“You know,” Mara whispered into the darkness, “at some point there’s going to be a crisis where I actually have something to contribute.”
Eli’s answering laughter was a puff of air, a shifting of his body in the small, dark space so that his elbow knocked briefly into hers. They sat together against the wall of the safe room, though it was really more of a safe closet. Nick was not yet spelled into silence. They’d simply implored him to be quiet and he had thus far complied, though Mara had given Eli permission to use persuasion if her son decided to pipe up and give away their location.
“In case it escaped your notice, I’m not contributing much here either,” he whispered back.
“Look me in the eyes and tell me you’re not responsible for the warding on this room.” Mara knew he wouldn’t. Couldn’t, and not just because it was too dark and close to make proper eye contact. This place was rank with static persuasion, the push so powerful she herself wouldn’t have seen the door if Lori hadn’t walked her right up to it. Now that she was inside, she could feel that it was Eli’s magic, the persuasion thick and iron-rich.
The persuasion was an outward force–Don’t look here. Nothing to see. But there were also shadows. Depths-dark and heavy, they draped themselves like velvet curtains over even the persuasion, presenting the outer world with one message–Nothing. Darkness. Silence.--and the inner world with another–Safety. Warmth. Emptiness. Where the persuasion was undeniably Eli, the shadows were pure Davy, so familiar he could have been hiding here with them, his arms wrapped around her, shielding her from danger.
“We may have helped with the warding, but that was years ago,” Eli said. “Right now, I’m just sitting here.”
The aggravation in his tone wasn’t difficult to parse. She’d heard the argument outside the door–he and Lori, spitting their respective cases at each other while Mara sat, tucked away with their packs in the darkness. Eli’s argument–that he ought to be with her when the Order came around, to lend his persuasion if they suspected her to be lying–paled in comparison to Lori’s–that he was an idiot and better get in the saferoom before his pride got them all hauled off for interrogation.
Mara wondered if he would have relented if not for her and Nick and the promise he’d made to keep them safe, but she didn’t have the opportunity to ask, because at that moment they heard the distant sound of the front door swinging open, boots on the floor of the barroom, and conversation too muffled to parse.
The safe room had once been a closet–one of the first doors in the hallway off the barroom. Why not the attic or the cellar, Mara wasn’t certain. This certainly felt more exposed, but perhaps there was some logic in hiding in plain sight. Someone might wonder why they hadn’t noted a trapdoor to the attic, but they wouldn’t linger too long, if at all, on the absence of a single door among many.
“--won’t mind us taking a look, of course,” a male voice was saying as it drew nearer.
“Of course not.” Lori, her tone saccharine sweet and foggy, affecting the high of persuasion. “Can I get you gentlemen something to drink while you search?”
“We won’t be long. Best you just stay out of the way.”
“Of course. I’ll be in my apartments if you need me. My daughter can’t be left alone too long. You know how children can be.”
Mara forced long, slow breaths into and out of her lungs as she listened to Lori’s soft footfall pass the space in which they were hidden. Then came the interminable wait.
With her sight smothered by darkness, her magical senses by Davy’s shadows, Mara had to rely on sound alone to parse together what was happening beyond the confines of the saferoom. She closed her eyes, blocking out the filter of distracting light that crept in from around the door, and focused on the sound of footsteps. Creaking doors. Voices.
There were four Order officers, she deduced from the voices. One stayed in the barroom, gleaning what he could from the few drunken patrons scattered through the room, which wasn’t anything, thankfully. Mara assumed that any guests who had seen anything would have had their memories gently blurred by Eli’s persuasion. The rest of the officers divided and began their search–two heading up the stairs and the last stalking about the ground floor.
Mara knew herself to be behind several layers of protection–Lori’s lies, the deceptive persuasion, the shadows, Eli. Nonetheless, she was as poignantly afraid as if she had no defenses at all beyond the darkness–a trembling animal, curled into a hole awaiting discovery by the snuffling, stalking, inevitable predator.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The officer’s boots struck the floor like drumbeats keeping rhythm with her lurching, stuttering heart. A few quick steps, a long pause, several slow, shuffling scuffs, another scatter of quick steps. Doors squeaked on their hinges, and the footfall moved away, then came closer. Moved down the hall. Away. Closer.
Opening her eyes, Mara looked down at Nick, who was curled up on her lap, thumb in his mouth, eyes wide. He couldn’t know all that was happening, but he seemed to have grasped the vital bits. He did not make a sound.
