by Kim Harrison
“Where are we?” Winona asked, and I sent my eyes up to the ceiling where a mock-up of the solar system shifted in the draft from the heating ducts.
“The observatory,” I said, hope making me jittery. Damn, we were like ten minutes from my mom’s old house. “Stay here. I’ll make a call, and we can just sit and wait.”
“Rachel,” she hissed, but I was already moving. We could be home in an hour, have the entire HAPA crew in custody in fifteen minutes.
I slid behind the desk, looking for the phone. Seeing it, I picked it up and punched in Glenn’s number. The 911 service would take forever.
“Rachel!”
“What!” I whispered loudly, then frowned. Why wasn’t I hearing a phone ring? Hell, I wasn’t even hearing a dial tone.
“Look out!” Winona shouted, and I looked up at the dark shadow coming at me.
“Get down!” Eloy shouted, and I threw the phone at him. It wasn’t connected to the wall, and it sailed the thirty feet and crashed on the floor in a crack of plastic.
“Now!” Chris shouted from somewhere, and the lights flashed on, blinding me. Winona shrieked, and I heard Gerald grunt. Squinting, I saw him holding his middle and Winona running from him, those feet of hers easily outdistancing Jennifer, reaching for her.
“Son of a bitch,” I snarled as I pulled the dart gun, aiming at Eloy and pulling the trigger.
Eloy slid to a stop five feet from me, the little dart with the red fletch hitting him right in the arm where I wanted it. His eyes went to it, and my bravado evaporated when he plucked it out and shook his head. Blanks! I thought, then threw the gun at him, pissed.
Eloy ducked, and the gun clattered next to the broken phone. In the background, Jennifer and Chris were trying to corral Winona. She skittered from them, her eyes almost shut from the light.
“Too easy,” Eloy said as he reached for me. “I told them you could escape.”
“Yeah? Well, you were right!” I said, and kicked at him. Or at least I would have if someone hadn’t sucker-punched me in the head.
Stars exploded as pain reverberated from my ear to my nose and back again. I reeled backward, suddenly nauseated as the lights went gray and the world spun. I fell to one knee, caught by someone smelling like blue jeans. It was Gerald, and his eyes still held the pain from where Winona had kicked him.
“This was a bad idea!” Chris was yelling. “She made it to the phone!”
Eloy bent over me, and I tried to push his hand away when he peeled my eyelids back to make sure my pupils dilated right. “That’s why I unplugged it. Hag.”
“Will one of you help us with goat girl here!” Chris shouted, clearly frazzled.
“You are all going to rot in hell, even if I have to carry you there on my back,” I breathed. My eyes were shut, but I could hear Winona’s hooves and hear her crying, trying to find a way out.
“Look, you ugly goat!” Eloy shouted, and I felt him grab my hair and pull my head up. “Either you stop running, or I’m going to kill her! Right now! And it will be your fault!”
“Go, Winona,” I tried to shout, but it came out in a whisper. “Go . . .”
“I mean it!” Eloy shouted, and something cold touched my throat. “I’ll cut her open right here, and she’ll bleed out in front of you!”
I tried to open my eyes, failing.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” Winona cried out, and then she yelped. I heard a skittering of hooves, and then her sobbing close by. The knife vanished from my neck, and Eloy let go of my hair. My head fell against Gerald, and I felt like crying, too. It had all been a setup. They’d wanted to know if we could escape, and we walked right into it, all the way down to the blanks in the dart gun and the disconnected phone. I was such an idiot.
My head lolled as Gerald flung me over his shoulder. The blood rushed to my spinning head, clearing it for an instant, and then it got fuzzy again.
“Hey!” Chris shouted, and I felt her take her notebook out of my back pocket. “You’re stealing my research?” she shouted.
“It’s evidence,” I slurred. “Get it right . . . bitch.”
“The chubi tried to take my research!” she exclaimed again, and I managed to get my eyes open, right when the lights went off again.
“Shut the hell up,” Eloy grumbled, and we all started back to the stairway. “Lock it up next time.”
