by Devon Monk
“Soon?”
“Better be.” He straightened. Caught up my hand and walked me out of the elevator.
“Enjoy the ride?” Shame’s eyes were twinkling.
“I did until you interrupted us,” I said. “So. Did Kevin say how to deactivate the security system?”
“Not to me,” Shame said. “Zay?”
He nodded, took about three steps down the hallway, then cast a spell with both hands. It was a Cancel, simple, but hinging on both hands completing the spell correctly.
“Is Violet going to have to use magic to undo the wards every time she walks in?” I asked.
“No.” Zay stalked off to the living room, Shame and me following. “She can pass through without triggering it. So can Kevin. The rest of us”—he glanced back at me—“especially those of us who use magic on a regular basis, have to work the wards.”
“So he’s basically blocking members of the Authority?”
“Hounds use magic every day,” he said. “Police use magic every day. Doctors, teachers.”
“Point taken. Good to know she’s safe from evil magic-using teachers.”
The hallway opened up into the living room, and I inhaled deeply. The room was huge, one entire wall a bank of windows that looked out over the city and Mount Hood in the distance. I missed that view.
“Where’s the device?” Shame wandered over to the mantle and dragged one finger along it as he walked the length. There were priceless collector’s pieces there, and I knew he knew it. He paused to pick up the most valuable pieces and tipped them to the light before replacing them carefully.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Zay squeezed my hand. “Ask your dad.”
I so didn’t want to do it. But that’s what we were here for.
Dad, I thought, where is the device that can track the cage Jingo used on Sedra?
He stirred. I knew he didn’t want to speak to me either, but whatever magical binding Victor and Shame had worked on him was still in place.
My office, he said.
“It’s in his office.” I walked back out to the hall and down a few steps to the next half level of the house, where Dad’s office was. I opened the door to his office, and the fragrance of half-caught memories surrounded me.
It was smaller than the living room, but not by much; two of the four walls were floor to vaulted ceiling with books. A stair toward the back led to a reading loft above. I used to love to sneak up there and read while he worked. That all changed when Mom left. After Mom left, his door was always locked, and if I so much as got within three feet of it, he told me to do my homework.
Zay glided in from behind me, doing a once-through the room that made him look like he cased joints for a living. Shame was noisier.
“Holy crap. It’s like a museum in here. He had a thing for antiquities, didn’t he?”
“I guess.” It looked the same as I remembered it, but I had very few and very distant memories about the place. Leather, walnut, mahogany. Brass, crystal, glass. Odds and ends from his early prototypes of the storm rods. No plants. No natural light. No art other than patent plaques on the walls.
Where is it? I asked Dad. What is it?
Look in the safe.
I don’t know where the safe is. He didn’t say anything. Sweet hells. He wasn’t going to make this easy. Show me the safe.
He stretched out enough that it felt like there was a hand in my head pointing. Behind the false wall in the loft.
“He said it’s in the loft.” I started up the stairs, my feet making no noise on the plush carpet. I flicked the light on, and a bank of lights hidden in the ceiling burned brightly.
I smiled. I had always liked it up there. The loft had changed. I remembered it being only half full of boxes and short bookshelves, a really comfy chair shoved against one wall out of sight from anyone below and situated so that the light was perfect for reading.
That chair, my chair, was gone. Boxes filled the space in neat, orderly rows, printed labels on each side. It smelled of old paper and dust.
It smelled of stale air and disuse. The graveyard of my childhood.
“So this is where old inventions go to die,” Shame said as he walked around a stack of boxes.
Which wall?
Dad pointed again, toward the wall on my right, and I made my way between boxes. The wall was smooth white paint. I didn’t see any latches or buttons or hinges.
“The safe is behind this wall,” I said.
“Tell him to open it,” Shame said.
I did not like the idea of him using my body, but it would go a lot faster if I let him. And then we could leave this place.
“Fine, but you two make sure he doesn’t do something stupid, like throw me down the stairs.”
“If he’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now,” Shame said.
“We’ll watch,” Zay said.
Open the safe, I said.
Dad stepped forward in my mind. He was still broody but resigned. I knew if he could turn the tables to his advantage, he would. But I could also tell he didn’t know how to make this situation fall in his favor.
That was a first.
He drew a spell with my right hand. An Unlocking. Nothing fancy. Well, except it was done in his signature.
A signature-based spell was worked so that only you, or a damn good forger, could open it. They carried a password in the glyph. And since there was no telling what word Dad worked into the glyph, after a few trials and errors, the ward would lock down and not respond to magic at all.
Clean and about as safe as magic could make it.
He finished the spell and pulled magic from somewhere within the wall itself. Very nice.
The wall didn’t look any different. But Dad ran my fingers along a seam I could not see. I felt a microbump, like a word in braille beneath my fingertip. Dad placed four fingers over the pattern of bumps and pressed.
The wall released, swinging silently open. It revealed the inside of a safe large enough that I could have walked into it if I’d wanted to.
I very much did not want to.
“Which item?” Zay said from right behind me. I hadn’t even heard him move.
