I grabbed them by the imaginary handful, pulling one swath of thread after another toward me, braiding them together as I pulled.

Step two: Use the magic.

Slowly, gently, I moved the magic toward the box, let the tendrils slink inside like water, gently searching, gently questing for the pins that would pop the remaining locks back into place. I imagined it was like playing the piano with one hand—each finger had to press a certain key at a certain time, then another key a moment later. Or, perhaps, two or three keys at once. It was the order, the tune, that mattered.

Heat washed against my back as the Veil moved again. Sweat dripped into my eyes, had dampened my shirt as the sun bore down. I’d never been so hot, not even in the bayou, with Phaedra Dupre’s accidental magic running through me. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be cool again. But if that army came through because I hadn’t locked the Veil, it wouldn’t matter.

“Lock,” I said, and felt springs engage, pins move. I pulled them toward me, all five fingers pushing keys with more speed, with more finesse, as the song rose to its ultimate crescendo. The tumblers clicked, and there were soft whispers of metal against stone as the gears popped into place.

One more tumbler, then two, then three.

And then the Veil was locked again.

The tension in my shoulders eased. And since I didn’t need the magic back, and didn’t want it spilling and releasing the locks again, I ordered it to stay. The box seemed to sigh as magic settled in.

But I didn’t have long to relax.

Now locked and reencrypted, the Veil snapped back along its meridian. But all that kinetic magic had to go somewhere. The earth began to shake, to rumble, and then it began to split. The pavers between the wings began to draw apart as a fissure split the earth down the middle, drawing a gap between the wings.

“Claire!”

I heard Liam’s voice behind me, watched in horror as the earth began to disappear beneath my feet. I turned onto my belly, grabbed at grass and pavers as I scrambled away from the edge, as my feet kicked at air. I finally got purchase, scurried to my feet just in time to watch the fracture reach the box, which began to tumble into the maw in the earth that all that excess magic had wrought.

“No!” I screamed out. I was nearly empty of magic, but I used what tendrils I could find to grab the box, pull it one sweating inch at a time back into the air. It flew ten feet above my head, set down with a thud ten feet away.

The locks still perfectly in place.

“Jesus! Claire! Claire!” Liam fell to his knees beside me, rolled me gently onto my back. And then his hands—so gentle compared to the panic in his voice—were on my head, my shoulders, my abdomen, checking me for injuries.

His hands settled on my face, cool against hot and flushed skin. “Claire. Come back to me, Claire. Come back to me, baby.”

I opened my eyes, stared into seas of roiling blue water. “I’m all right.”

His lips were parted, his breath rushed, and his eyes tortured. The moment stretched, filled to encompass us both, staring at each other from a magical battleground.

“The Veil? Did it reopen?”

He smiled. “It’s closed. You locked the Veil. And you split the earth. You were amazing.”

I nodded. I lifted my gaze to the impossibly blue sky, watched a pelican drift across it, completely oblivious to what had happened here on earth.

Fixing that damn owl was going to be a cakewalk after this.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Malachi escorted Darby into Bogue Chitto to keep her away from the Containment troops who’d nearly reached us.

We ran back to the van, drove a few hundred yards away, close enough to watch Containment troops arrive on the scene. They’d dragged out the few remaining ComTac operatives—and Rutledge’s body. Malachi had taken Nix as well, and there’d been a look of grim determination on his face when he’d carried her away. I didn’t ask what he’d do with her; I didn’t think I wanted to know.