by Kim Harrison
Nina leaned toward me, making me shiver when she whispered, “Probably for the same reason I am. We don’t trust you, Ms. Morgan.”
Swell. Just peachy damn keen. But I got in the elevator with all of them, and an uncomfortable silence grew as we descended. I said nothing, stewing over what David had said yesterday about them not trusting me. Maybe I was why Glenn was being closed with Ivy. Great. Now I was screwing up her relationships as well as mine.
“Rache, did I ever tell you the one about the pixy and the druggist?”
“Here are your radios,” Glenn interrupted, and I turned from the blank silver doors in relief. “Please wear them,” he said as he handed me one, then Ivy another. “I don’t want a repeat of what happened with Mia. I never heard the end of it, you running off like that and leaving your nylons to show us where you’d gone.”
“Thanks,” I said dryly, fingering the tiny earpiece. There was a mic on the battery pack. This was very high tech, far more than usual. Someone had finally given Glenn some funds, by the look of it. I’d be able to hear everything, and it made me feel professional as I dropped the battery down my shirt. Nina had already put hers on, and was making faces as the plastic warmed up in her ear.
“You just slip it, sort of . . .” Glenn was saying, his hands moving in pantomime.
“I think I can figure it out. Thanks.” My head went down, and I turned my back on them as I wiggled the wire to a more comfortable spot and clipped the battery to my waistband. A quick toss of my hair, and the wire was hidden. Not that it needed to be, but if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.
“Test,” I said softly, and Glenn held up three fingers to me. “This is radio three. Test.”
From my ear came a soft, “Radio three, acknowledged. Please maintain silence.”
I smiled, feeling like a part of something big, and I stood straighter. Ivy was doing the same with her radio. Nina was looking at her radio as if wondering why the I.S. didn’t have anything this high tech, and I smiled a bit smugly, even if I’d never seen anything this elaborate, either.
“Turn it down, Rache!” Jenks complained. “It’s going right through my head.”
I fiddled with the control until he lost his pained expression, then looked at Glenn when he leaned close, his map rattling. “Rachel, I’ve put you on the outer ring at one of the surface shafts,” he said, pointing, and I sighed at the distant location. “If they get past us, you and Jenks will have to stop them if they come your way. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, but I felt as if I was being gotten rid of. I suppose it was better than being in the car, but just. At least Jenks would be with me. Or maybe they were getting rid of him, too.
“I’ll be with the main force,” Glenn said, his eyes on the map. “With any luck, we’ll get them before they know we’re here, but if not, they’ll likely head for the back door. That’s where I’ve got you,” he said, turning to Ivy and Nina. “You’ll be with a contingent of officers, since that’s where we expect them to go. It leads to the Fountain Square parking structure, if you can believe it.”
“I believe it,” I whispered as the elevator dinged, but a warning flag snapped in a cold breath of realization. There’d be no Inderlander on-site at the actual capture zone.
The doors opened onto a dusty, dim hallway, lit by a cluster of flashlights aimed at the low ceiling. Three men looked up from another radio station, clearly temporary by the toilet-paper box they had it sitting on. Soft radio chatter was coming from it, obviously a different channel from ours. One of the men snapped to attention, but the other two simply acknowledged Glenn’s presence and dismissed him. “Sir!” the one barked, and I squinted at the unfamiliar uniforms of the two at the radio. Clearly we weren’t in the hot zone yet, but the new uniforms and attitudes bothered me.
I hung back, a question rising to pop against the top of my head, sending little tendrils of thought sparking through me. Expensive new equipment, unfamiliar personnel with a whatever attitude toward Glenn, only humans at the take zone . . . Glenn withholding something from Ivy.
The silver doors shut, sealing off the last of the clean, bright light, and I shivered as I felt the underground take me. I took a deep breath, sending a thought out to make sure I could still touch a line. The energy tasted like books, and I imagined we were still in the semipublic areas.
“What’s up, Rache?” Jenks said as he landed on my shoulder, and I smiled as if nothing was wrong.
“Ask me later,” I whispered, squinting in challenge at the two radio guys before they turned away as one, heads close together as they discussed something. They weren’t FIB. I’d stake my life on it. I’d also stake my life on the fact that Glenn knew they weren’t FIB. So who were they and why were they here, the-men-who-don’t-belong?
