“What do we do?”
Viv opened the door and stepped into the hallway. I stifled a shriek. “No one’s here,” she said in a normal voice.
I followed her into the hall and turned my light on. The wallpaper was ripped in a long strip that curled at the bottom, revealing the cubby. It was empty. I swore. “Now we have no proof.”
“Malcolm will believe you. Maybe there’s still something he can do.”
“Maybe. Let’s go.”
We tiptoed down the stairs and were nearly to the second floor when lights came on beneath us, in the lobby. I froze, and Viv bumped into me. “He’s still here,” I whispered.
“We’re trapped,” Viv said. “Unless…”
She grabbed my hand and dragged me through the nearest door. “Better lock it,” she said, and I did so, though it was a flimsy lock and a thin door and if a man with a hatchet decided to hack his way through, it wasn’t going to stop him for long.
Viv pulled aside the drapes. “Fire escape,” she said. “Help me—oof—open this window!”
I dropped my flashlight and took a place next to her, worming my fingers beneath the sash and pulling hard. No movement. I imagined I could hear footsteps coming up the stairs. Viv cursed and did something to the top of the sash. “It was locked,” she said. “Push!”
The window moved like it hadn’t been opened in decades. Inch by painful inch, it jolted upward until it was open wide enough for us to fit through. I let go to pick up my flashlight, and it started to sag downwards again. “We’ll have to hold it for each other,” I said, shoving it back up. “Climb through.”
Viv hooked her long leg over the sill and felt about for the fire escape. “It’s wobbly,” she said. “It’s never going to hold us.”
Behind me, someone tried the doorknob. Viv gasped and pulled herself the rest of the way through. “Hurry, hurry,” she chanted.
Someone pounded on the door, rhythmically, like he was trying to break it down. I scooted through the opening, scraping my back on the rough brick framing the window. The door flew open. Viv screamed and let the window fall. I teetered as the fire escape swayed under us. “Run!”
We scrambled as fast as we dared down the metal steps to where the ladder was fastened well above street level. Viv kicked the brackets holding it, and it rattled down, giving off little sparks where it knocked against the metal. Above, something heavy landed on the fire escape, and Viv and I shrieked and tumbled over each other trying to get down the ladder. Then we ran.
We reached the van and Viv started it up, screeching away from the curb and accelerating far too fast for the local speed limit. Neither of us cared. A cop stopping us would have been a welcome reminder of law and order. Never mind that we’d been on the property illegally.
Viv let out a deep breath and started laughing like she couldn’t stop herself. “I can’t believe we did that. If we’d been caught—”
“Who knows what might have happened,” I said. I leaned against the door frame and closed my eyes. Then I sat up and dug out my phone. “Malcolm has to know about this right now. Maybe we scared the guy off before he could finish whatever he was doing.”
I got Malcolm’s voice mail. “It’s Helena,” I said. “Viv and I found another one of those origami like the one in my apartment. Call me back immediately.” I hung up. “I’m so glad Andria didn’t answer. That’s not a message I want to see go astray.”
“You say her name like it tastes bad.”
“It does. But she’s not his girlfriend.” It came out as a sing-song, happy exclamation.
“Does it matter?”
Her quiet inquiry killed my happy mood dead. “I guess not.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie, I didn’t mean to be critical. But isn’t what Judy said true? You can’t date him even if he is interested in you.”
I shrugged. “You’re right. I need to get over him.”
“Has Jason called you yet?”
“No. I’ll call him, I promise.”
My phone rang. “Why is it,” Malcolm said, “when the words ‘Viv and I’ are combined with ‘found an origami’ I am filled with nameless dread?”
“We’re safe. Nothing happened to us. Listen.” I told him what had happened, pausing in the middle to ask Viv, “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere,” she said, making another right-hand turn. “I was sort of thinking we needed to lose the guy, but now I’m lost.”
