Page 41 of The Heart of Moonlight Falls

No shades floated around the main part of the property, but that didn’t stop Sebastian from bracing himself as they entered the trees. He didn’t relax the whole walk through the woods.

James stepped into the clearing ahead of Sebastian and Eli. “Um, guys…”

Eli pushed past, looking worried by the tone of James’s voice. Sebastian stepped forward and paused, taking in the scene before them.

The hole was bigger, almost double what it had been last time. Sebastian swore something shimmery sat in the middle even though the hole was still dark as ink. It was hard to be sure, but the shadow at the center seemed to flicker.

There was nothing else in the clearing. The fuel cell was still by the path, but that was it. All of Eli’s mechanisms were gone.

“The hole isn’t big enough to swallow all my equipment.” Eli spun to face him and James. “The mechanisms were all right along the edge, and that ground is solid. They were warded.”

Sebastian had sympathy for Eli’s frustration. Shades may have broken Parker’s wards in town to smash the lights but everything out here had been left alone until now.

“Look.” James pointed across the clearing where one of the blue tarps that had been covering the crates had been discarded at the base of a tree.

Eli rushed forward, but James grabbed him. “Careful.”

They walked along the trees surrounding the clearing, a safe distance from the hole, until they reached the tarp.

Eli picked it up. “Why would the shades break through Parker’s wards now? Did they decide to steal my bag and ruin everything all at once?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry, Eli,” James said.

Sebastian spotted something glinting farther into the trees. He went to investigate and, upon reaching it, found a small piece of metal, then another a foot away.

He brought them back to the others and handed them to Eli. “Looks like pieces of a mechanism.”

“They snapped it. Look.” Eli’s cheeks were red and his face twisted in fury. “Those black tendrils must be back. They seemed like the only things that could break wards.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that humanoid shade could break them as well.” Sebastian grimaced at the thought. “Neither being back is good.”

Eli threw the tarp on the ground, looking as frustrated as he was angry. “I can’t have these kinds of setbacks. I need to be able to work to figure anything out.”

Sebastian couldn’t help wondering if it really was so much of a setback. They didn’t necessarily need to monitor the energy flow in the veins anymore. It wouldn’t tell them how to fix anything, but he didn’t want to say so in case Eli took offense. He was only trying his best to help.

“If shades are trying to stop us from examining the veins, we must be on to something,” Eli continued, his eyebrows pulled together like he was thinking hard.

“Or they’re being territorial.” Sebastian looked back toward the clearing. “That must be why they’ve always acted possessive around Storm House. They were guarding their gateway and must not have wanted me messing with it any more than they wanted you studying it, Eli.”

Eli made an indignant sound. “So are we just going to let them have it?”

“No, they can’t have the gateway.” James placed a steadying hand on Eli’s shoulder. “We need to access the intersection to hook up another fuel cell or whatever we end up doing to try and calm the imbalance. But maybe if the shades think we’ve stopped monitoring the veins, they’ll back off a bit.”

“Maybe,” Eli agreed reluctantly. “I guess we should clean all this up. I’m sure pieces of my mechanisms are all over the place.” He bent to pick up the tarp he’d tossed on the ground.

Sebastian and James helped, picking through the trees for the rest of the torn-apart equipment.

As he hunted around in the dirt, Sebastian’s mind wandered. He tried to imagine what taking a piece of the vein would have looked like. How on earth had Sullivan and Nelson managed it? The vein was underground. Had they dug down to it? Could you even dig into a vein?

With the strange hole currently occupying the clearing, it was hard to imagine what the veins were like when they were whole. He’d always thought of energy flowing through the earth as a non-physical substance, not something you could see with the naked eye, but maybe the veins looked like a void similar to the hole.

When Sebastian had connected to the vein in town he hadn’t had any sense of what it looked like, just that it was part of him and that he was in the earth.

The smell of decaying leaves and dirt suddenly overwhelmed Sebastian. His head pounded and he closed his eyes against the sun’s glare. The earthy smell intensified, making him disoriented. Was he just hyperaware of the forest around him, or was this strange sensation something else?

James appeared at his side. “You okay?”

“Headache,” Sebastian replied, voice strained, blinking against the light. “I was thinking about the veins and connecting to them, and it’s like my memories triggered the pain…or triggered something.”

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