Re: Gotham: Zatanna, Louis, Eddie
Magic had stretched to surface-tension thinness in those split moments where the god invaded the dead and subsumed all animation in its existence. It smelled like ozone, and cracked earth as Zatanna poured all that she had into the open connection and slammed it closed in the next second, a handful of salt tossed into the wind in hope that it would land.
And it did. The smell of charred flesh and fat stung sharply on the air, over the cool damp of stone walls, and exhaustion. The smoke, the mirrors, they had done their duty, and Zatanna did not sway on her feet, wrung clean of controlled magic, if not magic itself - but she wished to. She smiled and it was effort, but the same showman's grin at a trick well-managed, the smooth counterfeit of assumption and illusion performed to a finish, was summoned.
She bowed her head, and felt the ache, the singe of dangerously-close connection sizzled to a close. "You are welcome, Louis." And then the grin broke and there was something a little closer to home, and a little more like a woman who had doubted their own ability to pull it off. "You're alive. Maybe not unharmed. But it's better than a circle."
She looked at Edward, and then the destruction of the basement workroom, and shrugged one shoulder. Clean up could wait. "I can offer you distinctly better hospitality, now it's just you, and no plus-one." And she reached, for Edward's shoulder, the lean fingertips resting on the tip, and prevented herself from letting weight seep down on the connection. They were alive. They weren't damaged.