Page 16 of Until the Stars Fall

“Summer rigged the interior lighting to cycle on and off, like day and night. She’s trying to give us some normalcy. Plus, because she’s clever, she rigged it to gradually adjust to the different day length on Gaia. She and Zola think it’ll help us adjust better when we get there.”

Very clever. I nodded and walked off.

“Lemme know if the music bothers your headache!” he called after me.

I didn’t answer, just waved behind me as I walked away.

Cleaning out the spell box and organizing its contents took most of the morning. I pulled everything out, threw out the trash—somebody had an addiction to Chewy Bears, judging by the surfeit of wrappers—and began organizing the contents into piles, by spell and by my best guess. I also started gathering information about the systems in the engine room to prepare for my audit.

Beck and I managed to stay out of each other’s hair in the vast engine room, which wasn’t surprising considering it had dozens of alcoves, metal staircases, balconies, and catwalks over multiple open-air levels. Thank God most of the systems I’d checked so far were intact and functioning properly, a far as I could tell. I missed having access to Noble Industries’ databases, but the Common had more manuals than expected. At least someone recently updated it. My main concern was trying to set those makeshift fixes to rights if I could, and make backup plans for when the spells would inevitably fail. Magic, in my experience, was too volatile for these fixes, even for as short a term as two months.

A few hours later, I was trying to read the model number on one of the evaporators, but the tiny thing was stuck on at an odd angle and higher than I could read from the narrow catwalk. Worse, strapped to the pole between it and me was a shelf with three candles burning. A ladder wouldn’t fit—did we even have one?—and I wasn’t about to stand on the railing without a safety harness and in my skirt. I eyeballed the height. Maybe Beck was tall enough to read it.

“Beck! Can you come see?”

“Coming!” He appeared a minute later with a new grease smudge on his shirt.

“Can you read the model number on that evaporator?”

He scaled the few steps toward me, and I pressed myself against the metal wall to let him pass in the narrow space. Again the whiff of soap and candle smoke from him, and also, slightly, motor oil. He stepped onto the first rung of the railing with his bare feet, hanging onto the catwalk’s pole and stretching over the candles toward the label.

“Don’t stand on the railing! You need a safety harness!” My hands reached out on their own volition to grab his legs, but I pulled them back into fists.

He ignored me. “It’s Model 24-XRTC.”

“Ok thanks please come down?” I blurted. If he fell, his body would catch fire and bounce off two different railings before he hit the concrete below.

He climbed down, agile as a cat, then gave me the tiniest smile as he edged past me. And it was…nice.

Okay, it was really nice.

He stepped to a respectful distance. “Thanks for not disturbing the candles this time. They’re arranged at perfect harmonic intervals to activate the filtration system.” He leaned against the railing and crossed his arms.

I scribbled the model number in my notebook, our conversation and his two conditions from yesterday hanging in the air between us. Much like the crocheted netting I’d been trying to ignore all morning.

“Still thinking about my offer?” he asked.

At least a dozen witchy fixes were set up throughout the engine room, not to mention the ones I’d passed in the ship this morning and last night. I’d started a section in my notebook listing them out, but the ratty collection of information in the box didn’t give me much to go on.

When I didn’t answer or look up, he went on. “I’m willing to drop the first condition, even though, c’mon.” He leaned slightly toward me. “What a badass name would that be? The Interstellar Grimoire. The other name I thought of is nowhere near as cool, but it’s not bad. Here, maybe you’ll like it better: The Book of WitchCraft.”

He nodded, eyebrows raised, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. I sighed and held the notebook to my chest, cocking my head to the side. I thought about his conditions all night. Well, not the first one. That was silly. But the second? I’d been struggling to control my magic for all of my adult life, and it had cost me more than I’d ever told anyone. What would learning to control my magic with him look like? And would it be worth working on when I was just going to have it taken away once I reached Gaia?

“I’m not tryin’ to tell you what to do, I promise. But I think you ought to consider taking me up on that”—he held up two fingers—“second condition.” His hand dropped to his thigh.

I didn’t answer. My head hurt way too much for this conversation.

He persisted. “You know, Hannah said you got her into magic, but she thinks you don’t have it anymore.”

He was a snuffling bloodhound on a trail. “Maybe that’s not your business.” I sidled past him to go down the stairs.

“It’s my business when you almost blow out a window on the spaceship I’m in.”

I whirled around to retort, but what could I say? He was right.

He leaned over and placed his forearms on the railing. “Please let me help you, Gemma?”

I frowned at him, confused at his gentle tone and open expression. For a hot second, I thought he was trying to be my friend, and I almost replied.

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