“She’s not going to get out again,” Chris vowed, and somehow, as I was carried back downstairs and dumped on a cold floor, I couldn’t argue with her.
I’d failed miserably. If I’d had my magic, I could have put up a circle and blocked that punch. I could have flooded Gerald with ever-after and dropped him like a rock. I could have lit the dark with a light, melted the bars with a word, punched a hole through the walls of the basement itself! But without it . . . I was nothing. Useless.
It wasn’t who I wanted to be.
Sixteen
I’d been in the stinking bathroom long enough that I couldn’t smell it anymore, and that sort of bothered me. They’d tossed me in here hours ago to keep me away from Winona. The tiny four-by-six room was disgusting, but careful inspection had shown me a way out. I just needed some time by myself. After I’d threatened to anatomically change Jennifer and Gerald if they dared open that door to so much as give me my dinner, peace was what I got. Stupid. The last thing you want to do is lock your prisoner in a badly designed, poorly constructed basement bathroom and ignore her. Whoever built this thing hadn’t made it to code. There were at least two feet between the studs.
Lower lip between my teeth, I pulled another chunk of wallboard from the growing hole I’d started with the chunk of plastic Winona had given me. The piece of wallboard was about the size of my hand, and I quietly set it in the water tank. I could take a larger chunk, but the bigger the piece, the more noise it made. I thought it was about three in the morning, but I didn’t like how close I was to their lair, and I was going to err on the side of caution. We weren’t going to get another chance after this. If I failed again, one of us was going to die, and it would probably be Winona. I couldn’t live with myself if that happened.
Cold, I wiped the back of my hand under my nose and carefully wiggled another piece back and forth until the paper gave way. I’d not heard a peep from anyone in hours, and I hoped Winona was okay. The hole was big enough on this side of the studs for me to slip out. All that was left was breaking the other side open.
Muscles protesting, I slowly got up, feeling everything ache from sitting for so long on the cold cement. Stretching to the bare bulb, I carefully untwisted it until the connection broke and the light went off. I didn’t know where the switch was, but it wasn’t in here with me.
I jogged in place to warm up as I waited for my eyes to adjust. It was cold, and I wanted to be able to move fast if I had to. Slowly the faintest glow of light from under the door started to show, and I knelt in front of my hole.
Taking that bit of plastic that Winona had given me, I bored a hole into the outer wall. My noise was as soft as a mouse, but if anyone was watching the door, they’d hear it. Breath held, I put my eye to the hole and looked out, seeing nothing but shadowy lumps and a glow where they were likely sleeping, boxes and old file cabinets between us.
So far, so good. Emboldened, I stuck my finger through the hole and pulled. Slowly, I widened the hole. The air got fresher, and I worked faster, trading off silence for speed. If I was lucky, Eloy was sleeping, not on patrol outside.
Eloy, I thought as I worked, my jaw clenching as I recalled his mocking expression when he’d caught us. He’d expected I’d try to escape, and I’d walked right into it.
My head hurt, the sulfites used to preserve the cheap food I’d been eating for the last twenty-four hours finally having built up to where they were hitting me hard. Frustrated, I yanked on a huge chunk of wallboard, cringing when it broke away with a pa
ttering of dust. I stopped, deciding the hole was big enough to squeeze through—I couldn’t stand being in this bathroom another second. Fingers curved under and hurting, I crawled through the hole in the wall. My back protested as the edges pinched me, and my muscles felt stiff.
My foot caught on a chunk of wallboard, scraping on the floor when it tore free. Still on my hands and knees, I froze, hair in my face as I held my breath and gazed at the faint light coming from behind the file cabinets and what looked like an ancient furnace. Not a sound broke the stillness, and slowly my pulse returned to normal.
Moving carefully, I stood and flexed my cold hands, my band of silver thumping down into my wrist. Satisfaction, and a little pride, made me smile. I’d gotten out without using any magic. None. Regardless, it made me all the more determined that I was going to get this stupid-ass bracelet off. Oh God. Al. I had to come up with something really big to bribe him with. Maybe if I made enough tulpas to buy his library back. But I knew it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. I’d torn a hole in the ever-after, and it was collapsing slowly but surely.
