And I had seen one of the women in the gossip site’s blurry photographs. Boccand sometimes went to a restaurant called The Duke’s Shield for dinner, and I had spotted the woman there.
The next night I dressed up and went to The Duke’s Shield. It was a little ostentatious – black marble flooring, gold highlights on the walls, everything polished and sleek and dimly lit. Boccand ate alone, as he always did, frowning as he stared at nothing. I ignored him and headed to the bar, where I found the woman from the photograph. She was about my age, though taller and fuller figured, and to be frank she looked like she should have been a model.
As it turned out, she wanted to be a model. Her name was Michelle, and it didn’t take much to befriend her. After her fourth drink, she poured her heart out to me. She wanted to be a model, and she met Timothy Roberts, who was a big deal in the Corbisher Group, and had promised to get her into the Group’s fashion websites. He was a rich man, and he had promised to leave his wife for her. But they had to be careful, so he had given her a keycard to his apartment, but once Roberts left his wife for her, she could move in and Roberts would get her gigs with the Group’s websites and clothing lines.
I kept the contempt and pity from my face. But I felt mostly pity. I had fallen for Nicholas Connor the same way she had fallen for Timothy Roberts, and I had believed Nicholas’s lies. Of course, I had seen the truth before it was too late. And Nicholas had not been as old, fat, and jowly as Timothy Roberts. On the other hand, Nicholas had been planning the mass murder of tens of thousands of people, and I doubted Roberts was guilty of anything more than being a liar and a philanderer. Maybe Michelle ought to have felt sorry for me instead.
Anyway, I got Michelle thoroughly drunk, and then bought her a cab home. While I helped her to the cab, I went through her purse, found her keycard, and took a scan of it with my phone. Once I had seen Michelle off, I drove to a print shop I had found in a suburb called Burnsville, broke inside, and used its equipment to print myself an identical keycard, making sure to wipe the computer’s hard drive once the printer had finished. I felt bad about that, but they wouldn’t get into any legal trouble and hopefully they had recent backups.
If I ever got rich, I promised myself, I would buy my own damn print shop. God knows that I spent enough time forging documents. It would be handy if I had my own equipment for printing false identification.
Once I had my fake keycard ready, I stopped by my hotel room long enough to change clothes from a sleek black dress to the gray jumpsuit of a janitor, complete with a tool belt, a hair net, and a black baseball cap. The janitors working in Corbisher Tower had uniforms like that, and it ought to pass casual inspection, especially if I kept the bill of the cap low.
But I wouldn’t need it until later.
It was two in the morning when I parked my van at a convenience store a few blocks from Corbisher Tower. I had chosen it because the convenience store’s parking lot didn’t have any security cameras, which made it a perfect place to cast a spell.
Specifically, I chose a Masking spell, wrapping myself in illusion. I fashioned the Mask to make me look like Michelle – taller, blonder, and bustier, clad in a tight purple dress and a long black overcoat to ward off the December chill. I got out of the van, keeping the Mask in place, and set off for Corbisher Tower. A Mask isn’t as difficult to maintain as a Cloak, but it’s still a lot of work. I had to make sure that my movements matched the spell, and I had to adjust it to compensate for different sounds. Like, Michelle’s illusionary high heels made different sounds against the concrete than my running shoes. I wished the Mask spell could have had her wearing flats, but I doubted Michelle would visit Timothy Roberts, Corbisher Group big-shot, in anything less than four-inch stilettos, Hell, she would probably visit him wearing only those four-inch stilettos.
I had a brief mental image of myself, wearing nothing but those shoes, walking to where Riordan lay sprawled upon a couch …
Damn it. I really was infatuated, wasn’t I?
One advantage of the discipline necessary to work magic is the ability to clear the mind, and I pushed all such distractions from my thoughts as I walked up to the front doors of Corbisher Tower. The doorman rolled his eyes a little as I handed him my keycard. Maybe he was the one who had taken those pictures of Roberts and his various mistress. I watched as he swiped the keycard through the lock, hoping I had programmed it right, also hoping that Roberts hadn’t dumped Michelle and disabled her guest access.