“Anyway,” I said to Malcolm, “he took the origami, but I hoped maybe you could learn something from knowing where it used to be. There might be more things—we might have scared him off before he could finish whatever he was doing in the Hyperion.”
“You might have scared him off.”
“Right.”
“Meaning you encountered him.”
“He sort of chased us.”
“Chased you.” It was not a question.
I swallowed. “Is this the part where you yell at me for being reckless and impulsive?”
“We’re getting there.”
“I just didn’t want to look stupid if it turned out there was nothing wrong at the Hyperion.”
“As opposed to looking smart and being dead. Helena—”
“I know, I’m not a magus, I’m not trained to fight, and my duty is to Abernathy’s. But this is about Abernathy’s, Malcolm. It affects me more than it does anyone.”
“That does not give you the right to risk your life doing other people’s jobs!”
Viv winced. Malcolm’s voice had carried. “Is that why you’re mad? Because I did your job for you?”
“I am angry because there are protocols for situations like this and you ignored—no, worse, you didn’t even know what they were. Don’t you realize you can tell me anything and I will give your concerns credence? If you had said you suspected magic at the hotel, my team would have investigated. Or are you too proud to risk being wrong?”
That one stung. He was right. “I’m sorry.”
“Just don’t do it again.” He sounded less angry. “We’re on our way to the Hyperion. Would you and Viv care to meet us there?”
“Really? You don’t think it’s too dangerous?”
“I think your ability to see through illusions will be handy, and I think it is unlikely Viv would be willing to let you go without her. But you must both do exactly as we say, with no questions asked, no matter how strange the request may seem.”
“I understand. Thank you for believing me.”
“Thank you for finally showing sense.” He laughed and hung up.
“I guess if he can laugh, he isn’t going to take my head off,” I said.
“What did he say?”
“He wants us back at the Hyperion with the team.”
Viv clenched the steering wheel. “That would be so much more exciting if I didn’t remember the things I saw in there. Or the fire escape.”
“If the guy removed the origami, the illusions will probably be gone, too.”
“I don’t like the sound of ‘probably’,” Viv said with a shudder.
The parking spot we’d used before was still empty. My phone said it was 10:16, and the pedestrian traffic had dropped off to almost nothing. We loitered by the side door—Viv verified it was still unlocked—until a black SUV pulled up to the curb beside us, and Malcolm and his team got out. They were dressed for action in black fatigues and knit caps, like urban commandos. Each wore a set of black swimmer’s goggles high on their forehead. “The two of you stay behind us,” Malcolm said. “Canales, you’ll bring up the rear. Quincy?”
“The door’s open,” I volunteered. Malcolm glanced at me and waved Olivia off. He opened the door, shone his flashlight, a bigger model than mine had been, down the hallway, and gestured to Derrick to precede him.
They moved through the ground floor even faster than Viv and I had, in what looked like a practiced search routine. Hector had a square box of some silvery-gray metal that ticked like a Geiger counter. “Magic residue,”
he said when I asked what it was for. “Though not all magic leaves a trace. This is to detect the most obvious stuff. Wouldn’t want to look like idiots by overlooking something basic.”
In the lobby, Malcolm had them all fan out, their flashlights making an intersecting pattern, so Hector could survey the whole room. Viv and I stood by the front desk, staying out of the way. I was watching Hector when Viv grabbed my arm and said, “Something moved. Not a shadow.”
“Where?”
She pointed. “Viv saw movement,” I called out.
“And you saw nothing?” Malcolm said. “Viv, come stand where you saw it.”
Viv swallowed hard and walked to a spot near the front door. Halfway there, she stopped briefly, then kept walking. “I’m taking your word this is an illusion,” she said.
Malcolm adjusted his goggles over his eyes. “It is,” he said. “Stop there.”
Viv stopped. Olivia went to join her, kneeling down and crawling around the floor in that corner. “Found it,” she said, displaying something small held between her thumb and forefinger. “Canales, I need a bag.”