“I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Winona, knowing she couldn’t hear me, then set a dusty box to hide the hole I’d made in the wall.
The stairs were a sure way out, but I wasn’t leaving without Winona, and she was too noisy on them. Not to mention that the front door upstairs would be locked, with an alarm attached. Attracting official attention would be great, but it would take fifteen minutes for anyone to get out here, plenty of time to be recaptured and relocated. HAPA was scum, but their people were well trained and efficient.
What I really wanted was a quiet, unalarmed basement window to sneak out of. Hesitating, I turned away from the slight glow and picked my way deeper into the basement. There probably wasn’t an elevator or a second set of stairs, since Gerald hadn’t set up any cameras in this direction, but maybe there was a window.
Ducking under an iron water pipe, I felt my way, looking for the faintest glimmer of starlight. Thick walls of old fieldstone held up the ceiling, supplemented by modern pipe supports. File boxes, dingy office furniture, and old displays, getting older the farther I went, that had once been upstairs filled the space.
“That looks promising,” I whispered when the concrete floor became dry, dusty tile, and I found what looked like an old shower stall. Squinting, I looked over the tattered shower curtain and a broken commode that looked as if it hadn’t seen water since the Turn. Across from them were two tall lockers, dented and with the latches broken. Janitors’ shower? My heart pounded when I saw the black-painted square surrounded by the rough stone walls of the original foundation. It had to be a window—right at my head level.
Excited, I went back into the mess behind me to find something to stand on. The rolling chair on casters was out, but the heavy wooden crate with PLANETS stenciled on it was ideal. Ivy. I missed her—she must be worried sick. Jenks, too. Wayde probably wasn’t having a very good day, either, though my capture was not his fault. The heavy box scraped lightly on the tile as I dragged it backward, and I winced. The dust tickled my nose, and I made one of those prissy-girl sneezes, almost blowing out my ears.
I finally got the box in place and scrambled up. “Please move,” I begged the gods of irony, and my breath slipped out when the thin panel of glass shifted upward, the strips of metal grinding on the tracks.
Cold air bathed my face. The night was calm, the hum of the interstate traffic faint and distant. There was a raggedy foundation bush in front of me, but I could see the empty parking lot to my left, and an open field and woods to my right. It would be a tight squeeze, but I was fairly sure both Winona and I could make it. Once outside, we could be halfway to somewhere before they knew we were gone.
I took one last breath of freedom, then pulled the window shut lest the fresher air give me away. As I stepped awkwardly from the crate, my cold ankles twinged. Time to get Winona.
My pace back through the dark, winding basement was faster, and I stopped at the umbrella stand holding a set of “planet poles,” picking out the thickest, shortest one as an unbalanced club. It slid from the rest with a soft scrape, and my pulse quickened. I might not have any magic, but I could still knock heads, and I hefted it, feeling empowered.
More slowly, I moved in the brighter gloom, seeing the empty counters and softly glowing lights from the machines as I crept by the three lumps sleeping on low cots. Jennifer’s curtain was gone. Gerald was on his back, set apart from the two women, his mouth hanging open and snoring slightly. My grip on my stick tightened. I had a thought to bean him one in his sleep, but then the rest would wake up. No telling what Chris would pull out of her magic book to hit us with. If we could do this with no one the wiser, then all the better.
Winona sat up from the floor as I hesitated over Gerald. Her eyes threw back the glow from the machines, like a cat’s, and I froze. She was okay. Leaving the sleeping thugs behind, I crossed the room to her. Winona didn’t stand, instead scooted to the door on her butt, and I wondered if they’d hurt her. “Are you okay?” I barely breathed as I crouched beside her.
“I’m fine,” she said, and our fingers touched through the mesh. “My feet make so much damned noise, it’s better if I don’t get up.” Her ugly face smiled, making me shiver. “I heard you get out. I thought you’d left me.”
