by Martha Carr
Her older sister just blinked at her. “Any coffee left?”
“Should be.”
Laura shuffled toward the coffee pot on the counter, and Emily brought all three plates and forks to the kitchen table. “Why were you up so late?” she asked before slipping into a chair.
“Coffee first.”
They waited for Laura to complete her slower-than-usual process of pouring coffee, grabbing cream and sugar, and loading it into her cup. They’d learned getting between their oldest sister and her morning brew when she said ‘coffee first’ meant a bad day for all three of them. Laura took a long, slow sip, closed her eyes, and sighed; then, she took a seat in front of her plate of quiche.
“So?” Emily popped a forkful into her mouth and let out a moan of approval. “Go ahead and spill it.”
“I definitely didn’t get enough sleep last night.” Laura cut up her breakfast, lifted her fork to her mouth, and paused. “I went out, actually.”
“Huh,” Nickie said through a mouthful. “I didn’t hear you leave.”
“I didn’t hear you come back,” Emily added.
“Hey, I can be quiet.” Laura’s sisters both snorted. “When I have to be.”
“Sure, but you’re never thinking about having to be quiet.” Nickie twirled her fork beside her temple. “Whatever else you’re thinking about at any given moment doesn’t leave room for being quiet.”
Laura rolled her eyes and kept eating.
And now she’s too quiet. “Okay.” Emily dropped her fork onto the plate with a clatter, and both her sisters glanced up at her in surprise. “You haven’t said anything about the quiche, Laura.”
“Oh. Oh, yeah. It’s really good, Em. Thanks.” Laura shoveled another bite into her mouth.
“I wasn’t fishing for compliments.” Emily stared at her sister and cocked her head. “But thanks. So how ‘bout you tell us what you’re thinking about so hard right now that you didn’t say anything about my awesome quiche?”
Laura paused, took another bite, and washed it down with coffee.
“Hey, good call, Em.” Nickie nodded slowly and studied her big sister. “We caught you, Laura. Now’s the time to fess up.”
“I was thinking about the best way to tell you guys what I did last night.” Laura frowned into her coffee. “And then I was gonna tell you. As soon as I figured it out.”
“There’s nothing to figure out.” Emily picked her fork up and continued eating. “Just say it.”
“Oh, my god. Did you go out with someone?” Nickie grinned.
“Ha!” Emily pointed her fork at the oldest Hadstrom sister. “You went on a date!”
“What? I did not go on a—no. Just no.” Laura shook her head.
“Then what is it? That’s a slice of the best quiche I’ve ever made, and you’re not even tasting it!”
“Okay, cut it out about the quiche, Emily.” Laura sat back in her chair and gazed with exhausted eyes at her sisters. “Fine. I’ll just put it out there.”
“Please do.”
“Em…” Nickie shook her head.
“Remember that map Dad drew for us after we told him about…well, our little Gorafrex problem?”
“The map to where the Engineer lives, yeah.” Nickie folded her arms.
“Yeah, well, I can tell you guys right now Dad sucks at drawing maps.” Laura blinked in surprise, like she hadn’t meant to say that at all.
Emily gasped. “You didn’t…” Her sister wouldn’t meet her gaze, and she slapped her hands down on the table. “You did. Come on, Laura.”
“Wait, you went to look for the Engineer without us?” Nickie frowned, and Laura dipped her head, staring at her half-eaten slice of quiche.
“I thought we kinda made it clear when we made a plan that this wasn’t a solo Laura adventure.” Emily scoffed. “I switched my shifts so we’d all have the same night off. I don’t switch my shifts, Laura. Not at—”
“Not at Meadowlark Tavern. I know.” Laura nodded.
“So why’d you ditch us?” Nickie asked.
“I didn’t ditch you guys.”
“Yeah. You did.” Emily mimed a little toss. “Like a bad habit.”
