Page 84 of Crossroads Magic
That angle let me see around the corner of the Dumpster, and spot the source of the light.
It came from one of the backyards of the empty houses behind the inn, which were separated from the inn by waist-high rusty ring-lock fencing. I saw four figures surrounding the glow, and was familiar enough with them to be able to identify them purely by their outlines. Trevalyan, Broch, Juda and Benedict stood at four evenly spread points around the source of the glow, watching it. I thought they watched it in silence, but I was too far away to know for certain. Yet their shapes were not moving the way they would if they were speaking. They simply watched.
The source of the blue glow was so bright, I couldn’t look at it directly, not even from here.
But I knew, anyway. It was the summoning token.
Trevalyan was dealing with it as only he and Haigton Crossing could.
As I watched, the bright blue light began to fade, to draw back into the source. Then, abruptly, it was gone, as if someone had snuffed out a candle. My eyes were still dazzled by the light, so I could not see the four men, now it had gone.
Shivering, purely from the chill in the room, I shoved another couple of pieces of wood into the stove and dogged it closed, then went back to my sofa and buried under the still-warm blankets. I picked up my phone and checked the time.
Three-twenty-three in the morning.
Had the power Trevalyan had wielded to destroy the token woken me?
There was no other explanation.
You are just coming into your powers.
I shivered again, and not from the cold.
Chapter Twenty-Six
All four men who had stood around that supernatural blue light were around the breakfast table the next morning. Three of them ate enormous meals, and drank multiple cups of coffee, while Broch poured black coffee into a ceramic mug and sat with his hands around it.
“Very cold morning,” he told me. “Cold enough even I can feel it.” His eyes sparkled with mischief.
“I see you’ve all worked up an appetite,” I said. As Ghaliya was not at the table—she was still sleeping heavily, and I had left her to sleep herself out—I was safe in adding; “You keep strange hours, all of you. Three a.m. is when everyone but Broch should be fast asleep.”
Olivia and Wim looked puzzled. Harper was not at the table, which I felt probably enhanced the comfortable mood that gripped the room.
Frida just smiled and sipped her tea, while Hirom looked around the table with his eyes narrowed, assessing and figuring out for himself what I was referring to.
Juda wiped his mouth with a napkin. I had found cloth napkins in one of the kitchen cupboards. “Three in the morning is the hour when spirits are strongest,” he said in his didactic tone.
“Oh? I thought that was midnight.”
“Midnight is for fairy tales,” Juda replied. “The Spirit Hour is more effective if you want—”
“More bang for your buck,” Trevalyan finished, overriding Juda. “Even if the cold does shrink everything to a fifth its size. I’m just glad I had three backups to hand. Even the Spirit Hour might not have been enough, otherwise.”
I laughed and finished my pancakes. Even Juda’s lecturing had not jolted the pleasant, contented air in the room. Trevalyan had been successful, then. They were all far too cheerful for him to have failed to neutralize the token.
I wondered how Harper felt about her token being destroyed. Had Benedict told her yet? Perhaps that was why she was not here.
Broch shifted his hands on the coffee cup, searching for more warmth. The work must have been chilling indeed, for he had said he did not normally feel the cold. He and Hirom had rolled barrels to Hirom’s forest clearing, and more barrels back to the town, the night my mother…..
I paused with my coffee cup half-way to my mouth.
Cold. It wascoldin Haigton Crossing at this time of year.
I put my cup down, splashing the back of my hand. I wiped it away absently. “Benedict, can I speak to you in private for a moment?”
He looked up at me. His frown cleared. “Of course.” He put down his knife and fork and his napkin and got to his feet.
I hurried through the wide archway into the hall, and waited for him to catch up to me by the front door, which was closed against the chill of the morning. With a jolt, I realized we would be standing where he and Harper had been standing the night I had witnessed their argument.