I gave her fingers a quick squeeze, then pulled back. “I was finding a way out.” I looked behind me to the sleeping people. “You heard all that? How come they didn’t?”
She shrugged. “I can hear everything.”
Impatience slowly tightened from my toes to my aching head. “Eloy?” I asked.
Winona brought her eerie cat gaze back from the cots. “He left after they soldered a new lock on the cage. They put charmed silver on me, too. I can’t tap a line now.”
I exhaled in dismay, and I spun on my heel, still in a crouch as I looked at the empty counters. There was a bolt cutter somewhere, but it would be noisy to look. “Key?” I asked hopefully, and Winona made an ugly face.
“Chris has it.”
“Dart gun?” I whispered, and she shook her head.
“Eloy.”
I frowned. Figured. He was probably waiting in the bushes somewhere playing soldier. It might be better to get her out of her cage first, then worry about getting her charmed silver off.
“Okay,” I said as I put my lips next to the mesh. “I’m going to pick the lock. The window is in the back at an old shower. Left is the parking lot, right is the woods. Once you’re there, keep running. They’ll never catch you.”
“What about you?” she insisted, and I cringed, thinking she was too loud.
“I’ll be right behind,” I said, trying to smile. “But if things go wrong and I can’t run—”
“I’ll pick you up,” she said, her head down as she scratched at her middle.
I took a breath to protest, then blinked when she appeared to push her entire hand inside herself. It was her pouch, and I stared when she pulled out a pair of wire clippers.
“Where did you get that?” I hissed, shocked, and she grinned her sharp-canine grin at me.
“They left it out,” she said. “I fell on it and no one noticed. I wasn’t going to take the zip strip off until I knew we were escaping.”
She held the clippers out through the mesh, and I took them, thinking cutting the mesh would be easier than trying to jimmy the lock—provided that it wasn’t noisy. Eager, I awkwardly angled the business end of the clippers back through the wires and around her wristband. It was only one of the cheap plastic-coated zip strips that the I.S. used, not like my industrial-strength band, and it wouldn’t fry her brain when it came off. With a soft thump, the sharp metal pushed through, and Winona sighed in relief.
“Thanks,” she said as she rubbed her wrist. “I never thought I’d miss being able to touch a ley line like that.” Her eyes went pas
t me, and determination made her fierce. “You came back for me. We leave together, or not at all.”
Grateful, I reached my fingers through the bars and gave her fingers a quick squeeze. She wasn’t that ugly, once you got used to her. “Thanks. Keep watch, okay? Monitors, too.”
She flicked her gaze over my shoulder and nodded.
The wire was the thinnest where the mesh was attached to the door frame, and starting at the bottom, I clipped the wires one by one, hesitating after each thumping click. It was almost absurdly easy, and it wasn’t three minutes before I stood and passed the clippers back through to her and she tucked them away, not even making a lump on her middle. Grabbing the long edge of the L I’d cut, I leaned back and let my weight bend the mesh up so Winona could slip out.
Her hooves clicked, and I held my breath as she moved slowly and erratically, trying to give her pace an uneven sound. Shoulders tense, she slid out sideways, exhaling when she was finally free. Smiling, I eased the mesh back down and took a relieved breath. Almost there.
“Son of a bitch!” a feminine voice exclaimed.
Winona’s eyes focused over my shoulder, then widened. I spun to see a shadowy figure sitting up on a cot. “Run!” I shouted, but they were between us and the window, and I didn’t know if there was another, more circular way in between all the junk down here.
“Oh no!” Jennifer cried, and my chest clenched when Gerald snorted awake, rolling onto the floor and reaching for something under his cot.
I snatched the pipe and took up a stance. Beside me, Winona had her head down and her fingers in her pouch. “Consimilis, calefacio!” she shouted triumphantly as she held up a scrap of paper.
A boom of sound exploded with a burst of light, and I cowered as every scrap of paper within a six-foot radius burst into flame. Holy crap, the woman had power!