Shift

ELEVEN.2

The California sun was surprisingly strong that early in the morning. The sidewalk burned through Kayden's lime green flip-flops; she had been so sick of wearing Blaze's oversized leather shoes that she had bought the pair from a street vendor outside of their motel. Celery had taken the rental car to Le Lieu, so the four of them were stuck walking, navigating the streets of Los Angeles with just the outdated map they had snagged from the front desk.

After walking several miles, Kayden lowered her map. "This is the place," she said, but she hesitated as she looked upwards. They stood in front of a large warehouse where every window was either smashed in or sloppily boarded up with two-by-fours. The door was chained shut with a large deadbolt, the puke green paint peeling off the wood, and the entire building was speckled with graffiti.

"This can't be right." She rechecked the cross streets. "This place is abandoned."

"I know," Blaze said, but he was frowning at the building, his eyes squinting in the morning sun. He turned to Helio. "Do you see that?"

Helio looked as confused as Blaze. He let go of Lexi's hand and took a few steps towards the building. "Yeah I do. But I thought..."

"See what?" Kayden asked. She scoured the building, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

"You won't be able to see it," Blaze explained. "There's a glamour on the building. It's cloaked in magic."

Kayden stared hard at the crumbling bricks, unable to see what really lied beyond the rugged exterior. "Oh. That's cool," she admitted.

"That's not why we're staring at it." Helio rolled his eyes as if he was dealing with a toddler. "There's a magic warp. Don't you remember what the Congregation said yesterday? Glamours shouldn't be working." He lowered his voice. "Non-er."

"Well excuse me," Kayden snapped, folding the map roughly. "But you can keep your snippy comments to yourself."

Helio narrowed his eyes. "Don't you dare tell me—"

"Helio!" Lexi gasped.

"Calm down," Blaze said, climbing up the front steps. "This is a good sign. If they found a way to get magic working again, then they'll be able to help us."

Blaze pulled at the doorknob. The deadbolt instantly vanished and the door opened with the tinkling of bells.

They filed in one-by-one and Kayden's eyes widened as she stepped over the threshold. They had entered a large room, and it was by no means abandoned. Wooden beams crisscrossed the high ceiling, and the windows, which had looked broken and boarded up from outside, were tall and whole and let in beams of natural light.

But it was the hulking printing press in the center of the room that captured Kayden's attention. The wooden structure looked like it had been built in the 1800s, but it was functioning as smoothly as a well-oiled modern-day machine. Kayden immediately saw why.

There were several stacks of blank white paper on one side of the room. As the press clanked away, several sheets flew off the pile and fed themselves into the machine. The handle on the crank spun like a top, silver streaks blurring as the giant press imprinted each page with lines of black text. Once the papers made their way through the press, they gathered in the air as a piece of thread sewed them to a crisp white cover. Only then did the completed book fall to the ground in a neat pile.

All by magic.

"Holy Gutenberg," Kayden said, walking towards the stack of books. The book jacket read A Progressive Book of Magic in fluid green script. However, the uppercase letters appeared to be sprouting. She stared in amazement as little illustrated buds bloomed into flowers and then withdrew into small green dots.