The smell of damp autumn rain, motor oil, and cold iron was the first thing Ada Morland noticed when her work boots touched the cracked concrete floor of her garage workshop on Millfield Lane. Outside, the steady drone of Harrowby evening traffic hummed along the ring road, with the dull thrum of the six-fifteen commuter diesel train rattling across the brick viaduct.
The brass Courtesy Arch had vanished behind her with a sound like a quiet breath—no crack of thunder, no smell of sulfur, and no dramatic purple sparks. On the workbench, beside her red tin toolbox, her electric tea kettle was sitting cold next to a half-eaten packet of stomach biscuits she had opened before her lunch break on Day Twenty-Two.
Ada stood motionless in the dim garage light for ten seconds. She listened to the total normality of Harrowby. Her left forearm, wrapped from wrist to elbow in Sister Merrow’s clean linen bandages, throbbed with a dull, manageable ache beneath her heavy flannel shirt. She reached down, picked up her twelve-inch steel pipe wrench from the bench. Then she set it into its fitted leather holster with a solid, familiar click.
Ada walked out through the open garage door into the small asphalt driveway where her white Ford Transit service van sat parked beneath the dripping sycamore tree. She unlocked the rear cargo doors with her key, the familiar double click of the latch echoing in the damp evening. Inside, the neatly organized steel shelving units held rows…
