Page 36 of Cold Curses

“How do you know?” I asked. “I mean, are you throwing demons at them?” It was an honest question, as it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder how they’d actually test the magic.

“No,” Aunt Mallory said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “We saved some residue from the Cadogan House lawn.”

Casting Rosantine back into the demon dimension had left some of her smut in the yard. “And nothing happened?”

“Bubkes. We’re trying to backtrack to find what we might have missed.”

“We could come out to you,” I said. “Maybe fresh eyes would help.”

“We’re at the warehouse,” Aunt Mallory said, “your mom and I. Your uncle Catcher is with Paige and a few of the Washington House guards at South Gate, but I think we’re closer.”

“We’ll be there in a few,” I said, then put my screen away, looked at Petra. “Do you want to zap a machine?”

SEVEN

Imagine the biggest old-fashioned machine—the metal type with gears and cams—that you’ve ever seen. Build it in black cast iron accented with gold and marked with magical symbols. Have it fill a brick warehouse, and add as its caretaker an earnest gamer whose family history reached back to the machine’s very beginnings.

With that, you’d have the start of the warehouse ward. If triggered by a demon, it would shoot a wide column of light into the sky through cantilevered doors in the ceiling. That light would give a faintly green cast to demon skin, and it would shoot lightning at any demons in the vicinity.

Or it had. It apparently was not doing so at present.

My mother—tall and lean, with light skin, straight dark hair, and pale blue eyes—and Aunt Mallory stood with the gamer machinist and gazed up at the ironwork masterpiece.

Hugo looked much healthier than he had the last time I’d seen him, when he’d been coming off a marathonJakob’s Questsession—a long-running online RPG—and the bummer of missing his beloved machine’s operation. His skin was still pale, but no longer shadowed. His dark hair was still shaggy, but in a way that looked intentionally mod. He wore a Chicago Bears T-shirt with “Monsters” across the front.

He glanced back at me, waved. “Hey, Elisa!”

“Hey, Hugo. You remember Theo and Petra?” We’d left Roger to the running of the office. And something about budgets. He was forever doing something about budgets.

Mom turned, smiled, came over to give me a hug while the others made their greetings.

“So, it’s not working?” I asked.

“Dead,” Hugo said.

“The cornerstone?” I asked.

“Fine, as far as we can tell.” This was from Paige, a sorcerer who happened to live in Cadogan House with her partner, the house librarian. The librarian and I had a complex relationship. As a kid, I’d loved to read books in the House’s massive library with a snack in hand. He’d preferred I never darken his door at all.

Paige had milk pale skin and red hair, and there were circles beneath her eyes. Aunt Mallory looked tired, too. Not a surprise, given they’d been working nonstop for nearly a week to get the broken wards online again.

The cornerstone for this ward was in a guarded shed not far from the warehouse. If the machine had been fixed, the cornerstone was still there, and the spell had been reset, it all should have worked.

I looked at the machine, then gestured to Petra. “You want her to light it up?”

Aunt Mallory looked at her. “It’s a spark of lightning, right?”

Petra nodded, pulled off a glove, wiggled her fingers. “Yep. How much do you want? There’s a ton of energy in the air right now. I’d put my money on a big storm coming.”

Aunt Mallory looked at Hugo. “She can take a lot, right?”

Hugo blushed faintly. “Well, yeah. But I think we need to be careful until we figure out what’s wrong. We don’t want to accidentally trigger anything.”

“What will hitting the machine with lightning tell us?” Mom asked.

“We’re thinking the machine’s connection to the cornerstone might be fried—maybe by that pulse of magic,” Aunt Mallory said. “So, while all the parts are in working order, it’s not getting power. This will give it some temporary power.”

“Is that likely?” Theo asked. “A connection problem?”