Page 21 of Dream Weaver

Spotting me, she stopped abruptly.

“Morning,” I murmured, tying my apron carefully.

She narrowed her eyes, clearly suspicious. But I wasn’t guilty of anything more than sheer persistence — or ignorance. My metalworking experience mostly consisted of keeping the bellows going and handing my uncle tools. I was about as qualified for this as open-heart surgery. And like open heartsurgery, there really could be lives on the line here, if Rich and Alice were to be believed.

With a grunt of — greeting? disappointment? — Abby disappeared behind the door of her locker. Yes, she was that slender. She made enough noise for a herd of mustangs, though, throwing down her bag and changing her shoes in that aggressive way of hers, like they’d personally wronged her.

“Hey, Abby. Did you feel that this morning?” Matt asked.

The commotion behind the door stopped immediately.

“Feel what?” she peeped a little too casually.

“My girlfriend said she felt the vortexes flare right before sunrise.”

I made a face. Did Matt really believe that spiritual mumbo jumbo?

Abby’s reply was as neutral as the cement of the workshop floor. “They flared?”

“Yeah. She said the vortexes threw out huge pulses of energy. She couldn’t sleep afterward.”

The dark circles under Abby’s eyes said she hadn’t either.

ButHuhwas all she said.

“Oh. Rich said you wanted this,” I said, handing her an old ax he’d hauled out of storage.

Some women were into boxes of chocolates or flower bouquets. Personally, I could be buttered up by a jar of nice, thick wildflower honey.

Abby dug vintage axes.

Her eyes lit up, and her cheeks flushed with excitement.

My inner bear seized on that and galloped off in a totally inappropriate direction, crooning about love, forever, and destiny.

Destiny? I froze. No way.

I cleared that nonsense out of my mind. Stupid bear.

Abby snatched the ax out of my hands and turned away, shielding it.

“You’re welcome,” I muttered.

“Thank you,” she murmured, heading off to her corner of the shop like a dog with a bone it had no intention of sharing.

She was so excited — and/or preoccupied — that she didn’t react when I joined her. She just went on inspecting the axes — the vintage ax and the one she’d mocked up the previous day. So far, she’d only made the head of the mock-up. From the look of things, the fittings were on today’s agenda, because you didn’t just stick a steel head on a wooden handle and start hacking away — not unless you wanted that steel head to fly off and hurt someone. It had to be fitted snugly with two long, thin bars, a rivet, and several wooden wedges.

I knew this only because Abby disassembled the vintage ax. She studied each part reverently, turning each piece over in her hands and running a finger over every surface. Then she got work creating copies for her mock-up. That took the rest of the day, and I got as much hands-on time as I had the previous day.

Namely, zero.

“How old is this?” I asked, reaching for the time-worn handle.

“Old.” She swatted my hand away.

“What are you using it for?”

“You’ll see.”

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