“Okay, fine. I went by myself because I thought that was the best chance of getting the information we needed.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Oh, come on. You guys know you don’t always make the best first impression. Nickie just floats around, going with the flow. Totally distracted. I mean, you were dancing around barefoot when we went to find the Tree Folk.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Nickie blinked. “You know, I also played the music that brought them out to talk to us in the first place.”
“Yeah, but this was an Engineer. One of the original Velikan who designed and built this whole ship. That’s like a meeting with the President of UT or the CEO of Google.”
Emily scratched her head. “Not really.”
“See? That’s what I mean.” Laura pointed at her youngest sister. “You always have some last-minute jab to get in or…just really awful jokes.” She cocked her head and blinked at her coffee mug. “Actually, Rutilda probably would’ve really liked you…”
“Who’s Rutilda?”
Laura glanced up at Emily and shrugged. “The Engineer. Honestly, I think she’s startin’ to lose it. Makes sense, really. Being down there by herself for who knows how—”
“Woah, woah, woah, wait.” Emily lifted a hand to stop her sister’s rambling. “Back up. You found the Engineer?”
“Yeah.”
“And you talked to her?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying this whole time…” Laura frowned at them. “I didn’t say that, did I?”
Nickie raised her eyebrows. “Nope.”
“So now would be the right time to tell us what she told you.” Emily jammed another forkful of quiche into her mouth.
“Okay.” Laura sighed. “I showed her that symbol the Gorafrex left on the wall at that woman’s house. She knew exactly what it was…because she designed it.”
When Laura finished telling her sisters everything Rutilda had said, the kitchen fell quiet.
“So…” Emily frowned. “We thought we had to keep that thing from possessing any more humans and killing other witches or wizards. And now we’re switching gears to finding and bashing up the energy cores of an escape pod so the Gorafrex doesn’t destroy the planet, er, ship. Does that cover everything?”
“Pretty much. Yeah.” Laura raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “I mean, if we end up finding the Gorafrex first and putting it back in its prison, we should definitely do that.”
“But we haven’t even figured out how,” Nickie said. “Sure, we know Dad’s lullaby calls it like a giant homing beacon. And that I almost played myself into a coma trying to get it into Tina’s laundromat. But it didn’t work.”
“It almost worked.” Laura pointed at her.
“And then the Gorafrex found an unsuspecting witch in the parking lot and completely ignored us so it could kidnap her…and then murder her.” Nickie shook her head. “If I’m gonna play that song again to capture it, I need to figure out how to use Dad’s ring to keep me from being useless afterward.” She glanced at the black Hadstrom legacy ring on her thumb—the same ring their Dad had worn as a protector of the Gorafrex prison before that responsibility fell to his daughters. “I can’t just pass out and let you guys fight it by yourselves.”
“Yeah, and I’d really like to figure out how those weird yo-yo things are supposed to be weapons.” Emily cocked her head at Laura. “You sure you have no idea what they’re for? You did make them.”
Laura shook her head. “I’m pretty sure the ring made them. I just let it use my magic. I think.”
Biting her lip, Emily turned to Nickie. “Hear any more drums?”
“Not since the night that thing got away from us.”
“Well, at least we know the Gorafrex isn’t trying to l
ure in another witch or wizard with the creepy drumbeats.” Laura smoothed her dark hair—the same color all three sisters had inherited—away from her face. “For now. Until you hear the drums again, Nickie, we have time to find the energy cores.”
“The Engineer didn’t happen to tell you where to find them, did she?” Emily leaned back in her chair and raised her eyebrows.
“No…” Laura grinned. “But we have a map.”
“Huh?”
“The symbol on the wall, Em.”
“Oh. Right. We just gotta walk in a big giant circle around Austin and start bashing up energy cores?”
Laura closed her eyes and tried not to snap at her sister. “I’m pretty sure it’s a little more complicated than that. Rutilda said the prison in the Greenbelt is at the center of the smaller ship.”
“And where are the energy cores?” Nickie asked.
“My guess is the first one was somewhere around that woman’s house.”
