Gil and Tara helped arrange Vivian more comfortably on the floor, folding her arms like she was a vampire in a coffin and straightening her legs. Clarice was trembling and didn’t feel capable of lifting her up to the couch, but she got a pillow under Vivian’s head.
“Can we get the lights back on?” Clarice asked, when she tripped over a couch cushion and almost flattened some poor kid. The book under her sweater was making another break for it, and she wondered if it would be okay to take it out yet. There was something decidedly weird about being in a house with so many unconscious people. Like it was backwards-haunted, she thought, trying to tamp down her near hysteria.
“I turned all the circuits off at the fuse box when I turned on the hallway stun circuit to slow them down,” Darius explained, returning with Bruno. “The system takes two minutes to charge, so I tripped them all and ran. No one can get back across it to the fuse box.”
Tara whispered something.
“What, honey?” Clarice groped for her hand in the dark. “Your mama will wake up soon.” She’d felt for Vivian’s pulse and it seemed strong. Shane stopped kicking and seemed content to lean his head against Clarice’s cheek, though he occasionally whimpered and tested her grip.
“How’d you know about the hallway, Darius?” Bruno wanted to know.
Darius dragged a foot on the carpet. “I called my mom,” he admitted grudgingly. “She told me what to do.”
Bruno clapped him on the shoulder, by the sound of it. “It was well done.”
“I DID GOOD!” Gil crowed. “I DIDN’T SHIFT!”
“You all did really well,” Bruno said kindly. “We can wait here until the others come.”
Clarice didn’t really relish waiting the entire night in a dark house with hungry kids cut off from the kitchen. “At least the bathroom is on this end of the hallway!” she said, trying to find the bright side.
Tara was tugging at her hand. “I can go,” she said.
“The hallway is electric,” Clarice reminded her. “It will shock you and put you to sleep like the men.”
“I can walk without touching it,” Tara said confidently. “I’m lucky, too.”
Clarice stared at her. All she could see in the gloom was a vague shape and the faint reflection off her big eyes. “Um…”
Tara seemed to think that was permission, and she flowed down into a tiny deer-like form that shimmered slightly in the dark. She took a few silent steps and, sure enough, was floating slightly off the floor.
“Okay,” Darius said, like this wasn’t the slightest bit unusual. Maybe it wasn’t, for him. He was used to shapeshifters, and Clarice had only known about them (forsure) for a week. He knelt to talk earnestly to Tara. “There’s a metal door on the wall inside the closet in the living room. It’s up high, you might need a chair. The handle slides to the side, it’s kind of tricky. You have to open it, and then look for a switch—kind of like a light switch, but sideways. There are a whole bunch of them, and you have to look for the one that has a red dot on the end. That’s the only one you need to touch. Can you do that?”
“It’s safe?” Bruno confirmed.
“Only the hallway is electrified,” Darius said. “It was meant as a trap. And if she’s not puttingweighton the floor, it won’t trigger.”
Tara trotted through the air down the dimly lit hallway, careful not to touch the men or the walls, and disappeared into the living room. Over the snuffling of the children, Clarice heard the scrape of a chair, the sound of a door, and a distant click.
“I’ll check it,” Darius said, but Bruno stopped him.
“I will.” Bruno stepped cautiously out into the hallway, one small step at a time, testing the floor until he got to one of the men and prodded with a foot.
“IS HE DEAD?” Gil asked, pressed between Clarice and the doorway to see out.
“No,” Bruno said, maybe a little too quickly. “He’s asleep. We should tie them up before they wake up and make trouble. I’ll turn the rest of the fuse box back on so we have light.”
“THAT WAS EXCITING!” Gil said, apparently not the slightest bit traumatized.
Clarice realized she was trembling and wished she was half as resilient. She really was going to have to get a business card from Bruno after all of this.
45
BRUNO
By the time Bruno got the lights on, Darius had found a tool box with a spool of paracord. They went to work collecting weapons and phones and tying up the hands and feet of the attackers. Roderick, Wendy, and Addison, decorated with several darts apiece, were made more comfortable. They had shifted into their human forms when drugged and appeared to be slumbering solidly.
“She’s going to be okay?” Darius asked plaintively, as they put a pillow under Wendy’s head.
