12/26/21 Snippet, TINSEL RAIN.

We’re more or less done with Chapter 18 smoothing: there’s, like, five chapters left. But they have to be broken up and reformatted, so that will take a little time. Still, on track.

Inside was an uncluttered shop, with a counter along one wall, stairs in the back leading up to what I assumed was an apartment, and a couple of rows of free-standing counters. I flicked a look over the floor to make sure there wasn’t a corpse, then made a beeline to the counter.

Graciella was a couple of steps behind me. “Wait, what’s going on?” she asked as I peered over the counter… to see not the dead body I was expecting, but instead a magic sigil that was distinctly not protective-looking. The way it was burning the paper and hissing was, as they say, diagnostic.

“TAKE COVER!” I yelled as I dived on the sigil.

I should stress that this was not entirely suicidal on my part. I mean, sure, I’m writing this, right? The blast must have left me something to write with. But I had two good reasons to jump.

The first was that when I jumped on the sigil, I made damned sure my hat was covering it. A Shamus doesn’t just wear any hat; ours are pretty special, in every way we can manage it. Including the magical ones: lots of people like to take shots at our heads, so every little bit helps. My hat is the most armored part of my wardrobe, is what I’m saying.

But the other good reason was — and I didn’t know it at the time — it wasn’t the sigil under my hat that exploded. It was the sigil on the door. When it blew up, everything in the store that wasn’t hiding behind the counter got a full blast of wooden and glass splinters. They don’t mention that bit about explosions in the Lore, for some reason. At least, not in the sanitized parts of it.

One thought on “12/26/21 Snippet, TINSEL RAIN.”

  1. …and now I am suddenly worried for Graciella. Was this snippet intended to make me worry for Graciella? It feels… a bit off-tone if it was.

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