Middlegame (Alchemical Journeys, #1)

by Seanan McGuire

Time is the substance from which I am made. —Jorge Luis Borges

Most of California has its own weird scent profile, a combination of eucalyptus and oleander and desert heat masquerading as human paradise.

Her expression is grave, but there’s interest in her eyes; she has a mystery. She has something to learn. Few things are more dangerous than a scientist with something to learn.

What Dodger is doing isn’t math in the truest sense of the word, and at the same time, it’s a deeper, truer arithmetic than she’s done in years. It is the instinctive math of children weighing parental disapproval against the rapidly setting sun, and the heartbroken math of sailors measuring the holes in their boat against the distance to the shore.