In the presence of company she would have waved her hands dramatically along the sides of the bowl before she conjured an image. She had done this in 1920 at a circus in Montana; she’d shocked famed skeptic Harry Houdini and the gypsy woman whose crystal ball she’d borrowed. With no one around she simply said a few words and Tim’s image appeared in the bowl.
As she had expected, he was still bent over his worktable in the lab. He probably didn’t know what time it was. If no one told him, he would work until he finally passed out from exhaustion. Then he would wake up two or three hours later to go right back at it the next day.
Not this time. It was time for him to choose between her or his work. She was sick of sharing him with TriTech, with this RAT project and whatever else he was up to. She hurled the glass bowl to the floor; it shattered into tiny fragments. Then she seized her coat from the rack beside the door and stomped down to her truck.
If she knew the TriTech building better she could have simply vanished herself inside. Though that would give away that she was a witch, which inevitably would land her in hot water with Glenda and the coven. So she would do it the old-fashioned way. After she climbed into the cab of the pickup, she reached over to the glove compartment. She’d left Sam Colt’s revolver there, along with a long, thin bronze dagger that had belonged to a priestess of the Greek goddess Artemis, for whom Sylvia had named her salon. Before the sun came up the knife might once again be used to spill blood.
***
Throughout the rest of the night, Emma sat in a chair beside Jim’s bed. She nodded off sometime around four in the morning. As if she’d read Emma’s mind, Aggie appeared with a tray of tea and cookies. “Thought you could use a little refreshment,” Aggie said. She didn’t look the least bit tired, but then again as a witch she might have a potion to help. Aggie picked up a cookie from the tray and then glanced at Pepe, who still rested against Jim’s unconscious body. “Does he eat cookies?”
“He’s a rat. He eats just about anything,” Emma said.
As expected, Pepe devoured the cookies right out of Aggie’s hand. She fed him the rest of the stack, which he also snapped up. Aggie shook her head. “I think I’ll go down and make some more. Are you going to be all right?”
“I’m fine,” Emma said. She drank her tea in silence; she made sure to add more sugar than usual to help her stay awake. She would have loved a can of Red Bull from the Sanctuary fridge right now.
After he ate his snack, Pepe returned to Jim’s side. The rat was steadfast in his devotion to his friend; he never once fell asleep. She wondered where he got the energy from, but then again he hadn’t spent all day teaching and searching for a missing girl.
On her fourth cup of tea, Emma heard Jim cough. She waited for him to wake up, but nothing more happened. She saw his bandages were still stained with blood. What would she find beneath them? She wanted desperately to look, but knew she had to wait until Aggie took them off. The witch would know when the time was right; she had no doubt used this potion on dozens of people in the last five hundred years.
Her vigil became more complicated after her sixth cup of tea when she felt the urgent need to use the bathroom. If she did, he would probably wake up then and find her gone. He would think she had abandoned him. The last time this had happened a year ago, he had destroyed all of the garbage sculptures he’d made of her and refused to talk to her until she finally went down and begged his forgiveness. In this case he might never forgive her.
Aggie crept up behind her again. “It’s all right, dear. He’ll be another hour yet at least,” she said.
“All right, but if he does wake up, tell him I’ll be right back,” Emma said.
She had never used the bathroom so quickly in her life. She didn’t even wash her hands as she usually did. From the doorway, she heaved a sigh of relief to see nothing had changed. Jim was still asleep with Pepe’s head on his chest; the rat’s whiskers twitched every now and then. Aggie sat on a chair opposite of Emma’s, where she sipped a cup of tea.
“He’s going to be just fine, dear,” she said. “You should get some rest.”
