Free Shadow Walker by Allyson James

walked out into the sunshine without looking back. We watched as he mounted his bike and drove away in a cloud of dust.
    Cassandra watched him speculatively. “I can’t read his thoughts, Janet, but something’s up with him. It might be magical or it might be mundane, but something’s upset him.”
    “Shadows,” the mirror groaned. “I’m telling you.”
    “What does that mean, exactly?” I asked in annoyance.
    “Search me, honey. I’m just a mirror. I reflect impressions; I don’t interpret. Now, if you want to get into his pants and see why he has ants in them, I don’t mind watching.”
    “I can see that the fire didn’t damage you too much.”
    “That kind of fire can’t destroy me, sweetie. I’m hard to get rid of.”
    Tell me about it.
    “If you need a spell . . .” Cassandra began.
    “No,” I said quickly. A good truth spell might get something out of him, but Mick wouldn’t thank me for it. Which rankled a little. Mick was in the habit of minding my business whether I liked it or not. Everything I knew about him , I’d had to pull out a tiny piece at a time.
    “Have a sandwich.” I pushed my plate to Cassandra. “Or give it to Fremont. I need to go talk to a petroglyph expert.”
    I meant Jamison Kee, my oldest friend, who knew everything there was to know about ancient glyphs and the stories that went with them. But as I walked into the lobby, Maya came hurtling out of the door to the basement, followed closely by Fremont.
    Maya waved a bundle of wires in my face. “Janet, what the hell is this?”
    “Wires,” I said. “Why are you pulling wiring out of my walls?”
    Fremont was pale and breathing hard from running up the stairs. “This is bad, Janet.”
    I didn’t get a chance to ask why. Maya went off in Spanish, then said in English, “Some son of a bitch has been down there, ruining all my wiring. There’s some kind of nasty disintegration, and everything is worse than it was before you started renovating. Like I never fixed it at all.”

Seven
     
    looked at the destruction of nine months’ worth of work. The electricity still functioned upstairs, but Maya showed me stripped and corroded wires, strangely rigged splices, and entire junctions dead.
    “I didn’t do this,” Maya wailed. “Someone sabotaged me.” She started up in Spanish again, calling the unknown person a string of filthy names.
    Fremont was quieter but just as angry. He removed a panel to show me pipes coated with rust and green corrosion. He also pointed out mold rotting the studs and beams that held up the hotel.
    “We gotta replace everything,” Fremont said. “All the plumbing plus the infrastructure, or the whole building is going to come down.”
    Maya was right—this was new. Last May, I’d followed the former inspector all over the hotel while he’d gone through his meticulous checklist. Everything had been in pristine condition. There was no way we could have had such deterioration in nine months.
    “Did we have leaks? Faulty joints—something?”
    Fremont looked indignant. “Not with my plumbing. I used all new piping and the most effective sealant. Plus a little of this.” He wriggled his fingers.
    Fremont fancied himself a mage, and he did have a tiny bit of magic in him, but not enough to have done this much damage even if his spells had backfired.
    “And I’d never have done anything like that .” Maya pointed to a knot of wire that looked as though it could burst into flame any moment. “That’s plain shoddy workmanship.”
    “Are you two saying someone came down here and rewired and replumbed my hotel?” I asked. “Incompetently? While no one noticed?”
    Maya’s dark eyes smoldered. “We’re saying we didn’t do this. We’re saying we’re better than this, but if you don’t believe us . . .”
    I held up my hand. “No, no. I believe you.”
    This was Magellan, a town that had been built close to vortexes, which were swirling sinks of magic. Who knew what kind of