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Idris went still, face a portrait of shock. “No way.”
I stared at Pellini, mouth open. “He . . . created a floater.” Neither Idris nor I could trace floaters on Earth. That required mastery of all eleven rings of the shikvihr. Moreover, Pellini hadn’t traced the sigil—he’d created it all at once. Before either of us could process that bit of information, Pellini transformed the ring into eleven vibrant chartreuse and violet sigils.
“Kadir,” Idris said through clenched teeth. He might not have recognized the chaotic raw potency, but there was no mistaking the unique Kadir-style sigils. “Bryce, can you shoot him?”
“Hey!” I said. “No one’s shooting anyone!”
Idris leveled a glower at me. “So, the dude imprinted by Kadir—the one who claims to know nothing of the arcane—is out on your nexus, fulfilling Kadir’s agenda. And you’re okay with that?”
“Will you please stop being an asshole for a few goddamn minutes?” I gestured toward Pellini and the ring of sigils he’d set spinning around him. “I have a way to stop him if I have to. It worked on Szerain, it’ll work on Pellini.” As the words left my mouth, the important thing I’d forgotten slammed into me with crystalline clarity. Kadir and Pellini in interdimensional space. I sucked in a breath. “I know what he created. It’s a way to teach us how to symmetrize the valves.”
“How do you know?” Idris asked with outright disbelief. “And why for chrissake would we want to do that?”
“I saw Kadir last night,” I said with measured calm. “He drew me into a non-physical place between worlds, like Pellini described.” I forged on despite the increasing What the fuck? on Idris’s face. “He said the demon realm is in chaos, and Katashi moves too fast with the work he does, and that we needed to learn how to symmetrize the valves.”
Idris eyed me warily. “You get that your explanation doesn’t put me at ease, right?”
I rubbed my eyes. “I can’t believe I’m trying to do this without coffee.”
“Okay,” Pellini said. He scrutinized the ring of sigils and gave a satisfied nod. “Okay.” He stepped carefully between two sigils and made his way toward us. Bryce holstered his gun but didn’t relax one bit.
“When did you learn how to do that?” I asked Pellini, pointing at the circle of sigils.
He stepped off the nexus and glanced back. “Just now, I guess.”
“I don’t understand,” I said with gross understatement. “How did you know what to do?”
“Mister, um, I mean, Kadir said I’d know.” He shrugged. “It’s for you and Idris.”
Without warning, Idris grabbed the front of Pellini’s shirt with both hands to yank him away from the nexus. My gut clenched as potency shimmered on Idris, but I’d underestimated Pellini. The surly detective was overweight and out of shape, but he knew his training. In quick, reflexive movements, Pellini trapped Idris’s hands against his chest, twisted, swept his leg, and shoved him facedown on the grass with his right arm up and held in a wrist lock.
“Fucking snot-nosed know-it-all punk,” Pellini growled. “Do not lay hands on me unless it’s a Heimlich or CPR.” He released Idris and stepped back.
Idris rolled away and sat up, features twisted in anger and humiliation. “Won’t happen. I wouldn’t be able to get my arms around you to do the Heimlich.”
Hurt flashed across Pellini’s face before he buried it under a scowl. “That shit won’t last long.” He jerked his head toward the sigils. “Make the most of it.” With that, he stomped away toward the woods. “Sammy!”
Bryce offered Idris a hand up. “I hope you know you brought that on yourself,” he said to Idris—to my enormous relief because that meant I didn’t have to say it.
Idris took Bryce’s hand and stood. He muttered a couple of words that could have been either fuck you or thank you, then marched toward the ring of glowing sigils. Off to my right, Pellini disappeared down the trail that led to the start of the obstacle course, his dog cavorting around him.
Bryce pursed his lips. “Need me to follow him?”
“No, it’s cool. He just needs some space,” I said. “Can you hold down the fort? I need to take care of this nexus thing.”
“I’m on it.”
I turned to the nexus in time to see Idris attempt to disrupt the circle of sigils. “Hey!” I called out. “Hold on. Who put you in command here?”
The ring remained unaltered despite his efforts. He cursed and dropped his hands. “Someone has to deal with this crap.”
“Not by destroying it before we check it out!” I moved forward and examined the slowly spinning ring of sigils. Though most of the sigils weren’t f
amiliar, to my delight I understood the whole of it. “It’s a simulator,” I said. “It’s what we can use to learn how to symmetrize a valve without screwing up a real valve or blowing ourselves up.”
“And you know this because Kadir told you.” Idris made no attempt to hide the scorn in his voice.
I scowled. “Kadir said I need to learn how to symmetrize a valve, Pellini said this was for us, and that sigil,” I pointed to three interlocked triangles, “is like one Mzatal always includes in his training patterns, only Kadir-style.”
