Page 5 of Until the Stars Fall

I crouched close to the floor, aware of Beck’s gaze on me, but too overwhelmed to care. Pressing my hands to my head, I desperately tried to hold the leash of my magic, to concentrate more on choking it off than on my fear of the faltering spell. I couldn’t lose control of it, not here.

But the leash slipped through my hands, and self-protective magic swelled out of me in a crashing wave. More glass broke. Shouting filled the room. The pressure eased, for me. A crack and a whoosh, something—a crack in the windows, a crack in the wall—connected the little room to the sucking hell of space.

Muffled, echoey chanting beyond my bubble. More shouting. Quick directions being given and followed, but I was in a cocoon of my own making, crouched on the floor. For just a moment, taking a deep, unfettered breath.

Then adrenaline seared through my veins, fear and anxiety entwining like snakes in my chest. I curled into a ball. I didn’t want to see the consequences of my cursed magic. All these innocent people on the ship, my Hannah, they’d all pay those consequences. And it wasn’t fair.

I tried to dissipate my magic, my frenzied thoughts racing in a haze of self-hatred. The window’s broken it’s all my fault we’re all dead it’s all my fault!

My safety evaporated, and the roaring filled my ears again. Beck fitted an emergency seal across the window, chanting in that language while the raven-haired witch stirred her potion. Zola struggled to wave her smoking bundle, now walking counterclockwise around the circle.

After a few painful seconds, the pressure eased. The roaring softened, then died. I sucked a gasp of air into my lungs, and looked up to see the others’ postures relaxing too.

Zola left the spinning circle of smoke and doused her bundle of leaves into a shell on the table beside the cauldron.

“It’s ready!” the raven-haired witch called in a too-loud voice, stirring the pot with a huge wooden spoon.

Beck fitted one last seal against the window then ran lightly, barefoot, to the table. He pulled on a pair of potholders covered with pink cats—I guess he was tired of burning himself—picked up the cauldron by its handles, and stepped over the spinning smoke without disturbing it. He sat the cauldron down without spilling a drop, right on top of a pentacle at the circle’s center, and stirred the potion.

The two women staggered into each other's arms, whooping with relieved joy. Beck stepped over the circle and crouched into a fall onto his back on the floor near me, his arms out wide, panting.

I stood, wobbled, and sat heavily onto a bench beside the door. He looked up at the movement, and our eyes met. Normally I was too proud to show any weakness, any imperfection, especially around strangers. But I was going to hurl in a second, and I didn’t want to do it anywhere near them.

“Oh my gods,” the raven-haired witch said, “that was terrifying. What was that extra disturbance?”

I pushed myself to my feet and staggered out of the room, my hands shaking. Halfway down the hallway I pushed through the door of a restroom and threw up in the nearest toilet, tears streaming down my cheeks.

When nothing else would come up, I straightened and stepped to the sink with my legs shivering beneath me. The excited voices of the coven passing down the hall echoed under the bathroom door as I let cold water rush across my hands. I watched it drain into the sink, willing it to take the nausea and horror of the last few moments with it. If any of them noticed my magical disaster, I was completely sunk.

I wetted a paper towel and patted my face. I couldn’t do much about my lipstick, but the cool towel revived me a little. I smoothed my hair, drank a little water from the sink, tucked my blouse back into my skirt, straightened my wide belt. My hands only shook a little now.

I paused halfway through the door with one foot in the hall. Beck stood against the wall, one bare foot up against it and his muscled arms crossed. He pushed off and took a step toward me, digging his hands into his jeans pockets, his expression serious.

“You okay?” he asked quietly, as if he really wanted to know the answer and wasn’t making fun of me.

“I’m fine,” I said, invoking every woman’s sacred right to say it and not mean it at all. I crossed my arms, flustered by his presence and attention.

He extended his hand and continued in a quintessential New Orleans accent. “You must be Gemma, Hannah’s safety-obsessed sister?”

I frowned and placed my little hand into his big, rough one, shaking it. “You’re mispronouncing astronautical safety engineer.”

He laughed without smiling. “You’re right. I am. I’m Beck.” He retracted his hand. “I hear we’re gonna be working on the ship together. Wanna see the engine room?”

I nodded, and he led me to the central elevator. We stood in silence as the panel lights flickered from floor to floor. From the corner of my eye, I saw him check on me once or twice. But he didn’t speak, and I wasn’t about to. I was too busy feeling the intense embarrassment of an introvert having a very trying morning.

On the bottom floor of the ship, Beck led me through a door marked “Engine Room, Staff Only.” I’d spent much of every work day inside simulations of engine rooms, and I was almost looking forward to the familiar hum and crunch of the machinery and the clean, working smells of finely tuned engines. But one step in told me the room was too quiet, and smoke dirtied the air.

I pushed past him, rushing toward the flickering light of a fire. I ran down a row of terminals on my toes over the metal grating, cursing my narrow, French-heeled shoes. Rounding the corner, I stopped short, my heart in my throat. In the command circle of the engine room where there should have been terminals and machinery, was instead the guttering light of dozens of candles, their flames flickering and throwing thin wafts of black smoke into the air.

“Oh my God!” I fell to my knees and blew them out.

“No! Don’t!” Beck’s footsteps were behind me, but no way would I stop. But the moment I blew out another fat one, something overhead emitted a horrendous metal-on-metal screech, clunking like a monstrous metronome. The ship pitched, throwing me back against a row of metal cabinets and to the floor.

“Jesus, do you wanna kill us all?” Beck threw himself into a crouch between me and the candles, his back to me. I was a turtle on its back, trying to right myself and keep my skirted knees together. Lighter already out, he relit everything I’d blown out. The engine overhead spat a shower of sparks on us and ceased its screech-banging, returning to its customary, humming purr.

“We’re in a powder keg of carefully controlled gases and circuitry,” I sputtered, trying to stand and keep my knees together, “and an open flame, much less sixty open flames—are you trying to blow us up?” I yanked my heel out of a grate, cringing before I made sure it wasn’t broken.

“These candles are part of an intricately calculated spell system,” he said, tucking his hair behind his ear. The muscles in his broad back shifted under his shirt as he touched candles here and there, adjusting a couple only by a quarter turn. “And they’re keeping us hurtling the right way through space.”

---