She turned her attention to Eli. A slant of light bisected his face, casting more shadows than illumination. His eyes were shut, his breathing shallow but steady. Could he sense through the layers of shields? She couldn’t, of course, but then again she wasn’t the architect of these shields. And her sensing wasn’t near as strong as his.
Someone’s weight creaked across the floor above them, and a delicate shower of dust rained down on their heads. Mara’s nose tickled. Eli’s eyes flew open. He reached for Nick, a moment too late. Perhaps there was nothing he could have done, anyway.
A sneeze, after all, was an automatic reflex, not a feeling or a decision that could be persuaded away. Mara shoved her son’s face roughly into her own chest, but her clothing did little to muffle the soft but deafening “choo.”
Mara froze. Nick froze, his head tilted back, eyes on his mother. Eli froze, his hand on Nick’s arm.
For a long time thereafter, all Mara could hear was her own breath and the hollow gallop of her own heart. She did not hear the officers approaching and caught only snatches of the conversation–
“--sounded like a–”
Air entered her lungs in a frantic woosh.
“--get Royce. He can–”
She breathed out a whirling typhoon.
“--the proprietor. I told you–”
She swallowed, and the wet sound drowned out even her heartbeat, but she saw the shadows dance in the light that seeped in from beneath the door as booted feet paced by in one direction and then the other, and then lingered just outside the door.
“--right here, I’m–”
Nick’s weight tripled, his body relaxing against her chest, and Eli retracted his arm. She turned, and could swear she heard each joint in her neck pop, each ligament stretch, as she did so, the individual threads of her clothing rubbing together like bows on stringed instruments. When had her small, quiet existence become so unbearably noisy?
She watched as Eli shut his eyes, watched his chest rise and fall, and forced her breaths to match his as his persuasion bubbled up and filled the space they occupied. Locked in by Davy’s shadows, the message threatened to drown her, licking greedily at the edges of her own shields.
Sounded like a rat. This place is a bust. Cite the proprietor for vermin and move on. The message repeated, over and over, growing in volume until she had to clench her teeth and squeeze her eyes shut against the roar. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. Davy’s shields, his shadows, were a fragile insulation against the maelstrom.
Sounded like a rat. This place is a bust. Cite the proprietor for vermin and move on. Immense pressure made her ears ache like they were pressed full of cotton batting. Nick, deeply asleep, squirmed with discomfort in her hold.
Just when she thought it would kill her–collapse her shields and her mind along with them–the pressure eased. The chaos of persuasion drained from the room like water from a tub, swirling into a vortex somewhere near the keyhole of the door.
Mara drew a shaky breath, and then another, sagging against the wall and working her jaw until her ears popped and her muffled hearing crackled back into clarity. The voices just outside the door were drawn tight with annoyance.
“--place is a bust,” one said. “Nothing here but drunks and rats. We’re wasting time.”
“I’m telling you,” said another, bootsteps shuffling just beyond the thin barrier of the door. “Something was off with the proprietor.”
“She’s a whore playing make believe that she’s a businessman,” the first bit back. “Of course there’s something off about her, but that’s not why we’re here.”
“So we’re going to just overlook it? Come on, boss, this is the first time we’ve had enough presence in this dump to make a difference. We could at least fine her. Let her know we’ve got our eye on her.”
“Cite her for the vermin if it’s so important to you, but be quick. We’re moving on.”
Three sets of feet stalked off, back into the barroom, their voices fading, punctuated by the distant creak and click of the front door. The fourth set lingered for a breath too long outside the door before turning and heading in the direction of Lori and Becca’s apartment.
Beside her, Eli shifted. “You stay here,” he said. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
She didn’t have to ask where he was going. Where before there had been four Order officers–a full team, stacked with complementary skill sets, now there was only one. One man, easily overpowered, squeezed for information, and sent away with a convenient hole in his memory.
“Be careful,” she said as he stood and reached for the doorknob. Just to say something, really, to put something of her own into the uncanny silence. Into this series of situations over which she had no control.
The latch clicked and blinding light spilled into the hiding space as he pulled the door open. “I will. Ten minutes, I promise.”
She swallowed hard and nodded, as if her answer actually mattered. As if she wasn’t just a mote of dust, carried forward on the eddies of powers far greater than her own paltry will.
“Ten minutes,” she said. “Sounds good.”