But all I had to do was nudge Dad, and he reached in and pulled what looked like a cell phone off of one of the shelves.
“I guess this,” I said.
“Is there anything else in there we might want to take with us?” Shame asked, peering around from behind. “How about I give it a look-see?”
“Let’s not add petty theft to your rap sheet,” I said. But I took a second to look at what Dad had thought valuable enough to lock away. Some papers that were probably his original patent designs and a boxful of files. A couple small jewelry cases, books, and a glass tray with three keys in it. There were a dozen document tubes, but before I got a good look at what else was in there, I noticed a wooden box. About the size of a shoe box, it was made of lightly varnished pine. I knew that box.
I picked it up, pulled it off the shelf. In my dad’s blocky handwriting were the words ALLISON ANGEL BECKSTROM’S BOX OF DREAMS. There was a little golden latch with a keyhole that I don’t remember being on it before. I brushed my fingers over the lettering and tugged on the lid. It held. Locked tight.
“This is mine,” I said.
“What’s in it?” Shame asked.
“I don’t remember.” An image of colored papers and origami cranes filled my mind. “Kid stuff, I think.”
Zay looked away from the safe.
I felt strange holding the box my dad had made for me. I reached over to put it back.
“It’s yours,” Zay said. “Keep it.”
He was right. There was no reason to leave it behind. Violet probably didn’t even know about this safe, and if she did, she had even less right to have my box. I didn’t know why Dad had kept it for so long. Locked away with things he valued.
“Is that it?” Shame asked. “We aren’t going to take any of the goodies? That le
ather case looks nice.”
“No,” Zay said.
“You never let me have nice things,” Shame groused.
Zay closed the safe, then pressed the wall back into place. As soon as the wall caught, the spell reactivated and gave off just the slightest scent of apples.
“Let’s go,” Zay said.
They both headed toward the stairs. I took one last look around the loft.
“Allie?” Zay asked.
“I’m coming.” I tucked the box under my arm and followed Zayvion and Shame out of the room, the house, and the life that had once been mine.
Chapter Six
This time when the elevator door opened, I took a deep breath and walked in. Well, Zay had his arm around my shoulder, and he walked in, sort of pushing me, and I followed.
Shame hit the buttons, and I had no idea if he and Zay were talking. All I was doing was breathing and trying not to scream.
We made it to the garage, and I practically ran out of the elevator. If there had been a gunman waiting to kill me, I wouldn’t have stopped my undignified flight.
About halfway across the parking area, I stopped. I was fine. I could breathe. There was air, space, openness around me. I wasn’t being crushed, smothered, squeezed.
I turned around. Shame was smoking. He threw me a grin.
Zay was on the phone. He tipped his hand toward one of the dim ceiling lights, and it slicked a flash of white across the device we’d just taken.
I still had the box under my right arm. It was a little awkward, but I tucked my hair back behind my ear and walked over to them.
“Get that out of your system?” Shame held out his cigarette. “Good for what ails ya.”
I shook my head. “Who’s Zay talking to?”
“Victor. Coordinating the hunt.” He exhaled a thin stream of smoke and then shivered and ran his hand down his arm. He looked off toward the exit.
“Problem?”
“Not with me. Maybe Terric.” He threw his cigarette to the ground and rubbed his boot over it. “Don’t know.”
Zay hung up and stuck the phone in his pocket. “Victor said he’ll meet us at Stumptown Coffee on Belmont.”
“Anyone else going to be there?” Shame asked.
“We’ll find out.” Zay held open the car door for me. His manners were showing.
“Hold on,” I said. “Shame, can I put this in the trunk?”
“Sure. Just watch out for the dead body.” He popped the trunk.
I walked around to the back of the car. No dead bodies, but his trunk was far from empty. A couple baseball bats, a few long-handled cases that looked like they could hold shotguns, and probably did, and a basket of laundry filled the space. I tucked my box between the laundry and the jumper cables and shut the trunk.
Zay was already in the backseat, so I took the front. Shame started the engine and got us out onto the street.
Sunlight and blue sky were both shockingly bright and welcome as we exited that dark, closed place. I felt like we were driving up out of a tomb.
“Do you know how it works?” Shame asked.
I twisted so I could better see Zayvion. He was frowning. “I have the general gist of it, yes,” he said.
“Just like that?” I asked. “You get a secret, experimental piece of technology in your hands and you’re a master of it?”
“It’s not that experimental. Or at least not anymore.” He pressed a button. Nothing. “Probably uses a dormant spell as a power source.”
“Might want to wait until we gather the troops,” Shame said. “In case we only get one chance at it.”
“Suppose.” He handed the device to me. “Just don’t push anything.”
It was heavier than it looked. Smooth, and the length from the tip of my fingers to the heel of my palm. I’d expected it to be set up like a phone, but instead of plastic, its face was silver and carved with glyphs. I tried to think where I had seen something like this before. Plates of metal with spells worked into it.
Finally came to me. It reminded me of the plates Dr. Frank Gordon had used to try to resurrect my father. Creepy.
“What?” Zay asked.