“I can’t,” Emma said as she sat down. “When he wakes up—”
“You’ll be right here, at his side.” Aggie smiled in a way that despite her wrinkle-free face looked grandmotherly. “He wouldn’t want you to make yourself ill, dear.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Emma set her chin on her chest and closed her eyes to feign sleep. When Aggie left, she would—
She opened her eyes to find the room filled with the yellow light of early morning. Emma saw she had been asleep for five hours. She also saw that Jim was still unconscious. To her shame, Pepe was still wide awake, his black eyes somehow accusing her.
“You haven’t missed anything yet, dear,” Aggie said. “I was going downstairs to put some breakfast on. What would you like?”
“Just a piece of toast would be fine,” she said. She usually drank a protein shake before her morning run, followed by a Red Bull later, but she doubted Aggie would have such things in her house.
“Of course, dear. I’ll bring some for your friend too.”
Emma nibbled on a piece of toast with blackberry jam when Jim woke up. He came to in an instant and sat straight up in bed. His red-brown eyes went wide as he looked around the room. Those eyes fell upon Emma. His mouth contorted in a snarl. “You lie!”
She threw the toast down and reached out to put a hand on his skeletal chest. “No, it’s all right. We’re not in a hospital. There are no doctors here.”
Jim looked around the room again. “Not hospital?”
“No. This is my friend’s house.”
“She doctor?”
“No. Not really. Not a medical doctor.”
“I’m a witch,” Aggie said from the doorway. She glared at Jim with an icy stare. “You probably don’t remember the last time we met. I looked a bit older then.”
Jim stared at her for a moment and then nodded. “You Emma’s friend.”
Emma nodded. “That’s right, Ms. Chiostro is my friend. She gave you something to help your wounds after I pulled you out of the sewer.”
For the first time, Jim looked down at the bandages on his side and leg. He grabbed hold of the bandage on his side to pull it off, but Aggie grabbed his hand. “Hold on,” she said. “You want to be gentle with those. Let me—”
“No touch!” he said.
“Look here, young man—”
“It’s all right,” Emma said. “I’ll do it.”
Jim didn’t object as Emma reached down to slowly peel the bloody bandage away from Jim’s chest. To her surprise and relief, there was nothing more than a blotch of fresh pink skin beneath the bandage. “Looks good,” she said. She did the same with the bandages on his leg to find it too had healed nicely.
“Thank you,” Jim said to Aggie.
“You’re welcome. Now perhaps you would like some breakfast? I have some French toast and orange juice downstairs.”
“Yes. That fine,” Jim said. Emma figured it was probably the best meal he’d had in over twenty years.
She waited until Aggie left to ask him about what he remembered of the accident. His story didn’t vary from what Pepe had told her. He had heard of an intruder and went to check it out. Before he could see anyone, the sewer pipe exploded and he was knocked unconscious. “You didn’t see anyone?” she asked. He shook his head. “Did you smell anyone or anything unusual?”
“Yes. There smell like glove.”
“Glove?” Emma considered this for a moment. “You mean like leather?”
“Yes.”
She filed this detail away later, along with the remote control she’d found in the sewer pipe. She had no doubt the two were related. The only question was why someone had wanted to blow up a sewer pipe—and if they had targeted the Sewer Rat.
“I go now?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Aggie said from the doorway again. She carried a plate heaped with what must
have been a half-loaf of French toast along with a half-gallon of orange juice. “We need to give you some time to recuperate.”
Emma put a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right here.”
***
Sylvia knew the front doors of TriTech would be locked and guarded so early in the morning. The loading dock would also be watched with cameras and perhaps a guard as well. The Scarlet Knight could easily have scaled the building to let herself in or jumped up to the roof and gone from there, but Sylvia didn’t want to involve Emma in her domestic dispute.
Besides, she was not without means herself. TriTech had moved into a vacant art deco-style skyscraper first built in the early days of the Great Depression, but it had yet to use all of the building’s fifteen floors. This left a lot of empty windows she could use to gain access.
In the early days, she and Aggie had tried to fly on brooms, but they never had the knack for it. If she concentrated enough, Sylvia could levitate herself up a few floors. She closed her eyes to focus. When she opened her eyes, she found she floated beside what would be the fourteenth floor.
