by Хлоя Нейл
“You okay?”
I looked over and found Jason behind me, worry in his eyes. “I’m good.”
He touched a fingertip to my thumb. “Good. Otherwise, I’d have to run back and take a bite out of crime, if you know what I mean.”
“Show-off.”
He winked.
“Got it,” Detroit announced. She pressed the plastic cover back into place, then waved her giant black watch over the pad.
For a moment there was silence, and then the door clicked as the mechanism unlocked.
Detroit pushed through the door.
“Nice job,” I said, passing by as she held the door open.
“It’s not firespell,” she said, “but it works for me.”
No argument there.
7
Detroit and Paul stayed by the door until we were done, then pulled it closed until it clicked shut again behind us. We filed down the stairs. A steel bar stretched across the final landing, probably to keep folks out of the basement and the tunnels. We hopped over it to reach the tall, metal fire door that punctuated the dank bottom of the stairwell and waited while Detroit jimmied the lock on a chain on the door.
I’ll admit it; I was impressed. Detroit had skills that made caper movies look low budget. But I wasn’t the only one pleased with our trek so far.
“Nice job back there,” Scout said, nudging me with her elbow. “I’m calling that Adepts, one. Vampires, zero.”
“Agreed,” I said, holding up a hand. “I’m gonna need some skin on that one.” She reached out and high-fived me.
It took only a couple of seconds before Detroit tripped the tumblers and was pulling the chain away. “All right,” she said. “Last part of the trip.”
“And this was supposed to be a shortcut,” I muttered.
“At least we got to spend some quality time together.”
I gave Jason a dry look. “Be honest. You were hoping I’d use firespell. You wanted to see it.”
“Well, if you want me to be honest, then yeah. I wanted to watch you work your mojo.”
“Jeeeez, you two,” Scout said. “Make out somewhere else.”
“Spoilsport,” I told her.
The fire door led back into the railway tunnels. Maybe the Pedway architect figured they’d put be put back into use someday.
“We’ll stay here and watch your back,” Paul said, pointing between himself,
Jamie, and Jill. “We can ice out the vamps if they make it in, make sure you have a clear path back to the Enclave.”
“Especially since we’re taking the long way home,” Jason advised.
Detroit grumbled, but seemed to get his point.
From there, it was only a couple hundred yards before we reached a ramshackle wooden door.
“This is it,” Detroit whispered, opening the door and giving us a peek of a walkway between our wooden door and a set of metal double doors at the other end of a long corridor. The walkway’s ceiling was covered by grates, and we could hear the sounds of music and engines above us as cars passed by.
“This is what?” Jason asked, confusion in his expression as he surveyed the hallway. “What are we supposed to be seeing?”
Naya’s face fell. “It’s gone.”
“The slime,” Detroit said. “This is where we saw it.”
“I definitely don’t see any slime,” Scout said, cramming beside me in the doorway. She was right. I mean, we were underground, so it wasn’t like it was sparkling clean in there, but there was definitely no slime.
Detroit looked crestfallen. “I don’t understand. This is really where we saw it. It couldn’t have just disappeared.”
Jason gestured toward the double doors at the other end of the corridor, which were marked with those pointy biohazard stickers. “No,” he said. “But someone could have cleaned up the slime.”
“Reapers?” I wondered. “You think the Reapers know something about the creatures?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “After all, we didn’t, not until we saw them last night.” He looked at Michael. “What can you tell us?”
Michael nodded decisively, then rubbed his hands together like he was getting ready to roll some dice. He stepped forward into the corridor, put a palm flat against the wall, and closed his eyes.
“It’s muddy,” he said. “Unclear. So many coming and going. So much birth and death. Change . . .” But then he shook his head.
“I can’t read anything else clearly.” When he opened his eyes again, there was defeat there. “I can’t see anything else.”
“What does that tell you?” Scout asked, tilting her head at him. “What does it mean if you can’t read anything?”