“Rachel,” Glenn said softly, and I jerked. “Do you want night goggles?”
Shaking my head, I hitched my bag higher. “I’m good,” I said, my thoughts on that special flashlight of Trent’s. I had to get one of those.
Glenn started down the hallway. “The stairs are this way.”
Ivy and Nina pushed past me, clearly eager to bust some heads. Jenks had gone ahead to light the way, and the scent of vampire incense rolled over me as I followed, last in line. Nina was excited, and I breathed her in, enjoying it. It was a good thing I’d sworn off vampires or I’d be in trouble right now, walking in the dark with two of them. Nina smelled as delicious as Ivy.
As if hearing my thoughts, Nina looked over her shoulder. A stab of fear slid to my middle, and her black eyes darkened. “Rachel?” she said in warning, and Ivy took her arm.
“Isn’t she fun?” Ivy said lightly, trying to distract both Nina and Felix.
My tension eased when Nina looked away. “I honestly don’t know how you do it, Ms. Tamwood. Most of my people would have succumbed years ago.”
Jenks dropped back, lighting them with his silver dust. He’d heard everything with his exquisite hearing. “Ivy defines herself with her denial.”
Nina looked at him in question. “Do tell,” she said, and I wondered how old Felix was if he was using one of Pierce’s phrases. “Nina tells me that Rynn Cormel has given you your blood freedom?” she asked. “Is that so?”
Glenn had reached a fire door, the lock clearly having been broken recently. His face was troubled when we came to a halt before him, and I didn’t wonder why. I knew Ivy was holding Nina’s arm and flirting to distance Felix’s thoughts from me, but he might not. “We have to be quiet from this level down,” he said needlessly. “Rachel, can you still tap a line?”
“So far,” I said, but one more stairway might put me below the easy reach of one. Good thing I still had my splat gun. And, ah, Trent’s charms.
Glenn worked the latch, and the fire door opened, showing a dark stairway leading down. The air shifting the strands of my hair smelled of oil and canned meat. Jenks hovered uncertainly, finally moving forward to light the path as I followed Ivy down.
The stairway was tight, more like an escape hatch than anything else, and I wondered if this was really a way out. I could understand it if this was a last-stand kind of bunker, but it would be a death trap if there was a real catastrophe—such as an invading force knocking at your door.
We reached the end in silence, and Nina gently pushed open the second fire door. She looked too eager for my liking, but Ivy was nearby. Maybe the pain amulet she’d asked for earlier was for Nina after Ivy cracked her head open.
“Saints alive, I’ve missed this,” Nina said as she slipped into an even darker hallway.
“Easy, Felix,” Ivy whispered, her hand on Nina’s arm.
“Dim the light, Jenks,” Glenn whispered as he followed me into the hallway, and I got a quick glimpse of a cylindrical passageway before Jenks landed on Ivy’s shoulder and his dust settled and went out. It looked as if the builders had simply set huge sewer lines and poured a flat floor in the bottom of them. Thick cords of electrical wiring snaked along the
curved walls at head height. I knew there were possibly more than fifty men down here scattered about, but I felt alone, and I shivered.
“This way,” Glenn said as he brushed past me. “We have twenty minutes to get in place. Rachel, we find your service shaft first.”
Jenks couldn’t dampen his glow and still fly, and Glenn cracked a glow stick, the pasty green light making enough glow to see by as I followed him. The hair on the back of my neck prickled as Ivy and Nina whispered behind me in the dark. I couldn’t hear their footsteps, but my gut knew they were there, and I tried to slow my pulse before I set the vampires off.
Fingers fumbling, I turned my radio up, and my shoulders eased at the sound of people. Almost before I knew it, Glenn stopped, looking first down, then up. It was my air shaft, bisecting the tube we were in. One pipe went straight down, the other up. A grate covered the lower shaft, and I looked down it as Jenks went to check it out, noticing that the tube made a sharp right turn about three feet down. Jenks’s wings sounded unreal down here, reminding me of summer and dragonflies. “This is it?” I whispered, and Glenn nodded.
