by Trudi Jaye
Fee sighed. “I could have stopped them. I’ve had opportunities since I left. When Geraldine died, she left me all the land they have their farm on. I could have kicked them off.”
“But you didn’t? Why?” Henry could feel the tension in her body.
“It’s easier to fight a battle when you know where the players are. If I kicked them off, how would I know where they were?”
Henry nodded. “Makes sense, I guess.”
“It wasn’t an easy decision to make. I wanted to kick them off the land so badly, to make them pay for what they did to me, and what they do to other people. But I didn’t. Instead, I installed someone in Geraldine’s place, to keep an eye out for kids like me. To make sure they don’t try to hurt anyone else.”
“So you have a gatekeeper down there?”
“Yes.”
“Can we call them? Ask them what’s happening? Maybe this attack has something to do with your parents?”
Fee nodded. “They’re not the only Witch Hunters in the U.S. It’s possible that it’s not them. But it’s a good idea, I’ll phone her now.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Fee’s hand shook as she replaced the receiver.
Alberta had used the code words they’d devised to let each other know if there was something wrong. As soon as she’d said something about baking peanut butter cookies for Fee, it had been obvious the woman was scared.
She’d told Alberta not to worry, she was sure the cookies would be delicious, and hung up.
“Someone was there, or they were listening in.” Fee’s mind was whirring with the possibilities. “We have to get her away from there.”
Henry shook his head. “We have enough on our plate here, Fee. If this really is the work of Witch Hunters, I’m not sure we can...”
“I have to! I put her in that position. She’s my responsibility.” Alberta was a lovely older woman with sharp eyes and a bad hip. She wasn’t up to protecting herself from crazy zealots. That hadn’t been her job, she’d just been supposed to keep an eye out and let Fee know if anything suspicious happened, all while living rent free in a nice house, with a bit of an extra pension.
“Then I’ll go with you.”
“You don’t have to.” Fee’s stomach lurched at the idea of going on her own, but she didn’t want Henry to go with her out of a sense of duty.
“I want to. You’ll need backup. And with the lab destroyed, it’s not like I’ve got much to do around here.” Henry frowned. “Although I do think we should find out more about who might have done this before we go anywhere.”
Fee nodded. “First I’m going to call Nolan and see how Eugene and David are.” She reached out her hand to pick up her phone, and it rang. “Hello?” she said.
“Fee, this is David.”
“David! How are you? How’s Eugene?”
David paused, and Fee heard him take a shaky breath through the phone line. He was obviously upset. “I’m fine. Eugene is in a serious condition. He has burns to most of his body. The damn fool ran back up into the lab.”
“I heard. I’m so sorry.”
David cleared his throat. “Lucas just rang and told us the FBI has found evidence the bomb was definitely set to go off while there were people in the lab. They’re targeting us. It was only because you were at home and the others trooped down to the generator rooms that we avoided casualties. The FBI agent thinks we’re all still in danger, so Lucas wants to put us all in protective custody, paid for by the company, until this blows over. Even Eugene.”
Fee scrunched up her face, trying to understand. “Protective custody? What does that mean?” Her intuition was pinging big time. She glanced over at Henry, who was frowning.
“Lucas has found somewhere we can all go. It’s a friend’s holiday home, with a security team suggested by the police. He wants us to wait out the investigation safe and sound.” David sounded scared and breathless at the same time.
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes. Although Lucas said the FBI agent seemed confident he was going to find who did this pretty fast.”
“Where would we be going?” She had no intention of going into some kind of indefinite lockdown with the team, not when Alberta needed her help. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious.
“I don’t know. They said it had to be secret for our own protection.”
A shiver went down Fee’s spine. “What about Henry?” She frowned over at Henry, who was watching her attentively.
There was a pause. “Lucas said he spoke to Henry, and he’s decided to go back to the Carnival.”
Fee’s stomach dropped out, and she opened her mouth to refute what David was saying. But she closed it again, and tried to keep calm. David was lying to her. But why? Was he part of this? She needed time to think.
“Do you think it’s safe, David?” she asked instead, trying to stall for time.
David hesitated. “Lucas wouldn’t harm us. He’s a good guy.”
Fee tapped one finger on the tabletop next to her. David hadn’t exactly answered her question. She said the only thing she could think of. “Okay, I’ll go with you. But I have to pack up my things. I can’t go immediately.”
“I knew you’d do it, Fee,” said David, sounding relieved. “You just need to pack enough for a couple of weeks. A van will pick you up in an hour.”
“Okay. An hour. I guess that’s enough time.”
“You’ll need to be fast.” David’s voice was calm, more confident now.
“Okay, I’ll see you soon,” said Fee, hanging up the phone. Her breathing was fast, and she tried to make herself calm down.
“It’s David,” she said. “I think he’s part of it somehow. He just lied to me about you going back to the Carnival.” She frowned, realizing she hadn’t made sure it wasn’t true. “You didn’t talk to Lucas and tell him you were going back to the Carnival, did you?”
Henry shook his head. “No. But tell me exactly what David said. We have to make sure it’s really him.”