I followed Hector to where Olivia stood and watched her drop the origami, which looked like a two-legged giraffe, into an ordinary Ziploc bag. “I don’t know what it does yet, but that can wait,” she told Malcolm, who nodded and gestured to everyone to move upstairs.
“We’re going to see where you found the origami first,” Malcolm said.
“Aren’t you afraid of the guy still being here?” I said.
Malcolm smiled and tapped his thigh, where a gun was holstered. “I hope he’s here, as I have some questions to ask him. But I doubt he remained once he was discovered. He likely thought you were squatters, but he couldn’t take the chance that you were more than that.”
He spent a few minutes gazing into the empty cubby, then made way for Olivia, who had a pad and pencil to sketch the upstairs hall. She flipped over a page and sketched something else. “What’s she doing?” I whispered. She was so intent on her work I was afraid of distracting her.
“She is plotting out the exact location within the city,” Malcolm said in a normal voice. “If that origami worked at a distance, as the first did, she can extrapolate what or where it was supposed to affect. Not as effective as having the origami to work with, but not a dead loss, either.”
After another hour, I was tired. Viv had spotted another illusion, and Hector had found traces of another of the exploded snowflake origamis, though not the thing itself. Finally, Malcolm said, “I think we’re through here,” and we trooped back to the lobby.
“Was this useful?” I asked.
“It’s given me more to work with,” Olivia said. “I’m increasingly inclined to believe in your mirrored maze or something like it. Origami magic is simple, in a sense—one shape does one thing, now and always. If you know a box creates an extradimensional space, and you find another box, you know what it does, too. Finding more of the—what did you call it? The exploded snowflake?—finding more of them suggests one person, or one group, is behind it all.”
“It’s not Judy.”
Olivia shook her head. “I’m not prepared to rule anyone out yet. But I’m not trying to prove it was Judy over anyone else if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“So long as you’re fair-minded, that’s what I care about. Because Judy didn’t do it.”
“I’m surprised you can be so loyal to her, what with everything she did when you were first made custodian,” Derrick said.
“She’s proved her loyalty to the store, and that’s what matters.”
“And we will prove the truth,” Malcolm said. “Now, do we need to follow the two of you home?”
“We’ll be fine.” Malcolm had his gaze fixed on me in that serious way that left me not knowing where to look, so I busied myself getting into the van and said, “Thanks again. Good night,” in a way that encompassed all of them.
“That was exhausting,” Viv said when we were on the road. “But exciting. I’ve never been in a real haunted house before. Okay, so it wasn’t haunted, but—” She shivered. “Hel, you should be grateful you couldn’t see some of those things. They were horrifying.”
“I am grateful, though I think you were more helpful because you could.” I yawned and stretched. “I wish I didn’t have to work tomorrow.”
“Me too. If only we could call in sick without losing pay. I want to follow Malcolm’s team around and see what they learn.”
I thought about Judy, stuck in her house with no information, no one who believed her except me, and I couldn’t do anything. Malcolm’s team was her only hope. “So do I,” I said.
called Judy first thing the next morning and told her what we’d found at the Hyperion. “So what you’re saying,” she said when I wound down, “is there’s still no proof I didn’t do it.”
I’d been upbeat enough this response discouraged me. “I thought the new origami creations were good evidence to the contrary.”
“Except I still might have planted them in that hotel.”
“But you didn’t. Malcolm will prove it.”
“You’ve got way more faith in him than I do.” She sounded too weary for eight in the morning.
I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my kitchen table. The room still smelled of toast and coffee. “I don’t know what else I can do. Malcolm will kill me if I try investigating on my own again.”
“You could go to the market. See when the origami seller first appeared.”
“How would that help?”
“I haven’t been to the market in over three weeks.” Judy spoke in tones of exaggerated patience, like someone addressing a stupid child. “If you could prove he only arrived there after I was there last—”
“Okay, okay, I get it. I’ll see what I can do. You don’t have to get snippy.”