The lock flashed green.
“Thank you,” I said, making the Mask smile at him.
The doorman only scowled. Odd, that. He looked like another veteran of the wars in the Shadowlands, with faint scars upon his left cheek and haunted black eyes. Maybe he had seen things he couldn’t forget.
I understood that.
Michelle wouldn’t, though, so I gave him a sunny smile and strode into the gleaming, marble-floored lobby of Corbisher Tower. I saw square columns supporting the ceiling, adorned with geometric reliefs, leading to a wide stairway and a row of elevators on the far side of the lobby. On the wall over the stairway landing hung a brilliant relief in polished bronze, showing a rising sun over the skyline of downtown Minneapolis. Balconies lined the walls of the lobby, giving the opportunity for people with apartments on the second floor to stare down at visitors. It was an odd look, and it made me think of an old church, or perhaps…
I blinked.
Or perhaps a temple?
Why would I have thought that?
Maybe because I had been thinking about the Dark Ones? Of course, the idea was absurd. The cults of the Dark Ones could not have possibly hidden a temple in a luxury building in downtown Minneapolis, especially when so many Elven nobles lived here. Yet for a moment I wondered if the symbol of the Dark Ones, a stylized nine-pointed star that looked a bit like a squid with fangs, was hidden in the bronze relief, perhaps as the sun with its stylized rays...
I pushed aside the dark musings. I had come here for a reason, not to wallow in my bad memories.
I would have preferred to take the stairs, but Michelle in her four-inch stilettos would not, so I walked to the elevators, making sure my Masking spell produced a loud clacking noise for my footsteps. Corbisher Tower was a forty-three story building, and according to Nora’s information, “Norman Harper” had purchased an apartment on the forty-first floor. That, come to think of it, was the last floor that was available to the members of the public, since the Corbisher family kept the top two floors of the building to themselves.
I rode the elevator to the forty-first floor, keeping my Mask’s expression nervous and excited. At last the doors slid open, and I stepped into a carpeted hallway with subdued lights in brass sconces attached to the walls. The hallway was deserted and silent. I took a few steps forward, noting the location of the security cameras. One covered the elevators, and another covered the hallways.
They did not, however, cover the door to apartment 41K, where Boccand had been living for the last few months.
I waited until I was out of the camera’s field of vision and then let my Masking spell dissolve. If anyone saw me, hopefully they would assume that I was a janitor on a nighttime maintenance call. If not…well, I would improvise if necessary.
The door to Boccand’s apartment was a solid slab of metal, painted and finished with a burnished veneer. I cast the spell to sense the presence of magical forces, and at once detected a magical aura behind the door, though I could not focus the spell well enough to learn more.
Fortunately, there were no spells upon the door, and I couldn’t see any mechanical or electronic traps. I checked the compass one more time, drawing it out of the hip pocket of my jumpsuit. Boccand wasn’t in his apartment. He was at a nearby bar, watching a cricket game on the bar’s TV (or lacrosse – I always get the two mixed up) and wouldn’t be back for at least an hour.
I pulled on a pair of leather gloves, made sure my hair net was secure beneath my cap, and cast another spell. The lo
ck released in the grip of my magic, and I took a deep breath, gripped the knob, and opened the door.
I stepped into a vast, empty living room. The lights from the city came through the glass doors to the balcony, throwing rectangular shadows across the walls. Hardwood floors clicked beneath my shoes, and I feared leaving tracks, but the floor looked scuffed enough that tracks shouldn’t a problem. The only furniture was a cheap plastic end table in the center of the room, holding a cylindrical piece of silvery metal about the size of my fist. I closed and locked the door behind me, and then cast the spell to detect magic.