Michael shook his head, clearly flustered by whatever he’d seen—or hadn’t seen. “Could be that too much went on—too much magic for any one message to filter through. Or could be some kind of blocking spell.”
“We’ve seen those before,” Detroit agreed. “Spells to erase the magic’s fingerprints, scramble the magic’s DNA. Reapers use obfus for things like that.”
I lifted a hand. “Sorry. What’s an ‘obfu’?”
“Obfuscator,” Detroit explained. “Something that obfuscates—makes it hard for Michael to get a read on the building.”
“Any chance you’ve got a magic detector in your bag of tricks?” Scout asked.
“Oh!” Detroit said, fumbling through the pockets of her leather jacket until she pulled out something tiny and black that was shaped like a pill. She held it up between two fingers.
“Magic smoke,” she said. After Scout pulled Michael back into the doorway,
Detroit leaned forward and tossed the pill into the hallway.
It hit the concrete floor and rolled a little, finally settling against the double doors.
“Four, three, two, and—” Before she could say “one,” the pill emitted a puff of blue smoke. As it rose through the far end of the corridor, we could see pale green lines crisscrossing the air, like dust highlighting a laser beam.
“What is that?” I wondered.
“Trip wires,” Scout said. “Magical trip wires. And I have got to get one of those spells.”
“I’ve got a box at the Enclave,” Detroit whispered. “I’ll bring you a couple.”
“We are now besties,” she whispered.
“What do they do?” Michael asked.
Scout pointed toward the smoke. “They set wards,” she said. “They’re like trip wires. If we breach one as we try to cross the door, whoever set the spells them gets a signal. Like an alarm bell.”
“And I bet Reapers would be on us in nothing flat,” Jason predicted. “This has got to be their handiwork. I mean, it’s got to be someone with magic, and if this was an Adept hidey-hole, we’d know about it.”
“Well, we’re definitely not going in there looking for slime,” Michael said. “What’s plan B?”
“I am,” Naya said. “I will call someone.”
“One of the recently deceased,” Detroit clarified, gesturing toward Naya. She took a step out of the crowded doorway into the corridor, blew out a slow breath and moved her hands, palms down, in front of her as she exhaled like she was physically pushing the air from her body.
Jason bumped my arm. “Let’s set up a protective area while she’s getting ready,” he said, then pointed to each of us in turn. Michael and Scout made a line between Naya and the wooden door into the tunnels, and Jason and I stepped around them all to create a barrier between Naya and the trip wires. Two lines of Adept defense in case something nasty popped through either way.
Once in position, we waited silently, gazes skimming nervously around the corridor, waiting for something to happen.
As if the air conditioner had suddenly kicked on, the temperature in the room dropped by ten or fifteen degrees. I stuffed my hands into my pockets. “It’s super-
chilly down here today.”
All eyes turned to me. Understanding struck, and the hair at the back of my neck lift
ed. The corridor felt like a field of power lines, abuzz with potential energy.
“That wasn’t just a breeze, was it?” Michael whispered.
The sidewalk grates began to vibrate, then clank up and down in their moorings as something moved into the corridor. The air got hazy, and a cold, thick fog sank down among us.
“She’s here,” Naya whispered.
Jason muttered a startled curse, then reached out for my hand. I laced my fingers with his and squeezed. Michael and Scout were also holding hands. About time.
The mist swirled, but didn’t take shape.
“She is having trouble heeding the call,” Naya said. “The energy . . . is scattered.”
“Is that why we can’t see her?” I whispered to Detroit. The question seemed rude —like this poor girl could help that she didn’t have a body—but important nonetheless.
“It takes a lot of power for the spirit to make contact, to penetrate the veil between the gray land and ours. Making herself visible would take more power than she’s got. But that won’t stop him or her from reaching out, or helping us.”
