That wasn’t easy considering the fact that Laila had nowhere else to be and Alia was still my semi-Siamese twin. If absolutely necessary, I would wait till nighttime when Laila returned to her camper, and with any luck I could disentangle myself from Alia after she fell asleep. But given the choice, I wanted to talk to Terry sooner.
An hour later, just before dinnertime, my wish was granted in the form of a messenger who came to our room to announce that Laila was to eat with her mother that evening, and the rest of us weren’t invited.
“That’s odd,” said Laila, not noticing the knowing glances Terry and I exchanged. “I can’t imagine why my mother wouldn’t invite you all.”
I shrugged. Laila would find out soon enough, and as far as I was concerned, it was for the better.
After seeing Laila off, Terry said quietly, “I wasn’t sure Laila’s mother would really tell her. I guess she deserves more credit than I thought.”
“Terry, we need to talk,” I said, aware that Alia was listening to our conversation.
“Is it something Alia shouldn’t hear?” asked Terry.
“Well, you seem to think so. Personally, I don’t mind if she hears.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but I didn’t want to upset Alia.
“Then we’ll just have to get rid of your nosy sister, won’t we?” Terry smiled and said to Alia, “Go shower now, and we’ll eat after you get back. Make sure you take your time.”
Alia shook her head vigorously. “No fair, Terry! Addy said I could listen!”
“Guess what?! I’m not Addy!” snapped Terry. “Now go or you’ll get the tickling of a lifetime!”
Alia stamped her feet in anger but obeyed. Grabbing her towel and nightclothes, she blew Terry a big raspberry and then disappeared from the room.
After locking the door, Terry turned to me and asked brusquely, “So what is it, Half-head?”
“I’ve got a real problem, Terry,” I began slowly.
Terry laughed. “Adrian, Laila’s got a real problem since her mother volunteered to be fish bait. I’ve got a real problem because tomorrow I’m going to be beaten senseless in front of a cheering group of Angels. What kind of real problem could you possibly have?”
“My sister is here,” I told her.
Terry threw her hands up in exasperation. “You invited her to tag along!”
“I’m not talking about Alia!”
I gave Terry a moment of silence to let it sink in.
“You mean your sister-sister?” Terry asked quietly. “You mean Catherine?”
I nodded. “I saw her today. In the Angel camp.”
“You’re sure?” asked Terry. “There were no children on the Angel side of the witnesses yesterday.”
That wasn’t so hard to believe. Cat was thirteen years old, and whoever had brought her to this gathering had no doubt left her in the camp during the first fight.
“Trust me,” I said. “I’d know my own sister, Terry.”
Terry whistled softly. “This could complicate things.”
“Yeah,” I said sarcastically, “like things aren’t already complicated enough.”
Terry smiled grimly. “You were right not to let Laila know. She’d tell her mother and then Mr. Baker would know.”
“Then you agree that Mr. Baker won’t help me?”
Terry nodded. “Not a chance. Not now, not here.”
In the past, Mr. Baker had promised more than once that he would help me retrieve Cat from the Angels, but there was no way he was going to risk upsetting his delicate covert operation for my sister.
Terry sighed. “Baker is liable to lock you up just to keep you from doing anything stupid.”
“Well, his concern wouldn’t be unfounded,” I said, grinning. “After all, I do have a bit of a reputation for rash actions.”
“So you’re planning to infiltrate the Angel camp all by yourself, then?” Terry asked skeptically.
“Of course not, Terry. You’re going to help me.”
“Like hell I am!” Terry said angrily. “Don’t you get it, Half-head? You already know all about our plans to kill Number Two. I should never have told you anything.”
“You’re right, Terry, you shouldn’t have,” I said evenly. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m going over there with or without your help.”
“You would risk the Angels finding out our plan if they caught you and delved you? You’d risk everything the Guardians are working for here?”
“Sure,” I replied unhesitatingly. “Wouldn’t you?”
Terry pursed her lips, but I knew she understood. There was little Terry wouldn’t have done for Gabriel.
“Besides,” I added, “as for the Angels reading my mind, they’d have to catch me first.”
“Which they will,” Terry said matter-of-factly.
“Which they might,” I contradicted. “I still have Cindy’s hiding protection, remember? And even if they did catch me, if they believed I was really only after Cat, they wouldn’t be in such a hurry to delve me. After all, I’m still not old enough to safely delve. I could probably pass for fourteen or even thirteen years old.”
“You could pass for five, Addy,” Terry said nastily. “But that won’t stop them from delving you if they thought for a second that you were a part of the Council’s plans.”
“I’ll make sure they don’t,” I said. “Please, Terry. You’ve got to help me.”
Terry shook her head. “Your sister has been converted, Adrian. She’s an Angel whether you like it or not.”
I knew that children were particularly susceptible to psionic conversion, and Cat would have been ten years old when she was converted by the Angel master. I bit my lip as Terry logically pointed out, “Even if you did manage to get to her, she wouldn’t want to come back here with you. Not while Larissa Divine is alive.”
“I’ll let Cat be the judge of that, Terry,” I said. “Please. I have to at least try.”
