Malcolm had made breakfast: chocolate chip pancakes and sausages, both of which I drenched in maple syrup. “I will never understand some of your eating choices,” he said, watching me fork up a dripping bite of sausage.
“This is delicious. It’s salty and meaty and sweet all at the same time.”
He shook his head in mock despair and ate his own sausage, totally free of syrup. “I can drive you to work today, if you want,” he said. “I have to give the final approval to the new alarm system.”
“That would be nice.” I took another gooey, delicious bite. “Did I tell you Viv is working for Mr. Wallach now?”
“No, you didn’t. That sounds…actually, it sounds like a recipe for disaster. They have the kind of personalities that would reinforce each other’s most adventurous qualities.”
“I’m sure it will be fine. Viv’s not stupid, and Mr. Wallach only looks like he’s reckless.”
Malcolm nodded. “And for all we know, this partnership will result in amazing discoveries.”
I scraped up the last of my syrup and sucked it off my fork. “That’s a very positive attitude. I’m collecting those today. It’s way too easy to fall into despair, what with everything that’s happened, so I’m choosing to look on the bright side.”
Malcolm stood and held out his hand for my empty plate. “I’m glad to hear it.”
Judy was in the office opening the mail when we came in. “I want to know what the front door really looks like,” she told me.
“Um…didn’t you look at it already?”
“Yes, but the letter with the instructions says they put an illusion on it to make it look normal. You can see through illusions, and I’m curious as to what was so extreme they had to cover it up.”
Malcolm had already left the office, heading toward the store front. Curious myself, I followed him. The store felt bright and new today, as if the oracle had needed a break, too. Even the deeply shadowed aisles between the bookcases seemed less dark, and the air had the fresh linen scent of line-dried laundry. My resolve to be optimistic increased.
I came through the last bookcases and stopped, stunned. Malcolm stood next to the door, feeling along its surface with his face nearly pressed against it. “What do you see?” he asked.
Where the old wooden door with a glass center had been stood a magnificent piece of what looked like leaded crystal, beveled and faceted to collect sunlight and turn it into fractured rainbows. It was impossible to see clearly through it; the world beyond appeared as colored angular lines, with the moving ones from cars and people passing looking like ripples in a pond. It looked more like a magic mirror than a door. If it had come to life and told me I was the fairest of them all, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
“It’s amazing,” I said. I walked forward in a daze, blinking away the brightness. “It looks like solid crystal.”
“That’s how it feels, too,” Malcolm said, stepping away from the door. “And sounds, if you knock on it. I’ll get someone over here to adjust the illusion. It ought to cover all five senses, but although it smells like wood, it feels slick like crystal.”
He put his hands on his hips and surveyed it. “The rest of the magic is active. It will now kill an invader outright if it touches the door, and it still operates as before to prevent an invader in a human body from entering. But it’s also proof against anything short of a nuclear warhead impact, and the magic that reinforces its physical resistance extends to the entire building. It occurred to me that there was nothing stopping someone from blowing a hole in the wall from either side, or the roof, so we took care of that possibility.”
“So how is this different from regular wards?”
Malcolm leaned against the counter, graceful as a cat. “Stone wards are a function of magic reinforcing stone’s natural tendencies to protect and guard. A stone ward…I suppose you could say it anchors itself within the stone, and the more magic a stone magus pours into it, the stronger it gets, until it creates an impenetrable ward.”
“Which would do us no good, because we have to keep Abernathy’s open.”
“Right. This magic is more like a web, but an irregular one. Lines of magic extend from the focus—the door, in this case—and interweave in a random pattern until they’re threaded through every inch of the walls and roof. The randomness increases its effectiveness because it’s a highly redundant system. If one line breaks, there are fifty others doing the same job. But that’s metaphorical, because the lines can’t break.”
I touched the crystal of the door, then jerked my hand away, afraid of smearing the perfect surface. My fingers hadn’t left a mark. “That sounds better than a stone ward. Why don’t we use these instead, all the time?”
Malcolm shook his head. “It requires too much magic to operate. With a stone ward, it requires a lot of magic to set, but the magic just sits there within the ward, powering it passively. This system needs magic poured into it constantly, and that’s expensive so far as sanguinis sapiens goes. But don’t worry,” he added, forestalling me as I opened my mouth to protest, “it’s only an impractical solution, not an impossible one. We have plenty of sanguinis sapiens to maintain it indefinitely.”
“That’s good, I guess.” I crossed the room to hug him. “I already miss you. I’ve loved the last few days of having nothing to do but spend time together. I’m sure we’d eventually get tired of each other, but not for a long while.”
“I agree,” Malcolm said.
We walked back through the store and kissed goodbye at the back door. When I returned to the office, Judy had a stack of bills at her elbow and was frowning at the computer screen. “Anything wrong?” I asked.
“Just the usual finances details. And Mike wants me to move in with him.”
I sat on the corner of the desk and picked up the fat stack of augury requests. “Wow. I thought you said he wasn’t interested.”
“He’s not. He’s worried about me living here when there’s a chance invaders might destroy it.” Judy sighed and pushed back from the desk. “I don’t know. He may have a point. I’m just not sure we should move in together for that reason. I could tell he was…oh, he wasn’t begrudging or anything, but he was clearly more interested in my safety than in building a life together.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“I’m probably saying it all wrong. I guess I mean if he could find another way to keep me safe, he’d be as hot on that as he is right now about me moving in. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah. But the store is totally safe now. You should see it—the door is a giant crystal. On a bright day, I’m going to need sunglasses.”
“I’ll tell him that. Actually, I’ll tell him to ask Malcolm about the details of the protections.” Judy sighed. “Sometimes I think about our future—me and Mike, I mean—and I just don’t know what I want.”
“But you love him, right?”
“Love isn’t always enough. What if we’re too independent to really fit together? Long-term relationships need compromise to work.” Judy twined the keyboard cable around her fingers. “But then I think about how far we’ve come, and I wonder, haven’t we already learned to compromise? To overcome our differences? So…I don’t know.”