Powerful magic radiated from the metal cylinder. I had never encountered an aura exactly like it, but it reminded me of a rift way spell…and of the shadowjump that Boccand had cast in Lord Castomyr’s treasure vault. A little flicker of excitement went through me. This had to be the anchor that that Morvilind had mentioned, which meant that it was possible the cuneiform tablet was nearby.
I searched the apartment and came up with exactly nothing.
The condo had a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and three bedrooms, and all the rooms except the master bedroom were empty. In the master bedroom, I found only a cot, a pair of tables, and a closet full of clothes. The attached bathroom had some towels and various male grooming products, but nothing else. The only other arcane aura in the apartment came from a metal watch sitting on one of the tables, likely the watch I had seen Boccand use in Castomyr’s mansion. I considering taking it or examining it further, but decided against it. I didn’t know what the watch did, or the nature of the spell upon it, but its theft would put Boccand upon his guard.
I examined the items on the two tables, hoping they would provide some information. One table held a variety of tools I recognized – lock picks and spring guns and the like, the tools of a thief’s trade. The second table held a laptop computer, the standby light glowing. I considered trying the computer, but decided against it. The computer didn’t have a camera, but almost certainly it was locked, and if Boccand was clever enough, he might have configured the machine to send his phone a notification if anyone tried to use it.
The only other item was a framed photograph. It showed a grinning Armand Boccand clad in the red jersey of some sports team or another, a bottle of beer in his hand. It was a far cry from the dapper, archaic figure I had met at Castomyr’s party. Boccand had his arm around a blond woman of about twenty-five. She looked very English, with high cheekbones, cheerful blue eyes, and pale skin. She wore the same kind of sports jersey, though hers had been cut low enough to expose quite a bit of cleavage, and she also held a beer in her hand.
Boccand’s girlfriend? Had to be.
The cot was only big enough for one, and there was absolutely no sign that a woman lived here. Maybe the woman was his ex-girlfriend? For that matter, it didn’t look like Boccand did much here except sleep. Maybe he had bought the apartment for some job or con or something.
It didn’t matter. All I knew was that the tablet wasn’t here. It carried a strong aura of dark magic, and Boccand wouldn’t have been able to conceal it. For that matter, if he feared treachery from his buyer (a reasonable fear when dealing with Dark One cultists and Rebels), it only made sense to hide the tablet somewhere else.
Still, it hadn’t been a wasted trip. I knew where to find his anchor, and if Boccand was attacked in Minneapolis, almost certainly he would shadowjump back to his anchor. That was his weakness, and with it I could trap him and force him to give me the tablet.
I paused before the door long enough to cast the Masking spell once again. I altered it to muss up Michelle’s hair and makeup, letting her dress look disheveled, like she had gotten dressed in haste and left. I had no doubt she had left looking like that a few times. Once the spell was in place, I checked the peephole, saw that the corridor was empty, and stepped out, locking the door behind me. I would return to the hotel and get a few hours of sleep, and then follow Boccand tomorrow. One of his usual haunts would be a good place to trap him.
I headed towards the elevators, turned the corner, and froze.
Terror erupted through me, my heart pounding against my ribs, my skin crawling with panic.
A man walked towards me, his back to the elevators. He was tall and thin and gaunt, so gaunt and pale that his face almost looked like a skull. His hair was black as night and slicked back, and his dark eyes glittered in deep sockets. He wore a crisp black suit with a spotless white shirt and a silken black tie, his shoes polished like mirrors.
But he wasn’t a man at all.
His appearance was the guise the anthrophages used when they came to Earth to hunt mortal prey.
I stood motionless for a terrible instant as the creature strolled towards me, wishing I had brought a gun with me. Then I prepared to drop my Masking spell and fling a lightning globe at it, hopefully killing it before the anthrophage discarded its human form and came at me…
Then the creature spoke.
“Pardon me, miss,” it said, its voice flat and toneless. “Are you lost? This building is for residents only, I am afraid.”
I blinked at it in surprise, and then my mind started working through the fear.
The anthrophage didn’t realize that I was Nadia Moran.
