Maine and Dandy both looked up. They could hear what sounded like horses outside, and a wagon pulling up to the gate. Dandy ran to close the door to the back room, but Maine stopped him, holding it open just an inch so she could peer through.

“Who is it?” he asked her, looking nervous.

“Shut up,” she hissed back. “I can’t see yet.”

They could hear many voices calling out; rough, male voices. They were laughing, calling to each other, and Maine’s eyes narrowed, pulling the door a little more closed.

A man appeared in the open doorway to the shop, silhouetted darkly against the light from the outside. “Hello the shop!” he shouted. “Anyone here!” Not waiting for an answer, he stomped in, swinging a stout cudgel over his shoulder. Maine gave a start of surprise: he was Human! The man looked like a common roughneck, dirty and unshaven, clad in stained and battered clothing with a red bandanna tied around one arm. He glanced dumbly at the shelves and cabinets, poking his stick at the cricket cages and worm bins. “What the hell kinda shop is this?”

Three more men entered the shop behind him. Each was dressed just like him, right down to the identical armbands. “Doesn’t matter,” one of them grunted. “Search the place for the jackrabbit. If she’s here, grab her.”

The last man through the door was lugging a pair of metal jugs in each hand. They looked heavy and sloshed with each step. As the others fanned out, peering about the shop, he dropped one of the jugs to the floor and started to empty the other, splashing its contents against the walls. Even from where she stood, Maine could smell the sharp stink of kerosene.

“Hey!” the first man yelled, getting the would-be arsonist’s attention. “Wait until we’re done looking first!”

Dandy grabbed Maine’s hand. He pointed behind them and she saw a small door in the back of the room. “C’mon!” he hissed.

Maine shut the back room door quietly, throwing the latch. Then, they both ran for the back door, Dandy in the lead. He pushed it open, dashing through, just as Maine remembered something. “Wait!” she started to yell.

As he stepped through the doorway, there was a sudden electric crack and another flash of orange light. And just like before, Dandy froze up, paralyzed mid-step by the ward. His momentum carried him forwards, and he fell roughly down the stairs to the sand below.

“Dandy!” Maine yelled, forgetting herself.

Behind her, she heard the break of glass and someone said, “Hey! You hear that?” There was the sound of heavy footsteps and then the office door started to rattle.

“Damn it!” she cursed. “Dandy, can you move?” Of course, he didn’t answer. All he could do was lay there, leg still extended in the air. She hesitated, looking down at the ward and seeing it still smoking on the threshold. Behind her, the door shuddered roughly as someone on the other side put their shoulder into it.

She had maybe a few moments. There was no way she could carry Dandy on her own and get away. No way to hide him either. Thinking quickly, she dropped to her knees in front of the office door. Sweeping the floor clear of papers with one hand, she pulled out her handy guide book again, and reached into her pocket for rune chalk. “Wards, wards, wards,” she muttered, trying to find the right page again. The door shuddered again, one of the hinges jarring loose.

She found the page and started to draw, her hand moving quickly. Tongue pinched between her teeth, her eyes flew back and forth from the book to the diagram, checking her progress. She couldn’t afford to get anything wrong now. “Start with the circle and move inwards,” she muttered, hearing Henna’s words somehow in her head.

“Start with the circle and move inwards,” she’d told her. “Remember the order of the brush strokes as well; it’s just as important how you draw a glyph as it is how closely you get it right.”

“What if I make a mistake?”

“Then you’ll have to start over. The more times you lift your chalk, the more breakpoints there will be in the drawing. Too many, and the glyph might not work.”

Maine remembered her hand closing over her small fingers, guiding her chalk. “Don’t raise the chalk, not until you’re done. Keep it one, complete stroke, that’s the Maierson way.”

