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“Athena Woodstock.”
I held up my hand. “We’d better stop before we end up scarring Parsley Green Faciane for life,” I said, grinning. “How much longer until we have a baby?”
Jill chucked a sofa pillow at me. “Three weeks. I’m ready for her to be out.”
“When do you plan to stop working?” Jill was a crime scene tech for the Beaulac Police Department, though she was currently relegated to non-field duties until after she had the baby.
“I’m not planning on it,” she said with a firm lift of her chin. “I’ll take time after she’s born.”
“I knew you’d be stubborn like that,” I said with a smile. “What does Steeev think about that?”
“He’s overprotective and proud of it.” Jill laughed. “I’m sure he’d prefer I hang out here all day and knit. Zack would too for that matter.”
“You’ve talked to him recently?”
Her face fell, and I immediately regretted asking. “Early this morning. He sounded better though. Told me not to worry.” She snorted. “Like that’s going to happen.”
“I can take pictures of you at the birthing class,” I said in a valiant effort to deflect the conversation away from Zack’s true state. “He’d love to see those.” My phone rang with Pellini’s name on the caller ID. “Sorry, I need to take this call. I won’t be long.”
Jill pushed awkwardly up from the sofa. “It’s cool. I need to be going anyway. Steeev’s mixing up an herbal concoction he says will be good for you-know-who.” She pointed at her belly. “Better not be vile or he’ll be wearing it. I’ll catch you later.”
I gave her a thumbs up and answered the phone. “Hey, Pellini.”
“Thought you weren’t going to answer,” he said in an oh-so-Pellini abrasive tone. “Wouldn’t be the first fucking time.”
“I almost didn’t,” I said, “but then I realized I’d miss your friendly banter.” I added “asshole” under my breath and didn’t really give a crap whether or not he heard it. Obviously a full day of Pellini being civil was too much for the universe to handle.
A sensation like static electricity on steroids crackled from my feet through my head followed an instant later by a wave of dizziness. The valve! “Shit. Gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.” I dropped the phone onto the coffee table and ran for the back door.
Chapter 4
Heart pounding, I burst out the back door and leaped off the porch. The valve’s normal tingly feel spiked to a nasty visceral buzz, signaling destabilization as clearly as a smoke alarm signaled my bad cooking. I pelted toward the woods and barely avoided an ugly sprawl when another wave of dizziness washed over me. Through bouts of vertigo, I staggered forward, hit the trail that led to the pond and wove through the trees as fast as I dared. A destabilized valve meant a potential overload of potency. Though my understanding of the valve system was superficial, I knew I had to repair that valve or risk an explosion.
A sudden eerie silence engulfed the woods as though the birds, insects, squirrels, and the trees themselves felt a premonition of doom. Sick uncertainty gripped me as I raced down the trail. My only experience with valve repair came from when I’d barricaded the valve node at the plantation—and I only knew how to do that because Kadir implanted knowledge of the required methods. But I needed to repair, not secure, this valve. My only hope was that I’d figure out a way to adapt Kadir’s info. Terrific. Our salvation depended on one of the Mraztur. My day was getting better and better.
I bolted into the clearing, then stumbled to an awkward stop and gaped in utter disbelief at the scene before me. The valve was on the far side of the pond, a rough circle of arcane energy approximately three feet in diameter. Jill stood in the center of it, surrounded by a twenty-foot high column of rippling arcane fire.
No. This couldn’t be real. Even with a thirty-second head start, no way could Jill have waddled out here faster than I’d run. I took a step forward, and another, but the scene stubbornly remained the same.
It was real. Sheer terror for my friend slammed in and spurred me into motion. “Jill!” I screamed as I raced around the pond toward her. “What are you doing? Get off the valve!”
Ignoring me, Jill spread her arms wide, opened her hands and tilted her head back. Around her feet the normal blue-green shimmer of the valve undulated in fiery orange like molten steel. None of this made any sense, yet I knew I had to get her off the valve. I charged her with the intent of doing a flying tackle but two strides from the valve, vertigo struck like a fist. Reeling, I dropped to my knees and clutched at the grass as the world tipped. Within a few seconds the vertigo passed only to be replaced by a crushing sensation as though gravity had increased tenfold. The power coursed around Jill, and the ground trembled as the valve emitted a whine like a cloud of pissed-off mosquitoes. Potency crackled over me like static electricity.
Hands gripped my shoulders and yanked me free of the valve. I landed in an unceremonious sprawl several feet away and immediately, Eilahn straddled me, intense and ferocious. “You must retreat.”
“No! I won’t leave Jill!” Agonized, I scrutinized the valve for a miracle that could save Jill. The constraining energy strands that should have been tightly twisted around its edge pulsed outward, frayed and perilously close to giving way. My gut turned to ice. If they failed, the valve would release the back pressure in an explosive burst—taking Jill with it.
Seemingly oblivious to her peril, she had yet to shift from her pose of head tipped back and arms outstretched. I struggled upright, but Eilahn seized my arm in an iron grip.
Jill gasped and stiffened. An instant later dozens of luminescent blue-green potency strands snaked from her waist to her feet and then outward to the edge of the valve. While I stared in astonishment, they moved like living things and interwove with the failing border to reinforce it. Within seconds the fiery orange around the valve changed to a less-ominous yellow-green, and the column of energy dissipated in a shimmer of purple.
Jill took two steps forward and off the valve, then swayed. Eilahn released me, and I sprang up to wrap my arm around Jill’s middle “You okay?” I asked, heart pounding as I anxiously searched her face.
She leaned against me and extended her hand toward the valve. “Made Zakaar’s valve better,” she said in a strangely lilting voice. “Not finishe
d. You’ll have to do it.” She dropped her hand and lifted her face to mine, smiled. “Rhyzkahl cries for you, but don’t worry, I didn’t say hello.”
The fuck? “Um. Yeah, that’s good,” I said, totally weirded out. This particular valve was one Zack had created off the arcane trunk that originated in Rhyzkahl’s realm—which I knew only because Zack told me so. Maybe standing on the valve had allowed Jill to pick up impressions of that information? But that still didn’t explain why or how she was out here in the first place. “Jill, what did you do?”
