Page 94 of Suspicions on the Stage
“We can’t kill one of them—not to my knowledge,” I say, before I realize how defeatist that sounds. “But we can disrupt the anchor point they’re using to project their power here without being present.”
“What anchor point?” the gargoyle growls, and I chuckle.
“Li, you need to do a reveal or something. We have to find whatever they’re using to control the storm.”
My best friend rubs his hands together and then closes his eyes, lifting his palms in the air as he chants. The High Fae is deep and guttural, but after a few minutes, the magic crawls outward until it reaches a spot close to us. Jerking my head at them, I head for the spot and wait until his magic makes a pedestal with an enormous stone on it appear out of nowhere.
I tap the glowing glass with a claw, and it flashes a new color, then resets to blue-green. “This is the lens; it’s focusing power from outside of the tornado.”
Morgana’s eyes glow yellow, then rake over the glass. “The anchor is inside here?”
“I think so,” I say as I scratch my chin. “It’s a projection of whoever this fucker is, so they could be anywhere and everywhere.”
Liam kneels beside it, scrubbing a hand through the dirt and coming up with a palmful of glass and insulation. “So what, a deity? An angry demi? Galactic-level nerd with a grudge? Some tricky legendary hoping to make a name in the digital age?”
“All of the above or none?” I offer, trying for levity, but it dies quickly. “I don’t know, Li. Neither of us has dealt with many of those places much over the centuries. You know some of themonlydeal with the heads of state, others rarely leave their realms, and others slip through the main realms like water only revealing where they were after they’ve fucked with things.”
He stands, brushing himself off. “We have to find some way of tracking them when this is over. If they’re partnering with the demon rebellion and the Hand… this won’t be pretty.” The prince is looking at me with that goddamn ‘noble hero’ intensity, and I know what he wants me to say.
I sigh. “Okay. We can work with the Guardians out west and the demons on this.”
He nods. “We have to know more about those visitors and what they might be capable of. I get the feeling one or more of the people in those groups will have access somehow.”
Morgana’s face brightens as she hears me suggest we work with the other families. “I think that’s a great idea for later. But we’re still stuck in this whatever the fuck portal and need to figure out how to stop this stone before the tornado takes out the campus and the city.”
Something thumps against the barrier—hard. The sound echoes and makes my nerves crawl. I don’t like not being able to see what’s coming at us from all sides.
“Are you okay?” Morgana asks, voice low. She means physically, but her eyes keep flicking to my arms, my wings, the ragged edge of transition where my hands are half human, half dragon. I’m not a pretty sight when I’m stressed.
“Fine,” I lie, and she doesn’t call me on it. Instead, she steps up, just close enough that I can feel the chill off her stone skin, and stares outward.
“I hate feeling like a pawn,” she says. “I hate it even more when I can’t see who’s moving the pieces.”
“More accustomed to being the queen, eh?” I mumble. She gives me an arched brow and a sniff that says I’m right.
Morgana LeCiel prefers to be the most powerful piece on the board.
We stand there quietly for a long minute, the three of us. Prince, bodyguard, and Dean, all stuck in someone else’s experiment and trying to work out how to get out.
Then Liam claps his hands, as if he’s decided something. “Okay,” he says, “let’s start with magic. Whatever this thing requires to be destroyed, it has to be imbued with some kind of magic. Worst case, it fucks everything up and we get stuck in a time loop and have to eat each other to survive. Best case, we walk out in an hour and go home to get very drunk while eating copious amounts of cheese.”
Morgana gives him a look. “I will eat you first if I get stuck in a time loop, Li. No questions asked.”
He grins. “Promises, promises.”
Some of the tension cracks when he jokes, and I force my body back toward a more human posture as I shift my wings. It’s noteasy to stay half-shifted when I’m so furious and my dragon wants out, but the pain is grounding. I know who I am in the ache, and I can feel where he starts and I begin to prevent him from taking over.
I need to be sharp if we’re going to figure out this puzzle.
We takea full five minutes to pick through the debris looking for something important. Morgana nearly eats dust twice, once on a slick of wiring that pulses like intestines, and again on a stack of frozen brush. I’m not used to watching her struggle with footing—her center of gravity is usually unshakable—but this place is designed to mess with our instincts.
I can’t even blame her; I almost twist my ankle twice and I’m extremely coordinated.
Liam is the one who figures it out first. He slows, cocks his head, then extends both hands, palms up. “We will not find something to thwart this here. It’s got to be something within us.”
The pedestal is made of… I’m not sure what. It looks like concrete and bone, fused together and shot through with veins of cold, liquid mercury. The stone is a rock the size of a soccer ball, glowing from within with its own storm: lightning snakes under the surface, blue and gold, and at the core is a point of darkness so dense it eats the surrounding light.
“Are you sure, Li?” I ask as I study the thing. “It could bounce back and hit us. There’s zero cover in this fucking place.”
