Jairo closed the door on the back of the rental truck and threaded the padlock into place. Melarie stood next to the dock door, tapping into her phone.


‘Did you find her?’ he asked.


Melarie slipped the phone into her bag and brushed dust from her pant legs. ‘Our patron got what they needed. The girl didn’t have a shard, though.’


‘And the H’nsla failed.’ Jairo sighed. ‘Oskar’s wasn’t enough.’


‘It’s a strange coincidence.’


Jairo supposed it was. Coincidental that they should be commissioned, here, right into the path of a H’nsla storm, and there should happen to be someone with a soulshard. Perhaps that was too much. Melarie herself said her visions weren’t infallible. So she’d been wrong about the shard. He’d been wrong about this being the final H’nsla.


Jairo zipped up his hoodie against the chilly April breeze and leaned on the loading dock. He was so tired, and the night wasn’t over. ‘What will she remember? Gabby?’


‘That she attended a local film premiere. An event to dress up for.’ Melarie’s brow creased. ‘I had to mod her friend with serum too. And the mother. They went for ice cream, so at least something of the night was real for them. Heavens, I don’t like that magic, Jazz.’


Jairo didn’t understand the differences between the serum-based memory modification process and the memory weaving Melarie usually did, only that the modding was much more manipulative and changed perceptions on a deeper level.


He gave her a sympathetic smile, but he pressed on. ‘Won’t they wonder what happened when they see the ball in their calendars? Or find ticket receipts?’ He had to know there were no loose ends, nothing of this that would come back around later. It was the rule of the Veifa. Give the patrons just enough that they didn’t question the impossible show they’d seen. Ticket stubs in pockets. The experience of walking into the big top. Reality rearranged into things they could comprehend.

Melarie massaged her temples. ‘I’ll stay in the city for a few days and tidy it up. I know someone who can remove those records. Give the girls another explanation. And I’ll take care of the rest of their families.’


‘Bloody hell, Mel. Is it all necessary?’


‘Mm-hmm. We experience time in order, but it doesn’t occur in order. For something else to keep happening sometime else, we must unravel tonight. And it’s a tricky knot.’


‘Is this seed event connected?’


‘It’s all connected.’


‘I mean more directly. To the H’nsla.’


She regarded him with grave eyes, then nodded once. ‘I believe so.’


The H’nsla. The ritual, one after another, leading to the eventual reparation of the Arch. If he was right. If, after tonight, he still had the stomach for it. At least now they had the funds.


‘If we pull this off, if we …’ Jairo didn’t say it. Fix the Arch, yes, but it was more than that, and if he couldn’t say it, how in all the stars and spaces in between was he going to do it? ‘What if I’m wrong?’


Melarie didn’t answer at first, just inspected the cuff of her black sleeve. ‘Better a night of peaceful dark than a universe of bright lies.’


It made little sense, but half of what Melarie said didn’t make sense. Not until much later, at least. That was the trouble with her prescience. Vague notions about the fate of nothing less than the universe that could be interpreted as either the end of the world or the beginning. Who would hold it all together if he failed?


An aerialist ran up to the loading dock bearing a small basket full of black fabric scraps, which they handed to Melarie.


‘You got all the pieces?’ she asked, picking up the topmost ribbon, torn and shredded as if someone had teased apart the fibres with a dinner fork. Tiny bits of gravel clung to the frayed ends. She dropped it back in the basket.


Jairo shook his head with a wry smile.


The aerialist nodded and darted to the hired people mover, where they accepted a beer passed through the front window before leaping into the back. As the door slid shut, the car took off with a mild screech of tyres and a louder chorus of cheers and whoops.


‘Let’s do it,’ Jairo said, climbing the steps of the dock, one leaden foot after another.


Melarie nodded, her mouth a grim line. They slipped back inside the darkened hall, the last ones here, Jairo having jammed the lock before the venue manager left.

She set the basket in the middle of the stage where the scorch marks made a deep, blackened scar. Jairo stared at it, feeling like a mirror image, but one where he wasn’t sure if he was the reflection or the original.


Melarie’s nose wrinkled – the waft of burnt flesh still lingered, and their brief time outside had cleared their sinuses. No one except the Veifa would remember the smell. Jairo could block it out if he wanted, not breathe if he chose, arrest his olfactory senses on a whim. But he didn’t. Memories swirled around him, just out of reach, black shadows in the dark. A telescope upended on a hillside. A girl who’d died for him, her hands slick with blood.


‘Let’s not do fire again.’ Jairo took a box of matches from his pocket, struck one, and dropped it into the basket. Black fabric and flame combined into a hellish image that burned the backs of his eyelids even as he and Melarie slipped back through the dock door and climbed into the truck cab.


Melarie pulled out onto the road, the comforting rumble of the engine and familiar surrounds of the vehicle a barrier between them and the grey smoke issuing from the hall, billowing in the side mirror. It reeked of burning sugar.