Before I could assure them that hadn’t happened, Opal said, “The woman who practices magic and is calledwitchwould be most suitable. Bring her to us.”
Less than five seconds later—too quickly for T. Laine to have run up the stairs, which meant the unit was just inside the door, ready to be backup—the door opened and T. Laine stepped onto the rooftop. The door behind her didn’t close completely, which reminded me I should have left it open too, and hadn’t.
T. Laine gave a formal nod. “I am Special Agent Kent with the Psychometric Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security, Unit Eighteen. I am a moon witch. May I observe the energies of the bracelet to ascertain they will not conflict with my own?”
“Once it touches you, it will be too late to withdraw,” Opal said. “Observe the device as I hold it.”
T. Laine said, “My thanks.” She studied the bracelet in the hand of the arcenciel. I had a feeling she was studying the arcenciels too. “The energies are strong, but my own seem to be compatible. Do you wish to place the cuff on my arm, or shall I?”
“We will place it. Should we find She Who Guards the Rift first, it will vibrate and a picture of the place where she is held will appear on the surface. At that time, you will be able to hear our voices as we speak, and we will be able to hear yours. Should you find her first, you will tap here.” She indicated an indention on the cuff. “You will then be able to speak to us and to call us to you. The cuff will be our guide. There will be no invasion of the privacy of listening until the vibration. We have learned that some things among humans are not for us to learn, such as the honeymoon and the mating.”
My eyebrows went up.
T. Laine held out her arm and Pearl slipped the bracelet around her wrist. It shrank as if it was alive and snuggled into place.
Instantly the two women dove off the side of the building. An explosion of light came from below and trailed down the street, so bright the forms of the dragons were lost in the glare. And they were gone.
The door opened again and FireWind said, “Ingram. Kent. Report.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“I feel a little weird,” T. Laine said.
FireWind lunged for her.
Lainie collapsed in his arms.
FOURTEEN
T. Laine regained consciousness on the utilitarian sofa in the break room. “Water?” she croaked.
With an arm behind her shoulders, FireWind lifted her to a sitting position and held a bottle of water to her lips.
“Tell me what’s happening,” JoJo demanded into my comms set. She was still in the conference room, overseeing security.
“She’s awake and thirsty,” I said.
“What day is it?” FireWind asked Lainie while she drank.
She wrapped her hand around his, drained the bottle, and said, “It’s a freaking damn Monday in the middle of a freaking damn snowstorm and I feel like I got hit by a freaking damn truck.” She pushed the bottle and FireWind away to sit upright on her own. Grabbing the bracelet with her other hand, she tried to pull it off. It didn’t budge. “This sucks.”
“Is it affecting your magic?” FireWind asked.
“I don’t know yet. Give me a bit. I need to run some tests here and in the null room.” She swung her legs off the sofa and held her head in her hands as if still woozy. “One good thing, we’ll know if being in a null room affects arcenciel magic.”
* * *
A storm warning screen was up on the overhead system. The precipitation had stopped, the temperature hovering near thirty-three. All the snow on the ground was melting slowly into the ice below, which would only make things messier when the temps refroze at nightfall. The roads were a briny half-frozen mess. Trees were down everywhere. Ice had coated electric lines and brought them down. Even KUB’s and Oak Ridge’s triple backup power grid, with the arm of the Tennessee Valley Authority to back them up, were no match for localized downed power lines.Headquarters electricity had held on, and we had Internet and comms. So far.
My brother and two half brothers, Amos and Rufus, had checked on Esther, the twins, and Mud, making sure they had firewood, lantern oil, and formula and that her pipes were okay. Sam had then made it up the hill to my house, started up my tractor, and attached the blade. Like the country boys they were, the three had scraped and snowplowed the slush off the driveways and the road, then disturbed the gravel to give tires enough traction to traverse the hill. When that was done, they checked my pipes and serviced my windmill. There were a lot of reasons to hate growing up in the church, but the attention and skill sets of family were good things.
Then to make sure “the womenfolk” were safe, Rufus was now curled up with a good book on Esther’s sofa, his shotgun beside him. He was letting my sisters feed him and serve him coffee while he “guarded the house.” Neither of them told him they were far better equipped to keep the house and grounds safe than him, but I was grateful he was there. My half brother with Esther and Mud, and Yummy patrolling the grounds, would provide adequate safety for my sisters. And if a small sad thought reminded me that no one had protected me when I was a young widow, the thought was small enough to push away.
I hadn’t decided to stay the night at HQ, but I was leaning that way. Even with the road to my house cleared, it might take me two hours to get home. Meanwhile we were all searching for Soul and Torquemada. But the thing about being a vampire was you didn’t need lights, heat, water, or power, and you could stay in a closet in an abandoned building forever and simply hunt humans in a city that was shut down. It would take authorities ages to find the drained bodies, if they ever did.
With that in mind, I checked to see the outcome of law enforcement intervention of the man who had tried to get onto my land, and of the others FireWind had taken in. All had lawyered up and had been released by the prosecutor without charges. They had vanished, of course.
Jo was teaching me how to do a deep dive on all the Spanish names Yummy had given us. I was learning how to search for the history of people on the Internet and the dark web, and it was scary how much there was out there. Some information wastotally incorrect, looking as if it had been prepared with a paycheck in mind, but other things I discovered hit the nail on the head. The skill was in finding the same information in different places and not word for word, then piecing a story or a history together with names and dates and a timeline.