“Radio?” he asked, and I gave him a thumbs-up. “Ley line?” he asked next, and I hesitated, reaching out, finding the barest whisper. It would be enough.
“I’m good,” I said, and Ivy’s eyes tightened at my word choice. I still had my splat gun, for the Turn’s sake, and I wasn’t going to hide upstairs with Dr. Cordova. “Don’t hang around on my account,” I said, and he peered down the dark hallway as Jenks rose to check out the upper shaft, flying right through his previous light trail. He really was amazing, when you got right down to it, and I wondered why they’d stuck him with me.
Glenn snapped another glow stick, and a cold, sickly green light joined Jenks’s pure glow. Glenn handed it to me, and then checked his watch. Wings clattering, Jenks dropped back down from the upper shaft.
“What are you still here for?” he said snarkily as he hovered at my shoulder. “We’ve got this. Go on!”
“Jenks, if you want to go with Ivy, I’m good with that,” I said, thinking he’d be of better use with her than sitting at an air shaft with me.
“Hell no!” he said, landing on my shoulder. His wings stopped, and it grew darker. “I’m staying here. You never know. They might come this way.”
Glenn nodded sharply, checking his watch again. “Okay. Sing out if you see something. Channel seven puts you through to me alone. You know where the dial is?”
I bobbed my head, and Jenks swore at me when my hair hit him. “Thanks, Uncle Glenn,” I said sarcastically, wanting to know why he’d arranged for no Inderlanders at the take zone. He’d be griping about it if it was Dr. Cordova’s idea, so clearly it was his own—and a faint feeling of mistrust slipped into me.
Behind him, Nina was beginning to look impatient. “I can hear them,” Nina whispered. “Little men, like mice in the walls. We need to go.”
“Yeah, go,” Jenks said, as clearly unnerved by her comment as much as I was.
With a last nod, Glenn turned away. Ivy and Nina followed, and in three seconds, the sound of their steps faded. In another three, they turned a corner and the light from Glenn’s glow stick was gone.
I exhaled and leaned against the wall, listening to the silence and breathing in the scent of fear that was more than forty years old. Slowly I recognized the draft pulling my hair up. Tilting my head, I turned the earpiece down and slid to the floor. “How long till they move on them?” I breathed.
“Fifteen minutes, sixteen seconds,” Jenks said from my shoulder.
I was silent, then crossed my arms and shifted my weight to my other hipbone. “We’re not going to see any action, are we?”
“If you go by Glenn’s prediction, not a fairy’s chance in a pixy garden,” Jenks said. “But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think they were going to screw it up and send them our way. The bastards are going to run, and it won’t be for the back door.”
“That’s what I think, too.” I smiled in the dark and waited.
Chapter Twenty-four
The green glow stick that Glenn had left me made Jenks look like a tiny, sickly wraith as he sat on my knee with his legs pulled up, mirroring me. It seemed colder now that I wasn’t moving, and my back was to the curved wall as I sat beside the ventilation shaft, my shoulder bag next to me. The draft was pulling the stray strands of my hair up and back. I rolled the glow stick between my palms as I listened to the sporadic radio chatter. I had the speaker cranked since it wasn’t in my ear, dangling down my front so Jenks could hear it, too. The conversations revolved around HAPA: who they were, what they were capable of, how many times they’d evaded arrest. I should’ve been listening, but I was thinking about Trent’s charms.
“You okay?” Jenks asked, his wings glittering like they held water drops.
I smiled, remembering how beautiful his wings were close up when I’d shrunk down to help him through the first difficult day after his wife died. “Thinking about Trent’s charms,” I admitted.
Jenks scowled, his angular features pinching as he picked at his boots. “Yeah? That Pandora charm he made you almost killed you. You should’ve let me bury them in the garden.”
I dragged my shoulder bag closer, peering down at the blue and gold pins. It was hard to tell the difference in the dim light, but I shoved two paralyzing charms in my right boot, two blinding charms in my left.
“Oh God. You’re going to use them!” Jenks moaned, and I moved my knee wildly until he took off.