She could almost feel those fingers now, guiding her hand. The chalk began to glow and tingle, and she could feel the magic building up in the diagram. Just a bit more to go…

The door shuddered once more, then burst open. One of the men stumbled into the room, staring wide-eyed at her. “Who the hell are-”

As his hand reached out for her, Maine lifted the chalk up finally. The glyph sparked into life, filling the room with an electric blue light. The man’s eyes flashed down, seeing his foot over the edge of the chalk diagram.

Maine threw up her hands in triumph. “Got yo-”

The glyph exploded all at once, hurling the man backwards and into the shop, bowling over the other men coming in behind him. Maine was lifted up off her feet and thrown through the air. She flew backwards, crashing through a window and landing roughly in the grass outside the shop.

She lay there stunned for a moment in the tall grass, hardly able to breathe. As she lay there, blinking, Ifri’s head popped into view, staring down at her curiously.

Mrow?

“I’m okay,” she groaned, pushing herself up. She coughed out smoke, and extinguished a smoldering piece of her hair between her fingers. All the windows to the backroom were blown out, and the door hung off its hinges. She blinked, trying to think of what had gone wrong. The glyph had looked right at least…

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“Mai-Maine?” Dandy called to her.

Still groaning, she pushed herself up and crawled over to where he lay. “Can you move yet?” she asked.

He gritted his teeth and slowly forced his leg down, grunting with effort. “A little. Was that you inside? Doing magic?”

“Yeah,” she said, starting to pull him up to his feet.

“Stop helping,” he told her.

“Oh, shut up.”

From inside the backroom, she could hear loud groaning sounds. They didn’t have long. She looked behind her quickly. Henna had at least cleared a bit of space behind the building for her alchemy experiments, but it didn’t leave them many places to hide. Seven large jars were buried up to their necks in the sand, with each of their lids sealed tightly with wax. Behind them, past the tall grass, were rows of stacked, weathered looking barrels, leftovers from the shop's former inhabitants.

“Just get out of here,” Dandy told her. He was stumbling on his legs, hardly able to move. “Run, leave me.”

“Didn’t you hear me? Shut up,” she snapped. She pushed him towards the barrels. “Hide behind them! I’ll be there in a sec!”

“Maine! What?”

She turned around and dashed to the jars, looking quickly down the line at the symbols scratched into the wax. “No. No. No. N-Yes!” She grabbed the fourth jar and began to pull at the wax, trying to pry the top open. The wax was stubborn though of course, chosen to protect the contacts from the elements, and refused to give. She reared back and kicked at it with the heel of her boot, striking it once, twice, three times, and shattered the top of the jar.

The stink of rotten eggs and worse drifted up at her. She could see lumps of saltpeter and the corpses of sulfurmanders floating in the muck at the bottom of the jar. Holding her nose, she dashed to the side of the shop, where a rain barrel stood against the corner of the building, and a bucket.

One of the men staggered out of the shop, still woozy on his feet. Bracing himself against the wall, he blinked and stared at Maine. “Hey, stop right there!”

Maine dashed the bucket through the water, holding it tight as she ran back to the jars. She could hear the man stumbling down the steps behind her, still shouting. “C’mon, c’mon!” she said, pouring the water down into the open jar.

The muck at the bottom began to boil immediately as the water hit it. The pot started to shake, quivering in the sand. A pungent smell began to fill the air, and Maine backed away, holding her breath. She turned to run, when suddenly a hand grabbed her.

“Got ya now!” the man yelled, pulling her off her feet. He opened his mouth to say more, but then his eyes welled up and he started to cough, hacking fiercely. Bringing up her legs, she kicked at his gut. He dropped her, sagging to his knees, groping blindly for her. She could see the other men now, stumbling out of the back room. They ran headfirst into the gas cloud, leaking out of the pot, and they started to yell, covering their eyes and noses. Maine turned and ran for the barrels.

Dandy was waving to her by the barrels. “C’mon!” he yelled. They ducked behind the first row of barrels and started to run, Ifri dashing in front of them.

“Where are we going?”