Naya finally opened her eyes. “Her name is Temperance Bay. She was one of us, an Adept. Her skill was illusion. She could change the physical appearance of an object. She died—was taken—by a Reaper at nineteen. Ten years ago.” Naya shook her head. “That’s all she can tell me—and she had trouble getting that much across. The energy down here is bad. Noisy.”
“That explains why I couldn’t get a good read,” Michael said.
“What would cause that?” I asked.
Jason pointed up. “Could be the trip wires. Could be because we’re down here in a hole. Could be because of whatever went on in this place before we got here.”
That didn’t exactly bode well.
“Hey,” Detroit said, looking at me curiously. “You’ve got firespell, right?”
“Um, yeah. Why?”
“Well, firespell is power magic. So maybe you could send her some firespell power, like an amplifier?”
Was she kidding? I barely knew how to turn the lights on and off. “I wouldn’t know how to do that.”
Undeterred, Detroit shook her head, then began tapping at the screen of her big black watch. “No, I think we can do this. It’s just a matter of energy. Of plugging you in, I guess.”
I looked at Scout, who shrugged, then Jason.
“This one’s all you, kiddo. You’re the only one who knows what it feels like. Do you think you could do it?”
I frowned, then looked at Naya. “Can you ask Temperance if she has any idea how to do it? How that might work? I don’t want to hurt her. I mean, could I hurt her?”
“Of course you could,” Naya said. “She’s deceased, not nonexistent. Her energy remains. If you unbalance her energy, she’s gonna feel it.”
“So no pressure,” Scout added from across the room.
No kidding, but I was an Adept, and I knew what needed to be done. “Okay,” I said. “Ask her what I need to do.”
Naya nodded, then rubbed the saint’s medal around her neck. Her expression went a little vacant again. “Temperance, we await your direction. You have heard our plea for assistance. How can we help you make manifest?” Her eyelids fluttered. “Nourish her with the energy,” she said, “to help her cross the veil. She says that I can bridge the gap to help you focus it. To help you direct it.”
I nodded again. I didn’t fully understand what Temperance was, but I had an idea of how it could work. Temperance was basically a spirit without a body. Naya was the link between us, the wire for the current I could provide. If I pretended Temperance was like a lightbulb in the tunnels, I might be able to give her some energy.
The only question was—could I do it without killing both of us?
“Give me your hand,” I told Naya. She reached out and took my palm, and I squeezed our fingers together. “With your other hand, can you—not touch—but somehow reach Temperance? Like, have her center herself near you?”
Naya nodded, and Temperance must have moved, because I felt the spark of energy along the length of our arms.
“Here goes,” I said, and closed my eyes. I imagined the three of us were a circuit, like the connected wires in a circuit board. I pulled up the well of energy, and instead of letting it flow into a bulb above me, tried to imagine it twisting, funneling from my extended arm into Naya’s, slinking softly through her, and into the ghost at her side.
I felt my hair rise and lift around my head as energy swirled and Naya’s fingers began to shake in my hands.
“Holy crap,” I heard Scout say.
My eyes popped open, and I glanced at Naya. “Are you okay?”
Her eyes were clenched closed. “I’m fine. Just keep going.”
“I saw her.”
I looked back at Scout, her face pale, her eyes wide, and the key around her neck—something worn by every girl at St. Sophia’s—lifting in the currents of magic.
“I saw her. She wore a brown skirt. You were doing it. Keep going.”
I nodded, then closed my eyes again and imagined a long cord of energy between the three of us—two current Adepts and an Adept from a former time. I pushed the energy along the current, not too much, just a little at a time, narrowing in as it spindled between us, like a fine thread being spun from a pile of frothy yarn.
I imagined the energy moving through Naya, slipping past her again, into the whirl of energy that was Temperance Bay. I tried to fill her with it, and with Naya acting as a conduit, I could feel her on the other side—her ache to be heard by the world around her, to be seen and remembered once again. It was a hunger, and as I offered her the energy, I felt her relief. When that hunger eased, I pulled back on the power again, slowing it to a trickle, and finally cutting it off.
