummeted to the ground. One became briefly philosophical and started reciting Yeats. Another inverted and spent several confused seconds being a butterfly-shaped hole in reality. Then they all popped like soap bubbles.
The witches nodded approvingly and turned their gazes to the gazebo, eager to see Vex’s embarrassment. But he just laughed. “Well, that was unexpected! The beauty of live demonstrations, folks—magic is nothing if not spontaneous.”
The chat loved it. Even from a distance, Luna could see the scroll speed increase.
“Smooth,” Delilah muttered. “He’s good.”
Too good. Vex was playing the glitch as intentional, as part of the adventure.
Chuck leaned back in his chair, beaming. He waved at the witches again. “Is this good shit or what?!”
* * *
Think, Shaw.
He’d been in worse spots. Probably. The time Big Eddie Moran had caught him cheating at cards came to mind. The time the cops had dragged him into that back room in Cicero. The time he’d spent ninety-eight years in an interdimensional void.
