Page 58 of Cold Curses

“Let’s take the sidewalk,” I said, because it made a loop around the edge of the park.

Theo took the lead. Beside me, Connor took my hand, squeezed. The affection made me think of Lulu, which had guilt settling in like fog.

“Let it go,” Connor said quietly, apparently sensing my concern. “You’re working for her. Sitting in a hospital lobby wouldn’t help either one of you.”

“I know that rationally. But still…”

“But still,” he agreed, and put an arm around my shoulders. And it tightened at the sudden squeal of tires as a car swerved in the road.

My first instinct was to assume the vehicle was a threat and step in front of Connor and Theo. But the vehicle kept moving, evidently not part of a demonic assassination plot, and disappeared around a corner.

I looked back, realized the vehicle had swerved to avoid a small construction area in the middle of the street. There was some low plastic fencing and a couple of cones—one of them down like a fallen soldier—but none of them were reflective, so the driver would have missed them until he or she was close.

And why weren’t they reflective?

Instincts triggered, I stepped off the curb and walked to the spot. Connor and Theo followed behind me.

I pulled back the warped netting, found a hole a good five feet across and six feet deep.

And at the bottom, etched with magical symbols, was a big broken rock.

TEN

It was a cornerstone. Asmashedcornerstone. Maybe accidentally—some kind of construction work gone awry? But smashed all the same.

“Someone broke the damn cornerstone,” Theo said.

“No,” I said, “someone broke the entire ward system. That had to be the pulse of magic: the breaking of the stone.”

The cornerstones secondarily regulated the ley lines. Stop regulating them, and it was logical you’d get a surge of power.

“That was days ago,” Connor said grimly. “They’ve been down the entire time?”

Theo blew out a breath. “Now we know why the sorcerers couldn’t get the machine online.”

I wanted to panic—this seemed like a very reasonable time to panic—but knew I didn’t have the luxury. So instead I focused, took pictures of the broken stone, the “construction” setup. And sent them to Roger and Petra with a simple message:Cornerstone destroyed when we felt magic pulse. Wards down. City open to demons. Spread the word for all sups to bolo.

The mayor was going to love this.

I put my screen away. “I’m going down there.”

Connor and Theo looked at each other, then at me.

“Of course you are,” Connor said. “Need a hand?”

I looked into the pit and closed my eyes to double-check for the presence of magic. I felt nothing.

“I’m good,” I said, and hopped down.

The stone was probably four feet across. Or had been before it had been snapped roughly in half. The crack was jagged, with lots of chipping. Someone had worked to break it. Not with magic, but with muscle.

Why not with magic? Because it couldn’t be broken with magic? Or because the person who’d broken it didn’t have any?

I took pictures of the fracture, then studied the hole. The dirt looked roughly hewn, as if it’d been dug out by hand. There were long, sharp marks that I bet were made by a shovel.

So the cornerstone had been buried, and someone had unearthed it by hand, broken it by hand.

Little wonder this ward hadn’t worked in the first place; it had been buried under earth and street. That was a risk in having an old magical defense system and not telling anyone about it. Development happened in the meantime. How had the person who’d done this known how to find it?