Page 91 of No Charm Done

* * *

Outside, the night was cool and damp. Mist hung in the parking lot like noncommittal ghosts. Elias walked past the monstrous trucks, past the convenience store with its wall of glowing advertisements, until he found a spot of darkness near the edge of the lot.

His hands were shaking.

Wards. Of course there were wards. Etched onto the equipment like hieroglyphics, the kid said. That was Burke’s style: melodramatic, paranoid, and effective.

Luna’s plan was to sabotage the demonstration. Make Vex look like a fool in front of the world. Break the spells, crash the app, humiliate him so thoroughly that no investor would touch CastR with a ten-foot pole. And it wasn’t a bad plan. From the sound of it, the same fate had destroyed other, bigger firms.

But if the real magic was happening in a bunker in Missouri, protected by Burke’s wards . . .

The demo could fail. Maybe Vex would be humiliated. But the app would still launch. Magic would still be sold for $2.99 a month.

Luna’s plan would fail. Everything she was fighting to prevent would happen anyway. And she had no idea.

Elias pulled out the last cigarette from the pack he’d bought in Tulsa. Lit it with shaking hands. Took a drag and immediately regretted it. Tastes like tar and bad decisions.

He should stick to his plan. Go to Chicago, right now. Walk to the on-ramp, stick out his thumb, disappear into whatever passed for a magical underground these days. Luna had made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him. She’d said it was over, and frankly she’d been right to say it. It’s not as though he’d asked for her help. She’d cooked up that little rescue mission all by herself. Hell, he’d probably be better off back in the Void right now. He didn’t owe that gal a thing.

Except—

Except Elias knew Burke all too well. Back during the Egypt job, in that tomb, the old man had paid three different magicians to ward a single artifact: overlapping protections, redundant systems, the magical equivalent of locks on locks on locks. Because Burke didn’t think like a reasonable person—never had. He thought like a man who assumed everyone was out to rob him, because that’s what he’d do. He was paranoid, but he was more than that. He was vindictive.

No chance in hell those wards would be purely defensive. They’d be retaliatory. Wards designed not just to deflect attacks but to punish anyone who tried.

The thought settled in Elias’s stomach like lead.

Luna and her sisters and whatever ragtag bunch they’d assembled were going to throw everything they had at CastR on July Fourth, and Burke’s wards would snap back at them like a boomerang. Burke had probably designed them specifically to hurt anyone who tried to break in. It wasn’t just that her plan was doomed, although that was certainly true. She could get hurt. And she’d never see it coming.

Elias dropped the cigarette, crushing it under his heel. He gazed out at the highway signs, brightly lit and plainly visible from the parking lot.

I-44 East / I-55 North: CHICAGO—450 MILES

I-70 West: KANSAS CITY—280 MILES

Chicago meant safety. When CastR launched and the magical world descended into chaos, there would be opportunities. CastR meant chaos, and chaos had always been good for people like him.

Kansas City meant breaking into a place he barely understood—what even was a data center?—bypassing security he had no idea how to handle, and trying to disable wards he couldn’t even see yet. It meant probably getting arrested. Possibly getting killed. Definitely getting no credit for it, because Luna would never know.

Elias stared up at the signs awhile.

“One honest job,” he said to the night, to the mist, to the highway that would take him somewhere he probably wouldn’t come back from. “One honest job before the curtain.”

A truck slowed and stopped. The driver rolled down the window, squinting down at him.

“Kansas City?”

“Yes, sir.”

Elias climbed in and didn’t look back.

Chapter 26

Training Montage

The cheerful morning sun streaming through the dining room windows made Luna want to throw up.

Not that she was thinking about Elias Shaw. Not the way he smelled faintly of cedar and soap, even after a century in the Void. Not the way he had of fussing with his tie when things got uncomfortable. Not how he’d looked at her after they kissed.