“Who cares,” he told her. “Just run!” He was moving stiffly, but as fast as he could. She grabbed his arm and started to pull him along.

“Keep going! We can lose them in the dunes!”

Suddenly, the barrels in front of them went flying as one of the men plowed his way through with a roar. They both yelled as they were knocked back. He stood over them, eyes red with tears and still coughing. “Damn brats!”

Maine scrambled for her bag, but he was on top of her in a moment, twisting her arm. “No more tricks from you!” She stared up at him, and then she saw a blur of movement behind him.

There was the sound of something solid hitting bone and the man went stiff, dropping to his knees. Maine gasped, able to breathe again, and looked up.

A dark-skinned man stood overtop of her. He looked to be young, in his twenties maybe, with short, dark hair and a gray tweed suit. He hefted a sturdy looking cane in his hands like he knew how to use it, and on his lapel, was a silver US Marshal’s star.

His nose twitched suddenly and he smiled down at her. “Miss Maierson, I presume? Hoo, you led us on quite a chase!” His voice was friendly, with an irrepressible joy to it, and she couldn’t help but smile.

Before she could answer though, the roughneck staggered back up to his feet. “Hold on,” the Marshal said, “this one’s still got some bite in him!”

The roughneck lashed out at him, fist blurring through the air, but as quick as he was, the Marshal was even faster. He dodged the blow, jumping in to smash his cane against the man’s temple before he’d even finished his swing. The man grunted and dropped like a sack of potatoes.

“Ha! There we go!” the Marshal crowed. He danced over the roughneck like a boxer, swinging his fists triumphantly. “Too long since I had a proper dust up!”

He continued to punch the air for a moment, till the sound of Dandy groaning seemed to reach him. “Whoa, sorry there! Didn’t see you, little friend.” He helped him up to his feet and then went to check on Maine. “How are you doing, Miss Maierson?”

“Okay,” she coughed, trying to catch her breath. He smiled at her, then looked up quickly.

The three other roughnecks were starting to recover in the yard. The pot had stopped bubbling, and the ocean breeze had blown away much of the gas cloud. Still, the Marshal put a hand to his nose and stepped back, laughing awkwardly at the men as they advanced. “Ya know, I’d love to tussle with you all,” he said to them. “I really would. But, I think I’m gonna leave you to my partner.”

They turned as a broad-shouldered Chinese man appeared, walking out the shop behind them. He was a head shorter than any of the men, with a rounded gut and sagging chin, but he had arms that would’ve put a Forge worker to shame. Over a pair of loose dungarees, he wore a leather poncho, and his hair was gathered into a messy ponytail that hung past his shoulders.

He looked at the scowling roughnecks with open contempt. “That’d be me,” he grunted, poking up the brim of his stetson hat with one finger. On his chest, a Marshal’s badge gleamed.

With a roar, the nearest man rushed at him, swinging wildly. He was a huge man, well over six feet and thick bodied, but the fat Marshal simply reached up and caught his fist, as easily as he might’ve caught a child’s ball. The roughneck grimaced, trying to pull his fist free, but it was like it was stuck in stone. The Marshal smiled and tightened his fist ever so slightly, and the roughneck dropped to his knees, his face going white. The Marshal continued to tighten his grip and the big man sagged even further, collapsing on the ground.

The two other roughnecks looked at each other for a moment, then turned and fled, running towards the road.

The Marshal snarled, his lips curling back. “Hey, don’t forget your friend!” With hardly any effort, he twisted sharply, hurling the first man over his shoulder and towards the fleeing pair. He struck them soundly in the back, and the three went sprawling, disappearing from sight around the house.

The first Marshal let out a whoop of delight and slapped his leg. “Not too shabby, Feng!” The other Marshal just grunted, rubbing his stubbly chin.

Maine stared at them. “Who are you people?”

The first Marshal grinned at her. “Why, we’re your babysitters, Miss Maierson. Your brother’s been worried. I think it’s time we got back home, don’t you?”