This floor had yet to be renovated, so Sylvia doubted anyone would watch it. She pulled Artemis’s dagger from her belt and jammed it into the edge of the window until she heard the lock pop. It was easy enough then for her to open the window and swim inside.
She collapsed onto a pile of insulation probably much older than she looked. It was probably asbestos the building’s owner had stashed up here to hide from inspectors and prospective tenants. She rolled off this and lay on the floor for a moment to rest and get her bearings. Tim’s laboratory was in the basement; she wondered if the stairs would go down that far or if she’d have to levitate down. She put a hand to her upset stomach and hoped not.
She started towards the door to the office or whatever it was she had stumbled into. She stuck her head out the window to see a hallway of wood-paneled walls and doors with frosted glass. The descriptions printed in gold letters on most of these doors had been peeled away by time and perhaps the maintenance staff.
She found a bank of elevators, but didn’t dare use those. She might as well go through the front door then. The door for a stairwell was beside this; she tried the door and it squeaked open. With a sigh of relief, she started down the stairs.
They waited for her at the door to the next floor. Two thugs as burly as those employed by Don Vendetta blocked the door, both with pistols drawn. “You’re coming with us,” one said.
“I don’t think so,” Sylvia said. She raised the dagger of Artemis. On the surface it would seem that she had brought a knife to a gunfight, but they didn’t know about the special weapons at her disposal.
“The boss said you’d say that,” the other said. “He said if you said that we was supposed to say that if you didn’t come with us he’ll have to kill your boyfriend.”
For a moment Sylvia considered the goon might have lied, but then decided given his line of work and dull monotone in which he’d delivered his message he probably wasn’t bright enough to bluff like that. “Where do you want me to go?” she asked instead.
“To see the boss.”
“You can go quietly or loudly,” the first one said, to sound menacing.
She slipped the dagger into its case and then held up her empty hand and hook. “Gee, I guess I’ll have to go quietly then.”
The smarter of the two opened the door while his comrade ushered Sylvia through. She figured they would use the elevator to head to wherever they were going, but instead the goon led her to the end of the corridor, where there was another frosted glass door that said simply, “Storage.” The goon opened this and then shoved her through.
For the second time in almost as many minutes she was surprised. This time by the size of the “storage” room. It had to be as big as Tim’s entire apartment, most of that space open at the moment. She smelled something that reminded her of a new suitcase to her left. In that direction, she saw a glass-topped desk, behind which sat a middle-aged man with thin dark hair and the onset of heavy jowls.
“Hello, Miss Joubert,” he said.
Sylvia took a step towards the desk to get a better look at the man. After a moment it came to her: Harry Wittman. She had never met him in person, but she had a dossier on him in her office. He was a small-time weapons dealer, the type of scum who didn’t care who he sold to as long as he made a few bucks. Last year she had undercut him on some weapons to a group of Grakistani rebels. Since then she hadn’t heard much of him.
“Well, I guess we finally get to meet, Mr. Wittman.”
Wittman tapped the nameplate on his desk that said, “Harry Ward.” “I decided to change it for legal reasons. I’m sure you’d approve of that.” He reached into his desk but came out with only a cigar. “I have to say you’ve got a hell of a plastic surgeon.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course not. It’s not like I could have looked in the city records and seen that you’ve been living here for over a century. You and your sister. How is old Agnes these days?”
“That’s none of your goddamned business.” She motioned to the goons behind her. “Your pet gorillas said something about you killing my boyfriend.”
“Oh, that. I would really hate to waste his talent. Not until I’ve gotten everything I can out of him.” Wittman blew out a cloud of blue smoke from the cigar. “Does he know he’s fucking someone old enough to be his great-grandma’s great-grandma?”