Our hands still linked together, I opened my eyes. Everyone’s gazes were focused to my right, past Naya, at the girl who stood beside her, gaze on me.
She wasn’t quite solid—more like an old movie projection than an actual girl. But even still, there she was. She had wavy brown hair that fell nearly to her waist, and she wore a simple, straight brown skirt and long-sleeved sweater. Her eyes were big and brown, and although she wore no makeup, her cheeks were flushed pink,
like she’d just come in from the cold.
Maybe she had. Maybe the gray land was cold.
She moved toward me, her image flickering at the edges as she moved, her body transparent. She held out her hands. I let go of Naya’s hand and extended both of my shaking hands toward Temperance.
And then we touched.
I couldn’t hold her hands—but I could feel them. Their outlines. Their edges. She was made of energy and light, coalesced into a form we could see, but still not quite real.
“Temperance Bay,” she said, her voice soft and barely audible.
“Lily Parker.”
She smiled back at me. I knew she was thanking me, so I returned her smile.
“How long will it last?”
“Not long,” she said, then turned to look at Naya, who nodded at both of us.
“Temperance,” she said, “we think that building was used by the enemy, but we aren’t sure why. We need to know what went on in there, and we need to know if anyone is still using it. Can you move through it? Take a look and see what kinds of things they were doing? We need to know if there are computers or papers—
documents of any kind that might be useful.”
Temperance nodded, then walked toward the doors, one slow step at a time. She moved right through the trip wires and then the doors—and then she was gone.
“And now we wait,” Naya said.
“Waiting” meant sitting cross-legged on the ground, the others chatting while I waited to get a little of my own energy back. It hadn’t occurred to me that filling Temperance up with power meant draining some of my own. My arms and legs felt heavy, like I’d run a marathon or was coming down with the flu. Jason sat beside me, eyes scanning the corridor as he off
ered me granola bars and water to boost my energy.
For Detroit, “waiting” meant working her mechanical magic. While we crouched in the entryway, she pushed the buttons on the sides of her giant black watch. After a second, a coin-shaped piece of black plastic popped out like a CD being ejected from a laptop.
“What’s that?” Scout asked.
“Camera,” Detroit whispered, then gestured toward the double doors. “I figure since we’re here, we might as well be proactive. The pictures aren’t fabulous, but it’ll give us eyes on the doors without risking Adepts.”
She glanced around, her gaze settling on the concrete eave at our end of the corridor. “That’ll work. Should give us a clear view.” She looked around. “Could anyone help me get a lift up?”
“I’ll help,” Jason said. He went down on one knee, the other propped up like a step, and held out a hand. Without hesitation, Detroit took his hand for balance,
stepped up onto Jason’s propped knee, and pressed the plastic coin into the concrete.
“Now I have a way to check in on whatever this is at the lab,” Detroit said.
“You guys have a lab?” Scout asked.
Detroit looked up, surprise in her face. “Sure. Don’t you?”
“You’re joking, right?”
Detroit just blinked at Scout. “No.”
“Uh, yeah, that room we met in earlier? That’s our entire Enclave.”
“No way. You guys are running a low-budg operation. We’ve got a lab,
conference rooms, kitchenette, nap rooms. I mean, it’s not lush or anything—it’s a bomb shelter built in the nineteen sixties or something.”
“Not lush, she says, but they have a nap room.” Scout made a noise of disgust,
then glanced at me. “You know what we need? A benefactor.”
“Aren’t your parents, like, superwealthy?” I wondered.
“We need a generous benefactor,” she clarified. “My parents are pretty Green-
focused. Ah! I made a pun.”
Detroit offered Scout an arch look, like she didn’t appreciate the use of humor in dire Adepty situations. I was beginning to wonder how they ran things over in Enclave Two. So far, it seemed like a pretty (up)tight ship.