“If the Council is successful, then in a couple of years–”
“Damn it, Terry!” I shouted furiously. “I’m not going to wait a couple of years! In a couple of years she could be dead! My sister is here right now! I might never get another chance like this.”
Terry said warningly, “If you force her, her mind could be destroyed.”
I knew that too. “I won’t force her,” I promised. “I’ll just talk to her and give her the choice.”
Terry remained silent.
“Come on, Terry,” I pleaded. “The Council still needs a reason to send Knights into the Angel camp, right? What difference would it make if I took Mrs. Brown’s place?”
Terry let out a loud huff. “Adrian, you are completely insane.”
“Then I’m in good company,” I replied evenly. “And don’t tell me that I’m not ready for something this big because I know I’m not and I’m going anyway.”
I dared not imagine what Cindy might have said to that, especially after I promised her I’d stay out of trouble this time. So much for being a good boy.
“What do you want me to do?” Terry asked resignedly.
“I just need a way in,” I told her. “I need to know how Mr. Baker was planning to send Mrs. Brown into the Angel camp.”
“That’s easy,” Terry said with a frown. “Laila’s mother was going to have one of our phantoms turn her invisible.”
“That’s a thought,” I said, “if I could get a phantom to help me.”
“Wrong, Half-head,” said Terry. “Floating eyeballs, remember? The Angels would be looking for that kind of thing. You’re forgetting that the whole point of Laila’s mother going over to the Angel camp is to deliberately get caught.”
“Oh, right,” I said, feeling stupid. “Well, I can’t get caught. At least not until I find Cat and have a chance to speak with her. There has to be some other way to get inside.”
Terry stared up at the ceiling for a moment before saying slowly, “Well, there are several service tunnels that run under the c
ompound, but they don’t surface inside the Angel camp. One of them will get you to the far end of the warehouses, pretty near their barrier, but you’ll still have to find a way past the sentries.”
That wasn’t helpful in the least.
I said rather embarrassedly, “My first idea was to wait for night, fly really high up and then drop into the camp from above. But I suppose that would be, uh...”
“Suicidal,” confirmed Terry.
“Then I guess invisibility is still my best option.”
Terry shook her head. “That’s a non-option, Adrian.”
“It’s the perfect option,” I argued.
“Eyeballs, Adrian!” Terry cried in frustration. “Eyeballs!”
“No eyeballs,” I replied.
“What?”
“No eyeballs!” I insisted. “The phantom could make me completely invisible, eyeballs included.”
“But you’d be blind as a bat, Adrian.”
I shrugged. “So what? Do you really think I couldn’t find my way out there blind?”
Terry narrowed her eyes. “Even without your ridiculous headset?”
I had left my ridiculous headset back in New Haven, along with my cane and talking compass. Perhaps there was a lesson about preparedness to be learned here, but I ignored it.
“I’ll manage,” I answered with as much conviction as I could muster. “Terry, if I were completely invisible as well as psionically hidden, as long as I didn’t pass right next to a finder or a destroyer, I’d be safe, right?”
Terry looked thoughtfully at me for a moment, but then she frowned again and said, “Still won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Because no Guardian phantom is going to help you without Mr. Baker’s explicit permission, which he will definitely not give.”
“How about Mr. Jenson?” I suggested. “He owes me.”
Technically, Mr. Jenson owed Alia much more, but I did pull the bullet out of his gut, after all.
“He’s a former Angel, Adrian,” Terry pointed out. “We don’t know if he really came here to find his son. How can you trust him?”
“That man risked everything to come here. I can trust in that.”
“It makes no difference,” said Terry, shaking her head. “Mr. Jenson is locked downstairs with two Knight sentries.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Only two?”
“Two very capable sentries,” Terry said seriously. “And you won’t be able to pull a stunt like you did last year when you busted me out of jail. We don’t have any official business to go down there in the first place, so they’ll be on their guard the minute we show our faces. And even assuming we manage to neutralize the sentries without anyone hearing, it would still take some time to convince Mr. Jenson to help. The sentries get regular calls from the command post, and if they don’t answer, someone’s going to come down to find out why.”
I looked at Terry unhappily. “You’re just one big bag of ‘no’ today, aren’t you?”
Terry shrugged. “I’m telling it like it is, Adrian.”
I wasn’t going to give up easily – or at all for that matter. There had to be a way in. I closed my eyes, and Terry kindly gave me a minute of silence to think it over. To my own surprise, I really only needed one minute.
“Alright,” I said slowly, “then I need you to find a way for Mr. Baker to secretly discover that I know that Cat is here. Think you can do that?”
“What for?” Terry asked in surprise. “We already agreed that we don’t want Mr. Baker to know about your sister.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want Mr. Baker to know that I know that he knows that I know that Cat is here.”
Terry gave me a blank stare. “Say that again.”
I did, and then I waited patiently for Terry to figure it out. Terry asked uncertainly, “You mean you’re going to use Mr. Baker?”
“No,” I replied, grinning. “He’s going to use me. Laila’s mother may not know the details of the Council’s plan, but as a member of the Council, she knows many of the Guardians’ other secrets. From Mr. Baker’s perspective, I’m definitely the safer bet because he thinks I’m as clueless as Mrs. Brown about the plan to kill Number Two. And being Cindy’s son, I’m just as good a reason for Mr. Baker to send a retrieval team into the Angel camp.”