I had Masked myself, and that morning I had cast the spell Riordan had taught me to block my telepathic spoor. The Masking spell baffled both the creature’s eyes and its keen sense of smell. So long as I kept the Masking spell up, the anthrophage shouldn’t realize who I was. Which meant I had to get out of here now, right now. Anthrophages always hunted in packs.
But if the anthrophage wasn’t here to kill me…then what the hell was it doing in Corbisher Tower?
I could worry about that later.
“But I am a resident,” I said. “Well, sort of. I’m a guest."
“Of whom?” said the creature in that soft, toneless voice.
“Mr. Timothy Roberts,” I said. “He’s an executive at Corbisher Group. Like, I think he owns this building.” I imitated Michelle’s rapid, rambling speech as best as I could. “So I was…uh, visiting him…”
“At three in the morning?” said the anthrophage.
“Yes,” I said, letting the Mask look embarrassed. “Uh…I had a little too much to drink and I got lost. Could…could you show me the way to the lobby?”
The anthrophage said nothing. Then it leaned forward, taking a deep breath, lips pressed into a tight line. I blinked in surprise, and the anthrophage took another deep breath.
It was sniffing me.
“You do not smell drunk,” said the creature.
I reacted as I thought Michelle would. “Why the hell are you sniffing me, you creepy pervert? You do that again I’m going to complain to your supervisor.” I drew myself up. “I’ll complain to Timothy! He’s an executive at Corbisher Group! He could get you fired from this crappy job.”
“You will accompany me,” said the anthrophage, “to the lobby.”
The thought of going with an anthrophage into an enclosed space like an elevator was terrifying. I knew the creatures preferred to drag prey to their lairs in the Shadowlands, devouring them alive. A few weeks after I had escaped from the anthrophage pack in Grayhold, I had had a nightmare about the anthrophages. In the dream they had dragged me into a cave, ripping off my clothes as they did, and then their fang-lined jaws had ripped away chunks of my exposed flesh as I screamed and screamed.
The dream had been bad enough. I did not want to experience the reality.
Still, one on one, I could kill an anthrophage. And maybe it wasn’t going to kill me. Maybe it just wanted to get me out of the building without making a scene.
Again, why?
“All right,” I said. The anthrophage gestured, and I stepped to the elevator door. The creature pressed a button, and the door slid open with a gentle chime. We stepped inside, and the doors closed and the elevator started its descent.
The anthrophage stood six inches from me, gazing at t
he elevator's buttons.
Sweat dripped down my back, and every instinct screamed for me to run or to fight for my life, but the anthrophage remained motionless. It really did think I was Michelle, and it had no interest in Michelle. Yet Michelle did not seem like the kind of woman who would let an elevator ride pass in silence.
“So, uh, do you like your job?” I said. “You have to work nights, which must suck.”
“I prefer to work nights,” said the anthrophage, still gazing at the buttons. “Guard duty is tedious, but I perform as my superiors instruct.”
Guard duty? What was he guarding? Boccand? Or something else?
“Though,” said the creature, a little rasp coming into the toneless voice, “one does become hungry while on duty.”
I tensed, fearing the anthrophage was about to attack me.
“Maybe you should pack a sandwich or something,” I said. “You can eat it on your break.”
“A sandwich,” said the anthrophage. “Yes.”
The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open to reveal the lobby.
“Enjoy the rest of your evening,” said the anthrophage. “Please do not wander the corridors without a resident.”
“I promise,” I said. I wanted to run for the doors, but I stepped out, imitating the wobble of a drunk woman in high heels.
The elevator doors hissed shut, and I glanced back.
And as I did, just for a moment, I saw the anthrophage’s face change, saw the black eyes turn a venomous yellow, saw its glistening tongue slide against its jagged fangs.
Somehow, somehow, I kept my composure and maintained my careful walk to the doors.
Then I got the hell out of there as fast as I dared.
Cloak Games: Shadow Jump Page 9