The maintenance bay behind the motel kitchen smelled of sulfur, damp concrete, and hot lead.
An overhead drop light hung from a cloth cord, casting a stark yellow cone over Tessa Rowan’s workbench. The bench was an eight-foot slab of maple, scarred by pipe vices and drill presses. Across its greasy surface lay the carcass of an alternator, jars of copper rivets, vulcanized rubber tape, and a brass-and-glass cylinder roughly the size of a two-quart thermos.
Mara stood by the cold coal stove, holding the equipment clipboard.
Beside her, on a wooden nail keg with her knees pressed together, sat the child. She had unbuttoned the top two buttons of her brown sweater, exposing the pale hollow of her collarbone.
Tessa knelt before her, holding needle-nosed pliers and a soldering iron heated over a camp burner. A thin blue curl of rosin smoke drifted toward the rafters.
“Keep your chin up,” Tessa said around solder clenched between her teeth. “Don’t swallow. If I drop tin down your shirt, you’ll smell like burnt wool for a week.”
The child tilted her head back, staring at the ceiling joists. Her throat was smooth, but beneath the skin, faint threads of pale blue luminescence pulsed—a sluggish, rhythmic glimmer like phosphorescent algae trapped in river ice.
