Page 30 of All Out of Flux
Then the Quartz Spider did the very last thing I expected. He helped me.
He traced his fingers in the air, drawing out a glyph in the shape of a glowing hourglass. He spread his hand out, capturing the glyph like it was a soap bubble, then slammed his open palm into my forehead.
Time passed. A blink, a moment, a heartbeat. My lashes fluttered as the wave of magic seized my body, the warmth accumulating, then crystallizing in my skull. I reached for my head, my jaw slack.
Time froze, but only in that little sliver of my skull — with Tiamat locked inside it.
“I can’t hear her anymore,” I muttered, grateful for the silence. “I don’t know what you did, but she’s gone.”
Unmoved, unsmiling, Brendan raised his hand again.
“Don’t say I never did you any favors.”
The Quartz Spider pressed the tip of one glowing finger against the center of my chest. From its gleaming floor to its lofty ceiling, the crystalline chamber exploded. Everything turned white. I screamed, but all I could hear was the sound of the world shattering.
14
MAX
Iopened my eyes to soft, radiant gold. Low light, a warm bed, cool sheets. I stretched out my arms and legs, savoring the release in my muscles. So comfy. So restful. My bed. Our bed. The one that I shared with Leon.
Leon. Where the hell was Leon?
Panic ripped through my chest like a bolt of lightning. I sat up, throwing the covers off, my brain hastily reconstructing the events of the night. Was it still the night? The same night, even? My feet hit the floor before I realized: how the hell did I get into bed in the first place?
“It’s really cute that you’re stumbling all over yourself worried about me.” Leon’s voice spoke drowsily from the couch in the bedroom that we mostly used as a clothing rack. “Wait. Youareworried aboutme, aren’t you?”
My hands flew to my face, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. I’d never been so disoriented in my damn life. Clarity returned, at least to my eyesight, and there among the draped T-shirts and hoodies on the couch was the young man responsible for dumping them there in the first place.
I couldn’t control myself. My feet went on autopilot, directing me toward the couch. I swept him up in my arms, kissed him on the mouth.
“Whoa,” Leon said, laughing, lifting his arm above our heads. “Watch the coffee. Okay, okay, big guy. I’m happy to see you, too.”
“Thank God you’re okay,” I breathed, kissing him again, catching the rich yet faint taste of coffee on his lips. Milky and sweet, just the way he liked it. “Wait. Where have you been? How long have you been here? How long have I been out?”
He peeled himself out of my arms and sat back down on the couch. “Chill out and I’ll let you know. No, seriously, sit down, don’t want you getting a heart attack. I’m not sure how long you’ve been asleep, but Brendan could have sent you back the way he did Guillotina.”
“By rewinding time. Is that why it feels like I haven’t slept at all?” I pinched a bit of my shirt, sniffed, and winced. “Is that why I smell like I took a nap in a gym bag?”
Leon wrinkled his nose and smiled. “You’re not that bad, Max. I like it when you get a little dirty. It’s kind of manly.”
I frowned, unsure of how to take the compliment. Then I sat up again, jolted by another flash of realization. “Tina. I gotta call Tina. See if she’s safe.”
She was, as it turned out, only stuck in the same bleary, bizarre state as Leon and me. I thought I heard her retching before she hung up. I felt queasy and completely out of sorts myself.
Time had ceased to matter, for one thing. My phone said it was only half past ten. How? We encountered Gustavo and the Mendez sisters after midnight. Did Brendan only send us back a few hours? Did he send us back an entire day? I pushed my face into my hands and groaned.
“Fresh pot of coffee waiting for you if you want it,” Leon said. He let out a sarcastic chuckle. “You’ll probably need it, honestly. My brain and my body are in two different time zones.”
Good idea about the coffee, at least. I poured some for myself, wincing at the bitterness as it went down my throat. “When this all started I never would have guessed this Quartz Spider guy would be so powerful. Is that where he took you? Another time zone?”
“Not just. Another reality, too. Talk about jet lag. I was in this weird crystal thing, like his own private pocket dimension. Remember Arachne’s space, the one she lends to her spiders? Like that, except we were inside a giant gemstone.”
“Frozen in time. A giant quartz crystal. You have to admit, the bastard has style. At least he’s consistent.”
He raised his hand in a fist, then spread his fingers out in all directions. “And then it exploded, and here I am. He wanted to talk to me, he said. He tried to gain my sympathy. Max, he killed his own brother, but not on purpose. Time magic, man. Shit’s fucked.”
Leon filled me in on the rest of it — this untimely abduction, the motive, the sob story. I was starting to see Leon’s side of it, but Brendan was still a problem for the arcane underground, for Dos Lunas. So maybe he wasn’t the evil genius we painted him to be. The man was still incredibly dangerous.