Judy sighed. The sound echoed in the phone’s speaker. “I’m tired of having nothing to do but wait for my father to bring Lucia before a tribunal for violating the Accords. I wish I could get out there and do the work myself.”
“Is he really going to do that?”
“Any day now. He’s convinced she’s got a vendetta against him and is taking it out on me.”
“That’s ridiculous. Lucia’s as fair-minded as anyone.”
Judy snorted. “Don’t kid yourself. Lucia might not support Nicolliens over Ambrosites or vice versa, but she’s got her favorites.”
“But she wouldn’t jeopardize the oracle that way.”
“Let’s hope not.” Judy hung up. I sat staring at my phone for a few seconds before putting it away and tidying up my kitchen after my small breakfast. Judy’s idea about the market was a good one, though I wasn’t sure how soon I’d be able to implement it. It would have to wait at least until after closing. I didn’t have time to drive all the way to Beaverton and back before ten.
I went downstairs and gathered up the parcels of auguries to take to the post office. I used some of those giant blue IKEA totes to carry them all, noting that the handle of one had begun to tear and I should maybe buy a new one. Fumbling with my load, I stepped through the back door, and with a shriek dropped everything as a large, muscular man came toward me with his hand outstretched. I scrambled backward and nearly had the door shut when he said, “Helena, it’s me. I’m sorry I startled you.”
I pushed the door open again. The man was Gemini, my friend from the bank. “What are you doing here?”
“The boss assigned me to you. Let me carry those.” Gemini scooped up the fallen totes and looped both over his left arm. “I didn’t think I should hang out around your front door.”
“That’s all right. I wasn’t expecting you.” My heart was still pounding with memory. “I thought Malcolm said you’d be discreet.”
“I will, but you should know it’s me skulking around.” Gemini’s smile was white and brilliant against his dark skin. “In case you happen to see me. I’ll also run any little errands you have, like this one to the post o
ffice.”
“I—there’s no point in saying I like going to the post office, is there?”
“Not really. The boss was very clear about that.” He smiled again. “Now, I’ll take these, and then I’ll be around if you need me.”
I waved goodbye, then went back inside, locking the door behind me. Malcolm hadn’t been kidding about the bodyguard, then. At least he’d picked someone I felt comfortable with. Would Gemini expect to sleep in my apartment? I wasn’t sure how comfortable I felt about that. I was torn between feeling irritated with Malcolm’s overprotectiveness and warmed at how he cared about my safety. Maybe there’s not such a big leap from that to caring about me, personally.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten silently. That was no train of thought to leap on. I needed to call Jason. It was too early in the day for that, that was all. I continued into the store, pretending not to feel cheered by the thought.
The store was quiet most of the day, with very few customers either Nicollien or Ambrosite and only a handful of mail-in augury requests. Judy, however, kept me busy with constant texts:
WHAT ARE YOU DOING
and
DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE MARKET
and
MY FATHER IS ON THE WARPATH. STAY OUT OF HIS WAY
which was simple, because I was more or less trapped in the store and William Rasmussen rarely deigned to make an appearance.
I leaned against the counter, staring at the last text. When had I started feeling like Abernathy’s was a trap? I loved the store—it was just I felt trapped by my inability to do anything to help Judy or to restore the oracle to full functionality. All I could do was keep performing auguries and pray Malcolm and his team were having success.
The door jingled. “Oh,” I said, “I was—” Thinking about you felt way too intimate, so I shut up before I could finish my sentence.
“Not too busy, I hope,” Malcolm said.
“No. It’s been really quiet.”
“I wanted to ask what you thought of Mr. Benson.”
“Who?”
“Gemini Benson. Your new bodyguard.”
“Oh.” I felt embarrassed. I didn’t know Gemini as well as I’d thought. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard his last name before. I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to thank someone for the gift of another person.”
The Book of Peril (The Last Oracle 2) Page 15