Sylvia let her hand drop to her side, where the dagger waited. She badly wanted to fling it at Wittman’s thick neck and slice open his jugular. She would dance in the fountain of blood that would spring from it, not just for what he’d said about her and Tim but for all the lives he’d ruined with his reckless arms sales. She couldn’t, at least not yet. “What do you want?”
“I want your help. See, I’ve got a plan that’s going to make me very, very rich. There are just a couple of little trifles in my way. You’ll take care of these for me and in exchange I won’t eliminate your boyfriend.”
“How do I know you’ve got Tim?”
“I don’t need to ‘have’ him. He’s working down in his lab, happy as a clam. The idea he’s going to bring me on Monday will make me a trillionaire.” He reached into his desk again, but this time pulled a black box with a long silver antenna. “I’m sure you know what this is.”
“A C4 detonator.”
“Exactly. And I’m sure you know how moldable C4 explosive is these days. If you’re clever enough you could even make what looks like an identification badge out of it.”
“You son of a bitch,” she said as she thought of the badge Tim wore clipped to his pocket while he worked. Even if the charge wasn’t very powerful, it would be more than enough to kill Tim the moment Wittman activated the detonator.
“So, do we have a deal?”
Sylvia looked down at the floor. “Yes. We have a deal.”
Chapter 6
After breakfast, Jim fell asleep, the blankets pulled up to cover his face. For someone who lived in the darkness of the sewers, Emma supposed even the early morning light was like a noonday sun. While Jim slept, Emma went down to the basement to find some old tarpaulins Sylvia had used to cover weapons crates. These proved to be good blackout curtains, so only a faint gray glow remained in the room.
Pepe, who lay on the outside of the blankets, approved of this. “You keep an eye on him,” Emma said, though she knew it was unnecessary. “I’m going downstairs again for a couple minutes.”
She found Aggie in the parlor; the witch sewed the tear in a black dress. “How’s your friend feeling?” she asked.
“Tired. He’s sleeping right now.”
“That’s good. He needs some rest.”
“Thank you for all of your help. I didn’t know where else I could go.” Emma sank down on a chair to look down at her feet. Tears nearly came to her eyes as she thought of Jim floating there in the sewage as if
he were already dead.
Aggie put down the dress to lay a hand on Emma’s shoulder. “Now, dear, don’t get upset. Everything’s worked out fine. He’s alive and he should recover fully. He’ll be back to all his little friends in no time at all.”
“I suppose so.” She couldn’t help but think someone had tried to kill Jim. That someone could still be down there, or at the very least might return. Next time he—or she—might be successful.
If that’s what the saboteur had really been after. She had studied the city’s sewer system to help her navigate when she was down there as the Scarlet Knight. From this, she knew the site of the explosion had no special importance, or at least none that was obvious. It was just one of thousands of pipes that ran beneath the city to channel waste to the processing plants. To blow up that pipe would accomplish nothing.
Until she could find out who had blown up that pipe and for what reason, she couldn’t let Jim go back to the sewers. She wouldn’t be able to stand the guilt if she allowed him to return to the sewers only to have the saboteur successfully kill him the next time. She would have to keep him here, on the surface, in the world he hated.
Again Aggie read her thoughts. “You can’t keep him here forever. He’ll be able to get up in a day or two,” she said.
“Then I’d better find out who tried to kill him before then,” Emma said. She got to her feet and with renewed determination went to the kitchen to find a flashlight. She could take the Scarlet Knight’s helmet, but she didn’t like to go out in the armor in the daytime—not even down to the sewers—if she could help it.
As she rummaged through the drawers, she heard a news report on television that caused her to straighten as if she’d been hit with a jolt of electricity. “Megan Putnam was last seen on the campus of Rampart State University, where she is a freshman. Police are asking that anyone with information please contact the Rampart City Police Department,” the news anchor said. A picture of Megan Putnam hovered over the anchor’s shoulder, the same one Emma had given to Captain Donovan.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 35