“I’ll look pretty stupid if I need them and I don’t have them,” I said, wiggling my foot until the cool metal warmed and their pinch vanished. I wasn’t one for organization, but even I knew that leaving loose charms rattling in a bag wasn’t a good idea, and as Jenks pantomimed hanging himself, I gathered the rest, slipping them into a zippered inner pocket of my shoulder bag where they wouldn’t interfere with my reach for the splat gun. I still didn’t know what the tiny ring Trent had left me did, and I looked at it, remembering what Jenks had said about his boys. Trent had simply forgotten. That’s all.
“Do I have time to make a call?” I asked, leaning over to get my phone out of my bag.
“What? Right now?” Jenks dropped back down to my knee, his expression disgusted. “Seriously, Rachel, it was sweet and all that he made you charms, but are you willing to trust your life to Trent’s maybe skills?”
The memory of watching him preparing to break into the Withons’ high-security compound and steal his own daughter filled my thoughts. It wasn’t how good he had looked in that black thief outfit, every line of muscle showing, or the obvious preparations he’d made, all the way down to getting me to help him get there alive. It was his confidence, his desire. I’d seen it under the arch before it fell, in the Arizona desert when he summoned Ku’Sox, and in a stupid little bar in Las Vegas when he didn’t want to leave to get our car. I’d seen it yesterday afternoon when he helped me with Al. He was trying to be what he wanted, and he really . . . wasn’t half bad. For some weird reason, I trusted him. God help me.
If he got me killed, I was going to be pissed.
“How much time do we have?” I asked Jenks again, my pulse hammering as I turned my phone on, praying I’d get a signal. One bar. It might be enough, and Jenks was silent as I scrolled through my recently called numbers and hit Trent’s.
“Enough if you’re quick about it,” Jenks said, his expression worried. His wings moved fitfully as he stood, his back almost to me as a show of his ambivalence.
“I just want to know,” I said as I tossed my hair from my ear and put the phone to it.
It rang three times before it was picked up, and I fidgeted while Jenks pouted. I didn’t know what I was going to say, a feeling that was compounded when the line clicked open and Trent’s very muzzy voice murmured, “Rachel? Mmm, hi.”
My eyes met Jenks’s, and he sniggered at me. Hi? He sounded half asleep. Elves usually napped around noon, but Trent had been taking a lot of
flack since coming out of the closet as an elf, and I’d be willing to bet that he was trying to stretch his natural sleep schedule to at least finish out a human workday before crashing. “Um, you got a minute?” I said, warming.
“I didn’t think about this before I installed that switchboard,” he said, his voice sounding more like his own. “What can I do for you? Since I’m awake.”
Embarrassed, I winced. “Sorry,” I said, meaning it. “Ah, about those charms you gave me?” I should have called him earlier, and my scuffing feet made echoes as I turned the radio down all the way. Jenks could probably still hear it.
“Charms.” Trent’s voice smoothed, his polish returning, and I heard the sliding sound of fabric as he got out of bed, presumably. His voice was normal, meaning he didn’t have anyone in there with him, and I don’t know why the thought occurred to me even as he added, “What about them?”
“You, ah, didn’t tell me what the ring does.”
“Oh. Sorry,” Trent said, and I heard a click and an echo as he put me on speakerphone. “It’s a line jump,” he added, and I almost dropped the phone.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said, my wide eyes touching on Jenks’s to find he was as mystified as me. “Who did you buy it from?” Don’t say Al. Please don’t say Al.
I heard the smooth shutting of a drawer, and Trent’s easy voice saying, “No one. Elves can jump the lines with enough prep work. Ah, I’ve never actually tried that one out. It’s supposed to bring the two rings together. It was originally a way for star-crossed lovers to meet against fate, but when you break it down to bare tacks, it’s simply a line jump. A come-to-me kind of thing. Just turn the ring, tap a line, think of me, and say ta na shay. I’ve already got mine on.”
Ta na shay. I’d heard that before somewhere. Holding the ring up in the faint pixy light, I slipped it on my ring finger, then moved it to my pinky when it was too tight. Jenks made kissing sounds as he stood on the rim of my bag, and I flicked a finger at him. The ring fit my pinky perfectly, which threw me until recalling that Trent had stolen my pinky ring once.