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“How odd,” Forest Moss said.

“What is that?” Tinker noted that Tommy, being smart, had vanished while they had been distracted.

Forest Moss gave her an odd look. “It’s a ley scry. It lets me see recent and active disturbances in the ley lines. I don’t know what that spell was supposed to do, but it just violently altered, and it’s now acting as a pump on a fiutana.”

“Oh shit. The black willow.”

* * *

The great doors of the refrigerated warehouse stood open to the summer heat. Magic flowed down over the loading down in a purple haze of potential. Tinker cautiously pulled the Rolls around, trying to angle the car so they could see into the cave darkness, but the dock was too high, and the door, facing the afternoon eastern sky, was cave dark. Tinker flicked on the headlights, but even the high beams failed to illuminate the interior.

“I want a closer look.” Tinker put the Rolls into park. She wished she could leave the engine running, but it would be a mistake with this much free magic in the area.

She got out and the sekasha followed. Magic flooded over her, hot and fast. The heat tossed the chimes on the ley shrine, making them jangle in shrill alarm. A smell like burnt cinnamon mixed with a taste like heated honey. The invisible brilliance hinted by the shimmering purple made her eyes water.

“Be careful.” She blinked away tears. “The magic is all around us.”

“Even we can see that.” Stormsong’s shields outlined her in hard, blue radiance. “Your shields, domi.”

Yeah, now would be a good time for that.

Tinker set up a resonance with the spell stones and then triggered her shield spell. Once the winds were wrapped around her, she waded up the steps, making sure that she didn’t disturb the spell by gesturing.

The padlock had been cut off with a bolt cutter. Her spell hadn’t failed; someone had broken in and sabotaged it.

Violet sparkled and shifted in the black of the warehouse, casting patterns of shadows and near light. Tinker couldn’t see anything that looked like the black willow. Stormsong tried the lights, but the switch had no effect.

“The flood would have popped the light bulbs.” There was no way Tinker was going in there blind. “Do we have a light?”

“Yes.” Pony took out a spell light, closed his left hand tight around the glass orb, and activated it. He played a thin beam of searchlight intensity over the room.

They had left the black willow tied down on pallets. The restraints lay in tatters. Splitters of wood marked the pallet’s destruction. The fork lift sat upended like a child’s toy. Dead leaves rode convection currents, dancing across the cement floor with a thin, dry skittering noise.

“Where is it?” Tinker whispered.

“I don’t see it.” Pony swept the room again.

“Neither do I.” Tinker glanced back to the street. Where was Forest Moss? That ground radar thing would come in handy just about now. “Let’s turn off the compressor and at least stop this flood.”

They moved through the warehouse to the back room. The small windowless room was empty of trees, with only the purring compressor to wreak havoc. A crowbar lay across the metal tracings of her spell, encircled with charring. Odd distortions wavered around the compressor.

Cursing, she started for the breaker box.

Domi, no!” Stormsong caught her shoulder and stilled her. “Stay here at the door. Let Cloudwalker do it.”

“The willow isn’t in here.” Tinker nevertheless stayed at the door as Stormsong asked while Cloudwalker crossed to the breaker box and cut the power to the compressor. “See, no dan—”

Her only warning was the ominous rustle of leaves, and then the forklift struck her shield from behind. She yelped, spinning around to see the forklift rebound back across the warehouse.

“Shields!” Stormsong shouted.

Tinker had let her shields drop in her surprise. She fumbled through the resonance set up as Pony’s narrow light played off the suddenly close wizen “face” of the black willow. They had to have walked straight past, somehow blind to it. It filled the warehouse now, blocking them from the door. It lifted a foot root and replanted it in booming sound that shook the floor. Its branches rattled as it blindly felt the confines of the room. A dozen of the arms encountered the upended forklift, scooped it up again and flung it at her.

Tinker snapped through the shield spell, already wincing, as the forklift sailed toward her. At the last second the winds wrapped tight around her and the forklift struck the distortion’s edge.

“Shit!” Tinker swore as the forklift bounced back across the warehouse to wedge itself sidewise into the far door. “There’s no other door, right?”

“No, domi,” Pony said.

Tinker wasn’t sure to be amazed or annoyed that Pony sounded so calm, as if she could pull doorways out her butt. “Oh damn, oh damn, oh damn. Okay, I know I’m smarter than this tree.”

The black willow lifted another root foot and shook the world as it planted it back down, a few yards closer to them, instantly pulverizing the cement floor, digging roots down into the building’s footing.

“But I have some doubts,” Tinker admitted, “that brains are going to win over brawn this time.”

What did she have to work with? She scanned the room of bare concrete block as the willow stomped ponderously closer. Crow bar. Boom! Compressor. Five sekasha. Five ejae. Boom! Circuit breaker box.

“Stormsong, what do you know about electricity?” Tinker asked the most tech savvy of her Hand.

“Nothing useful,” Stormsong said.

Boom!

“Nothing?” Tinker squeaked.

“It lives in a box in the wall.” Stormsong detailed out what she knew. “It goes away if you don’t pay for it.”

Boom!

Right — nothing useful. Scratch having Stormsong rig an electrical weapon. Just as well, good chance they’d just electrocute themselves.

The black willow stretched out its hundreds of whipping branches to scrabble at her shield. Tinker forced herself to scan the room again, and ignore the massive creature trying to reach her.

“The roof! It’s only plywood and rubber. See if you can cut through.”

The tree found the gap between the top of the tall doorway and her shield. The thin branches pushed through the space, caught hold of the doorjamb and started to pull.

“Oh, shit!” Tinker cried. “If it makes the door larger, I’m not going to be able to hold it! It’s coming in!”

There was a pulse of magic from Forest Moss, instantly defining the Stone Clan elf with Wyverns out by the Rolls, and themselves, pinned inside by the black willow.

“Forest Moss!” Tinker shouted. “Get it off us!”

The concrete walls buckled under the strain, tearing free to leave sawtooth openings, exposing twisted and snapped rebar. The branches flung the debris against the back wall of the warehouse like mad shovels.

“Forest Moss, get it—”

And suddenly the branches wrapped around her, cocooning her shield in living wicker, and lifted her off the ground.

Domi!” Pony shouted.

The black willow heaved her up. Its branches creaked as it tried to crush her shields down.

Oh please hold! Oh please hold!

A dark orifice opened in the crook where its main limbs branched from massive trunk. As the tree tried to stuff her into the fleshy maw, she realized what the opening was.

They have mouths! I wonder if Lain knows that. Oh shit, it’s trying to eat me!