True, she'd trusted Riki blindly, but she didn't know oni existed, and had awarded him the trust she gave all strangers. Her world had been a different place not so long ago.
"I know because -" she started in order to stall them. Because she'd known Tommy half her life. His family had owned a restaurant in Oakland since before Startup. He'd been a driving force organizing the hoverbike racing, and most summers she saw him on a weekly basis. He wasn't a stranger. She wouldn't immediately say he was "good" people. He had a temper and a reputation of being ruthless when it came to business; that didn't make him any more evil than her. She suspected the elves wouldn't accept those facts as a good argument for his humanity. Riki had proved her judgment was flawed.
What could she say as proof that these elves would accept? They were growing impatient for her answer.
"Because-" and then unexpectedly, Riki provided the answer. "Because when the tengu came looking for me, he didn't know where to find me."
That puzzled them, which was fine, as she needed to cram a lot into this argument to make it sound.
"Two years ago, Tommy bought a custom delta hoverbike off me. He needed to write a check, and there were the pink slips - forms to show transfer of ownership for tax reasons. I told him my human name, which was Alexander Graham Bell." Which of course triggered a round of teasing from Tommy, and occasionally afterwards, he'd call her 'Tinker Bell.' "I even told him why I was called that." In truth, she had been trying to stem the teasing with a sympathy play since Tommy's mother had also been murdered. "And that my father was the man who invented the orbital gate. I told him - he didn't tell the oni."
That seemed to buy it for the Wyverns. They released their hold on Tommy.
Magic suddenly flared across her senses, like a gasoline pool catching flame. Tinker spun around but there was nothing to see. Forest Moss made a motion, and she turned to watch him call on the Stone Clan Spell Stones and use the magic to trigger his shields. Around them, the Wyverns and her Hand went alert.
"What was that? Did you feel that?" She asked Forest Moss.
"It was a spell breaking." Forest Moss cocked the fingers of his left hand and brought them to his mouth. "Ssssstada."
The spell Forest Moss triggered was a variation of the ground radar. A long, narrow wedge of power formed from the male elf to the river's edge. He shifted his right hand, and the wedge swept northward through Chinatown. At the heart of the Chinatown, he hit an intense writhing of power.
"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.