“He said Lucas had spoken to you, and you were going home to the Carnival.”
“So Lucas could have been the one lying?”
Fee stopped and thought about it for a moment. “I guess so. But David sounded weird on the phone, like he was worried I’d say no to going.”
“You are saying no to it. He was right to be worried.” Henry grinned at her.
She rolled her eyes. “They’ll be here in an hour. We have to pack everything and get out of here in half an hour.”
“They could already have someone watching the building,” warned Henry.
Fee stared at him. “Then we need a distraction when we do leave, so we can actually escape.”
“I like the way you think,” grinned Henry. “Quick, grab everything you need, so we can get out of here. What about Max?”
Fee looked at her favorite invention and hesitated. He’d be useful to have here, to turn lights on, and make it seem like she was home. But there was a high likelihood someone would search the apartment when she didn’t jump nicely into their kidnapping van. “We take him with us. They all come with us.”
She ran to her bedroom and grabbed a large bag, stuffing as many of her clothes in as she possibly could. She got her toiletries from the bathroom, and even grabbed her tool kit. “Come on you lot. Out you come.” She gave a low whistle, and several small metal robots crawled out from hiding places around her room.
Most of them she convinced to climb into a small wooden container that she dumped her costume jewellery out of. But Bing insisted on climbing into the nape of her neck and snuggling himself into her hair. It was strangely comforting, so she let him hide there, and carried all her stuff back out into the main room.
“Why does this feel like I’m saying goodbye to my apartment?” she said to Henry, who was searching through her electronic equipment.
“Maybe it’s your intuition,” said Henry looking up from his task with raised eyebrows.
“Or
maybe I’m just being melodramatic,” she said staunchly. It would be fine. But just in case, she went back to her room and grabbed her little cardboard box of mementoes from under the bed.
As she stuffed it into her bag, she again stopped to watch Henry as he rummaged around the room. “What are you actually doing?” she said.
“I’m trying to create a distraction,” he said.
“And what exactly is the distraction going to be?”
Henry glanced at her over his shoulder. “I thought perhaps you could have some kind of a breakdown, and refuse to come out to the van. If I can get the parts together to make a fake you to sit by the open window, you can record something that will start when they trip your detection software downstairs.”
Fee raised her eyebrows at him.
“Don’t try to tell me you don’t have anything like that. I can see the set up for it here. Plus Max told me about it.”
“Are you sure it will work?”
“Sure it will. I’ve set up systems like this loads of times at the carnival. It’ll keep them distracted, and give us more time to get out of here.”
“There’s a back entrance to the parking garage,” said Fee. She’d made sure about back entrances and other options when she first moved in.
“Even better. We can escape out the back while they’re trying to reason with you out the front. Quick, come give me a few hysterical cries,” he said with a grin.
Between them, they configured a basic sequence that would respond to knocks at the door, and to anyone who called out to her from below. Fee kept glancing at the clock on her wall, willing time to slow down so they could get it done in enough time.
As they worked together, Fee was impressed again by Henry’s skill with making things. He seemed to know instinctively what to do and how to do it and his hands moved at high speed creating whatever they needed. She felt the hum of magic surrounding them. It was good to have someone else who had a similar power to her own.
“Okay, it’s done,” said Henry. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Fee nodded. It was basic, but exactly what they needed. It would recognize a van and begin the sequence as well. And it was going to take photos of the van and anyone who got out, and forward them to Fee’s phone.
They grabbed her bags and headed out the door. “Come on, Max, you’re coming too,” Fee called to the robot where it stood to attention by the door.
“Certainly, Wild Feather.” Max moved toward the door with his multiple-legged gait and closed it behind him.
They had to make room for Max and the bags in the back of Henry’s car and wasted precious minutes squeezing his tentacles into unnatural positions.
Henry started the car, and instead of peeling off out of the building like Fee was expecting, he drove at the correct speed out of the back exit and down the road.
“Come on, get going,” she encouraged, looking over her shoulder out the back window.
“We don’t want to call attention to ourselves. This car is already pretty noticeable, we don’t want to make it worse,” said Henry, as he peered around them along the road.
“What are you looking for?”
“Spies. Scouts. Lookouts. Anyone who looks suspicious, who might report us back to their bosses.”
Fee nodded. That made sense. “So where to now?”
Henry hesitated. “I need to go back to my hotel room. There’s something I need.”
“Okay then. Let’s go.”
“There’s a chance they might be watching my hotel room,” said Henry slowly.
Fee turned to face Henry as he focused his attention on driving along the city street. “Why would they be watching you? I’m the one they’re after.”
Henry took a breath. “Didn’t you say they had ways to detect if someone was using magic? I used my magic in a pretty public place the other day, saving that young girl on the Ferris wheel. If they’ve been watching you, they might have seen it.”
“Then why are we risking it? Surely we can buy you new clothes or whatever?”
“I have a journal and a diary with names and contact details in it. If this really is the Witch Hunters, I can’t let that get into their hands. It would give them an entirely new set of magic-users to take aim at.”