“The house where a witch was murdered by the possessed human whose tiny magical peabrain woke up three days ago?”
“Yeah, Em. That house.”
Emily glanced from Laura to Nickie and pursed her lips. “Anybody hear anything about either of the humans the Gorafrex woke up to their own magic?”
“Nope.” Nickie shrugged. “But they have to figure out how to handle magic on their own now that they know they have it. They’ll be fine.”
“Yeah…” Emily sighed and dug into the quiche crust with her fork. “I can’t help feeling a little bad for them, though. It’s gotta be pretty hard waking up one day after being possessed by a bodiless witch-murderer and finding out you have all this magic with no idea how to use it or what it’s for or what you’re gonna do next.”
Nickie chuckled. “Do you feel sorry for us too?”
“What?”
Laura smirked. “You basically just described us, Em. I mean, without the being-possessed-by-a-Gorafrex part.”
“Oh.” Emily snorted. “Guess we’re all just trying to figure things out as we go along, huh?”
“Sometimes, that’s all we got.”
5
After helping her sisters clean up breakfast—and making sure to tell Emily one more time how good the quiche was, because it was delicious—Laura headed up the stairs of their magically enhanced house on Pressler Street and went to her room. She’d been walking up the same stairs and taking the same right turn on the second-floor landing for years, but three days wasn’t nearly enough time to break the last part of that long-time habit.
She stopped in front of her bedroom door and reached toward her back pocket for her wand, which wasn’t there. “Right. Not carrying it around anymore. Because you”—she glanced at the silver ring on her thumb—“seem to be doing all the work now, don’t you?” Raising her palm toward the door, she only had to think about checking the wards she’d put up around her room—which she’d also started doing since the Gorafrex killed a witch who never saw it coming. Her ring flashed silver. The wards shimmered to life with an orange glow in front of her. “No such thing as being too careful.” The wards rippled as she grasped the doorknob, opened the door, and stepped inside.
Sunlight spilled through the curtain over her window, lighting up her L-shaped desk in the far right corner and her bed just beside the door, which she’d made even before getting coffee. “Okay. Now the coffee’s kicking in.” Laura rubbed her hands together. “Let’s make a map.”
Years ago, before she’d reached her current status as the University of Texas’ youngest tenured archaeology professor, Laura figured out how to combine a few spells to take her own crash course in amateur cartography. “This might just be the most useful thing I’ve ever done with it.” She lifted her hand toward the middle of her room and muttered, “Ostende Austin.”
Glittering purple lines appeared in the air, scrolling longer and reaching out from the center until a detailed map of the city hovered in front of her. Laura smirked. “Maybe I should send in a patent for this. Like Google Maps for witches.” She stepped closer to the purple lines and studied the map. “Okay. The woman’s house was down here in McKinney Park East…” Her silver ring flashed, and a glowing yellow dot appeared on the street where the magical Tibetan singing bowl she’d bought from Carl Hopkins—which also doubled as a magical-frequency tracker—had led her and her sisters three days ago. “Only we just didn’t get there fast enough, did we? We will this time. No more dead witches or wizards.”
Studying the map, Laura pointed at the Barton Creek Greenbelt running through the center of Austin. “And that’s the center of the prison. So…” She drew a white circle around the map, starting from the woman’s house, up, and around, keeping the Greenbelt in the center. Then she intersected it with six lines and had her twelve equally spaced points plotted and done. “So these are our energy cores.” The silver ring glowed each time she tapped the places where the white lines met the white circle. Eleven yellow dots glowed in her spell, and she stepped back to take it all in.
“Great. So we’ve got another neighborhood. More neighborhoods…” She traced the circle with her eyes, west and north and around. “Okay, a few public parks. Not so bad—wait.” The impulse to spread her fingers along the map was almost too hard to ignore. “Well, hey. If the Engineers did their job with magic and technology, so can I.”
