Changes

Chapter 16

“Harry,” Molly called from up in the living room. “I think they’re waking up.”

I grunted and lifted my pentacle necklace to examine it. The little pentagonal ruby had been quite obviously cut for this particular piece of jewelry. Or it had been before I’d been forced to use the necklace as a silver bullet. My little pentacle, the five-pointed star within a circle, had been warped by the extremes of stress I’d subjected it to. I’d been straightening it out with the set of jeweler’s tools I used to update Little Chicago.

The jewel abruptly snapped into the center of the pentacle as if into a socket. I shook the necklace several times, and the gem stayed put. But there was no point in taking chances. I turned it over and smeared the whole back with a big blob of adhesive. It might not look pretty from the front after it had dried, but I was pressed for time.

“That’ll do, pig,” I muttered to myself. I looked up to Bob’s shelf, where Mister was sprawling, using a couple of paperbacks for pillows while he amused himself dragging his claws through the mounded candle wax. I reached up to rub his ears with my fingertips, setting him to purring, and promised myself I would get Bob back soon: For the time being, he was, like the Swords, too valuable and too dangerous to leave unguarded. In Lea’s bloodthirsty garden, they were probably safer than they had been in my apartment in the first place.

I left my mother’s amulet and the glittering ruby sitting on my worktable so that the glue could dry, and padded up the stepladder.

I had hefted Susan up onto the sofa and fetched a pillow for her head, and a blanket. Molly had managed to roll Martin onto a strip of camping foam, and given him a pillow and a blanket, too. Mouse had settled down on the floor near Martin to sleep. Even though his eyes were closed and he was snoring slightly, his ears twitched at every sound.

While I had been in the lab, Molly had been cleaning up. She probably knew where all the dishes went better than I did. Or she was reorganizing them completely. Either way, I was sure that the next time I just wanted to fry one egg, I wouldn’t be able to find the little skillet until after I had already used the big skillet and cleaned it off.

I hunkered down next to Susan, and as I did she stirred and muttered softly. Then she jerked in a swift breath through her nose, her eyes suddenly opening wide, as if she were panicked.

“Easy,” I said at once. “Susan. It’s Harry. You’re safe.”

It seemed to take several seconds for my words to sink in. Then she relaxed again, blinked a few times, and turned her head toward me.

“What happened to me?” she asked.

“You were mistaken for an intruder,” I said. “You were hit with a form of magic that made you sleep.”

She frowned tiredly. “Oh. I was dreaming. . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I was dreaming that the curse was gone. That I was human.” She shook her head with a bitter little smile. “I thought I was done having that one. Martin?”

“Here,” Martin slurred. “I’m all right.”

“But maybe not for long,” I said. “The apartment’s wards are down. We’re naked here.”

“Well,” Martin said in an acidic voice. “I think we learned our lesson about where that leads.”

Susan rolled her eyes, but the look she gave me, a little hint of a smile and a level stare with her dark eyes, was positively smoldering.

Yeah. That had been pretty good.

“Did you guys find out about our tail?” I asked.

“Tails, as it turns out. Three different local investigative agencies,” Martin supplied. “They were paid cash up front to follow us from the time we arrived. They all gave a different description of the woman who hired them. All of them were too beautiful to believe.”

“Arianna?” I asked.

Martin grunted. “Probably. The oldest of them can wear any flesh mask they wish, and go abroad in daylight, hidden from the sun in the shadow of their own mask.”

I lifted my eyebrows. That was news. I wasn’t even sure the Wardens had that kind of information. Martin must have been a little groggy from his naptime.

“How long were we out?” Susan asked.

“I got here about five hours ago. Sun’s down.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, as if bracing herself for something, and nodded. “All right. Martin and I need to get moving.”

“Where?” I asked.

“The airport,” Martin said. “We should be able to be in Nevada by very late tonight or early tomorrow morning. Then we can move on the warehouse and look for more information.”

“We discussed it, Harry,” Susan said quietly. “You can’t take a plane, and we’re counting the minutes. A jet will get us there in about seven hours. The car will take two days. There’s no time for that.”

“Yeah, I can see your reasoning,” I said.

Martin stood up creakily and stretched. “Entering the facility may require a reconnaissance period. We’ll have to determine its weaknesses, patrol pacing, and so on before we—”

I interrupted him by slapping a piece of notebook paper down on the coffee table. “The storage facility is set into the side of a stone hill. There are some portable units stored outside in a yard with a twelve-foot razor-wire fence. A road leads into the hill and down into what I presume to be caverns either created for storage space or appropriated after a mining operation closed.” I pointed at the notebook paper, to different points on the sketch, as I mentioned each significant feature.

“There is a single watchtower with one guard armed with a longbarreled assault rifle with a big scope. There are two men and a dog walking a patrol around the perimeter fence with those little assault rifles—”

“Carbines,” Molly said brightly, from the kitchen.

“—and fragmentation grenades. They aren’t in a hurry. Takes them about twenty minutes; then they go inside for a drink and come back out. There are security cameras here, here, and here, and enough cars in the employee parking lot to make me think that the underground portion of the facility is probably pretty big, and probably has some kind of barracks for their security team.”

I nodded. “That’s about it on the surface, but there’s no way we can get inside to scout it out ahead of time. Looks pretty straightforward. We move up to it under a veil; I shut down the communications. We use a distraction to draw everyone’s attention, and when the reinforcements come running out, we’re in. Hopefully we can find a way to lock them outside. After that, it’s just a matter of . . .”

I trailed off as I looked up to find Martin and Susan staring at me, their jaws kind of hanging limply.

“What?” I said.

“How . . .” Martin began.

“Where . . .” Susan said.

Molly burst out into a fit of giggles she didn’t even try to hide.

“How do I know?” I reached over to the table and held up an old set of binoculars I’d left sitting there. “I went over to take a look. Took me about fifteen minutes, one way. I could bring you, if you want, but it’s cool if you guys want to take the plane. I’ll wait for you.”

Martin stared hard at me.

“You . . .” Susan began, something like anger in her tone. Then she threw back her head and laughed. “You insufferable, arrogant pig,” she said fondly. “I shouldn’t have underestimated you. You don’t always perform gracefully when everything is on the line—but you’re always there, aren’t you.”

“I hope so,” I said quietly. I stood up again. “Better eat something. I’ve got some things finishing up in the lab that might help us. We’ll go in one hour.”