“It just reminds me of those things Frank Gordon used.”
“What things?”
“The plates he put on Dad’s chest when he tried to raise him from the grave.”
Zay held his hand back out, and I gave him the device. He studied it, dragged a finger along the arcs and turns of one of the spells. “No dark magic. That’s good. It’s not the same spells Frank used. It’s not the same metal. Some of the conduction is similar—the links between the spells. But that could be said of most spells we use sequentially.” He glanced up. “I think this is different enough that you don’t have to worry.”
“I wasn’t worrying; I was just observing.”
“Think it will trigger easy?” Shame asked.
“Should. If not, we’ll ask Allie’s dad.”
I rolled my good shoulder. I was starting to really hate being the go-between for the powerful dead guy. But at least he was contained in one section of my head instead of running amok with my body.
Shame found parking about a block away from the coffee shop.
We all got out and started up the street without saying anything. Zay had the device tucked away in the pocket of his coat, which was fine with me. Something about that thing gave me the creeps. Enough that I didn’t want to touch it.
Victor stood next to his car, a new-model silver Jaguar sedan, which was parked a half block behind Stumptown, just past the grocery. He wore a suit and dark trench, had a coffee carrier in his hand, and was chatting with the people near him.
Hayden, in his usual jeans and boots, but a nice leather jacket, was with him. So was Terric, in jeans and peacoat, looking like he’d just walked off a ship, his pale hair falling like moonlight to catch at the stubble of his jaw.
Also with them was Sunny. Her bruises had either healed quickly, or she had a really good cover makeup. She’d braided her dark hair behind both her ears and tied the ends with bright ribbons—no, shoelaces. She had on neon green galoshes, tights, and a skirt and coat.
I didn’t see the Georgia sisters, Maeve, or the twins, Carl and La. They might be in one of the cars parked along the street, or maybe it wouldn’t take more than seven highly trained magic users to follow the magical cage locator.
“Good to see you,” Victor said as we approached. “Coffee? Shame, this one has extra milk and sugar.”
“Where do you keep your wings?” Shame asked. “You’re a godsend.” He plucked up the cup.
“Allie, black, isn’t it?” He handed me a cup.
“Thank you.”
The last cup he gave to Zay.
I wondered for just a second what we looked like to outsiders and decided maybe a group of people meeting up for business. Good enough.
“You have it?” Victor asked me.
“Zay.”
Zay handed him the device.
Victor held it like a phone, his eyes still a little bloodshot, like he was short on sleep, which he was. “Very nice.” He took a drink of his coffee. “I’ll trigger it, and I’d like you all to follow. It should get us at least within a block of the cage. I’m surprised Daniel didn’t make something more fine-tuned.”
Dad, in my head, chafed at that, and I got the very distinct impression of it being one of his earlier technologies, made even before the disks.
“Shame,” Victor asked, “where are you parked?”
“Just down the street.”
“Swing around and follow us.”
We all started off. Someone’s phone rang. I heard Victor answer. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked.
I paused, looked over at him. His body language had changed. Whoever was on the other end of the line either had bad news or was bad news. “That’s being handled currently. We should have an update today. Yes. Yes, of course. I’ll call you then.” He hung up, frowned at his phone before pocket
ing it.
He must have felt me watching him. He looked up.
“Problem?” I asked. I had taken only a dozen or so steps away from him, so I didn’t even have to raise my voice.
“No. No problem,” he lied. “Let’s take care of this.”
He turned and got into his car. Hayden, who was lingering on the passenger’s side, nodded to me. “Pick up the pace, Beckstrom.”
I turned. Shame and Zay were already a block away. I jogged to meet them at the car.
“What was that all about?” Shame asked.
“Victor. He got a phone call and sounded worried.”
“Huh.” Zay glanced up the street, but Victor was already in the driver’s seat.
We got into Shame’s car.
“Does Victor have a boss?” I asked.
“Why?” Shame asked.
“He sounded like he was in defensive mode. Like whoever was on the other line was giving him a job review.”
“Think it was Mum?” Shame asked.
I shook my head. “No, I’ve watched him talk to your mom. They get along fairly well. He wasn’t comfortable talking to the caller.”
“Might have been Bartholomew,” Zay said.
“The region’s Watch, right?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Why would he call?”
Shame laughed. “Oh, you’re serious? C’mon, girl, why wouldn’t he call? For starters, we’ve had betrayal, battle, and kidnapping within our group. We’ve had to lock down two wells and have had an unprecedented string of gate openings in the area. Plus, we have one of the only known living Necromorphs locked up, several solid Veiled behind bars, and have had two members die, one via murder, the other during a magical battle among our own people. Rogue magic users out here with unsanctioned magic-holding disk technology are looking to take over, and there’s been dark magic used to try to resurrect your dad.
“To put a cherry on the pie, the guardian of the gate, Zay, almost died. Most of that’s happened in the last month or so, and we’ve quite literally lost the Head of our organization in our own town, or hope she’s still in town, and can’t find her. Not exactly the way to run a railroad.”
“Does Victor take the responsibility for all that?”