Stepping toward her bedside table, Laura snatched up her phone and pulled up a map of Austin on the internet. She zoomed in to where she’d placed a dot for an energy core right off I-35. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.” She double-checked her purple map in the air, then looked at her phone again. “There’s an energy core at the Thinkery? They just had to build a children’s museum on top of an escape pod energy core, didn’t they? Perfect. That’s literally the worst place to—” The location of the last dot on her map made her groan. “Okay, two of the worst places. A children’s museum and the airport.” Biting her lip, Laura took a deep breath and let herself settle into what she and her sisters would have to do next. “This is gonna be interesting.”
“Hey, you guys?” Laura turned right off the stairs in the foyer and stepped into the spacious living room. “I think I found the energy cores we should look for first…” She stopped when she found Nickie sprawled out on the couch, reading what looked like a horror novel from an author Laura had never heard of. Their immortal bulldog Speed stretched himself out across Nickie’s bare feet, snoring away even this early in the morning. Probably getting ready to clear the room any minute, too. The dog’s nauseating gas problem made her hold her breath for a second until she was certain the air was clear. “Where’s Emily?”
“Work.” Nickie lowered the book and looked up. “She said that right before you went upstairs.”
“Oh…right. I can just Sister Soup her again—”
“Laura, I really wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
Nickie raised her eyebrows. “She was kinda pissed the last time your face showed up in the actual soup she was making.”
“She told you about that?”
“Yeah.” Chuckling, Nickie set the book aside and pushed up to sit sideways against the couch’s back cushion. Speed didn’t stir on top of her feet. “I mean, we have cell phones for a reason.”
“But that was an emergency. Emily doesn’t answer her phone at work, so Sister Soup was the only way I could get hold of her.”
“Is this an emergency too?”
Laura opened her mouth, paused, and puffed out a breath. “Not right now. No…”
“So text her. She’ll see it on her break.”
“I honestly don’t think she takes breaks.”
Nickie smirked. “Yeah, probably not. She’ll see it when she’s off, though. I think she said she’s off at three.”
“I just don’t want her to make any plans.”
“On a Friday night, Laura? Good luck.”
“Really?” Laura folded her arms. “I think keeping the Gorafrex from killing someone e
lse to turn on another energy core is a little more important than Emily’s social life.”
“Hey, I’m totally with you there. But I don’t have the night off, either.” Laura’s confusion must have been too obvious, because Nickie cocked her head in disappointment. “Come on…I have a show tonight. Which I also told you about. That’s why we were gonna go look for the Engineer tomorrow night. All of us. Together.”
“Right. Tomorrow. Okay.” Laura licked her lips and glanced around the living room. “I just think we should get a head start on this. Maybe I should go to Thinkery by myself, since you guys are busy. Check the place out, see if there’s—”
“Woah. Slow down.” Nickie draped her arm over the back of the couch. “Going off by yourself to talk to that Engineer is one thing, but it’s a really bad idea to go looking for an energy core without us. We don’t know where the Gorafrex is, or which energy core it’s going for next, or even how to stop it—wait. Did you say the Thinkery?”
“Yeah.” Laura plopped down in an old, super comfy armchair across from the couch. “I plotted the map for all twelve energy cores. Most of them are neighborhoods or parks. One’s right in the Colorado River. And then there’s the children’s museum.”
“Jeeze…”
“And the airport.”
Nickie blinked. “You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“Oh, boy. Yeah. Text Emily. We should go tomorrow for sure. God, just the thought of that thing around a bunch of kids…”
“I know.” Laura swallowed, then pulled her phone out and started a text to their youngest sister. “Here’s hoping tomorrow’s not too late.”
“We’ll be fine.” Nickie lay down, propping her head up on the pillow against the armrest. “I haven’t heard the drums in a few days. Trust me, I’d be hearing that pounding in my head even if the Gorafrex was all the way out in Brenham.”
Laura snorted. “Well if the drums come back, you’ll tell me, right?”
“Of course. It’s not like I can hide a massive migraine like that, anyway.” Nickie picked up her book and opened it to the dog-eared page.
