The Effaced: Chapter Thirty-Three

This chapter is a little bit on the short side, so apologies about that, but extending it more felt forced.

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With Firefright out of the picture, it didn’t take long for us to find Zone – no, to find Jessica’s – hiding spot. It helped that I knew where it was, so we really only had to navigate the shoddy un-cordoned area until we found it, and then I knocked on the door. 

It didn’t look like a door. It looked like a chunk of concrete that had fallen against a wall. But I recognized that the graffiti was actually an elaborate disguise for some of Jessica’s spells.

“Jessica, it’s me,” I said. “Also Firefright, but he’s currently under a sleep spell.” 

There wasn’t any visible alteration – there wouldn’t be, not with her demon’s ability to hide the active flows of aura from anyone – but I knew that she had to be scanning us. It took a few seconds, but then a section of the concrete vanished to reveal a small panic room. 

I held up the sleeping Firefright with one hand. 

“Here, I brought you a present,” I deadpanned, lifting Firefright’s sleeping body up to Jessica’s eye level. 

Jessica let out a soft laugh and pulled me into a one-armed hug, then glanced at Kelly. 

“Who’s this?” she asked. 

“Oh, right,” I said. “You missed out on a lot. Kelly, this is my sister, Jessica. Jessica, this is Kelly.” 

As I gestured to him, I fed Kelly more aura, so that he could keep the sleep spell ongoing. I had to admit, while I normally didn’t think of power transfer as an especially useful first tier arch-star, Kelly had gotten a lot of use out of it. 

“I’m his apprentice!” Kelly declared, and my eye twitched. Jessica noticed and laughed. 

“Why don’t you come in and catch me up on what happened?” 

The panic room was small, and most of it was taken up by the aura generator, leaving barely any open space at all. Cramming all of us in was hard and uncomfortable, but it at least meant that we would be relatively safe. In the end, Kelly and I were crammed against the aura generator on one side of the room, while Jessica sat on the tiny cot, and Firefright was thrown on the floor to continue his mind-magic induced nap. 

We filled Jessica in on everything that had been happening, and she went white as a ghost. It took a while, but when we finished, she let out a low whistle. 

“That’s a lot. I’m not sure that your new friends will be able to fully get you off of the hook, but you can try.” 

“Even if Rhys and Hadiya are able to work a miracle, it won’t stop what the Arenamaster is doing,” I said grimly. “I don’t know why she’s releasing terror attacks across the city, but she’s not the kind of person to create havoc for no reason. There’s something going on, we just can’t see it.” 

“I agree,” Jessica said. We lapsed into silence for a moment, then I looked up. 

“What happened on your end?” 

“A group of the soldiers – Red Eagles, did you say? – came storming into the grocery store, with Firefright at the front. He raised his hand, and it was like a bomb went off, but only in the direction of the store. Flames exploded everywhere, but my wards stopped the concussive force and most of the flame.” 

She held up her hands. 

“Now, I’ve prepared wards for most things, but an attack of that scale drained a huge amount of the stored power I use whenever it exceeds the generator’s output. The military people were firing onto me then, so I started throwing the emergency measures and using the artifacts I had on hand to fight back, while shutting down as many fires as I could. I rerouted all the power to the cold storage rooms and guided people back there, then fled down here, making sure they saw me leaving, so they’d leave the people in cold storage alone.” 

“Wow,” Kelly breathed. “That’s so cool. You did that alone?” 

“For all that the Arenamaster was awful, the three of us who survived were strong,” Jessica said. “Well, maybe not Firefri–” 

She broke off into a string of curses, and my eyes flicked down to the floor, where Firefright should have been laying, asleep. 

He was gone. 

“But… I was keeping up the spell?!” Kelly protested. “Where’s my aura going?” 

“I don’t know,” Jessica said, letting out a sigh. “That’s the problem with druids. They can pull out any trick, and it doesn’t even make sense half the time, because the magic they’re using follows different rules.” 

“It’s not your fault,” I said, putting my hand on Kelly’s shoulder. “If anything, it’s mine. I never should have taken my eyes off him, let alone just thrown him on the floor. I don’t know what trick he pulled, but like Jessica said, druids are slippery. I’d underestimated him because I was able to beat him so easily.” 

“At least we know where he’s going,” Kelly said. 

“Assuming he wasn’t lying,” Jessica pointed out, and I nodded my agreement. 

“We should head back to the lab,” I said. “It’s the safest place to be for now, and you can call to let your husband know you’re safe. I’m sure he’s worried sick.” 

“That’s a good idea,” Jessica said, nodding. “I’m not going to be able to stay cooped up down here forever. It’s only got enough supplies for a few more days. Water just takes up so much space…” 

“Wait, water?” Kelly asked. 

That got the pair started on a conversation about the things that had to be factored into the creation of an emergency shelter. I followed along with the practical side of things, but when they moved onto the defenses, I quickly lost track. I didn’t know enough about wards to really add anything, so I stayed quiet. 

Jessica, on the other hand, seemed delighted to answer all of Kelly’s questions about wards, and Kelly even had a couple of insightful comments about improving attention wards. 

At least, I assumed they were insightful. Jessica said they were, and that was enough for me to believe they were. 

As we clambered onto a bit of sheet metal and I lifted us back up to street level, I began to feel the utter exhaustion running through me. I’d felt it some when Hadiya and I had stopped for a rest in the abandoned warehouse, but getting the information that Jessica had been in danger had acted as a jolt to get me running again. 

But I couldn’t keep working forever. I needed to get some sleep. 

When we arrived back at the lab, I was faintly amused to see that Haidya was slumped over her desk, completely passed out. Rhys was similarly asleep, laying on the ground, spread across pillows that he’d scavenged from somewhere in the lab, snoring rather loudly. 

When we entered and the light of the hallway spilled onto them, both of them mumbled, and I thought I could make out Hadiya cursing our entire family lineage. She looked up and yawned. 

“Ah, goy out her. Good.” 

“What?” 

She waved her hand in a strange fashion that I didn’t know how to interpret.

“Sleep,” she mumbled. At least that was clear enough.

I looked at Kelly and lowered my voice, so I wouldn’t disturb Rhys or Hadiya too much.

“Sure you don’t want me to walk you back to your apartment?” I asked. “It would probably be more comfortable to sleep in a bed than the floor.” 

“I’m sure,” Kelly said seriously. “I’m never going back there again if I can help it.” 

I was too tired to do anything more than nod. Before I collapsed into my own stupor, however, I headed to the telephone Hadiya had on her wall and had the operator direct me to the anonymous tip line for the constables, then told the annoyed sounding person on the other end that Firefright might replicate his attack on the grocery store at Anterior Gardens. 

Jessica hurried over a moment later, and she took the telephone and had the call put through to her house. I tried not to eavesdrop on her conversation with her husband as I took off my coat, belts, and other accouterments and shut the door. Thankfully, their conversation was in quiet tones and whispers, and didn’t last very long. I glanced at her before I lay down to sleep. 

“Everything okay?” I asked in as soft a voice as I could manage, while also still being able to be heard over the snoring that was coming from Rhys.

“He had people come to the apartment looking for me,” she said in an equally soft voice. “He’s okay, though. They didn’t fire on him – since they had an idea of where I ran off to, I think they just wanted to be thorough. He’s calling in sick at work and will spend a few days in one of my other safe houses.” 

I smiled at her, gave her a quick hug, then laid down on the floor and promptly passed out.