Terry shook her head. “Mr. Baker would never deliberately risk you again. Not with Cindy waiting back home.”
“He would if he thought he could claim ignorance later,” I said confidently. “Mr. Baker is painfully pragmatic. He’s even worse than you, Terry. He’ll accept a calculated risk. If he knows that I know that Cat is here, and also thinks that I don’t know that he knows, then he won’t be in a hurry to stop me. Quite the opposite. He’ll want me to do something rash. As long as he could be rendered blameless, Mr. Baker would secretly help me make the crossing.”
Terry still looked skeptical. “You really think he’d do that?”
“I’d bet my left ear on it, Terry. If he knows I want to turn invisible, he’ll give me some official business with Mr. Jenson or find some other way to get another phantom to help me without making it look like the order is coming from him.”
Terry laughed. “Like I said, Adrian, you really are completely insane.”
“But it’ll work.”
“It might work,” Terry reluctantly agreed. “But you’re walking a razor’s edge here, Adrian. I never knew you to be such an optimist.”
I chuckled. “Optimism is a last resort when there’s no realistic plan.”
“Hold that thought,” said Terry, walking over to the door and deftly turning the lock and knob at the same time.
Alia tumbled into the room.
“How was your shower?” asked Terry as she roughly pulled Alia to her feet. “I see you dried your hair well. In fact, it’s hard to believe it was ever wet at all.”
“You forgot to change, too,” I said, telekinetically gathering Alia’s towel and nightclothes from the corridor floor and dumping them over her head. “How much did you hear?”
Alia closed the door and replied meekly, “Everything.”
Not knowing about the Guardians’ plot to kill Number Two, Alia probably hadn’t understood all of our conversation, but she had understood enough. “You’re going to risk your life again, Addy?” she asked with a worried frown.
I nodded. “She’s my sister, Alia. Just like you. If you were over there now, you know I’d go get you back.”
Alia’s frown deepened. “I know that, Addy. I just don’t want to lose you again.”
I knelt down in front of her and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “And I hope you won’t. But we all do what we have to.”
“Then I’m going too,” she said.
“Not this trip,” I said firmly.
Alia looked like she was about to protest, but I quickly said, “Believe me, I’d take you if I thought you’d come in handy. But I’m going in blind and possibly escaping by air. For once, I’m afraid you’ll just slow me down. Listen to me just this once. Please.”
“But I want to help you, Addy.”
I smiled. “Good, because I’m probably going to need you to bail me out again. And these aren’t dumb Slayers we’re dealing with this time.”
Alia, after a moment’s pause, nodded slowly. “Okay.”
Serving time for the evening meal was almost over, so the three of us rushed over to the kitchen motorhome to grab our dinner trays and then hurried back to continue our discussion. I glanced over at Laila’s camper on our way back to the office building. Had Mrs. Brown already told Laila about volunteering to be captured by the Angels? The curtains were drawn in the camper. I wondered how Laila was taking the news.
Back in our room, we ate quickly.
When we finished, Terry said, “We still need a real plan.”
As far as I was concerned, the best plan was always the simplest plan. “Well, if you don’t mind playing double-agent again, Terry, you could just straight-out tell Mr
. Baker that you overheard me talking to Alia about this. If he trusts you enough to ask you to be beaten to a pulp, no doubt he’ll trust you to keep his secret on this too.”
“Fair enough,” said Terry. “Conveniently, I actually have a meeting with him and the Council later tonight and I can probably get him alone for a minute or two.”
“You’ll have to make sure he knows that I want some time alone with Mr. Jenson.”
Terry frowned. “The real problem is getting you out.”
“Meaning?”
“Like you said, Mr. Baker thinks you’re clueless. He won’t consider you a security risk, so chances are he won’t be in a great hurry to retrieve you once you’ve crossed over. Instead, he’ll take his time to get his Knights extra organized to raise the chances of successfully pulling off the hit on Number Two.”
“That’s not good,” I said. The longer I stayed in the Angel camp, the greater chance I would have of being caught and delved.
“It’s not good at all,” agreed Terry. “We’ll need to make sure that we can push Mr. Baker into acting when we need him to.”
I glanced at my sister. “Mr. Baker is a politician. All we need to do is push him politically. Alia will do it.”
“How?” Terry and Alia asked in unison.
In response, I grabbed a pencil and tore a sheet of paper out of Alia’s drawing book.
“What are you doing, Half-head?” Terry asked impatiently.
“I’m writing a secret note to Alia,” I replied. “After all, she has a right to know where I’m going.”
Watching me rapidly line the paper with little black dots, Terry ventured, “Braille?”
“Alia can sight-read Braille,” I reminded Terry. “When the time comes, she’ll tell Mr. Baker about this note. Because nobody else here can decipher it, Alia will have to read it aloud in front of all the Guardians. She’ll conveniently forget she’s telepathic.”
“What does the message say?” asked Terry.
Alia, looking over my shoulder, read aloud, “Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.”
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