“I’ve bypassed the wards and any alarms that might still be active on this door.” Glad she caught that. I suck at wards, and unless they’re big enough to trip over I hardly ever see them. My own attempts at wards and traps are shoddy, amateur-hour work at best.

Magic has a way of making you think you’re invulnerable. That nothing can touch you. I have several years’ worth of scar tissue and badly mended bones that say the opposite. I’ve tended not to just jump through doors if I don’t need to. As mages go, I’m more cautious than most, and that’s saying something, considering the stupid shit I’ve done.

Gabriela doesn’t seem to have that restraint. I’m not sure if she has a plan beyond “break in and start shooting,” but whatever it is we’re doing, it’s not mine anymore. It’s Gabriela’s. I wanted information. She wants validation. Who knows what the hell that’s about? She might not even know.

She has responsibilities, people depending on her, territories to defend. She needs to show strength. Her standing’s already hurting, and taking down somebody like Sastre would send a message that the Bruja’s still somebody you don’t fuck with. But it feels like there’s more to it than that.

Gabriela angles herself off to one side of the door, the Benelli ready to fire if anything so much as sneezes. I position myself to the other side and pull it open on her mark.

The creaking of the hinges might as well be a scream in the nighttime quiet, but we don’t stop moving. We go in low, watching and listening. The door slowly closes behind us with a rusty creak. What little light was coming in from the streetlights outside disappears.

This part of the factory is a confusing chain of conveyor belts, cobwebbed machinery, smelters gone cold. I can’t see very far into the gloom. There are a few Echoes around, but no Haunts, and the nearest Wanderers are the dead hobos down in the riverbed, people who’d set up camp and drowned when the L.A. River turned from a trickle to a torrent.

Now that we’re inside, we need a better idea of the layout of the place and where Sastre might be holed up with her bundles of sticks.

I pull the compact from my pocket and click it open. I hold it close, covering the glass with a cupped hand. When it works it gives off a dim glow that in here would be like setting off a flare gun. I concentrate on the lighter.

Nothing happens.