“How would they know where you are? David would have no way to find out.”
Henry shook his head. “I’m not convinced it’s David. What if it’s Lucas? He knows exactly where I am. Or Pelgrim? He could have followed me home at any time these last few days.” He tapped his finger on the steering wheel.
“I’ll go in, try to see if I can ask someone from the hotel to get my bags for me.”
“What if they’re waiting in the room? They’d never let a hotel worker leave with your bags.”
“Do you have a better plan?” Henry glanced at her curiously.
“We could use my little critters,” suggested Fee. “Stay hidden, send them in to get bits and pieces. They might not be able to get everything, but they could safely get a phone and address book.”
Henry glanced at Fee a moment, surprise on his face. “Can they do that? Follow direction?”
Fee winced. “They’re a bit like a pack. They’ll go where I ask them, as long as Bing goes with them.”
“The one from your hair?”
“The one from my hair.”
***
Henry crouched behind the hedge at the back of the hotel, scanning the area, for anyone who might be watching for him. He couldn’t see anything suspicious, but that didn’t mean a thing. It wasn’t as if he was an expert at this kind of subterfuge.
They were planning to get as close as they could to the hotel, and then send the critters up to his room. He was going to burn the damned address book when he got it back. It had just never occurred to him how dangerous it was until now.
Behind him, Fee crouched with her arms curled against her, holding four small robots, including the spider-like swimmer, the kleptomaniac with hundreds of arms and legs, a cute little one that looked like a ladybug that Fee said was her first-ever creation, and a strange wild-looking one with tiny scissors instead of one arm, and long wires curling across its tiny faceplate as if it was the drummer in a Bob Marley tribute band. Bing was up in her hair, one hand outstretched like he thought he was an expedition leader.
Henry shook his head. He just didn’t understand how Fee could call them her failures. They were the most incredible things he’d ever seen. “Are they ready?” he asked.
“As they’ll ever be. I think we need to get them close to your room before we unleash them.” Fee looked at him and his breath caught. He kept forgetting about her new eye color, and then being surprised by it all over again.
“We’ll need to be on the lookout the whole time.” He didn’t know if he was being paranoid or not, but Fee’s description of the Witch Hunters had raised a chill up his spine. He didn’t intend to get caught by one of them, not for anything. Aside from anything else, he wasn’t sure there was anyone at the Carnival who could rescue them. They were all preoccupied with getting Missy and the others out of the trouble she’d gotten herself into.
“I’ll do my best, but I’ll need to keep an eye on the critters as well,” said Fee nervously.
Henry took a breath and tried to decide if he really needed to go into the room. The answer was still yes.
Annoyingly he was on the third floor of the small hotel; it had seemed advantageous when he first arrived. But he had an external balcony, and Fee assured him the robots would be able to climb up the outside and the little thieving one would be able to pick the lock with ease. He shook his head. This day was going from bad to just plain crazy.
Half bent over, they raced around the side of the pool, trying to keep under cover, and watch out for suspicious behaviour at the same time. It was harder than it seemed, because everyone looked suspicious when you were worried. All they could do was to keep going, and hope for the best. Henry ducked past another tree, and came to a
stop outside the window of the room directly below his. “This is it. They’ll have to climb up from here. Third floor.”
Fee nodded and lifted her hand up, letting each of the five metal robots off onto the concrete. They climbed up the side of the wall as if it was flat, speeding up to the top floor. They jumped over the balcony edge and disappeared from sight.
“They know it’s the bag on the bed, right? The one with the address book in it.”
“It’s fine. If they get the wrong one, we can send them back up again. They’re happy to run about.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know if we have time for that. Whoever it is, they’re serious; they’re willing to blow up a building to get to you.” Henry felt like he was being overly paranoid, especially given the look that Fee shot him, but warning signals were blaring inside his head. It didn’t feel safe, and he needed them to be leave as soon as possible.
They waited in silence for a few minutes, with Henry darting glances to the surrounding areas. Fee was watching for the critters to come back, and didn’t seem as concerned by an ambush downstairs.
A crash sounded upstairs in the room, and Henry jerked up to standing position.
“What was that?” whispered Fee. “Was that in your room?”
Henry shook his head. “I don’t know.”
As they spoke, three small metal objects came hurtling out of the room and over the edge of the ledge, only just hanging on as they ran, clinging to the edges of his black bag. Henry gave a sigh of relief. They’d got it.
“Where are June Bug and the Wildling?” asked Fee anxiously as they scuttled down the side of the building and dropped the bag into her hands.
The one with eight legs pointed six of them back up to the room, and chattered in a language only it could understand. Bing raced up her arm and into Fee’s hair, quivering. The thieving one bounced up and down in agitation.
“Did someone try to catch you?” asked Fee.
Affirmative chattering came from all three.
At that moment, two more creatures came flying out the window, but this time they were flying as if they’d been thrown. A large man appeared at the balcony and looked around. Henry pulled Fee quickly backwards under the balcony, holding a hand over her mouth when she went to speak, and hoping they hadn’t been seen.
